Allyson, email me. I'm here for backup, for agent advice, for editing and for anything else. sf_deb@yahoo.com gets me.

I was out taking Bev and Ginger to the airport. My house is untenanted.

For this week's "escape" challenge:

This Flight Tonight (for the escape challenge)

I've done my time here.

It hasn't been bad, despite my wanting to romanticise the negatives. I did school here, and theatre here. I ate freshly-made cannoli, and watched giant terrifying floats bobbing ominously over Fifth Avenue during the Macy's parade. I saw Paul Simon here, the Beatles at Shea, Bob Dylan before he was Dylan.

But everything I want is in California, the Bay Area, blue and green. The man I want is there. The music I love is there.

I leave my tenseness, my anger, my need to compete, on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, and fly away.

Ooh. That's good, deb. I can feel that.

I'm mulling over this drabble. The ironic bit is I'm actually in the midst of writing an escape scene, but I'm still trying to think of a way to distill its essence into 100 words.

I'm having trouble with this one, too. I don't know what my problem is, perhaps that I'm so content where I am right now that escape is tough to deal with. Hmm. Maybe I should go that way, what got me here.

I started another all-quotes-all-the-time one, but it sucked, too. Hmf.

Well, here's a try. I'll let the theme rattle around in my head for a while and try another later.

sand

She could pick things up in quantities of five. That was what five years in inventory control had done for her.

Now it was time. But they only made it to Kansas. They waited there. Brick small-town streets. Good jobs, no more debts. Waited.

She had quit her job a month ago, when the towers fell. Wise, wasn’t it, to leap into uncertainty when the world was falling apart.

Half thought them crazy. Half envied their freedom. But it didn’t matter, because they were getting paid to sit in the desert and play music and hang out with kids. Escaped.

Do I ask people in my essays if they prefer anonymity? Is that the classy thing to do? Is it customary?

when the towers fell

It's like that Star Trek Next Gen episode, "Darmok." A phrase that needs no explanation, that summarizes everything.

for the "escape" drabble

The nurse smiled as she left the exam room. “I just have to get some paperwork. I’ll be right back”.

The woman in the room winced as she sat up, a hand to her ribs. She shouldn’t have come here. The nurse would return with a police officer. They would start asking her their questions, wanting a name, a narrative, a betrayal. She limped across the room and picked up her purse.

They would lecture her about how she didn’t deserve this, how he had no right to do this to her, how she could stand up for herself. They would presume to know her life. They knew nothing.

She reached for the door handle. If she left now, she could escape. Escape the charges being laid, the subpoenas being issued, the meetings with prosecutors, the trial dates and witness warrants.

They would not understand. The door clicked shut behind her.

Two superb drabbles, there.

Do I ask people in my essays if they prefer anonymity? Is that the classy thing to do? Is it customary?

Allyson, I would, even if only on the purely legal basis. Even in published articles, I always felt it was sound practice to ask first; that avoids legal complications, and establishes a sense of trust early on. But that's just my take.