SoCS Aug. 19/17 – Pant

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Michael

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He was like a small puppy. Panting, fussing, paying attention to everything that happened. He ran this way and that, getting and fetching. Did she have enough? All she wanted? Could he do more? Could he? Could he?

To make it worse, she lapped it up. It was clear who wore the pants in this relationship. Being a helper monkey as he was I found disturbing as I began to wonder if he had any character of his own.

Often, I’d see him out at his clothes line hanging out the washing careful to hang her underpants the right way out as I’d heard him being berated for hanging them out inside out.

I questioned why this man needed to be reassured as often as he did. Was his wife a wanderer, ever threatening to leave him if she didn’t get what she required. Was he so insecure as to pander to her every request?

Some people are like that I know. Maybe he saw in her a person he couldn’t get enough of. His running around after her at the expense of his own dignity was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

He did wear pants I should point out, but not as securely as I might have thought.

 

Written for: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-1917/

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Saturday’s Mix–12 August 2017 – The Fairy Harvest Festival

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Michael

This week’s task: our best writing about a garden.

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The garden was looking the best it had for quite some time. Rain helped.

Rain was my next-door neighbour and a great help in my garden. She fussed around the pots, she encouraged the shoots on every shrub and was a magician when it came to propagating.

What Rain didn’t know, and I did was that within each structure of the garden was a small microcosm of life.

These microcosms were the fairy inhabitants of each section.

My favourites were the fern fairies for no other reason than they complemented the ferns in the most amazing of ways.

Ferns, as you know, are delicate structures. They can break easily if not handled and cared for with love and affection.

So too the fern fairies. Their social structure reflected the condition of their world. If all was flourishing then so were they, if things were tough, the ferns brittle so were their systems.

When in flourishing times it was exciting to be around them. The thing was you just had to know when to look and how to look.

The fern fairy harvest festival I had been fortunate to attend. They gathered under the fronds of the bird’s nest fern and celebrated long into the night the highlight always being the dance of the maiden hair fairies, tiny, delicate creatures whose dance was mesmerising and held all who paid attention in their thrall.

Maiden hair fairies had the ability to grab your attention, it wasn’t just their dance, their spellbinding movements and the sheer grace of them dancing in unison but if they looked at you and held your focus you were caught up in more ways than you might imagine. It was as if they got into your head, and when it happened, you could never think of a better place to be.

Tonight, there was to be a fairy harvest festival, I knew where it was to be held, I also knew the secret to attending. Being fairy-like, had a lot to recommend itself.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/saturdays-mix-12-august-2017-2/

 

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Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge – August 18, 2017

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Michael

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In the early morning the sun just touches the landscape.

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Our courthouse where it is always 9.30 am/pm

https://ceenphotography.com/2017/08/18/cees-which-way-photo-challenge-august-18-2017/

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August 17: Flash Fiction Challenge – Modern American Culture

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Michael

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August 17, 2017 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story that heals America. Difficult and idealistic, I know. Think about building bonds of trust or stories of friendship. It could be a positive story about America. Bonus points for hugging a cat.

Modern American Culture, lecture one, and I was seated eager beaver to learn. Professor Trumpet strode arrogantly to the lectern, his cat, Donald, under his arm. “Make America great again,” he announced. “Now, how to do it.”

The next forty minutes he regaled us with stories of American greatness from inventions to statesmen to reasons why America was the greatest country on Earth.

All the while Donald the cat, who had the look of a sad dictator about him, watched dispassionately from the desk beside him.

“We don’t have to make America great again,” he announced,” we already are.”

 

Written for: https://carrotranch.com/2017/08/18/august-17-flash-fiction-challenge-2/

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100 Word Wednesday: Week 32 – Cath’s Brother

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Michael

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Summer was the ideal place to raise a few dollars. The trio had rehearsed for months when Cath, the guitarist, insisted her little brother come along.

Bruno could sing. There was no disputing it.

He learnt the songs in quick time, and by the end of the second week was becoming quite blasé about the whole thing.

He would belt out ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and a favourite with most passers-by ‘Hey Jude’.

By the end of the fourth week, he had a dance routine and was soliciting people to part with their hard-earned cash.

 

Written for: https://bikurgurl.com/2017/08/16/100-word-wednesday-week-32/

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Thursday photo prompt – Wisp #writephoto – Cousin Daphne

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Michael

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She was just a wisp of a girl. I spied her across the parking lot standing against the telegraph pole a cigarette in one corner of her mouth and an odd checked coloured cap on a head that said there was a lot going on in there.

She gave the impression from her body language to enter at your own risk.

And that much was true. When I did approach her she stood her ground, there was no backing away, it was as if she was daring me to try her on.

I asked her name, and she continued to stare me down, not smiling, and in hindsight, I’m sure she even blinked the whole time I stood there.

She drew in a mouthful of cigarette smoke held it for a moment before blowing into my face.

I told her she wasn’t allowed to smoke in the car park and she ignored me. She said in a small but defiant voice that she was waiting for a friend.

She was looking straight through me, her eyes focused on something she was imagining and I could only speculate about. She rubbed her old dirty sandshoes in the dust as she extinguished her cigarette and looked me in the eye.

She said she was actually waiting for me. Said the office ladies had told her the best place to find me was in the car park. With her hands on her hips her height came up to my chest, and I looked at her wondering what she might want with me.

She laughed at my ignorance and then announced she was my cousin Daphne. Then it all fell into place. My cousin Alice had rung the night before asking me to look out for her daughter Daphne and that she’d be in need of my guidance.

Daphne and I sized each other up, she looked like she was in need of a good feed. Her clothes were old, and there was a rip in the shoulder of her t-shirt. It matched I thought the rip in the knee of her jeans.

Behind her was a small backpack and that was all she had in this world.

Later over dinner, she told me her story. The rejections, the abuse, the failures and the need to get away from her mother.

This wisp of a girl, aged 17, sat at my dining table and I thought I really don’t know about girls this age.

Daphne sensed my apprehension and offered to leave if I was uncomfortable. In the end, I told her she could stay and that she’d have to take me as I was. I showed her my spare room and said for her to get some sleep.

Tomorrow we’d start afresh.

 

Written for: https://scvincent.com/2017/08/17/thursday-photo-prompt-wisp-writephoto/

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Tale Weaver #133: under red skies, don’t step on a penny – Sam Stitious

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Michael

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Sam Stitious was what most people feared they might be. Superstitious. In fact, Sam was known as “Superstitious” within his community.

He was at best a fearful character, he constantly watched where he walked as cracks in the pavement terrified him so it meant that on occasion he’d be a little comical as you’d see him give a little skip as he walked along.

Sam came from a family beset with superstition. His mum and dad were what could best be described as nervous wrecks forever looking over their shoulders in fear of some disaster befalling them.

Sam was a believer in the power of the sunrise and the sunset. To him, it gave him a lead into the next twelve hours of his life.

He had a book in which he wrote the sunrise/sunset of each day. Cloudy/rainy days sent him into a frenzy as he then had no clear indication of the next period in time and speculating only worried him.

His biggest beef was the umbrella. At rest and standing, idle umbrellas were fine with him, but an active umbrella sent him into a mania. He had nightmares of umbrellas up inside his house. It was driving him crazy which explained why there was never an umbrella to be seen inside his house. They lived in a locked garden shed to the side of his house.

The reason for his over the top attitude to the umbrella was his Gran had suffered a heart attack the day his Aunty Una rushed in out of the rain and didn’t take down her umbrella causing his Gran to splutter, cough, choke and fall down dead in terror of the said umbrella active inside her house.

Today Sam is off to therapy. He likes therapy, it’s an opportunity for him to talk to his therapist Esme Tootle and in Sam’s mind Esme is a weird as he is as she has a thing about scarves believing the sight of one around one’s neck is an invitation for the thing to strangle you.

Today he giggles to himself as he stuffs his dad’s old scarf into his pocket.

“Therapy,” he thinks, “what a hoot.”

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/tale-weaver-133-under-red-skies-dont-step-on-a-penny/

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Storytime — How We Met

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Michael

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It was a Monday morning, pouring rain and my mate announced as we drove to the Teacher’s College that he was picking up his cousin on the way.

We arrived at the out of the way railway station to find this small wet young girl standing under an umbrella looking decidedly forlorn and lost.

She was glad to get into the car out of the wet, and I assumed at the time not caring who was in the car other than her cousin.

We met under those circumstances several times before I worked up the courage to ask her out. It took me four times before she agreed to go out to a function with me.

You could say the rest is history, and in literal terms, it is, such that in this present time I don’t have a significant other and that is ok. Years of oppression have taught me to value the life I have.

 

Written for: https://fivedotoh.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/storytime-how-we-met/

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Mundane Monday Challenge #122 : Learn Photography

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Michael

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Across the creek from where the ducks were found last week graze the cattle, content day in and day out.

For: https://trablogger.com/mundane-monday-challenge-122-learn-photography/

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Wordle #168 – The Runner

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Michael

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This week’s words: Feign Gait Torn Press  Left Labyrinthine adj. complicated, torturous, resembling a labyrinth Look Embed  Malformed Gritty Natural Dead-reckoning (In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one’s current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course.)

He surveyed the wreckage and again looked at his co-ordinates. It all pointed to a dead reckoning so how could he have come to a grief such as this?

He’d followed all the instructions so there was no way he could have missed. Even though the journey had been very labyrinthine in nature with a multitude of twists and turns he trusted his navigation skills as they had never failed him before.

He looked again, and sure enough, he knew he had turned left when he had, changed his gait to negotiate the malformed tortuous path and had in his own opinion showed more grit than ever before.

He knew he had to press on, the current disaster would be given the press it deserved, and he was not one to stop that happening.

He looked down at the blood oozing from the wound in his chest where the sign post was now embedded. Not willing to feign injury for fear his opponents might think he was weakening he reached down and with unprecedented strength tore the post from his chest with a slight ‘ugh’ coming from his lips.

As the blood began to gush from his torn chest cavity, he pressed his now ripped singlet into the wound and smiling at his opponents now agape at his gritty performance headed off down the track towards the finishing post.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/wordle-168/

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