caffeinewitchcraft:

And time’s up! I had a blast with this one, though I got a little caught up in wikipedia during it! Remember to post yours with the tag Caffeine Challenge so I can find it! I’ll put them all on the google doc soon, but if you don’t see yours on it, feel free to send me a message! Sometimes it takes a bit for them to show up in the tag.

You can read mine on the doc HERE or below!

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Toby is watering the ice plant (not that it needs it, it’s only complaining because he’d planted the marigolds a little too close this year) when the woman collapses just on the other side of his fence.

There are several unusual things about this beyond the obvious.

First is that Toby hadn’t actually seen her before the collapse, nor heard any footsteps.

Second is that Toby actually doesn’t have any neighbors and the only thing at the end of his little road is an old grain silo from when his house used to belong to a farmer.

Third is that the woman is dressed in an evening gown. An evening gown. In the mountains. High in the mountains, in fact, where the roads are more dirt paths than roads and the nearest town is at the bottom.

Toby stares at her through his fence and slowly puts down his watering can. He’s been living up here long enough to know better than to question the disappearances, the strange footprints, the eerie sounds that echo from somewhere above the summit outside his front door.

He has not ever had the opportunity to learn not to question the appearances.

“Ma’am?” he calls out, taking a cautious step towards the border of his property. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

The woman, lying face down in the dirt, doesn’t so much as twitch.

Toby hesitates at the gate and looks anxiously up and down the road. A faint breeze blows past, rattling the rash of poison ivy he hasn’t had a chance to usher away from his house and making something deep in the woods groan. It sounds like a rotted tree about to fall, its base too flimsy and hollow to hold up its skeletal canopy.

Toby knows it’s not a tree.

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