Rising Star Adventures and Beyond

Setting description

- CONTEST ROUND: Setting Description.

Describe a setting in words. Use all five senses and make your reader experience the setting as if he or she were there.
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As Ruth drove home from the funeral, she knew life would never be the same again for her. She could feel the sunshine on her face. She had the window rolled down so she could feel the wind against her body. Her eyes were kind of blurry from all the tears. She looked at the kids playing in the park and screaming gleefully as they chased one another without a care in the world and she longed for her life to be like that again.

Ruth drove past the only restaurant in town and the smell of different foods cooking lingered in the air. She felt sick. How could she ever eat anything again? The ache in her heart was so deep.

She drove past the church. She felt so numb inside. She should have had one of her daughters drive to and from the funeral but Ruth just wanted to be left alone with her misery. Why did God have to take her Mike?

Ruth must have aimlessly driven around town for awhile. She didn't feel like she was in her right mind. As she looked at the world around her, it looked like it had for years, but she felt disconnected somehow. She felt as though she was living in a different dimension in the same world as everyone else.

Ruth finally pulled into her driveway and parked the car. She sat there for awhile just feeling numb. She didn't want to go in. She felt completely drained. She wasn't even sure if she had the energy to move. Her neighbor was mowing the lawn. She didn't even go to the funeral and they had been neighbors for years. The smell of freshly cut grass drifted her way. She just sat there listening to the mower. It gave her something outside of herself to concentrate on for a moment.

After a few minutes, Ruth decided to go inside. She didn't make it past her couch. She just sat there. She was too tired to cry any more. Besides, she wasn't even sure she had any tears left. She wasn’t sure what to do with her self at the moment. Just then, the phone rang. She had been so lost in her thoughts, it startled her back to reality. It was Olivia, her best friend checking on her to make sure she had made it home okay.

The living room was simple. There was the couch she was sitting on with an end table at each end. On each end table sat a crystal lamp. There was one recliner in the room where her husband used to sit, she could still smell his scent in that chair. It sat between the end table and the door to the kitchen and dining room. There was a coffee table in front of the couch. The tv and stand set across the room in front of the window. There was a knick knack shelf in the corner of the room by the front door. The walls had been painted in a light turquoise color and there were curtains over the window with a little blue flower print to accent it. It was so quiet in Ruth’s house, you could hear the clock on the wall ticking. The floor was wood so you could hear anyone walking on it even in bare feet as you could hear the boards creaking with every step.

Ruth assured her friend she was okay and hung up the phone. She didn't want to face the bedroom. She wasn't ready for that yet. She always kept a couple of throw pillows and throw blanket on the couch. So she laid on the couch with those. She couldn't sleep. She couldn't eat. She couldn't cry. She just lay there with an aching heart feeling very numb all over. She kept waiting for herself to wake up from this bad dream, but it just wasn't going to happen.

She wasn't sure how long she lay on the couch or when she had gone to sleep, but when she woke up, it was in the middle of the night.