Judge This Week: Mars
Word Count: 300 max
How: Submit your stories as a comment to this post, along with your name, word count, and title (and Twitter handle or blog if you've got 'em!). One entry per person.
Deadline: 1 AM 11/6/2016 PDT (We were an hour late posting)
Results announced: Next Thursday afternoon.
Remember: Your entry must begin with the prompt! The prompt can be mutilated, but not beyond recognition. (Pictures do not need to be incorporated into your stories, they're for inspiration (and sometimes our amusement)).
Prompt
"You will have nothing!"
In Sickness and In Health
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Langley
@b_j_langley
300 words
“You will have nothing!”
Prince Amin looked up at his father, so smug upon his throne, holding his bejeweled sceptre aloft as he delivered his edict. Amin was tired of listening to the old man and while it could be considered treasonous he could bite his tongue no longer. “I will not have nothing.”
“You think I do not know your secret?” The king sneered. “This… girl.”
Amin pictured her fair face, her glorious smile. “She has a name. Poppy.”
“I know that this...Poppy is sick.”
The look of disdain on his father’s face filled Amin with fury. “What does that matter? In sickness and health, will we be together.”
“For how long? She has, what, six months to live? If you go ahead with this ridiculous marriage plan, you’ll soon be a widower, and no princess in the land will agree to marry you.” The King tried to look upon his son with sympathy.
So rarely had his father shown compassion, Amin did not understand the look upon the king’s face.
“I don’t want to marry a princess. I want Poppy.”
The king considered this a rejection of the olive branch he thought he’d offered and fell back to the hard line. “As my first-born son you have a duty to marry for the good of the kingdom.”
“I don’t care for the good of the kingdom.”
“Then you leave me with no choice but to banish you to the Black Wood.”
“I’ll take Poppy. Together, we’ll be happy.”
“And when she’s dead you’ll be alone. As I told you before, you will have nothing.”
“You’re wrong, Your Majesty.” Amin stood. “I’ll have something worth much more that a loveless marriage in a humdrum kingdom. I’ll have memories,” he said and placed his crown at his father’s feet.
Dreams Die Hard
ReplyDelete“You will have nothing.” Dobb’s angry outburst reverberated in my brain, ricocheting like an out of control nightmare. Repeating itself. Over and over. “YOU WILL HAVE NOTHING! NOTHING!”
He had then disappeared over the rise, into the bright Mojave sun, gone to the inferno, mad, angry and gone.
I rested on the ground, leaning against a large sandstone rock, hot from the sun.
It felt good. It felt like a good death was approaching.
Dobbs! He used to be David Langer but the lure got to him early. “Keerhist, Charlie. David’s don’t look for gold. David’s go to Church. They bore the hell of people.”
“They slay giants,” I offered.
“Yeah, well, you learned that in Church. Sitting next to a dull David.”
We’d grown up in dusty old Las Vegas, New Mexico. The whole town smelled of the past. We yearned for that bygone world. You could catch glimpses of it in movies. We were nothing much more than a movie set.
One night an old flick appeared on the tube. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
A life- changer, man. A life-changer.
David became “Dobbs” overnight.
He let me stay Cody. “One of the guys in the film. It’s a natural.”
“He dies,” I pointed out.
“It’s only a movie,” he argued.
Yeah, I thought. Only a movie.
But we started prospecting. Off into whatever hills there were. Our first and only obsession.
And then, a week ago, Mojave gold.
We’d looked for years.
Shit jobs to finance the craziness, the hunger.
The four-wheel died.
The water gave out.
And surprize, surprize, I was the one to succumb. The only one with a gun.
“You sick, mother. YOU WILL HAVE NOTHING WITHOUT ME.”
All the way to the bank, I thought, as my brain melted.
300 friendships gone
@billmelaterplea
www.engleson.ca
Bunmi Oke
ReplyDelete@bunmi_oke
297 words
WATCHING HER
"You will have nothing!" he says, spittle projectiles jetting across his mouth to her makeup.
"Well, you wait till I have everything." She flips her hair, as she always does when she's game for a non-game like this.
"You're having nothing. Not a dime of my money, not any of my assets and yeah, you bet, certainly none of our kids. My kids."
"Watch me."
Now there it was, the dreaded phrase. The jinx. She's always had her way whenever she uttered that. Maybe it's a challenge to lock horns: a clash of one's ambitious sauciness versus the other's loathing for being called out—aka super-sized ego—or reckoning it's a healthy invitation to a tango, though quite unlikely... Whichever it was though, he still recalls how she won a couple of those duels: When she insisted on having a fourth child and he declined, claiming he didn't have the means for an extra mouth. Seeing her intransigence, he guarded himself, ensuring he never neared her—not with a ten-foot... third leg (so much for avoiding a cliché). Dead-certain he'd been cautious on all fronts, she'd announce a missed period and, nine moons later, the bulge in her midriff will spill out not one but three little replicas of him. Disbelief, denial and DNA tests in five other hospitals nonetheless, results stayed unblinking: He's the father.
Or when she'd asked for a car replacement and he had to succumb only when his own car's ignition started to fail, though the automobile would display no such tantrum after she got her wish. Etc.
Perhaps, he realizes, what she wants him to learn is, if she said he should watch her do a thing, he better. Maybe winning is to pretend to down the gauntlet. Yeah.
So, this time, watch he would.
Angelique Pacheco
ReplyDeleteOlivia twists the knife
Word Count:227
“You will have nothing!” the child turned away with tears in her eyes. The empty bowl was heavy in her hands and she sighed. The others looked at her with haunted capsules for eyes, hunger just a common place occurrence here. She had a distended belly, her once caramel skin, now just a dirty brown. The rest of her was so emaciated that bones stuck out everywhere. Her hair hung in greasy strings around her face and the once blue dress she was wearing was held together by safety pins. She had known a different life once. Sometimes a memory snaked out in the form of a smell or a picture, reminding her of the lady with a floral dress who used to pick her up and love the hurt out of her.
She put the bowl down and picked up the knife, her finger running over the blunt blade and a small smile crept on her face. She walked towards the woman, teetering with dizziness, but she had a sense of purpose. The woman sneered at her as she came forward. “I already told you, you will have nothing!” She aimed to cuff the girl’s ear when a look of surprise came over her face. She slumped to the floor and the girl whispered gently as she twisted the knife, “no…. you will have nothing more!”
This is brilliant :) well done Ang. very haunting.
DeleteThanks :)
DeleteKim Pemberton (Twitter: @Kimmi_Pem_Pem)
ReplyDeleteGet Out of My Life
Word Count: 300
“YOU WILL HAVE NOTHING!!!” Natasha shouted. “You will not have anything under your name when I’m done with you.”
Ian talked back, “For what I did? I know you are upset with me, but think about the kids.”
“Ian, you had an affair. You cheated on me with this woman that you met online. I mean, all this time when I go to work and trying to make an earning for our family. We have two kids together and my mother was here. She knows what was going on and I didn’t believe her back then. God, why this has to happen to me?”
Ian was so relaxed and calmed during the argument. He knew he did something wrong and deceiving by having an affair with another women. What was he expected? Natasha had not giving anything in the bedroom with Ian in years. All she had done was overeating and gaining weight.
“Did you had sex with her?” Natasha questioned Ian.
“Yes I did,” Ian took a hard swallowed down in his throat.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long do you know her?”
“A few months.”
Natasha was furious. “How long do you know her, Ian?”
“Four months.”
“So that mean you been with her since I brought you and our children into the United States all the way from London. Do I don’t find you attracted to you anymore?”
“Well,” Ian was trying to bring it out in the opening. “I mean, you eat too much, you overweight, and never exercise. Plus, the sex was very dried and boring.”
Natasha was rolling her eyes. “So, what are you trying to tell me? You want to get a divorce?”
“I don’t want to leave our children.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I want a divorce, you sick unemployment crabs.”
-Nothing-
ReplyDeleteSam Lauren
296 Words
@the_word_of_Sam
“You will have nothing!” My sister flinched under my words.
I held up the tiny skull the witch gave me. She'd stuffed it with ground herbs from dirty jars, the shed of a snake, and a burnt scrap with Claire’s name on it.
All I had to do was crush it, the way Claire had crushed me.
Her music struck more hearts than mine. Claire’s art took risks I would never dare, her hand was steady. These were my passions she took, because she could not think of any on her own.
The latest thing was ballet. Claire would spend the next year dancing under a scholarship that should have been mine.
“You’ve taken everything from me,” I said. I shook the skull at her. “This will take everything you love.”
Claire cowered behind raised palms. “Please Eleanor, calm down.”
“No. It’s my turn to talk.”
I dashed the skull against the ground. Bits of bone spiraled across the hardwood floor. A pale smoke bloomed from the top like a mushroom cloud, lingering when it should have dispersed. Claire began to cry. “No, no…” she murmured, and sank to her knees.
My body tingled with the magic.
“Ellie- your skin-”
My arms were hazy. It was hard to focus on any one of my fingers, even when I tried to flex them. If I succeeded, I didn’t feel it.
“What’s happening?” I asked, desperate.
Claire wasn’t listening. She was trying to sweep stems and powders back into the base of the remaining skull.
I could see her frantic motions through my fading limbs. “It’s not working.”
She sobbed. “I just wanted you to like me.”
Claire raised her delicate fists, and brought them down through the smoke with a force that would crush the skull completely.
Alva Holland
ReplyDelete@Alva1206
What Future?
293 words
‘You will have nothing? What drivel you speak, woman! You don’t need anyone else to validate you. Alone you may be but with nothing? You have everything. Look around you, inside you and see the world you have created. No, it was not all done for someone else, it was for you. You just never got the chance to blossom, to flower outside those invisible walls. Now’s your chance. Yes, it’s sad and you will grieve – I hope you will grieve – it’s essential. Let it escape and fly so you can grow again. Your direction may be different but it’s yours. Take the opportunity, grasp it eagerly with both hands and surge onward. Don’t do it for me, do it for you.’
Angie couldn’t look at Cal as he spoke. While she picked at the loose skin around her fingernails and scuffed her feet nervously in the soft gravel, she felt his heavy hand on her shoulder. He continued, ‘you have talent and vision – use it to explore, create, entertain. Don’t waste your time looking back. The future is precious, limited and out there waiting for you.’
A sliver of daylight filtered through the elms, illuminating a reddish stone at Angie’s feet. The dew droplets sparkled, disappearing one by one in a steady rivulet to the ground. By the time the stone was dry, Angie was alone again, Cal had left her with the words ‘Don’t let yourself down, Ang.’
She raised her head, blinked into the morning sun, picked up the largest of the paintbrushes and etched a long flowing stroke across the empty canvas. With a rapid fusing of dark yellow oil, the resultant red was a perfect reflection of the stone at her feet.
Angie smiled. ‘I will have something.’