Down the Rabbit Hole

The 13th Chime/Worse Case Scenerio

Blogging Circle/DAY 1078: October 28, 2015
Prompt: It's midnight on Halloween and you hear the Grandfather clock in the hall strike 13. What happens?

I don't own a Grandfather clock, primarily because there is something movie-horror creepy about them...and I have children and dogs which makes owning anything so expensive and refined an impracticality on all levels. Halloween for the last few years has amounted to chasing my daughter around various neighborhoods for a few hours then ending up in bed well before the strike of Midnight, let alone, 13! However, for the sake of stretching my creative ligaments this afternoon I will use my imagination!

The last door bell chime was over three hours ago. It was safe to say the trick or treaters had called in a night. I looked at the heaping bowl of peanut butter cups and realized with dismay that I had vastly overestimated the need for candy this year again. I would have to do something with those shiny orange bags of fat-filled joy before I was tempted to eat anymore of them myself. I made my rounds, checking the doors and windows, before starting up the stairs. All of a sudden, the old grandfather clock began to chime. It was a deep and ominous sound that echoed off the walls of the quiet house. The twelve chime rang out, followed almost immediately by another. Thirteen? Really? On Halloween?
I dropped back down to the bottom of the stairs and peered around the corner at the timepiece. It stood like a sentinel in the corner of the dining room. All at once, the air around my ears began to sizzle and pop. The clock began to shake, the house began to pitch...

That's about all I got folks...

Blog City Prompt: Your creative imagination can be good for writing novels, poems, short stories but can be your worst enemy when it invents worse case scenarios. Do you agree?

Nothing is as scary or as bad as what my own imagination can invent. I've come to realize that I typically can not stop my brain from doing that "worse case scenario" stuff and I hate that it my default setting sometimes. It makes me feel more like a fatalist, and less like a problem-solver. There is some comfort in planning for the worse case, in that you know you will be prepared for it. Unless the worse case scenario is a army of super large, scientifically engineered spiders or an War of the Worlds alien invasion...in that case, why prepare? Pointlessly running for your life is so tiring and let's face it, anything that comes after instant vaporization, isn't likely to be more pleasant anyway!