We All Have Our Price

The Whirlygig 298

 Prompt words in red.

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/641168

 

      The moonlight was shining like silver.

 

No, that will never do, much too trite.  Skip the similes.

 

     Fir trees, dusted with star light…

 

Ok, better.  Metaphors are okay. 

Then what?  Who sees this star light? 

 

     She ran down the narrow forest path,

unseen by any creatures of the night. 

 

So, she saw the star light.  But, was she really unseen?  What if she was being followed… or chased? 

 

     Unseen apart for the one lean being who’d watched her cross the fields an hour ago and unbeknownst to her, was tracking her.  He knew these forest paths like the back of his hand, and realized there was no way she knew where she was going or where the paths led. 

 

Why would he notice her?  Why would he be “lean?”  Perhaps he isn’t lean, he’s leaning!

 

     As he sat in the driver’s seat, a naked young woman ran with purpose past his parked pickup.  She didn’t give him any notice, so intent was her mad dash for tree cover.  Her moon lit hair streaming behind her…

 

Ugh, no.  Let’s not have her naked.  It could be her whisper that lays bare a truth, the naked truth!  Yes!

Oh, lord, I didn’t mention a whisper yet.  OK…

 

A young woman quickly passed his parked pickup. It seemed to him that she was running with purpose, perhaps for her life even, if he was to wax poetic, as he so often did.  He thought he heard through his open window, a whisper on her gasping breath as she ran.  A whisper for his ears, or to herself? 

 

What could she whisper?   Think.  Think.

 

     He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded a bit like, “Help me.  Help me, please.”  He leaned out to watch her veer onto one of the many deer tracks in the forest.  Looking the direction she came, he wondered if she was being chased. It would account for her fear, and her cry for help.  If that’s what he heard.  He didn’t see anyone, which was the reason he was out here at this time of night.  Solitude.   

     No time to second guess himself, if she was in trouble he’d have to follow her.   Make sure she didn’t get lost, twist her ankle in the dark, or, keeping to the right, exit the forest at the highway.  He really couldn’t have her finding the highway, not after all the time he’d spent to spook her this direction earlier that evening.  Now, the left hand trail… that’s the one where he’d set out his traps.  Deer.  Raccoon.  Fox.  Women. 

 

Damn.  This isn’t going anywhere, but fast.  Why would she run right past his truck if she needed help?  I could change that part.  Maybe he ought to be a hero instead.  Rescue her from a bear or something.  But, he surely would have seen her being chased by a bear back at his truck.  If he wasn’t the one stalking her he’d have had no reason to even be sitting in his truck.  

Oh, hell…  Why’d I ever tell Todd there was nothing to writing a story?  Now he’s going to laugh and I’ll never hear the end of it.  He’ll probably tell this story at every one of his book signings.   “Where do I get my ideas?  Well, a lot of the time I get them from real life.  I’m an observant type.  My next novel will be a mystery about a published author who challenges his girlfriend to write a story herself, after she told him there was ‘nothing to it.’” His adoring fans will ask if that really happened, and he’s just the ass to tell them it did, and laugh at my expense.   

Of course, 

if it’s a best seller I’ll let it go, 

but for nothing less than another pair of Louboutins.   

I don’t mind being the butt of his jokes, 

but I do have my price. 

 

 

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