Sentence Starter #10: The Foreigner

[VerseD]

I take a break from Portal 2 to post a promised prompt. As Doctor Setebos always charged:

Sentence starters (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/tags.php?tag=sentence+starter) are a fairly simple concept. I'll post a sentence. You write everything that follows that sentence. That's it. It's just flash fiction. Make it interesting. Make it compelling. Make it yours.

Let's see if we can revive the old custom. The point is to challenge yourself to think creatively and grease those rusty neurons, then to share the result. Go for 300 words, but more or less are fine. The theme is alienation, or maybe isolation, and the sentence is this:

They called her "the foreigner," and she knew why.

[Doctor Setebos]

LOVE that someone has re-started this. :) I've linked it in the project thread. I'll participate when I get a chance.

[evilgoodwin]

I'll have to get involved with these. Need some recreational writing after I'm done with school.

[shunoshi]

Blarg, I wanted to make a post on the last sentence starter, but Composition class seems to beat my muse into a bloody lifeless pulp. I've been struggling with any form of non-class related creative writing. Thank God classes end in a couple weeks (although I'm taking Technical Writing over the summer which will likely kill my extracurricular writing as well).

Nonetheless, I'm happy to see the torch has been relit. I'm looking forward to participating (hopefully on number 10 here).

[VerseD]

I found this one so difficult that I had to put the starting sentence in the middle, and I wrote too much, and I'm not so happy with it, but when are we ever truly satisfied with anything?


With an elegant sweep of her right hand she cleared the hair from her brow, but not the bleak and striated gloom from the skies out the palace window. The garden air was cleaned by last night’s storm, and another would swell down the straits from the Black Sea tonight, she was sure.

The Northern blood in her was undiminished by the generations of mercenary forebears who fought under the suns of the southern sea; her bones remembered the dark forests and the mists and monstrous weather of the ancient home of her mercenary clan. And with fair hair and lily skin, with a cypress’ lissome profile in her oriental gown, she appeared alien and even absurd amongst the swarthy people of the city into which she had been married. She felt an eternal sense of placeless and irredeemable loss, and an itch of loneliness beyond reach or reason. At best she was treated with a kind of ritualized adoration, at worst, and most commonly, with a tacit contempt, as an emblem of foreign influence, and often as a source of almost zoological speculation.

They called her “the foreigner,” and she knew why.

She pretended to ignore the opinions of others, sometimes thinking of the future and sometimes of God and always of her children, who alone treated her with unconditional acceptance; but the solitude of her position was always there, lying fallow over her, as cold and suggestive as a sheen of sweat. We are all flailing about for acceptance, but she did so within a closed and empty room, filled only by an icy tangible darkness.

A nurse entered and told her, without affection beyond the duty owed to an inanimate possession of her master, that the children were put to bed.

“Is there anything else, mistress?”

“No, nothing else.”

Her accent was clipped, a simulation of aristocratic pronunciation, poorly fitted and laughable, limited in vocabulary to commands and honorifics. She spoke all her words of adoration in French, and all her confessions in Latin.

Across the garden stood the high domed roof of the reception hall. The man she married would be installed there in a tangle of statesmen, like a pillar surrounded by detritus washed up by a flood. He was black as an Abyssinian, bearded, with a callous brow and a physician’s hands. He was inconstant enough to be universally liked and to win picturesque victories that counted for nothing but reputation. Sometimes he rode in the jousting lists and sometimes he healed a captured prince or emir with his own skill. The city, as his home, gave him context and meaning, and he gave back to the city everything he would ever make. In truth, at heart, he was just as absurd a being as she or as anyone, but not foreign in the way of language, appearance, and acquaintance with custom.

When he died, she thought, she would be alone. Then she would go home.

[Generation ABXY]

Once I bring my old laptop back home, I'll be sure to post mine.

Oh, and I, too, am glad to see these started up again. Thanks, VerseD!

[Reverant]

I'll give someone a big sloppy hug (!!) if they can write this using only Foreigner lyrics and song titles

[Generation ABXY]

It's like that's tailor-made...

[evilgoodwin]

I ended up writing an action scene I didn't plan on. I'd like to flesh this out more, though and polish it more.

They called her “the Foreigner,” and she knew why. Of course she looked different from them. She was made that way, all Foreigners were. But she didn’t mind too much. She was free to mind any way she wanted now.

The Biocon Act of 2035 gave her this right, and she had earned it. She remembered feeling happy when her human friend had told her about it passing. Any biological construct could buy themselves after a time. They were alive, after all, just not human. This was obvious to all. Most humans don’t grow six-inch horns on their heads. Most humans aren’t created to be slaves.

She pulled her jacket tight and watched the group of men scowling at her from across the street. Hate was one thing the act did not prevent. Many people had been disgusted to lose their jobs to these “devils” and had taken action against them. Gangs had formed, groups of violent lunatics who had no problems torturing and murdering Foreigners and human sympathizers. The biggest surprise had come as a result of that violence: no retaliation. The Foreigners were completely non-violent. They protested, they wept, and the world noticed. The Act was passed, and they were able to gain the rights of humanity, though not without work. The world did not pity them enough, yet.

She had bought her freedom, like many of her brothers and sisters. Her friend had been overjoyed, and had hugged her when she had gained her citizenship. But that was years ago, and her friend was gone now. An accident, they said, but she knew otherwise. She had worked with chemicals in that lab for so long, she had seen what accidents could do to a body. Those burns on her friend had been no accident.

She eyed the men again and walked down the alley. She waited, and sure enough, they came for her. The largest one, a blond man with sunglasses sneered.

“Well, ain’t you the cutest thing. ‘Cept for them horns.”

The other gang members laughed. “She is kind of a looker, bro,” one barked. A tattoo covered most of his bald head. He high-fived the other man who had a face-full of piercings.

“I kind of like the horns. Gives me something to hold onto,” said Piercings, as he thrust his pelvis rudely.

The leader spat. “You’re real sick sometimes. How could you even think about doing that with one of them?”

Piercings shrugged. “They’re pretty normal everywhere else, just not the face. Best part is, they don’t fight back.”

Baldy laughed at this. So did she. That caught them off-guard.

“What’s so funny, bitch? Why you laughing?” Shades reached behind his back and pulled out a large dagger. “You crazy or something?”

“Just funny, that’s all.” Her speech was slurred.

“Hey, I think she’s drunk. Won’t be as fun now,” said Baldy. “Should just kill her and get it over with. One of those sympathizing cops might happen to start paying attention to the cameras on this street and notice that we followed her. Filthy devil-worshipers.”

“What, you want to make this quick?” She began to untie her belt holding her jacket closed. Slowly. She licked her lips and winked at Piercings. “Don’t you want to see what’s under my jacket first, boys?”

Before they could respond she had already drawn the gun from her holster and had it pointed at their heads. Shades laughed. “You stupid freak. You ain’t gonna use that on us.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger.

“Ain’t wired for it, right guys?” The others laughed. She pulled the trigger twice. Piercings and Baldy went down, a tranquilizer dart stuck in each of their faces. Shades swore and backed away.

“Your friend was right about our similarities. Did you know that if you inject a human with a certain chemical, it causes aggression and violence?” Her eyes narrowed at the goon. “It works on us, too, with a few side-effects.”

He turned to run, but her arm was around his throat in seconds. “Shit, she’s fast,” he thought before she slammed him into the ground. His breath left him and he saw stars. Those starts faded to a gun barrel pointed at his eye. He lay there, frozen, wondering why she hadn’t fired. She stared back at him, before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a photograph and holding it up next to the gun.

“This person was murdered a month ago because she worked and cared for those like me. Was it you?”

He stammered. “I didn’t kill anybody! I swear it! Please!”

“Don’t lie to me! You’re a murderer!” The barrel clicked against his shades as she pushed the gun closer.

“I’ve never killed a human!”

She glared at his face. She pulled the gun away and kicked him in the side. He howled as a rib cracked.

“I believe you, bastard. But you said ‘human.’ You’ve killed us, though, and for that…” she fired the dart into his neck. He gurgled a bit before it kicked in.

She put her weapon away and spat in his face. She reached up and put a finger to the device on her right ear.

“Three male suspects, alleyway of 1600 block of Wild Rose Way.”

“Roger, Detective. A unit is in route. ETA, five minutes.”

She turned off the device and stared at the photograph. And then she wept.