Friday October 8th, 2010

The exercise:

Four lines of prose that take place at or near: the border.

A lot of Kat's family is coming here for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night, which is mostly exciting! The non-exciting part is that we'll likely be exhausted and not fully able to enjoy their company, what with being at the market tomorrow morning.

Likely in the wind and rain.

But there are certainly worse possible things to endure. And you gotta know the food is going to be excellent.

Mine:

The miles sped past as we approached the border, the sun roasting us inside the rental car like two turkeys on Thanksgiving afternoon. I would've let loose another string of obscenities in the general direction of the rental agency for giving me a car without air conditioning, but it seemed the least of my worries at the time.

When we finally reached the border crossing I guided us to the end of the short queue of cars and received a final warning grunt from my recently acquired passenger.

As though I needed another reminder of the gun that was concealed within the newspaper on his lap.

4 comments:

Greg said...

Good luck with the market today, and I hope that Thanksgiving dinner is fun! Do you get a bank holiday for Thanksgiving?

I like the neat reference back to Thanksgiving in your prose, and the gun at the end is a neat little twist.

The border

"The border is a witch place, an edge place where things from one side can be confused with things from the other." Miss Framboise was stood by the fence that divided the garden from the river as she spoke to the girls.
"Watch," she said.
Slowly the waters swirled together and rose up, a gigantic water elemental towering over everyone, while Miss Framboise's head filled with thoughts of destroying the village.

Zhongming said...

Marc – Nicely done! About your prose, I think I share the same views as Greg :)

Greg – ah, I didn’t see that coming in the end, nice twist :)

Mine:

I ran as fast as I could towards that wooden bridge right above that small lake which filled with pure and calm free flowing water.

Then I just stopped and hold on to the bridge across that border and looked at my own reflections that mirrored from the water.

I start to mull over things which I had previously did and felt a great deal of guilt.

How I wish I can revert time back into the past and alter those things.

Heather said...

Marc- Fun read, although I do hope the driver makes it. Happy Thanksgiving : )

Greg- So much mischief from so few characters. I love it!

Zhongming- Nice imagery. I wonder what your character did?
-------
The ad played over and over again, tempting me to follow through and "run to the border". It wouldn't be the first time I caved, but I knew that I would leave feeling bloated and still unsatisfied. What was it about the ad, the freedom it promised in whispered undertones, that drew me in so easily even after so much experience told me to quickly head in the other direction? Taco Bell was simply never going to live up to the whispered promise.

Marc said...

Greg - thanks. And yeah, the Monday is a holiday for those unfortunate folk that work in offices and other silly jobs like that :)

We'll probably spend the day renovating.

Framboise is a lovely name. Great scene, I quite like the image of the elemental rising up from the water.

Zhongming - thank you, and I like what you did with the prompt :)

Heather - I agree completely, Taco Bell has no hope of fulfilling that particular promise :)