Bushwhack

Marcel preferred to think of himself as ornamental gardener. He had more than a BTEC under his belt and wasn’t shy about modeling his own work. When asked how he managed to sculpt with such precision he would reply with obvious pride, “I have a very flexible spine.” 

But Marcel was bored with his work at the beauty salon. His clients were housewives, young professionals and students who believed a regular trim kept their husbands faithful or their boyfriends interested or, if they were single, that it would give them enough confidence to get laid. Most of them weren’t adventurous. He was tired of Brazilians, Californians and the ubiquitous Bikini. His skill was going to waste, his art deserved a wider audience. Marcel had a vision. One day he would gather together enough performance artists to stage a gallery opening. Each actor would stand on a plinth, like classical Greek statues, so his work could be viewed at the correct eye-level. It would be a glorious moment. Then, maybe then, his father would stop calling him a Bushwhacker.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

A bushwhacker muttering about a girl in a grey dress marched past the convoy of comedians. They were heading to the next spring fair, where they were hoping to please the crowds and their starving bellies. But there wouldn't a fair expecting them in that village. Instead of an audience, there would be a mournful angry mob who would feed them to the crows.

Hélène L.

Purlieu

I wandered tired and alone to the purlieu of my mind. There I found a gnarled mass of fears which barred the way. Like Theseus, I had with me some string and the confidence that I would make it unscathed to the other side. I should have known better, for my string was merely a filament of pride and easily broken.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

I found her in the purlieu. He had laid her down in a bed of wild flowers, straightened her dress and crossed her hands on her chest. I say he, could be a she, even a they; I don't know. I don't think anyone will ever know. Whoever did it had put a lot of care into it. Almost some reverence. Her little face had turned gray, a pearly kind of gray, so similar to the silk of her pretty dress that she looked like these statues I had seen in the candlelit basements of their churches.

 I couldn't resist the morbid impulse to touch her cheek. It was cold, and slightly sticky. I didn't press hard; I was too scared to leave a mark. I wondered where her colours had gone. Did they dissolve into nothingness? Did the person who laid her there take them away? As I looked at the flowers around her, I thought they seemed to look a bit brighter than the ones further away. Maybe the red that once lit her cheeks, the gold that had once shone from her hair, had diffused into the ground.

 I thought about going to the village and telling them about the girl. But I couldn't move. I just stood there. Suddenly, I couldn't think anymore, only feel. All the emotions available to mankind had started pouring into me, mixing into an incontrollable force. What came out of my eyes didn't qualify as tears as the flow was so strong. I felt out of touch with my own body as it started laughing, shaking, breathing faster, unable to cope with the contradictory overspill.

I sat down in a half fall, rested on a trembling arm. I could see my blood pulsing in the veins of my hands. I noticed I had drooled all over my shirt. As my thoughts were gathering themselves, it came to my mind that no one alive had ever made me feel like that. It was the sudden understanding of my own death that I had just faced. 

I stood up and brushed the grass off my trousers, a vacant reflex. I couldn't go back to the village. I could only go forward.

Hélène L.

Dandle

"Dandling the secretaries used to be the best part of this job. Willingness to ride the Knee of Success was a useful performance indicator. It aided stratigic growth and directly incentivised positive momentum. Those with a competitive edge were quick to spot the low-hanging fruit and exploit their potential to spearhead future applications."

"Sexual harassment my ass!"

Kelli B. 

*  *  *

As above him I dandle [iron
wringing] I exhale

blurry petals from a dandelion.

Hélène L.

Incommodious

Of all the shoe fetishes, 

the three-inch golden lotus 

is the most incommodious.

 Image: Beverly Jackson

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/thebook.html

Kelli B.

*  *  *

- Where's the main water tap? 

- Well, it's very difficult to reach it, I'll show you, it's incommodious.

- It's in a drawer?

Hélène L.

10 words: Spiral of Shame and A brightening Sun

 spiral, hello, yellow, speaker, apple, thumb, brighten, hold, pin, turn.


SPIRAL of SHAME

Georgina pawed through her handbag wondering why she could never recognize the items in there by touch alone. I’d never be able to cope if I went blind, she thought. Something hard, taught and round found its way between her thumb and forefinger. Apple. She shoved it aside and continued to rummage. Where is my wallet? GoddamnwhycanIneverfindmywallet? She caught hold of something long, slender and cool to the touch. Keys.

“Sorry” she muttered to the saleswoman who was being forced to keep up a stiff smile of politeness. This was met by more glib smiling. I’ll bet she thinks I’m a right twat. Oh, god! I’ve become one of those women who can never –

“Sorry, I know it’s in here somewhere…” Georgina gave her bag a 180 degree turn and wrestled it up onto the counter to get a better look inside. Crumpled napkins, plastic cutlery, empty gum wrappers, loose change, the apple – again. With a sigh, Georgina upended her bag and shook it’s contents onto the counter.

Ker-THUNK

A yellow dildo. GASP!

The expression of the sales woman visibly brightened, her smile now genuine.

There was a pause the size of a pin before Georgina snatched the dildo and crammed it back into her handbag along with handfuls of other debris. She could feel her knees weakening, her body spiraling downwards unto the grubby carpet tiles. She could hear a voice, faint and muffled, like someone had thrown a duvet over a speaker. It said, Hello? Georgina? I think your wallet is in your pocket.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

A BRIGHTENING SUN

I am sitting by my window, staring at the busy street corner but looking at my own thoughts. Then I catch sight of my hands, resting on my lap. My big, manly, robust hands. The chipped black varnish and the flaky tips of my nails. The inflamed flesh around them, the cracked cuticles, the never healing cuts.The numerous lines, like rippling spirals spreading from my knuckles; an aging sign.

I can't remember how it feels like to hold somebody's hand. I intertwine my fingers, as I used to do when I had someone's hand to hold, I look at them, those lonely powerful hands, and I feel sad for them. I start stroking my left thumb with my right, as if to say, there, there,  it's all right.

A red light. Then green. As a car pulls away, its speakers leave a trail of "Yellow" by Coldplay. I try to wash it out of my head, but it gets replaced by another one of their songs: "a warning sign".

Uniformed youths gather by the crossing, carrying polystyrene boxes of death. One of them kicks the apple that fell from under his elbow; I twitch as the innocent fruit rolls under the wheels of a car. 

I stretch my left arm up until I feel pins and needles. I hold by bloodless, numb left hand in my right one. It feels like the cold hand of a dead person. My hugging hands look like they're silently sealing my solitude.

An open roof double decker turns from the main road. Tourists wave hello. I wave goodbye.

Hélène L.

On the Edge of the Big One

Kelli's word for H5l5n5: Simon, singer, open, lot, wicked, jungle, carve, slimmer, junk, awkwardly.

The singer carves the notes in the air, and for a moment, as the words curl around him like smoke, forgets he's never made it. The waitress, who thinks her life would have been different had she been slimmer, opens a bottle of champagne she will never be able to afford. The guy everybody knows as Simon, even though his name is Pete, or Pat, nobody really knows or cares, is looking for his past at the bottom of his beer. All that lot flocked to the jungle hoping to rid their despair; but all they found was junk, as they failed to dare. They're not wicked, just tainted: along the way, someone forgot to care, as they awkwardly fell, in a hell they unknowingly shared.

Kind of inspired by Billy Joel's "Piano Man". Wasn't listening to it, just came to my mind as I wrote the first line.

The Big Sleep

Kelli's words for H5l5n5: spinach, lump, ring, wrath, simple, juggernaut, pumpkin, gibberish, found, flan.

She pours a glass of wine to wash the man right out of her head. It shines like the gold of her ring, as a sweet, thick, syrupy nectar would; only it's bitter and dry, like her thoughts. Now, every time he smiles at her, it's as if he had spinach on his teeth. That fucking smile. The spinach had always been there, she just refused to see it. There are so many things she refused to see. She's wondering how many things in her life are tainted with invisible spinach. It's not that she found something out that changed everything. She can't point out the exact moment when her eyes opened. Did it happen gradually? Is it the same process that people who find God go through? So many questions running through her head, and she can't be bothered waiting for her brain to suggest some answers. She doesn't give a fuck about the answers. They would only be shape-shifting gibberish anyway. She remembers catching herself having hateful thoughts about him over the years. Like that time they went to an Italian restaurant and he ordered panna cotta. That suits him, she had thought. Flan. A flaccid, gormless lump of flan, that's what he is. And since then, every time he'd been above her, his sweat dripping on her bored face, she'd thought of the plate of shaky panna cotta.

She enjoyed the wrath for a while. The wrath she was directing at herself for being with him. At least it was an emotion. A simple, raw emotion. But being a juggernaut to herself didn't lead her anywhere. Like a dog running to bite its own tail, she ran out of energy

and dropped into inertia.

If only she could have been like a pumpkin plant, able to fertilize herself. Poor child, she thought as she swallowed the pills.

Infinity plus 1

H5L5N5's words for Kelli: marble, hairy, snake, softly, nature, Napoleon, nebulous, carnage, lullaby, hard

From the depths of the nebulous carnage a guttural note, hard as marble, shot to the surface with a CRACK!

From Napoleon's position on a faraway hillside, the sound filtered through his dreams as a lullaby sung softly by a hairy snake. 

Freud, not yet born, absorbed this knowledge deep within the nebulous carnage of the universal subconscious.

And so on to infinity.

Simon says

Simon says: Wash your hands.

Simon says: Re-use plastic bags.

Simon says: The peach is an abstraction of lewd animal urgency and desire which must be avoided with all the willpower at man's disposal lest he lose his way in this life.

Credit where credit is due: The photo for this post is not my own. Thank you bentoyumm I hope you don't mind my use of your image!

Your words: tinker, thinker, stinker, sphincter, most, boast, ghost, host, lilac, azure

Self-help

My assignment given by Kelli:
Your character has just won £8 million. Everyone and their dog now wants to be their friend. How do they cope with their new wealth?

- Isn't it the guy who wan £8 million you just served?
- Aye. He comes in all the time. He's always buying the same book in several copies that he asks me to giftwrap for his "friends" who are after his Johnny.
- What book is it?
- "How to cope with rejection."



Kelli's assignment: 5 children from Norway go to Eurodisney.

The Penguin

The 10 words from Kelli :
lift, Frankfurt, open, clamber, penguin, dim, jigger, brazen, poach, whistle.

"Who the fuck are you?" he says, staring at the mirror. The frustrated anger and the despair lift his brow in a chaos of conflicting lines; his brain feels like it's been poached.
He hears a disembodied voice telling him to go back to his seat. As he opens the door, a turbulence sends him flying (as well as the content of one of the passengers' coffee cup) across the aisle. The sudden pain in his thigh as he crashes on an armrest takes his mind off his introspection for a moment.

He unscrews the miniature bottle of alcohol he stole off the trolley on his way to the toilets (yes, he could have asked for it, it's free after all, but the staff on the flights to Frankfurt always terrify him) and swallows its jigger as he dives back in his inner thoughts, losing his eyes in the cottonwool sea.
He hums himself a tune to the brazen roaring of the reactors; something his dad used to whistle when he was a child eating cloudberries back in Maine.

What is he doing with his life? when and where did he lose track of what he really needed? Five years ago, the first time he was sent to Frankfurt, he had thought: that's it, I'm quitting, that's not what I want to do with myself, I deserve better. And there he was, on his way to Frankfurt again, hating himself for having become that numb shadow of a human being.

As the plane clambers above the winds, he sinks deeper into bitterness.

He looks inside his wallet. Look at that, he thinks; there's nobody close enough to my heart that I would carry their photo with me. Just credit card receipts and an old coupon for a meal for two for the price of one from a restaurant he has nobody to take to. And an out-of-date condom.

But it has a penguin on it, he thinks with a dim smile.


10 words for Kelli: abstraction, willpower, peach, life, Simon, bag, desire, animal, urgency, lewd.

Blue Eye Surprise

That can't be right... It must be the horrible light from that energy saving bulb. But if the light from the bulb is orange and my eyes are green, that wouldn't make a blue reflection, would it?
With toothpaste dribbling down my chin I lean in for a closer look turning my head from side to side to see if the colour changes from green to blue like an object in a hologram changes from one thing to another. No change.
Did I get coloured coloured contacts by mistake? No don't be stupid you would have noticed that. Wouldn't I? No, I'm sure I would notice something like that. Maybe you need some more natural light. Try the living room - and wipe that toothpaste off your chin.
I grab my compact and examine one eye then the other in the cool light of the north facing window. Still the same. My eyes are now blue.
this is bizzare. Should I panic? Is there reason to panic? Should I see the doctor? the optometrist? Am I going colour blind? Maybe I'm imagining things. Look in the mirror again.
Nope, still blue.
Ok. This is officially weird...maybe they'll change back tomorrow. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? More ridiculous that them changing from green to blue in the first place? Ok, ok, ok! Enough! I now have blue eyes. They might even suit me. Come to think of it I could do with a change. You should dye your hair blond! Blonds have more fun, right? Especially blue-eyed ones! NO, don't dye it. What if it doesn't suit your skin tone? Then you'd be walking around looking like a idiot for months. I could get a wig! Just to try it out. The shop downstairs should be open by now... I knew living above a wig shop would come in handy some day.


10 words:
lift, Frankfurt, open, clamber, penguin, dim, jigger, brazen, poach, whistle

Scalding!

Riccardo polishes steaming baskets of cutlery straight from the dishwasher. His hands move in a staccato rythum while his eyes remain fixated on the man at table three. He has ordered today's special - Beef in allegro marinade, flown in specially from Paris Tennessee with a side of seasonal vegetables and mashed potato. His suit looks plain and well worn, his tie a mish-mash of ostentatious reds and oranges swirled around and spat out onto cheap polyester. Riccardo picks up his tenth butterknife and rubs it gently, suggestively. He would love to dote on table three but the man has company; a sharp nosed woman dressed from head to toe in plum. Her hair colour, eyeshadow and lipstick, skirt and blazer, blouse and tights, shoes, handbag and nailpolish; everything in more or less identical shades. Riccardo thinks she looks looks a jar of prunes, obviously over compensating for her marginal personality. The pair pause their conversation while their plates are placed in front of them. Riccardo notes that the woman has conservatively ordered the pasta primavera. His attention shifts back to the man who is removing his tie and draping it over the back of his chair. Riccardo's imagination flits to a fantasy involving the man at table three, his tie, a bedpost and a damn good spanking. Riccardo takes a deep breath and governs his strength to keep the tingling in his groin from becoming a full-on errection and grabs another scalding knife from the cutlery basket.

Dunking Duckling

Startled by the start of the motor,
The dunking duckling, all shivery,
Stared at the bowing bogus doctor,
Whose only degree was a livery.

She had mocked his overture
And mimicked his disappoitment;
So he broke, before his departure,
Her denture, to find some contentment.

It took all his hate to fling 'er,
And her body made a splash;
The mortician did not linger:
His guilt had gone awash.

But do not, my friend,
Fall into helter-skelter;
For the duck, in the end
Rejoined his shelter.

Your words: company, allegro, pasta, compensate, govern, tenth, dote, spanking, fixated, marginal.

White rabbits, white rabbits

The meeting room is buzzing with conversations as the clock strikes midnight. The Chamberlain clears his throat in an attempt to attract the attention of the assembly.


- My dear brethren, I demand some quiet, please. We are here to discuss a serious matter. I've been told that some of us have emitted some concern about the validity of the human tradition of invoking us on the first day of every month. Our elders are offended to know that a faction of our younger members, calling themselves "Leporidae Potentia", want to deny human beings the right to be blessed by our luck. We decided it was time to discuss the problem, and what better time than tonight, on all hallow even, to bring the matter forward?

- Dad, I mean, with all due respect, Mr Chamberlain, I'd like to be the first to voice my opinion, said Alba. The practice you mentioned hasn't been revised since 1420. We are now in 2008, and things have changed. Humans don't respect us as much as they used to. This rule is obsolete: they don't even believe in us anymore! So why should we bring them good luck just for the sake of it? The tradition has lost its meaning!

- They can't even agree on the invocation anymore! said Candidum, with all the revolt of his youth. "Rabbit, rabbit", "white rabbits" or just "rabbits", even "hares"; and what about that "tibbar" nonsense of saying it backwards! They can't remember why they're saying it, and, which is worse, we can't remember either!

- I hear you, said the wise Chamberlain. I agree with you, Alba: humans don't really believe in us anymore. But they do respect us more. Only 40 years ago and your legs would have been turned into keyrings. And you're mistaken about the lack of revision: the Balliol amendment has been created to prevent the type of abuse as performed by Harold Nicolson. As for you, Candidum, you do have a point. Nobody knows why...

- We should go on strike! interrupted Blanche.

- ...but we should work together on finding the origins of our deal with the humans, finished the Chamberlain. As long as we don't remember what we're getting in exchange of the luck we give them, we shall keep our promise. For all we know, not fulfilling our side of the engagement might cause our doom.

- What makes you think we're getting something in exchange? said Candidum.

- I know what we're getting, shouted Shiro from the back. We're getting drowned in boiling wine and experimented on!

A clamour spread across the hall.

- Silence! bellowed the Chamberlain. We shall vote. May the ones who want to maintain the tradition raise their ears. I will take into account Hvit's unfortunate encounter with a lawn mower that left him short of one ear.

A rustling sound echoed in the galleries.

- The majority has spoken: we shall continue with the tradition. Meeting is over.

* * *

Back in 1420, on the early morning of November the first, the White Wizards and the White Witches of Somerset travelled and gathered by a rabbit hole just outside a place they called Oxenaforda. John, a young sheperd, was hiding behind a tree.

- But white habits bring good luck! said one of the wizards.

John ran back to his home and woke his sister up:
- White rabbits, white rabbits! he said.

- White rabbits, white rabbits? she repeated.

- I saw the White Wizards grouped around a rabbit hole saying that white rabbits bring good luck!

- Really? said Alys. So we shall call on the rabbits for good luck too! Let's go and wake Mum and Dad up, and let's make it the first words they say, so they have a lucky day.

Meanwhile, in the rabbit hole, the rabbit they called Stein woke up with a start.

- Mister Chamberlain, Mister Chamberlain! he shouted, running in the galleries.

- What now, Stein?

- I've been invoked! I'm the chosen one!

- Calm down, Stein...I've felt it too.

- Have you? Wasn't it amazing? What shall I do? Shall I give them some luck?

- Whatever Stein, if it makes you happy. They might invoke us again if you do, and I have to admit I found it quite pleasant.

- Great! I shall tell all the others! said Stein, as he ran to spread the word in his most debonaire way.

Your turn:
A bookseller becomes allergic to printing ink.

What a show!

Bambi Havadong stepped centerstage beneath a cascade of pink and orange sequins; her gargantuan proportions tamed by a corset lined with Teflon for ease of removal. As she shimmied in the limelight in a gesture of welcome to her adoring fans one member of the audience was heard to exclaim, "She looks like a marshmallow being severed with dental floss." A gust of laughter wobbled like a poorly spun wooden top. Then silence. A cough. The opening chords of 'I Will Survive' cut through the faint static of the sound system. Bambi's coral-painted lips curved around each syllable in a celebration of a sisterhood to which longed to belong (an unfortunate symptom of her condition) and her transformation was complete. In her own mind she was as agile as a kangourou, as wholesome as a daisy, as stimulating as a dildo - and her ass could write the alphabet in cursive.


Your words:
motor, duckling, overture, mimic, livery, shelter, fling, linger, mortician, bogus

33 in 33

It's official - the world will end in 33 days and my 33 years will disapear faster than a man after uttering the words 'I'm not ready for commitment'. Yeah, well I'm not ready either! Damn this global warming. Thought it might be nice up here in Scotland for a change but what did we get - more rain! I was all up for it untill the place started to flood. It won't be long before the UK makes like Atlantis and Venice and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. I should have booked my ticket out of here before everyone decided there was no point showing up for work anymore. All the looting and partying - people rutting like dogs on every street corner. Not really my scene. I always though the end of the world would be a little more romantic, y'know? People gathering together to sing songs round the fire and lend a neighbourly hand in a way we haven't seen since the war... fat chance of that. Fat chance I have of finding Mr. Right now! I will have to face the fact that I will die a virgin. Well, not technically, there was that one guy back in High School; and the guy at that party downtown on Halloween, but he doesn't really count because I never saw him without his Osama Bin Laden mask; oh, and the moron I wasted six years of my life with. But that was seven years ago so, technically, I've been a virgin longer than I've been having sex. And now what am I going to do? I refuse to stoop to the level of a slut simply because the world is going to end.

Your turn:

What happens next in this scene? A clock strikes midnight down a rabbit hole in Oxford.

Sasparilla Guerilla

When I was a child, I used to sit on the edge of my bed and bounce,
looking at the buildings across the street shaking as I pretended a
giant was walking down the road. It made me feel as small as one of
these blue sasparilla eaters that I used to collect in their rubber
form.
Dopamine was overflowing my brain, when dwelling in between the
brackets of imagination that feature less and less in the chapters of
my adult life.
It's probably the lack of ad hoc conditions.

But soon, the spiky hedgehog of reality would burst my colourful
bubble of freedom.

Snip! go the scissors of time.



(I cheated: I used rubber instead of rub.)

Your words: complete, cascade, stimulating, tame, across, kangourou,
daisy, alphabet, symptome, celebration.

Kelli's task

I forgot your new assignment:

It's officially the end of the world in 33 days. Describe the state of mind of a single thirty something woman who's concerned she might not manage to have sex before it happens.

Describe your first encounter with a celebrity. Tell the story twice - once from your point of view and once from theirs.