The Observer
If you read my post last week, chances are…
You’re not here for anything outside of the continuation of this story. So, let’s get to it.
If you did not read Last Yesterday Part 1, STOP! Seriously, you’re going to NEED to read Part 1 so go read that here.
NOTE: Last Yesterday was written with the help of an Artificial Intelligence Natural Language Generation (NLG) tool. This story is a combination of my thoughts and the AI’s thoughts.
At the end of this post, I have a special offer for anyone interested in seeing how I built this story. Now, let’s find out what was on that card…
Photo by Rostislav Uzunov from Pexels
Last Yesterday Part 2
Feeling the golden lines over the back of the card, their coarse grain grinds against his fingers. He looks to The Observer, watching for any twitch, any movement as the card is turned over revealing its face.
The man looked at the card, back to The Observer, back to the card. Questions spun through his mind as he threw the card back to The Observer, "What's this crap?"
"The Hanged Man." The Observer said calm, smiling. "Oh, an unfortunate draw." He chuckles. "Unfortunate for a man who wants to change his situation."
Leveling the gun back to The Observer, the man dismissed the card and nods to the glowing ord. "Why's my daughter there?"
The Observer glances to the card then back to the man. Disinterested in the gun, watching the man's eyes jut between the orb and the card. "It's simple."
"What is?" the man growls.
"Your daughter is the price of your freedom." The Observer leaned back in his chair and cards spilled from his hands. He watched them flutter to the ground as he continued to speak, "You wish to change your situation, so does she. You choose who gets to change."
"Leave her alone!" The man screamed and kicked the card up into The Observer's face.
"You for her. Easy decision, right?" The Observer dusts off the cards from his gray trench coat.
As the cards float back down, the man sees them sliding and slipping around the floor. They came to a rest, face-up, all cards showing The Hanging Man. Every card showed a man hanging from a tree by his feet, with his head bowed and arms struggle.
Then the man noticed it. On the card, sitting in the tree, perched over the Hanging Man was a cat. It looked like a twin of his morning visitor. No, more than a twin, it was the same cat. Same gray coat, same white beard, same, white-tipped ears. The cat's claws dangle over the rope hanging the man as the white beard pulls back into a needle-toothed smile.
"She wouldn't age here." The Observer said. "She wouldn't grow." He leans closer to the man, pushing the orb under the man's nose. "And neither would her lung cancer."
The gun falls. Drug down by the weight of the hard truth. Here she could live. There, she would not. How long has the man been here, he wonders. How long has he lost since his daughter's diagnosis?
The man knew she didn't have long. He looked deeper into the orb seeing her sunken eyes, graying skin, frail body. She would not make it much longer. The cancer was winning.
The man thought of his choices. Of the woman he loved and the daughter he cherished. He could take her away from this place, but she would age. She would die.
"What choice do I have?" Tears rolled into the man's eyes. "I lose. She loses. Either way we all lose."
The Observer leans back, tilted his head and twirled his hand over the floor. The cards jumped back into his hand. "Perhaps, you should draw again and see if fate has changed?" The Observer smiled.
That smile drove the man back. Does a worse fate face him in the next hand? He's played blackjack before. You have to know when to stand and when to hit. The man thinks about the last bullet, the last shot...this is his last hand. The time for caution has ended.
Golden threads glimmered in the gemstone light of the cavern. The Observer's hand swayed and waved throwing speckled light dancing around the man.
The man reached for the cards.
The Observer snatched them back. "On second thought..." The Observer mused. "Perhaps I can help you if you help me." He pushed the cards together and pulled the first one from the top with a deft finger flip. It was the Hanging Man again but The Observer's finger tapped the top of the card, the cat. "I need a cat."
The man remembers the cat from his first visit. The one that stared at him with soulless eyes. The one he feels watched him make his choices.
"You want the cat?" The man asked.
"I think you misunderstand; I need the cat." The Observer said and put the card back. "I need to kill the cat; well, I need you to kill the cat."
The man's daughter looked away from him finally running off towards her mother. She panted heavily exhausted from the short trot. "And if I do?"
"Reality is not the only thing I can change." The Observer chuckled. He flipped his hand with the orb in it to be palm down, the orb vanishes. He flipped his hand back over opening his palm to reveal a clock. Golden, glowing with flames rippling from it.
"Time with your daughter is just a dead cat away."
to be continued…
Don’t wait for Part 3
Part 3 is the conclusion of LAST YESTERDAY and I will be sharing it next week, but you don’t have to wait until next week. You’re just one newsletter sign up away from getting Part 3 instantly.
And if that isn’t enough, signing up for my newsletter will also get you access to the video recording of me building this story with the Artificial Intelligence tool. I talk through how I did it and show you a screen share of me building the story with Artificial Intelligence.
This video will help you see how to use an NLG (Natural Language Generation) tool for your own writing. If you think AI does everything…well, you’ll see what’s possible. This tutorial/demo video will be shared during the week of Dec. 13th.
Sign up to get Part 3 right now and I’ll be sending out the video of using AI to write Last Yesterday early next week.
Thanks
Thank you to Cathy at Merely Day by Day for hosting Poetry Friday this week. Again, no poetry this week but I thought you all might enjoy a story.
Special thanks to Snapwire: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-gray-cat-looking-up-against-black-background-730896/ for the cover image of this post.