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because I have nothing better to post
And I'm feeling -- I don't know, insecure or something, about the blank days on my calendar -- must spam friends page -- I present for your amusement the Creative Writing Story of Doom.
Oddly, the first three lines have been in my head for ages and ages, mostly sticking there because I've been wondering if "were" or "was" was correct in the first sentence. I'll leave it a mystery (and a reason to click the cut-tag) as to which I opted for. :P But if anyone's postive which one's correct, I wouldn't be averse to knowing. Sure, I thought they were kinda interesting plot-wise too, but the grammar point fascinated me most. :P That's two :P's in one paragraph -- oh look, three! ... Moving on, before this gets too Monty Python...
Disclaimer for those of y'all who somehow don't know: I'm a Ren faire geek and totally in love with KRF, and, as usual, nothing should be taken seriously. Also, constructive criticism is always welcome, and this was six pages one-and-a-half spaced, which may be massive or not depending on what you're comparing to. Don't say I didn't warn you. :P (Knights of Ni voice -- "I typed it again!")
And without further ado...
When I woke up, there were six inches of shiny steel blade sticking through the door. I sighed. Well, here’s another hotel I won’t be staying at again.
The clock blinked a resentful 6:52 as I dragged myself off the stiff mattress and threw on a t-shirt and sweats, wrinkling my nose at the room’s residual odor of cigarettes and nasty paint. Feeling vaguely paranoid -- but then, it was justified, right? -- I pressed my nose to the door and scanned the hall from the crusty peephole. Nobody there. I slid the chain off the latch and stepped into the hallway to examine the knife protruding from my door.
Except that really, “sword” would have been a better word. Counting the bit currently sticking into my decrepit hotel room, it was probably a foot and a half long, and the handle-thing had rather tacky red jewels inlaid. And -- oh, perfect. Impaled on the thick blade was a folded piece of white paper. My name was on the front, in somebody’s loopy scrawl. I should probably call the evidence guys, I thought; the finer points of clues really aren’t my forte. I reached for the doorknob to reenter the room.
Of course it didn’t turn. My morning was just getting better and better.
The kid’s glassy eyes slowly focused on my door. I watched the gears turn. “Uh -- you know -- that’s a --”
“Yes, I know,” I said, heroically resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “There’s a sword in my door. I’ll be out by ten, and I realize I won’t get my cleaning deposit back. Can you just let me in already?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled as his master key clicked in my doorknob.
I went straight for my cell, flipping through my speed dial numbers. “Yeah Scott, Beth Hanson here. Listen, I’ve kinda got a sword stuck through my door.”
“What?”
I dug my key out of the pocket of yesterday’s jeans, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear. “A sword in my door. No, that’s not a metaphor for something. So you wanna come down here and run some -- wait!” The kid was still outside, I discovered. He was reaching for the sword. There went my fingerprints. “Stop, don’t touch ... that ... “ He pulled back, but not until after his greasy fingers had probably smudged any evidence that might remain. “Ugh. Well, I may have just lost the fingerprints,” I glared, “but come down anyway?”
“Be there in ten,” he said, and hung up.
I turned to the kid. “Listen -- just -- don’t touch anything. Okay?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled again, casting a longing glance at the weapon.
By the time I’d cleaned up and changed into something very slightly more presentable, Scott was outside my door dusting the thing with a pale powder. “By the way, do you know what time it is?” he asked, without looking up.
“Um, quarter past seven? Sorry, but I’m no happier about this than you are,” I said.
“When did it show up?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You know me, I could sleep through an earthquake,” I said. “Sometime since eleven last night? Though I was pretty tired, could’ve been there when I got back.” At his horrified look, I added, “Kidding, Scott.” Guy’s brilliant with a magnifying glass, but no sense of humor.
I spent the rest of the morning packing, then went into the office to see what Scott had turned up. “So?”
He shrugged. “Just one set of prints, probably from the kid you told me about.” He passed me a stack of Polaroids, which I riffed through and then stuck in my bag for further examination, though they didn’t look like anything I hadn’t seen. Scott added, “Nothing back from the handwriting analysis people yet.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “So now what?” But I already knew. There was nothing I could do until I had more information. Unless -- “But what did the note say?”
“We couldn’t tell,” he said sheepishly. I opened my mouth to tease but he continued, “Whoever it was stuck the sword straight through the writing. The words are part of what the writing folks are doing.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation, thought about making a dramatic exit, but opted to keep on Scott’s good side. Letting my arms fall, I thanked him and left.
Just when I thought fate had it in for me, though, came a piece of luck in the form of a yellow sign with a blood red crown. “King Richard’s Faire,” it said, with an arrow. Just the kind of dorks I was looking for. I hit the gas, my day having been suddenly brightened.
The “parking lot” was really a wide grassy field, two-thirds full of cars, buses and motorcycles. Ahead of me a couple giggled as they dug in their trunk. They were both wearing leather, hers so skimpy it was a wonder she wasn’t frozen yet and his a concoction of spikes and straps, at least ten times as much material as hers by weight or surface area. Yeah, this was the right place.
I waited in the long line and didn’t wince too badly when they dinged me twenty-two dollars just to get in. I’d charge it to the company somehow, get reimbursed, or so I hoped.
A woman in an ornate blue dress frothing with lace and cut low in front traded my newly acquired ticket for a map as I entered. She was old enough to know better, I thought, as she recommended the jousting tournament at the end of the day. Ahead of me loomed a tall building hung with hammock-like swings, slightly impeding my view of brats sliding down a long slope on fake horses, pointing neon lances at a ring held by a three-foot wood dragon. On the left, a grown man thumb-wrestled a child, while standing on a giant chess board. The whole thing was a chaos of garish colors and raised voices. I wanted to go back to bed.
Instead, I opened my map and scanned the area. The “Gaming Glen” looked promising, offering (besides the swan swing, archery and mug slide) a weapons booth with the next demonstration at one. I glanced at my watch. If I hurried -- I hurried.
Bad idea, it turned out. I did four laps of the dance stage before luckily ending up at the weapons booth, though entirely by chance. The crowds had dispersed, mostly, so I went up to the man standing by the fire and asked with my best tough voice, “Excuse me, sir?” He was big, okay?
“Aye, m’lady,” he said, turning.
“I wonder if you sell anything like this?” I asked, ridiculously proud of my own subtlety as I proffered one of the photos.
A booming laugh echoed from his belly. “I’m quite sorry, m’lady, but we sell only quality wares here. What ye have there is a first class fake. Pretty to look at, tis true, but likely to shatter and break on first contact with the cold black hearts of m’lady’s enemies.”
I tried to smile. He was kidding, I was pretty sure. But -- “So you couldn’t, say, heave this through a door?”
He chuckled. “Not unless ‘twere a very flimsy door. Perhaps I can interest m’lady in one of our throwing daggers?”
“No, it was this size,” I said, more to myself.
“A bastard sword, then? But ye wouldn’t be able to throw it through doors, no more than ye could that.” He gestured at the picture, adding, “That one can’t have much balance, but not even with something like this--” he laid a two foot piece of metal across his finger and let it sway to a perfectly balanced halt -- “even with this you couldn’t get through a real solid door easy, and certainly ‘tis too heavy to throw.”
“Well, thanks,” I said, “I’ll keep that in mind.” Weird.
Back at the hotel, I snuck in behind a pair of plump tourists who, judging by their clothing, had come from the same place I had. I went up to the room, where the door seemed to have been mysteriously mended, already. Curious, I ran my fingers along the door, feeling for something, anything. And -- there! My fingers rode over a faint seam in the door. Following it, I found it enclosed an area roughly a foot square. I gave the edge a slightly harder poke with my finger, and it came away with dark brown paint clinging to it.
Financial is going to kill me for this if I’m wrong. I dug my pocketknife out and pushed it into the door outside the area. With effort I could slowly wedge it deeper, but it was difficult. I extracted it and tried again inside the square. The blade slid in like the proverbial hot knife through butter.
Just then my cell phone beeped. I hit the pick-up button. “Hanson here.”
“It’s Scott,” came the tinny voice. I went outside for better reception. “Beth, I checked through the prints. They match up to one Rob Garrow, age 22. Been in trouble a couple times -- disturbing the peace, threats and stuff.”
“But if he’s the motel kid, he touched it after. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“The prints were all over the blade,” he said smugly. “Did he touch the whole thing, or just the hilt?”
“What?”
“The, um, handle.”
I thought. “You’re right, he only touched the hilt. So -- if he did it -- why?”
“That’s your department,” he said smugly, hanging up.
I sighed and went back into the hotel -- and noticed the kid, Rob, wasn’t behind the desk. Well, why not? I went up to check things out. Lying open on the desk was a map of the Faire I’d just vacated, with a route in blue Sharpie leading to the jousting field, and a doodle that might have been X-marks-the-spot or might have been -- I squinted -- a skull and crossbones.
Great. Just great.
Once I was driving down a straight stretch without much traffic, I phoned Rob again. “Those random threats. Directed towards?”
“Tourists, mostly, folks from out of town,” he said. “Not much of a common thread besides that.”
“But this is the back end of nowhere. Why would tourists come here -- except the Faire?” Speaking of which... I braked and pulled into the huge, grassy parking lot.
There were faint beeps from the other end, which I took to be Rob checking it out. “Yeah, a surprisingly large portion of them are on the SCA membership register.” Before I could ask, he clarified, “Society for Creative Anachronism. You’d say renaissance faire geeks. There’s also a charge of defacing property, and it’s at the address of that faire too.”
“That’s what I figured,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up and sprinted for the entrance. They made me pay admission again, but I didn’t have the time to argue.
I ran for the jousting field. The demonstration was set to start at four. If I hurried, I might make it.
But of course, I got lost again. By the time I got to the field and pushed my way to the front, there was already someone lying flat on the ground, looking wounded. As I watched, a quartet of youths carried a stretcher out and gently transferred the man onto it. I sighed. I’d been too late. But -- I took a second look at the figure on the stretcher. In different clothing, red with exertion, but it was Rob. And they were carrying him out? He twitched a little, shifting slightly as if to be more comfortable, and I realized there was no way he was as hurt as he was pretending to be. They took him out, he’d get away, and maybe hurt more people.
So I shoved my way through the crowd to the hill they were climbing to leave, ducked under the ropes, and strode up to the stretcher. “Beth Hanson, police,” I said, waving my badge.
“Huh?” one of the kids said eloquently, almost losing his grip on the primitive stretcher.
I looked Rob in the eye. “Clever,” I said. “You touched the sword afterwards so that I’d think that was why your fingerprints were on there. You thought I’d never suspect the poor little kid behind the desk. You’re busted, punk. I’m glad these folks took you down. Because you were gunning for them, huh? Tired of all the tourism from the faire? Of having to clean up after these freaks and listen to Rocky Road to Dublin at all hours of the night? Nice try, buster.” I brandished my handcuffs. “You’re not really hurt, are you? You’re coming with me.”
“M’lady--” he began, then cleared his throat and dropped the accent. “You’ve got it all wrong, ma’am. I... I always deliver the bill that way. With the sword? People who come here for the faire really get a kick out of it, and nobody comes here for anything else. And they’re pretty clean, and I like Rocky Road, as long as it’s not the Dropkick Murphys version.”
“But the sword was fake!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t very well going to leave one of my good ones where people like you could pick it up for ‘evidence’!” Appreciative laughter from the crowd nearest us, and the hiss of people whispering to people farther away exactly what was going on. He added, “And I put the balsa wood panels in specially so even the bad swords go through.”
“Then what about the charges of disturbing the peace? The threats?” I asked smugly.
He had the grace to go red, and mumbled something. “What?” I asked again.
“Paintball,” he said. “There’s, um, not much to do during winter round here. So my friends and I bundled up and, um, kind of snuck into the faire grounds to play paintball. And, um, we kinda got caught by some people surveying the grounds for next year. And we sort of shot at them.” My jaw dropped. “They weren’t hurt!” he said defensively.
“But the threats,” I persisted.
“There’s, er, residential housing a little way through those fences. And we were kind of yelling things like...” He mumbled something, and I decided I didn’t want to hear.
Everyone was staring. I tried not to blush. Ah, well, if there ever was a time for an overblown exit... I threw my hands up, cast my eyes toward the sky. “Boys will be boys,” I sighed, and strode out.
Behind me, the bloke seated up on the platform -- King Richard? -- smoothly ad-libbed lines about the Black Knight’s narrow escape from the law. There was applause. Ha. Part of the show, was I? Ah, well. If I got kicked off the force for today’s hijinks, at least I’d have a backup gig.
Oddly, the first three lines have been in my head for ages and ages, mostly sticking there because I've been wondering if "were" or "was" was correct in the first sentence. I'll leave it a mystery (and a reason to click the cut-tag) as to which I opted for. :P But if anyone's postive which one's correct, I wouldn't be averse to knowing. Sure, I thought they were kinda interesting plot-wise too, but the grammar point fascinated me most. :P That's two :P's in one paragraph -- oh look, three! ... Moving on, before this gets too Monty Python...
Disclaimer for those of y'all who somehow don't know: I'm a Ren faire geek and totally in love with KRF, and, as usual, nothing should be taken seriously. Also, constructive criticism is always welcome, and this was six pages one-and-a-half spaced, which may be massive or not depending on what you're comparing to. Don't say I didn't warn you. :P (Knights of Ni voice -- "I typed it again!")
And without further ado...
When I woke up, there were six inches of shiny steel blade sticking through the door. I sighed. Well, here’s another hotel I won’t be staying at again.
The clock blinked a resentful 6:52 as I dragged myself off the stiff mattress and threw on a t-shirt and sweats, wrinkling my nose at the room’s residual odor of cigarettes and nasty paint. Feeling vaguely paranoid -- but then, it was justified, right? -- I pressed my nose to the door and scanned the hall from the crusty peephole. Nobody there. I slid the chain off the latch and stepped into the hallway to examine the knife protruding from my door.
Except that really, “sword” would have been a better word. Counting the bit currently sticking into my decrepit hotel room, it was probably a foot and a half long, and the handle-thing had rather tacky red jewels inlaid. And -- oh, perfect. Impaled on the thick blade was a folded piece of white paper. My name was on the front, in somebody’s loopy scrawl. I should probably call the evidence guys, I thought; the finer points of clues really aren’t my forte. I reached for the doorknob to reenter the room.
Of course it didn’t turn. My morning was just getting better and better.
The kid’s glassy eyes slowly focused on my door. I watched the gears turn. “Uh -- you know -- that’s a --”
“Yes, I know,” I said, heroically resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “There’s a sword in my door. I’ll be out by ten, and I realize I won’t get my cleaning deposit back. Can you just let me in already?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled as his master key clicked in my doorknob.
I went straight for my cell, flipping through my speed dial numbers. “Yeah Scott, Beth Hanson here. Listen, I’ve kinda got a sword stuck through my door.”
“What?”
I dug my key out of the pocket of yesterday’s jeans, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear. “A sword in my door. No, that’s not a metaphor for something. So you wanna come down here and run some -- wait!” The kid was still outside, I discovered. He was reaching for the sword. There went my fingerprints. “Stop, don’t touch ... that ... “ He pulled back, but not until after his greasy fingers had probably smudged any evidence that might remain. “Ugh. Well, I may have just lost the fingerprints,” I glared, “but come down anyway?”
“Be there in ten,” he said, and hung up.
I turned to the kid. “Listen -- just -- don’t touch anything. Okay?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled again, casting a longing glance at the weapon.
By the time I’d cleaned up and changed into something very slightly more presentable, Scott was outside my door dusting the thing with a pale powder. “By the way, do you know what time it is?” he asked, without looking up.
“Um, quarter past seven? Sorry, but I’m no happier about this than you are,” I said.
“When did it show up?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You know me, I could sleep through an earthquake,” I said. “Sometime since eleven last night? Though I was pretty tired, could’ve been there when I got back.” At his horrified look, I added, “Kidding, Scott.” Guy’s brilliant with a magnifying glass, but no sense of humor.
I spent the rest of the morning packing, then went into the office to see what Scott had turned up. “So?”
He shrugged. “Just one set of prints, probably from the kid you told me about.” He passed me a stack of Polaroids, which I riffed through and then stuck in my bag for further examination, though they didn’t look like anything I hadn’t seen. Scott added, “Nothing back from the handwriting analysis people yet.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “So now what?” But I already knew. There was nothing I could do until I had more information. Unless -- “But what did the note say?”
“We couldn’t tell,” he said sheepishly. I opened my mouth to tease but he continued, “Whoever it was stuck the sword straight through the writing. The words are part of what the writing folks are doing.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation, thought about making a dramatic exit, but opted to keep on Scott’s good side. Letting my arms fall, I thanked him and left.
Just when I thought fate had it in for me, though, came a piece of luck in the form of a yellow sign with a blood red crown. “King Richard’s Faire,” it said, with an arrow. Just the kind of dorks I was looking for. I hit the gas, my day having been suddenly brightened.
The “parking lot” was really a wide grassy field, two-thirds full of cars, buses and motorcycles. Ahead of me a couple giggled as they dug in their trunk. They were both wearing leather, hers so skimpy it was a wonder she wasn’t frozen yet and his a concoction of spikes and straps, at least ten times as much material as hers by weight or surface area. Yeah, this was the right place.
I waited in the long line and didn’t wince too badly when they dinged me twenty-two dollars just to get in. I’d charge it to the company somehow, get reimbursed, or so I hoped.
A woman in an ornate blue dress frothing with lace and cut low in front traded my newly acquired ticket for a map as I entered. She was old enough to know better, I thought, as she recommended the jousting tournament at the end of the day. Ahead of me loomed a tall building hung with hammock-like swings, slightly impeding my view of brats sliding down a long slope on fake horses, pointing neon lances at a ring held by a three-foot wood dragon. On the left, a grown man thumb-wrestled a child, while standing on a giant chess board. The whole thing was a chaos of garish colors and raised voices. I wanted to go back to bed.
Instead, I opened my map and scanned the area. The “Gaming Glen” looked promising, offering (besides the swan swing, archery and mug slide) a weapons booth with the next demonstration at one. I glanced at my watch. If I hurried -- I hurried.
Bad idea, it turned out. I did four laps of the dance stage before luckily ending up at the weapons booth, though entirely by chance. The crowds had dispersed, mostly, so I went up to the man standing by the fire and asked with my best tough voice, “Excuse me, sir?” He was big, okay?
“Aye, m’lady,” he said, turning.
“I wonder if you sell anything like this?” I asked, ridiculously proud of my own subtlety as I proffered one of the photos.
A booming laugh echoed from his belly. “I’m quite sorry, m’lady, but we sell only quality wares here. What ye have there is a first class fake. Pretty to look at, tis true, but likely to shatter and break on first contact with the cold black hearts of m’lady’s enemies.”
I tried to smile. He was kidding, I was pretty sure. But -- “So you couldn’t, say, heave this through a door?”
He chuckled. “Not unless ‘twere a very flimsy door. Perhaps I can interest m’lady in one of our throwing daggers?”
“No, it was this size,” I said, more to myself.
“A bastard sword, then? But ye wouldn’t be able to throw it through doors, no more than ye could that.” He gestured at the picture, adding, “That one can’t have much balance, but not even with something like this--” he laid a two foot piece of metal across his finger and let it sway to a perfectly balanced halt -- “even with this you couldn’t get through a real solid door easy, and certainly ‘tis too heavy to throw.”
“Well, thanks,” I said, “I’ll keep that in mind.” Weird.
Back at the hotel, I snuck in behind a pair of plump tourists who, judging by their clothing, had come from the same place I had. I went up to the room, where the door seemed to have been mysteriously mended, already. Curious, I ran my fingers along the door, feeling for something, anything. And -- there! My fingers rode over a faint seam in the door. Following it, I found it enclosed an area roughly a foot square. I gave the edge a slightly harder poke with my finger, and it came away with dark brown paint clinging to it.
Financial is going to kill me for this if I’m wrong. I dug my pocketknife out and pushed it into the door outside the area. With effort I could slowly wedge it deeper, but it was difficult. I extracted it and tried again inside the square. The blade slid in like the proverbial hot knife through butter.
Just then my cell phone beeped. I hit the pick-up button. “Hanson here.”
“It’s Scott,” came the tinny voice. I went outside for better reception. “Beth, I checked through the prints. They match up to one Rob Garrow, age 22. Been in trouble a couple times -- disturbing the peace, threats and stuff.”
“But if he’s the motel kid, he touched it after. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“The prints were all over the blade,” he said smugly. “Did he touch the whole thing, or just the hilt?”
“What?”
“The, um, handle.”
I thought. “You’re right, he only touched the hilt. So -- if he did it -- why?”
“That’s your department,” he said smugly, hanging up.
I sighed and went back into the hotel -- and noticed the kid, Rob, wasn’t behind the desk. Well, why not? I went up to check things out. Lying open on the desk was a map of the Faire I’d just vacated, with a route in blue Sharpie leading to the jousting field, and a doodle that might have been X-marks-the-spot or might have been -- I squinted -- a skull and crossbones.
Great. Just great.
Once I was driving down a straight stretch without much traffic, I phoned Rob again. “Those random threats. Directed towards?”
“Tourists, mostly, folks from out of town,” he said. “Not much of a common thread besides that.”
“But this is the back end of nowhere. Why would tourists come here -- except the Faire?” Speaking of which... I braked and pulled into the huge, grassy parking lot.
There were faint beeps from the other end, which I took to be Rob checking it out. “Yeah, a surprisingly large portion of them are on the SCA membership register.” Before I could ask, he clarified, “Society for Creative Anachronism. You’d say renaissance faire geeks. There’s also a charge of defacing property, and it’s at the address of that faire too.”
“That’s what I figured,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up and sprinted for the entrance. They made me pay admission again, but I didn’t have the time to argue.
I ran for the jousting field. The demonstration was set to start at four. If I hurried, I might make it.
But of course, I got lost again. By the time I got to the field and pushed my way to the front, there was already someone lying flat on the ground, looking wounded. As I watched, a quartet of youths carried a stretcher out and gently transferred the man onto it. I sighed. I’d been too late. But -- I took a second look at the figure on the stretcher. In different clothing, red with exertion, but it was Rob. And they were carrying him out? He twitched a little, shifting slightly as if to be more comfortable, and I realized there was no way he was as hurt as he was pretending to be. They took him out, he’d get away, and maybe hurt more people.
So I shoved my way through the crowd to the hill they were climbing to leave, ducked under the ropes, and strode up to the stretcher. “Beth Hanson, police,” I said, waving my badge.
“Huh?” one of the kids said eloquently, almost losing his grip on the primitive stretcher.
I looked Rob in the eye. “Clever,” I said. “You touched the sword afterwards so that I’d think that was why your fingerprints were on there. You thought I’d never suspect the poor little kid behind the desk. You’re busted, punk. I’m glad these folks took you down. Because you were gunning for them, huh? Tired of all the tourism from the faire? Of having to clean up after these freaks and listen to Rocky Road to Dublin at all hours of the night? Nice try, buster.” I brandished my handcuffs. “You’re not really hurt, are you? You’re coming with me.”
“M’lady--” he began, then cleared his throat and dropped the accent. “You’ve got it all wrong, ma’am. I... I always deliver the bill that way. With the sword? People who come here for the faire really get a kick out of it, and nobody comes here for anything else. And they’re pretty clean, and I like Rocky Road, as long as it’s not the Dropkick Murphys version.”
“But the sword was fake!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t very well going to leave one of my good ones where people like you could pick it up for ‘evidence’!” Appreciative laughter from the crowd nearest us, and the hiss of people whispering to people farther away exactly what was going on. He added, “And I put the balsa wood panels in specially so even the bad swords go through.”
“Then what about the charges of disturbing the peace? The threats?” I asked smugly.
He had the grace to go red, and mumbled something. “What?” I asked again.
“Paintball,” he said. “There’s, um, not much to do during winter round here. So my friends and I bundled up and, um, kind of snuck into the faire grounds to play paintball. And, um, we kinda got caught by some people surveying the grounds for next year. And we sort of shot at them.” My jaw dropped. “They weren’t hurt!” he said defensively.
“But the threats,” I persisted.
“There’s, er, residential housing a little way through those fences. And we were kind of yelling things like...” He mumbled something, and I decided I didn’t want to hear.
Everyone was staring. I tried not to blush. Ah, well, if there ever was a time for an overblown exit... I threw my hands up, cast my eyes toward the sky. “Boys will be boys,” I sighed, and strode out.
Behind me, the bloke seated up on the platform -- King Richard? -- smoothly ad-libbed lines about the Black Knight’s narrow escape from the law. There was applause. Ha. Part of the show, was I? Ah, well. If I got kicked off the force for today’s hijinks, at least I’d have a backup gig.
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(I only have more to say about this than your poems because, while I enjoy your poems, I never "get" poetry at all. Prose I can handle!)
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When we switched stories in Creative Writing class, my reader (
And thus, genius was born. :P Doesn't it kill the whole story to know where I was coming from? :D
And I'm glad to hear the exposition was smooth too, as I think it's one of the hardest things to do. (But I wanna tell you all the irrelevant background details noooooow! It's all so neat and pretty in my head! What do you mean you're bored?) So thanks thanks thanks! :D