The Daily Post

Stump

“Honey, we’ve been walking for sooo long! I feel like we’re just going around in circles!”

Ralph raised the binoculars to his eyes and peered through them for the umpteenth time. The woods in the distance were dense. They were made up mostly of dark, shadowy pines, but the occasional maple dotted the way. The birds were both abundant and weird. Rather than chirp, they buzzed. One of them had picked up Spot, their old springer spaniel, three days ago, and flown away with him.

“You can see for yourself, we’re following the road, Martha.” He didn’t want to scare her, but he thought a couple of times that he’d seen the same tree twice.

“I think we should set up camp soon,” Martha said, tiredly.

“Sure, okay.”

“Do you think we could build a campfire tonight?”

Ralph sighed. “And where, exactly, are we going to get wood from?”

“We could just chop up a bit of the road,” she suggested with a shrug.

Great, thought Ralph. Then if we are walking around in circles, we’ll come across the hole in the road and Martha’ll go crazy.

“Please?” Martha begged. “It’s been weeks since we had a hot meal.”

“Yeah, okay.” Come morning, while we’re walking I’ll give her the binoculars and just change lanes when she’s not paying attention, he decided. The lanes both to the left and the right seemed endless.

***
Stump is the word of the day on the Daily Post, and our assignment for today on A Story A Day was to paint a vivid setting. How long did it take you to figure out where they are?

Recharge – #SoCS

The close-minded man is mortified when it turns out that the world has two moons. One is the same which the men land on – the other hangs outside his window at night and is made of cheese. He views it at first as a figment of his imagination, but being close-minded, that only last for a few seconds. Then night after night he opens up his window and pulls it down and eats it, only to find it hanging there again the next night, as if it has recharged itself.

The cheese moon has no cycles he realizes after a week. It is always full, and after a month, when he has grown three sizes larger, he sees that it will not go away.

The close-minded man’s mortification eventually turns him to petrification: his unwillingness to believe in the cheese moon transforms him into a petrified chunk of cheese, staring out his window at the cycles of the moon, and a piece of cheese hanging from a string, held by his upstairs neighbour.

socsbadge2016-17

Brought to you by The Daily Post and Stream of Consciousness Saturday, which you can find the prompt for here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/09/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1016/

The Chronicles of Mary, Part 8

Mary was on her third job in as many months, at yet another accounting firm. Unhappy, she would sit at her desk day in and day out, wondering if she’d one day expire doing this very job. Sometimes, she looked out her fifth-storey window and wondered how long it would take to hit the pavement if she jumped.

On one particular Wednesday afternoon, her boss called her into his office. She trudged in and leaned against the door frame, long past attempting to make a good impression.

“Mary,” her boss said, “I’m hungry. Would you mind going into the cafeteria and getting me a sandwich?”

“It’s two o’clock. The cafeteria’s closed,” Mary replied.

“That’s okay. Just go in and make one, then.”

Mary sighed and wandered down to the cafeteria on the first floor. The door was open, so she went into the deserted kitchen and made her boss a sandwich. She trudged back upstairs, dropped it on his desk, and returned to her own.

Five minutes later, her boss came out and stood before her, smiling. “Would you like a job at my country club, making sandwiches?” he offered.

“Yes,” replied Mary.

And so the next day, Mary started her fourth job in three months.

***
I totally missed yesterday’s prompt for A Story A Day. The reason: things are getting more complicated over there. Funny enough, the second-week post mentioned that by now we should know what the best time of day to write is for us – mine happens to be after 11pm. Given that I try to post a new story every day, and wish to be in bed by midnight, it’s a stretch for me to write more than 300 words.
The above is my pathetic attempt at an Ugly Duckling story. It kind of fits the formula… Kind of.

Endless Summer

The palm trees sway elegantly in the ocean breeze
as she lounges at twilight upon the beach
and ponders, a cheap paperback
tented, forgotten, on her thigh,
that perhaps she could have won,
striven harder
toiled longer
to achieve her dream
of skiing down a mountain slope
snow dancing beneath her feet,
chilled wind whistling past her ears…
But all she has is here,
is now,
the palm trees swaying,
the sun-warmed sand beneath her chair.

The ocean sings a song of endless summer
as she breathes in the salty sea
and picks up her book
to escape her broken wish.

Stones

Plop

“Billy, would you please stop dropping stones in the water.”

“Why?” Billy asked his dad.

“I’ve told you. You’ll scare away the fish.”

“Oh.”

…

Plop

“Billy?”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“What did I tell you about dropping stones in the water?”

“I forget.”

“You’ll scare away the fish.”

“Oh, right.”

…

Plop

“Billy, I’m starting to get angry.”

“Why?”

“Because you keep dropping stones in the water and I don’t want to spend hours sitting here for nothing when I could be at home watching TV.”

“We’re not catching anything, anyways,” Billy mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I said, we’re not catching anything. And I’m bored.”

“Are you telling me we came all the way out here because YOU wanted to go fishing and twenty minutes in, you’re bored?”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll give you sorry, you little…”

“Dad no! You promised you wouldn’t slap me on my birthday!”

“You’re lucky. Let’s go home.”

“Wait! Look at all the fish!”

“How the hell… Hang on. Did you have any stones in the boat, Billy?”

“No.”

“What have you been dropping overboard?”

“The little fish we brought.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“You’re spending your next birthday with your mother.”

Our prompt for today on a Story A Day is “When your character is not like you.” The character (the dad) is not like me because he’s a guy, he’d hit his kid for being bored, and he’s fishing. I’ve never been, nor have I had any desire to go, fishing.

Cake

Baking a cake for the twins’ bake sale at school should have been easy. Thousands of moms did it every year. At least that’s what Winnifred told herself as she threw the cake mix into the grocery basket along with orange juice, yogurt, and the cookies she suddenly had a craving for. Cravings were a stress thing she was very familiar with.

Her first clue that things weren’t going to go as planned should have been the fact that there was no money in her account when she tried to cash out with her debit card. The money should have been there – she’d just been to the bank to make a deposit. So she dug in her purse for cash to pay for her groceries and then went straight back to the bank. As it turned out, someone had stolen her PIN number. She filled out a bunch of forms and got a new bank card, and the bank reassured Winnifred that she would get her money back within the next few days. So off she went home.

Winnifred read the instructions carefully. She preheated the oven and added the exact amount of water and eggs to the mix that the recipe on the side of the box called for. But when it came time to pour the batter into the pan, she realized she had no pan. Of course she didn’t – she wasn’t the sort of mom who baked. So off she went to the store again. This time, she had to really scrape the bottom of her purse for change, since she forgot that she had no money in her bank account.

Finally, Winnifred got home and managed to bake the cake. The kids got off the bus and came clamoring through the door just as she was finishing off the icing.

“There!” she said to her twin girls. She turned the cake for them to admire her work. “You can take this to school tomorrow.”

“But Mom,” one of the twins said, “the bake sale was today.”

That night, Winnifred enjoyed cake with her cookies.

***
This story was prompted by a Story A Day, where our prompt for today was “when your character is like you.” I hate baking!! 😀

Melody, Two – 100-word Drabble

Melody’s self-consciousness at not being able to sing caused her to maintain the facade that she couldn’t speak. Her wish to vocalize came with her first crush.

His name was Marvin. He was tall, handsome, older than her, and he had a place in the school choir. Like Melody, he couldn’t hold a note in a bucket. One day as she walked home from school, following him, she tripped and fell on the sidewalk. She let out an exclamation and he came running. When she explained her dilemma to him, he promised to keep her secret.

Melody was in love.

To be continued…
Melody, Part One

I wrote this drabble in response to the Story A Day challenge.

Melody

Melody was born to parents who loved music. Both were accomplished singers. How Melody ended up being tone-deaf was one of the great mysteries of life.

When she was young, her parents took her along when they traveled the world. She would stand in the wings with her nanny when they performed, and people often asked her why she wasn’t up there with them, entertaining the crowd.

“She can’t sing!” her nanny would say. Embarrassed and downtrodden, Melody also learned not to speak.

To be continued…

Clowns

“Send in the clowns!” they say,
so we don our paint
and shovel our feet into gigantic shoes,
place the rainbow wigs upon our heads
and screw our noses in place.

Then, what do you know?
The children’re all afraid
they shiverin their boots
for they told us not
to leave off
the pointy teeth.

Oh, Pennywise, you fool,
shiny eyes peeking through the grate
you’ve ruined it for us all.

#GordDowniesCanada

Reduce a landmass to a village
with fierce determination,
a soul filled with poetry,
a heart that beats with the rhythm of Great Lake’s waves,
and the love of your people.

Enormous respect.

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Kingston, Ontario, Canada