Author: Doug Jacquier

No Redemption For the GOD Squad

/ Doug Jacquier / 32 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘redemption’.

Being a card-carrying Member of the Geriatric Obstreperous Devils Motorcycle Club (aka the GOD Squad), there are many things for which I will not be seeking redemption any time soon, yea even though my deathbed moves a little closer with each passing day and the Grim Reaper is standing by to turn back the covers and send me on Eternity Leave.

I won’t be apologising to my grandchildren for taking every opportunity to hide their electronic devices, phones, chargers etc (under the green vegetables in the crisper works well) or for replacing my couches with beds of nails.

I will not be seeking the forgiveness of supermarkets and their entitled millennial customers for supergluing the self-serve checkouts and chatting amiably with my checkout person about the books I am reading currently and exchanging recipes for pea and ham soup.

Perish the thought of abasing myself towards those spawn-of-Satan politicians who seek my vote, despite the fact that every one of their previous promises has evaporated like a fart in the wind.

As for those neighbours who complain that I am ruining the streetscape by digging up the front lawn and planting vegetables, they can kiss my artichokes.

Yea, verily I say unto you that I will continue to make full use of my poetic licence and drive on any damn side of the road to writing Hell that I choose.

Tempted by Titivillus

/ Doug Jacquier / 26 Comments

This piece was written in response to the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘scribe’.

In much the same way as there are Patron Saints (mine is St. Jude, Hope of the Hopeless), there are also Patron Demons, with one such being Titivillus, the source of error making and tempter into mischief of the mediaeval scribes who produced copies of the Bible.

Working from daylight to dusk, often in freezing temperatures, they were tasked with making immaculate exact copies and it was inevitable that there would be the occasional mistake, like the Word of Gob, or Sadam and Gomorrah, or the Virgin Merry.

Brother Anselm’s visitations from Titivillus were more likely to result in lewd scenes hidden in the background of an illustration of the Wedding at Cana or jokes scribbled in the margins about the Fish and Chip Monk.

Occasionally his devilish handiwork would be discovered by the humourless Scottish senior scribe (known as the Ayr Friar) and he would be required to say a thousand Hail Mary’s backwards without a mistake, but most slipped through unnoticed in a world not yet defiled by printers and word processors.

Until the fateful day that his monastery was chosen to present an example of their fine work to the Pope in Rome and the Bishop travelled many weeks to deliver the exquisite tome to His Holiness, one that Brother Anselm had transcribed.

The explosion could be heard around the Holy Roman Empire when the Pope discovered that his favorite passage had been transformed into ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no weevil’.

Wear and tear

/ Doug Jacquier / 25 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘wear’. I’ve actually had a few pieces accepted this week but I decided not to waste a good whinge. 🙂

All these rejections are starting to wear me down (if they were the old paper rejection slips I’d have enough to refurbish the interior of the Sydney Opera House), so I’ve decided to create a few of my own writer sites to ensure I get published somewhere.

The first off the drawing board is the logical extension of the Alphabet Soup of gender/sexual identity in that it will particularly focus on Z writers i.e. zoologically-indeterminate, non-binary in terms of species and those transitioning to a new species (e.g. I’m on a journey to becoming a wombat).

Next will be ‘I Think I’ll Go Eat Worms’ for those feeing unloved and/or hated, like pun-addicted formerly redheaded men, women who remain effortlessly thin, and vegans.

Work is well-advanced on ‘Put another prawn on the barbie’ for recalcitrant Australian writers who insist on having a ‘u’ in ‘colour’, incorrigibly mention places unfamiliar to anyone west of Hawaii and stubbornly insist on local vernacular (e.g. as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike).

Sure to be popular is ‘I only see dead people’ for writers who are genetically incapable of imagining fairies, dragons and apocalyptic futures (e.g. Donald Trump winning a second term and declaring himself President for Life).

Finally, I’m sure I had plans for those afflicted by short-term memory loss (I can’t find them where I’m sure I left them) but I know there should be an outlet for such masterpieces as ‘Call me … damn that whale, he’s even wrecked my memory’ and ‘It was the best of times, it was …. half-past four, I think’.

The Blitz Spirit and other myths

/ Doug Jacquier / 33 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘shelter’.

Note: No jokes this week.

As the rising wail of the air raid sirens echoed through the night, Maisie was well-prepared with blankets, a torch, and other essential supplies and thanked God once again that her children had been billeted in the countryside while her essential work in the War Office continued.

She walked as swiftly as is possible to the air raid shelter that was her nearest Tube station, which would protect her and hundreds of others from everything but a direct hit.

After the usual initial shuffling for a place, supervised by the air raid wardens, Maisie made up her bed, alternately dozing fitfully and chatting with those nearest her about their children, their men on the front line and ration books.

When the all-clear sounded, she ascended into the smoke-filled hazy morning light and picked her way home through the rubble and the firemen, desperately trying to save houses and rescue trapped people who hadn’t got out in time.

As she walked, she mentally totted up what ration coupons she had left, wondered if her husband, Tommy, was safe and started drafting in her head a letter to the children.

When she arrived at her home, it had no roof and one wall had started to crumble but so did her life when she realised looters, with no-one around to stop them, had already taken everything of value and, for the first time that night, she allowed herself to weep.

A juicy scandal

/ Doug Jacquier / 24 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘juice’.

When the Feds descended on the Give-Me-The-Juice Bar, customers scrambled for the exits and the owners tried to destroy the evidence down the sinks and toilet bowls, but to no avail; the jigger was up.

Damning evidence presented to the Courts included a grainy white residue in the glasses of customers who’d ordered the Colombian Cola (snorting straws an optional extra).

The house special, The Highball, was based on wheatgrass but with a liberal dose of non-industrial hemp and was easily located through the large collection of munchie plates surrounding its imbibers.

The Mexican Tropical turned out to be mescaline with orange juice and steroid sprinkles, leading to Keystone Kops capers on the street as officers tried to wrestle down drinkers chasing butterflies in traffic.

The Mood Swing Smoothie seemed innocent enough until it was analysed and they found the traces of Mother’s Little Helpers.

Ultimately, all of the customers were released when the duty lawyer pointed out that police officers had consumed some of the evidence and had contaminated the crime scene for a very, very long time.

Ambiguation of express – Wackypedia

/ Doug Jacquier / 26 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘express’.

  • Express
    1. (v) exude through the pores, as in emotion, words, milk, sweat, BO, unctuousness, and conspiracy theories
    2. (adj) commonly used to describe the speed of bullet trains but in fact not as fast as Superman
  • Espresso
    1. (n) Actual coffee (not Starbuck’s 364 variations on dirty water in a bucket)
    2. (n) Very fast train in Italy
  • Expresso – (n) What half the world says when they mean ‘espresso’
  • Ex-press
    • (n) Former journalist
    • (n) Burnt-out clothes iron
  • Express instructions – (n) Directions given so quickly that you forget everything after ‘You just ..’
  • Express post – (n) A mythological faster-than-normal form of mail that people are willing to pay to believe in.

F’ing Freddie

/ Doug Jacquier / 26 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘charm’.

Freddie Stare was a fabulous finesser of foot-tapping fantasia, with his fascinating rhythms filling the gravity-free firmament after he found Fionnuala Fagan, the famed fox-trotter from Fenagh.

However, in recent times, he’d decided he could fare well without fair Fionnuala and was making a fine fettle of flying solo on his seemingly-feathered feet and was often to be seen playing footsies with a wide array of footloose floozies.

Not to be fobbed off, Fionnuala furiously fanned her desire for fatal revenge and fossicked through files on pharmacology, seeking to distill a phial of foul poison to fix Freddie’s fate, knowing full well he would return to the fold in the future.

She made up a tincture of fenugreek, fennel, feverfew, fo-ti root and food-poisoning salmonella  and disguised its fetid taste with fruit juice and fizzy Fanta.

Inevitably, Freddie became fatigued and grew too floppy for fandangos, fornications and frolics so he presented himself to Fionnuala, with fraudulent fork-tongued promises of faithfulness, in order to charm her into ministering to his frail and failing frame, for old friendship’s sake.

Fionnuala was not to be fooled by Freddie’s flattering fakery but feigned concern and bade him drink her felicitous tincture, which she said she’d named in his honour as Freddie’s Fantasia, and soon after Freddie fell flat on his face and Fionnuala fed him to the fiery furnace.

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Fair dealing

/ Doug Jacquier / 57 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘fair’

As Mr. Orr’s son, Welles, trudged slowly along to Hardly Fair, sitting on the bone-rattling seat of his cart pulled by a horse he’d borrowed (Clyde’s ‘Dale’), he speculated on what prices the goods he had on board would fetch.

He had no real head for trade and was easily confused when he had to calculate how many apples were in a pound of grapes and whether a wigwam for a goose’s bridle was considered essential for a man of good standing or a luxury that few could afford.

He knew that he could always rely on selling a few left-handed screwdrivers and some cans of striped paint and a couple of boxes of skyhooks to the dimmer folk but he always rode home thinking that what he really needed was something considered universally necessary by his largely impecunious customers eking out a living on the Aero Plains.

He grew barely enough to feed himself and his family of undiscovered artists, alchemists and potboiler authors (whose only real talent seemed to be procreation and who constantly complained that their genius was being stifled by the lack of an indoor toilet), so he had no agricultural surplus to sell.

As his spine almost cracked crossing the rock-strewn Crickety Creek, it dawned on him that the answer was right beneath his feet (or at least Dale’s feet), namely water, so the next week he rode to market with crates of bottled water labelled “Welles Water – Sourced from a pristine mountain stream and guaranteed free of cholera, typhoid, anthrax and all manner of other diseases present in Crickety Creek!”

On his way home in his newly-purchased flatbed truck, he collected the water barrels filled by his ne’er-do-well family from Crickety Creek and set out for his bottling plant.

A Guide to Hell

/ Doug Jacquier / 28 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘guide’.

Browsing on Ebay, I stumbled upon a book entitled ‘A Guide to Hell – The Alternative Facts’ by B. L. Zebub, with a description that read ‘Learn what the corrupt elites don’t want you to know about an alternative AfterLife’ and offered for sale by the highly rated Seller, Q. Anon.

My winning bid brought this tome (smelling somewhat of sulfur) to my home and I immediately began to explore ‘Chapter 1 – It is NOT hot in Hell’, which informed me that, contrary to all the lies, Hell’s residents enjoy the very pleasant warmth of those lazy Hades days of summer.

Chapter 2 made it clear that the soundscape does NOT consist of wailing and lamentations but instead the joyful sounds emanating from residents enjoying the mud baths and the hot tubs.

As the chapters unfolded, I learned that the Lake of Fire is actually a very pleasant place to go sailing and that the so-called ‘brimstone’ is actually the charcoal used on the myriad barbecues where the residents enjoy gnashing their teeth on a cornucopia of culinary delights provided by Mr. T. Rump, St. Alin and Miaow C. Tong.

In the final chapter, The Real Revelations, I learned the secret codes used for programs to imprison the citizenry (e.g. Covid = Centralised Oligarchy via Vaccinations, Internet and Disinformation).

When I’d finished reading, I congratulated myself on my investment; after all, signing over my brain was small price to pay for The Truth and, besides, I wasn’t using it anyway.