The exercise:
Write about something or someone that is: blunt.
Was going to get back to the yearlong prompt today but I'm not feeling up to it right now. Will try again tomorrow.
Mine:
"This isn't working out the way I'd hoped," she said as she grabbed her purse. "So I'm ending this date now, before I waste any more of my time."
"I'm sorry?"
"Oh, don't be. It's not your fault you're this boring and uninteresting." She stood up from the table and scanned the restaurant before looking down at me again. "It's just the way you are."
"That's hardly fair! Come on, give me one more chance!"
"Good night," she said, no trace of emotion in her words or on her face. She held her purse in one hand, testing the weight ominously. "Don't make me use this to get out of here."
3 comments:
Keep sawing away
Never fear
I'm sure it's
Fine -- you'll slice the apple
Eventually.
@Morganna: another fine acrostic! I like the slightly condescending tone of the poem, so appropriate to the determination of the apple-cutter and the futility of their work. I wince a little as I read it though: blunt knives are the ones that cause the most injuries :(
@Marc: I'm looking forward to the yearlong prompt! I think it's starting to take off now and it would be good to see where it goes. However, this is a perfectly acceptable substitute, and I like the last paragraph especially where the handbag is considered as a blunt instrument. The tension, the irritation the lady feels -- they're all nicely brought to life. Great work!
Blunt
Bare feet on snow. Skin so white -- it reminded her of the squat walls that surrounded her parents's new house in Southstream, they were there to keep visitors away and let them know they were unwelcome -- that the blue veins were like lines of mould in cheese. Toes blunt and spatulate, ankles knobbled and hobbled, perhaps someone had taken a hammer to them? The quintessential blunt instrument, the percussive device for bringing electronic equipment back to life. Shins livid with bruising, such a contrast to the whiteness of the feet. She wanted to find socks for them, cover them up and match them to the battered flesh below the knee.
"No socks," said a voice; there was a Scene-Of-Crime-Officer standing nearby holding a transparent plastic evidence bag with a shampoo bottle inside, nestled in crinkles and wrinkles. The shampoo was called Afterthoughts. "No fibres below the knee."
"Spoilsport," she said, just a little chastened that her thoughts had been so visible on her face. "Are you the only one here?"
"They're all over in the East," said the SOCO with a smile. His hand, fingers spatulate but long, perhaps he should have been a piano player?, dipped into a pocket and pulled out a slim packet of cigars. "There's a diesel leak."
As though cued the wind blew in carrying the scent of diesel with it. Somewhere behind her she felt things change and a soft, warm breath on the back of her neck from someone standing too close. "You're a bit of an afterthought," said a clear voice. There was sympathy there as though being this blunt was unusual. "Let me fix that for you." Fingers as cold as the pale feet in the snow pressed against her temples and pain shot through her head.
She sighed softly, wondering where she'd put the petri dishes, but that wasn't this life, was it?
"I know it's a bit of an afterthought," said the SOCO, "but is it still too late to find out what happened here?"
A doctor loomed overhead, bright lights behind them turning them into a silhouette. "You were exhausted. Again."
She turned to the SOCO who was smoking now but still smiling, and the cigar smoke sparked a memory of being 17 and sitting in a bar with Jenny. Glasses clinked, a waitress left her number on the table and they both wondered who it was for. Jenny took it and gave it to her and there was a sense of loss. "Bluntly," she said, "it's never too late. But the price gets higher."
She reached out, her hand resting on an ankle as cold as that of a marble statue and the living and dead met again, and a gateway shimmered into being. A young girl stood there, her hands blackened somehow and a hungry look in her eyes.
"Have you got a cigarette, Jenny?"
Morganna - hah! Perfect :)
Greg - thanks!
Really enjoy the twists and turns of this scene you're working with. You handle it so seemingly effortlessly. Bravo and... I'm pretty sure I remember there being more of this to come, so I won't bother asking for it now :)
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