Fiction Fragment Friday

I decided to do something new for October. This month every Fiction Fragment Friday is part of the same story, but told from a different character’s point of view. There are five Friday’s in this October so there will be five stories. There are only four characters in the story this week so that is going to present an extra challenge. I have some ideas, but we will see where it goes.

  I pulled the jacket tightly around myself, but it couldn’t stop the wind from ripping right through me.  The rain was coming down so hard it actually stung as it hit my face.  My heavy coat with a hood would have been so much more effective, but I liked the wind breaker better and I never imagined I would be stuck out in a storm.  It was one of many mistakes that night that had led to this miserable situation.  My car sat in a ditch about a mile behind me, but I was almost home.  My eyes stung from the water, but I could see my house at the end of the block.  Thoughts of dry clothes and a warm blanket filled me with hope.  I could deal with the car in the morning.

  I put my key into the front door and tried to turn it, but the lock wouldn’t budge.  I let out a scream of frustration and slammed my fists into the door.  I slumped my head against the door in frustration not sure what to do next so when the door opened, I stumbled and had to grab the frame to keep from falling.  As it was, I found myself staring up into a stranger’s face.  “Can I help you?”

  “Who are you and why are you in my house?”  I watched as his facial expression ran through a gambit of emotions.  At first, he looked annoyed, then as he took in the miserable state I must have presented he became concerned, when I spoke he was confused, but the circle finally completed and came back to annoyed.

  “Lady I don’t know who you are, but this is my house.  I’ve lived here for over five years.”

  As my eyes focused, I could see the living room behind him.  All of the furniture was different.  The walls were lined with pictures of a happy family, and I could the children age between photographs.  The TV was on, but I had never seen one like it.  It was thin and mounted on the wall.  There wasn’t even an antenna coming out of the top of it.  I stepped back into the rain to take in the house.  It was my house, but there was a strange family living in it.  I looked down at my key that hadn’t worked in the door.   “What’s going on here?”  I asked.  It just didn’t make any sense.  I looked to the driveway and didn’t recognize the cars parked in it.  They certainly didn’t look anything like my Cavalier.  Having no idea what to do next I turned an ran back into the storm.

  There was a gas station a few blocks over and I felt like I needed to get out of the storm so I could at least think.  Looking around I couldn’t find any pay phones outside.  I found that extremely odd, but I didn’t have change on me anyway.  I started thinking about who I would call collect for help if I could find one.  Maybe I could get the clerk to let me borrow the station’s phone.  I pulled open the door to the station and stepped inside dripping water all over the floor.  I looked over at the counter and locked eyes with a clerk who looked to be in his fifties.

  “Oh no, not again.”  He looked terrified and was backing away from me.  “Please just leave me alone.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “No, you aren’t real.  You aren’t real.”  He ran out from behind the counter and disappeared into the backroom.

  I was so tired.  It was getting hard to keep moving so I sat down on the gas station floor.  I grabbed a newspaper from by the door not caring that I was going to destroy it with my wet hands.  I looked at the date, but it didn’t make sense.  October 2021.  I did the math in my head and wondered how the paper could be off by 35 years.  Blood dripped from my head onto the paper, and I dropped it in a panic.  I looked down and my clothes were torn and shredded.  When had that happened? 

  I couldn’t stand so I crawled to the stock room door and started banging my fists on it.  “Please help me,” I screamed.

     There was a voice behind me.  “I think thirty-five years is long enough.”  It hurt to turn my head to face the new voice.  It was a man dressed in a black suit.  He was holding his hand out to me.  I reached out and as our hands met the pain faded.  I looked down and my clothes were whole again.  “Come now, it’s time to go.”  Together we walked out the front door of the gas station and the world faded away.