Monday 2 April 2012

#atozchallenge: BYZANTINE

What attracted him to her was her use of the word byzantine. He was a lover of curious words, and he had heard her mumble under her breath about how byzantine the college office was with its multiple forms in triplicate . He had turned to look at her sharply, but she hadn’t noticed as she was engrossed in mumbling her way through Form 981015D and 9843210C in an attempt to obtain student housing before the semester actually started.
“I could help you with that, you know,” he had said as unobtrusively as possible when she had come to a stop in the middle of Form 354648Z.
“Uh, do I know you?” she had asked a trifle rudely.
“I… Well, I work in this byzantine office,” he said. “And actually, if… if you just fill up Form 6548E, you’ll probably… uh… be able to get a room by… O… Orientation.” He pushed the single form towards her.
“Oh. I hadn’t meant for you to hear that,” she said. He watched her cute little pixie ears turn pink. “Thanks a lot, Mister - uh,” she peered at his name tag.
“Ed. You… you can call me Ed.”
“Sure. Right. Uh - I guess I’ll just… fill up the form then.”
She gingerly pulled the form from his fingers and he smiled at her. He watched as she filled up the form, cocking his head every so often. This semester might actually be quite interesting if there were people like her to talk to.
“Have a good day!” he greeted cheerily as she passed the form to him and walked out.
It saddened him that the last thing he heard her mumble as she walked out of the office was, “Total creeper.”

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Byzantine
1 relating to Byzantium, the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
2 (also byzantine) (of a system or situation) excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail
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A little bit of overemphasis on the word "byzantine", maybe. 
Funny, I was imagining him as a nervous little man with a bit of a twitch, but I don't think that really translated well into the text.  

23 comments:

  1. Same time zone! Anyway, I like how you cleverly dealt with this word prompt and I already feel for Ed in such a short piece.

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  2. Very enjoyable! Poor Ed.

    New follower here. I’m enjoying reading my fellow “A to Z”ers. I look forward to visiting again.

    Sylvia
    http://www.writinginwonderland.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thanks for the follow, Sylvia!

      I'm following your blog too.

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  3. nice job! so where'd you get your flash fiction writing prompt? I'm going to be doing some flash fiction for the challenge and would love some ideas ;-)

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    1. Thanks Anna! (Ooo, that feels weird).
      I took the last word for each letter in my Oxford dictionary as my prompt. My list of words are here though I might change a few.

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    1. I really have to credit this girl at auditions last week. She taught me the word "creeper". I just HAD to use it.

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  5. I feel for Ed :) your stories are short,sweet and very interesting.
    http://sulekharawat.com/2012/04/02/best-friend/

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  6. Haha bless!
    Learn something new everyday, I've learnt a new word - thanks! (not that I can pronounce it..)

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    1. I've heard of this word before... but didn't really know what it meant until I tried to write about it.

      Not to sure how it's pronounced either... I don't do too well with phonetics.

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  7. I love this story. I laughed out loud at the end. Poor Ed.

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  8. Bless his heart, I hope he can help her find new and interesting dimensions of horror...

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    1. Owh... Ok, that remains to be written.

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  9. Sweet piece of writing. :-)

    I never knew that byzantine had that extra meaning.

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    1. I just found out too :)

      Thanks for dropping by!

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  10. Very cute scene; I liked it a lot. Thanks for sharing. I never knew byzantine had two meanings.

    Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment on my blog, too.

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    1. Thanks Clare.
      Great to see you here too :)

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  11. Shame, man! Poor Ed! He's obviously shy, and just trying to help the girl out, and she was so rude at the end!

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    1. Some people are just so mean, aren't they?

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  12. Aww...I'd be curiously attracted to someone who could make a sentence with the word `byzantine' in it like Ed. But poor Ed!!!

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