Weekly Challenge #1052 – Gemstone

The next topic is PICK TWO
Twaddle
An owl
Stable
A tin of beans
Crossing

RICHARD

Price tag

It’s not often the Antiques Roadshow comes to town, so when we heard they’d be recording locally, we had to go along.
The question was, what we were going to take to be appraised.
Certainly not the ‘Dogs playing poker’ print – a cultural icon maybe, but hardly an antique.
There was little of interest in the china cabinet; just chipped and mismatched plates and cups.
Then granny turned up with her jewellery box and produced a huge, antique gemstone in a gold setting.
What did the experts say it was worth?
You’ll have to watch the programme to find out!

LIZZIE

The art installation Gemstone featured a naked mannequin with a television for a head, holding a megaphone. Its right arm was missing. Find meaning mode activated. Broadcasting television slogans while the body suffers the pain. Pleased with his interpretation, he approached the artist and shared his view. The artist looked at him, puzzled. He nodded, trying to prompt the artist to say something. The artist said “No, we got the mannequin on sale. They had lost the head and an arm, so they gave us an old tv and a megaphone.” Gemstone?! They should’ve named it Lacking a Gemstone, then.

LISA

Finders Keepers

Derek’s dream had led him to a secluded glade. He’d had a vision of a buried chest full of jewellery there: gold pendants and rings with precious gemstones.
The ground looked quite disturbed but it was a popular spot for youths to drink and besides his dreams were never wrong. Unperturbed, Derek started sweeping the ground with his metal detector.
On the way home, empty handed and despondent, he listened to the radio. An exciting local news story interrupted the broadcast: that evening a gang of teenagers had found treasure worth millions in the very spot he’d just been searching.

TOM

A bridge too far

It was called Project Gemstone. Personally, I thought it was a dumb code-name, but I didn’t get to make the call. It is pretty random, so others in the Alphabet black ops community don’t all get the cool ones. It equally pisses off everyone, like when D.S.T. got Robot Chicken. Gemstone dealt with the thorny issues of college students. Students of history known university students are the engine of revolution. Having eyeball on even the least likely camp was the goal of Gemstone. This was how I became a spook and ended up in Hanoi carrying paperwork for the Professor.

SERENDIPIDY

My engagement ring features a black gemstone. It’s not a diamond or sapphire, a spinel or tourmaline.
It’s not even precious in the conventional sense: it’s just plain old glass crystal.
In point of fact, if you look closely, it’s not even black. It’s actually deepest, darkest red.
The colour comes from an inclusion: real human blood, injected into the stone and sealed there forever.
The blood is that of my first husband.
A reminder that he will never bother me again.
Also, a very visible warning to my future husband, that there are some lines you just don’t cross.

NORVAL JOE

Patrick and Bobbi’s friend, Candy, joined the others in the messy front room.

Sabrina shot hateful glares at her former captor, as Joan explained about CPS coming in the morning.

Bobby looked around the squalid room in panic. “Mom’s on night shift. She won’t be home until seven.”

Joan put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll have the house shining like a diamond by morning.”

“A diamond?” Bobby asked, clearly skeptical.
Joan chuckled, “Well, a semi-precious gemstone, at least.”

Bobbi doubled down. “But how?”

“I have a special talent for organization.” Joan closed her eyes, breathing deeply.

PLANET Z

Harriet’s birthstone was a lump of coal. Nothing ever went right in her life. At the school dance, her classmates tied her up, put her in a circle made of salt, lit candles, and performed ritual rhythmic gyrations, an attempt to summon the dark Lord to take her away. It didn’t work. But the principal tried to blame her for the incident. Her foster parents couldn’t be bothered to show up to the inquiry. Eventually, she graduated and took the first bus out of town. No one knows where she wound up, and she never attends any of the reunions.

Croutons

The first time Joey saw a salad bar, he was overwhelmed by all of the things laid out and arranged at the table. He loaded up his plate with croutons and a small pudding dish of ranch dressing. From that day on, all he would ever get from salad bars were the croutons and ranch dressing. His mother would scold him, set the plate aside, and make another plate for him. Keep with a variety of vegetables. But Joey would just sit there and stare at it until it was time to leave. And he would dream of his croutons.

Stacking

The Guinness Book of World Records does not recognize the tallest column of Kraft Parmesan cheese canisters stacked, but if it did, it still wouldn’t recognize Maurice Flambo of Antwerp. At a public exhibition, he stacked 174 of the green canisters. He used a fire truck ladder to achieve the great height. The column stood for five minutes before a gust of wind brought it down. And then the uproarious applause died down and was replaced with shots of anger when it was discovered that the ends of the cylinders were coated with adhesive. Maurice never attempted the stunt ever again.

Troll hunter

Sigrid was a pretty good troll hunter. He wasn’t the best, but when John the Bold wasn’t available, or the patron was on a limited budget, Sigrid was a reasonable choice. Sometimes his work took a little longer, and there would be collateral damage, but Sigrid got the job done. His online reviews weren’t as positive as John’s but when Sigrid hunted a troll that troll stayed hunted. John kept a dungeon full of trolls, and if he got a bad review, he would threaten to let those trolls loose again. Sigrid had more honor than to violate a contract.

Demon Summoning

Unlike other demons who required fancy rituals, sacrifices, and strange geometric patterns drawn on the floor, Agarro Darkshade had an ad in the yellow pages. Forgoing the traditional fireball, he preferred to knock on the front door. He also didn’t require souls or other rare artifacts for payment, he just traded in cash. No checks or credit cards, he wasn’t set up for that. He also didn’t practice dark magic. There was enough of that going about. Most of the time he’d snap his fingers to clean a house, fix a clanky air-conditioning system, or get a car running again.

Heist

Hampton Maddox drew the short straw and earned the role of getaway driver for the heist. The thing is, he didn’t know whether he should wear a mask or not. I mean, sitting there in a car in a mask is kind of suspicious, but if there are cameras on the street, they’ll clearly identify him. So he split the difference and put on nose glasses with a Groucho mustache. A cigar completed the ensemble. However, when the gang ran out of the bank, he forgot how to unlock the doors. He rolled down the windows though. That’s sorta worked.

Sixgun McGinty

Sixgun McGinty had an itchy trigger finger. Thankfully itchy trigger fingers are covered by the gunslinger union medical plan. Doc Walker gave him some pills and a cream and advised him to wear thin gloves for a few weeks. His condition significantly improved and instead of prematurely blowing away deputies and sheriffs and Marshalls, he shot them at a more reasonable and decent pace. Not that the law men ever felt like that. They felt like they were shot and bleeding out, which they did. McGinty then complained of a sore throat, but they still put a rope around it.

Weekly challenge #1051 – An empty cup

The next topic is Gemstone

LISA

Thirsty
The cup was plastic
The cup was white
The cup was just out of reach.
She attempted to lean
She tried a shuffle
Her thirst grew but still the little cup just sat on her table
A nurse passed the end of her bed and she tried to talk, tried to nod, to groan but the nurse was reading some notes so didn’t notice and left the ward.
A cough tickled at her parched throat and lurched her body forward, knocking the cup over. Spilling the contents. The empty cup lay on the hospital floor, waiting to be thrown away.

LIZZIE

The café was still closed. “The clients are outside.” The stress. Let them wait, said the manager. Wait?! The clients will leave. The manager, furious, slammed the door open, letting a flood of people in. “Line up, ladies and gentlemen.” Some of the clients left. And like so, day after day, the café went bankrupt. “Now we’re unemployed.” The manager sneered. “I’ve got a job for you.” The staff looked surprised. “I have a… parallel business in the basement.” Six people were counting bills. Millions. “Where is this money coming from?!” The manager smiled. “No one knows.” And he winked.

RICHARD

Unpredictable

The old woman stared into the empty cup before looking up at me curiously.
“Young man,” she said – I liked that – “I have never seen a pattern like this before. It is hard to know exactly what the tea leaves are saying.
On the one hand, I see them spell success, wealth and power, on the other… well, shall we just say the future doesn’t look quite so bright?”
I was annoyed. I hadn’t crossed her palm with silver for that.
I grabbed the cup and looked inside.
I saw exactly what the leaves were saying.
My teabag had split!

SERENDIPIDY

An empty cup.
A dead body.
I know what you’re thinking. I poisoned him, right?
You’re wrong, that was the last thing on my mind when he woke me this morning with a cup of tea.
It was a thoughtful gesture.
But, he didn’t really think it through.
I don’t drink tea first thing in the morning; and if I did, believe me, it wouldn’t be black, with two sugars.
I drink coffee.
And without my morning coffee, I get very grumpy indeed.
He knew that, and still he gave me tea. Black, with two sugars.
So, I strangled him.

TOM

And left the cup unreconciled.

The empty tea cup sits to my left. Victorian blue edged in gold-leaf, hell 30% of the thing in gold-leaf. The handle done in a Greek revile manner that is known as Colonial. Echoing the silver work of Revere I found it at the back of Diann’s China cabinet. A tiny item in the mass of object that must not find new homes. It screams of drawing room pretension, so unlike the woman who last owned it. More Tupperware than China, more dairy queen than Hight tea. It is doubtful I will ever have cause to fill it with tea.

NORVAL JOE

“Why are we at Bobby’s house?” Sabrina asked Billbert’s mother as they navigated through the trash in the front yard.

Mrs. Weinerheimer kicked an empty paper cup with her toe. “Look at this mess. Children’s protective service is coming here in the morning. If we don’t get their house straightened up, Bobby and Patrick will be removed from the home before they’re able to verify our story.”

Surprised to find them on her porch this late, Bobby still invited them in.

“Do you need something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Joan said. “But first we need to get your house cleaned up.”

PLANET Z

Ollie, the owner of the company, would put a cup on the floor and practice his golf putting in his office. His son, Richard, had the whole back wall of his office taken out and he would practice like he was on the driving range. The factory floor was pretty large, but the ball tended to ricochet off the machinery and the employees. They’ve got hard hats, said, Richard, teeing up another ball. Ollie, ever the diplomat, offered hazard pay to anybody who took a golf ball to the head. It’s not like Richard isn’t shouting fore, right? He said.

Turkey

Frederick maintained the boiling oil over the entryway at the Duke’s castle. But he used the finest cooking oil of the kingdom, and he had a side business of making skewers of tempura, vegetables and chicken. It was quite the lucrative venture. On Thanksgiving, he would deep fry turkeys. The Duke really enjoyed deep fried turkey, and he gave Frederick a promotion. Frederick‘s assistant, then took over the oil duties, but the next Thanksgiving he forgot to thaw the turkey and when they were dropped in to the cauldron, the ice flashed to steam and scalded everyone in the tower.

Boiling oil

When it came to jobs at the castle, a lot of the guards were jealous of Frederick. He was in charge of the night shift for the boiling oil that they could pour over enemy soldiers coming through the main entrance. with the castle being in northern Denmark, and it’s cold climate, Frederick was warm in winter while the archers on the parapets had to wrap themselves in multiple elk skins. Then the Duke remodeled the entrance to use interchangeable archers to fire through murder holes. Frederick was not so good with a bow and arrow, and he was downsized.