The Names On The Wall

A Writer’s Life For Me – Instagram

The names on the wall went back over two hundred years. He knew they meant something; he just had to figure out what. Every name had a date next to it. It was the same date next to each and every one. It was today’s date, 28th September but for each year for the last couple of hundred years. This large monolithic slab of rock that had appeared in his local park last night reaching up over one hundred feet high above the trees. The crowds had been there since the dawn had broken, first early morning joggers, then parents and children on the school run, office workers and then, finally, the people who decided to roll out of bed at 11 in the morning and spend the day pretending like they had something useful to do.

Adrian didn’t often walk through this park but when he heard the crowd, when he saw people flocking from every direction he had to go and see what all the fuss was about. Due to the size of the rock, he had seen it from quite far away. As he approached it, he gained this feeling in his stomach that it was something to do with him. He had no idea why. His life was fairly mundane. He had been unemployed for 3 months. He was currently living off his savings and some tomato plants he had only been growing as a way to impress a girl he had recently dated but was now one of his only sources of food. His cupboards were bare, he hadn’t seen friends in weeks because he was too ashamed to admit he was running desperately low on funds and he hadn’t fuelled up his car in weeks.

This morning instead of heading for the Job Centre, he decided to go for a walk. He hadn’t intended on going through the park, he was going to go round. But the buzz from the crowd drew him in. And there he stood being gently pushed by the swaying assembly, staring up at this ancient and at the same time new rock that should not have been there.

He could hear the conversations going on between people. It was something to do with God or the government. It was a publicity stunt. Aliens. It was an art project. It was not structurally sound and all these people standing around it were most likely going to be crushed, said someone in the crowd.

It was chaos but it was also extremely civilised too. As much as there was a little to-ing and fro-ing, the overall vibe was of calm. There should have been panic and fear but as much as some of the theories about the rock where completely outlandish, no-one seemed scared. Adrian wondered what it all meant, the names, the dates, the rock itself. It was a mystery that noone seemed to be making any substantive headway with.

“It’s cracking!” Someone near the front shouted. Again, there was no panic. There should be panic, a hundred foot rock that has appeared from nowhere is cracking. He started to see the crack appear now as it reached above average person height. It slowly moved up and up the rock, the noise just about audible over the now murmuring crowd. A few chips of rock fell from the crack but nothing to set the crowd off.

Suddenly, the two sides of the rock, either side of the crack, separated. You could now probably fit a hand through the fissure. They started to move slightly, like a wobbly tooth on a small child. Just a very small amount of movement but enough for you to be convinced that it was actually on the go. The slight movement became increasingly more pronounced every few seconds like someone somewhere was hitting a button: vibrate…vibrate more…vibrate even more.

The ground started to shake now too. There were some ooos and aaaahs from the crowd but again no panic. Adrian saw the two halves of the rock starting to lean. He wanted to run but something rooted him to the floor. One piece fell forward and one fell back. The piece that fell towards him, missed him by mere centimetres. He looked down at the slab that was now on the ground next to him an instead of grabbing his phone to call an ambulance for the people who had been crushed he just looked a the names on the rock.

The longer and longer he had stood in the presence of this giant stone, the longer he realised that he had lost all of his square edges. He had become so unconcerned about the world around him, the screaming from the crushed, the lack of any sort of reaction from the onlookers. He was more interested in the name he was at eye level with being his grandfather’s name. The woman partially buried under the slab whose small blood covered hand twitching nearby seemed like little more than an annoyance. He knew this was wrong

In the distance he could hear sirens, normally they would have invoked a reaction but he neither wanted to run to or away from the scene. There was some screaming on the outer edge of the gathering but it just felt so far away that it did not deserve any sort of reaction.

“Adrian Schulman, 28th September 2012.” This, as far as Adrian knew, was not a significant date for his grandfather. It wasn’t his birthday, the day he died, the start of his retirement. Adrian didn’t know much anymore, he sure as hell didn’t know anything about empathy right now, but he knew he had to figure out what that date meant.

Everyone who was left alive in that crowd had the same thought too. “What happened on September 28th?” Everyone in that crowd that was still alive had a name they knew on the rock that had fallen closest to them. Everyone of them was about to go on a journey.

My Thoughts: I found this great page on Instagram full of writing prompts and this one stood out to me. I decided on 20 minutes this week to get the idea down. I’m not sure where this would lead but I’m anticipating bingeing on The Leftovers season 3 in the next week or so, so like that show, it’ll probably go nowhere…but be a fairly enjoyable, if not completely ridiculous and mind-boggling journey!

xx woeful writes xx