Friday 29 August 2014

100 Words: Upon the Boiling Sea

They still called him Youngster although he’d been aboard some five years and there were crew members much younger and less innocent.  He didn't mind, though, had never minded because he hated his real name.

Sailing the boiling sea was treacherous, their large ship was designed to roll very little, conduct no heat and keep the steam away from its crews’ faces.  Yet all feared falling in.

He had seen it once, heard the scream (there was only ever one), and knew he would never take a risk. 

The taste of the fallen, though… that was worth taking a risk.




Written for 100 Word Challenge #392 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Youngster.

Desert Island Rules

He and Terry had been stuck on an uninhabited island for several weeks now hoping for rescue.  Terry was a man of structure and had begun to lay down the law early on.  John had always been less organised and this suited him as he didn’t really want to think too much about practicalities. 

And Terry’s rules had made sense for a long time.  It was sensible to ration what supplies they had been shipwrecked with, to explore the island together, to only swim with the other watching, to limit exposure to the sun, to take turns in testing the food found.

Now, with the food supplies from the boat gone, Terry was still insisting on rationing the food, despite there being more than enough coconuts and fruits and berries of various kinds on the island to keep them going forever.  And keeping the curfew going now they knew the forests so well seemed ridiculous to him.  John had lived for his midnight strolls back home.

After Terry forbade John to use the latrine immediately before him, he began to think about how long it had been since he had eaten meat.  They had had found no animals on the island, only fruit.  And Terry had not yet outlawed murder.


Once Terry’s remains had been laid to rest, John began to explore further and generally do as he pleased.  His life became a fine one of solitary pursuits in a tropical setting.

It was too late he realised Terry was too close to the water supply.


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, "Your rules are really beginning to annoy me," taken from the film Escape from LA.

100 Words: The thing at the bottom of the garden

They found it at the very bottom of the garden and she instantly forbade them to touch it.  Then banned them from the bottom third.

Over the coming days her mind kept wandering to it, her head and eyes kept looking down the garden toward it, her feet strayed off path a few times, just for a moment, before she remembered her own rules.

On the ninth day, though, she gave in.

In a trance, she walked smoothly down the garden, her children watching from the window.  They were the only witnesses, no one ever really believed them. 

“She’s inside.”


Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

WILD LIFE 



Wednesday 27 August 2014

250 Words: Stuff inspired by phrases picked out from 250 (Jumbled) Words, No 4: Remember pages

Remember pages,
Remember stages
Of my days of diary.

Remember pages,
Remember wages
Paid to keep my diary.


Forget the details,
Forget the fails
Listed in my diary.

Forget the details,
Forget the wails
Littered through my diary.


I remember they kept me prisoner for years, those leather bound volumes kept hidden away.  Each night they would call and I’d slave away with pencil or pen transferring my travails onto paper. 

I’d glue clippings too, and crudely drawn pictures of things seen, those loved; slogans, poems, quotes... 

I remember there were changes as time went by, as I moved between bands or pen preference, styles, magazines, newspapers; the whole epoch itself was divided into eras. 

It took its toll, though, ground me down as I wore the pencil’s nib or drained the pen’s ink.  I carried on because it felt vital to me, it carried me through.  I paid to crest along neatly.


Looking at them now, talking to others, I realise I’ve also forgotten much.  Wrongs committed are barely mentioned or not listed; the endless whining of inaction and the absence of real life: everything that made me stop, everything that makes me glad those days are done. 

And yet I fondly remember pages hidden in my diary and the release- the abandon that
was all the liberation I needed and desired.  My room was all the world, all the stage, I required.  I adored those times at the time, and I survived those times thanks to those pages.

FYI: 250 (Jumbled) Words - follow Jumbled tag for others from it, too.

Friday 22 August 2014

Numbers

They were my numbers, I was sure they were my numbers.  I checked and re-checked and yet, on the phone, they said the prize had been claimed.  I spoke really quite sternly at them until they suggested perhaps I was applying my numbers to the wrong day.  When I saw they were right, I apologised a lot and hung up, red-faced and terribly embarrassed. 

It was only then that I noticed the haunted hotel story and recalled a conversation I had had with my son about both that and the lottery competition. 

What a cruel trick to play.

I had to get him back.

I acted quickly and worked fast, without thinking about it too much, if I’m honest.

That’s how I ended up ruining his chances with the girl he’d really liked for ages.  They were just starting to get close, apparently, and my leaking of photos of him building his model railway had dampened her enthusiasm, somewhat, sending him back to the romantic drawing board.

If she really likes him, she’ll come round, I’m sure.

I don’t think he will mess with his mother again, though.

Hopefully.


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

 

Lyssa Medana

100 Words: As I left for St Louis, MO

After the plague, most towns and cities were abandoned to allow survivors to group together maintaining what we still had, rebuilding societies elsewhere.  I decided on St Louis, an image of her Gateway Arch filling me with hope as I walked there.

As we stopped tending our landscapes, nature began taking over again.  There had been talk of this return for a while, cracking sidewalks and crumbling walls. 

It was as I left town that I saw it.  I hadn’t thought nature would reclaim vehicles, yet there it was, a plant growing from a van.  “Life finds a way,” indeed.


Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT -Copyright-Roger Bultot 

Copyright-Roger Bultot

 

100 Words: After the Stag

He cursed them as he stamped along the wharf having woken naked, cold and with a terrible headache.  They’d left him clothes, at least.  A sou'wester and hat filled with fish and stinking so bad he spent half the walk dry retching.

Filled with anger, he felt they’d gone too far.  Sure, he’d participated before, ramped it up with each marriage.  This, though, was too much and he was determined to tell them so.  Especially when the rain hit.

He never did.  Not after finding a stag worse off: in lingerie, handcuffed to a bhoy and sick from the bobbing.


Written for 100 Word Challenge #391 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Wharf.



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Monday 18 August 2014

250 Words: What happened when we summoned the Biblical Beast

We dabbled a lot at Uni and for a few weeks it was with the occult that we concerned ourselves.  It started with ouija boards run by us before we started to explore the darkest recesses of the oldest libraries to find and explore further the arts of the dark.  And after one too many Hammer Horrors, we decided to summon the Beast of Revelations.  And to slay him.

We did it in the middle of a rainy, stormy winter’s night, sat in a chalked circle on the hard floor of the basement laundry room.  As the rattle of the windows in their frames grew evermore, and the candles flames flickered more violently, so our chanting grew more determined, finally fixing itself on the repeating of the numbers,  “616.  666. 616.  666...”

On we went, continuing even as the Beast began to appear: a dim, ghostly pillar of light that slowly transformed to take the rough shape of the Beast, before becoming more solid until he was formed in completeness. 

He was not what we had expected.

Before us stood a man dressed in a blood stained toga (so he had already been slain!) who jabbered in what we presumed was Latin.  Fearful and scared was his tone, and the look on his face grew with concern, then horror, at his modern, and very non-Roman, surroundings. 

As was soon the case for those surrounding him as we began to look to one another mouthing, “How do we send him back?” 

Sunday 17 August 2014

Hidden in Alphabetical Order

“Here it is, hidden in alphabetical order, as you thought,” whispered Steve as he pulled an ancient tome from the shelves of the classic fiction section.

“Excellent,” replied Jackie, “He served us well by moving it from Special Collections.”

Together the pair returned to the office with their precious find.

“What now?” asked Steve.

“We wait.”

The book had been missing for decades, ever since it had moved it to the barely used classic fiction section, in practice more a museum display of books, and MISSING was stamped on its record card.  On a high shelf it sat unnoticed while a feverish hunt had gone on around the world to no avail.

It looked unassuming enough.  A plain navy blue cover with chipped gold edging, the faded name of the author and title upon the spine.  Events, though, had transpired; secrets had been discovered and now it was down to Jackie and Steve to protect them.

After they had been waiting a short while, Steve asked, “What’s so special about this book- it’s just a lot of old stories and pictures.”

“Not everyone thinks they are merely stories, do they, you know that.

“It is not that, though you are right.  

“This book is a one-off and it hides a secret, supposedly.  A secret the author took to his grave, only for it to be discovered centuries later.  Hidden somewhere inside is the means to find the entrance to the Underearth and all those hellish creatures and people who live there - including He Who Destroyed, of course.”

Steve shuddered.  “Why not burn it then?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, that might be best.  Our predecessor didn’t in case someone ever had a good, genuine need to go down there.  The information could well be dangerous but in the right hands could do a lot of good.”

At that moment, a youngish man with close cut hair and beard walked in.  

“I was expect-” started Jackie.

The man pointed at the book and gave a page number, “They sent me instead.”

Steve opened the book, saw the picture and was amazed when he saw the caption.

Jackie was less impressed.  “You expect us to believe you’re Merlin.  Any wizard can change their appearance.”

“Only I know about that portrait.  You know how little seen that book has been.  Anyone else would have killed you already.  And..”  He pointed to the window behind them. 

Beyond it stood a tree where one had not stood before.  One that could only have been Merlin’s tree with its singular leaves and beyond ancient boughs.

“Fine.  Take it.”

Merlin stepped forward, whisked the book away, turned his back and was quickly gone.

Back to his tree and his endless movement with another item to add to the collection of things he knew his future apprentice would one day give away and help cause the end.


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, "There it was, hidden in alphabetical order," by Rita Holt.

100 Words: The rose I have set my life to win !

My vision of her etched in my memory, carried as a keepsake, a reminder of my promise to win the Rose of Upland Farm.

At every dance I searched for her, praying I could at least be her partner for a few minutes.  I begged my father to approach hers, to enquire.  I walked past the farmhouse often, hoping for a second glance.

When these avenues came to naught I began to believe she’d been an apparition, a tantalising trick of those beautiful red roses.  

Until I saw her from my window. She’d seen my gaze, had been searching too. 



Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt (well, more from the quote featured, which became the title- I found the poem (available here, and below) it is the last line of and wrote something to follow on from it):


Image courtesy of the British Library and taken from page 115 of 'A round of days described in original poems by some of our most celebrated poets, and in pictures by eminent artists engraved by the Brothers Dalziel'

A LIFE IN A YEAR. THE OPEX WINDOW. 



She had but lately come from school ; 

I had not seen her when in the calm 
Breath of the Summer morning cool 

I took my way past the Upland Farm. 

What did the Summer roses say, 

That round the half- opened casement clung ? 
Bed, red to their very hearts were they : 

Did they tell me that I and the world were young? 
Just for a moment they swayed and shook, 

Parted to show me a sudden face : 
Can a face alter a life ? a look 

Make of the world another place ? 

Just for a moment the roses shook, 

And a face looked out from among them, then 
Vanished but not from my heart the look, 

At a window that never will shut again. 
Still at the Upland Farm the rose 

Blows on the wall and blooms within ; 
Still in my heart it blooms and blows, 

The rose I have set my life to win ! 


100 Words: The desk that would change everything

He thought buying an old writing desk would change everything.  “The thoughts and writings gone before will inspire me,” he thought.

Once home he sat on the chair and it creaked in a welcoming way.  He moved forward, another creak urged him on.  He leaned down on the desktop, pen in hand, and a further creak said, “This is it!”

But they were misleading.  As he moved his pen and his bum, creak after creak became a cacophony that completely blocked his creativity.  

Before long the desk became a storage cupboard and he worked silently at a flat packed desk.


Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:


PHOTO PROMPT -Copyright - Jan Wayne Fields

Copyright – Jan Wayne Fields

Saturday 9 August 2014

100 Words: Strange Houses

Seek me out in the strange house, seek me out below the edge, where the stairs take you straight down beyond the lip of the cliff.  

We are not the strangest house.  You can see that abode from mine.  I sup there every fifth Sunday- on those days seek me there.

It is out to sea, the strangest house, tall and thin and built upon a rock, a light shining and spinning from its top every night.  Inside it is mostly stairs that go up.  

I am told this is not unusual but I find it strange all the same.


Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:


Björn 6

Copyright-Björn Rudberg



100 Words: The End of Roving Jack the Pirate Hunter

I travelled fastest when I travelled alone, roving and flitting between ports tracing my prey.  With a partner I’d be open to backstabbing, would waste time discussing decisions.  We could split up, sure, cover more ground, but I refer you to the 8th word of the last sentence.  

I had an assistant once, he felt like an anchor.

Until that day, of course.  Stranded upon a small island between Caribbean Isles, she found me wandering the beach despondent.  My life saved, I had to disclose my reasons for being there.

And now we are Jack and Jill: Roving Pirate Hunters.


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from both the written prompt ("He travels the fastest that travels alone," by Rudyard Kipling) and the following picture prompt:


Image courtesy of the British Library from Roving Jack the Pirate Hunter, published 1867, a romance

100 Words: Sick of the Tales

Charles was sick of the tales of his father: his honourability, his quests, the deeds he’d
accomplished before he was grown; and his rebellion against the old evil.  How could anyone live in such shadows?  He shivered thinking about it, sick of “not living up to his name”.

Edward was sick of the tales of his son: the cruelty, the lack of sense and desire for questing.  He might have achieved a lot but there was still much and more to do.  Your name can become what you make of it but Charles was despoiling his before he was grown.


Written for 100 Word Challenge #389 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Tale.

Friday 8 August 2014

250 Words: Banishing the Nightmare

The final showdown came after several nights in which I got closer and closer to either snatching the creature out of the thin air or swatting it with dreamed up weapons.

Soon, though, I resolved that I could never get quick enough and that what was required was something more real and the following occurred:

I dreamed I was in bed trying to sleep.  I couldn’t regain sleep because something was scratching at the glass covering a print hanging above my chest of drawers.

I was once more confused about the sound I heard every night and slowly eased myself up to take a look.  As I caught sight of the creature, it stopped the scratching and turned to look at me.

This time, though, rather than look back at it, I summoned all the strength I had within me and moved my eyes, just my eyes, toward my bedroom door.  Curious, the creature looked across and so, before it had time to leap at me, I did; or started to at any rate.

I stood up on my bed, bringing the duvet with me so that as the creature sprang at me I was able to capture it.  The last thing I saw before I woke was its surprised face.

I woke up when I hit the floor on top of a duvet, under which was a writhing mound.  I took the cricket bat I’d left on the floor and bashed the mound until the writhing stopped.  Problem solved.



Wednesday 6 August 2014

250 Words: The Nursing Home Nightmare

Fran’s Grandfather lived in a nursing home in Kent and I pretended to be an oral history interviewer in order to get in.  Once alone with the man I came clean and asked him about the creature.

“You are the first to believe me.  The staff here said we’d made the scratches ourselves,” he told me.  “Well, it’s hard not to when I’m living it.  I guess I wouldn’t have before.”

He told me how the creature had been visiting a different room each night, frightening the inhabitant and leaving its mark somewhere in the room.  “Often destroying cherished photographs,” he added, looking away at where his had presumably once stood.

“In the end my desperation grew to the point I felt all I could do was fight back.”

“I’ve tried that but it’s always too fast.”

“You must become the master of your own dreams.  I know it’s hard-  it took a death here before any of us could bring ourselves to take it on.  It’s like in Inception: you must not be scared to dream creatively, even if no one’s dreams are quite as epic.  It is on your ground, young man, and that is its weakness.  It can only win while fear rules your dreams.”

I went away with hope in the knowledge that one of these creatures, at least, had been defeated, though not knowing why it was there.  “I wish I knew the answer to that.  Just a case of bad luck it would seem.”

Monday 4 August 2014

250 Words: The returning Nightmare

Over the following weeks similar episodes occurred, each time the creature appearing in a different place in my room: various parts of the wardrobe, each drawer in turn, under the bed, on the lampshade, behind the teasmaid, even on the landing- entering the room slowly, its eyes shining brightly in the gloaming: always appearing accompanied by the awful scratching that would keep me awake in the dream and cause me to look up in its direction- and always the marks when I woke up: gradually my bedroom began to resemble that of someone who’s taken against the walls with a pair of scissors.

I began to become too scared to sleep, trying to stay awake all night in the hope of avoiding the creature.  Always, though, I would eventually succumb; always it returned.

I tried dousing myself with sleeping pills, hoping to dull my brain’s senses enough to halt the dream but that didn’t work either.

I googled the problem, visited forums.  Nothing.

I even started to try and take the creature on in my dreams but it was always too fast for me to even move.

In the end the answer came at work.  Gradually I became more despondent during the day.  Plus I was looking worse and worse.  Most people ignored this, kept their distance.  Not Fran, though; dear Fran.  She told me I was looking like her Grandfather had until recently, “Said it was all down to some night-time spirit, the mad old coot.  Fine now, though.”

Friday 1 August 2014

100 Words: X Marks the Spot

He saw the building that formed a cross and knew it was time.  He took his leave of the crew and the passengers, apologising for the inconvenience, picked up the bags of money and exited via the stair ramp, which conveniently dropped down from the bottom of the craft.

As he parachuted softly down, he steered himself toward his target, a second cross-shaped building, in this case a church, and thought about all the ways he would spend the money he had earned. 

After the minister had helped him move the money to the crypt, he apologised too; for squealing.


Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:
PHOTO PROMPT- Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields 
PHOTO PROMPT- Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields 


100 Words: May cause anxiety

“But I want to sleep,” I groaned to myself on reading the warning on the packet: May cause drowsiness.

I had not slept, or hardly slept, or not slept properly (which I couldn’t have said) for days.  During the day I daydreamed about dreaming, sleeping deeply and soundly while adventuring in the far flung corners of my mind, but at night I just couldn’t.

So I’d resorted to pills but the warning only filled me with the anxiety I felt each night as I begun another failed attempt to sleep well.

Perhaps Plan B: Get Smashed would become my approach.



Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the both the written prompt, "Instructions on a pack of sleeping tablets - "May Cause Drowsiness""

100 Words: Faded Wallspace

As I left I looked back on my old domain, covered in bright patches where posters and pictures had been.  All else, the parts that had seen it all, were faded as if jaded or worn by the years of watching me.

If they even took notice.  If they did they would have seen much and nothing.  Events that mattered to me, even though they mostly only involved sitting reading (occasionally love letters), listening to music (and compiling compilations), watching TV (some with added undersheet activity). 

And now I leave, a new life ahead, a new room to possibly bore.  



Written for 100 Word Challenge #388 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Faded.