This story is part of the
750 Word Project 2022
.
*
Samantha drove her car into the hills, to a place she'd never been before. The hills were blond but densely blanketed by olive-green chaparral.
Behind her lay the city, a vast, smog-shrouded plane stretching to infinity. In the city were a husband at work and two kids in school. Ahead of her loomed an adventure.
She parked the car in a dusty open place at the end of the road. The Site on the Internet said this was the place to go.
A hunger, long quelled and seldom acknowledged, impelled her to visit the Site, and then to follow its instructions and directions. So, here she was, on a hot summer Tuesday afternoon, at the appointed time, getting out of her car, wearing a knee-length blue dress with buttons up the front and high heels and nothing else.
Samantha teetered on her heels over a bumpy trail to a place a hundred yards away from the car, shrouded on three sides by tall, thick clumps of ceanothus and manzanita. A boulder stood in front of her, as she'd been told it would. Opposite the boulder, the hill fell away steeply, revealing an expansive view of the city hundreds of feet below.
On the boulder were two handprints in white chalk, a few feet apart. Samantha approached the boulder and put her hands on the prints, as the Site had instructed.