“Pull! Pull! Pull!”
The chanting pervades all my senses as my hands slide nervously over the rope.
Perspiration lubricates my fingers, until dark red blood begins to be drawn from my
quivering grasp.
I glance around through the smoky air,
my gaze gasping for a sight of clarity.
All that greets me are the beady, black eyes of Jacques Roux.
Ooooh I love this name.Grinning, he gestures upwards at the large, wooden frame of the guillotine looming above
me menacingly.
I cannot wrench my eyes away from the body, abhorrent in its flowery white blouse and
short ballooning trousers though it may be.
It is the hanging, limp limbs that sicken me the most. The same animalistic, lifeless
desperation of the eyes that surpasses all class divisions and cries out to my basest
humanity.
“Well, are you going to pull?” Roux murmurs through clenched teeth. I can feel his hot
breath on the outer surface of my ear as his Herculean frame is illuminated by the
disappearing sunlight.
Breathing deeply, my fingers gear for the thudding drop, my stomach lurching in
preparation for the ghastly release.
This is so far, so dark, sinister and really engaging. I'm excited for more!* * *
Beyond the couchant gendarmes I traverse a long, winding passage cut out of stone. The
sky is dark and awash with sooty clouds as the walls begin to close in with suffocating
ease. The place emanates with smells of rotting flesh and the faintly metallic flavour of
blood that seem to have crawled in a couple of hundred years ago, died without the benefit
of a clergy, and remained there ever since.
As I begin to reach its zenith, bodies clutter the passage, with their brown rotting rags
hanging off shrivelling limbs that extend out to me.
Beside them sit children left in their own waste as tears burn gashes in sooty flesh.
oooh, goood one!Grime
and rot festers in their flesh as each fingertip pleads to me for some gentle benevolence.
I know the hunger all too well, but there is a distance between them and my own sturdy
boots.
“I have nothing,” I whisper quietly as I push the hands away.
Wasting women cling like twisted weeds to my ankles, limbs contorted in odd positions
from the tight clothes bearing pale skin. Somehow, the haunting desperation in their darkly
shadowed eyes draws me in.
I know what they request.
Yet the sliver of silver clinking angrily in my pocket turns me onward.
I begin to reach a vague suggestion of the day’s final rays peering through cracks in the
stone-cobbled walls. It illuminates each particle of dust that floats freely before me through
the murky air.
With the light comes a familiar cacophony of shouting piercing the air somewhere in the
distance. The constant rumbles of unhappiness and uncertainty are the perpetual melody
of this city, drowning out the gentle murmur of the River Seine.
Yet the intermingled rose pink and orange flood the sky with glorious light. Surely, with
nature guiding my way, I cannot stumble.
I reach the markets at last, just as the final sellers are beginning to store their produce in
overflowing woven baskets. Tables unending of produce eaten in France?
Before me, a tall man in short trousers and a sweeping blue coat, delicately curved at its
tale, smiles sneeringly and gestures at the empty bench. His basket is laden high with the
afternoon’s still steaming offering of bread.
We've got the setting really down pat here. This is what I've got: France, in a past time, classic bakery has some nice bread, set in Paris near the River Seine - great! And this is coming from someone who doesn't know much about Parisian history, so I'm assuming that to your marker this will be even more powerful. I cannot help but wish that I, too, could be united with such lavish wealth.
I shiver as the air grows colder, and the evening sky begins to groan under the weight of a
steadily appearing black bruise.
Breathing heavily, I press my precious coin into the gnarled hands of a grinning lady. My
eyes graze over the delectable pastries, delicately crafted breads, and suddenly my
stomach is bitten with gnawing pain.
“One loaf, please,” I sigh.
To my horror, the lady shakes her head firmly and presses the silver back in my hand.
“Nine sous,” she croaks, pushing the steaming bread out of my reach.
“That’s half a day’s wage!” I protest. My voice begins to waver — I cannot tell
whether for some reason this is sticking out to me as being awkward? Perhaps, "I cannot tell if it is prompted by anger or tears? What do you think? Maybe I'm being fussy, but I know you'd like me to be fussy on little things! This might just be a little irrational on my part. with
anger or tears.
“Unjust, is it not?” A loud voice pierces the tense air, and I turn in astonishment to see a
short, rotund man wearing long, striped trousers and a short-skirted coat.
I love, "is it not?" This rhetorical negation works really well to capsure a voice of the era.“Absolutely, sir,”
A capital letter for Sir, usually I echo, eyes drinking in his strange attire. I pull my own tattered cloak
closely around my lanky figure.
It is then that I notice the pointed red cap atop his head, and the yellow clogs adorning his
feet.
“Sir, you are of… the Sans-culottes?” I voice as the curiosity boils within me.
I can't tell you how much this imagery is exciting me - being wrapped in a coat, suddenly noticing some colourful clogs, this works wonderfully!The small man smiles then, and grabs my blackened hand with ease.
“Adrien Durand,” I stammer with uncertainty.
“Jacques Roux, of the Enrages faction,” he murmurs, eyes glittering. “Young man, we are
those who will get your bread back from those bastards.”
In one swift movement, he presents to me a pair of striped pants and a shining vermillion
cap. I open my mouth, lips moving in harmony with my steadily beating heart, yet
somehow no sound of acknowledgement escapes.
“Would you care to join us?” he offers with a charming smile. His sagacious black eyes
seem to stare into my very being — yet with their darkly seductive passion, I cannot look
away.
You've described this mystique wonderfully. My mind is swirling. The stars twirl above me in unison, crying out for me to leap into their
secure and warm arms, and the moonlight illuminates the crimson hat I finger gently in my
sooty hands.
It doesn't have to be here, but at some point I'd like to know what the hat is made of, it seems to be the only bit of imagery I'm missing. I wouldn't put it here, because by fingering the hat you've already identified a sensory experience, but perhaps later if the hat comes up again, I'd like to know if it's felt, velvet, cotton, whatever it may be. Is it soft? Scratchy? etcThe passionate ambience deepens until the murky air is pervaded by an entrancing,
vermillion glow.
* * *
The sun’s beaming rays are just beginning to unite with the bright azure of the sky as
crowds swarming loudly around the Tuileries Palace.
At first I read this as though the clouds were swarming loudly, and I loved it!! What an interesting piece of imagery! The crowds swarming definitely makes more sense, of course! Trees gather us in as the streets
slowly fill with a conglomeration of bodies, young and old, tall and short, all dressed in the
pinstripe pants and pointed red hat of my benefactor.
A statement of change. A statement of oneness for those who had been so long ignored.
It sets my heart alight with a burning fire, a spontaneity, that can be extinguished by no
Girondin or upper class statesman or merchant.
Roux stands closely by my side now, somehow reaching to place a firm hand on my
shoulder, intertwined between the perspiring bodies and rumbling voices.
“Be prepared, young man,” he murmurs in my ear. “It may become passionate.”
This is some V for Vendetta type stuff! I love your use of passionate here. Not violent, not crazy, but just full of passion. Amazing. Excellent word cgoice.“Passionate?” I inquire with a grin, readjusting my short coat with a flick of the wrist. I am
overwhelmed by the energy that instantly flows through my veins.
“Indeed,” he smiles, as his eyes glint with the dark orbs glowing brightly as the moon. “For
at last you and I, your family, your neighbourhood — we will all be avenged.”
I also love the smiles that follow the mention of passion - you've really captured the way of thinking in this story. You've captured an essence of human experience.There is a strength to this crowd that I cannot explain. I am sure every stone, every
building must feel the vigour beginning to fill the gardens. The Palace seems almost to
quake before us with its statuesque towers twisting as they reach the slowly clouding
horizon.
“Give us our bread!” a shrill cry sounds. One Sans-culotte has leapt into the icy air, raising
his red cap to the sky as his lithe body quakes with a fury that courses through my own
body.
At once, an alarm sounds loud and clear through the crowd. My limbs are rendered
motionless with terror until I feel a hard tug on my arm.
“Hurry, Durand,” mutters Roux, his brow furrowed and darkening by the second, his dark
eyes not wavering from the Palace. I am pulled suddenly
A general rule of thumb is to not use the word "suddenly" without considering if it is truly the best word for the piece. Suddenly, is a missed opportunity for description of a swift and often unexpected change of events. Consider if you can extend this, or if suddenly is the right word. I'm not suggesting that it needs to be changed - but prompting you to consider this as an opportunity. into a swarming mass of people,
almost beast-like as it raises its collective fist in deafening, thunderous rebellion.
Palms begin to drum on the sturdy wooden doors of the Palace. The building seems to
shake and quiver with energy matching my own as the cry is raised to the heavens.
“Girondins out! Girondins out! Enrages in!”
Everything becomes motionless for an instant except the rushing blood my head, the
sternly beating heart beneath my short-skirted coat, angrily pleading for equality and
justice.
With a fiery passion beginning to stir in my chest, I find my own voice joining the cry.
“Give us unity!” my shaking voice calls into the throng.
From a distance, I perceive tall men in frilled cream blouses and tight white pants pushed
outwards into the crowd. Sans-culottes surround them with foaming, ravenous mouths,
arms tearing at their helpless limbs like wild animals on a hunt for their pray.
All I can see is a flurry of red, blue, and white blocking out the fiercely beaming rays of
sunshine. We do not notice that the sky has begun to seep, water gently falling from the
oncoming purple bruise, almost as if weeping for past.
omg. Are you incredibly proud of this line? I would be!“Girondins out! Girondins out!” comes the cry once more.
At once, their is another tug on my arm. Roux’s eyes are alight as his mouth moves
incomprehensibly.
“You will do it?” he roars above the tumultuous shouts of the crowd. It moves as one,
singular beast, pushing me ever closer to Roux’s Herculean figure. Pushing a Girondin
toward me like a piece of meat, blue coat in tatters and stained with congealed patches of
someone’s blood as it floats behind him.
I open my mouth to reply, brow furrowed in confusion.
But the roar of the crowd acquiesces for me. Their eyes gleam in delight at the sight of his
withering frame submitted to pain they had known too long.
“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
I am pushed towards a towering wooden object. The beams are splattered with a dark
crimson stain of blood, and my stomach churns at the sudden knowledge of my role.
The rope is placed in my hand, the body stomped to a lying position, hands tied behind his
back as the crowd laughs raucously at his pain.
It pains my heart to see the eyes eager for suffering of those they are divided from, just
like the very enemy they had aimed to subvert.
Roux grins at me and claps me on the back cheerily. This time, his smile seems alive with
a savage passion that sends a chill through my body.
I love that you've changed it from an exciting passion, to savagery.“Pull! Pull! Pull!” comes the cry now, lifted up to the sky as it seeps with rain. Fingers
pointed in my direction as the body hangs limply over the wooden beams, the sharp edges
of the rope cutting my blackened fingers.
“Well, are you going to pull?” whispers Roux with a sinister smile. His Herculean figure
suddenly seems to dwarfs the one hanging beneath us.
I love that we've been taken back to the start. Love. It.The one with eyes seeming to plead desperately for the human underneath.
Just like in the slums I call home, I know what he requests.
He requests to be treated not as the enemy. For me to recognise our common humanity, to
forget that my trousers are striped, and his are not.
I turn to Roux and shake my head.
“No,” I say firmly.
The crowd groans angrily beneath me, throws tattered flags of red, blue, and white at my
feet. Roux’s dark eyes grow stormy and cold, his mouth forming a hard, disconcerting line.
I take off the red cap and rest it at his feet.
To edit/other ideas
- Symbolism
- guillotine - more throughout?
- red
- imagination & nature as the catalyst for social change: interjections of
imagining…?
- Flashback to childhood - “one life”?
- include
- a Romantic poet/revolutionary’s words? (rousseau etc?)
- a newspaper article/announcement - “anarchy ensues in…”