I recently visited my Father and Step Mother in Inverness, Florida. One of the things I enjoy doing with my father is attending his writer’s group with him when I am able to. The group meets once a week at a community theater and center on the way to Crystal River. The group leader and organizer, a younger lady named Elissa, scours the web to find topics and then she places the topics on slips of paper and places the slips into a small cloth bag. A the group waits she selects a topic at random and everyone gets a chance to write a short essay, story or just their thoughts on the topic. As Elissa’s tastes are rather eclectic, so of course are the topics that catch her eye and make into her little cloth sack.

This weeks Writer’s Group topics where:

“My Workspace” (assigned the week before)
“A Century Old Symbol of Rebirth”
“On Top of the Sky Scraper”
And
“Gold Plated Diapers”

I don’t just sit and watch when I visit the group, I also take part in the writing and critique. I guess my favorite topic from the four above was “On Top of the Sky Scraper” for some reason this brought up an interesting vision for me so I thought I would share what I wrote with you.

Mike

On Top of the Sky Scraper

Copyright 2008, Mike Ault

The water is calm this morning. You can see the torch of the statue of Liberty through the morning mists. The air is still fairly cool, not like it will be later in the day as the temperature and humidity rise to a crescendo of hot, wet heat that steals your breath and energy, only dying back to livable levels after dark.

The morning sun plays on the water, glittering and dancing as the only breeze f the day runs across the surface far below chasing itself into oblivion. The sky is a hard blue bowl with just the wisp of a cloud here and there.

You can hear the water lap against the stone, slowly eating it. Eventually the water will wear it all away. Over the side I look far down to the water, if you fell you wouldn’t survive more than likely.

“It used to be a lot taller.” The words interrupt my thoughts. “Several stories infact.” My father comes up behind me, old before his time, his face showing the lines of thousands of drifting miles of ocean and the leather of his skin, years of sun. “Then the ice up north and down south melted, of course it was the ice down south that mattered.” He rambles sometimes now, we used to listen, but now it has become part of the background.

We turn and go back to the stairwell, out of the sun which is already getting intense. In the last month the water had climbed another floor down below us and at night the building moans and rattles. Soon we will have to move again.

“People used to pay millions for that view.”

“Millions of what?” I ask, not really caring about the answer. Our footsteps echo from the musty depths of the stairs.

“Never mind, it isn’t important” he answers.