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Loramir
11-28-2010, 04:22 PM
Okay so i was really bored the other day and wrote this... it's a bit nonsensical so bare with me...


“You look like you’re in for a fun night,” she said dryly and awkwardly, glancing at the items I’d placed before her on the counter. My eyes stared tiredly downward, blinking at the half litre of vodka, extra large bag of wotsits, a box of man-size tissues and triple pack of paracetamol. Her eyes shot up, piercing holes in mine, expecting a response. Please, I thought, just scan them, bag them, charge me and let me leave. But my feet were stuck fast, stuck in her Medusa stare. My mouth was dry and I never really cared much for conversation, at least not with those who didn’t appear to have the mental capacity to form a sentence without someone standing behind them pulling the strings. Sure, I think, I’ll humour her just this once.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be mental!”
“Oh?” she replied, intrigued and bewildered, obviously not catching on to my sarcasm.
“Mm… see, I was just gonna sit in and read Catherine Cookson novels…” stop talking, please stop talking “but once I walk away from this till, I’m open to a world of opportunity!”
She continued to stand there, her expression stuck in the same, dull and confused glance, though that could have been the thick as stone slabs of foundation engulfing her face. She wanted more.
“If I’m gonna get hammered, which, let’s be honest, happens too easily too often,” why are you still talking? “I may as well have something to binge on afterward. And I’m gonna have a mega headache in the morning, so why not the paracetamol, I’m a smart boy, am I not, best look after myself” what are you on about, you lunatic “and as for the tissues… well… you know…” I shot her a wink, she blushed, and silence fell all around us like a shroud. Why, why, why did I have to open my big mouth and shut my tiny, stupid eye?
I wanted to take every last pill in the packet, choke myself on wotsits and hang myself with a tissue noose, and if that didn’t work then inject the vodka straight into my bloodstream and jump off the nearest bloody bridge. I could have said anything, done anything, anything other than what I did. If I could turn back time and act like a normal human being for once… but I can’t, because I’m not normal, I’m an absolute dick!
People start muttering at the checkouts, and she tells me to enter my pin, but it’s all a haze, the muffled sounds turn to colours, blurring by, irreverently jumping to and fro around my head. Just what I need, I faint.

*

Where’s my inhaler, where’s my ****ing inhaler? A whiney voice brings me straight round to consciousness.
“You alright love?”
I know that voice. It serenades me into the blinding light above me. An office… I’m in a chuffing office. Great, I thought, just when you couldn’t do any worse, you go and make a scene, thanks asthma, thanks a bunch!
“I thought you were possessed or something, you started mumblin’ this nonsense and started blinkin’ like you were being stabbed in the eye!” she squawked excitedly.
I squinted through the harsh yellow aura around me, two cold, piercing eyes gawking back into mine. Brilliant, Miss Intellectual was back! This isn’t such a bad thing, I said to myself, she heard none of it, none at all… I wonder if it really happened.
“I’m fine really. Oh god, I’m so sorry” I plead embarrassingly after I notice the trainee tag on her sweater. I noticed then that she wasn’t another moody till tapper, and those beady baffled eyes were sheepish and flustered from being thrown in the deep end.
“Are you sure you’re alright, cause I thought you were a gonner, you went out like a mite…”
“…you mean like a light”
“Yeah…” she murmured, lost as if she’d just heard the most profound sentence in her life. I looked into her eyes, and straight through them like an x-ray. I could actually see the tiny monkey turning the cogs in her head, stopping now and then to catch his breath.

:party:

Captain Pike
11-29-2010, 02:17 PM
Engaging. One thing, don't give your characters your imagination. Somehow, when the medical person said, "... like you were stabbed in the eyes", it sounded like you -- it had a similar imagination as that of the narrator. I couldn't possibly garner enough evidence to support this criticism from such a short piece, it's just what I thought when I read it.

MANICHAEAN
11-29-2010, 02:35 PM
It must be difficult for check out girls to be portrayed in any interesting light, trapped as they are like chickens sitting on eggs, encompassed by their tills and low level partitions. But even with "Miss Intellectual" you added some good depth to the character, even if it was thick but sympathetic. Enjoyed it. Do more on the spur of the moment. Sometimes they come out better than the considered, structured stories.
Regards
M.

Loramir
12-05-2010, 10:03 PM
Thanks guys for the feedback
Yeah i tried going back and detaching myself from the character and looking at it from a screenplay point of view, acting it out as it were, but as it was spur of the moment there's not much i could do and i didn't want to taint the flow of the piece any further.
I struggled mostly with writing from the opposite gender, as although i always found myself a bit of a tom boy i still don't fully understand the linguistics, definitely worth checking out other writers who do this though.
Thanks again maybe if you could be so kind as to ask others on their opinions would be great
Lora