Tag Archives: Fiction

Aunt Tillie

“Would somebody please tell Aunt Tillie she’s dead!” Mother blurted out breaking the silence of our ordinarily droll morning meet up over weak tea and buttered toast. “I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in over a week, and frankly, I just don’t know how much more I can bear!”

Without looking away from his morning Post, Father muttered, “Well, she is your sister. I believe that places the burden of truth squarely upon your shoulders.” To which mother groaned loudly in response, causing Father to add, “After all, you’re the only one she seems currently intent on making miserable.”

“Not so.” I voiced rather meekly, my mouth half hidden behind a nervous hand. Father’s morning Post crackled as he lowered it cautiously, just enough to rest his bespectacled eyes directly above the morning market headlines. They widened as he looked from me, to mother, then back at me again.

“Mother didn’t know. I never told anyone. The night she passed, I heard what sounded like someone crying in the attic. I was frightened, but I steeled myself, took a deep breath, put my hand on the doorknob and unlocked the door. When the door opened I felt a presence.”

“As it passed me in the doorway, a small voice whispered something about a gopher or maybe a mole and father’s inner thigh? Oh! I don’t know! It all happened so fast.” Mother’s eyes narrowed. Father ducked quickly behind his Post. And Auntie Tillie? She was never heard from again.

This piece written in 50 word increments is my response to the literary quote provided on this week’s 50 Word Thursday. The quote was, “I took a deep breath, put my hand on the doorknob and unlocked the door.” – Christiana Miller – Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead.

The Promise

You might think this kind of love is curse-ed. You might think no love is worth all that much pain. You might think I am better off for having lost it- but if I could I would do it all again…..

 

I am want to call it love making. But it was not.

It was animal. It was instinctual. A ritualistic coupling of passion and pain, anger and ecstasy all in such great measure that even in this moment, with that day so long ago and far away, I know not whether it rendered me dead, or I was reborn.  

But I do know, that from the moment he unsheathed his passion driven dagger and drove it deep into the tender recesses of my aching, needful flesh- yesterday was long forgotten and the promise of tomorrow? Simply did not exist.

There was only now. There was only us.

Until there wasn’t. 

And it is there, that the story of our demise truly begins.

                                                                          *****************************

 

The Promise is a song written and performed by American metal band, In This Moment. It was released on their third album, A Star-Crossed Wasteland. The song is a duet featuring In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink and Otherwise vocalist Adrian Patrick.

I have included videos of both the metal studio version and a live acoustic performance so you may enjoy the song as a ballad if the metalcore version does not arise in you- the memories of unquenchable passion that it does in me.

“This song is about when you are madly in love with somebody, but you know that you’re dangerous for that person and vice versa. They’re dangerous for you even though you crave them. You want it more than anything, even though you know it will end badly.” – Maria Brink- Lead vocalist, In This Moment.

 

The Promise

Its haunting
This hold that you have over me
I grow so weak

I see you
And everything around you fades
And I can’t see

You can never know what it is you do to me

I can’t take what you do to me
I can’t take it

I can’t take what you do to me
I can’t take it

No matter what I say or what I do
I know how this will end
So I turn it away now before we begin

And no matter what you say or what you do
I know how this will end
So I’m turning away now

I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you

You touch me
And I can barely make a move
And I can’t breathe

You never know what it is you do to me

I can’t take what you do to me
I can’t take it

I can’t take what you do to me
I can’t take it

No matter what I say or what I do
I know how this will end
So I’m turning away now before we begin

And no matter what you say or what you do
I know how this will end
So I’m turning away now

I’m dangerous

The only promise I could make
Is that my promise is a lie
The only promise I could make you
Is that my promise is a lie

No matter what I say or what I do
I know how this will end
So I’m turning away now before we begin

And no matter what you say or what you do
I know how this will end
So I’m turning away now

I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you
I’m dangerous for you

I’m dangerous, I’m dangerous for you

My promise is I will hurt you
My promise is I will hurt you
My promise is I will hurt you
My promise is I will hurt you

This is my response to Jim Adam’s call for songs containing the words Promise, Vow or Oath on this weeks edition of Song Lyric Sunday.

What’s in a name?

rose bad fox studio defunct link

Bad Fox Studios Defunct link

She had been given that name Glorious back when her Mama was hell bent on becoming a Christian.

She grew up being called Glori. That’s Glori with an I, not Glory with a Y.

And that made a difference, but only to Mama. Who had by then divorced herself completely from Christianity and taken up the path of the Buddha, to whom something called dukkha was even more important than glory was to Christians.

So she kept her mouth shut about the whole I and Y thing and just considered herself lucky she had been born during Mama’s Christian phase.

Here are 100  words about as near to nothing as you can get without writing nothing at all. I was however able to include the word, Glorious, as provided by Eugenia this week on her site Eugi’s Causerie. So I guess all is not for naught.

Symphony of Destruction

Big Jim Hawkings leaned back in his tufted leather desk chair and lit a cigarette. The hinges and springs that secured the seat of the chair to it’s carriage-like base squeaked and groaned as he pushed his sturdy frame hard against the back of the chair, stretching his long legs out straight in front of him- and crossing them at the ankle.

He had done it.

Oh, they liked to think they had done it. But they knew, just like Big Jim knew, they could never have done it without him.

True, they had taken him out of a wheat field in the Northern Plains. They had funded and backed and bribed and funded some more until the face of Big Jim Hawkings was as casually accepted as the man of the people as was a trusted relation.

But it was Big Jim that endeared himself to the people. Sucked them right in- like marrow from a bone.

It was Big Jim with his slow southern drawl, and his well worn Carhartts. It was big Jim with his work hardened hands and his prayer callused knees.

It was Big Jim that had applied the oil to all the appropriate orifices, and Big Jim that had looked on and done nothing when they slammed the double edged sword of their ulterior altruism home- before the people even knew they were being bent over.

But more importantly, Big Jim had been there when the time came to lick the wounds he had greased the way for them to inflict. There to apply the salve of his own smooth tongue- when the people realized how brutally they had been ravaged.

And now it was Big Jim they would listen to. Big Jim they would trust.

So tomorrow when he called upon the people to rain down like fire from the heavens and cleanse the earth of the very corporate scum that had seen fit to create him- he had no doubt the people would follow his direction. No doubt that based solely on his utterances, the people would be willing to lay down their lives.

Oh, they had opened this window to the stars, alright- the night they chose him to be the face of their menace.

Big Jim chuckled to himself as the carriage-like base of his chair cried out, yet again for mercy.

“Now, I’d like to see ’em try an close it.”

 

Symphony of Destruction

You take a mortal man
And put him in control
Watch him become a god
Watch people’s heads a’roll
A’roll, a’ roll

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction

Acting like a robot
Its metal brain corrodes
You try to take its pulse
Before the head explodes
Explodes, explodes

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction

The earth starts to rumble
World powers fall
A’warring for the heavens
A peaceful man stands tall
Tall, tall

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction
Writer/s: Dave Mustaine

Symphony of Destruction was written by Megadeth founder and frontman, Dave Mustain. The song is about not only political leaders who act as puppets for the powerful organizations that control them, but also very much about We The People that blindly follow.

 

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.”

― paraphrase of words credited to the Buddha 

 

This is my response to Jim Adam’s call for songs containing the words, Give, Get, Take, Receive or Send on this weeks Song Lyric Sunday.

The lead-in fiction was inspired by the three phrasal prompts offered on the OLWG #89. The phrases were:

he leaned back and lit a cigarette
Window to the stars
ulterior altruism

 

 

 

Ecstasy

If the music didn’t get any better he was going to take that pill Kelsey kept offering him. After all, why should Kelsey be the only one having any fun?

He tossed that question around in his mind for a moment before his loins decided on the only logical answer.

“Because the more pills Kelsey has, the more pills Kelsey will take. And the more pills Kelsey takes…”

Jamie quickly distracted himself from the pursuant visual that accompanied his thought process.

Suffice it to say, Little Miss Kelsey wouldn’t be the only one getting a ride on the way home..

This snippet written in exactly 100 words was inspired by the opening line supplied by Dylan on this week on MLMM’s First Line Friday