Completed in 2017. Not even attempted in 2018, what with a new job, moving, and oh yes, getting married I knew there was no way I'd get any real writing done.
2019 begins with not only good intentions but a real itch to tackle some writing projects. Wouldn't you know 2019 also begins with a course for work complete with weekly assignments and roughly one billion pages of reading?
The result is this: a fun prompt: No one can know. I knew instantly what the 'knowing' would be about.
If only I'd managed to get'er done. It's meant to be 1500 words, but his is all there is of it so far, 200 words short and a whole lot of killing of darlings still to be done:
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It happened quite by accident. We weren’t looking to cause trouble for anyone. We didn’t want to draw attention to anyone who wanted to keep an aspect or two of their lives private, but sometimes people behave so oddly they draw attention to themselves anyway. Or at least the attention of someone with a proclivity for nosiness and a steady habit of people watching.
That’s what we were doing: people watching. There is a picturesque water fountain - the kind that used to water cattle in the olden days - near one end of a charming cobblestone street. It’s more of a lane, really, populated with small but arty offices of architects alongside cafes, book shops, and sellers of collectables and flats above with charming boxes of geraniums at the windows. Everywhere were parked bicycles with wicker baskets on the front, and people walking or sitting in groups of various numbers. One could hardly resist the lure of an hour or two spent observing all that activity perched on a step of that water fountain. We couldn’t, at any rate, and whether you would or not isn’t relevant to this story.
We noticed because there were six of them, you see. We might not have paid any mind to that lacquered blue door if it had been only one or even three of them passing through the door within minutes of each other and emerge again three quarters of an hour later. There was an almost furtive air about them though nothing specifically we could put words to. There also didn’t seem to be anything in their appearance to link them together and yet somehow we could tell they belonged together in some way. Perhaps it was that they didn’t want to be seen that drew our notice.
We were intrigued enough to return the next day to see if the same activity occurred again but to our disappointment not one person used the blue door a few minutes past noon. Still, it was a beautifully soft blue sky day so we didn’t feel the loss of intrigue too keenly. There were pretty girls and boisterous children enough to engage our attention.
We would have thought no more about it except there we were, back at what was becoming our usual spot - a stone bench around the fountain - a week later and by chance saw the young woman. Was there something familiar about her that caught our notice? Or was it the fact that with a hand on the shiny handle of the blue door she quickly looked back from the direction she had come before slipping inside?
Now that we were watching for it we saw four more people behave in the same fashion: slipping out of the flow of people strolling along, a furtive look up and down the lane, a quick disappearance through the blue door. No one seemed to notice the mysterious behaviour; it was as though people were willing invisibility upon themselves.
What happened behind that blue door? Why was it such a secret? Another week passed in which the questions would not rest. We pondered and puzzled over the problem of answering the riddle for five complete days. On the sixth we had an answer, and on the seventh we set out putting our plan in place. We were going to enter through the door ourselves and hide inside to observe from within.
Several hours were devoted to learning how to pick a lock. (It really is remarkable what knowledge can be found online) Our own door served admirably well for practice. It was while bending over to better see the mechanism when it proved especially difficult we realized we had never seen any of the mysterious ones in the same position. None of them had ever used a key to open the door, but rather had walked right through. The door must be already unlocked!
It is a very difficult thing to sleep a night through when the mind is occupied with the anticipation of promised treat. True, this was not a dinner of chocolate or an outing to the seaside but
[next day... something something something... we're hidden inside and observe: ]
Far enough away the sound was muffled, a heavy door creaked open, hesitated, then creaked its way closed to a rusty catching of the latch. Click clacking heels made their way toward the room where six people sat in a circle of chairs.
“Again!” cried the wearer of the heals as she entered the room, “I was nearly spotted coming in just now. Why must we meet right next to a bookshop?”
Either no one in the room heard her, or they were so familiar with this question nobody bothered to answer her. We suspect it was the latter, because Heals went immediately to a mirror hung just inside the door to reassure herself her impeccably styled hair hadn’t been harmed by her adventure. Just as she’d expected, not a hair had strayed from its assigned place. It would take a substance stronger than hair to go against her will.
Meanwhile, some others in the group were exchanging banalities with each other, details of life since they had last met. Some spoke of children’s progress at school, one shared a new shortbread recipe, and another commented on the rather daring tie of the gentleman sitting beside her. This pleased the gentleman to no end, as he had just the evening before made the purchase of it with the hope it would catch her eye should she be at the meeting today.
“It’s a little too dashing,” said Tie, hand smoothing down the length of the object. He was hoping to hear assurances to the contrary, which the woman with glorious red hair was more than happy to provide. “Oh, just dashing enough! Do y’know, it really brings out your eyes.” Red smiled at him, despite the pointed snort of ‘enough already’ from Heals. “And very fine eyes they are too,” said Red, patting his hand.
Tie laid his other hand over Red’s, preparing to look deeply and meaningfully into her eyes with some profound yet intimate comment but was foiled by the insistence of a person dressed in severe blue that they keep to the schedule and begin at once without wasting time with chit chat for once. The Boss was a firm believer in schedules.
“If we could all just take our seats, please,” a pause fraught with the expectation of immediate obedience, “In future I’d very much appreciate if we could keep the chatter to a minimum. We are making every effort to be discrete and it will be remarked on if we are late back to our desks every Tuesday.”
“I agree,” chimed in Red, “we’re already four minutes late starting.”
“Does she realize we’re all waiting for her every time?” asked one of the moms of the other with a sniff.
Her friend peeped over the brightly coloured cover of the paperback in her hands. “Don’t let her get to you, hon. She’s always been wound tighter than a clock with a too-short spring.” (As we have the advantage of being outside this story, we would have to agree with this mom’s assessment of Red. Not three minutes before click clacking her way into this room, she shared a piece of her mind with a young boy who swerved too closely into her path in his skateboarding exuberance.)
The room settled into silence. Six [Seven?] people sat in a circle facing inward, each had a paperback novel in hand. Some were held sheepishly. Most books were face down. Only two were brazenly showing their [insubstantial? lurid?...] covers. These two were obviously well on their way to not caring what others thought about their reading material.
Five [six?] pairs of eyes - and one pair of glasses - looked to The Boss. (This seems a suitable time to tell you that The Boss was not and has never been officially declared the boss of that group. Some people come by that sobriquet by virtue of being bossy in all situations. Our group here had simply....
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that's all there is.
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