Prompt 1 (Mysterious Carolers): Caroling has been a tradition for years, so it’s not really unusual when you hear a soft chorus from outside. What is unusual is that it’s three in the morning, and the moment they start singing you feel a chill in the air. Maybe it’s a holiday song, maybe it’s not, but whatever it is it’s a song you know before--from this life? From another?--and something about this version makes you go cold. If you move to the window, you will find no carolers, but the song is loud enough that you know you should be able to see them. They sing one song, and then there is silence. An eerie chill lingers, and your dreams are haunted by strange voices. You’ll probably never be able to hear that song again without feeling a chill.
Music was Rob's life. As far back as he could remember, there had been music around him. His mother, a music professor, saw to it that the house he grew up in back in London was filled with music. A musical prodigy himself, he made a point of knowing what every song or piece of music that he heard was called, and he taught himself more than a few of them on the various instruments that were present in the house. Even now, grown and living in Destiny City, Rob still listened to everything musical, even if he didn't like the piece in question, and made note of what it was called; and if he liked it, he learned it.
So when carolers started singing outside his front window, Rob instinctively started humming along as he sat in his living room watching the fire in the fireplace. It didn't occur to him that it was far too late at night for carolers to be out; time was basically meaningless to him at this point in his life.
A sudden chill drifted over him, despite the fireplace. Still humming absently, he stood and crossed the room to toss another log on, poking the already burning logs with the fireplace poker. As he sat down, he started listening to the carolers, really listening to what they were singing. It wasn't a typical Christmas carol, as one might expect carolers to be singing – in fact, it wasn't a carol at all. Even so, Rob felt like he knew what the song was, like he'd heard it before in the distant past, but he couldn't put his finger on precisely what song it was or where he had heard it before. His brow furrowed; it wasn't like him to forget things like this. And the way they were singing made his blood run cold. He shuddered back another chill and turned to look out the window.
Nothing. Which was very odd, as the volume of the singing made it sound like they should be right there outside his window.
The singing grew in intensity, as did the chill Rob felt. This was bothering him – not so much that he couldn't see the singers, but that he knew this song somehow, yet didn't remember what it was. Could he have heard it in passing at some point and simply forgotten to note what it was? Unlikely – he was meticulous about such things. Immediately he grabbed something to write with and a napkin from his take-away curry and started scribbling down what he was hearing, thinking that maybe if he saw it he'd remember .
But before he could get too far, the song ended. The silence which followed was eerie and deafening. Rob went to look out the window again, and again he found nothing out there. A chill lingered though, the kind of chill that no amount of heat from the fireplace could warm. "s**t, what the ******** was that?" he murmured, puzzling over what had just happened. It was going to drive him batty not knowing what that song was; he fully expected his dreams tonight to be full of phantom carolers turning his veins to ice with their singing.
He didn't want to go to sleep tonight.
WC: 550
