PVE??

Trifextra: Week Fifty-three
For the weekend prompt we're asking for exactly 33 words of dialogue.



"Shh!  Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Sounds like someone whispering."

"You're nuts."

"Screw you! Listen!"
:
"So what're they saying?"

"It sounds like..."are there any spirits that wish to speak with us?""

The Boy

Week #4

This week's book is the  Margret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, whose opening sentence is:

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

here is my offering;




We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. I'm sixteen now, so me and Gram and some of the men is on roundup.  Roundup is where we go out to the old, hardpack trails and find other peoples looking for a safe place to stay.  Cause most places isn't safe. That's why the fedment wants everyone to live in partments under they law.

But it got night so we stayed in the gymnasium.  That's what Gram called it.  She said it was a part of schoolclass where kiddos practiced sportplay.

I never had school. They stopped when I was two. Gram said a lot of things stopped when the sick came.  Gram said a lot of peoples died.  Like my dad, and big sis.  I don't remember them.

Gram is got a freespace. Fams get they own househome to live in and a little dirt to grow veges and berrifruit. Some fams share they dirt to grow beefs and porkers for food. And some grow different kinds a woolies to get they hair for making wear and covers. And we use they milks for soapbars.

Mama says they used to be mallmarkets to get all that stuff for money.  I don't understand what she means.  We trade things we make good for things other people make good.  I seen money, but it doesn't look like it's good for anything.

Gram shows new people stuff they can learn to make so they can trade for what they don't.  Sometimes partment people sneak out to trade stuff the fedment give 'em for freemade stuff. They say our foods is better tasted than what they get.

They bring tronics and metals and meds to trade. We dont make many meds. We use herbleafs. But sometimes that's not enough.

Metals get made into pretties or tools. We use the tronics to hear netspeak. That's how we know its time for roundup.   

Peoples get on the freenet and say they going to find space and what way they is going. The bad part is bandies listen too. Sometimes on roundup we find peoples robbed and dead. Sometimes we help peoples get away.

The peoples that lived will come to Gram's freespace or keep on to find they own.  We hope they get luck.  Some just go to the partments so they don't have to work dirt. 

Working dirt is hard, but I get all I need from it.  Gram showed me growing and puttinup.  And I can make my own wears and covers from woolie hair. I can cut it off the woolies and spin it. Then I can weave and knit for pieces of wear.

Sometimes I trade my makes for tools to make dirt work easy. Sometimes I trade for pretties.  Mama trades for books if she can find 'em.  She tries to show me how to see the words. Its hard, but I can know some of 'em. 

She says I need to know more so I remember how to make stuff. And learn to make new stuff. So I try hard as I can.  I seen pics of stuff I want to know how to make. Mama has lots of pics. Sometimes they make her cry. She won't say why.

One of the fams here has a girl kiddo I like. She makes pretties and she makes good wears. She can know a lot more words than me too. She helps me know some. 

I hope when I get my own househome and dirt she will like to work it with me. 

Siren

Write at the Merge Week 5

This week, I give you a French phrase (you are not required to use the phrase verbatim, but you can) and a photograph:

La Douleur Exquise (French): The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have.

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

Trifecta week Sixty-two

MOUTH

1a : the natural opening through which food passes into the body of an animal and which in vertebrates is typically bounded externally by the lips and internally by the pharynx and encloses the tongue, gums, and teeth
  b : grimace <made a mouth>
  c : an individual requiring food <had too many mouths to feed>
2a : voice, speech <finally gave mouth to her feelings>
  b : mouthpiece
3: something that resembles a mouth especially in affording entrance or exit: as

  a : the place where a stream enters a larger body of water

  b : the surface opening of an underground cavity

  c : the opening of a container

  d : an opening in the side of an organ flue pipe

Please remember:

• Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.

• You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.

(I've attempted two prompts in one this week)


He wasn’t immediately aware of the music. It started low, worming its way into his conciousness slowly, until he found himself humming along with the melody. Swaying to the soft beat.

He smiled, an involuntary twitch of lip. He stopped his work and leaned back in his wheeled desk chair to listen more closely. The harder he listened, the farther away the music became.

A frown crossed his brow. He rose and went to the small window of his office. The window wasn’t made to open. The door, however, was.

Soon he found himself on the sidewalk in front of the building. He cocked his head, honing in on the direction of the haunting notes and in a semi-daze, he followed.

The journey through the city went unremarked. He almost noticed the rural land he passed as day became evening, then night. By morning, he’d entered a wooded tract and was following a small, forgotten river.

It was afternoon when he reached the mouth of the river, where it emptied into the sea. The trees still clinging close to the banks, roots reaching out to the water. He didn’t feel the cuts on his arms from pushing through brush. He didn’t care that his shirt was in shreds, or his shoes waterlogged and muddy.

All he knew was the song. Sad and sweet and full of unfulfilled promises.

He found its source. A monstrous gatehouse of stone. Empty windows in its upper reaches, watching his approach.

Without hesitation he climbed ancient, lichen covered steps. Higher, the melody quickening the closer he came. At the top of the stairway, a room. From the fading light of the window he saw the singer. A woman, of sorts. At his gasping entrance, she silenced.

His heart broke at the quiet, his arms reached out, pleading. She turned swiftly to the window and leapt to the sea below, her jeweled scales flashing in the last rays of sunset.

With a cry of pain, he followed.

Duty

Master Class #3

Roxanne’s choice of opening sentence for this week’s class promises to generate some more creative and off-the-wall writing. She chose Kelle Groom’s book I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl whose opening line is:

Morphine makes me weightless, airborne.

Morphine makes me weightless, airborne.  That wouldn't be useful just now.

So, I embrace the pain. Ripping my body, searing my brain with fire tipped knives.

Oddly, it keeps me focused.

When my thoughts stray from the job, the pain invades and shreds the edges of my sanity.

Morphine makes me fuzzy around the edges. I forget the face of my target. When it wears off, I'm reminded of my duty with punishment harsher than before.  

Acid tipped knives.

I embrace the pain, focus on the face.

Squeeze.

Relief that outclasses morphine floods my exhausted flesh. 

I'll be airborne, until the next face floats into the margins of my vision.

Careless Love...

The red dress brought out the highlights in her hair.  She brushed a stray brown strand back into place, as she  chewed on her lightly glossed lower lip.  

She sighed, as she gazed across the room. Covertly watching him, curly blond hair and discreet musculature. His arm possessively wrapped around a honeyed blond...

The honey blond glanced longingly, at every chance, toward the painfully shy young man. Thick black hair crowning his face, that unbeknown to him, was made for Hollywood...

Hollywood sighed, and gazed across the room at the petite brunette in the red dress, chewing on her lip.


100 words inspired by David Bowie’s Soul Love.

Relaxing

Trifextra:  Week Fifty-two


The weekend challenge:  This weekend, we're sending you back to English 101 to revisit the concept of literary devices.  We want you to give us a 33-word example of personification.  Wait.  What?  You forget what that is?  It's the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals (http://literary-devices.com). 




No one sits at the desk
. 
Yet, the tiny amber eye blinks in thought
.  
Processing private processes in ones and zeroes.

Until someone interrupts its humming reverie with a click of its mouse.


.

Joy Ride

Write at the Merge: Week 4
This week we were given two images, I chose this one;


        They'd been riding since dawn,the shaggy ponies kept a steady but leisurely pace. Liam  dismounted  at the top of the highest point in the area. The small specks in the distance encouraged him to remount and coax the quickest pace the animals were capable of maintaining without over taxing them.

       After a few hours he said, "We're about to be overtaken, lassie. We'll need to be findin' some cover quick."

       Anne Marie cast an exasperated glance at her traveling companion. "Who wants to kill you this time, Liam?  Some angry husband, perhaps?"

       "Are ye sure it's not yerself they're a trackin' girlie? It seems I've pulled ye outta a scrape or two."  Liam had alit and given his pony a slap on the rump.  The stocky animal lumbered a few paces away and began munching on grass. "Stupid creature. They'll eat ye if they kill us."

       Anne Marie sniffed the air, "I'm fairly certain I don't know this pack."  She chuckled at Liam's discomfiture over her gift.  "It's you they want.  I just want to know why."

       He sighed in resignation. "They think I've disrespected them in some way, I imagine."  Liam looked back at her, "Sweetling, if ye want t' live, I suggest ya get off that lump and draw that slice o' iron ye're a carryin'".  The distant sound of hoof beats was closing on them.

      "I don't use my blade to kill honest men." She turned her pony toward a stand of trees as if to leave.

      "Though I admire yer high principles, I never said they was honest, m'dear.  And ye'll find that out if they kill me."  Liam's eyes roamed her form, "they'll see ye as the spoils.  Even dressed as a man, ye're very comely."

      Anne Marie snorted, then smiled sweetly, "In that case, perhaps my best option is to kill you.  Leave your pretty body where they can find it, and escape while they grieve your loss.  Or rather, the fact that they didn't get to kill you themselves."

"If'n ye kill me, darlin', ye'll not find yer treasure.  So ye have need of me, and ye'd miss me.  Besides, ye just said ye didn't kill men."

      "I said honest men, Liam.  That doesn't apply to you."  She grinned as she dismounted, drawing the iron great sword. "Though, I might miss you.  A little."  She could hear the laboured breathing of horses.  The party was almost upon them.

      "That's me girl!"  Liam chuckled and together they turned to face the eight riders that entered the clearing.


For those that recognize these characters, this event is before Liam undergoes the change that makes him immortal.