Tag: practice

Challenge Month, Day 4

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Day 4: Write 250 words starting with the next piece of dialogue you hear.

“I hear ya,” Jordan ran his hand over his face, sweat sliding against oil.  “Chief was last in B-wing helping one of the scrubs.”

Trista licked her lips and set the procedural ledger on the counter.  She shuffled in place and smoothed out her pink nursing uniform.  “I don’t know how to help this guy, then.  I’ve never set a femur.”

“I don’t think you can just set a femur.  Isn’t that a little outside our weight class?”

Trista looked away.

“Sorry,” Jordan apologized.  With deftness he’d only barely learned to control, he slid a needle into the soft notch of Miss Ortega’s arm.  He landed the vein on his first try in spite of himself.  He only learned how to do it last week.  “Look, it’s not like anybody is making it your responsibility.  That’s the perk of being interns.”

“But everyone else is preoccupied,” Trista snapped.

“Make one of them preoccupied,” Jordan took the lash in stride, “I don’t know.  It’s not our job.”

“It is our job.”

“It will be our job,” Jordan lassoed the IV cord around the backside of Miss Ortega’s bed and flicked the apparatus a few times until he was certain no wandering air bubbles would compromise his patient’s safety.  “I can’t help you.  I want to, but I can’t.”

But Trista didn’t seem to receive Jordan’s rebuffing very well.  She did not leer at him, but the look cutting through her eyes definitely meant something.  Without further discussion, she yanked her ledger off the counter and hiked down the hall towards B-wing, evading orderlies and otherwise doing a fine job of showing how panicked she’d become.

“Sorry girl,” Jordan said beneath his tongue, “I’m not a hero.  Doubt I ever will be.”

An Exercise In Alliteration (Ben Vs. The Asteroid)

Hello all of you strange creatures,

If you are not familiar with alliteration, it’s the literary technique in which multiple successive words in a line begin with the same consonant sound.  A common example is the tongue-twister “She sells seashells by the seashore,” which utilizes alliteration on both the hard ‘S’ sound as found in ‘sells’ and the dragging ‘sh’ sound in ‘she.’

I am going to attempt to recreate this technique in a series of lines, each modeled after a letter of the alphabet.  What’s more, I’m going to try and make it at least sort of resemble a story (we’ll see how that goes).

Remember, the words don’t necessarily have to begin with that particular letter, just have a sound in common with it. Don’t be surprised if I skip Q or X, because I’m fond of my sanity.

Let’s begin.

All at once, an angry asteroid attacked
Before Ben could bounce back from his bereavement
Could a crisis more criminal have possibly come?
Doubting his usually deliberate disposition, Ben dared not die
Even eagles evacuated enormously evil events
Fly as Ben might, fleeing was fickle and for the faint-hearted
Good god the asteroid was great and gruesome, though
How could this humble human hope to do anything but hesitate?
If an incident of such insane implications were to initiate
Just what kind of jostling juxtaposition would we find ourselves?
Kings would cower before this catastrophe
Lest all lowborn men lose hope of life
Might Ben muster the mettle to master his misgivings?
Never give in and knock away his nightmares?
Only our own hearts offer opposition
Pounding, pumping pain through every pore
Quit calculating the complications, Ben. Get crackin’
Run red with haste, retreat with raw reliance
So you may see a sweeter sunset someday
Tomorrow won’t turn you tipsy, try to be tougher
Unless you understand your place in the universe
Victory will fill your veins like a voice of valor
Won’t it be wonderful to wish upon the stars without worry?
eXcept that won’t happen, for your exit has been extinguished
You are young and you are yelling because you have
Zero seconds to hope you become a zombie.

So I may have cheated a few times, but I did technically get every letter in there.  The coherency of that story leaves something to be desired, but I’m contented with what I’ve got.  Perhaps next month I shall try again and see if there’s any improvement.

God bless, make a friend, always remember to smile.

Here’s a picture of Sheldon the Turtle for your entertainment.  Compliments of DeviantArt

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