Welcome to the fun as we round out October. Go check out the prompt and show us the amazing inside of you. Also, let me know if you're doing Nano this year (my name over on the boards is lissajean if you want a friend) and if you're a pantser/planner/rebel/etc. Go write! Have fun! :)
If you haven't read the full version of the rules, go here. Otherwise, here's the short version:
Rules:
1. Start with the given first sentence. (Allowable alterations listed below)
2. Up to 500 words (exclusive of title)
3. Keep it clean (nothing rated R or above)
4. Optional Special Challenge
5. Stories submitted must be your own work, using characters and worlds that you have created. Sorry, no fanfiction.
6. Include: Twitter/email, word count, Special Challenge accepted
7. The challenge is open for 24 hours on Tuesday EST
8. Only one entry judged per round. If you write/post more than one story, you need to indicate which you would like judged. If you fail to indicate, it will be the first one posted.
9. Winner judges next round.
Oh, and feel free to change pronouns, punctuation, tense, and anything in brackets to fit the story/pov/tone. I'm not going to be TOO picky... Our judge however...
Our Judge today is Foy S Iver. Read her winning tale from last week here! Foy S. Iver cultivates a normal life that sprung up from abnormal soil. She is a Dragon, FlashDog, and, as of recently, an Editor for Firefly Magazine (for this, she is human). Find her on the Twitter machine @fs_iver or on her website www.foyiver.com. And remember, don't touch that button...
Your first sentence for FINISH THAT THOUGHT #3-17 is:
No one tells you it's the good memories you'll resent the most.
Your SPECIAL CHALLENGE from the judge is:
Imbed 2 truths and 1 falsehood about yourself or your past.
AAAAAAAND WE'RE OFF!!!
AAAAAAAND WE'RE OFF!!!
Samoan Daydreams
ReplyDelete@studyleaks
Special challenge accepted
WC: 478
No one tells you it’s the good memories you’ll resent the most.
“Oh, so your father is from Samoa? That’s so interesting, Janet, because I actually visited Samoa as a teen, with my parents.”
Janet glanced out of the double glazed window, her eyes not meeting mine. She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair and big brown eyes, a slender figure and nothing at all noticeable to differentiate her from any of my other students.
“It was on a boat,” I continued. “Actually we went to the Sliding Rocks and we also took a princess on our boat from American Samoa to Western Samoa.” Which Samoa is your father from?”
The classroom was empty except for the two of us. The light switched off automatically as it did from periods of inactivity. Janet sat still, only tapping with her pinky on her MacBook.
“Do you know how hard you had to press, back in the day, to type out an ‘a’ or an ‘l’? Those simple letters were so problematic that I became a whizz at typing out months of business correspondence with neither.”
Janet yawned widely, her teeth straight and white. She didn’t bother to cover her mouth. Nowadays every single teen got their teeth straightened. It was covered under the standard health care. It was impossible to have a crooked smile. No one would even know what that meant when they read it in a novel. Not that people engaged in that sort of activity any longer either.
“Ok Janet, I get it. I’m rambling.”
Janet sat up straight and smiled. Yes, authenticity was the newest fad. Say it like it is, and you’ll get it right every time.
“So what is it that you’d like to ask me, Janet, since this is actually your time.” Janet shrugged. She’d never been taught to converse with her teachers. We didn’t deserve the time of day. I bit hard into the end of my old-school yellow HB pencil, and faking a cough, surreptitiously spit out paint flakes into my hand.
It had actually been the best day of those four long years. I’d been stuck on a boat with continuously bickering parents, and with a brother who only wanted to play Monopoly all day. There’d been long weeks of seeing only the ocean, deep and dark, potentially full of sharks and poisonous snakes that I still couldn’t shake from my dreams.
Then that one perfect day at the Sliding Rocks, a natural slide down a short waterfall of smooth, mossy rocks. Easy laughter; playing with other kids. No one telling me what to do that day. Just running up and down the stones to splash again and again in the cool water, under a hot sun.
No one tells you that no one wants to hear those memories. And that was the crux of the matter.
Light the Corners of My Mind
ReplyDeleteDave @ParkInkSpot
492 words, special challenge accepted
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No one tells you it's the good memories you'll resent the most, because those are the memories most painful to lose. No one misses the memory of a bully, the one who broke your nose on the school bus. No one misses a wet and nasty buzzard-breath kiss from a great aunt with a great deal too much mustache hair. No one will miss the memory of those terrible freshman dorm dinners, the mystery meat with watery ketchup and a side of teeth-breakingly al dente pasta.
Forgetting those terrible memories is a blessing. Most people repress them without effort and never notice any difference.
That's not what the court mandated, is it?
The series runs on the monitor again. Images flicker on the monitor at a rate of several frames per second. Some people I know, some people I do not recognize at all, and some people who appear to be Asian, or Italian, or Maori; but don’t trigger any change in my pulse or respiration.
For less than a heartbeat, I see a face that I do recognize. Dr. Penrose calls out, “Hit, pulse increasing, pupillary response on Image 87.”
He’s caught me again. His monitors have, anyway.
“Nicolette Sanchez. Of course you remember her, don’t you, scumbag?”
Don’t encourage him. Avoid eye contact.
“Oh, this one is a good one. Look at that sassy skirt, as if she was communicating directly with you. You thought she put that outfit on just to please you, right?”
I just work on keeping my breathing under control. Of course, his monitors answer every question he poses. I gave up trying to lie weeks ago. There’s just no point. You can’t lie to his monitors, and if you try the pain only gets worse.
“You became obsessed with her several years ago. Last year, you began stalking her. That ended well, didn’t it? Do you remember the FBI, the guns and tasers? Of course you do. Give us a playback on file 817, Bob.”
His assistant Bob calls up the file and plays the pain memory. Electricity locks my muscles tight, I’m twitching on the floor while fire burns through my body, and I scream and scream.
“It hurtses us, doesn’t it precious? Yes, it does. Playback 163 for this scumbag.”
I’m four or five, and dreaming of the ocean, waterfalls, crashing waves, and wake up in bed. I groan when I feel my bladder let go in the prison jumpsuit.
“All right, that’s enough fun and games. Time to burn her out, let’s do… File 905, and up the voltage to eight hundred percent. Bye bye to Nicolette, forever.”
For the first and last time, I reach out to touch her honey hair. She screams and struggles, and I lose my grip. The knife slips in far too easily, and hot blood explodes.
My mental treatment keeps me out of the Chair. That’s the last time I’ll ever remember.
What was her name?
ReplyDeleteAstrally Projecting to Baskin-Robbins on Halloween
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No one tells you it's the good memories you'll resent the most. I think this while sitting in this chair with my eyes being the only things that can move, freely, like smooth flowing dreams ricocheting off the stone walls of reality. You feel the soul swirl in the cone of your body like those lazy summer walks with my father to Baskin-Robbins and picking one of the 31.
We never know what we have till it is gone. No matter how aware you are at any particular moment. You do not know. And I imagine we will not know life, anyone, till we die and look at it from afar and then it will be so clear. Like a rock in your hand. Or winter on your face at midnight. Or a first kiss devoured like a banquet. I can see myself clearly, now, because I am astrally projecting and am on the ceiling looking down at myself in a wheelchair paralysed from the neck down.
To love and lost or never to love at all. Balanced here on the ceiling I can tell you it is better to never have loved at all. That may seem cynical, or funny, but love can turn to hate the way fall leaves disguise death with rapturous beauty.
I started astrally projecting when I was 9. It just happened. I could leave my body and fly around outside like a bird using spirit wings. Now, that I am in this state, it is the only way I can get around. The only way I can leave my mind and the memories of my past physical self.
I am 31. The last flavor in the glass case. The one melting from neglect. The one I always chose. The one that was pristine with no digging. With no flavor or expectation to bury. No aftertaste afterlife.
Today is the 31st. Halloween. I am at home. My body is at home.
I am ugly.
I am a stupid.
And people think I am arrogant.
Everyone is the opposite of what they act like. Cary Grant said that. And it is true. I appear to be unaware in an Aquarius kind of way. I seem aloof like I do not care. Impersonal maybe. That is how I appear. Like a Halloween costume that we go through life with, to protect ourselves, we become... by behavior, our opposite. Now, I am free as a bird even though I appear to be immobile with saliva running down my face. I sail over trick and treater's heading to Baskin-Robbins. Heading toward a solid memory I can call my own. When I get there I move through the window and see the flavors like soft gemstones all lined up radiating a perfect love discovered. I look and that is all. I notice a young girl with her father taking the first lick of a flavor less traveled. She looks up at him and beams a smile.
And life becomes clear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(500 words)
Grxhauntedengine04@gmail.com
Special Challenge Accepted