Use Your Words, prompt #34 (fight)
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what_she_sawTitle: Use Your Words
Summary: There are two kinds of fights.
Prompt: #34 (fight)
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Rating: PG
Character(s): Allison, Scanlon, Devalos
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 753
Use Your Words
There are two kinds of fights. Allison knows this from Joe, who took sign language in college. While in spoken English the word “fight” can refer to a physical tussle, or a spat of verbal sparring, in American Sign Language there are separate signs for each. The sign for verbal arguments is smaller, subtler, suggesting that those types of fights are detailed, complicated, and far beyond the reach of any explanation. The sign for physical fighting is bigger, clenched fists, imparting anger.
Allison has witnessed her share of fights since she started working for Devalos. Husbands and wives fight. Brothers and sister tussle over the legal limitations of wills. And she’s even – accidentally, of course – walked into the midst of a bar fight.
All of those fights have things in common. They are a combination of words and physical gestures. They arise out of misunderstandings, loads of feelings, confusion, or even petty jealousy. And they all have a way of raising the temperature in the room, ratcheting up the tension, and changing the world around them.
And she doesn’t mean to sound crass, but after awhile all fights start to look the same to her. The same emotions, the same base issues, the same inability to approach resolution.
But one fight will always remain in her mind, because it was simply so odd that it defied convention. Allison has always remained grateful that her main language is spoken English, since there is no combination of signs that could have adequately expressed the fight, and the fight’s mentality.
A man had been kidnapped, and murdered, and his wife was the prime suspect. She was a high-society type, previously from New Jersey, extremely interested in makeup and fashion and everything that wasn’t her family. Her family, besides her husband, included her mother, her severely disabled sixteen-year-old daughter, and an ever-rotating series of private-duty nurses. With her husband gone, the wife – her name was Annabelle – came into more than $2 million, which was two million reasons for murder.
Two weeks into the murder investigation, they’d all been in the same room – Annabelle, her mother Delores, and the daughter, Rebekkah, plus one of the private-duty nurses, named Irene. Scanlon was convinced that one of them was guilty.
Annabelle had been proclaiming her innocence up and down, holding a thin expensive cigarette – unlit, of course – between her exquisitely manicured fingers. “I ain’t done nothin’ t’ Roddy.”
“Maybe that’s why he left,” Delores suggested, sotto voce.
Annabelle shot her mother a look that would have peeled paint.
Scanlon and Devalos simply sat and watched.
Allison kept her eyes on the daughter. The dreams she’d had had centered around Rebekkah, and she sensed there was something below the surface. The girl sat in her wheelchair, held up with straps and buckles. A computerized device was held up in front of her, but Allison had never seen her use it. Her eyes were far away and drool meandered its way down her face, coming to pool on the handmade bib around her neck.
“Y’ know what, Mother,” Annabelle said, disgustedly.
“If you weren’t such a whore, he’d probably…”
The conversation turned into an uproar, but Allison’s focus remained on Rebekkah. As her mother and grandmother argued, the girl began to rock and jerk in her wheelchair. Her eyes blinked slowly, purposelessly.
“… gone off with that two-bit floozy he met in Delaware, and…”
“… think you’re so high and mighty, and…”
Rebekkah jerked her head back. A loud, computerized voice split the air: “Stop this. You are both idiots.”
Delores and Annabelle, as though stunned into silence, broke off their sentences mid-spat.
Rebekkah rocked backwards and jerked some more, and Allison realized that she was hitting two switches on either side of her wheelchair headrest, which apparently controlled the speech device mounted to her wheelchair. A moment later, another proclamation came forth: “Mr. Devalos, if you are looking for the culprit it is not my mother or my grandmother, although they may both need to be locked up. The real culprit is Irene.”
Devalos looked up. “Excuse me?”
More rocking and jerking, and then the proclamation that would put a woman in jail. “I saw her. She injected him with medication, my medication. Dad fell down. He twitched and it was over.”
Things moved quickly – Scanlon arrested Irene. Annabelle fell into Delores’s arms. And Allison looked at Rebekkah, and wondered how she’d classify the fight.
Was it “verbal fight”?
Or was it “physical”?
Maybe it was neither.
Maybe it was both.
Summary: There are two kinds of fights.
Prompt: #34 (fight)
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Rating: PG
Character(s): Allison, Scanlon, Devalos
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 753
Use Your Words
There are two kinds of fights. Allison knows this from Joe, who took sign language in college. While in spoken English the word “fight” can refer to a physical tussle, or a spat of verbal sparring, in American Sign Language there are separate signs for each. The sign for verbal arguments is smaller, subtler, suggesting that those types of fights are detailed, complicated, and far beyond the reach of any explanation. The sign for physical fighting is bigger, clenched fists, imparting anger.
Allison has witnessed her share of fights since she started working for Devalos. Husbands and wives fight. Brothers and sister tussle over the legal limitations of wills. And she’s even – accidentally, of course – walked into the midst of a bar fight.
All of those fights have things in common. They are a combination of words and physical gestures. They arise out of misunderstandings, loads of feelings, confusion, or even petty jealousy. And they all have a way of raising the temperature in the room, ratcheting up the tension, and changing the world around them.
And she doesn’t mean to sound crass, but after awhile all fights start to look the same to her. The same emotions, the same base issues, the same inability to approach resolution.
But one fight will always remain in her mind, because it was simply so odd that it defied convention. Allison has always remained grateful that her main language is spoken English, since there is no combination of signs that could have adequately expressed the fight, and the fight’s mentality.
A man had been kidnapped, and murdered, and his wife was the prime suspect. She was a high-society type, previously from New Jersey, extremely interested in makeup and fashion and everything that wasn’t her family. Her family, besides her husband, included her mother, her severely disabled sixteen-year-old daughter, and an ever-rotating series of private-duty nurses. With her husband gone, the wife – her name was Annabelle – came into more than $2 million, which was two million reasons for murder.
Two weeks into the murder investigation, they’d all been in the same room – Annabelle, her mother Delores, and the daughter, Rebekkah, plus one of the private-duty nurses, named Irene. Scanlon was convinced that one of them was guilty.
Annabelle had been proclaiming her innocence up and down, holding a thin expensive cigarette – unlit, of course – between her exquisitely manicured fingers. “I ain’t done nothin’ t’ Roddy.”
“Maybe that’s why he left,” Delores suggested, sotto voce.
Annabelle shot her mother a look that would have peeled paint.
Scanlon and Devalos simply sat and watched.
Allison kept her eyes on the daughter. The dreams she’d had had centered around Rebekkah, and she sensed there was something below the surface. The girl sat in her wheelchair, held up with straps and buckles. A computerized device was held up in front of her, but Allison had never seen her use it. Her eyes were far away and drool meandered its way down her face, coming to pool on the handmade bib around her neck.
“Y’ know what, Mother,” Annabelle said, disgustedly.
“If you weren’t such a whore, he’d probably…”
The conversation turned into an uproar, but Allison’s focus remained on Rebekkah. As her mother and grandmother argued, the girl began to rock and jerk in her wheelchair. Her eyes blinked slowly, purposelessly.
“… gone off with that two-bit floozy he met in Delaware, and…”
“… think you’re so high and mighty, and…”
Rebekkah jerked her head back. A loud, computerized voice split the air: “Stop this. You are both idiots.”
Delores and Annabelle, as though stunned into silence, broke off their sentences mid-spat.
Rebekkah rocked backwards and jerked some more, and Allison realized that she was hitting two switches on either side of her wheelchair headrest, which apparently controlled the speech device mounted to her wheelchair. A moment later, another proclamation came forth: “Mr. Devalos, if you are looking for the culprit it is not my mother or my grandmother, although they may both need to be locked up. The real culprit is Irene.”
Devalos looked up. “Excuse me?”
More rocking and jerking, and then the proclamation that would put a woman in jail. “I saw her. She injected him with medication, my medication. Dad fell down. He twitched and it was over.”
Things moved quickly – Scanlon arrested Irene. Annabelle fell into Delores’s arms. And Allison looked at Rebekkah, and wondered how she’d classify the fight.
Was it “verbal fight”?
Or was it “physical”?
Maybe it was neither.
Maybe it was both.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 03:02 pm (UTC)Really interesting, it's not as obvious as one might think. You've got characters, plot, and questioning in not even 700 words. I'm jealous. Maybe I should force myself into writing something.
At the risk of repeating myself, I'm really fond of your style. The poetry, the flow, the insight. Also, I'm a sucker for angst-y, poetic or cryptic ends, so this was perfect.
Thanks for writing and sharing ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 12:14 am (UTC)I write a lot of angst-y, poetic-y, cryptic-y endings, in most of the fandoms I write for. :)