"It was the middle of the night..." or "It happened at midnight..." 1-30-22

The Big Giant!

By Colette Flynn 1/30/2022

It was the darkest night of all. No one was awake but me and I was scared, for it was witching hour. I was told stories about the witching hour but I have never thought about actually being awake during that time, but of course I was. I was thinking about my family and not about cookies or anything. I was thinking about my family. I have two sisters and three brothers and my mom and my dad. My sister is Lizzie and Lucia. I have a brother named Brandon and David and Michael. But I was really thinking that if the big giant would take me because I saw him the other day . And in the morning my family would wake up and see I’m gone! Would they be sad? Well of course, my family loves me they would put flyers and stuff up. Just then the big giant grabbed me right from my bed!! The end.

Brooks Flynn 1/30/2022 

I woke up and it was a new day. Then I ate cereal. Then I sat on the porch. Then Mommy yelled at me to clean. Then when I finish cleaning then I saw on my bed, then I ran up the stairs. I asked my mom to play on her computer. Then she said yes! After mom said yes it was lunchtime. Then I went to bed. 

Maja Holmquist

Exercise

"Hey. Look at Nate," Shelby whispered as we got onto the bus.

"Yeah?" I said, glancing over at Nate. “What about him?"

"I heard he got a C on that last test. His dad's gonna rail on him. He probably needs cheering up."

"Probably."

She looked at me pointedly.

"Does he even know who I am?" I asked her, exasperated by her efforts to get me to talk to someone else.

She shoved me towards him.

With his throwback glasses and seriously rumpled hair, he looked like he'd been peeled out of an article in Popular Science. Probably an article about how the hippocampus, socks, and cheese relate. An article in which he appeared only in the photos and only as the test subject with electrodes sticking up like crazy, colorful extensions of his dark, haphazard hair.

I observed for a second as he stood, watching trees go by and worrying his pencil in and out of his hair with a furrowed expression.

So maybe not the Popular Science bit. But I was pretty sure that Harrison Ford wore those exact glasses when he starred in the remake of Sabrina. The same kind of large, round, 90s-style glasses my grandpa wore up until a few years ago when he traded them in for the, then, more trendy rectangular lenses. He complained for a year about not being able to see his food through the small lenses unless the plane of his face was parallel to that of his plate.

I marched the rest of the way to Shelby's chosen subject, noting the smell of coffee and suppressed brilliance. At his side Nate held a pencil and a notebook that oozed beyond its self-proclaimed one subject, 70 sheet limit. Papers stuck out at all angles.

I tilted my head to look up into his face, immediately impressed by the lack of obstruction in his nasal airways.

"Do you look down with just your eyes to see your food when you eat or do you move your whole head?" I queried.

He looked at me, surprise breaking through his features. Either my sudden appearance, near proximity, or my question, did the trick. I couldn't tell for sure which.

I backed up a bit, losing my view up his nose. Clasping my hands behind my back, I bounced from my heels to my toes, then hummed a cough, trying to clear the nervousness out of my throat.

"I'm Jamie. My grandpa and Harrison Ford had glasses just like that. But he's frustrated with the glasses he has now—", I paused to shape my thumbs and forefingers around my eyes in small, three-sided rectangles, "—because he has to work harder to make his food not blurry."

Nate slowly raised an eyebrow.

"My grandpa, not Harrison Ford," I added.

His lips twitched.

I cleared my throat again, humming extra long in the silence as I peeked over at Shelby. She was blatantly staring at us over her magazine. Nate followed my gaze. I watched his other eyebrow as it surged to recover from its late start in the race up his forehead.

I repositioned myself to stand beside rather than in front of him and cleared my throat. Again.

He looked back at me, crossing his free hand over his abdomen to reach mine.

"Nate."

I released his cool, dry hand and cleared my throat when he didn't offer an answer to my question.

What had I asked again? Could he see his food when he ate?

Good grief.

Had I really asked that?

He glanced at me, unable to keep the skin around his eyes from crinkling even when he looked away.

I stared, until he faced me with an unsure but genuine smile.

"I don't have any trouble seeing my food," I said, gesturing to my glasses-free face," so I'm, um, always curious."

He lifted his hands and notebook in a helpless shrug as he finally answered in a deceptively deep, gravely voice. "I don't usually look at my food when I eat. I, uh, just eat it."

Either his voice naturally sounded like he was recovering from a cold, he actually had a cold, or he would be needing to visit my aunt's rehab program sooner than he might have been planning. His reputation in school as the "logical" but cool kid didn't skew him as a smoker so I opted for either of the first two explanations.

"Ah. Sensible of you," I said, both in answer to his statement and to my own musing.

He nodded with a now decided and wide smile. It fit his teenage face much better than the sour expression of before.

I looked over at Shelby triumphantly. She wiggled her fingers at me, in the "go on" fashion.

By: Carrie Keiser

It was the middle of the night and a car alarm went off, setting the neighborhood dogs to barking. That’s what brought me out of my slumber and ripped me from my dreams. I needed it all to stop, I needed to get back to that other place. 

The other place, the place beyond sleep, it is were you go when your eyes close. The place created by your resting mind. Imagine that if that place were not just in your head, if you could interact with it, if it were real. Well that is what the other place is like for me.  The other place is not just a dream world that changes with each sleep, it is a real place that I interact with and thrive in.  It’s like this life is the dream world to me. That is why I have to get back. I have to stop the alarm and the barking I have to!  There are some very important things happening over there that need my attention.  

I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed, grab my robe and glasses. It’s time to find the source and stop the the the terrible car alarm. And those dogs, I must end the barking! I stumble over to the window, just which car is beeping and flashing?  I scan the street, but don’t see the source of the racket.  I close my eyes for just a moment, concentrating, the sound seems to be coming from directly below me! My car? How can this be? I live alone and my keys are hanging by the door, no one could have accidentally pushed the alarm button.  I hung my head in shame, I was the cause of this terrible middle of the night noise.  I run not walk to the door in search of the keys, They aren’t where I hung them. What??  Maybe someone was trying to get into the car and that is what set the alarm off.  I have to find the keys, before more neighbors have been rudely awakened and stolen from their other places. Finally I located the keys, they have fallen under the hall table.  After the button has been pushed, mercifully the noise is silenced and as I return to my room and my bed, the dogs are also quiet.

Removing my robe and crawling back under the covers, I close my eyes and pray sleep takes me fast. Oh yeah I can feel the calm settle over me and the heaviness of sleep gently blanket me as I return to the other place. One reality fades and another takes over.

Story Slingers

January 30, 2022

Myrna Flynn

IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT

I was sleeping soundly and enjoying a pleasant dream. Rudely awakened by a throbbing, low humming. the house seemed to be responding to the noise. Suddenly, I realized that our bedroom was totally dark, almost as being in a cavern when the guide turned off the lights.

I lifted the curtains and looked out on a totally dark street, not even one streetlights on. I looked at my watch see what time it was. My watch would not light up, so I tried my phone, the same thing. I had a battery powered clock on the nightstand. Pushed the button, it was exactly midnight.

I shook my husband awake and asked him to go to his ham radio to see if he could find out what was going on. Most of his ham radio pals were already on the line. Chatter was coming from all over the United States.

And one of our operators, NASA scientist, quickly determined the cause was am EMP. The dreaded destruction had been launched. He was trying to establish from when it came. With the help of ham radio owners a path was tracked around the world. It started in the northern Far East, but the culprit was not pinned down yet. The main countries that had the capacity to do this were China and or Russia.

Almost every country was struck with the EMP. It is still happening in some areas. My husband just heard this news development, Russia has also gone dark and China is losing light. It seems one of the engineers hit the wrong pulse and a missile went to their satellites and they are failing also.

Time is running out and the worst is yet to come.

Story Slingers Prompt

"IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT"

01-30-22

Daren Flynn

IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT

We all wondered when it would happen. In fact is was the most discussed topic among those with whom I associated. We had speculated about it for years but had never attempted to find out for ourselves exactly when it would happen. Then on the last day of the 20th century it was agreed among us that the lot of us would make the attempt to discover the answer to our conundrum. So we all gathered that New Years eve, each with our cell phones fully charged, and began our vigil. Half of us kept our eyes on our clocks while the other half watched the calendars. And that is how we discovered the answer to our question, "When does December 31st become January 1st?" IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT.