Words for Wednesday
The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.
This week's words/prompts are:
1. suitable
2. rapturous
3. smeared
4. snuffle
5. bookmark
6. scoop
and/or:
1. snick
2. funny
3. twilight
4. espionage
5. synchronicity
6. feisty
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Sadly this is true.
ReplyDeleteI was rapturous when the smoke which smeared our sky with a nasty brownish yellow permanent twilight was gone.
I had big plans too. I had promised myself that on the first suitable day I would be back in the garden, snicking back errant growth, pulling up weeds, just revelling in being outside when breathing wasn't an issue.
Sadly some cosmic espionage system was wise to my plans, and thought it was funny to mess with them. In a nasty kind of synchronicity with the clear sky three garden loving members of my family ALL came down with simultaneous snuffles (despite not having seen each other for weeks). Snuffles which rapidly became snot city. We sneezed. We coughed. And my digestive system came to the party as well.
Clear days, clear skies and this feisty gardener became a sad, soggy miserable mess.
I tried, but I couldn't even read. Bookmarks went in, books were closed and I scooped up a box of tissues and retired to bed (with frequent dashes to the toilet).
Today I finally feel that I might live. I don't even mind. Much.
I do hope the skies are still clear when I feel up to going into the garden again...
I'm sorry to hear you've been unwell, EC...and hopefully you will be back feeling 100% again really soon.
DeleteThis week's words suited your dilemma down to the ground...or to the garden! Take good care. :)
Oh, how i hate summer colds! Hope you feel better soon, and glad you got a good story out of it.
DeleteThe snuffles were bad enough. The digestive upset was adding insult to injury.
DeleteElephant's Child; I'm so sorry that you've been unwell and just in time for sunny skies too, but you made a great story of it using my words. I hope you are well enough to read again and to get out in the garden, but please don't overdo too soon.
DeleteSnotting around (a bit), too - well wishes. Made a great story, though!
DeleteOuch, I feel your pain. I hope for more sunny and soot and snot free days for you and your garden.
DeleteWell written anyway.
Sorry to read this, a nasty time for you and when both ends are co-ordinating in the misery not pleasant at all. I hope you're on the mend now. Well done on the story.
DeleteXO
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How funny it was that finally, in their twilight years, they were achieving synchronicity in various areas of their lives.
ReplyDeleteDuring the majority of the years they’d spent together, her feisty character and her systematic secrecy, which would have been the envy of any top espionage agent, hung like a heavy cloud over their marriage.
Her secrecy about many things had smeared their relationship in a multitude of ways.
His had always been a rapturous passion; hers less enthusiastic; reserved; oft times indifferent. However, they had stuck it out, eventually finding a balance suitable to both of them.
As he pulled the old hard-covered tome from the shelf, he heard a soft snick of something falling on the polished timber floor. It was a bookmark. He bent to scoop it up. As he did so, he heard a snuffle behind him.
I am glad they found a balance. I don't believe that many relationships can be properly assessed or understood from the outside.
DeleteAre secrets about to be revealed?
DeleteLee; intriguing. Are there secrets yet untold in this marriage? Is the balance once again to be upset?
DeleteHmm this begs for a part two. Capturing story.
DeleteLeaving us hanging there. I do love the complexity of relationship stories.Well done.
DeleteXO
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ReplyDeleteIt wasn’t Suitable to think of the non-Rapturous night he’d just had. Instead, he Smeared the four corners of the bread and stared at the backsplash, unconcerned about the backlash.
He licked the knife. Waste not, want not, the spread was spread. Equally. No Nutella redlining allowed in this white, toasty neighborhood.
With the humming of the fridge, upset at having to work so early, but no other sounds around, he stood at his chair. She slept, and that was good. He needed time to digest not just breakfast, but the things told at the meeting.
“Your stories are too long,” one said.
Another had said it took so long to read his Words for Wednesday that it was often Thursday when they finished.
Angry, he snarled a bite from the brown toast, the real crunch in his head hiding the sniggers of his imagination. As the hazelnut attacked his palate for the first time in 22 hours, he sighed, lowered his head and heard a Snuffle.
Jodie stared up with true love, her shaggy body wiggling from side to side, led by that stupidly, huge tail. Jodie would power at least one small French village if he could ever harness the tail energy of his pound puppy.
He raised his eyes to the table and his smile died. The comments everyone wrote (and then passed along) lay trapped under the slim, steel Bookmark, as if they could escape and cause even more havoc.
Feeling idiotic, but a little more realistic now the ego had recovered these last few hours, he began to Scoop the handwritten notes into the mouth of his open briefcase. (No Nutella needed.)
There. The notes were out of sight and out of mind. He’d have his people call their people and get back to them toot-sweet. Like even manana.
Funny, in the Twilight of his current WIP, that he worried about Espionage from within the writing group, especially from those with whom he had no Synchronicity! His improved mood earned Jodie the last piece of toast.
After quietly placing the plate in the sink, he sat at his rightful place in the universe. Again.
The beloved wouldn’t wake for hours and his best rewriting happened in the wee hours. Before booting up the computer, he felt Feisty and knew why. This week’s words hadn’t killed anyone, had they?
Ha! He knew he could do it!
Sadly, he’d missed one word and never heard the Snick of the blade and the sudden movement behind him. His head felt awfully heavy, so he lay it sideways on the warming keyboard.
As he looked at the reflection from the blank screen with a whole new point of view, the early morning light grew dark...
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DeleteEchoing Lee. It is definitely Wednesday (and relatively early in the day). Only one death in your tale (or at least I assume your narrator is now deceased) is fairly tame. Mind you, I am pretty sure that River doesn't (usually) behead people for missing a word.
DeleteVery engrossing! And no, it doesn't take that long to read your story.
DeleteWell, it's still Wednesday morning her, Mark...and I've finished reading your very fine story. :)
DeleteYour mind works in mysterious ways! I like it! I like it! :)
(I deleted my original post because I discovered I'd made a typo).
Mark Koopmans; another excellent tale. And I haven't beheaded anyone, ever, for just missing a word. It would be petty of me, since I often miss a word myself. Perhaps the killer was someone jealous of his writing ability, possibly the one who said his stories were too long. I don't believe any GOOD story is too long, when the reader is swept away, who wants that to end?
DeleteYou caught me with Nutella - I never cared, but my little Brother, oh, my! He might...!!! (No, he´s a sweet Daddy of two Daughters now. Who love... Nutella.)
DeleteAt least his last meal was one he loved - great use of the words.
DeleteXO
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Ooh, you killed someone after all. It's not a true MK-tale if it does not include a murder. And echoing others, no WfW stories cannot be too long. And it IS still Wednesday.
DeleteGreat words. This week, Aunt Marigold came back.
ReplyDeletemessymimi; I don't know what I was thinking when I chose those words and now I have to make something of them too. I'll be over to read Aunt Marigold as soon as it is up.
DeleteShe snick, snug, snuggled her way into my life.
ReplyDeleteI was young and I feel sorry now. I went to professionals - or so I thought.
They sold her to me.
A lille Gerbil-girl.
They did not tell me this species prefers the twilight ... or rather... night.
Nor that you should never keep just one.
I was too young.
Internet??? Not back then!
Not funny. I went to a professional store, right?! (No!)
She was a feisty one. An intelligent one.
She managed to escape.
I called... Mum (what else do you do on an evening when you´re 13 years of age???).
Mum HATED "mice", but she was afraid of the damage the lille critter could create. We cought the wee one.
Then, yes, synchronicity - she (the mouse, not Mum!) got up when I came back from school.
I opened her cage.
She knew.
She knew it all.
Where and what I am. My ear? She made all her way up to my shoulder (eeek, in summer it hurt, a little), she stood up and told me something in my "naked" ear.
She knew where food and toilet were.
One day I came home.
She was lifeless.
She was 2 1/2 years old, maybe 3.
A Grandma in mouse-years, but... I cried my eyes out. I bawled all day. And night. And..
She was my companion, and, as you can guess, this is a true story.
1986 she left.
Thank you, River. I never thought I can take some words like that and fall back in time!
I don´t even have one picture (1986!!)...
What a sweet tale of remembrance of such a tiny creature.
DeleteXO
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It really did happen. She was clever, lovingly and cute - and lonesome, I suppose...
DeleteA bittersweet tale of a feisty friend. Well written.
DeleteThis is lovely. I suspect that most of us have wept buckets for the loss of such a friend. I know I have.
DeleteSuch a sweet story about sweet little pet.
DeleteAwww. Pets take our hearts, don't they.
DeleteIris Flavia; a sweet and sad story. I've never had a gerbil, but I have had pets, dogs, cats and one guinea pig, that wormed their way into my heart and of course I cried when they were gone.
DeleteHere's mine:
ReplyDeleteWell somebody hasd to do it, Ms. Penny Barnes thought. And freshly retired from her head teacher job, she was completely suitable.
Espionage would be an enjoyable part of it.
The smeared and snuffled and snicked would be scooped and mended.
She was prepared for others to find this funny and thought: I can be just as feisty as the rest of them oldsters wasting their days in coffee shops.
She cruised the shelves until twilight, a perfect time to walk home with her shopping cart full to the brim, its contents ready to be synchronized into rapturous order.
In due time, they would be returned, refurbished, renewed, back to the town library, complete with a neat bookmark inside each one
XO
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My library ID said 1980, I guess, or earler. I loved to browse there- at daytome, though!
DeleteThese days we share books in an old phone booth!
A beautiful idea - I´ll put in bookmarks!!!
A BIG, BIG HOORAY for Ms Penny Barnes.
DeleteWhat a wonderful thing to do!
DeleteWWW; Mrs Penny Barnes sounds like my kind of person. I've often borrowed books from the library and if I found any damage I would fix it before I returned it.
DeleteOh yes!
ReplyDeleteCharlotte; do you have a story on your site this week? I shall pop over and find out.
DeleteNo, I have only a "look into how my brain is working-post" as I have sprained a neck muscle. The story will be up in installments over the coming days :)
DeleteMine has been posted here when I finally stopped wandering
ReplyDelete
DeleteCindi; I'll be over to read in just a minute
After weeks of snuffling around, Jen’s sister Beth finally left. It was the suitable time, Jen hated Beth’s guts. As Beth began to pack, Jen smeared jam in Beth’s shoes and put them in the suitcase, to help bookmark the day Beth left. A scoop of honey in them completed Jen’s plans. The sound of the car door slamming filled Jen with rapturous joy. Little did Jen know that strawberry preserves layered on her sheets awaited her.
ReplyDeleteSisters in thought and deed. I can remember a brother carefully putting a saucer of water in my bed. When I knocked it over and got up to change the linen he rushed through the house telling all (and the visiting guests) that I had wet my bed.
DeleteSo much animosity, it's really quite sad. You captured in a paragraph a lifetimes of loathing.
DeleteMy brothers are evil, too. Mine put a rotten egg under my bed, where it exploded in the middle of the night. Bastards.
DeleteSusan Kane; I've never known siblings who hated each other so much to do things like this. We had our squabbles but none of us ever played such awful tricks. We might hide books and toys, or just not talk to each other, but that was as far as it went.
DeleteOh, evil siblings, and a sticky mess. We were never this evil! But well written.
DeleteI've heard of sibling stuff like this. I remember one sister telling me her brother had stuffed her curtain rods with shrimp which rotted and they couldn't trace the appalling smell.
ReplyDeleteXO
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