Write On Edge: More Than Words Challenge

The Red Writing Hood  challenge this week gives us 450 words to focus on dialogue and body language to set a scene or move a story forward, limiting your use of narration, beginning with "His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke."

This challenge rides outside my comfort zone. Way outside.

The last time we were given the opening line it started: "It was a rainy night in Dusseldorf." My characters were involved in a car accident. You can find Gina and Eddie here and here, in order.



I offer the following in response: Out of the Frying Pan

His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke. “You know I can’t take those off.”

Gina squirmed on her stretcher, testing the handcuffs that secured her to the railing with a firm tug. Sticky tears slid like January molasses down her cheeks, but she was too numb to care about her runny mascara. Her neck was stiff and the high-pitched buzzing in her ears drowned out the sounds of the emergency crews. “Whatever, Danno. Where’s Eddie?”

“How’s about we start over? I’m gonna ask you again, real nice-like, for old times’ sake…”

The buzzing helped her ignore his question, but the sight of a black bag rolling by on a stretcher sent icy shards of fear to her heart. A horrified whisper escaped her lips. “Oh, God,”

He followed her gaze. “That ain’t him, Gina.”

She released her breath slowly and tugged at the handcuffs again. “Why didn’t they take me to the hospital yet?” she muttered, bitterly.

Officer Daniels shrugged, “I haven’t cleared them to take you yet. We’re still trying to ascertain if we’re taking you to the prison ward. Now, tell me what happened.”

He fell silent, his impatient fingers tapping against his forearm. She found his grimace unsettling. “I’m only talkin’ to Eddie.”

Caterpillar eyebrows collided above his nose. Daniels leaned against the ambulance and snarled loudly at her. “We need to keep this in house, Gina. Eddie’s not a local anymore.”

Her vision was foggy but it didn’t keep her from searching every face that passed by. The accident was staged, but by who? She needed to know what Eddie saw, who pulled him from the driver’s seat before she blacked out. There were way too many badges and official windbreakers floating about for her to trust anyone else. “Yeah? That pick-up-line ever actually work for you, Danno?” she hissed defensively, still scanning the crowd. “Newsflash, Flatfoot, fed or no fed, Eddie’s been local since his ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock. You fall off a garbage truck in high school and you think that makes you one-a-the-boys?”

Darkness flushed the light from his eyes. “You put on an expensive dress and tease your hair and you think that makes you a lady?”

She locked onto his eyes from the edge of her lashes as flames of anger burned into her cheeks and drove the buzzing from her ears temporarily. “Got one word for you, Danno. Lawyer.”