The old television screen flickered to life, pale lines of blue light skittered up and down on the glass and eventually formed a fuzzy image of an old man's face. His dull, sunken eyes displayed a weariness from unkind years as he gazed through the screen at no point in particular. The image fractured into abstract lines of blue, white, and black briefly as Theresa turned the dial at the bottom of the set, eventually conceding that the picture could get no clearer. Most days she didn't bother turning it on, but whenever it rained she couldn't help but want to see her father's face. She used to sit for hours on his lap, listening to the rain on the porch roof or to one of his many stories about times before she was even born.
She held her hand up to the screen just before the image of her father did the same, she'd memorized the recording over the last few years and liked to pretend that it was just like when he was alive. Suddenly she felt foolish and removed her hand, watching as the recording ran on and his hand remained up to the glass for several minutes. She liked to marvel at the details of the hand, even through the fuzz of the old tele-screen, at the way his fingers twitched and moved as she watched. It was the same every time, of course, but after years the routine itself made her nearly as happy as the image on the screen. She pushed the stop button at the bottom of the screen and as the image faded it played the same recorded portion it always did after you stopped it, the sad image of her father waved as it flickered and the screen became dark. As Theresa packed her things for work she wondered how bad her commute would be due to the rain, and if she'd feel like re-loading her father's tube when she returned home or if she'd load her mother's as she often did.
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This is the beginning of a short story I've had rolling around my brain for a while now, and just randomly decided to start writing it with little preparation. This is just two paragraphs for now, but I'll either come back into this post and add onto it or repost these two and add some more on as I feel like. I could just keep it on a word doc and share it once there's more there, but I figure why the hell not just share a quick snippet of it as I write it?
As for my reading schedule I finished 1984 on last Thursday, November 4th so it took me about nine days to get through it. That was a bit longer than I anticipated but still I've already jumped into the Wheel of Time book 6 - Lord of Chaos and am currently 7% of the way into it. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some speed and finish this book before the end of November, and then get through the next one by the end of the year!
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