RERUN WEEK #3: Describe the wrong things


Carol stands absolutely still. In front of her, not more than ten feet away, is a fully-grown black bear. The ferns beneath its feet are crumpled and slightly browning, their delicate fronds pressed into the thick, wet mud of the forest floor. Carol hesitates. Slowly, very slowly, she looks around for a possible escape route. The light falling through the canopy of leaves has a pale, thin quality to it and the air is brackish with a faint scent of the stagnant water from the nearby estuary.
She decides to make a dash for it. Her shoes are slightly too tight, pinching at her toes and digging into the soft skin just above her heels. If she had put on thicker socks this morning, this wouldn’t be a problem, but in her haste to leave the house, she had grabbed a thin white cotton pair designed to sit low on the ankle, hidden below the line of the shoe. Seeing her move, the bear leaps forwards. A plane is flying directly overhead and the sound of its engines is like the rumble of a distant washing machine. It is a passenger plane of some sort – most probably an old 737 with a good few years of service still ahead of it. The bear eats Carol.

13 comments:

  1. I can't help feeling that this could be used to good effect somewhere...

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  2. Well, I guess as she was going to get eaten so unceremoniously, wasting a lot of description on the woman might have been futile. The ferns, however, are still there.

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  3. I feel like if you're about to get eaten by a bear, odd things might come to mind. (Like, say, sock choices.) The plane, though, is a nicely useless touch.

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  4. As I have pointed out before, black bears don't stalk humans: they would only try to eat you if they are starving. "You scream and you leap."

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  5. I must say, this piece actually comes across to me as extremely effective and vivid! It puts you in Carol’s position: the terror heightening all her senses, throwing into stark relief sensations and impressions that would normally pass over her head like ships in the night…

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  6. Anne giggled at her laptop screen. In the corner of the blog, the words "blog archive" appeared. They were a pleasant shade of green, much lighter than forest green, but dark enough to contrast with the airy, white background of the page. Oh, and the post was really funny. :)

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  7. "The bear eats Carol". Laughed for a loooong time :P

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  8. so bad it's good
    A+ would read again

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  9. This can be used to great effect in situations where you wish to show that the usual rules do not apply, such as a dream or vision. (But as always, it's no good if you don't write badly *well*. If you write badly *badly* it's just mediocre, which is no fun at all. Which should really go without saying, but sadly it can't.)

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  10. I feel like if your getting about black bear. Now its time to avail dry van dispatch servicesfor more details.

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