Mix metaphors


Seeing the lie of the land and bracing for impact, I stepped up to the plate and prepared to eat my words. In the hollow blankness of the auditorium, my creaking cough thundered like a volcano going off, a single pistol-shot in the echoing cavern of expectation before me.
’So,’ I said, my throat as dry as my wit, which was as sharp as my tone, ‘we seem to have reached a fork in the garden path you’ve been leading me up like a lamb to the slaughter. A turning point of no return, you might say.’
I knew that this would hardly be a ground-breaking barnstormer of a speech, but so far, it was going down like the stock value of a lead balloon manufacturer. The silence that followed was as long as a freight train, as deep as a philosophy textbook and as uncomfortable as this analogy.

8 comments:

  1. Mixed metaphors elevated to art. Bravo!

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  2. That was a metaphorical stir-fry, sizzling with over-cooked imagery.

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  3. "it was going down like the stock value of a lead balloon manufacturer" brilliant!

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  4. The whole thing was good, but the last sentence was sublime. Nice.
    Deep in the bowels of my mind I aspire to such heights.

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  5. silence as long as a freight train, awwwesome!

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  6. I love it when characters talk this way, but not the narrator.

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  7. My favorite bit has to be the "turning point of no return."

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  8. I particularly like "ground-breaking barnstormer." If a barnstormer breaks ground, they're doing it wrong.

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