Creative Writing 2100: Exercise 75

William stares at his text book. He reads the same headline for the third time: To learn to create the physical world that makes a believer of the reader and pulls her into the tangible, felt life of the story.

William stretches out on his bed and puffs the pillow under his chest. He balances the book against the headboard and props his head between his hands. His feet hang off the edge of the bed and bounce methodically. He looks at the words on the page again.

He considers himself a relatively intelligent individual but cannot figure out what he has to do. And why do it have to be a "her"? he wonders. "Because a her and her friend wrote it," comes the his own audible unrequested reply.

He turns the page over slowly then returns it to its original position, as though the secret was hiding and he has to find it. Nothing happens. The words begin to change and the paragraphs morph. His eyes stare but refuse to focus on the black lines and curves of the letters on the page. He feels his eyes getting warm and stiff in their sockets. William wants to blink but is afraid to miss the moment when the secret jumps out of the page. He thinks for a moment and realises how stupidly he is behaving. His brain tells his eyelids to close and renew his vision. It suggests he turn his head and shake the cobwebs that are forming slowly in the corners of his sight. But William's body parts are stubborn and remain fixed to the equally stubborn page.

"Forget this," he mutters. But he can't. How can I be boring to the point of who-knows-what? Something about gravestones and tongues appears from the mass blur of words at the bottom of the page. His eyes flicker down and burn from the friction created by their movement under his dry eyelids. Still he does not blink.

"After a few seconds, the gravestone seemed equally hard and inflexible... " That makes no sense. He tries again. "After a few seconds, the gravestone seemed equally hard and inflexible and I couldn't stop..." Yes I can, William counters. But he reads on.

His eyes endure the torture of the passage as his mind wanders uncontrollably. Finally, he blinks. He shakes his head. "After a few seconds, the gravestone..." His eyes begin to water. The letters return to their blurry state. He rubs away the tears collecting on the rim of his lower eyelid with the back of his hand. I knew I shouldn't have blinked. His head dips slightly to the right and his eyes lose their place in the paragraph-slush on the page. Again, his eyelids close, bringing more fluid to his already faded vision. Again, the back of his hand acts as windshield wiper in the blinding rain of tears. William feels the pressure building in his chest, rising to his face. "Oh well," he mumbles, resigning himself to the imminent yawn. It erupts, coaxing more tears from his reddening eyes, and wrapping a warm wave of tempting sleep across his face.

William looks up at his text and shakes his head in petty frustration. He shuts the book and yawns again as he reaches for his composition book. His half open eyes scan the bed for a pen and are soon successful. He retrieves it and opens his book to the next blank page. His head drops to almost the same level os the page and he begins to write:

William stares at his text book...

Sunday was a good day.

After much encouragement from all camps, I acted on the opportunity to discover the "world below" without the inconvenience of having to return to my native atmosphere (arguable fact) for the purpose of respiration.

I started the journey to becoming a certified SCUBA diver.

The instructors say that apparently I am a natural and the certification process should be no issue for me. All I wanted to do was play among the marine life. They saw more I suppose.

This will be the new hobby, especially considering the sea's surface has been letting me down (literally) with its consistent absence of wave swell activity.

More, when there is...

Careful, This Line Is Bugged

So last week we're at a friend's house for a dinner party and the topic of strange and decidedly eerie insects makes its way into the conversation after a moth made its way into our space. We exchanged stories of encounters, experiences and urban legends for the better part of an hour before moving on to other points of discussion... either that or the insesct spray's introduction to the table hastened the departure of further input before the possible arrival of maniacal spraying at random moving objects - humans included.

Less than a week later, one of our friends in attendance forwards a shot of something called a "clack-clack" (so named for obvious reasons) which he was awakend by in his room in the wee hours of the morning. At approximately 3 1/2 inches in length, this wasn't your typical swat-and-go-back-to-sleep bug. He dutifully captured the intruder, set it into the wild with directions to the home of the insect "lover" who hosted us previously.

Just so you do know, none of us would mind if it forever got lost in the bushes along the way.