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: Midnight tonight, PDT.
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 amusement).)
Prompt:
"This was not how I imagined this going."
The Frozen Cave
ReplyDeleteBy Ronel Janse van Vuuren
@miladyronel
ronelthemythmaker.wordpress.com
188 words
‘This was not how I imagined this going.’
Tony glared at Michaela before turning back to the entangled ropes. If he couldn’t fix it, they were going to hang against the rough wall of this seemingly endless cave-system.
The cold crept through his clothes, reminding him that they weren’t supposed to be there. Freezing tendrils caressed his face, making him shiver deep inside.
‘Can’t you just fix it already?’
He swallowed against the cold and fear, trying not to yell at her for causing the ropes’ entanglement in the first place. If she’d only climbed at a steady pace…
Slowly, his fingers froze in the protective gloves he wore. The ropes refused to budge.
Looking down, he could see her. Tony shook his head. No matter how much he and Michaela fought, he couldn’t let the frozen woman take her.
‘Tell mom and dad that I love them.’
He saw the confusion in Michaela’s eyes before he used his knife to cut her free. She shot up to the ledge where the others were waiting. Satisfied that he’d saved his sister, Tony met the frozen woman at the bottom…
Ah, sad. :( True brother's love. Sometimes, life takes one to save another.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I was too quick to hit send there.
DeleteAJ Aguilar-van der Merwe
ReplyDeletewww.annajaileneaguilar.com
@AnneVDM0519
200 words
DID YOU EVER LOVE ME?
"This isn’t how I imagined us going," I say to Darren. "Then again, life rarely goes according to my plans or desires. What about you?" I look at him. He makes no sound as he lies on the bed. "Don't answer." I chuckled.
Katharine McPhee's song, "Better off alone", plays softly in the background.
"So yeah," I say, as the song ends, "did you ever love me? Probably not, right? Judging from your text message this afternoon. Sleeping with three other girls, you said. I know I said it's fine. I have a toy boy to spend time with while you're with one of the others. I lied. It's not okay.”
“No, it isn't okay,” I repeat, murmuring. I take my Smith and Wesson from the bedside table and look at it as though it’s going to talk to me. I feel a sense of anticipation mounting. Silence. I lie down beside the man I adore.
"Life's lemons, people say... or do they say life's demons? Whatever." I kiss him on his frozen lips. "You said you liked me crazy. Me, too.” I grin widely. “I love me crazy."
I put the gun on my head. I pull the trigger.
Haunting and edgy piece. Love it!
Delete
ReplyDeleteThe Coarse of True Love-An Extract from the Unpublished Papers of the late Huxley Hobart
300 words to the witless and the wise
billmelaterplea
www.engleson.ca
This was not how I imagined this going. My shortcomings were legion. My tongue was too quick, my brain disengaged, my shallow heart transplanted in the steaming compost of past loves.
“It’s not you, Louise,” I’d said, channeling every two-bit line from the thousand, soft-soap-opera, lovie dovie movies I’d ever seen. “It’s me.”
My pronouncement seemed not to surprize her.
“Of course, it’s you,” she spit-balled back at me.
I swore I saw a cartoon balloon float out of her hair that said “Duh!”
I slunk away like an old dog who’d farted his last flipper.
Later, at the Drunken Goose Tavern, I ran into Grunsky. Grunsky was known far and wide as a slick lady’s man, a sleek male roadster who never crashed and burned.
“It’s a good line, Hobart. Classic. Maybe a little over-used but it always sends the right message. Well done.”
“Not very comforting, Grunsky. It didn’t seem to work on her.”
He gave me his best Casanova-Valentino smile, drained his brewski, and said, “Fishnoodles, Fearless Fosdick. She agreed with you, right? That’s exactly the response you wanted her to have.”
Bingo! The gong finally rang. I‘d been hurt by Louise’s readiness to accept the proposition that I was the callous guilty goober in her life. Of course, the whole point was for me to fall on my flimsy sword but my ego also wanted her to protest just a little bit.
“Guys like us, we always want it both ways, Hobart. That just ain’t the way the Dump Technique works. You gotta leave them better than you found them. The next guy‘ll be in your debt.”
“You should write a manual,” I said.
“Maybe you should take a crack at it, Hobart.”
It was an idea.
Men needed all the help we could get.