The exercise:
Write about: it's been a while.
Miles returned to school this morning after missing the last 9 days. He asked if he could go last night, which we felt was a pretty good sign. But we figured he could just go for half a day to ease back in, and he wanted to go for the whole day.
So I brought him his lunch just before noon to see how he was doing and he had zero interest in coming home. He was certainly pretty tired this evening, but I am feeling grateful to have finally reached this stage of his recovery.
2 comments:
Hmm, we're in December, so I guess... Christmas has been a while away?
It's been a while
"It's been a while," said Sandra. She was nearly eight and wore her hair up in a bun like her mother. She was wearing a nice blouse and a sensible skirt and looked like she was a project manager thirty years old. In fact she was a project manager for Miss Snippet, who used her classes as a valuable source of unpaid labour for numerous civil construction projects.
"Ho," said Santa sounding miserable. He was sat on a wooden chair in front of Sandra with his hands cuffed in front of him. His red jacket was torn and white fluffy stuffing was poking out -- Santa had fallen on hard times and was nowhere near as jolly and plump as the media suggested. Now he was lean, feral-eyed and looked like he'd happily sell children to an orphanage for enough money to get drunk in a gutter. He'd shaved his beard off and his hair was matted and grey and he stank like an abattoir before cleaning.
"Yes, quite," said Sandra. She picked up a blueprint and considered it for a moment. "We have a proposition for you."
"No," said Santa. His voice was surprisingly clear and, for a moment, it was like the old Santa was there. Granted, the old Santa had been skinned and forced to steal from children in order to have his skin returned, but Sandra felt that the past was the past and not worth bringing up in the present.
"You haven't heard it yet," said Sandra, sounding reasonable. "And you already know that I won't accept refusal."
"No," said Santa, his voice hardening.
"We can get Miss Snippet," said Sandra, setting the blueprint down. That elicited a higher-pitch 'no' and she picked it back up again. "I'm glad you can see sense," she said. "Right. This is the floorplan to a building so well guarded that all of our attempts to get in over the past year have failed. We have accidentally drilled into the basement, only to find guards there. We have assaulted the roof only to find more guards. We have even sent in tradesmen only to find them under guard while they were there. So we are going to send in the one person they can't protect themselves from. You, Santa."
"Ho ho," said Santa sounding miserable.
"And in return we're going to replace your liver," said Sandra. "With a fresh one, with no cirrhosis. It's been a while since you had a functioning liver as far as we can tell."
"Ho!" said Santa, looking interested for the first time.
Greg - yeah, that's a fair take on the prompt for sure.
Oh boy. Well, I mean, the deal being offered could certainly have been worse. Admittedly I don't know which building is about to be broken into though...
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