I feel like sharing, so here's a piece I did for the "Show, Don't Tell" portion of my creative writing class (which, sadly, wraps up this week). It's based on a prompt that I'll reveal at the end. No point ruining the surprise.
Tumult
The dying light of the setting sun cast a familiar shade of crimson on the placid surface of a secluded lake. I crouch down to dip my hands into the cool water, releasing the weight I held in my hand in hopes it would sink to the bottom, forgotten. My eyes watch while colors swirl and dance as ripples radiate in all directions, distorting the lake's surface irrevocably. Cold seeps into my skin, like lead leeching through my pores, and I can feel the life draining from my hands. The encroaching numbness is pleasant, almost as cleansing as the source of the sensation. But the pleasure is short-lived as a needling irritation creeps over me, a frustrated sigh flaring my nostrils as I withdraw my hands from the lake. A quick flick of the wrist scatters droplets of water, the feeling slowly returning to my hands as I return my gaze to the world at large.
Trees border the lake on all sides, some blotched with the colors of the season, others sending out their lifeless limbs in random contortions. The colors seem unnatural in the moment, like someone had hurriedly slashed open a vein against several of the trees on one side, only to send splatters against the opposite canopy. Hidden between the wide swaths of scarlet foliage, leaves hued like flaxen hair quiver on a rising breeze. That zephyr, an unexpected intruder, stole into the space between the trees, ruffling the leaves and the surface of the lake alike. My fading reflection dances on the ripples, twisting and bending into the facade of some inhuman creature.
Done with the warped visage glaring accusations up at me from the water's edge, I rise to drink in a space growing more tumultuous. Wind, swelling in force, slashes through the trees; leaves quake as they vainly attempt to flee the assault. Waves begin to roll across the lake, churning up colors of an abyss void of the light of the sun. Spray from the lake whips about me on the wind, speckling my clothing with dots of moisture. I want to strip off my dirtied coverings and toss myself, once again, into the din. To drench myself in the colors not my own, to feel the world itself rage against my body. I refrain, willing to take in the tumult from afar this time as a grin turns my lips. In the sound of the gale I hear a voice rising up in me, my lips parting to loose words spoke in another time, at another place: “You have nowhere to run.”
The prompt from this exercise was: Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do no mention the murder.
How'd I do?
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