Spoiler
OK so our challenge was to write about an inanimate object, and the one I was given was a soda can. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, so any comments or critiques would be awesome.
The can was lying on its dented side, wind whistling through its hollow core with a mournful sigh. The outer label was already beginning to fade in the penetrating rays of sunlight, and now it was little more than a piece of scrap that clung to the earth in desperation to fight being whipped away in the wind. To those who say an object made by man can never think or feel, they cannot remember their first bicycle and how it seemed to be alive, a newfound friend with the loyalty of a dog; or the way a star shines brighter when you make a wish. Eventually an object somehow stores memory and through it receives some form of life, until there is no more room to hold these things and no need, and then the object fades and dies as all things do. This can still rattled alive with memories, ones better left forgotten but essential to reveal. Yet there was no one - no one at all - to pick it up and see the incriminating evidence. There were finger prints, even very small stains of blood, that would tell befuddled police chiefs and heartbroken friends the story they needed to know with simple lab tests. With it they would have their one lead, a single piece of a treasure map that could bring them to the killer of poor Annalise Relanno. Yet there it sat in the dirt, and how long would it last before the rain came and washed away the vital signs that could save the lives of the murderer’s future prey? The small bottle of Coca-Cola had been the last thing the living hands of Annalise had touched; as time passed, that precious DNA would continue to disappear.
The fingerprints were mingled those of both Annalise and her pursuer, those of predator and prey. The perfect evidence, and yet no one was there to find it.
Then suddenly a car drove up, someone stepping out and stretching his stiff arms. He paced, ran his hands through his sandy hair, licked his sun-chapped lips. Warily, he looked around, remembering the news article about the young girl who had been upducted not far from here, and a strange feeling came over him. Shaking it off, he continued to work his aching muscles. His feet kicked the dirt as he shuffled along, and seeing the soda can he stopped. With a shrug he picked it up and, in good-natured intention, let it fall into the trash can.
