Today I had to work the early shift at work, which means being up before 4:30 am. That’s unholy, imo. Now it’s almost 8 am and I’m considering my morning snack. I wish I could say that’s led me to a writing prompt, but so far I’m coming up blank!
That said, I still feel the need for a prompt, so here we go. It’s a total free-write. Write a paragraph that includes the following words, in any order:
Tweet
Log
Snack
Advantageous
Log
Snack
Advantageous
Okay, so the snacking did prompt a prompt…
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Here’s mine:
He glanced at her with something of a sneer, the loving look she remembered being easily replaced. Had she thought him handsome? Kind? Fool. He was none of the above, and no one she knew.
“What now?” she asked. She set the snack tray down on the kitchen’s island. The sliced gouda, pita chips and hard salami rounds in their neat rows were at odds with the chaos inside her.
“Now? Now you leave.”
“Leave?” she repeated stupidly.
He chuckled. “Yes, leave. As in, get out of my house.”
She looked past him to their guests gathered in the doorway, trapped in silence, mid-interruption of John’s dumping her. Beyond them she could see the Yule log in the fireplace. It was cheerily decorated and ready to be the centerpiece of their Christmas party. He hadn’t seen the guests, and went on without interruption.
“Now.”
The suspicion had slept inside her so long she had almost forgotten it was there. Now it reared up to full life. “The governor’s daughter?”
“Mm-hmm. We reconnected at as charity dinner last week.”
“Only last week?”
He shrugged. “This time. The meeting was, shall we say, advantageous.” He lifted a finger and ran it over the edge of the snack tray. He stared at the tray, seeming to study it. “We got this on our wedding day, did we not?” He hooked a finger under the crystal platter and pulled it toward him—toward him and off the counter. It slammed onto the floor like a dropped cannon ball, sending glass chunks and finger food skittering.
One startled guest gasped and another whipped out his phone, snapping a picture. She could already imagine the tweets incoming.
Ooh, dang! I already didn't like John for coldly dumping the protagonist, but when he ruined the snacks, THAT crossed the line. :)
ReplyDeleteI'll try a short one.
"Tweet tweet tweet!" The calls of frantic robin parents resounded through the leafy chamber of the forest. The birds flitted among branches of delicate understory trees, directing their cries towards a red-shouldered hawk perched on a tall, rotted stump. The hawk ignored the robins' pestering and peered down the hollow of the standing log. The nest of baby robins inside would make a perfect snack for his own young, if he could find a way to get down there to retrieve them. Side-stepping around the rim of the snag he craned for an advantageous position from which to pluck the little morsels. Alas, the nest was too deep in the hole to reach without risking entrapment. The hawk stared broodingly, until dual dive-bombings from the mother and father robin finally shooed him.
This is awesome! I feel a novel coming on . . . :)
DeleteThat rat bastard! I think the most horrible part of your passage is the phone pic and the inevitable tweets. Humanity diminished by technology.
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