Christmas Miracle!
It’s time for Friday Fictioneers again, hosted by Rochelle at her blog Addicted to Purple. This week’s photo, which inspires our 100-ish word stories has been contributed by Björn Rudberg.
This is probably the silliest, most pointless story I’ve written for FF but hey – it’s Crizzmuzz! There were so many ways I could have made this a gory tragedy – ah, how I smiled to myself – but no, it’s Crizzmuzz!
Click on the blue froggy for this week’s other stories.
Copyright Björn Rudberg
A swarm of excited kids poured out of the minibus. Christmas Eve trip to the Old Keep. What a treat!
“Careful now,” cautioned their teacher.
The kids didn’t listen. They ran off up the old steps to play “Normans versus Saxons”. The steps were wet and Little Jimmy slipped.
Down he plummeted, screaming. At the last second he fell into the waiting arms of Santa, who had skilfully manoeuvred his sleigh under the falling child before landing safely in the car park.
“It’s a Christmas Miracle!” yelled the kids, clapping.
Meanwhile the sleigh, which had landed in a disabled bay, got clamped.
“Bollocks,” said Santa.
Mondays Finish the Story – Triple Six
It’s time for Mondays Finish the Story – a weekly 100-150 word challenge run by Barbara Beacham where we write a story based on both a photograph and an opening sentence (the opening sentence is free, word-count-wise!).
Sorry if it sounds a wee bit clunky, I had to strip 50 words out :-(. And it’s not very Chrismassy, I’m afraid 😦 :-(.
Click on the blue frog to see other contributions for this week.
The supplied opening sentence is in bold in my story, which is beneath the photo.
As the year wound down to a close, they gathered around the table and raised their glasses.
“As is our custom at year’s end, let us welcome a new member. To Simeon!”
Simeon smiled. At last – inducted into the secretive “Order of the Triple Six”!
For years he had made himself useful to the Order. None knew what they did, only that their association made one rich, powerful.
As they toasted his entry, Simeon noticed that the others were sweating, nervous, scared even. As he watched, one of the Order gazed in horror at his drink, then choked, fighting for breath. He fell to the floor, twitching. Blood sprayed from his mouth and he spasmed, face black, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Simeon dropped his glass in shock.
“There can be only Six,” intoned one.
“One in, one out,” added another.
“B…b…but why Triple Six?” stammered Simeon, shocked.
“Ah, yes. Triple Six. 666. Why don’t we take you to meet our patron?” smiled a third.
On the First Day of Christmas…
On the first day of Crizz-muzz, my true love sent to meeeeeeee,
A bill for a pretty pe-nneeeeeee.
Well Merry f*cking Christmas to you too, Water Company.
😦
Have any of you got home all excited to see mail on your doorstep right before Christmas, only to have reality come crashing back in?
Sharing My World Week 49
It’s time for Share Your World again, with the questions posed as always by Cee at her photography blog.
What is your preferred hot drink: coffee, tea, water, hot chocolate, or other?
Coffee, obviously :-). I don’t actually drink any other hot drink.
I love chocolate but hot chocolate – I’m not a fan, for some reason. I’ll occasionally drink tea but I hate milk so it has to be black or preferably with lemon.
So it’s coffee for me, all the way.
What was your favourite toy as a child . . . and now?
I liked Lego as a child, but I also had a great fort which my Dad made for my brother and I. It even had a working drawbridge, which had a cotton reel providing the counter balance. We spent hours playing with that fort. It’s possible it’s still in my parents’ loft, I’ll have to check!
As for now, I don’t know if it counts as a toy but my PlayStation 4 is pretty cool.
Candy factories of the entire world have become one and will now be making only one kind of candy. Which kind, if you were calling the shots?
Noooooo! It’s like my worst nightmare come true :-(.
Wait a sec, we still get one kind of sweet, you say?
I don’t know exactly what the word “candy” encompasses (it’s an American word) but I’m going to assume it includes chocolate, ’cause I luuuuurve me some chocolate. Look what I got as part of my work Secret Santa present.
390g of pure chocolate yumminess
And it’s entirely possible that I bought too many boxes of these delicious Guylian seashell chocolates. I’ve eaten one, wrapped one (pre-photo) and I need to wrap two more of the five remaining. I guess I’ll have to take one for the team and eat the extra boxes :-).
It’s a tough job but someone’s got to eat them
Would you want $100,000 right now or $120,000 in a year (tax Free)?
I don’t need the money right this minute so I’ll take the extra $20k bonus for waiting a year. In theory.
In practice, I’d need to check the current exchange rate and exchange rate forecasts. In a year’s time, if I’m extremely unlucky, the larger amount could convert to the same amount of pounds Sterling as the smaller amount does now.
If the US Dollar collapses in a year compared to the pound Sterling, I could end up with nearly nothing. At least it’s not Roubles.
I’m over-thinking this. My brain hurts :-(.
Thanks for Sharing My World with me this week!
Playing God
Here we are with another week’s Friday Fictioneers, the weekly photo prompt hosted by Rochelle over at Addicted to Purple. This week’s photo, which inspires our 100-ish word stories, was contributed by fellow fictioneerer Douglas M. MacIlroy.
All our stories are added to the link-up during the week, so click on the little frog badge to read them, and add your own if you wish!
Copyright Douglas M. MacIlroy
Professor Drake smiled as his team celebrated. Inside the tank hundreds of insects buzzed, painstakingly cloned from the DNA of a single specimen entombed in amber for millions of years.
“Science fiction no longer!” he proclaimed to his applauding staff.
Unseen, one of the insects escaped the tank and flew into an air duct.
Drake lay on the floor of his lab, listening to the silence of a world populated by seven billion corpses. How did the dinosaurs really die out? he wondered as his last breath rattled through his lungs. A meteorite, or the bite of a simple insect?
Odyssey!
I was one of the lucky recipients of one of Evil Squirrel’s holiday pictures, drawn by his own paws! I’m impressed that it has already arrived, all the way from the US of A, and this being Christmas time as well with all the postal delays that implies.
I got Odyssey – “The Nest’s patron saint of lost causes“. And what a cool picture it is!
Odyssey, by Evil Squirrel
Thanks, Evil Squirrel, and happy December holiday of your choice to you too :-).
Mondays Finish the Story – Not Fair
Here is my contribution to Mondays Finish the Story, a prompt challenge which supplies not only a photo but also the first sentence!
I’ve decided not to slaughter everything in sight this week and go for a more thoughtful piece. So let’s see how that works out 🙂
We have 100-150 words not including the first sentence, which I have highlighted in bold in my story. Click on the blue froggy to see this week’s other contributions!
“They say that life is a game of chess…”
“Chess, Grandfather?”
“Yes lad. You see, everybody has a different way of doing things. Take the bishop.”
The boy picked up a piece. “This one, Grandfather?”
“That’s the one, lad. He’s sneaky – diagonal mover. Just like knights, popping in all of a sudden. Then you have your rooks. They’re straight-movers.”
“So, straightforward and sneaky people, Grandfather?”
“That’s it lad. Your pawns, they’re the workforce, but if they apply themselves – reach the other side of the board – they achieve real power. The king is the key, but while he stays at the back, his queen ranges far and wide destroying everything in her path.”
“Cool!”
“And on top of everything, you have to think several moves ahead, plan everything out.”
“Just like in life!”
“Exactly. Now, lad, let’s play.”
“Okay, Grandfather. Hey! One of my pieces is missing. That’s not fair… oh.”
“Now you’re getting it, lad. Just like life.”
Sharing My World Week 48
It’s time to Share My World with you all, courtesy of Cee at Cee’s Photography Blog. Thanks for posing the questions, Cee!
What is your favourite toppings on pizza?
Everything! Chuck it all on.
Well, none of that vegetable shit, obviously. Or those weird little fish. Cheesy meaty goodness, that’s what we want. Olives are good (I checked and they’re fruit, not veg). And peppers too (also fruit). So the “no veg” rule holds firm.
Is that extra cheese? Why yes, yes it is.
I want to learn more about …
I’d quite like to learn the guitar properly, rather than just the easiest chords (I know that’s technically learning to “do” something rather than learn “about” something, but hey).
Because everybody knows the lead guitar gets all the girls. And because it would be cool.
I have a 20 year old electric guitar which is largely broken. I need a new one. It’s on the “list”.
What are three places you’ve enjoyed visiting?
That’s tricky – I’ve got to choose places I’ve enjoyed visiting but not lived in, so that rules out Ireland and Germany straight away.
North Scotland – summer holidays with my Granny when I was a kid. Beautiful.
North Wales (my little holiday last year). Beautiful as well!
Tintagel (Cornwall) – I had a wonderful day out during the summer.
Do you prefer eating the frosting of the cake or the cupcake first?
I’m not anti-frosting per se, but it can be pretty sweet and overwhelming. So I attempt to eat the frosting and cake together, which is a good combination. I suppose if it weren’t a good combination, people wouldn’t frost cakes.
Bye bye for this week!
Prior Knowledge
It’s time for Friday Fictioneers again, ably hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo was contributed by fellow fictioneerer Sandra Crook.
Click on the little blue fella for this week’s other contributions. I finally gave into InLinkz’s demands to “create an account to get the code” and all I got was this little badge with no post counter :-(.
Copyright Sandra Crook
Albert peered out of his tent and gasped in surprise. Before him was the debarkation ramp of a huge – spaceship. A blob oozed from the entry-way, a tentacle pointing a device directly at him. He turned and ran, hearing a “zap!” sound, feeling a ripping pain in his back…
…and he awoke in his sleeping bag, sweating. Wiping his face, he peered out of his tent. Before him was the debarkation ramp of a huge – spaceship. He turned and ran, thinking as he did so that prescient dreams were not the blessing he’d once thought. Hearing a “zap!” sound, he braced himself.
Mondays Finish the Story – What Are the Odds?
It’s time for Mondays Finish the Story! Which will never be on a Monday for me, as I only have an hour and a half free from 0600 until 2300. Mondays are nasty 😦
Fresh from not reading the instructions last week (I thought the supplied first sentence was included in the word count), this week I thought I had 200 words! Nope. So much frantic editing was done.
We get a photo prompt, the first sentence (which is in bold in my story below), and 150 words to tell our story, and you can see all the stories for this week here.
Donning her fins and snorkel, she headed out into the deep water. She knew she was foolish to dive alone. She knew she shouldn’t have ventured so far from the boat. Now she was tangled helplessly in the discarded net of a careless fisherman, deeper than she had ever been.
If she could only reach her diver’s knife! A few more centimetres…
Bracing herself, she twisted sharply, dislocating her shoulder. Screaming, she found her desperate manoeuvre had worked – she could now reach the blade. Sawing frantically, her air running out, she managed to free herself, pushing towards the surface, her injured arm dangling uselessly.
Her vision grew darker as oxygen starvation set in – only a few more metres. The surface, safety, grew closer, closer…
Their boat suddenly lurching, the startled exclamations of the tourists turned to screams as red blossomed past the glass underside of the boat, followed by a woman’s body as it was drawn inexorably toward the thrashing propellers.
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Woohoo!
I totally didn't win!
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