Here are your prompts for today from
:Write about an out-of-date computer
throw away the master key
“What do you expect to prove?”
The kind of character who doesn’t like to go outside
YIPPY KI-YAY FICTIONEERS!
Ella picked up her clippers and carefully snipped an errant branch. Her bonsai garden made her happy. She spent hours planning the shapes and arrangement, checking the light, and adjusting the level of fertilizer to water ratio in her mist system.
She jumped when something hit the window. As she turned, another plink. This time, however, she saw what it was. A small, smooth stone fell away, just as another made contact with the glass. Ella took a deep breath. It wasn't the first time. The neighborhood children often threw stones at the strange woman's third floor window. No one knew what she looked like. They didn't know whether she was young or old. They only saw the shadows passing by the window.
So they threw rocks. Ella usually ignored them once she understood what the sound was. Two or three stones and then the children moved on. She removed the gloves she wore while caring for her little trees and smoothed out the white cotton of her dress before moving to the edge of the window. From that vantage point Ella could see down to the street but remain hidden in the shadows. The children had already run away.
Smiling, Ella turned from the window, just as another "plink" sounded. And then another. And a third in quick succession. The next stone was larger and sounded less like a tap on the window than a shot. Two more stones, each larger than the one before, crashed against the glass. The window held, but it wouldn't take many more heavy blows. Slipping back to her viewing place, she looked down, but saw no one. Slowly, Ella turned from the window again, determined to remain inside, but unsettled by the invisible person throwing rocks at her window with such force.
In an attempt to calm herself, Ella pulled her gloves on and picked up her smallest scissors. She felt better when she worked to perfect her little trees. The stones kept hitting the window, one after another after another. She heard the glass begin to crack. She looked up in time to see the glass spiderweb from the center pane to the edges. She watched until the center broke into the room. Shards of glass ripped through the bonsai closest to the window. Ella cried out, but the cry was cut short by the final rock sailing into the room without impediment.
Days later, crime scene tape covered the window and much of the street in front of the house. Officers combed the yard for clues. The rocks in the room did not match the local stones. There were no footprints, no sign that anyone other than the neighborhood children had been near the house in weeks. The only certainty was that a woman was dead, her face rendered unrecognizable by the force and size of the small boulder that crushed her, turning her white dress crimson.