almosteverythingelse-blog - Tumblr blog

almosteverythingelse-blog · 6 years ago

Text

the classy life

Task:

“A clean slate!” Compose a piece of imaginative writing in which you imagine the new world for the protagonist Tom Ripley. You do not have to stay within Highsmith’s world. You will need to include a title. 1000 – 1500 words

Excerpt for your Imaginative Response (Excerpt is from The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, 1955)

His mood was tranquil and benevolent, but not at all sociable. He wanted his time for thinking, and he did not care to meet any of the people on the ship, not any of them, though when he encountered the people with whom he sat at his table, he greeted them pleasantly and smiled. He began to play a role on the ship, that of a serious young man with a serious job ahead of him. He was courteous, poised, civilized and preoccupied. He had a sudden whim for a cap and bought one in the haberdashery, a conservative bluish-grey cap of soft English wool. He could pull it down over nearly his whole face when he wanted to nap in his deck-chair, or wanted to look as if he were napping. A cap was the most versatile of head-gears, he thought, and he wondered why he wondered why he had never thought of wearing one before. He could look like a country gentleman, a thug, an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a plain American eccentric, depending on how he wore it. Tom amused himself with it in his room in front of the mirror. He had always thought he had the world’s dullest face, a thoroughly forgettable face with a look of docility that he could not understand, and a look also of vague fright that he had never been able to erase. A real conformist’s face, he thought. The cap changed all that. It gave him a country air, Greenwich, Connecticut, country. Now he was a young man with a private income, not long out of Princeton, perhaps. He bought a pipe to go with the cap. He was starting a new life. Good-bye to all the second-rate people he had hung around and had let hang around him in the past three years in New York. He felt as he imagined immigrants felt when they left everything behind them in some foreign country, left their friends and relations and their past mistakes, and sailed for America. A clean slate! Whatever happened with Dickie, he would acquit himself well, and Mr Greenleaf would know that he had, and would respect him for it. When Mr Greenleaf’s money was used up, he might not come back to America. He might get an interesting job in a hotel, for instance, where they needed somebody bright and personable who spoke English. Or he might become a representative for some European firm and travel everywhere in the world. Or somebody might come along who needed a young man exactly like himself, who could drive a car, who was quick at figures, who could entertain an old grandmother or squire anybody’s daughter to a dance. He was versatile, and the world was wide! Upward and onward!

Response:

The classy life suited him well, he decided, fingers poised in a practiced manner on the handle of the teacup. At least, he hoped it looked practiced, he had spent all afternoon mastering the air of superiority that so many on the ship grown up with. He sipped the tea quietly, pretending not to immediately regret the decision as the scorching liquid burned a path down his throat. He hadn't realised that tea came in a form other than bitter and tepid. His only experience in the past came from the dregs in the cardboard cups he had salvaged from behind the café. He decided he liked it, downing another sip of the searing beverage. The poor boy from the alleyways of New York City didn't know how to drink tea of the upper class but his new persona was well-accustomed. He pulled his treasured cap down firm on his face mimicking the way he had seen others do.

He was so immersed in the creation of his new persona - a fearsome lawyer or a benevolent doctor, perhaps - he missed the signs of his own imminent kidnapping. When the men dressed in black took the table beside his, he simply made a mental note to buy something black himself, a dress suit to further assimilate himself with those of the upper-class. When the men cast furtive glances in his direction between their whispered conversation, he felt merely embarrassed, certain they'd seen him wince with his first sip of tea.

When the pair of hands grabbed his shoulders, he almost felt pride that his first thought was of the wrinkles he would have to get the ship's servants to iron out of his new jacket rather than the one of fear that had been bred into him after years as the street thief. But years of breeding don't go away overnight and the familiar emotion set in soon after.

Timothy Forrest, he had dubbed his new persona - a conservative name that associated itself with an image of a respectable businessman. The name became a mantra he ran over and over in his head as the thugs shovelled his head into a bag. Timothy Forrest was a man straight out of a private education with a future in economics or engineering or perhaps both. He was a man whose suave nature and lined pockets had the girl who lived down the road fight with her friends to win him over. Timothy Forrest was a man he quite liked and was anxious to become in his new world.

But when one of the men demanded his name, Timothy Forrest disappeared and it was all he could do to whisper a pathetic 'Tom Ripley' through the rough cotton over his head. When a muffled 'yeah, right' came as the reply he couldn't help but feeling offended. Despite his abandonment of his alter-ego, it was still denied - he might as well have lied and saved his dignity.

With every minute that passed, his future became bleaker lacking the promise that had previously entertained his daydreams. He could no longer guess if he was still on the ship. The soft lull of the waves became a noise he missed dearly and at times when he felt he could hear it once more, he had to dismiss the possibility as a figment of his imagination.

When the bag was finally pulled off his face he found no relief. The room was dark and his eyes were slow to adjust. The room bore the dank trademark stench of all things wet.

The men left with the promise of returning, placing a particularly mocking emphasis on the 'Mr. Ripley' that accompanied the door slamming shut behind them.

He couldn't help but feel slighted by the world. This was his clean slate - it seemed hardly fair to be ripped away so early in the adventure. Misfortune, it seemed, had quite the affinity for him.

He had gotten very accustomed to the luxuries of his life on the ship. Mr. Greenleaf had mentioned offhandedly once that their new life would be far superior. He found it hard to believe the older man despite his learnedness of the world. The ship was perhaps the peak of luxury he would ever experience, but it wasn't hard to top his previous lifestyle so he was confident of his satisfaction in his life after the boat. The rooms on the ships were large - he would have settled for something the quarter of the size. With large peepholes overlooking the waves that had adopted a constant shade that seemed so impossibly deep and blue, he wished for a camera to save the image forever.

His home had forever been filtered through shades of brown that had then been stripped of saturation. The closest he got to this kind of beauty was the stained red of the cola cans that the busker collected his money in.

The bed in the corner of his room on the ship could probably fit six of him in it. He had always looked down on those who owned beds so big. They took up space in the room that could have been filled with other useful amenities - and space was so valued in downtown New York. With one of his own, he felt a strange attachment. He had always been tall for age, arms and legs growing before the rest of him. It was a new and not unwelcome experience to be able to fit all of the lankiness within the bedframe. It was a comfort he would take with him to his new life, he had decided quickly.

Another attachment he had soon made was to the sense of being someone respectable. People looked at his clothes and didn't see what used to be tattered fabric or the bruises that stippled his skin. They saw the grey of the English wool and they saw the shine of his shoes and they smiled.

He wondered if he would ever see someone smile at him again. He wondered if he would see anything again. His eyes still hadn't adjusted.

The darkness of the room was another new amenity. His home had always been lit with the glow of the streetlights that lined the alleyways, blinds had been a superfluity that had never become a priority. The boat supplied lampshades that lit the room with a mosaic of colours and so he never felt it necessary to enjoy the comfort of darkness that his mother had so often complained of lacking before.

Time had never been something to keep track of. It was something he had assured Mr. Greenleaf that he would incorporate into his alter-ego. Every moment spent with the second-rates didn't feel like one to be celebrated and so time became a matter to ignore rather than notice. Consequently, he had no idea how long he had been detained. Days, perhaps, hours, maybe.

Despite the countless narratives of rescue he had managed to concoct in the time of his capture, salvation seemed improbable. He was coming to terms with the fact that perhaps his new life wasn't the one of high society and success that he had imagined but rather one of slavery and labour. His old situation had seemed unfortunate but he had realised that things could be worse. How fortunate that he be humbled through experience.

The door opened.

The light seeping through the cracked door was almost blinding, illuminating the room to be that of the boiler room of the ship. He had been on the ship all along. The shadow of pudgy man stretched into the small room, elongating his frame. He wore a cap low over his face concealing it almost entirely and a small spark of indignation rose up when he recognized it as one that he had bought earlier during his stay on the ship. Regardless, the fear was still very prevalent so he decided he wouldn't mention it.

The man - despite his stocky frame managed to easily pull him out of the room into the ship's familiar corridors. "Stanton, are you kidding me? It's the wrong guy!" The man reprimanded people he could only imagine to be the thugs that had previously kidnapped him. The admonition was followed by a string of colourful words. They had all but forgotten about him.

The experience hadn't shaken him as much as he'd expected it should have. He wondered briefly of the man he had been mistaken for, realising that his accidental identity theft meant he looked refined enough to be someone else on the ship. The small note gave him great pleasure and he celebrated the fact as he returned to his quarters on the ship.

The suit had been crumpled up like the newspapers he got back home, the grey of the material and suspicious stains from the boiler room only likening the appearance.

Timothy Forrest was not a tattered newspaper from New York that didn’t warrant a second glance. He was a hardcover book in which people who belonged on the ship would chat about over expensive wines - now equipped with a thrilling backstory in which he suffered a brutal kidnapping and barely escaped alive.

The experience, he felt, had hardened him into the persona he had concocted for himself. His docility seemed replaced with a certain hardness and his face - whilst still forgettable, seemed less conformist and more likened to someone with an opinion. The phrase 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' had been tossed around his neighbourhood as a joke - people who lived in the streets knew its falsehoods. However here on the ship with the civility of his kidnapping, he felt that the phrase resonated far more with those in this standard of living - his standard of living now.

He decided he would buy a new hat to celebrate it. The classy life suited him well indeed.

#short fiction #short story #creative writing #assignment #everything else

0 notes

almosteverythingelse-blog · 6 years ago

Text

curiosity killed the cat

Curiosity, they said, killed the cat. It was a disease, it was death. Let us protect you. Let us cure you.

When they shot the girl, they were protecting her. When they dragged the women out of her home, they were protecting her. When they whipped the man in the street, the were protecting him. They were cured now.

Broken, skin a patchwork of ugly scars, flinching at every whisper - but cured. Let us cure you too.

Blair had never met those people. But their names were spoken synonymous with a warning - don't end up like them. Their mangled bodies flashing scarlet across the television screen - they were infected. And a disease like that had to be treated.

That's what they told the woman who no longer had a daughter; the fiancé left with nothing but a half written page of vows; the wife who had a closet full of suits no one would ever wear again. They were infected.

The problem was, so was she.

Curiosity had killed the cat. But Blair always wondered whether it was because the cat had followed his curiosity to his death or died from the sheer power it had over him. Maybe the cat wasted away just wondering what would have happened if it had followed that smell, ate that food, talked to that person, pressed that button.

The button the button the button. Surface shining, fine layers of dust undisturbed in years. Displayed on the pedestal, so close so close.

"That's its power." Too close. Blair flinched away from the button. A woman tucked a curl of fair hair behind her ears. "The frequency." Her voice held the magnitude of a black hole, sucking in everything within her vicinity, steel eyes destroying simultaneously.

"Despite all attempts to eradicate the disease, it still remains prevalent amongst members of our society. The frequency will release the dopamine chemical in the of the brain which increases expression of curiosity amongst the infected. To put it simply, it will help reveal the infected in this group today - and they will be given appropriate treatment."

Appropriate treatment. What was 'appropriate' was relative. When the butcher snapped the neck of one of his chickens to pluck and sell the next day, it was appropriate. If a father hunted down his child to murder it in cold blood, the society would demand retribution. The father would play out his story as the villain yet the butcher would his a hero for filling his neighbours' bellies.

"But that's the room." The woman was still speaking. "The button does something else entirely. It's quite impressive." What does it do what does it do? But she had moved on to the masterpiece behind it.

If carnage was to be defined by a single painting, that would be it;

The glass buildings towering into the skies, the roads lined with neatly trimmed pines, edged with manicured lawns. It was easily recognisable as Metropolis. She had driven down that very road to the excursion that morning. But blood turned the roads into a grotesque mosaic. Bodies heaped across them in a mismatched jigsaw. Limbs barely connected to their respective bodies, organs spilling from gaping wounds. Their faces mauled beyond repair yet the expressions of agony and terror were impossible to miss. The sun shone upon the slaughtered people, turning the paths Blair had walked on millions of times before into shimmering rivers of blood. Nothing about this was familiar.

"-The first cleansing." The woman's steel gaze scanned the crowd, mouth twitching in amusement at the mirrored looks of horror. The painting wasn't a painting at all.

As Blair stared into the sea of dead bodies littering the streets she lived in, her heart climbed into her throat, pulsing to a drumbeat of terror. It was a photograph.

"There's no need to be worried. Those are the corpses of the curious." She spoke 'corpses' as though she were talking about weeds that had been mowed out of her perfect, compliant, indifferent garden bed. "They refused treatment, and so they were dealt with accordingly."

There was nowhere to look without seeing the death and feeling its presence breathing down her neck, promising a reunion in the near future. Photograph of her future, walls painted in rust and roses, people around her so nonchalant about her death that was rapidly approaching, the button calling her name. What does it do? There was nowhere to look without being assaulted, without giving herself away.

Blair tried imagining the paved paths she’d walked down this morning but all she could see was the blood filling the cracks in the sidewalk blooming in puddles in the place of the little spurge plants that were there before. Blood the colour of roses, of rubies, of pomegranates, of her favourite nail polish, of the button - what does it do what does it do?

“Blair.”

Blair had been friends with Margot since the very first day of school. They were basically inseparable. She had seen Margot through countless breakups, crushes, first days, birthdays and so much more. Yet through all those years, Blair had never seen that look of unadulterated horror and despair.

Blair stood where she was, frozen – panic lacing her limbs, leaving her paralysed. Her fingers brushed the years of dust that coated the red plastic, arm outstretched towards the cruel device. She had somehow gotten so close, no one had noticed – she hadn’t noticed.

“Got one.” The woman adjusted her skirt, pride coating her words.

“I just wanted to know what it does.” Blair’s voice barely broke a whisper. She sounded pitiful, even to her own ears. It was no excuse. She was infected.

“Step away from the button now, darling.” The endearment sounded poisonous. “It hasn’t been pressed in over two hundred years, let’s keep it that way.”

“I just wanted to know what it does.” Blair repeated, what does it do?

“No one knows. Something horrible, for the both of us. Come now.” The woman spoke triumphantly, as if she’d won, but in that split second, her steel gaze fractured, the smallest sliver of fear slipping through.

Blair’s fingers twitched beside the button. They’d never get to her fast enough.

They said curiosity killed the cat. They forgot to tell them that satisfaction brought it back. She pressed the button.

#everything else #prompt #story #creative writing

0 notes