Past possible tense [Three word week #38]

Luke knew she dreamt prophetically – witness the dream she told him of all those years ago, when they were both thirteen.   Admittedly she only told him after the event but she had her reasons and by then, even if she had told him (and he would have believed her) there would have been no getting out of going on that trip.
  
And that it turned out so horrifically was nothing to do with psychic over-ride as such.   Yes, it had involved psychological manipulation, the ‘divide and rule’ thing, and he, that man whose name he no longer cared to mention (not because he had not got over the experience – and he thought to a small degree he never would because it was part of him) was fully grown and had well-honed his methods.
  
All they, at thirteen, had had was the sort of knowledge of each other that came with growing up together, but even so there had only been the two of them who had had the guts, the self-belief, the understanding of the need for urgency to even try to combat it.   All those hours of whispered urging the others to believe, to understand what the man had been aiming at, in that room filled with what Dee kept calling ‘janky’ furniture, the stained mattress and folding metal chairs, white enamel paint mostly peeled off, but rusty-edged where it hadn’t.    Every time Dee said the word Luke thought of ‘jankers’ and remembered his uncle who had told him jankers was an army prison, which could equally apply to this.

Much of it had been physical control, which was why every time the four of them had had to lay and listen to the fifth one who was in with him, to hear the whimpered anticipation and the aftermath sharp yip of pain, it undid all the talk of ‘together we can beat him.’
  
In the end it had just taken two, but because there was only two, and because the rest weren’t with them – hadn’t been able to be brought to see sense or the need for action – those two had had to carry out a far larger task, and keep it secret from not only him but the others too.   So big and with such consequences that they had had to claim it an accident, to keep their part in it a secret, to lie about what happened, both to the others and subsequently to everyone who ever asked.   You’d’ve thought that would mean their loyalty to each other would be forever steadfast.

You’d be wrong.

But, back to her.   Back to today and how he’d got here.   Was it due to her hyperinduction?   Her entering his mind, his dream and causing him to make a plan to come back here?   Truly not knowing until she reappeared that that was what had happened?

He could no longer say that was impossible.

This week’s entry for Steve Isaak’s Three Word Week http://www.readingbypublight.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/3-word-week-38.html

A selection which for once I’ve been able to incorporate into an on-going piece of work, whose provenance owes much to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html and continued development to the daily prompts on Thinking Ten http://www.thinkingten.com and may well become the follow-up to my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel ‘Not wanted on voyage’, for which I’ve just about finished the first draft. 

I.) hyperinduction - v. When someone psychically overrides - controls - the will and actions of another person. (Source: Alphas, Season 1, episode #1: "Pilot"; original air date: 7/11/11)
II.) janky - adj. - Inferior quality; held in low social regard; old and delapidated; refers almost exclusively to inanimate material objects, not to people.
III.) yip - adj. - n.A sharp, high-pitched bark; a yelp.; intr.v. To emit a yip; yelp.

Prunella Clough by Frances Spalding

Oh joy! and a lovely surprise to read today of a new book - the first proper biography - of my all-time favourite artist.   Needless to say I ordered it within minutes ...

Stranger danger [Book blurb #57]

All the lonely people … you had feel sorry for them … or exploit them.

Jed was an exploiter par excellence.   He needed to be.   To start he’d told himself it was for the money, but once he had enough of that he found he still needed the power.   To use it, to feel it … and to challenge himself to go just that little bit further each time.

Had it not been such a quiet night he’d have ignored the outwardly demure and vulnerable Vivienne – no sweat, no pleasure.

Had it not been such a quiet night he might not have found that there were limits to his power, to his ability to withstand pain.   That sweat did not always equate with pleasure.   And that there were no limits to which she would not go.

Not a nice story – how could it be?  But one which cannot be ignored.

Week #57’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and a photograph of a collagraph print which I based on a sketch done while sitting in Perth’s CBD district at a place called ‘Durty Nellies’ where I’m happy to say the food, drink and ambience were all excellent .
Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

April intention

This house, the house I decided in an instant was the one for us, standing with my back to it and looking at the view, trying to ignore the silly saleswoman who did not deserve her salary, having already kept me sitting there, on guard to prevent anyone else from taking it, for half a day while she hunted for the keys (and the day incidentally my daughter’s third birthday, but she  two hundred and fifty miles south), we have lived in for the past thirty-seven years.
That day I could see the openness, the green of fields and blue of distant hills, and the conical absurdity they told me was called Roseberry Topping, and the wide expanse of sky.
Since then Roseberry’s top has been blown off lest it become too dangerous, much green has turned to red filled with what was said to be the largest housing estate in Europe, the straggled hawthorn hedge across the road has grown to hide the hills, but we still have the wide expanse of sky, and can track the annual progress of the sunrise from beyond far left in summer round to the Cleveland Hills on the shortest day.
And there, also but low (so no fear of flooding) and out of sight, is the river, the river Tees, then tidal, flowing out from right to left and leaving twice daily expanses of wet mud so that there was always a question when walking down to it as to what one might see.   Until they built the barrage and removed variety, leaving just the growth of the giant hogweed and the comings and goings of the fishermen to make the changes, so that, lacking dogs and children, I ceased walking down between the golf course and the field and cannot now remember when I did it last.
But from the first of April I have vowed that I will do it daily partly for the exercise and fresh air (I spend too long sat at my computer) but also so that I can return home with a line or two, some words of poetry or prose to add to my stones of communication blog.

Super stud unscrewed [Three word week #37]

‘You’re at it again!’   She slammed the mug of instant coffee down onto the worktop with sufficient force for it to slop over and puddle.

‘At what?’   He had hoped to project male disdain at excessive female emotion but his head hurt too much for him to raise his eyebrows.

‘Using those poncey made-up wank-words, the ones you keep bringing home from that American girl that you say you hardly know, and never speak to.   ‘Inoculatte’ my arse – it’s not lack of  coffee that makes you late, just lack of will power – though I suppose you’re expecting me to be tactful about that too …’

Over the rim of her glass of peppermint and jacaranda tea, she studied him.   Not only was he self-pitying and failing to perform but he looked unattractive too, face sheened and glaucous, eyes dull and a couple of whiteheads appearing on his chin.

Seeing her eyes on him he strove to gain further sympathy.   ‘I’m not sure I’m well enough to go to work … I’m clearly suffering from an invasion of xenobiotic antibodies …’

He’d misread her expression, misread the tone of her voice and misread the gentleness with which she set down her own mug.   Deceptively calm, she said ‘And I’m suffering from an invasion of Zeno stoicism.’   She handed him his jacket and his briefcase.  ‘ Go.’

This week’s entry for Steve Isaak’s Three Word Week

http://readingbypublight.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/3-word-week-37_22.html

I.) glaucous - adj. 1. Of a pale grayish or bluish green.
II.) inoculatte - v. - To take coffee intravenously when you are running late. (Source: The Washington Post's Style Invitational, 2005)
III.) xenobiotic - adj. - Foreign to the body or to living organisms. Used of chemical compounds.
n.A xenobiotic chemical, such as a pesticide.

Fearful symmetry [Book Blurb #56]

Everyone recognised Antonia Blake – how could they not? – but no-one could remember her from school.

No-one remembered Meggie Tyger – whyever should they? – and her absence from St. Hilda’s twenty-first reunion went unremarked, as it ever had been.

Antonia was ‘Fearful Symmetry’ – gossip columnist, socialite and style icon –  and of course they wanted to be listed as a friend, under her wonderful tiger icon!

At the twenty-second reunion talk inevitably turned to the four whose deaths had occurred in the interim, seemingly accidental, unexplained and increasingly bizarre.

Questions were asked, connections made.   Eventually Meggie Tyger’s name was whispered, ginger hair, glasses, head-to-toe freckles and a brace on her teeth recalled, consciences pricked.  

But was Antonia once Meggie?   Had Antonia, absent this year,  taken revenge for the bullying?  

Or could it have been the unforgettable PE teacher William Anvil, who left after only one term, career in ruins, having impregnated five girls?

Week #56’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and Scott Liddell's photograph.

Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

Triple serendipity, coincidence

Last month I posted on 6S a piece called ‘How it sometimes goes’; about the arrival from nowhere of the name “Susannah Elphinstone” into my head in response to a photographic prompt for Book Blurb Friday.
She stayed there and, as the story grew, under the influence of Thinking Ten prompts, was found by Luke at a long-lost ruined house which came to me from a half a century ago, part memory, part fabrication.  
Today I sought to add some substance to that house.
Found a solitary photo on a Flickr site.
Found that the man whose site it was, the man who took the photo, was a boy I once sat beside in primary school.
Whose face and voice and impact I remember clear as yesterday and whose conversation about the need to look at and really see I coincidentally recalled last week.  

Unsuccessful salving of a conscience

Baz had been attending a hanging, otherwise he’d’ve been there.

And afterwards, in my more hysterically dishonest moments, I even wondered if Luke had arranged for the assassination.  But that was a step too far in self-justification.   And if it hadn’t been for the fact that Luke knew the restaurant owner and had got reservations – because Baz asked if he knew whether or not it deserved its reputation – we’d not have been going there anyway.   I’m certainly not petty enough to say it was because Baz was missing for my birthday celebration – I know very well how these things happen:  the nearest available reporter had to go and Baz being on the spot there was no choice.   He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way either, even said to me (later, before he found out) that he’d been relieved that the Arts correspondent had been at his grandmother’s funeral.  (Which, he also said, made it five grandmothers he’d buried, in two years)

But.   He hadn’t been there.   I had, and so had Luke.   And because it was my birthday Luke was being kinder than usual, less vituperative, more entertaining, and he opened up a bit more than usual.   When the conversation got around to books he mentioned the Wigtown Book Festival that he’d been to at the weekend, which led to him telling me about Wigtown’s Bladnoch whisky.   And I couldn’t blame the whisky either because by the time he’d suggested we go to his flat just round the corner from the restaurant (I hadn’t known that, but presumably Baz had) so I could sample it, I was already guilty.

This also appears on Thinking Ten, where it is my response to the Monday, On Location prompt of 'A restaurant'.   As before, I am using these prompts to spark scenes for potential short stories or character development for forthcoming novels.

'Revolver' inspiration at MuDSpots

Michael Brown asked for writing based on titles from this Beatles album - seventeen responses so far and all fascinating and individual voices - check out  MuDSpots ~33

Read the small print [3 Word Week #36]

I don’t like stating the bleeding obvious, or being predictable, but it really is impossible to use the words ‘Heath Robinson’ without also saying ‘contraption’   You try it.   Although I  did think that surprise had something to do with my loss of verbal control.  
This is how it happened.  My Dad coaches one of the top football teams (can’t tell you which for reasons of discretion) and he's always let me tag along to training sessions at weekends and in the summer holidays, so I always got to know the players, seeing them come and go as I grew up.   A couple of summers ago, when I was fourteen, he said he didn’t want me to join in the swimming pool sessions, last year it was no shorts, and at the beginning of this holiday he presented me with a track suit – expensive, top-of-the range, very nice, but bloody baggy!    I knew what he was up to, of course, I’m not stupid, but no amount of argument would have him change his mind.   Last summer I eventually gave in, not without sulking.   This summer, no problem, meek as the proverbial!
And the reason for that?   

Aha, as I said, I’m not stupid, so I’m not telling you his name.   Suffice it to say, lest you think the obvious, he wasn’t one of the footballers.   No, he was one of their Dads – bet you weren’t expecting that were you?   Anyway, to cut what might be getting a too long story short, him and me had been getting on really well for a few months, if you know what I mean, so when the team got to the European Cup and were away for a week I decided I'd surprise my bloke by turning up at his house to spend some quality time together. 
Well, he was surprised, yeah, but so was I, because the first time I went into his bedroom there was this … well, believe you me, ‘Heath Robinson contraption' is the only word.   Levers and pulleys and swivels and angles and chains and all sorts of springy spikes and slightly sharp-edged bits and pieces.   Being of a practical disposition, it took me ten seconds max to work out what it was.
‘So,’ I said, demonstrating I was an understanding sort of girl, ‘You put your foot in here,’ (indicating) ‘or your hand here,’ (ditto) ‘move it up and down, faster the better, and Bingo, you got pain.’
He went red, poor sod, all embarrassed and a bit woebegone too, like a little boy caught with his hand down his trousers and a dirty magazine under the mattress, but me, I’m dead straight as well as practical so I said ‘Look, love, if it’s flagellation you want, absolutely no worries, I only charge triple rates.'   He should’ve known that already, it was on the card I gave him at the beginning – as I said, I don’t like stating the bleeding obvious.

http://readingbypublight.blogspot.com/2012/03/3-word-week-36.html
I.) flagellate - tr. v. 1. To whip or flog; scourge., 2. To punish or impel as if by whipping.
adj. 1. Biology Flagellated., 2. Resembling or having the form of a flagellum; whiplike.
3. Relating to or caused by a flagellate organism.
n. An organism, such as a euglena, that is equipped with a flagellum.
II .) Heath Robinson - adj. - Absurdly complex and fancifully impractical. (The term was coined after W. Heath Robinson [1872 - 1944], a British artist known for drawing ingeniously complicated devices.)
III .) woebegone - adj. - 1. Affected with or marked by deep sorrow, grief, or wretchedness.
2. Of an inferior or deplorable condition: a rundown, woebegone old shack.  

Lily Childs' Feardom

If you like reading or writing horror or chilling flash fiction you could give yourself a treat by visiting Lily Childs' Friday Prediction Challenge

Each week Lily posts three words and challenges participants to use them in a piece not exceeding 100 words and then post their entry as a comment on her page.  Comments are generous almost to a fault;  Lily picks a winner and (surprise, surprise - no point in hiding my light under a bushel) last week's winner was ME, as she says herself:

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge
Every week many of you say, how does Lily choose a winner when the quality is so high? Well, it's always hard but this week - hell has erupted from the frozen lakes of my chambers and stumped me. However - it must be done. There will be just one winner, and no runner-up... because every single entry is a runner-up. Well done, one and all.
My winner is Sandra Davies with the second part of her harrowing series The Blacksmith's Wife. This tale is screaming to be told and I cannot even begin to anticipate what will happen next. Many congratulations Sandra - don't leave us dangling!

The story so far can be found on my Friday prediction page - next week's words are curdle, cherub and rip and I shall do my best to continue the tale.

Death: fresh daily [Book Blurb Friday #55]

The first body appeared on his first morning, bloody and tied to the first of the rusty piles, the second the next day.   After five days, and five bodies, all presumed to be connected, the local police claimed to be at their wits’ end.
Which was when the almost invisible elderly man, offered his theory.
Assistant Chief Constable Colin Thrush had been coming here for years, incognito and always alone – the only place he truly found relaxation.   This would be the last time.
Widowed, retirement three years away but death less than three months, he yearned for just one more  active investigation, having found paperwork more tiring than hands-on had ever been.
He got his wish:  uncovered age-old pacts and compromising conspiracies which threatened reputations, created controversy among those who controlled, and knew he had nothing to lose by ignoring threats and pursuing all leads to their multi-damaging ends.

Week #55’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and, with apologies, to Kathy Matthews’ undeserving light-hearted photograph. 
Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

NaNoWriMo2011 - fifteen weeks on

A bit of a 'Eureka!' moment - after weeks of tweaking,  adding and refining,  a sudden impulse yesterday to write an 'Aftermath'.   Two thousand words later - and the whole thing coming together far more smoothly than looked to be likely at first (i.e. I avoided the 'and then, and then' dreary explanation, as well as the compulsion to tidy everything) - so that at 125K I do believe the end is nigh!

Elspeth and the siege of St. Remy [Book Blurb Friday #54]

Elspeth believed in the indissolubility of marriage.
          Jake merely paid lip service.
Elspeth tried to put an end to his cheating.
          Jake was too blinkeredly arrogant to notice.
So when a last-ditch but genteel Provençal attempt at romantic revival failed, Elspeth ditched both belief and gentility and took up a chain-saw instead, intent on some cure-or-kill pruning.
          With results which surprised her as much as Jake.
          With results which also surprised Chantal the cook, Marie the waitress, Soulange the hotel-owner’s teenage daughter ... and Soulange’s utterly delicious brothers, Jean-Pierre and Michel.  
          And then, more satisfactorily still, Soulange’s devastatingly capable, widowed father, Charles.
But WAS it kill?   Or cure?   Or merely a seasonal trimming, which would require repeating in a twelvemonth?   
          Jake, for one, could never be entirely sure, nor ever as complacent again.

Week #54’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and one of my photos (which does make things harder not easier, I find) 
Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

Strumpet trumping [Three word week #35]

‘Giraffiti? Giraffiti bollocks more like – you’re having me on!   It’s no more than a spelling mistake by some ignorant wanker.’

They were lying, post-coital, in her bed, gazing up at the high – and highly-ornate – ceiling above them.   He had likened the multiplicity of water stains – mostly  ecru, occasionally eau de nil (though he’d laughed and said the Nile was miles from here) and multi-rimed with ochre shading out to dirty grey – to something he’d seen in some art magazine somewhere, was trying to remember how it had been described. 

She turned her head and looked at his profile.   Better by far than full face, but even that was better than most.   She rolled over and straddled him.

‘Never mind giraffertiti or whatever you said, I think you’re highly videogenic …’

‘Videogenic?   What’s that, some sort of super stud?’

‘Yeah’ she said, covering his mouth with hers.

http://readingbypublight.blogspot.com/2012/03/3-word-week-35.html

I.) ecru - n. A grayish to pale yellow or light grayish-yellowish brown; the color of unbleached linen.
II.) giraffiti - n. - Vandalism spray-painted very, very high. (Source: The Washington Post's Style Invitational, 2005)
III.) videogenic - adj. - Having a physical appearance and exhibiting personal qualities that are deemed highly appealing to video viewers.

'Ignorance, not necessarily bliss'

It's Jules Verne Week over at Thinking Ten; Tuesday's 'Take it away prompt' was Yesterday/Tomorrow I will ...   This was my response:

Tomorrow I will know.
Today I am ignorant.
Suspicious, yes of course, but while I do not know I can convince myself it might not be so, not as has been described.   And despite the rumours, despite what my so-called friends have told me, despite the inaccurate and embarrassed mumblings of my mother, I remain ignorant.
Because having been told the facts, the mechanics, if you like (and whether or not the words used were those from the nursery, a textbook or the gutter it makes no difference) is absolutely no substitute for the reality of  experience.   I may be young but I am not so stupid as to be unaware of that.
And so I hold on to the fact, merely, that tomorrow, in approximately twenty hours’  time, I will know.

Pillow talk [Three word week #34]

“Your s-s-sulkiness is unbecoming, my dear ... I have told you before, s-s-size is most definitely not everything.”   He had turned towards her, lifting himself onto one elbow, the better to make his point.
She turned her head away, averting her face from his steely grey eyes, knowing that he would be even more supercilious were she to tell him that it was not the size of his cock she found so antipathetic – certainly not the most diminutive she’d come across (no pun intended) – so much as his fricative struggles with her name.   
‘Susannah’ was bad enough insofar as whenever preceded by cries of  'Oh' it invariably reminded her of a Negro spiritual, banjoes and coming from Alabama and all that, but when the stuttered sibilance was such that all she could envision was a ravenous chorus of nesting vipers, inevitably all passion sped, leaving her profoundly unsatisfied.

http://readingbypublight.blogspot.com/2012/03/3-word-week-34.html

diminutive –

adj. 1. Extremely small in size; tiny.
2. Grammar Of or being a suffix that indicates smallness or, by semantic extension, qualities such as youth, familiarity, affection, or contempt, as -let in booklet, -kin in lambkin, or -et in nymphet.
n.  1. Grammar A diminutive suffix, word, or name.
2. A very small person or thing.
fricative –

n. 1. A consonant, such as f or s in English, produced by the forcing of breath through a constricted passage. Also called spirant.
adj. Of, relating to, or being a fricative consonant.
unbecoming -

adj. 1. Not appropriate, attractive, or flattering: an unbecoming dress.
2. Not in accord with the standards implied by one's character or position.