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Flash Fiction: Somebody Needs Attention

Wordsmith.org and I are on a break.

Though I’ve enjoyed the freedom, I’ve missed the early morning wake up call in my inbox where the Word of the Day challenge awaited. I’ve forgotten the playful tease that comes in a real stinker of a word, felt lonely for the thrill in wrestling a word into submission, and longed for the surprise when a word lends itself to a poem.

I needed a flash fiction fix, but I’m not ready to recommit. So, I glommed onto one of Lisa Romeo’s writing prompts (from her Winter Writing Prompts Project). The word: bloated.

Nobody said re-entry would be pretty.

*****

Somebody Needs Attention

Rebecca held the curtain open with the back of her hand. The sunrise colored the sky with a fiery orange and shed light on the fact that nothing had changed. Bags of garbage still lined the sidewalks; they festered, split, and spilled out onto the street.

Mrs. Owen, from across the street, ate a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken it seemed, and Bobby Cooper, at the end of the block, must not have any real dishes. Paper plates and red plastic cups littered his stretch of lawn.  Rebecca’s next door neighbor, Stan, had tried to keep things neat by piling his garbage into a well-formed mountain, but one of the bags had rolled off and exploded onto Rebecca’s driveway. A shadow moved across the concrete and slipped behind the trash — a rat.

It had only been three weeks since the Waste Management workers first refused to fire up their trucks and clear the neighborhood, but already they made national headlines. Workers weren’t allowed to collect any trash, but the mayor insisted they had hauled somebody’s garbage and dropped it on the front steps of his house. The mayor’s front door was blocked, he said, and he was being held hostage by refuse. Still, he didn’t budge on concessions. It was like the New York City garbage strike on a small town scale.

Rebecca turned on the news, which showed two police officers outside the mayor’s house wearing face masks. Then, the news cut to the mayor, who sat inside and conducted a news conference using his son’s videocam. He drank his coffee and bragged that, with the internet, he could run the city from the comfort of his own kitchen. “Bring it on,” he told the camera, meaning more garbage Rebecca guessed.

The mayor reminded Rebecca of Vince Watters in high school. Vince played the clarinet, he wore high-waisted jeans from Walmart, and he got pushed around during lunch. Vince landed in detention one week, for fighting back, and got chummy with Darrin and Hendricks, two beefy outcasts who happened to be seniors. Vince marched into the lunchroom that Friday, with Darrin and Hendricks at his side, pointing fingers at the jocks who shoved him around and yelling “Yeah! Bring it on, dickheads!”

If memory served Rebecca right, the mayor played clarinet at his inauguration that year, and, like Vince, he puffed his chest when he was flanked by guards.

Once during the broadcast, the cameras fell onto the mayor’s wife as she wiped off the counter and poured him another cup of coffee. She cleared his breakfast plate and dumped the leftovers into the trash can, which seemed mostly empty. Her shoulders sagged and her expression was flat when she turned back around, but Rebecca thought she saw a hint of disgust in her eyes.

The mayor, however, beamed.

*****

For fun, click on over to this video from They Might Be Giants, called “I’m All You Can Think About.” The song plays just at the beginning, and is well worth the click.

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Word up. It’s Execrate, and I’m disgusted.

Wednesday’s Word means write something – an essay, poem, or flash fiction – based on Wordsmith.org’s word of the day and post it by midnight. Past pieces from this fun writing exercise can be found under Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar to the right.

~

I’m feeling sassy today, maybe because this is the last Wednesday’s Word post for a while or because it’s the weather. Quite possibly, my attitude stems from reading the definition of Today’s word:

execrate. verb. to detest, denounce, or curse.

It’s hard to meditate on a word like that and not puff up my chest or haul out my soapbox. I curse the cold temps right now, for example, and the encroaching deep freeze that the meteorologist with the hair piece keeps gushing about (see? it is the weather). But, do you know the first thing that popped into my mind after I read execrate?

Food that cannot be chewed properly. If you’re a finicky eater like me, you know what I’m talking about.

*****

The Martyr

Cynthia closed her menu and set it on the table. Peter whispered to the waiter, who nodded and slipped away. Cynthia smiled that dreamy smile. Two weeks ago, Peter’s photo popped up on her online dating page with an “I’m interested” vote. She studied his profile. He had those deep, brown eyes that hinted at warm nights by a fire in December and boxes of rich chocolate on Valentine’s Day, so she bumped him up to “Let’s chat.” They talked online for an hour and a half. Then, they both sent the “You, Me, Now” instant message on the next day. It was so cute.

This dinner was their first real date, and she wanted to make a good impression. She paid him full attention and got chills down her spine when he said her name in the same sentence as “beautiful.” Was there a hint of an English accent in his voice? She hoped so.

“Beautiful!” He said again, when the waiter brought out their appetizer. Peter gave the waiter a thumbs up; Cynthia cringed. Oysters. On the half shell. Raw. Glistening globs drenched in their own puddle of, what was that she wondered, oyster juice? Peter’s hands flashed in front of her as he squeezed lemons and ground pepper and set out tiny forks.

“The best in the city!” He said. “Aphrodisiac,” he winked. All she had to do was eat just one. He lit up and spoke of Italy and the first time he ate them raw. She cooed on the outside but grimaced on the inside.

He picked up a shell and shimmied the oyster into his mouth and down his throat. He groaned. She shivered. But, what choice did she have? It was the oyster, or Peter. Or, the oyster and Peter. Either way, she told herself, she had to do it. She surveyed the platter for the smallest one. She picked up the shell and held up her hand. In a few seconds, it would all be over.

“To us,” she said, and she gripped the seat of her chair.

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Steady, Girl (a little flash never felt so good)

It’s Wednesday’s Word, and you know what that means: write something – an essay, poem, or flash fiction – based on Wordsmith.org’s word of the day and post it by midnight. Past pieces from this fun writing exercise can be found under Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar to the right.

A New Year generally brings a fresh start, a positive outlook, a host of promises to do better, be better, feel better. But, for me, just days after the festivities ended, I hit a wall.

 

from www.MeetSusanDavis.com

It wasn’t writer’s block as much as it was the feeling of writer’s plateau.

This thing isn’t really going anywhere, I thought. “This thing” being that one story still sitting in someone’s slushpile, that novel I’m trying to write, and bla bla bla. I bet you know the drill.

No writer should sit in that place too long. As writers, we often hear we should write for our readers. But some days, we have to write for ourselves. Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and time for my biweekly tête-à-tête with Wordsmith.org. If I didn’t commit to do this thing every other week (for my own darn good), I’d still be sitting in that cesspool of doubt, trusting  a shiny quarter to decide my fate:

Heads I quit, tails I don’t quit.
Three out of five.
Okay, five out of seven.
Fine, seven out of ten.

Never trust a quarter. Besides, I don’t really want to quit. I just want to move forward. And, the best way to do that is to write.

Today’s word:

primrose path. noun. A path of least resistance, especially one that ends in disaster.

As they say on Twitter, #amwriting now.

*****

Steady, Girl

Peter poured the coffee and handed a cup to his wife, Sharon. “Quitting would be easy,” he said, “but then what would you do?”

“I’d go back to knitting dishrags and Yoga every morning and reasonable bedtimes,” Sharon said with a huff.

“Okay. But, you’d be depressed within the month.” Peter kissed her forehead and picked up his briefcase for work.

“I’m already depressed,” she said.

“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy,” he told her, and he promised to check in on her at lunch. Then, he shut the door. Sharon shuffled back to where her laptop waited in sleep mode.

She drummed her fingers on the desk.

She jiggled her mouse. The screen lit up, but her muse didn’t.

She studied the pattern of the glaze on her coffee cup, the one she bought from that little pottery shop in Pueblo years ago.

“My new mojo!” She’d told the Potter, as she handed him twenty dollars.

“Big enough to hold three cups of coffee in one, and sturdy enough to work you through a dozen bestsellers,” he’d said when he’d given her the change.

She’d read more than a dozen bestsellers since then, but she hadn’t written one. She stared out the window next to her desk and watched a brown spider weave a whole web in the corner — one short length of silk at a time.

If only it were that easy, Sharon thought, to start at the beginning, jump to the end, and then fill in the middle. “Spiders never get writer’s block,” she mumbled, and she tapped on the window. The spider scurried to the side of the pane. It bobbed and then folded into a small hole in the wood.

Sharon sighed and wrapped her hand around her cup. As she tipped it to take a drink, she noticed a line across the rim. She held the cup away from her to get a better look.

Yes, she thought, a crack. A hairline fracture, really, but still!

“Ha!” She told the spider, who had ventured back out of the hole but had not yet crossed her web. “No wonder!”

She poured out the coffee and tossed the cup into the recycling. She rifled through the cabinet for a clean cup – a plain one without the distraction of glazing or a logo. She put on a fresh pot of coffee. Her mind whirled, her fingers tingled.

Something was definitely brewing. *

~

* I’m not sure what this story has to do with primrose path, so much, but there you are, anyway. And, I think I feel better.

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