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The gray-slated door swings wide, and from its cavernous gap burst forth two figures being pulled and clutched at by the white turmoil behind. The blizzard’s frosted fingers dash into the office, racing forward as if hoping to overtake the two souls that it had blown and battered around and bring them back into it’s frozen heart.
The door slams shut and instantly the fingers collapse, the power that was driving them moans and wails behind the heavy walls of the enclosure, screaming softly for another victim to clasp. The two figures stand in the brightly lit room, still hunched up, hiding inside their coats and scarves from the darkness they have just escaped.
Their eyes peer forwards into the white confusion, their vision expanding outwards as their pupils dilate. A battered table that seems to have been made before the war swept over this area, scratched and dinged is etched into the corner of the room. It seems more a monolith built up to death, broken and banged, as if all hope has left it’s sturdy wooden platform that’s now been designated to hold year old copies of Family Circle and A Taste of Home. A door opposite from them, newly painted in dark brown, giving off a sickly scent of tangerines and grapes; newly spilt wine adorn it’s edges in an almost festive way.
3 chairs align the left of the room, set up mechanically right against the wall, digging into the paper and all the way down to the plaster. They have been festooned with the dirt of a thousand traveler’s, each passer-by leaving their stamp on time’s shrouded meniscus. The chairs are certainly part of that great curved trap, being both sucked down into history buoyed to the edge of time. This is how our two travelers rest, on chairs being hurtling towards the end of time, yet never quite breaking the present barrier.
Time is a curious thing in this room, it is counted off methodically by an old wooden clock, surrounded by a grungy, pinstriped wall. Looking the head of some enormous businessman bound to a casual gathering of associates, ticking off it’s knowledge. The two travelers look up at the clock; they can not tell, is it counting down or is it counting up? Counting down they decide, for as they stare, the hands begin to slow, resting longer between each beat. It seems as though Father Time has become aware that each tick brings him closer to his ultimate demise, his arthritic hands crawling across the face of the clock.
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Hobbes, the next time someone asks me for an example of really terrible melodrama, I'll use the phrase "time's shrouded meniscus."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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On the other hand, the "chairs hurtling towards the end of time" bit is actually kind of inspired. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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No, I'm serious. If you save anything from that exercise, save that line. I won't even steal it. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I think your main problem is the title of this thread. If you'd called it "Secret Snipet from OSC's New Ender Novel," everyone would have loved it. Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Engineers and lawyers. Hmph! They try to pack too much information into their sentences. I cannot tell you the agony I get into when editing my hubby's work. His run-on sentences last for paragraphs!
He justifies his phrases by telling me that they are precise in meaning, and he has to say things in just that way. He hates the nuances of adjectives and adverbs. He is in love with prepositions.
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I was in love with a preposition once. She didn't retun the love, nor did she let me go. In fact, she kept me dangling like a bad participle.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I think a true engineer would have understood that on entering a lit white room from the dark outdoors, the protagonists' pupils would contract, not dilate.
Really, that's my only issue with this passage.
Other than that single exception aside, my belief is that the writer's obvious enjoyment of and enthusiasm with The Bard's great language that is this English which we speak, comes across with flying colors like that of the banners of the ancient kings of old.
Posts: 431 | Registered: Oct 2003
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