A short piece written as a writing exercise.
Tick, tock, the pendulum swung. All around them gears turned, and he stood still. Was he listening? Consulting some inner voice? Leather creaked as he stepped forward, shaking within his straps. Light played over his bruised flesh, highlighting the speckled web of blood underneath. What world could accept such a sight?
In his bandaged hand he held a faded page…a letter?
“My dearest William,” it read, “My latest efforts have failed. I shall not try again. This is my fate, the price of my hubris. Look upon me, and never forget what I have done.”
By the time I looked up he had already retreated into the shadows. “Mathias?”
“Good-bye-my-friend.” Soon he faded from sight; the creak of leather lost in the sound of gears.
Use Stories to see other pieces I’ve written.
So did Mathias hand William the letter? That’s the only way this segment would make sense to me. You didn’t indicate this in your work. It’s hard sometimes to put writing in context when it’s segmented so I may be totally off.
I liked the style of writing. Your work is grammatically and structurally sound and I could visualize what was going on. I wasn’t sure about -shaking within his straps-what straps?
Apologies. I was experimenting with a minimalistic writing style. In my mind this is a disfigured character who wears leather straps across his body to hold himself together.
I missed that in the piece. You may need to add a little more to the first or second paragraph to clarify his disposition. Again, it was very well written 🙂
Thank you. I think I may flesh this out into a short story someday, thought right now the focus is blog posts and book reviews.
You really should create a whole short or long story. You have a wonderful writing tone that hooks the reader (well me anyway) in straight away. Also my type of genre; dark and a bit sad.
That is most flattering, particularly coming from someone I respect as a strong writer.
I’d definitely like to return and build more around these pieces, though at the moment it’s taking all my writing time to keep pace with my blogging schedule. I’m hoping that gradually I’ll get faster. If nothing else I may start taking breaks once I feel like I’ve built up a nice library of old posts.
You know about scheduling posts on WP? You can write a bunch and schedule to be published st a later time? Handy feature! I only just found out about it!
I do like that feature. Sadly when I first launched I had about 8 months worth of posts built up. Now I only have a few weeks written ahead.
Gradually I’m hoping to rebuild my queue, but quality has to come first. 🙂
So true!!