Cool Luke's Hand's 1st assignment

[Dragon's muse]

Welcome to the block.

Craft a scene/chapter/story with the following elements.

A toy airplane
A slice of bread
A bathroom rug

Happy writing.

[Cool Luke's Hand]

"If an alarm clock could talk, what do you think it'd say?"

"I don't know. What?"

"I don't know either, I was asking you. Why do you always have to do that?"

"Do what?"

"I try to talk to you about something that might be funny, and you just kill it. Why can't you ever take a joke?"

"I didn't know! I thought you were telling me a joke!"

In the Cameron household, this is what passed for casual breakfast conversation. Luke and Betty Cameron had been married for just over two months - five months the Tuesday before this conversation took place, as it happened - and the warm glow of being newlyweds was beginning to wear off. "Chalk and cheese" was a fairly good description of their personalities, not to mention their backgrounds; Betty was the only daughter of a pair of very wealthy, very outgoing socialites and, despite her parents spending very little time with her as a child, had developed a personality best described as "quirky" and worst described as "having her head in the clouds". On the other side of the coin, Luke had been kicked out of his home at sixteen and, after seeing his dreams of becoming a successful vet dashed, had been forced to take on a plethora of small, part-time jobs just to make his ends meet. He'd been hardened from an idealistic young man with the world at his feet to someone with his feet firmly on the ground and mind hardened past tolerating Betty's many foibles. You might have wondered why the two even got married to begin with, and with good reason; the answer was simply that they hadn't known one another long enough. Five months was a short time to be married, but it was an even shorter time to be in a simple relationship. As Betty scowled into her tea, Luke finished the piece of toast he'd been chewing on for the past ten minutes and stood up - he'd married into money, but not enough so that he didn't have to work.

"Did you take the last piece of bread?" came Betty's shrill voice just as he reached the door, and Luke's shoulders visibly sagged. He'd seen this before, and he knew what was coming...in his mind, it was best just to weather the storm.

"I don't think so, I just took a bit of the toast that was already on the table," sighed Luke, still with his back to the table.

"Then why is there only one piece of bread left?!" Betty shrieked, her temper bubbling over as it was wont to do. Luke leant his briefcase against the door-frame and turned around just in time to get hit in the chest by that same last piece of bread. "I didn't use it all!"

"I don't know, I just said that," protested Luke as he knelt down to pick up the limp slice. "You were the last person to use the bread."

"And I didn't use it all! You need to do more around the house!" Betty shouted, stomping her foot on the kitchen's tiled floor. "You left the bathroom mat on the floor again, do you think it's my job to clean up after you?"

"But I didn't use the bathroom mat!" tried Luke again, still utterly unaware that by now he was doing nothing than banging his head against a wall. "I mean it!"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"No, no..." Luke sighed, resisting the temptation to storm out. "Look, I have to go to work now, I can't stay any longer. When I get home, I'll tidy up some more, but I have to go to work." In lieu of a reply, Betty just scowled and poured herself a second mug of tea. It may have been just after eight in the morning, but it was never too early for a slug of liquor in her drinks; it had always been her weakness, and she'd just figured that everybody had some flaw. That was hers. The sound of the front door banging shut brought her back in the real world, and only then did she realise that the kitchen was a real mess.

"Somebody should clean this up," she murmured to herself, before pausing, considering the task and deciding to ignore it. "Luke can do it when he gets home," she continued, picking a fridge magnet from the floor. Shaped like a jumbo jet, it was one of the few things Luke had taken with him when he was kicked out of his familial home, as it had more importance to him than simply being a magnet. As a child, he'd play with it for hours on end, having a strange fixation on it; a psychiatrist he'd briefly visited had theorised it was a kind of link of his long-dead father and, while little else the shrink had said had stuck, Luke thought that was fairly accurate. It had become his lucky charm over the years...which meant that Betty casually throwing it into the trash resonated on more levels than just the superficial one.

---

The hours passed quickly for Betty. She'd caught three of her favourite daytime shows, ordered in pizza for lunch and downed the equivalent of eight shots of vodka, so by the time she heard Luke's keys scraping at the lock, she was in no state to answer the front door for him. Just standing up had been hard enough for her, and after spilling two of them, she'd decided that she didn't need a glass of water that badly. Still, in her own mind she'd been busy; maybe not cleaning, or doing the other duties a homemaker is normally tasked with, but she'd rationalised that enjoying herself was her job in life while Luke brought home the bacon. She was a socialite's daughter, she wasn't meant to work for a living! Such are the logical hoops a person's brain will happily jump through to absolve themselves of guilt and make themselves feel better. For Luke's part, he'd also been busy - he'd successfully closed a tricky deal more than a month in the making (not to mention one that had stumped three more senior members of his division first), and in doing so had secured a handsome bonus added to his end-of-the-month paycheque. Not unreasonably, he was feeling good about himself as he scrabbled with his bulging keychain - he was young and, despite his tough childhood, he still had the world at his feet. One of the few memories he had of his father was him telling the young Luke that, with hard work, he could do anything he set his mind towards, and today he was going to prove that theory right.

As he dropped next to the radiator, his briefcase fell open and the contents spilt across his path. Normally, this wouldn't be cause for concern, but with the front door wide open there was the horrible chance somebody might have seen something - small, yes, but it was still a dangerous chance to take. Slamming the door shut hastily and taking one of the items in hand, he peeked around the door to the living room where, just as he'd hoped, Betty was asleep on the couch. Despite himself, Luke gazed at her for a moment - when she wasn't yelling or drunk, she really was quite beautiful. Hands clad in rubber gloves, he mentally crossed his fingers before advancing into the room and lifting Betty from the couch. This was the part of the plan that was the riskiest, because if she woke up, everything would go horribly wrong. He was just lucky she was a heavy sleeper. She stirred, but nothing else, her mind so far away at this point that nothing short of an earthquake could have woken her. Still, she wasn't the lightest of loads, nor was Luke particularly strong. When he slipped on the wet kitchen floor, Betty slithered out of his grasp and landed hard on the tiles, the sharp pain bringing her back to life in an instant.

"Shit!" Luke cursed, rushing back to his open briefcase in the hall. Betty was in that state of semi-consciousness where one is awake, but not quite lucid just yet, and the delay was all the time Luke needed. Betty was just trying to piece together what she was doing on the soaking wet kitchen floor when she felt a screaming pain at the back of her head - it was just for an instant, though, as the impact of the stainless steel claw hammer wielded with all of Luke's strength was more than enough to crash through her skull like a wet paper sack. For this was Luke's plan; he knew Betty was a drinker, and rare was the day she would be sober when he arrived home. Although it had seemed nasty, the sound of the hammer blow wasn't nearly loud enough to pass through the walls, and since the kitchen had no windows, there certainly wouldn't be any first-hand witnesses. Lifting the rapidly-dying Betty up one more time with his hands under her armpits, Luke gently lined up her head wound with the edge of the stone kitchen counters; he was hoping that the blood on the counter-top, coupled with the wet floor and the large amount of alcohol in Betty's system, would be enough to make it look like a tragic accident. All he had to do was play the part of the grieving husband. For the first time in months, Luke grinned as he applied the finishing touch to the grim scene, tossing a newly-wetted bathroom mat in the corner by the washing machine. "Just one more thing to do," he thought, plucking the telephone from its cradle

"Ambulance, please," he said, his voice quavering even now.

Never too early to start playing a character.

[Dragon's muse]

i have seen this and will get to it this afternoon or tomorrow.

rose

[Dragon's muse]

Good plot, but the execution (pun unintended) falls a bit flat. You run to excessive wordiness which can dilute the impact of the story. Vary sentence structure. If the reader has forgotten the beginning of the sentence by the time they read the end, it pops them out of the story and engenders confusion -- the writer's arch enemy.

You really like beginning sentneces with "As" clauses; vary it a bit to keep from monotony.

Not a bad first assignment. I'll get your second one posted today or tomorrow.

rose


"If an alarm clock could talk, what do you think it'd say?"

"I don't know. What?"

"I don't know either, I was asking you. Why do you always have to do that?"

"Do what?"

"I try to talk to you about something that might be funny, and you just kill it. Why can't you ever take a joke?"

"I didn't know! I thought you were telling me a joke!"

In the Cameron household, this is what passed for casual breakfast conversation. Luke and Betty Cameron had been married for just over two months - five months the Tuesday before this conversation took place, as it happened (i keep re-reading this bit and just can't get it to make sense.)- and the warm glow of being newlyweds was beginning to wear off. "Chalk and cheese" was a fairly good description of their personalities, not to mention their backgrounds; Betty was the only daughter of a pair of very wealthy, very outgoing socialites and, despite her parents spending very little time with her as a child, had developed a personality best described as "quirky" and worst described as "having her head in the clouds". (A 61 word sentence. Just a shade too much info in one lump. Split it up a bit.) (new paragraph here)On the other side of the coin, (ding, ding, ding, cliche alert, danger Will Robinson) Luke had been kicked out of his home at sixteen and, after seeing his dreams of becoming a successful vet dashed, had been forced to take on a plethora of small, part-time jobs just to make his ends meet. (little longish again)He'd been hardened from an idealistic young man with the world at his feet to someone with his feet firmly on the ground and mind hardened past tolerating Betty's many foibles. (you used 'hardened' twice in the same sentence -- vary word choice for extra punch)You might have wondered why the two even got married to begin with, and with good reason; the answer was simply that they hadn't known one another long enough. (addressing the reader is tricky -- "Most of their friends wondered. . . " would convey the same message, without the intrusive narration.) Five months(you have earlier said they have been married "a little over two months") was a short time to be married, but it was an even shorter time to be in a simple relationship. (it takes several readings to make this make sense, and i'm still not sure what the point of this sentence is.) As Betty scowled into her tea, Luke finished the piece of toast he'd been chewing on for the past ten minutes and stood up - he'd married into money, but not enough so that he didn't have to work.

"Did you take the last piece of bread?" came Betty's shrill voice just as he reached the door, and Luke's shoulders visibly sagged. He'd seen this before, and he knew what was coming...in his mind (delete -- unnecessary, where else would he know it), (;)it was best just to weather the storm.

"I don't think so, I just took a bit of the toast that was already on the table," sighed Luke, still with his back to the table.(Delete --In the next sentence you say he turned to face the table, so the reader will assume he had his back to it.

"Then why is there only one piece of bread left?! (one or the other, not both)" Betty shrieked, her temper bubbling over as it was wont to do. Luke leant his briefcase against the door-frame and turned around just in time to get hit in the chest by that same last piece of bread. "I didn't use it all!"

"I don't know, I just said that," protested Luke as he knelt down to pick up the limp slice. "You were the last person to use the bread."

"And I didn't use it all! You need to do more around the house!" Betty shouted, stomping her foot on the kitchen's tiled floor. "You left the bathroom mat on the floor again, (;) do you think it's my job to clean up after you?"

"But I didn't use the bathroom mat!" tried Luke again, still utterly unaware that by now (delete) he was doing nothing than (only)banging his head against a wall. "I mean it!"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"No, no..." Luke sighed, resisting the temptation to storm out. "Look, I have to go to work now, I can't stay any longer. When I get home, I'll tidy up some more, but I have to go to work." In lieu of a reply, Betty just scowled and poured herself a second mug of tea. It may have been just after eight in the morning, but it was never too early for a slug of liquor in her drinks; it had always been her weakness, and she'd just figured that everybody had some flaw. That was hers. The sound of the front door banging shut brought her back in the real world, and only then did she realise that the kitchen was a real mess.

"Somebody should clean this up," she murmured to herself, before pausing, (delete)considering the task and deciding to ignore it. "Luke can do it when he gets home," she continued, picking a fridge magnet from the floor. Shaped like a jumbo jet, it was one of the few things Luke had taken with him when he was kicked out of his familial(a little flowery -- 'family' works just as well) home, as it had more importance to him than simply being a magnet.** As a child, he'd play with it for hours on end, having a strange fixation on it (delete); a psychiatrist he'd briefly visited had theorised it was a kind of link of (to)his long-dead father and, while little else the shrink had said had stuck, Luke thought that was fairly accurate. ** Another very long sentence)It had become his lucky charm over the years...which meant that (you can replace all this with a semicolon for increased impact)Betty casually throwing it into the trash resonated on more levels than just the superficial one.

---

The hours passed quickly for Betty. She'd caught three of her favourite daytime shows, ordered in pizza for lunch and downed the equivalent of eight shots of vodka,(Start a new sentence here and delete 'so" so by the time she heard Luke's keys scraping at the lock, she was in no state to answer the front door for him (delete). Just standing up had been hard enough for her, and after spilling two of them, she'd decided that she didn't need a glass of water that badly. not sure what this has to do with answering the door)Still, (delete) in her own mind she'd been busy; maybe not cleaning, or doing the other duties a homemaker is normally tasked with, but she'd rationalised that enjoying herself was her job in life while Luke brought home the bacon. She was a socialite's daughter, (;)she wasn't meant to work for a living! Such are the logical hoops a person's (Betty's)brain will jump (jumped)through to absolve themselves (herself) of guilt and make themselves feel better. (delete) New paragraph hereFor Luke's part, he'd also been busy - he'd successfully closed a tricky deal more than a month in the making (not to mention one that had stumped three more senior members of his division first {delete}), and in doing so had secured a handsome bonus added to his end-of-the-month paycheque. Not unreasonably (delete), he was feeling good about himself as he scrabbled with his bulging keychain - he was young and, despite his tough childhood, he still had the world at his feet. One of the few memories he had of his father was him telling the young Luke that, with hard work, he could do anything he set his mind towards, and today he was going to prove that theory right. (too much info in one sentence.)
As he dropped next to the radiator (did he drop or did the briefcase drop? Misplaced clause), his briefcase fell open and the contents spilt across his path. Normally, this wouldn't be cause for concern, but with the front door wide open, there was the horrible chance somebody might have seen something - small, yes, but it was still a dangerous chance to take. Slamming the door shut hastily and taking one of the items in hand, he peeked around the door to the living room where, just as he'd hoped, Betty was asleep on the couch. Despite himself, Luke gazed at her for a moment - when she wasn't yelling or drunk, she really was quite beautiful. Hands clad in rubber gloves, he mentally crossed his fingers before advancing into the room and lifting Betty from the couch. This was the part of the plan that was the riskiest, because if she woke up, everything would go horribly wrong. He was just lucky she was a heavy sleeper. She stirred, but nothing else, her mind so far away at this point (delete)that nothing short of an earthquake could have woken her. Still, she wasn't the lightest of loads, nor was Luke particularly strong. When he slipped on the wet kitchen floor, Betty slithered out of his grasp and landed hard on the tiles, the sharp pain bringing her back to life in an instant.

"Shit!" Luke cursed, rushing back to his open briefcase in the hall. Betty was in that state of semi-consciousness where one is awake, but not quite lucid just yet, and the delay was all the time Luke needed. Betty was just trying to piece together what she was doing on the soaking wet kitchen floor when she felt a screaming pain at the back of her head - it was just for an instant, though, as the impact of the stainless steel claw hammer wielded with all of Luke's strength was more than enough to crash through her skull like a wet paper sack. For this was Luke's plan; he knew Betty was a drinker, and rare was the day she would be sober when he arrived home. Although it had seemed nasty, the sound of the hammer blow wasn't nearly loud enough to pass through the walls, and since the kitchen had no windows, there certainly wouldn't be any first-hand witnesses. Lifting the rapidly-dying Betty up one more time with his hands under her armpits, Luke gently lined up her head wound with the edge of the stone kitchen counters; he was hoping that the blood on the counter-top, coupled with the wet floor and the large amount of alcohol in Betty's system, would be enough to make it look like a tragic accident. All he had to do was play the part of the grieving husband. For the first time in months, Luke grinned as he applied the finishing touch to the grim scene, tossing a newly-wetted bathroom mat in the corner by the washing machine. "Just one more thing to do," he thought, plucking the telephone from its cradle

"Ambulance, please," he said, his voice quavering even now.

Never too early to start playing a character.