The official advice was not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

Ordinarily he wasn’t one to listen to official advice, he wouldn’t have much of a career if he followed the rules.

But heading out to work today, when no one else had left their houses, when there were no other cars on the road, when the land was so quiet and serene, would have been suspicious behaviour.

So he stayed home. He watched some trashy daytime TV, listened to the latest weather warnings on the radio, read a book. He ventured outside to clear the driveway and built a snowman for the fun of it.

The call came that evening.

‘What happened?’ the anonymous voice asked.

‘I took a snow day.’

He was met with silence, then, ‘It needed to happen today. Tomorrow is too late.’

‘I can’t control the weather.’

‘There will be repercussions for your breach of contract.’ The line went dead.

Oh well, he thought. After staring at the snow for the last week, he’d been contemplating retirement somewhere warm, sunny and far away.

By the time the snowman had melted the house was empty with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the garden.

Written as part of Sunday Photo Fiction. Write a story of around 200 words based on the photo prompt given (above). Hosted by Al Forbes. For more details visit HERE.

To read more stories based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.