this is a page for
Monthly Archives: January 2019
I was born with eight brothers and sisters. One of my sisters didn’t make it. I was the runt, but you can’t tell it now, can you? My mother was fawn colored, with little patience for us and our needle teeth. She tolerated us until she didn’t have to anymore. Her relief was visible. I only knew my father from a distance. He was massive, and kept behind chain link on concrete. His ears were docked, and he was the color of a ten-year old nickel that had been carried in many pockets. I thought he was magnificent. One day, the man who feeds us brought another man and I was picked straightaway. I was happy to be held, and my ears rubbed. Nobody had ever given me singular attention before. He put me in a box on the seat of his pickup, and I promptly jumped out. He let me ride on his lap to my new home. It was so exciting to be somewhere new! All the smells! All the sounds!! All the people!! I was loved for a time, and then the family all left. I was put in a black cage. It was lonesome. I missed my brothers and sisters who were always climbing all over me. There were two other dogs there, but neither were extra friendly. One was downright hateful, and I think the one who was grey like the fog was not hitting on all four…
{#60 word count: 60. A gypsy places the most ridiculous of curses on you} Of course I would make fun of her nose. Anybody who had eyes in their head would. It was truly hideous. So the old woman with the bulbous nose and curly gray hair woven with tattered ribbons pointed a gnarled finger at me and said I would never finish another sentence. Now, isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever 😂😂😂 I especially like this one. Take that, you bunch of whiners who always want MORE…
Because one writing challenge isn’t enough. I’m gonna try to run two as long as I can stand it. Seeing as I’m starting this one over a week late, we’ll see if I get burned out before I ever get caught up. For these prompts, I’m choosing to take a more realistic approach. Of course, being only one word, they are much easier to manipulate than the almost full scenarios the other challenge presents me with. I promise to do the best I can to entertain you. ********************************************************************* It was one of those days I didn’t want to get out of bed. I just knew if my feet touched the floor, I was either gonna throw up, cry, or fall down. But things had to be done, so I slowly peeled the covers back, relishing the feel of cool air on my clammy skin, and began to ease out. I kept a hand on the bed for reassurance and I crept, gingerly now, along the side towards the bathroom. When I got to the corner of the big tester bed that had been in my family since they came over on the Mayflower (not REALLY, but just about), I gripped the post and breathed deeply through my nose. “You are not sick, you are not sick,” I chanted. I squinched my toes against the dark plank scuffed hardwood. “You are not sick, you are not sick…
{#463. You’re in witness relocation when at your job for a grocery store in this faraway place, someone recognizes you} My life isn’t stressful anymore. I don’t have to wonder who I’ll find on my couch at three o’clock in the morning, or check my backseat before getting in my car. I don’t have to thoroughly inspect seals on containers and examine my food before eating out in restaurants. I no longer have to avoid busy intersections or make excuses to always ride alone. I’m not forced to have a backup plan with alternate routes to get from point A to point B these days. What I have is a home in Bear Lake, Idaho, nearly cut off from the world. I work a routine job at the local Stop-n-Sav just to fill some hours in my stretched out days. I could be anyone I wanted to be, but who I wanted to be was a hermit. And the government didn’t mind at all. They were thankful to have someone that wouldn’t cost a bundle and that wouldn’t be a headache. Bear Lake isn’t much of a tourist destination, and certainly wouldn’t be for the colleagues I had in my past life. They’re all the glitzy glam of Vegas or West Palm Beach. Here we have mountains, but not the pristine slopes…
{#48 Word count 100. Write a eulogy for a famous fictional character. Only reveal who it is at the end} She was the hottest trick in shoe leather, all the beaus of the county after her. And no wonder, with a seventeen inch waist! But she married Mister Charles Hamilton to provoke her true heart’s desire. Shortly thereafter, widowed by the war, she moved to Atlanta to join her sister-in-law and aunt. She nursed injured soldiers at the hospital near the depot for a time and delivered her SIL’s baby with little to no help from her simpleminded darkie. She finally left Atlanta with her stolen mule once the Yankees began to burn it. She, her SIL, the newborn baby, and maid waited out the Union Troops under a bridge in a flood. Upon returning home she found that the farm had been seized by Union Troops and all their livestock and crops had been ransacked and stolen. Her mother dead, and her father gone batty, she was forced to be at once both the lady of the house and the overseer. She shot a Yankee deserter who broke into the house while her family picked cotton in the scorching hot red clay fields. Flat broke, father now gone as well, she and her mammy fashioned a dress of curtains to beg for tax money for the farm from a wealthy gentleman she had befriended in Atlanta, but all was in vain. It was…
Connect the dots Of my little spots And see my moss On which I lay. I am slimy I am cold I am fast But I’m not bold. I like the mud Best of all I’ll hide from hikers Both great and small. You must be quick To see me there Perched on a rock Near my lair. Some think snake Others think frog I am neither Beneath my log. If I had a shell I could not squeeze Between these roots So if you please Don’t pick me up As I scurry away Just admire my spots And be on your way. Please enjoy this picture by my good friend Timothy H. Fisher (aka The Hiking Fish) more than you enjoyed my bad poetry. Please hold my good friend Beth responsible for my bad poetry, as she gave me the prompt and I couldn’t think of a good story to tell. I only have two salamander stories, and neither are especially entertaining. One ends with dead, extremely smelly salamanders, anyway. Please get more information about the Salamander Capital of the World here. No foolin’!! Home of Dolly Parton AND salamanders!!! Please see Fish’s gallery at https://www.facebook.com/thfisherphotography/ He writes too…
{#262 The monologue of a serial killer before court on why he did it} “It’s funny how you can see people, you know, and think how much better lookin’ they’d be dead. I mean, I get it, we’re supposed to wait on the wraith of God to strike ’em down, but I never was much none for patience….and this ol’ girl, she was on a bad road, y’know? In a bad way, doin’ bad things with bad people. And her little boy deserved better’n that, so I just waited one night, when she was comin’ up her walk, there, in them slutty shoes and that indecent dress you could see straight through, and she was a-rootin’ through ‘er bag for ‘er keys. And I was sittin’ there a-waitin’ crouched down real low-like beside them bushes and I just reached out and caught ‘er. She didn’t even get a chance to scream. That clothesline, hit was a good ‘un, paid six dollars for it up at the hardware…I knew it wouldn’t give till the job was done. Hit sure didn’ take long, neither. She had one of them real skinny necks you see on girls that do so many drugs. Her breath was right awful, though. I don’t know what she’d drunk…
Day 3 of the rest of my life. And the rest of yours. I’m digging these prompts, I hope you are too. {#240 You are taking medicine that you’ve been required to take for a year now. You notice that the label seems strange though, you peel it back to find something curious.} 6:00 a.m. A struggle. One eye open to mash the big silver button. Sleep. 6:13 a.m. Did you know you could set your snooze to more than nine minutes? You do now. Although I could probably use at least another hour of REM, the team could use me. I rise, and is my custom, head for the medicine cabinet. I should really invest in one of the those pill-a-day containers, because halfway through my first cup of coffee I’ll be wondering if I already took it. But of course I did. I do it first thing every day so I know I did. My eyes are adjusting as I try to focus on my face in the mirror. Law, another zit. How come when you hit nineteen they don’t just up and disappear? Here I am, nearly twice that, and they’re still popping up unwanted on my chin. Or on my cheek. On the inside of the my nose. Those little bastards HURT. I shake out my allergy pill, my vitamin, and my script. It’s a small thing, innocuous…
Greetings on this second day of January. Monday it was tropical, today it was frigid. Whatever. I work inside, what do I have to complain about? Besides coming out of spin class and the sweat at my hairline forming ice crystals, that’s all. Other than that, though, all is well. On this second challenge, I flipped a little further into the book. Seems I ruffled some feathers yesterday with not telling the whole story. Hey, the choice wasn’t mine!! Think about yours truly over here, wanting to tell about the rest of the gruesome night and I had to stop. This is why I don’t play by the rules. Rules generally suck. You’ll be soothed by today’s. Instead of typing it all out, I’m just gonna show you what it says. Wicked fun, right? Since Beth was the first to give me feedback on yesterday’s, she got to choose the letters. She didn’t know what she was choosing letters for, and I obviously didn’t tell her what they stood for. This was my version of pulling them out of a hat. Now I have to write quickly because it’s my bedtime. Spin took a lot out of me. Leave your worries and cares on the bike! Hey, I went almost ten miles in 45 minutes. But this, this is my passion. BSATD {Or, as they are known here: hubcap, hair…
