Come join us in the #weekendfreewrite!

The contest @mariannewest and @Freewritehouse gives three prompts and you have to write for five minutes using each prompt - without looking at the next prompt UNTIL you have finished with the first one!

You can find this weeks first prompt here: post

I Told You So

"It is a conspiracy, don't you see it?" She walked away from the table, clenching her fists.
I grimaced behind her back as she paced around the room. Everything was a conspiracy according to Sandra. From the shower running out of hot water just as she got the shampoo in her hair, to the stock market being down 500 points. According to Sarah, the great cosmic gods of Karma had her on their shit list.

I have to admit, it did seem that way. Ever since she’d been passed over for the promotion she’d been waiting on for years, everything seemed to go wrong for her. It was one thing after another. These days I hated to even answer the phone when she called. But I didn’t want to be a fair weather friend only, so I always answered.

Last week’s conspiracy was the Great Insurance Scam. She’d finally made her last car payment on her 2014 Hyundai. Then two days later she hit a deer on the way home and totalled the car. Between the $1000 deductible she carried and the low Blue Book value of the car, she was right back in debt again to replace the car. According to Sarah, Bambi and Prudential had conspired to prevent her from enjoying her momentary financial relief.

Two days ago she called to tell me about her altercation with a rotten pumpkin. She ranted on for 10 minutes about being late for her book club at her friend’s house two blocks away. She took a shortcut to save time and swore a rotten pumpkin had rolled right into her path. It exploded into green stringy goo when she stepped on in, ruining her new shoes. When I reminded her I had warned her about cutting through the neighbor’s garden she replied, "Pumpkins can grow everywhere. that is not what I want to discuss with you." I was glad she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “Well, what did you want to discuss?”

“I want to discuss my mailman spying on me and reporting back to the postmaster. You know she’s good friends with my boss. I came home from work and there was that shady mailman standing on my front porch, taking the mail out of my box and going through it. It was way past the time he should be delivering my neighborhood. When I questioned him, he said he was backtracking his morning deliveries looking for a check he had misdelivered. Like I’m going to buy that story! I’m pretty sure that’s why I didn’t get that promotion.”

Ok, this was far fetched even for Sandra. “And that’s not the half of it,” she continued. “I told him I KNEW what time it was. He just looked at me and held up his arm. And the watch was broken! What kind of mailman has a broken watch? That’s when I knew for sure, he’s a spy. He’s only been on the job for a couple of months, I bet they got rid of the regular guy so they could put this imposter in his place.”

I stared at the phone dumbfounded. I’d seen the gradual decline in her mental state, but I didn’t know it had progressed this far. Maybe she’d suffered a concussion in that collision with the deer. Maybe she had a brain tumor. This was going way too far to just be over compensating for being passed over for a promotion. I asked Sandra if I could come over so we could talk about it in person. As soon as I hung up the phone I’d be calling her mother to talk about getting Sandra some professional help.

Meanwhile, in the back room of the post office, Jake was changing out of his borrowed postal uniform. “Thank God, that’s over, I was sick of playing the mailman. That’s a damn tough job! Here’s the letter I was sent to intercept. It’s a good thing you got that intel this afternoon, because I sure didn’t recognize it the morning when I delivered it.”

[credit@EdibleCthulhu]