My hand found cold sheets in the bed where my husband usually was.
"Jerry, where are you?"
He wasn't answering. And that scratching hadn't stopped. Was it even scratching? Scraping? Knocking?
I'm not a scaredy-cat, but I don't want to be alone to face a burglar in the house. I mean, what are husbands for? What could I do, without leaving the bedroom? Scare the burglar? The alarm? How did you set it off? We had a little booklet of instructions in a bedside table drawer. His or mine?
A loud wood-splintering sound came up from the kitchen.
"Jerry, WHERE ARE YOU?" I yelled.
More wood-splintering.
Where could I hide? And where were my clothes? I was stark naked. (Don't ask). If a burglar found me like that, what would be sure to happen next? I mean, he might be a gentleman burglar, but what were the chances?
"JERRY! I'M NOT JOKING! WHERE ARE YOU!"
Call the police? My phone was recharging down below. Jerry's phone? Where in hell was Jerry's phone?
Turn on the lights. Pick up my clothes from all across the floor. Pull them on fast. Search everywhere. No telephone.
Shit, Jerry! Have you done a runner? One last time, full tilt boogie, then sneak out the door, is that it?
I'm going down. Quietly. Get the phone, lock myself in the downstairs bathroom. Call the cops. Softly, softly, down the stairs. My phone is in the lounge near the TV. Unhook from recharge. Jesus, it's burbling! Drop it on the couch, stick a cushion over it.
Stop, listen.
Someone's crying.
Jerry?
In the kitchen?
Creep over there, look in.
Jerry's phone is on the floor with the flashlight on. He's sitting in his underwear on the floor with his back to the store cupboard, smashed and splintered. His face is all broken with tears.
"I can't find it," he says.
"What can't you find, honey?"
"My tooth. I lost a tooth."
If you wake a sleepwalker, don't you do them lasting harm?
"We'll look for it tomorrow."
"No, it's gone, it's gone!"
When men dream of a missing tooth, what's that supposed to mean?
"Come on back up to bed, and I'll show you where it is, sweetheart," I say.
Really nice feat of bringing it taut through the mystery of what goes scratch-scrape in the night & missing person, to so gently dropping in this authentically sweet note to close.
As you can see from the title, I decided to use both prompts... question and missing tooth...
Where is my missing tooth?
Why does my mouth hurt? Why am I missing a tooth? How did I end up on the sidewalk on my side in the dark? What can I remember about how I got here? Why did that man hit me in the face? Why didn’t I block his fist with my own? How long have I been lying here? Is that my tooth, near me on the pavement, glinting in the distant street light? When will I be able to climb to my feet, tuck the tooth in a shirt pocket and walk away? Who was this man who attacked me? Where can I find him? Why can’t I remember anything, even who I am? What is that word, when you can’t remember anything? I think it starts with an A. Who the hell am I?
A start from last week that was blocked up, just got freed by your new prompt!
How does the plumage stay white?
Walk into town. Go by the canal. Brown-reddish water not-moving looks like cough syrup or liniment. It will remind you to go by the pharmacy to pick up your medicine, though medicine is tablets now, not liquids from dusty glass bottles. That’s what did the trick, liquid from dream-coloured bottles on a shelf at the top of the cupboard. A teaspoon held in front of you, hold still, watch the liquid fill your big eyes.
Stop on the bridge over the brown canal, squeeze to the iron barrier to let the cyclist go by, breathe in the food steam from his delivery. Look down onto the surface of the water at your own silhouette, see the swan smooth over the water, how does the plumage stay white? If you haven’t an answer by now, the medicine won’t give you one.
That reminds you to go to the pharmacist and ask for your medicine. The pharmacist recognises you, you think, which suggests you’ve become a regular. A chronic pain. Where does the slow pain flow from and where does it go? Are you explained as the slow vehicle for this brown-reddish pain?
What is the medicine for, what can it possibly be for, then, if it’s to take away the explanation? Fill the small white pill in the palm of your hand, hold a glass of water in the other hand, and think of a new way of asking the question.
"liquid from dream-colored bottles" -- notes of Alice and the rabbit! Something entrancing here, beautiful alongside the crisp, brisk second person voice.
How did you get here? By boat? By bus? Over the mountains on foot? I know it can’t be by air, there is no airport here. Why did you come in the first place? Did you think you could change my mind? Do you remember what I said? Did you think I wasn’t serious? And now, what do you suppose will happen? That I’ll forgive you?
Are you hungry? How about some scrambled eggs before you go? Do you want some wine?
What time is it? Did you know there’s a mandatory curfew here after 11pm? Wait, you knew that didn’t you? Was that your plan? To stay past curfew? Force me to let you stay the night?
What the hell are you doing with that? Are you kidding me? Where’d you get it? From that thug friend of yours? Is that why you came here? Are you going to shoot me?
Do you know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall?
Thanks Mary. I’m a AYOWD refugee and your posts have really helped fill the void. If I ever get a rebate from that course I will become a paying subscriber to your Substack!
I have never known the origin of that reference. And there are conflicting stories about what the line is about, including the fact that John—in his typical approach to life—was having all of us on. It may be nothing more than his wordplay which was always supposed to make us wonder and then feel like idiots afterwards.
Well it started as a couple of prompt responses here, became a short story, and after a round of reviews on Critique Circle is approaching novella size. Not really my intent. Odd how that goes.
Where is it, the missing tooth? It was present in the mouth when we first exhumed the body; the coffin down in the sunken bed of the grave, too fragile to be lifted; a construction line sketch of a discontinued undertakers showroom model, brought from Mamuju on the back of a wagon at great expense, during which time it was stolen and then ransomed back, delaying the funeral by two days. Now, after eight years in the ground, it was absent its varnish, held together by a compact of red soil.
Taking the sides of the cloth that we had laid underneath the body of Indah when we last saw her, we parted ways, two of us walking in one direction, three in the other, the middle of the sheet rising at our departure and her body rising with it. We anchored both ends of the cloth with chunks of broken headstones, leaving it slightly bowed at the centre. Tentatively we lifted her the rest of the way out, Diann brushing off a pair of conjoined centipedes that tumbled back down into the hole.
We removed the previous year's grave clothes to be burned, though Elok said the dress would be good enough to wear after it was cleaned, and kept it. The new dress, purchased off the back of a window mannequin at Bunga Anggrek in Mamuju, was laid alongside Indah, while we washed her body and Elok styled the greying hair, bemoaning that, in death, her sister possessed it in more abundance than she did.
Murni fretted over the missing tooth and whether one of the dukun who roam the cemetery might have stolen it to use in his black magic. The two living sisters held up bras and debated whether one was necessary, the breasts having long wilted, exposing a waxy foundation of skin, dried out like a scab, pulled taut over the scaffold of the ribcage.
We had photographs taken with Indah. Some on our phone cameras and a few by the professional graveyard photographer. After we had laid her to rest and filled the hole, Murni made the sisters promise not to mention the missing tooth to their mother who would be upset.
“Someone has taken it,” he murmured to himself later, as alone at the garden shrine he prepared the candle ritual that would defend his family from the attentions of evil spirits.
[I started with a random question from the wonderful "Oblique Questions" questionbot, and here's what came out. It's a little ... odd.]
Are there any quail left now? Once there were so many of them, the tiny feathered things in constant motion, covering the ground. There were so many, and they moved so quickly, that they were impossible to count. Now, it seems, there are too few to count. No one has seen any here in, let’s see, decades.
Are there any foxes? I remember them chasing after the quail, their red fluffy tails lifted in the air as they trotted, noses pointed, paws stretching out, missing again and again until finally they pounced on their prey.
And what about the gryphons? They would lie in wait outside the castle wall, beady eyes peeled for foxes, their favorite feast. The curved talons on their front feet terrified me as a child, but my father told me they made affectionate house pets and kept the grounds free of varmints. Our huntsman encountered one last year, lying on the forest floor, depressed as all get-out. I don’t know what it could have been living on. The huntsman stroked its feathers and said a few encouraging words, and it wagged its lion tail but refused to get up.
Even the castle is beginning to crumble. There are corridors where no one has walked in years, and cobwebs hang from the dripping ceilings. The walls are damp to the touch, and bits of stone fall away if you run your fingers along them. The paint on the family portraits is flaking, making some of the ancestors look as if they’re weeping.
Is this the fate of all things, this emptiness and decay? Or will the earth turn one fine day and begin bubbling new life? And if it does, what will become of me, remnant of the old, dying world?
Love the oddness, especially the line "the curved talons on their front feet terrified me as a child" I had to look up the Oblique Questions wordbot - very cool! At first I thought it would be related to 'Oblique Strategies' cards. So today my access to oblique repositories has doubled!
My legs feel like logs, heavy and apart from the rest of me, so tired all the time no matter how much I sleep, what could that be? My hair falls out in the brush, more than usual, my skin is dry, the lateral edges of my brows thinning, why are only the ends of my eye brows thinning? I ask my doctor friend.
That’s called Queen Anne Sign, she says.
What? I say. I don’t believe her.
Yes, it’s a syndrome, and they named it Queen Anne Sign, isn’t that wacky? She says.
Wait for her to leave, I think to myself. It sounds crazy, right? I’m going to Google as soon as she leaves. But we shouldn’t Google medical things, you’ll go nuts, isn't that the truth?
She waves and says, see you later? I wait for a beat, don’t let her catch you. How long should I wait? Click click click, her heels on the sidewalk diminishing, mixing with traffic. She’s gone, right?
She’s a doctor, shouldn’t I believe her? Is she gone yet?
Yes.
I get out my computer and look it up. Queen Anne Sign? The Queen Anne Sign or the Queen Anne’s Sign?
There she is, all in black, mourning the death of her son, Anne of Denmark, she looks right at me, isn’t that creepy? Like her eyes are saying, are you a hypochondriac?
that’s a lot of cleavage, isn’t it? Why do I always zero in on the boobs? Look at her brows, that’s why I googled her, right? Thin, yes. Are they only thin on the ends, or all over? Hypothyroidism? Is that what she had? Is that what I have?
Haven’t done anything. What is it that you want to leave, donate, bequeath?
It’s more a state of mind I want to leave
Is it a spiritual legacy?
Do you have a form for that?
No
It’s not that. It’s a knowledge I don’t want to disappear
What do you want to preserve?
I don’t want all the old dogs forgotten. Take the Owe out of Poet and you’ve got a Free Pet- Memory. Advertisings not my thing. I want people to have access to future dead pets, free of charge
I guess there’s the internet. There’s a lot of them there
It’s not as spooky and precise though is it? It’s not like filing through eighty thousand dogs out of eight million for the one that barks to you
You want a library of dead dogs?
I’d not say no to that
A resource of deceased pets…for people who don’t have live pets?
Not just that. Also as friends to existing pets who are stuck at home. These pets are doing everything, you’d really get the sense you know them
So the dead babysit the living?
Do you mind if I use that phrase?
Feel free
My dog Benny Huppy died recently. I filmed him every day of his happy life.
I’ve seen you in the park with your dog. I’ve noticed he is not as social as the other dogs.
It made me think- would …your or other dogs like to meet Benny Huppy? He could be a Multi screened film- a real time hologram, or a AI soft robot dog. He’d be a bit bouncy, soft in parts, play the way your dog likes
[ He’s been watching me- this is ALL about Me- Knew it ]
How would you afford holograms or robots for everyone?
There’s be different levels for different types of pet lover, preferences to people who cant afford or aren’t allowed dogs, bereaved owners, people who cant get about - pets that cant socialise. [ Maybe You? ]
There’s a lot of dogs that need homes
Do you think I should give my money to dogs that need homes?
Possibly. Probably. Yes
Would you get another dog?
No
There you are, your dog might like a friend. I could save a million dogs as well
That’d be nice
Done. He speaks into his phone.
‘ask D to cost vet bills food grooming toys recreation and screening owners for one million dogs’ (speaks softly) and one million bouncy puppy friends
Now put it out of your mind and see if it comes back with a bow on it. My card., I’ll be back
Ok, thank you
Think on two words while Im gone. Swear Birds. Nothing like a good swear, when in pain. These birds have the foulest mouths I’ve ever heard, there’s levels, from Dammit! to the worst things a human has ever let a bird overhear. Patients in severe pain love these guys.
He sings
‘When you’re blown- up-broken in half-
Scream while you laugh
at Swear Birds. ‘
He walks off.
She peeks over counter at his shoes.
Max? How do you tell if someone’s insane?
Max sticks his head out of a cubicle.
We check their finances
What if they’re rich?
That’s as sane as it gets in this country. He might be a dafadill
Wossat?
Do Anything For a Date- ill-
Pity. I want a swear bird for my Gramps
I want one for out the back here. You don’t want a camera on the end of your bed, nuzzled into Mr Biscuits -But if a bird was yelling ‘That bastards looking at you again! ‘Make it easier
So great! "Take the owe out of Poet"! and the swear birds - will think on those two words a good long while. And - I was quite startled to find two more pieces this week involving dogs - seems the mind meld .. or mind melt?.. is well underway!
Is it possible to wander into someone else’s dream?
I am with a Norwegian man who is either studying or working in the US. Is he married? Separated? Whichever it is, today is his day to take the child to day care where I work. Am I having an affair with him? The three of us, including a toddler with a round head, arrive at the day care together. I play peek-a-boo with the man’s toddler with a round head. I hold a small doll with a round head behind a shelf and pop it around the end so he can see it, but he seems uncertain of whether to laugh at the sudden appearance of a small doll who has a round head and is dressed like him or to cry. The father sits on a child’s chair next to a table and indicates that I should sit in the other chair. He has a stern look on his round face. I tell him I work here and must interact with the children. He taps the table with his finger, pointing to the chair on the opposite side of the table and tells me that since I arrived with him my duty is to sit with him. Is this behavior indicative of the reason his wife walked out on him? I’m confounded by his demand and walk away. He walks outside through the door. My throat feels raw. I don’t feel well and think I should leave and go home but I haven’t got a car. Where is my car? At the repair shop. How will I get home? Will I need to take a bus? I must call and find out which of the buses run from here to there and whether I’ll need to transfer to another bus. I look for a pen or pencil and scrap of paper so I can call the bus company and write down the information I need before I can leave for home. But I can’t find a pencil. Are pencils too dangerous to have within reach of the children who attend day care? Might pencils harm the children? I see scraps of paper on the low, child-sized table and pick up a scrap. Is there a pen? No pens. I look at an administrator’s desk but only see thick markers. I look around the room. Everyone is faceless and barely there at all. They all dissolve into nothingness and I am left to ask, What am I doing here?
I wrote this before reading anyone else's stories and am amazed by the common themes. Does anyone here want to take ownership of this dream? I'm convinced it isn't mine. LOL
I was also amazed at overlap this week! I loved this one so much, the extraordinary eerie tone that the questions created, with the narrator both divulging what is happening and being completely unsure what is happening.
A bit of creative nonfiction about my morning today. I think I had a different idea yesterday when I first read this prompt, but like with all-things-mommy, I forgot.
____
Where does she think she's going? Are her shoes on OK? "Whose is that?" It's noisy at the library, the children's room rampant with screams, shrieks, and trills of joy. Yet my daughter is not interested: no sense for the stomping of small feet in socks and sneakers, the slapping of tables, the clatter of puzzles.
Where is she going now? Does that say "Employees Only?" Is that a Christmas book? "Elmo!" a child cries, face full of tears, reaching for the knee holes of my ripped jeans. Why did I wear these again? "How old is she?" "How old is he?" "Why don't we pick a different book?" He runs and cries. She runs and hides, toddling off through an opening in the stacks. Are children's books' shelves called stacks? Half-stacks? Like pancakes?
Where is she now? Small hands smack sandy-tinted glass, pre-cracked, at the back of the room. She smiles and babbles with joy. "What are you doing?" "Where's Miss Daisy?" "When will we start?" "Should we go on without her?" I scoop my baby into my arms, and her face is defiant. An open palmed slap smacks my mouth. "Why!? Be gentle. Can you be gentle?" I grab the grubby toddler hand, kiss its pudgy fingertips. When will she stop with the slaps? 17 months? Sooner? "See? Be gentle." She struggles against my clutches, her face narrowed with displeasure.
Where are we? What's going on? Why won't you put me down? The door to the auditorium opens, and the rabble rouses, lurching forward, strollers lined up like paparazzi as we walk the red (blue) carpet. "What's your name?" "When did you sign up?" Where should we sit? A neat semi-circle of adults sit with their well-behaved babies, children's music mild over the PA. "If you're happy and you know it..." My daughter stands stock still. She neither claps, nor stomps, nor shouts "Hooray!" Is she too young for this? Is she tired? Is it time to leave? She stares at the dancing librarian.
Will you sit with me? I try, holding her close to me. She obliges, her sneakers splayed out against my legs. She leans her head into my shoulder and rubs her eyes, clearly exhausted. Yet there's one thing that gets her up and moving, excited to be at the library at last.
Are those bubbles? How do you catch them? Where are they going?
Captures well the pace and rapid switching of taking care of small kiddos. I really liked the strollers lined up like paparazzi, and also the feeling/moment of oh no is my kid going to behave amidst these other seemingly well behaved kiddos.
thank you 🙏🏽 - as soon as I started drafting it, I realized how many questions I am asking myself every day with a toddler, haha. And of course she is the one to go against the grain (i.e. wander off) but it makes for exciting life and writing ✍🏽 😂
Nelson was in a tree. Lord knows how he got there. He was hurting all over. He took stock: the right leg was broken by the look of it, twisted in an ungainly way; the left foot was pointed backward. He was bleeding from his chest, abdomen, nose, and somewhere on his scalp. Something disastrous had happened. Must have.
>What happened? How did I get in this tree? He was talking out loud, but someone or something was speaking to him.
>>You – on me, Nelson. You are in – tree.
>A tree? How the hell did I get up here? Nelson was not just confused; he was certain he must be going crazy. Must be trauma from whatever happened, he thought.
>>No Nelson. You – not – crazy.
>Whoa, I didn’t even say anything. Where am I? Am I in some strange space station, in another universe? WTF. He must be delirious.
>> No Nelson. No delirium. Just –reality – protecting you.
Nelson pondered for a moment. He realized that despite his injuries, he was pain-free.
>Am I in shock, or is this a dream?
>>No Nelson.
He was beginning to realize that whatever it was, this alien, some gnome, or whatever – ok, this tree was singularly certain about his state of affairs.
>OK, what’s going on here? Why don’t I hurt? Look at my foot, my leg, And I’m bleeding. He was bleeding profusely. He was going to die. Maybe he was already dead. This fucking cannot be real. The tree spoke again. And as it spoke, Nelson could feel the tree limb – yes, that’s what it must be – moving under and around him. And as it did, the tree seemed to speak in his head. He watched his leg rather swiftly begin to return to normal. His foot slowly turned to its toe front position.
Nelson vomited.
The vomit disappeared as he listened to this internal voice.
>>We understand Nelson – a series of disastrous accidents – conversation is not – now safe – more safe than ever.
Nelson doubted that, but there was no question that he was certainly safer than before. He recalled being chased. Running. Stopping suddenly to pick up this strange button. Something else was in the back of his mind.
>This is crazy, isn’t it? But can you tell me exactly what’s going on?
“Doesn’t she see that the door is closed? Doesn’t she remember how we agreed that meaning can be a thing made out of a closed door?” he thought. “Don’t we both know that this can make it not only a door, but a sign shared between us?”
“Did you feed -- ?”
“But why must she do this?” he implored, to himself. “And why am I so troubled by it? Does it mean that I want to be distracted, in fact? If this weren’t the thing I were after, why would I be putting so much attention into it? What is this part of me that is awakened now, only now and not by anything else so far today?”
“Howww?" howled the pup as it trotted out through the now pushed-open door.
“Crunch crinch slish slosh,” went the dog food, the hard grains and the soft stuff from the can.
“Will I rain on you or let you be?” wondered the sky.
“I felt so totally optimistic about today just ten minutes ago. The day looked so undisturbable, so totally full of potential,” he simmered.
“Hrmm brmm bmmbla grhmm?” she voiced from the other end of the house, or at least so it arrived to him.
“But am I now straining to hear this? And would I now hear this distant plane passing, if I were not keying myself right into it?" he wondered.
"But now, are you really thinking this is the stuff of a story?” he typed out onto the screen.
“What happened next? And what now?” asked nobody then, except that he did hear this quite distinctly, and felt it unmistakably directed to him.
“Lick slurp lick?” came the pup back into the room, looking up and asking, “What is your face showing me now?” as was the question every time she looked at him.
“Can people really ever know what dogs are thinking, though,” he quarreled with himself. “Can we really know what another person is thinking or what the meaning of a door, closed, open, ajar, is meant to signify? Can we ever really know if we are being considerate when we have only been taught that doing this means this and doing that means -- “
“More coffee?” she asked through a door now open one dog width. The mug in her hand steamed undeniably.
What Was That Scratching Down In The Kitchen ?
It woke me up, that was sure.
"Jerry?" I whispered. "Jerry!"
My hand found cold sheets in the bed where my husband usually was.
"Jerry, where are you?"
He wasn't answering. And that scratching hadn't stopped. Was it even scratching? Scraping? Knocking?
I'm not a scaredy-cat, but I don't want to be alone to face a burglar in the house. I mean, what are husbands for? What could I do, without leaving the bedroom? Scare the burglar? The alarm? How did you set it off? We had a little booklet of instructions in a bedside table drawer. His or mine?
A loud wood-splintering sound came up from the kitchen.
"Jerry, WHERE ARE YOU?" I yelled.
More wood-splintering.
Where could I hide? And where were my clothes? I was stark naked. (Don't ask). If a burglar found me like that, what would be sure to happen next? I mean, he might be a gentleman burglar, but what were the chances?
"JERRY! I'M NOT JOKING! WHERE ARE YOU!"
Call the police? My phone was recharging down below. Jerry's phone? Where in hell was Jerry's phone?
Turn on the lights. Pick up my clothes from all across the floor. Pull them on fast. Search everywhere. No telephone.
Shit, Jerry! Have you done a runner? One last time, full tilt boogie, then sneak out the door, is that it?
I'm going down. Quietly. Get the phone, lock myself in the downstairs bathroom. Call the cops. Softly, softly, down the stairs. My phone is in the lounge near the TV. Unhook from recharge. Jesus, it's burbling! Drop it on the couch, stick a cushion over it.
Stop, listen.
Someone's crying.
Jerry?
In the kitchen?
Creep over there, look in.
Jerry's phone is on the floor with the flashlight on. He's sitting in his underwear on the floor with his back to the store cupboard, smashed and splintered. His face is all broken with tears.
"I can't find it," he says.
"What can't you find, honey?"
"My tooth. I lost a tooth."
If you wake a sleepwalker, don't you do them lasting harm?
"We'll look for it tomorrow."
"No, it's gone, it's gone!"
When men dream of a missing tooth, what's that supposed to mean?
"Come on back up to bed, and I'll show you where it is, sweetheart," I say.
love this story
Thanks, Mary.
Really nice feat of bringing it taut through the mystery of what goes scratch-scrape in the night & missing person, to so gently dropping in this authentically sweet note to close.
Thanks, Danielle. Things worked out that perhaps he was more haunted than she was.
Sounds like a case of vagina dentata to me.
"I'll show you where it is."
👁🕶
If you're going to start talking Latin, everybody will be impressed. But nobody will understand.
I loved the swerve ball from "I mean, what are husbands for?" to "When men dream of a missing tooth, what's that supposed to mean?".
Ah, it turned out in the end that she really loved Jerry. That was the path that the story took.
Excellent. What it must be like to live with a sleepwalker or to be one...so good.
As you can see from the title, I decided to use both prompts... question and missing tooth...
Where is my missing tooth?
Why does my mouth hurt? Why am I missing a tooth? How did I end up on the sidewalk on my side in the dark? What can I remember about how I got here? Why did that man hit me in the face? Why didn’t I block his fist with my own? How long have I been lying here? Is that my tooth, near me on the pavement, glinting in the distant street light? When will I be able to climb to my feet, tuck the tooth in a shirt pocket and walk away? Who was this man who attacked me? Where can I find him? Why can’t I remember anything, even who I am? What is that word, when you can’t remember anything? I think it starts with an A. Who the hell am I?
Well done, Rolf--if a little bit scary!
So good, so real.
Oh yes. Great work, Rolf, and all in a paragraph.
A start from last week that was blocked up, just got freed by your new prompt!
How does the plumage stay white?
Walk into town. Go by the canal. Brown-reddish water not-moving looks like cough syrup or liniment. It will remind you to go by the pharmacy to pick up your medicine, though medicine is tablets now, not liquids from dusty glass bottles. That’s what did the trick, liquid from dream-coloured bottles on a shelf at the top of the cupboard. A teaspoon held in front of you, hold still, watch the liquid fill your big eyes.
Stop on the bridge over the brown canal, squeeze to the iron barrier to let the cyclist go by, breathe in the food steam from his delivery. Look down onto the surface of the water at your own silhouette, see the swan smooth over the water, how does the plumage stay white? If you haven’t an answer by now, the medicine won’t give you one.
That reminds you to go to the pharmacist and ask for your medicine. The pharmacist recognises you, you think, which suggests you’ve become a regular. A chronic pain. Where does the slow pain flow from and where does it go? Are you explained as the slow vehicle for this brown-reddish pain?
What is the medicine for, what can it possibly be for, then, if it’s to take away the explanation? Fill the small white pill in the palm of your hand, hold a glass of water in the other hand, and think of a new way of asking the question.
So quiet. And yet pulsing with mystery. A mind that forgets and then remembers.
"...As the swans in the evening
Move over the lake."
The swans are white, the lake is black. Deep.
And I have promises to keep?
(My Robert Frost obsession just kicked in. Sorry)
"Deep" was a semi-conscious quote from "Stopping By Woods..." I almost wrote "the lake is dark and deep".
The swans moving over the lake is from an Irish ballad called "She Moved Through The Fair".
"liquid from dream-colored bottles" -- notes of Alice and the rabbit! Something entrancing here, beautiful alongside the crisp, brisk second person voice.
Evokes a scene in a some way that reminds me of Ondaatje, who is one of my favorite writers.
Nice, very compelling. And mysterious.
. . . see the swan smooth over the water, how does the plumage stay white?
and the water stay brown-reddish as pain ? All your questions without any answers, never any answers.
I am taking a Flash course and today we had to do a 100 word flash so hence the brevity.
“Why do my clothes smell so funny?”
“Because Daddy left them in the wash machine over night.”
“Mommy never does that.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“Why can’t we have pancakes for breakfast?”
“Daddy doesn’t know how to make them.”
“Mommy does.”
“I know. Really good ones.”
“Why can’t I go over to Ben’s after school?”
“You go to day care after school.”
“Why do you work so much?”
“I need to make more money now that Mommy doesn’t.”
“Why can’t Mommy come home?”
The father stared into eyes too young to feel such pain.
“You know why.”
“Why did she die?”
oh. Yes. So very sad.
oh. my.
Beautiful, and so close to home.
:((
really sad.
• Do You Know How Many it Takes? •
How did you get here? By boat? By bus? Over the mountains on foot? I know it can’t be by air, there is no airport here. Why did you come in the first place? Did you think you could change my mind? Do you remember what I said? Did you think I wasn’t serious? And now, what do you suppose will happen? That I’ll forgive you?
Are you hungry? How about some scrambled eggs before you go? Do you want some wine?
What time is it? Did you know there’s a mandatory curfew here after 11pm? Wait, you knew that didn’t you? Was that your plan? To stay past curfew? Force me to let you stay the night?
What the hell are you doing with that? Are you kidding me? Where’d you get it? From that thug friend of yours? Is that why you came here? Are you going to shoot me?
Do you know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall?
Wow--this was really well done.
Thanks Mary. I’m a AYOWD refugee and your posts have really helped fill the void. If I ever get a rebate from that course I will become a paying subscriber to your Substack!
What is AYOWD?
A Year of Writing Dangerously with Summer Brennan.
Thank you!
I see Mary answered your question on AYOWD
no worries--enjoy the posts and don't give payment a second thought. Just very happy that you are here!
I so loved this piece Marcy! All the transitions and the blank space between them, it leaves so much for the imagination!! Just brilliant!
Thanks so much. I just kind of free write on these prompts not giving it a lot of thought and am often surprised at the shape they take.
That is exactly the idea, no? Sometimes it’s better not to overthink things…
No, I don't know. Tell me, please.
Psst! 4,000...
Supposedly 4000, but in the lyric, “holes” was a dig on the Albert Hall and a substitute for the a**holes that fill it.
Ah! I never knew that! Thank you!
That has been one of the essential facts of life since the 1960s. I thought no intelligent life in the universe could possibly be ignorant of it.
Which leaves us all with a question concerning mary g's life form, which courtesy forbids me to formulate openly.
But we are all wondering...
Covid. Blame covid. Which yes, I have.
Ha! But surely you've heard of the xkcd lucky 10,000 theory? (i just discovered it ten minutes ago)
We might also wonder if I'm impervious to snarky comments.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
What does that mean?
Wow! I didn’t know that!
Angela, I won't repeat my reply to Mary.
But honestly! Next thing you'll be saying you didn't know that they found the holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and they had to count them all.
I have never known the origin of that reference. And there are conflicting stories about what the line is about, including the fact that John—in his typical approach to life—was having all of us on. It may be nothing more than his wordplay which was always supposed to make us wonder and then feel like idiots afterwards.
Supposedly 4000, but in the lyric, “holes” was a dig on the Albert Hall and a substitute for a**holes that fill it.
[Is it just me or does anyone else find it weird how often mary’s prompts mesh with what you are doing at the moment?]
removed
Jeepers! Is this an entire novel?
Well it started as a couple of prompt responses here, became a short story, and after a round of reviews on Critique Circle is approaching novella size. Not really my intent. Odd how that goes.
Fantastic, Mark (with a K)!
Where is it, the missing tooth? It was present in the mouth when we first exhumed the body; the coffin down in the sunken bed of the grave, too fragile to be lifted; a construction line sketch of a discontinued undertakers showroom model, brought from Mamuju on the back of a wagon at great expense, during which time it was stolen and then ransomed back, delaying the funeral by two days. Now, after eight years in the ground, it was absent its varnish, held together by a compact of red soil.
Taking the sides of the cloth that we had laid underneath the body of Indah when we last saw her, we parted ways, two of us walking in one direction, three in the other, the middle of the sheet rising at our departure and her body rising with it. We anchored both ends of the cloth with chunks of broken headstones, leaving it slightly bowed at the centre. Tentatively we lifted her the rest of the way out, Diann brushing off a pair of conjoined centipedes that tumbled back down into the hole.
We removed the previous year's grave clothes to be burned, though Elok said the dress would be good enough to wear after it was cleaned, and kept it. The new dress, purchased off the back of a window mannequin at Bunga Anggrek in Mamuju, was laid alongside Indah, while we washed her body and Elok styled the greying hair, bemoaning that, in death, her sister possessed it in more abundance than she did.
Murni fretted over the missing tooth and whether one of the dukun who roam the cemetery might have stolen it to use in his black magic. The two living sisters held up bras and debated whether one was necessary, the breasts having long wilted, exposing a waxy foundation of skin, dried out like a scab, pulled taut over the scaffold of the ribcage.
We had photographs taken with Indah. Some on our phone cameras and a few by the professional graveyard photographer. After we had laid her to rest and filled the hole, Murni made the sisters promise not to mention the missing tooth to their mother who would be upset.
“Someone has taken it,” he murmured to himself later, as alone at the garden shrine he prepared the candle ritual that would defend his family from the attentions of evil spirits.
Incredible. I feel I was there, watching this.
Between the question and the answer, a whole world...
Wow! Precise, visual, and beautiful.
[I started with a random question from the wonderful "Oblique Questions" questionbot, and here's what came out. It's a little ... odd.]
Are there any quail left now? Once there were so many of them, the tiny feathered things in constant motion, covering the ground. There were so many, and they moved so quickly, that they were impossible to count. Now, it seems, there are too few to count. No one has seen any here in, let’s see, decades.
Are there any foxes? I remember them chasing after the quail, their red fluffy tails lifted in the air as they trotted, noses pointed, paws stretching out, missing again and again until finally they pounced on their prey.
And what about the gryphons? They would lie in wait outside the castle wall, beady eyes peeled for foxes, their favorite feast. The curved talons on their front feet terrified me as a child, but my father told me they made affectionate house pets and kept the grounds free of varmints. Our huntsman encountered one last year, lying on the forest floor, depressed as all get-out. I don’t know what it could have been living on. The huntsman stroked its feathers and said a few encouraging words, and it wagged its lion tail but refused to get up.
Even the castle is beginning to crumble. There are corridors where no one has walked in years, and cobwebs hang from the dripping ceilings. The walls are damp to the touch, and bits of stone fall away if you run your fingers along them. The paint on the family portraits is flaking, making some of the ancestors look as if they’re weeping.
Is this the fate of all things, this emptiness and decay? Or will the earth turn one fine day and begin bubbling new life? And if it does, what will become of me, remnant of the old, dying world?
Yes, odd. But wonderfully odd!
Love your images, Masha, and the sense of life going by.
Love the oddness, especially the line "the curved talons on their front feet terrified me as a child" I had to look up the Oblique Questions wordbot - very cool! At first I thought it would be related to 'Oblique Strategies' cards. So today my access to oblique repositories has doubled!
I love this. Such great detail.
Timewise I was in the present until the gryphon appeared. Wonderful.
Yes, the gryphons and the castle were a shock to me, too. No idea where they came from!
That is when you really find the good stuff while writing. Let it all come in.
You know all my secrets.
Did I share them or did you steal them under the covers of night?
You know all my fears.
Did I tell you or did you pry them like a nail from the wall?
You loved me didn’t you?
Innocence. I still have that. Thank God for small things.
Love the questions.
My legs feel like logs, heavy and apart from the rest of me, so tired all the time no matter how much I sleep, what could that be? My hair falls out in the brush, more than usual, my skin is dry, the lateral edges of my brows thinning, why are only the ends of my eye brows thinning? I ask my doctor friend.
That’s called Queen Anne Sign, she says.
What? I say. I don’t believe her.
Yes, it’s a syndrome, and they named it Queen Anne Sign, isn’t that wacky? She says.
Wait for her to leave, I think to myself. It sounds crazy, right? I’m going to Google as soon as she leaves. But we shouldn’t Google medical things, you’ll go nuts, isn't that the truth?
She waves and says, see you later? I wait for a beat, don’t let her catch you. How long should I wait? Click click click, her heels on the sidewalk diminishing, mixing with traffic. She’s gone, right?
She’s a doctor, shouldn’t I believe her? Is she gone yet?
Yes.
I get out my computer and look it up. Queen Anne Sign? The Queen Anne Sign or the Queen Anne’s Sign?
There she is, all in black, mourning the death of her son, Anne of Denmark, she looks right at me, isn’t that creepy? Like her eyes are saying, are you a hypochondriac?
that’s a lot of cleavage, isn’t it? Why do I always zero in on the boobs? Look at her brows, that’s why I googled her, right? Thin, yes. Are they only thin on the ends, or all over? Hypothyroidism? Is that what she had? Is that what I have?
Hypothyroid or hypochondriac?
hypochondriac forever
Fun - but, What is it with you and Mary and the boobs? Is this what now? Or what now and the boobs? - sounds like a band name.
Mary g. and the Missing Teeth.
Sounds like a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery.
Lee,
Mary and the Boobs!
I love that song.
Hahaha! You are so right, she had a boob thing, and today others have “teeth” things. Missing teeth 🦷
did I have a boob thing? I have no memory of that! ha! I'm losing it completely
Legacy
Can I please start a Legacy?
What type of Legacy?
I would like to know some types to choose from
I don’t know that I can help you
I appreciate what you’ve done so far
Haven’t done anything. What is it that you want to leave, donate, bequeath?
It’s more a state of mind I want to leave
Is it a spiritual legacy?
Do you have a form for that?
No
It’s not that. It’s a knowledge I don’t want to disappear
What do you want to preserve?
I don’t want all the old dogs forgotten. Take the Owe out of Poet and you’ve got a Free Pet- Memory. Advertisings not my thing. I want people to have access to future dead pets, free of charge
I guess there’s the internet. There’s a lot of them there
It’s not as spooky and precise though is it? It’s not like filing through eighty thousand dogs out of eight million for the one that barks to you
You want a library of dead dogs?
I’d not say no to that
A resource of deceased pets…for people who don’t have live pets?
Not just that. Also as friends to existing pets who are stuck at home. These pets are doing everything, you’d really get the sense you know them
So the dead babysit the living?
Do you mind if I use that phrase?
Feel free
My dog Benny Huppy died recently. I filmed him every day of his happy life.
I’ve seen you in the park with your dog. I’ve noticed he is not as social as the other dogs.
It made me think- would …your or other dogs like to meet Benny Huppy? He could be a Multi screened film- a real time hologram, or a AI soft robot dog. He’d be a bit bouncy, soft in parts, play the way your dog likes
[ He’s been watching me- this is ALL about Me- Knew it ]
How would you afford holograms or robots for everyone?
There’s be different levels for different types of pet lover, preferences to people who cant afford or aren’t allowed dogs, bereaved owners, people who cant get about - pets that cant socialise. [ Maybe You? ]
There’s a lot of dogs that need homes
Do you think I should give my money to dogs that need homes?
Possibly. Probably. Yes
Would you get another dog?
No
There you are, your dog might like a friend. I could save a million dogs as well
That’d be nice
Done. He speaks into his phone.
‘ask D to cost vet bills food grooming toys recreation and screening owners for one million dogs’ (speaks softly) and one million bouncy puppy friends
Now put it out of your mind and see if it comes back with a bow on it. My card., I’ll be back
Ok, thank you
Think on two words while Im gone. Swear Birds. Nothing like a good swear, when in pain. These birds have the foulest mouths I’ve ever heard, there’s levels, from Dammit! to the worst things a human has ever let a bird overhear. Patients in severe pain love these guys.
He sings
‘When you’re blown- up-broken in half-
Scream while you laugh
at Swear Birds. ‘
He walks off.
She peeks over counter at his shoes.
Max? How do you tell if someone’s insane?
Max sticks his head out of a cubicle.
We check their finances
What if they’re rich?
That’s as sane as it gets in this country. He might be a dafadill
Wossat?
Do Anything For a Date- ill-
Pity. I want a swear bird for my Gramps
I want one for out the back here. You don’t want a camera on the end of your bed, nuzzled into Mr Biscuits -But if a bird was yelling ‘That bastards looking at you again! ‘Make it easier
It Would
They go back to work
my god, so funny and also so completely serious. "They go back to work." You continue to amaze
"That's as sane as it gets..."
Hahaha!
Haha
Terrific - the world needs more J.D.A!
So great! "Take the owe out of Poet"! and the swear birds - will think on those two words a good long while. And - I was quite startled to find two more pieces this week involving dogs - seems the mind meld .. or mind melt?.. is well underway!
Really? morphic resonance- canine frequencies
Is it possible to wander into someone else’s dream?
I am with a Norwegian man who is either studying or working in the US. Is he married? Separated? Whichever it is, today is his day to take the child to day care where I work. Am I having an affair with him? The three of us, including a toddler with a round head, arrive at the day care together. I play peek-a-boo with the man’s toddler with a round head. I hold a small doll with a round head behind a shelf and pop it around the end so he can see it, but he seems uncertain of whether to laugh at the sudden appearance of a small doll who has a round head and is dressed like him or to cry. The father sits on a child’s chair next to a table and indicates that I should sit in the other chair. He has a stern look on his round face. I tell him I work here and must interact with the children. He taps the table with his finger, pointing to the chair on the opposite side of the table and tells me that since I arrived with him my duty is to sit with him. Is this behavior indicative of the reason his wife walked out on him? I’m confounded by his demand and walk away. He walks outside through the door. My throat feels raw. I don’t feel well and think I should leave and go home but I haven’t got a car. Where is my car? At the repair shop. How will I get home? Will I need to take a bus? I must call and find out which of the buses run from here to there and whether I’ll need to transfer to another bus. I look for a pen or pencil and scrap of paper so I can call the bus company and write down the information I need before I can leave for home. But I can’t find a pencil. Are pencils too dangerous to have within reach of the children who attend day care? Might pencils harm the children? I see scraps of paper on the low, child-sized table and pick up a scrap. Is there a pen? No pens. I look at an administrator’s desk but only see thick markers. I look around the room. Everyone is faceless and barely there at all. They all dissolve into nothingness and I am left to ask, What am I doing here?
I wrote this before reading anyone else's stories and am amazed by the common themes. Does anyone here want to take ownership of this dream? I'm convinced it isn't mine. LOL
Stay well mary g.
I was also amazed at overlap this week! I loved this one so much, the extraordinary eerie tone that the questions created, with the narrator both divulging what is happening and being completely unsure what is happening.
Why is the way so long?
/ The better to tire you.
But why do we continue?
/ We have never known something else.
Where did we begin?
/ This is an impertinent question for a youth.
How I ache though, is it right?
/ If you stop and then you start again, it will be worse.
Why do you help me along?
/ This is my work to do.
Will we continue like this forever?
/ Would you like that?
I do not know what is like.
/ It does not matter, really.
Does father love you?
/ Your father pays me well. It is better not to speak of love.
Have you had children, also?
/ You would not like it if I said yes. You would not like it if I told you of other children.
But I would!
/ You would not like stories so much if they were real.
How can a story be real?
/ Stories are regularly real. First they are stories, and then they are real, and then they are stories.
They must first be real.
/ No, I’m afraid it has always been this way.
Will we be a story?
/ We have always been a story.
Do you love me, also?
/ Let us sing a song now. It is better than asking questions.
What is a song?
/ Be still and I will show you.
How do I -- ?
/ Be still but keep up, little one.
Because the night is long?
/ Because the night is long.
This is so beautiful.
Thanks, Mary! Such a kindness to attend to us all even from within COVID -- hope you're on the mend!
a bit more energy this morning, thank god. Thanks for the well wishes.
. . . beautiful and scary said the little one
Hehe, the spookiness snuck up on me! Thanks so much
A bit of creative nonfiction about my morning today. I think I had a different idea yesterday when I first read this prompt, but like with all-things-mommy, I forgot.
____
Where does she think she's going? Are her shoes on OK? "Whose is that?" It's noisy at the library, the children's room rampant with screams, shrieks, and trills of joy. Yet my daughter is not interested: no sense for the stomping of small feet in socks and sneakers, the slapping of tables, the clatter of puzzles.
Where is she going now? Does that say "Employees Only?" Is that a Christmas book? "Elmo!" a child cries, face full of tears, reaching for the knee holes of my ripped jeans. Why did I wear these again? "How old is she?" "How old is he?" "Why don't we pick a different book?" He runs and cries. She runs and hides, toddling off through an opening in the stacks. Are children's books' shelves called stacks? Half-stacks? Like pancakes?
Where is she now? Small hands smack sandy-tinted glass, pre-cracked, at the back of the room. She smiles and babbles with joy. "What are you doing?" "Where's Miss Daisy?" "When will we start?" "Should we go on without her?" I scoop my baby into my arms, and her face is defiant. An open palmed slap smacks my mouth. "Why!? Be gentle. Can you be gentle?" I grab the grubby toddler hand, kiss its pudgy fingertips. When will she stop with the slaps? 17 months? Sooner? "See? Be gentle." She struggles against my clutches, her face narrowed with displeasure.
Where are we? What's going on? Why won't you put me down? The door to the auditorium opens, and the rabble rouses, lurching forward, strollers lined up like paparazzi as we walk the red (blue) carpet. "What's your name?" "When did you sign up?" Where should we sit? A neat semi-circle of adults sit with their well-behaved babies, children's music mild over the PA. "If you're happy and you know it..." My daughter stands stock still. She neither claps, nor stomps, nor shouts "Hooray!" Is she too young for this? Is she tired? Is it time to leave? She stares at the dancing librarian.
Will you sit with me? I try, holding her close to me. She obliges, her sneakers splayed out against my legs. She leans her head into my shoulder and rubs her eyes, clearly exhausted. Yet there's one thing that gets her up and moving, excited to be at the library at last.
Are those bubbles? How do you catch them? Where are they going?
Ah, yes. The popping of the bubbles--always a favorite!!
Captures well the pace and rapid switching of taking care of small kiddos. I really liked the strollers lined up like paparazzi, and also the feeling/moment of oh no is my kid going to behave amidst these other seemingly well behaved kiddos.
thank you 🙏🏽 - as soon as I started drafting it, I realized how many questions I am asking myself every day with a toddler, haha. And of course she is the one to go against the grain (i.e. wander off) but it makes for exciting life and writing ✍🏽 😂
Who’s talking?
>WTF?
>>Take – easy, Nelson. Everything – fine soon.
>Who’s talking?
Nelson was in a tree. Lord knows how he got there. He was hurting all over. He took stock: the right leg was broken by the look of it, twisted in an ungainly way; the left foot was pointed backward. He was bleeding from his chest, abdomen, nose, and somewhere on his scalp. Something disastrous had happened. Must have.
>What happened? How did I get in this tree? He was talking out loud, but someone or something was speaking to him.
>>You – on me, Nelson. You are in – tree.
>A tree? How the hell did I get up here? Nelson was not just confused; he was certain he must be going crazy. Must be trauma from whatever happened, he thought.
>>No Nelson. You – not – crazy.
>Whoa, I didn’t even say anything. Where am I? Am I in some strange space station, in another universe? WTF. He must be delirious.
>> No Nelson. No delirium. Just –reality – protecting you.
Nelson pondered for a moment. He realized that despite his injuries, he was pain-free.
>Am I in shock, or is this a dream?
>>No Nelson.
He was beginning to realize that whatever it was, this alien, some gnome, or whatever – ok, this tree was singularly certain about his state of affairs.
>OK, what’s going on here? Why don’t I hurt? Look at my foot, my leg, And I’m bleeding. He was bleeding profusely. He was going to die. Maybe he was already dead. This fucking cannot be real. The tree spoke again. And as it spoke, Nelson could feel the tree limb – yes, that’s what it must be – moving under and around him. And as it did, the tree seemed to speak in his head. He watched his leg rather swiftly begin to return to normal. His foot slowly turned to its toe front position.
Nelson vomited.
The vomit disappeared as he listened to this internal voice.
>>We understand Nelson – a series of disastrous accidents – conversation is not – now safe – more safe than ever.
Nelson doubted that, but there was no question that he was certainly safer than before. He recalled being chased. Running. Stopping suddenly to pick up this strange button. Something else was in the back of his mind.
>This is crazy, isn’t it? But can you tell me exactly what’s going on?
Why did I pick up that button?
The button! Never pick up the button!
I'm with Masha. Don't pick up that button, Nelson!
“Did you feed the dogs?” she asked.
“Doesn’t she see that the door is closed? Doesn’t she remember how we agreed that meaning can be a thing made out of a closed door?” he thought. “Don’t we both know that this can make it not only a door, but a sign shared between us?”
“Did you feed -- ?”
“But why must she do this?” he implored, to himself. “And why am I so troubled by it? Does it mean that I want to be distracted, in fact? If this weren’t the thing I were after, why would I be putting so much attention into it? What is this part of me that is awakened now, only now and not by anything else so far today?”
“Howww?" howled the pup as it trotted out through the now pushed-open door.
“Crunch crinch slish slosh,” went the dog food, the hard grains and the soft stuff from the can.
“Will I rain on you or let you be?” wondered the sky.
“I felt so totally optimistic about today just ten minutes ago. The day looked so undisturbable, so totally full of potential,” he simmered.
“Hrmm brmm bmmbla grhmm?” she voiced from the other end of the house, or at least so it arrived to him.
“But am I now straining to hear this? And would I now hear this distant plane passing, if I were not keying myself right into it?" he wondered.
"But now, are you really thinking this is the stuff of a story?” he typed out onto the screen.
“What happened next? And what now?” asked nobody then, except that he did hear this quite distinctly, and felt it unmistakably directed to him.
“Lick slurp lick?” came the pup back into the room, looking up and asking, “What is your face showing me now?” as was the question every time she looked at him.
“Can people really ever know what dogs are thinking, though,” he quarreled with himself. “Can we really know what another person is thinking or what the meaning of a door, closed, open, ajar, is meant to signify? Can we ever really know if we are being considerate when we have only been taught that doing this means this and doing that means -- “
“More coffee?” she asked through a door now open one dog width. The mug in her hand steamed undeniably.
“What happened next? And what now?” Love these!
Your own question, just vibrating through everything all these last months! (: