This is my first 'Lois and Clark' short story, I wrote it this morning as I was thinking about how much fun we can have with the English language. Now, grant it, the ending is not something I would imagine Clark to say, but please just humor me with it.
I always did like the Chemistry between these characters.
The Simplicities of Language
By: Yvette Jessen (Namasté)
‘It was a dark and stormy night...’
This was all that Jimmy Olsen had typed into his computer, but what he didn’t expect was for Lois Lane to come up from behind him and stare down at the computer, her hands on her hips as she regarded the young man through curious brown eyes. “What are you doing?” Lois asked somewhat confused. “This doesn’t look like the article that Perry assigned you to write this afternoon.”
“I just wanted to try my hand at creative writing, I hear it impresses the ladies,” Jimmy smiled proudly as he turned abruptly around and looked at Lois. “I’ve been reading this book, ‘Creative Writing for Dummies’ and I figured that if a dummy could write something, so could I.” He smiled at her. “But, now I’ve got writer’s block.”
“Writers block after one sentence, and a cliché one at that? ‘It was a dark and stormy night’, blah, blah, blah.” Lois looked at him and watched as he deleted the statement and stared for a moment at a blank computer screen. “How about something a little bit more intense? A good writer can have a little bit of fun with the English language, don’t you think? I mean; creative writing can use the imagination, whereas newspaper writing is left to the facts.”
Jimmy nodded. “OK, how about this: ‘It was amidst the hours of darkness when the tempestuous clouds rolled across the horizon’?” He asked as he began to type quickly, his fingers literally racing across the keyboard rapidly all the while the artificial lighting meshed together with the shadows emanating the room made him look the obvious part of a man on a mission.
As he finished typing the statement, he looked up to see that Lois was eyeing the computer as if to say ‘you’ve got to be kidding’, yet no words emerged from the audacious reporter.
“OK, you don’t like that one, how about ‘A sinister night was upon them as the cumulous clouds gathered with expectation of emitting precipitation throughout the countryside’.” He smiled proudly as he regarded the computer screen and then looked back at Lois. “I personally like that one, don’t you?”
Before Lois could respond, Clark Kent had returned to the newsroom and was making a beeline straight for Jimmy’s desk when he recognized that Lois was standing and looking over the younger man’s shoulders. Thinking that Jimmy was working on a story for the paper, he approached, but upon reading the various attempts that the young man had made, his eyebrows arched from behind his glasses and he rubbed his forehead with confusion. “Tempestuous? Where did you find that word?”
“In my thesaurus,” Jimmy smiled weakly. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t heard it, CK.”
“Well…actually,” Clark hedged. “Not in every day conversation.”
“OK, so how would you start this story?” Jimmy asked.
Clark smiled. “I don’t know, maybe…wait I know…’It was a dark and stormy night…’ That’s direct and to the point.”
Lois’ eyes simply rolled, but no words emerged, instead, she made her way back over her desk and sat down as Clark and Jimmy watched her. With a shrug, Jimmy went back to work and Clark returned to his desk.
***
Ende...
