The exercise:
Time to bring back the First Line Prompt. This time around, begin with: I had a brother, once.
I overheard this at a coffee shop the other day - the speaker was an elderly man and he seemed to be talking with a couple he'd met fairly recently, perhaps even that morning via sharing a table during a busy time at the shop.
I mean no disrespect in using this as a prompt, it's just that the wording caught my attention. I don't think I'd even be using this if he'd said My brother died a long time ago or something like that. This seems to be far more open to interpretation (not that any of the alternatives would make for a bad prompt).
Anyway. Have at it.
3 comments:
That's an interesting way to find a prompt!
I hoped you'd like the flashback to your weekend away not long after Max was born :) You do realise that this blog is also a partial diary of your life for the last ten years, right? ;-)
For today's piece I'm returning to this gentleman, though I'm sure you'll recognise Dr. Fraud in there as well. To give you a hint, before you click on the link, I'm not Raising Hope here.
I had a brother, once
Dr. Fraud's office was gloomy; the curtains were drawn across the picture window to keep the sunlight out, and they were aquarium blue which made the room feel both chilly and flooded. The couch, ice-white according to the office-furniture catalogue seemed almost iceberg-like as it sat alone in the centre of the office, and Dr. Fraud's desk (which had been pushed off into a corner) was gun-metal grey and might, if you squinted, have resembled the prow of a doomed ship.
Sitting on the couch was a middle-aged but distinctly muscular man. He had his smartphone in his hand and was reading through a message or email as Dr. Fraud came into the room.
"I lost my teeth," said Dr. Fraud without pre-amble. The man on the couch looked up.
"I feel like I'm drowning," he said. "I feel like I'm in that film about the big jewel."
"Romancing the Stone?" said Dr. Fraud. "Hmm, I suppose you do look a little like Kathleen Turner."
"Titanic," said the man. "You don't sound like you lost your teeth, Doc. You sound just fine in fact."
"Well, thank-you for noticing." Dr. Fraud squared his shoulders and straightened his blazer a little. "But in fact I meant the teeth I bought from eBay. They belonged to a vampire, you know."
"Maybe the vampire took them back?"
"Ah," said Dr. Fraud sitting down at his desk. "So you have belief in vampires then?" His Austrian accent, which came and went as he remembered it, was suddenly thick.
"Not really, doc. Believing in things takes effort, and... well, the stress of the police investigation, the sudden loss of family members,... I mean, what are you supposed to believe in when all this happens like this?"
"Ah yes," said Dr. Fraud. "You're Jack. I forgot."
"Thanks, doc."
There were some quiet moments while Jack put his phone away and Dr. Fraud opened up the manila folder on his desk and realised it was the file for Brittany and put it back down again.
"Remind me," he said. "Last time we talked about... your Electra complex?"
"No doc, you told me I couldn't have an Electra complex since it was the nanny that shot and killed my father."
"Oh yes. You lost a lot of family members as I recall. Did we cover all of them?"
"Not quite," said Jack. He sat back on the couch, and the leather covering squeaked like a distressed mouse. "I had a brother, once. Well actually I had two, but the stronger drowned the other one in the bath when they were three. There were child-psychologists everywhere for six weeks, drawing parallels between that and how my grandmother died. Then they all went away again and life just carried on as normal."
"Noooooormaaaaaaaal," said Dr. Fraud. Jack ignored him.
"I think he lasted until he was about twenty-three," he said. "He was wearing as the floor manager as the tyre factory, and we got a letter home one day that said he'd worn out and had to be replaced. I think we got an Alsatian because they didn't have a like-for-like match. I remember that Dad was on the phone to the insurance company a lot. There was shouting, but that was nothing new. Oh, and my mother looked at me and said 'This is why we wanted you to be your own sister.'"
For some reason the link above doesn't seem to be working; I have no idea why, especially since it seems to have been replaced! However, this is where is should go to, and in case blogger decides to hide that too; http://daily-writing.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/monday-december-10th-2012.html
Sorry!
Greg - oh, quite. I have searched this blog on many occasions to figure out when something happened (most recent example: couldn't remember which day in January I'd been diagnosed with diabetes. Thanks to the blog I now know it's the 21st. Maybe I should be worried about how bad my memory is...)
Ah, always a pleasure to see Dr. Fraud again. And I'm happy to see you return to the dysfunctional family patient, as there was obviously a gold mine of future posts waiting to be written after that first one :)
Sent you an email, by the way. Reply when you're able to. Please :)
Post a Comment