Weekly Challenge #1066 – PICK TWO Poetry, Pancreas, Freakshow, Frankenfood, Postage stamp

The next topic is Zombie

LISA

A Tale as Old as Time
Tonight was Deborah’s creative writing class, her husband, Dave, called it freak show night but it was her night to be her. She enjoyed crafting new worlds at her evening class.
The lesson that week was ‘a letter that you’ll never send’; a chance to be open and honest with no fear of recrimination.
She wrote to Dave. The message was clear. Exactly how she felt. Others dropped their letters in the bin, filed them for reference. Debs bought a stamp, posted hers to him and checked in to a hotel while she looked for a new place to live.

LIZZIE

Poetry, a freakshow in the making. Add a postage stamp, someone yelled. He continued. Something about his pancreas. She felt sleepy. He spoke louder. She stood, right there, in the front row, but she felt sleepy. She must’ve fallen asleep standing, because when she opened her eyes, the room was empty. The stage was empty. Where’s the freakshow? Where is he and his pancreas? As she started toward the door, a piece of paper fluttered to her. It said “Violets are red, roses are blue, my pancreas will burst, and so will you.” It must be love then. She smiled.

RICHARD

Getaway
I’ll be honest, my getaway plan was severely lacking in detail.
So lacking, you could easily have written it out in full on the back of a postage stamp in thick magic marker.
It was basically, one single word: ‘Run!’
But, that was more easily said than done. I mumbled I needed the bathroom, with any luck it would have a window I could crawl through to freedom.
On the way, I peeked into the bedroom, and immediately wished I hadn’t!
‘What is this freakshow?’ I murmured to myself.
‘You’ll find out, soon enough’, came her voice over my shoulder.

SERENDIPIDY

Poetry in motion.
With a single, fluid sweep, my knife cut deep, slicing through his stomach and pancreas, with a slick, smooth follow through, up behind the rib cage, cutting deeply into his left lung.
Theatrically, I swung myself in a wide arc away from his body, withdrawing the knife and flicking a spatter of blood across the wall and ceiling.
It was beautiful, almost balletic in execution.
Slowly, and dramatically he slumped to the floor, life ebbing away.
He’d been my high school drama teacher.
I crouched and whispered in his ear…
“Not a clumsy kid any more, right?”

TOM

Too Much Time On My Hands

If silence is gold; noise is lead. Splitting the difference a gentle hum of reality is copper. Should every level of sound have a corresponding metal? Can there be negative sound sucked out of your brain stem. You most likely need a mess of dark matter for that. Manufacturing dark-metals would be process intensive, cost a lot gold coin to do. And you bet it would be hecka louder than a data center. Which sure would be the opposite of silence, which does meet metaphoric standards. Will infinite silence collapse to a negative waveform in the present of dark matter?

1066

It was a total freak-show. First, we are fighting the god dam north men. Slog-fest. Then we got march across the whole fucken island to kick Norman ass. We are all dead tired but we put up a good fight. Then this stupid hunk of wood kills the king. The stuff of poetry, I’d say. Bet they will be singing about for the next 1000s years. Pain in the Pancreas if you ask me. When I get home my misses is going to be major piss-off. Never got over that roman leaving town thing. What next the house of orange?

NORVAL JOE

A large manila envelope waited for them on the stone porch of the Weinerheimer home.

No post mark identified the origin of the letter and a postage stamp with Cyrillic writing made it even more mysterious.

Inside, they found a small book of poetry, five tickets to the Sonoma Raceway, and a note.

The note simply read, “Read the book and meet me at the race.”

“That’s perfect,” Billbert said. “Mom. You and Dad can drive the three of us to the race next weekend.”

Sabrina wiped the tears from her eyes. “I thought we were taking Bobbi, not Mandi?”

PLANET Z

Every few years, there was a new variety of pepper that the news would call the world‘s hottest. It would have some crazy name and hot sauce makers would ship out bottles with skull and crossbones or flames or other crazy labels. Are they put warning labels on them with tongue and cheek advisories. Joe never fell for that trend. He liked a little bit of a kick, but he was into flavor, not pain. What was the sense of eating chicken wings if you couldn’t enjoy them? The waitress whose hits you’re staring at, isn’t impressed at all, bro.

Done dirty dancing

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner” was the last thing Johnny said before everything went black.
When he woke up, he was on the floor of a white round room.
He was in a hospital gown and the back of his head was sore.
He slowly got to his feet.
No door. No windows.
He felt along the wall. No seams.
The cops questioned the staff and the guests, nobody knew where the dancing instructor went.
The owner said he chased after his pregnant girlfriend.
But she never head from him since she left.
Years later, the camp closed down.

We are Texans

There’s only one way to separate the Californians from the Texans.
Shout THE STARS AT NIGHT ARE BIG AND BRIGHT!
See who claps four times and shouts DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS.
Those aren’t the Texans.
Those are the Californians, pretending to be Texans.
Hit them. Kick them. Beat them down.
Hang them by their entrails.
We fire our guns in the air and eat our Whataburgers and drink our Lone Stars and cheer.
We are Texans. And we are loud and violent and proud to be Texan.
Wait. Who is that? Who is drinking a Bud Light?
Californian!

I wish I could make this moment last forever

I wish I could make this moment last forever, said Arthur. He was happy, but the happy times don’t last. So when his family died in the house fire and the grief seemed endless, he realized that happiness speeds up time and grief slows it down, so the suffering lingers. After years toiling in his lab. He figured it out and the next day his lab assistants saw the horrifying result. Arthur stood there, as still as a statue. They couldn’t move his limbs and he didn’t fog a mirror, but he was still alive in his horrifying, miserable stasis.

Morgan

As famous as Morgan was, he doesn’t have a headstone. When he died, he was cremated, and his ashes were buried next to his mother‘s coffin. There is a statue of Morgan outside of the stadium. He played in for 13 years and broke all kinds of records. Every year, players and coaches vote on an award named after him. But when it comes to himself, he didn’t want anything more than a spot by the people who brought him into this world and raised him. Those who know, they still bring flowers. Sometimes a bobble head or a football.

Midseason replacement

When Judy died in a car wreck, the fans warned. The producers wondered how would they finish the next season of the animated show she starred in. They tried to harvest the previous eight seasons for voice work, but it wasn’t enough. They fed it into an AI powered audio generator, but the performance fell flat. None of the sound alike actresses sounded quite like her. Eventually they enlisted her twin sister. She didn’t have the acting range, but the fans gave her a pass on that. Ratings continued to decline, and the show was canceled before the finale aired.

Ghosts

My grandfather was 19 when he enlisted for the war the night before he shipped out, he married my grandmother and promised that he’d come back. But he never did. This plane went down, killing the whole crew. My grandmother was in the middle of writing him a letter letting him know she was pregnant when they knocked on her door back then you couldn’t end things like you can now, so our family pulled together. My father’s first word was daddy. My grandmother had never used that word or mentioned her husband around the baby. Maybe he saw ghosts?

Weekly Challenge #1065 – Silence

The next topic is PICK TWO
Poetry
Pancreas
Freakshow
Frankenfood
Postage stamp

RICHARD

From Butthole to Rabbit Hole
Take it from me, calling yourself ‘Fluffy Butthole’ at a romantic meal is a sure fire way to prompt an embarrassed silence.
She looked at me sympathetically. “You’re not very good at this sort of thing, are you?’
I have to admit, she had me there. We hadn’t really got off to a great start with the whole porn star thing, and I was struggling to reconcile the fact she was my boss, and this whole evening could only lead me down a rabbit hole I really didn’t want to pursue.
I sipped my wine, and quietly planned my escape.

LIZZIE

Silence. She was teaching meditation now. Breathe in, breathe out. The group followed her lead. Suddenly, someone at the back moved out of sync. Breathe in, breathe out. Another one out of sync. She stood up and walked to the back of the room. Now, one in the front row. Stop! What is going on? Everyone shrugged. OK, back to breathing. In sync again. For a few seconds only… She squinted. A corpse-pale specter kept pushing her students. She rolled her mattress and swung it. The specter looked shocked. Breathe in, breathe out, she said, a smirk on her face.

LISA

The Quiet One
Sandra hadn’t heard the sound of silence at home for a while so the house felt disorientating. The clock with the noisy tick was still on the floor. Smashed. Broken. Never to make a noise again.
She crept upstairs to surprise her family; after years of trying not to wake babies she automatically avoided the creaky steps.
Nobody was up there. She knew that before she climbed the stairs.
Her phone shattered the silence, the hospital calling.
Her husband was awake. She should come in immediately. No mention of the children and she couldn’t ask, for now she could pretend.

NORVAL JOE

The three sat in the back seat while Billbert’s mother drove home. She made eye contact with him in the rear-view mirror, raised an eyebrow, and nodded her head.

He wasn’t sure what that signal meant, so he broke the silence. “Look, Sabrina. We’re all tired. We’re all stressed. And we’re confused. That’s still no reason to be mean to Mandi. You should apologize.”

To Billbert’s surprise, Sabrina said, “You’re right. I am tired and stressed.” She looked out the window. “I’m sorry, Mandi.”

Sabrina’s shoulders shook.

Billbert couldn’t see her face, but he thought Sabrina must be crying again.

SERENDIPIDY

Timmy called me to discuss details of a contract he’d like me to consider.
He feels that Tom has been victimising him and it’s about time someone put a stop to it. Permanently.
Sounds right up my street, and I guess it works in my favour too… taking out some competition, if you know what I mean?
So, I’ve drawn up the details. All I need is Timmy’s signature, and the deposit up front, and then everything’s in place to silence Tom, for good.
Unless, Tom, you have a counter-offer to take out Timmy?
Business is business, after all.

PLANET Z

By the time Harmony and Melody’s parents were told that their twin daughters were deaf, it was too late to change their names.
They got cochlear implants young, but preferred to shut them off and chat with each other.
Their grades sucked, but they were pretty, and they ended up on the pole together, feeling the beat of the music through their hands and feet as they twisted and writhed on the stage.
On days off, they were models by day and escorts by night.
Saving and investing until they could ditch the heels and makeup and never perform again.

George the Ghost Pirate

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, he put a sheet over his head and said he was a ghost pirate.
“BOOOOOOOO!” moaned George, as he flapped his arms around.
At night, George was scary-looking.
But during the day, he looked silly.
And people would point and laugh at him.
That’s when George threw off the sheet and hacked them to bits with his sword.
This was very useful in battles.
But when it came time for Trick or Treat, he didn’t get much candy and spent a lot of time running from the police.

Santa drinks Fanta

The Coca-Cola company invented the modern image of Santa, with his red fur clothes with white trim. For years he’s been advertising the beverage. When Coke left Nazi Germany, the Nazis developed Fanta in its absence. And the motto “Santa drinks Fanta” caught on, despite the regime’s insistence on a religion of the state instead of traditional religion. After the war, when the brand was reabsorbed into Coca-Cola, an effort was made to denazify Germany. Including rebuilding association of Santa with Coca-Cola, burning advertising posters, and coloring books in piles along with Mein Kampf while driving their peppy BMW convertibles.