Contest Entry: It's so Bad it's Good

Option 2 – Pride and Prejudice

The day Darcy and Bingley fell into a really bad novel


    “…so then I said, ‘You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns’," said Darcy.

    "Then what did Lizzy say?" asked Bingley, who was sitting on a high-backed parlor chair with lime green cushions.

    Darcy jumped off of the heavy oak Wainscot chair he was seated on and began to pace back and forth across the blue and gold Donegal rug with a small burgundy stain in the corner.  He set his lips in a grim line, which made it a little bit difficult for Bingham to understand what he was saying. "She just went on and on about Wickham’s misfortunes!"  Darcy ran his hands through his shining dark hair, which fell a few inches past his collar, and when one of his long delicate fingers snagged an unruly curl, he let out only the tiniest yelp, even though it hurt quite a lot.  "This is all so stupid, Bingley!" he growled.  "Wickham is short and pale and I am tall and dark.  Not only that, he is not at all mysterious!"  And the growling was even harder to understand than the grim lips but eventually Bingham did.

         And then a great feeling of sadness came over Bingley because he was also not tall, nor dark, although his face was a little tan.  He was afraid of his own horse though, and nobody had guessed that, so he was, perhaps, a little mysterious.  He sat and thought about not being tall or dark for a long while, until Darcy cleared his throat, and then Bingley asked, "What happened then?"

         "And then she goes towards the leather settee near the east window, where the morning sun bathes everything in it's soft glow, and I say, 'I could carry you over there' and she says, ‘pardon?’, and I say, ‘Even though I don’t possess supernatural strength, I could probably carry you over to that settee without much problem because this is a very small parlor’, and she just looks at me like she thinks I’m crazy and then crosses the room all by herself and plops herself down, like I haven’t even made the offer.”

         Bingley’s eyes widened.  "I am all astonishment!" he said, astonished.

         "She is so stupid.  Which is why I love her.  But she is also an excellent walker, which isn’t such a good thing.  She isn’t the least bit clumsy and hardly ever falls down."

         And Bingley did not answer immediately because he was looking off into the distance with a faraway look in his eyes in a way that Darcy found very irritating, because he guessed that Bingley was thinking about not being tall and dark, even though Bingley knew that he was just the sidekick and not the hero and as such should not be hogging up the word count wishing he were taller.  And now he had hogged up over eighty words.  Plus the nine just now.

         Darcy had to clear his throat twice before he finally got Bingley’s attention.

         “Was her bosom heaving?” Bingley asked finally, a little afraid of what the answer would be.

         “She had a shawl on – so I couldn’t tell,” Darcy snarled.  “I asked her several times to remove it - very politely too.  She would not oblige me.”

         “Oh!  My!  God!”  Bingley cried, speechless.  “What did you do?”

         “What do you think I did? I stalked her like a great jungle cat, closing the distance between us in one long stride, and then, quick as a really fast viper, my hand shot out to grab the shawl,” he ran his hands through his lustrous hair…a little more gently this time.  “I had no choice!” he howled.

         Bingley had to agree that, really, Miss Elizabeth had given Darcy no choice.  But all the growling, snarling and howling was starting to make Bingley just a little bit nervous, so, to be on the safe side, he got up and moved a little closer to the exit.  “So?  Were they heaving?” he asked timidly, once he’d edged a little closer to the door.

         “I don’t know.  She’s a spry little thing - like an even faster viper or a mongoose or something.  She jumped out of the way and called her manservant, Hill.  You remember him?”

    “Yes.  A great tall fellow.” Bingley hated him instantly.

    “A brute,” Darcy agreed.  “He picked me up and threw me out of the house.”  Darcy brushed off his jacket as he recalled the indignity.  “He’s lucky I didn’t lose control of my mercurial temper.”

         “Right,” Bingley said absently.

         “If I had.  There would have been hell to pay.  It would have taken four or five men, at least, to get me off of him.”

         Bingley nodded.

         “Maybe even ten or twelve.  He would have taken a frightful beating.”

         “He’s very lucky to be alive,” Bingley added helpfully.

         “It might have even taken an army.  If I had really lost my temper it would have…”

         “Yes. Right.”  Bingley interrupted impatiently.  “So what will you do now?”

         Darcy sighed, and closed his fine eyes.  “I could kidnap her,” he said slowly.  “Kidnap her and then ravish her.  That might work.”

         “Except…you’d have to deal with Hill.”

         “Blast it all!”

         “What if you wrote a letter?  ”
         
         Darcy opened his eyes.  “Bingley, that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.  Heroes do not write letters.  Heroes slay villains, and captain ships, and occasionally fight malfunctioning robots.

         Bingley shuddered.  He wasn’t sure what a robot was but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to meet one on a dark and stormy night…in a poorly lit deserted alley…his only companions his wits and his fists.  He wondered how tall robots were. 

         The both fell into silence, Bingley’s gloomy and Darcy’s brooding.

         “It has been a very confusing day,” Darcy said finally.

         Bingley had to agree.  It had been a very confusing day indeed.

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