FreeWrite: Betty Likes to Break
sooo,
Now that my first write-a-thon story is drafted, I wanted to cleanse my palette a little before moving on to the next one. Here’s another free-write exercise. 400 words from the pov of a character put in a new situation via a witness protection program.
Betty did bombs. Explosives. Fucking grenades. Betty didn’t do birthdays.
It was a suitable punishment then, that since she’d been plopped down in the middle of suburban New Jersey with four summer outfits and a nicely furnished two bedroom condo, every Saturday was spent in someone’s living room or backyard, eating cake.
That’s what you get for accidentally setting fire to the Russian Consulate.
“Is this black forest?” She said to Margaret as they watched the older women’s kids slide back and forth on the teeter-tooter. “God. It must be. So moist.” The words coming out of her mouth were as sickly sweet as the stuff going in.
You need to blend in. The suits in DC had told her. Fit in or they’ll find you.
Yum. Cake.
Margaret licked her hairy upper lip. “Oh, honey, you have no idea. I had to tell the lady behind the counter three times that I didn’t want that dry vanilla stuff we had at Leona’s last week. “
Margaret was a friend. Hmm, no. Maybe a ‘friend.’ She was nice enough, able to show Betty the ropes around town while providing a nice stash of local gossip, but with her pale skin and weak wrists, she was the kind of woman that Betty would have snapped in half is she were still working for the Covenant.
She took another bite of the cake, jabbing her tongue into the dull, cold prongs of the blue plastic fork. It was just past fifteen-hundred hours. She was supposed to be knee-deep in mission plans, not wrestling with her skirt.
“I love that outfit, by the way.” Margaret pointed her mojito in Betty’s direction. “The floral pattern is just lovely.”
“Thanks.” Betty took in Margaret’s beige pants hitched up to her sagging breast line. “I, uh, I really like the cut of your slacks, too. Very modern.”
In this moment, Betty wanted to blow something up. A half pack of matches were sitting next to the pastel clumps of used birthday candles. Seeing them made her fingers crawl with urgency. She held on tighter to her paper plate, but it was beginning to buckle.
Margaret took it and used it to gesture towards the kids. “How about a game of pin the tail on the donkey?”
Not now, Margaret. Not unless you have a Beretta 501 Sniper Rifle. And maybe a variable-power scope.
July 12th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Okay, I love it. Excellent work.