We have some exciting news! Each Friday we will be sharing a small portion of our writing with you. We’ll have essays, fiction, articles, poems…everything. We encourage you to provide feedback. Tell us where you think the story is going to go. Let us know what we did right, what we could do together, what you liked and what you didn’t.
Tonight I am sharing with you a short piece of a story I began about 7 months ago.
Yellow
Luke leaned his aging body over a monstrous engine tightening a bolt into place. He sighed, put his hands inside the pockets of his overalls and starred at the machine for a moment before he retrieved a tiny notebook, opened it and checked several figures.
He went to the glass container filled with a clear yellowish liquid and opened a valve. The fluid dripped slowly into the machine. Tiny bubbles floated up through the liquid bursting as they came to the top.
Walking around to a key and a large red button, Luke simultaneously turned the key and pushed the button. The engine coughed and then produced a constant rumbling growl.
Luke yelled with enthusiasm and despite his age leapt into the air.
“I’ve done it!” he said in his thick Irish accent as he turned to his basset hound. “Do you smell that? It’s clean and sweet. We’ve made it, boy! We’ve made it!”
The dog answered by wagging his tail and rolling to his back.
Luke turned off the machine and yelled over to his lounging puppy. “Hey, boy, let’s go make a phone call.” He climbed the creaking stairs which were coated with flaking, waxy residue.
The dog, realizing he wasn’t going to get his belly rubbed followed his master up the stairs.
Luke dialed his nephew’s number, forgetting to check what time it would be on the east coast of the United States.
“Hello?” a groggy female voice came across the phone.