Weekly Challenge #1054 – Pathetic

Sorry it was a day late.

The next topic is Dirty

RICHARD

Written off
I’m in a writers’ group.
There must be nearly thirty of us in all, and everyone, with the exception of me, has aspirations.
Some are working on their first novel, and several of the group are already published authors; some are even making a living from writing full-time. We even have one who had a best-seller with a national bookstore chain.
Not me.
I started my novel over thirty years ago, and I still haven’t got beyond chapter three.
So, I’ll just stick to a hundred words, I can just about manage that every week.
Pathetic, isn’t it?

SERENDIPIDY

You’re a pathetic little worm who doesn’t even merit being recognised as a human being.
A loser and a basket case, who will never succeed in anything they do and will leave nothing as a legacy when their miserable life comes to an unwholesome and untimely end.
You’re hopeless: doomed to perpetual failure, and when you’re gone, nobody will care, or mourn your loss.
Why bother trying? You may as well give up right now and accept your fate. You will always be pathetic.
That was my school report at age fifteen.
No wonder I turned out like I did!

LIZZIE

Pathetic. The word reverberated in her mind. The beach house was nearly empty now. He moved on and got offended when she found out. He begged for “a second chance”. But she packed up her stuff and walked away. Deal with it. The problem was, he didn’t want his “new life” anymore. “It wasn’t fun”. Get a house, have kids, go to work, come back home. Suddenly, what he had with her was what he had with the other one. Boring. Shame the beach house was one of the casualties. She moved on. It’s nice to be free, she thought.

NORVAL JOE

“Why did you bring her here?” Sabrina asked, curling her lip. “Nobody wants Lindimindi around.”

Mandi’s mouth dropped open in shock.

Billbert frowned, thinking deeply. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t leave her at her mansion, by herself.”

“You’re pathetic.” Sabrina folded her arms and turned away.

No one expected Patrick to speak up. “No. Sabrina. You’re pathetic. I listened to you when you were in our basement. You were delirious from our sensory deprivation experiment. Did you cry for help? For your grandmother? No! You shouted at Billbert that he was too stupid and lazy to come and find you.”

PLANET Z

Ollie was the bane of Olive Garden. Yeah the Guinness book Record for most breadsticks eaten in an hour. I won’t give you the number because that’ll just encourage you. I mean, you could look it up, but that’ll start you on a dangerous road. Ollie ate so many breadsticks, his stomach exploded, and there was nothing they could do for him, and he died. Unlike Leslie, his wife who had the record for most bowls of salad, eaten in under an hour. She went light on the salad dressing, so it was healthier. Unlike her carbohydrate addicted husband was.

Elevaterror

There were three elevators in the Montgomery building. You could get into the elevator on the left and when you got to your floor, you were coming out of the elevator doors on the right. Terry tried this a few times and sure enough the strange phenomenon transported her to a different elevator door. It was always the right floor. Just a different set of doors on that floor. She asked others and they said yeah, it’s a little weird, but the stairs are a lot weirder. We lost people that way. It was… bad. Terry kept to the elevators.

Eldest

Bonnie came from a big family out on the farm four brothers and four sisters. She was the oldest, and when her mother died of tuberculosis, she became the glue that held the family together. Getting all the kids out into the fields, and then out to school. She was the one who milked the cows. Her father never said thank you. She couldn’t do everything though so every kid had a household chore from laundry to sweeping to cooking. Some fought back, draining her energy. She lit the fire that burned the place down, everybody tied into their beds.

Bookworm queen

Nancy Whitcombe was the prom queen by default. Everyone else had dropped out or was too sick to go, or worse. There’d been a horrible bus accident after the football game where most of the senior class ended up dying in a flaming wreck. The ones who had been too sick from food poisoning in the cafeteria to go to the game, consider themselves lucky. And Nancy had been a total bookworm. She never went to games or parties ended up as prom queen. She also graduated at the top of her class. It looks good on her college applications.

Sea of grass

The neighborhood was a nice wooded place with houses and driveways and all that. You got lots of shade in the summer from the tall trees. Every now and then you’d have to cut back a branch or take out and hold dead tree, but for the most part, it felt like living in forest. Then people moved away or died, and we were the only original family left, and people started coming in, knocking down all houses, cutting down the trees and putting up their little mini mansions and we’re the last tiny forest and a sea of grass.

Lich mayor

Gartham the Witch King has been a really good mayor these past 300 years. Our little town is quite self-sustaining. And when we need occasional injections of goods and cash, we just put out the call for heroes to come save us from the lich that lives in the caves with his undead army. Nobody comes close to defeating him, and the more fresh souls we provide, the fewer towns people he needs to harvest. It’s a pretty good arrangement, and every year we hold a festival in his honor, and he waves his bony hand to the adoring crowd.

Lert

In my family, whenever we saw a sign that said be alert, we’d ask what is a lert. So, that Halloween, I wanted to dress up as one. We fashioned a rubber suit with masses of writhing tentacles and blinking rolling eyeballs. And a huge gaping maw of dripping fangs. Which doubled as my candy bag. They sprayed me down with slime and then we went out. From house to house, spreading horror and fright. It was when we got back home, and I looked in the bag to find a trove of chocolate bars and a severed human hand.

Weekly Challenge #1053 – PICK TWO The next topic is PICK TWO Twaddle An owl Stable A tin of beans Crossing

Sorry it was a week late.

The next topic is Pathetic

LISA

Sometimes the End is the Beginning.
They made us wear masks, to make it seem like fun I guess, my partner was an owl; I was Bart Simpson. Sending kids out in pairs to do the dirty work. They told us what to get, nothing fresh. Stuff that would last.
The door was smashed in, the store already well looted, bottled water long gone. I put a tin of beans in my bag for the group and filled my pockets with things for me: matches, some sweets and a bag of tealights.
I was young but old enough to know I may be alone again soon.

LIZZIE

Fix fence, check how stable the tin of beans is, she typed. Stable tin of beans? Where had that come from? She continued typing her To-Do list. She shook her head. Then, she realized she was stuck. She couldn’t think of anything else to add. Tin of beans. Tin of beans. Check. Check, check if stable. She decided to check the cupboard. A tin of beans, check. Stable… Oh. It was cracked open. Something was growing inside. She took a closer look and a voice in her head said “Thank you”. The green spores were the last thing she remembered.

RICHARD

Campshite
An owl hoots in the darkness; the forest closes in, and I don’t mind telling you, I’m starting to question why I’d thought it was such a good idea to try out wild camping in the first place.
I was cold, my clothes were damp, the tent was cramped and the unsettling noises around me were giving me the shivers.
“Relax” I told myself, “if those kids on Youtube can do it, then so can you.”
Maybe some food would help!
I fished out a tin of beans from my pack, then realised I’d forgotten the can-opener.
Home time!

SERENDIPIDY

The patient was stable. No cause for concern, and the prognosis was good, very good. Right now, they’re peacefully sleeping as I busy myself around the room, topping up their water jug, smoothing the sheets and checking their notes.
All is well.
I take the syringe from my pocket and uncap it.
Leaning over the patient, I screw the syringe into their cannula, before pausing to enjoy the moment.
I depress the plunger, injecting air directly into their vein, before retrieving the syringe and gently brushing away a wisp hair from her face.
“You’ll be crossing over soon,” I whisper.

TOM

In the high country

There a rope bridge in the mountains that is the only stable crossing to WinterFell. Not a trip for the faint of heart, they call the winds that whip the bridge: The Hawk. My name Bucky Tou. My grandfather is leading me over the pass, teaching me the ropes. In the mid-bridge he steps to one side and moves behind me. He whispers in my ear. “Go slow. Then go slower.” I shake my head and slip one foot forward, make purchase, then slid he other. I am cold, all I want to do is get out of the wind.

NORVAL JOE

Without having to direct anyone where to start or what to do, they all went about the house, cleaning.

Sabrina expected that with how busy and determined each person was, they would be constantly running into each other. However, they were all stable and consistent, focused on their tasks, and rarely crossing up or interfering with one another.

At midnight, Mrs. Weinerheimer’s phone rang. It was Billbert, wondering where she was. Half an hour later, he knocked at the front door, then let himself in. Sabrina’s blood pressure shot up, and her ears began to ring as Linoliamanda followed Billbert.

PLANET Z

It’s June 21, and nobody can find summertime Sam. He’s the guy who sells pinwheels to kids at the beach. He says he donates all the money to charity, but he’s never said which charity. Something he steals the pinwheels to sell. But no one around here sells pinwheels besides summertime Sam. We asked the mailman if he delivers boxes of pinwheels and he says I don’t even know where summertime Sam lives. Nobody does. We all grew up with summertime Sam pinwheels but nobody knows anything about him. Maybe it’s a good thing that nobody has seen him yet

Helen

Helen of Troy‘s sister Bertha also had a face that launch 1000 ships. However, it wasn’t her beauty that urged 1000 ships of warriors to come fight to capture her, because Bertha was really ugly. Despite Royal decrees ordering man after man to marry her, her unwilling suitors fled by the boatload. Eventually, the kingdom was empty of marriage material. Even the blind would flee her presence. That’s how ugly she was. She ended up marrying a wooden mannequin. But in the middle of the night, it threw itself into the fireplace. Archimedes invented the paper bag for her head.

The crown

I can’t remember the word for it, but sometimes a word represents a greater concept. Like saying, the crown rules, a kingdom. In the kingdom of the Westlands, the Crown literally rules the kingdom. It is a sentient powerful artifact that takes over the mind of whomever wears it. It has passed down through the royal family. With some rulers, is satisfies it’s lust for blood, engaging in wars and purges. With others, it’s satisfies it’s colonel lust with orgies and banquets. As the body succumbs to excess, a coronation is planned, and the crown prepares to rule once again.