The exercise:
Write about something or someone that is: feeble.
Not at all inspired by my attempts to get through work this evening while suffering beneath the cruel thumb of a tyrannical cold.
Okay, maybe a little bit.
Regardless, I survived. And now I'm off work until Monday night, which hopefully gives me enough time to recover.
Fingers crossed.
Mine:
I wasn't always this way, you know. So incapable, so frail, so... weak. This wrinkled, faded old thing you see before you now used to be young and strong and vibrant.
When I would go to the beach as a young man, women would look at me. With lust in their eyes, not the pity they would grace me with today. I could have had my pick of those bikini broads, believe you me.
The men would stare too, try as they might to deny it. Envy oozed out of their every pore. Some of them would even pack up their things and go to another beach. I bet you a few of them even went straight home, they were so demoralized.
Now? Now, if I were to get some helper to wheel my tired old body to the beach, the young studs would only look away. At best. At worst they would laugh. So blind to their own futures it would be a wonder they could find the water from where they lay glowing in the sun.
Maybe I should do that. Make a nice day out of it. Get some fresh air and sunshine. Warm my sagging skin, maybe burn my balding head.
Let those little lion cubs see what awaits them in old age.
2 comments:
Get well soon then! It must be a truly tyrannical cold though, standing over you, pressing the pillows down over your face and threatening to beat you with a big stick if you dare try to rise... ;-)
Heh, I did wonder where you were going this morning with your story, and you didn't disappoint. But... lions at the beach? You're not allowed to shipwreck us on any desert islands then!
Feeble
He might have been still alive, struggling feebly when I took his identity, but I'm sure it didn't last for long. The car had been sitting out in the sun for a couple of days, by the look of it, with the engine block half-crushed by the rocks that had fallen down. The cliff-face -- well, bluff really -- provided a little shadow, but not in the middle of the day when the sun was strongest. There were goat dropping round the car too, so they might have nibbled on him, I guess.
He was sprawled in the driver's seat, his legs trapped beneath the bent steering column, and he didn't move or make a sound when I looted his pockets for his wallet, keys and any interesting documents. I only knew he was alive at all because he tried to stop me taking the necklace -- silver chain, little locket with a picture of a harridan inside -- from round his neck.
But he was weak and feeble and I fancied being Sergeant-Major Dave Green, so I punched the steering column and triggered the air-bag and left it there to press over his face and help mother Nature along.
Greg - thanks, that cold wasn't a very bad one, I'm happy to report.
Eh, the lions reference was meant to be... metaphorical? Whatever the word is, my brain isn't working right now. Not literal, at any rate. But I do like the idea of it being an actual lion now that you've put it in my head...
Jeez, that is a nasty bit of work. Superbly done, of course, and I can't stop myself from wanting to hear more stories from your narrator, but goodness me. Cold. Blooded.
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