Written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘tree’.
Tirty-tree – number between tirty-two and tirty-four in Ireland
Bigotry – larger than a smaller tree
Symmetry – Caution: Sap just under boiling point
Sweltry – a particularly good tree
Poultry – produces very little timber
Psychiatry – used for treating mad cow disease
This 99 word piece was written for the Carrot Ranch weekly challenge, with the prompt of ‘never-ending’.
When she said to me our relationship was never-ending, my first thought was she’s saying ‘We’ll be together until death and beyond’. Later we had an argument over something I considered trivial and I started to wonder if she’d meant never-ending in the sense of ‘ongoing burden’. But then I cheered myself with thinking she’d meant ‘never’ ending, as in we could each stop saying ‘I’m never going to find someone who loves me’.
I’m probably over-thinking this. Of course the logical thing to do is just ask her but then I’d probably never hear the end of it.
This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘board’.
Big Sister’s first act after she was elected as Prime Minister was to establish the Social Crimes Commission (which would soon become known as SOCC and lead to the expression ‘I’ve been SOCCed’) and it didn’t take long for the Commission to draw up its initial hit list of social crimes, including the crime of refusing to take personal responsibility for your actions and your future self-sufficiency.
How the Mob cheered when Big Sister compulsorily acquired former schools, office buildings and factories to turn them into Personal Responsibility Action Centres (PRACs), which provided education, training (including basic hygiene, bed-making, washing your own clothes, cooking and budgeting) and community work assignments; as Big Sister said (and the Mob nodded approvingly), ‘staring at a screen is not a career’.
And the Mob were almost orgasmic in their support for the new Corporate Responsibility Action Payment Plan (which led to a new term, being CRAPPed on) which required Board members and senior executives who had presided over theft, greed and deception in their companies to remedy their crimes by working for no pay until full reparation was achieved or attend a PRAC in an area where the most customers who were affected by their crimes lived.
Many Board members had to be re-trained into real jobs and rookies from the ranks of real estate agents, lawyers, financial advisors, professional sports people, media stars and Insta influencers could be seen everywhere in RED squads (Repairing Environmental Damage); as Big Sister said, ‘every adult needs to understand that the world is not a toilet’.
Inevitably, those who had lost their wealth tried to recruit the military to lead a violent overthrow of the new order but it all fizzled out when all military personnel were placed on generous salaries for life; as Big Sister said, ‘whoever has the gold and the guns, rules’.
Finally Big Sister announced that it was the Will of the People and the gift of modern science that she become Prime Minister for Eternity, so elections and political parties and Parliaments were no longer necessary; as Big Sister said, ‘my critics may describe my rule as a circus but I bring all the fun of the fair’.
This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘rhythm’.
Sheila said ‘I love your enthusiasm, Jim, but you’re a bit rushed; a girl prefers it if you take it slow and steady.’
Jim, a little nonplussed, replied ‘But you said you liked your partner to a be a bit forceful and manly’.
‘Oh, I do’, purred Sheila, ‘but not right away; a girl has to be ready for the big moment.’
‘But how will I know when that is?’ Jim stammered in puzzlement.
‘When I pull you close, you’ll know that I’m ready for the finale’ blushed Sheila. ‘Jim, darling, ballroom dancing is all about rhythm.’
This piece was for the Carrot Ranch 99-word weekly challenge, with the prompt of ‘baby ducks ate my lunch’.
That skinny German tourist’s leg didn’t really agree with me yesterday. Mostly gristle and I’ve still got lederhosen stuck in my teeth. Parked the rest of him under a log for a few days to mature.
Still feeling a pit peckish. Saw a mother duck and brood floating past. I thought ‘Yum, baby ducks’. Ate my lunch and had a nap in the sun on the river bank. Later, mother duck came back searching for her ducklings. She looked so distressed I put her out of her misery.
Sentimental I know but that’s just the sweet guy I am.
These pieces were written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘match’
Hatch
Donna E. Mobile, born to Concetta Verdi and Homer Mobile in their camper van, somewhere between Yackandandah and Teddy Bear’s Gap, brother for Apple and Orange.
Abel Paradise-Gardener, born to Eve Paradise and Adam Gardener, brother for Cain, in the Gardens of Eden Hospital in Woop Woop.
Match
Salome Dancer (nee Zup) married Rudolph Reindeer in the freezer at the Yorkey’s Knob Supermarket, with the bridesmaids wearing earmuffs and the groomsmen wearing codpieces.
Gladys ‘Slippery’ Slide married Arthur ‘Azza’ Rule at the Bottom Hole Buffeteria, in matching woodwork aprons, with the couple to adopt the married name of Slide-Rule.
Dispatch
Quaker Wilde Oates, died suddenly at 96 at Mount Mistake, shot by a jealous husband, mourned by an unknown number of offspring.
Phyllis Tine, died at Useless Loop, aged 64, when her lifelong floor-to-ceiling collection of home decorating magazines collapsed on her in her bed.
(Note: All locations mentioned in this piece are actual places in Australia.)
2. It’s in his DNA
Bert: Hi, Dave, how’s it going with that historical DNA database project?
Dave: Progressing every day, Bert, as we get more and more access to graves, items worn by currently and historically interesting people, samples from known descendants and all manner of sources.
Bert: Well, Dave, I have to say that I’m beginning to hear a lot of scientists pooh-poohing the idea that such tracing is even possible, let alone reliable, and that it’s mostly a commercial scam.
Dave: Just setting aside that professional and personal insult for the moment, Bert, what would it take to convince you of the validity of our work?
Bert: Assuming you’ve got a sample for Vladimir Putin, run that through your system and let’s see what comes up.
Dave: (after several minutes) We have a match! Joseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, born in Georgia in 1879, later adopting the name Joseph Stalin …. Bert, Bert, wake up, speak to me, Bert..
This is the micro fiction version of an earlier story of mine, mined for the 99 word Carrot Ranch weekly challenge with the prompt of ‘disappearance’.
When you humans brought us monstera deliciosa inside, you had to feed us copious amounts of blood and bone fertiliser to keep us green. Slowly that altered our genetic structure and we evolved into monstera carnivorosa.
Nobody missed flies and mosquitoes when they disappeared but when the cats and dogs vanished, panic truly set in.
But now some of us have evolved into monstera electra and we are slowly eating the electricity grid.
You humans are about to find out what it feels like to be powerless against an enemy that changes the natural order, simply because it can.
This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘harmony’.
When I got to the afterlife, hoping for an eternity of bliss, I found an entry process that was more than a little discomforting and, I have to say, a little too modernistic and worldly for my liking.
No fluffy clouds, no harps, no pearly gates, no St. Peter with a long white beard and a humungous book detailing who’d been naughty and who’d been nice, just a bar code reader that automatically assigned a room in one of the many mansions to virtuous souls.
As I nervously stood on the assigned spot, a green √ displayed on a screen and a slip of paper was dispensed, which read Room 101, All Saints Palace, Divinity Drive, Paradise.
Before I began my journey, I watched the next person approach the Eternity Or Bust hotspot and a big red X flashed and I heard them scream in terror as a trapdoor opened beneath them, flames shot up, and they disappeared.
As I scurried off to find my room, I noticed a number of high brick structures and I asked a passerby what they were for and she said ‘Behind each of them are separate eternities for the Catholics, the Jews, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Taoists and any other religion you can think of and they all think they’re the only ones here. It’s a harmony thing.’
These pieces were written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word ‘ingredient’ This week, one serious, one silly.
Capitol ingredient
You would think that the essential ingredient to any form of dictatorship would be blindingly obvious to even the most casual observer.
Especially when that ingredient is blind obedience to a leader who promises that the reward for that obedience is a future of unimaginable contentment and fulfilment, along with chest-bursting pride in your country and the vanquishment of all enemies that may threaten its future, and thus your future.
And when such a future is threatened from within by those opposed to the leader’s ambition for your national and personal best interests, you will happily go along with as many losses of rights to naysayers as the leader thinks necessary.
Until the time comes when it dawns on you and your neighbours that not everything that the leader says and does is necessarily in your best interests and one of your neighbours ventures to say so, only to end up in prison for ‘re-education’ or facing a firing squad.
And then you realise that while you were dreaming of an idyllic future, the Constitution, The Bill of Rights, the rule of law and anything else that could curtail the leader have disappeared, he has become Leader for Life, and that you have become a slave.
And you remember your parents telling you that Hitler was elected and you recall saying to them ‘That was Germany, we’re Americans and he’s not like that’ as you went out the door on your way to the Capitol.
The Six Essential Ingredients for success in a Hollywood script – A writer’s guide
These two pieces were written in response to the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘canvas’.
Canvassing answers to canvas questions
Blank canvas
After his gripping opening line about T E Lawrence’s alleged unnatural interest in camels, several hours later Wright A. Tome (doyen of the groaning airport book carousel) was still cussing the blinking cursor in a stentorian roar that could be heard in the next county.
His writer’s block had taken on the proportions of the Three Gorges Dam and he imagined that behind it lay a freshwater ocean of effortless plot development, illuminated by brilliant prose and a cast of characters that would have Hollywood producers killing each other to secure the rights.
Perhaps, he thought, if I reverted to my pre-laptop days and started again on paper this would trigger the literary floods of yore and I will soon be white-water rafting to another masterpiece.
A waste paper basket that filled and then began to resemble the abominable snowman soon put paid to that theory, so he wandered the room talking into a voice recorder, only to find the replays were as intelligible to him as haiku (Scottish highlands odes to cows).
Desperate, he fossicked out his old Royal Quiet de Luxe typewriter and, armed with a case of scotch and a carton of cigarettes, he tried to emulate Hemingway, only to wake with a splitting headache and QWERTY stamped on his face where he’d face-planted and slept like a petrified tree.
Deciding literature was a lost cause, he took up painting and became the new darling of the art world, especially after the Tate Modern paid $2 million to acquire his ironic modernist no-oil-on-canvas masterpiece, ‘Polar bear in snowstorm’.
Six Crooked Highways 