The exercise:
Write about: the doodle.
I can't believe we've almost reached September already. Doesn't seem right to me. At all.
Got back to the job search this morning. Nothing promising yet, but trying to remain positive and hopeful.
Harvesting corn tomorrow morning for local orders. Like, all of whatever is ready. We had someone order five dozen ears, which I don't think I'm going to be able to manage. But I do plan on giving it my best shot.
Mine:
The drawing was found crumpled up into a jagged ball in the garbage can at the back of the garage. Just a messy doodle done in red and black crayon. Officer Westbrook discovered it, I think. Maybe Officer Whittaker. I'm always mixing those two up.
Anyway. Whoever it was that found it didn't think much of it at first. Probably figured it was a neighbour's kid who'd done it. The deceased found it blowing across his yard, maybe, and just tossed it in the trash.
But then somebody must have pointed out that the neighbour's don't have any kids. In fact, nobody on the whole block has kids.
That's when they called me in.
Who did it? they asked. And, more importantly, What the hell is it supposed to be?
The implications were easy enough to determine, even though nobody dared to speak them aloud: had the Crayon Kid come out of retirement to strike once again? And if so, would he dare to continue his dreadful work or was this simply one, sick, twisted finale?
Except we all knew that it was him. And, worse, we all knew the answer to that second question was that people like the Crayon Kid never stopped until somebody stopped them.
Somebody like me.
3 comments:
Dip down
Over and swirl
Oddly around
Down the side
Lazily squiggle
Ever moving.
@Morganna: Not only is that a great description of a doodle, but putting it into a poem, and getting an acrostic from it too... that's an amazing piece of work! Thank-you for sharing it with us :)
@Marc: is the bakery job just a summer job then? I'm sure you did tell us back when you started, but it's become kind of routine now to hear about it and it kind of felt like a permanent thing :) Good luck with the job hunt though!
Here you have an interesting start that gets more and more intriguing as it goes along, and while I'm tempted to write a piece from the Crayon Kid's perspective, I'd rather see you develop this more and take it somewhere for us. Week long prompt at some point maybe? I think my favourite bit, by the way, is the description of the doodle itself, discarded and messy. Plus I want to know what it all means!
Doodle
Jack pushed the other door on the landing open the same way as the first; his palm against the door and his body across the doorway of the room with the knives on the bed. It resisted, opening perhaps an inch and then being blocked by something. He pushed harder and there was a slight movement, but then it stopped again.
"Damnation, Jackie-boy," he said softly, mostly under his breath. He'd started talking to himself during three weeks behind enemy lines hiding in bombed-out houses as he got closer to Schwermuten and the habit had become as ingrained as the dirt in the lines on his hands. He held the lighter up to the gap he'd opened and the flickering light allowed him to see an empty room. Except, of course, for the dark weight on the floor obstructing the door.
The drum beat, so incessant that he'd stopped listening to it, stopped.
He stepped back into the open room and pushed the door to, leaving it open as much as the other; not enough to arouse suspicion but enough to see through and watch for people coming up the stairs, and waited.
Seconds dragged by, agonizingly slowly, becoming silent minutes where nothing happened. Then there was a creak from somewhere downstairs that made him tense like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike, but the silence resumed its vigil afterwards and more minutes coalesced into stillness. Then the drum beat started up again.
He stepped back and his fingers dragged across something waxy. For a moment he was about to lash out, and then he realised it must be a candle. Picking it up he lit it and looked around the room again. The flickering, smoky light wasn't that much better than the lighter but it was easier to hold it close to things and because of that he found the notepad on the floor by the bed, covered in doodles. Even a cursory glance at it chilled his blood, and when he turned to the second page and found the repeated, insane attempts at drawing the Ilmatu seal he felt briefly physically sick.
"Time to go, Jackie-boy," he said softly. Whatever was going on in this house tonight, he was sure he was out of his depth.
Morganna - another top notch acrostic from you. Well done!
Greg - I think the bakery job is for as long as I want it. I'm just looking for something full time to replace both it and the farm and the town and... I have too many jobs.
Hah, I shall take it under consideration. I think you're right though, this could use some more exploring.
It took me a moment to figure out which of your tales this was continuing, but once that was done you sucked me right back into this scene with unsettling quickness.
And *of course* the danged Ilmatu are involved somehow...
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