Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday. Come write a 250-word story (erotic? tgi oriented?). Start any time Friday, finish by 6pm PDT Saturday. Post the link to your story in the comments below or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). Try to include the wildcards.
Thanks this week to @butchtastickyle and @travisking
Spread the word, and have fun!
You helped us just in time yesterday, tossing us a line, yelling at my bickering crew to shut up and untangle the spinnaker, towing us out of the channel before those great lake freighters got too close. I was at the tiller, the one you called Pippi.
I’m not as young as I look. I’m starting 10th grade in September; most of my classes are with Juniors. I liked your boat, your beat-up polo shirt, your dimples, your accent, and your confident command when you told the jokers at the bow of my flying junior: “sort yourselves out!” My cousins are from England. Nicholas looks your age and goes to a school where they still get the cane.
I didn’t pick my crew; we get assigned. I hate those guys. I’m a better sailor than that. I think I’m too scared to be a great sailor, though, like my dad. I’m too scared to kiss a boy, and anyway my mother would kill me.
I haven’t seen your boat around, but if you’re ever at the Pier, stop by the snack bar and let me get you a milkshake. Maybe you could give me bravery lessons, like they give boys in England. You could teach me how to run a fast beat rail down, how to punch someone in the jaw, how to sneak out after dark and take the cane without yelping. I’m scared of capsizing, but if I was in your boat, I’d do it.
Check out other missed connections this week:
Welcome to Midweek Missed Connections! The (optional) setting this week: at sea.
What is MMC? Finish anytime Wednesday and post the link here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). Spread the word and have fun!
—Bring him here.
—Let me go!
—Shan’t. You’re a horrid, dirty boy spying on us.
—He saw us the whole time.
—He saw our knickers!
—Let’s pluck out his eyes.
—Let’s feed him to the Germans.
—Quiet, all of you. He’s got to have a proper trial. Right then, you, what do you have to say for yourself?
—Cat got your tongue?
—Not so clever now, is he?
—Order! Nothing to say…? Then the court finds you guilty of espionage in the first degree. And public lewdness.
—I wasn’t lewd!
—Shut up. It’s time to discuss your punishment.
—Let’s tell his Headmaster. He’ll get the cane.
—Let’s tell his dad. He’ll get it unprotected.
—If we tell his mum, he’ll get the hairbrush first.
—Mum said he’d get the strap as well if there was any more nonsense.
—Traitor!
—Should’ve seen him last night in the air raid shelter.
—If you say one word—
—Ow, Mum, please! Mummy! And that was just the slipper.
—I’m going to kill you, I am.
—No you aren’t, boy. You’re going to listen to us. The court will consider a gesture of compassion.
—Well, what?
—Sulking isn’t done, you know.
—If you agree not harm the witness here, now or ever, and if you agree to accept the punishment of the court, we will keep this matter amongst ourselves.
—What’s the punishment of the court, then?
—Three from each of us, with this.
—But that makes…
—Don’t strain yourself calculating. It’s that or we tell your mum, your dad, and your Headmaster.
—That’s not fair!
—Your choice.
—You’re evil, you are.
—Insulting the court will get you nowhere.
—If I agree, then that’s an end to it? You won’t tell anyone else?
—Right.
—What about the boys?
—No-one.
—Well…
Microfantasy Monday is the brainchild of Sweltering Celt. The theme this week via ButchtasticKyle was espionage.
I knew it was a bad idea and that I shouldn’t do it. But I did it anyway. I opened up the drawer in my study labeled “others”. Inside this drawer are a few things – things that were once in use. A few (not all) of Casey’s exercise books; her pencil box; the docket book; in the back you can see a packet of cigarettes. (Click on these thumbnails, btw, for the full images.)
The pencil box was used mostly for formal school occasions, and it looks like it hasn’t been properly used since we went to Mr. Penn’s the second time. You can see the fake cockroach (realistic when you come across it!) and the caps & snapper for the exploding book trick, among other items. The Wall Drug badge was from our cross-country road/camping trip the summer he moved here. We tied the wolfhound up to the hitching posts outside, ha ha. If you’ve never been to Wall Drug, you’re missing something.
Here’s a sample page from the carbon docket book. Actually, the dockets were mainly written by people from St. Mary’s or St. Boniface’s (where Casey and Mark went when first at Home School). RP or TL would deal with them. This one was written by Casey’s form teacher, Mrs. Denner, who was no-nonsense but had a sense of humor. There are at least two other nail varnish offenses in the book. Dockets fell out of use after a while, but in the early years of being together, they were a handy way to ask for a scene. It also helped me transfer and deal with some of the frustrations of my RW day as a teacher, most especially how very boring and hard it was to have to be a grown-up all day long.
Elsewhere there are folders with notes and stuff to/from Marky, Casey, TL, RP etc. None were ever thrown away. I am nowhere near ready even to think about finding them. Unfortunately for me, there was a card in this drawer from Mr. Prior to Casey. Unfortunately for me, I opened it. There was his own handwriting (so how can he really not be anywhere??). It appears to be in response to a letter from Casey herself, I’m guessing one of the times she decided she seriously wanted to leave Home School, that Mr. Prior was super nice but had loads more important kids to look after, and in this case that she really didn’t deserve the tickets to The Sound of Music RP had given her for her birthday so he should really take Ruth instead. [one of the Others, kid at Home School] This kind of sentiment appeared periodically and can best be understood as extreme attachment made anxious either by his need to travel or by Casey’s jealousy towards RPK. (Ironic because they later became very close, a story for another post.) Here it the card:
And here is what it says:
October 11, 1998
My Dear Casey:
I’ve been saving up this card to send to someone in a farawy place, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to use it.
Thank you for your note. The night is always darkest as the dawn begins to break. You may of course leave Home School but you’re right – it will take a long while to arrange. In the meantime you should, I think, carry on trying to do your book, and you should certainly not surrender your ‘Sound of Music’ tickets. They’re yours, you deserve them, you jolly well take Ruth!
Often in our lives, things seem hopeless and despairing. Ask for help – from other people, from within yourself, from God. But don’t stop the search. You will find the courage, and the answer. I know that, and believe it as strongly as I love you.
Your wishes will be honored, and I won’t try to talk you out of this. But I don’t agree with it and I certainly don’t regard it as a done deal. I would like to talk to you. You know where I am, and you know, in your heart, how deeply and powerfully I feel for you. You have the light and the voice of God within you. Look, and listen. Create space and time for yourself, and only do when you are sure that what you have seen and heard is Right.
I love you, my little one. I know you’ll be true to yourself.
RP
I wish, I wish it were that simple now.
She wasn’t a rower. Those people were beyond her in every way, more fit, more popular, more everything. She could scarcely do pull-ups at PE. He didn’t row either – that boy Andrew, from her class – until this summer.
From the slope above the tow-path, she watched as he dragged himself to the boathouse at dawn and every afternoon at four. She’d gone initially to watch him, but now she set her alarm as much to see the one who met him there. This other boy’s name she knew; everyone knew it – James. He’d been star of their rowing team until he left to row for Oxford. Now he rowed beside Andrew, his muscles flexing beneath the singlet he wore, held together at the shoulder with a safety pin. Through the binos she could see the scar on his forearm. There’d been a motor accident in his Upper Sixth year. He’d been dragged three hundred yards along the M25. He was lucky, they said.
She killed the mosquito on her cheek and trained the binos down into the boathouse. The sun cast long shadows through the windows. The path was clear, the evening still; their voices carried up the slope. He was berating Andrew now, as he often did, for his lack of effort. Andrew’s father hadn’t hired him to waste time, but to train Andrew up. Andrew shuffled and bent reluctantly over the scull. James held the back of his neck and raised a slipper. She watched.
What is Flash Fiction Friday?
Read other folks writing this week:
Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday. Come write a 250-word story (erotic? tgi oriented?). Start any time Friday, finish by 6pm PDT Saturday. Post the link to your story in the comments below or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). Try to include the wildcards.
Thanks this week to @papatomla and @travisking
Spread the word, and have fun!
He had a thing for shorts. Not skimpy shorts or baggy things, but proper shorts, just above the knee, gray flannel or khaki especially. You can blame his African prep school. I have a couple of pairs of khaki shorts, and it seemed like every time I wore them, it disturbed his imagination. He’d say: If you keep on wearing those shorts, Casey will have to have the cane. Or, Those need cane marks so much it’s not even true! If I bent down to pick up the dog’s bowl, for instance, or fasten my shoe, sweep up some fur, he’d say: Oh, you can stay like that. Stay just as you are. Actually, he used to say that regardless of what I was wearing, or not wearing.
It’s hard to describe what it’s like to knock around the same house wearing things he would have fancied an awful lot and not have him here to say things.
Last weekend I ventured into a form of half-mourning with some dark-dyed jean shorts. Up until now, I’ve been wearing all black every day, with the exception of the grey suit I wore to a graduation this June. Here in Gotham, lots of people wear all black, so it doesn’t quite communicate what it might have in other times, but then I don’t wear it for other people. These dark blue short, however, felt…gaudy, even when paired with a black top and shoes. I can completely see the point of half-mourning, i.e. mixing greys and other dark tones in with the black for a half a year. After 14 months of all black, color feels alarming.
He would have liked these blue shorts, a lot. They would probably have made him want to take out a paddle, or a strap. Maybe, if worn up in the country, they would have made him want to take them down, and perhaps apply some switch cut from the yard, or just his hand.
I don’t really know. I won’t know. These days I’m no longer a temptation in shorts, but just a middle-aged woman slobbing around in clothes that are probably too young for her.
You sat beside me yesterday at the Requiem Mass. You were tallish, your voice vaguely English, your shorts blue camo, white tshirt, sandals without socks. I was the young widow wearing black. We were only six in the Resurrection chapel; you took Communion grazing my elbow but never spoke. You seemed like a tourist, arriving late and dashing away after, but you knew the words to the creed (rite I) and to everything else except the special bits in the leaflet I held, trembling, to share with you.
You smelled nice – understated, classy aftershave – your voice a comforting baritone. Standing beside you, I imagined for the first time that there could be someone else for me, someone my age, fit, groomed but not fussy, who would drop into such an old-fashioned church and join such a service of a sunny Saturday noon. Was it chance, or were you mourning someone, too? A parent, a friend?
You had the air of ex-public school prefect, since deepened, opened, and made more humble by life. I’d like to see you in linen trousers, an open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up below the elbow, waiting on the porch, prepared to interview a tomboy in khaki shorts & scraped shins about where it is she’s been all day. Afterwards, we could concoct something in the kitchen with the strawberries that wanted eating.
Come back tomorrow for Mass at 11. Let me show you around town, and introduce you to…a couple of people.
Check out other missed connections this week:
Welcome to Midweek Missed Connections – the place where you get to write the enhanced account of that special someone you saw…and fantasized about…and never saw again.
Jessica wrote a terrific post last week about a missed connection on the Tube and all the marvelous thoughts going through her head. It made me think there should be a Missed Connections Plus section on Craig’s List where you get to lay out all your fantasies in addition to the basics. Then there is the fact that it’s such a long week between Ang’s Microfantasy Monday and Flash Fiction Friday. So, in the spirit of reaching out to new people, and submitting to the limits of a new genre, here you go:
Write a piece in the style of Craig’s List Missed Connections detailing not only who you were and who he/she was, but also what was running through your mind as you watched your target, or after you parted. Fiction? Non-fiction? Who will know for sure? Keep it under 250 words and post the link here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan) anytime Wednesday. If you need inspiration, a setting will be supplied each week, optional of course.
This week’s setting: church.
Spread the word and have fun!
