The exercise:
Write about: the scientist.
Took the boys to Science World today. A much-delayed visit, originally planned for last summer.
It was certainly worth the wait.
The exercise:
Write about: the scientist.
Took the boys to Science World today. A much-delayed visit, originally planned for last summer.
It was certainly worth the wait.
2 comments:
I think the delayed visit was the last time you used that prompt too! It looks like a fun place to go to; since Max had always been a bit of a handyman so far, I guess you're hoping he'll be the next Baron Frankenstein? :)
The scientists
The wildfires had started in the morning. No-one had reported yet on how they'd started this time but Jenny had the radio on in the mobile lab and was humming along to the songs in between the news updates. There was a smoke haze on the horizon, a grey band that almost, but not quite, blended in with the blue skies -- the cloudless blue skies, like they had been for two weeks -- and the birds were avoiding that side of the sky. I paused, kneeling down to tie my shoelaces and stopping abruptly and wondering why. There was a moment of tension where I wasn't sure who I was and where I was, and then, briefly, the feel of padded leather against my shoulders, straps around my wrists and a smell of tobacco from a man dressed like a Hammer films mad scientist.
"Can you believe this is a classic?" called Jenny from inside the lab, breaking the spell of the moment. My memory clawed at the image of the scientist, trying to pull it out of the locked depths, but all that emerged was one word: Westrill. I thought that maybe there'd been a house there once.
Then the sounds of Britney Spears filled my ears and all I could find to say was, "Classic? They have to be old to be classic, Jenny."
She appeared in the doorway of the trailer wearing her hair up in a net and holding a pipette. "Twenty two years today, how old do you want it to be?"
My eyes widened at the thought that this song, something I'd cried myself to sleep to, could be that old already, and then there was an overwhelming rush of sadness that that must mean that I was old as well.
"The temporal lobe is overstimulated," said a voice in my ear, but it wasn't real, it was an auditory hallucination straight out of the locked memories. As soon as I heard it, I shivered and realised I didn't want to unbox these events of the past, and I felt the fear that Pandora had; maybe I'd gone too far already, maybe it was too late.
"Are you ever going to stand up? We have science to do!" Jenny's words broke the spell again and all that lingered was another name, Northbrook. And the image of a house, like a sepia-tinted photograph, that changed depending on the direction you approached it from.
"We're cooking meth," I retorted, and all of a sudden I knew it was a lie. Jenny had sworn we were cooking meth, but the memories were returning now, the scientists -- the real scientists -- had given her the recipe but not the understanding. They gave me the understanding, in the rooms at Southstream where the paintings on the wall watched me with sensitive, compassionate eyes and the leather chair and the straps held me firmly in place so that I had no choice to but look, to see, and to understand.
The smell of smoke filled my nostrils and I coughed, just the once, and wondered if it was time to move the trailer again.
Greg - well, he is certainly scientifically minded in a way I never was.
Ooh, so many details interwoven to make a delicate little mystery. I do hope you managed to continue this one, at least a little bit anyway.
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