#dailyprompt-1896 — Public Fediverse posts

Epilogue: A Toast to Treachery

The arrest of Inspector Salomone was a quiet affair, conducted with the discretion that only a small village like Speranza could muster. Inspector Davies, the unassuming but astute officer who had once investigated the death of Elias Thorne, led the disgraced Salomone away in handcuffs. The former guardian of the law did not rage; instead, he wore a look of terrified resignation, muttering about a “higher tempo” and a “conductor” who would not be pleased.

“I was merely the second fiddle, Moira,” Salomone hissed as he was placed into the squad car, his eyes darting toward the bell tower. “The orchestra plays on, with or without me.”

Back at the Coffee Taverna, the atmosphere was one of exhausted relief. The adrenaline that had fueled our escape from the Cigars House had faded, replaced by the heavy, comforting scent of roasted beans and the earthy aroma of Altea’s unlit tobacco.

We gathered around the table to open the bottle of Speranza, Year Zero. Altea, with the reverence of a priestess, used a corkscrew to pull the ancient stopper. It emerged with a satisfying pop, releasing not the smell of vinegar, but a rich, complex bouquet of dark cherries, leather, and… something metallic.

“To the soil of Speranza,” Anna toasted, raising her glass. “And to friendship, the only root that doesn’t rot.”

We drank. The wine was exquisite—velvety and deep. But as I set my glass down, Toe, my sleek black cat, jumped onto the table. He did not look at the wine. He looked at the cork.

With a surgical extend of a single claw, he hooked the cork and batted it toward me. It rolled across the wooden table, coming to rest against the base of the kerosene lamp.

“Look,” I whispered, the Poirot-like instinct twitching in my mind.

Burned into the side of the cork, hidden until it was pulled from the neck of the bottle, was not a vintage year. It was a sequence of musical notes. A specific, haunting trill.

“That’s not just a melody,” Marisa said, her face paling as she recognized the notation. “That is the opening bar of The Devil’s Trill sonata. It’s the signature of the ‘Maestro’—a legendary thief who steals not with silence, but with sound.”

A New dissonance

Before I could respond, the heavy oak door of the Taverna creaked open. The wind from the street blew in, extinguishing the candles and plunging us into a sudden, Hitchcockian gloom.

Standing in the doorway was a young woman, drenched from a sudden squall. She clutched a violin case to her chest as if it were an infant. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the same terror I had seen in Viviana Bellini’s face weeks ago.

“Dr. Hopes?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They told me you could help. I am the second violinist for the quartet playing at the gala tonight. But… the first chair has vanished.”

She stepped into the light, and Ashwaganda let out a low, warning growl from his perch.

“He didn’t just disappear,” the woman sobbed, placing the violin case on the table next to the branded cork. “He vanished while he was playing a solo on stage. One moment the music was there, and the next… only silence. And in his place, they found this.”

She opened the case. The violin was gone. Resting in the velvet lining was not an instrument, but a perfectly preserved, severed finger of a marble statue—and a single, fresh cacao bean.

I looked at Altea, Anna, and Marisa. The “Conductor” Salomone had warned us about had already begun his performance. The wine was finished, but the overture to a new nightmare had just begun.

“Lock the doors, Anna,” I said, picking up the marble finger. “It seems our quiet life in Speranza is about to get very loud.”

How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

Sometimes I save Jetpack writing prompts as drafts so that I have something to write about later, should I feel so inclined. Obviously, if I want to be writing, I should be writing more for my book (Dissolution Protocol) that I haven’t touched in four months. But, it takes a certain mood for me to be able to get into the state of mind that I need for writing fiction.

That out of the way, how’ve I adapted to the changes brought on by the pandemic? It depends on what changes you mean? Have I learned to deal with most drivers on the road becoming more aggressive than they were pre-2020? You can’t tell me that you, as a driver, haven’t noticed it.

I’ve definitely adapted to most smaller gas stations suddenly closing at nine or ten in the evening every single day, for who knows what reason, post-2022. Of all the things you might need in an instant, or suffer being stranded, a gas station is one of them. But I’ve learned to plan around my gas tank, and figure out which places are open should I need to fill up late at night.

It’s seriously as though half the world has chosen to ignore that not everyone works a cushy nine to five desk job.

But that’s always the most evident at the end of each week when the normals holler out, “IT’S FRIDAY!”

I think, if I could say I’ve adapted to anything, it is the idea that any one of us could be gone tomorrow. It’s not an idea that’s far-fetched. It’s not something you can really scoff at anymore and go, “Yeah, okay. But not me.“

Yes, you.

And everyone else.

It doesn’t even have to be covid. It could be a car accident, it could be a consequence of murder or abduction. It could be because a guy in the supermarket was mad about his tomatoes being rotten, and because aggression is something gripping this country by the neck, he could whip out a gun and go postal.

It could be, just because it was your time to go. It could happen while you’re sleeping, you could suddenly slump over at work.

It could happen at any time, anywhere.

And I think that’s something the pandemic has really drilled into my head. So much so, I still struggle with … finding my sense of self, ever since then. Every couple of months I feel like I’m trying on new personalities, trying to figure out what I like most, where I belong, who I am–before it’s too late.

Just like, I’m kicking myself every single day that I don’t have my next book finished. But the drive isn’t there, so I don’t do it.

Just like the clock in my head says it’s ticking, it’s melting away, and you’re still not married, you still don’t have children, and you can’t even muster a proper conversation on a dating app.

It’s the feeling of impending doom, I think, that I’ve adapted to most. With nothing more than the feeling of just being … numb to it.

https://cmdr-nova.online/2024/05/12/prompt-adapting-post-covid-19/

#covid #covid19 #dailyprompt #dailyprompt1896 #doom #pandemic

When the lockdown started we got on board quick. We locked everything down and we locked it down hard. My wife and I were both overweight and pushing 50 years old (well, I was pushing 50 more than she was as she still hasn’t hit that “happy” milestone yet) and that was enough to justify our response, but more importantly to me, my step son has Crohn’s disease and type one Diabetes and there was no way in hell that kid was catching Covid-19 on my watch. We were all high risk but in my book his high risk out weighed everything else by far.

We still haven’t let up completely. Well… I don’t know, maybe we have. Maybe the mindset behind our day to day has changed so much that we can’t really perceive that we’re basically back to pre-pandemic normal.

We aren’t masking up every time we leave the house, but we are quick to put one on in some circumstances. If I have a sniffle I’ll wear a mask. We still hesitate to go out socially. Restaurants are few and far between. Doordash, Amazon, curbside pickups, they are all our friends. We’ve let ourselves go on a couple of trips. The last one was seven months ago and wouldn’t you know it, Jen and I both caught Covid. Shit. At the time I said to Jen that we needed to go on a trip right away after we recovered. We needed to get right back on the horse because if we didn’t we might never be able to bring ourselves to travel again. That was seven months ago. No one has returned to any horses yet. Shit.

So even though everything is steadily recovering and getting back to normal, we have adapted such that normal no longer feels completely normal, and we may never fully un-lockdown. I hope we can bring ourselves to relax, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull off that little magic trick.

The good news here though… my step son did not get sick on my watch. Mission accomplished.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/04/02/adapting-to-covid/

#dailyprompt #dailyprompt1896