Lesson Four

Lesson Four – Story Assignment Keeping in mind your Character Study, your Character Questionnaires and your Stereotype list from last two lessons as well as using the concepts covered in this lesson, write a short scene (500 to 750 words) in which your character’s actions and/or relationships reveal at least two aspects about your character and his or her situation that are important to the overall story and/or advance your story’s plot in a primary way.



         He’d been in New Orleans for more than a week, helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when he’d found her.  He’d not intended, on actually travelling thousands of miles, to help people he didn’t know.  Then he’d seen the reactions of his fellow parishioners and decided to volunteer.  After all, he could always fake an injury and come home if he found things tedious.

         Somehow, she’d been overlooked by the others, hidden, as she was, in the attic crawl space above one side of a double shotgun house in the Ninth Ward.  His group hadn’t found any survivors, or even bodies, for the better part of the day, so he’d wandered off on his own.  He’d followed the sound of coughing, wading through fetid, standing water and the sodden sludge that had once been someone’s most comforting possessions.

         He’d fought his way down the collapsing hallway and discovered the retractable stairs to the attic.  Rolland gave to serious thought to the advisability of climbing up those stairs.  He was, after all, a large, robust man.  Then, there was a soft whimper and a gurgling noise.  He found these sounds a Siren’s song calling to him.  The stairs groaned in protest, but they bore his bulk. 

         He’d found her in a corner, beneath the mildewing eaves.  She was young—certainly not fifteen—probably, younger.  The dark skin of her nubile, Nubian body, showed through the wet, once-white, now-almost transparent tee shirt.  She was dying, and they were alone.

         There had been a dark dream curling like smoke through his mind for several years.  He couldn’t remember where it had come from, or even when he’d first toyed with the notion.  He only knew that more and more often his fantasies were powered by the idea of having very young, unwilling, and completely helpless partners. 

         Now, Providence had presented Rolland—God’s most dutiful servant – most pious church warden—with the opportunity to fulfill his most secret desire.  His cock twitched, with exquisite anticipation, as he crouched low and moved towards her.  She stared up at him, her pleas screaming through the sultry silence. 

         “It’s all right,” he said, smiling back down at her.  “I’ll take care of you.”  He reached down, grabbed her under her arms, and dragged her to the center of the attic, under the low peak of the roof.  He smirked, knowing she thought he was there to save her.  But he was not. 

         With unexpected swiftness, he pulled up the thin fabric of her grimy tee shirt.  Even as weak as she was, she let out a gasp of shock, and the very sound of it shot hot blood to his groin.  For a moment, he just stared down at her, before he jerked her shorts down.

         Twenty minutes later, his eyes red-rimmed with tears, he carried her down and out to find his colleagues.  But he’d taken the fine, gold-plated chain from around her neck and kept it.  He’d also managed to steal a number of body bags.  He had enjoy the girl’s body, but he’d found even greater gratification in her death.  They were pleasures he would enjoy again.