Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

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 to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Hilary Melton-Butcher and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. dredge 

2. hedgerow 

3. curmudgeonly 

4. scruffy 

5. pink 

and/or: 

1. disgruntled 

2. plying 

3. dolphins 

4. sea-cave 

5. hispid

Here is my story:

Clarissa sat back in the deck chair and took stock of her surroundings. She wasn’t used to being among people and certainly hadn’t wanted to come along on this outing, but nurse Roberta had talked her into it. “You’re going to be seeing the ocean,” she’d said. “You might even see some dolphins.” At 86, Clarissa had been found by a group of school children on a picnic, she’d been lying wet and shivering, quite ill, under a hedgerow and was quickly taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital.

There, various people had tried to discover who she was, where she had come from, but all they got was her name and the fact that she now had no one and no home. Once well again, Clarissa had been moved to the local church owned nursing home to live out her days. Quite a few of the others there had asked similar questions about her past, but Clarissa was not yet ready to dredge up those memories.  Curmudgeonly old Trevor Whitmore, more and more disgruntled at the rapid rate his eyebrows and ears were becoming more hispid, was most persistent, claiming she looked familiar and hadn’t she once attended The Purple Elephant Market Place regularly?

Clarissa had stared at him so blankly, he eventually grew uncomfortable and moved to a different corner of the room. Now here she was, in a deck chair, on a deck, outside the Surf and Turf restaurant, next to Millicent, almost the same age and just as reticent as Clarissa. Millicent continuously wore a scruffy pink jacket that was very definitely ready for the rags bin, but she refused to give it up saying, “I’ll wear this to me grave! It’s all I’ve got left of me life!” every time anyone tried to coax her into something newer.

The group had all eaten as heartily as age would allow and were happy to be sitting out in the sun watching the waves dancing under a light breeze. Out of the blue, Clarissa surprised herself by saying to Millicent, “We might see some dolphins. Nurse Roberta said we might, wouldn’t that be lovely?” Millicent pulled her jacket tighter and simply grunted. Trevor moved closer to the women, eyeing them as lecherously as if he were 30 instead of 90, waggling his eyebrows, hoping for a smile and began plying them with questions.

“Did you like that old movie we saw last night? The one with the old pirate ship hidden in a sea cave and found by some children. I thought it was fabulous, I used to want to be a pirate when I was a little boy. What did you think of the lunch? I liked the crab fritters, couldn’t possibly have eaten a steak, not anymore I can’t. These teeth are no good.” And on and on he went, questions, statements, trying to ease them into talking so he could again ask more about where they were from and who their families had been. Clarissa and Millicent both leaned forward to look at him, then at each other. “Must have once been a politician, the way he prattles on,” said Clarissa. “Or a lawyer,” said Millicent, “with all those questions,” and promptly blushed bright red at having said so many words at once.