The focus of this assignment was dialogue - we had to write a conversation between two people where both were hiding something. The assignment scared the hell out of me at first - fiction had been hard enough but creating speaking characters? Eventually I had to force myself to sit down at the computer and wing it.
I couldn't stomach the idea of writing about some kind of domestic discord or tragic medical diagnosis so I reached into a different place. Being raised Catholic I've always been fascinated by the struggle between good & evil so for this assignment I decided the two should have a conversation.
"Shadows and Light"
Except for a single light burning atop a worn desk
the room was in darkness. Behind the desk sat an old man, his broad shoulders
slightly stooped and his thick hands criss-crossed with the marks of age. His
eyes were fixed on the desk, on an object at the fringes of the light. It was a
globe — the world in miniature — the green land freshly charred, the blue seas
newly boiled away.
God stared at the scale model of destruction and
sighed. This had been his world, its inhabitants his children and his children
had destroyed themselves. “Not for the first time,” spoke a voice inside him.
The old man cradled his head in his hands as the unbidden emotions of a life
long ago burst forth — the joy of creation, the wrath of wounded pride, and the
ache of separation.
