The exercise:
Your four lines of prose this week shall be about: clowns.
Because why not?
Yay, weekend!
Mine:
Mary was in the kitchen washing dishes when a knock at the front door disrupted her daydreaming. She quickly dried her hands while checking the time on the oven's electronic display before rushing to see who it was.
I hope that's not the kids already - Damon's birthday party isn't supposed to start for another hour!
But the three clowns waiting for her on the porch, with their painted white faces, neon red wigs, billowing yellow and blue costumes, and concealed black guns, didn't much care what time the invitation had told them to arrive.
Marc- well done, as always. Although, being a paranoid parent, the sinister ending means I may cancel the magician I considered hiring for my son's birthday party.
ReplyDeleteSecond note: A friend and I wrote both entries together by changing lines. Vicki at http://vickiswritingbetaplace.blogspot.com/
Our results:
The doctor was perplexed by the man's symptoms: wide darting eyes, heavy sweats, stuttering, the hospital curtain clenched tightly between his ashen fingers. As Dr. Jones listened to the halting mutters, he noticed the words evil, red, and harlequin made the man's heart race harder. Dr. Jones' head snapped up fiercely, his face as sour as vinegar lemons. "Who the hell brought a clown to visit someone who is clourophobic?!" he shouted as the smiling painted face of a French clown receded from the curtains hanging on the other side of the bed.
-----
Laying in the bed listening to the pips and clicks of the machines, I am drawn to the sound of the shuffling-flapping rhythm of footsteps. I slip out of bed and walk to the door of the room, slowly craning my neck to see who is responsible for the flapping sound, but no one is there: the hall is empty. I turn to go back to my bed, convinced it is a hallucination from the heavy medication, and see a brightly colored clown holding a bunch of balloons looking at my body in the bed. "Oh shit," I mutter, "I'm in clown hell."
Wow, all three of those pieces made me smile at the end, that was great! Well done all of you!
ReplyDeleteClowns
My mother used to breed clowns and she always warned me to watch out for the ones with flowers in their buttonholes. "They're poisonous," she'd admonish me, wagging her cigarette, "You shouldn't ever get in their way." I was embarrassed by her, and tried to avoid having my friends meet her. So there's some kind of irony in the fact that my ex-best-friend is now marrying my mother, and my job at the wedding is to keep the wretched clowns under control....
Much easier to write when you aren't rocking a babe back to sleep at 1 in the morning:
ReplyDeleteHe sat at his desk, arm covering half his paper as his hand raced furiously across it, with a smile that made his face look bigger than life. I couldn't help but watch him, wondering what mischievous twitch triggered the joke this time. With Sam, there was always a joke. I smiled at the memories as Sam, the class clown and ruler of late night television, delivered his opening monologue for the last time.
Heather - glad you liked it. And I think the magician should be okay, but perhaps a metal detector would be in order, just in case ;)
ReplyDeleteThat's very cool that you two combined on those! I loved the image in the first one of the clown receding, and the creepiness of the second one with the clown footsteps in the hall.
Oh, and a third one! You spoil me.
I like the twist on the prompt, taking it to the class clown angle. Nicely done :D
Greg - breeding clowns sounds like an interesting profession. Though quite hazardous, by the sounds of it!