by Mayumi-H | Sep 19, 2012 | Short Stories
It’s time, once again, for another 100 Word Challenge for Grown-Ups, courtesy of Julia, who prompts us with
…as the apple fell….
We’ve got to incorporate the prompt, which means we get a total of 104 words with which to work. For me, I’m examining a character in the rough.
“Rot”
He crunched, teeth ripping through red flesh, and sniffed at the dumb, shuffling forms below. Worms, they were: dim drones bred for labor and submission.
Not that he was better. Soldiers followed orders; the behavioral inhibitors wired through his central nervous system made certain of that.
But there had been a time…a time when he’d reveled in the rush of freedom, the flush of passions, and the squeeze of tiny fingers around his thumb….
He crunched again, then grimaced, at the wriggle of greenish, half-eaten pulp.
As the apple fell, he aimed his rifle and sniffed again.
Worms. That’s all any of them were.
Dark, perhaps, but it’s where my mind’s at, these days of rain and storms.
by Mayumi-H | Sep 17, 2012 | Fearless, Short Stories
It’s a double-whammy this week, as I’m incorporating both Julia’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown Ups (week 57) prompt of “…returning to the routine…” and Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction prompt “AWKWARD” into the same post. Actually, it’s a triple whammy, since I’m also using Monday’s Fearless post to coincide.
To catch you up, Julia’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups gives writers a phrase or picture prompt, and we have 100 words (give or take; see the link for details) to write a story around it. Lillie’s Five-Sentence Fiction gives a one-word prompt, and we’re to write a flash fiction piece, consisting of only five sentences, that corresponds to said prompt.
I didn’t think I’d be able to participate at all this time around, as my schedule has been so hectic…but the pieces just fell together right, for me. (Maybe you disagree.)
“Hope In You”
![By Zelda F. Scott (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://mayumi.amorphous.press/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2012/09/256px-ballet_flat_in_the_westpark_in_bochum.jpg "Ballet_flat_in_the_Westpark_in_Bochum")
The bar turned slick beneath her hands, and her arms quivered all the way to her shoulders as her foot slid over the mat. It wasn’t from any thought or impulse, though, but mere weight, and that more than any pain or effort made the tears well.
Graceful, darling dancer: she’d never be that again, not if simply returning to the routine of standing on her dumb, labouring legs was this hard.
Spitting a plea for rest (and hating herself for it), she transferred to the chair, feeling weak, broken, hopeless.
Until she thought of him, and his smile, and pushed herself up again.
Julia’s prompt is a bit easier to recognize, here, than Lillie’s is, but hopefully you can see how I related this to both.
What awkwardness – or return to routine – did you describe, this time around?
by Mayumi-H | Sep 10, 2012 | Fearless, Short Stories
The prompt for this week’s Five Sentence Fiction from Lillie McFerrin is MEMORIES.
Once again (and keeping with my posting schedule), I’m using it to tackle some backstory for Fearless. Part of this is an effort to get back on-track…and part of it is because I think the conflict is an interesting one to examine.
“What It’s Not”
At four, he simply hadn’t known; “love” was but the smell of Christmas roast filling the kitchen, or cold ice cream sliding down his throat, or the rush of seawater between his toes.
By the time he was twelve, he’d come to understand it a bit more, though still not very much: Mum’s warm embrace, and his sisters’ gentle teasing; the joy of rolling waves to ride, and the blow of ocean air against his face.
By sixteen, though, he knew, he understood, even if he wished he didn’t. Because love like in stories was glorious and loud, full of honesty and trust, not hushed and hidden and kept secret in his breast, whispered only to the wind and the soft goose feathers stuffed in his pillow; it wasn’t a wicked laugh and a crooked smile, nor the shine of golden hair and sun-drenched flesh stretched beside him in the sand day after day. It was Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Paolo and Francesca…not this, not them, not him: Neville, and the beautiful, oblivious boy who filled his dreams.
A bit of a tortured Neville, here, but teenagers tend to be filled with angst.
What MEMORIES did you take a look at, this week?
by Mayumi-H | Sep 5, 2012 | Short Stories
“FACES” was the prompt for this week’s Five Sentence Fiction challenge, from Lillie McFerrin’s blog. We don’t have to use the word itself, just write five sentences with that word as inspiration.
My original entry was much more based within a fandom, much more referential and trying to be clever. So is this one…though, I prefer it over the original.
For all those parents who think they have any kind of control over what their children do….
“No Girls Allowed”
Larry’s only criterion was that he wanted a boy; he even had a name in mind: Thor, after the Norse god of thunder, a childhood heroic fantasy figure (though he’d accept Loki, if the personality fit).
Not to say he didn’t love his girls (and, here, he included Sally, even if he’d never call his feisty, gorgeous wife a “girl” to her face) – he loved them more than anything, in fact – but being the only man in a house with three women took its toll; there were only so many evenings he could spend with Elton, shooting 2D zombies, or with Tom, feigning interest in a single man’s problems, or with Craig, faking his way through a conversation of last night’s football match. He wanted to connect with a male who’d understand him, who’d let him be himself; he didn’t think that was too much to ask.
So, when he’d arrived home again after a two-day stint working the dealers’ room at another convention, and his girls had met him at the door with too-wide, cagy grins, asking him to “keep an open mind, don’t get upset, Daddy, please,” he’d known something was amiss, and was ready to give them an earful.
But, then, they’d pulled out that wobbly-legged, round-faced, chocolate-coloured bundle of fluff, that looked up at him with those dark, trusting eyes and that snub, twitching nose, and that happy, proud smile that promised loyalty and interest no matter how mundane, married, or how much of a geek he was…and all he could say around his creeping smile was, “I guess we can call her Sif.”
![By Ltshears (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://mayumi.amorphous.press/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2012/09/256px-chocolatelabpup1.jpg?w=227 "256px-ChocolateLabPup1")
Good old Sif.
As much as I enjoy writing for a lot of these prompt challenges…I really have to stop jumping on them so readily, and concentrate on my own work-in-progress novel. I love Ross and Amber too much to let them simply simmer, while I play in other people’s ponds.
That said, what FACES do you like examining?
by Mayumi-H | Aug 29, 2012 | Short Stories
I’m back in the world of the Stowaways, for this week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown-Ups (week 56).
Julia is offering the following for our prompt:
“…as my penance [for last week’s confusion,] I am posting what I hope is an easier prompt for you but with a link to my apology. The prompt is: … being clear is essential to …”
There was no direction that we needed to include those specific words (Julia is often very clear about that), so I didn’t. But, hopefully, you’ll see why it’s often so necessary to follow instructions.
“Turnabout”
“You’re not taking us back!” Stoll shouted, just as the hunter vaulted over the table, smashing his boot into Stoll’s face; blood arced from his nose as Stoll crashed to the floor, his rifle clattering beside.
Lelia’s pistol flashed up, but the hunter spun on her, slapping his hand to the base of her head to send her to the floor, too.
Tych squeezed his gloves around his spanner, but that was all. The next second, he was staring down the hunter’s gun barrel.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” the big man growled. “I said, you’re coming with me.”
Action is not my strong suit, but I do enjoy dabbling with it, every now and again. I figured it was warranted for this moment, seeing as it’s a follow-up to Aral’s scene, from an earlier prompt.
I’m thinking more and more I’d like to examine these characters in greater detail. Perhaps for this year’s NaNoWriMo?
How clear did your scene or story come out this week?
![By Zelda F. Scott (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://mayumi.amorphous.press/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2012/09/256px-ballet_flat_in_the_westpark_in_bochum.jpg "Ballet_flat_in_the_Westpark_in_Bochum")
![By Ltshears (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://mayumi.amorphous.press/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2012/09/256px-chocolatelabpup1.jpg "256px-ChocolateLabPup1")
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