I’m trying something new, but among some people I’ve met through other writing prompts. The Unicorn Challenge is “a magical new weekly writing opportunity from Jenne Gray and  C. E. Ayr. ” The rules are: Maximum of 250 words, based on the photo prompt.

Ignoring the Signs by D. Avery

Even if he’d noticed the sign, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He wouldn’t have stopped what he was intent on doing.

For he had listened, and God help him, he’d then looked. He couldn’t unsee it. And now there was no stopping him.

If he’d noticed the sign, he might have made a wry, bitter joke even as he grimly continued on his path.

‘Beware of trains!’ goes the joke. First he’d heard the chugga-chugging. ‘Stop?’ He’d heard her crying out, ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’  She wasn’t speaking to him, that was for sure. But he didn’t stop at the door where he’d stood listening, no, he went ahead and stepped into their bedroom and once there he couldn’t help but look, and he saw, as he’d long suspected, that his marriage, his life, was over.  

So. The joke’s on him. He’d long suspected that too.

‘Don’t stop.’ He couldn’t unhear it.

He wouldn’t stop now. He was through the gate. Oh, he listened for a train as he walked, and upon hearing one, ducked into the bushes by the tracks, waited there and listened to the hum and screech on the rails, closer, closer, closer. He peered through the brush as the train approached, closer, closer, closer, watched it hurtling down the tracks towards him, closer, closer, closer, and then he went ahead and stepped out in front of it, putting a stop to what he couldn’t unsee; putting a stop to all that he could never undo.

At GirlieontheEdge, our venerable host of Six Sentence Stories, Denise, has a Leo Tolstoy quote:

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.”

Great literature? In the following Six Sentences (yes, six and only six) on the very day a man goes on a journey, a stranger comes to the town he’d just journeyed from. Doubly great?

The Milk Carton Kid by D. Avery

On a day the sheriff had journeyed off to the east, a stranger rode into town from the west, a saddle-weary young man who, after tending his horse of course, made his way into the nearest bar where he asked in a voice rough from disuse, “Got milk?”

The barkeep obliged him, kept them coming until empty milk bottles littered the bar and the stranger’s milk mustache had grown thick and cheesy, prompting a patron to remark to Doc that with that thick milk mustache, the stranger kind of looked like the sheriff but Doc shushed him and the two of them walked out behind the stranger who stood holding his distended belly in front of his horse.

“I wouldn’t recommend ya try ridin through 2Hard2 Pass in the hot sun Stranger, all that milk ya drank will turn inta cheese.”

“No whey,” the stranger replied, “But maybe I’d butter sleep it off, if you know where I might do that.”

The stranger, feeling the effects from over-imbibing at the dairy bar, walked with churning steps as he followed the Doc to the sheriff’s office to avail himself of a spare cot, barely listening to Doc telling him how the sheriff was away on yet another journey, still searching for his son who’d gone missing so many years ago, never giving up hope of a happy reunion.

The stranger didn’t notice the old milk carton on the shelf with his own young face peering down at the cluttered desk of the man who’d never forgotten, who’d never given up; the man whose journeying would end as soon as he returned to see who’d finally made it home.