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Browsing Tag: #fiction
I haven’t talked books with y’all in awhile. I just finished one that’s like all the rest: Devastatingly handsome guy meets girl. They fall in love. They get married. They both have brilliant, successful careers in the big city that has a small-town vibe. Guy becomes abusive. After much back and forth, girl leaves. He begs for her forgiveness and to come back. Meanwhile, girl has reunited with high school boyfriend, who is perfect in every way, wealthy, and unattached. Girl discovers she’s pregnant by dreamy, abusive, estranged husband. They try to work it out. Girl decides she’s gonna be strong and still pursue divorce. Guy is emotionally wrecked and never stops trying to win her back. The author’s note at the end said she wanted to create a strong female protagonist and show that abusive relationships aren’t always black and white. Yeah, I get that. Abusive relationships are generally created by a subtle, gentle erosion. They don’t just throw you up against the wall and break your jaw on your honeymoon. It’s a much slower process that I believe begins mentally. My problem is this. You want to create a strong female character? Well, give her a life that won’t be so great without the abusive husband. Don’t give her her own business with a strong support system of girlfriends and an understanding mom who lives…
{WP#482. A scientist created a new animal today} Breaking: Houston, TX. Associated Press Herschel Barnes, PhD, of Bayloyre Genetics, has successfully created a new creature, a hybrid formed from a nine banded armadillo (Latin: Dasypus novemcinctus) and a black tailed jackrabbit (Latin: Lepus californicus). This is not a prank, coming from the age old play of the “jackalope”. It is unknown at this time how successful captive breeding will be, as armadillos can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, while jackrabbits are a modest seven. Dr. Barnes is reported to say, “I was just messing around, seeing what I could create. When the sperm and egg fused, it was a Friday afternoon and I didn’t go home until Monday.” They’re calling it “Armarabbit”. The creature can leap a measured 17 feet flat footed, and gains an additional twelve feet if given a running start. It rivals the Kangaroo Rat for distance in relation to body size. It features long, sinewy hind legs with two inch toenails. The front feet are largely useless, and almost completely covered with scales. The reduced ears give it more of a dinosaur appearance with tufts of hair on the underside and scales topside. We were unable to secure a picture, as the world-renowned scientist is keeping things under wraps until more is researched. It is an omnivore, preferring plants over grubworms and roadkill (this reporter does, too!). By and large nocturnal, the corporation has…
{#378 They say revenge is a dish best served cold. You’ve waited ten years for this moment} The following is a work of fiction. I’ve always said fiction has a good dose of fact, mixed with some fantasy. I’ll let you determine what’s what. Enjoy! I come from a long line of rage. My lawyers tried to get me off on a insanity plea, but I told them like I told everybody else in that courtroom I wasn’t crazy and I damn sure wasn’t sorry. I don’t think that helped my case. But I’ve been taught my whole life there’s nothing wrong with the truth. I’ve also been told on numerous occasions to keep my mouth shut. I’d had all I could take. The literal love of my life expected sympathy for his foolish decisions to take a lover that has bankrupted him. That’s after what I got. I didn’t feel any sympathy, I felt a maniacal fury towards him and the last ten years of my life. I’d warned him over and over again to just shut up. My head pounded, my teeth chattered, my hands clenched. When he reached for me, I scuttled backward like a crawdad. Crawdads aren’t scared, you know. It’s just self preservation. They will fight. They will pinch you seventeen ways to…
{WP #942 The City Behind the Waterfall} My backpack weighed only eight pounds, but it may as well have been eighty. The mosquitoes were literally eating me alive, and I wondered how effective my malaria shots were if the swarm sucked all my blood and I had to have a transfusion from a native who had NOT had the recommended rounds of anti-malarial antibodies? Something else to worry about. Writing for National Geographic had been a dream of mine since I was old enough to look at the pictures, and I knew I was beyond fortunate to have this experience, but the tribesman scout that I had been assigned to was a brutal hiker and I was dog tired. I missed my dog, speaking of dogs. I missed chili dogs from street vendors in Chicago. I missed going to the movies to see a chick flick. I missed my beautiful canary yellow Volkswagon Beetle. I missed getting all the electricity I needed from a wall socket. I missed makeup and uncomfortably high heels, and most especially, I missed my books. I collapsed on a rock covered with vines. I didn’t have the energy to look for snakes. All I’d seen were lizards lately, anyway. They liked lounging on my tent. My Bushman stopped his whacking and faced me with the universal quizzical “How can she be tired already? Wimpy girl” look. I feel sure that if he knew how to roll his eyes…
Last month for Book Club we read Karen White’s The Night the Lights Went Out. We were all enamored with the story of Sugar Prescott, about whom not nearly enough was told. So I decided to breathe a little more life into her. This one’s for my girls. When I won the election for mayor, my brother Harry very nearly lost his mind. He had always been a vexation to my spirit, but he became downright unbearable. I wasn’t about to bake brownies and call nice, he should be treating me to a celebratory dinner at the nicest steakhouse in three counties. But we all knew THAT wasn’t going to happen. He even tried to run a a smear campaign against me!! Like there’s any dirt to be had that he could tell on me without incriminating himself. And that mealy mouth ninny he married! Trying to get me, Sugar Prescott, kicked out of the Country Club? Foolishness. There wouldn’t have been a country club if it hadn’t been for me begging Daddy to donate the land so we could have a nice tea there every once in a while. Where else was I supposed to throw Willa Faye’s showers? The basement of the Credit Union? No, no, no. Anyway. Ten years after that nasty business with Curtis that we do not speak of, I somehow found myself in the thick of uncovering some…
{#777 “I shouldn’t have consumed that water from Saturn”} My name is Amy Farrah Fowler Cooper. I married the world famous string physicist Sheldon Cooper in a small ceremony five years ago, and to date, this has been my greatest accomplishment. Admittedly, this is a fairly disparaging state of affairs, as I should be as famous as he is for my work in neuro-biology. But I’m not. So, one day about four years ago, Rajesh came to me bragging about how they were putting a man on Saturn like they had back in the sixties with the moon. Howard was designing a top-secret Rover for it. Howard would not be going, seeing as how the one fiasco in space nearly did him in. Of course, the excitement was palatable among our little group. And now we await the return of our cadet and all the spoils from deep space nine. Rocks for the geology lab. Some dirt for the ecologists. And data for everyone! Except me. I could study the brains of the astronauts, but I didn’t expect to find anything different than I ever had before. Maybe some endorphins from going where no man had ever gone before, pardon the pun, but no Earth shattering evidence of anything. I was bemoaning my woes to Sheldon that evening over dinner when he said in that offhand way he has with actual interesting information (instead of his usual tedious fact sharing…
{#411 The story you shouldn’t have overheard on the bus} I was looking at their shoes and thinking they didn’t belong. I admit, I judge people by their footwear. I can’t help it, I profile. Forrest was right, you can tell a lot about people by looking at their shoes. Where they are headed, where they’d been. And these Christian Louboutin’s did NOT belong on a scuzzy old city bus past midnight, or any other time. You’ll find duct taped running shoes on the bus. Or polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life secondhand oxfords. Or sensible thick soled lunchlady shoes. People eking their way through life, working two jobs in order to scrape by. But never Louboutin’s. Maybe some knockoffs on a hooker, some that she’d painted the soles red to fool no one. Because the people who knew what Louboutin’s were knew they weren’t gonna find ’em on a girl painted up like a brazen hussy at two o’clock in the afternoon. But as I was saying, it wasn’t two o’clock in the afternoon. It was two in the morning and I sat very still in my muddy Redwing work boots, pretending to look at my phone but really watching a guy on the aisle two rows up on the right, silently nodding along to his iPod music. Or maybe he…
{#112 A man goes to a pawn shop with one single item. What is the item, why is he at the pawn shop?} Jena chose C, the word prompt is peanuts. This should truly be a challenge…🙄 ********************************** He was down on his luck. He was down on his knees. He was in a pawnshop two towns over. “They’re magic beans,” he assured her. “Man, you crazy!” She replied, flipping a long braid over her left shoulder, popping her grape gum loudly. This was followed by the drumbeat of her outrageously painted nails on the scuffed glass countertop. Girl sure could make a lot of noise. “I’ll give you a dollar, Jack, and that’s just because I’m kinda hungry and don’t want to eat another candy bar.” “They’re magic beans,” he insisted. He was here because these truly priceless magic beans, disguised as lowly legumes, had broken him. They had broken him mentally, physically, and financially. He would have sold his soul to the devil as a young man to get his hands on them…but now…now they only caused him pain and remorse. “They’ll take you anywhere you wanna go. You just gotta believe.” “Where I come from, you put ’em in a RC cola and watch ’em fizz,” she said absently. He shrugged, keeping his eyes steady…
You don’t have to crack the spine to read a book. I’d prefer you never crack it at all. If given the opportunity and GIFT of holding a brand new book in your hands, simply open it, fan through the pages a couple of times and gently bend the front and back covers 90°. That’s all that is necessary for breaking in a new book. Now, once you’ve chosen your new book, or it has chosen you, as is so often the case, you just open it up and get to reading. My preference is to be in a chair I can nest in, with my water and chapstick nearby, under a good light. I plan to stay awhile. I don’t want to be sidetracked, so I don’t have my phone near my person. I might even bring snacks. And then I’m whisked away, often to the Lowcountry, but sometimes my Book Club forces me out of my comfort zone and I have to read about the poor women in Kabul, or tribes in Africa two hundred years ago. Sometimes I don’t read about people at all. The best part about reading is there are no rules. Whenever I meet someone who says they don’t like to read, after I swallow my disdain and overall nausea, I quickly ask them about their interests. And guess what? People always enjoy reading something, whether…
{#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…
