Write the start of a novel...

Pthom

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Hi, Islaitha, welcome to the thread. Look again, they're there. :D
 

Robert L.B.

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Sneaky, editing them in. :p

vector
chill
asphalt
pink
petticoat

----------------

"Then take the third vector."

"Third what? Sure it's not left or something? Why vector?"

"Don't ask me, I'm not writing this."

Anna gazed long and hard at the array of pink switches in front of her. Who in God's name had thought this many were needed for a simple Tie-Dye gunship? She picked one and flipped it.

The sound of a hidden weapons compartment opening to the chill of space was lost to the vacuum. Anna couldn't see anything though. What had she fired?

The question was answered when she slowed down slightly and saw a petticoat fly in front of her. She was going to strangle the inventor of this ship.

Why was she even flying this chaos-plagued thing? Give her the smooth feel of a hovercraft striking a plasteel wall before rebounding off and skidding on asphalt dotted with speed bumps any day.

Mandible
Orange
Wallaby
Chainsaw
Spork
 

Nymtoc

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When she walked into my office I knew she was trouble. You don't see a dame smile with a clenched mandible unless the dame is up to something.
She was blond. She was stacked. She was dangerous.
"Are you Sam Wallaby?" she breathed.
"That's the name on the door," I said. "It's my door."
"Oh, Mr. Wallaby, I need your help."
"Would it be inconvenient to tell me what kind of help?"
I felt like a chainsaw was buzzing my spine as she said, "My husband's lover's brother-in-law's girlfriend's uncle is trying to kill me."
"Slow down, lady," I said, putting my feet on the desk and reaching for a bottle of Four Roses. "So far you haven't given me anything but a bunch of crazy, lopsided angles. What's your angle?"
"Don't you understand a word I'm saying?" She glided closer to my desk, her legs shimmering in orange silk stockings. "I'm in terrible danger."
"What's your name, sister?"
"Sister Margaret Mary. I used to be a nun but I'm not anymore, so don't call me sister. My name is Margaret Eleanora Ingrid Rachel Elizabeth Hansen-Smythe, but--"
"Okay, Maggie." I took a swig of the Four Roses. "Dangerous dames are my business. But I still don't get you. You look as red-hot as a tequila sunrise and about as vulnerable as an tiger that's changed its stripes to look like a candy cane. If you--"
"Stop those awful metaphors," she said. "Won't you protect me?"
I reached into the bowl of popcorn next to the Rolodex, stirred it with the spork some dame had given me back in 1939, and said, "First I need to know if you're serious. In my game, a deposit is like the hump on a camel's back, especially if the camel has been trekking through the Sahara for six weeks with a rider who doesn't know Egypt from East Podunk and can't find an oasis." I pulled out a pack of Camels and lit one.
She reached into her purse and pulled out five hundred-dollar bills. "Is this enough?"
I took the bills and gave them the once-over. They were real. "It'll do for starters," I said. "I get fifty dollars a day--plus expenses."



:D

sassafras
engineer
duplicity
starve
confetti
 
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Pthom

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Edgar loved to eat. If it were up to him, he would have ten meals a day. But his income as second-string chemical engineer for a major fruit juice manufacturer precluded that. His tastes ran to the expensive side of the cuisine balance. Not only did he find it hard to afford eating at nice restaurants, but because he perpetually smelled of sassafras, most of them refused him entrance. Frustrated, and not willing to starve, Edgar took up gourmet cooking.

Life was good, for awhile, until his sister Charlotte re-entered his life. Charlotte absolutely loved parties. She could come up with a reason to hold a party for any occasion, no matter how trivial. But she was also a liar. Her duplicity was the reason Edgar had estranged himself from her in the first place. But he agreed to allow her a visit, exacting from her a promise to not make a piñata while he was mixing up the batter to an angel food cake. The last time, it had prematurely broken, getting confetti in the batter and ruining everything.

eggs
horses
chameleon
Reuben-esque
anti-freeze

:D
 
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Harimum

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“I would rather drink anti-freeze than pick you up tonight!’ her husband said.

"My 53 year old wife posing naked for a bunch of Art Students! You're on your own! I want nothing to do with it!"
Jenny sighed and turned to her daughter.

“No chance mum!” replied Sarah, “You can just get the bus! Wild horses couldn’t drag me there!”

Honestly! To say that she had a tattoo of a chameleon on her left buttock her daughter could be quite prudish at times!
“I’m rather proud of my Reuben-esque curves I’ll have you know!” she said teasingly.

“Well anyway, I’ll just get the bus then! There are eggs in the fridge so if you won’t give me a lift home then you’ll just have to make your own dinners tonight!”
She pulled on her coat and headed out into the cold November air to the art class.

Dinosaur
Karate
Casino
fingernail
Balloon
 

Nymtoc

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Bigger and flashier and weirder. That's what it's all about these days in Las Vegas. How to out-shine, out-sparkle and--yes--out-gross the competition. So it was no surprise that the newest casino on the strip, T Rex, opened with a 200-piece band playing "Let's Spend the Night Together," a gigantic balloon of Ozzy Osbourne and an overhead salute by the famed Air Force Thunderbirds.

Kathy stood looking at the fantastically designed animatronic dinosaur outside the place. It was as least as believable as those dinos in Jurassic Park. How on earth did they make something like that seem so real? A low brick wall surrounded the creature, but Kathy was in an impish mood, and she climbed over it and walked right up to the monster.

"Okay, Rex," she said with a smile. "Let's see if you're as bad as you pretend to be." She reached out and scratched the dinosaur's leg with her fingernail.

"Wow, that was brave of me," she said to herself, starting to climb back over the wall. "I didn't even have to use karate on the silly old beast."

But at that moment the world changed forever for Kathy, for with a roar that could be heard as far away as Hoover Dam the dinosaur--no animatronic marvel after all, but a real, unfrozen Tyrannosaurus Rex from 65 million years ago--reared its head and swooped down upon her with its teeth shining in the spotlights.

She screamed.

:e2teeth:

catapult
Braille
insubordination
mountebank
embroidery
 
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Joycecwilliams

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Eric could make a woman's knees unstable with his touch. He read the forms of the ladies as if they were writings in braille. This trait served him well as a mountebank for Service Vacs. Eric would knock on the doors of lonely women and not only get appointments set up, but bed them as well.

Brianna put her embroidery down to answer his knock on the door. She certainly didn't need a vacumn cleaner but she allowed him in her home. Her womanhood felt like a catapult, hurling streams of warm honey at just the touch of his hand.

Of course the inevitable happened, it always did and it was time for Brianna to face reality.. Her guilt overwhelmed her she was quilty of insubordination and worried her husband Mack would discover her deed.


anchor
penmanship
catastasis
slake
cottage cheese
 
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Pthom

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Proud to be chosen anchor man on the cross country team, Denny took the long way home from high school. But five miles of running made him thirsty enough to drain a swimming pool. Too bad there wasn't one handy. Instead, he opened the refrigerator, collected the half-full pitcher of Very Berry Kool-Aid and without bothering for a glass took a long pull from it. It was way too sweet. That worm of a sister of his probably forgot to measure the water--again. He rummaged around some more. V-8? No. A Tupperware container of Aunt Hilda's cottage cheese and Jell-O. Didn't she have any more imagination than that? Dad's beer? Hell no. Gravy? Oh, come on.

Denny sighed and topped off the Kool-Aid with water. It diluted it more than Kraft Foods intended but it did serve to slake his thirst. He looked at the clock. Quarter to four. Almost two hours before mom came home; another, maybe, while she prepared supper. Plenty of time. He shouldered his book bag and headed upstairs to his room.

Western Civ wasn't his favorite course, but this month they were studying Greek theatre, and although the language was stilted, the stories were pretty cool. Denny flipped open his notebook and took out the mimeographed assignment sheet.

"In classical Greek tragedy, dramas followed a rigorous format. Write a 500-word essay explaining the epistasis, catastasis and catastrophe in terms of modern literature."

They gotta be kidding, Denny thought, getting down the big dictionary. He could have written pages on the Trojan war, or the Peloponnesian war. The Greeks really knew how to fight, man. And in the nude, too. He chuckled. Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't it freak out Roberta Jamison if he ran the 10k next week naked? Roberta was such a prude. Geez. But hey, you know? There were Olympic gold medal winners who ran barefoot. If he did that, and uh, you know, kinda just forgot his jock strap, it would be close to running in the nude. Hell yeah. And he wouldn't get arrested if he had his shorts on. Nice thing about running for Polk High, was that the courses were mostly on turf, not like over at Lincoln, where those dudes had to run on cinders. Ouch. No, man, maybe running barefoot wasn't such a good idea these days.

Denny became aware he was staring at the Dictionary, that had fallen open to the letter H, and there, in the margin was a picture of a Holstein cow. What's that about? Shaking his head, driving dreams of running naked from his mind, he glanced at his bedside alarm clock. The big red numbers said 4:57. Changed to 4:58 as he watched. Dagflippit! He'd have to rush through the essay. And his penmanship would be terrible and Mr. Hanson would mark him down for it. Well, some things just couldn't be helped. No matter what, he was going to the movies tonight with Elly Lamb.

Denny uncapped the Bic and wrote: In classical Greek tragedy . . .

supposition
mistrust
corrugations
lining
eggplant
 

Nymtoc

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In the spy game, you had to be able to figure out who to trust and who to mistrust in a split second. Sillaby had been at this game a long time now, and when the blond babe with the pierced left eyebrow walked into the club any supposition that she was an ordinary patron vanished. From above, the rapidly moving lights created fantastic, illusory patterns on silvery corrugations in the walls. This was some club, he thought, a supposedly trendy downtown hangout for spoiled rich kids that was actually a meeting place for the world's most dangerous operatives. The blonde sidled up to his table. She was wearing eggplant-colored pants, whose crimson lining was just visible at the hipline.

"Is anybody claiming this chair?" she said.

"If they are, they're toast," he replied. "It's yours, baby."

She sank into the chair, and as she did so her lime-green top opened to reveal everything but her nipples. "Do you know the way to San Jose?" she purred.

"How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" he replied.

She smiled. "Three times six and four times seven, twenty-eight and eleven."

That was the code. She was his contact from Langley.

;)

disingenuous
frappe
boo-boo
gyroscope
teal
 
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Pthom

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I took one look at the dude in that crazy retro bar and knew I was in heavy. God, he was sucking up a teal-colored frappé through a damn straw, for chrissakes. Oh well, best get this shit over with. I undid the top two buttons of my top, and shoved my pants low. Maybe he'd get lost looking at skin.

I moved in. He invited me to sit, using some kind of jive talk that sounded like it came out of some last-century pulp crime novel. We did the password shtick. By the way he smiled, I knew I'd suckered him in. "You're some disingenuous bitch," Harrison had said, after I passed the last exams. Don't have a clue what that means, but Harrison is hot shit military brass and if he says so, then I am. I bent over, showing the guy tit. It worked. His pupils dilated till there wasn't iris left.

"So you're from Langley."

Damn, the asshole said it too loud. I checked, but no one noticed. Thank God for cheap booze. "You know you talk too much," I said, and licked my lips.

I got up, moved my chair around closer to him, making sure he saw skin. His shit-eating grin told me he did, and more than he had in a long time.

"Oops," he said. "Boo-boo. You're falling out."

"Like that bothers you?" I leaned in, one hand on his arm and stuck my tongue into his mouth. While he tried to push my pants off the rest of the way, my other hand found its way into his, past his belt and closed on the checkered grip of a--Christ, a derringer? Well, at this range, it wouldn't matter. I let him feel the muzzle of the pistol on his scrotum, and whispered into his ear, "Pal, you won't live to dawn, if I'm any judge, and I'm a pretty good judge of these kinda things. But hey, in the few seconds you have left on this planet, why don't you be a good boy and tell me where you put the gyroscope plans?"

bark
leaf
twig
reactor
dye
 

Nymtoc

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Cross and double-cross. Sillaby had seen it all. The babe was doing exactly what he expected her to do--bark up the wrong tree. It was the kind of tree you find in phony forest scenes in B movies, the kind where every twig hides an electronic bug and every leaf conceals plans for an atomic reactor.

She thought he could blast his balls with the Derringer? Shit, were her bosses at Langley really so stupid they thought this caper involved anything as simple-minded as a gyroscope?

"Sorry, babe," he said. "That Derringer came from a Cracker Jack box, but the stilletto I've got pressed against your left boob now is real. Did you really think a neophyte like you could outclass a veteran like me?"

"Veteran?" she said. "From the Civil War, right? Listen, you refugee from an Ian Fleming novel, these tits aren't real either. I'm wearing plastic body armor. My real tits are a hell of a lot more interesting. Too bad you'll never see them."

"I've already seen them, baby, when you made 'Debbie Does Detroit,'" That shook her, and he moved in for the kill. "By the way, Blondie, I've been meaning to ask you. Where did you get the dye job?"

:D

monomaniac
elevate
transubstantiation
glob
restive
 
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Pthom

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I really thought I had him then, but the damn monomaniac discovered my lexan armor only extended up so far. Damn, the point of that knife hurt. And how the hell did he know I was in that old porn flick? I let go of the derringer and grabing him where it counts, boosted him up and out of the chair. The knife took a bit of me with it as he toppled over backward, but it was worth it to watch his head crack open on the bar rail. I had to look away, then, because the glob of brains that leaked out of his cracked skull made my stomach churn.

I tossed a fifty on the bar. "Clean up in aisle one," I told the bartender, and grabbing the whiskey sour he'd just made for someone else, drained it. Maybe it would elevate my restive mood.

Standing in the lobby, I felt warm stickiness trickling down my ribs behind the armor. I didn't want to, but I had to know what kind of shit his knife did to me. I ducked into the women's. My tit looked like hell, but it was just a skin wound. Meant a trip to see Worley, though, the scheister. But he was good with a knife, and had this green goop that made you heal really fast. "Like transubstantiation," Worley said the first time. "Fix you up like new." And he laughed.

I stuffed a bunch of tissue into the armor to sop up the blood, dumped the stilleto in the waste slot, and walked out into the night.

hegemony
individual
verdigris
anemometer
previous
 
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Nymtoc

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Romanpopovich clenched his fists and cursed. He strode to the window and looked out over the streets of Sadengrad, the capital city of Pysfrickorod. A fierce wind was blowing, and a flurry of pamplets fluttered past the window. He knew they were pamphlets demanding liberation. So what! He would stamp out these traitors just as he had stamped out their predecessors. He was in control now, and if the rest of the world refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of his government, the rest of the world could go to hell!

He fought to tamp down any fear that an insurrection might actually arise here in Pysfrickorod. He had already achieved hegemony over what used to be a a few flabby democratic states. He had pacified what remained of the opposition by issuing a proclamation of individual rights. As long his citizens forswore allegiance to any previous government--on pain of torture and death--why should they have anything to complain about?

"Why you looking so pensive, Dahlink?"

He turned from the window. Lydia Karmenova had glided into the room. She was wearing a gossamer negligee. After last night, he was surprised she was able to glide at all. "Am I looking pensive, Lydianska?" he asked. "I was only thinking of the welfare of my people."

"That's all you ever think about, Poopie," she said, coming toward him. "Even when you're down there nuzzling my...you know...all you think about it your pipple. But I guess that's why I gotta be so long-suffering, being the plaything of a great man."

"You know I don't think of you as a plaything, Nuzzledinky," He said. He planted his mouth on hers and gave her some tongue.

She moved her hand against his crotch, but he turned abruptly away. "There is indeed something on my mind, Kinkypuss. The anemometer shows high winds today. The wind has been blowing those damned revolutionary pamphlets into my window."

"Oh, pooh!" she laughed. "Every time there are revolutionaries you send them straight to the gallows or else you have them drown in boiling oil or something. Why you worrying now?"

"It's something my great-grandfather told me," he said. "He used to say, 'The dome of a great cathedral acquires a patina of verdigris over the centuries. He who would scrape it off may end by scraping off his own skin.'"

"What that mean, Dahlink?" Lydia Karmenova moved her fingers under his beltline.

"Damned if I know, but it's always bothered me."

A pamphlet fluttered through the window. It read "DEATH TO THE TYRANT!"

He stooped to pick it up, but she grabbed it first and crumpled it up. "Let's go do foo-foo," she said.

"Well, all right, Biddledypoo."

But at that moment, from far down the street, there came the sound of cannons.

:eek:

stampede
radish
incarcerate
filigree
appendix
 
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Pthom

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Damn the sheriff. Why the hell did he have to incarcerate the boss? He hadn't done anything but drink a little too much. Now Henry was in charge of the roundup. Astride a horse in the middle of a stampede, Henry winced in pain, convinced that in moments his appendix would burst and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. It was that rotten radish, no doubt, in the salad he ate last night at Rona's, that place of too much gilded filigree and red velvet.

stem
blandishment
quietude
victorious
hamper
 

sandyn

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“I just want to spend some time alone with the best looking man I’ve ever seen.” Serena batted long eyelashes.

The blandishment worked. Cole picked up the picnic basket and carried it to the car. He didn’t see the victorious look on her face as she followed him to slide gracefully into the seat with an air of quietude.

After a short drive to a lovely park on the river, she spread a plaid blanket in a secluded spot on the bank. The picnic feast devoured, Serena plucked a ripe, red apple from the hamper. “A, B, C…” she said silently, and smiled to herself when the stem twisted off as she recited the initial of his last name.

inane
hawk
bellicose
imaginative
space
 

davids

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inane
hawk
bellicose
imaginative
space

Hawk stood at the helm, fire surrounded his soul. Where five-hundred children had played nothing was left but the charred remains of their spirits.

The ship pulled hard to starboard as Hawk fought against it. He could not hold to port much longer. Flames sucked at the hull as his arms began to fail.

The Z-1 Perceptor watched as he struggled at the helm and laughed at him, at the stench of burning flesh. Mechanical words raped Hawk's soul.

"Mr. Hawk stands on the edge of space, inane, bellicose ranting. Children dead, next phase. We are not being very imaniginative now are we Mr. Hawk?

The machine had been programed for saving, not for being kind or gentle. Hands were ripped from the helm, flesh left hanging, John Hawk dreamed.


facedown
gaffer
periscope
spook
vixen
 
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Kerr

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Lying facedown on the gridiron roadway I called to the gaffer below. "Hey! If you ease the periscope around the corner so as not to spook her, you'll see the vixen of my dreams walking by."

"Wet ones?" he asked, peering through the scope.


ferret
kill
outstation
realism
veracity
 

John Paton

carn the mighty hawks !!
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Nick Headstrong, famed Hollywood Director, visited Sri Lanka earlier this year scouting for locations for his new movie "Wake up Ferret Man"

This is the sequel to "Kill Ferret Man' his huge blockbuster of 3 years ago. I interviewed Nick in a lonely outstation 200 miles south of Colombo - the nation's capital.

"I'm looking for realism this time" Nick confided in me. "An accurrate and precise portrayal of the truth."

"Veracity!" I ventured.

"Gesundheit" he replied.

Pygmy
fulcrum
shortcomings
syzygy
briquette
 

Pthom

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"This is going to take forever," Brad muttered, inserting the third briquette into the cooker. He looked with mistrust at the cartoon bushman logo on the conical device. "Whose idea was this anyway?"

Vikki would be at the observatory most of the night anyway, photographing tonight's Mars/Venus conjunctive syzygy. When she got home after one of these sessions, she was always famished. And wired, wanting to talk well past dawn. And despite having to leave for work by 7:30, Brad would oblige, fixing her a hamburger and trying to stifle yawns as she talked.

The Pygmy Cooker was her idea. "It will save energy. See?" she said, reading from the brochure. "It uses only one briquette and can cook two steaks well done in just minutes." Then she had batted her long blonde eyelashes at him and he could never resist that and he found one on Ebay.

Brad sighed. The cooker had arrived just this afternoon and it had taken him almost four hours and several false tries to assemble it. Then he realized they had no briquettes or steaks. Safeway was about to close. They had the briquettes, but were out of steaks. Brad bought hamburger. Frozen pre-formed patties.

And then, trying to pry the damned disks of frozen ground-up cow apart, he had cut his thumb on the knife as it slipped off the upturned cereal bowl he used as a fulcrum. They were out of band-aids, too, so now he had this big wad of gauze pad and micro-pore tape on his thumb and felt like a complete idiot.

And the damn briquettes either wouldn't light or would burn up so fast in the Pygmy that there was no way in hell he'd be able to grille a hamburger, let alone thaw one out. Brad lit a match--and watched as the gauze on his thumb caught fire. He jammed his thumb into the glass of wine he'd poured over an hour ago, and shook his head. Maybe Vikki wouldn't mind so much having Cheerios tonight. Maybe she would take pity on him and forgive his shortcomings.

zymurgy
granola
crinolines
pepper
anticipatory
 

davids

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"Zymurgy please replace the granola on my crinoline, add the pepper, then and only then shall I be able to fulfill my spousal obligations!" Blymurgmouse held his manhood in hands yet unblemished by the warts of Wank-Gold in unequivical anticipatory bliss.

legato
penury
scull
trap
wingspan
 

Pthom

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Well, okay, I guess: "zymurgy" is the manufacturing chemistry of fermentation processes in brewing, a crinoline is a stiff frame worn under a woman's skirt to give it a full appearance (and the prompt was plural). But you know, hey. Whatever cooks your crumpets.​

The first movement had been nearly unbearable. Sheldon escaped to the lobby after and drank several glasses of red wine, so he was fairly numb during the second movement. The legato passages nearly put him to sleep. He did sleep through the second intermission.

Gloria was blissfully silent, although he could tell from her icy demeanor and expression of sheer disgust that he hadn't pleased her much. Fortunately, the final movement was a rousing march, and got progressively louder, so that by the time the concert was over he was almost back to his normal acerbic self. The stood an arm's length apart under the marquee watching in the rain drench the poor souls who had chosen to drive and leave their cars in the parking structure two blocks up the hill.

"Well, my dear," he said to Gloria, while looking for a cab and in a tone of voice designed to avoid the trap he knew she was setting for him. "What shall we have? Italian, or Thai, perhaps? Or I know this great little Greek--"

"Just shut up, Sheldon. Just take me home."

"But Gloria, my sweet--"

She spun on him. "What the hell is going on inside that thick skull of yours?"

"Well, I uh, I am just trying to--"

"Not hard enough." Gloria spotted a vacant cab, raised her arm and dashed to enter it before Sheldon could respond. And in a swirl of rain, she was gone.

"Well, that was fun," he muttered, and walked in the opposite direction, coat collar turned up and shoulders hunched against the downpour. The limit of Gloria's compassion--or her imagination with lovers, apparently--wasn't as broad as the wingspan of a gnat. She'd been a long shot anyhow, he rationalized. If it hadn't been for his penury of female companionship, he would have just told her to forget the damned concert and ordered pizza in.

:D

Kashmir
cashmere
tornado
casserole
fleas
 

suzi

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We had been in Kashmir for over a month waiting for supplies that hadn't come. They told us it was due to the recent tornado, that all deliveries were delayed, but we knew that wasn't the case, they wouldn't be coming. We had been forgotten, actually worst, they hadn't forgotten us, that could have been understandable, we all forget things, we had been purposely neglected. Like the fleas that lived in my bedding that I chose to ignore rather than acknowledge. We were expendable...if only I could blink my eyes and find myself back in my crazy grandmothers kitchen wrapped in her tattered cashmere blanket eating her tasteless tuna casserole listening to her tell me this trip was a bad idea.

joggers
lyrics
sheets
attic
amputation
 

John Paton

carn the mighty hawks !!
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joggers
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I hadn't been the same since the amputation. I was beginning to think it wasn't worth joining this crazy wiccan sect but I still loved Agatha too much. But to cut my middle finger off as part of the initiation. How else would I show my anger at a motorist cutting me off, I wondered.

My brain was frazzled and I still couldn't remember the lyrics to that goddam song. I grabbed the music sheets again and tried to concentrate.

"Happy Birthday to you ***** Happy Birthday to you ***** Happy Birthday dear Agatha"

Finally I was beginning to feel a little better. More of the words were beginning to stick.
My little poodle stopped for a pee and I watched a couple of joggers on the other side of the road. They seemed so in love. What was their secret?

Just then my mobile rang. It was Agatha.

"We're all in the attic. All 17 of us. Just one more thing and you will be one of us"

I nervously crossed the road and a car screeched to a halt.

"Whatcha doin' fruitcake!"

"Blow it out yer ass" I responded in kind. I tried to give him the finger without success. Man! This thing called love is gonna be tricky to work out.


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Pthom

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Suzann made several mistakes that afternoon. In an attempt to create a romantic setting she moved the all-weather speakers from their hiding place behind the fake boulders, in the mistaken belief that the music would be clearer. She strung up an old string of Christmas lights, for atmosphere, unaware that this particular string wasn't meant for use outdoors. And, she forgot about the loose flagstone in the patio. If Suzann had paid closer attention to these things, she might still be alive.

Instead, she focused her energy toward pleasing Glenn. He'd left for work this morning in a foul mood. Justifiably: the old weather station that had hung on the hallway wall was now in pieces in the trash. But it wasn't her fault. Really. Glenn shouldn't have hung the heirloom--made by his great, great grandfather--right where she could brush against it with a load of dirty laundry. Glenn pointed out that it had hung there perfectly fine for fifteen years. Then he stormed out, slamming the front door.

At first, Suzann had it in her head she could get the weather station repaired. After all, the wood plaque was okay: just a little scratch. But as she tried to pick up the broken pieces of the hand-blown glass thermometer, its mercury gathered in silvery puddles on top of the carpet fibers, she knew it would be impossible.

She spent half the day feeling sorry for herself, then coming to realize how unproductive that was, decided to ingratiate herself to Glenn by throwing a romantic little party just for the two of them. It would be a warm evening. A fancy steak dinner on the patio would be perfect.

Minutes before she expected Glenn home, she plugged in the Christmas lights, put Sarah Vaughan on the stereo and satisfied everything was perfect, returned to the kitchen for the salad. She'd put it in Aunt Belinda's old lead crystal bowl, the one that was almost too big for the dining room table. She had to carry it in both arms, like a laundry basket.

The toe of her sandal caught on the loose flagstone. Trying to steady herself Suzann caught hold of a hot Christmas light. The bowl dropped and shattered. She slipped on a tomato and fell ...

#

When Glenn arrived home, feeling bad that he'd snapped at Suzann this morning, the first thing he noticed was that the fire alarms were screeching, the house full of smoke. Rushing into the kitchen, he turned off the stove, flipping two very black and very ruined t-bone steaks into the sink. Then he noticed flickering lights out on the patio.

Lying in the middle of a pile of salad and shattered crystal was Suzann's inert form. There was blonde hair and blood on one of the speakers, and in her hand, a Christmas light, crushed, the shape of its tungsten filament burned into her palm.
 

Woof

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Phtom, that story is good, except that it's too short. Five words too short, to be precise. {HINT}