Hairballs of Genius

Prompted again…


1 Comment

The lovely and talented Sierra Kummings posted a few different prompts on her blog today and offered a challenge. Because I so love to procrastinate, I’m taking her up on that. Here are the results.

***

On her final descent, the sun dripped toward the Western horizon, turning the sky into a pallet of pinks and blues and purples. Clouds threatened to blot out the water-color image as we broke into a clearing. The water called to us. Home, was all I could think.

Henry had reservations, his steps faltering as I tugged him along with me, down the hill.

“Marlie, are you sure that’s where we belong?” He came to a stop behind me.

I turned back to him; I could feel my face flushing in the cool air, then the blush of excitement and anticipation tinting my cheeks.

“This isn’t our world, Henry.”

“But,” he hesitated. He looked up at the trees, the sky. “This world though. It feels so…”

“Ours is below the surface. Don’t you feel it pulling us? Hear it calling to us?”

Henry shook his head. “That can’t be right.”

My heart stopped. We were already too late. He’d been free of the water too long. He forgot who we were, what we were. I needed to act fast if I was going to save my love. With only minutes to spare, I grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hill with me to the dock.

The sun, just brushing the tree tops, was disappearing fast.

At a full run, I refused to let go of Henry’s hand. Just before the wood planks came to an abrupt stop, Henry’s hand jerked free. With too much momentum built up, I couldn’t stop. I was already flying through the air, arms stretched out to the side for a few seconds before I brought my hands together and sliced into the choppy water. Beneath the surface, I felt my legs fuse together, my tail propelling me through the cool, dark world we came from.

Oh how I’d missed that feeling, that feeling of belonging to the place I was. I would have kept going, the other world nearly forgotten already, but something stopped me. My heart let me go no further, pulled me back to the surface. I stayed where I was, for just seconds, before turning back to where I’d just come from.

His hair, normally a golden blond, turned to a fiery shade of red in the disappearing light. He stood there, jaw slack, at the end of the dock. Terror filled his eyes as he stared at me.

“Henry, you have to trust me. I know it’s been a long time, but this is where you belong. You don’t belong up there. We belong down here. We’re merfolk.” The sun, half hidden now, sent me into panic mode. “Henry, please. Jump in. You’ll die if you don’t.”

Strong hands wrapped around my tail and pulled me under, but I fought free and surfaced again. “Henry!”

He jumped when I screamed his name.

I grabbed his ankle, the only thing I could reach. “It’s happening, Henry. Now! You need to jump in.” Hands tried to drag me down, but I held on. Without Henry, life below the surface was no life at all. I would rather die with him than live without him.

A tear dripped from his lashes and slid down his cheek, glistening in that last ray of sunlight.

“I’m sorry.” His voice, barely a whisper in the roar of the wind as the freeze overtook him.

“Henry!” I sobbed as his form turned to ice. Another pull from below, but it was too late; everything above the surface was already frozen.

We stayed that way. For one hundred years, I held on to my love, part above the water, part below. Through the birth of our children, I survived, half frozen, half alive.

When dawn finally broke again, the ice began to melt, and the world above turned green again. I’d held enough life in me below the surface that I survived above the surface too.

But my poor Henry. Turned into petrified wood, he was destined to remain dead in our world and the world he’d so stubbornly refused to leave.

As I slipped beneath the surface, I wept. Our children would never know their father. Our children!

The twins, Trista and Ewan, waited with my sister. She’d made it back with her love, and together, they’d raised my children as their own. I embraced my children, both so much of their father in their appearance.

“How you survived is beyond my doing.” Clarice, the queen, adjusted her crown as she spoke. “You risked your life for his.”

“Live with him. Or die without. There was no other choice.”

All Fed Up…


Leave a Comment

This also came to me in the form of an assignment, but will make a wonderful prompt as well. Mary was fed up with Bob and… My assignment was to write something with that as the opening line. This was as much of a venting session as it was a work of creative writing…

Mary was fed up with Bob and… Just… and. She couldn’t quite figure out what the ‘and’ part of it was yet, but when she did, things were going to change. The incessant thumping from his room at all hours of the night from the hard rock and techno he preferred kept everyone else in the house up, despite the constant complaints. The midnight snack he was prone to was more like a meal, and every morning when she got up to get ready for the day, there was another sink-load of dishes to be cleaned even though the sink and drying rack were both empty the night before. He was a straight A college student, and he was busy with homework eighty percent of the time when he was home. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do the darn dishes every now and then.

She picked up one of the offending dishes, still perched precariously on the edge of the black granite counter before someone – most likely the cat – knocked it on the floor and broke it. She stared in disbelief. Something had been melted to the plate. He didn’t even have the decency to put it in the sink and soak it? GRRRRR! Enough was enough. Her nose twitched, her lip curled up as she rummaged through the storage closet and dug out one of those old child safety latches, the ones that look like an octopus with it’s little zip-tie-like straps that caused the need for ten thumbs plus an extra hand to operate correctly, and put it on the first pair of cupboard doors. She gave a light tug to one of the doors and to her delight, it didn’t budge an inch.

“Morning, Ma,” he said, going directly to her to start his morning the way he started every morning. He scratched his ribs through the plain white t-shirt he wore, yawning immensely, causing his eyes to pinch shut as he walked.

“Good morning,” she replied cheerily, sipping on her own steaming mug of coffee while she read the newspaper at the kitchen table. He kissed the top of her head, then did a one-eighty to open the glass door that housed the coffee mugs, stopping abruptly, digging his fingernails into his scalp through his brown hair. Glancing about the kitchen, he noted the line of safety latches guarding the contents of the cabinets. Bob took a few steps back and leaned his butt against the table next to his mother and reached for her mug to steal a gulp while he pondered the mechanics of the contraption keeping him from his morning brew. She read her son quicker than a lightening strike though, and dropped her hand possessively over the top of her mug, drawing it in closer. He sighed, rolled his gray eyes, made a face behind her back and turned back to the cupboard.

“So do we have a poltergeist or something?” he teased, reaching up to try and make a go of the latch.

“Mmhm. He likes to eat our food and leaves piles of dishes to be washed by someone who got no enjoyment out of the meal what-so-ever,” she said. He made a noise, his concentration on the stubborn latch. He hadn’t heard a word she’d just said. Bob shook his head while he tried to contort his hands to get the latch to release.

“Ma, can you get this thing open? Please?”

“What? You mean the engineer can’t get a simple latch to open?” Mary asked, finally turning to him, one dark brow raised over a set of blue eyes.

“Ma! I need my morning brew,” he said, “and I can’t get this stupid thing open.”

She couldn’t keep the vindictive smile hidden any longer, so she let it take over, a dimple flashing to life on her right cheek.

“Perfect.”

As Prompted


Leave a Comment

A friend of mine was watching the first Harry Potter for the first time in a while, and commented that she loved how Hagrid kept saying “I shouldn’t have told you that.” I’ve always loved that line myself, and wished they’d kept with his little catch-phrase through the series better than they did.

Anyway, she prompted all of her writerly friends to write something with that line, then post it in a group thread. So I did. And seriously? I got, what is to me, a massive compliment. If it were raining right now, I’d be out there doing my happy dance in it. The compliment, by none other than windr0se over at A Novel Approach, had this to say:

“great timing and backstory in one of the best ways I have ever seen.”

But anyways, now it’s got me thinking… A writing prompt. Weekly or bi-weekly, I haven’t yet figured it out, but I will, and I’ll let you know what I decide on. For now, it’ll be as inspired, until I figure out the details. Which will probably be before the next prompt.

My Challenge To You: Come up with a short piece of fiction with the line, “I shouldn’t have told you that.” You can post it to your own page and put the link in the comments below if you choose, or if it’s 200 words or under, you can just post it right into the comments! Happy writing everyone!

So without further ado, the following is my contribution to the prompt. (It could probably use a little more editing, but as is, this was a rough draft)

The clacking of metal on metal as the cart clicked up the incline had Mary gnawing on her bottom lip. The line of carts was about to crest the top of the first big drop.

Her scream caught in the back of her throat, making it impossible to breathe. Her nails dug into Luke’s arm, on the verge of drawing blood. Wind howled past her ears, blending with the rushing sound inside her head. The rollercoaster corkscrewed upside down a couple of times before launching them into a loop-de-loop.

The scream tore free. Just a few more hills to slow them down, and the carts came to a stop. Luke climbed out, helping her up onto the exit platform. Her knees trembled, and with an arm around her shoulders to keep her steady, he walked down the steps with her.

Together, they walked out beyond the rest of the carnival goers, toward the parking area.

“Okay, when you said you didn’t like rollercoasters, I didn’t realize it meant you were terrified of them,” Luke commented as they walked.

“Pride had me refusing to admit that.” Mary refused to look at him, embarrassed by her reaction to a simple ride.

“Look, I’m sorry for making you hold up your end of the deal. But,” he stopped, just next to his truck, turning her to face him. “You did say if we went out dancing, you’d go on a rollercoaster with me.”

Mary held a finger up, swallowed, then bent over, expelling the contents of her formerly happy stomach. When she straightened, she was surprised when he lifted the bottom of his shirt up and wiped her mouth with it.

“I shouldn’t have said that. And I totally get it if you never want to see me again.” Mary looked down at the dirt, kicking at it with the toe of her boot to cover the puddle between them.

“A fear of rollercoasters isn’t enough for me.”

“I puked on your boots.”

“No worse than anything I’ve stepped in at the ranch.” Luke smiled, then brought his lips down on hers.

Mary backed away in surprise, slapping a hand over her mouth. There was no way it could be a pleasant kiss now. Not with the taste of vomit still fresh in her mouth.

“Tell you what. Next time we go dancing, we’ll do something less terrifying. Like skydiving.”

Luke’s teasing smile wasn’t enough to keep her stomach from lurching, and she backed up a few paces, just to be safe.

“No. No extreme sports.”

Luke laughed. “Says the girl who does trick riding at horse shows across the country.”

“I shouldn’t have told you that either. Can you please take me home now?”