Friday 26 October 2012

NaNo Prep 2012: Siana's escape from the Pit of Suck


A hand emerges from the black mire at the bottom of the Pit of Suck and grabs wildly for something - anything at all - to use as an anchor. The hand closes on nothing but slick clay and it sinks back into the blackness, defeated for now. The owner of the hand sinks deeper and the darkness is complete.


Voices call from above, though. Some of them taunt, others encourage and a few are just whispers begging for a chance to live. She can hear them even from the deepest part of the Pit of Suck and she fights her way towards the surface one more time. Her hand breaks the surface... and this time as she grabs for an anchor that doesn't exist another hand closes around hers and she is pulled out of the black muck to lie gasping for breath right on the edge of the Pit of Suck.

Siana looks up at her rescuer. "Hello," she whispers. Her rescuer is Scott Burns - muse and necromancer, imagination candy and the one person Siana can rely on to keep her writing. He gives her an encouraging smile and holds out a bright red towel with something written in white on one side.

"Did you enjoy your swim?" Scott asks, helping Siana into a sitting position so he can wrap her in the towel.

Siana huddles deeper into the towel and looks down into the blackness of the Pit of Suck. "I can't do this," she whispers. "I'm always going to end up there. It's so long since I've felt like I was a safe distance away."

"Oh, Siana..." Scott says.

"Surprised or disappointed?" Siana asks.

"How about sympathetic?" Scott looks from his writer to the Pit of Suck and back again. "Siana, you succeed by turning up at the page every day and writing something," he says. "That's why you're doing this. Now, go and write something."

Siana adjusts the towel and crawls forward on hands and knees, slowly putting distance between herself and the Pit of Suck. The horizon and NaNoWriMo are looking closer than ever and Siana wants to find a safe position beyond the gravitational pull of the Pit of Suck before November begins.

1 comment:

  1. Okay, we need a barbed wire fence around that thing all November. For one month, we are absolutely not allowed to suck. (Otherwise before long we'll both be looking up at the far sky from below, roasting virtual s'mores over a campfire built upon the smoking pyre of our wasted literary effort.)

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