Z for Zipping through the streets: atozchallenge

Today, the last day of the challenge, I'll be using a story-starter sent by Donna B. McNicol who has encouraged me throughout the challenge. I began with her prompt for A, and am ending with her prompt for Z. 

The photograph is courtesy Vikram Tandon, ace photographer, and kind friend who's allowed me the use of his work. 

I hope everyone enjoyed the challenge as much as I did, participants and non, and I hope to come back again to the challenge next April.
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Zipping through the streets, Ariel headed towards the highway exit, when she spotted it--a goddamned tiger ambling across the grass towards the road, its tawny coat glowing in the morning light, its amber eyes staring right at her.

She hadn't slept much the night before, both kids had colds and kept coughing and waking. But this took hallucination to a whole new level. Shaking herself, she gripped the steering wheel harder. Nothing in her life as a single mother of two boys under eight, and a bank proof operator frequently harried by her boss, had prepared her for a tiger in front of her car. Particularly one which had settled itself on its haunches right at the mouth of the exit, yawning, completely unaware that it had no business outside a zoo in a Texan suburb.

Much later, she would back out, gather her nerves, and call 911. After a soul-numbing day at the office where she would tell no one about her morning, she would pick the kids from daycare, head home, and then, tuning in to her local station as she set dinner, watch her tiger being tranquilized by animal control. It would always remain 'her' tiger in her stories to her kids.

But at that moment when her palms tingled and she wondered if she should honk, those bright eyes looked at her so silent yet so full of conversation, she did not. She pulled up instead, and stared right back-- just two folks with no axe to grind, meeting up on a quiet morning.

If you liked this story you might like some of the stories I wrote for my A to Z last year. 




As co-host, I would like to end with the following remingder to A-Z participants:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge Reflections Posts of 2012 will start on Monday May 7th.  The Linky list will go up on that day so you can enter the link for that post on the list.

You can tell us what you thought were the highlights of your April Challenge, what you learned, what changes you might make next time, or what surprised you most.   Let us know about special bloggers you met in your A to Z journey or about a post or posts that especially moved or impressed you.  There are no limits as to what your Challenge experience might have been so tell us in your best way how you felt about the April A to Z Challenge of 2012.