#coffeebreak: border crossing
Something a little intriguing for today’s writing challenge. Write against the photo for 10 minutes and share an excerpt of the results in the comments below.
Oberbaumbrücke, originally uploaded by LimitedExpress.
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Mark,
On behalf of all of the coffeebreakers I’d like to thank you for putting up ten coffeebreak challenges (thus far)
Over the first nine challenges I have written 2,703 words. Going to try and hit 3k with this challenge. That’ll be 3,000 words whose existence is directly related to your website!
So, Mr. Welker, take a bow.
You are leaving the American sector:
Lost. Lost again in his thoughts. Lost again in the alphabet of names scribbled on signs far above him. Looking up to the heavens, clenching his gnarled and empty fist “are you mocking me?” directed somewhere, at some one, but again the direction had leaked out, like ooze from a battery well past its use by date.
David had come here in haste, to eek out a better chance of survival, to find a better opportunity than his war ravaged homeland, to discover a better chance at life; because, well, life didn’t seem to be handing out any free tickets to him.
It had always been this way. Some kind of mass offensive thrown at him, just as one battle – sometimes yes, an actual battle – had been averted, another piece of chaos inadvertently rocked forward. Wave upon wave of life’s little uncertainties, obstacles, wars raging against the status quo.
But had he taken the right direction? It was a question beyond meaning. David had always lived like this, one foot in front of the other. Was it his will driving him forward, to something better or was it just a mindless shuffle of feet. The haze of fog silenced his inner critics and he found a way, again, to shuffle forward. He would not yield to these troubles framed heavy and drooping over his weary composition, he was determined to make the best of this. And the rest of his life would begin now. As the warmth and light of day climbed drowsily over the sky mottled with fog. His spirits rose again, against the odds…
Why thank you Mr Simpson, and thanks for pointing out the 10 challenge anniversary. My thanks is to all those who come here to participate, I am genuinely surprised every time I read what people come up with.
I’m glad its kicking some creative gears in motion. I think I will tackle the border crossing one over the weekend.
Lovely finisher Benjamin:
“As the warmth and light of day climbed drowsily over the sky mottled with fog. His spirits rose again, against the odds…”
I love surprising descriptions of sunrises – always a challenge to avoid the obvious. And the repetition of “day climbed” and “spirits rose”.
Thanks for the kind words Mark. I also echo the thanks of Daniel and the coffeebreakers, it really is a wonderful exercise in creative writing which I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate.
Regards
Benjamin
Dan the man said it best; you’ve provided a great exercise for us nine-to-fivers to use to keep our writing sharp. So thank you! (:
As for today’s prompt, I visited Berlin a year and a bit ago with my girlfriend and we went to the place this is photographed, so it was a nice reminder for me. Anyway, on with the prompt.
sketch:
‘the American’ sector could be just about anywhere (I guess that’s the thing about Americans, really–always claiming sectors in places they have no real right to, but I won’t get political here). So hey why not just put it on the moon? the source photograph is the crossing over from east to west germany -> berlin wall. So perhaps a wall on Luna, nice little synergy with the wall of China being the only man made structure (though that’s apparently not true according to Fry et al on Q.I.). alrighty, let’s do that.
write:
The strike team moved through air lock smoothly, their suit weights and jet-packs positioning them parallel to the ground. Their camouflage transformed them into spiders, evolved over million years to adapt to moonrock. The great wall loomed behind them; it had been constructed years earlier, providing the man on the moon with a roguish scar. A bank of L.E.D.s proclaimed the phrase known to many, but made famous once again by the lunar conflict: “YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR”.
There were no guns to be found amongst equipment of the team. These were special ops, silent hunters. As such, they carried only specialist pressure pumps, or impact hammers as they were commonly known. Impact hammers were a terrifying weapon, designed exclusively to fling a body far enough through the Moon’s thin atmosphere that they would escape its meagre gravity and float into space. Unless the victim possessed the same kind of jet-packs that the strike team did, they would be lost to asphyxiation or frozen to death. Of course, if the team were at risk of being captured, they would be forced to do the same thing to themselves before inhaling a suicide gas.
The strike team continued their predatory approach, unmindful of the spectacular Earthrise breaking behind them.
Very clever Phill. What a coincidence that you’d actually seen this sign in real life! I really love the idea of the impact hammers. It makes such sense. I’m not even sure that a gun would even work properly in space (anyone?) and just a little gravitational push would be enough to send a person flying for miles.
Here’s what I came up with this evening:
The sign. The road. The sign. The road. The small bin fixed to a lamp post. The wad of chewing gum welded between two cracked paving stones. The sign. Two soldiers waiting by the checkpoint. The spindly limbs of a willow stretching for the road. Ruddy water collecting in the joins, a ticket to a film smudged into the ground. The sign. Don’t look at the soldiers. The sign. The railing and beyond the slate river water and beyond a tugboat dragging itself through the drizzle and beyond the next wall of the canal tinseled with razor wire. One of the soldiers drops a cigarette and you follow the pinprick of light right down to where it fizzles out under his boot and then back up your eyes travel over the boots, the fatigues, the medipack, over two pouches bulging with metal grenades and there are his eyes. Look at the sign. It’s too late. The rifle moving from his shoulder to his hands. Look at the sign. The tin surveillance shed looming beyond the checkpoint. The line of street lamps guiding you home. The soldier gives a hand signal to the other and they move in unison to take up positions across the road. You glance down at the tugboat. One of the soldiers places a hand on your chest. The tugboat performs a long graceful turn. You can see its captain, rubbing his hands against the cold. The soldier reads clumsy German from a piece of paper. STOP. DECLARE. PAPERS. He rubs his fingers together. Points with the rifle. The gun uneasy in his hands. Look at the sign. The tugboat captain spits over the side and looks up at the point. Look at the sign. And run.
@Mark: I don’t think I can confidently can’t claim credit for the hammer idea–my memory is so bad that I dare say it’s been in a video game or some kind of sci-fi I’ve read somewhere along the line. I might try and find out if that’s the case sometime. In the meantime, thanks. (:
Your one was great, I really liked the immediacy and the way the short, punchy descriptions lent a tension to the scene. Great stuff.
You are leaving the American sector? Christ, that didn’t look familiar. I look about. The world is dreary like the inside of a whale gut and it doesn’t smell much better either. Or perhaps that smell is me. I lift my arm and have a whiff of my armpits. Oh yeah, ripe. I run my tongue into my armpit hair, taste sweat (obviously) and funnily enough, curry powder.
The curry powder. Of course.
Curry has a displacing effect on me. As a twelve year old it had started when I bit into a curried egg sandwich that knocked me into the middle of next Wednesday. I was standing in my kitchen one minute, and then I was in front of my class, spluttering a mouthful of egg. The class exploded colourfully, every child jumped up, except for one: that little boy in the back who had known, dreaded, that this moment was coming.
Time displacement is difficult to explain so it was with a fair measure of relief that the symptoms of my curry powder allergy shifted to geographical displacement.
It had actually been beneficial. I’d just get to wherever I was going quicker. When I got married, I was displaced from my plane and met my wife at the Charles De Gualle airport with some hastily purchased flowers, and a baguette.
But the symptoms, like my wife, left. I hadn’t been displaced in, shit, I guess twelve years.
You are leaving the American sector?
The pub that I was walking out of when I displaced was full of stale beer, stale cigarette smoke, stale humans. I was turning grey, as grey as this place and I was getting used to the idea you know? It seemed like a slow, boring, harmless death. I’d accepted it.
But that sign, the warning it tries to impart upon me, has the opposite effect. The grey can’t get to me now. The colour is returning to my tar stained fingertips, they dance frenetically over each other like an upturned classroom of twelve year olds.
I’m going to die here. Bring it on.
BTW, that’s 3,000+ words from your challenges… woot!
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