Week 2 - For Thursday

The Skeleton, 53, page 142

"Prison. This is no place for a guy like me!" I remarked.

My name is Richard Marcheza, and I was one of the most influential mob bosses in the entire city of New York. I got busted by some two-bit cop who bagged me on income-tax evasion of all things. Who would've thought. A man like me should have been arrested for all the violence I've dealt, ordered, or caused using my own two hands. I have contacts all over the city working on getting me out of here, including a couple jail guards who smuggled their way in. Of course, I do not know of them yet, or I have yet to speak to any of them, as they will come to me when the time is right. This afternoon, however, the time is right. Every day at 1:00 PM, the same group of thirty-five prisoners are sent out to do work duty somewhere in the vicinity outside of the prison. The guards lined us up outside our rusted cells, same as always, but today, a guard that I had never seen before approached me. He put his hand on my shoulder, awkward for his kind, in order to get my attention. I looked away from him and thought nothing of it, probably just some guard who wanted to throw in a quick insult about my being arrested. Then I felt something small and metallic land in my pocket.

"You'll need this," he muttered under his breath.

I smiled, and the guard went on his way. The prisoners were brought outside and the labor began. I continued my work-duty routine as usual, and observed the scene around me. I took out of my pocket just what I expected - a small key. Looking around and brushing off my dusty prison attire, I held the key, reached down to my shackles, and began to unlock them as quietly as possible. I felt on top of the game until a shadow loomed over me - it was a fellow prisoner, looking directly at me with his eyes full of raging jealousy, anger, and envy.

"GUARDS!" The prisoner yelled.

I panicked. Out of impulse, I reached out to punch the tattletale who stumbled backward, still yelling. Guards began to approach me, but behind them emerged a familiar face - the guard from earlier who was my associate on the inside. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at the two guards heading our way and shot them once each with a tranquilizer. They'll wake up and not remember a thing. By this time, all the prisoners stopped their work and the scene became frantic from there. I heard a shout to run over the mass frenzy, but that was the last of it. I fled the scene and never looked back. Something obviously didn't go to plan, but who cares, I was a free man. My journey on foot would begin, despite being clueless about the events that just took place prior.


I chose this exercise among the others to post because I've had a certain story idea that's been floating around in my head for some time. It's just an outline, really, I have the sequence of ideas worked out, but not the scenes in detail. This is essentially one of those scenes, however, to make this more workable for the assignment, I came up with the whole "mob boss" thing. Also, in case you didn't notice, I chose "The Skeleton" exercise on Page 142 because I thought the linear story requirements it had, such as a lead protagonist attempting to achieve something through the use of an object, an obstacle arises, and it is overcome by an outside force. It just seemed to perfectly corrolate with something I have in mind for a story which involves the escape of a prisoner, albeit maybe not some prestigious person like was concocted in this story, but nonetheless a prison break. I'm not exactly sure how most prison breaks happen, you only hear about them in the news without the details as to how. Additionally, the only things I can think of offhand are movies like Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, which was basically where the whole "work duty" thing in my story came from. Anyhow, to recap, I picked this particular assignment because I knew it best went along with what I have in mind for the short story that we're gearing up for at the end of the semester, and I think it's giving me the best pratice, results, and introduction to that. Definitely was a good eye opener and a useful exercise.