Another reference to what is on my desk. (Just so you know, I’m not the sort does
housework, so dust and other oddities are inevitable.)
Which is why no mention, by me, of a feather duster.
But plenty other fascinating uses of last week’s prompt words, and a richness
of submissions from which to try and pick a winner. I had a short list of four
...(and had Rosie and Bill not been past the deadline with their pieces that
would have risen to six) but eventually,
almost inevitably, it is Dan’s ‘The
Hulder Nymph’ which especially delighted me with both the language of its dialogue
and the background to the exchange.
Words for next
week: hiatus scrub twin
Entries by
midnight Thursday 18th January winners and
words posted Friday 19th
Usual rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash
fiction or poetry using all of the three words above in the genres of horror,
fantasy, science fiction or noir. Serialised fiction is, as always, welcome.
All variants and use of the words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links
to your stories on Twitter or Facebook or whichever social media you prefer.
Respite [Threshold 193]
ReplyDeleteThere’d been enough dissension since before the twins’ arrival for my refusal not to cause a hiatus (and Raven knew he needed me too much to object). Nevertheless a breathing space would be beneficial.
I remembered my intention to scrub the floor of Lant’s loathsome deposits and headed downstairs, fearing to find he’d spread himself more widely than Raven’s room, but no.
What he had done was leave all doors wide open. I closed and bolted the front, went along to the scullery. Early-morning mist now dissipated, sun brightened the stone slabs.
For a moment I felt warm and welcome.
[This looks like I chose the prompt words knowingly! - I promise it wasn't so.]
As always, we are drawn into the scenario being played. And indeed, if I didn't know better, I'd think you hand-picked the prompts this week, so seamlessly do they flow into this installment.
DeleteYeah, yeah, we know all about it!!!
ReplyDelete:)
sometimes the prompt words slide in, sometimes they refuse. Here they obviously slid in with great ease, a fine scene setting instalment.
DeleteCongratulations to Dan for one hell of a fine story and the opportunity to add a new word (Hulder) to my every-growing vocabulary. Nicely done. I knew that dialogue would be a killer.
ReplyDeleteDan, good one! Cleverly done and captivating.
ReplyDeleteI See Red
ReplyDeleteJerry Gaither
I smiled as I scrubbed away the blood. The body had been taken care of and all remaining evidence purged from the room. It hadn't been easy. She had been quite thorough in leaving the dead woman for me to find in my house. I shook my head thinking of how she was the murderous twin to my soul. This game we played, trying to incriminate each other, had been going on for years. I suppose you could call it flirting.
I took a hiatus from bleaching the floor for a smoke. She was good, I mused, but I'm better.
What lovely irreverence! Really enjoyed this, thank you.
DeleteAn interesting game of incrimination. Well done.
Deletethis is good, the sort of story I really like. Thanks for the read, Jerry!
DeleteThis was a truly excellent little tale, managing to be both horrific and humorous. No easy task to accomplish. VERY nicely done.
DeleteThank you. I really enjoy these challenges. This one was a particular one. Took a few tries to find the right story with this one.
DeleteCongrats Dan!
ReplyDeleteDivisible By One
ReplyDeleteI have a twin. Never met her personally. Aside from hiatuses (long and short), she intrudes into my life.
When young, I didn't take much notice. Usually friends accusing me of ignoring them the previous day. Soon forgotten. In later years, however, an acquaintance claimed to have seen me earlier that week wearing nursing scrubs. Just one weird example!
Then, at a party, a man I didn't know asked why I hadn't kept in touch. Called me Maureen. Not my name.
I've done research:
"Doppelganger."
"Ghostly counterpart."
"Acts of its own accord."
But most chilling:
"Always trails behind its owner."
Nice. The ending really sells this. It seems so innocuous until the last part. Love it!
DeleteBrilliant building of creepiness.
DeleteThis is actually based on experiences. Not the "nursing scrubs" part (that was inserted simply because of the prompt word), but just about everything else. The most recent happening was last year when a woman I sat next to on a train greeted me with: "Haven't seen you in ages. How are the kids?" Maureen and I, apparently, are often in the same place at (or close to) the same time: London, Spain, California, Virginia, Oregon, etc., etc. I don't think I've ever visited a place where Maureen hasn't previously shown up and that I haven't been told about.
DeleteHow truly fascinating! Does it make you want to try and meet up with Maureen?
DeleteWell, I believe the doppleganger concept is that if we do meet face-to-face, only one of us will survive. So, given that, I'd have to say probably not. LOL. As a point of interest, I have seen a picture of Maureen (from the guy at the party who was apparently head-over-heels in love with her) and I don't think we look anything alike, although nobody else agreed with me.
DeleteNot sure which i enjoyed more, the fiction or the truth. I expect many of us can relate to this creepy story.
DeleteIt is a creepy story and the truth is creepy, too. I was told years ago by family members that my doppelganger lives in Canada and does in fact look exactly like me. Someone in the family sent a photo to an aunt who thought I had gone there to visit. I never knew any of them existed.
DeleteChange of focus [265]
ReplyDelete‘My father’s father?’ Disbelief and a dawning fear she might not be joking, John Pettinger found himself possessed of a rare aversion to hearing truths whose contents could never thereafter be scrubbed from his mind.
He’d never known his father’s father. A not-uncommon hiatus in Petzincek family relations created an estrangement which began before he was born; a situation similarly twinned (albeit for fewer years) to his own relationship with Aleks, a son unmet until he was eight years old.
But if true, this green-eyed woman was his aunt. Was that better or worse than Gunita, his bedded-since–teens step-sister?
This is pretty complex, but if I'm getting it right, bedding the step-sister would be preferable to doing the aunt, but who knows? My aunts aren't all that desirable, so I'm not a good judge.
DeleteBut she's an aunt who's ~10 years younger than John Pettinger... (and I should have said 'half-sister' not step-) And no, I haven't worked out the mathematics of his grandfather being her father!
Deletevery involved, with chills running through it.
DeleteAs John mentioned, this was a complex addition to the serial but one which is intriguing. Still, we're talking about Pettinger here, so what else is new?
DeleteCripplegate Junction/Part 128 - Residual Raiders
ReplyDeleteAlice's fingernails were filthy. Miss Constance would have scrubbed until the cuticles were raw. Miss Constance, however, was missing. The Station Master told Alice the governess was on "hiatus." Alice didn't understand, just happy it meant no more scolding.
She now often accompanied Marmalade to the Nookery, formerly forbidden by her custodian. Twin bandits, one human and one feline, they rummaged the treasure trove accumulated by the Rook before the bird's abandonment.
There, an unusually subdued Marmalade, gold-green eyes speculative, sometimes snuffled the lacy remnants of a lavender parasol.
If Alice thought it looked familiar, she didn't dwell on it.
--------------------------------------------------------
To read the earlier installments (a suggestion only) which led to this point in the tale please visit:
http://www.novareinna.com/cripplegate.html
A link to return to "The Prediction" can be found on the site. Thank you.
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm intrigued by Alice's filthy fingernails. She seems oblivious to what may have happened to Miss Constance but perhaps she doesn't recall the details. Really good installment.
DeleteMarmalade's 'gold-green eyes speculative' has me admiring.
DeleteI watch my two cats and think of Marmalade, my Kai is like him, ever nosing but pretending not to be. This is a good instalment, like it a lot.
DeleteDuplicity
ReplyDeleteSummer mornings, spine unwilling to support me, knuckles galled but brain bright as ever I dictate my novels from the chaise longue beside the French windows. (Wintertime I transfer to its twin, beside the fireplace.)
‘A cat!’ you cry, occasioning a hiatus in my concentration. Together we watched it stalk and fail to catch its quarry. My next sentence lacks precision.
‘Scrub that,’ (an ugly phrase I learned from you). I watch as you apparently obey, unaware you expect me to die before your perfidy becomes known.
Before this latest book is published.
My words.
Your name upon the cover.
Is this written in second person? I'm not too familiar with this POV but it works here if that's what it is. I hope this betrayer gets caught. Scoundrels are rarely successful in the long run.
DeleteI think it's first person John - I'm very poor at analysis and naming parts of grammar. This is a bit lumpy due to the sudden lurch forward in time I think.
Deletethere's a lot going on here inside the outline we have, as 100 words is limiting at times., I like it when more is hinted at.
DeleteUsing "scrub that" also presented itself to me this week, but (unlike your talented self) I was unable to get it together in workable fashion. For some reason, I find myself imagining the main character here as something of an invalid (as in wheelchair-bound). Never can tell which path the imagination is liable to wander down.
DeleteThe Shanty Town Incident
ReplyDeleteThe annual Twin Lakes shanty fishing contest has been scrubbed due to unusual activity beneath the surface of the ice. It seems the 154 year hiatus is over. Citizens of Mishington are scrambling to decide the proper action. Mayor LeBlanc, if he could be found, would likely know what to do, but Vice Mayor Kane’s idea to hold the meeting on the ice is now under question. The sudden rumble from below is very unsettling, especially after Secretary Quinn read the minutes from the archived 1864 town meeting. The appearance of the huge emerging claw confirms it. We’re screwed.
Uh oh!! Clever, fresh and creepy.
DeleteI like the cold reporting of this - typical small town activities with untypical small town happenings beneath the ice!
DeleteMost delightful. What an excellent vignette. "We're screwed" sums it up so perfectly. Great choice of names too.
DeleteHeteropaternal Superfecundation
ReplyDeleteNot all twins are identical. Some don't even have the same father. My nephews for example. Different as chalk and cheese...and not just in terms of appearance.
One is a scrubbed-clean, rosy-cheeked cherub. Gentle as a lamb. Never any trouble.
The other, an unwashed and nefarious imp. Into everything. Hate and discontent wherever he goes.
On a brief hiatus from her discernment process, their mother got tipsy on the sacramental wine. She called it her "night of heaven and hell" and then took a vow of silence, never to speak of it again.
I won't bore you with the details.
What a thing to say, having got me on the edge of my seat, panting for them!!
DeleteThe title was almost a story by itself. Really entertaining. Loved the whole sacramental wine paragraph.
ReplyDeletehints, leaving it to our imagination - but I think even that may fail in the face of what could have gone on...
DeleteVirgil’s Load
ReplyDeleteRunning face sickness took Makawee down shortly after the twins were birthed. Virgil made do best he could, cookin’ an’ scrubbin’, but he wasn’t meant to be no mother. He taught them boys to chore soon as they could walk, but still, Virgil carried too heavy a load. He took them boys on hiatus to the top of Lookout Ridge and they stood each a side of him, tall and proud, leaning over the edge. Far below the prairie dust carried whispers of advice. Virgil put a hand on one back and, with the slightest pressure, he made his choice.
Oh no-o-o! This is dreadful. Horrific. And made worse by the laconic, homely style in which it's told.
DeleteGreat tale, Dan! Loved your use of language. The "prairie dust" sentence is marvelous.
DeleteGood one Dan. Really powerful.
Deletethe power of this is in the simplicity of the telling. Loved it.
DeleteThis was most pictorial in nature. If I'm reading correctly, he had to make the ultimate choice between his two boys? The image of a father with a twin on either side standing upon a windswept ridge captures the imagination.
DeleteKursaal (Episode One Hundred Three) - "Sisterhood Of The Scorned"
ReplyDeleteSisterhood of the Scorned was Primrose Lee's brainchild. Mortified by Arbuthnot Jester's philanderous flitting between lovers with barely a hiatus (latest victim herself), she vowed to bring about his demise.
The initial meeting was attended by the conjoined Deviant Twins and a staggering number of local widows and spinsters. A determined Primrose presented her avengement agenda.
Then, from the rear, a shout:
"He treated you like scrubbers!"
The unidentified individual hurried into the night.
Genteel townswomen fainted at the vulgar insinuation and were transported to the First Aid Station, where Ludmilla Bartók revived them with smelling salts and sweet tea.
---------------------------------------------------------
To read the earlier installments (a suggestion only) which led to this point in the tale, please visit:
http://www.novareinna.com/kursaal.html
A link to return to "The Prediction" can be found on the site. Thank you.
---------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: The conjoined Deviant Twins (Ruby and Rita) as well as Ludmilla Bartók have featured in previous episodes.
Having once been 'revived' with smelling salts, I don't recommend it. But then I doubt I'd've fainted at 'scrubber'
DeleteLovely use of the prompts.
the faint hints at a different age - one we would now be hard put to understand, I feel. Nice little instalment.
DeleteI agree with both Sandra and Antonio. One would be hard put these days to understand "swooning" at an insult such as "scrubber," but those genteel ladies are such easy victims to the vapors!
DeleteLuther opened the oblong box. A metal ball, sandpaper and a note were inside. “The note says scrub the ball with the sandpaper,” Luther said.
ReplyDeleteWarily, I did. The ball opened, spilling a gray ash into the box. Spellbound, I watched the ash transmogrify into a dark Luther twin, except his right hand was missing.
Surely, I thought, I’ve taken a hiatus from reality.
A searing pain scorched my right wrist. I watched horrified as my right hand disappeared then materialized on the twin’s wrist.
“Sorry, I had no choice,” he said. “You and I are black. Luther is white.”
Oh, I DO like this - unexpected and beautifully told.
Deleteclever one, Jim, write some more like this!
DeleteThis was indeed very clever and quite unexpected. I'm extremely fond of the unexpected. The prompts certainly disappeared into the fabric of this telling.
DeleteAnonymous is I, J.E. Deegan, who neglected to include my name and the title SORRY.
ReplyDelete"Make sure you scrub," I said holding out a rag. It was bath time for both my kids, twins at two years old. Water pelted my shirt and pants as they flung their hands and bounced up and down with excitement. I realized another semester had started, which would have made three years towards my Ph.D. Instead, I went on hiatus and took a full time job when Sarah found out we were pregnant. But, three years later, my family was worth every grade.
ReplyDeleteWelcome David. Love this description of bath-time.
DeleteHi David, welcome to the Challenge. Very nice descriptive piece and heartfelt, too.
DeleteBeautiful and heart-warming little piece. Lovely use of the prompts and such a delightful telling. Oh...almost forgot...welcome, David. Look forward to more.
DeleteThe Mad Italian. (for those who don't know, this is Leonardo Da Vinci who, every week without fail, pounces on the prompts and creates a political statement which is so accurate it's untrue. Today he didn't, you will see why...
ReplyDeleteNo 38
I was afraid of a hiatus in our diatribe against your politicians but all is well, the weather did not disrupt the supply, one worry scrubbed from the mind. Its twin remains in place, ‘not enough time’, but we are surmounting this by my taking over and writing these words. When I have done, another powerful figure, once called the last gunslinger in the west, will take over and he too will pontificate on political matters. This week I have avoided any comments, for if I were to make them, they would be too incendiary for this forum.
Do I read news of a replacement?
DeleteI agree it seems to read that way, Sandra, but I do hope not. I look forward with much anticipation to Leonardo's observations each week. This particular entry was something of a fascinating enigma.
DeleteParty Games
ReplyDeleteThe party game was simple. A line of bottles across the room, the need to step over them wearing a blindfold and not unbalance one, ‘I’ll help,’ whispered my twin, taking advantage of the hiatus of preparing me. ‘I’ll share the prize,’ I muttered. So began the walk, his hand under my elbow, my feet seeking the spaces between bottles which chinked and clinked. I scrubbed all worries. I would win.
The blindfold came off, the bottles had vanished. It had been a trick. We were to be added to the pile of bodies they had to feast on.
Oh the horror of being made to act as a blindfolded fool - reasons children's parties were so dreaded. But this for grown-ups and all the more deadly.
DeleteI can't say I'm afraid of the dark, but I do have a definite aversion to being blindfolded for any reason. This particular instance would count among my highest reasons. What an absolutely innovative tale...and welcome back to the realm of stand-alones, Antonio.
DeleteThat is to say, Antonia, of course!!!
DeleteLate in both our time zones this week. One of these weeks I'll be on time again.
ReplyDeleteThe Adventures of Rosebud, Pirate Princess #112
A Dragon’s Castle
With keys found, assassin acquired, and laundry folded the three of us headed out to my favorite little castle. This one’s the one Cecily and I hid in whenever I took a princess-princess hiatus. The Valkyrie scrubbed all records of it for a tenth birthday present. We’ll be staying here while we get Natasha’s wing and Georgiana’s arm all fixed up.
As I was writing just now an untwinned sock fell out of my book. I hope its match didn’t get left behind, though I could just make a new one. I’m sure there’s a sock knitter around here somewhere.
On time or not, this is delightful as ever. I do hope you are planning a book sometime. Preferably illustrated. But maybe not: I doubt an illustrator will match what is in my head.
Delete