Friday September 21st, 2012

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about a man named Stinky.

I actually have a character with that nickname in one of my Protagonize stories, but he's, ah, not what I would consider to be a good fit for the content on the blog. Yes, I shall put it that way.

Back to the market tomorrow morning for the second last one of September. Then we get four more in October and we are done for the year.

You know, assuming somebody doesn't decide to arrive early and our focus shifts to more important things.

Mine:

At my school there were many things about Stinky McGee that us kids knew without ever having to say out loud. Firstly, McGee was not his real last name - though by 8th Grade nobody could remember what it actually was.

Additionally, we were deeply grateful that the teacher in charge of school plays never selected Stinky to be involved as one half of the two person costumes (you know, the donkey, the horse, that sort of thing).

And we were absolutely, one hundred percent certain that poor old Stinky would never, ever win a game of Hide and Go Seek.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I'm quite sure Santa Claus never arrives as early as October, so I think you'll be fine there, Marc ;-)
Stinky seems like a misunderstood child to me :-P I don't recall having anyone with that problem in my classes as a kid, but there was certain always an odd kid for one reason or another. I guess that's how kids divide themselves up though.

Stinky
He always smelled of something nice: Tom Ford aftershaves with hint of earthiness, or orchids. When he leaned in a drift of scent would gently move with him, and for a few minutes afterwards you'd be smiling involuntarily because of the smell. So of course his nickname around the office was Stinky, which he bore with tolerant good humour.
So when I discovered that he used the scent to cover up his gangrenous leg, you can imagine how surprised I was.

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, it's what makes us different that seems to divide us. I'll take a pass on the social commentary bubbling up right now, as I'm not feeling quite up to it :P

That right there was an unexpected final line. Well done, sir.