Exquisite Corpse, pt 2
Isaac Middle's contribution to this Holiday medley
It’s week two of this silly and low-stakes break from doom scroll, and I hope you’re all allowing yourself to find some joy in the simple things. I certainly am. Especially because the second act of the Exquisite Corpse game was delivered by none other than our favorite witty conspiratorial wombat, Isaac Middle. Even in the thick of his Apollo series, Isaac found some time to contribute to this fun and creative little project and I believe you’d be pleased with how juicy it’s starting to be.
For those coming in fresh, an Exquisite Corpse is an old surrealist parlour game in which artists (or writers) collaborate on creating a piece of work without having a preconceived notion as to what is taking shape. And for those wondering about the name, Daisy pointed to the wiki entry which had this to say:
The name is derived from a phrase that resulted when Surrealists first played the game, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau." ("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.")[1][2] André
Wikipedia
The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine!! This might not excite some of you as much as it tickles me, but I have certainly given notes similar to this in theatre rehearsals - the contextual humor is up my alley.
If you missed the guidelines or the introduction to the story written by me, you can click on part 1.
And now, here’s for week 2 of our Exquisite Corpse, brought to you by Isaac Middle.
“Charlotte, is it?”
The woman in question looked up from her phone in the dank hospital waiting room, where she had been aimlessly doomscrolling through Telegram for the last hour or so, and stood up a bit too suddenly upon seeing the person from whom the voice originated.
“Yes, that’s me… Officer.”
The Policeman, sensing her surprise and trepidation:
“Don’t worry, you aren’t in any trouble: standard procedure for any hit and run incident.”
Charlotte spun the phone in her hand nervously — hit and run, yes… but not just any hit and run. Avoiding the inevitable for as long as possible:
“How is Philip?”
“Let’s call him stable. The surgery went as well as could be expected, but he has a long journey ahead of him.”
The Policeman motioned her to sit back down, and took his own place with a somewhat awkward two-seat gap in between them (unbeknownst to Charlotte, he was recently coming out of a divorce so painful and traumatic that it completely inhibited his capacity to act normally and naturally around attractive members of the opposite gender).
“So… walk me through the event, as best as you can Charlotte.”
She resisted the urge to unlock her screen to quickly check the current price of XRP, and looked the Officer in the eyes for the first time.
“Well, I saw the whole thing unfold. I had just arrived back from my morning walk with Luna…”
She paused, hesitating at how much to reveal: but there was something disarming in the Officer’s sleep-deprived eyes that made her feel safe to open up.
“You know, it was the strangest thing: without fail, our walks around the 360 degrees of the block will take between 29 and 30 minutes to complete. And Luna always poops exactly half way through the cycle: just raises and spreads her buttcheeks so anyone watching can see them. But this time… well, I’m not sure exactly, but it was like she was deliberately delaying us, like she wanted us to arrive back late, as if she wanted me to witness…”
She trailed off, quite reasonably feeling like she had overshared to a complete stranger in uniform.
The Officer, both perplexed and intrigued — also resisting the sudden urge to narrow the seating gap between them — attempted to get things back on track.
“So the driver… just drove straight off, did they?”
“Yes: went a good 50 yards with Philip still on the windshield — was only a combination of the swerving and highest-level windscreen wiping that flung him off.”
The Policeman smirked: “Typical Prius driver, am I right?”
Charlotte faked a polite smile at this both inappropriate and unfunny attempt to lighten the mood, however her now violent phone-spinning revealed the escalating nervous tension underneath.
The Officer was again required to get things back on track, this time from his own digression.
“Did you see the driver? Or the Plates?”
“Well, not during the incident itself. But…”
She glanced up again, and again finding Officer’s eyes having an inexplicably disarming effect on her.
“It’s not the first time I had seen this Prius. In fact, I’d seen it almost every day, during the final Waning Balsamic stage of our walk — parked at the top of the street.”
The Officer eyes suddenly became slightly less drooped.
“So you think it was deliberate? That they were waiting for Philip to leave the house and cross the road?”
Charlotte answered simply with a nervous glance of acknowledgment into his sunken eye sockets, before finally resorting back into the false comfort of her portable black mirror.
“But who would want to take out a humble and meek Choir Director? What possible motive could there be?”
Realising he was asking this question now to himself, he quickly called for backup… and — also realising that Charlotte was completely distracted by her phone — made the boldly liberating move to halve the seat-gap between them.
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This was great fun Tonika. Looking forward to seeing in what unexpected, and hopefully politically incorrect, direction the corpse turns next.
This is so fun! The "highest speed windshield wiping" required to dislodge Philip was my first guffaw out loud. The image of that!
Another hard act to follow. Now we have the potential triangle--is the freshly divorced officer going to cuckold the dreams of the now-incapacitated Philip? Who's up next, Tonika? Can you reveal your sources and whet our appetites?
Great job, Isaac, of keeping us guessing and giving us a glimpse of Charlotte through the officer's reaction!