Wednesday Blog Hop - Something for Nothing

Phew! I've just about managed to get this in this week before I'm too tired to concentrate. The last two weeks have just raced by and so have the prompts for this blog hop.

But here I am this week, rushing it at the end to hand it in before the deadline ticks round. You'll have to bear with my entry this week, it's still fairly rough around the edges, but something is still better than nothing.



So, as usual the rules are:

• use the photo prompt
• use the five words given
• do not exceed 500 words
• post your entry before the following Wednesday
• link up with the wonderful hosts
• check out the other contributions
• have fun!!!

This weeks photo:

This weeks words:    bill, chisel, title, system, bicycle

Our lovely hosts:  Carrie Sorenson at Chasing Revery, Nicole Pyles at The World of My Imagination

And my contribution:

Something for Nothing

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The weather system had been malfunctioning for months now, and Sylvia was coming to the end of her patience with it. In the beginning, it had been wonderful being able to control the weather, but the warranty on it must have been running out or something because all it seemed to do now was break down. It wasn't so bad when they'd had the heat of summer for six months, although that too began to wane towards the end of it. It was no fun riding a bicycle to work when it made you sweat out of every pore before you'd even arrived.

Of course, nobody was allowed to make any complaints about it. She remembered the debates had raged for years before it was decided to take the technology on, it was to be the saviour of mankind in the face of the devastation brought on by the changing climate. So many bills had been passed to make way for its construction, it's a wonder it went into operation at all.

Then there was a spate of deaths surrounding the final months of construction. It had fallen behind schedule and there was one last push to get it out on time. The men who sat up in their sky high offices, wearing their expensive suits and carrying their fancy titles, sacrificed the lives of too many men in order to reach their ambitious targets. They all but forgot about the people doing the actual work, the chisels and the hammers as they called them. All that became of them were statistics.

But Joey hadn't been a statistic to Sylvia. He'd been a loving father and husband, a hard worker who'd do anything he could to help out for the greater good. At least that's what he used to call it. She thought he should concentrate on doing more good nearer to home, with his family. He'd been away for weeks at a time working on the project, and the last time he'd come home it had been the shortest of visits, just a day and a night before he had to return.

She felt like her heart had been ripped from her chest the day she'd got the news, the day he became 'just a statistic'. She didn't care what the weather did now, all it was to her was a reminder of what she'd lost. And it worked so well, or so she thought, that his efforts seemed to have been for nothing.

Word count: 419

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