Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, Elephant’s Child has been putting up a selection of six (or twelve) words which is called “Words for Wednesday”.

She had taken over this meme from Delores, who is gradually retiring from the blogging world.

This month the meme continues here, at Drifting Through Life

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.   

Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme.   

If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

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. hideous

2. antiseptic

3. feeling

4. gamble

5. opulent

6. sandbox

and/or:

1. column

2. yourself

3. network

4. quell

5. inset

6. jug

Here is my story:

The hideous green walls and smell of antiseptic everywhere did nothing to quell my feeling of dread. This hospital was a far cry from the opulent mansion I'd last seen my uncle in.

I'd played there often as a small boy, running and chasing through the marble columns with my cousins, burying GI Joes and toy dinosaurs in the sandbox out back, pretending to be an archaeologist like my father when I dug them up again. 

On one of his many trips home, my father had presented my mother with a tiny clay jug, inset with turquoise and lapis lazuli gems. It had become her most treasured possession, having pride of place on her dressing table.

A few years later when an earth tremor collapsed the tunnel my dad was excavating, I'd cried in my uncle's arms and asked why. Why my Dad? We still needed him.

Uncle Hugh had said, "Life is a gamble, risks must be taken if we are to learn anything from it. This is the way of the world." 

And after the funeral, "Calm yourself now and stand tall. Be proud. Your father's many findings over the years have done much to help the people of today understand their history, the ancient ways, the  beginnings of modern civilisation.  An entire network of modern communication today began with the very first papyrus scroll. And your father was a genius when it came to deciphering the ancient languages."

From that day, my uncle had raised me and supported my mother.

Now he lay in this hospital bed, dying. A shrunken shell of a man, his claw like hand gripping mine with far less strength than before, as he handed to me a papyrus scroll, witnessed by the doctor and an assistant standing next to his lawyer, Mr Hamilton, by the bedside.

His last will and testament. 

He'd named me his executor and I was to read this document to the family gathering two days after his funeral. Uncle Hugh had amassed a great fortune over the years, investing heavily in real estate, less heavily in casinos. His sons, Colin, Blake and Bradley, were bequeathed substantial amounts of cash and several apartment blocks each. They would be the new landlords, owning the properties each had been managing for the last tenn years.
My mother, Uncle Hugh's baby sister, received a more than generous amount, enough to ensure her worry-free living for the rest of her years.
Assorted housekeepers and carers received similar amounts.
Myself? I would have an amount equal to the cousins, plus my uncle's mansion with the request that I turn it into an archaeological museum. 

All this was followed by an unexpected surprise entry. I was to locate a distant relative named Molly Raven and her son Jimmy, last known to be living in Alaska. 
Jimmy was an archaeologist as my father had been.
Uncle Hugh had set aside a substantial amount for him and Molly in the hopes of reuniting the family and getting the museum off to a good start.