Challenge 11: Fin's world

The evacuation started around midafternoon. Cowie took me with her to their little hideout - an open alleyway between tall brick houses, which was blocked up by detritus on either end. Bits of wood, a rotting garbage heap, a dead dog and piles of sacking. She was most worried about her man, who still wasn't back. "We're good here," she told me. "They're all caught up in their own business."
"What about Fin though?"
She acknowledged that this was a problem.
They'd had an argument the night before. She thought he wasn't there enough for the boys. He thought the boys wouldn't have anything to eat if it weren't for him. The boys - Et and Ley - and I sat aside in the bedroom while they argued. "They want Ley to get married," Et told me, "but he doesn't even get to go out and work, so I dunno what he'd do with a woman."
Ley said, "It's only Cowie. Since when does Fin care? He'd take me to work if he could."

"We'll never agree," sighed Cowie as we lazed in the corner furthest from the dog. "Fin's such a linear, practical view of the world. Work, marry, children. I want them to grow up in an exciting world!"
"It seems pretty exciting to me," I said wryly.
"But Fin doesn't see it that way! This is my point. His world is just there to be dealt with. He sees a difficulty, he deals with it. Ack, this is not like him." She climbed onto the sacks - not clambering, although she should’ve been. She just climbed right up no problems, peered over. "He sees a difficulty, he should turn up. We're gonna miss the evac, is what. Oi, boys."

Ley put aside the wind-up clock he'd been playing with. "We going?"
"No sign o’ Fin yet."
"We've only been here seven minutes, sheh!"
Minutes don’t mean much here, and I’d never heard any of them asking the time before. Cowie sat next to me again, wrinkling her nose as she moved aside a bit of soggy newspaper. "I want them to experience everything. To enjoy it. To absorb it. To see it through different eyes every day!"

I wasn't sure what to think of this, because Cowie didn’t have a job, and given that attitude in this place, if it weren't for Fin she probably wouldn't have anything to eat either.
Ley and Et started to hit one another. Nothing major – Cowie just ignored it. “Their names are short for Finley and Finnet. I was hoping they’d look just like him.”
“Well, that’s not so exciting, you’ve already got Fin,” I pointed out. “Didn’t you want your boys to be something different?”
Cowie didn’t answer this. “How long’s it been?”
“Eight minutes. We really have to wait in here?”
“No, I want you boys to go down to the ‘port. Me’n Fin will come when he gets back.”
Ley puts his clock in his pocket. “Ya sure?”
I know just as well as Cowie does that they won’t go down to the ‘port. They’ll go uptown where Fin works – it’s a couple of kilometres from here – and try to find him.
“No...you boys stay here and I’m’na look for Fin. You can come if you like,” she added to me. “But, Cowie,” protests Et. “What if neither of you’n Fin come back?”
“Well...you got that clock. Give it...uh...an hour. Give it an hour, ‘n if neither of us back you should go for the evac.”

I didn't know how far away the 'port was, but Cowie didn't know what an hour was. In our mutual ignorance, we left the boys behind and climbed – well, she climbed and I clambered – out of the alley. The city was dead quiet, apart from occasional yells where someone was still home. We had to duck out of the way a couple times to make sure we weren’t spotted. “I wonder if Fin’s gone to the port without us.”
“Leave the boys behind?”
“He’d take them to work if he could!”
I shut up then, because it was cold and she was upset. We went along like that for a while. And that’s how I ended up being with Cowie when she got to where Fin worked and found all of his stuff, scattered around. All the furniture upside-down. “They must’ve come through here already...”

“Hey Cowie, we’d better head back to the boys,” I say, grabbing her arm. I don’t know what it means, and here I was thinking the walls were holding during the evac, but Cowie’s shaking and sits down on the underside of the upside-down table, staring around like she can’t see anything. I’ve never been here, but I recognise Fin’s favourite pin-cushion with the stuffing coming out. “He’s got it too...my Fin!”

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Word count: 805

Challenge 1: Paramour

“Lucas”, he laughed, “you are what the sun will always sing.”

A moment ago, el sol sat in the sky wearing his purple wedding dress, the one with the orange vale. He doesn’t know that the aisle he walks goes around and around, or that he’ll be back here in a day. Timeless waiting takes timeless patience and often, in frustration, he burns with anger, or hides and sobs. But still he walks.

El sol is not the only ignorant. Long ago, nobody realised the earth was a sphere.

Now, las estrellas are beginning to arrive. Too late to hem their lover’s fiery dress with silver lace, or to set his bright blue hair glancing with gemstones; still, timelessly, they seek a trysting place.

The street is hushed, expectant. A young woman saunters into the lamplight, she drags a giggling man. He pulls her against him and tilts her neck to bite collarbone and now she is giggling, he arrect, they trace their shadows around a corner.

“Lucas”, he assured, “you know I will be there.”

Waiting like el sol is enduring and empty. But expecting is urgent and full of him. Full of his moonlike features, his gaunt and silvered bone-hollows. Full of his shadowed breath and the way he cuts the universe in half with his eyes. Full of his bold thrill.

The streetlamps know he is coming and flicker their mockery.

“Lucas”, he insisted, “their slurs, their spit, they don’t matter. Always remember to leave them behind.”

The wind knows he is coming and hisses its disapproval – para-hhaha-mour, para-hhaha-mour.

In this way I am the luckiest man in the universe, luckier than a sunbeam: he will keep his tryst. He is coming.

There are moths under this lamp and they know he is coming before he is here. They scatter sideways. I scatter at the sideways scowls of moths who have never before seen two men in a lover’s embrace.

With full, insistent lips he kisses collarbone.
“Lucas,” he craves, “it’s no different, it’s no more shocking. Long ago nobody realised the earth was a sphere.”

wordcount: 348

Challenge 11: My Mistress' Secret

My mistress is not sleeping well. Many nights, she murmurs, rustling sheets and beads of sweat on her brow. Sometimes, she wakes with a cry, eyes wide, heart pounding like a skittish gazelle.

This morning, she emerges from her bedroom, dressed in loosely fitting robes that only emphasize how thin she has become. She puts on her best ‘normal’ face and sips her tea, leafing through the mail. She has a visitor, Emily, and before going into the lounge, she checks her reflection in the bathroom mirror, hating the face she sees there.

I arrange the platters of fruit and cheese just so, while Emily waits, long red nails tapping on the glass topped table. There are tattoos all over her skin, dark and twisting, like vines with thorns. My lady emerges, cheeks flushed, muttering to herself beneath her breath. We are all used to the way she does this and think nothing of it, mostly.

“Sister,” Emily says, rising to embrace my mistress. They are not blood sisters, but they share one tattoo in common, a serpent encircling the sun. Emily’s is on the back of her hand. She is not afraid to show who she is. My lady’s is more disguised. It sits at the base of her spine, a place only a maid or a lover would see.

My mistress smiles, kissing Emily’s cheek. “Welcome, sister. You have news?”

“I do,” she glances at me and my lady dismisses me at once. I bow and take my leave.

The girls huddle in the kitchenette, swapping rumours. Jenifer kneads bread for our lady’s evening bread, whispering, “Emily is an assassin. She tattoos a thorn for every kill.”

Diedra is preserving fruit from our lady’s garden. “Her Holiness would not allow a servant of the Dark God into her home.”

Our mistress is a priestess. I am her student. I listen to their theories and let my mind wander. One thing my mistress does not know about my abilities – I can project my vision.

“I will confirm my suspicions tonight,” Emily says.

“And if you are right…” my lady takes a slow sip of her tea. “You know what you must do.”

“Of course,” Emily stands, kissing the silver ring on my mistress’ finger.

The day passes slowly. My mistress spends much of it in meditation. She prays more fervently than ever and the voice in her head will not give her peace. She mutters over and over, fighting with herself in the privacy of her cloister.

There is soup for dinner tonight, caught by our island’s own fishermen. My mistress does not emerge to join us. We pray for her, and Emily, whatever she may be.

Night and sleeping, screams in the distance, though too faint to wake any of the girls. I am just sensitive. I am gifted. The shutter in the hall bangs in the wind, almost masking the sound of feet, whispering over marble tiles. Ghostly eyes without a body, I watch as Emily slips through the shadows into my lady’s room. She has spatters of blood on her skin and her white, knee length dress is torn. She puts her bloodies knives down on the bedside table and wakes my lady with a kiss. Eyes flutter open and the words, “It is done,” echo faintly.

My lady arises and stares for a moment out the window, her eyes full of conflict. Then she guides Emily into the adjoining bathroom and strips off the torn dress, sponging away the dirt and blood with her own hands. In return, Emily slips the thin straps of my lady’s dress off her shoulders, helping the silk slip to the floor. They embrace and kiss, tenderly at first, then with more and more violence as recollections of their guilt overtake. Somehow, they make it to the bed again, a mess of hands and passion and groans of frustrated pleasure. I feel a heat in me, wishing, perhaps, that I could be a part of their world.

Eventually, there is nothing left in them and Emily falls asleep. It is only then, that my lady lets the tears flow. It is her secret self who grieves for fallen friends and a cruel betrayal. I know this side of her, this woman, trapped inside the body of a tyrant. She looks at the naked woman beside her, face cringing in disgust. She arises and goes to the window, watching for the dawn. She lifts one of Emily’s knives and positions it over her breast, hands trembling at the thought of driving it home. But then my lady returns to her senses, voice harsh as she says, “Keep your hands to yourself, you bitch.”

Wordcount: 782

Challenge 11

Create a narrator intimate to the story but outside it as well. The wonderful effect of a narrator who is intertwined with a story but also essentially unimportant to its outcomes is that you have more leisure to explore the complexities of the plot, the kinks in it, and the gaps of knowledge this cheerful spectator is going to have. Don't make her omniscient or even close - though she can guess expertly at the problems she is observing and can even be wrenched by the emotional logjams she is witness to.

Wordcount: 800 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 10: Mr Umber's dinner party

Mr Umber was having a battle with the housekeeper.

It had started even before the dinner party. In fact, it's been going on for years. It's just a bit more embarrassing when everyone's there. The current theory: the reason Mr Umber never has dinner parties is because he's terrified of the housekeeper. They are talking about it (when Mr Umber is downstairs trying to find out where the cheese has got to). It's clear that everyone (who's fashionable) is having a battle with their housekeeper.

Sadly, no one seems to have told Mr Umber. He came up the stairs looking forlorn, and doesn't say anything about the cheese when he sits down.
"Darling, don't worry about it," says Mr Umber's cousin, Lady Aspic. "You know, everyone has trouble with the hired help."
The cheese, and the housekeeper, wander in about ten minutes later. They've brought two maids with them: one looking sullen and half asleep, and the other looking slightly pregnant.

Mr Umber, with much nudging from Lady Aspic and her companion, instructs the housekeeper to remain in the room. "You can't go running after them. If they won't respond to the bell, then they should stay where they can be of use."

"He needs a woman to look after him, that's what," whispers Mr Hartle to Mr Osman. "She'd know what to do with the servants."
"The problem is this unionisation business they keep going on about. They think they can get away with anything these days." The housekeeper moves half an inch closer to the table.
Mr Umber hears this part of their conversation too. "Actually - " he's interrupted because Lady Aspic spills wine on her dress and shrieks.

This is considered the signal for the ladies to retire. The housekeeper follows us - the sleepy maid is left with the men - and Lady Aspic is brought water and towels.

Another reason why Mr Umber should find himself a wife is that she would be able to lend Lady Aspic a dress to wear. Lady Aspic has already told her carriage to come at eleven, but she must sit 'til then in her wet, wine-stained gown.

The housekeeper fetches a little wooden chair for the slightly pregnant maid, and fusses over Lady Aspic's dress.

"That man is utterly scatterbrained," Lady Aspic tells the room. "One of these days he'll forget his own hat!"

She turns to the housekeeper. "I hope you don't let him forget his own hat."
"No, m'm."
"But you forgot his cheese."
"It was late being delivered, m'm."
"Tradespeople. You can never trust these shopkeepers to be on time. Now, why don't you take that girl away."

The housekeeper takes the wooden chair and the maid takes the extra towels.

"Letting a girl in her condition see to the ladies! Appalling." Lady Aspic's companion inspects her gloves as if something could have soiled them.

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Word count: 481

Permission!!

Iconoclast suggested that we check that we are allowed to be writing this blog, so we sent the following email to Brian Kiteley, the Author of The 3 a.m. Epiphany:

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Dear Professor Kiteley,

We are writing to you about your book 'The 3 AM Epiphany'. We are a group of amateur writers who love your book, and enjoy sharing the exercises. To this end, we have recently started a blog - http://3amepiphanyproject.blogspot.com - on which we regularly post a challenge from your book, and our responses.

We have linked to your book on Amazon.com but it has just occurred to us that there may be copyright issues with posting the exercises, and we would like to find out what your feelings are on this.

Yours sincerely,
[Anistasya and The Iconoclast]

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We were excited to recieve a response within hours:

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Dear [Anistasya and The Iconoclast],

I am delighted you're doing this. I don't believe there are any copyright problems with the blog and using the language of the exercises, as long as you keep the link to the Amazon page fairly obvious.

Thanks for the kind remarks.

Best wishes,

Brian Kiteley, Professor and Associate Chair
English Department
University of Denver

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We are very excited and more enthusiastic than ever. Here goes the next 190 exercises!

And now for something completely different

The blog is in its second week now, although I'm sure it feels like longer when you're doing the challenges! This seems like a good time to give a bit of background on the contributors, so that we each have some idea of who we'll be sharing our writing with over the next few months.

Those of you who wish to do so, please feel free to leave a comment telling us about your interest in writing, why you're undertaking this challenge, and any other information you'd like us to know.

As a general note, we're a group of enthusiastic New Zealanders, scattered around the country, with varying degrees of experience and interest in writing, brought together by the beautiful Anistasya, who has already completed her first novel and the talented Nightfire, winner of more Nanowrimo's than should be allowed!