Here’s the beginning of this week’s story! I can’t wait to hear the endings you come up with for this one.
Yesterday was my first day completely free. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I did nothing. Today, though, I am going to make the most of it. I don’t care that it is raining, the cold, hard kind of rain that viciously splats against the windows. I have do something or I will go crazy.
I pull on my coat and yank my rainboots onto my feet. As I step out onto the sidewalk, I see the bus just pulling up to the stop on the corner. I jog quickly, pushing my way past the other people waiting to get on. My hand is on the railing when I see her.
I freeze, the disgruntled murmurs of the passengers jostling in line behind me not penetrating my brain. How can she be here?
You know the rules by now. Finish the story in one sentence or as many as you like. Please post your answers here so we can all enjoy your creativity!
How can she be here? She’s dead!
A large man behind me gets tired of waiting and pushes hard against me, and involuntarily my feet move up the bus steps. I let the swarm of humanity sweep me down the aisle and into a corner seat.
Craning my neck, I look out the window toward the corner where I spotted her. My skin is all clammy and my breath is short, too shallow.
The bus jerks, belching out black smoke. The smell of exhaust nauseates me and I bend forward, trying to control my stomach.
How can she be alive? I saw the body with my own eyes that night. The broken rope, the trail of broken grass where she had slipped and fallen down the mountain. She couldn’t have survived.
For once, my senses don’t match with my reason. I know I saw her body, dead and broken, five years ago in Mississippi. I also know I saw just her now, alive, healthy, and vibrant, in New York City.
If she is alive, why did I spend the last five years in jail? Anger burns deep inside, slowly building until I slam my fist into the seat in front of me.
For five years I lived in that prison, keeping out of trouble and serving my time, knowing I deserved it for not being careful enough that night. ‘Involuntary manslaughter’, they called it. For me, being in prison wasn’t even the worst. Missing her night and day, bawling my eyes out silently for letting her die, for not protecting her, that was the worst.
And for what? To find out now it was all a mistake?
Clenching my fists tightly, I get up and get off at the next stop, then catch the next bus back to my apartment.
I need to pack. It’s time to go back where I said I would never go again. It’s time to go home.