SoCS Aug. 26/17 – When

Posted on August 26, 2017 by Michael

socs-badge-2017-18

When it’s time, I’ll come out, and all will be revealed.

When I do, you won’t have to worry as you won’t be implicated.

When the day arrives, it will be all understated, just a few words saying well here I am, and there are you. I’ve missed you but its time, and we’ll laugh about the great times we had and then think of ways to resurrect what fun we had, all those years ago.

When you read what I’m all about you’ll say once you stop laughing that it was all a matter of words and words can be bent and re-shaped and then recycled into any meaning you want.

When you finish with me, you’ll not regret a single day other than the pain the tyranny of distance brings to us.

When at the appointed time you stand beside me, hopefully, I’ll be still standing but never the less there’s a chance I won’t as time as a way of deciding when enough is enough.

Written for: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/25/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-2617/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

August 24: Flash Fiction Challenge – Family’s Sake

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Michael

august-24

August 24, 2017, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write about an escape artist. It can even be you, the writer, escaping into a different realm or space in imagination. It can be any genre, including BOTS (based on a true story) or fantasy. You can focus on the escape, the twist or the person who is the escape artist.

He knew if he twisted, squirmed and then bent himself round then back he might manage it. It was a dicey move, fraught with danger, so many ‘what ifs’.

Looking around he knew this was his one opportunity. No one suspected he’d try this. No one suspected he had reason to.

To the outside, all looked hunky dory.

But he’d come to the end of his tether. It was now or never.

Life had become untenable. For his family’s sake, he needed to escape. Freedom he knew was priceless.

He knew he needed to dislocate in order to locate.

 

Written for: https://carrotranch.com/2017/08/25/august-24-flash-fiction-challenge-2/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Thursday photo prompt – Cracked #writephoto

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Michael

cracked1

He was told often enough that you didn’t need to be cracked to live here but it sure did help.

Around him was one disorder after another. People crying, screaming in the night, accusing him of things he could not possibly have done and doctors who laughed at his claims he was being victimised.

Their solution to his pleas was the same day after day. A jab in the arm that sent him to sleep.

He awakened the next day, and the torment would start over.

Next to him was always the drooling girl, drugged out of her mind the drool sliding down her lip and onto the filthy night shirt she wore. No one seemed to care, she was silent, they knew she wouldn’t drown or anything and so left her to herself.

He’d reach over and wipe her face, she never acknowledged him, probably he surmised she was not even aware of him being there.

Opposite him crazy Larry raved on about the demons dancing around him, Lucy the dark-haired girl leered at him across the room and licked her lips as she imitated slicing her arm again.

The kitchen staff would enter and dump his breakfast, lunch or dinner, not caring if his slopped in his lap, doing their job as uncaring as they could.

He’d help the drooling girl, putting her food to her lips in the hope she’d awaken enough to take it in. Then seeing her unresponsive they hooked her up to a feed line, walk away and laugh about her as if she didn’t matter.

Then one day the drooling girl was gone. He was alone. His only ‘friend’ was no more.

A woman approached him, said she was the drooling girl’s mother, thanked him for caring about her, said he was the only one who reached out to her. He wondered how she knew.

Across the room, crazy Larry was threatening everyone’s death if he didn’t get what he wanted. The afternoon ritual had begun again, and he knew he had to endure.

“I’m cracked,” he thought, “and I’m slipping through the cracks of my mind.”

 

Written for: https://scvincent.com/2017/08/24/thursday-photo-prompt-cracked-writephoto/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

Tale Weaver #134 – 24th August – Shopping With Miss Marble

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Michael

Shopping Bag Abstract Groceries Shop Grocery

Image: Google Images: Labelled for Reuse.

It was Friday evening, and Miss Marble sat at her kitchen table pencil in hand, her writing pad before her and her mind on what needed to be bought the next day on her weekly shopping trip.

She disliked domestic shopping. It was tedious in her mind, and nothing more than a means to an end. She much preferred spending her time in her back room stoking the fires under her cauldrons and creating a potion that might do the trick for some neighbour in need.

Miss Marble was a witch who lived at 46 Grimace Street and had done so for a very long time. People came and went on Grimace Street, but Miss Marble had stayed.

On the wall was an order from Dulcie Greenhorn at 6 Grimace Street for a cleaning potion. Dulcie was getting on a bit these days and was in need of some help around the house, and Miss Marble had once mentioned to her that when the time came, a cleaning potion might be useful when Dulcie started to feel she couldn’t do it like she used to.

Tonight, she’d start on the potion as she’d not long received an order of elbow grease and along with a generous helping of bicarbonate of soda, she knew just the amounts to mix together to make all the difference when it came to cleaning.

Miss Marble let her mind wander as she thought of the effect the cleaning potion would have on Dulcie. As Dulcie was a simple down to earth sort of woman she knew Dulcie would get a kick out of what the potion would do for her. Sprinkle a bit on your mop or broom and watch the little darling do the job for you. Though in these modern times Miss Marble did warn against sprinkling any on your vacuum cleaner as the potion and electrics didn’t appear to be compatible with each other.

It got Miss Marble thinking that she should be able to create a potion to solve her dislike of shopping. After all, it was just a matter of a potion to get the shopping trolley going at the supermarket, a list that saw what it needed and away it went. Payment she thought was a different nowadays. The barter system had long gone, and Miss Marble needed money, real money to purchase things at the local Woolworths.

It was something to think about as she jotted down on her list the basic requirements for the next week. She shuddered as she thought of the crowds she’d encounter, the nosy ones who looked at her trolley, who’d whisper to each other as she always passed in her black skirt and pointy hat. After all, Miss Marble reasoned she’d been around a long time, several hundred years in fact and had therefore earned her hat. You couldn’t buy them anymore, and so she wore her’s with pride.

Knowing her list was complete she retired to the back room where on one wall was stored the jars of elbow grease and on the other the bi-carb soda. It was never a good idea to store either ingredient in close proximity to the other. She learned that early on as she grew tired of replacing the walls.

So, with spatula in hand, she stoked up the fire under number three cauldron and set to work. Dulcie, she knew would be around before she left for the shops.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/tale-weaver-134-24th-august-shopping/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

100 Word Wednesday: Week 33 – The Group Photo

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Michael

image

On their first holiday, they were keen to snap photos at every opportunity. They arrived at the strange statue, and as their English was poor, they couldn’t make head nor tail of the inscription.

As they stood in puzzlement there approached a passer-by whom they asked to take a photo of them gathered around it.

Well practised in making a happy pose it never occurred to them the person holding the camera would run off with it. The shot later appeared on Instagram with the tell-tale evidence of a person called Bikurgurl having claimed it for her own.

 

Written for: https://bikurgurl.com/2017/08/23/100-word-wednesday-week-33/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Mundane Monday Challenge #123 : Learn Photography – The Brick Pile

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Michael

IMG_0245

My yard once being a builders yard still retains some elements of that past. I liked the way the morning sun touched on the edge of the brick pile.

https://trablogger.com/mundane-monday-challenge-123-learn-photography/

Posted in Photo prompt, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Wordle #169 – Mara’s Cat

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Michael

week-169

This week’s words: Fell Grin Local Naïve Touch Fata Organa n. a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production. Imbibe Opportunity Malleable Keyhole Trammel Hindsight

I fell out of bed and knew immediately it wasn’t going to be a normal day. After all, it was a Tuesday, and it didn’t feel like a Tuesday as Tuesday’s always a feel about them.

I looked around anticipating the day was going to rough no matter how I looked at it. Mara had left her cat behind again, and it sat on the rug grinning at me knowing I didn’t like cats much and more fully aware that the cat didn’t like me.

The trouble I knew had all begun the day before. It had been at the bored meeting when a real fata organa moment had occurred. Everyone was bored out of their minds, and bored minds tend to wander and look for reasons as to why they are bored. It was obvious that Mara sitting across from Olaf had suffered a real moment of emotion, her usual passive self, displayed a flash of emotion not witnessed in her before. She leapt to her feet, threw the glass of water she was holding at Olaf and threatened him with certain death should he continue to stare at her the way he was.

Olaf a local and a touch naïve protested he was doing no such thing to which Mara responded by throwing her note pad at him.

In hindsight that was not such a good move as Olaf accused Mara of spying on him through the bathroom keyhole and from then on it was on for young and old.

Later as we sat around the front bar of the local pub imbibing in several, if not many stiff drinks when Mara took the opportunity to say she would be staying over and that her cat, the grinning Cheshire, would be staying too.

My protests fell on deaf ears as Mara had that ability to sense the malleability of my character and before long I was entertaining not just Mara but her cat as well. There were saucers of milk, a lot of purring and a commitment to quell the trammelist urges I so often had towards her cat.

Now I was awake and staring eye to eye with her ginning cat as it eyed me off with evil intent if not obvious trammel towards me. Yes, I heard myself saying to the grinning cat, milk, a saucer of milk coming up.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/wordle-169/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Writing Prompt “It’s all in the title” – Unfinished Dreams

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Michael

zombie-doll

The girl who was made of unfinished dreams.

She turns the page and looks at the next image.

She remembers the dream in which she encountered the river

Flowing rapidly, it hissed at her to stay away.

But she needed to cross and stepping into it the current dragged at her

She struggled as she knew across the stream was a better place.

She was always moving towards a better place, it played on her mind.

For so long life had been about acceptance,

Her lot in life was same old same old.

Here she felt safe, secure, familiar.

But she craved love, acceptance and care

She knew it was out there

Mostly out of reach but a dream she clung to.

She had urges to travel, but insecurities prevailed

Tied her down, hobbled progress

So, her day dreams sustained her

She cared about the boy, but he was out of reach

As she was to him.

They had shared the same dream

Touched each other’s souls like nothing before

Thrilled and excited the prospect of what might be.

But until then she’d remain

The girl made of unfinished dreams.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/writing-prompt-its-all-in-the-title/

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Weekend Writing Prompt #16 – Colours

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Michael

horse-racing-2357029_960_720

My Uncle Bill was one of those men best described as a colourful character. He lived alone, most of the time, though there was one woman who seemed to answer his call when needed.

Most of the time Uncle Bill could be found huddled close to his fuel stove, head stuck in the paper and ears paying attention to the talk back on the radio.

To visit him was an experience and you had to be prepared for and forgiving of his tendencies to fart, belch, swear and ridicule anyone he disagreed with which on any given day was pretty much everyone.

He was my mother’s only brother a man who had seen a lot of the world and had, therefore, an opinion on everything.

He loved a bet on the weekends, his Friday paper always folded over to the racing guide. On a piece of dirty paper, he’d scribble his bets for the next day, listening Saturday mornings to the racing selections on the radio.

“It’s a hard game,” he’d say as he gathered up all his bits of paper and stuffed them into his top pocket before making his way to the local betting shop. Then he’d stop and look once again at the newspaper, the racing guide by now a series of doodles as his mind had worked to discover the winners of each race. “Every winner is here you know,” he’d state as if making one of the great philosophical statements of all time.

Later in the afternoon, I’d stop by to see how he was going. He’d have a series of empty beer bottles scattered around him and more often than not a pile of crumpled betting slips littering the floor.

The radio would be blaring, and Uncle Bill would be talking back to it intend on having his opinion heard.

I always made a cup of tea when I arrived, I figured by then he’d had more than enough and needed to slow down.

He’d regale me about his lack of success, horses beaten by a nose, how he’d mixed up his numbers in one race and missed out of a ‘fortune’.

“It’s a hard game,” he’d repeat over and over never once suggesting he’d give up on the bets, but determined the next week to do it all over again in the belief good luck was just around the corner.

 

Written for: https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/weekend-writing-prompt-16-colours/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

First Line Friday -August 16th 2017 – The Accident

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Michael

accident-2161956_960_720

This week’s first line: After the accident, unease grew like a mold in the corners of his mind.

At first, it wasn’t something he knew was happening. It began to manifest itself each time he came to drive his car. The accident was something he didn’t think he’d ever witness but it happened in front of him in the wink of an eye, and all he could do was stand there and watch as the unfortunate driver was assigned to eternity.

What started out as an innocent drive to collect the families ironing evolved into something of a nightmare.

The car he saw as he reached the corner. His senses told him it was travelling quickly and to wait. He did so.

As he turned into the street after the car had passed, he looked up to see it had collided with another vehicle and literally bulldozed it into oblivion.

Now each time he took to the road that vision returned to him. Every corner was a potential death trap. Traffic lights filled him with an instant dread when the amber light appeared.

He knew he had to get a handle on what was happening. So, he talked about. To anyone who’d listen. It was like working the whole trauma of it out of his system. It took him time, but eventually, he began to feel more and more confident.

His unease slowly dissipated as he began to put it all into perspective.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/first-line-friday-august-16th-2017/

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing prompt | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments