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Early Arrivals

This week’s photo prompt prompted me to write two rather differing stories. Any feed back would be welcome.

Copyright T J Paris
Copyright T J Paris

The cafe attracted the young and avant-grade. The bulk of its business came from day trippers. Yesterday’s incident was disastrous. If only Johanna had not run amok with a rifle, the visitors had posed no threat to her, yes their appearance was a surprise. They have never arrived in August before, Johanna had shot and killed them. The two fields that constituted her small holding were littered with bodies.

Thirty greylag geese lay dead amongst the corn. They found Johanna slumped in a armchair, she had turned the rifle on herself. On the table next to her was a letter from the mayor, informing her that her land was required for an extraction site. The residents of the town had voted to take the government bribes, two thousand pounds each and a lump sum for the council. It was expected that the fracking would release vast amounts of gas.

The media had run with the story on the six o’clock news, visitor numbers to the town crashed, and the fracking company decide not to proceed.

This Post Has 10 Comments
  1. Johanna thought they were taking her land from her so she shot and killed people then killed herself? Wow, pretty heavy! The kicker is in the end when they decided not to take the land after all. Great story!

  2. Ooh you wrote two stories for the prompt, and I love that they’re both so different. Can’t say which one I prefer; this one definitely takes a darker side to things.

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