Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twenty-Fourth - A Winters' Walk



Day twenty-four. This one didn't speak to me, but I tossed out a quick parable. The only other reply I saw was the stalwart Samantha Dunaway Bryant with something as usual nice and atmospheric and which should give you cause to smile at the end.



A Winters'
Walk
Winter isn't coming. It's already here.

The trees are bare, the air is as cool as the sunlight diffused through early morning fog. Trees are long since bare, save for distance conifers. The pavement unyielding and distant beneath your feet.


It's another day heading deeper into the city, another day eyes straight forward. This isn't the kind of city where you make chatter.

It's different today. The crowds seem a little thinner. You wonder at first if it's a holiday that you didn't know about. Some obscure religious one that you didn't know about. But then the next day it's the same, and the day after.

This is now normal.

Weeks pass. A day comes that the crowds again thin. Could that have to do with the news story? The one about the raids? Couldn't be. The people in this city aren't the type to get rounded up. You all go about your business. One day at a time, one step at a time.


The next month. You've stopped looking to either side. So has everyone else. It isn't even possible to tell if the crowd is the same. If it's thinned, if it's grown back.


You, and the others in your city, know the truth.

If you remain silent, eyes ahead, they'll never come for you.

You plan to live to see the spring return.

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