Word Count

 

Alexandria Schrieber is a character in my work-in-progress novel Twins. In chapter 20, she wakes on the morning of her abortion appointment. Her planned pregnancy to convince her married lover to leave his wife has failed. 

She is nervous about the procedure afraid of anything medical and not sure she doesn't want a baby. 

As she turns under the duvet waiting for alarm to sound, she resorts to a game she played with herself when she was a preteen and needed to concentrate on something other than the problem at hand.

Alex is multi-lingual: German, French, English with enough Arabic to get by, a talented woman. The game is to make up sentences with each word having one more letter than the word before. She finds English the easiest language to do this. She starts.

• I - one letter
• am - two letters
• red - three letters

Here she pauses then thinks from - four letters. 

The word beach comes into her mind, but it requires the before beach. Then choking but the ing makes it too long. 

Anger. That's it. If she puts a period after anger she won't need to think of a six-letter word. At the same time, if she puts a period, she will have to deal with today, which she doesn't want to deal with at all.

The alarm, which sounds like church bells, goes off. Damn it. She has to make a choice.