The ani-Munch snickered at "kumquat"...He really needs some more stuff to do.

Deb? Do you have something for me to beta?

I do. Sending.

erika, received. Will curl up with it later. Today is running away from me at warp speed, and I'm already edgy.

Ok...I imagine it'll take a while for me to fix it anyway. No hurry.

I am a dimwit! After asking for drabble suggestions, I chose one....in my brain. And forgot to post it. I am a Tep of Very Little Brain some days.

Anyway....the key paragraph challenge is now closed.

We're up to challenge #11, which is almost 3 months of weekly drabbles! I am SO pleased that people are still enjoying it!

I intend to use all the suggested challenges sooner or later, but since my moderator-ship is also a dictatorship, I'm making this week's challenge topic silence. Because, frankly, I have an idea for it, and I haven't been drabbling lately.

So there it is. Silence. Actual words are required in the drabble (Polter-Cow, I'm looking at YOU, baby). Go to it.

Silence. Very come as I'm not for yours truly.(No shit! Really?)

London 1978

The last thing she remembered hearing was a crackle, a spitting, something that might have been firecrackers. They were distant, then not so distant, then closeby.

There was, in her aural sense memory, also a sick squealing, and an angry whining. It might have been tires on wet pavement; it might have been something else.

Now she sat in the London casualty ward with a dozen other passersby. The doctor held up a handwritten sign: "A bomb exploded near you, outside Harrod's. Don't worry. Your hearing loss is temporary."

If there's any justice in the world, she thinks, he'll be right.

That's rather evocative. I think it was the doctor with the handwritten sign that suddenly transported me back to...oh, weird. I went back to, like, 1878 instead of 1978. It felt so Victorian. Or maybe I always imagine London as Victorian.

Just a true vignette. My friend Jenny was outside Harrod's when an IRA bomb went off, and they called her work contact number, and I went to make sure she was OK.

She was very cross about the whole thing, after she stopped being scared shitless.

Down the Cardiac Care hallway towards Hubby's room. The door is open, but the room's dark. Maybe he's asleep.

In other rooms monitors beep, oxygen feeds hiss, the evening TV news speaks. The sounds fade as I approach his door. Nothing from his room. Not the triple-beep of the blood oxygen sensor announcing a drop, nor his sleepy swearing as the alarm wakes him and reminds him to breathe. Not the steady beep that tracks his heartbeat.

Freshly made bed. Faintest rush of air from the ceiling vent.

"Where is he?" I snap at the nurse.

She cringes. "He went for a walk."

Oh, good one.