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Now and Again-Excerpt from "Fair or Not"
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Now and Again-Excerpt from "Fair or Not" |
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the romantic fanatic Junior Member
since 2000-08-05
Posts 26Spokane, WA U.S.A. 
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Please keep in mind that this is a small excerpt from a longer work, hopefuly to become a novel one day, but currently is just a group of short stories, all seemingly unrelated. It is easy to take out of context, so I will provide a background: This is a story of a black man imprisoned wrongly, declared innocent, freed, then imprisoned again. Enjoy. Time is a lonely creature. Time shuns all companions and leaves them to wallow in their own sorrows. To ignore time is to allow it to pass you. If you focus on the passing of it, it will draw you in an and distort all you know. Now and again there is respite for me. Now and again I find solace. Years have passed and yet I still sit and wait. There will be many more years to come. Will I still be here? Once, long ago, there was a place for me. Deep in the recesses of my mind I seem to recall a conversation... "Yours is the best around!" whispered Sheila Finnegan as she approached my booth out of breath, waiving a blue flag."You've just won First Place! I am not supposed to tell you yet, but I can't help it. Just play dumb when the judges come around," she said with a smile. "What's the blue flag then, my love?" I asked. "Oh, I won first place in my category, too. 'Best Pie in the County'. Luckily, my daddy didn't judge that contest." Shelia seemed happy to win it on her own merit. I had my doubts about my own prize, though. The judges came around and awarded me the bottle of scotch that was my prize for "The Best Brew". Sheila's father seemed excited. The night before I had asked for his daughter's hand in marriage. Sheila was the last of four daughters to be married off. They seemed to be the only two who wanted the marriage to occur. After the judges left, my booth was surrounded. Other local brewers and all three of Sheila's brothers were there. You could smell trouble on the air, lingering like bad perfume. I am not entirely sure what happened next. I remember being slapped on the back. Then on the head. The next thing I knew I was trapped in the eye of a hurricane of fists. A couple found their mark, but for the most part, there were too many men to get in a good shot at me. Hostile intentions pent up for a year were being loosed. I allowed them their anger. The men had their reasons. It wasn't until Sheila became involved that my emotions had risen. Sheila began to scream for me to be let go and somehow got pushed into the center with me. She was pummeled, bruised and beaten before I even saw her. I drew my blade. No one saw. I grabbed the arm in front of me and sliced the length of flesh from wrist to elbow. I withdrew and drove my knife deep into the man's soft gut. Looking up, I realised it was Sheila's father. He had worked his way into the crowd to try and save us. With a piercing scream from Sheila, the crowd dispersed. Standing alone in a sea of blood, I begin to cry. |
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| © Copyright 2005 Darric A. Lengling - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
a fairly strong, pleasantly vague opening distilled into a cliche of moments that lead us nowhere. write what you see, not what you think it should say.  and call me sometime... if you ever get time. heh. |
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