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.

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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.

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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.”

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

 

Copyright – Madison Woods 

An InLinkz Link-up

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.

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

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.

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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.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

 

Copyright-Roger Bultot

 

An InLinkz Link-up

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.

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

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