Monday Mission: No Ideas but in Things

(Today's mission is to write a 500-word postcard story without dialogue or any description of characters' interior states. Every idea needs to be placed in an object or an action.)

She fastened her skirt behind her hips, tucked in her high-necked green sweater, pulled up her tights and squirmed her feet into her black boots. Reflexively, before leaving for her new job, she fastened her silver pentacle around her neck, then did up her winter coat and grabbed her purse and ran for the bus.

The bus was late and full and she found a spot by the rear door to stand, holding the railing, staring out the window. Outside grey empty trees and dingy grey snowbanks creeped by, but her eyes focused elsewhere. Maybe on the dim grey sky behind the grey buildings. Not, certainly, on the eyes of the woman sitting in the seat by the window, pointedly staring at her.

She got off, raced to her desk, checked the clock. Ten minutes early. She poured a cup of tea and let it steep at her desk while she checked emails before the morning’s meetings. The next one in the Yonge Room—where would that be? Third floor? No, fifth. This hallway? No, that. There it was. Five minutes late. She found an empty seat and pulled out her notebook and pen and took notes, referring frequently to the binder left behind by the last person in her job. She took frequent small sips of her tea and made careful notes in a neat hand. Blue ball-point pen, nothing fancy, just a Bic. When the break came she grabbed a mini muffin and sat back in her seat, re-reading her notes and the binder, annotating the margin; eventually she put the pen down and leaned back, breaking small pieces of muffin off and putting them in her mouth, wiping her fingertips on the napkin between bites. The room was corporate beige and corporate grey and corporate red, the carpeting laid in inoffensive tiles, whiteboards and corkboards hanging in place of art in any other room.

Groups of attendees stood around the room in clumps of two or three or four, talking and laughing, but sometimes, too, staring at her. Or not precisely at her. At her neck. She flushed, and traced the silver chain with her index finger, held the pentacle in her palm. As the meeting reconvened she kept it there, thumb and forefinger worrying the line of the star, still taking notes with her right hand, still flushed, looking only at her page or at the speaker. By the time the lunch break came around, she had carefully tucked the pentacle inside her green shirt, chain and all.

~~~~~

422 words. Not bad.

In this morning's Toronto Star there is a story about Stephanie Conover, invited to participate in judging a beauty pageant, then de-invited when the organizers found out she practiced Tarot and Reiki. Just in case any of you were under the impression that we had freedom of religion in this country.

More on this tomorrow (or Wednesday, depending on how busy I am). Today it might make my head explode.

Posted by Andrea at January 28, 2008 10:01 AM under Fiction , Monday Mission , Witch

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