Graham, for the life of him, could not find the floss. Terry watched her husband bang and bash his way through the drawers, the medicine cabinets, his travel bag, all to no avail. If he didn’t find the floss soon, her husband, King of Freakouts, a man absolutely opposed to ever asking for help, instructions, directions, anything--was going to lose his mind.
“Honey, you want help?” Terry called out to her husband, though she already knew the answer.
“Aaaarrrggghhhh!” Graham cried.
While her husband continued to thrash, Terry reached into her handbag, pulled out the floss she always kept in her makeup bag, unreeled one long line of floss, and then worked between her teeth, loosening the bits that were stuck there with glee.
“Let me know!” she called out as she rolled the floss between her fingers into a dainty little ball and thought of all the things in her life that were stuck and needed loosening.
Fran was determined not to let the unfortunate weather or her weight gain or her unfinished to-do list, including dealing with the rodent problem in her basement get in the way of enjoying her one paid vacation week off. In fact she was just about to open a very special bottle of wine when there was an unexpected and unwelcome knock at the door. She rose from the couch and untucked her shirt to cover the unforgivably huge roll of stomach fat that had become her unwanted companion.
She knew before opening the door that Leslie was arranging a lecture in her mind and Fran began steeling herself for what would surely be an onslaught of well-meaning suggestions about how Fran could improve
“Hi Leslie,” Fran opened the door halfway. “I’m busy celebrating. Its my week off. “What do you want?”
Leslie pushed her way inside and shut the door behind her.
“Francesca Lillibeth Simon.” Leslie got down on one knee and held out a little velvet box. “Will you marry me?’
Fran’s first thought was how unattractive she must look from that angle, but then something came over her, something fresh, like when the crocus comes up out of the hard winter ground. She looked down at Leslie.
“Yes.” She said. Then she nearly passed out from the burden of wondering what to do next .
I'm gonna have to figure out why you can't post.... that's a bummer. But this piece! It's fantastic!! So funny and such an unexpected ending. Just great.
ha! It's such a cliche--men who won't ask for directions, men who put together IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions--but, you know, sometimes there's a reason for cliches.
Eric glanced up to the top of the ridge, then down to the river thrashing in its gorge against the cliffs, and shook his head. Trish gazed at her frozen boots, saying nothing, but she didn’t have to say anything, he knew all of this was his fault, his violation of the protocols of good sense, talking her into taking this questionable shortcut through ever-deepening snow.
“What now, genius?” she asked.
“We keep trying,” Eric replied, “or we die.”
She looked at him then, a flash of anger and fear pulsing from her searing blue eyes, and she turned and stalked away, as much as one could stalk away on a steep, snowy, icy slope. After a moment Eric went after her, no plan, no vision, no hope, only a notion that they were better off together than apart even if she hated him. He was looking at her instead of his feet and thus stepped blindly onto not snow but ice and fell, endlessly, face forward, flailing, sliding straight for the wall of rocks four hundred yards away, until he heard the thwack of her axe and stopped short, dangling from his pack straps, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
“Hey,” Trish said, behind and above him, “you might want to be more cautious. If you want to get out of here in one piece.”
In real life I was by myself. I had to embody both of these characters. But I find it more interesting to play with it in writing as though there were two of us. (And maybe it’s partly true, as we contain these multitudinous selves…)
He knew he had to leave that place, if he were ever to make a life that was his, not theirs, forward looking, not backward, about abundance instead of scarcity. Then she came into his life through work, as a client really, someone to please, whose problems, the carpentry related ones anyway, became his, but they refused to remain just that, to be so easily solved. A kind of love was sneaking into the frame, an attraction, an inappropriate, get you fired or thrown out by your girlfriend vibration that was impossible to hide. “I’m not coming back. I’m not finishing the work. We both know this has become too personal, too loaded, too risky,” was the message he left on her machine. She sent him a birthday card six months later, with a picture of the beer they liked to drink when he had finished for the day, but his girlfriend read it first, since it was her house and she got the mail, so he had to burn it on the BBQ in a ceremony they squeezed in between grilling the chicken and the zucchini. But the pillars were already fractured, the relationship was tearing, that ritual fire would not weld any of it back together. He moved out a month later, into the first apartment that was his and his alone, where he could create, or do nothing all day, without any furniture but once again thinking about the future with gratitude, and a touch of fear.
oh my god! Right after i said i wouldn't comment and here I am commenting, because Kurt, this is just so good. Thanks for posting and playing along. I'm very happy!
John changed the lock, but he knew it was useless. Emma could pick any lock in an instant and, an hour later, she did, appearing in the bedroom just as he was about to turn out the light.
She posed in the doorway, the key for the new lock dangling on its ring from her pinky, and smiled at him as he raised up onto one elbow.
“You know I can’t resist a challenge,” she said as she pocketed the key and took off her stilettos, carrying them across the room toward the bed.
John sat up and teased, “how else can I keep winning the bet?” before kicking the top sheet away.
Emma, eying his manicured feet, toenails trimmed and soles smooth, raised first the left shoe, then the right.
He was beginning to have trouble sitting down and standing up. Once I bought him a lightweight folding chair for the beach to make it easier for him to get up by himself. The first day I took him there, while I struggled with the chair, he moved ahead with his cane and plunked himself down in the sand next to a couple, obviously entranced with the young woman in a high-cut Brazilian bikini. He told me to go swim, he would take a sun bath. Later as I emerged from the water, I saw him in the distance straining to get to his feet. The couple rushed over to help - the ravishing creature pulling on one bony arm and her smooth-muscled companion grabbing the other. He was smiling, no doubt.
While Dorothy was at the movies, Richard, morose, downed beer after beer until he was completely wasted. By the time he heard the door slam, and footsteps in the hall, he almost didn’t recognize Mathilda. How had she gotten the key to his love nest?
“Mathilda, don’t!”
But Mathilda went ahead and did.
After she left, Richard sat glumly on the floor looking around the trashed room. The most sensible thing he could think of was to get a locksmith, and fast.
Harvey went in to get a cheap fifth of whiskey, and LuAnn was there to cash in a million dollar lottery ticket. While the clerk made a phone call to figure out how to handle the winning ticket, she offered to upgrade his choice of whisky, and after the clerk got the details sorted out they went to a motel, drank the fifth, discovered they both always wanted to live on a farm and next day drove to the Northeast Kingdom and bought the place they live in now.
The horse came a year later. She wanted a white horse because they were pretty and he went the sixty miles to the auction place and came back with a roan.
Why didn’t you get the white horse I asked for she said.
It is white, he said.
No, that’s a roan. You spent my money on a roan horse when I wanted a white one.
When she woke up and looked in the mirror and saw dried blood on her chin and neck and her dress. A tooth was loose. He didn’t come back that night, but when daylight came she looked out the window he was in the hayfield scything, the arc of blade swinging high over his head and slashing down into the hay. In the corner of her eye she saw the horse who stood with his head down near the fence. She went outside for a better look and saw the five gallon pail of white paint with the lid nowhere, and the used paint roller smeared with grass and horseshit and a blizzard of paint splatters all around. At least, so far as she could tell, he had taken care working around the horse’s eyes and muzzle.
The daughter makes it home by curfew before discovering she left her purse in the woods where she and Ralph stopped to pee while they drove around drinking Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. She rouses the father from his whiskey stupor to tell him she’ll be right back.
She thinks she’s standing far enough behind his chair that he won’t sense her struggle to keep both feet planted on the rotating earth, but he comes to as if slapped, jumps up with a roar and a red face. “She’s drunk! She’s drunk!” he spews, careening into the coffee table and catapulting his boiler maker across the carpet.
“Just throw that anywhere,” says the mother as she tiptoes through the sodden swamp, swaying to the tune of her latest opiate.
The daughter tries to smell her own breath as the father drags Ralph in and, fast-talking teen that he is, he holds up rather well, she thinks, but the father isn’t having any and kicks him out for good, no prom, no nothing.
The daughter cries on the floor by the couch, the mother stumbles to her side—solidarity! The father jumps up and down, cartoon guns drawn, sputtering like Yosemite Sam on amphetamines. Say yer prayers, Varmint!
After an eternity of this, the father grounds the daughter for a month, the daughter grounds the father for a month, the father grounds the daughter for another month, and they all go to bed to sleep it off.
This from my 10 year old nephew Maximus Beauchamp:
Bob and Bobs Mummy: a story of cannibalism.
Bob and Bobs Mummy dropped some hot noodles on the floor and burnt down the house. As if it could not get any worse the fire spread and burnt down the whole country; they died, how sad.
Bob woke up, looked at himself and said 'Oh shit, not again".
Bobs Mummy popped up beside him and said "I'm so hungry," looking at Bob who was now a girl cheeseburger.
"Wait Mummy," said Bob the girl cheeseburger.
"Son, or maybe daughter, is that you, said Bobs Mummy.
"Look at yourself", said Bob, "holy fuck, you are a chicken!"
The chicken who once was Bobs Mummy then ate the girl cheeseburger who once was Bob.
Yep. Stuff happens. Dead or alive. Matters not a jot to folks out there in Metamorphosia County. That Maximus is going to make a dandy Mayor. Certain sure he is. Why the word is that he's already working-up his speel, stomping out his campaign trail and pitching slogan's to folks unlucky enough to fall within earshot: "Vote For Me: Maximus Beauchamp Mummy!", "Vote Mummy!", "Max Mummy For Mayor!", and so on, and so forth..
The magazine columnist tsk-tsked to herself as she finished up the memoir in her hands and started on its pre-release book review. Downtown and a few floors below, the memoirist was chewing on her nails, scooting her desk chair back and forth, rubbing the ends of her hair together despite nearly – nearly! kicking the habit a year ago, and generally going mad with the stress. “My concern,” the columnist began her piece thusly, and then scratched it out; she is concerned but it is complicated: firstly she empathized with the desire to write about one’s socially relevant workplace, because she, the columnist, did that as well, but she felt stern, because she, the columnist, searched within herself and recognized something concerning beneath the desire. “Portrait of the Artist As An Office Drone”, wrote the columnist, and sat back, pleased. The memoirist waited, ignoring texts from concerned friends. When the piece was published, the memoirist read it within five minutes of it coming out, read it with gritted teeth and then when she finished something inside her yelped and collapsed. For a moment she existed too strongly, now the moment has passed, and she can close her eyes.
Limbs as flesh poems, all four aglow in the dark, spilling the spawn of white hot word flows, into the making moulds of four fresh, four times an hour, for the four hours of 90's Night on the Imperial's psychotropic dance floor.
Without his Fairy Godmother aka Mrs Scholey in whichever of the microverses of his mind would Little Derek Scholey be?
Okay, I'm about a month behind here, but still wanted to try this exercise, which I did this morning:
Bob limped onto the porch toward the aluminum patio chair, his favorite, but when he tried to sit lost his balance (he had forgot his walker) and his weight tore through the webbing.
Terry heard the noise, knew immediately what had happened and rushed outside to see Bob trapped, looking like a gargoyle, struggling to breathe.
“This is what you get you fat fucking bastard.”
“Help me,” he rasped, “I can’t… help me.”
She didn’t budge, crossed her arms, “How many times have I told you stop sitting on my porch?”
His legs pushing against his stomach had pulled his elastic waistband down exposing his diaper and the top of his butt crack. She looked around to see if anyone was watching; then, as the bulging veins at his temples ran up onto his forehead like two mighty rivers about to converge, she considered one by one the options available to her.
On her third trip through the parking structure, Anna struck gold in the form of a Jeep in a reasonably sized spot, motor running, back up lights on. Josh, navigating in the opposite direction, also on his third pass, saw the same opportunity. The three cars were immobilized: Anna on the right ready to pounce on the space; Josh to the left, same intent; and Jeep not moving because Anna and Josh had not left enough space to safely maneuver. Anna smiled and waved at Josh to indicate, in a friendly way, that she had arrived first, and he ought to move along. Josh gave no indication of any awareness of Anna or her purported first-in-time claim to the spot. Things escalated, as these things tend to do, until Anna and Josh were both outside their cars in a heated discussion which resulted in a slight backup of other traffic in the structure. While this could have been the opening scene in a sappy rom com which eventually ends in a wedding or the birth of a cute baby, it actually ended with Anna and Josh each accepting plea deals lowering their respective assault charges to disturbing the peace misdemeanors, requiring many hours of community service and over a thousand dollars apiece in attorney fees and court costs.
Andrea took a bite of her sandwich. Tim grabbed it from her and tried to cram it all into his mouth in one bite. Andrea reached into his mouth to pull out what remained unswallowed.
"It has anchovies in it, you fool!" she said.
Tim put fingers into his mouth and tried to push them down his throat.
Zing went all seven strings, sentenced to serve time on my entirely fictional zither, reading this Niall.
MMO is the acronym that comes to mind but pity also, for the fictional detective who comes humming but is soon leaving stage right, screaming, having been maddened to find clarity and firm up on whether this a prima facie case of 'Murder, Premeditated Aforethought' or a prima facie case of 'Death by Accident and / or Misadventure'.
"Best leave to the lawyers to make case and counter case on the question of just what might be argued as to Means, Method and Opportunity" opined D. S. Niven (aka 'Sniveler' to his friend and mentor Ex D. I. Rebus (always just known 'Rebus' to one and all, friend or foe) they shared and compared notes of their day over pints of heavy in the Ox that evening.
"Imaginative mind" said Rebus, smiling wryly, "never come across an instance of death by anchovy before" and then, pausing to allow himself a wet shake of his shaggy haired head, continuing to suggest that "you'll have moments to mull on that while your up at the bar buying our next round Sniveler."
The moon is rising over the South Atlantic and Jason is treading carefully down the Ocean path towards the breaking waves on the beach. Coming onto the beach in the bright moon light he could make out the figure of a woman entering the silvery water; it was going to mess up his fishing.He found a place behind a dune to leave his fishing gear and walked towards the figure in the surf to sort out things. " Heah! " Jason shouted out to her as he closed the space between them. She ignored him and started running back and forth in the white foam of the breaking waves. He ran after her and touched her arm and he could see her white teeth set in a grin as she turned to confront him. She was all wet and silvery and beautiful in the Moon river, "Can I swim with you?"
I just saw this here--it seems I never commented on it...? I wonder how I missed it. Well, better late than never, i suppose. Sweet little story, Graeme!
I try not to miss anybody's work, so I feel bad that I missed yours. If you post and you don't get a "like" from me (that means I've read it) please let me know! And thank you--so glad you're enjoying all of this.
Today I didn’t swim after all, and not because the 15° C water was cold: it wasn’t. All along the shore was a 10-meter barrier of floating seagrass (we had had several days of strong winds), coupled with a long swell that gathered strength as it rose, and when it fell, digging a deep trench that I knew I would stumble into as soon as I stood up to come out. The foaming water had actually begun to feel warm, caressing my legs as I walked in the shallows but each time I went deeper into the water it covered them in posidonia so thick I could hardly move and I remembered once being caught up in a surge heading toward the shore, the seagrass’s long arms binding my arms (and legs), the wave mounting and crashing, pummeling me when I tried to come up for air, rolling me under. Drowning is always a possibility, however shallow the water, but I ultimately came up spluttering as the wave receded. When fear grips me, why is it that I never remember this?
I'm enjoying the playful atmosphere you've created here. Both of my "stories" are notes I've been making - with the idea of working my way up to something longer. All I did was combine a few short sentences to make the required seven sentences. I also had lots of fun taking your sample story and running with it. Would love to do more of that.
I'm so pleased that you're having a good time here. That's the goal. (Also, writing.) Each week, there will be a new prompt and an example from yours truly. So you'll always have something to play with around here.
Here's another one from yours truly:
Graham, for the life of him, could not find the floss. Terry watched her husband bang and bash his way through the drawers, the medicine cabinets, his travel bag, all to no avail. If he didn’t find the floss soon, her husband, King of Freakouts, a man absolutely opposed to ever asking for help, instructions, directions, anything--was going to lose his mind.
“Honey, you want help?” Terry called out to her husband, though she already knew the answer.
“Aaaarrrggghhhh!” Graham cried.
While her husband continued to thrash, Terry reached into her handbag, pulled out the floss she always kept in her makeup bag, unreeled one long line of floss, and then worked between her teeth, loosening the bits that were stuck there with glee.
“Let me know!” she called out as she rolled the floss between her fingers into a dainty little ball and thought of all the things in her life that were stuck and needed loosening.
I love the denouement. Who would have thought that floss could play such a major part in our lives?
i go nowhere without floss
Ditto!! Or at least a toothpick.
putting this in reply since I am unable to post
Fran was determined not to let the unfortunate weather or her weight gain or her unfinished to-do list, including dealing with the rodent problem in her basement get in the way of enjoying her one paid vacation week off. In fact she was just about to open a very special bottle of wine when there was an unexpected and unwelcome knock at the door. She rose from the couch and untucked her shirt to cover the unforgivably huge roll of stomach fat that had become her unwanted companion.
She knew before opening the door that Leslie was arranging a lecture in her mind and Fran began steeling herself for what would surely be an onslaught of well-meaning suggestions about how Fran could improve
“Hi Leslie,” Fran opened the door halfway. “I’m busy celebrating. Its my week off. “What do you want?”
Leslie pushed her way inside and shut the door behind her.
“Francesca Lillibeth Simon.” Leslie got down on one knee and held out a little velvet box. “Will you marry me?’
Fran’s first thought was how unattractive she must look from that angle, but then something came over her, something fresh, like when the crocus comes up out of the hard winter ground. She looked down at Leslie.
“Yes.” She said. Then she nearly passed out from the burden of wondering what to do next .
I'm gonna have to figure out why you can't post.... that's a bummer. But this piece! It's fantastic!! So funny and such an unexpected ending. Just great.
That is so wonderful. And the incredibly unforeseen turn!!!!
Great story!
Mary, you are very intimidating
nooooooo!!!! (And i see you wrote one anyway--so mine wasn't intimidating, it was inspiring!)
Nice!
Except that, Graham might be my default mode!
ha! It's such a cliche--men who won't ask for directions, men who put together IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions--but, you know, sometimes there's a reason for cliches.
You definitely don't need instructions for IKEA furniture.
I dare you to do a kitchen!
I've built several kitchens from scratch.
Never an IKEA kitchen, but don't see a problem.
( I've been an architectural designer, custom builder, cabinetmaker, boatbuilder, etc., so have some experience.) :)
OMG. So true. I’m really good at IKEA furniture and I tackled a kitchen. Or rather it tackled me.
Next time I buy a Billy bookshelf, please come over!
Maybe via Zoom.
I wonder how many people here have Billy bookshelves?
Why it might be better to be non-binary, and less of a cliche…for the time being…
Eric glanced up to the top of the ridge, then down to the river thrashing in its gorge against the cliffs, and shook his head. Trish gazed at her frozen boots, saying nothing, but she didn’t have to say anything, he knew all of this was his fault, his violation of the protocols of good sense, talking her into taking this questionable shortcut through ever-deepening snow.
“What now, genius?” she asked.
“We keep trying,” Eric replied, “or we die.”
She looked at him then, a flash of anger and fear pulsing from her searing blue eyes, and she turned and stalked away, as much as one could stalk away on a steep, snowy, icy slope. After a moment Eric went after her, no plan, no vision, no hope, only a notion that they were better off together than apart even if she hated him. He was looking at her instead of his feet and thus stepped blindly onto not snow but ice and fell, endlessly, face forward, flailing, sliding straight for the wall of rocks four hundred yards away, until he heard the thwack of her axe and stopped short, dangling from his pack straps, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
“Hey,” Trish said, behind and above him, “you might want to be more cautious. If you want to get out of here in one piece.”
oh, wow. Have a funny feeling you know of what you speak here....
Yes. Although I would never endanger someone else in this manner…only myself!
Oh, yes, i didn't mean THAT.
Ha. Trying to make it more interesting; and to follow your pattern…kind of!
it was perfect!
Thank you! Several revisions, to tighten it, and it could use more. Thank you: this is a great exercise!!
I know that. But consider not endangering yourself that way?
Where’s the fun in that?
No, I learned a ton from that experience; I’m still learning from it, 12 years on.
I have hiked with David, and have heard several "true stories" along these lines. !
Great ending! So you did get out in one piece, I presume...
In real life I was by myself. I had to embody both of these characters. But I find it more interesting to play with it in writing as though there were two of us. (And maybe it’s partly true, as we contain these multitudinous selves…)
It really becomes something else with another character. Though I suppose you could have decided it was better to stay together, you and yourself ;-)
I like to get out of my own head, and check out other people! (At long last!!)
One step wrong....smart girl with an ice axe...Well done David^^
Thank you, Graeme. One stupid step for a man, one fell move by a woman…
He knew he had to leave that place, if he were ever to make a life that was his, not theirs, forward looking, not backward, about abundance instead of scarcity. Then she came into his life through work, as a client really, someone to please, whose problems, the carpentry related ones anyway, became his, but they refused to remain just that, to be so easily solved. A kind of love was sneaking into the frame, an attraction, an inappropriate, get you fired or thrown out by your girlfriend vibration that was impossible to hide. “I’m not coming back. I’m not finishing the work. We both know this has become too personal, too loaded, too risky,” was the message he left on her machine. She sent him a birthday card six months later, with a picture of the beer they liked to drink when he had finished for the day, but his girlfriend read it first, since it was her house and she got the mail, so he had to burn it on the BBQ in a ceremony they squeezed in between grilling the chicken and the zucchini. But the pillars were already fractured, the relationship was tearing, that ritual fire would not weld any of it back together. He moved out a month later, into the first apartment that was his and his alone, where he could create, or do nothing all day, without any furniture but once again thinking about the future with gratitude, and a touch of fear.
oh my god! Right after i said i wouldn't comment and here I am commenting, because Kurt, this is just so good. Thanks for posting and playing along. I'm very happy!
And thank you for leading the way. You are a very bright light in SC and now here, in your own gig. 🙏
thanks, Kurt. It really only works when people respond, so thank you for being here.
second that
love "the ceremony."
John changed the lock, but he knew it was useless. Emma could pick any lock in an instant and, an hour later, she did, appearing in the bedroom just as he was about to turn out the light.
She posed in the doorway, the key for the new lock dangling on its ring from her pinky, and smiled at him as he raised up onto one elbow.
“You know I can’t resist a challenge,” she said as she pocketed the key and took off her stilettos, carrying them across the room toward the bed.
John sat up and teased, “how else can I keep winning the bet?” before kicking the top sheet away.
Emma, eying his manicured feet, toenails trimmed and soles smooth, raised first the left shoe, then the right.
They fit like a glove.
Way to go for it! I didn't know where it was going until i got there. Great job!
thanks for the lock-changing idea. john and emma took it and ran with it.
He was beginning to have trouble sitting down and standing up. Once I bought him a lightweight folding chair for the beach to make it easier for him to get up by himself. The first day I took him there, while I struggled with the chair, he moved ahead with his cane and plunked himself down in the sand next to a couple, obviously entranced with the young woman in a high-cut Brazilian bikini. He told me to go swim, he would take a sun bath. Later as I emerged from the water, I saw him in the distance straining to get to his feet. The couple rushed over to help - the ravishing creature pulling on one bony arm and her smooth-muscled companion grabbing the other. He was smiling, no doubt.
love it.
good reason to leave the chairs at home.
Time to sit in the sand and be helped^^
While Dorothy was at the movies, Richard, morose, downed beer after beer until he was completely wasted. By the time he heard the door slam, and footsteps in the hall, he almost didn’t recognize Mathilda. How had she gotten the key to his love nest?
“Mathilda, don’t!”
But Mathilda went ahead and did.
After she left, Richard sat glumly on the floor looking around the trashed room. The most sensible thing he could think of was to get a locksmith, and fast.
What a riot!! Karen!!! Now my story makes so much more sense!
No longer locked OUT^^
Go Matilda!
Harvey went in to get a cheap fifth of whiskey, and LuAnn was there to cash in a million dollar lottery ticket. While the clerk made a phone call to figure out how to handle the winning ticket, she offered to upgrade his choice of whisky, and after the clerk got the details sorted out they went to a motel, drank the fifth, discovered they both always wanted to live on a farm and next day drove to the Northeast Kingdom and bought the place they live in now.
The horse came a year later. She wanted a white horse because they were pretty and he went the sixty miles to the auction place and came back with a roan.
Why didn’t you get the white horse I asked for she said.
It is white, he said.
No, that’s a roan. You spent my money on a roan horse when I wanted a white one.
When she woke up and looked in the mirror and saw dried blood on her chin and neck and her dress. A tooth was loose. He didn’t come back that night, but when daylight came she looked out the window he was in the hayfield scything, the arc of blade swinging high over his head and slashing down into the hay. In the corner of her eye she saw the horse who stood with his head down near the fence. She went outside for a better look and saw the five gallon pail of white paint with the lid nowhere, and the used paint roller smeared with grass and horseshit and a blizzard of paint splatters all around. At least, so far as she could tell, he had taken care working around the horse’s eyes and muzzle.
that is a wild and dark story! Half horror, half crazy reality. Jeepers, Tod. Nice going!
The daughter makes it home by curfew before discovering she left her purse in the woods where she and Ralph stopped to pee while they drove around drinking Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. She rouses the father from his whiskey stupor to tell him she’ll be right back.
She thinks she’s standing far enough behind his chair that he won’t sense her struggle to keep both feet planted on the rotating earth, but he comes to as if slapped, jumps up with a roar and a red face. “She’s drunk! She’s drunk!” he spews, careening into the coffee table and catapulting his boiler maker across the carpet.
“Just throw that anywhere,” says the mother as she tiptoes through the sodden swamp, swaying to the tune of her latest opiate.
The daughter tries to smell her own breath as the father drags Ralph in and, fast-talking teen that he is, he holds up rather well, she thinks, but the father isn’t having any and kicks him out for good, no prom, no nothing.
The daughter cries on the floor by the couch, the mother stumbles to her side—solidarity! The father jumps up and down, cartoon guns drawn, sputtering like Yosemite Sam on amphetamines. Say yer prayers, Varmint!
After an eternity of this, the father grounds the daughter for a month, the daughter grounds the father for a month, the father grounds the daughter for another month, and they all go to bed to sleep it off.
Families! Gotta love 'em! Loved the ending--it surprised me, which is the best type of ending. Thanks for joining in, Patti!
And thanks for the kind words about the story.
Thank you for this substack, Mary!
This from my 10 year old nephew Maximus Beauchamp:
Bob and Bobs Mummy: a story of cannibalism.
Bob and Bobs Mummy dropped some hot noodles on the floor and burnt down the house. As if it could not get any worse the fire spread and burnt down the whole country; they died, how sad.
Bob woke up, looked at himself and said 'Oh shit, not again".
Bobs Mummy popped up beside him and said "I'm so hungry," looking at Bob who was now a girl cheeseburger.
"Wait Mummy," said Bob the girl cheeseburger.
"Son, or maybe daughter, is that you, said Bobs Mummy.
"Look at yourself", said Bob, "holy fuck, you are a chicken!"
The chicken who once was Bobs Mummy then ate the girl cheeseburger who once was Bob.
Happy New Year to yas!
To the Max!
Yep. Stuff happens. Dead or alive. Matters not a jot to folks out there in Metamorphosia County. That Maximus is going to make a dandy Mayor. Certain sure he is. Why the word is that he's already working-up his speel, stomping out his campaign trail and pitching slogan's to folks unlucky enough to fall within earshot: "Vote For Me: Maximus Beauchamp Mummy!", "Vote Mummy!", "Max Mummy For Mayor!", and so on, and so forth..
The magazine columnist tsk-tsked to herself as she finished up the memoir in her hands and started on its pre-release book review. Downtown and a few floors below, the memoirist was chewing on her nails, scooting her desk chair back and forth, rubbing the ends of her hair together despite nearly – nearly! kicking the habit a year ago, and generally going mad with the stress. “My concern,” the columnist began her piece thusly, and then scratched it out; she is concerned but it is complicated: firstly she empathized with the desire to write about one’s socially relevant workplace, because she, the columnist, did that as well, but she felt stern, because she, the columnist, searched within herself and recognized something concerning beneath the desire. “Portrait of the Artist As An Office Drone”, wrote the columnist, and sat back, pleased. The memoirist waited, ignoring texts from concerned friends. When the piece was published, the memoirist read it within five minutes of it coming out, read it with gritted teeth and then when she finished something inside her yelped and collapsed. For a moment she existed too strongly, now the moment has passed, and she can close her eyes.
"For a moment she existed too strongly, now the moment has passed..." That's so true. Nice job!
Thank you.. I just saw that the piece got screwy with tenses. it's fixed!
It’s more of a thought for the day, but Im squeezing every unrelated drop out of this prompt.
The Dancer.
When Derek Little danced he lived
His imaginary lithe limbs performed perfectly, while his jaunty fat little real limbs pumped away underneath.
he was three poets meeting at a local tavern, then staying on for 90’s night
he bit into his dream pear and juice ran down his chin but he didn’t mind
Mrs Scholey washed his three favourite shirts daily cos he liked to get changed
His limbs were flesh poems, glowing in the dark
Life was good to him, and he was good right back, expressing himself through dance,
as an Emperor somewhere wanted
i love that you're loving this prompt. Write away!
Thanks for starting it Mary
Limbs as flesh poems, all four aglow in the dark, spilling the spawn of white hot word flows, into the making moulds of four fresh, four times an hour, for the four hours of 90's Night on the Imperial's psychotropic dance floor.
Without his Fairy Godmother aka Mrs Scholey in whichever of the microverses of his mind would Little Derek Scholey be?
His colours wouldn't pop without Mrs Scholey, and his whites wouldn’t still be blue
Yeh, that fits J.D.A. , with her, Mrs Scholey being a lifelong Persil Girl.
Okay, I'm about a month behind here, but still wanted to try this exercise, which I did this morning:
Bob limped onto the porch toward the aluminum patio chair, his favorite, but when he tried to sit lost his balance (he had forgot his walker) and his weight tore through the webbing.
Terry heard the noise, knew immediately what had happened and rushed outside to see Bob trapped, looking like a gargoyle, struggling to breathe.
“This is what you get you fat fucking bastard.”
“Help me,” he rasped, “I can’t… help me.”
She didn’t budge, crossed her arms, “How many times have I told you stop sitting on my porch?”
His legs pushing against his stomach had pulled his elastic waistband down exposing his diaper and the top of his butt crack. She looked around to see if anyone was watching; then, as the bulging veins at his temples ran up onto his forehead like two mighty rivers about to converge, she considered one by one the options available to her.
Oh, this one! You surprised me with that ending. Nice job--and you're never behind around here! So glad you did this one.
On her third trip through the parking structure, Anna struck gold in the form of a Jeep in a reasonably sized spot, motor running, back up lights on. Josh, navigating in the opposite direction, also on his third pass, saw the same opportunity. The three cars were immobilized: Anna on the right ready to pounce on the space; Josh to the left, same intent; and Jeep not moving because Anna and Josh had not left enough space to safely maneuver. Anna smiled and waved at Josh to indicate, in a friendly way, that she had arrived first, and he ought to move along. Josh gave no indication of any awareness of Anna or her purported first-in-time claim to the spot. Things escalated, as these things tend to do, until Anna and Josh were both outside their cars in a heated discussion which resulted in a slight backup of other traffic in the structure. While this could have been the opening scene in a sappy rom com which eventually ends in a wedding or the birth of a cute baby, it actually ended with Anna and Josh each accepting plea deals lowering their respective assault charges to disturbing the peace misdemeanors, requiring many hours of community service and over a thousand dollars apiece in attorney fees and court costs.
Oh i just now cracked up on my sofa at the end of this! Great little story.
Thanks! This is so much fun!
Andrea took a bite of her sandwich. Tim grabbed it from her and tried to cram it all into his mouth in one bite. Andrea reached into his mouth to pull out what remained unswallowed.
"It has anchovies in it, you fool!" she said.
Tim put fingers into his mouth and tried to push them down his throat.
He retched and retched, but nothing came up.
His airways were already closing.
oh! So good!
Zing went all seven strings, sentenced to serve time on my entirely fictional zither, reading this Niall.
MMO is the acronym that comes to mind but pity also, for the fictional detective who comes humming but is soon leaving stage right, screaming, having been maddened to find clarity and firm up on whether this a prima facie case of 'Murder, Premeditated Aforethought' or a prima facie case of 'Death by Accident and / or Misadventure'.
"Best leave to the lawyers to make case and counter case on the question of just what might be argued as to Means, Method and Opportunity" opined D. S. Niven (aka 'Sniveler' to his friend and mentor Ex D. I. Rebus (always just known 'Rebus' to one and all, friend or foe) they shared and compared notes of their day over pints of heavy in the Ox that evening.
"Imaginative mind" said Rebus, smiling wryly, "never come across an instance of death by anchovy before" and then, pausing to allow himself a wet shake of his shaggy haired head, continuing to suggest that "you'll have moments to mull on that while your up at the bar buying our next round Sniveler."
The moon is rising over the South Atlantic and Jason is treading carefully down the Ocean path towards the breaking waves on the beach. Coming onto the beach in the bright moon light he could make out the figure of a woman entering the silvery water; it was going to mess up his fishing.He found a place behind a dune to leave his fishing gear and walked towards the figure in the surf to sort out things. " Heah! " Jason shouted out to her as he closed the space between them. She ignored him and started running back and forth in the white foam of the breaking waves. He ran after her and touched her arm and he could see her white teeth set in a grin as she turned to confront him. She was all wet and silvery and beautiful in the Moon river, "Can I swim with you?"
I just saw this here--it seems I never commented on it...? I wonder how I missed it. Well, better late than never, i suppose. Sweet little story, Graeme!
I'll be back to post more. I love what you are doing at,"What now?" Many thanks for your comment^^
I try not to miss anybody's work, so I feel bad that I missed yours. If you post and you don't get a "like" from me (that means I've read it) please let me know! And thank you--so glad you're enjoying all of this.
You have taken a lot on for all of us that join your prompts....TX for everything you are doing with your ideas, comments and word craft^^
xo
One more before Mary gives us a new prompt.
Today I didn’t swim after all, and not because the 15° C water was cold: it wasn’t. All along the shore was a 10-meter barrier of floating seagrass (we had had several days of strong winds), coupled with a long swell that gathered strength as it rose, and when it fell, digging a deep trench that I knew I would stumble into as soon as I stood up to come out. The foaming water had actually begun to feel warm, caressing my legs as I walked in the shallows but each time I went deeper into the water it covered them in posidonia so thick I could hardly move and I remembered once being caught up in a surge heading toward the shore, the seagrass’s long arms binding my arms (and legs), the wave mounting and crashing, pummeling me when I tried to come up for air, rolling me under. Drowning is always a possibility, however shallow the water, but I ultimately came up spluttering as the wave receded. When fear grips me, why is it that I never remember this?
Somehow, this prompt really works for you. This one you wrote is sooo good.
I'm enjoying the playful atmosphere you've created here. Both of my "stories" are notes I've been making - with the idea of working my way up to something longer. All I did was combine a few short sentences to make the required seven sentences. I also had lots of fun taking your sample story and running with it. Would love to do more of that.
I'm so pleased that you're having a good time here. That's the goal. (Also, writing.) Each week, there will be a new prompt and an example from yours truly. So you'll always have something to play with around here.