Jerry's Birthday
Jul. 23rd, 2007 02:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordwhackerThis... oddly dark little gem comes from a challenge by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eternalism to write a story of exactly 522 words containing a pickaxe, a party hat, and pineapples.
Jerry's Birthday (522 words, first draft)
On his 36th birthday Jerry made a terrible social faux-pas by somehow getting himself killed at his own birthday party. By this time the guests had already paid Jerry his mandatory birthday “hello’s” and had moved on to much more urgent matters. They had all so uniformly decided to ignore him that his death went unnoticed until close to three in the morning.
Cam and I had finally persuaded everyone to give up and go home and were rather... amorous, if more than a little drunk. The door to Jerry’s guest room opened as Cam pushed my body against it. In a moment of reasessment we saw that we weren’t alone. Jerry lay on the floor by the cot, his conical party hat pulled down over his face.
“Oh, Jerry,” Cam said, straightening himself out - though his shirt was half undone. “Didn’t mean to wake you, mate.”
“He’s out cold, Cam. Leave him.”
“Naw, he’ll need to roll over, don’t want him choking on his own vomit.” Cam lifted the party hat from Jerry’s face.
Only there was no face left. Only something angry and red.
“Cam. Pull it down again.”
He did. “Better than a cold shower.”
“Did everyone else go?”
“As far as I know.”
A small sound made him flinch. I listened. Again - leather on floorboards. “Upstairs.”
The world tilted in front of me as I ran down the hall, trying to keep up with Cam’s long strides. I regretted, regretted that last beer, the one that made me wonder how much of this I was dreaming. An urgency gripped me as we mounted the stairs, a fist in my guts. I wanted to run, but Cam’s image in front of me pulled me on. He needs me.
At the top of the stairs a human grunt sent Cam to the floor, slung down by the broad side of a pickaxe. A form - a man, Cam’s size - drew up, ready to swing it back down for the killing blow.
The pineapple hit the murderer’s head with enough force to snap it down and nearly bowl him over. He stumbled and spun around to face me and the other one hit him square in the mouth, sending teeth and blood flying. The pickaxe clattered to the ground as he clutched at his mouth, falling against the wall in pain. Cam got up and made use of his expensive Jujitsu classes by keeping him in a hold while I called the police.
“And you say you defended yourself with... book-ends, ma’am?”
I nodded. “Nice sized marble ones. Shaped like a couple of pineapples. Always bothered me. Thought they were quite tacky, really.”
“Tacky - but useful.”
“Finally. Jerry was never much of a reader. Not of books, anyway. Always liked pineapples. What did he used to say about them, Cam?”
“Pineapples - them’s one crazy fruit,” he said, impersonating Jerry, though he hesitated, like he wasn’t sure if it was all right.
After Jerry’s funeral I started thinking, wondering if life was going to go on like this, being so insufferably the same as it had been while Jerry was alive.
---
Now, a challenge that I think I'll take up myself: pick a colour, and then write a description/scene that eminates this colour (literally or figuratively or both) - but never actually use the name of the colour in the text. (For added fun: don't divulge your colour, and make people figure it out :-)
eternalism to write a story of exactly 522 words containing a pickaxe, a party hat, and pineapples.Jerry's Birthday (522 words, first draft)
On his 36th birthday Jerry made a terrible social faux-pas by somehow getting himself killed at his own birthday party. By this time the guests had already paid Jerry his mandatory birthday “hello’s” and had moved on to much more urgent matters. They had all so uniformly decided to ignore him that his death went unnoticed until close to three in the morning.
Cam and I had finally persuaded everyone to give up and go home and were rather... amorous, if more than a little drunk. The door to Jerry’s guest room opened as Cam pushed my body against it. In a moment of reasessment we saw that we weren’t alone. Jerry lay on the floor by the cot, his conical party hat pulled down over his face.
“Oh, Jerry,” Cam said, straightening himself out - though his shirt was half undone. “Didn’t mean to wake you, mate.”
“He’s out cold, Cam. Leave him.”
“Naw, he’ll need to roll over, don’t want him choking on his own vomit.” Cam lifted the party hat from Jerry’s face.
Only there was no face left. Only something angry and red.
“Cam. Pull it down again.”
He did. “Better than a cold shower.”
“Did everyone else go?”
“As far as I know.”
A small sound made him flinch. I listened. Again - leather on floorboards. “Upstairs.”
The world tilted in front of me as I ran down the hall, trying to keep up with Cam’s long strides. I regretted, regretted that last beer, the one that made me wonder how much of this I was dreaming. An urgency gripped me as we mounted the stairs, a fist in my guts. I wanted to run, but Cam’s image in front of me pulled me on. He needs me.
At the top of the stairs a human grunt sent Cam to the floor, slung down by the broad side of a pickaxe. A form - a man, Cam’s size - drew up, ready to swing it back down for the killing blow.
The pineapple hit the murderer’s head with enough force to snap it down and nearly bowl him over. He stumbled and spun around to face me and the other one hit him square in the mouth, sending teeth and blood flying. The pickaxe clattered to the ground as he clutched at his mouth, falling against the wall in pain. Cam got up and made use of his expensive Jujitsu classes by keeping him in a hold while I called the police.
“And you say you defended yourself with... book-ends, ma’am?”
I nodded. “Nice sized marble ones. Shaped like a couple of pineapples. Always bothered me. Thought they were quite tacky, really.”
“Tacky - but useful.”
“Finally. Jerry was never much of a reader. Not of books, anyway. Always liked pineapples. What did he used to say about them, Cam?”
“Pineapples - them’s one crazy fruit,” he said, impersonating Jerry, though he hesitated, like he wasn’t sure if it was all right.
After Jerry’s funeral I started thinking, wondering if life was going to go on like this, being so insufferably the same as it had been while Jerry was alive.
---
Now, a challenge that I think I'll take up myself: pick a colour, and then write a description/scene that eminates this colour (literally or figuratively or both) - but never actually use the name of the colour in the text. (For added fun: don't divulge your colour, and make people figure it out :-)
