Lesson 5 Galumphing

OK, so I did this exercise and a whole scene emerged. It was probably meant to be more rough than this, but this is what came out without editing except for typos.

Lesson 5

Try Galumphing

Pick a number between 100 and 999. Write it down on a scrap of paper. Now pick the word out of the following three columns that corresponds to each of the digits in the number you wrote down. For example, my number was 632, so my words are: radio, foot doctor, and grocery store. (see lesson for columns)

Your task is to write one paragraph using the item from column 1, the character from column 2, and the place mentioned in column 3. You are galumphing, so feel free to have fun. Be profligate, excessive, exaggerated, and uneconomical, as Nachmanovitch advises. Take the scenic route. Improvise. Trust yourself. See what comes out.

My number was 576 = garbage can, scorpion and bank

Ok, I am trying this for 10 minutes right now. What about a garbage can, a scorpion and a bank? The scorpion can be outside the garbage can outside a bank in Phoenix, Arizona. I don’t know why I think of Arizona and scorpions because we have them in California too.

The air is dry and tastes of dust, but between the buildings on either side of the alley, the shade provides a welcome reprieve from the heat. Next to an old battered tin trash can, a small black shiny scorpion suns itself in the small triangle of sun from the reflection of a window, its curved stinger poised over itself. It is so still that a person might think it’s dead. But it’s stillness gives it away, an ambush predator, lulling the unwary into a fall sense of security by not moving, by blending into the landscape around it.

Jake scoffed. Sort of like him, really. He poked at the arachnid no bigger than his index finger and guffawed when it scurried under the trash can.

Jake stood up from his crouch and checked the alley way again for any sign of prey. He couldn’t stand to be in direct sunlight, so he would have to wait for a quick meal on some unsuspecting homeless person looking to bed down for the night. It was surprising that this alley wasn’t already inhabited by the homeless but they were strangely absent.

A sound at the end of the alley drew his attention. He was surprised to see a woman, dressed in tight-fitting black motorcycle gear. Jake’s fangs lengthened. She would be a tasty morsel. She smiles almost as if reading his mind.

“Hungry, big boy?” she said in a sultry voice as she stalked closer to him.

Saliva welling in his mouth made him swallow before answering. “Yes,” he said, hissing around his lengthening fangs. She was only step away from him now. The tight leather showing all her juicy curves that his eyes lewdly followed. From the distance, he should be able to scent her, her heat and blood beneath the surface of her translucent skin.

“What are you?” he asked. His eyes roaming carefully over her now. His gaze came up to her eyes and he realized that they were a glassy black... the entire eye held no whites. In fact, he could see his startled face reflected out of those inky depths.

“Pissed,” she purred and stepped back as something long and dark moved behind her shoulders.

Jake thought he was seeing her dark hair in a ponytail, moving of its own free will over her head and curving towards him. Then he saw the stinger, a curved lethal point that glistened wetly. He’d seen something similar not 5 minutes before.

It was the last thought in his head before the stinger pierced it, popping it like a needle with a balloon. Immediately, the rest of the body burst into dust and rain to the ground in a gray mass.

The woman retracted her stinger behind her back and turned to the trash can.

“Come out my darling. He can’t hurt you now,” she said, crooning.

A small black body tentatively crawled from under the warped metal. And then another... and then dozens, black glittering bodies swarmed her shiny leather boots. Laughter filled the not-so-empty alley behind a bank in the summer in Phoenix, AZ.