Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a word challenge meme which she calls “Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of six words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

This week's words are:

1. splat

2. pow

3. kabam

4. biff

5. bling

6. zippo

and just for fun, we also have:

1. deleterious

2. ambidextrous

3. anomaly

4. forklift

5. impound

6. zebra 

Here is my story:

You may remember a couple of weeks ago, we left Bradley on the floor with a broken arm, a collapsed ladder and several dozen smashed figurines. 

Let's continue, with parts two,three, four....

As he lay there thinking deleterious thoughts about porcelain figurines and ladders, Bradley decided there was no getting around the fact he and Brenda were going to have a discussion about open shelves vs things in cabinets. He heard her rushing down the passage calling "I heard crashing! What's happened?" Brenda came to a dead stop in the doorway and surveyed the wrecked room with wide open eyes. For a few seconds, she was speechless. Well, there's an anomaly, Bradley thought. A speechless Brenda. In all the years he had known her, Brenda had never been completely silent. She even talked in her sleep!

Soon enough, she found her voice. "Oh Bradley! are you alright? What happened? How? Oh my goodness! your arm! Bradley don't move, I'm calling an ambulance right away!"

"Another anomaly?" Brad thought. "I was sure Brenda would make a fuss over the figurines before me."  He lay as still as he could and wondered which figurine was under his bum cheek, it was rather uncomfortably large. "Probably one of the snow domes," he thought, "unbroken too or I would be feeling dampness."

Brenda came back with a cool cloth for his face and held it to his forehead while she glanced around at the broken bits and pieces. "I guess you were right Brad, I should have put all this stuff in a cabinet safely out of the way. I'd been thinking about it already, when I realised it was taking me almost an hour to properly dust them each Sunday, I thought maybe one of those glass fronted cabinets would be nice. We could put it in the front hallway. But we won't need to buy one now, will we?"

"Why don't we get one anyway?" said Bradley. "There must be a few pieces that didn't break, there's one snow dome at least that's whole, under my left bum cheek."

"Oh and look!" said Brenda, "there's the little zebra Aunty Milly brought back from her African Safari holiday."

The doorbell rang and Brenda got up to let in the ambulance crew. As they entered the room, Bradley made a joke, "Hope you've brought a forklift, I've been on holiday and eating my wife's wonderful cooking, I swear I've put on at least fifteen pounds!"

This brought a smile to everyone's face and the men assured Bradley they would have no trouble lifting him onto the stretcher, they just needed to immobilise his arm first. "Lucky you're wearing a T-shirt," said one of them, "the last bloke we had with a broken arm was in a Tuxedo and we had to cut the sleeve to apply splints." 

The other man said, "bad episode that one, fisticuffs at a wedding and the fellow was knocked down a long flight of stairs."

The first man continued the story as he quickly splinted Bradley's arm. "We heard from some of the kids there, real excited they were, it was just like an action movie they said, lots of 'biff, pow, kabam! until the victim landed 'splat' at the bottom of the stairs." 

The second man said, "I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at that reception! Now, let's get you up on the stretcher. Will you be coming with us, Mrs. Lewis?"

Brenda said, "I'll follow in the car and bring all of our insurance information too, then we won't have to get a taxi home. Bradley will be coming home today won't he?"

"I should think so, it looks a simple, clean break," said the second of the men, "nice plaster cast and you'll be home in time for tea!"

"Tea!", exclaimed Brenda. "I was about to start cooking when I heard the crashing in here. We'll have to settle for pizza delivery."

Several hours later Bradley and Brenda were home again with instructions to keep the arm still and dry as much as possible for the first day or so. Bradley sat in the green leather armchair and watched as Brenda swept up the broken pieces and smiled each time she found something whole. The snowdome that had been under his bum was her favourite igloo one with the tiny Eskimo standing beside his icy home. 

Later, as they ate their pizza dinner by the television, Brenda remarked, "it's a good thing you're ambidextrous, you'll have a lot of paperwork to catch up on when you get back to work on Monday. Those impound invoices won't type themselves and you said yourself that new man filling in for you was a slacker, and pretty hopeless at filing."

"Mmmm," Bradley nodded as he chewed a slice of garlic bread. Swallowing, he said, "he's probably got everything starting with 'the' filed under 'T'. I'll have to get that sorted first thing I expect. Oh, hey! did you remember to get that Zippo lighter I asked you for? it's part of the basket of goodies we're collecting for Stan's retirement lunch."

"I did," said Brenda, "it's on your dresser, and I got a nice leather case for it too, even had it engraved with his initials for a bit of extra bling."

"Thanks," said Bradley. "I'll slip it to Jill as soon as I get there Monday morning, she's taking care of all the wrapping, there's about twenty little bits and pieces gathered so far. Stan's a popular guy, we'll be sorry to see him go, but he's 70 and his missus wants a Pacific Cruise before they're too old to enjoy it."