Dr. Gaylove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Prompt
So I've had an idea for a novel kicking around forliekevarz. And I gathered my courage beneath me and told writer_atdusk about it, and we decided to trade off prompts for our respective political novel 'verses. You should check hers, for realz.
I'm longing for some good, hard clit crit.
Fountain.
Dirty water trickles out of the mouth of a crumbling mermaid, her face and arms concealed by pigeon shit and the dirt of too many winters. The ground is damp from the previous night's rain, and there are children in the playground nearby. The sounds of their play mingle with the sounds of mid-day traffic, which filters in through the hedge from all sides. The park is small, littered with cigarette butts. Parents sit on the various benches and discuss their days, weeks, lives. A child sits on the fountain's circular base, unnoticed, wholly unremarkable in his gray wellingtons and brown windbeater.
John Belden is six and he is pretending to be a statue. One ruddy knee is raised, foot planted on his stone perch to support his elbow. He sits in a modification of The Thinker, brows drawn almost comically together. The mermaid gurgles dully behind him and he mimics the noise, watching the other children as she does.
John Belden is fourty and he is pretending to be a statue. The other parents gossip and smoke and glance every now and then at their offspring. He sits on a bench with his chin in his palm, elbow on his knees, watching his daughter. He wonders where she got her extroverted nature from and smiles, just a little, behind expensive glasses.
Stairs.
There's only three steps leading up to the podium and MP Paddock has climbed them many times. The carpet is slightly worn in the middle of each step, dark green fading gray. The podium itself is undistinguished, essentially a dark wooden rectangle made upright. The sweat from thousands of palms unknowingly marks its side and top, cautiousness and courage there in the deep swirling grain. MP Paddock knows it as if he built it, as if the sweat and spit and tears were his own.
That does not stop him from feeling as if he is climbing his own gallows, every eye of the House trained on him. There is a hush of papers shuffling, quiet whispers. Milton feels sweat bead at his temple and resists the urge to loosen his tie, resists the urge to let them know how truly frightened he is. And he is frightened. He knows that by giving this speech, by speaking out against injustice, he'll only have history turn around and repeat on him. But his family is safe and so he climbs that last step on shaking legs, squares himself before the dark wood and sweat and the eyes of the House, for all the families that are not his own. He clears his throat and the noose sways, its shadow crossing the podium top.
"This government is guilty of crimes against humanity by definition of the Geneva conventions and the Venice amendment." Silence greets these words and it is expectant; hungry. The faces before him could be the deep dark of night, hard and real and coming to get him. Stone figurines watching dispassionately as he slits his own throat. Cold sweat drips down Milton's back.
"And it cannot be tolerated any longer. Ever again. People are dying because you are too afraid to speak up and do your duty. Despite the strict no exportation of information policy, the Coalition of EuroAsian Nations has been informed of the atrocities currently being committed in our streets and homes." Rope coils around his neck and he knows he will not live out the week. He eyes his colleagues, his fellow humans and their rodent-like wet eyes and alarmed hunched shoulders. His thick eyebrows form a sharp, disapproving V over his horn-rimmed glasses. "You people should be disgusted with yourselves." He spits. The floor drops and he dangles in the air, a flurry of whispers rising around him as a thousand upstarted moths.
Technology.
Equal parts sugar and chlorate. Lead piping, capped, with a fuse.
That is a pipe bomb. A monkey could make it. It could be placed surreptitiously beside your wife in a public park. It could be picked up by your child as a curiosity. Of the million and one ways your loved ones could be slaughtered, unexpectedly and irrevocably torn from you, the pipe bomb is arguably one of the worst. It is made with a purpose in mind, by people competent enough to work with such materials. It is the technology of human cruelty, the wiring of a total disregard for human life. It is the chemical reaction of nightmare after nightmare that leaves you shaking like a leaf in the cold night, gazing with fear that is slow to dissipate at your family as they slumber unknowingly on.
John is achingly familiar with such nights. He stays awake until dawn, trailing from his daughter's room to his wife's side and back, watching as they huff the sleepy, shallow breaths of birds. When he enters his bathroom on one such morning, he sees the bared piping under the sink (he wasn't told about the renovation), he drops his bundles of towels and clothing. He only just makes it to the toilet before dry heaving, watching yellow-orange stomach bile dribble from his lips. He is white as a sheet and shaking when he tells his wife he's fine.
Food.
"I just don't think it's right, John."
"Well, I'm trying my best, Grace. Pass the roast, please."
"Daddy, I don't wanna eat my lima beans...."
"I mean, people are being beaten to a bloody-- sorry, sweetheart, don't repeat that-- pulp. They--"
"I'm aware of the situation. I run the country."
"I'm not going to. I don't like them."
"Don't you be glib with me! I'm worried about Jenny."
"What, and you think I'm not?!"
A loud splat cuts off Grace's reply. Both adults peer curiously at the floor where a large, green glob of lima beans resides, spreading lazily outward on the cream coloured carpet.
"Jenny! Why on earth would you do that?"
"You know you are not to play with your food, Jenny, you're old enough now."
"I don't. Like. Lima beans."
I'm longing for some good, hard clit crit.
Fountain.
Dirty water trickles out of the mouth of a crumbling mermaid, her face and arms concealed by pigeon shit and the dirt of too many winters. The ground is damp from the previous night's rain, and there are children in the playground nearby. The sounds of their play mingle with the sounds of mid-day traffic, which filters in through the hedge from all sides. The park is small, littered with cigarette butts. Parents sit on the various benches and discuss their days, weeks, lives. A child sits on the fountain's circular base, unnoticed, wholly unremarkable in his gray wellingtons and brown windbeater.
John Belden is six and he is pretending to be a statue. One ruddy knee is raised, foot planted on his stone perch to support his elbow. He sits in a modification of The Thinker, brows drawn almost comically together. The mermaid gurgles dully behind him and he mimics the noise, watching the other children as she does.
John Belden is fourty and he is pretending to be a statue. The other parents gossip and smoke and glance every now and then at their offspring. He sits on a bench with his chin in his palm, elbow on his knees, watching his daughter. He wonders where she got her extroverted nature from and smiles, just a little, behind expensive glasses.
Stairs.
There's only three steps leading up to the podium and MP Paddock has climbed them many times. The carpet is slightly worn in the middle of each step, dark green fading gray. The podium itself is undistinguished, essentially a dark wooden rectangle made upright. The sweat from thousands of palms unknowingly marks its side and top, cautiousness and courage there in the deep swirling grain. MP Paddock knows it as if he built it, as if the sweat and spit and tears were his own.
That does not stop him from feeling as if he is climbing his own gallows, every eye of the House trained on him. There is a hush of papers shuffling, quiet whispers. Milton feels sweat bead at his temple and resists the urge to loosen his tie, resists the urge to let them know how truly frightened he is. And he is frightened. He knows that by giving this speech, by speaking out against injustice, he'll only have history turn around and repeat on him. But his family is safe and so he climbs that last step on shaking legs, squares himself before the dark wood and sweat and the eyes of the House, for all the families that are not his own. He clears his throat and the noose sways, its shadow crossing the podium top.
"This government is guilty of crimes against humanity by definition of the Geneva conventions and the Venice amendment." Silence greets these words and it is expectant; hungry. The faces before him could be the deep dark of night, hard and real and coming to get him. Stone figurines watching dispassionately as he slits his own throat. Cold sweat drips down Milton's back.
"And it cannot be tolerated any longer. Ever again. People are dying because you are too afraid to speak up and do your duty. Despite the strict no exportation of information policy, the Coalition of EuroAsian Nations has been informed of the atrocities currently being committed in our streets and homes." Rope coils around his neck and he knows he will not live out the week. He eyes his colleagues, his fellow humans and their rodent-like wet eyes and alarmed hunched shoulders. His thick eyebrows form a sharp, disapproving V over his horn-rimmed glasses. "You people should be disgusted with yourselves." He spits. The floor drops and he dangles in the air, a flurry of whispers rising around him as a thousand upstarted moths.
Technology.
Equal parts sugar and chlorate. Lead piping, capped, with a fuse.
That is a pipe bomb. A monkey could make it. It could be placed surreptitiously beside your wife in a public park. It could be picked up by your child as a curiosity. Of the million and one ways your loved ones could be slaughtered, unexpectedly and irrevocably torn from you, the pipe bomb is arguably one of the worst. It is made with a purpose in mind, by people competent enough to work with such materials. It is the technology of human cruelty, the wiring of a total disregard for human life. It is the chemical reaction of nightmare after nightmare that leaves you shaking like a leaf in the cold night, gazing with fear that is slow to dissipate at your family as they slumber unknowingly on.
John is achingly familiar with such nights. He stays awake until dawn, trailing from his daughter's room to his wife's side and back, watching as they huff the sleepy, shallow breaths of birds. When he enters his bathroom on one such morning, he sees the bared piping under the sink (he wasn't told about the renovation), he drops his bundles of towels and clothing. He only just makes it to the toilet before dry heaving, watching yellow-orange stomach bile dribble from his lips. He is white as a sheet and shaking when he tells his wife he's fine.
Food.
"I just don't think it's right, John."
"Well, I'm trying my best, Grace. Pass the roast, please."
"Daddy, I don't wanna eat my lima beans...."
"I mean, people are being beaten to a bloody-- sorry, sweetheart, don't repeat that-- pulp. They--"
"I'm aware of the situation. I run the country."
"I'm not going to. I don't like them."
"Don't you be glib with me! I'm worried about Jenny."
"What, and you think I'm not?!"
A loud splat cuts off Grace's reply. Both adults peer curiously at the floor where a large, green glob of lima beans resides, spreading lazily outward on the cream coloured carpet.
"Jenny! Why on earth would you do that?"
"You know you are not to play with your food, Jenny, you're old enough now."
"I don't. Like. Lima beans."