Tag: jolene rice prompt

  • Forfeit

    Here’s another short bit of fiction based on writing prompts from Jolene Rice. They are the following four items with the only rule being that you cannot kill off your main character

    1. attacked by squirrels
    2. what nobody wants to talk about
    3. mascot for a professional team
    4. animal psychic

    Apologies offered in advance.

    I do lost cats, mostly. Colic in horses if the vet’s backed up. Twice a year somebody’s parrot stops talking and I sit with it for an hour and tell the family what they already know, which is that the parrot wishes they would ask for more than “Polly wants a cracker.” One, in particular, had a secret habit of shouting “Fucking hell!” whenever the house was empty, it told me. Practiced it all day long, most days, by his reckoning.

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  • Reunion

    Participating in Jolene’s (Chico’s Mom) prompts where the only real rule is that you can’t kill off the main character. Oh, and use the four prompts provided:

    1. not so Good Samaritan
    2. vampire
    3. reunited
    4. pills

    Here is my humble offering below.

    Vladimir opened the heavy wooden door on the third knock, as though he’d been expecting this all along. Which, of course, he had been — for eleven years.

    “Aldric.” With warmth, arms outstretched. That slight lisp that came with elongated canines. “Come in, come in. You’ll catch your death.”

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  • Grave situation

    Flash fiction using Jolene’s prompt. Rules: Must use all four of the following and not kill your main character:

    1. This time it’s bound to work
    2. what is that smell?
    3. mortician
    4. toy maker

    “Gah! What’s that smell?”

    The shoveling did not stop. Nor did the speaker.

    “Gah! I say, Nate — What’s that smell?”

    “It’s called ‘death’, Jeff. I could go into the chemistry of putrescine, cadaverine and butyric acid but I’m afraid it would all go over your head and we’d still me forced to hear your heavy panting and repeated ‘Gah’ utterances because you have absolutely no respect for science.”

    “Why didn’t you just say ‘science’? That’s all I needed to know. Not those ‘ines and acids.”

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  • Heads will roll

    For Jolene Rice’s Storytime prompt.

    Must include the following:

    1. person who laughs at inappropriate times
    2. butcher
    3. wishes come true
    4. shhhh!

    When you are the Queen they let you laugh at inappropriate times.

    “Off with her head,” followed by a mad cackle. Or three. And then they say: “Oh, it’s just the Queen being a Queen,” and they join in once they realise there are consequences involved to not joining in the reverie.

    Then everyone is laughing.

    And it becomes less inappropriate to laugh because of reasons.

    The last one had the audacity to call Us a butcher. How very droll. And still, We made his head roll. Because when you are the Queen, they let you order someone’s head removed on whimsy. The laughter was nervous, but all courtiers laughed the same.

    When you are the Queen, people tend to laugh when you do. And rhyme when it suits a Queen to rhyme, too.

    One of Our subjects said, “I wish I wouldn’t hear my Queen laugh when she beheaded someone.”

    “Shhhh,” We said. “Your wishes have come true.”

    He smiled.

    “Off with his head,” We said.

    And We held Our laughter until his head dropped into the basket. Then We let peel a mad cackle or three.

  • Ice cream man

    It’s story time!

    Here’s another quick little bit of flash fiction in support of my friend, Jolene’s writing prompts. This one has the following four elements that should be included:

    1. driver of an ice cream truck
    2. competitive eater
    3. wrong side of the tracks
    4. stairs

    Enjoy.

    Dennis Marley sat on the stairs with their steep climb to the top of the hill, his destination within sight up where that hill crested. It was only a little more than a city’s block worth of climbing and he would finally arrive.

    There was only one problem. The truck.

    The damned truck.

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