Red Writing Hood: Conversations In the Air

I've been out of the writing prompt game for a little while and decided to dive back in with the Red Writing Hood prompt from Write on Edge.

This week's prompt was to look into our writer's toolbox and pull out the things that need polishing. To go outside our comfort zone.

I'm not sure how far out of my comfort zone I actually went, but I always need to work on dialogue. And, it's probably a decent exercise for me to write something without paranormal influences from time to time. So I looked at the picture offered for inspiration and went with the first thing that came to mind. (Then I had to go back and do some cutting to fit the word limit.)

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Via Stock.Xchng

"I don't like heights."

"I know."

"I think I left my stomach down there." Sam closed her eyes, swallowed. "Why did you bring me here?"

"This was where we had our first date.”

She opened her eyes, gave him the look he'd come to think of as Sam's Scalpel. Sharp, precise, denuding.  "I remember. We went to the arboretum. Had lunch at the Ocean Front. You threw up from bad mahi-mahi. We didn't ride the Ferris Wheel."

"I wanted to. You wouldn't go for it."

"I shouldn't have gone for it this time."

"So, why did you?"

"Because... You wanted to ride the stupid thing. You were like a kid. So excited."

"You did it for me?"

The Scalpel, again. "What's going on?"

He sighed, shifted. His weight swung the gondola and she grasped the edge of the seat.

"I know about Christopher," he said. He also knew if he looked at her, he'd see the same stricken look on her face that he saw in his rear-view mirror the afternoon he'd seen the two of them tangled together on the pier. "I know it was over months ago, before it even really started."

"Yes." She sounds like she's choking.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No." Her voice is small. Nearly lost in the cavern of the gondola.

"Good. I decided: I don't want to leave. …I also don't want this hanging over us. So, I figured, why not go back to the beginning."

"Wishful thinking. You can't undo—"

"I'm not interested in undoing."

They were stopped the apex.

The world spread out below them, tiny and immaterial.

He turned to her, took her hands to steady her.  "This is the chance. To start something new. We can leave all the old screw ups here. Or we can take them back down with us. What do you want?"

She looked at his hands, his face. For the first time, she stared out the glass wall. Her breath caught and for a second he thought she might be sick.  "I want to leave it. It's too much to keep carrying."

He nodded.

She closed her eyes.

He held her hand throughout the descent.

On the ground again, he could feel Sam’s legs shake.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"I could use some toast and tea."

"Let's go to the Ocean Front. I'll avoid the mahi-mahi this time."

It's About Power, Not Piracy

I'm all out of clever repartee.

If you haven't yet, write or call your congresscritters and tell them not to support SOPA or PIPA.

If you live under a rock--and it would have to be a pretty big rock, half buried under the continental shelf--and you haven't heard about either of these things yet, get thee hence to Stop American Censorship to learn more.

"Immortal"

Blood Wine and Roses.

A late summer evening, outside The Vesta, and a crowd of black clad teenagers gathered, waiting for the next showing of Blood Wine and Roses. Some wore cloaks, fake fangs. Others, Victorian cameos tied around their necks with black ribbon.

Elissa and Gabriel came up out of the underground stairwell that led into the lobby of the theatre. Elissa leading the way, her fingers wrapped around Gabriel's wrist, weaved drunkenly through the crowd.

They passed a girl with her head thrown back so the boy in her arms could bite at her neck and Elissa, grinning, half turned to Gabriel and said,

"So, if you were given immortality, would you share it with me?"

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Gabriel and Elissa. Two characters who cropped up in NaNoWriMo '09. Whose histories I've been visiting in snippets for the 31 Words prompt challenge I gave myself on Deviantart. Whose story I need to make a point of getting familiar with.

Six Sentences: Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed?

Late at night, he sneak out.

When he thinks I's sleepin'.

When he thinks I don't hear him for being so exhausted from tendin' to the baby, who got a bad case of the colic.

But I hear him, his big bare feet slidin’ over the floor boards in the hall and the click a’his nails, grown long.

When he come back to bed in the mornin’, his hair a right mess with brambles, there’s somethin’ sticky, dark, an' thick in his beard, an' his breath smell like old meat.

I try not to wonder who made him a meal this time.