em onty
03-23-2010, 07:44 AM
The following is the introduction to a story I'm working on. Any and all comments and suggestions welcome.
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The Brass Cage, 13th March 2010
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The long trek up from the village has left you feeling positively disgusting. In fact, disgustingly disgusting. Your feet are sticky with dust, dirt and donkey piss (Following that cart had been a tactical error). Your face, you suspect without the means to positively confirm, is streaked with that greeny-yellow glue that coated the bushes on the cliff side of the path about two miles back. Your shirt is stuck to your back with sweat which, in the last ten minutes of rest, has gone from a foul congealing mass of boiling, molten flesh and cheap, fibrous hemp to being more akin to the unpleasant but novel sensation of having a small glacier creep up your spine. Your once white now grey shorts are soaked through with the sweat and bodily grease that's run down between the crack of your arse, ensuring your unhygienically infrequently washed pants and genitalia are nothing less than fully submerged in the unwelcome fruits of your expeditionary folly. And your hair is still greasy. And your hat is still excruciatingly, embarrassingly bad.
Your get off the rock, leaving a small puddle, and go to look over the edge of the cliff on the other side of the dirt track. Beyond it lies an endless amount of Peru, unwalkable in a lifetime. The romantic, adventurous side of you would have it thought of as immeasurable, both simply in the extent of its landscape, its length, breadth and width, and in its scope for secrets and sheltered, forgotten treasures. You forgive it instantly, as you have done countless times already over the last two months, for allowing the sun to beat down with such untempered ferocity, for filling the foliage with an immoderate variety unpleasant insects and for letting a donkey urinate on your sandals.
You glance at your watch. In fact, having had nothing better to do, you've been keeping an eye on the time this past half hour in order to mark a minor but notable landmark moment on the trip. Four, three, two, one ... Exactly two days ago, to the minute, you beat a hasty retreat from the pleasant little village you'd been holed up in for two blissful weeks. An angry father. And fair's fair, you consider, he did have good reason to be angry. But that evening, before being forced to scramble out of the window of the gents, had been one of those rare, guilt free moments of flash-in-the-pan euphoric joy.
You smile as you catch yourself fingering the rip in the side of your shirt . Miles and miles back down the mountain side there was, you liked to think, a balding, forty something man still clutching that little fragment of fabric with whitened knuckles; livid and humiliated. It would only be fitting, the bastard had been too much of a coward to act in protection of his little darling's innocence until the drink and social pressure had made him. Let him marinade in his own petty hatred and shame.
Christ. Would you have let yourself think like that before the trip? No, maybe not. But not because you were a better person then, just a coward, too, like the father. Full of love and hate but unwilling to admit either, even to yourself, in case it caused something, anything to change in your life. You feel cleaner now, like having taken off a tight collar which had you leashed to something intangible but utterly overbearing. Mind, could just be the mountain air in your weak, never-before-been-more- than-five-hundred-feet-above-sea-level lungs. As they would no doubt agree back in Dorset, them faw'n parts can make a man do odd things, and think in odd ways.
Your recollection of the rare, guilt free moment of flash-in-the-pan euphoric joy is interrupted ever so impolitely by a flash-in-the-pan breeze slapping your damp clothing against you. You shiver, pick up the pack (All three stone four of it. You measured it back in England and it sure as taxes hasn't got lighter) and trudge on.
Y
The Brass Cage, 13th March 2010
Y
The long trek up from the village has left you feeling positively disgusting. In fact, disgustingly disgusting. Your feet are sticky with dust, dirt and donkey piss (Following that cart had been a tactical error). Your face, you suspect without the means to positively confirm, is streaked with that greeny-yellow glue that coated the bushes on the cliff side of the path about two miles back. Your shirt is stuck to your back with sweat which, in the last ten minutes of rest, has gone from a foul congealing mass of boiling, molten flesh and cheap, fibrous hemp to being more akin to the unpleasant but novel sensation of having a small glacier creep up your spine. Your once white now grey shorts are soaked through with the sweat and bodily grease that's run down between the crack of your arse, ensuring your unhygienically infrequently washed pants and genitalia are nothing less than fully submerged in the unwelcome fruits of your expeditionary folly. And your hair is still greasy. And your hat is still excruciatingly, embarrassingly bad.
Your get off the rock, leaving a small puddle, and go to look over the edge of the cliff on the other side of the dirt track. Beyond it lies an endless amount of Peru, unwalkable in a lifetime. The romantic, adventurous side of you would have it thought of as immeasurable, both simply in the extent of its landscape, its length, breadth and width, and in its scope for secrets and sheltered, forgotten treasures. You forgive it instantly, as you have done countless times already over the last two months, for allowing the sun to beat down with such untempered ferocity, for filling the foliage with an immoderate variety unpleasant insects and for letting a donkey urinate on your sandals.
You glance at your watch. In fact, having had nothing better to do, you've been keeping an eye on the time this past half hour in order to mark a minor but notable landmark moment on the trip. Four, three, two, one ... Exactly two days ago, to the minute, you beat a hasty retreat from the pleasant little village you'd been holed up in for two blissful weeks. An angry father. And fair's fair, you consider, he did have good reason to be angry. But that evening, before being forced to scramble out of the window of the gents, had been one of those rare, guilt free moments of flash-in-the-pan euphoric joy.
You smile as you catch yourself fingering the rip in the side of your shirt . Miles and miles back down the mountain side there was, you liked to think, a balding, forty something man still clutching that little fragment of fabric with whitened knuckles; livid and humiliated. It would only be fitting, the bastard had been too much of a coward to act in protection of his little darling's innocence until the drink and social pressure had made him. Let him marinade in his own petty hatred and shame.
Christ. Would you have let yourself think like that before the trip? No, maybe not. But not because you were a better person then, just a coward, too, like the father. Full of love and hate but unwilling to admit either, even to yourself, in case it caused something, anything to change in your life. You feel cleaner now, like having taken off a tight collar which had you leashed to something intangible but utterly overbearing. Mind, could just be the mountain air in your weak, never-before-been-more- than-five-hundred-feet-above-sea-level lungs. As they would no doubt agree back in Dorset, them faw'n parts can make a man do odd things, and think in odd ways.
Your recollection of the rare, guilt free moment of flash-in-the-pan euphoric joy is interrupted ever so impolitely by a flash-in-the-pan breeze slapping your damp clothing against you. You shiver, pick up the pack (All three stone four of it. You measured it back in England and it sure as taxes hasn't got lighter) and trudge on.