September 17, 2020, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story of mice. It can feature any variety of the little critters in any situation. Are the the character or the inciting incident? Use any genre, including BOTS (based on a true story). Go where the prompt leads!
There were three of them. John, Jack and Jeano. They lived happily behind the pantry in the old farmer’s house.
The farmer’s wife disliked them and was ever vigilant to do them harm.
She didn’t care that they were blind and so just felt their way around.
She ambushed them one Saturday morning and cut off their tails.
They ran in circles, why they asked why?
There was mayhem and chaos, the farmer’s wife chopping and chasing, the mystified mice scurrying to and fro.
They found refuge behind the pantry, and there they plotted and planned a rightful revenge.
Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit. (One of my mum’s favourite quotes).
Thoughts are often just flashes in my mind as they travel from one side of my brain to the other. They don’t linger long enough to form into words, but every so often, like with this prompt, those thoughts become words even though my mind is undecided as to which words it might select as appropriate.
Its what makes the process so deliciously attractive. The interaction of thought and word and the sometimes conflict they play out does, in the end, produce something you can be pleased with.
It doesn’t mean one wins over the other because so often we write our thoughts down, we believe we are hitting on a winner only to find the words inadequate, and so we go back and edit our work, asking ourselves can we say this better, is this thought a legitimate one or am I just fooling myself.
Our thoughts will scream at us, “No, that is not what I am thinking, that word only tells half the story, re-write, re-phrase, think man think.”
And so the struggle continues, and there is a part of us that repeats this daily, we don’t seem to grow tired of the effort required I think because we are energised by the process, at least I am.
It was one of those days you remember. It was a Tuesday; stuff seems to happen on a Tuesday, do you ever notice that?
He came into town on a Tuesday. Tall and lean, sitting high in the saddle with a gun on his hip that looked custom made not like the K-Mart ones the rest of us wore cause that’s all we could afford.
He stopped outside Benny’s Wellabarraback café, looked around and ran into the Barney the town drunk.
“Sorry, Mister,” said Barney, “I didn’t see you there.”
“Got a bank in this town?” the stranger asked.
“Ah don’t rob it, Mister, I got all my savings in there and it ain’t much cause I’m not much you know.”
The stranger looked down on Barney and pushed him out of the way as he made his way into the café.
“I’ll have a half-strength skim latte on soy,” he said to Gladys the girl barista. “Oh and make it hot, not luke warm, I hate my coffee luke warm.”
“Yes Sir,” answered Gladys as she set to work.
The café door opened and there appeared the wide frame of Lester Ley, the town Mayor.
“Mr Suddubsome I believe, welcome to Weelabarraback. We are honoured to have you here with us.”
“You got my money? I don’t start work until I see the colour of your dollars.”
“Got it right here,” replied the Mayor handing over a brown envelope.
“Good man,” said Suddubsome, “Now, who we got to deal with first?”
“Well I’ve written out a list, and if you’d be so kind as to do each one discretely, I’d appreciate it as we don’t like a lot of noise and fuss in this town.”
“That’s a long list; you really got this many grievances?”
“Oh, there’s some low life’s in this town. A good clean out is what it needs. Now, do you think you could have the job done by mid-day tomorrow?”
“I’ll have it done by midnight tonight. You haven’t got the Undertaker on this list have you; we might be needing him.”
“No, no he’s one of the few upstanding men in the district. Invaluable to the town.”
Suddubsome sipped the last of his coffee and got up to leave. “Might have a word with your town drunk, he’ll give me a feel for the place.”
“I would waste my time on him, most of the time he doesn’t know what day it is.”
“Then he’s my kind a guy.”
Several hours later, Suddubsome knocked on the Mayors office door.
“You were right, Barney doesn’t know what day it is, but he does know the dirt on you.”
Several hours later, the Undertaker came to the Mayor’s door. He was a grim sort of man in a very grim sort of way. A tape measure slung over his shoulder; he began the work an undertaker does.
Suddubsome, money in pocket, rode out of town, content he had put in a good days work, and it was still Tuesday.
“You can do this,” she said as he looked at the page, the paints and inside his nerves jangled in fearsome expectation of making a complete fool of himself.
“But I have no artistic ability. I have trouble colouring in between the lines, let alone making something from scratch. It will look infantile.”
“Everyone has artistic ability; we just manifest it in different ways. Not everyone can be Picasso. And you have to start somewhere. Consider it another means of expression.”
It was her reassuring smile that gave him the most worry. She’d see soon enough the limit of his skill if you’d call a few splodges on the page the full extent of his ability.
He took up the tube of blue, blue he thought was neutral enough to maybe hide his deficiencies. He squeezed out a blob and with his brush spread it over the page in much the same way, as he would butter his toast.
“I see,” she said, “keep on trying, and don’t think of the paint as something you might eat.”
“You’ve heard of the fool on the hill,” said Crisp looking down on the boy fishing in the sunset, “well, this is the fool on the lake.”
“You’re being a bit harsh, aren’t you?” I questioned.
“He’ll never catch anything out there, the water is too quiet,” answered Crisp, “everyone knows quiet water means the fish are asleep.”
“I think that’s a load of nonsense.”
“Well, watch and see if he does catch anything.”
So I did, and he didn’t.
I wondered at that moment if I could bottle this quiet water and sprinkle it over a sleeping Crisp, a quiet day with her could be something of an asset.
Suddenly she jolted me from my reverie.
“Dream on,” she said, “I know what you are thinking.”
Written for: https://crispinakemp.com/2020/09/16/crimsons-creative-challenge-97/
It was once the cards were on the table that he knew just where he stood.
The odds were not good, his chances slimming as the minutes ticked by.
He looked around and realised the cards were well and truly stacked against him.
It was co-operate or most likely perish, and that scenario he didn’t embrace.
He was the number one counter-espionage agent; he had skills and a reputation to uphold. The nation would be depending on him to come through with a victory at whatever cost to himself.
His immediate problem was the handcuffs; then he estimated there was an issue with getting to the toilet and the very likely outcome of wetting himself, which he knew, would not go down well with his mum when and if he made it home. His mum was a stickler for good hygiene practice, and wetting one’s pants was just not on.
The cuffs were tight, they cut into his wrists and were stopping the blood flow to his hands, and he could feel them less and less.
He knew he needed to draw an ace from somewhere and up his sleeve was always a possibility even though his captors had removed his shirt anticipating such a move.
He had to think quickly, not an easy path to take for a man who thought less and less because he found the more he thought about any situation, the worse it got and right now thinking about his problem wasn’t helping, in fact, he was feeling the tinges of depression circling him.
Then a break. A guard entered, held up a bottle of water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. As he did, he brought up his hands between the guards legs and crushed his manly bits. The man went down clutching at what he hoped was not the end to his manhood, as our hero shifted and seized the keys from his belt and in a flash had the cuffs off and was making for the door.
The cards he felt at that instant were shuffling more in his favour as he had played his ace; the guard was still on the floor caring little about him and lot about his himself.
It was unfortunately at this point that his house of cards began crumbling about him and everything went black.
“I am a museum full of art, and a deck full of music, but …..”
‘I am a museum full of art, and a deck full of music, but’ I am also a poor man.
Around me I can see the beauty of the world, the colours, the majesty, the sheer brilliance of being alive and behind that the music plays, so often soft calming melodies and at other times rocking beats my feet tap too, my heart sings and I feel blessed to be alive.
I know it is all there, but there is something within my own scope of ignorance that tells me I should not take it for granted but rather I should stop and reflect, try to understand why it is that I am so enamoured by the world.
Art is for me something to be admired. I think because I recognise my limited ability, I struggle to draw a straight line, I find even colouring between the lines a challenge.
Music is always soothing to me, its company in the alone times; it’s always been there in one form or another.
I think that when I was younger and writing music, I did so because it gave me a feeling of being whole, and when I wrote my musicals and had them performed I fulfilled another urge within me, performance.
My poverty is of an intellectual nature. Art is so subjective, which is, in fact, the reason for it being so fascinating, the same can be said for music. I want to know more, but I question my capacity to grasp and understand, so I find myself enjoying what I have, and what I know but my mind stays open to new ideas and opinions.
It took us years before we could bring ourselves to clean up the old shed. Well the shed itself wasn’t all that old, but the stuff inside it was there because it had nowhere else to go.
It belonged to my brother, the stuff that is.
He was a builder and made props for musicals and shows all around the district. After each show, the props would return to the shed and be packed away as a memorial to the many hours of painstaking work he put into each piece.
I could understand his reluctance to part with them; they were one-offs and as such, had limited usefulness. Here was one such prop be made for a performance of the “Little Mermaid”. An elaborate construction of an underwater grotto constructed on plywood but coated with polystyrene foam into which he had placed various objects such as lanterns and objects you might imagine in such a place.
But once his time as a builder came to an end, as the result of rheumatoid arthritis, the shed remained a place stuffed full, you could barely move within it, it was so packed tight, I started to make overtures that the shed could be now used for other purposes.
He finally acknowledged his limitations, and we decided on the clean up. Some of the props he managed to send to new homes but most of it we had to cut up and dump. In the end, and I’m still working on it, we took four loads to the dump, filled the garbage each week, and eventually cleared the shed to the point where it now can the potential to be a rather useful space for us to use.
Under the shed was a stack of old timber, which has been cleared out as well, and much of it cut up for firewood. I have months of firewood to get through so most afternoons I set the fire ablaze, and slowly I am getting through the stack, but it seems never-ending, though it is nice on a calm afternoon as the sun sets to sit by the fire and enjoy a drink or two.
The clean up has a way to go, but the end result is going to be worth it, as I will have a space to relax and a view across the river flats to bask in.
Morpethroad 