Come the Storm (WoE week 21)

Write at the Merge challenge this week is themed with Abandonment.

First the quote:

"Go off to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path." Ralph Waldo Emerson

and now the photo:

photo by Liam Andrew Cura courtesy Unsplash

Now, this scene is going to be weird. I wrote a short scene some time ago for a WoE prompt (week 20 of 2013) starring new characters: Sofie and Tiko. That scene to me felt like something post-apocalyptic but I didn't give it much thought until this prompt. I promise you, there is a ton of backstory for this scene, but it won't fit in 500 words. Well, to be honest, I'm a tad over that because I didn't want to chop anything out.

If I haven't completely befuddled you yet, read on. But. Since I've only written about Sofie and Tiko once before, and since it doesn't explain anything, I'll give you the Cliff Notes version.

Sofie and Tiko are on their way to Amarillo. (previous installment) Sofie's father, at some point in the past, released something horrible into the world and he died. (not included in previous installment)

I offer the following in response: Come the Storm

Turbulent clouds choked the sickly-green sky. Sofie shivered despite the heat, remembering how the sirens echoed through her hometown under such a canopy. The hairs on her arms and neck stretched in the charged air acknowledging the power in the brewing storm. She stepped up the pace in her hunt for shelter, moving through the derelict businesses of Downtown McCormick.

Each building was branded with the FEMA search and rescue code, though the orange paint was starting to fade after…had it really been fifteen years? Sofie paused to read the symbols on a condominium complex: 13/5/76, TX, 25 DOA, NE. Every possible entrance, windows included, was boarded up.

“Find one?” Sofie barely heard Tiko over the wind.

“No,” she shouted back and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Dead-on-arrival. No entry.”

“What?”

Sofie drew her finger across her throat – her own perverted sign language – and moved on to the next building, and then the next, and the next, trailing orange x-boxes and DOAs in her wake.

“Sofie!”

She turned. Tiko formed a W with his fingers and tapped his chin before pointing to a crumbling cement structure on his side of the street. Sofie ran best she could through the driving wind, light-headed with joy as she read the symbol for herself: 13/5/76, TX, 0-0, F/W. The Texas Home Guard finally identified an unoccupied building with both food and water.

Sofie giggled. Even if after 15 years, the food and water was gone, it was still a building unscarred by death. It meant shelter for the night and with any luck, a functioning storm-cellar. Tiko helped her navigate through the hole in the chain-link fence and over the rubble of the building’s crumbling exterior. With a little effort, they pried the boards off a window cavity and climbed inside.

Tiko turned his flashlight on. “Office building, maybe? Condemned long before the plague hit, I think.”

Sofie crossed through the amber light and peered through the blackened solar window at the other end of the hall. “There’s a courtyard. And there’s ivy or moss or something climbing up the sides.”

“Woot! Green means water source. Now we can weather the storm.”

They found the lobby. Exposed concrete floors told the story of missing carpet, but Sofie sighed with relief. She preferred cold seeping through her sleeping bag to bugs infesting her slumber. As she unrolled her pack,  Tiko pulled out his salvage bag and began preparations for a salad of dandelions and wild onions, the fruits of their many stops along the abandoned roadway.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without you, Tiko, honestly.” She averted her gaze from shame. “People try to avoid me, or hurt me, because of what my father did.”

“People are jackasses. You are not your father. You don’t know a virus from a volleyball.” Tiko selected a fungus from their salvage salad and chucked it across the room. “Or a mushroom from a toadstool, apparently.”

“They’ll never forgive him, will they.” The words tasted bitter across her tongue. For all his sins against mankind, Dmitri Kerov was still her father.

“No.” Tiko shook his head. “They never will. But I hope I can. Someday. When I can exchange my anger for peace.”

Some of the WoE crowd mentioned during the assessment that they aren't always sure when it's okay to leave criticism. I'll try to remember to be a better citizen and put a note at the end of my responses to the prompt, but if I don't, comments and constructive critiques are ALWAYS welcome here. Okay? Okay. so, let me have it. Give me what you've got. I can take it.

Broken Chopsticks (WoE #20 Orphan and Pianist challenge)

Have five challenges really passed me by? I'm so sorry. I've been neck-deep in the self-publishing world, prepping for The Trouble With Henry's little big debut. And Write On Edge has been speaking about me, as in the inactivity that takes root in creativity with a vengeance. Like the garden in the backyard, it's time to weed.

Sooo, this week we have the word "orphan" and a sketch of hands at piano keys.

Cracking knuckles.

Blank screen.

Here we go.

I give the following in response:  Broken Chopsticks

Rubble lined the plot where her home once stood. Tendrils of smoke and ash danced with earth and brick, framing forgotten memories with no future. Sofie clutched a scrapbook to her chest in attempt to shield her heart, to preserve her fragile innocence, to keep her wits from fracturing under the weight of the end. It was an unbearable struggle, and useless. She survived, but to what end?

Her mother made waffles in the kitchen every morning, but Sofie couldn’t remember ever eating them. The scent of butter coated everything and white cabinets yellowed at daybreak. Her father poured syrup…no, not syrup. Something darker, richer... Molasses. Her father poured molasses in methodical squares, with the precision of a little boy coloring inside of lines in a book, frowning if the darkness overflowed onto the plate. And she would, what? Sofie wiped the memory away as it slipped through her eyelids, leaving her cheeks cold and damp.

“It’s not good for us to be standing here.” Tiko was born with a voice of reason. His parents were divorced several times over. He was an orphan, too, but the kind that comes from neglect and a couple bottles of $10 scotch. “Not if we’re still going to make Amarillo.”

“I just can’t believe it’s all gone.” Her ankle twisted as she balance-beamed towards the remnants of the back porch. “It’s all gone and I don’t know what waffles taste like.”

He folded his arms. “We came a hundred miles out of our way for waffles? Sofie, we could’ve just stopped at IHOP.”

She leaped across some bricks and recovered from a shaky landing. Her voice stuck in her throat. “It made sense at the time.”

“You’re crying.” Tiko scratched his temple. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I can’t remember any of it, Tiko.” The scrapbook escaped her grasp and scattered memory fragments across the broken earth. She cursed as she bent to collect the pictures. Frustration fought the images, creasing and dog-earing scrap in her hands.

He stooped to help, gripping her hands until she had control again. “Is she your mother? She was a looker.”

Sofie concentrated on the face in her hands. The photograph showed signs of improper storage and acid erosion. She cringed. Her memory was the same, darkened edges, acid-bleached faces, like she came from a long line of Amish dolls. “I wish I could say for certain it was. But honestly, it could be my aunt, or my grandmother.”

“Stop it, Sofie.”

“Stop what?” She shoved her past back into the book.

“Stop…this. Take a deep breath and embrace what you have, not what you lost.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not…”

“I’m not.” He sighed. “My grandmother was a concert pianist. You know what I remember? Nothing but thin, spindly fingers fighting arthritis to play chopsticks.” He helped her stand and brushed dirt from her jeans. “It’s not fair. I get it. But this isn’t going to fix it.”

Sofie exhaled. “Amarillo.”

“Amarillo.”