Ever Closer

Here is today's Ten Minute Exercise. Today I tried playing music. It definitely affected the story. Perhaps you can tell.

Racing through city streets on a rainy night. No use saying dark. It’s night after all and even in a big city not every corner can be lit with bright yellow lights. This corner—that is where we’re racing to--a flash of light. Blue. Red. Green.

A dance club door opening and closing quickly. Who are we following? Sounds, beats pounding against my eardrums. My ears have always been sensitive to this type of noise. I long for some place quieter calmer, dimmer, less light, but I have to be in here since I’m following someone. But I can’t think with all this noise. There. Just saw it. Something that doesn’t belong. She’s beautiful, too beautiful at least for this place. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen my share of beautiful women in a city like this, but she is beyond comparison. Were anyone truly awake here they would notice—notice she is not of this world.

I follow without getting too close. Does she know I’m here—that we’ve made contact with our “friends”. I don’t know why we continue to work with them. They don’t really do much for us in return. Nevertheless, my job is to follow, to track her movements to see what she’s doing here. I follow her to the restroom. Many of these places are unisex and you can find many people in here doing other things than what the facilities were made for. She must have disappeared into one of the stalls. At least the noise of the club is lessened, dampened in here. I can think a little more clearly. I wish I’d brought those nifty ear plugs with me but I left the case in the car. I should wait for her outside but then I’d be faced with the roar of the beats and voices of people having a good drunk time. Damn, she’s come out. She looks me up and down. I can see that out of the edge of my eye as I pretend to preen in the mirror. I look at her and play along like I don’t know who or what she is.

“Hey, you having a good time?”

She just smiles, flirting back. I guess the reaction to this look of unbelievable sensuousness should make a normal person nervous. I have to try to act like I’m flustered but trying to play it cool. “What I mean, is do you want to be having a better time?” I try to flirt.

“Sure. What do you have in mind?” If I can get her out of here, out of this noisy place, closer to the car, maybe I can get her then.

But Addison doesn’t know this change in the plan. I was only supposed to confirm suspicions of her presence. “Why don’t we head back to a friend’s place. He’s having a special party. A private party.”

“Sounds good,” she says without hesitation. Is she on to me?

I turn my back to her which makes my skin crawl. All my protective senses scream in defiance. But I have to continue this role-play to accomplish anything from this fiasco. I lead her out of the club. I don’t want to go out the back door, which is closer to the car. Closer to Addison, who is going to be furious, so I go out the front hoping she’ll believe me and follow me out back before she realizes what’s going on.

Later edit: So what I just typed in ten minutes was 573 words, so had I continued typing non-stop like that, I could have written over 2,000 words in forty minutes. Seriously? Granted, it was utter crap, but that's pretty cool. I could totally meet the minimum word count everyday if I don't worry about critiquing the story. And that's kind of what it's about, isn't it? You at least have a first draft on paper or hard drive and then from there you massacre it and reform it into something much better. Cool.