Mid-Week Blues-Buster Week 3.19
Welcome to the Mid-Week Blues-Buster Flash Fiction Challenge, Year 3, Week 18.
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.
***SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*** This week’s deadline will be 6AM (yes, AM) PACIFIC TIME on Sunday morning***
This week’s song prompt is a slice of Americana… Say hello to John Mellencamp, everyone!
The tune is… “Crumblin’ Down”. Here’s a link; https://youtu.be/FxSlYdIYQ7E
This week’s Judge is… it’s still me. If we get a decent turnout this week I’ll go back to lining up special guest Judges again.
The challenge starts the moment you read this post and runs through 6AM PACIFIC TIME on Sunday October 25th.
Now… go write!!!! Please??? Pretty please with sugar on top???
Posted on October 20, 2015, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
The Tsuruoka Files 
Crumbling walls wc 315 @cc_lark
Poking a stick in the dry mortar, I watch the poorly constructed paste trickle down the unfinished walls, adding to the pile of dust on the unsealed concrete floor.
This house, our house, unfinished, weak, shoddy, thrown together too quickly and doomed.
I poke at it like a tongue on a sore tooth, stop, start, stop, dig deeper until it hurts.
My shoe shuffles in the dust. I listen to the dry rasp of sound it makes as I crush the larger particles into finer powder.
My ears are alert for his return.
I poke the mortar, digging it out from between the bricks. Bit by bit. Like I have been for weeks now. Not so much anyone could notice at a casual glance. I scrape and scratch and my thoughts match the scraping.
There was never a real plan, just an idea and the idea bled from the pain and the pain came from the knowledge and the knowledge was a secret so my plan is a secret.
I listen for his return.
I sweep the dust under the rug and under the couch and under the table and scratch some more.
The pain is numb now. My thoughts are numb. It is just the scratching and poking filling the void.
Thirteen times he lied. Thirteen times he kept the secret. Thirteen bricks are loose now. One for each.
Before the pain, before the secrets and lies, I just wanted him near me, I wanted his arms around me.
To breathe in when he breathes out, to wake and sleep and live and breathe him
Numb.
I hear him coming.
He is on the other side of the wall.
He stops and bends for the thing I know he can not resist and I lean in and listen through the wall.
I press a little firmer and my wall comes crumbling down.
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Crumbling walls
@harmony77uk
word count: 387
Jasper looked around him at the small sanctuary that he had created for himself. He had been in hiding for several weeks, and yet his face was still plastered all over the news. Jasper did not agree with anything that had been written about him, because everybody had problems, did they not? The fact that he had problems should not have been a newsworthy item.
He was not on the run from the law; not yet anyway. It was all to do with him trying to bend the rules in order to get to a girl. If you did not bend the rules then you were always going to be second best, and, in this instance, second-best was just not good enough for him. Jasper had tried to use the art of deception in order to win the prize. The problem with that was that he had been found out. Nobody had wanted to treat him the same way after that, so Jasper found himself turning into a bit of a recluse.
All of this trouble caused by a girl. If it was not all stupid, then Jasper could have laughed. Instead he had to bite back the anger that seemed to boil in his very veins. Jasper was very glad that there was no mirror contained within this room because he was sure that he would look like his skin was the colour of molten lava. He wiped away the veil of sweat that seemed to cover his body every few minutes.
There was no way of telling when he was going to cease to be the subject of gossip. It would happen at some point; it just had to. Then, and only then, would he be able to face the people that he had once called friends. He was convinced that around this point he was going to get the girl he was dreaming of.
If only his plans had not gone all wrong and send those flimsy society walls crumbling around him. He sniffed defiantly, because now was not the time for self-pity. What was needed now was some kind of action to return to the spotlight being the number one he deserved to be. Jasper had danced his way out of many a situation before now, so all he to do was think.
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Warning Shot
547 Words
@denise_callaway
Cybil deflected the remark of the man sitting next to her. She had no interest in one night stands and pick up lines were stale. She smoothed the wavy blond hair and tucked it behind her ear. Hinkle called it her halo because of the way at glowed around her head when backlit. She smiled briefly remembering the carpenter that had wriggled his way into her heart.
He coaxed her out of her shell. The introverted librarian lived a simple life until Hinkle. He showed her adventure beyond the pages of a book. She looked forward to the next chapter unfolding. She earmarked the pages in her memory to enjoy luxuriously as she languidly stretched out in her clawfoot tub with a glass of wine in hand.
Those memories were now firmly clamped down, locked away in the dungeons of her soul. Throwing back a shot of whiskey, she grabbed her handbag and walked out into the city’s night air. She glanced over her shoulder. Nobody followed.
A backfire on a car and she was back there again. He lay before her, covered with blood. She, with hysterical tears tried to stop the bleeding. The bullet tore through him and nicked a main artery. He was gone in minutes.
The man leaving the bar spotted the woman rocking back and forth on the sidewalk. Rain spilled around them without concern. “Ma’am? Are you okay, ma’am?” She stared unseeing. She was lost in the memories. Pandora’s box was opened and they would around her, squeezing her sanity.
He wrapped his coat around her. “I’m sorry, Cybil. I need to get you off this street.” Startled by the mention of her name by a stranger, she allowed her eyes to focus on him.
“Who are you?” she quavered.
“Sidney Lewis,” he responded simply as he hailed a cab.
The name sounded familiar as she searched her memory. Hinkle. He had talked to a Sidney not long before the shooting. As he helped her into the cab, he settled in next to her, directing the cab to her hotel.
“You seem to know quite a bit about me, sir,” she commented, running through what she had told him in the bar. Just small talk. No mention of names and definitely not her hotel.
“Hinkle and I worked closely together. He told me to keep an eye on you should anything happen to him.”
“But why would he…he was killed…I don’t understand.”
“I’m not surprised. Hinkle liked to keep his worlds compartmentalized. He thought that would keep people around him safe.”
“Why would we need to be kept safe?”
“Hinkle took risks most people…avoided. Business ventures that led to partnerships with some rather cagey people. I believe one of those partnerships soured before his untimely death.”
Cybil considered this new knowledge and realized it wasn’t new at all. She had seen him duck into other rooms to answer calls. She knew deep in her heart that he was tied to some risky endeavors. The walls of understanding began to fall down as she pieced together incongruous scraps of memories.
Cybil closed her eyes. She realized that she inadvertently knew too much. Could she trust this man who claimed to be Hinkle’s friend? The cold steal against her side answered her question.
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