Friday January 15th, 2010

The exercise:

Your Four Line Friday Prose prompt this week is: my own little rain cloud.

AFC Word Count: 15,764
AFC Word Target: 15,000

I'm finally finding my stride with the story now. Which is good, because I realized today that there's a good chance the first draft won't be done by the end of the month unless I up my daily word target. How'd it get to the 15th already?

Mine:

Vancouver's real winter has arrived in town for a proper visit - it's been absolutely miserable with rain out there the last few days.

Despite this, I somehow managed to convince myself to go to the gym last night, equipped only with my umbrella and whatever crazy thoughts that had convinced me that staying warm and dry were bad things.

On the way to the bus stop at least three, fat drops landed on my head - from underneath my umbrella, as far as I could tell. I checked it for holes but found none and was a little confused; when I got to the bus shelter and got hit with two more raindrops (umbrella folded up at my side at this point, just using the large, glass, hole-free roof of the shelter for protection against the elements) I just about lost my damn mind.

4 comments:

summerfield said...

hi, marc. i'm still in a writing rut but the "rain cloud" prompt is so apt and i came up with this. thank you.

GOODBYE, MARVIN.

I saw your note last night when I came home: brief and to the point.

"been wanting to say i'm moving out; so today is my last day here. sorry, would've given more notice but just can't find the opp. i've removed much of my stuff, whatever i've left, keep if you want, discard if you don't. know that i've always wish we'd work out. but some things just won't. marvin"

I cried, both from sadness and relief. Sadness that we reached the point when we could no longer talk to each other and you had to say your goodbye on a small piece of paper. Relief that at last I am free of you and I didn't have to be the one to say goodbye.

The last several weeks, I'd wake up and seemed that the sky was always gray. I'd force myself to enjoy the sunshine and mild temperatures but you'd come to mind and it's like a bucket of cold water had been poured on me. I had been wanting to tell you to move out or I would, but I don't know if it's dread or pity or just plain hate, but I just took all opportunities not to have to look at you or talk with you.

The few times we had managed to make love (only out of physical need was the only explanation in my mind) you cooed at me when you noticed I was crying, thinking it was my expression of pleasure, when in fact what I wanted was to push you away. If you had noticed, I no longer open my mouth when you kiss me. Only the need to gratify the physical desires made me move my body in rhythm with yours. I cried because the act had become meaningless and I dread having the urge again to be loved by you. I know your style, your moves, your whispers, your touch, which now I all dread.

We had grown so far apart we can't reach each other anymore. And in the end, I had no more desire to reach you. I stopped talking because I couldn't pretend any longer. I didn't want you to think that anything about you still meant anything to me. I wanted you to leave me, to leave me alone.

And now you had left. I sat by the window and watched the almost horizontal rain as it pelted onto the glass pane. But the weatherman had said the rain would only last until mid-morning. And so did my pain.

Greg said...

@summerfield: wow, that's a moving piece! Really nicely written too -- if this is what you do when you're in a rut, I need to see what you do when you're not!

@Marc: I had to go back and check that that was only four lines! It was such an interesting little story that I could have sworn it was more like ten. Well done!
And the raindrops on the head thing... very mysterious! You clearly have a haunted umbrella.
And... with all this gym going, how long before you change your Protagonize profile picture to one of your obviously enviable abs? ;-)

My own little rain cloud

"Can you hear the rain? No, don't answer, of course you can't. It's my own little rain cloud, inside my head, making my brain wet."
Vince paused in his reading of Dr. Monsanto's diary to adjust his toga, and Dave felt a familiar crawling in his stomach: the feeling of a plan starting to turn bad.

Marc said...

Summerfield - what Greg said. Also: I really, really like that final line.

Greg - yeah, I had to really work to fit that in four lines and... some of those lines were questionable, haha.

re: the gym comment - ha.

Oh dear, water on the brain. That can't be good!

g2 (la pianista irlandesa) said...

If you must question your lines, 'Loo, just check the punctuation. If Dickens can get away with a properly punctuated sentence of 118 words (a certain sentence that starts out "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,..."), your sentences would be fine.

My Own Little Rain Cloud

All that comes to mind is a particular "bear of very little brain," and his attempt to fool some honeybees into thinking he was a raincloud. I believe in some book-on-tape I had there was even a little song that went "I'm just a little black rain cloud," but I can't remember the rest.

Perhaps it's simply because of the season, but the idea of rain just doesn't gel with my mind; most of the time I enjoy rain, it's very Romantic, but at this time of the year I find it makes things much greyer than they need to be. Conversely, though, I'll probably be looking for rain to wash away the scruffy, hoary remnants of winter in a few months; I shouldn't get my hopes up too high just yet, it's just the middle of January, after all.