i remember the smell of the fabric of your simple city dress.
taken from the glorious otherbella! ♥
post a sentence (or two or a paragraph) from as many of your WIPs as you want, with no explanation attached.
01. The drums are pounding behind him, Kyle totally smashing it, and Dave grins as he scans the crowd, eyes fervent, magnetic, lips harsh against the mic. He's dropping his voice low, whispering lyrics, fingers slick with sweat slipping as they grip the stand, when he spots him.
A boy, pale skin, dark hair, and when the spotlight moves over the crowd, the light catches on him, like an August sunrise catches the soft dips of the ocean. His eyes are green, and they're watching Dave. And it's hot on stage, but it must be sweltering in the audience, packed with warm bodies, because Dave can see a line of sweat trickling down the boy's forehead, the dampness at his hairline, the way his thin t-shirt clings to the broad curves of his shoulders.
The boy's swaying slightly with the beat, the quiet bass that Kyle is drawing from the drums, and when Dave hums out the last word of the lyric, the boy smiles at him, his chin lifting to nod at him, like an encouragement, just as the band rips into the final chorus, drawn-out, and heavy, and thick.
02. "Someone's knocking at the door," he says, and like magic, there's another succession of knocks.
"Well," Carly says, like Cook is missing something plainly obvious. "Answer it."
"But this isn't my house," he says, turning away from the counter and toward the door, the phone cord twisting around his middle.
"Maybe it's the post man," Carly says.
Cook glances at the clock. "It's 11:49 at night."
"Yeah, but it's England," she returns as he takes a step toward the door. "They do things funky there sometimes-"
03. day two.
It's the distant, muffled murmurs of barely-awake people that rouse David, and he closes his eyes and rubs them, exhaling. When he opens them, he sees blue, clear and ever-stretching. And he thinks, Maybe this will be okay.
It takes him a minute to actually stand up, because when he moves his arms to push himself up, this ache stretches across the entirety of his back, stinging his fingers and settling painfully into the grooves of his spine. He pauses, takes a minute to catch his breath, then grits his teeth and digs into the sand and shoves upward. As he rises, the pain slips down his legs, wraps around his ankles, and he staggers, breathless.
Brooke stands from her place by the fire and jogs to him with wide, worried eyes. "You okay?" she asks, pressing her hand gently to his back.
He blinks, gasps, arches away from her hand. "Yeah," he manages.
04. This was his childhood dream to expand the boundaries of biological data in direct correlation to the emergence of volumetric display technology, and this is his dream coming to fruition, here, before his very eyes, as he hollows a space at the base of the hologram's neck, curves his thumbnail into the tiny palms to carve love lines, cool silvery-blue air moulding like fluid beneath his fingertips.
05. "Hey!" David says. "You're that guy from the Hero tournament." His cheeks burn. "Um, the one Jason was talking to?-Dave, right?"
Dave's grin grows. "Yeah, yeah, that's me. The one and only Dave." He laughs, a little. "And you're the Guitar Hero wiz kid whose been showing up everyone else since day one."
"Well," David says, his eyes falling to the floor, "I don't know about that. I've only played two people so far, and neither one of them were very-um-familiar with expert. But I can tell you what I am for sure."
"Oh?" Dave says. "And what's that?"
"I'm David Archuleta," he says, and then he laughs at himself, because holy cow, he is just not himself. Maybe idiocy is an early symptom of swine flu, or something-
06. Working for the FBI hadn't been on his list of "What I Want To Do When I Grow Up" when he was a kid. He didn't watch CSI or any of those forensic shows; even the sight of blood frightened him, made his mouth dry and his stomach drop.
He hadn't even given thought to the field of Behavioral Science until he was seventeen, and little Amy Lockland from his choir group was kidnapped. Eleven-years-old, with all the talent in the world. David Archuleta's little home town was tilted on its axis after it happened-the news flew through prayer chains like wildfire, Sunday mornings spent rubbing soothing circles onto the backs of trembling moms and dads, grandparents and children. And when he'd found Amy's body, lying carelessly amongst fallen trees in the forest, limbs awkward and twisted, eyes open wide- Devastation seeped into the town, curling around the bases of low-dimmed sidewalk lamps, licking into the corners of windows with dust an inch thick. Everyone succumbed to a haze, a haze that couldn't be lifted by the cheery red lights of fire truck parades, or the orange glow of Jack-O'-Lanterns on Halloween night.
The murderer had never been found.
And perhaps that was reason enough for Archuleta to move to Quantico, Virginia, eighteen and bright-eyed and emphatic, ready to tackle the world.
post a sentence (or two or a paragraph) from as many of your WIPs as you want, with no explanation attached.
01. The drums are pounding behind him, Kyle totally smashing it, and Dave grins as he scans the crowd, eyes fervent, magnetic, lips harsh against the mic. He's dropping his voice low, whispering lyrics, fingers slick with sweat slipping as they grip the stand, when he spots him.
A boy, pale skin, dark hair, and when the spotlight moves over the crowd, the light catches on him, like an August sunrise catches the soft dips of the ocean. His eyes are green, and they're watching Dave. And it's hot on stage, but it must be sweltering in the audience, packed with warm bodies, because Dave can see a line of sweat trickling down the boy's forehead, the dampness at his hairline, the way his thin t-shirt clings to the broad curves of his shoulders.
The boy's swaying slightly with the beat, the quiet bass that Kyle is drawing from the drums, and when Dave hums out the last word of the lyric, the boy smiles at him, his chin lifting to nod at him, like an encouragement, just as the band rips into the final chorus, drawn-out, and heavy, and thick.
02. "Someone's knocking at the door," he says, and like magic, there's another succession of knocks.
"Well," Carly says, like Cook is missing something plainly obvious. "Answer it."
"But this isn't my house," he says, turning away from the counter and toward the door, the phone cord twisting around his middle.
"Maybe it's the post man," Carly says.
Cook glances at the clock. "It's 11:49 at night."
"Yeah, but it's England," she returns as he takes a step toward the door. "They do things funky there sometimes-"
03. day two.
It's the distant, muffled murmurs of barely-awake people that rouse David, and he closes his eyes and rubs them, exhaling. When he opens them, he sees blue, clear and ever-stretching. And he thinks, Maybe this will be okay.
It takes him a minute to actually stand up, because when he moves his arms to push himself up, this ache stretches across the entirety of his back, stinging his fingers and settling painfully into the grooves of his spine. He pauses, takes a minute to catch his breath, then grits his teeth and digs into the sand and shoves upward. As he rises, the pain slips down his legs, wraps around his ankles, and he staggers, breathless.
Brooke stands from her place by the fire and jogs to him with wide, worried eyes. "You okay?" she asks, pressing her hand gently to his back.
He blinks, gasps, arches away from her hand. "Yeah," he manages.
04. This was his childhood dream to expand the boundaries of biological data in direct correlation to the emergence of volumetric display technology, and this is his dream coming to fruition, here, before his very eyes, as he hollows a space at the base of the hologram's neck, curves his thumbnail into the tiny palms to carve love lines, cool silvery-blue air moulding like fluid beneath his fingertips.
05. "Hey!" David says. "You're that guy from the Hero tournament." His cheeks burn. "Um, the one Jason was talking to?-Dave, right?"
Dave's grin grows. "Yeah, yeah, that's me. The one and only Dave." He laughs, a little. "And you're the Guitar Hero wiz kid whose been showing up everyone else since day one."
"Well," David says, his eyes falling to the floor, "I don't know about that. I've only played two people so far, and neither one of them were very-um-familiar with expert. But I can tell you what I am for sure."
"Oh?" Dave says. "And what's that?"
"I'm David Archuleta," he says, and then he laughs at himself, because holy cow, he is just not himself. Maybe idiocy is an early symptom of swine flu, or something-
06. Working for the FBI hadn't been on his list of "What I Want To Do When I Grow Up" when he was a kid. He didn't watch CSI or any of those forensic shows; even the sight of blood frightened him, made his mouth dry and his stomach drop.
He hadn't even given thought to the field of Behavioral Science until he was seventeen, and little Amy Lockland from his choir group was kidnapped. Eleven-years-old, with all the talent in the world. David Archuleta's little home town was tilted on its axis after it happened-the news flew through prayer chains like wildfire, Sunday mornings spent rubbing soothing circles onto the backs of trembling moms and dads, grandparents and children. And when he'd found Amy's body, lying carelessly amongst fallen trees in the forest, limbs awkward and twisted, eyes open wide- Devastation seeped into the town, curling around the bases of low-dimmed sidewalk lamps, licking into the corners of windows with dust an inch thick. Everyone succumbed to a haze, a haze that couldn't be lifted by the cheery red lights of fire truck parades, or the orange glow of Jack-O'-Lanterns on Halloween night.
The murderer had never been found.
And perhaps that was reason enough for Archuleta to move to Quantico, Virginia, eighteen and bright-eyed and emphatic, ready to tackle the world.