Mr. Unger had his back turned when a student’s physics book crashed to the floor.
Whipping around, he threw himself on the ground.
As he rose moments later with wet eyes, an onlooking wall poster offered a silent explanation:
“Freedom isn’t free.”
prompts
gargleblaster: why do birds suddenly appear?
“Lousy, good-for-nothing scarecrow. Blasted crows peckin’ every damn tomato the frost didn’t nab.”
“Ain’t no point in fussin’ if you cain’t do nothin’ ‘bout it.”
“Betcha I can scare ‘em off.”
“Howd’ja figger?”
“I’ll make that there scarecrow look more like you.”
Photo credit: WildnisPhotography via Etsy
Gargleblaster #160: Answer the question “Why do birds suddenly appear?” in exactly 42 words.
gargleblaster: have all your clocks stopped?
I’m late! I’m late! Her insides screamed,
as she kissed white rabbits hoping for white knights.
But the glass slipper never fit;
fairy godmother never appeared.
So she walks the plank toward midnight,
a punctual crocodile waiting beneath.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Photo credit: StayGoldMedia via Etsy
Gargleblaster #159: Answer the question “Have all your clocks stopped?” in exactly 42 words.
gargleblaster: tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?
As the LCD ticked away the time she had left, Joseph took her speckled hand in his.
“You’ve fought a good fight, old friend,” he choked. “But don’t you stay for me.”
“You never did before . . . And now it’s much too late.”
Gargleblaster #158: Answer the question “Tell me something, old friend: Why are you fighting?” in exactly 42 words.
gargleblaster: do you see her much?
“Do you see her much?” she pecked, returning with tea. “Or is she more like a pretend girlfriend?”
“Yes, mother, I see her,” he responded, teeth clenched.
Every night, he thought. But it was complicated now with the restraining order in place.
Photo credit: HoneyPotPhotography on Etsy
Gargleblaster #157: Answer the question “Do you see her much?” in exactly 42 words.
gargleblaster: who dunnit?
Fresh blood spilled on the ground,
eyes darting all around.
Suspicions rose,
but bodies froze,
as ears rang from the sound.
With tensions running high,
none knowing truth from lie.
The smoking gun—
held by each one—
whispered in the air, “Goodbye.”
Photo credit: Neon Noir Smoking Gun Art Print by Etheloos on Etsy
Gargleblaster #156: Answer the question “Who dunnit?” in exactly 42 words.
the last great act
Without a word, she dropped to the ground.
Those that had gathered below let out a unified gasp. Mothers drew young children into their bodies to shield their innocent eyes. Business men with slick hair and shiny shoes, already late for afternoon meetings, emails piling up in their inboxes, remained frozen with shock. Some turned their faces in anguish; others buried their heads into their hands.
But Nathan refused to look away.
He had arrived at the corner of Bristoff and West 1st an hour earlier, just as he’d been directed in the letter. And there he waited, holding her words in his sweaty palms as the blue ink began to bleed into his skin.
When she appeared, stepping off the edge of the highest building with confidence and grace, he had to squint to make out her sleek silhouette. Even then, he could barely detect the slight line beneath her feet, the highwire splitting the sky.
In the letter, her words had been pleading and honest.
Nathan –
I write you requesting a specific favor. And in return, I offer you the perfect angle for a piece in your underground pub (I’m afraid it won’t be suitable for the mainstream edition).
I’m sure you’ve heard of the most recent sanctions. They’ve moved beyond guns and liquor and cigarettes to recreational pursuits. Skydiving, long-distance running, skiing, rock climbing, hang gliding, bull riding – all sanctioned. And the list goes on; there are hundreds more.
They’re saying it’s to protect us, to keep us safe from these “high-risk” activities. Can you believe that? They’re hobbies, for Christ’s sake! But that’s the world we live in: a dictatorship under the guise of excessive mothering!
As she began to make her way across the wire, a crowd formed on the sidewalks and street corners. For a moment, the busy world halted mid-sentence, mid-stride, mid-latte to wonder at this figure walking across the sky.
This isn’t about risk, Nathan. No, no, no. It’s never been about that. This is about stifling what drives us, what gives us purpose. This is about stomping out our embers of passion. This is about breaking us down.
Soon, it’ll be painting and singing and writing. They’ll say they’ve linked creativity to brain cancer; they’ll offer data from their own studies to back the claims.
That’s why you started the underground paper, isn’t it, Nathan? Because they took away your editorials? No more opinions, just the facts, right?
Only minutes had passed before marshals from the Enforcement could be seen from the roofs of both buildings – the one she had stepped off of and the one she was destined for. They waited eagerly for her arrival, like predators who had chased their prey up a tree. But she seemed not to notice their presence, focused solely on her act and nothing more.
Of course, the skywalk was on the sanction list. Hell, the old-fashioned tightrope made the list! But I can’t give it up, Nathan. It’s all I’ve ever known.
I’ve got a plan to prove them wrong. And I need you there. I need you to cover the story.
Come to the meeting of Bristoff and West 1st – in front of the old stock exchange – the first Monday in April, 1:55 in the afternoon. You’ll know where to look for me.
Please bring your camera – and don’t be late.
Yours,
Aurelia
Suspended halfway between the two high rises, her progress stopped. Motionless except the wind whipping her ponytail with violent ferocity, she raised her head first to the overcast sky. Then shifted her gaze to what waited below.
Nathan felt the sudden, overwhelming sensation of his lunch rising in his stomach. It had not occurred to him before that moment that she had no intention of making it across.
Unrolling the wrinkled letter once more, he saw something he had missed: a postscript scrawled across the back in faint pencil.
The most high-risk activity of them all is denying ourselves what we love. We simply cannot survive it.
We have to let them know. We have to let everyone know.
Nathan looked up only to see her fold her arms across her chest before letting herself fall backward, the triumphant finale to her last great act.
Grabbing the camera from around his neck, he waited for his shot as she fell from the sky.
gargleblaster: what’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
Like lakes of deepest blue,
Those eyes draw me into you.
You laugh and flirt; I just stare.
You bat your lashes, twirl your hair.
But you aren’t the reason my gaze won’t stray.
I see my reflection and can’t look away.
Photo credit: Original watercolor from ForestSpiritArt on Etsy.
Gargleblaster #155: Answer the question “What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing?” in exactly 42 words.
Writers’ Block Challenge #4
Task: Write a story about the images on a roll of film. Use 12, 24, or 36 paragraphs.
Flawed Memories
He hadn’t crossed her mind for months when she decided it was time to clean out the closet in her adolescent bedroom. She dug through the poufy frocks and sequined skirts of old prom dresses, remnants of a coin collection, graduation caps and gowns and tassels. She dug deeper and uncovered pictures that had decorated her college dorm. Art supplies long forgotten. An old broken iPod – lime green, clunky and heavy. She sorted through high school sports paraphernalia. Sweat shirts from swim team. Running shoes from track.
Twenty-two years of memories kept quiet and tucked away. Out-of-sight and nearly forgotten. But not quite.
Buried underneath a box of clothes that most certainly didn’t fit anymore, she found it. A shoebox. Wrapped in pink and purple tissue paper. And small cut out hearts. A memory box. Containing all the keepsakes a sixteen-year-old holds onto the first time she falls in love.
She ran her finger along the outside edge over the crinkled, stiff paper hearts and considered just throwing the whole thing away. Why rustle up all those old feelings, right? Surely there’s nothing in there she’d actually want.
But something sentimental got the better of her and she lifted off the lid.
Inside, she found delicately packed corsages. Dried flowers and ribbons and Velcro bands. Faded ticket stubs to movies and concerts and amusement parks. Cards and tags from every birthday or Valentine’s gift. Empty jewelry boxes. Letters they wrote each other. Printed lyrics to their favorite songs.
She felt her heart tug as she flipped through the memories. Let them flash in her mind. Homecoming dances and football games. Break ups and make ups and a mountain of firsts. How earnestly she had loved him.
At the bottom of the box was a single roll of film. Undeveloped. She lifted it out and pulled at the fragment of film strip peaking out of the plastic black case, exposing the negatives. Holding it up to the light, she saw a sequence of happiness. A casual afternoon together with nothing better to do than laugh and cuddle and waste a roll of film.
She shook her head. That’s not what it was like, loving him. You’d look through this box and think we were perfect for each other – that we were meant to be. That we were happy. But we were no such thing. Sure there were moments like the one captured on that film. But there were other moments to. The terrible kind. The scream-so-loud-your-lungs-hurt kind. The weep-until-you-get-a-migraine kind. There was cheating and callousness and recklessness and selfishness and emptiness.
Where is the box that holds those memories? Where’s that roll of film?
We look back and we see the flowers and the letters and the smiles and we wonder, were we wrong to let it all go?
She put the film back in the box alongside the other happy mementos before replacing the lid. If I must remember us, I insist on that memory being true to what we were. With that, she added the memory box to the ‘throw away’ pile and moved on to sorting through the Art Supply bin.
opening lines
Task: Think of your five favorite novels and read their opening lines. Ponder them. What makes them great. And how you can use their opening line strategies in your own writing.
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my free time to thinking about death.
Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart (Joyce Carol Oates) “Little Red” Garlock, ‘sixteen years old, skull smashed soft as a rotted pumpkin and body dumped into the Cassadaga River, near the foot of Pitt Street, must not have sunk as he’d been intended to sink, or floated as far.
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) We are at rest five miles behind the front.
Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) Those who saw him hushed.
writeamuck 