The exercise:
Write four lines of prose about: cracking.
Today did not go at all as I'd planned or expected.
I got a call shortly before 9 this morning asking if I could do a 12 to 9 shift at the community centre today. Not really in a position to turn that down, despite the chaos that followed.
Kat had a client from 10:30 to 11:30, so I took the boys up to her parents place. But we were totally out of firewood at home, so I had to leave them with Kat's mom while I went to chop and haul wood. Then I went back to retrieve Miles (because Max, of course, wanted to stay longer), bring him home, have a shower, and leave for work.
On my 'dinner' break at 3:30 I got groceries and came home to watch the boys while Kat snuck in a shower. Then I went back to work until 8:50 (hurray for danged cold temperatures and a freezing wind sending people home early).
And then I went up to check on our friend's house on the mountain, as they've gone to Vancouver for a few days and asked me to check in on their place while they're gone. I was going to go up this afternoon but... then work called.
And tomorrow I'm at the bakery starting at 8. So... yeah, best get some sleep soon, huh?
Mine:
He says he's not bothered, he's doing just fine, but I can see him beginning to wilt under the pressure. It's so relentless, so impassive, how could he not be showing signs of its influence?
I don't think he'll last much longer, no matter how brave a face he puts on for the outside world. Which is just fine by me - I'm more than ready to sop up the secrets he'll be leaking.
3 comments:
That sounds like a pretty busy day! I'm actually quite impressed you could get Max back, have a shower and get to work all in half-an-hour; I'm pretty sure I'd have struggled! But you seem to have got everything organised and sorted and conquered the chaos, so I'd call that a win for Christmas :)
Hmm, I'm curious about what's causing the pressure in your tale today, and eager to learn about these secrets too, so if you were to add this to your list of things to continue I wouldn't be upset at all :)
Cracking
After the strange case of the spiders the Upton house had been left alone and the town had kind of pulled back from it; houses were built further away, people moved out of nearby houses, and the webs had meant no-one had really wanted to get in there anyway. Now it was more town folk-lore than anything else: that thing with the spiders that happened at the Old Upton House fifteen years ago.
The weather was as icily cold as it had been fifteen years ago, and there was a light from inside the Upton House where a traveller, a young kid with bad acne, a tattered, stubbly beard, and clothes too thin for the winter, was huddled as close to the stove as he could get, grateful for some warmth at last. The cracking noises in the walls were a bit scary at first, but he was getting used to them now, starting to feel the heat soaking into his bones and wondering why the shadows seemed to move so independently of the flames from the stove....
on one side, thoughtful blue cosmos swirl gently, with pockets and eddies of activity here and there, although lately bolts of worry have been more frequent than would be preferred.
on the other, those cosmos were allowed to swirl, but they churned with more unease and tighter, more calculating eddies, all streaked with worry and concern; under the surface lurked brighter, more terrible things out of phase with time, full of teeth and brine and direst submission.
between them stood a great and impossible wall of smoky, swirling glass, veins of green neon barely glowing from within—the essence of that cosmos was allowed to pass through, but it kept all else separate.
but on both sides the glass was feathered with fractures, and perhaps it was only a matter of time before something came loose and hit this large, brittle thing at just the wrong angle.
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So initially my idea was very similar to your offering, because one of the few characters consistently in my head lately is basically on the pressured end of that scenario—hiding in plain sight is a stressful business indeed, especially when you have plenty to hide.
But then you had your idea first, and I can't copy that.
So instead I wrote this—in writing rps, many people write with multiverses, which allows a means to write multiple relationships, with multiple versions of canon characters, etc, without much complication. I don't do that so much, I have two iterations of the character in question.
But she's also aware that there are two iterations of herself, they're just separate from each other right now.
They will come back together at some point. The sorting of over two years of parallel memories is… not going to be pretty.
Greg - well, Max would have been impossible. Miles was manageable though. And I did pack my lunch before leaving the house with the boys, so that helped a bit.
Also: I may have been a few minutes late.
Argh, you just love torturing me with this stuff, don't you? I only vaguely recall the details of this one, but it's enough for me to skip reading it again right before bed. I suspect you will take that as the compliment it is intended to be :)
g2 - fascinating stuff, the take and the explanation that follows. And... I'd apologize for stealing your initial take, but seeing what came of that unintended snatching... I feel as though I should be saying 'you're welcome' instead :P
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