Creative Writing Homework 2.15.2011
Claudia stepped off the metro train and walked briskly to the escalator. It was one of the longer ones.
She tilted her head back to stare up into the gaping patch of brightness above her. She felt herself move toward it, slowly and without any effort from her body. Rows of lights striated forward into the space beyond, and she felt the earth tilt as her eyes followed the brushed metal sleekness of the moving machine. She felt like an astronaut, going into outer space at some glacial speed. This was truly the future.
Midway through the journey between the troglodyte land of the trains and the stars, Claudia turned her head with a dizzying courage. She was no wife of Lot, but behind her trailed the little beacons once more, transformed from guiding lights to hellish fires as the escalator sides lost their brightness and traded it for dark ombre.
Once more, planes shifted, and Claudia felt herself fall. She gripped the rubber handles, reassuring herself that she would not slip. Her eyes darted from the sidewalls back down into the earth, into hell. The darkness and its depths seemed an infinite space away, some Hades where people were born to make the same journey as she, emerging slowly from its womb into –
She turned back forward again to see the mechanical future only to find herself at the landing of the escalator. Her arms hugged her sides and her shoulders tensed as the harsh winter wind whipped at her and her hair. She braced herself and walked against it towards the bus stop, continuing the rest of her morning commute.
[Prompt: Write a scene in a setting that is likely to be quite familiar to your readers (supermarket, dorm, classroom, movie theater, etc.) but that is unfamiliar, strange, outlandish, or outrageous to the central character. Let us feel the strangeness through the character’s eyes.]
