Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, assorted people have been taking monthly turns at putting up a selection of words which is called “Words for Wednesday”.

This month the meme continues here, at Elephant’s Child’s blog, with words supplied by Margaret Adamson and Sue Fulton.

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 images.   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.  We would really like it if as many people as possible joined in with this fun meme.

If you are posting on your own blog - let us know so that we can come along and read your masterpiece.

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. backpack

2. hundred

3. relatives

4. happy

5. tick

6. plant

and/or:

1. illumination

2. age

3. pastime

4. profound

5. die

6. laugh

Here is my story:

 The Drifter

I hitched my shoulders a little to settle my backpack more comfortably. Getting away from the noise of a hundred relatives and guests at Mum's house made me as happy as a tick on a dog. 

The occasion had been my sister's wedding and though I had not been home since leaving at age fifteen, each room still felt familiar and comfortable to me. 

The garden was new, Mum had taken several seasons to replant the entire backyard in a design suitable for a wedding reception party.

It was an evening reception and the twinkly illumination on the gazebo shone as bright as the stars in the night sky above. I'd watched the party from my darkened upstairs room, with Mum sneaking up a plate of food for me. 

It wouldn't do for my step-dad Bob to spot me at the party, he'd take out his temper on Mum later. He wouldn't touch her physically, but his tongue-lashing would be vicious.
Mum had let me know the wedding date in a coded advertisement in a national newspaper which we both read weekly. 

Sixteen years ago, when Mum had helped me leave home, we'd agreed this would be our only communication.

My step father had begun to make my life miserable when I turned twelve and morphed into the exact image of my real Dad. His favourite pastime had been to squeeze my face with one ham-sized hand while punching me not too softly in the stomach with the other. His excuse for this was he wanted to 'toughen me up, I was too soft and dreamy'. 

Mum had divorced him when she discovered this and Bob had sworn to get back at me. Turns out he'd only married Mum for to gain access to the insurance money collected when Dad died in a work accident. 

The one good thing to come from the marriage was my sister, Trish.

Anyway, one Saturday when Bob had arrived to take Trish to the zoo, Mum had driven me to the train station and waved me goodbye, her profound sorrow hidden beneath a carefully practised cheerful smile. I'd spent the next sixteen years couch-hopping around the country, briefly staying with distant relatives and family friends, none of whom liked Bob, so wouldn't dob me in.

I was thirty-one now and Trish a lovely young bride of twenty. There was nothing of her father in her. Trish looked exactly like Mum and had all her kindness and sweet disposition.

I had the last laugh as I walked away in the dark of the early morning. Trish had married a wonderful young man much like my own Dad had been. Howard even had similar colouring, with his dark hair and brown eyes.