Free Write Working with Wood

Today's free write was prompted by a young woman we saw walking down our street on our way to Mille et Une for a croissant and chocolate. She was carrying what looked like three pieces molding lumber. What is different, I am learning to do an AI graphics program, text to image, to illustrate the anthology of my work, that I'm pulling together of my short stories and poems (mostly published) called The Corporate Virgin.

D-L's Free Write -- Working in Wood

She'd show him. Mallory walks down the narrow village street with three long pieces of wood under her arm.

He'd mocked her, saying a woman would never be able to fix the molding around the bedroom door. He was the one who had broken it during in yet another one of his temper tantrums.

"We'll leave it. Remind you to behave," he'd said.

She wasn't sure when their relationship turned violent. After she'd quit her job at his insistence, sometime.

The first time she'd forgiven him and the second. After the third time her only thought was permanent escape.

Back in what would soon be her former home, she pried the damage molding from the wall. Using his tools, she measured the wood to fit.

She'd never told him how her father insisted she have basic skills usually attributed to a man. She could change a tire and the oil in the car. Why she hadn't said anything, she never could figure, just that it was a secret to guard.

She decided no to paint the molding. It would be her farewell message.

She picked up her suitcase and her phone with the tickets to Montreal. A job awaited her, given by an old friend who hadn't said, "I told you so," but," Thank God, you came to your senses."

Mallory knew how lucky she was not to become an abused statistic.

As she put her coat on she saw the sawdust on the floor and thought it was a fitting commentary on her short mortgage.

 

 

Rick's Free Write Woman with Wood

 

Cassandra was not known for her abilities in plumbing, electrical or carpentry. In fact, she had never done anything more challenging than fixing a ceramic vase with super glue. And then, she had gotten glue on her fingers, and it took a week to get it fully off.

But she had determined to surprise her eight-year old son, Thomas, with a railroad track for Christmas. He loved the Thomas the Tank engines animated character, but that was a British TV series, and she could not find the toys in any shop in the south of France, despite searching from Ceret to Narbonne.

 

How hard could it be? So she drove out to Weldom, which she had heard had cut-to-order wood in the back of the store, and tried to explain in her broken French the type and length of pieces she thought she needed.

 

By the time she got home, she had to hide the six-foot pieces of wood in her bedroom closet, as it was time to pick up Thomas at school. The project would wait until tomorrow.

 

The next day she laid the strips on the kitchen floor, and got started searching the internet for instructions for building a railroad. All seemed to involve saws and lathes  and other equipment she didn't have and couldn't afford.

 

Cassandra started to cry, when her new boyfriend Pierre knocked and walked in. "What's all the tears?"

In between sobs, she explained Thomas's yearning for a wooden train set.

"Why didn't you mention it? My cousin is a wood worker. Let's go see him."