While visiting our daughter, husband took advantage of a big city to look for some shoes. Took a while, and my feet have yet to recover but I can now snatch time to do my duty with Prediction.
As ever, a thoroughly good week of superb entries and from others’ comments I doubt there’ll be much dissension at my naming David’s ‘The Curse of the Unfinished Horror’ as ‘winner’ this week, with Antonia’s untitled but intriguing final piece a worth runner-up’
Words for the coming week: shoehorn, splash, ticket
Entries by midnight Thursday March 30th, new words Friday 31st
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.
Well deserved choices for top mentions . Congratulations David and Antonia.
ReplyDeleteRight on with David and Antonia as top choices.
DeleteLady of the Lido
ReplyDeleteSpring equinox in Brockwell Park. With a quick dip of her hand Dulcie snatched a spectator's ticket and shoehorned her way through the heaving crowd. By the time she found her seat the sacrificial orphans were shivering by the water’s edge.
Hushed expectancy proceeded a frightening splash. The Lady rose from the Lido, tentacles, unblinking cyclops eye. The good folk, in their trilbies and trinkets, bayed like beasts to the crunching of bones and the spitting gristle. Dulcie reached for the gun concealed in her pocket. Time to prove that the poor were not pushovers.
Typically nasty, this one David, with extra spikes.
DeleteSo bleak and wonderfully grim, David.
DeleteI liked how the prompt words simply melted into this dark tale
DeleteAntonia says- good one, David! The ticket prompt is the gft this time... I went that routem, here's ny entry - feels good to be early for a change!!
ReplyDeleteGiselle folded her limbs so they were squashed in a box small enough to carry – even if it did need a shoehorn to get her out again… but the crying had stopped and the land owner had begun to believe there was a way out of the predicament. Seriously, who would turn down a chance to see the Manic Desires? He had a ticket and he had the strength – the woodland would have to wait.
This sent my imagination questing in several directions!
DeleteWhat an image - folding and squashing limbs into a box small enough to carry .
DeleteAntonia: the coating of mud would be enough to justfify souring the taste of mud covered classy rolls stuffed with unspeakable.items Gisele was hungry but eniugh to take a bite? She used the (un)delightful orchetral sounds coming frim the field to muffle her departure, give her a gathering of screaming toddlers any day - if you want pure torture, that is....
DeleteThe Secret Armadillo Soldier (SAS) Diaries - entry 222
ReplyDeleteA shoehorn-moon, shadowed by thin cloud, lay low in the sky as the raggle-taggle group set off. ‘Tick, tick, ticket’, sounds of night-wing bugs calling in the undergrowth and the uneven creak of the contraption accompanied them as they moved quietly, avoiding well-worn trails as often as they could for paths less used.
With a nod from Nigel and watched by the sentry ‘dillos, gerbils drifted, in small groups, toward Moses nestled on the contraption and as thin rays of morning sun sent splashes of light to colour the landscape, their jittery behavior melted into a more confident marching hop.
Lovely! Especially 'uneven creak of the contraption'.
DeleteHow smoothly and vividly this flows along, Terrie.
DeleteAntonia / thanks, Sandra!
ReplyDeleteAntonia / wow, what a paragraph, Terrie!! So vivid and has the air of reality, that these creatures cannot plan a war... and they do and it works!
ReplyDeleteHUSBAND AND WIFE
ReplyDeleteSteve Ferlazzo’s tongue felt stiff as a shoehorn and sat uncomfortably in his mouth, which he could not open. Nothing else of him could move either. He was totally immobile. Tied?
A shadow of memory splashed through his mind, suggesting he had been violently struck on the head by something heavy.
But why… by whom?
A face appeared above his… familiar… female… his wife Janis, whom he had killed. Hadn’t he? Blood dripped from the gash across her neck.
A knife appeared in her hand. “This, dear husband, is your ticket to hell!”
The knife descended. “See you there, Stevie!”
Suitably gruesome, especially a tongue 'stiff as a shoehorn'
DeleteMurderously compelling stuff here . Most enjoyable .
DeleteChange of focus [509]
ReplyDeleteBen, observing Philly’s attack stance, sensing potential for trouble, and thinking more quickly than Pettinger – he’d too often had to shoehorn apart fighting women! (Some saw the potential for pleasure, but no fun being splashed with the spit of their venomous insults (or their blood, if it came to that!) made a joke of saying to Philly, ‘No fighting in here, love; else HR would insist we sell tickets.’ His smile hid relief as she backed down.
Ben may have averted a fight this time but I'm betting Philly wont let this go easily. Skillfully written Sandra, keeping the reader invested in the character and the story too.
Delete[Threshold 430 ]
ReplyDeleteFailing to consider the likelihood of splashing the embroidered cloak-type garment Raven wore, I approached too fast before recalling the brakes were in far from what any quad-bike mechanic might consider “tickety-boo” condition. Frantic, I wrenched the handlebars sharp right, intending to glide sideways and arrive parallel, thus providing the added benefit of making whichever of us was Raven’s intended victim harder to grab.
Someone, however, with greater prescience, produced what appeared to be a giant shoehorn, which he used (with some strength), to keep the vehicle turnings, saving Raven’s cloak, but depriving him of his intended punishment.
I keep hoping Raven will end up getting his just desserts.
ReplyDelete