Mid-Week Blues-Buster Week 2.39
Welcome to the Mid-Week Blues-Buster Flash Fiction Challenge, Year 2, Week 39.
This is a flash fiction challenge. The prompt is a song. You are not required to write about or even mention the song. It’s there only to get the ideas moving around in your brain pan. If you want to write about the song (or the video- it’s all good here) go for it but don’t feel like you have to.
The rules;
500 words, but it’s a slushy 500, meaning you can go up to 700 or as low as 300.
Post your entry right in the comments section of this post.
MAKE SURE TO PUT YOUR TWITTER HANDLE NEXT TO YOUR WORD COUNT AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR POST. IF YOU’RE NOT ON TWITTER GIVE ME AN EMAIL ADDRESS OR SOME OTHER WAY TO GET A HOLD OF YOU!
The challenge starts whenever I post this on Tuesday and ends at MIDNIGHT PACIFIC TIME on Friday. You read that right. Pacific Time.
This week’s song prompt is a killer tune by Irish chanteuse Imelda May.
The song is… “Bury My Troubles”. Here’s the link; http://youtu.be/MKqQysq_8Qs
This week’s Judge is flash fictioneer Lori Fetters Lopez.
The challenge opens the moment you read this post and runs through MIDNIGHT PACIFIC TIME on Friday February 27th.
Now… Go Write!!!
Posted on February 24, 2015, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 16 Comments.
The Tsuruoka Files 
Wretched
Ice settling into my veins, freezing my very essence, memories etched on my face. Old hurts trespass my present, coloring the palette I paint. Our history becomes our now without us even knowing.
I’m afraid of the unspoken, the not happened yet rows. In my head scenarios, play, constantly on repeat. The voices in my head won’t stop, day and night, heckling, whistling and prodding. Ideas percolate and brew till they fester and stew and totally obscure my view.
Jealousy is a constant companion, she never leaves me alone. A few minutes late and she’s doing her thing, I’m checking his emails again. She controls me, taunts me, and makes me go through his phone. It’s not me but that bitch called Jealousy.
There was a time, I can hardly remember now, when I trusted everyone and everything, the world was a wonderful playground. Disappointments, betrayals have turned me in what I now see creeping, bitterly across the mirror. A wretched, scared of her shadow, soon to be dried up prune.
When will I be able to let my past go? When will it stop controlling me? It’s not you I’m fighting really, but ghosts that continue to haunt me. I built a wall brick by brick, it took years to get this strong, and now I’m too weak to knock it down.
I got a cat and I was even jealous of that, where did she go? When not with me, who’s she seeing? What had they got that I hadn’t? I should have got a dog it’s loyalty would have massaged some balm to my soul.
Ironically it’s the past that made me what I am, but it’s the unknown that’s killing us, today. I’m trying to live in the present to enjoy what we are but the future is pissing on my lamppost, marking me, leaving a scar.
Word count 312
@susanoreilly3
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This is about me you write.Rita Joyce Singh a wonderful read.
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Can’t
Your words bruised a lot more than your fists ever could. I poured poison into my soul its everlasting unlike the bleeding you caused. I let you destroy me, turn me into someone I hate, but I hope I won’t be this way forever.
I have a constant reminder, a perforated septum, no plastic surgeon wants to take on say they’ll probably end up doing more damage so every morning I wake up with blood in my throat and nose, makes it hard to get over.
I also have a dodgy eye, looks like I’m crying all the time and it’s slanted, the nerve was so damaged at first that it couldn’t close, it was constantly open, people thought it was Bells Palsy it was easier to let them think that.
All this I can cope with but it’s the head space you invade that causes the most issues. Fights with new partners are blown out of all proportion; I’m always expecting a punch. The way I lost all self-respect and tiptoed around, cowering in the corner when you came home in a rage has made me super vigilant and I can’t handle a normal row.
Our son makes me happy I met you, he’s the one good thing to come from us, does it make me evil that I’m glad you’re gone and he’ll never have to meet you? Your suicide I thought the most selfish act at the time but maybe it was your first unselfish one. Who knows? Certainly not me, I can’t even figure me out, never mind you.
I’m still here, alive and stronger and have the wonderful gift of empathy. I don’t take any crap now, not from men anyway, that’s an ongoing battle I fear I’ve lost, I have lost the ability to trust, I just can’t.
Word count 305
@susanoreilly3
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I joined this lovely website of great poets. This was about three years back. All by accident. I started getting responses and sometimes later the internal mail among members got going. I soon realized I was doing the unexpected, reaching out to the people on this mail site. Some of them (all of them highly talented minds)had saddening stories, illnesses and some were holding out a friendly hand towards me. In many instances I started writing words of encouragements on the mail box and I became another person altogether. I had a long history of depression and a very hurting childhood, and, in writing and reaching out to others I learned two important things. Our own worries and setbacks are not the only things in the world. Secondly, I realized that the other person is suffering so much similarly and a kindly encouragement can push them along, cheer them and uplift them. I, from old past experiences could advise them to hold strong. These bad times too pass.
Unawares, I had done so and brought some relief or had soothed them in their times of distress. Only by using written words. There is a miracle here, I, myself ended up feeling good and was able to overcome my own depression and was making deliberate efforts to stave it off. Of course, it happened unwittingly. Exorcising my past hurt and sense of inadequacies. Few other things I learned from this site of poets were that we humans should not take ourselves too seriously and dramatize our problems and wallow in it and certainly not for years, that is carrying too much baggage. The other good things were that talking to like minded friends, (even though it is only in e-mail letters) sharing problems can change our attitudes and inner sense of being. We feel better and feel more human and useful. Finally, the greatest lesson learned was that humans have greatness. Great inner strength, you never know when it knocks in and are resilient and just need someone to tell them they are loved.
Rita Joyce Singh
(This is my entry I hope I am in the right box and place and procedure)
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hi rita yep u did it great write x
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The List
“Excuse me, but what are you doing in the backyard at this time of night?”
I heard her ask the question, but didn’t look up right away. I needed to muster a little more self-control before attempting to speak.
“I am not done yet, you asked me to do several things for you before coming to bed. After I finish this, I need to put up the Christmas lights and assemble your new office chair.”
“I don’t recall digging a hole in the backyard being on my list.”
“It wasn’t, I’m sorry dear.”
Actually it was, but she didn’t understand that, and I wasn’t going to explain it to her. So I kept digging. She harrumphed her way back inside saying something mankind being useless. I paused from my digging to pick up a handful of dirt. It felt moist and rich. It felt like freedom.
I skipped the Christmas lights and put together the office chair. Then I stepped into the bedroom. She rolled over and asked me about the lights. I lied and said they were up.
She did exactly what I knew she would do. She stormed outside to see and forgetting the hole she tumbled in. The ring of my shovel silenced her whining, and I began filling in the hole. Tamping it down and carefully replacing the sod. I put the sprinkler over the spot and in a few hours it would be hard to know see anything had happened there.
Then I slowly walked inside and looked over her list.
Before coming to bed please take care of the following.
1) Get rid of your bad attitude.
2) Assemble the new chair.
3) Take out the garbage.
4) Put up the Christmas lights.
Sitting down in my new chair, I crossed off the first three items. Behind the fourth I wrote maybe later..
309 Words
@CharlesWShort
Yes, there is a chair in there and, yes, I included hearing her voice, feeling the rich soil and looking over the list.
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“A Spade is a Spade”
Written for Weekly Blues Buster prompt song “Bury My Troubles” by Imelda May
Bob welcomed the warm breeze as it flooded in from the driver’s side window, and was glad there was a short reprieve of silence as his Studebaker chugged along into the desert’s darkness.
One good thing about having a cut on his hand was the dual use of handkerchief wrapped around it; tipping up the brim of his fedora, he wiped the sweat from his hairline.
He was thankful his wife never asked questions about his business, but the briefest glimmer of concern in her dark eyes never went unnoticed when Bob came home with a black eye or a busted lip. But her worry always swam away like a prized fish through his slick palms, then she’d look away and reignite her tirade about hating the desert and missing the city.
The Bronx in her voice would kick up into a high-pitched whine until they were yelling at each other until he was disgusted with himself, then she’d bring on the waterworks.
Running a hand over his face, Bob shook the thought away and considered sending Mary some flowers just because, but then again that might lead to questions…, and then she’d bring up Mitzy again and make him sleep on the sofa.
“Christ,” he cursed to himself. Better not.
The quiet was short lived as the banging from the trunk resumed.
Bob grumbled, but thank the almighty for tiny miracles, he was almost there.
Cutting the engine and trudging toward the trunk, he took a moment to bask in the swirl of dust that kicked up.
The barrel-chested man opened the hatch to reveal a slip of a dark haired man, tied up and gagged, but flailing in the dark crevice. The boyish man let out a high pitched squeal as Bob unceremoniously dragged him out and forced him to stand.
Grabbing a shovel and leaving his lantern (the full moon lit up the pebbles and shrubs), Bob cut the rope on the man’s slender ankles and quickly pressed his snub nose pistol into his back. The older man’s actions were practiced, mechanical and dull in their tedium.
Bob forced the other man to march into the night and stood by with his gun fixed on him as he forced the waif to dig his own shallow grave all the while pleading mostly to himself as the older man wasn’t listening.
Bob yawned and momentarily considered helping dig just so he wouldn’t be out until sunrise, but his back, a veteran of years of brawls and spontaneous burials, protested.
“That’s enough,” Bob declared.
The man in the pit trembled in fear, “You don’t have to do this,” he plead.
Bob sighed gesturing with his gun, “C’mon. You brought this on yourself, kid.”
“I was gonna pay him back!” tears streamed down his dirt covered cheeks.
“It’s the principal of the thing,” Bob replied flatly at the overused line as he approached the younger man pulling back the hammer on his raised gun.
“Wait!” the man shouted holding out his hands in front of him.
“Quit stalling,” Bob retorted irritably.
The young man grasped for something to say, “Y-you wouldn’t kill a-a woman would you!?”
“What?”
“I’m a woman!”
Bob laughed heartily, “Well, that’s a first.”
“I can prove it!”
Sure there was nothing to lose, Bob indulged the soon to be dead man, “Alright. Prove it.”
Nervously, the man in the pit tore open his shirt sending buttons flying in the dirt before tugging at thick bandages wrapped around his chest until he revealed a set of breast that shouldn’t be there.
“What in the hell?” Bob stared dumbfoundedly.
His mind was straining with too many questions like crabs fighting in a bucket jarring him out of his well rehearsed routine.
“Go,” he uttered slowly, “You are dead. You leave, and do not come back here.”
The stunned person in the aborted grave scrambled to cover up and crawled out of the hole, but moved gingerly unsure if they’d receive a shot to the back.
“I said go!” Bob shouted.
Without further hesitation, the girl(?) ran until Bob was surrounded by only darkness and confusion for a moment before he filled in the empty pit.
697 Words @skarlitsunrise
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Whiskey Cryin’
“Darlin’ I don’t mean to interrupt a woman who is clearly dedicated to getting her drunk on but it does sort of make my heart hurt to see someone as lovely as you doing that alone.”
The woman sitting with a bottle of Jameson in front of her cut her eyes to the side my way as her mouth lifted in a slight twitch.
“You Irishmen. I swear, you make everything sound like the beginning of a song that will end up being both funny and sad and usually with someone dead.”
Oh good lord her voice. A throaty contralto that shot straight down to my cock.
“American! Well I should have guessed that I suppose. The talks been all over the village about the American woman who keeps drinking everyone under the table.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hold back her grin. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but she was captivating. She wasn’t some 20something girl full of bubbles and giggles. Nothing wrong with that but, at a certain point in a man’s life you started to need a woman. A woman who had been through some shite, who knew what it was to lose and win and lose again. My hands practically itched with the need to touch her red-gold hair, her skin, her lips. I leaned in closer letting my humor fade as I put my hand on hers.
“Seriously, what’s a beautiful woman like you burying under all that whiskey?”
Her eyes met mine finally. Green with a darker green ring around the outside edge and laugh lines at the outer corners. A small smile played on her lips but didn’t make it to her eyes.
“Oh the usual, grief, loss, loneliness.”
She hadn’t pulled her hand away so I closed mine around hers and brought it to my lips, holding her gaze.
“James Dougal at your service madam, I’m quite proficient at chasing away those three monsters. Oh, I’ll not lie to you, they’ll always return but maybe not tonight.”
That got a laugh out of her.
“James Dougal, what on earth could you possibly want with a middle aged American woman crying into her whiskey?”
“Well if you’ll tell me your name I’ll tell you what I see which is clearly not what you see.”
“Cassidy MacArthur.”
“Cassidy. May I call you Cass?”
“All my friends do.”
“Then I will presume and do the same. What I see, Cass, is a beautiful woman who has been sitting alone a bit too long, a woman carrying some sadness but no real self-pity, a woman whose natural joy and humor has taken a blow but isn’t even remotely down for the count.” As I spoke I moved slowly closer until my lips were a hairsbreadth from hers. If I didn’t kiss her I thought I might die but I waited. After one heartbeat more than I wanted it to take she lifted her chin just the tinniest bit and angled her head in clear invitation. I cupped her face in my hands and slowly rubbed my thumb over her so soft bottom lip. My voice sounded gravelly as I brushed my lips against hers.
“Why not let me help you bury those troubles darlin’?”
@MissBliss
Words: 542 not including title
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No More Troubles
They board the train together. Her heart pounds in her chest with excitement, and her pale cheeks flush becomingly. He smiles down at her, taken with the sparkle in her eyes and the curve of her lips.
“Excited, Darling?”
She takes his offered arm, squeezing his bicep lightly with gloved fingers.
“Oh yes! This is thrilling!”
When they’d first heard about the train, she’d immediately wanted to go. “Have the experience of a lifetime!” the ad had read. “A three day journey in a genuine, refurbished Pullman rail car. Experience the grace and splendor of yesteryear!”
“Oh, can we?!” Her voice had gone up like a much younger girl’s, and he had smiled at her delight, and nodded.
She wears a smart dress, black with white trim, white gloves, a small matching hat and black stilettos with white trim. Her dark hair is pulled up into a bun, neatly sprayed beneath the hat. He wears a dark three piece suit and a fedora. They look smashing together, as they make their way to their seats.
“It’s so charming!” She is breathless with delight and kisses him on the cheek, standing on tiptoes to do so. He pats her hand and they settle in. He hands their tickets to the gentleman when he passes by, and they chat. The journey is soon underway. They travel along, talking about everyday things, nothing important. She stretches after a bit.
“I’d like to get some air. Could we?”
“Of course, Darling.” He slides out and waits for her to rise and follow. She takes his arm again, letting him steady her as the train sways slightly beneath their feet. She steps out onto the platform between the cars, waiting for him to join her. As soon as the sleek metal door closes, she takes a step and sways wildly. He catches her arm, steadies her, but finds his own footing compromised.
Their eyes meet and hold while he attempts to catch his balance and he watches, dumbfounded, as she bumps into him deliberately. The metal floor is slick and he is already off-balance as he begins to fall backwards over the small railing. His frantic fingers grip the top of the rail, stopping his descent momentarily, but he knows he’s lost.
“Why?” he mouths at her, already feeling his grasp fail.
“You always think things like this will make up for all the pain you’ve caused. Now you know for certain…they don’t.”
There is no more time, as he lets go without even time to scream. She hears the sickening thud as the wheels immediately crush him, waits a beat, and then screams wildly herself. As she moves back inside the car, stumbling, in tears to tell someone what has happened, her mind hums along to the thought of no more beatings, no more drunken rages, no more mistresses….no more troubles.
480 words including title
@Angeique_Rider
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Little Boy Blue
621 word count
@laurenegreene
She lay on her back on the floor of the blue room, dirt securely stuck under her tiny fingernails. She stared at the mobile, gently swirling around as the light rays streaming through the window seemed to make it move. The crib sat, empty in the corner. She had peeked into it earlier, looked through the slates to make sure no one was there. Empty. Abandoned.
“Hattie.” Daddy was leaning against the doorjamb, the shadow of a beard had started to creep across his face. “Your mother would be upset if she saw you in here.”
“Where did he go, Daddy?”
But Daddy just shook his head and waited for her to stand up and come to him.
He took her small hand in his and they crept down the hall, passed the room where her mother stifled sobs all day long. Bury your troubles. Hattie didn’t know what had happened. Her brother, chubby cheeks, flailing arms, all smiles, was there one minute and gone the next. An empty nursery—the ghost of the baby haunting their house.
Daddy lifted her to the counter and kissed her cheek, the scratchiness of his five o’clock shadow made her giggle.
“Peanut Butter and Jelly?”
“Mommy usually makes me lunch.”
“Turkey sandwich?”
He pulled out the meat and the bread, slapped mayonnaise on both sides, shook a few chips from the bag, as Hattie scrambled down from the counter and to her seat at the table.
When he put the food in front of her, Hattie wailed, “It’s not right.” She started kicking her feet, a tantrum rising up in her blood like a tsunami ready to destroy anything in its path.
“What’s not right?” Daddy asked.
“Mommy cuts it in triangles. Not a square. I don’t want a square!”
Hattie pouted, pushing her lower lip out, and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Fine,” Daddy said, taking the plate to the counter in a huff. “You just won’t eat. Go to your room.”
Hattie stomped off, but she didn’t go to her room. She ran outside into the backyard instead. She’d put the shovel behind the shed. She pulled it out, and she emptied her pockets: a little pile of treasures lined up. The shovel was hard to manage for her six-year old muscles, but after a few minutes she’d dug a hole, big enough to drop the treasures into and cover up. She set the shovel down beside her and dug a little bit more with her hands, dirt staining them a dusty black. She put the items into the hole, lined up one by one, next to each other. There were seven filled in holes now. Daddy and Mommy hadn’t noticed them. They’d been too busy crying and hiding away from the world.
She patted down the dirt and felt satisfied. She stood up and started walking towards the shed.
“Hattie.” It was Mommy—red-rimmed eyes and hair askew. Mommy didn’t look like herself.
Hattie flung the shovel behind her back, but she knew it was too late. She stepped back, and Mommy’s eyes traveled to the holes behind her, half covered, remnants of the past rising to the surface.
“What are you doing, Hattie?”
“Daddy didn’t know the sandwiches were supposed to be triangles!” Hattie shouted, throwing down the shovel and then running for the safety of the house.
Mommy, puzzled, drained of all emotions leaned down into the dirt. Her nightgown swept the ground, picking up dirt as she started digging.
The first thing she pulled out was a teddy bear, soft and blue. Then a rattle. Then a pacifier. Grief threatened to consume her when she pulled out the photo: Daddy, Mommy, Hattie and baby Gray. Bury your troubles.
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Oh….this is just heartbreaking. Well done.
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Thanks Robin.
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Word Count 511
@susanoreilly3
#mwbb
#flashdogs
Basic
‘Excuse me but what on earth are you doing up that pole at this time of night?’
I rolled my eyes, how many times I had told her, that I did not want to join her exercise class, and that I was not listening to her Health and Safety Training anymore. If I could bury her along with the lecture I would.
‘Mom, I’ve told you I want to be a fire-woman, and the only time I can practice is when you are in bed, and unable to nag me constantly.’
She murmurs something under her breath about pulling a muscle in my spine and grabs the office chair.
There are times I wish I was blind and deaf as she proceeds to drape herself across it all the while telling me I have to learn the basics as her pole is completely different than a Fireman’s pole.
I wonder can she not smell the fear emanating of me. She is a naturally, lithe, sexy woman whereas I take after my dear lumbering dad, with all the grace of an elephant trying to learn ballet.
I know I’m not going to get any sleep tonight if I don’t at least put on a show of trying to keep up with her and learn a move or two. ‘Okay, mom, you win give me the chair.’
She claps her hands like an excited toddler and begins to manipulate my body into all sorts of unmentionable positions. I felt like I was playing twister but with no visible means of steadying myself should I start to fall.
‘See, it’s working, your already at least fifty per cent more nimble than last week.’
‘Mom, you meant last week when I had the flu, and you tied me upside down, and left me there for half an hour.’
‘Don’t exaggerate dear, it was at the most fifteen minutes and I do believe it cut your out of work time by half, the rush of blood to the head or something.’
I couldn’t argue her point, but I think it was more the heat that surged through my body when her mixed pole dancing class arrived an hour earlier than she thought. They must have thought I was enjoying some weird bondage session. Mr. Roberts has never looked at me the same since.
I begrudgingly have to admit to myself that since she has got me to participate now and again my posture and along with it confidence has greatly improved. Being a stroppy teenager I could never tell her that, and the only time it was safe to practice without being caught was the middle of the night.
I gave up the idea of the fireman thing months ago, my mind now totally engrossed in catching the eye of a certain Paul, unless of course mom can teach him to give me a fireman’s lift. It’s hard to try and be sexy when it’s your mom teaching you but she can teach me the basics, I smile to myself, I’ll take it from there.
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Bradley listened to the words of the song playing endlessly on his music player, its words being injected into his brain through the earplugs jammed into his ears and blocking out all sound from everything except his music.
“Secrets I hide in me,
Deep down inside of me
I keep them,
I keep them at bay
No one will ever know
What I don’t wanna show
I lock them,
I lock them away”
As the song echoed in his head, he wrote word after word on his computer. An endless stream of words, telling one story after another. All stories from his memory, his life. All things he’d lived through, endured, survived.
The time that old man demanded, “Look at me while I’m talking to you!” That old guy never knew, never understood, how hard it was for Bradley to look at anyone. Especially to make eye contact. Bradley hadn’t heard a damn word that guy had said. All he could remember was, “Look at me while I’m talking to you!”, and the old man’s eyes, the anger in them, the scars, the pain, the demand for respect. As if those eyes were saying, “I’ve been through hell in life, and I’ve earned some respect, damn-it! Now look at me while I torture you to get even with life for how it treated me!”
Bradley wrote it all down. Every memory of that moment. And the song played on and on, over and over, in his head.
“Oh worries, stop haunting me,
Don’t you keep taunting me!
I won’t be,
I won’t be no slave
I put you to rest for good,
I did the best I could
So get in,
get into your grave”
He wrote down his memory of the guy at work, the boss, the person in charge. The time that guy called him a prima donna. Yeah. A prima donna. “Spoiled rotten little primadonna.” Bradley never talked about it, not to anyone. He never let anyone know. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. People had always said things about him. Always called him names. Primadonna. Sally. Bitch. Privileged white boy. Momma’s boy. Weakling. Clueless.
Bradley wrote down every name he could remember. Everything he remembered being called. No one knew. He never told anyone. How it felt. How he felt. Like when he was in Junior High, and the other boys called him, “Sally.” Even when he played street football with them, and his knees and elbows scraped up from landing on the asphalt and gravel, as his blood dripped from his fingertips, and he kept playing.
And still, they called him “Sally”.
He wanted to scream, to cry, to pick fights. He had nightmares of those fights where he wound up with busted lips, a broken nose, black eyes, and the other boys standing over him where he laid, beaten, on the ground, as they called him “Sally” over and over again.
He wrote it all down. Like he’d done a million times. Page after page. And all the while, that song played on, and on.
“Farewell ye gentlemen,
Goodbye my mental friends
Hear what,
Hear what I’m sayin’
Ashes and dust to dust,
That is the end of us
Oh Lord,
Oh Lord I’m prayin’”
When he couldn’t write anymore, he saved the file. Then he printed it. When the last page printed, Bradley placed the pages in a plastic bag, then went to his back yard, where he’d left his shovel.
In the middle of the night, while everyone was asleep, Bradley carefully cut a chunk of sod from his yard and placed it to the side knowing he’d need it later. In the bare dirt, he dug a four-foot deep hole. Carefully, he placed the bag of printed pages at the bottom of that hole and buried them under four feet of dirt, topped off with the sod. No one would know what he’d done.
And that song played over and over in his head. All night long.
“I’m goin’ to bury my troubles away
I’m goin’ to bury my troubles away”
685 Words
@LurchMunster
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