July 19: Flash Fiction Challenge – The Bush

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Michael

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July 19, 2018, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about Fannie Hooe. Although she is a legend in the Kewenaw, feel free to go where the prompt leads.

The bush is a harsh place. Isolation and loneliness go hand in hand. Jack Cater was a drover, his wife Jess died having their third child, and Jack was heart broken.

Her sister Marie came to help, and she too found the bush life oppressive. It was the long periods on her own with two children not her own. When Jack came home, he looked to her to give him comfort.

One day she left with the children. Jack couldn’t understand why and scoured the landscape thinking she’d fallen down a mineshaft. But there was no sign of her.

 

Written for: https://carrotranch.com/2018/07/19/july-19-flash-fiction-challenge/

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Worth A Thousand Words # 3 – Marcia Gotoo

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Michael

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Once a month Bob down at Bob’s Laundry and Clean employed Marcia Gotoo to clean out the machines.

Marcia loved her job, it wasn’t a job that required a lot of brains to do but Marcia loved the notion of Bob employing her, and she wanted to do a good job.

Every machine had to be scrubbed out and all the accumulated guck removed. Sometimes the stench was over powering, and she wondered what had been in the machine to leave it so rotten.

One day in one of the guck collecting places she found a diamond ring. She took it to Bob who looked in his notes and found no request or notice of a lost ring and so he said good luck to Marcia and let her have it. It was her first piece of luck in life, and she took the ring the next day to a jeweller and had it valued.

As there were a lot of machines to clean out Marcia developed a way of making the job interesting for her. As the cleaning took place between midnight and dawn, the place was deserted, and so she devised a scheme whereby there was a play list for each machine.

This helped her through the night, and she could sing as loud as she liked, no matter how out of tune she might have been.

Some songs had a memory attached. There was one that took her back to her marriage. She had been married to a man who promised her the earth and who gave her plenty of dirt. He was a soulless character, and eventually, she moved out in the middle of the night after drugging him giving her the opportunity to flee.

There had been no other men since then. She’d been bitten once, and it wasn’t going to happen again despite the best efforts of a series of men who attempted to woo her with promises she knew were empty.

Cleaning the machines reminded her of the purpose of life. Everything was there for a reason and for a time everything worked perfectly, but there would come a point where a clean out would be required and a resolution to move on. Like her job as one play list ended, so it was time to move on to the same job on another machine, the only difference was she was being paid for this cleanup, not belted for not doing it to someone else’s expectations.

Bob was a good boss he’d come in as she was finishing the last machine and marvel at her job, pay her what she was owed and say he’d see her again the next month. Marcia was grateful; this job even though tiring to the extreme did allow her to live a little as her normal job, cleaning toilets at the train station was a soul-destroying job.

Today she went home a happy girl. She would fix herself some breakfast, have a bath and go to bed. If she was lucky when she awoke her daughter would call as she did each week to see how her mum was getting on.

The last thing Marcia ever did after her night cleaning the machines was to put any washing on.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/worth-a-thousand-words-3/

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Three Things Challenge, 19 July 2018

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Michael

3tc

Today’s things are: disco, boy, june bug 

Today my teacher Miss Teresa was looking very hot and bothered. It was the middle of summer, and we were in class sweating away as we worked on our maths problems.

In the back of our minds was the disco planned for the coming evening. Miss Teresa had promised she would dance with anyone who asked her and I was keen to as I thought she was pretty alright. Then again most of the boys in the class thought the same.

Today though she was looking unhappy and when we asked her why she looked sad she said it was the June bugs. Her yard was full of them, and she hated having them buzzing around her when she went out to mow her lawn.

Then she went into a demonstration of how she reacted to them.

Her flailing arms gave is a lot to laugh about and one boy; Jasper Allcock nearly wet his pants he laughed so much.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/three-things-challenge-19-july-2018/

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100 Word Wednesday: Week 80 – Lost

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Michael

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“Are you sure you dropped it?”

“I’m certain, it just fell out.”

“I’m not keen to get on my hands and knees dressed as I am.”

“Shhh, don’t speak so loud, its embarrassing.”

“Well, you are going to look weird if I don’t locate it.”

“John, please show some discretion.”

“Ok, I’ll ask the guy in the checked shirt.”

“He doesn’t look all that happy, you might be imposing on him.”

“Never mind that, it’s got to be here.”

“Please be careful. Don’t step on it.”

“I will.”

“Oh dear, I found it. My glass eye was down my cleavage.”

 

Written for: https://bikurgurl.com/2018/07/18/100-word-wednesday-week-80/

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Tale Weaver #180 – Growth – 19/7/18

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Michael

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Exploring the concept of growth.

When she was a small girl, her mother took to her bed and not long after her stepfather took to the girl’s bed.

So began a messed up life, a life where what one might consider normal growth of a child from childhood to adulthood turned upside down.

Her mother claiming she was too unwell to fulfil her motherly duties meant the young girl grew up as the carer for her younger siblings, she read her mother’s cheap, sleazy novels, she was subject to the role of a comforter and the victim of sexual abuse that was the haunt her all her life.

As a child, she should not have been subjected to shame, but that is now part of her life, a burden she deals with daily.

As a teenager, she rebelled as kids do, with no great guidance in life she sought comfort wherever she could find it.

Pregnant at an early age with plans to keep and nurture the child she found others conspired against her and the child was stolen.

This left a huge hole in her life, she found ‘solace’ in religion, which ironically turned into a hell on earth.

Two children later and an abusive husband she stepped away, determined to give her children a life she struggled against all the odds until she met a man who like her was damaged but in whom she found trust and devotion.

In old age, she still bears the scars of a life where growth was often a steep curve and where today she exists day to day in a world where making the best of what she has is about as good as it will get.

Growth is individual to us all. Some of us have been lucky to grow as nature might dictate, but not everyone is so fortunate. The school of hard knocks often fortifies us for the rigours of life, makes us strong in ways we never would envisage and teaches us the value of love and compassion.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/tale-weaver-180-growth-19-7-18/

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Three Things Challenge, 18 July 2018

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Michael

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Today’s things are: grapefruit, HDMI cord, battery

I walked into class today to find Miss Teresa sitting there holding a HDMI cord looking at each end and then up at the new TV we have in our classroom.

On her desk was a grapefruit, which I assumed was for her lunch.

She looked at me and asked if I knew anything about HDMI cords and if to make them work she needed a battery.

I did know a bit about the cords as my dad was forever fooling around with our TV trying to get a better picture and HDMI cords he reckoned were the answer to his problems.

I showed Miss Teresa how to use the cord and before long she had it plugged into the TV and the DVD player below it.

She said thanks and then began cutting up her grapefruit.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/three-things-challenge-18-july-2018/

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Worth A Thousand Words #2 – The Rainbow Field

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Michael

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Photo Credit: DeltaWorks @ Pixabay.com

The rainbow field looked magnificent, as it should in the days before harvest.

It was important that each section of colour be at the premium stage as each bloom complemented the other.

On their own, they constituted a powerful magic but combined they could change minds, create and nurture and generally do more good than could be imagined.

The workers within each section had laboured day and night in the past weeks to bring their section to ripened fruition.

To the public passing the paddock, it was an intriguing sight watching the rows take on their full colour. But they knew little about what was happening on the ground, below the rich blooms they could only admire.

Here beneath the colours was another world of enterprise and industry. This was the world of the Rainbow Fairies.

Over the years the fairies had evolved into the colours they nurtured. They had become territorial, the hats they wore proudly symbolising which colour of the field they belonged to. Though they lived communally, they left the commune each day wearing the hats that marked them and their worth. Beginning fairies in the field wore the drab green, their apprenticeship starting with the simple propagation of the plants, learning the peculiarities of the plants and how to decide which colour they might grow into.

The top of the fairy hierarchy were the fairies who worked the white flowers. This was because the white flowers held the most powerful of magic.

Each row was harvested separately, and then the flower heads were dumped in huge bins at the end of the field. Here the master concoctors would select what they needed to create the potions ordered from far and wide. It was a huge business, orders flowed in day and night, and shipments departed the same way packed in small boxes labelled potpourri so as not to attract suspicion.

Once the harvest was complete, the Fairy Master of the Field would allocate the rotation of the sections and the process of cultivation and growing the next season’s crop would begin all over again.

Fertiliser was important, as the stems from the previous harvest would be ground up and spread over the field along with a liberal scattering of any damaged petals from the harvest. Everything served a purpose with the bottom line making a living being paramount.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/worth-a-thousand-words-2/

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Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers – No Name Street

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Michael

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I was lost. The sign at the top of the street said “No Name Street”. My map had no such street name.

The houses looked like so many I had already walked past. Ahead of me, the street turned a curve, and I wondered what lay beyond it.

As I walked past the first house, a voice asked if I was lost?

I couldn’t see from where the voice came so kept going.

“I wouldn’t go down there,” said another faceless voice.

“No telling where you’ll end up in No Name Street,” announced a voice seemingly in my ear.

I stopped in the middle of the street and looked about. I was feeling uneasy, voices with no bodies were unnerving.

“Who are you?” I asked the street.

“Voices of warning,” came the reply.

“I’m lost,” I pleaded.

“Go back then, only the brave step further.”

I felt a small hand slip into mine,  a small boy was beside me. “Come on mister,” he said, “come with me before you get yourself into real trouble.”

 

Written for: https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/fffaw-challenge-174th/

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Worth A Thousand Words #1 – The Morpeth Train

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Michael

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Photo Credit: ejaugsburg @ pixabay.com

I grew up with a train line behind my house. There was a line with no trains as the trains had stopped running slightly before I could remember them.

But everything was there until men came and tore up the steel lines and left the shell of a train line. But the bank the trains ran on stayed, we played on it, found a lot of the bank was sand, and that afforded us the luxury of a sand pit which we dug into at our leisure.

There was an old signal post behind out house that slowly rusted into oblivion and a little further down a bridge across a small creek. Today the remains of the bridge are still there but not much else.

The train station platforms remain, and the Morpeth Station has been kept for historical reasons. To us in 2018 it seems odd that there would ever have been a train line, Morpeth is today a tourist destination, lots of antique shops and cafes, a few hotels and not much else. Each weekend it is jammed packed with people checking out the few galleries and taking advantage of the great eateries.

But in the past when the train ran, it was a thriving river port. Ships would come up the river from the port of Newcastle to load wool and grain. But as progress happens and the river silted up, the use of Morpeth as a port became redundant. Road transport had improved as has rail access to the port in Newcastle.

So Morpeth died in lots of ways. I always considered it a dead end place three miles down the road. In the 80’s and 90’s, it woke up to its tourist potential.

I’m sure my parents and those people living along Morpeth Road at the time drew a collective sigh of relief when the train stopped running. There was no such thing as a quietly running steam locomotive.

The legacy for us is that the old houses in the street, mine included, have a thin layer of soot in our ceilings which we rediscover any time we attempt any renovation involving the ceiling.

The days of the steam locomotive are long gone, but some of us are old enough to recall them huffing and puffing their way along.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/worth-a-thousand-words-1/

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Three Things Challenge, 17 July 2018

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Michael

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Today’s things are: calendar, knee, jeep  

My teacher Miss Teresa came bouncing into class on her first day back from holidays.

“Look,” she announced holding up a calendar, “I’ve been to the Vatican and can you believe it but they have a hot priest calendar. Look here is Father July, isn’t he the hottest, I’d love to confess to him.”

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Being young and innocent most of us had little idea as to what she was on about and thought the calendar was great waste of money.

Rather my thoughts went to my mate Simmo’s dad who had just bought a Jeep and who promised to take me with him on the weekend when his dad was taking the Jeep out into the bush.

 

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/three-things-challenge-17-july-2018/

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