Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. No reason. Just ending the week in style.
You can write whatever you want in the comments section. You have two minutes. Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.
Have a good weekend!
The red turns to black. Or a kind of rusty, dark brown. Give it enough time and it'll turn black. Let it build up. When there are puddles ... that's when it happens. It's a tough thing to see the first couple of times. But you get ... what's the word the news yuppies use? Desensitized? Something like that. Me, I sense everything because I am the one the dark thing chose. It is a burden. I don't sleep well. I am always working, doing his bidding because there's no doubt in my mind that if I didn't it would be terror, horror, red, then black. I can see it now. I have seen it.
What a goddamned shame, they say. She’s let herself go. Not the tight uptight pile of combed plastic priss and ribcage that she used to be, but wow. All that gray hair. All that wild craziness. We can’t have that around here. She’s let herself go. Maybe, though…she didn’t want to live in a box, strapped up tight in a full-body corset, never flying free? She’s let herself go, and cut free the string tying her to the ground so she can sail with the other kites. And the birds. She’s let herself go and I want to run behind her, waving, calling out, “Take me with you…with you…with you…”
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. I love this line: "Not the tight uptight pile of combed plastic priss and ribcage that she used to be, but wow."
DeleteThe precipice is seductive. They always are. Bedroom eyes and impish smile. Makes your heart race, doesn't it? Part of the plan, buddy. Suck you in and suck you off and blow you away and you don't even care. Until suddenly you *do* care, but by then it's too late.
ReplyDeleteYou tell yourself you've learned your lesson. That, given the chance to go back in time, you wouldn't make the same mistake twice. But maybe it wasn't a mistake.
Hard to tell.
Yeah, you'll do it again.
It's all part of the plan.
"The precipice is seductive." Man, that's beautiful. I like the rest, too of course, but that is a lovely sentence, my friend.
DeleteAnd yeah, time machines are overrated.
Fran said his nose was red because he was a booze hound, but to six-year-old me I figured old Mr. Quinn was a clown. Fran, older than I by a whopping three years, laughed at my naivete. "Noses turn red when you drink booze." I shrugged and said, "He stuck it up there. Mr. Quinn's in the circus."
ReplyDeleteFran got straight A's at P.S. 55 where I was new to the school. Could she be right?
"And he painted those lines," I added to strengthen my case.
Again with the laughter. I wanted to punch Fran, but I knew she punch me back, much harder than I would. "They're a booze hound's little broken veins, dummy."
Then old Mr. Quinn walked out his front door, waving at Fran and me, picking up the newspaper on his lawn, doing a quick two-step skip, and back into his house.
"See," I said. "He did a skip like a clown!"
"Like a drunk, you mean. He's probably drinking already and it's not even eight."
The school bus was not yet in sight, so I headed slowly towards Mr. Quinn's house to get a look inside. Sure enough he was pouring a drink into a shot glass and guzzling it down. My heart sank.
Fran stood beside me.
"Well, he coulda been a clown," I said.
"Yeah, a real Bozzo!" said Fran and we ran towards the waiting school bus.
This is a deceptively complex piece. I really like it. Lots of story in a little flash. Just the way it should be. Cheers, Sal!
DeleteThank you J. I'm a fan of the pieces you write on here! :)
DeleteThanks, audrina!
DeleteSo, sometimes it's easy to be the good guy. Most of the time, really. I don't like seeing people unhappy. I like to see smiling children. I crave the sound of laughter. Too often, I am filled with the sound of a ghost wind. The kind of wind that rips through prairies. It is disorienting. It makes me feel like an imposter.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I can't smile as much as the next guy, but I sure like seeing other people do it. There is joy in there. Once the dust settles. Once the prairie has returned to it's comfortable stasis.
Music bleeds through discreet head phones and dampens the sound of the saw. She drifts in and out of sedated delirium, wearing an insane smile.
ReplyDeleteMuffled voices pierce the fog of confusion. Someone asks if she is ok. She giggles and slurs out a positive response. It’s unbearably hot and sticky damp tendrils curl on her cheeks.
He cuts and hammers and drills.
She drifts and twitches and tastes salt on her lips.
Something hovers on the tip of her memory then floats away like a wisp of smoke. Nothing matters, she is sure of that. A glimpse of red, is it a skirt or blood? A fleeting panic before blackness engulfs and soothes once more.
He was wearing a mask, they all were. It must be a costume party, yes that explains it! The music changes to rock and she nods her head to the beat.
He slices deep exposing bone and she smiles because she can’t feel her legs and they are playing her favourite song.
What a delicious bit of writing! I like this one a lot.
Delete"...sticky damp tendrils curl on her cheeks."
This is a wicked piece, lady. Love it.
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DeleteThanks JD. ;)
DeleteIt's only two blocks, but as the saying goes its location, location, location. Two blocks of navigating hipsters, hippies, and street people. All of them smoking, all are various degrees of dangerous spiritually. I'd forgotten the mean streets; forgotten how mean they were. Cruel to strangers. When I spent all my days down here, I was protected by my invisible badge of membership. Member of the supposed to be here society, an elite group which had the sense to leave each other along. No secret handshake or subtle body language clues. You just know who belongs, whose on loan, and who is a target. After all this time away from the mean streets, I was a easy mark. Not my first rodeo, I carried nothing of value. They can smell that and the smell chums the waters setting up a feeding frenzy that can end in everything from hurt feelings to a complete mugging. Through the nicotine fog, up the steps of the downtown library, and into the haven of free wi-fi, books, and clean air I go laughing. Gauntlet ran, mission accomplished, my years of experience didn't fail me. I still have what little it takes to navigate those two blocks.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really dope piece, Ed. I feel that way a lot. Especially when I'm in the old hood.
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