Sunday May 14th, 2017

The exercise:

Write about: the vandal.

Cleaning the offices at Town Hall for the first time tomorrow. Not sure I'm looking forward to it, but I'm glad I was able to get a head start on it today by doing the public washroom attached to the building.

Pretty quiet day, as the weather was going back and forth, once again, between sunny/warm and cloudy/windy/cold.

Had a Mother's Day dinner at Adam and Becky's house this evening with everybody on the farm. Was a nice chance to get together, even if I was tired after work.

I hope all the mothers out there had a great day, whether it was your country's Mother's Day or not.

Mine:

I leave my mark
For all to see,
But only I
Will know it's me.

Some letters here,
Some damage there,
Just to bother
Those who care.

But that's enough,
For now at least,
To make me smile
With all my teeth.

Though one day soon
I will crave more,
And then they'll see
What I have in store...

2 comments:

Greg said...

I can't quite work out if you're expecting the Town Hall offices to be in worse condition than the public washroom or not from your comment :) I going to go with... they're worse! As that will produce an entertaining prompt-rant from you.
One of my colleagues here showed his appreciation for his mother and wife by reposting a previous Mother's Day post on his facebook wall, which unfortunately was ambiguous enough to make you wonder if he'd married his mother. I wish I could say that's the stupidest thing he's done.
Is this the back-story to Red5 by any chance? The jauntiness of the ryhme scheme neatly conveys the audacity of the narrator I think, though the threat of the teeth is wolf-like and adds an element of unexpected danger. I like it :)

The vandal
"I just don't get it." Maisie was shaking her head from side to side like a depressed Saint-Bernard as she led the police-men down the corridor. "It was like that when I arrived, but... but it... it makes no sense! Who would want to do a thing like that?" She turned a corner, her slippers making no noise on the pale-green carpet, a colour favoured for its calming properties by mental institutions across the world, and stopped outside a plain wooden door with a brass doorknob. "This is it, officers. Brace yourself." She heaved a sigh that shook her large frame, her waist taking noticeably more time to stop jiggling than the rest of her, and thrust the door open.
Inside was a storeroom, the kind used by museums to hold exhibits not currently being exhibited. Metal shelves held boxes and crates, all carefully labelled with white-tape labels and black handwriting; the shelves had matching labels on. A large table, for examination and dis-/re-assembly sat in the middle of the floor and there were no windows. An air-conditioning unit hummed quietly by the ceiling, and there was a scattering of sawdust on the floor.
"There," said Maisie, throwing her hand out, palm upturned and nicotine-stained fingers pointing accusingly. She indicated a dollhouse sat on the main table. A moment passed and she looked anxiously from face to face of the attending officers. "You can see it right?" she asked. "Some vandal has been in and broken some of the windows!"
"Right," said one officer slowly. "Ok ma'am, we'll take a look. Would you mind closing the door and standing outside please? We don't want anyone... uh, contaminating, the uh, scene of the crime."
"Of course! Of course!"
When the door was closed the two officers stood in front of the doll-house and looked it over.
"This is it?" asked Bill. Ben nodded.
"She's dim," he said.
"I can see that!"
"No, I mean really dim. The windows were broken years ago, by Marco Kwan."
Bill raised an eyebrow. "The body artist? Whose Shroud of Turin we picked up a few year back?"
"Get the bag out," said Ben. "Yes, him again. The windows are apparantly a key of some kind, if you know what you're doing. But, and here's the weird thing, the exact number and location of the broken windows changes depending on where the dollhouse is."
"So where are we taking it?"
"We're not. We're handing it over to the Partners in Rhyme and letting them use it."
There was a thoughtful silence.
"Catto scares me," said Bill.
"Me too."

Marc said...

Greg - nah, just a lot to get done in not enough time to do it. Finding ways to get it done, but I recall that first attempt being... a challenge.

That sounds like a rather... unfortunate way to celebrate the occasion :)

Ah, Red. One day, Greg. One day we will finish that tale. Though not on Protagonize, now that it is no more.

Though now that I think about it... I wonder if I ever saved an off site copy of the whole thing? I know I have a backup copy of all the parts that I wrote...

Hmm, further intrigue and more interweaving of Ben, Bill, the Partners in Rhyme, and the super awesome and cool Marco Kwan. I like it!

Also: your description of Maisie was fantastic.