The exercise:
Write about: the snitch.
There were about 20 people in the bakery lineup before opening this morning. Once I let them in it was the longest I've seen the shop stay full for since I started - I kept looking up expecting to see the line dying down and that did not happen for quite some time. I didn't check the time but it felt like close to an hour.
This afternoon we took a family trip to Penticton for an appointment. Did a quick grocery shop while we were there and then got back home to have dinner.
But! Not before Kat's dad came down to finally install the screen door. Max helped some more... actually, I'm pretty sure he did more work on this door than I did.
He thinks so too, as he was insisting at dinner that he and Papa (Kat's dad) did all the work and was wondering why Mommy was also thanking Dada for getting it done.
Sigh.
Mine:
I was standing over an unconscious body in an abandoned warehouse when I made the call. The pool of blood emanating from his head was larger than I'd planned on, but I was pretty sure I hadn't overdone it. Anyway, there were worse problems to have than if I had.
"Hello."
"Oscar? It's Carter."
"Carter? Where the hell you been? Talk was we'd lost you, man."
I'll admit to feeling genuinely touched by his tone. He actually sounded like he meant it. I guess I wasn't expecting that.
"I've been hunting, Oscar. When word got around that we had a snitch I wanted to be the guy to find the little weasel who was talking to the cops, you know?"
"I get that, man. You know I do." Oscar sounded less enthusiastic. "It's just... man, it didn't look good on you."
"What do you mean?" I knew exactly what he meant, but I thought it best to ask anyway.
"You looked like you was the snitch, Carter." Oscar was nearly apologetic. Probably as close to it as he'd ever been.
"Well, you don't need to worry about that any more."
"Who said I was worried? About you? Please." Oscar laughed his deep, belly laugh and the phone practically vibrated in my hand. "Wait, what's going on? Talk to me, man."
"My hunt has completed with resounding success." I looked down and saw that the man's breathing had grown more shallow. Maybe I had hit him a little too hard. "I've got the snitch, Oscar."
"That's my boy! Give me your address and I'll send a car to pick you and your prey up, okay? It'll be good to see you again, Carter."
"You too, Oscar." I gave him the address and hung up. After a final look down, I went over to the door to wait for my ride. Our ride. Me and the snitch. Poor bastard. I leaned my back against the wall and watched him continue to bleed out. I felt like I had to say something, you know?
"Sorry man," I called out, my words echoing around the empty room. "I couldn't let them find me, right? Somebody had to be the guy to take the fall though. Better you than me."
KIds like their accomplishments to be noticed, and they don't always understand what they adults were doing when the kids were being allowed to join in :) But I'm sure Max is right and he was doing all the work while you sat back, cup of coffee in hand and feet up on the dog, watching and trying not to fall asleep :-P
ReplyDeleteHow much was left in the bakery after the line died down then? And do you think it will be like that again tomorrow?
Your last line today threw me completely as it's not quite like you to treat your characters like that! Normally only Henri is that calculating and devious, so I was expecting something else. I do like the phone call and the suggestion that the rest of the gang(?) could see the evidence and didn't really believe it, so I'm kind of curious about your protagonist now; is he a weasel or a clever con-man? I think you ought to add him to your list of stories to revisit and develop :)
The snitch
"This is Squidditch." The speaker, a young boy dressed in the robes of a student wizard, gestured towards the sky; far above them, at heights where a fall would mean certain death, tiny figures floated in the air. There were sudden movements, then moments of stillness, that suggested they were doing something, possibly with a ball of some kind that was too small to see. "It's very popular, it's the school game."
"I've heard of quidditch..." A mousy girl with brown shoulder length hair, an attractive snub nose and the short-sighted blink of an habitual reader had put her hand up.
"Everyone has," said the student wizard. "This is the proper version of the game, not the toy version they use down in Hogwarts. Apparantly they got complaints from the parents about injuries and toned the game down. I might add," he said in a lower voice, leaning in slightly to the group, "that any school that regularly employs evil wizards and has a death-rate that high from a typical school year has bigger problems. They lost the entire third year once, and all Minister Potter had to say was, that was a bit unlucky."
There were nods from the group; some tentative, some enthusisatic. Not all of Minister's Potter's edicts were popular after all.
The student wizard gestured and a glowing line encircled the group and then lifted them into the air. There were a couple of "ooh"s and "aah"s from the easily impressed, and the mousy girl raised her hand again.
"Isn't this rather advanced magic?" she asked.
"No," said the student wizard. "You really want to go to Hogwarts, don't you?" He sounded sympathetic. "They have a very easy syllabus there; the rest of the magic schools try to put out wizards that can wiz. Anyway," he gestured. They were nearly three hundred feet up now and the ground seemed terrifyingly far away. "You can see that the players have the snitch and are bludgeoning it."
"You can't see a snitch from this dis–" The mousy girl fell quiet as a heavy bat slammed into the side of a very buised looking child.
"The snitch..." asked a parent.
"Is what you think it is," said the student wizard. "A tattletale, a trouble maker, often a bully. We don't tolerate that kind of behaviour here."
Greg - I think you've got it pretty much right, other than the fact that I don't have a dog :P
ReplyDeleteI think it's going to be that kind of busy every day until summer ends. I'd be surprised if the bakery stays open until past noon before August ends.
Thanks for the kind words on mine, and I shall keep this one in mind for further developments :)
Hah, an enjoyable twist on the Harry Potter world. You do excel at that sort of thing, you know.