Intro: In class we are reading the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. We were told to write a paragraph or so in the same style as her first words. This is my attempt:
The dirt-laced air bites your eyes like acid. The ground is bare, rocky, without a trace of fertility in it. The sky looms, infinite and blue, overhead. Your vision is compromised, tunneling in a single direction, peering, searching. The shoes crunch on the terrain as the others make their way towards you, slowly lining up. Metallic clicks of triggers on safety ping through the dense air. It becomes silent. People dig in, tense, ready.
The mind-shattering blow of the referee's whistle cracks the calm in half. Everyone is scrambling, jumping, diving as puffs of dirt fly. You must find cover behind a bunker or dare to be stung by the bees rocketing out of the guns of your opponents, 15 per second. The air is rife with paintballs as they explode, sending blood-like paint spraying on your face. The once statue-like bunkers, standing tall and strong, take the brunt of the force, weaving to and fro from the impact of the paintballs. The sound is so cacophonous as to be numbing - the screaming of metal gun bolts accompanied by an orchestra of screaming ammunition with a solo by a screaming player yelling expletives like noone else's business as he stomps off the field, freshly covered in the abstract art of his opponent.
10 minutes pass. You look at the bunker across from you and make a break for it.
10 feet seems like 100 arduous miles as you sprint. The end is near...and then...
The ground deceives you at the very last second, grabbing your ankle with it's imaginiary hand, dust clouds flying as you fight for traction. As you fall you see the bees once more, flying at you. Sting after sting comes as your opponent becomes painter, neon blue staining your hands, chest, face. The rocks on the ground punch you in the kidneys on impact and you are now officially dead.
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I used to love writing like Kingsolver's, but lately I've been leaning more towards the sparse, to-the-point writing of people like Nick Hornby. Kingsolver's descriptions are by no means pretencious, but I really do believe that writing laced with metaphors doesn't always work. Thankfully, the entire PB is not written in the fierce narrative of the first page.
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1 comment:
I only paintballed once and it was pretty fun but your version sounds a hell of a lot more interesting. You make it sound like it pulls you into the game. Your passage could be on the information pamphlet advertising paintball's excitement.
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