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Amy
{#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…
Happy New Year!!! 2019. Hmm. I’m challenging myself to write more this year. Last year I set a goal of reading more, which I achieved, but not the number of books I wanted to read (75, I only got to 63). I took up a digital farming game back in the summer and unfortunately my reading fell by the wayside. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I got a Kindle book: 1,000 Awesome Writing Prompts. I was skimming through it recently and found out they are, indeed, awesome. I’m starting haphazardly at the 9% mark and will be flitting around to wherever suits me. Or I might get all brave and do a blind selection. Anyway, this particular prompt that piqued my interest is in the Flash Fiction section. I didn’t even know there was such a thing, so I’m learning already! Flash fiction is either a word count maximum or a maximum time you’re allowed to write on the subject. Or I guess both! It sounds truly challenging for me, as I tend to get carried away, but perfect for the first day of the year when we’re all laying around after foundering on shrimp & cheese grits, cornbread, and collard greens. I still have all my decorations to put away. Except the big tree. It was dead as a hammer so I took care of it Sunday. So hopefully this will get me back in…
“Not everyone is as lucky as you are,” is a phrase I’ve heard my whole life. I would just roll my eyes and march off, thinking of all the ways I didn’t have it made, all the little disappointments and injustices. My hair was unmanageable, I always had some pimples, my legs were never what you would call shapely. I was rarely permitted to stay overnight with friends and forget about going anywhere on a weeknight. I wasn’t what anyone would deem “cool” due to my penchant for riding horses and to make matters worse, I wore glasses. Going all the way through school in the town you were born in presents its own problems. Guys don’t ask out girls that have thrown up on their shoes. Guys don’t ask out girls who write their English papers for them. Guys don’t ask out girls who don’t smoke weed, pretend to be dumb, and don’t wear flashy jewelry and experiment with makeup. High school guys don’t, anyway. I had friends, though. They were all cooler than me. There was the cheerleader, there was the wild girl, there was the math whiz. I was none of those. I wore my cowboy boots and listened to the Beatles. I just wanted to be included on the weekend activities and have somewhere to go when I didn’t want to go…
I’m sure you sniggered a little reading those words from me. ‘Cause of COURSE I know it. I know everything. That’s why y’all love me. But no. I’m asking you, how do YOU know? “How do I know what?” you ask. Are you confused yet? Or just tired of me? I’ve not written in awhile and I feel like driving you just a little crazy before I get down to it. I’m not serving up meat and potatoes right off the bat! You gotta endure cocktail hour. Which, as we all know, is the best part. Ok I’ll stop. I get tired of hearing myself ramble, believe it or not. And I gotta go to bed eventually. How do you know it’s Christmas? Obviously not from the stores, who start placing their wares in June. (Looking at you, Hobby Lobby. But wait! I’m not complaining. I love Christmas. Drag out all the sparkles and glitter for as long as possible, I love it. Truly.) Do you know it by the weather getting that frosty edge of the morning? Or by the Christmas carols on the radio? Do you know it from all the tasty treats that start to become commonplace in the office? Maybe from well wishes coming to your mailbox? I’ll tell you how I know. How I’ve always known, apart from looking at…
