uselesstinrelic

(For LJIdol S10, Wk 8   Writing prompt:: "No Comment"   TW/CW: child abuse)

They had all done something wrong,
some little transgression of childhood.
Maybe a chipped plate.
A baseball laying in the mess of a shattered flower pot.

Cooly, she commanded her children to go out back and choose the switch she'd beat them with.
My uncle, just 8 at the time, drug back a tree with a grin
thinking she couldn't lift it.

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  For LJIdol Week 7, "Where I'm From"

  I turned away from him briefly and glanced at the cuckoo clock over the bar. With the sheer force of my hidden glare, I willed the minute hand to tick on. Twenty more minutes until I was out of there.

  “Wouldst the m’lady perchance care to join me on a…” he paused, seeming to roll words over in his lil’ thinker in search of the most Olde Tyme lingo to throw at me. “A… daring excursion? After m’lady’s shift?”

  Offering him a better smile than he deserved for affecting that horrifying Shakespearean drawl, I demurred with a small laugh that was designed to get the most tips possible. “Oh I’d probably faint at the sight of a troll or a wereraven, or whatever beasts lie out in those woods! Honestly, I can't even imagine the horrors! You’d have to save me left and right! But I wish you luck in your mission-“ I thought of the silver coins that would be in my pocket if he left happy and swallowed my pride, “… m’lord.” I topped up his ale with a great, hurried splash and turned to bolt, you know, elegantly, but he latched on again.

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     My entry for LJIdol Wk 4. Prompt information and other entries for the contest are viewable on this page.


      The little bugger slapped me in the face. Not even on accident. It straight up planted its muddy, cow-smelling palm on my cheek with enough force to send my safety goggles hurtling off into a bush and then giggled at me. As I was wobbled around, cursing and searching helplessly for my dignity, I heard the high pitched hum of its wings and looked up just in time to see it buzz around and slam into the butter churning pot I’d nestled up against a stump and the take off into the tree line. The pot flung to the side with almost comical force and the milk, as it splashed out, soured and turned into viscous clumps that spread across the mossy forest floor and introduced me to a smell I instantly hoped I’d never encounter again in the rest of my life.  After a few moments of silence, the puck’s laughter echoed from somewhere in the dark, but I couldn’t pin down from where. I stood quite still and looked all around for that telltale glint of piss yellow eyes from the shadows as I started to feel around on my belt for the pouch of tossable trap netting. Without warning, I felt my uniform jacket flipped up over my head from behind and found myself tumbling off balance. I landed in a graceless heap with a thick plopping sound that let me know I was now sprawled on the spilled sour milk and felt my stomach jump as it considered dumping out dinner in response to the stench.

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(Notes: for LJ Idol Week 3 --- This is a long one. Sorry. I really planned on cutting it down a lot in editing but I had a family circumstance and it was a matter of posting it rough or not posting at all. CW: mentions of abuse. It's vague but I don't want anyone caught unawares.)

“I’m going to be with him a long time,” I remember thinking to myself at one point. “But ‘a long time’ doesn’t mean forever.” It felt like a kind of weird omen and I wondered at the time why I’d have such a strange revelation about the end of something that had only just begun.

I was 18 years old and encased in a white gown when those words popped into my mind again.

“‘A long time’ doesn’t mean forever. We’ve been together a long time now. But I don’t have to do this. Do we even like each other anymore?”

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For LJ Idol Week 2, theme: "That One Friend".

I met her over slutty brownies. Apparently that is a thing. “Slutty brownies”, I mean. And a big thing too, if you were to go by the way people were gasping and grabbing for their forks.

  “It’s cookie dough wrapped around Oreos, pressed into the bottom of a pan, then brownie batter poured on top,” she informed me with a vaguely country drawl that took a conspiratorial edge as she leaned over and purred in a stage whisper, “but after it cooled I also added ice cream on top. And hot fudge!” Her shared secret was rewarded with a chorus of awe and compliments on her cleverness from the assembled, and she smiled at their flattery.

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(For LJ Idol S10 Wk 1)


Feeling Human
It has been six years since the ships left our moon’s orbit and three years since the fact that these vessels were there at all had been leaked to the general populace. Had the government been able to decide how we saw the documents detailing the events of their visit, they would have been littered with so many black marks you’d be lucky to see so much as a period left over. But certain people made sure we saw them in whole and we responded with inquiries. Town halls. Lawsuits. Federal investigations. Endlessly demanding to know ‘why?’

Another species had contacted humans and a small nest of us met their message. These beings (‘aliens’, if you must call them something) had offered us a cure for human suffering that, with it, came packaged the freedom from pain, disease, and hunger. Tasked by these beings with the burden choosing for us all, these few humans debated within the few hours these visitors offered and then emerged with their decision: they refused the gift.

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I'm going to participate in season 10 of LJ Idol. Last season I had a really busy couple of days and missed the deadline for my entry and ever since then I've missed having something to look forward to and to motivate me to take a little time for creativity. I feel bad I didn't end up coming back and following the progress (I kept figuring I'd come back and try to be active and then before I knew it, S10 was starting. Oops.) but I hope I can come back now and spend more time with people and participating in the writing.

http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/945807.html

She was waste. For so long only cold and silent. When it happened, it was a violent pulsing that started in the center of her hollowed chest. One stab in the darkness, followed by a dozen; a tiny bird locked in a drawer, flailing blindly against the walls of its enclosure. Viscous blackness began to force its way through her veins in messy gushes that echoed the discordant throb of her atrophied heart and clumps of hardened ichor, still struggling to become fully fluid, tore at the shrunken rivers of her body, threatening to burst forth from her papery flesh like a sausage left too long on a fire. Living again was more painful, more full of terror and confusion than dying. Instinctually, her mind bid her to scream, as if it might help her to overcome the insanity of existence, but her mouth, already clogged with dirt and roots, kept her dignity for her.

It would be a while before her twisted limbs would break through the ash-streaked snow and the taint of her body be expelled from the belly of the earth in a cough of dusty, pest-ridden soil. It would be a while, yes, but she could already hear the metallic humming calling from above her as surely as she could feel the swelling of her eyeballs as they sprouted from the slop in her cranium and back into her sockets. She had already waited so long. She could wait a little longer.

The Guardians had fallen from favor, the singing shards were unprotected, and tonight she would rise.







"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."
-J. R. R. Tolkien