Thank you all for your poems and stories this week, it's always great to see how many permutations of meaning you all can wrest out of the same words! Sandra has had a successful follow up operation and we're looking forward to having her home again; and I'm starting to understand how difficult it is for her to choose just one entry for the week, so I'm going to choose two.
First up, John's Heed the Warning Signs which created a fantastic microcosm of conflict, and I liked the juxtaposition of the boy's small hand staying his dog, and the hard gnarled hand of the harasser. My second winner of the week is Jim's Don't - I got caught up in it's rhythm and was definitely not expecting the final line!
Words for the coming week are gangster, gull, pier
Entries by midnight Thursday 4th November, new words posted Friday 5th November (Bonfire Night in the UK!)
Usual rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash fiction or poetry using all three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy, science fiction or noir. Serialised fiction is, as always, welcome. All variants and uses of the words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links to your stories on Twitter or Facebook or whichever.
Cheers everyone, and can't wait to see what you create next week - Julia
Both deserving of the top slot choice, well done on some excellent writing Jim and John.
ReplyDeleteI am honored to share the top spot with you, John.
DeleteI am honored to share the top spot with you as well, Jim. Maybe there's hope for us yet. I wonder if we can come up with a gangster story. I bet we can.
DeleteVery nicely done, John and Jim. I thoroughly enjoyed both entries and would have been hard pushed myself to choose one over the other. I hope to return with my own humble submission, should my wandering muse ever decide to return to the fold and bring with her some type of creative ability.
Delete:::::rolls eyes:::::
Disposal
ReplyDeleteWeathered buildings, grimy with salt-spray, lined its boards and, a malodorous stink rolled in and out with the tide below the old pier. Faded twinkle-lights flickered on along its length as a lone gull wheeled hastily out to sea in the gloom.
Wood boards creaked then thud, splash.
Wearing his trademark trilby and faded suit, Gangster-Man moved with lazy satisfaction.
Creak, creak, thud and splash.
He smiled to himself, poked the remaining gory bundles on the floor toward the trapdoor with his spat-covered shoe and picked dried blood from his grubby fingernails with the tip of a large bone-handled blade.
Gangster-Man was busy tonight. Loved the lone gull and spat-covered shoe. A very nice offering, Terrie.
DeleteYour choice of verbs is nothing short of splendid, Terrie! Rolled... flickered... wheeled... creaked. Great!
Deleteooh, the lazy satisfaction of a "job" done - chilling
DeleteBlogger refused to let me comment on the winners, so I'll do it now, congrats to John and Jim...
Deleteand to say I found this very evocative and chilling at the same time. Good work, Terrie
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ReplyDeleteThe grass is always greener
ReplyDeleteI guess you could call it a pier. More like a glorified dock with half-sunken pylons even the gulls avoided. Talk about anticlimactic. I was expecting dashing gangsters and cement overshoes. Maybe a gun moll or two.
But I guess this Jimmy Hoffa fellow didn’t warrant such fanfare. Dump him and get out, was what they told me. And keep your freaking mouth shut.
No problem there. Who would care about this guy anyway?
unsolved mysteries - the best!
DeleteHoffa... very nice, John! And someone certainly has keep his mouth shut all these years.
ReplyDeleteoh this one is good!!!!
DeleteA NIGHT ON THE RIVER
ReplyDelete“Irish” Jimmy Dugan, Louie “Lips” DeCinque, and “Two-Ton” Tony Fiore stood shivering in a bitter wind on Pier 44. Below them the Hudson River crawled along, reeking of a host of rank effluents. They awaited heroin, expected in a rowboat around 3 a.m.
Or so it was believed.
“Feels like we’re in a gangster movie, doesn’t it?” whispered "Lips."
Nobody laughed.
“Two-Ton” pointed toward a dead sea gull drifting by. “Poor bloke,” he said, “this foul river is no place to die,"
“It is for snitches,” said “Irish” Jimmy as he pumped bullets into the brains of “Lips” and “Two-Ton.”
it's a gansgter-eat-gangster kind of world - well evoked
DeleteNo heroin showed up, I presume. You have to hand it to Two-Ton for caring about the gull, even though he couldn't keep his lips zipped. Nice writing, Jim.
Deletenicely done capturing the whole gangster thing in a few lines. Good stuff.
DeleteA Wise Guy’s Dream
ReplyDeleteIf I was a gangster in Brighton Rock
I’d prowl beneath the pier at twelve of the clock
A dead gull’s feather in my trilby hat
My cutthroat flashing like the claw of a cat
Abandoned by my gang and grassed to the law
Catholic consternation sticking in my craw
Everything I do always turning bad
Sirens wailing along the promenade
Gunned down like a dog as the funfare sleeps
While over at Peacehaven my young bride gently weeps
Prowling beneath a pier at midnight is probably not a good idea. This was very enjoyable, David. I've often wondered about religious consternation and gangsters, at least the fictional type. It seems counterproductive.
DeleteShould have chosen another venue to go prowling. Very nice, David.
Deletebravado will get you into trouble, no question of it... sharp writing, David.
DeleteEllis 017
ReplyDeleteI tried to organise my thoughts. I was still wearing my third favourite dress, sea-foam green covered with black thready lace, like being under a pier. It didn’t look ripped or stained.
I couldn’t remember seeing DCI Kurt Petersson, at all the Spearmint Rhino, though he had said I wouldn’t be undercover alone. I was to look out for potential Irish gangsters, but accents get lost in the music and shouting.
I flirted to get close, get the men talking.
Gulling them, lulling them.
Yes, accepting drinks.
I don’t remember being on the stage. Or anything much, really.
If anyone is curious about the previous episodes they can be found here:
Deletehttps://jkdavies-dailywritingpractice.blogspot.com/search/label/Ellis
Perhaps the undercover operation didn't go as planned. I enjoyed the third paragraph with the dhort sentences. Very effective.
DeleteWell, undercover work can create some dangerous situations, or, perhaps, pleasant ones.
Deletethat was good, saying so much in chopped up sentences, I love that in fiction.
DeleteScared
ReplyDeleteIt’s dusk, at least the sky above is dark, but light at the edges beyond the sky pier where the buoyant pods dock. It’s darker underneath the docking platform, uneven underfoot, the pavement heaving where the roots grow.
I can hear the Senali brothers from the other side of the underpass, cracked laughter like gulls crying. I have to go through there.
I puff my chest up, make myself look bigger. My cap is pulled down, and my shades are mirrored. Let my arms hang loose and ready. They turn, wary.
Look at me y’all, I’m the fucking gangster here.
oh yes, he's a gangsta for sure! Love the descriptions.
DeleteJoys of Mediumship
ReplyDeleteA pier features strongly in my Christmas memories – back in the days when we were Essex people we would get wrapped up warm on Boxing Day and go to Southend, walk to the end of the pier and ride the train back. Ah, good days! Gulls aplenty to welcome us and shout goodbye. There were a few trader gangsters but – where aren’t there gangsters wanting to con you out of money??? Like, electricity companies… in those days my mediumship was confined to ‘I want to be’ without knowing what it was I wanted. Good job spirit knew…
There are Boxing Day swims on the coast near where I grew up, in the shadow of a pier too; but I have never been temped to participate! Nice memories evoked.
DeleteStop The Week – an ongoing record of the miseries of running a second hand shop…
ReplyDeleteThere’s a house clearance to do and it was all rush, accompanied by the shrieking gulls from the breakwater/pier (who act like gangsters, with that beak they can!) and ‘we’ll take the table and chairs and wall unit to the dump when we go’, they won’t sell... I rearranged the shop to make room for new stock, there is bound to be some things in the house we want/can use.in the house. Table and wall unit cleared, and the Transit battery let us down and now Shaun’s back has let us down and... it’s back to waiting… Life is fun…
The Mad Italian - Senor Da Vinci is here - with his posh hat on...
ReplyDeleteYour politicians gather in groups in expensive places and talk of this and that to ‘save the world’ while the earth burns. We are the ones who knew it back in my time and still know but for many it is as if they walk down a pier and throw the leavings to the gangster gulls and walk back, having done your duty. My friends, there is a long way to go. First you need to stop thinking it is a difficult task, and second, you need a full heart commitment to change. Then the answers will come.
'a full-heart commitment to change.' How true that is, Antonia.
DeleteChange of focus [446]
ReplyDeletePhilly lifted a fleece from the coathook beside the door. Passed it to a grateful Pettinger who, genitals concealed, stated 'Sixty years ago most MisPers were drug-related. Police records will tell us which gangsters favoured concrete burials, as opposed to chained-to piers to drown. Both applicable to river deliveries –'
'– and gulls enough to mask screams.' which the DCI took as Philly's declaration of allegiance. Addressing ettinger, 'That'll keep you busy for a week. DC Moth can take over Anemone's murder investigation. Miss Stepcart, I'd like you to come back to the station with me.'
And Philly is whisked away from Pettinger just like that!
DeleteMost interesting how you wove the prompts into this entry, Sandra. A very enjoyable read!
ReplyDeleteDiscussion on decency [Threshold 368]
ReplyDeleteNot for the first time Raven complained my expressions of orgasmic delight too smilar to mewing gulls for hm to be sure he wouldn't find himself beneath some sea-weed festooned pier spattered with guano, and scratchy from an incursion of sand into various orifices. 'As, no doubt, should you,'
'I worry more about public indecency –' Raven sniggered. '– Whether local laws are enforced by corrupt and lawless local gangsters, funding their activities with blackmail and extortion. I doubt Cocktail pure as driven snow, and gangsters inevitably dictate their own brand of morality.'
'I doubt they can even spell it.'