The below snippet was written as an in-progress writing exercise. Here I was working on sharpening my dialogue skills. No prompts were used for this exercise. This exercise was completed in June of 2012 and transcribed here in December 2016.


She stood in the doorway, waiting for him to notice.

“That you?” He muttered.

“Who else would it be?” She said as she entered the musty room.

“Been awhile. Wasn’t sure you’d come back”.

“Brought you something” She said as she made her way to the dining table and placed the brown package in front of the old man. “Should be right up your alley”.

“What is it?”

“Open it”, she insisted.

He clawed at the package, eventually revealing its contents. Once the package had been upended, a small, sleek, black box slid out onto the table. Discarding the brown packaging carefully, he adjusted his spectacles and studied the black box.

“Is this what I think it is?” He asked, his words thick with judgement.

“It’d want it to be for the shit I’ve gone through to get it.” She replied, disregarding his tone.

With a grunt of disapproval he asked; “Why did you bring it here then? You think I need one of these?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Only people looking to get themselves killed.” He said, looking into her eyes, searching for reason.

“Or people looking to stay alive.” She replied, unconvinced.

“You realise what they’d do to me if I tried to use this don’t you?” He asked, then answering his own question he stated; “In minutes that door would be reduced to splinters and men armed to the teeth would start pouring in”.

“Well sure, that’s what would happen if most people used it.” She began. “But your whole life revolved around these things once didn’t it?” He looked at her dreading what she was about to say. “Surely you know how to disable the tracking chip,” he closed his eyes, trying to block it out, “encode the data so that their scanners won’t recognise it,” his head began shaking, “mask its digital signature so it looks like an ordinary mobile device and -“ Bang! She jumped, startled by his fist slamming a hole into the wall. There was a long silence between them. She was too worried about having blown her chances with him to try continuing her speech.