Seeing the lie of the land and bracing for impact, I stepped up to the plate and prepared to eat my words. In the hollow blankness of the auditorium, my creaking cough thundered like a volcano going off, a single pistol-shot in the echoing cavern of expectation before me.
’So,’ I said, my throat as dry as my wit, which was as sharp as my tone, ‘we seem to have reached a fork in the garden path you’ve been leading me up like a lamb to the slaughter. A turning point of no return, you might say.’
I knew that this would hardly be a ground-breaking barnstormer of a speech, but so far, it was going down like the stock value of a lead balloon manufacturer. The silence that followed was as long as a freight train, as deep as a philosophy textbook and as uncomfortable as this analogy.
Mixed metaphors elevated to art. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteThat was a metaphorical stir-fry, sizzling with over-cooked imagery.
ReplyDelete"it was going down like the stock value of a lead balloon manufacturer" brilliant!
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing was good, but the last sentence was sublime. Nice.
ReplyDeleteDeep in the bowels of my mind I aspire to such heights.
silence as long as a freight train, awwwesome!
ReplyDeleteI love it when characters talk this way, but not the narrator.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite bit has to be the "turning point of no return."
ReplyDeleteMitch Benn did a song "The Devil and a Hard Place" about these. He was inspired by someone on the news claiming that we're standing on the precipice of a runaway train.
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