The exercise:
Your prompt today: the run-around.
Survived until the end of the day today at work. I suspect I'm about to crash though.
Mine:
“Hello there! How can I help you?”
Her smile was as fake as her suntan, but not nearly as phony as the warmth in her greeting. With clenched teeth and tensed jaw muscles it was difficult to manage an intelligible reply. The fact that she was the tenth customer representative I had been directed to in the last hour didn’t help matters either.
“I’m sorry sir, could you speak up?”
I considered, only for a moment or two, repeating my profanity-laced request that she place her stapler in a rather uncomfortable location on her person, but chose instead to bite down, hard, on my tongue. Then I waited until the blood pooled before giving her a wide, bright smile and letting it leak from both corners of my mouth.
As she ran screaming around the office, her arms flailing around like fish in the bottom of a boat, my smile only grew wider. It felt good to turn the tables at last.
3 comments:
Marc- I love the visual of your character smiling and blood pooling around his teeth and pooling over his chin. Grotesque and comical.
And guess what???? I've exceeded the character limit again.
http://writersblock-heather.blogspot.com/
Sounds like you're glad that you're only doing a four day week this week! Still, you're getting stronger -- by the time you quit, you'll be feeling well enough to volunteer for overtime!
Great little piece, the ending wasn't what I'd expected at all! I'm with Heather, I love the grotesquerie of the narrator leaking blood from the corners of his mouth.
The run-around
"It's a magic circle, boys! The only way to break it is to run around it. Repeatedly."
We all groaned by set off anyway. Our gym teacher had an odd sense of humour.
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Sorry it's short, I'm off to Harrogate this morning and am a little pressed for time.
Heather - glad you liked it :)
And I really should have known better than to think 'that looks awfully short for one of Heather's contributions' when the comment window came up...
Greg - grotesquerie is a great word.
I'll let you off the hook for a short one this time around, but only since you've been on your best behavior :P
I rather like the sounds of that gym teacher though!
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