It's Wednesday's Weekly Writing Prompt (a few days late...). This week's little story was inspired by the above picture and these five words:
North
Gutter
Padlock
Herald
Sky
500 word maximum (once again I think I wrote 499...), a week to complete the story, and the stories need to be submitted to Nicole's website: HERE. I've had a lot of fun with these. If you're wondering if you can do it or if it would be fun, why not give it a try? Here's what I wrote for this week.
A Gutter?...What?
“Excuse
me,” Herald Johnson said to the perspiring bus driver as he stepped from the
bus where he spent the last nine hours. “What town is this?”
“No
comprendo,” the driver said as he waved an annoyed hand at the American
student.
“But I have
no idea where I am!” Herald screamed as the dusted glass door closed with a
squeak and the bus began to drive away followed by a plume of pollution and dirt.
Herald scanned his surroundings and he knew one thing for certain, this wasn’t
the Texas Tech University Center and this small hamlet carved into the Pyrenees
Mountains was definitely not Seville.
He should
have just stayed on the bus, Harold thought. Why did he trust that old woman
who woke him up after a two-hour nap, the woman who told him in Spanish that this
was his stop. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what she said. And now the
non-Spanish speaking 20-year old was lost in what looked like a sleepy town of
less than 5,000 people, none of which, Herald thought, probably spoke English.
“Pardon,”
Harold said to the first person within earshot. “Can you tell me where I am,
por favor?”
“Qué?” the hunched
spectacled elderly man said to the American’s baby face.
“Do you
understand English?”
“No,” the
man said shaking his head.
Harold
looked up hoping some celestial object could help him. He noted the sun’s
location in the morning sky then checked his watch. He quickly formed a
rudimentary compass in his mind.
“North?
Ah…norte?” Harold pointed to where he thought north was. The old man smiled and
nodded. “Norte,” he said, his voice light, carefree.
That’s
great, Harold thought. Knowing where north was didn’t really help him at all.
If he only had his cell phone, but he left it back in Lubbock knowing it
wouldn’t work in Europe.
“Do you
have a cell phone?” Harold said to the older man a little louder than was
necessary. “Cell phone?” Harold tried to pantomime him holding a phone to his
right ear.
“Eh?” the
man said.
“Cell
phone…cell-i-phono?”
“Canalón?”
the man said with a quizzical tone. Maybe this man understood him after all.
“Si,”
Harold said. “Si, si… canalón.” “Where can I find a canalón?”
The
man gave Harold a confused look and then shrugged his shoulders. He turned and
pointed to the roof of what looked like a Spanish church at the corner of the
town square.
“Gracias,”
Harold said and ran to the building. He reached the door only to find a large
padlock sealing the door closed.
“Canalón?”
Harold asked a younger woman passing by. She stopped, gave him the same
confused look the old man had given him and pointed up to the corner of the
building’s roof. “Canalón,” she said.
Harold
looked up. “A rain gutter?...What?”
“I
don’t know why you are looking for that,” the woman said as she left Harold to
try and figure out what to do next.
I wonder how long it will take him to realize she spoke English. :P I like how compact and concise this feels. (Can I ask) How many words? I could count, but ... it's just easier if you tell me. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe first draft had 540 so I did a little cutting. When I copied it over from WORD, the number count (without the title...) was 499. Thanks for the nice words!
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