Vous Allez Dormir (You'll Be Sleeping)
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Context
This is another thing that's come out of the local writing group. If you've got one in your town, then I heartily recommend attending it. Writing groups are a great way to boost your productivity and to find inspiration through challenges and through sharing perspectives.
Anyway, the exercise that resulted in this piece of writing comes from Pat Schneider's Writing Alone and With Others, a guide to getting into the writing habit and to starting a writing group.
What the specific exercise that lead to tonight's piece involves is simple: take a song or prayer or poem that you know by heart, and use its lines as a refrain for whatever it is you write.
My own result is a short horror story, but the same song in another's hands might have lead to something a little more innocent and pitched to the audience of the song that I used. Also, Wikipedia was used as a reference for the full song.
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Vous Allez Dormir (You'll Be Sleeping)
Frère Jacques...
The sound spewed out from the top of the door jamb, an empty space of just a few centimeters – but enough for the sound wiggle through and into the room. Clarence held his fingers in his ears and hoped that it would mute the sound enough to let him think. To come up with a way out.
Frère Jacques...
It didn't seem to be working. The melody pinned all of his muscles to the spot and made his arms feel as heavy as the furniture he had pushed up against the door. At the time he hadn't considered the use of the towel that Joyce had offered, screaming as the song ate at her from the inside out, turning her every movement into a concentrated step and swing in time with the schoolroom chant.
Dormez vous?...
Clarence wondered how much more pressure his inner ear could take before it burst. He cursed himself for refusing the ear plugs, though by the state of the house, it seemed like no one here had taken them either. And why would they?
Dormez vous?...
Who would have believed the news reports and status updates and tweets? That there was a song in the air and it was out for human blood?
Clarence was beginning to feel woozy, and he staggered backwards, his elbow striking a lamp, the thing bursting on the floor.
Sonnez les matines...
It was getting clearer now, trying to pour its whole essence through the crack at the closed and [fortified] door's top. Clarence imagined that he could see the vibrations as each recognizable word lilted through the air, tugging at his own childhood memories of its recital like French Canadian nuns pulling at taffy.
Deafness was better than this.
Death was better than this.
Sonnez les matines...
Clarence forced his fingers harder against his ears, until he could feel both digits compressing the ears' inner chambers. It felt like two walls were being pressed down into the same room – he wondered which would top which.
Din, dan, don...
He wondered and pressed.
He pressed and wondered.
Din, dan, d-
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Check back here on Wednesday for an editorial on some of the newest news, and on Friday for a hunt for the good in the 1993 Nicolas Cage film noir, DeadFall. Also, be sure to come by the blog tomorrow and Thursday for more Annotated Links.
And, if you'd like to leave me some feedback on today's story (positive or negative, but only constructive, please), feel free to add a comment below.
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