Friday May 2nd, 2014

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about: the liquid.

It's that time of year again... time to weed out and mulch the strawberries.

Hurray?

Not so much.

I'll save the hurrays for when it's done.

Mine:

In the flickering candlelight the liquid in the cracked wooden bowl glistens darkly. The woman seated across the table from me reaches out a wrinkled finger and uses its long, curled nail to stir it slowly. I half expect it to dissolve in a surge of black bubbles.

What I don't expect is to hear the voice of my dead grandmother.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I'm sure the strawberries are looking forward to it, even if you aren't! Still, it sounds like a lot of bending and lifting, and I doubt I could bring myself to look forward to doing that either :-/
That's an eerire little tale in just four lines! The atmosphere is terrific given its brevity :)
I shall try and remember to tell Cincinatti's story at some point, and Des might just make another appearance now and then :) Probably not in Vancouver Irrealis though :-P

The Liquid
"No containers of liquid are allowed through security if they can hold more than 50ml," said the security guard. She looked grim and smug at the same time. Jonathan and Matthew stared, first at her, then at each other, then back at her.
"I contain eight pints of blood," said Matthew, "yet you'll... let... me–"; his voice trailed off as the security guard advanced.

Marc said...

Greg - ah yes, thank you for the gentle reminder about Vancouver Irrealis. Perhaps a visit is in order tomorrow...

Oh dear. I do believe I'd take the train, or boat, or... anything but that plane!