Peril is thrilling.
There was a small room and a handful of writers. I told the professor, I'm afraid I'll never write again. She dismissed it, but I wasn't reassured. Perhaps I always knew there would come a'time when my imagination would lie fallow and be heralded into a different direction-- not forever but for a long while. Maybe the next 20 years? I can't be certain.
But imagine then if you can, a field of trees I was ordered to keep watered and primed in the meantime, a whole village in fact relying upon the water irrigation and me walking a long ways to see fields wilting set off running only to find a landslide- and my hands cramping, my mouth dry, the spade broken, clawing into the dirt and rocks with the sun blazing one last time before i collapsed. And then came a small stream, just enough to revive me...we still don't know about the village though.
Or better, more closer to the truth, it was an ordinary day. The girl parked the car in the shade. She saw a friends car and thought of missing the meeting and drinking coffeebean instead. But the girl didn't like coffee bean and ultimately you know meetings, they were expecting her. Little did she know.
The girl sat in the room with a glass of water, cross-legged on the couch.
And the other one, the dark one whose spirit screamed wrath, screamed hostility, told the girl that she loved her as if that was enough to make amends when the word spoken hollow had the air of a curse- and the conflict rising up surged against the girl as she sat silent, baffled and uncomprehending.
It followed her out of the house and there was an ominous stillness to the air. Her body leaned forward hunched by the weight of something, she didn't quite know what. But it had come over her, it was trying to over take her. She knew it the next day as a tickle came down her throat, as she violently was brought to her knee on the boulevard. The jalapeno in her eye mere mockery to what was threading all around her, trying as it were to choke and expire the very light within her.
Here she stood on a precipice, the edge crumbling, the earth giving way, and down down she went scraped and bruised to a ledge overlooking the dark space of nothingness sometimes called despair.
1 comment:
I read this once. And I read it a second time. On my second reading, I find myself imagining the last half of this post [starting with 'the girl sitting cross-legged on a couch' (a detail which made my mind race! After all, she must have been wearing something that required her to assume this posture. A skirt, a dress, something revealing! You left out a description of her legs, an oversight which your many male readers will no doubt find egregious. I was able to conjure up a satisfactory pair of legs, very alluring, just the right shape and texture. But your other male readers may not be able to think on the fly like that. Keep this in mind for the future). Anyway, I can't explain it, but I imagined the second the half of this post being spoken aloud by Vincent Price, and let me tell you, it had a far greater impact. Try it yourself! Imagine Vincent Price saying your words, magnifying the level of despair! I'm going to have nightmares for weeks!!!
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