supplicium post mortem

Kids!

With the winding up of Midweek Missed Connections and the hiatus of some other weekly writing challenges, here is a new one for you. If people like it, we’ll carry on for a while. It’s called Bookends. Here’s the idea.

Each Monday we will get a starting and an ending sentence or phrase for a story which should be 500-750 words long. Story due linked here or on Twitter @caseydamnmorgan by 9am eastern time Friday (leaving plenty of time for Flash Fiction Friday!). After all the brief fiction, I thought it would be fun to see what comes out in a longer setting. So, not quite “flash” fiction, but a longer story held between the bookends of Monday and Friday, and a beginning and ending sentence. Game?

Bookends #1:

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind.

He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

With thanks to Wallace Stevens and Langston Hughes. As for which is the opening and which is the closing, you will have to decide. Spread the word and have fun!

The dreams don’t stop. Neither does the hope that he’ll be upstairs when I come in the door, that I’ll hear his footsteps clumping along the floorboards and down the spiral stairs. It will be such a relief, as it always is when he comes home. Like stepping into air conditioning from a brutal, New York summer.

People don’t talk about him as much as they used to. Everyone else seems to have repaired the colossal tear in the matrix that his disappearance caused. His job has been filled. It is no longer tasteful to think on him.

I cannot tell you… I cannot tell you—anything. I know…I know. Everyone has part of their life which is now in the past. I am no different from any single person still walking this planet. I don’t like the word unfair. But how come I have to keep living when he didn’t?

The card I gave him on our last anniversary is still in the bedside drawer that used to be his, its message a kind of steganography:

xoxoxo me

h&l&nt & tc4mh, l&h ohbb uhc, h-h, & ont4cdm b/c sagg.

I asked him if he understood, and he read the whole thing confidently aloud: hugs and love and nice things, and the cane for marky, long and hard on his bare bottom, ha-ha, and only nice things for casey because she’s a good girl.

There is no one to talk to this way anymore. Even the dogs don’t get it.

God, help me.

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What is Flash Fiction Friday?

This really was a bumper crop for 3F. Don’t know if it is fall industriousness or the thrill of a hard challenge, but these writers deserve a big hand (won’t say what kind or where) or at the very least nice comments on their blogs. Read on, Macduff!

• Rafi
• Sandy
• Abby
• Nettagyrl
• PapaTomLA

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 @nakedrafi @papatomla @travisking.

• air conditioner
  
• matrix
• steganography

Spread the word, and have fun!

m4w – 46 – MOMA Lobby

Yesterday, 11 AM, you leaned against the wall of the MOMA lobby, breaking the spine of a paperback book as you held it with two hands and read it, scowling. You wore a gray skirt that fell just above the knee, your calves bare and sexy-as-hell, a black top zipped up the front, and, incredibly, gray ankle socks with black oxfords that seemed lost outside the schoolroom. I would have been happy to flip up that skirt and learn more – if it doesn’t brand me a pervert to say so.

You consulted your wrist-watch eleven times in seven minutes, your scowl giving way to an expression that struck me as bereft. I felt you needed a hug, possibly several. Your party was late, your mobile phone unhelpful. You chewed the inside of your mouth and tried in vain to read. Who would stand up someone as adorable as you, miss? You wore no makeup, your hair careless and natural; the way you bore your disappointment showed you’ve no idea how attractive you are.

When you sank to the floor and put your head in your hands, I lost my self-control and asked if you had the time. You answered in a voice too confident for the red eyes. You look like you could use some diversion, from the paperback, the rotten dates, the confident voice. What about a walk in the park with me? In the Rambles, you don’t have to pretend.

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This is the last week of Midweek Missed Connections! Thanks to everyone who joined in over the last 12 weeks, in particular PapaTomLA, who made so much hay from real Craigs List adverts.  What is Midweek Missed Connections?

Read other missed connections this week:

• PapaTomLA

Mija cooked up this whole idea: since it’s the first day of fall today, everyone was supposed to wear plaid. We generally comply with dress codes, but unfortunately, we don’t have anything plaid that complies with half-mourning requirements. Thus, ours was only a brief foray into plaid,  indoors, without an appropriate top, but here it is, complete with Casey’s school shoes. Haven’t worn those in a while…

Welcome to the last week of Midweek Missed Connections.Twelve seems to be a good number, so this will be the last week of the Midweek Missed Connections challenge. Hope you enjoyed it. If you never got to give it a whirl, this is the moment! Optional setting this week: the lobby

What is MMC? Finish anytime Wednesday and post the link here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). Spread the word and have fun!

James, it turned out, was a dirty English schoolboy. He got his hands switched when the housekeeper caught him “being foul” behind the chicken coops. Their tutor had been more than usually annoyed. He’d hauled James in by the ear and shut the door loudly behind them. With the housekeeper in the corridor, Casey had not dared to listen, but James later confessed that Carstairs had made it clear that while “solitary congress” could be overlooked, scandalizing ladies by performing it in public places could not. The switch was sore, James said, exceedingly sore across the palms, applied with force; still, he claimed to have gone straight from the schoolroom to the lavatory to finish his wank. “I’m Ophiuchus, I am,” James bragged. When Casey demanded to see this snake of his, he surprised her by obliging. His willy was attractive, clean if sweaty, and uncut. Friendly.

Sometimes she would sneak into his room at night and stand by the side of his bed. He’d put his willy away, scootch over, raise the covers, and then put his arms around her from behind. Sometimes she cried, but it didn’t stop him hugging her. He wasn’t Marky, but when the hug reservoirs were so catastrophically low, any hug felt like rain after drought. Sometimes in an attempt to cheer her up, he’d whisper bits of The Mikado libretto, to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark, dock, his striped palms around her elbows, knees behind hers, breath on her cheek.

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What is Flash Fiction Friday?

You should have heard the bellyaching this week about the wildcards. All we have to say is: Suck it up, buttercup; hard words will continue until morale improves!

Read other folks tuff enuf to write this week:

• Rafi
• Travis
• Abby
• Nettagyrl

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 @nakedrafi and @travisking.

• sweat
• Ophiuchus
• libretto

Spread the word, and have fun!

Life can be so routine that you imagine nothing will ever happen. Six o’clock, evening commute, people funneling out of the subway, alongside the health-food store, back to their apartments. Me, going roundie-mcblock with the dogs; you, emerging from the train. We exchanged glances as one does with a thousand strangers in this town. A mere detail in the unchanging monotony of too-slow life.

What stood out was your Aran sweater. It’s September, and no one’s wearing sweaters yet. I’ve always liked woolen sweaters on tall men, the way they sit upon a broad, flat chest. You were tall, slim but not lanky. You noticed my wolfhound, then me. We exchanged an almost-smile, the shy grimace of urban passings. Your sweater had already entranced me, making my mind pucker – like lemon, salt, and tequila to a mouth – at the bizarre sight of those leather elbow pads sewn into it.

Rounding the corner amidst hipsters and their phones, I imagined how it might feel to be across your knee. No role suggested itself, curiously, just the palpable urge to be held quite firmly by someone tall and fit, your woolen sleeve across my waist, a foretaste of rock-solidness. I imagined how your bear hug might feel. Does it show, how very hug-deprived I am? Last night I remembered the safety and satisfaction of sinking into bed with my husband. Rock-solidness now a dream, recalled by you and your sweater in the corridor of a nondescript evening commute.

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Come write your own missed connection – real or fantasy, who will know? Post the link today (Wednesday) here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). What is Midweek Missed Connections?

Read other missed connections this week:

• Jessica wrote a post today which described an awesome midweek missed connection, though I’m sure she wasn’t attempting this challenge.
• PapaTomLA

Welcome to Midweek Missed Connections! Optional setting this week: the corridor

What is MMC? Finish anytime Wednesday and post the link here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan). Spread the word and have fun!