Seeing as how I have been reduced to stumbling my house in my pajamas and watching re-runs of “Dog the Bounty Hunter”, I felt it was imperative that I clean my room. A few hours in and I’m up to my knees in forgotten socks, empty cookie boxes, and mounds of paper. Paper. The bane of my existence. A myriad of sheets torn from notebooks and cut from trees, smothered with scribbles and crossed-out words, dripping with futile feelings and lackluster laments. This is my life. Paper. Construction, card, recycled, lined, my paper. I sort these papers into piles, in disarray that hides actual order. Then from the corner of my eye, I see a blur of azure and ochre. My high school journal. A burning sensation creeps up my neck and stings my cheeks. I haven’t opened this in years, and the thought of what was written on these pages years ago is tugging at my heart strings. But I have nothing better to do, so I pick it up. Its full of exercises.
“Write a biography of yourself, fact is not a necessity.”
“Place yourself in the mind of someone you had an argument and write about what is going on inside their head.”
“Write an extended metaphor about an enigmatic entity.”
Flipping through the pages, I come across an entry titled “Atmosphere and Setting Exercise”. I read it three times, so see if I could grasp the concept of it. It seems as if it was written by someone else, someone with thoughts far more obscure than mine, with sadistic inclinations and morbid dreams. If only I could go back into my naïve 17 year old mind and decipher the meaning of this:
The air hangs over the city like a thick blanket soaked with cyanide. The sky is the colour of sulphur stained with feces, pocketed at the sharp corners of the towering buildings. Calls of choked breathing echoes off the hard stone walls, which drip chillingly with sweat and tears. The brick is stained with blood and ash, maroon and grey, decrepit, crumbling under the weight of the smothering sky. Chips of brick tumble like stone sponge to the slimy cobblestone roads, deserted, empty.
It is cold. Putrid dew seems to form on the rough cobblestones. As the temperature continues to drop, the walls sweat, the stench of decay rising to the polluted firmament. The air is thick and smells of death, one would feel the dead as one walks through it. I can taste the despair in every breath I take. Despair, fear, and inexplicable awe, the cries of a nation yearning and grieving in unison echoes and bounces off the sweaty stones.
I can hear the scrambling of unkempt, blistered feet, attempting to find solace in a world ruled by hate. The low moans of prayers drift slowly through the poisonous air. Prayers of repentance, of fear, for the one who holds their lives in the palm of her hand. Their cries find harmony with the sounds of the whip, the slashes of daggers, the spurting and bubbling of blood as it drips into a puddle on the cobblestone road.
Her steps, as she walks through the streets, are almost muffled by the cries and moans. Her leather boots creak and click along the wet stones. They smell more of a butchery than the sweet comforting smell of leather. She takes in a deep breath and revels in her dystopian masterpiece.
The scattered flutter of vultures’ wings lulls the young ones to an unrestful sleep, feeling for their mothers tattered robe for comfort. She feels the rusty bars which hold her prisoner. They are as damp and uninviting as the floor to which she is chained.
Could I continue on? Could I get back into this mindset and maybe see where this story would take me? To corners of mind that should have been avoided? To a girl with a vendetta, waiting to be let out of her cage? To be teased by my own apparent thought. I doubt it. But who’s to say what could happen; I only know of one who holds time and I best not rush that decision.
Tags: dog the bounty hunter, exercises, expression, fear, paper, writing
I love your style. I don’t know if I’ve said this before or not. I’m not someone who easily compliments other peoples’ writings without that tone of “oh you could do better if…”, very proud of me to do it but it’s what I do. However, I love your style. From your descriptions, to the seamless transitions. I think I favour the descriptions though. “Then from the corner of my eye, I see a blur of azure and ochre.”…I could almost taste that view.
I appreciate your words, because I know how difficult it is to compliment someone else’s work. A catchphrase of mine is “Ok how about you let me write it?”
The next time I write an extended metaphor, I shall do it with you in mind. Thank you.