Silenced

The main road was dark and quiet. News of the storm was all anyone had been talking about for days. Jack had been sure to stock up on all the necessities the day before. He just had one more stop to make before he headed home to settle in the for the storm.

He checked his rear-view mirror. Only the pale flecks of the falling snow could be seen dancing across the blackened night sky. Jack pulled to the side of the road, laced up his boots, and grabbed his hat and gloves. The wind tore through his jacket as he walked to the back of his truck. He opened the tailgate, sliding his truncheon to the side, and reached in with both hands.

“Better get a move on before we are both stuck in the snow”, he sniggered.

The road had iced over, making it difficult to maneuver the extra weight. But nothing was as difficult as what he had witnessed when he came home early the other night. Her words had been like daggers, digging deep and twisting to the core. She had told him he was too effete for her taste, that she needed a real man to satisfy her needs. She thought she was so smug with her big words but he wasn’t as naive as she thought. He knew about all her time in those stupid chat rooms. She was never smart enough to erase the history.

After that, he knew what he had to do. There was no wavering, never a second thought to his decision. Things needed to be made right and he was just the man to do it.

He pulled his collar up around his neck and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. The storm was just starting to pick up and Jack could feel the temperature dropping. The weatherman proclaimed it as going to be the snowstorm of the century this afternoon on the news. That was exactly the weather report Jack wanted to hear.

As he began to walk back to his truck, a blue glimmer in the snow caught his eye. The snow was softly falling on the body, creating the illusion of  fluffy white blanket. He stooped down and smirked when he realized what had caught his attention. She had always insisted on wearing that God-awful necklace – saying it brought her luck.

“Well look at all the luck it brought you now missy.”

Jack fingered the blue and green ostrich charm in his palm. “I have just the place for you little fella.” With a swift tug the necklace was free and dangling from his finger tips. He slid it in his shirt pocket and quickly re-zipped his jacket to fight off the wind’s brutal assault. The silence in his head was golden.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, ChrisWhiteWrites challenged me with “Use the words effete, truncheon and wavering in your story. Also, include an ostrich. Oh, and for bonus virtual high-fives adopt an orphan prompt from IndieInk. I chose: ‘The snow was falling softly on the body” and I challenged Kelly Garriott Waite with “Use these words in your story: doctor, roll of film, stairwell, telephone“.