The exercise:
Write about: the lift.
With the help of my dad and uncle I performed my first oil change this afternoon. It was pretty fun, actually, and they both seemed to enjoy themselves. My dad in particular, as he suffered through my many years of complete lack of interest in 'car stuff'.
I imagine I'll be seeing and hearing about the pictures they insisted on taking for quite some time.
Mine:
Cigarette smoke gathered around her face in the still morning air, framing her weather-beaten features and giving observers the impression that she'd just finished emerging from the depths of hell. A long exhale hid her from view for a moment and when she reappeared nothing seemed to have changed.
On the outside, at least. She still seemed deeply unhappy about some unknowable conflict. Internal? External? Spiritual? She had no interest in discussing it and only a fool would have pressed the issue.
But inside a change had been set in motion. It struggled through her veins, caressed tense muscles until they relaxed, almost against their will. A sigh detached from her belly and rose, ever so slowly, toward her lips.
The smoke had given her the lift she had so desperately needed.
3 comments:
Heh, I think we ought to get to see some of these pictures too! Still, it sounds like a nice way to relax after the stress of getting everyone together for dinner :)
That's a great little story, slowly introducing the idea and making us as happy when the punchline arrives as your protagonist is for the smoke to have given her a lift in the first place.
The lift
"It's called a pasternoster," said Martin. "Probably because that's what you'd recite as you were standing on it."
He and Edward were standing in a terracotta-tiled hallways looking at the lift at the end. It was open front and back and consisted of seven platforms suspended at equal intervals on huge steel cords. At the front the platforms rose smoothly and evenly and people stepped on and off at whichever floor they wanted; at the back the platforms descended at the same rate and people again stepped on and off.
"What happens if you don't step off?" asked Edward, his face a picture of horrified fascination.
"You either get thrown off when it rotates at the top and fall through the pasternoster, or you get crushed at the bottom when it rotates there," said Martin. "It's a bit like a water-wheel really."
"It looks lethal," said Edward. "Shall we take the stairs?"
Scene: A mother and her little girl.
Okay, honey.
You've got to help me.
One, two, three,
Lift!
Now wrap your legs around my middle.
Another successful lifting of a 40 pound child.
Greg - if I get a digital copy of any of them I'm sure I could be convinced to share one or two :P
I would also take the stairs, when confronted by such an apparatus.
Morganna - oh, jeez. My future flashing before my eyes (as long as you replace the girl with my boy).
I do hope he's a helpful lad...
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