The exercise:
Pick a James Bond movie and use its title as the inspiration for your writing today.
I did use this prompt before, but that was almost exactly nine(!) years ago, so I think I'm doing all right. Plus it was before any of you who are reading this now were around, so there's that.
2 comments:
The world is not enough
"Black eyes, black lips, black nails; we are dancing a slow dance," sang Lady Believer. Her voice, a pleasant tenor, filled the ashy, ember-strewn landscape. Behind her, pulling a cart like a horse, was Dead Love, and above, wheeling on erratic thermals and vicious cross-currents, were vultures. The smell of rotten eggs was dominant, but now and then a hint of putrefaction cut through it, and if you were close enough to Dead Love then the aroma of roasting pork drifted up from her bare feet.
The dark hills were mounds of burned things: wood, plants, the possessions of the sinful, bodies, and the paperwork of a generation. The roads between them were cinder-beds that shifted slowly and meaningfully, carving ever new routes across this demesne and rendering all maps useless within a space of time. No sun hung in the sky; no moon, no stars. Overhead was just a iron-grey expanse that promised rain but never delivered. No days ever passed.
"Kiss of ash, my tongue fails," sang Lady Believer. Behind her Dead Love moaned softly, poking her own tongue out. It was so blue it was practically purple and it wiggled in the air briefly, obscenely, pointed and dagger-like. "At the sharp blade of romance."
Lady Believer stopped, and Dead Love, ever aware of her mistress's actions, stopped as well. The creak and groan of the cart behind her, piled high with bodies in all states of decay, screamed low and intensely as the wood seemed to suffer with its cargo.
"Do you remember romance, Dead Love?" asked Lady Believer. "The yearning for something, straining towards it yet trying to make it appear that it's only incidental? The controlling of urges so as not to scare away the object of affection? Doing utterly unnecessary things because the effort involved communicates sexual fitness somehow?"
Dead Love shook her head, tossing it like an impatient horse. A yowl like an angry cat fought its way free of her throat and her blue tongue poked out, tasting the ash on the air again.
"I suppose not. Who would romance a corpse?" Lady Believer's smile was a predator's. "Who could romance a love that had died before it even started?" She lifted a hand and Dead Love flinched. Lady Believer waited for her head to return back, waited for the brown eyes to look up beseechingly, and then patted her as though she were a cat.
"The thing about romance," she said, "is that when you give in to it, then the world is not enough." She looked around, spread her arms wide. "Look at this," she said. "How could anyone imagine that the world is not enough?"
The smell of burning flesh from Dead Love's feet reached Lady Believer's nose at last, and she wrinkled it. "I don't want to replace your feet again," she said. She started walking once more. "At least, not before we deliver this."
The cart shrieked as Dead Love took up the load and its wheels were forced to turn once more.
"Black eyes, black lips, black nails; we are dancing a slow dance." Lady Believer's voice was the only sound for miles around.
Greg - fantastic descriptions and atmosphere throughout this one. Grim, bleak, and still highly enjoyable :D
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