Meeting for July16th 2022

Suzie was the only one who wrote and achieved all words in her writing for the writing prompt.

Writing Prompt: Theatre, Shaft, Husband, Colon, Locate — July 16, 2022

The theatre is dark inside, too dark to see anything. I follow my husband’s lead by the touch of his sleeve.  Halfway down the aisle, he halts. Shafts of sunbeams glow at his feet. Next, the giant movie screen lights up sending more bright light rays. I stumble, fall hard on my butt and feel a sharp pain in my colon area.

I wake up startled and feel the hot sun burning my fair skin. I locate my surroundings and see I’m sitting on a bright yellow tube in the middle of my large swimming pool at my beautiful Italian Villa. My lover smiles over at me.

__Suzie Hagen

November 24, 2015 – Prompt – All Dialogue

Prompt was to be All Dialogue  and use the words: yesterday, wallet/purse and revolver

*****

 

“Once again I have lost my purse.  Yeah , I know, if you want to find something ask the blind guy.”  

 

“Honey why don’t you put your purse in the same place all the time, I don’t  mind helping but this is getting tiresome “ he replied.

 

“Yesterday and the day before yesterday   I am always losing it and it gets frustrating “ she said.

 

“Put it the same place”

 

“Where?  thats my problem I have no place to lay it down or hang it up, she complained, just no place at all.  I use what ever place is handy then forget where it was.  I feel like I’m in a revolving door, stuck, just going round and round and accomplishing nothing”

 

“I don’t mind helping but your right about where to put the purse.  Why don’t we make a shelf or hang a hook for it?”

 

Valerie Cook

*****

 

 In Paris

“Pierre, were you in Paris yesterday?”

“Oh yes, I was there,” he said looking sad.

“What is your opinion on the matter?” The English man asked.

“We have government coming in and going out like a dance revolving around a central figure.”

“I was detained and could not attend. Were many people there?”

“The streets were lined with crowds. You could not imagine. There must have been a hundred, no maybe 200,000 people. I have never seen so many blood thirsty people in my life. Some cursed thief even stole my purse. I thought that leather sack was well hidden.”

“Now to get back to the main event, as we might call it, how was that?”

“Bloody damn awful, as you British say. It is something I never want to witness again. That damn guillotine is one hell of an instrument.”

Ellynore Seybold-Smith

 

 

October 20.2015–Prompt–red marker, belt, golden paperclip and a flask

This weeks prompt: A male character ina suit, wearing gloves and is in front of a house he has never been to before. He carries a duffel bag with four items in it. They are: a belt, a red marker, golden paper clip and a flask.

*****

Nelson brushed the grass off his trousers with gloved hand and noted with regret that his new suit now sported grass stains. “Gees, I hope I have the right house. It must be,” after all it looked exactly as described by the woman who hired him to get the job done.

Hoisting his duffel bag over his shoulder, climbing the tree that towered up to the third story, managing to jump onto the balcony, and using a gold paper clip he wrestled open the flimsy catch on the balcony door.

Yes, I’m in, he thought as he spied the sleeping figure in the nearby bed. With stealth he approached, grabbed a pillow, and with firm hand held it over the face of the nasty fellow.

When the victim was about half dead he poured alcohol down his throat, secured a belt around his neck and chucked him over the balcony. His neck snapped as the belt prevented him from falling further.  Nelson had tied it to the railing.

Authorities found a suicide note that appeared as though it was written in a drunken stupor with a broad-nibbed red marker found alongside.

Kirsten Wohlgemuth

*****

Pin-Striped Nut-Case

Poem – By Lloyd Rain – 10/22/15

 

He sported a black pin-striped suit

With only one protruding black boot

The boot was tattooed with red symbols

From the marker he held in his cymbals

 

The belt wound loosely ‘round his neck

As if he were to hang in a sec

He tipped the alcohol from his flask

To ensure through his neck all would pass

 

A crowd had assembled nearby

To observe what next he would try

Only one in his circle dared ask

“What, Sir, is the meaning of your flask?”

 

He turned to face his observer

“Is it not evident, kind sir?”

Pointing his gold paper clip at the man

“This lubricant is merely a scam.”

 

“When mixed with red markings of jam

Using this tool as a ram

Fools like you’d be surprised

At the resulting explosive ka-blam.”

 

Whereupon a truck did arrive

And attendants alighted from the drive

They gently escorted our man

Into the bowels of the van

Ensuring he was still quite alive

 

As it slowly departed the curb

Viewers wond’ring, “Is he genius or rube?”

He pointed a finger below

To the sign on the side quite aglow

With the words clearly rendered and durable

Asylum For The Confused And Incurable

 

                                              $──────══════════════ End ══════════════─────$

October 13, 2015–Prompt -cell phone & key

This weeks prompt was: You are lost in the woods. You’ve had no food for days and only have two items on your person. They are: a cell phone and a key.

*****

The cell phone Mary carried wasn’t going to help her. There was no signal. She thought back to earlier when her car ran out of gas. She remembered a filling station she passed on the road and decided to walk back. It didn’t seem far. However, she got turned around and went in the wrong direction.

She blamed her confusion on hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. She hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road and it was getting dark. She thought she saw light beckoning from some building on a side road and so she followed it deep into the forest. When she came to the end of the road there was no light. It was only the glint from the setting sun shining on the cabin window. The door was locked.

She reached into her pocket instinctively and pulled out her house key. In desperation she tried it and it opened the door. What she saw inside the room turned her world upside down. This can’t be happening she cried out as everything went black.

Linda Scott

October 6, 2015–Prompt–A Hacksaw ! ? !

Continuing give the prompt and pull the items this weeks prompt was: You’re adopted and never knew your real parents. One day a man comes to your door and says he is your father and can prove it, He produces a single items and you know he is telling the truth. The Item a hacksaw.

*****

 

Ding dong,

“Oh darn, not while I’m in the middle of getting dressed.”

Susie answered the door after quickly throwing on a dress. A tall man stood there wearing a

long black cape and top hat. She was speechless.

“Pardon me ma’am,” he said in a deep voice. “Are you Susie Hammer?”

“Yes I am,” she said with a shaky voice. “Who are you?”

“I’m your father, Harold Hammer.”

“You can’t be. My father was executed for killing my mother. You better leave or I’ll call the

police.”

“The report of my death was an exaggeration. It is me, your father in person.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Yes,”

“How?”

“Tell me how your mother died.”

“She was cut into pieces,” she stammered.

“By a hacksaw.”

“Yes.”

“Well, here it is—this is the hacksaw.” He said pulling it out from under the cape.

Susie fainted.

 

Ellynore Seybold-Smith

September 8, 2015 – Prompt (something new)

To challenge the group to think outside the box and let there imaginations soar I am trying out something new from the book 1000 Awesome Prompts. For this a scenario is given and then a number of items from the 26 that can be chosen  are randomly selected: This weeks scenario was: You are a delivery man dropping off your last package of the day. Your truck gets in a fender bender and that last package has split open spilling out five of the random items. You have to call the authorities…what was in the package and why was it so serious?

The five items: 3 dice, a belt, a red marker, a plush bear and a key.

Andy cringed as his freshly washed TRS truck was struck as he entered the intersection on Elm street. How could it be that just as he is about to make his final delivery and on this always quiet street he been hit in the rear fender by a blue Chevy pickup. As he stops and prepares  to get out he is astounded to see the truck back up, hang a Ueee and speed away.

“Damn! My shift was almost over. Just one last stop to make.” He steps on the gas hoping his vehicle is drivable but when he looks in his rear view mirror he can see the rear doors are open and spies the corner of a brown package on the ground.

He stops. Sets the emergency brake and lights and gets out. He sighs as he walks to the back of the truck. Yep, it is his last package on the ground and it contents are spilling out. “Holy Cow! What the ****.” It’s the strangest assortment of items he’s ever seen, “Shit,” he says as he lifts a gun belt complete with a  holster containing a semi-automatic pistol from the ground. He whistles. Company rules say “no guns may be sent by TRS. There are three red dice that feel slightly weighted when he shakes them in his palm. “I think these are loaded dice.” He whispers to himself and put them in his pants pocket. There’s a brass key on the ground too and it has the number 13 on it and looks like it opens a locker. Maybe at the bus station, he thinks. There are a stack of documents to which a red marker is attached. At the bottom in red are instructions saying,” Take the bear to pier 30.”

“Bear! What bear?” Andy pulls the torn edges of the box apart and then he sees the bear. Just like one he got his son when he was little. “Holy Cow!” he says again for a stream of white powder is trickling from a hole in the plush toys foot.

Andy knows he has a mess on his hands. Someone is sending illegal merchandise using the TRS delivery service. This is about drugs and guns. “I’ll call Joe. He’s the boss. He’ll know what to do. Who should be called.”

Andy the bear, gun belt, key and red marked documents back in the box. He shuts the rear doors and carries the box with him to the front of the truck. He sets the box on the floor beside him. Checks his manifest for that last address and drives on down the street.

 

 

July 28, 2015–Prompt–Once in a Blue Moon

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

Once in a blue moon my mind goes blank,

Especially when it’s called to do a prompt.

I sit, I stare, I don’t know where

I’ll get a good idea.

I struggle, I groan and look around the room

at all the creative souls

who write away, with lots to say

and fill the pages blank.

Come on, Lloyd, you are intense.

What have you got to say?

And Pamela, so focused on the white becoming gray.

Now Roseanne is up my alley, she sits

and twiddles her thumbs.

As time goes by, the moon does wane.

Ellynore Seybold-Smith

4-21-2015 – Prompt- The Hallway Was Silent

The hallway was silent.

I looked out around the door from the bedroom to make sure it was empty. I knew the guy with the AK -47 was somewhere in the house looking for me. To live, I needed to see him before he saw me.

I said to myself, “David, you have to make this shot count. You only have one rock for your slingshot.”

Fortunately for me in the next moments, he poked his head around the corner and I nailed Goliath right in the eye with my last rock.

By J. C. Gable

*****

A Utah Winter

The hallway was silent, very different from the mayhem the children usually produced. My daughter Cathy’s favorite game was to run down the hall and execute a summersault and land in the middle of the beanbag chair. I would hold my breath for fear she would smash her head aganst the wall – luckily she never did. The baby tottered  back and forth, laughing the whole time. My teenager sat on the couch clapping at ruckus. I was sure Cathy would be a candidate for the Olympics.

The winter weather and the thought of three sick children with wet feet and fevers, from playing in the snow was more than I could take. Instead I let them wear the hall carpet into shreds’. Kid are kids after all.

Carmel Westerman

April 14, 2015 – Prompt – Your a hoarder describe your compulsion

SPIDERWOMAN

I collect spiders. Yes, those critters most people hate. I find them fascinating. When I find a spiderweb outside I sit and watch it until I see a bug get caught. Then wait for the spider to suck the juice out of it. After that I carefully transfer the flowerpot or whatever the web is attached to, into the house. One time I had a black widow couple. After they mated for hours she ate him. Soon out of the eggs dozens of babies appeared.

The hardest job was attracting flies to keep them fed. A piece of rotten meat in the living room did that job. That was fine until the meat crawled off in the form of maggots. It almost made it out of the open door, but was stopped by the five tarantulas I have living under my bed.

No one understands the thrill I get when one or more of those beautiful, bulky spiders crawls over my naked body at night. The more I learn to love spiders, the less I like people.

 

Ellynore Seybold-Smith

Prompt–Feb. 3, 2015

*In Keeping with trying to change up our prompts this week I chose one from the book 1,000 Awesome Writing Prompts by Ryan Andrew Kinder. This was offered one day as a free e-book that Meleesa brought to my attention and I downloaded it. It’s prompts are different and I have gone through and highlighted some I thought would work well for us. So this weeks was: “A bird is buiding a nest. Write from the perspective of the bird and the different things (include some odd human materials) it uses to build the nest.”* The four we choose were fun or different.

 

NESTING

Hummer landed with his beak full of curly grey hair.

“Oh, Hummer, this will make our nest ideal, decorated in tones of grey—so gorgeous against your bright green throat.”

“Thank you, Hummerina! I agree with our color scheme this year and there’s a lot more of this on the ground there, a short distance away, he bobbed his head.

Hummer had sat as patient as a rock, and observed how one human sliced off the lustrous, soft material from another human’s head.

Hummerina was proud of her mate and showed her love for him by fluffing up her feathers as she thought, our cozy home sheltered in the  leafy filled tree was indeed a mansion.

She took her turn at gathering the downy fluffs of grey.

After their busy day they flew off to the ‘Red Sweet Bar’ for sustenance.

Kirsten Marie Wohlgemuth, author

*****

My name is Sam, the Osprey, and my partner is Jean.  High above the Columbia River we spend our days hunting and gathering.  Nest building consumes our spring and even though it is in my DNA, I hate it!  I love my partner but nesting just is not my thing.  She is off to the local thrift stores gathering a piece of string, special leaf, or some shiny object.  For me, I’d rather suck raw fish than be caught at Good-Will.  I still do not understand my lady.

pat stone

*****

 

Another season, another nest. Size is always the same. Location, location. location. Where will I be safe with my babies?

There seem to be so many humans around spying with cameras to document my progress. I see one that has left his lens cap cover. That cap might be heavy for my size beak, but I’m going to give it a try!

Landing on the ridge of the old mine shaft, my beak grabs the edge of the shiny plastic. My foot slips in the sand and starts a stream of of sand around the cap that floats it down into the black hole.

OK, plan B.

By Carol Christel Taylor

*****