Daily writing prompts from June 9th, 2008 to December 31st, 2022
Wednesday June 17th, 2020
The exercise:
Write about: the ground below.
Which is also the title of one of the tracks on Run The Jewels newest album which... well, I'll just say it arrived at a good time. Oh, a language warning, I suppose, is in order.
I shall have a listen to that track then :) Now, where I did leave Ben and Red...?
The ground below Ben had a theory that steering was done by adjusting the weights on the sides of the balloon, like Herr Markus had been doing before falling overboard. It stayed just a theory though as I wasn’t about to go risking falling out of the basket myself, and we were still heading south. Maybe we wouldn’t end up exactly where we wanted to be, but we’d be close enough to walk. I hoped. And, at least I knew that Ben had landed this balloon at least once so far, so I knew that we wouldn’t crash. Probably. The ground below drifted by, and the sky above us turned pink and yellow and red and finally faded out to black and the stars twinkled above us like tiny eyes watching from a great distance. And we shivered, because there were no blankets in the basket and our jackets were fine enough, but not quite, and there was a little bit of a breeze. “Remember that time when Suzie locked us in an icehouse?” Ben lit up another cigar, which I supposed might be keeping him fractionally warmer than me, and I tried not to feel jealous. “Was the the time we were in Dodge City?” “After Dodge,” said Ben. “Dodge was where she picked up on us and let the Graham brothers know that we were in town.” “Oh yeah,” I said, hugging my arms around myself. Even with the jacket buttoned up tight it was just not warm enough. “They thought we were bounty hunting when we were just mushroom picking.” “Yeah,” said Ben. “No, after that, they headed out to Fort Lyon and we went to Caddoa and somehow we all ended up in the same restaurant on an evening in June.” “And you were flirting with the sous-chef,” I said, the memories crystallising at last. I was sat watching the birds on the Arkansas river, and the next thing I knew I’d been jumped by the Graham brothers and thrown in the ice-house.” “Which is where I already was,” said Ben. “And the sous-chef,” I said. “Which was lucky in the end, because she called for help and you didn’t have to try and burn the ice-house down with your cigars.”
“That plan would have worked.” Ben had that confidant, comfortable tone that usually means he’s right, but only if you’re willing to pay for the collateral damage. “We’d have been out, and no-one would have chased us out of town.” “Again,” I said. “We’ve said goodbye to more towns than most people get to say to each other Ben.” “There’s a lot more out there still,” said Ben. “We just haven’t found the one best suited to us yet.” I laughed at that, and in the silence that followed I finally fell asleep.
And woke up the next morning stiff and achey and had to stand in the sunlight for nearly twenty minutes before I felt properly human again. “Where’s the chamber pot in this thing?” I asked, the tightness below my stomach becoming unbearable. Ben’s gesture to the side of the basket was unmistakeable, so somewhere down below something got an early morning shower. Looking over the side afterwards, I discovered that we were back over houses and roads, and with hindsight maybe I should have checked first. Although I’m not sure it would have done much other than refined my aim. “We got any landmarks to look out, Ben?” “Jimmy said Elizabeth Town,” said Ben. He joined me at the side of the basket, which tilted slightly and made us both grab the edge. I took a step back, and the basket righted itself a little. “In the mountains.” “I’ve got mountains over where the sun’s coming up, and mountains off to the south,” I said. “Did Jimmy say anthing else?” “Huh. He mentioned Humbug Gulch,” said Ben. “He was laughing, think he thought it was funny.” “That would be a bit smaller than a mountain,” I said. “Not helping here, Ben. Try harder.” Ben shrugged. “He said in the mountains,” he said. “Let’s keep heading south then, there’s mountains that way. When we find somewhere in the middle of them with people we’ll stop and ask for directions.” The notion of Ben chewing on his cigar and asking for directions, probably by nearly landing the balloon on someone and yelling at them, made me laugh so hard I had to sit down for five minutes
Greg - ah, this is definitely bringing back fond memories of How the Best... the utter lack of a coherent plan, the complete trust that things will work out, somehow. The two of them drifting along in a hot air balloon not knowing exactly where they're going is... perfectly Red and Ben.
And yet somehow, I fully expect them to get where they want to go. Eventually. And maybe even in one piece.
3 comments:
I shall have a listen to that track then :) Now, where I did leave Ben and Red...?
The ground below
Ben had a theory that steering was done by adjusting the weights on the sides of the balloon, like Herr Markus had been doing before falling overboard. It stayed just a theory though as I wasn’t about to go risking falling out of the basket myself, and we were still heading south. Maybe we wouldn’t end up exactly where we wanted to be, but we’d be close enough to walk. I hoped. And, at least I knew that Ben had landed this balloon at least once so far, so I knew that we wouldn’t crash. Probably.
The ground below drifted by, and the sky above us turned pink and yellow and red and finally faded out to black and the stars twinkled above us like tiny eyes watching from a great distance. And we shivered, because there were no blankets in the basket and our jackets were fine enough, but not quite, and there was a little bit of a breeze.
“Remember that time when Suzie locked us in an icehouse?” Ben lit up another cigar, which I supposed might be keeping him fractionally warmer than me, and I tried not to feel jealous.
“Was the the time we were in Dodge City?”
“After Dodge,” said Ben. “Dodge was where she picked up on us and let the Graham brothers know that we were in town.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, hugging my arms around myself. Even with the jacket buttoned up tight it was just not warm enough. “They thought we were bounty hunting when we were just mushroom picking.”
“Yeah,” said Ben. “No, after that, they headed out to Fort Lyon and we went to Caddoa and somehow we all ended up in the same restaurant on an evening in June.”
“And you were flirting with the sous-chef,” I said, the memories crystallising at last. I was sat watching the birds on the Arkansas river, and the next thing I knew I’d been jumped by the Graham brothers and thrown in the ice-house.”
“Which is where I already was,” said Ben.
“And the sous-chef,” I said. “Which was lucky in the end, because she called for help and you didn’t have to try and burn the ice-house down with your cigars.”
“That plan would have worked.” Ben had that confidant, comfortable tone that usually means he’s right, but only if you’re willing to pay for the collateral damage. “We’d have been out, and no-one would have chased us out of town.”
“Again,” I said. “We’ve said goodbye to more towns than most people get to say to each other Ben.”
“There’s a lot more out there still,” said Ben. “We just haven’t found the one best suited to us yet.”
I laughed at that, and in the silence that followed I finally fell asleep.
And woke up the next morning stiff and achey and had to stand in the sunlight for nearly twenty minutes before I felt properly human again.
“Where’s the chamber pot in this thing?” I asked, the tightness below my stomach becoming unbearable. Ben’s gesture to the side of the basket was unmistakeable, so somewhere down below something got an early morning shower. Looking over the side afterwards, I discovered that we were back over houses and roads, and with hindsight maybe I should have checked first. Although I’m not sure it would have done much other than refined my aim.
“We got any landmarks to look out, Ben?”
“Jimmy said Elizabeth Town,” said Ben. He joined me at the side of the basket, which tilted slightly and made us both grab the edge. I took a step back, and the basket righted itself a little. “In the mountains.”
“I’ve got mountains over where the sun’s coming up, and mountains off to the south,” I said. “Did Jimmy say anthing else?”
“Huh. He mentioned Humbug Gulch,” said Ben. “He was laughing, think he thought it was funny.”
“That would be a bit smaller than a mountain,” I said. “Not helping here, Ben. Try harder.”
Ben shrugged. “He said in the mountains,” he said. “Let’s keep heading south then, there’s mountains that way. When we find somewhere in the middle of them with people we’ll stop and ask for directions.”
The notion of Ben chewing on his cigar and asking for directions, probably by nearly landing the balloon on someone and yelling at them, made me laugh so hard I had to sit down for five minutes
Greg - ah, this is definitely bringing back fond memories of How the Best... the utter lack of a coherent plan, the complete trust that things will work out, somehow. The two of them drifting along in a hot air balloon not knowing exactly where they're going is... perfectly Red and Ben.
And yet somehow, I fully expect them to get where they want to go. Eventually. And maybe even in one piece.
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