Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 146

This weeks prompt photo was created by Hermin Abramovitch, an artist from Israel - known as ahermin over on their page on Deviant Art. He calls this Picture of a City. He creates all sorts of surreal things.

Okay, inadvertently I ended up with another tale from Tricky, but every day I am getting more clarity about what her story will be telling me.

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There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Jumping Through Time

Bollox! That would teach her to muck about with things she shouldn’t. She could see him coming in the distance and needed to work fast.

The mirrors worked, she knew that, but she couldn’t be sure she’d set them to the right frequency; if it was wrong whoever was coming would be in for a nasty shock.

She could see his red shorts and those luminescent funny-shaped shoes they wear with the laces off centre; she’d seen them last time she’d travelled through that particular mirror. It had been a strange place, full of buildings all crowded together and machines that spewed nasty toxins into the air – and all these people running.

She’d tried to work out what they were running from or to, but couldn’t. And they wore different clothes from people who weren’t running. She even saw huge posters up on walls displaying those shoes and people running in the background. Maybe it was some kind of fashion, thankfully lost in the annals of time, never to return – at least not to her time.

She shuffled the other mirror round on the wet sand, trying to put them where they’d meet in the right place. It should only feel like he tripped on something and almost fell when he came through. The water surrounding them reflected the sky so he should only experience a bit of disorientation for a few seconds before (hopefully) rejoining the road on the other side.

She could hear him breathing now as he ran. Was she right? He was just one of those running people, wasn’t he? She really hoped nothing was chasing him; she wasn’t prepared for two of them to jump through, that would create a problem. She hadn’t calculated for two; the rift wouldn’t hold.

She could hear the footfalls now, thumping on the wet sand. She held the mirror steady as it shook with his arrival. She put a hand on the other mirror making sure they remained lined up. His breathing was in her ear and she heard a grunt as he broke through, with a sort of yell that turned into a yip as he almost somersaulted through into the other mirror. She heard his feet land heavily in the other mirror, and a few stumbles, then he was running again.

But he glanced over his shoulder for a second and caught her eye. She was sure he had looked straight at her and seen her.

She shuddered. No, it was just a trick of the light. He couldn’t have known she was there. Surely not, unless … unless he wasn’t just one of those running people, someone for her to experiment on; what if he was an agent sent by Carter? What if he was clued up on what she was doing?

Arse! Damn her tricky mind and its whisperings.

She put the mirrors together and shoved them back into her carpetbag. She stumbled in her rush to stand, her knees stiff from being in the residue water the tide had left behind. She needed to get back and think about this, and needed to do it in a safe place – her home being the only one. He couldn’t reach her there.