Wretchedness and Redemption, a Freewrite

Suddenly, something slammed against the boat.

That old, wooden, bail-n-sail dinghy couldn't have been budged by a manatee. Whatever had just slammed into it was probably good and sorry. She turned her head from portside to see if whatever it was needed her help.

"help! i need some help i need some help i need some help..."

A wretched sodden and traumatized, city-slicker in a kayak, sputtered starboard.

"Oh Ok. Now now. Take it easy. First, locate your PFD, because I don't see one."

"PFD?"

"So that explains how you got involved with my newspaper to begin with."

That's when he stopped sputtering enough to take a look, first up at her, and then down at his feet, which were now crawling with spiders.

"GET ME OUT OF THIS THING!"

Another sorry assed urbanite. The last words he said, to the wife he'd left trapped in the water lilies just moments ago, were probably something like "How hard can it be?" He then got into a boat he knew nothing about, at the edge of the mountain lake he'd never been on, and paddled (if you could call it that), on an undeniably straight line right into the cross winds in middle of the lake. And now he was crawling with spiders.

His desperation level shot up. She decided to torture this city slicker for a while longer. She could see what was coming.

rain is beating on the roof (and here is yet another prompt that does not want to fit into my story. let me think for a bit. hm. rain is beating on my roof...)

It started to rain, then to hail. The golf-ball-sized hailstones were bouncing three feet high off the plastic kayak, sounding an awful lot like gunshot. They pummeled the city slicker's bald head and knocked his glasses off into the lake, never to be worn, at least not by him, again.

He started to cry.

She said "smile" as she focused her journalist's camera on his upturned and despairing face. He was going to regret calling her a "backwoods hillbilly, with a shotgun and shit for brains" in the article he'd published just that morning.

This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite challenge. Saturdays are special in that writers have an option to write for a three prompt challenge, 5 minutes for each prompt, no peeking ahead to the next prompt. The prompts are in bold italics in my entry.

The image is mine.

Thanks so much for reading this. I have to admit that I spent a lot more than fifteen minutes on this - the first drafts needed a lot of cleaning up, then the story needed embellishing, than commas needed inserting, and in all I think I spent another 15 minutes making it into a story. I hope it amused in a way.

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