Thursday, February 21, 2008

Revenge in Verse

I usually don't mix my desperate plees for attention, but I thought this was pretty cool.

A friend of mind turned me onto a writing challenge called Ficlets - www.ficlets.com. The premise is a bunch of authors gather and write very short stories. The stories are counted by the keystroke and I think you get just over 1,000 key strokes to tell a story.

I've written five or six but decided to do something a little different. This story's called 18-1 and the first line contains 18 words. The second line contains 17 words and so on all the way to the last line which consists of a single word. I also used the exact amount of keystrokes to write the story, something they call "Ficlet Nirvana.

Either way, I'm proud of the thing. Here it is:

18-1
I can’t begin to tell you the anguish you’ve caused me, the nights I’ve spent obsessing over you.

When I saw you eating in that restaurant across town, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

But there you were, breathing and conversing, chowing down on a burger and sipping a Budweiser.

I don’t know if this is providence or something slightly darker, but here you are.

My basement is nothing extraordinary, but it’s going to become extremely special to you.

It must seem an odd reversal of fortune, you shackled in my basement.

But then, fate is unpredictable, rivaled only by the mysteries of love.

After you killed my daughter, I thought you had vanished completely.

Imagine my surprise, finding you here in my own backyard.

And now, there’s the matter of what happens next.

By now you’ve probably guessed I want revenge.

I know you don’t believe in God.

I’m not sending you to heaven.

Here’s what’s going to happen.

I’ll stab you here.

Then you’ll die.

And then?

Nothing.

1 comment:

atomicweightofcheese said...

w00t ficlet love :) I love the 18-1 idea and yours is badass! Check your 'notes' at ficlets. Sent you something.