The dusty man's stooped figure was hunched over a can of white paint, he held a small wooden paintbrush in his right hand while shielding his view from the sun with his left. On his face was a look of intense concentration, his tongue was stuck out of his mouth and writhed around with each brush stroke, following the direction of the paintbrush as though it were attached to it by string. Indeed, his whole body seemed to mimic the events transpiring on the shiny pane of glass in front of the weathered man, his back arched as he painted the majestic curves of the letter “O.” His eyebrows leaped and fell as his brush followed the roller coaster ride of the flowing “M.” When he moved from letter to letter he did a little dance, hopping to the right in order to continue the flow of calligraphy without breaking his tempo. Finally, when he had reached the final letter, his face was inches away from the glass, his tongue was writhing manically with effort and his brow poured sweat into his gleaming, squinting eyes. And then it was done. Roots carefully propped the paintbrush across the rim of the paint can, sat back and looked up at the giant glass window that had so thoroughly occupied his being for the past five hours. He read aloud to himself, “ROOTS' EDIBLE HERB EMPORIUM” and fell back into a fit of giggles with a grin on his face like that of a child who had just built the biggest sand castle on the beach and didn't notice the tide slowly eating away at it's foundation beneath.
8 comments:
This is what you would do, wouldn't it? Good descriptions. I like how effort was put into the description of a simple event (painting). I also like how the character seems to be possibly childish and maybe mentally unstable.
I like the mirroring. This kind of movement is difficult to describe, but you use the letters effectively to evoke my imagination.
I like your final simily; it tells me something about the shop (threatened?) and the character (shortsighted?).
i agree, as I read the last sentence, it took me a few seconds to think, wait a second, a child building a sand castle and not noticing the tide slowly eating away at its foundation? something's gonna happen! and of course, it also shows a childlike side to his personality. i'm intrigued to read more.
I completely agree with Jake and Will. So here's nothing to really say that would add to wht they said... I reall liked the simily at the end though.
The blog that you're cahracter is in.
“I love you Jason,” JLC whispered in his ear.
That was what she said last night as she came up behind him. Last night was the first night he had seen her in over 10 years. She was shorter than he, but still average height for a woman and slender, with medium length dark brown hair. As always, he found those brown eyes with a hint of grey. She was wearing a black dress; in fact, it was the same black dress he had given her for their two year anniversary. He had tried to forget what she had done, but nothing could replace the heartbreak he had felt. Then here she was, right in front of him, and he remembered everything. All the love. All the passion. All the hatred. He didn’t know what to say, what to feel, he could only stare. After a couple of minutes, seemingly an eternity, he got up and left, returning to his apartment.
It had been 12 years since someone had called him Jason. Twelve years of James. Twelve years of hiding his emotions. Twelve years of looking through life but never finding what he wanted. Twelve years of isolation. It had been 12 years of letting no one close, letting no one know what he was truly thinking.
“Why? Why now?” Jason thought. You see James was not his real name. His real name was Jason. “Why should I care? She betrayed me. Why do I still care? Do I care? If I don’t care why haven’t I moved on? I haven’t trusted anyone for so long, why should I trust her now?” With this thought Jason finished his breakfast and decided to clear his head by going for a ride. He put on his leather jacket, which though years old, smelled of new leather, dirt, and smoke, and left the room
He went to the garage to get his bright green and black YZF-R1 Yamaha bike, and turned onto Main Street towards the expressway. Weaving in and out of traffic, his surroundings blurred around him as he fought for freedom. Signs raced passed him as he pushed his motorcycle to its limit. He didn’t worry about the police, they never bothered him. He enjoyed these rides. It’s not like anyone ever cared whether he lived or died, so why should he. These rides always cleared his mind, but this time he couldn’t stop thinking about the past and about her. He had given her everything, she was his first and last. Everyone says how hindsight is 20-20, and now he understood why. She had manipulated and used him to get what she wanted. He had loved her, and loathed her, but now he didn’t know what to think. Had he over reacted when he found out? Could it really have been a simple mistake, a slip up, and that “word” still held meaning between them? “No,” he thought. “I was right for leaving, if she had loved me as much as she said, then she would not have…” And then Jason realized that he had ridden 200 miles outside the city. He needed to get back before he ran out of gas.
Once back in town, Jason stopped by the new root shop, Roots’ Edible Herb Emporium, which had just opened. As he approached the door, he saw a box lying just outside the door and a sign which read “Free Husky Puppies.” By now only one was left, a girl, who appeared to be sleeping. She was tiny and had a beautiful black and white coat. Jason wondered why someone would get rid of such a beautiful animal, but decided to think about it later as he walked into the slightly run down, hole in the wall store with the freshly painted sign. The owner immediately came up to greet him and asked him what he wanted, saying all the time that he was so excited about opening up this store and it was wonderful he already had his first customer. Jason told him he wanted the Salvia divinorum, a plant containing one of the most potent hallucinogens known to man. All of a sudden the man stopped all his giggling and dancing and was very serious. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked. “Yes,” Jason responded. Jason paid and left, paying the man no more attention. Once outside, Jason found the husky puppy had awoken, climbed out of the box and was sitting next to his bike. The puppy just sat there looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes. The same color as his, but with more emotion. His were dead. He often heard people refer to his gaze as that of ice and death, lacking complete emotion. Jason carefully placed the puppy in his jacket, zipped it up, so she was not in danger of falling out and returned home.
Back in his room, he pulled 10 Things I Hate About You, one of his favorite movies, from the rack under the TV. He had given a lot of thought to naming the little puppy and finally came up with Sasha. Sasha on the other hand was skittering around the room, still not able to walk completely, sniffing and biting everything she saw. He sat down on the couch and began to smoke. Sasha jumped up in his lap, curled into a ball, yawned, and went to sleep, while Jason began to watch the movie.
Brie turned slightly in the stool and slid the glass to the other side of the countertop. She looked carefully back at the bartender, over the flipped-up collarof her sheepskin jacket, before sliding down over the orange vellum and fighting her way through the heavy Irish lemonwood out to the crusty city, with the cleansing chill, that frosts over all the filth and cans and cats and corpses. It was nearly time for dinner.
I wasn't really getting anywhere, on my feet, in my thinning shoes and stuffy stockings. The streets passed like warped time, and they barely registered before the feeling. It came over the world, with such force that I turned to watch the epiphanies dawn in people's eyes. No epiphanies. Dull knife faces.
The bitter cold was tears in my eyes when a warm flood came to my face from the bookshop. I let myself be pulled in and quietly felt the sun in the rank flourescence of the store. The store's smell filled me.
The man at the counter looked at me from over his computer. There was familiarity in the gesture as there was familiarity in his eyes. I turned on a heel and hid behind the books.
I left the bookstore sneezing. The street was getting a burgundy-anguished colour, a colour for seeing out a window, not for walking in. I ducked into the next door I saw, to look for a phone or something. I had hated the moors at night, and I didn't want to find out what night in a town felt like.
Inside was a large countertop; further back, rows of wooden shelves with jars and mysterious things. I liked it right away.
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w119/bridgettewiggins/applicationforrootshop.jpg
"as I read the last sentence, it took me a few seconds to think, wait a second, a child building a sand castle and not noticing the tide slowly eating away at its foundation? something's gonna happen!"
-x-
Agreed. Which brings up the question, will my character notice, if she ends up working there? Or is this another black hat?
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