Heaven

Oct. 10th, 2007 01:58 am
fredless: (Default)
[personal profile] fredless
Setting exercise - Write a scene of your muse eating a meal. Focus on the setting, and illustrate the surroundings that he or she is dining in. It can be in their home, outside, in a restaurant, whatever, but it must be someplace that the muse would IC'ly eat.


It's heaven.

Fred's very, very sure it's heaven right there in paper colored pleasure, all dyed in the sorts of oranges and reds that aren't really the kind to be found in nature. No, these are manufactured hues for manufactured paper for manufactured foods, which is to say it's been a good five years since she's had anything like it. They're not bright, but the burn her eyes anyway. Her little bits of heaven.

You just stop seeing certain things anymore, and sometimes they cease to be. And you try and remember them. There's taste, and texture, the way a voice sounds when it's not shouting at you, they way honest to goodness electrical lighting lights up a person's whole being, and they can't hiding anything. From you or yourself. Every facet, every flaw just lit up like a Christmas tree. All you've got to do is look to see. And if in the end you choose to blink and squint your eyes so those lights and lines blur a bit? Well that's on you.

Just like the taco is...on you. Fred can't even be sure who shoved it in her hands. The girl with a tree for a name had taken Angel away to talk about the girl they both knew. Which of course left Fred with a bunch of people she didn't. Know, in any well or real way. But they'd listened to the bit about tacos it seemed, and now the small sack filled her hands. They were distracting her and she was distracting them. Back and forth and back and forth because if it's one thing Fred knows? It's listening. And they're trying to listen to the talking going on outside, even if they don't want to admit it. The not admitting it is where the food comes in.


She takes two steps back, then three, then two more. Eating's not something she's accustomed to doing in public anymore, especially with all those eyes on her. Normally there's the part when she has to steal her mean first too, with the running that comes after. So the bag is hugged that much closer even as the back on her knees hit something soft. Fred lands on the small circular sofa with an unexpected woosh of air, mouth drawn up in a nervous bow. She pulls herself even deeper into the upholstery, and that's when Fred revises her religion a bit.

Heaven is brightly wrapped tacos and this particular bit of fabric.

It's old Old, and used, and loved. One half of it sits higher than the other just below her, and the smell of it mixes itself up with the beef and tomato in her hands. There's soap, where someone's obviously tried to get a cleaning it. Real, actual soap. Fabric softener too, maybe bits of it left behind by the last person that sat there. So it helps her see a crampt wooden room with dappled afternoon light, filled to the brim with white bits of electrics way part their prime, and a soft, brown woman with more than enough good years left to call her own.

There's sweat, and dandruff, a small burn hole just to the left, and a flash of white where the covering is clear worn away on the right. It's people, and love, and age, and the not-cave, and about all the normal Fred's about to be able to handle in that moment.

It's holder her, and she's holding it right back.

So she opens up her first taco, and steps right through those heavenly gates. Which are somehow made of golden arches topped with a sombrero. It's the not normal in her back again, but she's plenty used to that my now. Fred thinks, sometimes, it might get a little lonely without it.

The taco itself tastes like a test. Will it be a good as she remembers? As wonderful as all those flavors she clung to for so very long, desperate to recreate? It's a taco and a memory and herself. She's going to sink with it, she expects to. Because it can't possibly be what wants it to be. Bits of the wrapper are inside Fred now, because she's eating it that fast. It's a five-year famine coming to an end.

Fred smiles, and it's everything but angelic.

But it tastes right.

Just exactly right.

Date: 2007-10-10 06:52 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com
This is wonderful! I have no idea where to start. It seems so simple, but this has so many fun and unique layers. It's like I'm sitting in her brain during the few minutes before she eats. I love all the little details, how something as simple as a taco and the world around her are so amazing because she hasn't had them.

*lots of applause*

Date: 2007-10-10 04:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/
Thank you so much. It makes me smile knowing you enjoyed it.

Date: 2007-10-10 12:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lt-wes-janson.livejournal.com
You have managed to out do yourself once again. Bravo. :)

Date: 2007-10-10 04:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/
Thank you!! I was so excited when I saw this prompt. It was one of the moments when the idea is there the minute you read it!

*hugs*

Date: 2007-10-10 02:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wesley-w-price.livejournal.com
This is beautiful and so very perfect. I can see the whole scene and see it from both her perspective, and with her perspective on them, from theirs, and how the taco becomes so much more than a taco and more than any of the rest of them in there.

Just lovely.

Date: 2007-10-10 04:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/
Thanks. I woke up from a horrid nightmare last night, and wrote myself past it. This was the result!

*hugs*

Date: 2007-10-10 04:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wesley-w-price.livejournal.com
Bah to the nightmare but absolutely yay for the results. That is so awesome, both that you were able to use the writing to help, and that something so beautiful came out of it.

*hugs*

Date: 2007-10-14 10:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] you-rock.livejournal.com
Image

Like someone said, always an exceptional pup, but this post really did the character justice. We agree and you TOTALLY ROCK!

Date: 2007-10-15 05:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/
Thank you so much. This absolutely made my day. And to whoever's brainchild this is? What an amazing, special idea!

Profile

fredless: (Default)
Fred Burkle

May 2015

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
1011121314 1516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 3rd, 2025 11:00 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios