door_step
12-11-2002, 1:00 AM
Another great "oldie" written by Ken (Trample Babe’s Rug)
Well, I'd like to offer this purely fictional bit of story telling. I (Ken !) wrote the original during the last ice age (when I was but a wee boy just out of high school), but cleaned it up a bit when I found it.
The commotion up ahead, whatever it was, had just abated, and the crowd of women leaving the conference was finally able to move foreword. After having been stuffed unceremoniously into the rather narrow hallway following the final symposium, the women were no longer the well mannered elite of society that had entered more than an hour ago. Ill tempered faces and sharp, irritated quips characterized the well heeled assembly, which was not hard to understand, considering the unfortunate failure of the air conditioning.
The shouting up ahead had lasted for about ten or fifteen minutes (being packed in so tightly with other women, she couldn’t look at her watch without poking some other irritable woman). The raised voices started out mostly male, shouting in impatient sternness. But soon the ratio hanged. More and more women’s voices could be heard. Angry voices. Impatient voices. But then the shouting had stopped. And, blessedly, the crowd, now on the brink of becoming an angry mob, surged foreword.
She watched the heads of the scores of women ahead of her. Evidently there was a step-up a few paces from where she was. She continued walking, trying to watch the floor in front of her. But as she neared the step-up, the women behind her closed in and pressed her to the backs of the women in front, causing her to walk on with an uneasy sense of blind trust.
The noise of the bickering women, mixed with the continuous scraping and clicking of their shoes, was loud enough to drown out her thoughts, which was just as well since her thoughts were better left dead. She had to feel with the toes of her red high heeled pumps for the step-up, and finally she found it. She placed her right foot firmly on the step and brought herself up, but almost lost her balance as the ground beneath her foot seemed to squash down under her. But the crush of women behind her would not be denied and prevented her from doing anything about it, so she kept on treading the uneven floor. And about five seconds later, as she was stepping on a rather flat bit of floor, she felt something give under her shoe, and heard a muffled man's scream of agony.
to be continued,
doorstep
Well, I'd like to offer this purely fictional bit of story telling. I (Ken !) wrote the original during the last ice age (when I was but a wee boy just out of high school), but cleaned it up a bit when I found it.
The commotion up ahead, whatever it was, had just abated, and the crowd of women leaving the conference was finally able to move foreword. After having been stuffed unceremoniously into the rather narrow hallway following the final symposium, the women were no longer the well mannered elite of society that had entered more than an hour ago. Ill tempered faces and sharp, irritated quips characterized the well heeled assembly, which was not hard to understand, considering the unfortunate failure of the air conditioning.
The shouting up ahead had lasted for about ten or fifteen minutes (being packed in so tightly with other women, she couldn’t look at her watch without poking some other irritable woman). The raised voices started out mostly male, shouting in impatient sternness. But soon the ratio hanged. More and more women’s voices could be heard. Angry voices. Impatient voices. But then the shouting had stopped. And, blessedly, the crowd, now on the brink of becoming an angry mob, surged foreword.
She watched the heads of the scores of women ahead of her. Evidently there was a step-up a few paces from where she was. She continued walking, trying to watch the floor in front of her. But as she neared the step-up, the women behind her closed in and pressed her to the backs of the women in front, causing her to walk on with an uneasy sense of blind trust.
The noise of the bickering women, mixed with the continuous scraping and clicking of their shoes, was loud enough to drown out her thoughts, which was just as well since her thoughts were better left dead. She had to feel with the toes of her red high heeled pumps for the step-up, and finally she found it. She placed her right foot firmly on the step and brought herself up, but almost lost her balance as the ground beneath her foot seemed to squash down under her. But the crush of women behind her would not be denied and prevented her from doing anything about it, so she kept on treading the uneven floor. And about five seconds later, as she was stepping on a rather flat bit of floor, she felt something give under her shoe, and heard a muffled man's scream of agony.
to be continued,
doorstep