This morning I woke up a bit on the tired side.  I had spent a fair share of the night tossing and turning, thinking of all the stuff I have to do today and not feeling very inspired to write.  I figured it would take me longer than usual to come up with my story for the day, so I fired up my computer while I drank my first cup of coffee and started playing around, you know, checking email, reading a couple of the blogs I follow and what not.  When what do I hear?  The inspiration for today's story.  When I checked it out, my dog had indeed pulled a new blanket out of a shopping bag and dragged it down the hall.  He didn't damage it, just decided to play with it and cause a ruckus. :)

The joys of dog ownership frequently offer me hours of entertainment and in today's case material for my writing.  Enjoy!

Suspicious Noises

What in the world is going on up there, she asked herself.  Through the ceiling she heard repeated thumping as if a herd of elephants had decided to stampede through her living room.

Unable to concentrate with the loud noise above her head, she got up.

She climbed the basement stairs and quietly opening the door she stepped into the suspicious silence of the main level of the house.

His tail wagging, her 100-pound Akita sat looking up at her with a foolish grin on his face and the remains of her new comforter scattered across the living room floor.

Unexplained Encounter

Before last night I didn’t believe in the supernatural.  Now, I admit there is a possibility, at least, until I find an explanation for what we saw.

It started as dinner out with friends and ended up with discovering a grisly crime had taken place.  We were headed to the restaurant by the Peterson farm, when Hank swerved suddenly and drove into the ditch.

“Did you see it?”

We got out and looked, sweeping across the road was the filmy image of Amanda Peterson.

We ran off toward the farm, where we meet the police responding to an emergency call.

The Coat

The wool coat appeared one day, hanging on the coat rack near the door.  The receptionist asked everyone in the office if they knew where it came from.  Everyone denied knowing.  She checked the appointments for the last week for possible owners and made phone calls.

Everyone denied owning a coat like that and for several weeks it hung there unclaimed.

One winter day the receptionist glanced outside to see a young woman standing in the entryway shivering coatless in the cold.  She got up from her desk, took the coat down and gave it to the woman in need.

I noticed something interesting in writing my story for today which led me to do some research.  The word air-conditioned is counted as two words in my word document even though I would count it as one, so I looked it up and yes, most of the answers and grammar sites I looked at counted a hyphenated compound word as one.

So, why does the electronic word count function count it as two, I asked myself?

I found out it had to do with coding in computing.  Most text systems consider a hyphen to be a word boundary instead of a character so the compound word created with a hyphen is counted as two words.

Since, grammatically (air-conditioned) is one word, I posted today's story without removing the extra word the electronic word counting says the story has.  :)

I suppose there are earlier stories I treated differently, before I discovered this discrepancy, but then the method of word count in manuscripts is a whole other discussion and I will leave that for another day.

Suffice it to say, I will stick with using the electronic word count unless the story contains a hyphenated word and yes, I am kind of nerdy when it comes to accuracy.

Have a great day, wherever you are!

Saying Goodbye

He pulled into the parking lot and parked the car.  The sounds of the engine faded away and the couple sat in the growing silence for a moment.

“I suppose we should go in.”  She said.

He nodded and opened his door letting in the muggy heat of late summer and stepped out.

She waited a moment longer, not in a hurry to exit the air-conditioned vehicle, before opening her door.  Together they shut the car doors.  He came around the front of the car and took her hand.

“It will be okay.”  He said, guiding her toward the church.

Survival

The old man shuffled along the dusty road; with head bowed he moved forward one step at a time. 

He was one of the lucky ones, making it outside the city before the disease spread and the city was cut off from the rest of the world.

Behind him a band of light appeared along the horizon as the sun began its climb.  The dusty vegetation alongside the road slowly emerged from the shadow of night.  Parched from the lack of rain the landscape braced for the coming heat of day. 

He considered his fate if he didn’t find water.