The Creature Forces the Question: Up or Down
Read The Rules First.
Your Word Prompt is: Vital
******Fiction Written by Robert T Gasperson © 7/16/2007******
Ralph hung on the side of the cliff. He had no clue as to how he got himself into this predicament. All he was trying to do was waking to his girlfriend’s house. Now he was dangling from a rock face, not to mention a giant beast moving his direction intent on either making him fall or eating him for a midnight snack.
The creature got closer to the edge of the cliff. It looked over allowing Ralph to get a better look at what he was up against. The thing has giant red eyes and fangs that jutted nearly a foot out of its gaping mouth. There was what seemed to be fur, but in the low light the fur almost looked like a horrible muddy paste. Ralph hoped that muddy paste was not what he thought it was. Thought of other victims this creature may have eaten earlier in the night kept crossing his mind.
The rocks in the wall were holding him for now and he was just out of reach of the creature who was just about to eat him. He felt like he was in between a rock and a hard place, or in this case, an impending doom and a tumble to his untimely demise. This was not really how he wanted to go out. If anything, he was hoping to get married and have a couple of kids before some creature decided to devour him.
The only way that he could think of to get himself out of this situation was to either climb up and fight his way past this creature or start climbing down and hope that he could find a ledge or the bottom of this chasm before his arms and legs gave out on him.
The only way he could think of to get past the beast at the top of the cliff was to use the knife that happened to be in his pocket. He thought he might be able to slice at the beast and at least scare it away long enough for him to pull himself of this shear face. If he could stab it and cause some kind of damage, maybe the wound would be enough to kill it. He could only hope.
The only problem was that his pocket knife was in his pocket and it was taking every ounce of strength he had to keep himself up. He looked around trying to ignore the growls of the beast and tried to find a better foothold. If he could just find a way to wedge his leg somehow to hold the majority of his weight he just might be able let go of one hand to dig in his pockets.
To his right he saw a flat surface with hardly a notch to latch onto, but on his left there was a large gash in the wall. It was almost like the wall had experienced an earthquake of some kind. There was a large chunk missing from the opposite side of the crack. Ralph turned his ankle to where he was able to hold his body with just the strength of his legs. He let go with his right hand and reached down into his pocket.
His jeans were tight from the stretching he was having to do to keep himself up. When he wrapped his hand around the pocket knife he found that he could not get his fist out of his pocket. This forced him to pull his hand back out a bit and try to pull the knife out with just a couple of fingers.
The knife was still tight but it was sliding up and out of his pocket. He thought he had it when his fingers slipped free just as the knife tumbled free and clattered down the side of wall. Ralph cursed the air and he grabbed on again to the handgrip that he had just let go of. There was only one thing left to do. He started the unsure climb down.
***************************************
If you enjoy this kind of writing exercise, check out my book: Robert’s Word-A-Day Book. I also have a book to help you come up with names for your characters called: Random Character Names for Your Novel.
Also, did you know that you can get paid by reviewing this short piece of fiction? scroll down and click the button that says: Get paid to review my post.
Finally, Please come back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see the new Word or phrase to write about. If you are so inclined, there is a signup box in the sidebar of the main page of this blog. This will allow you to get all of my new blog posts as I write them sent directly to your email inbox.
