{"id":3100,"date":"2022-05-01T00:05:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-01T04:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3100"},"modified":"2022-04-28T15:23:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T19:23:43","slug":"the-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3100","title":{"rendered":"The Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Message<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-3101\" src=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"148\" height=\"111\" srcset=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog-300x225.jpeg 300w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog-768x576.jpeg 768w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dense-fog.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 148px) 100vw, 148px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fog was heavy as I walked through on the path leading to my destination. Where was that destination, you might ask? That is hard to explain since I don\u2019t really know myself. I received this message that just said to follow the path of least resistance starting at the entrance to the park. There was nothing else on the message. Being the curious kind of person that I am, I decided to do what it said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I made my way to the park, it was a very sunny and clear day when I started out. As soon as I got to the park and stepped across the entrance threshold the fog appeared blanketing out everything but a single path in front of me. This made me even more curious and a bit apprehensive. But I did what the message said. I followed the path. As I continued walking the path made some twists and turns; I continued as instructed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a while, I thought to myself, I clearly must not be in the park anymore. Considering how far I\u2019d walked, I knew the park wasn\u2019t that big. But at this point, I couldn\u2019t stop. Looking behind me the fog had covered up where I had been. I had no choice but to go forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I finally came to a clearing. The fog dissipated and the path and park disappeared. Before me lay a vast garden of flowers. Each one had a different color, shape, and size. The aroma was intoxicating. The sky was clear but not blue as expected, but a sort of pale green and included two suns, both shining down on me. One sun was bright yellow as our sun is, and the other was bright blue. The thing is, as bright as they were I could look straight at them, unlike our sun which would cause irreparable damage to your eyes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was at a loss as to where I was or what I was supposed to do when I saw her coming toward me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI should have known,\u201d she said. \u201cOnly you would be stupid enough to not only follow an unsigned message but continue walking once you stepped past the entrance to the park and fog showed up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhat?\u201d I asked. \u201cWas this some sort of a test? Who are you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was then the suns began to merge. The flowers began to wilt and the fog appeared again obliterating everything. It took only a few minutes before the fog dissipated and I found myself standing at the entrance of the park again with the message in my hand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I looked down at the message, the writing had changed.\u00a0 Written in bold letters was \u201c<\/span><b>BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was signed, Christina. But that\u2019s my wife\u2019s name?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Message The fog was heavy as I walked through on the path leading to my destination. Where was that destination, you might ask? That is hard to explain since I don\u2019t really know myself. I received this message that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3100\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[387,388,177],"class_list":["post-3100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-stories","category-story-writing","tag-fog","tag-message","tag-writing-prompt"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3102,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100\/revisions\/3102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}