Thursday 10 December 2009

Exercise: You wake up and find yourself . . .

It's been a while since I last posted a writing exercise, so I thought I'd dig out an old one for you.

With this one, we each got given a random location, and the situation was `what if you woke up and found yourselves there`.

Exercise: You wake up and find yourself on a shop floor in the High Street

The voice brought me slowly to consciousness. I could hear it, the low, grumbled tone that vibrated through my head, but the words were a mystery. What was he saying? I couldn't tell.

Painfully I opened my eyes. The bright strobes from the ceiling above me were the first things I registered. The second was the blinding pain that shot through to the back of my skull. Squinting, I groaned and rolled over.

"No sale! No sale!" cried a second voice, the words gradually becoming coherent. "No sale!"

No sale? Where the bloody hell was I, and why wasn't I at home where I was supposed to be? Deciding to try again, I dubiously opened my eyes, expectant of the pain. It didn't catch me off guard this time. Two men stood over me, both Indian. One spoke in a language that baffled me. Obviously it made perfect sense to both him and the listener, but not to me.

"No! No sale!" the listener continued to cry.

Whilst the first man argued his point with what sounded like urgent need, I pushed myself into a seated position and looked around. Suddenly I knew where I was. I was lying in an aisle of a shop, one of many that lined the High Street.

What was I doing here?

Looking up, I saw both men staring at me, as if my movement had brought my presence to their attention.

"Sir," the listener shrieked in my direction. "Tell him no sale!"

"What?" I stammered, blinking.

"No sale!"

Again the first man waffled on as I continued to look around. Eventually my eyes brought my body to my attention. I was covered head to foot with little yellow sticky price tags. They were stuck all over me and each stated £3.50. I looked back up at the men confused.

"Sir! Tell him `no sale`! He want to buy you for thwee pound fifty! I say him no sale! No sale!"

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