Look at me, actually remembering that it’s Friday before I’ve fallen asleep! Tonight, I don’t feel like using my beloved Dixit deck for a writing prompt, so instead I used Seventh Sanctum’s What-If-Inator and got the following prompt:
What if Joan of Arc had access to CGI?
And this is what I wrote:
Jeanne smiled as she watched the writhing image on the screen. It was a smug smile, the sort that curled up at the edges, the sort that said “things are going just my way”.
“Can you at least mute the sound?” Pierre shifted in his seat, cringing visibly every time the pitch of the shrieks pouring from the speakers rose.
Jeanne looked at her brother. “Why? I payed good money for this material, I might as well enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it? How is watching yourself burn to death enjoyable?”
She laughed. “It’s not real, Pierre.”
“I know that!” He snapped. “Would you just mute it?”
She sighed and shrugged. “Fine.” A click of the remote and then the CGI copy of herself was screaming quietly on the screen.
“I still don’t understand why you had this made. When you said you had something to show me I was expecting something a bit less… morbid.”
“This video is going to change everything,” she replied. “I don’t care if it’s morbid!”
“How?” He asked, exasperated. This was hardly Jeanne’s first wild idea, though it might be the strangest one yet.
“Don’t you see?” Her eyes gleamed with excitement as she paused the video and turned to him. “I spread this to all the news channels, they put it on the air for all to see. The scrappy, small-town girl who just wanted to make things better for the little guy, burned to death by robed figures who may or may not be supporters of certain politicians… I’ll be a martyr. Everyone will love me. No-one will be able to say a damned thing against me after this!”
Pierre rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay… and then what? You spend the rest of forever pretending to be dead?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what?”
“You’ll see…” she smiled, turning back towards the screen. A flick of her thumb and the image came to life again, the young bright face covered in soot and contorted with pain. Jeanne smiled. This was just the beginning…
I quite like this bit, even though it was a quick job. Almost tempted to do something more with it, though I’m not sure what…
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