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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Caffeine Cure...A Story


Wednesday Writing Blog Hop!

The picture to this week's Wednesday Short Story Blog Hop was a doozie! Creepy, but a doozie. Once again it's Wednesday and I'm writing a little story. Here's the link to Nicole Pyles' Site: HERE .

500 word minimum, a week to complete the story, must post to Nicole's website, must use the picture (above) and must use five randomly chosen words. The five words for this week's picture are:

Zip
Hymn
Computer
False Teeth
 Peacock

Caffeine Cure...

    The drone from Larry’s bald tires on the lonely road created an automotive hypnotic hymn as the tired entertainer drove to his next gig 100 miles away. His last show in Studderville, a town so small it lacked even its own zip code, proved less than stellar. Something in his act was broken and had been for a while. He’d fix it if he knew what was wrong, but he didn’t know what was wrong, and that was the worst part.
    His aging Chevy continued through the darkened back roads under a waning moon. Larry’s head began to dip…once, then twice as fatigue seeped into the car from the warm summer night.
    “Hey! Idiot! Keep your eyes on the road!” Larry’s head snapped to attention as a rush of adrenalin coursed through his veins. “What the…?” Larry said to himself as he turned to look at the interior of the car to find the source of the phantom voice. His gaze confirmed what he already knew. He was alone, except for Jack and Jill, the two mannequins he used for his ventriloquist act. Their expressionless faces continued staring straight ahead, their painted black eyes and whitened false teeth remained fixed, immobile, dead as the light from the car’s dashboard illuminated their features in a ghostly macabre hue.
    “What was that?” Larry asked himself. “Must be the fact I haven’t slept in 2 days—no wonder I’m hearing things…I need caffeine.” Larry scanned the winding road and saw nothing but aging tarmac. “Maybe I can make it to Peacock Falls before…”
    “You’ll never make it! You’re going to kill us all!”
    Larry slammed on the breaks causing two tons of steal, rubber, and plastic to screech to a halt. A half-eaten hamburger, his cell phone, and Larry’s laptop computer flew from the passenger front seat
and landed in a heap on the floor. With a jolt the car came to rest diagonally in the empty road. Larry’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the car’s steering wheel. Crickets lazily chirped outside the car while inside a petrified man heard neither the crickets nor the purring of the car’s engine as the deafening sound of his own rapid heartbeat pounded in his ears. That voice, it was different. It came
from someone—something—else…it was a girl’s voice. Not daring to turn around Larry glanced into the rearview mirror. Jack and Jill were gone.
    The trembling began in Larry’s shoulders and continued down his arms until they reached his hands causing his still clutching fingers to finally release the steering wheel. His left hand still shook
as he clumsily grasped the door handle and opened the driver’s side door. Larry began to walk, then run down the street, screaming at the top of his lungs as he frantically ran away, leaving the diminished moonlight to filter through the car’s rear window and fall upon two wooden dummies that had slumped onto the backseat floor of the car.

8 comments:

  1. Brilliant! I loved the ending, so simple. Well done.

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    1. Thanks Heather! I wanted to add more to the ending, but I ran out of words (darn 500 word max limit!). Thanks again for the nice words! I'm looking forward to reading yours... ;)

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  2. I've been so tired I hallucinated while driving before. It did not help it was super foggy. I kept seeing houses appear before me and only the knowledge of being on a highway got me to the next exit.

    I stumbled over this sentence:

    Crickets lazily chirped outside the car while inside a petrified man heard neither the crickets nor the purring of the car’s engine as the deafening sound of his own rapid heartbeat pounded in his ears.

    I think it's just a breath too long.

    Otherwise, I love the creepy mystery of it all. Fatigue or puppet possession ...

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    1. Oh, Carrie--that sentence... The rest of the story flowed quite well, but I wrote and re-wrote that particular sentence several times (as, I'm sure you can tell...). There is a lot in there. In my re-writes I could get the feeling I wanted with multiple sentences, but I ran up against the word limit. Glad you pointed that out, really. And thanks for the comments!

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  3. I loved the ending, how the puppets had slumped to the floor, but he was too scared to find out where they went as he bolted out of the car and ran away. It reminded me of the times there was a massive huntsman spider in the car or room (they get as big as a small adult hand), one minute it's there, and the next it's gone and I wasn't about to stick around long enough to find out where it went. I was just like your main character, running away screaming. hee hee

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    1. Thanks! And I don't know how any human can live with those spiders around. We have tarantulas in North America, but they only come out in the fall and they are not very fast...they kind of go at their own speed. Those thinks you have are terrifying! Thanks again!

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  4. I can't believe I missed this!! Oh this is creepy. See? I would never be able to own these types of freaky dolls!! They remind me of so many horror movies!! I love the process of fear in this too. First the "oh it's nothing" to the "you better runnnnn."

    Clever use of peacock! :)

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  5. Liked the use of peacock myself too - "Peacock Falls" Ending makes me wonder = 'What happens next'.... :-)

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