Click on graphic to go to Sammi’s blog page where more 71-word poetry or prose are key.
Whispering Cuts
Lost in a familiar sea of grave reality, my dysfunctional heart not yet surrendered, something of which none are certain. Worry descended like a pall over my will. Sadness has taken control of my soul. Well-intentioned, high-riding key influencers are wheedling me into their delusional corner. Life, lies, and what matters: shut down before I hit the ground. I ponder death, or better, conceivably, never to have been born at all.
Look both ways, but in the end, it is just the end.
Nothing more.
Mind the gaps of life’s traps.
Sometimes it’s your fault. Sometimes it’s not.
For the final full week of January, our guide to telling stories based on a picture, Rochelle, has tossed up a J Hardy Carroll pic to inspire us. It took a while but my muse, obviously an older woman, set my mind to an inappropriate tale, but not an uncommon one.
To find the how-to of this story telling challenge, click on the J Hardy photo and you’ll be shuffled over to Rochelle’s blog where the situation is made clear. Can you tell a complete story in one-hundred or fewer words?
Genre: Erotic Fiction
Title: Pinch Me, Maggie
Word Count: 100
***
She, much older, married and Julia’s mother. I loved her and suspected she knew. I never expected this.
At her daughter’s birthday party, she told me to meet her in the old abandon building north of the football field. I was to be there about eleven. I was early.
I asked, “Mrs. Robinson, why?”
She smiled, “I can tell what you want. Call me Maggie May here, but Mrs. Robinson in public. If you tell anyone about us, I’ll make your life miserable. It’s your move, young man.”
My heart pounded. I held her. “May I kiss you, Maggie May?”
***
Look both ways because love is ageless and where you find it.
Mind the gaps between May and September.
Click on the scene from ‘The Graduate’ movie to read more awesome stories.
And, of course, the story as told by Sir Roderick David Stewart.
Lying on the Cath Lab table, oxygen
up my nose, needles in my everywhere,
nurses and technicians asking questions.
Technology all around.
It’s like a Federation starship sickbay,
or a Starbase infirmary
with many more actors vying for a role
and space at my table.
There are two main characters. The protagonists are
the Chief Medical Officer and me.
Other smart young wonders,
called residents, watch.
Also, a consulting rep from
the manufacturer of my shiny new transcatheter aortic heart valve,
to be snaked into place and magically,
guided, angiographically trough my veins and arteries,
and into my beating heart, which will soon almost stop,
scaring all except unconscious me,
to replace the defective OEM part.
They all look alike in masks and caps. I’m naked on a procedure table,
surrounded by X-ray machines, big screen monitors,
procedure carts, lights, and computer workstations.
In some other room nearby, more medical miracle role players
wave from behind large windows. I needed a Playbill.
No TV doctor medicine-show drama. Okay, maybe a little,
but two days later I am home and ready to rock.
Ya gotta love modern medical science.
Look both ways and ask lots of questions.
Mind the gaps for diagnoses and prognoses.
They called him Tom—not his real name.
This guy was no head-hanging Tom Dooley.
Tom liked to watch. A voyeur. A peeking peeper.
A people watcher of the lowest and riskiest form.
Yet, old Tom was submissive. Not dangerous. But who knew?
Night was his time—windows framed his fantasies.
One day Tom saw something that made him
stop peeping—almost. “Now I’ve seen everything.
My life is complete. And I need to go to confession,
but not with that priest.” Tom, confided in himself.
Then, late one warm summer night, there was a scream.
Someone else yelled.
Dogs barked.
Tom ran.
He heard a gunshot.
Maybe Tom had seen everything. But he never made it
to confession. He died doing what he loved.
What he needed.
And he died running,
just not fast enough. Peeping Tom was no more.
“And another one gone” and
“Another one bites the dust.”
Look both ways.
Exhibitionists and watchers can work together,
each according to his, her, or their wants and needs.
Click the Script graphic for Sammi’s page and more writings.
So, Tell Me
I want to know you. The real, secret you.
I want to read your mind’s script.
Show me your play list. Who do you love?
What about friends? What’s your deal?
I want to know what you do in private
and tell no one. What was your childhood like?
When did you decide to be you?
Who do you hate? What was
your relationship with your parents?
Do you swear? Ever been sexually molested?
How many sex partners do you have?
Tell me your favorite everything.
I’d ask you what you think of me,
but that’s none of my business.
Look both ways at people.
It’s okay to wonder and to imagine.
But mind the gaps.
Not everything makes sense or is what you expect it to be.
As Hanukkah ends
Kwanzaa begins, and it is boxing day in Canada.
Because yesterday over two billion enlightened
of the eight billion humans alive
decide a religious thing and dispute
coffee cups and well wishes,
which must be specifically selfish.
It’s also the climaxing week of
collegiate football bowls
so schools can decide who to fire
or to obscenely overpay with locked down
contracts having nothing to do
with anything educational (or successful)
except that we are better than you—
more near neurotic selfishness. Yay,
we’re number one (so what?).
But it is serious business
for calendars. The end of another
elliptical orbital trip around the
minor star we call Sun,
and another 365 days bite the dust.
In the meantime, libraries close,
school music programs falter
or are cancelled to reduce cost,
and art blows in the wind.
Happy holidays. Congratulations,
it’s a wonderful life, Mister Potter.
Look both ways except this week.
For twenty-twenty-two, it’s over.
Mind the gaps for “what have we done?”
To welcome official northern hemisphere Winter and to punctuate the solstice, Mistress of Fictioneering, Rochelle, has teamed up with the wonderful winter scene photographer, Dale Rogerson, to inspire us to create, write, and to post stories of fewer than 101 words.
While a click on Dale’s pic gets you a sleigh ride over to Rochelle’s blog where all the fun begins, I can tell you that this is a challenging writing experience. So is going to the page of squares (inlinkz) where reading and commenting begets us the same. Do that by clicking on the below photo of Jackie O and her bane paparazzo, Ron G.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Title: Ambivalent Vanity
Word Count: 100
***
“Ron, that’s her private property across the creek. You’re obsessed with this woman. No wonder everyone hates all paparazzi.”
While looking through his telephoto viewfinder, “People love my photos and rags pay us big bucks, Billy-boy. Celebs want it both ways — fame and fortune with pictures but hate me for taking them. Hand me my waders.”
I stayed back while he walked toward the house.
Ron came running back to the crack of gun shots. He fell into the freezing water. Then he got up, and we ran to the car. He laughed and said, “Ain’t this job fun, Billy-boy?”
***
Look both ways for a paparazzo hiding behind a bush.
These days, everyone has a camera.
Mind the gaps or just surrender to the inevitable cha-ching of notoriety.
The facts: Ron Galella, the freelance photographer who relentlessly pursued Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis until a judge barred him from taking her picture, who pestered Marlon Brando until Brando broke his jaw and detached five teeth, and who for better or worse helped define today’s boundary-challenged culture of celebrity, died on Saturday, April 30, 2022, at his home in Montville, N.J. He was 91.
Click on the photo of Jackie Onassis and photographer Ron Galella to read more excellent stories inspired by Dale’s photo. (1971 in NYC. Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
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