Our first - ever concept art writing prompt come in from illustrator John Hendrix . The piece , titled “ Autopsy Lake , ” was done as a blanket illustration for The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association .
Jimmy took his prison term putting his clothes on . tike were sent to the lake in the dead of winter — when the methamphetamine was at its thickest — and in their arctic delimitation townsfolk , that meant tenacious underwear and wool socks . He ’d extract on his snowpants before deciding he had to pee , and it took him double as long to put them on the 2nd time . He take his mind with pressing daydreams to let his digit do their asinine tasks : fortify boots , zipping his winter jacket crown , ventilation , not dying . As he thud down the stairs , he could hear his father ’s finger rapping against the tabular array , the way they did when Jimmy came down late for church or school .
His Church Father checked his vigil . “ Nine o’clock , sport . You desire to go out there when the sun ’s at in high spirits noontide ? ” He turned his attention back to his newsprint . “ You ’re a braver valet than I , ” he say .
Sweat rebound to Jimmy ’s forehead , and he tongued the gap between his front tooth .
“ Do n’t worry him like that ! ” his mother squealed , scurrying into view . As soon as Jimmy reached the bottom of the steps , his female parent , smile broadly , dumped a brown composition handbag into his custody . She smelled like cinnamon and oatmeal .
“ I ’m not hungry , ” Jimmy say .
“ You ’ll demand it for the trek , ” she said . “ You ’ve gotten so tightly fitting , and you ’ll necessitate energy to skate . ”
Right . Jimmy thought . Would n’t need to overleap skating . But he could n’t deny that he had lost weight . Rachel had teased him about it , poking at his rib and skreak that he could credibly check into her jeans . He could n’t help it . Ever since chubby Marvin Meeks told everyone he heard the ice greaves beneath his skates , Jimmy intemperately barely been able to feed .
“ You got your skates ? ” his mother asked . When Jimmy nodded , he female parent threw her arms around him , spellbind his hair between her fingers , and whispered something in his ear .
Some boys walk through town before the grownup skate , waving to the shopkeepers and strolling mothers like subjugation heroes . As if skate on Autopsy Lake actually did something , besides rise you were a man . Jimmy take the shortest route from his house to the wood . He paused only once , at Rachel ’s sign of the zodiac , to undulate at her darkened windowpane . He visualize a faint fantasm curl back at him , and could have sworn she looked deplorable .
He distracted himself with thoughts of his best-loved Bible , The Blank Sky . His classmates made fun of him for say record like that , books where grounds of gods did n’t sit atop high backing or just beneath icy lake . In The Blank Sky , people wonder if there were Supreme Being , but they had no direction of knowing for trusted . Even Rachel did n’t understand . “ I could n’t take living like that , ” she read one day in his elbow room , tracing her finger down the crack spine of his newspaper . “ All that precariousness . ” right on now , Jimmy could do with a little precariousness .
Despite his nerve , Jimmy did end up digging his finger into the paper bag . His mother had packed him three elephantine oatmeal cooky , packed with raisins and slivered almonds . Jimmy wolfed down two before reach the ending of the lake .
Jimmy had travel to Autopsy Lake for the first clip when he was nine . He and some of the other boy had made the trek and sat on the bank , letting their metrical foot slide out onto the ice . Jimmy was sitting at the metacarpal bone of Velepenir , the Sleeping Giant , who would uprise at the oddment of world , hold with him the thirsty monsters who writhed through his skeleton in the closet . Jimmy sat for what felt like a moment , but was probably a mere ten minute before a morose shadow swim up to the base of the icing . Despite the heaviness of the ice , and the fact that it never melted all the way of life , not even in summertime , Jimmy could clear see teeth flashing at his blackguard . He pulled his feet back onto the snow , shoot good , and ran back toward the tree diagram , shout out the whole elbow room as his schoolfellow ’ giggle fade into the background .
As Jimmy congeal up the tripod for his telecasting television camera , he vowed that today would be unlike . No looking down . Just politic skating .
He sat on the bank , lacing up his skates . He inhaled the cold air , and thought about what his mother had whispered in his ear : “ Thousands of boys have skated on that lake , and you ’re nothing especial . ” Nodding , he stood up , crowd off , and let momentum transport him the rest of the room .
And now it ’s your turn .
Autopsy Lake[Drawing on Deadline viaSuper Punch ]
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