“Peeked out into the three a.m. darkness to see yesterday morning’s snowfall damaged by the warming afternoon. Sunken in depressions like a Temperfoam mattress.”
OR
“Went shopping for a back-relieving foam mattress, lumpy like the morning’s snowfall melted by the warming afternoon.”
Near perfect in accuracy, and yet uneloquent in either case. Metaphors and similes must be magic, relative to bring the instant imagery and yet produce the pleasing, the horrific, the nodding-yes of acceptance in the reader’s mind.
(NOTE: Someone, somewhere–and I suspect it was at MetaxuCafe–posted about inappropriate metaphors in a particular short story collection and that post inspired this one. But I can’t remember where I read it, so I can’t give appropriate credit. I hate that. I hate when that happens.) (NOTE #2: Just found it via Metaxu at Bookface.)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Ah a perfect mattress formed as if kneeded by the paws of a white persian kitten.
Nice. That’s exactly the point, and the image is lovely and easily brought up.
“She fell to the floor, squirming and shrieking like a bag full of kittens with their tails tied together…”
}:)