Drabblewrimo 2022

[cesare]

FABRICATE

It’s no good, he said to himself. To be elected, I need to enhance my beautiful blond hair to shine with the promise of a golden future whenever I touch their grey humdrum lives.

A mere enhancement, a tweak. Fields of yellow straw, reflecting the sun’s glory, that the electorate can bask in near my sunny presence.

Straw with a plastic coating, lovingly handstitched to a lace cap and fastened with superglue (a health and safety measure lest a hot glue gun ignite my artfully constructed toupee). The process is part of my name, I wonder if they’ll notice.

 

[sojourner]

Ace

I'm made up so many are having a crack at this now. There's tons of wonderful stories here Loving it

 

[May Kasahara]

Me too, the quality is insane

 

[cesare]

ETHER

I wondered many times if Esther was a play on Ether. Ether, the one-time favourite of the killing jar. Ether with an added “S” for sadness or suicide or maybe Sylvia. Perhaps all three. Was this what went through Plath’s mind when choosing the name of her main protagonist?

The anaesthetic death of the cruel killing jar. The goldfish bowl display of the bell jar, where the flights of murdered butterflies take wing on a pin. Maybe “S” is for the tiny souls simultaneously set free but captured for eternity. At least until their lacy wings crumble, dust to dust.

 

[sojourner]

 

[Fez909]

RECKLESS

Watch! That was the last thing I remember saying. Before this.

I wanted to have kids someday. Not for a few years, but at some point. Now I wish I had them already. They could help me get dressed. Feed me.

It's selfish to think that way, I know. But it would help with the despair.

At least I still have my hearing, my sight. I can cope with this. I think. But a life without music, film, conversation, art. Without seeing her face again. I'm not sure I could go on.

Is it selfish to expect her to stay?

 

[prunus]

Lucent

More than blue. Homer described the sky as bronze. But here, now, it glowed like gold.

Lying face-up on the warm grass, like that first time.

The hills rolled, empty, in all directions. It was nobody’s fault, they said. You did everything you could.

“Did I do everything I could?”

It can only be thought of in tiny pieces, fragile like glass.

All of time exists at once, and forever. The past is still as real as this, here, now.

No thought. Silence. Only the blue.

The call of a buzzard. Peace.

“He would have loved this.”

And everything breaks.

 

[prunus]

RECKLESS

Watch! That was the last thing I remember saying. Before this.

I wanted to have kids someday. Not for a few years, but at some point. Now I wish I had them already. They could help me get dressed. Feed me.

It's selfish to think that way, I know. But it would help with the despair.

At least I still have my hearing, my sight. I can cope with this. I think. But a life without music, film, conversation, art. Without seeing her face again. I'm not sure I could go on.

Is it selfish to expect her to stay?

That’s very powerful. And I have to say, beautifully written.

 

[prunus]

That’s very powerful.

Bounty:

He’s sure he doesn’t mean them to die, but he kills on capture, hating the memories how of their eyes bore into his during their last breaths, and the weakness he feels when he cannot look away, cannot help but watch them watching him: a doubled judgement, a magnified shame, and worst of all, the tickling thrill of power.

He lays out traps laced with things they cannot resist, each time hand-picked, tailored with careful sensitivity to their desires, their needs; he observes the spaces inside that weep to be satisfied. Wounds already, really. In some ways, that’s absolution.

This is stunning writing. I’ve read it about 20 times in a row. Beautiful. Thank you.

 

[Clair De Lune]

Reckless

5:50 Wake

2.5 spoons of coffee 0.5 of sugar and a careful dash of milk.

Stir anti clockwise 1. 2. 3. 4. 5

6:15 shower

6:30 leave house

6:50 Board train

Carriage E

Seat 55



Notebook
Pen
Date-
Day-
Heading, underlined.

Tissue left pocket

Bump from behind

Irritation

Volume 25

Continue to write

Day 15- still entirely invisible

It seems that my week clean slate is threatened once more
I'd like to resist
To be strong

I reach behind me
Lift her chin skywards and slowly begin to squeeze..

'Tickets please'

 

[Humberto]

What a thread!

 

[Humberto]

A corpse is a cold emotion.

Every man's a villain or a superhero.

Whatever happened to the 50's rock and rollers?

Praised and murdered. Retired before they started.

Purity they ask and steal a few crumbs to make a billion.

Who can resist.

 

[Humberto]

lol fetches coat

I'll attempt a proper one one day instead of drunken inhibition stream of consciousness thingy.

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

Conceive:

I created a life for us where we lived gracefully: normal people with a baby we held up to your huge windows and showed the ocean to each morning. I traced our steps through the kitchen and watched you pour my coffee into that golden mug, and then when I followed us to the bedroom that life vanished.

And I created a life for us where we lived shamelessly, in bars, with me dancing while you watched, or with your hand exploring under my dress while we pressed into dark corners.

And I created a life for myself without you.

 

[sojourner]

CONCEIVE

Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to conceive.
We hear and warp and weft and steal,
we sow the seed
and set the scene,
omit the bits that no one reads
from fairies to philosophy.

The magpie sat between our ears
selects the best of hopes and fears
then stashes them in nests of gold
to hatch and let a tale unfold
that lifts a heart, that lightens loads,
that wraps an arm around to fold;
brings solace to the lonely.

Write your inner stories,
poems, secret songs.
Diversity is vital
so that everyone belongs.

 

[sojourner]

Yu_Gi_Oh you're coming up with some astonishing stuff. Love it.

BLOODY LOVE YOU LOT

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

Yu_Gi_Oh you're coming up with some astonishing stuff. Love it.

BLOODY LOVE YOU LOT

Ugh. Writing these is my favourite part of the day right now.

And then when I wake up in the morning, I drink my coffee and read what you guys have written while I was asleep. SO COOL.

 

[sojourner]

Ugh. Writing these is my favourite part of the day right now.

And then when I wake up in the morning, I drink my coffee and read what you guys have written while I was asleep. SO COOL.

Same! Being so engaged with these is part of my fight against winter depression. When I write, I leave my head completely.

 

[sojourner]

oops wrong thread!

 

[Yu_Gi_Oh]

Same! Being so engaged with these is part of my fight against winter depression. When I write, I leave my head completely.

After more than a year of thinking about it, I just sent some short creative non-fiction out to be rejected for publication. There is something so thrilling about writing what you're really thinking and saying fuck it to censoring that, even to yourself.

 

[sojourner]

After more than a year of thinking about it, I just sent some short creative non-fiction out to be rejected for publication. There is something so thrilling about writing what you're really thinking and saying fuck it to censoring that, even to yourself.

Nice one! Rejection is all part of the process. You just won't suit some, but you will suit others

And absolutely re censoring yourself! If you don't speak your truth, how can you expect anyone else to connect to it?

 

[May Kasahara]

WEAKNESS

They said it couldn't be done, that a man like him has no soft spots. He sure knew how to find ours though. Afterwards, we found each other, a tenderised, brutalised sisterhood, and we swore revenge.

Face, body, manners and mouth remade, I slipped into his world like a knife. Imagine my surprise when I found you, little one: his soft spot, his beloved child.

My sisters won't understand, or forgive. I sheath my weapon and steal you away. Not knowing your fate will twist the knife in his guts more deeply and surely than my girlish hand ever could.

 

[prunus]

Pride

It was still dark when the drums started; slow beat, call and response. She could feel the crowd around her start to sway gently. She shivered with the cold, and nervousness, but: she could do this.

The fire was lit, warmth welcome on her legs. Sky purpling, the drums beat on, louder, faster, compelling the fire higher, the dancers wilder. She felt the heat, love, confidence within her.

The sky brightened. The flames multiplied. She looked to the east, and laughed with joy, as they burnt her face.

The sun rose.

“I did it."

"It will be a good year.”

 

[prunus]

CONCEIVE

Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to conceive.
We hear and warp and weft and steal,
we sow the seed
and set the scene,
omit the bits that no one reads
from fairies to philosophy.

The magpie sat between our ears
selects the best of hopes and fears
then stashes them in nests of gold
to hatch and let a tale unfold
that lifts a heart, that lightens loads,
that wraps an arm around to fold;
brings solace to the lonely.

Write your inner stories,
poems, secret songs.
Diversity is vital
so that everyone belongs.

This is so fucking brilliant it makes me cry and fill up with joy at the same time.

 

[prunus]

Fabricate

We’d always told each other stories. Some were true, some not. I don’t think we always knew which were which, even whilst telling them.

My story filled up with cliché: My heart sang. I drowned in your eyes. There was nothing but you.

That night we kissed, I know neither of us planned it. Alcohol was involved, and an inadvertent bush, but even so. Walking, kissing, hand in hand under the dark-light-dark of the street lighting. What was the story there?

I told the scariest story. I told you I loved you.

You ran away, taking my story with you.

 

[Clair De Lune]

I'm loving reading these. I've been meaning to try writing some short fiction for some time...I hadn't realised quite how vulnerable it would make me feel though.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Ooh this is a good thread isn't it?

BURIAL

He wrote his own eulogy, this part included, because he trusted no-one else to do it. He did not wish to be praised after death for being something he never was in life. Kind, thoughtful, wise, any of that. He watched, he learned, he copied, he wrote it all down and he grew rich on the proceeds. That was all he did. He became the first man to finish an autobiography; a drop of blood from his wounds the full stop to the sentence describing them. He leaves only this advice: do not live your life as I lived mine.

 

[cesare]

I'm loving reading these. I've been meaning to try writing some short fiction for some time...I hadn't realised quite how vulnerable it would make me feel though.

Yes, when you reach into your insides where you normally protect; your authentic and vulnerable self. I'm not able to do that yet tbf. Mine are outward and self-protective. But that's OK I hope.

 

[sojourner]

...I hadn't realised quite how vulnerable it would make me feel though.

Showing your writing to other people is nerve wracking, especially at first. Will anyone like it? What if it's crap? Will I just look thick?

Well bollocks to all of that. The main point of this is to enjoy writing them. Make YOURSELF laugh, cry, be intrigued, high on plot and surprise. Enjoy playing with ideas and words and structures. Run around, let loose, and relax.

 

[sojourner]

FETCHING

NO, Margaret, I will do absolutely no such thing! Oh my GOD. What is WRONG with you?!

That’s all those nights down at the Mecca with Dirty Mary and her cronies, drinking 17 halves of lager and lime of a Monday night. I knew it would end up corrupting you, besmirching your ladylike integrity. Oh god, this is all my stupid fault. I should never have let you go alone.

Sorry what?

Ohhh, FETCH ME, fetch me the TV Times?! Thought you said felch me. I do apologise. My ears need syringing again.

Pardon? What’s felching? DON’T GOOGLE IT MARGARET!