The exercise:
Write about something or someone that is: nefarious.
Bakery had its usual busy opening this morning, but then things slowed down more than usual. I was able to leave at 11:30, which I didn't mind at all, what with having to work my second job starting at 4.
Well, third job, if you count me bringing apricots to the bakery this morning as farming work. Which, technically, I suppose it was.
Community centre was quiet for most of the evening, with my only fun involving having to kick twenty teenagers out of the gym and having it take so long that I ended leaving work about twenty minutes late.
Easily the least favorite part out of all my jobs right now.
Mine:
"How much longer do we have to hide here?"
"Until we catch Mr. Simmons doing something knee fairy us. So it shouldn't take too long at all."
"But we've already been watching him for, like, twenty minutes."
"That just means we won't have to wait much longer. There's no way he can go more than half an hour without doing something that is pure evil. You'll see."
"Are you totally sure he's evil?"
"Billy, please. You were there. You took the geometry quiz he made us all do. This man is a monster..."
"Yeah, but..."
"... and he needs to be stopped!"
If you bring the apricots to the bakery and then stay there to work, is that two jobs or one? As in, was bringing the apricots all part of the work you do for the bakery anyway? It definitely gets hard to count and I can quite see two people disagreeing over it. But Max seems to think you do 800 jobs anyway, so I'd let him keep adding more and more to them until he decides that you do all the jobs in the world and must be very important!
ReplyDeleteI think your kids in your story should worry more about their English than their geometry, but I did like their reinterpretation of the words. It made it quite easy to work out roughly how old they must be, and why they'd be so annoyed at a geometry test! I also like the childish determination that adults can't go a half-hour without doing something evil if they _are_ evil... I'm pretty sure you're making observations from real life here :)
I feel slightly sorry for Mr. Simmonds though. At least until he does his next knee fairy us act.
Nefarious
The noise of the souk had died down but not dissipated completely. Despite it being long past midnight and the moon starting to hang quite low in the sky there were still cries from food vendors not completely given up on selling what they had left, and the occasional, more startled, cry from a night-owl tourist discovering exactly what they'd just been sold as food. The air was dry and hot and the breeze was coming in from over the desert sands. The rich smell of spices came through in waves as the breeze brought first coriander in from direction, then tempered it with cinnamon from another and then added caraway and aniseed to the blend. The smell had been exotic and intoxicating at first, but now Bill was starting to feel like he was trapped in a bakery oven. The rare whiff of camel was now the best part of the night.
Ben was lounging on a deck-chair that he'd haggled for in the streets of the souk earlier that day. The vendor had actually run after them, throwing Ben's money at his back and shouting in some mangled Arabic that his mother was the offspring of a goat and an ape and had clearly had sex with a dead seal in order to produce Ben, so Ben counted that as a win.
"You think they're dead?" Bill checked his watch, recently liberated from the Egyptian Musuem of Antiquities. They'd taken the henchmen-applicants on a training run to show them how it was all done.
"One of them must be," said Ben, stretching his arms above his head. "They'd be out by now otherwise. I think they're probably trying to figure out how to get across the chasm before the exit."
"How did we do that the first time?"
"Adrenaline."
Bill stared off into the navy blue night sky thinking back. "Oh yes," he said slowly. "I remember now. You told me that this was the tomb of Queen Nefertiti."
"I was close," said Ben. "I read things more carefully these days."
"You missed four whole clauses in that pre-nup that girlfriend wanted you to sign!"
"They were written on a separate page that she'd stuck to the one above so I wouldn't see it."
"Using her own bodily fluids. She was more like a slug than most slugs are."
Ben shrugged easily. "Everyone makes mistakes."
"Yes. Like confusing Queen Nefertiti with her guardian, Quefa Neferious." Bill laughed. "You're right, we were being chased by that thing with eighteen legs and more teeth than anyone you've ever dated and I think we just pole-vaulted over the chasm without having a clue how deep or wide it was."
"Those were the days," said Ben. "Well, I guess they are."
There was a sobbing sound, and a scarred henchman-candidate dragged himself into view.
"Well crap," said Ben. "Looks like Quefa Neferious isn't dead in there yet."
Greg - no, the bakery bought the apricots from the farm and I was just delivering them since I was coming in to work (at the bakery) anyway.
ReplyDeleteGod, I confuse myself sometimes.
I think these two kids have plenty of things to worry about, both now and later :)
Always enjoy hearing tales of Ben and Bill, and this was no exception.