Okay, so this is the first new one. It's based on a posting today on Today's Cool News about a Christopher Hitchens piece in Slate about the poor level of political discourse in America today.
I took seven words/phrases out of the Hitchens story for this prompted freewrite I call "The Green Lapels"
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Lapel *
Stability *
vapid and vacuous *
potty-training *
Dream *
Riposte *
Landscape *
I made a stupid mistake. I suppose that's because my attention was focused on the lapels of the man standing in the doorway of my walk-up rented room.
One doesn't expect to see lapels on the coat of the sort of man who wanders into this "Care Not Cash" SRO hotel on San Francisco's Market Street and certainly not ones that looked like these. They were green (the rest of the coat was a grey pinstripe) with sparkling cubic zirconium fake diamonds studded around the seams.
On second thought, perhaps that's exactly the kind of garb you would expect on a man in this dump. In any case, the lapels were a distraction I couldn't afford. By the time I looked up, his fist was just inches from my nose. Far too late to duck but just enough time to turn and keep from getting the thing broken. Still I took a hard punch to the side of the face.
Dazed, I reached back with my left hand to the small dresser for stability while my right hand reached for the gun in my waistband behind me.
Again, he was too quick. His gun was in my face before I made it to my belt. After watching my weapon disappear into his waistband, I found myself bouncing on the hard surface of the room's small bed.
In the kinds of detective novels my ex-wife read, I would have had some witty reposte for the man holding a cheap revolver about three inches from my nose. Instead what I came out with bordered more on the vapid and vacuous. Perhaps it was the taste of blood in my mouth.
"Let me explain the landscape around here to you," his voice startled me from my dream. That's when I noticed the intensity of his eyes. They were so powerful, so mad, so beyond this earth, that I knew I didn't have much time.
"Ever have any kids?" I allowed my eyes to unfocus as I said it.
"Wha?" his gun was shaking now.
"Ever have to potty-train a small child?" I was shouting now, raving, my hands flailing. Soon his arms were waving with mine.
It was all the time I needed. I grabbed his gun hand and pushed it upward, away from both of us. At the same time, I swept his feet out from under him and wrestled him to the floor.
Later as I sat on the edge of the ambulance allowing that cute paramedic to patch my face, I wondered how much truth to put in the paperwork, especially about those damned lapels.
This is outstanding. I love this. You're clearly disturbed--but I love this. Really: You have a gift for fiction.
Posted by: John Shore | March 07, 2008 at 09:41 PM