Category: exercise

Perspective

This writing exercise is based on an exhibition by Lea Gulditte Hestelund at Overgaden in 2018, and the Olga Ravn’s subsequent novel, The Employees.

The Cleaner

I overheard someone calling it a Minion. I see it now. It’s the colour and shape, the oval of the omeprazole capsules that Hamid takes for his irritated belly. I think it’s more like a halter. A donkey’s halter, in pale yellow, slipper soft leather. It’s for a human head, not a donkey’s, and that’s creepy. We don’t know it’s for a human head but that’s my best guess. It isn’t fitted over a head, just a clear perspex dome. I don’t like it, especially at five in the morning when there’s nobody about. The lower straps would cover a person’s mouth. Even a donkey’s mouth is let free. Minions are creepy too, the way they get about all together dressed the same with their deranged eyes and their tilted mocking laughs. I overheard the shift manager calling us minions in the tearoom. He thought I wouldn’t understand. Or maybe he knew exactly. He was picking his nose when he said it. I was emptying the coffee machine. Pushing the damp dark grains into the food compost bin and breathing in the thick woody scent. He flicked the snot onto the floor. The artist came in one day. A string of people followed her in white gloves. She asked me about cleaning her object. Did I use the little brush I’d been provided with? She blinked a lot when she spoke and looked over my shoulder. Then she thanked me for my work and gave me a paper bag of croissants on her way out. One of them’s half eaten, she said, you can throw it away if you like, I won’t be offended.

The Security Guard

They don’t know how long to stand in front of it without moving on to the next one. They look about to see who’s looking. But they all stand longer in front of this one than the others. Especially the women. They frown when they look at it and they touch their lips with their sparkling painted nails. One of them actually started crying. Dabbed her eyes with a tissue she pulled out of her handbag then tried to hand it to me to put in the bin. There’s no bins in here, she said, sweeping the tissue around the curve of the gallery with a tanned bare arm. So where I am supposed to find one then, I didn’t say. Actually, it’s my favourite piece in the exhibition. It doesn’t have a name none of them do. It’s definitely for prisoners, for women likely given the colour. They would use black on men. Or grey. Must be to gag them. Some of them need gagged right enough. But not like that. Women are right to stick up for their rights. Reckon its something to do with that cancel culture. Everything is these days. No one out protesting yet but they’ll be here sure as day turns to night and night to day. Last exhibition they were all out screaming and chanting and throwing coloured flour about the place. Half of them with purple hair. Or green. Rings in their noses. The other half older men in suits with pink frothing faces and jowls laddering down their necks. Even got my picture in the news trying to keep them apart. My mother cut the piece out of the newspaper and pressed it between two old magazines. The headline said Choreographed Cancel Culture. What does it mean? my mother asked. She’s proud of me, my mother.

The Woman Visitor

I’ve been three times now and I can’t stop staring. I want to reach inside the case and touch it the way you’d check a lump on the back of your neck to see whether it’s growing or not. It’s leather, the colour of October oak leaves. If I say bondage would you think less of me? But bondage is wrong – it’s not dominatrix stuff. It’s a silencer. Allows her to see but not to speak. Allows her to sniff but not to yawn. Why do I think it’s for a woman? The artist is a woman. She’s telling us about women being silenced. Or she’s doing the silencing. One woman silencing another. Does she want to silence her, the artist? Of course. You only have to look at Twitter. Women rounding on each other like serpents. Trolling and wounding. The strap that goes up over the head that keeps the whole thing in place has long slim pockets. You could keep pencils in those pockets, coloured and sharp or blunt black, the harness comes with no explanation no instructions. What do they let her do, we wonder? What does she draw with the pencils that she cannot say out loud?

The Student

Look at that one over there. The amber one with studs. Studs have more than one meaning. Take your pick. That’s a head alright. Empty-headed. The straps must cover the mouth. Unless you turn it round. But what would be the point of that? How do they know if it’s on too tight? Hannibal Lechter didn’t state a preference for colour but if he had he would have picked scarlett November for the metal taste he left on her tongue. Behind, at the back of the head, there’s a thronged strap, pigtail length, fringed at the end, a grabber for the controller. How we scream at those old movies with the fringed leather jackets on the boys that strut their stuff puffed up preening themselves in car windows while wiping yellow shite off their shoes. The studs that keep the whole thing together are not neat, people are not neat, they are rowdy when pricked antagonised demonised anonymised why waste time with neat when you’re trying to buckle them up.

The Object

We are here for you to relate to our bodies in many different forms and positions – bodies that may seem strange to you. Through spatial staging, the artist enters the viewer’s own body, thereby adding an additional layer of experience to the exhibition’s theme. We hold our secrets behind the tamped skins of pigs and spit inward the moment you move on.

Tags art, gallieries, objects, perspectives

exercise Flash fiction

Ghost

This is a George Saunders exercise: write a story with exactly 200 words in 45 minutes but only use a total of 50 words.

Wanker ghosts her. For the boxes she packs.

Win a week on an island. She never enters competitions. They want your data. Troll you for years. She ticks the boxes. Wanker.

Dodges through the traffic. Fingers up to the blasting horn. Wanker.

They call months later. Automated message. You’ve won. Pack your bags. We’ll send a cab. The cab is automated, dodges traffic. They ghost her bags. She wins a week on a traffic island. Traffic blasting horns.

She ticks her fingers through the week. She never packs boxes. Traffic blasting horns. Wanker.

She ticks her fingers through the month. She never packs boxes. Wanker. Trolls on cabs dodge blasting horns.

She ticks her fingers through the years. She will never pack boxes. Wanker. Ghosts tick fingers up to blasting horns. Trolls send a competition. Win a week on a box. The wanker never won.

She wins a week on a box. We’ll send a cab. The cab is automated, dodges traffic. The box ghosts her. Trolls send a competition. Win a week on a troll. A ghost trolls her. Win a week on a horn. We’ll send a wanker. The wanker is automated, dodges her boxes.

She never calls.

exercise musings

Endings

The bed was just as it always was. Military corners tucked in tight. The coral stain on the pillow half a purple sun.

That’s it, I suppose, he said.

Anyway, you always said I drank too much, she said, draining the glass. It was a lie and she knew it and he knew it.

There’s always yesterday, I said.

You knew that of course. You had always known. Even though you weren’t there. You’d never been there. And that, you would say if you were here to say it, was the whole point.

She kicked the gull’s skull into the sea. It tumbled, recovered, and right way up, bobbed out into the grey sheet of the outgoing tide.

The surviving shoe lay upside down in the hall for the longest time. For several years, the new owners of the house still felt it unlucky to move it.

She had something important to say, she said, gesturing to him to sit down on the boulder beside the well.

Everywhere, all about her, the stench of singeing songbirds.

He chuckled. He’d been right, the flat-earther, right the whole time.

Tuesday seemed as good a day as any for all of them to stop crying.

He dipped one end of the oar into the water. Felt the heavy stickiness of it in his palms.

He would get another puncture that day.

Maybe the prices would rise tomorrow. Maybe they would fall. Either way, she still had the tractor.

And so this story, with its fully pronounced end and final full stop, was never about life at all.

exercise Flash fiction

Still, no one speaks

The sudden silence is so loud, so brash, so charged, I stumble. My bare heel slips out of my platform shoe and I grab at the nearest chair to catch myself. My glasses steam up and the silence jumps an octave. I force my heel back into my shoe and rub my glasses with a finger. The Café Royal melts into focus.

The serving bar, a long fat oval, is in the centre of the room. Everything in it and about it is flashy and tiled and chandeliered. Johan had chosen the bar and I wasn’t surprised. On-line at least, he’s a flashy sort of guy.

There are mirrors of mirrors of mirrors. Multiples of multiples and shattering vulgar light. I’m confused. Are there five people or ten or fifty? I settle on around twenty including the three barman.

Across from me a woman leans on a chair by the door. She is older than me, and flustered. She is wearing the same yellow shoes. The same cropped jeans. The same neat black jacket. I frown at her and she frowns back. We blush together as we understand our idiocy. I want to scan the bar for Johan but now I’m too humiliated to look.

Still, no one speaks.

A barman, neat in a moustache and a tight black waistcoat with a tea towel draped over his shoulder, studies me. His appraisal is slow and deliberate. I pull my shoulders in. Shrink inside. He releases me, turns away and leans over the counter to a young bloke in a suit. They exchange whispers and money.

The young bloke swivels on his stool and faces me. He’s looking but not looking. He has a banknote in his fingers that he rolls and unrolls. Something gold flashes around his wrist. He doesn’t seem to blink. I drop my eyes. Sticky acrid bile catches the back of my throat. I imagine it yellow. Then green. I cough. The bloke keeps looking not looking rolling unrolling.

Still, no one speaks.

The bar is dim and cool. Everyone in it is cool and dim. Except me. I am hot. I cannot control my breathing.

I cannot control my breathing. Breaths coming short and fast. Too short and so fast. What’s wrong with these people? It can’t be me. How could it be me? I try looking to my right.

There’s a trio, standing in an alcove. A fiddler, a guitarist, and a woman who probably sings. She’s in a red dress with matching flat shoes. They are not playing music. But they’re not resting. They’re a livestream on pause. The fiddler, a tall man with angles and rough cheeks and a blistered nose, still has his fiddle under his v-shaped chin. The arm with the bow is stuck, crooked in the air. He sways lightly. He is looking at the bloke on the stool. His eyes seem distressed.

The guitarist is also looking at the bloke on the stool. He has more of a querulous look. His guitar hangs on his chest from a leather strap over his shoulder, and his right hand is a frozen pick at a fret. The woman in red has her belly out and her mouth open in preparation for a high note that does not come. She is looking at me. Where is Johan? He must have seen me by now.

Still, no one speaks.

My short fast breaths need reassurance. My hands are sticking with sweat. I try looking to my left. There’s an old woman sat on a high chair at a fruit machine. She’s wearing a sleeveless crocheted waistcoat, nicotine taupe, over a rumpled white shift. Her eyes are pulled to the line of odd fruits. Her fingers are on the red button. The fruit machine is not flashing. Its lights are stuck on glare. The woman’s right shoe makes a rapid tap tap on the wooden footrest below her. It’s the only sound in the bar. The only sound apart from my short fast breaths.

The silence blisters. A mobile phone. It rings and rings until it rings out. It comes from the far corner of the bar, the corner I can see. It comes from a group of four men with dominoes splayed out across their table. Two of the men are looking at the bloke on the stool. The other two have their hands flat on the table.

Still, no one speaks.

I feel sick. This is why I never go into bars first. Why I always wait outside. Wandering about on the pavement pretending to make a call. Maybe this is Johan? A test? A test for a first date? But how would he set the whole thing up? He wouldn’t know all these people. The woman at the fruit machine sneezes. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. I’m the only person that looks.

I need to leave. I let go of the chair. I set my face in an air of oh well nothing happening here I’ll just head home. I swing around on my platform shoes. The bloke on the stool hops down. He is bigger than I expected. He moves fast. He moves to the spot between me and the door. He is close enough to touch. He smells of onion and metal. My adrenaline roars.

I look back around the bar for help. To the trio of musicians. To the woman at the fruit machine. To the men with the dominoes. To all the others sitting in silence with their gazes anywhere but here. Someone drops a coin on the floor. Someone on the other side of the musicians. The coin bounces and spins. I can’t help but watch it. The bloke in the suit has breath that is warm and gummy across my hair.

The coin settles. It settles beside something red. Blood red. A trail of blood. The trail leads to a man. A man lying face down all crooked under a table with a couple sat each side of him. No one bends to retrieve the coin.

And still, no one speaks.

Postscript. This was a writing exercise on building tension.

Tags mystery, tension