- Author
- 12/13/2019
- 766 Words
- 1,533 Views
- 17 Comments
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Story Prompts/Ideas - 2. Joe
I picked a 52 year old, single guy who had to start completely over. What does a man do when he loses everything he has known, and has to begin a new life away from the comforts of his old routine?
The initial confusion of awakening quickly gave way to a jolt of adrenaline as the orange glow and crackle of flames jarred Joe to consciousness. He threw back the covers and stared out of his window.
He owned a hundred and fifty acres of land. A huge mono-crop of corn grew out in his fields, and he was only a few days away from a big harvest. The growing season had been good to him, and he was sitting on a bumper crop. Now, that same crop that had held so much promise was fueling the biggest fire he had ever seen.
He felt the warmth of the blaze that burned in his fields even from the window. As he watched burning embers, pushed into the sky by updrafts produced by the fire that created them spread out in a fan of more promised destruction.
Where's Tux? Perhaps it was odd, that his first concern was for his resident half-feral barn cat. He shoved on his work pants, threw on a shirt, and pulled on boots in less than a minute.
Running through his old farmhouse, and outside, he held up a hand and grimaced. The heat was incredible, even though there were two-hundred feet between him and the edge of the field.
Maybe I can save the barn. He looked at the structure, a few football field lengths from the house. The fields butted up to the barn, with only about eighty feet between the flames and the old wooden structure.
Joe leaped on his tractor. Starting the machine, he drove toward the barn. Luckily he had left plow attachment on the front from some work he had done on his road, and he squinted as the temperature increased.
Hope this works. Joe dropped the blade of the plow and dirt began to build in front of it, sliding along the edge of the attached sheet of curved metal.
"Ah. Damn." His eyes watered from the heat and Joe held up a hand to shield his face. It felt like walking into a furnace, and he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to take being so close to the flames. He focused on the job and chugged along between his barn and the edge of the field.
The plow created a little fire break of sorts, turning the dry grass under the earth.
Joe gritted his teeth, then pulled the tractor behind the barn. He had intended to make another pass, but the little hairs on his hand had curled from the heat, and he wasn't sure the fuel tank on the tractor could survive a repeat trip through the gauntlet.
He leaped off of the machine. "Tux!" Joe ran into the barn. "Where are you, you aggravation!?" Joe heard the plaintive cry of a cat in distress above his head, and he grimaced. "Of course!" He climbed the ladder as fast as he could go. There was a spot Tux loved to hide back in the far corner of the loft, and sure enough Joe found him hunkered down there.
"Come on." He scooped the terrified cat up into his arms. The black and white feiline sank his claws into Joe's flannel covered shoulder, but he didn't feel that at all. "Hang on."
The crackle and glow of additional flames were in his peripheral vision as he descended the ladder. The barn was on fire. He was going to lose it.
Joe exited the barn, put a hand on his cat's back to hold him in place, and he ran for everything he was worth. In the span of a few moments he had gone from trying to save his barn to the realization that his very life was on the line.
A wall of flame roared into life behind him as he left the structure, and there was one on his right as his fields burned. Those fields on the other side hadn't yet caught, but it was only a matter of time, as ash and sparks filled the air.
"No." The first hint of fire on the roof of his farmhouse bloomed in the dark of the night. Joe changed his flight slightly to run past the home. He pelted by it, on the way to the only possible safe spot he could think of.
"Sorry, Tux." Joe waded into the small pond. The apology wasn't needed, as the cat was far past caring about water. He took them both into the pond until only his head and shoulders were exposed.
There, Joe watched as his whole life burned.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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