this is an excercise in showing not telling. |
Ruby turns as she hears the door lock behind her. What is she to do now? "Guess I'm not getting this job." She laughs, "Why do I always laugh when I'm nervous?" She looks around the room and realizes it is starting to get cold, maybe the damp blouse is the reason, but she'd be damned if she would take it off, why there might be cameras lookin at her right now!" The chill was becoming more obvious now as her teeth start to chatter. "Maybe those reptile men don't feel the cold" she thought. She looked for a window, anything that will give her an idea of a way out. The cinder block walls were starting to get a layer of white frost on them. They felt slippery as she ran her hands over the edges of the blocks. She wanted to live, not die in a blinking icebox! She had to keep moving, Ruby remembered her brother telling her that if ever she was caught out waiting for a bus and it was cold, to just keep moving and it would keep her warm. She started to do jumping jacks.. "Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes" she sang. It was an old camp song, and it was working. Her teeth weren't chattering anymore. She kept moving around the small square room looking for anything that could help her 1. know what was going on here, and 2. help her get out of here! There was no chair, or table, just a small, cold, and getting colder, cinder block room. Where was the light coming from? Ruby could see, but there was no window, only a locked door, and the cold walls. She pointed her finger and started to write in the frost on the wall, "Help me!" Hey, they did it in jail cells and on the bathroom stall walls, why not here?" she thought as she wrote on the wall, "At least I still have my sense of humor!" There were no windows, no lights that she could see, in the room and yet, the room was not dark. How come? She thought. Were the walls themselves emitting light? or was it the frost? "Interesting, they're giving me a choice," she smiled, "I can have light, or I can be warm." "I'm not going to choose!" She yelled out to no one, or maybe to a lizard man. The room seemed to get colder. She got the hint, no more yelling out.But there had to be a way out of here, there always was in all the books she read. And the movies, and even TV, you never saw the mystery not solved in the alotted time. Now she wondered why not? Maybe she could have planned what she would do if ever she was locked up in a freezer with lizard men watching her. Ruby was now running around the room. The breath from her exhale was a white cloud, as she moved from one corner to the next, then a diagonal X across the middle. That should keep her blood flowing for another few minutes. At lease she had air, as she pantted from the running. She put her hands on her knees trying to catch breath and she noticed a small black spot next to the door. It was below the hinge, but above the baseboard, look like a doorbell button. She wondered what would happen if she pushed it. Would the door open, or the air warm? She moved her index finger over towards the black spot. But what if it was a bad thing that happened? If she touched it and the ceiling started to come down? Hadn't that happend to Indiana Jones? "I can't do this" she thought."All I wanted was a job! A blinking job! Somewhere to go during the day, to help her meet new people and get over that cheating boyfriend, to give her a paycheck, and mostly to let her feel useful again." It had been so long since she'd felt needed. The door didn't have any frost on it, Ruby noticed."Maybe the steel isn't as insulating as cinder block." there she goes with that humor thing again.She walked over to the door, at least there was a handle on this side of the door, she reached her hand out and turned it. |