Creative Writing Exercise I

And that’s when the sadness came:
The night was eerie and mysterious feeling. It was overcast with an odd chill to the otherwise warm breeze that came off the too calm ocean. I lay in the hammock that hung in my second story balcony, staring at the dark clouds that were forming over that stillness. I pined anxiously for my Dorian’s company. He had been at sea for a little over four months, just two more until he was scheduled to be home. But two months seemed an unbearable eternity and I was beginning to feel trapped by the days that lay ahead. That’s when the sadness came. It crashed into my like the sudden thunder that shook the sky. As the wind began to pick up and swirl around my head, riling the water below into violent crashing waves, I felt a similar stirring in the pit of my body. The place behind my eyes started to burn hot and red, even as the air around me cooled to a chill gray.

Coffee:
It had been a long and arduous night. My mind was throbbing with exhaustion, my eyes were sore, my neck ached and my fingers cramped from holding the small paintbrush for hours. I rinsed the bristles in the jar of murky brown water next to my table-top easel and left the brush inside it to allow the remaining paint residue to dissolve. Stretching my arms above my head, I stood from my paint covered stool and dragged my barely responding legs across the wood floor to the coffee pot. Its content had long ago gone cold and stale, so I opened the overhead cabinet and searched for the can of ground coffee that was usually readily available. A sigh of quiet frustration escaped from my dry lips as I remembered the image of that empty can lying in the garbage. I glanced at the clock on the overworked coffee maker, 5:27 AM. Outside my kitchen window the sun still hadn’t peeked over the horizon; but the nearby coffeehouse would be open regardless. I didn’t even bother changing out of the old paint speckled shirt and leggings; just slipped on a pair of old sneakers, grabbed my keys off the hook by the front door and went out to start my decade old Honda Civic.