Saturday, April 22, 2006

Prompt Week 10

Tonight I’m sitting in the dark trying to type by the light of the computer screen. I don’t want the neighbors to see that I’m still awake. I’m afraid that one or the other of them might tap on my door hoping for some respite from their eternal fighting. It starts the minute that she pulls in the driveway after work and doesn’t stop until one of them tears away in the little red car. I hate that I have to sit and listen to the horrible names that they call each other and the brutal threats that they make against one another.

Every day is another battle in their war. The same shots are fired with the same precision as the battle before. The voices get raised to the same crescendo in the same manner. Even their physical positions are unchanged. She stands in their doorway with the yellow light behind her and he paces betweens his broken down truck and the stairs. Occasionally, one of them throws something in the other’s direction and whatever it is will lie there through the night like a soldier’s boot on a deserted battlefield. In the morning their three year old daughter plays with it while her mother loads the car.

The bluebird of happiness flies over the battlefield and lands on a boot left behind.

1 Comments:

Blogger johngoldfine said...

I liked that prompt--stole the idea from a book I'm reading called 'Kaput' about WW2. You've done wonders with it, handled it perfectly. Tone is vital in a vignette like this and you have yours just right--I'm doing vignettes in 162 this week and will steal this as an example if I may.

Sun Apr 23, 07:42:00 AM  

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