Assignment: Write about a specific place that was an important part of your childhood or youth. Make sure you are establishing specific atmosphere or mood, or are reflecting a specific frame of mind of your narrator, or point of view character…
By the time the afternoon rush hour rolled around, Aaron was in a stupor. He left his windowless office and rode the down elevator with the other banking zombies. He flowed through the Underground City, past newsstands and flower shops, not as a commuter, but as a leaf on the stream. Minutes later, he boarded the subway.
He found himself a window seat, more through luck than anything else. He slumped in his chair. The car was packed, hands clasping the stauncheons limply, conversations, if any, muted and subdued. The car hissed with ventilators, and the rushing presence of the tunnel walls. Aaron stared out the window at the fluorescent lights flashing by at intervals, and the rising and falling striations of black dust on grey concrete.
Then the light brightened. Aaron blinked. In the holes cut into the tunnel walls, he thought he saw sunlight. It was sunlight.
The train burst into the open, the vanishing rush of the tunnel walls as deafening as the new light was blinding. The setting sun flowed into the train, turning everything orange. The sky was a mottled blue. Outside, the cars on the road paralleling the train were just turning their headlights on. Apartment buildings on the horizon glowed.
Aaron sat up in his seat. He took a deep breath as though surfacing, and smiled.
My parents bought Erin and I a DVD player for our anniversary. With some help from Dan, we managed to set it up. To test out the DVD (and to start out our DVD collection), I purchased the Harry Potter movie (Philosopher’s Stone, of course), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Iron Giant. Today, I went and bought the second season of Buffy. The DVD works well, and there is a noticeable improvement in sound and video. Erin and I are both very pleased.
Well, now we have more gift ideas for Christmas, if ever you’re stuck!