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Petrified Wood
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 04:56PM 3WW Prompt: Touching, Visible, Stage
Cafe Writing Prompt: Option 3, Pick 3 Possession, rough, eternal
When the serrated blade buckled against the wood, Jessie knew it was time to see-saw it out. His shiny red knuckles gripped up into a fist and he bit his stubbly bottom lip as he pulled, then pushed.
"This one is ready to fall."He turned to Ben, his new quasi-apprentice and pushed him onto the straight and clear path. It seemed like he had a new apprentice every month now. These days young men just can't handle the rigours of a lumberjack's life, but they sure like the pay.
"Hey J, Whats Mr. G. do with all these trees anyways?"
"Another one down!" Jessie ignored Ben, and called out to Mr. Giuseppe, the man who signed his check.
"Where do you want her?"
The splintered wood creeked and moaned in pain as she; heaved away from him in disgust, hit bottom and rolled up against the other fallen timbers.
"I want that one on the truck bed, she's a keeper." declared Mr. Giuseppe.
Jessie turned towards Ben to respond, "Mr. Giuseppe is a wood alchemist Ben, he's a man of science and we don't call him Mr. G."
"a wood wha??" Ben retorted, as he crouched down and placed his hand on the weathered, rough skin of that newly cut tree. He could still feel her heart throbbing, or was it the chainsaw reverberation?
"So Mr.G is a man of science is he?" Ben asked rather rhetorically "whats he do make paper out of 'em?."No Ben no paper, Mr. Giuseppe is more like a collector".
Once she was strapped in Mr. Giuseppe shuffled his feet over to the truck and hoisted himself in. He was getting older and didn't seem to have the stamina for field research anymore...he would have to train someone soon. Someone who had the eye to pick out the Prana filled specimens.
Time, days, months and years of running his hands along the grain, peeling bark, and touching the inner circles seem to be flying by him. Once the driver pulled up in front of his studio, he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
The studio was hoisted up on girders and built by Mr. Giuessepe with the finest dead-wood there was at the time. The structure stood alone in the middle of a field that seemed endless. He had installed two stately iconic doors that seemed out of sync with the architectural crudeness of the one-room workshop. Still the most unnerving thing was the sculpture arched above the entrance, comprised of random arms reaching out everywhere, made out of petrified wood.
The driver unsnapped the strap that held the log, and kicked it off the truck bed.
"I don't usually make pick-ups and drops for one log at time, Sir. It seems a mighty odd waste of efficiency."
"Oh well you must be a new driver, because I always do only one girl at a time." Mr. Giuseppe placed his hand by his head as if to salute the driver goodbye and walked towards his studio doors.
Once the studio doors opened wide, the world they held hostage burst into a breath of air and was unsettled from the dust. All the floating and abandoned puppets swung on strings and they rocked from side to side. You could tell Mr. Giuseppe had been the supreme being in this space among all his personified possessions for quite some time.
Mr.Giuseppe took off his long cracked leather coat and hung it on a wall hook. He wiped his glasses clean. It was at that moment all the lives he had created became visible. He looked across the studio in a three hundred and sixty degree panoramic circle, inhaling the taut strings, the backward limbs, the hairless heads, stopping at P. his masterpiece. A frozen boy carved wickedly on a chair with his eyes fixated eternally on the ground.
"Today is the day my boy, you're at that stage...all grown up and ready for a girl."
Cafewriting
Reader Comments (10)
oh wow!!! this is great!!! i love this.. what an excellent concept!!! you go P.....!!!!!
oooh I just absolutely loved that!
An excellent, thoughtful piece. A kind of wood magic!
You excel in fiction writing!
green-eyed monster
This is so cool! I love Pinocchio,when i was little i made my dad read the story to me every night for like 8 years. <3
This was magical... I really enjoyed it! ;)
What a marvelous first 'sharing'... welcome to Writer's Island!
Totally took me by surprise. Excellent!
this was just lovely....so very well written....never, ever expected the ending....and that is what made it even more perfect!
The mystery has a magic potency. Pinocchio reborn!
Gemma