All the back stories

I am going to put all the back stories that I have written for the Great Hites Prompt, except, of course, those that I have just posted today, already.

Here it goes. My first story; I mentioned it in a previous post, but I don't think I posted the story; was a bout the space elevator:

Great Hites prompt #35 "The first space elevator, just rained it's first cargo all over the desert, now for the first passenger."

"Third floor, men's lingerie, rubber baby buggy bumpers, right handed smoke benders," Jeremy said as the box began its' climb up the composite ribbons. The three other occupants of the space elevator, white faced and white knuckled, eyed him nervously, not sharing his humor.
Jeremy sat buckled in his safety seat, the one in the north east corner, the same one he had sat in for the last twenty three climbs. He had said his same little joke to himself each of those twenty three climbs as well. This was his first climb with an audience; with passengers.
At the low orbit station Jeremy had found, through casual conversation with the other lift pilots, that he was not the only one who had developed silly rituals for the climbs and descents. Superstition wasn't dead in the days of the space elevator, and anything that would add a little extra luck wasn't going to be scoffed at.
Especially since the failure, last spring, that left the contents of the space elevator spread across the desert. He remembered the scathing headlines in the local and national papers. "Now for humans?" The journalists were asking. Since that accident some of the pilots had even taken up the archaic ritual of praying to a god.
Jeremy kept his luck rituals; his jokes, sitting in the same safety seat every time, eating chicken for dinner the night before the climb. He didn't want to become known as the pilot of the first manned lift to come down.
Ground people didn't really understand, anyway. Space elevators were still new technology. Really, they were still mostly experimental.
He had to sign liability wavers, and 'no fault clauses' just to apply for the program. Heck, his parents, and even his little sister, had to sign affidavits saying that they wouldn't sue for anything, in the event of 'lift failure.'
He remembered, as a child, the space shuttle, Challenger, disaster. His father was stationed at a military base in Hawaii at the time, and Ellison Onizuka, the first Hawaiian astronaut, was on the flight. Jeremy could remember monument of flowers at the Punch Bowl Cemetery, in Honolulu, that was set up in Onizuka's honor.
Would they make such a monument for him if his box crashed?
His stomach lurched and he broke out in a cold sweat. How could he have allowed himself to think that? Had he just jinxed himself? Twenty three climbs and he had never allowed himself to think about death. And now with passengers!
It was their fault. The passengers didn't understand luck. They had never climbed the ribbon before. They hadn't performed any rituals. They were going to bring the lift down and spread bits of their DNA across the desert at the lifts base; theirs and his.
Panic overwhelmed him, pressure was bearing down on his chest, and he struggled for breath against the straps and buckles of the safety seat.
His worst fears were realized when there was a sudden jolt, a hiss of air and the straps holding him to the seat released him to rocket toward the ceiling of the box, in the weightlessness of space.
The door to the lift opened. Jeremy steadied himself with a handhold on the bulkhead. He smiled weakly and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, huddled masses and wretched refuse, welcome to Ellis Island, you're in America,
now," and directed his passengers onto the space station.

The next week was a prompt about 'bringing an army of darkness to work'. I don't think he ment to the actual work place, though I did give it some thought. Instead, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts about astronomy, and I thought that you couldn't get anything darker than a black hole, so I wrote my story about one super massive black hole and his experiences in relationships in high school.


I was a teen age super massive black hole. It was really hard to fit in in high school. At a time in my life when I should be developing relationships, some that should last my lifetime, no one wanted to get close to me.
I was attractive, if I might say so myself, maybe too attractive. As a quasi stellar object with an impressive accretion disk, I could be a bit overwhelming. I had an appetite to match my size and I consumed whatever I could reach.

There was one little variable star with an oblique orbit that used to wink at me when she passed by. At times she was kind of cute and then at times she was really hot. When I got a clear look at her one orbit I realized that she was actually they. She and her sister were binary stars; twin sisters. Let me tell you, either of them would have brightened my life.
In retrospect, it never would have worked with the twins. Their orbit was long and, as I said, oblique. Then I found that they had a couple of gas giants in close orbit. Hot gas giants! How was I supposed to compete with that?
Eons have passed since the days of high school. My accretion disk is all but gone, and with it any potential for visible light. Sure, there is a bit of infrared and some x-ray echoes bouncing around the galaxy, but nothing to draw any real attention. And I know, I am the center of a massive galaxy with numberless stars and planets swirling around me.
I am an accumulation of the billions of stars, the cosmic dust and galactic debris that I have consumed.
There I was, voted most likely to become an army of darkness to bring my infinite work of destruction to the universe. But the facts are, I am a dark, essentially invisible, lonely mass, isolated in the vast emptiness of space.

My third Great Hites, was a prompt about the News from pokeepsie. I don't remember how that related, but this is the story I submitted. I liked it a lot, myself.


The Prison
The walls of the prison cell were exactly as you would expect them; slime and black moss grew in the water percolating through the walls and oozing down to pool on the floor. The air in the cell was humid and smelled of rot, but it wasn't cold. Not this deep in the cellars of the prison, with in the very foundation of the mountain, upon which the tyrants castle was built.
The prisoner sat naked on the floor of the cell. His clothes had rotted away years ago. His grey hair matted with filth reached nearly to the floor where he sat leaning against the locked wooden door.
He waited for the sound of approaching boots on the stone floor, outside the door. When had he last heard them, and the sound of the metal plate as it was shoved through the gap under the door?
He couldn't know, in the perpetual dark, during this one eternal night. But he had eaten, he thought, he must have, because he was still alive, having lived long enough for his clothes to rot away and his hair and beard to grow almost to his waist.
He tested the shackle around his ankle. The iron cuff bit into and wanted to tear the thin skin as he pulled on it to test the strength of the chain. The chain, long enough to allow him to reach the door, but not go through. Go through? But it wouldn't open. The metal plate would just scape the floor as it was pushed under the door.
The door was locked, or at least he assumed that it was. He knew it was, didn't he? He must have tried the door in the countless years that he had spent in the cell, with his clothes rotting off and his hair growing down his back.
He stood on weak and trembling legs, his knees threatening to buckle under his meager weight. He leaned against the door, supporting himself as search for a knob or handle. But the door, at the prisoners touch, creaked on rusted hinges as it opened into the dimly lit passage.
Unbelieving, he stepped forward and the chain fell away from his ankle. He ventured tentatively, into the passage, outside the cell. The hallway stretched off into darkness on both sides, the torch near the open door casting only a small pool of light on the floor where he bent trying to catch his breath, panting in anticipation. He stretched his arms and legs to loosen joints stiff from inactivity and felt a sharp pinch at the bend of his arm, like the bite of a spider. His head started to spin and his sight, even in the darkness, filled with a brilliant blinding white. He fell to the floor and rolled onto his back, breathing hard, trying to ease the sudden nausea.
He lay still for a moment, then slowly opened his eyes. His head was resting on something soft. He turned his head to the side luxuriating in the suppleness of the linen and the fragrance of its' cleanness. Beside him sat a woman. She looked familiar, but she was much older than a woman he had known. How long ago had he known her? She looked so kind, with lines of concern at the corners of her eyes and across her brow.
She saw him looking at her and she smiled. She reached out to run her hand through his long greying hair. "Dale, honey, you're awake," she quietly exclaimed! "They didn't think it would happen so quickly." She stood and kissed his forehead. Turning to the phone, she said, "I have to call the kids, there are grandchildren now, too. They will want to say hello. It has been so long." She paused with the phone held halfway to her ear, "The doctors don't know how long the drug will last, they have never tried it on humans before."
She was punching numbers on the phone as the blackness crept in from the edges of his vision, to steal his wife away and plunge him back into the cell, under the castle in the foundation of the mountain, with the slime and moss growing on the walls where the water percolated through and oozed down to pool on the floor.


The next prompt was "The cold was shocking" and I wrote a long story about a homeless man as he tries to make his way from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

December in Modesto was foggy and cold. He shivered in his light jacket, standing outside the entrance of the hospital, directions to the Gospel Mission crumpled in his hand.
He couldn't believe that he had left Los Angeles . It was warm there, in Mid October, when he had set off to the north.
Traveling north had been painfully slow. Travelers were hesitant to pick up hitch hikers these days; especially old ones. He remembered the days of his youth with fondness, hitch hiking with friends around the country, eventually arriving in Southern California. He fell in love with the ocean and warm nights on the beach instantly.
In a short time all of his friends moved on. They went back to college, or to their home towns or just to work.
He had tried to work; odd jobs. But something, or someone, a co-worker, or a customer, something would get under his skin and make him angry and he would blow up and break something, and he would be back on the street.
But the street was good. It was open and uncomplicated, and there were no walls to press in on him, no people that would require him.
He might have to ask for spare change to get a drink now and then, but there were always people on their way somewhere, or nowhere, to make panhandling worth while.
But he was old now. How old was he? fifty, sixty? He remembered Kennedy getting shot, LSD and Viet Nam, and all that was in the 60's.
It was getting harder to sleep, too. His neck and back hurt him all the time, so every night he had to find a comfortable place to sleep; couldn't just sprawl out on the sand. And it was getting dangerous too. Kids, teenagers, they don't hitch hike for a thrill anymore, they beat up old men.
He was heading north to Sacramento. He had a brother there, or he did years ago. He had to go there and find him.
He made it to Bakersfield in the back of a pickup with a load of old tires. He heard the driver talking on his cell phone while getting gas at a station where he often pan handled. He hadn't truly decided to leave L.A. until he heard that driver. "Yeah Buddy! I got this load of tires I'm taking over the grape vine to Bakersfield. Meet me there and I'll take you all the way to Sac."
The driver said he was going all the way to Sacramento. He had a brother there! Here was his chance and he took it. He squeezed in among the tires, not thinking past Bakersfield, where the tires were going to be unloaded.
In Bakersfield he was quickly discovered among the tires by the unsympathetic driver, who ranted about the fines he would have received if the man had been noticed by the highway patrol, riding in the back of his pickup. When he asked the driver if he could catch a lift to 'Sac', to find his long lost brother, he was told to take a hike. He stood in the gloom of the setting sun, in the parking lot of a west Bakersfield service station, hundreds of miles from the beach, and his destination.
He started to walk north. He thought, 'The guy told me to take a hike, maybe I'll just walk all the way there.' He soon found, however, that his shoes, worn with out socks, wore blisters on his ankles, his back started to pain, and he got hungry and tired quickly. He had to find another ride, he would die long before he could walk that far.
He was in Bakersfield for weeks, and with each passing day it got colder. He found a Good Will collection station. People would drop off bags of clothes, and trash, during the night knowing that the store staff would have to deal with it when they opened the doors in the morning. He waited in the shadows and then rummaged through each bag that was left there until he found two coats; one thick and warm, and the other, light but waterproof. He also found a comfortable pair of boots and even a pair of socks.
The week of thanks giving arrived to find him asking for spare change at the northern end of town. One man, about to give him a dollar, changed his mind and told him he would take him to lunch, so that he wouldn't 'drink away' the money he would have received. That was fine, he was hungry enough, and during the lunch conversation the philanthropist introduced himself as a Pentecostal Minister of a small congregation just north of Fresno, and was returning home after doing some charity service in northern Baja California.
The man explained his plight to the minister who replied that he would gladly take him as far as he was going for the small price of 'listening to the Word of God'.
He rode in the ministers 1986 Plymouth K car and listened as the Word of God deteriorated into a discourse on the evils of this world, from mostly innocuous to the most vile. And it became clear that many of the evils that the minister found the most reprehensible were some that he had the most personal experience with. But he dozed and listened as they traveled north past each of the small towns, the minister pontificating on social injustices and the lack of moral response. They finally reached the small town a few miles past Fresno, the minister pulling the K car into the gravel parking lot of a long rectangle of a building that served as both, the ministers home and meeting house.
From the parking lot of the church he could see the highway and began to walk toward it. Reaching the frontage road that parallelled the north bound lane of high way 99, he stopped. His feet and ankles ached with arthritis. He sat on the edge of the asphalt road, with his feet resting in a shallow ditch, the dead dry grass of the long ago spring broken off and blown away by the wind, a thin carpet of short, new grass, beaded with moisture from the valley fog. His mind returned to the beaches of Southern California.
He used to surf all day, and then sleep under the piers next to his surf board. There were bonfires on the beach, and barbecues, and even women looking for companionship. He could be companionable for a short time, but then even the most pleasant woman would start to get on his nerves, and he would spend a day surfing and working his way north or south along the coast, and find a new place to hang out.
Surfers always shared food with him, if they had it. And if they didn't he could walk between the beach towels, and blankets and coolers until he could find something edible to swipe. He never tried to take money or valuables, that could land him in jail, but no one would call the cops over a bite of food. He could flash a winning smile that would lite up his darkly tanned face that would win people over and they would give him a beer to go with the sandwich he just tried to take.
He couldn't surf anymore and the stumbling old bum drew too much attention to surreptitiously spy out food in the baskets and coolers of swimmers and beach loungers.
He looked through the wire fence that ran between the freeway and the frontage road and watched the light fog swirl and eddy along behind the cars and trucks. To the north was an overpass for one of the small country roads where it met the freeway. He could see that there was a minivan parked under the overpass, and the various sized people of a small family were milling about the vehicle.
He found a hole in the wire fence and crawled through, and walked the hundred yards to where the family gathered to watch him approach. The mother was speaking to the children in Spanish. He had surfed with enough Mexicans to know just a few words, and thought hard to put a question together. "Va norte?" he finally asked. They began to speak among themselves much faster than he could follow, but eventually it appeared that they agreed to take him on as a passenger. They waited for him to climb in the back seat and sit next to a broken out window that was taped over with a plastic sheet. The noise of the plastic sheet increased, the wind threatening to tear it from the van as the driver accelerated onto the highway. Accordions and tuba blared from the the AM radio, and children laughed and fought with one another all to the rhythmic flapping of the plastic sheet of the window.
Suddenly he was waking up as the car was pulling off the freeway. The driver pulled over and wished him, 'buena suerte', 'good luck', and opened the sliding side door of the mini van to allow him out. He watch the car disappear into the fog in the distance as it headed for the families home.
He walked back over the overpass, looking for a comfortable place to panhandle or try to hitch another ride, when he saw that the freeway was crossing over a river that flowed through the center of this town. The fog was getting thicker and a cold drizzle was sticking to his hair and beard.
He followed the side of the freeway toward where the river flowed underneath and found that there were others that had also sought refuge from the damp fog under the bridge. There were three men sitting around a small fire which they fed with bits of wood broken from wooden pallets that they had stolen from a nearby storage yard. He greeted the men and approached to warm himself at the fire. They eyed him with calculating glares. Crouching close to the fire, the warmth quickly penetrated his thin trousers, and he began to feel much more comfortable, if not entirely welcome. He hadn't known that there was a forth man in the little party until stars burst across his vision as the unseen companion slammed a river rock against the back of his head. His consciousness was fading away, and he wondered if he was dieing, until he hit the water. The cold was shocking. The conspirators had stolen his two coats, his boots and his socks and thrown him into the Tuolumne River, assuming that he was probably dead, or would be soon enough.
The Tuolumne River, whose origins were high in Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, had much of its water diverted to provide drinking water for the San Francisco Bay Area, and for irrigation of farms throughout the central valley of California. By the time it passed through the city of Modesto it was usually a sluggish trickle, but recent heavy rains in the foot hills had risen its level and increased its speed markedly. Instead of allowing him to sink placidly to the bottom of the river, the rapid current quickly dragged him across the river where it made a sharp turn to the south and promptly lodged him in the brambles of the western bank.
In a haze of pain and cold he struggled up the bank, shoeless, to collapse on the road at the top. A grounds keeper from a nearby golf course saw the prone form laying in the street when the beams of his trucks headlights fell upon the old man. He covered the man with a blanket from the back seat of his Club Cab, and waited by the unconscious form until medical assistance arrived.
The nurse asked him questions as she cleaned the top of his head in preparation for the arrival of the plastic surgeon who would oversee the reapplications of much of his scalp. "Name?" she asked. "Um. Joe, I think." She frowned, "Last name?" He paused, "I don't think I have one anymore," he mumbled thoughtfully. "Address?" she asked. He sighed, longing for the beach, "Los Angeles." "And the street address", exasperation sounding clearly in her voice? "Any one of them, just take your pick," and he sighed, wishing she would stop asking him questions.
It was foggy and cold, the morning in Modesto, when they discharged him from the hospital, with a donated pair of shoes, a light jacket, and directions to the Gospel Mission.
He had a brother in Sacramento, or at least he used to, and he started walking toward the freeway.

Another of my favorites came the next week with the following prompt:

The flames leapt higher than they would have thought possible.

This is another story I hope to develope, as future prompts allow.

"Henry, lean in here, closer with that lantern."
"Yes, Lord John." Henry said, lowering the lantern toward the ground where the younger man knelt on the ground, arranging an assortment of sticks. The sticks were all of similar lengths, though cut from different thicknesses. "Are you sure that it is vital that they be arranged in such an order?"
Lord John stopped what he was doing and looked up, into the grey eyes of his long time servant. He was feeling frustration welling up in him, and his first response was to unleash it on this faithful older man, but caught himself before saying something that he would regret. "Yes, my friend, it is vital that each stick be placed in its' proper position, or this entire exercise will be pointless," he said instead.
"Here are 77 sticks, cut from the straightest willows growing along the most curved parts of the Forest River. 28 of the thicker sticks are arrange as you see here, 2, then 3, then 5 then 7, and at last 11. You see? They are the first five prime numbers, their sum being 28. Then atop that structure, the thinner sticks, 13, then 17, then 19. The next three prime number, the sum of them all being 77. The numbers are vital."
"Yes my lord," Henry said, the scepticism clearly apparent in his voice.
"Look around you. We have found the deepest part of the forest, where the pines grow so straight and tall that the moonlight will only light this small glade, directly, for a few minutes at midnight. That time approaches, look up. The legend says that a flame started at midnight, from the willow wood of the Forest River, arranged as we are doing so, here, will summon the spirit of the forest, and it will be bound to do our will until the next full moon. That is all the time we need to be able to exact our revenge and re-establish our prominence throughout this country side, for the rest of our lives."
Henry looked up to see that the light of the full moon was, in fact, working its' way down the trees on the western side of the small glade. In minutes the moon would be directly over head.
"We must work quickly," Lord John said, now feeling the pressure to complete the structure with sufficient time.
He placed the final stick as the moonlight touched the ground at the base of the giant tree just feet away. "Henry," he gasped, the light is upon us, bring the flame, now!" He was almost in a panic to begin the ritual. Henry stumbled, the lantern swinging wildly on its' chain, but was able to right himself and offer the flame to his master.
Lord John opened the lantern door and quickly lit a small willow twig from a coal with in. He eased the burning twig under the stacked pyre the moment the light from the full moon rested atop the structure. Though the willow boughs were green and wet the flame caught instantly. With blinding intensity the pyre was engulfed in the fire. The flames leapt higher than they would have thought possible and Henry wondered if escape would even be possible if the flames jumped to the surrounding forest.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the flames faded and were gone, the wooden structure was intact and uncharred.
Upon the wooden structure sat a small girl, her iridescent gown flowing down the sides of the alter, covering her legs, except for the tips of her bare toes.
She sat, immobile, with her head down, and tilted to the side, her unfocused gaze directed at the forest floor. The expression on her face seemed ,at once, passive and immobile, yet changing at each instant; at once disinterested, then distraught, offended, sad, impatient, and contemptuous.
"It's just a little girl," Henry exclaimed. For the smallest fraction of a second she glanced in Henry's directions. A short sigh and small sob escaped her lips, ruby red against milk white skin.
She was small, true enough, and though her gown was in no way revealing, she was a woman of obvious maturity. "Henry, this in no girl, this is..." Lord Johns words were lost in a sudden roar of winds that burst around the two men, who crouched near the small woman. The air was still in the vortex of the storm, but only yards away trees were shattered and blown down; branches, dirt and other debris were pick up by the whirl wind and spun around the small clearing. Just as the two men began to despair that the winds would change and draw them in to a terrible death, the wind abated and the flying debris settled to the ground. The destruction was immense and spread for almost a quarter mile in all directions.
Henry knelt next to the placid diminutive woman, his mouth hanging open, disbelief in his eyes.
"Henry, Fortune has smiled upon us," Lord John said, a grin slowly spreading across his face, "This is no little girl! This is a woman scorned. Hell hath no fury.....".


The next prompt was, "It's only tuesday". This was a fun one to write as well. There is a lot of talk about the end of hte world coming in 2012, when the Mayan callender comes to an end. It was fun to mix in this superstition with scientific favorites like the cosmic microwave background.


Inside Joke

The death row prisoner, Harvey Banks, sat inside his cell and smiled. He had an inside joke. His execution was scheduled for December of this year, 2012, but he wasn't worried. He had been counting down the days for years, now, and the big day, the day of the big joke, was only three days away.
The elements of his plan were coming together this Friday, everything was set.
He had been working on this plan since 2004. To make it all happen, he knew it, even back then, he would need a big bank roll, and nothing traded in this prison like cigarettes. Cancer stick currency, the insiders called it. He quit smoking and started saving. It took him a whole year to actually quit. It's hard to not smoke in prison, where everyone does, the smoke is always around you, inviting you back into the habit. He couldn't let anyone know that he had stopped smoking, so that he could get even more 'cash'. "Hey buddy, can I bum a cig from you?" He would ask around after every meal, and stash away a few extra each day. "Got a light?" he would ask, but then not light it, just let it hang in his mouth. Occasionally, someone would catch him at it, "You gonna smoke that thing?" They would ask, and he would reply with, "I'm trying to quit, I wanna be healthy when I go to the chair," and they would laugh together, but he would laugh all the better at his inside joke.
Eight years earlier, almost to the day, he had received the first message. He hadn't believed it at first; thought it was his imagination. He heard it in the static from his fm radio. He knew about static. You get plenty of free time in prison, if you call sitting in your cell free. It gives you a chance to catch up on all the reading you didn't get to do, as busy as you were, on the outside.
Banks had always been fascinated by the stars that you couldn't see really well in the city where he lived. But in the prison library, they had a whole shelf of astronomy books, with pictures of the stars that he never gotten to see. He took the books back to his cell and started to read about the universe, and was fascinated. He talked so much about the things that he read that the inmates gave him a nickname, which doesn't bear repeating in polite company, but alluded to his astronomical interests.
Messages were encoded in the static caused by the cosmic microwave background radiation. He listened to the static each night, at the same time, for a week. He wasn't crazy, or imagining this, he was receiving instructions from extraterrestrial life. Their message was this; They were coming back on the winter solstice of 2012, when the Mayan calendar comes to its end, and they are going to vaporize the earth. They would do it, too, because they weren't pleased with how the earth was doing. These beings had interacted with the Maya, centuries ago, and had given them instructions regarding the proper preparation of the earth for their arrival of their own descendents, centuries into the future. They warned the Maya that if they, the aliens, were displeased, they would vaporize the earth and start over. They even gave the Maya a date; winter solstice, 2012.
The static encoded message gave directions to all who could understand, how they could be rescued from the doomed planet. All who would be saved must be ready, atop a building or mountain, four weeks before the day of annihilation; just three days away.
"It's only Tuesday," he said to the guard, passing outside his cell. The guard didn't miss a beat as he paced by the cell, he had heard worse comments than that all day, and Banks sat is his cell and laughed.
A guy in laundry owed him a favor and agreed to leave him in the facility at the close of business. He could gain access to the roof through an air vent, and since it was six floor up, with no possible way down, the spot lights would never cross it to find him there.
He had carefully selected the proper guard for collusion, and had to offer him his entire stash of cigarettes. Guards were limited to one pack of cigarettes that they could bring into the prison each day, to prevent them from trading with the prisoners; keeping them honest. Five years worth of cigarettes was enough to turn any small time guard into a major player, who then could get cooperation from the bosses of the even largest gangs in the prison. He had promised the guard that he only wanted this one chance to view his beloved night sky, before his execution, and would return to his cell, or more likely. solitary, in the morning when apprehended on the rooftop; but, of course, he would be gone. He kept a straight face during these negotiations, there was no one in the prison who was worthy to share his inside information; let them be vaporized with the rest of the world.
Friday night everything went exactly as planned. He was left, hiding in a bin or clean towels, at 8:00 pm, when the laundry was locked for the night. He waited quietly in the dark room until all sound had died away in building before opening the vent in the ceiling and working his way to the roof. At the 9:00 pm and midnight cell checks, his empty bunk was carefully overlooked.
He had checked the lunar tables and knew that at midnight the waxing moon would be directly overhead. As the moon approached its zenith Banks boldly stood in the center of the rooftop with arms out stretched, head back, looking up into the night sky, expectantly. Waiting, his neck began to get stiff, and at times he had to bend over and stretch out the muscle cramps. Other times, he began to get dizzy, the stars over head spinning around him as he lost balance and tried to catch himself before falling to the rooftop.
Eventually, reality settled in. The moon was descending toward 3:00 am and his alien rescuers had not come for him. The guards would be changing shift and the prison would soon be on alert to a missing prisoner. He sat on a ventilation conduit, his face in his hands, dejected.
The fresh guard quickly reported the missing prisoner and the search began. The investigation rapidly revealed the escape route through the laundry room ceiling to the roof above. Guards stormed up the stairway and through the access to the roof. Spot lights crossed and searched every inch of the roof.
They found Harvey Banks right shoe on the roof under the ventilation conduit, but a thorough search of the entire prison and the country side for miles around yielded nothing more.


The following week was my Ganymede story with the prompt, "They watched as day turned to night". In this case the sun was passing behind the planet Jupiter. The darkest time of the entire day on Ganymede, if you are on the planet side of the moon, would be this period when the son was blocked by the planet. And even then, Jupiter gives off light of its own.

The following week, the prompt was supplied by Justin, the Space Turtle. "At the largest bookstore in the city" I started off with a mysterious sounding description of the basement, but then, couldn't help myself and lightend it up.

The Basement Room
At the largest book store in the city there is a basement where nothing is stored. The books go right onto the shelves, if it is stored away, no one can buy it. There is dust on the basement floor, no one goes there to clean, why clean a room that is never used?
There is a trail through the dust where many feet have walked from the bottom of the stairs to a room at the far end; there is a little window in it, that slides open when you knock and wait long enough.
I went there once, that room in the basement. I knocked at the door and waited. Ancient eyes with deep crows feet peered through the and asked the questions that I couldn't answer. He just closed the little window and I walked away, back along the path through the dust.
Someone called out to me as I reached the stairs. He invited me back to enter the room.
The room was filled with the smell of decay and old men in strange hats. Some wore robes and one man, apparently, wore nothing but long hair and beard. His eyes twinkled.
Cackling, the man at the head of the table stood, thrusting his finger at another, coughing, spittle sprayed from his lips. "Roll the dice," he shouted, his laughter raising in fervor and pitch. "You're dead", he shrieked gleefully, even before the dice tumbled to a stop, "You're all dead!"
All the men at the table screamed; some jumping to their feet to lean hunchbacked over the table, others too week to stand just swayed and howled from their seats, the intensity of the argument increasing by the moment.
My escort turned to me and winked, "Twenty five years we've been in here. Longest game of D&D in history."
I nodded and left the room as he turned back to the assemblage, "Order some more pizza, and roll new characters, it's my turn to be Dungeon Master."

The next two prompts, I have already mentioned, were about Mr. Gorbachev, and Belly Button Lint.

I am cought up with Great Hites now. I hope to put these stories in, weekly. Though since no one, except maybe Lisa, reads this, it doesn't really matter.