All entries for Wednesday 08 October 2008

Intro to Creative Writing Week 1

Inside Michael Davenant’s brain his synapses fizzed and bubbled. Cells formed and reformed and drifted to the edges to form part of a chain dissolving into a tributary artery. The 500,000 cells that contained his knowledge of the secret buzzed deafeningly.

Michael was worried. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see; every once in a while the synapses from mind to eyes misfired, catapulting him into a world of acidic blues, greens and fluorescent reflections of dying retina platelets. This was different.

Something in the air felt life-threateningly familiar.

It was here.

The bulbous group of cells that knew he had to lose to save his life were drowned in a wave of adrenalin.

Michael opened his eyes to see the white, slippery floor. He looked up. Behind her flat, Flemish face were tows of spectators – and rows of empty benches. There wasn’t a large turn-out for their meeting. Good. Less people to hear whatever was said, even if it was something he didn’t want anyone to hear. Less people to see him lose.

He brought his eyes sharply back to her face.

“Aphra, “ he said. “I didn’t see you there – you know, my eyes…”

He was lying; she knew but he didn’t care.

“I understand. Unfortunate.” She expelled the words as if dissecting specimens on the bio-lab table. He’d seen her do it so many times that her precise speech seemed a necessary extension of her scientific career.

Not that she needed a career – everyone knew who her father was. She was practically royal. She was the child of privilege. For someone like him, she was untouchable.

For a moment, Michael’s heart drummed out three extra beats and his pupils dilated. He suppressed the memory of her skin against his, of sweat and death. He stopped thinking about how her eyelids caught the light like a weeping Flemish Madonna. Her chin and lips were stumpily sculpted; in the half-light velocerapterish. He stared at her lips. It wasn’t helping.

“I think you know what I’m expecting the outcome to be,” she said. He understood that she thought he would have to let her win. Migraine ricocheted across his forehead.

The hand clasping his knife twinged sympathetically. He stepped back. The bell chimed 12pm. The crowd waited – bored, tired, expectant.

Aphra stepped back twelve spaces. The bell chimed 12:01pm. It began clumsily, as she drew her knife across his face in an ungainly arc. It caught at the temple – a scratch – and blood spurted dramatically. He didn’t duck, but stayed in the same place, awaiting his punishment.

The fibrous stumplings circling his heart contracted. His brain cells floated freely through the red.

He lowered himself slowly to the floor, and lay down, arms outstretched. He let go of his knife and started at the skylight above. He wasn’t going to fight. He didn’t care anymore.

She looked down at him, puzzled.  

“What used to be worth a shekel of silver is worth a shekel of gold,” shouted the voices his atoms were creating inside his brain. The light from the ceiling grew yellower and began to be streaked with tart, acid colours.

His memories were flooding his senses in random order. Serotonin was shuffling out of its hiding place and bubbling excitedly along veins. He couldn’t care anymore. It wasn’t even a possibility.

Aphra’s eyes narrowed. She grasped her knife tighter and leant over his face. There, she slowly etched a grid in blood across his left cheek, opposite his wounded temple. She chequered it, filling in half of the squares with raw flesh. Then she stopped.

People were rushing out of the stadium. This wasn’t in the rule book. The bell clanged and the match was over.

And a moment later she was kissing his wounds – or was she sucking at them, vampirific, he couldn’t tell – and he was being carried out of sight of the crowd and the contest was over.

The clump of cells carrying the secret started to turn tubular and harden. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about medical terms. I'm making them all up.

Madeleine Beresford : 08 Oct 2008 17:34 |  Tags: Blood Death Icw Icw20089 Sex |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem