She had never heard that sound before. It was oddly off pitch and a bit far away, like when you hear your mama calling you while you’re swimming underwater. She strained to place it – human? animal? who knew – before shaking it off and emptying the dishwasher. The news was playing in the background and, shocker of shockers, shit was hitting the fan yet again. Time to switch to Spotify.

She dropped the still dripping Tupperware into the sink while idly wondering when someone would design a dishwasher that managed to actually dry Tupperware along with everything else in the darn thing. That and washing crusted eggs off of forks would be two remarkable technological advances. A cat flittered by tossing the yarn ball toy from her Christmas stocking followed closely by a dog intent on stealing said ball and drooling it into a puddle of bubbly spittle. And there’s that sound again.

She wandered into the hall, tilting her head, trying to follow the noise to its source. She wandered past the phone she’d misplaced, a radio left on, but the sound still scratched at her subconscious. What was it?

That’s when she remembered the kid.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “the first 3 words of the first full sentence.”  1. Grab the closest book to you when you sit down to write your post. 2. Open it to a random page. 3. Locate the first complete sentence on that page. 4. Use the first three words of that sentence to start your post, then take it from there–write whatever comes to mind. That’s it! Have fun!