How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.
There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.
Hopefully they wouldn’t
find her up here. This was as remote as you could get. There’d been talk of
them finding others in the wilderness; having some kind of special drone
scanners that could see through trees and foliage, but she hadn’t heard about
them looking along mountain tops. Saying that, they could easily access them
with their flying capabilities; if you could fly to Earth from space, a
mountain range was a piece of cake. Yet, they’d halted all flying machines – in
fact everything on Earth had stopped since their arrival.
They were obsessed
with how people were treating the planet, which yes, wasn’t good. But now they
were rounding them up, claiming they were contaminated too. Annabelle wasn’t
sure if they were killing people or taking them to use elsewhere. She hadn’t
been able to find that out. They’d arrived so fast all media had ground to a
halt, even the internet had gone down. There’d been a few last broadcasts, but
then silence.
It wasn’t too hard for
Annabelle though, she was already living a remote life out on the edge of a
tiny village with Snowdonia at her backdoor. She hiked daily, so coming up here
wasn’t new for her, although she’d never stayed overnight. But at least she was
equipped for it. She’d planned to go to the Himalayas the following year, climb
the Annapurnas, maybe reach a base camp. She didn’t think she’d ever try
Everest, but she’d wanted to experience being in its shadow.
But such plans were
gone now, along with normal life. She didn’t know if being up here for a month
would be enough, but they’d been working their way through the region and were
days away from her village. She hoped that maybe they’d be finished by the time
she needed to come back down.
She spotted movement
on the skyline. Had other climbers had the same idea as her? Maybe it was
someone she knew. She sat up, edging closer to one the jutting rocks to shield
herself from view. She couldn’t make out details from this distance, but they
didn’t seem to be loaded up like her. She couldn’t see any backpacks and they
were moving towards her.
A bad feeling spread
across her stomach. She could see the colours of their coats now, but it was
their faces she needed to see to find out if it was them or not.
The difficulty with
these aliens was that they weren’t really alien; they were human. The only
thing that separated them from the people on earth was their eye colour; they
had translucent, reflective eyes, but from this distance she couldn’t see them.
They’d come to ‘reclaim’
the Earth. Humans had been left here millennia ago to take care of it, but hadn’t done a good job. They weren’t happy.
Annabelle shuffled out
of the sleeping bag and rolled it up while watching their progress. There was
still nothing to define whether they were friend or foe. She attached it to the
bottom of her pack and slipped her arms through the straps. Should she stay or
go? Was she about to be caught or were they also people trying to escape?
The sun peeped over
the top of the range and as they glanced over their shoulders there was a flash
of light. It was them!
She slid backwards
along the snow on her bottom, not wanting to stand up. She could maybe slide
down over the edge a bit, and get to her feet out of view. She reached the edge
and swung her legs round. She might make it. Then the rocks gave way under her
feet, and she descended faster than expected, the stones taking her straight down.
Then she was thrown forward into a hollowed out cavern on the side of the
mountain.
She lifted herself up,
checking her body as she went. No serious injuries, only a few scrapes. She
looked out of the hole in the side of the mountain amazed and relieved at her
escape. Then she heard a shuffling behind her and turned. Ten figures appeared
out of the gloom.
‘Did they see you?’ one
of them asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good,’ said another.
It seems there had
been other that had had the same idea as her.
Greetings all!
ReplyDeleteNew to this challenge, so I hope you enjoy!
https://shadetheraven.wordpress.com/2020/10/02/mid-week-challenge-the-frozen-hunt/
Hello!
DeleteThanks for joining.
Here's a clickable link for others to read: The Frozen Hunt
A Foul Deed, Done to Death:
ReplyDeleteHercules strained his neck, fixing his eye on the cook.
“And you,” he said, glaring across at her from his perch. “You had a perfect opportunity to poison him. You could have prepared his breakfast in seclusion while the rest of us were asleep, leaving it out in the kitchen for the maid to deliver. You wouldn’t need to be there with him while he ate: the toxins were like a time-bomb, ticking unheard on his plate. You could arrange to be called away, create an alibi, let somebody else take the fall. It’s known you’d had a disagreement with the maid. She was a junior member of the staff, a newcomer to the house. Who better to frame for your crime? She was a little too young, most definitely too glamorous, and yes, too self-assured. She was a stranger in the town, her accent setting her apart. Nobody would take her side if she was challenged.”
The others all gasped, subtly shifting away from Mrs Danielson. She was one of the longest serving of them all. It was rumoured that she’d assisted in the birth of the late Lord’s sons, being one of the first to be sent for when the Lady’s waters broke. One of the coppers filled with water, a clean set of towels: who better to call when the Lord was unavailable? Cook had the authority of her position and a voice that was rarely ignored. She was a sergeant-major of a woman: a woman with stature in the house. It was almost inconceivable that she could be involved.
And yet, the bird-detective had a reputation of his own. He had uncovered the deceit of the deerstalker wearing fraud; the one who’d purported to be the possessor of the finest mind in the country. If it hadn’t been for the superior reasoning powers of this detective’s avian brain he would still be at large, claiming to solve heinous crimes and extorting enormous sums of cash, promising never to reveal what it was he’d deduced. He’d had an easy familiarity with both sides of the law, serving himself instead of the moral majority who’d been wronged. Who would have thought he would be nothing an opportunist with a drug habit and a violin?
Parrot Hercules; that’s who. Hercules, the world’s greatest bird detective.
But the woman in the apron was made of stronger stuff. She had large hands, thick fingers, thumbs which could break a bone with a quick flex of her wrists. You could imagine that she was planning her escape from this room right now. Or perhaps she was pondering on how she’d serve the famous detective in a sauce derived from his own juices, with his head wrenched off and his legs adorned with fascinators fashioned from paper.
Maybe she would be more than a match for him.
Maybe this would be the end for Hercules, the parrot.
Love this. Really funny. But isn't this for the feather prompt? Week 169?
DeleteErrr. Yes. I had problems posting and it seems that I got this on the wrong week by mistake. I've tried again. Hopefully, I got it right this time.
Delete