Write-On Prompt: Just One Ride

 Note: It was prompt night last night at Write On, and we had five options to pick from. Because I never do anything easy, I tried to tackle three. Two of them dealt with conveying emotions through body language and dialogue. Not sure I hit the mark with that, but hoped the slumping and banter conveyed a desire on both sides of the conversation. The third was to write a story with an open ending. That I did. Let me know what you think Mary did after Roger opened the passenger door.

 Up and down Locust Avenue, the street lights blinked to life as the sun fell behind the line of trees to the west. It wasn’t dark enough for the orange glow from the bulbs to be noticeable to anyone other than Roger, and he only noticed because he was slumped against his rusty ’78 Camaro and had nothing better to do than watch lights turn on. The Camaro’s original color had been apple red, until someone, probably in the 1990s had decided to make it silver. Except they clearly hadn’t known how to paint a car, as the silver now was flaking off, revealing the red, and in spots, rusty flesh below. Roger wanted to sand off the silver completely, restore the original sheen, and revel in all its muscle car glory. He wanted to turn the stereo on loud, have the speakers shake in their casings, and listen to Ozzy, or ACDC, or maybe even Motely Crue. He wanted a great many things, instead he was slumped against the passenger’s side door waiting. Always waiting for time to do things like that. For money to upgrade the engine. Most of all, he waited for Mary Scott to come down those porch steps.

His dark bangs fell before his even darker eyes, and he didn’t bother to brush them away. His shirt was cutoff at the shoulder on purpose, the three tears in other places weren’t. His skin was tanned to his rotator cuff, but a creamy white for the rest of his torso, and blotches of grease spotted all of him. Some still wet, other so dried to his skin and clothing that the only way they’d ever be removed was with fire.

“You can stand there all night,” Mary called from the porch, her pale summer dress dancing in an invisible breeze. A radio played somewhere, maybe even a block over. The song was an oldie, one where the guy could smoothly hit the high notes and make you believe in things like love and peace and happy-ever-afters.

“Maybe I will.” Roger shrugged, reached into the car and grabbed a pack of cigarettes and his Zippo.

“My dad will come out and slug you if he hears you been smoking in front of his house.” Mary had her blonde hair tied back with a golden bow. He liked it better when she let her locks spill to her shoulders.

“Then, you just go in and tell him that Roger Hirsh is going to smoke a whole pack of reds at his curb unless his daughter comes down here and gets in the front seat of this mighty fine automobile.”

“It’s an old beater,” She glanced at the screen door behind her. He wondered if she’d ever get the courage to either rat him out to her pa or come scrambling down to him to see what it meant to really let her hair loose.

“It’s a classic.” He lit the cigarette, nodded his head back and let gravity move his bangs from in front of his eyes to their proper place atop his head.

Mary crossed her arms and planted her feet. Since meeting three weeks earlier, they had done this dance almost nightly. He rumbled down her block fifteen minutes after getting off at the garage, parked in front of the house, and waited for her to accept his invitation for a quick ride, just a couple swings around the block was all he was asking, and each night she refused, remaining in purgatory on the porch until Roger’s stomach growled so much that he had to retreat to the nearest fast-food joint.

“Your nothing but a grease monkey,” Mary stuck her tongue out. “I’m going to college in a month.”

He grinned. College girls, always hiding behind their books and their intentions. Just wait ten years doll, when your tire pops on that station wagon, and your preppy frat boy has to call a service to get it fixed, he thought. Roger would have it off and fixed in two shakes while you and frat boy will be sitting beside the road for three hours. Well, he wasn’t going to wait ten years for her to figure it out. He was tired of waiting for the good things to come his way. He didn’t know what it was, but something about this Mary seemed good to him. Real good, and he wasn’t going to give up just because she couldn’t envision the benefits of dating a fella that was good with his hands.

“I tell you what, you ride once around this block, just once, and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave you alone forever.” He said, dropping the stub of his cigarette and grinding it down with the heel of his boot. “Just once.” He held up a single finger.

She snorted. Behind him, the street appeared orange under the lights as the sun dipped lower and the shadows grew longer. A lot of stories – a lot of good stories – have started under such lights with the wind whipping past open windows and music blasting on the stereo.

He opened the passenger door and waved for her to come, hoping that his wait was over.

Write-On Prompt: One Clean Slice

 

Note: Last night was Prompt night at Write On. I turned the prompt into the gruesome little scene below. I did like the character created have started thinking about how this could be tweaked. Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts if you have any. 😊.

 Prompt: Start your story with someone walking into a gas station.

 Syd kicked the doors opens, her black boots smudging the plexiglass as a giant pink bubble inflated between her lips. Behind the counter, Reggie stopped counting coins to give as change to some twelve-year-old who looked to be filling his stash of candy and caffeine. Two tall hombres in cowboy hats and denim tuxedos were standing before the bank of refrigerated doors on the opposite side of the station, likely deciding which case of cheap beer they’d split that night. The modern American saloon was the roadside gas station. The gossip. The games. The fighting. Gone were the sticky wood floors, the dancing girls and the six-shooters replaced by Little Debbie, Big Gulp Soda Machines and the semi-automatic death machines every third idiot thought they needed to riddle deer carcasses with seventy bullets in twenty seconds.

 “Where is she?” Syd announced. Reggie pointed toward the pizza kitchen, he didn’t want any trouble here. The hombres glanced from the wall of beer, wads of tobacco filling their bottom lips. Syd wondered if they knew of her, maybe heard the stories, probably not believing that anyone, especially a woman could be so brutal.

 “Martha Rose, get your ass on out here,” Syd called. A clattering of pizza pans rattled from behind the spinning trolley filled with day-old slices. The sausage on top of one was green, Syd wasn’t sure if that was intended or if mold had started to form. She didn’t much care, she wasn’t there to eat.

 Martha Rose plowed through the bat-wing doors like a linebacker through an offensive line. The woman was in her forties, gray haired, barely five-foot tall and easily two-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Clutched in her sauced stained hands was a pizza cutter, its round blade splattered with melted mozzarella.

 “Don’t you come another step closer, Syd Bannon! I might not be as quick as I once was, but I know right where to cut to make sure you bleed too much before anyone can make you stop bleeding.”

 “Tsk, tsk,” Syd said, walking over to the end cap of the nearest aisle. It was filled with Twinkees and Cupcakes and all sorts of other treats filled with sugar and God knew what else. People thought of Syd as evil, or at least the hand of evil, as she was the one who Luke sent out to collect debts, but she bet that Hostess and Little Debbie killed more folks in a minute than the dangerous Syd Bannon could in ten lifetimes.

 “I mean it, Syd.” Martha Rose waved the pizza cutter around. Syd glanced once at the kid at the counter, sending a clear message. The boy scooped his candy and cola against his chest and pushed through the doors into the night without getting his change. The two hombres in cowboy hats followed without needing any encouragement.

 “Lock that door,” Syd said. Reggie complied, a hurt look crossed Martha Rose’s chubby face. Never had she considered that her co-worker could betray her so. The dumb ox hadn’t learned that everyone around here had debts to Luke.

 “I’ve known you all your life,” Martha Rose said. “Babysat you when you were in diapers.”

 “I remember you doing a whole lot of yelling,” Syd answered. “Funny how uppity some folks get when they have just a glimmer of authority. Like to hit my ass with a belt, too, if I recall right.”

 “Just when you deserved it,” Martha Rose said. “I didn’t like doing it.”

 Syd saw her own face in the security mirror. The bones of her skull seemed to push against her skin like they were horns trying to poke out. Her scar ran from above her right eye down that side of her face and then looped under chin, stopping just above the jugular. She kept her hair trimmed to a stubble, it was dark with a faint cowlick in the back. Her teeth, what she had left of teeth, were yellow. Hygiene wasn’t a necessity in her line of work.

 “Hmm, maybe I did deserve it. Seemed like justice, I suppose. Sooner or later, we all get what we deserve, don’t we, Martha Rose.”

 “Please, Syd.” Martha Rose cried.

 “You’re six months due on a ten-thousand-dollar debt,” Syd said, tired of seeing this woman’s fat tears running down her fat face. “Our patience has run out!”

 “Those games are rigged! You know it’s true, Syd! Luke has ’em set up so we all lose our money in ’em.”

 “If you know that, you’re pretty stupid to play them.”

 A look of defeat came across the woman’s face which was followed instantly by frantic desperation. She charged, the pizza cutter waving in front of her. Syd had time to roll her eyes before adjusting her-own weight, dodging the cutter, and then tripping Martha Rose. The woman fell with a wet smack on the tiled floor. Syd climbed upon her back, and pressed down on the back of Martha’s hand, forcing her to release the cutter. Syd grabbed the cutter, and then yanked Martha Rose’s head back by the hair, revealing the folds of her throat.

 “Goodbye, Martha Rose.” Syd didn’t need more than one cut, even though the cutter’s blade was nearly dull.

 She left Reggie a crumpled hundred on the counter after he unlocked the door. The blood would pool and stain the floor, and he’d have a hell of a time cleaning the station once the police arrived and did their dance. The police would wait a few minutes for Syd to be well clear. Everyone, after all, was in debt to Luke one way or another. They weren’t going to pinch his best henchman, or henchwoman, as it was.

 The night air was heavy with humidity after she kicked the door open. She reached into her denim vest, removed a pocket notebook with a stub of a pencil stuck between the pages. She crossed out Martha Rose’s name. Below it was another name. Burt Logan. She knew she’d find him down at the marina. She revved her motorcycle’s engine once before turning on the highway that led toward the river.

 

Mixtape Challenge: An American Tail – Songs from Bruce Springsteen Over the Last 40 years

 

Link to playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4NNLEXrPXclY1n221y2Q89?si=482fea3e08a3425e

This month’s mixtape challenge for Playlist Pandemonium was to create a mixtape of American songs. As it turns out, the Music Snobs League I am in was also doing a draft of Bruce Springsteen songs. So, since we didn’t have a volunteer for the Mixtape Challenge, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone, sort of. The Mixtape I made has 11 of the 20 songs that I selected that focus on the American Experience.

I think Springsteen has always been a polarizing figure in music. Generally, you like him, or you don’t. In this age of partisan raging, anyone on the conservative right now must hate him because they’ve been programed to hate everything left, just as everyone on the left has been programmed to hate, I don’t know, Kid Rock, I guess.

I am not here to parse politics. Bruce’s politics are clear, but his music has spent the last 40 years capturing the messiness that is America. It drips often with the bittersweet nostalgia that Americans love but balances it with the undertones that much of that nostalgia is fantasy rather than reality. Whether it’s the angst between one generation and the next, the costs of war on citizens, soldiers, and our trust in our government, or the social questions and issues that swing from one extreme to the other, Springsteen usually finds the words and tone to deliver a message.

Here's my Mixtape:

1. The River (Live at LA Coliseum) – 11:38 – I add this because the intro sets the right tone, and when the harmonica kicks in it just rips.
2. The Promised Land – 4:28 – I mean I think this one is self-explanatory.
3. Born in the USA – 4:39 – Still a song most people misunderstand.
4. American Land – 4:25 – The immigrant’s tale with an Irish sound.
5. 4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – 5:35 – Here’s a song dripping with sweetness and nostalgia and Americana.
6. Devils & Dust – 4:59 – A song that asks what happens when you trade in all your values to get what you want.
7. Western Stars – 4:39 – Similar to Devils & Dust, this acoustic song laments the American West.
8. Last to Die – 4:17 – OK, someday we’re going to send soldiers overseas to die in other people’s wars.
9. Death to my Hometown – 3:26 – Ah, yes, how the robber barons have bought up companies and destroyed small town America
10. American Skin (41 Shots) – 7:22 – I think this one is obvious, too.
11. The Rising – 4:47 – Released in the wake of 9/11, this is a song of hope and rebirth. 

Write-On Prompt: Don't Touch That Key

 

Note: Last night was prompt night at Write On. The items above were presented as prompts for a story of our choosing. Here’s what I came up with.

 A square nail, the kind pulled from some old barn with a million years of rust on it and the jagged crooks and bends of a witch’s back, was driven into the side of door frame, very near the top. A silver ring circled where the nail met the pine board stained dark when the house was built in the early 1900s and now almost black a hundred years later as the original varnish aged. From the ring dangled a single silver key and next to it a white plastic square with some sort of green sticker on it.

 Mary Beth squinted to make out more, maybe there were words on the sticker and maybe even numbers on the plastic square, but she couldn’t read them. If Mama were gone, she would drag a chair over to look closer, but Mama was at the oven, striking a match and lighting a candle that smelled like cinnamon rolls.

 “Your face will stick like that,” Charlotte said from the table. Charlotte was two years older and two years wiser, as she liked to say. As if being ten was a rite of passage where little girls cease to be silly and become great sages of the world.

 “I hope it sticks like this,” Mary Beth answered, directing her tongue at her sister.

 “Girls, stop it,” Mama said, flicking her wrist at them like they were pesky flies. She was always doing that these days, as if the girls were nothing more than annoying pulses of light at the edge her vision. Charlotte pretended not to notice, saying that Mama had always been like this, and that Mary Beth just had to accept it and grow up. But Mary Beth knew the truth. Mama changed the same time that Daddy changed, and both of them changed the same night that Daddy drove that nail into the door frame and put that key on it.

 “Don’t either of you ever touch that key,” Daddy had said, his face red like he’d just ran up the hill to the barn a dozen times rather than drive one nail into a board. “You touch it, and I”ll know it, and believe me, you won’t be able to sit for a month.”

 Mama fluttered from the room, arms jerking about like a marionette and Mary Beth settled into the chair next to Charlotte.

 “What’s it for?” Mary Beth asked.

 Charlotte rolled her eyes, grabbed a tube of lip gloss and spread it on her lips, pursing them like she was some harlot in the movies. Mary Beth wanted to grab the brown tube, throw it across the room, and remind her oh-so-wise older sister that it wasn’t lipstick she was smearing on her lips. Charlotte could have greased a turkey through a pinhole with the amount of times she grabbed the lip gloss and pouted her lips in an hour.

 “You gotta be wondering,” Mary Beth said.

 “I”ll have you know, I’m not.” Charlotte flipped a page in her chapter book that she carried everywhere. Another illusion. The girl thought she could convince everyone that she was some Brainiac by carrying the book around, but Mary Beth was pretty sure her sister had never read more than two pages in a sitting in her life.

“You’re a liar.”

 “Am not. I’m not curious because I know what it does.”

 “Oh yeah, smarty pants, tell me.”

 “It opens a lock.”

 “Well, duh, I know that, but what lock?”

“The one on the door at the back of the shed.”

 Mary Beth thought a minute. She avoided the shed because it had a putrid musty smell, and if she looked hard enough, she could make out the skeletal remains of critters in the dirt floor. The shed was old, just as old as the house if not older, and, at first, she couldn’t remember there being a door in the shed. Then she remembered, it was a giant oak door with hundreds of engravings on the back wall. A door that was entirely too nice to be hanging in a derelict shed. It had been buried behind decades of rubble when their family moved into the place three years earlier. Her daddy had started cleaning in that shed in October, hauling old lumber and tools and bags of garbage out for days. At some point, he must have cleared a path all the way to the door.

 “What’s that door need a lock for?” Mary Beth finally asked.

 “Because there’s something behind that door,” Charlotte said, “And Mama and Papa don’t want us to see it.”

 “Wha…”

 A chill air blew into the house as daddy rushed in from doing chores. His face was long and his eyes drooped. He was only thirty-five, but he looked like he was in his sixties. When did daddy start looking so old and tired?

 “Susan, isn’t it time for these girls to get to bed?” he called, stomping to the fridge, opening it, and pulling from it a red beer can. He barreled from the kitchen without even acknowledging the two girls.

 Mary Beth wanted to protest. It wasn’t even seven thirty. Their bed time wasn’t until eight, sometimes they could even stay up to eight-thirty, but Charlotte elbowed her in the ribs.

 “They go out there after we go to sleep,” Charlotte said. “I’m going to follow them tonight.”

 Mary Beth eyed the key again at the top of the door frame. This mystery that had nagged for a better part of a month, and the answer as simple as a lock out in the shed. She wondered how long that Charlotte knew. Probably only a day or two, but Charlotte probably would claim she’d known all along. Well, she wasn’t going to pull anything over on Mary Beth here. She might be eight, but she was plenty smart, too.

 “I’m coming with you,” Mary Beth said, thinking she could bring her little blue flashlight to guide the way.

Write-On Prompt: WD 2 - Calling Captain Crapper

 

Note: This is the second prompt in a series of  five prompts we are working through at Write On. The first story is linked here: What Lies Ahead: Write-On Prompt: WD 1 - Rob Calls It Quits (whatliesaheadblog.blogspot.com)

Nobody ever thought about Wendall unless the crapper backed up, an unusually common malfunction in the men’s room at Castella Services. Only seventeen males worked at Castella, well sixteen since Rob’s outburst about an hour earlier, and Wendall had his suspicions on which one of those seventeen couldn’t clean their rears without using half a roll of TP and clogging the old pipes of this aging building. Wendall was twenty-nine, and he’d already spent more time on his knees in front of a dirty stool with a plunger in one hand and a clothespin over his nostrils than most people would spend in three lifetimes.

 Not only didn’t they think of him, but they also didn’t know his real name. “Captain Crapper,” that’s what most of the khaki-wearing bastards called him.

 “Captain Crapper” they called when the toilet clogged, “Report to the deck for another voyage on the brown sea.”

 Wendall had thought about quitting, just like Rob had, a thousand times. But what would happen then? He lived with his mother, who retired early from a career in doing nothing to spend her golden years doing less, and his grandmother, who was ninety-six and still walked three miles a day, but who hadn’t held a job since Jimmy Carter was in office. Both were dependent on his meager salary.

 Wendall played the scene of Rob quitting over and over in his mind. The suddenness of it, the brisk way he waltzed from the office, shoulders back, head held high. He was cool, just like a rockstar.

 The tickets, the thought of them rang like a tornado warning in his head. Seven hundred bucks down the drain.

 Clearly, Rob had forgot that Wendall had a surprise waiting for him. Wendall had only mentioned it to Rob three times that day. Of course, Rob had barely acknowledged it.

 “Hmmmm,” Rob mumbled, while the two smoked during a break that morning. Rob lived in his own head sometimes. That’s one of the things Wendall liked about him. The guy could exist without talking and that calmed Wendall.

 Wendall had wanted to wait until the end of the day to spring the tickets on Rob, that way maybe they could go down to Bump’s Tap and split a pitcher of beer talking about it. Metallica. Third Row, center. Rob would have probably high-fived him or something because Rob loved music, and for whatever reason, Wendall just wanted to do nice things for Rob. He wasn’t like the rest of the assholes at this hellhole. He was a daydreamer, sure, but he wasn’t arrogant. Hanging out with a janitor wasn’t below him, and he didn’t call Wendall “Captain Crapper.” Just Wendall. Sometimes, he’d even say, “Hey Buddy.” Can you believe that? Buddy. Wendall hadn’t had a buddy or a friend or a pal since grammar school. The tickets were an impulse buy, he didn’t even have Rob’s phone number, but they were buddies, pals, friends, right? Buddies, pals, friends, go to concerts together.

 Now Rob was gone for good.

 “Ahoy!” Cal Pickens called. “There’s a storm on the brown sea! Calling Captain Crapper!”

 There was a chuckle around the cubicles. The cubicle where Rob sat was quiet, this time because Wendall’s friend was gone and not because Rob found the nickname stupid and thought Wendall was a good guy.

 Wendall grabbed the plunger and sighed.

From the Beat: Unique Features

 

Note: I covered a high school baseball game on Saturday for Sauk Valley Media. Below is a bit on how doing so can translate to writing fiction. A link to my game story is also below.

Saturday’s Sectional Championship baseball game between Newman and Dakota provided enough dramatics that I didn’t have space to discuss one of the unique aspects of the host site in Pearl City. The baseball diamond at Pearl City sits in the corner of the football field, which itself sits in an earthen bowl.

To meet the required dimensions for postseason play, the outfield fence extending from left field to center was placed atop the bowl, meaning the last 10 feet or so of the outfield grass was a steep gradient, almost like a wall before the fence. Once upon a time, I probably would have added a column or side story about the challenges of this setting feature. Alas, space and publishing realties don’t allow for that sort of expansion of coverage at SVM.

If this was a fictional story, it would have been a focus of the setting with the point being that the story would hinge on this unusual trait. It’s easy to get caught up when building a fictional world, that we forget the point. You put characters in a place for a reason, and you give that place characteristics, and when you marry the two together in the plot, that’s when there is magic. A huge ice wall in Game of Thrones was unique and served a purpose, and if the books progress like the TV show, a big point in the story will be how the bad guys (the White Walkers) overcome the wall. Maybe a more accessible setting feature is the yellow brick road. That’s a unique thing about Oz, and following it becomes the driver of the plot.

Anyways, just a thought on settings from my observations from my latest excursion to my old beat.

Story link:Baseball: Tunink’s homers power Newman into 1A supersectional – Shaw Local

Write-On Prompt: WD 1 - Rob Calls It Quits

 Note: Write-On was cancelled on Tuesday night, but I had a prompt from my latest edition of Writer's Digest that I liked, so I held a private session at home. The prompt is actually a series of five prompts that would help create a series of interconnected flash fiction stories. I wrote on the first prompt last night, and I hope to do all five and share them here with you. I will admit I went over 500 words here. 

Here is the prompt: 

The drive to work: twenty-four minutes or somewhere between four and seven standard songs shuffled on Rob’s MP3 player. Today the ride started halfway through Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” An anthem from a band filled with romantic drama that made millions crafting songs about those romantic problems. Rob hummed along, wondering if he could function in a band with an ex-girlfriend. The song ended but his fantasy didn’t, so he missed the next two songs to the point if a madman pointed a gun at him later that day he couldn’t have named them with his life very much depending on it.

In his fantasy, his female bandmate had a voice like Stevie Nicks but looked more like a 1990s version of Gwen Stefani. He liked his girls punkier rather than mystical. They met at a club when both were seventeen, sneaking in with fake IDs and bonding over a shared freak out after each unwittingly took pills that they found out later were ecstasy. Once the throbbing lights and spinning subsided, they shared their mutual admiration of late sixties jam bands and items from the dollar the menus at fast food chains.

Rob lost his train of thought as John Fogerty’s voice filled his Grand Am with “Run Through the Jungle.” Creedence Clearwater Revival - another band with problems, but between Fogerty and the rest, including his own brother. Rob rolled through a stop sign at the intersection of one rural road with another, realizing he was ten minutes from work. No bandmates there. Just co-workers at Castella Services, a subsidiary of Something-Or-Other Incorporated, a brand of some Chinese firm. He operated a computer there, checking emails, transferring requests to the office in Houston and verifying customer reviews of Castella’s multiple but often vague services. He talked to three people there on a regular basis. Norman, his middle-aged, angry boss, Wendall, the janitor who smoked two packs a day near the picnic table at the back of the building, and Myra, a foul-mouthed grandmother who shared a cubicle with Rob.

After Fogerty, Blink-182 sped through a catchy tune followed by Sublime and T-Rex. Rob decided the female would sing, he’d play lead guitar, and the band’s first album would go double-platinum on the back of a trilogy of singles Rob wrote about a traveling gunfighter in an apocalyptic version of the old west. Shortly after Rob would propose to his lady frontwoman only to find out she’d been stepping out with the bass player.

 “Bummer,” Rob actually said parking in front of the faux-brick façade of his workplace.

 “How’s it fucking going, Rob?” Myra greeted him at their cubicle, the beep of his computer powering on punctuating her sentence.

 “Shitty,” Rob said. “She’s screwing the bass player.”

 “What?”

 The conversation ended there, the only sound being the sporadic tapping of their fingers on their keyboards. Rob couldn’t get over his imaginary band’s breakup in a torrent of bitter feelings and backstabbing. He remembered he had to stop for milk after work and that he wanted to start binging Game of Thrones that night for the fourth time. He hadn’t been on a date in eighteen months. Rob wanted to be in a band with messy romantic entanglements, at least it was something.

 Norman peeked his head over the cubicle at 2:30, wondering about a series of emails that Rob hadn’t read yet.

 “I quit, Normy,” Rob said, clicking the power button on his computer monitor.

 “Whew, shit,” Myra said behind him.