Truth be told, today a little something is wrong. She just can’t remember what it is. That’s been happening more and more of late. Something pops into Wendy’s head and then pops right back out again. Lately, she’d been growing weary of this endeavor called life. Why couldn’t she have died the way Carl did, asleep in his bed, none the wiser? And still young enough for people to show up at his funeral, say nice things about him. There will be no one left to eulogize Wendy when she goes—no one who knew her in her youth, when no one called her Wendy or Mrs. Axelrod, but instead Weazel, or sometimes Weaze, until Carl came along and changed it to Wiz.
No, there would only be Lynne who has called her “Mother” all of her adult life. Never Mom or Mommy or Ma. Mother. A very efficient name. Always so insistent. Always telling Wendy what to do. Take this pill in the morning with this one. Take that one in the afternoon with all of these. This one with food. That one only before bed. When did you last shower? Your teeth—are you brushing them? Mother, you don’t smell good. A daughter should be a mother’s best friend, not a stranger with constant instructions.
How many pills had Wendy taken this morning? She couldn’t remember. It was just too hard to keep track. You take one and then you can’t remember if you took it, so you take another one until all of it is wrong. Today, she’d given up and taken all of them.
“How about a slice of cake?” the girl asks Wendy. Is she same one who wheeled Wendy to the dining hall? This one is from another country, though they all look the same in their purple scrubs, their pretty smiles. Cake! What a lovely surprise.
“Thank you,” Wendy says. She feels very, very tired. She can already see the way she’ll buy this one birthday presents. They’ll have lunch. The girl will visit all of the time. She'll give such a lovely eulogy. “Thank you, my sweet girl.”
The above is a re-worked story of mine where I revised it to start "in the middle of things." I'm not sure the story works anymore, as it's quite edited. But I wanted to post something today...
having just had a conversation with my mother where I kept chanting to myself "Be compassionate be soft" instead of reacting and telling her what to do, this one really hits home
"A daughter should be a mother's best friend, not a stranger with constant instructions." Such a hard relationship with so many pressures both internal and external.
The moment Eleanor woke, she knew she needed to take action. This had gone on long enough. Allen, her dead husband, had come to her again in a dream. This time they were standing at the edge of the ocean, holding hands, something they had rarely done in life. As they looked out at the water, Allen had leaned in and whispered, “the water holds all secrets, but the secrets are drowning.” This was the same kind of bullshit he had been spouting in her dreams for the last two weeks. In life, Allen had been an accountant, tight fisted and practical, with no interest in philosophizing. In her dreams he was a half-witted guru, uttering inanities like “all paths lead to the same circle” and “beneath the bushes, that’s where the gold is found.”
An hour later, Eleanor stands at the edge of Long Island Sound. It is a cold day and she’s all alone on the beach. She looks up at the clouds and says loudly, “The water holds no secrets, Allen. You know what it holds? Plastic bags, algae, jellyfish, motor oil, body parts, and those ugly crustaceans that look like miniature armored dinosaurs.” She picks up a rock and it skips twice on the surface before plunging into the water. “That’s a sign, Allen. You know what it means? It means leave me the fuck alone. Let me sleep in peace.”
Prompt #92 borrowed from a friend who said I could write about it:
She could feel the cold air on her spine where the medical gown, loosely tied, exposed her backside. Was it a chill? At the same time her chest, neck and cheeks felt red hot. She kept her face still when the doctor mentioned the cucumber.
“Use a cucumber, about this size,” Dr. Kimball said, gesturing width and girth with his chubby hands. “And each day, get a bigger cucumber, and that will help stretch out the area.”
When Karen was a young woman, there were no female OBGYNs in town. Not any she knew of, anyway. But she’d become desperate. Something had gone horribly wrong, all within a matter of months. She’d told Dr. Kimball, with much embarrassment, that sex with her second husband had been fantastic until recently. Now intercourse was painful.
Earlier that morning, she’d rehearsed what she would say and how she would say it, to overcome her dread. She wanted to know if something was wrong with her. Was there anything she could do?
Use a cucumber, he said.
In the grocery store, she avoided the produce section altogether. She was only fifty-two.
Later, in her seventies, Karen told this story to a woman two decades younger, and they both laughed, the way you laugh about strange, dark times.
When he excused himself to change into his "flight clothes,” I peeked at his luggage. The initials EP were prominently embossed in gold on the butter-soft leather. EP. He was Italian, a designer he’d said. EP? Who could that be? The only designer I could come up with was Evan Picone.
This was the Concorde—fast, sleek and shiny. When he returned in his buff colored cashmere tracksuit, he handed me a souvenir, a square scarf printed with a swirling psychedelic pattern of blues and greens. I recognized it. Emilio Pucci. This was Emilio Pucci. Nice calling card.
The scarf retails today for over $300. I found it on the internet. Pucci himself died in 1994. He would have been 64 in 1978 when I met him. I was 30. Pucci combined brilliant colors in abstract prints with a nylon clingy fabric that made his dresses form- fitting and eye-catching. He lived in Florence.
He told me that he was afraid his children in might be kidnapped. This was indeed a period when kidnappings for ransom of the wealthy were common. I began to like this somewhat formal, somewhat pretentious man.
Then the conversation shifted. Emilio asked if I’d like to go with him to Plato's Retreat once we landed in Manhattan. Plato’s Retreat, which no longer exists, was not a meditation or yoga site notwithstanding the word retreat. Nor did it offer Ted Talks or lectures in philosophy as the word Plato might imply. Plato's Retreat was an expensive swinger’s club, which opened in the basement of a New York hotel in 1977.
This was not my first orgy invitation. But I had definitely moved up the economic scale from the invitation from my Berkeley acting teacher to his Friday night orgies at his home in the Berkeley hills.
“No thanks,” I said. “Have I offended you?” I considered telling him that I reserved being offended for my clients who raided their corporate bank accounts and then blamed me because I hadn't kept close enough watch on their shenanigans.
But before I get too self-congratulatory about my morals, what if the passenger next to me had been Brad Pitt or Richard Gere. What would I have said if the man propositioning me had been faster, sleeker, shinier?
Hahhaha! I would love to know the answer to your own question! And yes, I remember Plato's Retreat... It seemed so crazy and wild to me back then. (What a life you've had!)
Angela, yes. My memoir (as yet unpublished) is called "What's Left Unsaid." I'm not sure if this scene is still in my memoir, but it's fun to pull out bits and edit to Mary's prompts.
I met her at a gem and coin fair in Kansas City and she promised me the best fried chicken I ever ate and I said I doubt that and she said I don’t and took me across the street to Go Chicken Go. We sat at a booth by the kitchen and I asked her name and she said Sky and I said Sky what and she said Sky Bailey but most people just called her Bailey and I said but what kind of name is Sky and she said she was part Indian and I said you don’t look Indian to me and she said that’s not the part that’s Indian and I said well what part’s Indian and she said: the part where you promise me anything.
I walked up on the old man from out the woods behind his house and he was sitting by the pool bent over in his chair working at his toenails with what looked like a goddamned pair of pliers and I said Hey Carl! and he said What! and I shot him in the back of the head before he could turn around and it sprayed blood and brains and snot and I don’t know what all from here to the pool. I looked over at the house and Bailey stood there leaning in the doorway with her arms and ankles crossed smoking a cigarette like my mother waiting for me after school and Bailey said nice shot Slick and I said yea he was hard to miss. Then I picked up a tumbler of tomato juice and vodka from off a little glass table next to Carl and saluted her with it and gulped it down. It tasted like chicken.
I was leaning on a shovel waist deep in a hole and Bailey was sitting next to the hole on a rolled up carpet in little running shorts and sandals with colored colored beads on the straps like the girls from school and she said so who gave you that name Slick and I said they gave me that name at Leavenworth and I ran my tongue around my mouth remembering when they pulled every tooth in my head with a long slow sucking sound and a plop like pulling a long bone from the mud. I saw Bailey was looking up where a buzzard was wobbling down the sky like some toy on a string and past that bird big thunderheads were boiling up like a judgement. I climbed out of the hole with the shovel in my hand and saw she had my Glock and I said what’s up there Bailey when she didn’t answer I mumbled what you see up there Sky?
I came winding down out of the hills in a driving rain, steering with one hand and had the other hand on Bailey’s sandals and Carl’s phone in the seat beside them. I was leaning forward and squinting through the windshield where my wipers couldn’t keep up. There were squirrels and raccoons and skunks and I don’t know what all running across the road when a big doe shot across in front of me and I thought there’ll be another one and that one slammed it’s head into my passenger door and lightning flashed and I could see in my mirror a bandy legged deer dancing around the road on its hind legs and pawing the air like it was climbing a ladder. Then Carl’s phone started singing what a long strange trip it’s been and my shoulders jumped like Fuck! then I picked up the phone and thumbed the screen and yelled: What?
And I see the lightning crack and I see the red mist. And I hear the thunder clap and I smell the burning burning and I smell the piss. And I taste the/ And I feel the/
oh my god. That's really my response here. oh my god. (And i do see all of the "ands" in this one.) Your writing is so impressive and wild. Love that ending.
This is automatically in medias res. Final episode next week!
Squirreled away in the midst of the heap of lacerated postal sacks, Valentine had at last put Pierre's phallic event to good use, and they drifted off to sleep in each other's arms. The train whined and shuddered as it chundered down an incline, then it stopped.
"The train's stopped," Pierre said.
"Mmmm? It always does here," Valentine said. "Kiss me."
And so he did and so they did. Pierre's event was long-lasting and very satisfactory. Valentine said so. Pierre said it would always be like that with her. Valentine said "Show me again," and he did and they did.
(Note from narrator: these two may be getting ahead of themselves for a couple in a pile of postal sacks under the bottom of the sea, but love will always find a way).
"It's the sea up there," Valentine said as they lay side by side, momentarily sated.
Pierre pictured sixty-six starfish studding a sandy seabed, and a seventeenth-century shipwreck with silvery sardines slipping through the fissures in its split and shattered strakes. The thought of slipping through fissures started Pierre off again and so they did, once more.
This beats the Métro any day, he thought.
The train jerked forward and laboured upward. How soon would they be in England? Pierre had been on a language exchange visit there with his school, and it was horrible, all they gave him to eat was leg of lamb boiled with mint. He didn't really want to go there again, but with Valentine even leg of lamb boiled with mint would be a gastronomic experience.
"We'd better get ready to scarper," Valentine said as she rearranged her clothing. "We hop out at Folkestone."
They crawled out of the pile and found Bill and Bert and the gang waiting for them.
"Bart!" said Bill. "Wotchabinapto?" said Bert. And they both laughed identical laughs and led the way to the end of the wagon.
"Who is Bart anyway?" Pierre whispered to Valentine as they went.
"Bill and Bert's long-lost brother. They got a tip-off you were often on that line at that time of day. That's why we were there."
"But I'm not Bart!"
She giggled. "Nobody's perfect."
The train slowed. Three of the young fellows made a human triangle against the end wall, and slipped a latch that opened a trapdoor from which a stepladder unfolded.
"Emergency escape," Valentine said. "Now be ready to run."
And we all wait with bated breath for Pierre to cross the finish line. Me thinks he's got time for at least one more long lasting and satisfactory event....
When the elevator juddered to a halt between floors 5 and 6, the 7 occupants gazed up from their phones and then at one another.
“What the—?” David said, and reached for the emergency phone.
The lights flickered and went out. A single emergency light wavered overhead.
Dana screamed, and began to sob.
”Maintenance,” said a voice at the other end of the emergency line. David began to explain but his voice was cut off by Phoebe who elbowed him in the neck as she called home.
”Mr Tinkles, it’s Mama!” Her voice rose. “Don’t you worry, sweetums.”
”Shhhhttt!” David hissed at her. “They can’t hear me—!”
”Ouch! You’re on my foot!” Noah yelled.
”Sorry, sorry…” Philip said from the back of the car.
Another voice on speaker:
”911. What is your emergency?” Sarah had called 911. She opened her mouth to respond, but Sheldon had called his mother.
”Shel, baby, is that you? Are you hurt?” Mrs Bagley’s voice echoed from the walls and ceiling.
Rivaled only by Noah’s boss who called him:
”Fields! Where the hell are you?”
Dana began to wail, now.
“Excuse me, ma’am, is someone hurt there? Do you need an ambulance?”
From Sheldon’s phone, Mrs. Bagley demanded,
“Sheldon! Is that a woman with you?”
Philip, cowering in the corner, began to pray every prayer he had ever memorized. But he had memorized badly—
“Our Father, before I lay me down to sleep…”
”Hello, hello—this is maintenance. What floor are you stuck on?”
”I can’t breathe!” Dana called.
“Shut up, everyone!” Noah yelled. “6th floor! Tell him 6th floor,” he said to David.
Phoebe looked up at the floor indicator.
”Are you sure? Maybe it’s 5th floor.”
Dana grabbed Noah’s hand.
“You have to get us out of here!”
The elevator resumed its journey upward, and stopped at the next floor. The doors opened, and two goats calmly surveyed the sweating, pulsing, and disheveled occupants.
”You see?” Said one to the other. “That’s all it takes. Just push one little button.”
Elijah runs, burning up the dirt on the track in an unloved, over-logged forest. Every oxygen-starved cell in his body aflame, dust trailing each footfall. It can’t be true that he could get almost everything he wants with Hanna and still be in agony. Each breath, lung-searing. Is he sprinting toward her, or away, or possibly on some parallel track. The blue spruce, fir and hemlock branches are bent, listening.
A week ago they finally backpacked together for three days, in a mysterious and magical wilderness created out of the remnants of an enormous volcano that had suddenly and violently collapsed into smoking ruins some twenty thousand years before, only to evolve into a paradise of rocks, flowers, peaks and views. The trail kicked their asses good, even while uplifting them. Outside of going to the woodsy bathroom or sleeping in their separate tents they’d been together for every moment in a kind of intimacy of souls, which had felt purer and deeper than any romantic, physical or emotional liaison, a camaraderie of essential being that had only taken four messy and convoluted years to achieve. But of course in the end they had made their way back to the trailhead, the parking lot, the road downhill into traffic, noise, indifference, separation and nothing much left to hope for.
He runs, until he can’t anymore, his lungs heaving, dying for air. He wishes he could just pass out and be done with it, but when his eyes open the buck watching him paws the tuff, snorts, and slowly and elegantly trails away sideways, as Elijah watches, blinking, the pain draining from his body in exactly the same way as the joy had.
On a heap of dead fish, he realized something had gone terribly wrong. But before he could feel sorry for himself, he wondered how all these fish had ended up in this container. Maybe they were trash fish, he thought, even chuckled at it, then kept puzzling what made a fish “trash” in the first place. Was it the slime some species were slicked with? And if so, why didn’t the mucus wash away in the eternal bath of their natural habitat?
On the bank, Lars, the designated lookout, had drifted back to his spotter’s perch from birdwatching, hoping to catch a passing bikini, when he noticed the giant container floating under the bridge, and no Dan on the railing above. Lars put two and two together and decided to ride home.
“Son?” the fish-lorry operator hollered, peeking over the rim to make sure no kid was “sleeping with the fishes.” Relieved, he spotted the backflip boy flat on his back, maybe concussed, smiling with no light behind those dead-fish eyes.
“Everything alright down there, kiddo? Give me a thumbs up so I know you can hear me.”
A shiny thumb, polished by fish slime, slowly rose as a sign of life.
And so they floated: a fisherman and his catch, and the boy, lulled by the trash of the sea.
Not altogether certain of what, exactly, is happening in this one. But the last sentence is lovely and gives me a sense of what I'm missing. Definitely started this in the middle of things!
PROMPT: Write a story that starts in the middle of things. Launch right in! Put us in the scene. Don’t beat around the bush! Get your reader wondering what’s going to happen. 400 words.
The helicopters hovered. It was like a pack of dogs sniffing a scent. They rose at once and flew across the field heading for the marsh. As the whump, whump was heard less, a series of screaming tires flew into the barnyard, scattering chickens amongst the dust they raised. Men popped out with guns drawn taking a bead on anything that looked like it could move. A pair of black boots stepped from the car and walked over to the porch.
“Something up officer?” asked Len after he spit tobacco juice lazily out onto the lawn. His accent was laid back.
“Lt. Colonel,” came the reply.
“Must be something all important for a loo ten ant kernel to be out here scaring my farm animals.”
The Lt Colonel looked Len over carefully. “A dangerous man is on the loose. We have reason to believe that he is in the area. You seen any strange looking people around recently?”
Len walked over to the railing where he sent another stream of tobacco juice in an arc that would make any ball player envious. He turned to the Lt. Colonel. “Can’t say I have. The last bizarre thing I saw was when the army dug up my back forty. They dug a hole the size of a football field. Brought cranes in too. A funny little feller popped up out of that pit, scared them all half to death. Took five linebackers five minutes to bring him under control. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of anyone since.”
“Mind if we search?” the LT. Colonel asked.
“Be my guest,” replied Len.
They inspected Len’s property, finishing as dusk fell on the farm.
The Lt Colonel marched back to his car. Len watched them carefully as they drove down the road.
He walked over to his tractor and moved it about ten feet. He lifted a piece of plywood covered in dirt.
“You can come out now son,” Len said, dropping his back country accent.
The boy pulled himself out from his hiding place, his space helmet in one hand.
“Not sure how you are going to get home but it would be best to get there quickly," Len said.
The boy waved as he walked across the field towards the hole.
“They didn’t dig deep enough,” thought Len as he watched the boy jump into the hole.
I liked this little story, even if i didn't really get it. (The funny little feller part threw me.) I loved that he hid the boy with his tractor, though.
Great images here - from the very first one with the hovering helicopters like a pack of dogs sniffing a scent. And the championship spitting and fake accent!
“Can I help you? Do I know you from the hospital?” She expected some response, but no word was uttered. He stared at her. Intently. At this, Denise became uncomfortable and shifted her foot from one leg to stand on both in the bus shelter.
“Yes. You were on the ward with my niece and nephew, where you nursed them through their infection.” He added, “Though…you know the outcome”. His expression gave such a deep melancholy, a devastation only grief could afford. His eyes watered. I suoi occhi si inumidirono. At once Nurse Rutherford placed this man. He was with the father of the two young children who had painfully passed the week before; the uncle. An infection: a flesh-eating infection that had entered their tissues from unsuccessful liver transplant surgeries. Her mouth was instantly dry and found it impossible to speak, impossible to convey any sort of compassion to this man who was so clearly crushed through his loss of these young children and who now had tears running down his grieving cheeks.
“These children were fratello’s mio’s vita, his life!”, this man uttered through now short sobs. Denise wanted to console him, put her arms around him and tell him life would be ok. Time would heal. But this seemed insulting to the man, so she stayed silent. Within seconds, his shoulders and breathing were heaving, and he started to pace the area of the bus stop frantically. “Di chi e la colpa? Eh? Whose fault is this? I want to know! I demand answers!”, he shouted at her. The man was angry and Nurse Rutherford felt at once unsafe on the outside of the shielded hospital grounds.
From the inside of the expensive long camel coat, a steel gun was extracted and was pointed directly at Denise. With a shaking arm the man directed the gun, and all his pain at her. She tried to back away from him, find her footing so that she could try and run, but he had her backed into the shelter of bus stop.
“Please no!” she begged the man, the desperately wretched man who wanted revenge for his nipotii. Stumbling back, trying to move further away, she fell to the damp ground. Sheer terror took hold of her. “No, for the love of God! I tried…we all tried to save them!”.
The gun fired. Nurse Rutherford slumped to the ground. Blood ran from her gaping mouth.
It is a sad one. Thanks for the feedback. It’s my first post after attending a writing workshop that Tom Brennan gave (which was really informative ☺️).
We sit quietly on our porch here in the high desert watching the rain. Our silence opens us. Listening to the raindrops landing, smelling the fresh damp earth, feeling the plants exult in the first taste of humidity since June. Now with the leaves turning, the sky softens replacing harsh white with soft gray.
I begin to slip. I am both here and drifting back to my summer of confusion.
In some ways, things were delightful in the usual summer way. The week at the coast in July. Up before sunrise each morning, we sat on a different porch looking down to the beach. With tea and coffee. A plate of fruit and rolls. Sitting in silence there too, we watched shore birds going about their morning routines. Later each day, walks, books, cooking, conversation, napping. Our hearts and minds slowed.
So many islands of respite we found. Baseball games. Friends. Movies. Sunsets and stars.
We needed the respite more than we’d ever needed it before. If we allowed ourselves to listen and watch, which we not only allowed, but felt it our duty to do when we were off our islands of respite, to be informed participating citizens, what we saw and heard was heartbreaking.
It was, as Charles wrote, the best of times and the worst of times. What fun he would have had with a would-be tyrant king and his materialistic wife wandering into a command performance of Les Miz.
Now, fall is here. Fall, the beautiful fruition of summer. Fall, the harbinger of bleak dark days ahead.
I look over at you, and you are a Zen master fully present and open to this moment of beauty while I churn with the beauty of the moment and the despair of so many things outside the moment. But, as I have done before, after my panic, I relax into my version of your acceptance and presence. I remember that I can hold everything in my heart: that beauty needs despair, that present needs past and future, and that this is where I am and belong.
The hole in the backyard had been there when they moved in. Within days they woke to find the hole noticeably larger. Little Sammy, six years old, kept staring at it as if he could fathom its depths. There was no question that it was large. But deep as well. It was Sammy who first noticed that it was growing more round, and as the shape formed, he saw that the entire circumference was enlarging. He also noticed, most carefully because he didn’t want to fall in, that it was getting deeper.
A week after they moved in, the family awoke to find the entire back yard had been taken over by the hole. Sammy’s older sister Sarah had to be careful each morning as she stepped out to empty the trash. The hole had just about reached the back stoop. Sheila told her to be careful, but one day as she was emptying the trash Sarah just simply disappeared into the hole. So deep was it that no sound could be heard as she fell.
In this not overly bright family, Sammy seemed sharpest. He took this event for what it was and never again used the back door. In fact he flatly refused to empty the trash. Other than the problem of emptying the trash, no one seemed at all fazed by Sarah’s absence. One evening she went to bed. The next morning she was gone.
Sarah wasn't the only one the hole took. Sheldon, their Doberman/Chihuahua mix, succumbed to the hole’s siren call one day as he was nosing around. Sheila told her husband Sydney that she thought she'd heard Sheldon bark. Looking out the back window she thought she had seen something swiftly grab Sheldon by his collar and drag him in.
All this time the hole was growing and the house was beginning to tilt slightly with the underlying foundation now being undermined. But no matter, overall Sydney thought the house was safe. “Solid as a rock”, he commented to Sheila and Sammy over breakfast the morning that it finally happened.
Sammy was at school. Sheila was at work at the Publix. Sydney was working at home as he usually did. Settled in his second story office, Sydney noticed a slight rumbling. Looking up he could only see darkness. Unfazed, he stood to turn on the lights and fell right into the hall bathroom which was now the floor.
When Sheila and Sammy came home, they were surprised to find no house.
First staring at each other and then into the hole, they suddenly felt the need to grasp each other and in that quick motion found themselves hurtling into the hole’s depths.
Neighbors wondered what happened to the Steeleys, Little Sammy, Sarah, Sheila, Sydney and their dog Sheldon. Some mentioned hearing an occasional belch-like sound emanating from the hole and a long contented sigh.
There was a moment when he thought he might become violent. He regarded the sharpened and gleaming kitchen knives, sheathed in their wooden block standing like infantry men ready to be deployed. Surveying the kitchen; dried spaghetti scattered like pick up sticks among broken glass from three jars of Rao’s marinara, he reasoned that if he did kill her, it would hard to separate the blood evidence from the sauce splattered on the walls.
At his feet in a puddle of pale pink juice. lay the raw chicken breast she had thrown. A wet spot behind his head marked where it had slapped the wall. Raw Chicken! It would take a bucket of bleach to clean and sanitize the trail of salmonella slime dripping down to the floor.
All He Had Said Was please remember to wash your hands before you touch the sink. He had used a reasonable tone. Forceful perhaps but not angry. She had thrown the chicken then. At him! Then she was screaming I AM NEVER COMING BACK. And she left, slamming the door. Oh and now it occurs to him that the door knob and the elevator buttons would be contaminated as well. A crazy person. Only a crazy person would do that. When they’d met, she had seemed so stable. She was a Yoga Teacher. Finally, he’d thought I’ve found THE one.
And what would he say to the housekeepers when they came? Nothing. Nothing was better than trying to explain. He would leave the apartment. He would take sanitizing wipes for the elevator and go to the gym and when he came back everything would be clean. Everything would be normal.
Oh, this one cracked me up. "When they'd met, she'd seemed so stable. She was a yoga teacher." Hhahahahaa! Well, Buster, you should have known better than to give her that little direction about washing her hands before touching the sink. What a fantastic final straw.
“And what would he say to the housekeepers” —what a great way to reveal so much about this character who apparently never gets his hands dirty. Well done!
yes, definitely a two sides to this story sort of a thing going on! Well done, Dinah. Also, loved the small details, the three jars, the infantry of knives.
I love this so much. I love the can't-guess-the-next-twist plot and the tension created by the strong personalities of both characters. His cleanliness obsession is the perfect bow on top!
“Don’t you dare put the robber on my wheat!” Lena snapped, slamming her palm on the table. The hex tiles rattled, sheep cards fanned across the table like confetti.
“Then give me some of your precious ore,” Marcus shot back. He held the little black figure above the board like a hangman savoring the tension.
“You already blocked my brick in the last last round.”
“Because you keep winning!”
“I’m not winning! I’m stuck at seven points!” Across the table, Jonah snorted.
“Seven points is winning when the rest of us are mired at four.” He shuffled his pathetic stack of sheep and eyed Lena’s cities with undisguised envy.
The tension was ridiculous; the board was reduced to a miniature warzone.
Sam, quiet until now, coughed into his sleeve. “Uh…this is a game?”
“Games are war in miniature,” Lena said without missing a beat. Her eyes didn’t leave Marcus.
The robber hovered, still undecided. Outside, thunder cracked. The lights flickered once, twice. No one moved.
The robber finally landed - smack gab on Lena’s wheat, of course.
“You absolute snake.”
“Strategic placement,” Marcus replied, but his grin was thin.
Lena leaned forward, voice low. “You’ll regret that.” Sam laughed nervously.
“What, like, she’s going to torch your settlement?”
But no one laughed with him. The storm outside swelled, the wind pressing against the windows like a living thing. The tiny paper harbor cards fluttered as the house shuddered.
Jonah squinted. “Uh…guys?”
Through the glass, past the rain-streaked panes, a light bloomed at the edge of the yard. White, pulsing, too steady for lightning.
When the robber comes to visit! ha. Great story. Also enjoy that game - but often feel squirmish about how the goal is to extract as many resources from the island and out compete other civilizations. Like can't we play a game about using resources responsibly, reasonably and getting along? Seems like that would be a much more challenging board game.
Catan really is a cutthroat little island sometimes 😅.
I’d play a game about cooperation and responsible resource use. Imagine the tension of trying to share a limited wheat field fairly. That would be a real strategy challenge! Kibbutz Catan!
Truth be told, today a little something is wrong. She just can’t remember what it is. That’s been happening more and more of late. Something pops into Wendy’s head and then pops right back out again. Lately, she’d been growing weary of this endeavor called life. Why couldn’t she have died the way Carl did, asleep in his bed, none the wiser? And still young enough for people to show up at his funeral, say nice things about him. There will be no one left to eulogize Wendy when she goes—no one who knew her in her youth, when no one called her Wendy or Mrs. Axelrod, but instead Weazel, or sometimes Weaze, until Carl came along and changed it to Wiz.
No, there would only be Lynne who has called her “Mother” all of her adult life. Never Mom or Mommy or Ma. Mother. A very efficient name. Always so insistent. Always telling Wendy what to do. Take this pill in the morning with this one. Take that one in the afternoon with all of these. This one with food. That one only before bed. When did you last shower? Your teeth—are you brushing them? Mother, you don’t smell good. A daughter should be a mother’s best friend, not a stranger with constant instructions.
How many pills had Wendy taken this morning? She couldn’t remember. It was just too hard to keep track. You take one and then you can’t remember if you took it, so you take another one until all of it is wrong. Today, she’d given up and taken all of them.
“How about a slice of cake?” the girl asks Wendy. Is she same one who wheeled Wendy to the dining hall? This one is from another country, though they all look the same in their purple scrubs, their pretty smiles. Cake! What a lovely surprise.
“Thank you,” Wendy says. She feels very, very tired. She can already see the way she’ll buy this one birthday presents. They’ll have lunch. The girl will visit all of the time. She'll give such a lovely eulogy. “Thank you, my sweet girl.”
The above is a re-worked story of mine where I revised it to start "in the middle of things." I'm not sure the story works anymore, as it's quite edited. But I wanted to post something today...
I love the old lady series, especially Wendy.
It all gelled with the line, "Today she'd given up and taken all of them."
Very touching. Loneliness is such a horrible thing.
thank you, Mark.
having just had a conversation with my mother where I kept chanting to myself "Be compassionate be soft" instead of reacting and telling her what to do, this one really hits home
Thanks, Dinah. I tried so hard to 'be compassionate, be soft' with my ancient mom, but it's really, really hard.
"A daughter should be a mother's best friend, not a stranger with constant instructions." Such a hard relationship with so many pressures both internal and external.
The mother/daughter relationship is so fraught for many people.
It works. In medias res works well with this kind of story.
Thanks, Angela!
I love the opening -it drops me right into the narrator's state of mind, knowing something is wrong but she can't remember what it is.
The moment Eleanor woke, she knew she needed to take action. This had gone on long enough. Allen, her dead husband, had come to her again in a dream. This time they were standing at the edge of the ocean, holding hands, something they had rarely done in life. As they looked out at the water, Allen had leaned in and whispered, “the water holds all secrets, but the secrets are drowning.” This was the same kind of bullshit he had been spouting in her dreams for the last two weeks. In life, Allen had been an accountant, tight fisted and practical, with no interest in philosophizing. In her dreams he was a half-witted guru, uttering inanities like “all paths lead to the same circle” and “beneath the bushes, that’s where the gold is found.”
An hour later, Eleanor stands at the edge of Long Island Sound. It is a cold day and she’s all alone on the beach. She looks up at the clouds and says loudly, “The water holds no secrets, Allen. You know what it holds? Plastic bags, algae, jellyfish, motor oil, body parts, and those ugly crustaceans that look like miniature armored dinosaurs.” She picks up a rock and it skips twice on the surface before plunging into the water. “That’s a sign, Allen. You know what it means? It means leave me the fuck alone. Let me sleep in peace.”
So funny and well done. Love "jellyfish, motor oil, body parts...."!!!
You should put "All paths lead to the same circle" on a t-shirt!
Oh, I love this one! Also the fact that Allen was an accountant.
Great arc to this story, terrific humour. Well done, Wim!
I hope this belongs to a short story. The mangled inanities, in particular, are perfect.
Thank you - I think I’ll try to turn it into a longer flash piece.
Yes, please! Both characters definitely deserve to do more.
Prompt #92 borrowed from a friend who said I could write about it:
She could feel the cold air on her spine where the medical gown, loosely tied, exposed her backside. Was it a chill? At the same time her chest, neck and cheeks felt red hot. She kept her face still when the doctor mentioned the cucumber.
“Use a cucumber, about this size,” Dr. Kimball said, gesturing width and girth with his chubby hands. “And each day, get a bigger cucumber, and that will help stretch out the area.”
When Karen was a young woman, there were no female OBGYNs in town. Not any she knew of, anyway. But she’d become desperate. Something had gone horribly wrong, all within a matter of months. She’d told Dr. Kimball, with much embarrassment, that sex with her second husband had been fantastic until recently. Now intercourse was painful.
Earlier that morning, she’d rehearsed what she would say and how she would say it, to overcome her dread. She wanted to know if something was wrong with her. Was there anything she could do?
Use a cucumber, he said.
In the grocery store, she avoided the produce section altogether. She was only fifty-two.
Later, in her seventies, Karen told this story to a woman two decades younger, and they both laughed, the way you laugh about strange, dark times.
Oh, wow. Male clueless doctors....sheesh. I hope that woman got herself a new doctor and perhaps some estrogen cream.
Years later she learned about creams, hrt, etc but… my god.
How to get things totally wrong !
Crazy story. Thanks for sharing, Sea.
A female ob/gyn was brusque and dismissive with me, so the situation hasn’t really changed. No cucumbers were injured, however…
removed
oh, oh, oh, so sweet! Thanks, Mark!
Wow. You had me right up until that last line. So well done.
Nice Mark! I’m a sucker for a surprise dog story!
When he excused himself to change into his "flight clothes,” I peeked at his luggage. The initials EP were prominently embossed in gold on the butter-soft leather. EP. He was Italian, a designer he’d said. EP? Who could that be? The only designer I could come up with was Evan Picone.
This was the Concorde—fast, sleek and shiny. When he returned in his buff colored cashmere tracksuit, he handed me a souvenir, a square scarf printed with a swirling psychedelic pattern of blues and greens. I recognized it. Emilio Pucci. This was Emilio Pucci. Nice calling card.
The scarf retails today for over $300. I found it on the internet. Pucci himself died in 1994. He would have been 64 in 1978 when I met him. I was 30. Pucci combined brilliant colors in abstract prints with a nylon clingy fabric that made his dresses form- fitting and eye-catching. He lived in Florence.
He told me that he was afraid his children in might be kidnapped. This was indeed a period when kidnappings for ransom of the wealthy were common. I began to like this somewhat formal, somewhat pretentious man.
Then the conversation shifted. Emilio asked if I’d like to go with him to Plato's Retreat once we landed in Manhattan. Plato’s Retreat, which no longer exists, was not a meditation or yoga site notwithstanding the word retreat. Nor did it offer Ted Talks or lectures in philosophy as the word Plato might imply. Plato's Retreat was an expensive swinger’s club, which opened in the basement of a New York hotel in 1977.
This was not my first orgy invitation. But I had definitely moved up the economic scale from the invitation from my Berkeley acting teacher to his Friday night orgies at his home in the Berkeley hills.
“No thanks,” I said. “Have I offended you?” I considered telling him that I reserved being offended for my clients who raided their corporate bank accounts and then blamed me because I hadn't kept close enough watch on their shenanigans.
But before I get too self-congratulatory about my morals, what if the passenger next to me had been Brad Pitt or Richard Gere. What would I have said if the man propositioning me had been faster, sleeker, shinier?
Hahhaha! I would love to know the answer to your own question! And yes, I remember Plato's Retreat... It seemed so crazy and wild to me back then. (What a life you've had!)
In the 90s they opened a version in South Florida called Plato’s Repeat.
If you were gay in NY in the 70s, and you heard about Plato's Retreat, you thought, "Isn't that cute. The straights are trying to be like us."
Haha. One part I took out of my essay was when Mayor Koch closed down a number of gay bath houses and Plato‘s retreat got caught up in the closures.
platos retreat! an era gone by
I knew a guy who went there regularly.
You just gave me a whole new connotation for in medias res! You have written a memoir, correct?
Angela, yes. My memoir (as yet unpublished) is called "What's Left Unsaid." I'm not sure if this scene is still in my memoir, but it's fun to pull out bits and edit to Mary's prompts.
Yes it is! Your memoir sounds intriguing.
Hahahaha! Nothing like upward mobility !
Wowza! Hahahaha! "Plato's Retreat" sounds something out of a movie or a scene from "White Lotus."
They opened one in South Florida in the 90s called Plato’s Repeat. Not as exclusive, I think.
google it!
Hahahaha! You know I just did! There's a David Suskind show on YouTube, too.
I met her at a gem and coin fair in Kansas City and she promised me the best fried chicken I ever ate and I said I doubt that and she said I don’t and took me across the street to Go Chicken Go. We sat at a booth by the kitchen and I asked her name and she said Sky and I said Sky what and she said Sky Bailey but most people just called her Bailey and I said but what kind of name is Sky and she said she was part Indian and I said you don’t look Indian to me and she said that’s not the part that’s Indian and I said well what part’s Indian and she said: the part where you promise me anything.
I walked up on the old man from out the woods behind his house and he was sitting by the pool bent over in his chair working at his toenails with what looked like a goddamned pair of pliers and I said Hey Carl! and he said What! and I shot him in the back of the head before he could turn around and it sprayed blood and brains and snot and I don’t know what all from here to the pool. I looked over at the house and Bailey stood there leaning in the doorway with her arms and ankles crossed smoking a cigarette like my mother waiting for me after school and Bailey said nice shot Slick and I said yea he was hard to miss. Then I picked up a tumbler of tomato juice and vodka from off a little glass table next to Carl and saluted her with it and gulped it down. It tasted like chicken.
I was leaning on a shovel waist deep in a hole and Bailey was sitting next to the hole on a rolled up carpet in little running shorts and sandals with colored colored beads on the straps like the girls from school and she said so who gave you that name Slick and I said they gave me that name at Leavenworth and I ran my tongue around my mouth remembering when they pulled every tooth in my head with a long slow sucking sound and a plop like pulling a long bone from the mud. I saw Bailey was looking up where a buzzard was wobbling down the sky like some toy on a string and past that bird big thunderheads were boiling up like a judgement. I climbed out of the hole with the shovel in my hand and saw she had my Glock and I said what’s up there Bailey when she didn’t answer I mumbled what you see up there Sky?
I came winding down out of the hills in a driving rain, steering with one hand and had the other hand on Bailey’s sandals and Carl’s phone in the seat beside them. I was leaning forward and squinting through the windshield where my wipers couldn’t keep up. There were squirrels and raccoons and skunks and I don’t know what all running across the road when a big doe shot across in front of me and I thought there’ll be another one and that one slammed it’s head into my passenger door and lightning flashed and I could see in my mirror a bandy legged deer dancing around the road on its hind legs and pawing the air like it was climbing a ladder. Then Carl’s phone started singing what a long strange trip it’s been and my shoulders jumped like Fuck! then I picked up the phone and thumbed the screen and yelled: What?
And I see the lightning crack and I see the red mist. And I hear the thunder clap and I smell the burning burning and I smell the piss. And I taste the/ And I feel the/
oh my god. That's really my response here. oh my god. (And i do see all of the "ands" in this one.) Your writing is so impressive and wild. Love that ending.
Oh such a good line: “the part where you promise me anything.” You really open up the windows and doors and let it all in. Well done.
Love this, Keith. When I got to the end I realized I’d been holding my breath since the rain started.
This is automatically in medias res. Final episode next week!
Squirreled away in the midst of the heap of lacerated postal sacks, Valentine had at last put Pierre's phallic event to good use, and they drifted off to sleep in each other's arms. The train whined and shuddered as it chundered down an incline, then it stopped.
"The train's stopped," Pierre said.
"Mmmm? It always does here," Valentine said. "Kiss me."
And so he did and so they did. Pierre's event was long-lasting and very satisfactory. Valentine said so. Pierre said it would always be like that with her. Valentine said "Show me again," and he did and they did.
(Note from narrator: these two may be getting ahead of themselves for a couple in a pile of postal sacks under the bottom of the sea, but love will always find a way).
"It's the sea up there," Valentine said as they lay side by side, momentarily sated.
Pierre pictured sixty-six starfish studding a sandy seabed, and a seventeenth-century shipwreck with silvery sardines slipping through the fissures in its split and shattered strakes. The thought of slipping through fissures started Pierre off again and so they did, once more.
This beats the Métro any day, he thought.
The train jerked forward and laboured upward. How soon would they be in England? Pierre had been on a language exchange visit there with his school, and it was horrible, all they gave him to eat was leg of lamb boiled with mint. He didn't really want to go there again, but with Valentine even leg of lamb boiled with mint would be a gastronomic experience.
"We'd better get ready to scarper," Valentine said as she rearranged her clothing. "We hop out at Folkestone."
They crawled out of the pile and found Bill and Bert and the gang waiting for them.
"Bart!" said Bill. "Wotchabinapto?" said Bert. And they both laughed identical laughs and led the way to the end of the wagon.
"Who is Bart anyway?" Pierre whispered to Valentine as they went.
"Bill and Bert's long-lost brother. They got a tip-off you were often on that line at that time of day. That's why we were there."
"But I'm not Bart!"
She giggled. "Nobody's perfect."
The train slowed. Three of the young fellows made a human triangle against the end wall, and slipped a latch that opened a trapdoor from which a stepladder unfolded.
"Emergency escape," Valentine said. "Now be ready to run."
And we all wait with bated breath for Pierre to cross the finish line. Me thinks he's got time for at least one more long lasting and satisfactory event....
Can’t believe all the fun is going to end next week :-(
Ooh, I am glad I got here for the starfish.
The starfish on the sand was all I had before I started writing this episode.
When the elevator juddered to a halt between floors 5 and 6, the 7 occupants gazed up from their phones and then at one another.
“What the—?” David said, and reached for the emergency phone.
The lights flickered and went out. A single emergency light wavered overhead.
Dana screamed, and began to sob.
”Maintenance,” said a voice at the other end of the emergency line. David began to explain but his voice was cut off by Phoebe who elbowed him in the neck as she called home.
”Mr Tinkles, it’s Mama!” Her voice rose. “Don’t you worry, sweetums.”
”Shhhhttt!” David hissed at her. “They can’t hear me—!”
”Ouch! You’re on my foot!” Noah yelled.
”Sorry, sorry…” Philip said from the back of the car.
Another voice on speaker:
”911. What is your emergency?” Sarah had called 911. She opened her mouth to respond, but Sheldon had called his mother.
”Shel, baby, is that you? Are you hurt?” Mrs Bagley’s voice echoed from the walls and ceiling.
Rivaled only by Noah’s boss who called him:
”Fields! Where the hell are you?”
Dana began to wail, now.
“Excuse me, ma’am, is someone hurt there? Do you need an ambulance?”
From Sheldon’s phone, Mrs. Bagley demanded,
“Sheldon! Is that a woman with you?”
Philip, cowering in the corner, began to pray every prayer he had ever memorized. But he had memorized badly—
“Our Father, before I lay me down to sleep…”
”Hello, hello—this is maintenance. What floor are you stuck on?”
”I can’t breathe!” Dana called.
“Shut up, everyone!” Noah yelled. “6th floor! Tell him 6th floor,” he said to David.
Phoebe looked up at the floor indicator.
”Are you sure? Maybe it’s 5th floor.”
Dana grabbed Noah’s hand.
“You have to get us out of here!”
The elevator resumed its journey upward, and stopped at the next floor. The doors opened, and two goats calmly surveyed the sweating, pulsing, and disheveled occupants.
”You see?” Said one to the other. “That’s all it takes. Just push one little button.”
Some elevator! Probly at the UN...
I love writing elevator stories. Easy in medias res, too.
Too funny!
Thank you Mary. I am neck deep in Simon and the goats, so this was just some fun.
It’s always nice to see calm goats after an emergency.
Elijah runs, burning up the dirt on the track in an unloved, over-logged forest. Every oxygen-starved cell in his body aflame, dust trailing each footfall. It can’t be true that he could get almost everything he wants with Hanna and still be in agony. Each breath, lung-searing. Is he sprinting toward her, or away, or possibly on some parallel track. The blue spruce, fir and hemlock branches are bent, listening.
A week ago they finally backpacked together for three days, in a mysterious and magical wilderness created out of the remnants of an enormous volcano that had suddenly and violently collapsed into smoking ruins some twenty thousand years before, only to evolve into a paradise of rocks, flowers, peaks and views. The trail kicked their asses good, even while uplifting them. Outside of going to the woodsy bathroom or sleeping in their separate tents they’d been together for every moment in a kind of intimacy of souls, which had felt purer and deeper than any romantic, physical or emotional liaison, a camaraderie of essential being that had only taken four messy and convoluted years to achieve. But of course in the end they had made their way back to the trailhead, the parking lot, the road downhill into traffic, noise, indifference, separation and nothing much left to hope for.
He runs, until he can’t anymore, his lungs heaving, dying for air. He wishes he could just pass out and be done with it, but when his eyes open the buck watching him paws the tuff, snorts, and slowly and elegantly trails away sideways, as Elijah watches, blinking, the pain draining from his body in exactly the same way as the joy had.
So happy to come online and find the return of David Snider! I've missed your tales!
Been trying to come back! I missed you all also!!
Love the ending image here…
Thank you, Janet.
On a heap of dead fish, he realized something had gone terribly wrong. But before he could feel sorry for himself, he wondered how all these fish had ended up in this container. Maybe they were trash fish, he thought, even chuckled at it, then kept puzzling what made a fish “trash” in the first place. Was it the slime some species were slicked with? And if so, why didn’t the mucus wash away in the eternal bath of their natural habitat?
On the bank, Lars, the designated lookout, had drifted back to his spotter’s perch from birdwatching, hoping to catch a passing bikini, when he noticed the giant container floating under the bridge, and no Dan on the railing above. Lars put two and two together and decided to ride home.
“Son?” the fish-lorry operator hollered, peeking over the rim to make sure no kid was “sleeping with the fishes.” Relieved, he spotted the backflip boy flat on his back, maybe concussed, smiling with no light behind those dead-fish eyes.
“Everything alright down there, kiddo? Give me a thumbs up so I know you can hear me.”
A shiny thumb, polished by fish slime, slowly rose as a sign of life.
And so they floated: a fisherman and his catch, and the boy, lulled by the trash of the sea.
Not altogether certain of what, exactly, is happening in this one. But the last sentence is lovely and gives me a sense of what I'm missing. Definitely started this in the middle of things!
Nice opening, kinda slimy and intriguing in the middle, elegant closing.
Thanks, Janet!
Hope that kid will wash his slimy hands before touching the bathroom doorknob.
That’s the paradox, innit?
Wow. The imagery and description of this one! Lars scampered off pretty quickly.
The Hole Wasn’t Deep Enough
September 30 2025
Prompt by: what now?: Prompt #92
PROMPT: Write a story that starts in the middle of things. Launch right in! Put us in the scene. Don’t beat around the bush! Get your reader wondering what’s going to happen. 400 words.
The helicopters hovered. It was like a pack of dogs sniffing a scent. They rose at once and flew across the field heading for the marsh. As the whump, whump was heard less, a series of screaming tires flew into the barnyard, scattering chickens amongst the dust they raised. Men popped out with guns drawn taking a bead on anything that looked like it could move. A pair of black boots stepped from the car and walked over to the porch.
“Something up officer?” asked Len after he spit tobacco juice lazily out onto the lawn. His accent was laid back.
“Lt. Colonel,” came the reply.
“Must be something all important for a loo ten ant kernel to be out here scaring my farm animals.”
The Lt Colonel looked Len over carefully. “A dangerous man is on the loose. We have reason to believe that he is in the area. You seen any strange looking people around recently?”
Len walked over to the railing where he sent another stream of tobacco juice in an arc that would make any ball player envious. He turned to the Lt. Colonel. “Can’t say I have. The last bizarre thing I saw was when the army dug up my back forty. They dug a hole the size of a football field. Brought cranes in too. A funny little feller popped up out of that pit, scared them all half to death. Took five linebackers five minutes to bring him under control. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of anyone since.”
“Mind if we search?” the LT. Colonel asked.
“Be my guest,” replied Len.
They inspected Len’s property, finishing as dusk fell on the farm.
The Lt Colonel marched back to his car. Len watched them carefully as they drove down the road.
He walked over to his tractor and moved it about ten feet. He lifted a piece of plywood covered in dirt.
“You can come out now son,” Len said, dropping his back country accent.
The boy pulled himself out from his hiding place, his space helmet in one hand.
“Not sure how you are going to get home but it would be best to get there quickly," Len said.
The boy waved as he walked across the field towards the hole.
“They didn’t dig deep enough,” thought Len as he watched the boy jump into the hole.
I liked this little story, even if i didn't really get it. (The funny little feller part threw me.) I loved that he hid the boy with his tractor, though.
Great images here - from the very first one with the hovering helicopters like a pack of dogs sniffing a scent. And the championship spitting and fake accent!
Lots to play with here!
“Can I help you? Do I know you from the hospital?” She expected some response, but no word was uttered. He stared at her. Intently. At this, Denise became uncomfortable and shifted her foot from one leg to stand on both in the bus shelter.
“Yes. You were on the ward with my niece and nephew, where you nursed them through their infection.” He added, “Though…you know the outcome”. His expression gave such a deep melancholy, a devastation only grief could afford. His eyes watered. I suoi occhi si inumidirono. At once Nurse Rutherford placed this man. He was with the father of the two young children who had painfully passed the week before; the uncle. An infection: a flesh-eating infection that had entered their tissues from unsuccessful liver transplant surgeries. Her mouth was instantly dry and found it impossible to speak, impossible to convey any sort of compassion to this man who was so clearly crushed through his loss of these young children and who now had tears running down his grieving cheeks.
“These children were fratello’s mio’s vita, his life!”, this man uttered through now short sobs. Denise wanted to console him, put her arms around him and tell him life would be ok. Time would heal. But this seemed insulting to the man, so she stayed silent. Within seconds, his shoulders and breathing were heaving, and he started to pace the area of the bus stop frantically. “Di chi e la colpa? Eh? Whose fault is this? I want to know! I demand answers!”, he shouted at her. The man was angry and Nurse Rutherford felt at once unsafe on the outside of the shielded hospital grounds.
From the inside of the expensive long camel coat, a steel gun was extracted and was pointed directly at Denise. With a shaking arm the man directed the gun, and all his pain at her. She tried to back away from him, find her footing so that she could try and run, but he had her backed into the shelter of bus stop.
“Please no!” she begged the man, the desperately wretched man who wanted revenge for his nipotii. Stumbling back, trying to move further away, she fell to the damp ground. Sheer terror took hold of her. “No, for the love of God! I tried…we all tried to save them!”.
The gun fired. Nurse Rutherford slumped to the ground. Blood ran from her gaping mouth.
This story definitely begins in the middle of things, and then we have to go back in time to understand it all. What a sad story this one is.
It is a sad one. Thanks for the feedback. It’s my first post after attending a writing workshop that Tom Brennan gave (which was really informative ☺️).
You weave the beginning of the story into it so well as it progresses from the middle outwards.
We sit quietly on our porch here in the high desert watching the rain. Our silence opens us. Listening to the raindrops landing, smelling the fresh damp earth, feeling the plants exult in the first taste of humidity since June. Now with the leaves turning, the sky softens replacing harsh white with soft gray.
I begin to slip. I am both here and drifting back to my summer of confusion.
In some ways, things were delightful in the usual summer way. The week at the coast in July. Up before sunrise each morning, we sat on a different porch looking down to the beach. With tea and coffee. A plate of fruit and rolls. Sitting in silence there too, we watched shore birds going about their morning routines. Later each day, walks, books, cooking, conversation, napping. Our hearts and minds slowed.
So many islands of respite we found. Baseball games. Friends. Movies. Sunsets and stars.
We needed the respite more than we’d ever needed it before. If we allowed ourselves to listen and watch, which we not only allowed, but felt it our duty to do when we were off our islands of respite, to be informed participating citizens, what we saw and heard was heartbreaking.
It was, as Charles wrote, the best of times and the worst of times. What fun he would have had with a would-be tyrant king and his materialistic wife wandering into a command performance of Les Miz.
Now, fall is here. Fall, the beautiful fruition of summer. Fall, the harbinger of bleak dark days ahead.
I look over at you, and you are a Zen master fully present and open to this moment of beauty while I churn with the beauty of the moment and the despair of so many things outside the moment. But, as I have done before, after my panic, I relax into my version of your acceptance and presence. I remember that I can hold everything in my heart: that beauty needs despair, that present needs past and future, and that this is where I am and belong.
Oh, yes, the exhaustion and stress of being an informed citizen. Love the beautiful last line in this one.
Wow. You express the mixed bag of emotions that is the “normal for now” existence.
Very well said. Love your Zen master!
The hole in the backyard had been there when they moved in. Within days they woke to find the hole noticeably larger. Little Sammy, six years old, kept staring at it as if he could fathom its depths. There was no question that it was large. But deep as well. It was Sammy who first noticed that it was growing more round, and as the shape formed, he saw that the entire circumference was enlarging. He also noticed, most carefully because he didn’t want to fall in, that it was getting deeper.
A week after they moved in, the family awoke to find the entire back yard had been taken over by the hole. Sammy’s older sister Sarah had to be careful each morning as she stepped out to empty the trash. The hole had just about reached the back stoop. Sheila told her to be careful, but one day as she was emptying the trash Sarah just simply disappeared into the hole. So deep was it that no sound could be heard as she fell.
In this not overly bright family, Sammy seemed sharpest. He took this event for what it was and never again used the back door. In fact he flatly refused to empty the trash. Other than the problem of emptying the trash, no one seemed at all fazed by Sarah’s absence. One evening she went to bed. The next morning she was gone.
Sarah wasn't the only one the hole took. Sheldon, their Doberman/Chihuahua mix, succumbed to the hole’s siren call one day as he was nosing around. Sheila told her husband Sydney that she thought she'd heard Sheldon bark. Looking out the back window she thought she had seen something swiftly grab Sheldon by his collar and drag him in.
All this time the hole was growing and the house was beginning to tilt slightly with the underlying foundation now being undermined. But no matter, overall Sydney thought the house was safe. “Solid as a rock”, he commented to Sheila and Sammy over breakfast the morning that it finally happened.
Sammy was at school. Sheila was at work at the Publix. Sydney was working at home as he usually did. Settled in his second story office, Sydney noticed a slight rumbling. Looking up he could only see darkness. Unfazed, he stood to turn on the lights and fell right into the hall bathroom which was now the floor.
When Sheila and Sammy came home, they were surprised to find no house.
First staring at each other and then into the hole, they suddenly felt the need to grasp each other and in that quick motion found themselves hurtling into the hole’s depths.
Neighbors wondered what happened to the Steeleys, Little Sammy, Sarah, Sheila, Sydney and their dog Sheldon. Some mentioned hearing an occasional belch-like sound emanating from the hole and a long contented sigh.
Moral of the story: When a sinkhole appears in your backyard, MOVE. Great response to this week's prompt!
Thank you, Mary
this is so creative - a house-swallowing hole, but most creative is the nonplussed attitude of the family.
Thank you Gerard
I love how this creeps along with everyone so casually unaware!
Thanks Angela
There was a moment when he thought he might become violent. He regarded the sharpened and gleaming kitchen knives, sheathed in their wooden block standing like infantry men ready to be deployed. Surveying the kitchen; dried spaghetti scattered like pick up sticks among broken glass from three jars of Rao’s marinara, he reasoned that if he did kill her, it would hard to separate the blood evidence from the sauce splattered on the walls.
At his feet in a puddle of pale pink juice. lay the raw chicken breast she had thrown. A wet spot behind his head marked where it had slapped the wall. Raw Chicken! It would take a bucket of bleach to clean and sanitize the trail of salmonella slime dripping down to the floor.
All He Had Said Was please remember to wash your hands before you touch the sink. He had used a reasonable tone. Forceful perhaps but not angry. She had thrown the chicken then. At him! Then she was screaming I AM NEVER COMING BACK. And she left, slamming the door. Oh and now it occurs to him that the door knob and the elevator buttons would be contaminated as well. A crazy person. Only a crazy person would do that. When they’d met, she had seemed so stable. She was a Yoga Teacher. Finally, he’d thought I’ve found THE one.
And what would he say to the housekeepers when they came? Nothing. Nothing was better than trying to explain. He would leave the apartment. He would take sanitizing wipes for the elevator and go to the gym and when he came back everything would be clean. Everything would be normal.
Oh, this one cracked me up. "When they'd met, she'd seemed so stable. She was a yoga teacher." Hhahahahaa! Well, Buster, you should have known better than to give her that little direction about washing her hands before touching the sink. What a fantastic final straw.
“And what would he say to the housekeepers” —what a great way to reveal so much about this character who apparently never gets his hands dirty. Well done!
yes, definitely a two sides to this story sort of a thing going on! Well done, Dinah. Also, loved the small details, the three jars, the infantry of knives.
Very fun - character development snuck in all kinds of crazy ways. Love the salmonella slime paranoia.
How many housekeepers does this freak hire?
I love this so much. I love the can't-guess-the-next-twist plot and the tension created by the strong personalities of both characters. His cleanliness obsession is the perfect bow on top!
Unsettled in Catan:
“Don’t you dare put the robber on my wheat!” Lena snapped, slamming her palm on the table. The hex tiles rattled, sheep cards fanned across the table like confetti.
“Then give me some of your precious ore,” Marcus shot back. He held the little black figure above the board like a hangman savoring the tension.
“You already blocked my brick in the last last round.”
“Because you keep winning!”
“I’m not winning! I’m stuck at seven points!” Across the table, Jonah snorted.
“Seven points is winning when the rest of us are mired at four.” He shuffled his pathetic stack of sheep and eyed Lena’s cities with undisguised envy.
The tension was ridiculous; the board was reduced to a miniature warzone.
Sam, quiet until now, coughed into his sleeve. “Uh…this is a game?”
“Games are war in miniature,” Lena said without missing a beat. Her eyes didn’t leave Marcus.
The robber hovered, still undecided. Outside, thunder cracked. The lights flickered once, twice. No one moved.
The robber finally landed - smack gab on Lena’s wheat, of course.
“You absolute snake.”
“Strategic placement,” Marcus replied, but his grin was thin.
Lena leaned forward, voice low. “You’ll regret that.” Sam laughed nervously.
“What, like, she’s going to torch your settlement?”
But no one laughed with him. The storm outside swelled, the wind pressing against the windows like a living thing. The tiny paper harbor cards fluttered as the house shuddered.
Jonah squinted. “Uh…guys?”
Through the glass, past the rain-streaked panes, a light bloomed at the edge of the yard. White, pulsing, too steady for lightning.
The group froze.
The robber sat smugly on the wheat hex.
No one touched their cards.
And then the light moved.
Oh, this one is so good! I'm gonna show my daughter--she loves that game.
When the robber comes to visit! ha. Great story. Also enjoy that game - but often feel squirmish about how the goal is to extract as many resources from the island and out compete other civilizations. Like can't we play a game about using resources responsibly, reasonably and getting along? Seems like that would be a much more challenging board game.
Catan really is a cutthroat little island sometimes 😅.
I’d play a game about cooperation and responsible resource use. Imagine the tension of trying to share a limited wheat field fairly. That would be a real strategy challenge! Kibbutz Catan!
I don’t know the game - but it seemed like a well-wrought description of current global issues.