The task is to continue the opening line," Smoke escaped from the basement window" and end the story with the image of smoke.
This exercise did not interest me at all but to progress to week 9 I had to complete it. Doggedly I sat at keyboard and here is the result. Try it!
Euphoria
Smoke escapes
from the basement window. She’d opened the sash window to stifle the smell and
there it is, the tell tale curl, the waft of forbidden activity drifting into
the garden. He would kill her if he knew what she was at. She’d promised on her
grandmother’s grave to never do it again. So much for oaths. Her grandmother
lived for sixty years with the same problem. Three score years, she’d be happy
with that, until the end anyway. In the end her granny felt short-changed, her
life’s ambition, to write her account of a stifled life, unaccomplished.
The
trails of smoke curl upwards like silk scarves thrown. Cleo stiffens. She hears
him pottering about nearby trying to connect two hose pipes. He’s cursing and
muttering to himself. Not handy.
That’s what her granny said about him when he arrived. And very bad tempered is what she should have added. Violent, in fact, at times; hopefully not
this time.
But he hadn’t much sense of smell which was a disadvantage if you
live with someone with a compulsion like hers. There was a name for it; she
couldn’t remember what it was. They said
the habit was foul. They talked of it as if it was a genetic deviation. They
didn’t get it, the anticipation, the exhilaration. She’d set fire to the
curtains once or twice, her own that is, but that was unintended. Her damage
was usually confined to old shacks and derelict buildings.
“She’s at it again.”
Her mother’s voice dowses her musings. “Can’t you smell it coming from the
basement?”
“I’ll tan her hide!” he shouts.
Cleo takes a final drag, legs it out
the window and heads for the barn where she can already smell the euphoria of
smoke rising.
Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019
