The walk through the city was more dreadful than usual. Stopping at the ‘STOP’ sign seemed meaningless as I could now feel the drugs kick in. Luckily the glorious drugs brought back the memory from last night, the sensational feeling he gave me, even just looking at him frying the egg white on the hot pan somehow evoked my promiscuity. As I strolled through the park, I heard the shilling sound of a swallow. It reminded me of the news of Epilson exploding last night. Epilson means ‘the swallower’. Such improbable hints of our forbidden affection. Being in the city that never sleeps has its advantages as the munchies were now starting to affect me. Oh how I craved some Dalloon spring rolls with Uncle Ben’s sauce and Heinz ketchup.
As I walked in to the store I somehow misread the sign they had on the floor, “Car rental” instead of “Caution wet floor”. It must have been the drugs affecting my vision. As I ran towards the list item on my munchie’s wish-list, I slipped and fell, knocking down all the Toms chocolates. A nearby child uttered "mommy! bamama!". "No Eragon, she didn’t slip on a banana". I got up and remembered that I had spent the last dollars at the dealers’. For a moment, I felt the barrel of my colt in my pocket nudging me as my ill-tempered companion begged me to rob the store. The barrel felt like the one of a musket, but then I thought about the poor Chinese shopkeeper who had to make a living selling unions in red, white, yellow, and try to push the sales of sweet potatoes or fries, just to get through the day. This wasn’t fair. As I had every intention of walking out of there with my
conscience clear. As I walked past him with I noticed he had his hand on a shotgun. Did he hear my inner thoughts? I felt the anger within me rising up so I turned back and asked him for a pack of Venus razorblades and a M.A.C lip balm, situated next to the glue on the shelf. He nodded and slowly turned his back to me. My inner voice said no, but it was my anger that pulled up my gun and shot him, hitting him in the head like JFK and the brains splatter stained my dress. His frozen expression reminded me of the phantoms in The Lonely Painting. As the woman and child ran out, I flipped the ‘Sorry, we’re closed’ sign, and gazed at the 'No Smoking' sign. As if, I thought, and lighted another doobie without thinking of the ‘Fire Hazard’ sign. It was noon and so people would probably have heard the shot. I pushed aside a saw as I quickly grabbed some wood, a hammer and nails and forced the door shut. If only I had a ‘No trespassing’ sign.
I made my way to the centre of town, walking past McDonald’s. I was once more tempted to use my gun, the annoying birds flying everywhere. The garbage was everywhere, it was a feast for the doves and the waddling of seagulls reminded me of a penguin, I realised at that point just how much drugs I had done. I ran in panic away from the birds, only to find myself in a dead end. I looked at the ‘Cautious, Children at Play’ and realised it was a school yard. My travel through the city had come to an end, as an ominous crow’s cry drowned in the sirens.
By: Tinna & Hawkins
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ReplyDeleteWe did this writing game with inspiration from the writing game where we had to take turns in writing words and sentences, as we took turns in writing a few sentences without correcting the other person's writing and not commenting it. We also used all the objects from both the lists (12 signs, 2 guns, 6 birds etc.) which made it hard to limit the text to 450 words as well as integrating it in the text. Luckily there were some of the same choises such as JFK as the dead politician and the time of day.
ReplyDeleteDon't think I've ever read travel writing by a drug addict before. Reads more like true crime/confessions than travel lit.
ReplyDeleteThe ingredients are quite well mixed (too many birds, though!), and the trick of have a hallucinating narrator makes a big difference as you can let her imagine some otherwise pretty unlikely things...
Yes, we found it very hard to do a travel writing with so many diverse ingredients and it quickly turned into a crime story than anything as we thought the word count limited us alot (especially since we did twice the ingredients than meant to do). Furthermore, we agree on the part with waaay too many birds, but again, that's because of the double ingredients list. And yes, the druggie imagination helped a lot.
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