Vingette

Noun
1. A decorative design placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book or along the border of a page. 2. An unbordered picture, often a portrait, that shades off into the surrounding color at the edges. 3. a. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch. b. A short scene or incident, as from a movie.

I used to love writing Vignettes. They're never very long, and they never really tell a story but rather convey an emotion, image or an atmosphere. I was going through some old writing I'd done, and I found a few, one in particular that I liked -I wonder where I was going with it. Ask for critiques if you want to, or just post things you'd like to share. There's a lot of writers on here, but we don't post nearly enough writing. So get cracking!

Silver

The water was hot. That was good. Hot water would maybe wash away the filth in her soul. It would wash away the grime in her hair, the dirt and blood that caked over her skin.
   She pressed her hands against the cracked tile wall of the shower, hoping agianst hope to feel something, anything that might make her realize that she was human. There was nothing under her hands but the cold tile, slowly warming from the coursing water. The shower sputtered. Stupid, cheap motel room she thought acidicly at it. The water was cooling off. She closed her hands around the knob, thin, delicate hands ringed with dozens of silver rings, and twisted it. The water grew warmer and warmer, giving off more and more stream. Maybe, she mused, maybe I could scald my skin right off...burn it all away. Maybe she could burn herself right away. All the dirty pieces of her. Maybe...but there were no maybes in life; she knew that. And yet, the stupid, foolish part of her could hold on to the hope that one day her sins would gone, forgotten undisturbed.
   Feh. Stupid hope.
   She grew tired, and sat in the shower, with her head bent, letting the water run through her hair, subtly transforming it from the muted red and brown to it's true shade of light blond. The water ran through her hair, and down her face, trailed from her thin face through the hollow of her neck, falling between her breasts, then dropping off. Some were luckier and held on, running down her abdomen, her stomach, to her thighs, washing tiny rivers of skin through the cake of blood and dirt and grime.
   She pushed her hands against the tiles on the floor. They were dirty, cracked, disgusting, like the tiles on the wall -like her. Her thin shoulders were heaving, and anyone would have said that she was crying. But she would never have admitted it to herself. It's only the shower she would have said. Only the shower. And the shower fell, hot and thorough, cleaning and not cleansing.

Last edited by morosemocha (12-07-2007 09:17:42 PM)