Mondays Finish the Story – October 5th, 2015 – Ethel Mert

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Michael

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Finish the story begins with:  “Few knew about the castle hidden inside the island.”

Ethel Mert knew though as she sat in the bow of the boat and watched the island come into view.

There was a scheduled lunch stop at the Mert Island Café and in that time she hoped to once again connect with her roots.

They were still there she knew, hiding within the castle walls, long hidden from general view and protected by the Mert Family spell that allowed anyone to see the island except the secret castle.

Ethel had been away too long she thought, the tingles within her at the sight of the island reminded her of her connection. She wondered how she might be received and how they would feel if she availed herself of a few potions with which to continue her travels. After all she thought those confounded whinging American tourists had it coming to them.

Written for: https://mondaysfinishthestory.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/mondays-finish-the-story-october-5th-2015/

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Wordle #81 “October 5, 2015” – Johnno

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Michael

week-81

This week’s words: Warehouse Board Concession Personal Scurrilous (grossly obscene, abusive) Animal Gasp Ferment Scab Rivet (a metal pin for passing through holes in two or more plates or pieces to hold them together, usually made with a head at one end, the other end being hammered into a head after insertion.) Tin Sugar

Johnno was a bit of an animal but he was our town’s animal.

He was a scurrilous character claiming fame for being the town’s flasher, the town’s streaker and the town’s peeping tom.

No one of course challenged his right to those titles and after a life time of scurrilous deeds together with his working life in the canning factory making jam tins and later in the company’s warehouse Johnno had settled down into retirement enjoying and exercising his considerable talents, none of which endeared him beyond recognition that it was he who had perpetrated the scurrilous deeds about the town.

In older age there was a move to stop him streaking as he tended to frighten small children and revive horrible memories in the minds of the ladies in the retirement village.

If you were unfortunate to be in the shops when he was there his personal hygiene was on display for all. To say you gasped as you wandered past him would be putting it mildly. He’d stand near the jam tins proudly pointing out to all who’d care to listen that his hands had made them. Even made clear he had popped the minute rivets to hold the tin in place.

The community was often at loggerheads over the concessions it gave to Johnno. The town administrative board was under constant attack to have the health authorities place him in care or at least give him a bath.

It was felt that left to his own devices his entire body was in danger of fermenting to a point where his entire person could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

As he aged and fell from time to time the scabs that formed on his knees took on the form of harbouring unknown bacteria that gave the impression of being in constant battle with themselves and the possibility of mutating to a point where he posed a potential threat to the whole town.

Johnno’s final demise came when the sugar truck broke down out of town and the sugar had to be brought into town by hand. Johnno loved sugar and practised the well-known sharing act of two for me and one for you.

They found him in a diabetic coma from which he never recovered. His scurrilous legacy lives on, there’s a plaque with his name on it in the tin factory and he was buried with a bag of sugar and a roll on deodorant. No one in the after life should be made to gasp it was felt…

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/wordle-81-october-5-2015/

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Writing Prompt #127 “NoEnd House Part 7″ – Night Shadows

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Michael

nodus-tollens

nodus tollens n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore-that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre-which requires you to go back and reread

There’s a strange woman running through my life

She’s coming at me from all sides

She wears a headdress

Bright feathers and a leather cord around her waist

From which hang

Scalps and small furry remains of previous kills.

I wake up and look about the room

The night shadows have moved

The moon has passed over

The yellow glow of the morning sunrise

Hovers away to my left

I wonder what is happening to me.

I work 9 to 5

I am on average a boring and plain man

I teach English to students

Bored from their previous lesson

I add to their wretchedness

I give little to add value to their day

But I do it all day every day

I excel in the ordinary

But I suck at Jane Austen.

It’s the same shit different day mentality

Its up at six, shower, dress, breakfast

Train, walk, first class ad nausem.

I live as on a treadmill and I can’t get off

My wife saw the light and headed south

Had enough of my tedium,

Even sex she said was as if on rote.

But when I think I am settled, accepting

The vision returns. The woman

Naked except for her sparse dress

Lures me, plays with me,

I can’t stop her; I don’t want to stop her

She unearths a hidden side to me

One I keep secret for fear of comments

Discovery I may not be what all perceive me to be.

We engage as lovers, she leads me into

Dens of pleasure, explorations of our bodies

Places I never knew could elicit such physical rapture.

In dark spaces she sits astride me

Looking down upon my manhood

My mind is filled with unexpected delights

I lie back and allow her to take me where she will.

I awake each morning,

Looking about the night shadows have moved again

I need to get her out of my head.

Elizabeth Bennett her repressed sexuality

And seething desire for Darcy

Jump out of the text at me,

But I know my charges are not moved.

I run the shower cooler to compose myself

The woman and her hold on me

I store away, until tonight.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/writing-prompt-127-noend-house-part-7%E2%80%B3/

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SoCS Oct 3/15 – Expect/Unexpected – Aunt Amanda

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Michael

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This week’s challenge: expect and/or unexpected.

We were waiting at the arrivals gate the air of expectation was building by the second.

How will we know her?

Is she tall?

Short?

Did she say what she’d be wearing?

What colour hair does she have?

The questions went on and on.

Yes she was arriving.

Yes were expecting her at any minute but I knew as much as anyone else. The email simply said arriving 10.20 am Qantas flight from New York.

So we stood there our necks craning over the throng of the expectant waiting to see who came through that might resemble my dad.

Aunt Amanda, dad’s sister who had gone to the States when she was eighteen and never returned, was coming home to attend dad’s funeral and we all decided to go to the airport to meet her.

Dad had maintained contact with her all these years and so it was easy to call her and speak to her when he passed away. Her voice was that strange combination of Australian accent and the twang of the words she pronounced from living in New York all these years.

She two years younger than dad and had broken her parents hearts when she left to marry Barry Nook a soldier she had met when he was stationed at the camp down the road from their home.

Barry had died a few years earlier and dad had been saddened that his health was not good enough to go to his funeral.

But Aunt Amanda was soon to come into our lives. She was the last of her line and we were it as far as an Aussie family went.

My son Benny held up a sign, ‘Welcome Aunt Amanda”.

I was getting fidgety, the kids impatient, my wife looking worried, as were we all, as it seemed to take an eternity before we saw her.

Before us stood a woman, the exact image of dad. The same shining blue eyes, that smile that dad had when he looked happy to see you.

She embraced us all, there were G’day’s all round, I gathered her luggage and we headed for the car.

We expected a woman who might be reserved with us from being so long away but in fact we found a woman so pleased to be among us that we couldn’t help but feel immediately warm towards her.

Written for: http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/02/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-315/

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Music Prompt #11: “I’ll Fly Away”

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Michael

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdRdqp4N3Jw

‘When you gonna fly away?’

She asked him

Gathered as they were over the dinner table.

She’d eyed him with suspicion.

These past weeks

Always was he talking about going away.

‘Can’t stand another minute here,’ he’d said

‘The incessant nagging, the bitching

Before my life’s over

I’m gonna fly away.’

‘Where you gonna go,’ she drawled at him

‘’Who you gonna get wash your stinkin’ clothes

Cook your dinners and scrub ya back?’

‘Plenty women jump at a chance with a man like me.’

‘Yep,’ she said and thought a moment.

‘Plenty of stupid women out there.’

‘Well you is one of them,’ he muttered

His chin had drool from his soup

His beard speckled with crumbs from the stale bread.

‘You’ll soon find out you can do a while lot worse than me.’

‘I doubt that.’ He replied

So began the weekly argument

The bitching

The snitching

The saying this and that

The hollering

The screaming

Names flying left and right

The obscenity of their life

Laid bare in front of them.

Exhausted they went to their rooms

Fell into their beds

Wondered for a moment of days past

When they fell into each other’s arms

But now they were grotesque reminders of youth.

They shuddered at the thought of intimacy.

I’m flying way thought the man

Not today but tonight

Like every night

I’m flying away.

In a room at the end of the hallway

The woman who suffered his ignorance

Had already flown.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/ill-fly-away-performed-by-alison-krauss-and-gilian-welch/

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Knock, Knock Writing Challenge~! Week # 6 – RG’s Happiness Shop

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Michael

happiness

This week’s task: If you could find it in yourself, that bit of bravery to leave the comforts of your everyday life behind and pursue your own happiness and if money wouldn’t be an issue, where would you go and what would you pursue?

RG Cook’s Happiness shop is down the street and around the corner from my house.

It is the most amazing of stores. It’s full of the most intriguing objects all intended to create within you a sense of happiness.

There are things that bobble, things that hobble, things that wobble and in the far corner is a strange yet happiness inducing object that if you look at it too long it emits the most sensuously pleasing gobble gobble, gobble you could ever imagine. Needless to say it’s frightfully expensive but you can never just look at it, listen to it and feel its magic without that sense that everything in life is going to be ok from this moment on.

RG is an enigmatic character. On any good day you’ll find her sitting behind her counter at the front of the store always busy, sewing, knitting and sipping on a steaming brew, which never gives out any odour suggestive of tea or coffee.

Roberta Grace Cook has run RG Cook’s Happiness shop for as long as anyone can remember. I’m always intrigued by the by-line beneath the sign, “ It’s true it can be bought.”

She does a roaring trade, especially of a Sunday during the tourist season and in autumn when people seemed to get titchy with each other.

She also runs a writing course and is particularly interested in memoir writing.

Manus Kestralgurk had come from a very challenging childhood. It had taken him fifty years to begin writing his tale.

He signed up for RG’s course on memoir writing and soon found himself writing his story. Each chapter of abuse and torment haunted him until he showed it to RG who would look over it and talk to him about the content and the people involved.

RG had this calming and understanding manner. Where each week Manus would worry about his latest revelations, RG in her own unique way would peruse his work and always comment positively.

Importantly though, Manus always went away feeling good within himself and empowered to write more. Over a five-year period he completed his memoir.

He and RG stood together and admired the published volume. She asked if she could stock it in her shop and Manus was so flattered that she asked.

In the first week there were fourteen sales and Manus could not have been happier.

RG’s shop down the street and around the corner from me has always been there. She sits there each day, eyeing each customer and weighing up the degree of happiness that are in need of.

I take her a coffee each morning and she loves a chat. I have never left her shop feeling anything but happy.

https://nonsmokingladybug.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/knock-knock-writing-challenge-week-6/

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Tale Weaver #33- When Fruit and Vegetables Spoke to Me. – Are You Deserving?

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Michael

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Image © Roses Garden

I am a simple man with simple tastes.

I go about my business each day and I try not to bother anyone.

Every Sunday morning I go to the supermarket to do my weekly shopping.

I buy the same things each week with the occasional variation in the fruit and vegetable section.

But this particular Sunday everything was different.

The shop had a different feel to it, like there was an anxiety in the air waiting to find a way into everyone’s shopping baskets.

I sensed it immediately and felt a cold chill circling around me.

As I approached the produce section I could see that there were very few people in there. Usually it was crowded with folk selecting their apples, oranges, potatoes and tomatoes from the vast array of produce on display.

A voice to my left drew my attention:

‘Hey good lookin’?’

I looked around and saw no one near me.

‘What cha got cookin’?’

Again I was startled. I clearly heard what I just wrote down.

‘Ya wanna cook somethin’ up with me?’

I looked around, then I looked down.

In front of me was a bowl with a few capsicums, button squash, a zucchini and a small malformed tomato.

I did a second take as I thought they each had a set of eyes. Eyes that were focused on me.

“SURPRISE!!!” they chorused as one.

The red capsicum then took over:

‘Look bud, I can call you bud yes?’

‘Yes,’ I stammered.

‘Good. Now listen bud, we vegetables have had enough. You know what I’m saying, every week we sit around here at the beck and call of you folk who pick us up, squeeze us, drop us into the darkness of your shopping bags, take us home, freeze our arses off in your refrigerators and them chop us into bits before cooking us and eating us. I’ve summed that up haven’t I guys?

“YES!’ they all retorted.

‘And we are sick of it. So as of today you gotta prove you deserve us.’

I began to back away unsure of what I had gotten myself into.

A little voice said: ‘I show you a good time mister?’

‘Pardon,’ I said.

‘I love you all night long?’

I suddenly realised it was the small tomato, the one with the deformed face that was making a pass at me.

‘We could have fun play date?’

Suddenly the red capsicum rumbled something very peppery and the tomato blushed a deeper red.

‘Don’t bother yourself with the tomato, she’s insane.’

‘She is?’

‘Yes. Now as I was saying you got an argument to prove you are deserving?’

Behind the capsicum a little voice said: ‘But I cheap.’

The red capsicum moved a little, rolled its eyes and the tomato vanished underneath his large imposing redness.

‘Actually,’ said the zucchini sounding important. ‘You simply state your intention to have something particular this week for dinner and we decide if that is reason to give you one of US, to satisfy your culinary desires.’

‘I’m hoping to make some tomato soup.’ I said with trepidation.

‘Tomato soup?’ boomed the red capsicum; ‘Well I have a crushed one here now.’

‘And a beef stir fry with capsicum and mushrooms.’

‘Sounds delicious,’ said the red capsicum. ‘Give him the tickets to select what he wants.’

Suddenly the button squash who up until now had been a set of eyes taking everything in burst into action and spewed forth a small gold ticket announcing the holder of the ticket could have the items he wanted.

‘He’s rather scrawny,’ said one to the other.

‘Skinny legs and long fingers. I’m a pudgy person myself,’ said the other.

‘So am,’ I said the first.

I gathered my ticket and quickly gathered what I wanted and left the produce section as quickly as I could.

I thought I’d left the nightmare behind me until that night when I began to prepare my dinner and I found the tomatoes I had selected arguing with each other who was the redder and who aught to be first under the knife.

I suddenly lost my appetite.

A sandwich would have to do.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/tale-weaver-33-when-fruit-and-vegetables-spoke-to-me/

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FFfAW-Week of 9-29-2015 Cutlass and Thrust

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Michael

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Cutlass and Thrust looked up over the bow.

‘Arrrgh,’ said Cutlass

‘Arrrgh,’ replied Thrust.

‘Where we be?’ asked Cutlass.

‘In Pirates Cove,’ said Thrust.

‘How’d ja know?’

‘The house, it’s the Storytellers Abode.’

‘It is?’

‘Had a lick a paint be the look of it.’

‘But where’s the Jolly Roger?’

‘And the Priceless Joy?’

‘Arrrgh, now she was a good ship.’

‘She was, you could sail on her in any weather and feel as safe as in your mother’s arms.’

‘You remember that voyage to Happy Valley?’

‘I do. Weather rough as any you’d encounter.’

‘But we made it to the Medieval Mans Bar and Grill.’

‘Arrrrrgh now that was a place to be to be sure.’

‘A place to tickle your fancy.’

‘Arrrgh,’ said Cutlass

‘Arrrgh,’ said Thrust.

‘Do you think Lou’s still running the abode?’

‘Arrrgh bound to be, she be a good wench.’

‘Arrrgh she served a good hot pot.’

‘Arrrrgh,’ said Cutlass as he stepped out of the boat.

‘Arrrgh,’ said Thrust as he followed in his wake.

Written for: https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/fffaw-week-of-9-29-2015/

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Wordle #80 “September 28, 2015” – My Girlfriend

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Michael

week-80

This week’s words: infection Pastel Cranberry Bony Atavistic (of, relating to, or characterized by atavism; reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type.) Figure Exhale Copse (a thicket of small trees or bushes; a small wood.) Nebulous (hazy, vague, indistinct) Menace Door Ichor (the fluid which flows like blood in the veins of the gods)

My girlfriend was very convincing in her maintaining she possessed the characteristics of the ancient warrior Boudicca. This atavistic notion that her night time activities, her persistence in letting out a blood curdling scream from the attic window as the clock struck eleven was a reflection of some ichor that ran thick in her veins.

Often against the light of the full moon her lithe figure cut an impressive silhouette and you could never say she had a bony dispossession. Rather she was a woman to be reckoned with, a woman of substance as there could never be said there was anything nebulous about her.

If you happened to knock upon her door and get past the pastel shades she had painted it in there before you stood a woman to whom you would not only be impressed but also firmly believe that her ichorous appearance beheld any living thing you might find in any random copse about the town.

There was a presence about her that at first sight your initial breathe which you might normally exhale in wonder would be found holding on inside your throat for fear the sight before you might vanish with the exhaling of your breath.

But once over that her infectious personality coupled with her magical cranberry thick shake made all thoughts of survival merely academic.

It was this very thing that entranced everyone who ventured near to her. Some thought of her as a menace about the place but when you found her picking by hand the cranberries for the next days shakes you could easily dismiss all thoughts of her being anything but a menace. For as I said at the start her atavistic notion and her loving of me left little to the imagination and usually nothing behind the door, if you get my drift.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/wordle-80-september-28-2015/

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Writing Prompt #126 “Collage 7″ Rain for Sunshine

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Michael

collage-7

It all exploded in my face

The delicate balancing act

I couldn’t maintain

For discovery was hiding

Just around the corner.

No matter how I stepped

It was a time factor.

Fear plagued me

What if’s flooded every thought

I lay awake at night

Wondering when it might ignite

The fury then descending upon me

There was no way I could cover it up.

I dreaded the day, but I knew….

It was coming….

There were so many factors in the final decision

Weighing up pros and cons

When holding on to what I had

Seemed the prudent way forward

Forgo the possibilities

Each ringed with risk.

I’m not brave I told myself

I like security

Reaching out is hazardous

Staying in is safe.

I could sugar coat it all,

Pretend it was nothing

But I knew

The burning in my heart

The longing and want.

Those thoughts had faded long ago.

There was only one way forward.

Leave behind complacency,

Let go of my old life

Step into the unknown

Embrace what I find.

I knew I could

Diffuse potential disaster

Trust the ones around me

Begin to believe in myself.

I am forging a new life

There’s magic in each day

I have pirouetted full circle

Given up rain for sunshine.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/writing-prompt-126-collage-7%E2%80%B3/

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