Lollipop

She looks at the lollipop.

It has the colour of juniper berries and the scent of a cleaning product.
The guy who sold it to her looked like a complete trickster; but nothing you wouldn't expect from someone who sells morphine on a stick. She had to listen patiently when he told her that he used to be in a SWAT team back when he lived in California, "where it never rains".

She'd always been fascinated by people like him, the ones who always have numerous unbelievable anecdotes to tell. Being handicaped by the muchness of her gullibility, she never believes anyone who has more than one extraordinary story in their luggage.

She removes the crispy wrapping in a hurry, quick, before she changes her mind. For some reason, she's wondering if she's not ovulating, gets concerned that it may affect the embryo that might get conceived tonight if she has sex.

Then she smiles at her own madness, reminding herself that tonight she's not going out, just watching a DVD of Bear in the Big Blue House whilst tripping on a morphine lollipop.

Your words: conscent, fracture, character, amplify, ecstasy, prayer, block, society, cassoulet, window.

Arena

Hundreds of people all willing to connect because of some harmonious vibrations. Me, alone against them, held in place against them, with no will to interact with them. I can feel the vibrations reaching me and dying inside of me as if were some sort of earth wire in a plug.
I observe the happening from where I am, where time stands still as in the eye of the storm: I'm right in the center of it but it feels as foreign as if I were standing outside.
People as a stream flowing along the vibrations, moving past me anchored as a rock in the middle of their feverish communion.

Submerged by loneliness, I drag my empty shell through the drain.

Back in the privacy of my void, I feel one again.


Your turn: Show me a perfect day in a perfect world.

Repugnant

A man and a woman sit on a park bench near a bycicle path in Dorking.

- He cuts a repugnat figure in his riding jacket, wouldn't you say, Ned?
- A more disfigured hero I have never set eyes upon.
- Yes, shame about the trajectory...
- Not at all, Eliza. I would say it was a stroke of serendipity!
- Well, if it weren't for the colonic I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
- True. [pause] Look, he's stopping
- He looks a bit forlorn, should we ask for an autograph?
- What about the manure?
- It'll wash off. C'mon, don't you want to bask in the glory of saying we actually spoke to him? The guy's practically a national treasure.
- If he's nominated for a CBE it will be to his own amazement. Trust me.
- Shame. Fancy getting a coke instead?
- Yeah.


Your turn:
swat, juniper berries, trickster, numerous, muchness, ovulating, overwrought, hurry, morphine, remove

Tropical Delight

Hell hath no greater tempest than a woman served pineapple instead of chocolate cake.


Next:Describe the largest crowd you have ever been a part of.

Starry, starry night

- Prick up your ears. Give your eyes away to the glittery twilight and focus on the sounds.

He said that as if it were a most pleasant experience but all I could think of was the family of hypothetical bears I knew were waiting for us to fall asleep so they could sharpen their claws on our bodies.
What was I thinking when I said yes?

When you lead a vestal life such as mine and get tired of people giving you that over-the-counter look that you get when you're buying a bottle of wine and a meal for one on Valentine's day, you might find some attraction in an offer to go for a pick-nick made by the DIY shop assistant in your local supermarket.

- Lovely. Can we go back into town now? I have a jub jub to feed.
- Oh, no, let's stay here for a little longer: there's nothing more beautiful than a flight of doves in the sunrise.

SUNRISE? You expect me to stay here all night in lumber land? So first you turn the ride into the Camel Trophy by getting us lost in the swamps, and now you want me to spend the night here? No way.You can stay here and wait for the bears to eat you: I have to go home and hoover all the crisps crumbs you left all over MY car.

Only I didn't say that. The bear got him first.


repugnant, trajectory, colonic, disfigure, amazement, glory, serendipity, blaze, forlorn, manure.

Breakfast

I remember what I had for breakfast the day my hamster died.
I had deep fried hamster and chips.

Your turn: you're wearing wet clothes and holding a pineapple at the end of your up stretched left arm.
Why?

Hélène

Naked Disc

There is a loud thud at the front door. A brown envelope scrapes its way through the bristle-like fringe of the mail slot and falls to the floor. Brisk footsteps retreat down the stairwell echoing in the bleak emptyness of concrete and chipping paint. Before I have walked the length of the livingroom, I hear the door to the street groan on its hinges and bang closed again.
There is no writing on the envelope, only a symbol. It looks like a geometric fish. I don't know what it means. I haven't ordered anything. I press my fingers against the paper. It's rigid - circular - a CD. I hold the envelope up to the light in the misplaced hope that this will answer the many questions that cross through my mind. I decide to wait and see if the mysterious deliverer will return to collect it but my fingers have already tugged at the edge of the seal. It opens without resistance. I slide the CD into my hand. Aside from being neon green in colour the CD has no inscription, no symbols. I cross back through the livingroom and switch on my computer. I hear the door to the street creak open and slam shut again - Footsteps acending the stairs - I slide the disk into the drive - Footsteps cross the first floor landing - The computer asks if I would like to run the disk - Footeteps tapping up the second flight - Click 'Yes' - The heel, toe slap of footsteps on the second floor landing followed by the jangle of keys being inserted into a door one floor down - The program whirrs in the disk drive and the geometric fish appears on the screen, below it the instruction 'Click to enter'.
...Click...

A fanfare begins to play. Then a buttery-smooth barratone voice announces, 'Welcome to Neon Fish Farm, the greener way to buy fish! Get 10% off your first purchase with this exclusive promotional code!'

Fucking advertising gimmicks.


You next. Finish the thought: I remember what I had for breakfast the day my hamster died.

Written by Kelli

Useless bag of crap

He's one. You can tell be the way he swaggers down the platform eating that jelly doughnut, it's viscous innards oozing onto the tips of his pudgy fingers. I wonder if a woman has ever let those fingers near her cunt. I doubt it. Not without money up front. See the way he studies the tube map in a disinterested fashion? That's the habit of someone who knows where their going but can't stand to stare into the middle distance, afraid of catching someone's eye. I'll bet in his head he's imagining some impropiety he's planning to commit later. Look at him - suckling his jam covered fingers, slightly trembling, like he were sucking the toenail of some cheap whore. I'll bet he's some quack. Calls himself an IT specialist when really he's the guy who does the nightshift in some fancy office tower cleaning keyboards, peeling off stickers and other crap those city boys leave cluttering their computer stations. I'll bet if he doesn't leave them sparkling he gets hauled into the office and belittled by the Boss man just like his father used to, before he died of lung cancer. The father who made sure he knew from an early age what a useless bag of crap he is at everything. I'll bet he lies in bed at night dreaming of the day he'll get revenge by droping his sorry ass in front of a Waterloo & City train making all those self-important office twats late for their morning meetings.

Next 10:
Jub jub, hoover, twilight, doves, glitter, lumber, claws, over-the-counter, vestial, prick

Written by Kelli

The Fivah

On August, 6th

Pitch black. It feels like a coffin. Where the fuck have I ended up this time? I think I'm not alone: I can feel some others around me, some of them like me, some bigger and some much smaller ones, I can hear them, the smaller ones are always louder. Everything shakes: here comes the light! What's happening now? A woman grabs me, hands me to another woman, a small ginger one, suffering from allopecia, stuttering an embarrassed "thank you". Oh my God, I'm in a hairdresser's! How did that happen? I must have fallen asleep in the last wallet. What is a woman suffering from allopecia doing at a hairdresser's? Maybe she bought a wig? Ah, no, I can smell it: she had her nails done. Well I suppose she has beautiful hands, it might be where she has to find pride in her feminity. It's a bit like a blind man in a one hour photo shop, an almost bald woman at the hairdresser's; but, hey, I've seen that before too.
Her purse stinks of plastic and I bet she has the left overs of an egg sandwich in her handbag: either that or...I don't really want to think about it actually.

Of course. Of course she had to go to the pub. I'm glad she's using her bigger notes first: I really don't feel like the spending the evening going from hand to hand. I might be able to spend the night in the possession of a taxi driver.
Ah, she's talking to a guy: I can see him each she opens her purse to check if she has enough for another one. Can't say he's a catch...but who knows, he might have handsome feet. He wants to give her his phone number. What, he can write in on me?!? Hey, in some countries that would be considered defacing me, it's illegal!
I'm not pleased. I have some ugly fat middle aged drunkard's phone number written on my back. Well at least I wasn't gropped by half the bar.
Electric light: we're in a shop; she's buying fags. There you go, back in a till drawer...oh, someone is taking me out again: it must be a Friday night. Ah, some sort of commotion: it's definitely a Friday night. And it's about me!
It's a young man shaking me in the face of the shop assistant: "I'm flabbergasted! How did you do that? This note has my dad's mobile number on it!"

Your turn: someone finds a CD without any inscription on it. Where does he/she find it? What's on it? What's their reaction to it? Same thing, 20 mn

Hélène

Another Writing Challenge

On August, 5th,

You have 20 minutes, GO!

Trace the journey of a £5 note through the lives of 2 different owners. What was exchanged during the transactions? How much, or little, did the transaction mean to each of the people involved?

Kelli

Pioneers

August, 4th

Picture this: in a parellel universe, America never evolved from the pioneer time. Times are rough: the population feeds from corn and gets drunk on rutabaga beer (try saying it out loud). One day, in a small town called Pepsicock, the oligarch allows a circus from Beijing to entertain the population. Cho "Tarty Cream" Chang is the main attraction: all the eyes are on her when, her jovial shapes skillfully exposed by a glittery see through leotard, she glides on a greasy pole like a fat chicken coming off a skewer. The men in the croud simmer, get inflammed and cheer her loudly, throwing their hats in the air.
And then they ate her.

Next 10 words:
Verbose, belittle, impropriety, viscous, disinterested, quack, sticker, drop, twat, toenail

Hélène

Aligator

August, 4th

Never spank an aligator - u get me? All u end up wi' is one irritated motherfucker - an' I mean FUMING - an' unless you want to toss him your left nut as colateral, u gonna end up wi' a full-on frontal lobotamy, u get me? That ain't no reward for ludicrous dumbass behaviour. Get it bruv? Safe. Peace out.

Next ten words:
cream, jovial, leotard, Bejing, Pepsi, to glide, oligarch, simmer, rutabaga, to inflame

Kelli

Zimmer Frame

There she was, that slut of a Polish baker, pretending to ignore him, wearing that obscenely tight white blouse over that loose bra of hers, only pretending to hold her full funbags in which he was dreaming of biting. "What can I do you for?", she says, and he hears himself asking for a pretzel, when all he really wants is to flip her over his zimmer frame, insert the pretzel in that amorphous mouth of hers, slither it until she almost chokes. He jostles the zimmer frame closer to the counter, holding it desperately with his hands covered with liver spots, as if firebranded by an epileptic cowboy. He curses: Jingle Bells! My body has abandoned me! Now he just has to make the assumption she didn't notice the wet patch.

Aligator, irrigation, reward, ludicrous, festival, irritate, colateral, fuming, lobotomy, spank

Hélène

Rocket Man

Ahhh, there's nothing quite like an adulterous, cum sucking, scab to make you realise where you stand in the hierarchy of life. It's enough to make you want to eat vomit. The next time I catch that soda slurping, camembert sniffing, mollusc of a man, Gaspard anywhere near my Girtha I'm going to burn off his pubic hairs with a blowtorch and send him rocketing to the moon like a spaceship!

Next ten:
abandon, zimmer frame, jostle, firebrand, pretzel, slither, amorphus, Jingle bells, liver, assumption

Kelli

Gertha's Uranus

For Gaspard, there was nothing like fucking that big Gertha working at the Sauerkraut factory, wheelbarrow style. Her marvellous overweight body, her overflowing rolls of flesh flapping around the tight leather girdle strapping her pachydermic waist was already enough to make him feel like projecting his spunk up to Jupiter even before inserting his splinter shaped cock up her burning snatch. He would make her fly right up to Uranus tonight, part her enormous lunar cheeks as a coroner dissecting a ribcage, waiting for her to express her ecstasy humming the Macarena.

hierarchy, scab, camembert, symphonie, adulterous, suck, vomiting, soda, hairs, spaceship

Hélène

Wyoming

Wyoming. Where people have the power to vanish at will, it seems, I've seen them dissapear like so many flies zapped to dust by flourecent bulbs. A girl and her caramel coloured go walking through the fields at night trying to shake off the ambiguity of the day. She staves off dehydration by fellating ice pops and staring up at the sky, mesmerised by the sounds of swaying grass and the creaking chirp of crickets - and then they're gone.

Next ten words:
girble, humming, splinter, to ride, overweight, orange, to disect, wheelbarrow, Jupiter, to burn.

Kelli

There has to be a Beginning

On August, 2nd


To Kelli:

I offer you an activity I used to do when I was a teenager (and that you probably did before)

Here's a list of 10 random words coming from my unstable brain (verbs can be conjugated):

caramel, power, legacy, ambiguity, Wyoming, to vanish, to mesmerize, fluorescent, to dehydrate, fellatio.

Now you have to write me a story of at least 10 lines incorporating all those words and send me 10 words back, then I'll write you a story and send 10 words, and so on.

Hélène