flash fiction friday #78
flash fiction friday #78; inclusion trigger: sick, prick, flick, stick, lick.
rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural/thematic challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.09a.m. friday, trinbago time; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago time.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, song or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to this/my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment here).
you may join in at any time prior to deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on this/my trigger-post or fasbook note or instastory or whaever, once we can all read it; please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends online).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago time.*
[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.
posted by sweet trini @ 11:57 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
The last thing that H.R.H.P.D. says she remembers clearly is seeing a drop of blood. She recounted to me that the blood sat on the pale expanse of her finger all by itself, in the shape of a tiny, red pearl that had mesmerized her. Everything after that moment she says, is a blur.
She said that as she tried to rouse herself from her haze, her mind found the image of a spindle pricking her finger – that’s probably what had caused the blood.
“What had bewitched me to want to sew with a spindle? How long had I been asleep? What had made me so sick? And why did my head hurt so badly when I tried to remember more?” were all questions that she told me she had asked herself in those first, important minutes.
She described opening her eyes, looking down and finding herself on a bed that she didn’t know and only recognizing her trademark large, ivory, tulle skirt with floral appliques dancing around the hem. What she said had first caused her alarm was that the left sleeve of her bodice was torn and hanging off her shoulder. At the time that all of this was going on she recalled feeling as though “her face had been licked by a dog.”
“Why was I, a princess, waking up in a strange bed with a headache, a wet face and a torn gown?” she asked me.
According to her, at some point someone must have flicked on a switch because she recalls a sudden burst of light and then seeing a man hovering just above her whose mouth was “smothered in velvet matte lipstick”. At one point in our meeting she described the man as “a pale, stick-thin thing with a beard”.
As I sit playing with my press I.D. card outside His Majesty’s Prison, I can’t help but wonder if the weeks I’ve spent trying to set up this interview with former Crown Prince Magnus , the man accused of raping Her Royal Highness Princess Dava, will be worth all the effort that went into organising it. I’m hoping that he will share some more details about his remarkable story of travelling in secret from Denmark “on a mission of love, to rescue” Princess Dava from what he describes as “an evil spirit” but what doctors have diagnosed as a diabetic coma. Only time will tell how all of this will unfold.
in+done+posted@ https://urbanfolktales.blogspot.com/2020/04/fff78.html [immediately above this post on this blog]
walk good.
lord, tend the stick
and make safe yuh flock
Nah, that wasn't it. He licked his fingers wet and put out the flame. He always felt like he could hear better in the dark. Even times like now when he only heard his heart pounding in his head. He could feel the pulse, the force of it pushing behind his temples looking for a way out.
lord, tend the sick
and make safe yuh flock
That was it!
He was waiting for a man called Joseph. Joseph would come to the church, he was told, wait for him there. He was a man preferred to be on the move, but, he stick here waiting on Joseph. If he don't meet Joseph tonight, he don't get pay. He really hated churches. They always take him back to when his grandmother used to drag him to them three times a week, five times during Easter and Christmas. He hate the smell of frankincense and myrrh and how it seem to hold on to everything, seem to settle over and still everything. What little boy you know could sit in a hot church in all them clothes and not move? He must move and everytime he move his grandmother find the spot on his side, just where his lil waistcoat raise up and his shirt come out his pants. She find that spot and everytime he move she pinch him good and lean in and whisper,
"You cry in this church here Samuel. When we get home is licks like you never see. Who don't hear does feel."
Maybe for 5 minutes he would sit still. for the first two of those he would drop his chin to his chest and look up at her with an expression that made him look amazed, intimidated, and vexed at the same time.
Hate fucking church. He paced now. Is Joseph fault, he decide. Because if is not for Joseph and this church habit of his, he Samuel, wouldah never set foot in one again. But if he don't meet up with Joseph, he don't get his money.
He see the flicker of the approaching lights before he hear the car engine or hear the tires over the loose gravel as the car pull in and stop.
Joseph! He was in a better mood because Joseph was finally here. He took his place behind a fat circular pillar.
Joseph open the church doors and come in whistling some church tune. Of course he doing that, and the place empty with high ceiling and pipe organ and stained windows and every note he whistle bouncing off something else and grating on Samuel nerves. Samuel is facing the altar, waiting on Joseph to walk past him. Happy, at least, that Joseph is showing no sign of knowing that he is there.
Joseph really have no clue. He thinks he is alone in the church, it is why he comes at this hour, aloneness. Joseph is not a believer. He stop believe since he was eleven and the Irish priest show Joseph his prick. He had never see a white man penis before. It look like Satan to him but it feel warm in his hand, not hot. He liked how it felt. Is that make him stop believe. The man who every week leading prayers, the shepherd of the flock, the hypocrite. He condemn in public the very same thing he doing with Joseph in the back and joseph stop believe. He love the smell of frankincense and myrrh because it remind him of the old Irish, who, before he left, set up Joseph nice.
"My Joe," he call him. "It hurts to leave you my boy. Let me look after you lad, will you?"
He taught is money the white man was going to give him, but it was to be even better.
He set him up with a job in the orphanage. The Irish man of the cloth who travel the world spreading the gospel of his seed, he delivered Joe unto years and years of boys with no parents and no consequences. Until the night he walk in the church and fail to notice Samuel John. He didn't hear the footsteps behind him but he did feel the blade pull from one side of his neck to the other.
lord, tend the sick
and make safe yuh flock.
I real late on the submission. FFF#78
New to the space and the concept.
Respect to everyone.
Attempting to write a book and a play from this material/ these characters
Hope you enjoy. Doh mind the typos.
I appreciate all feedback.
Trixie break bottle to challenge Fancy the night the boy come and start to work Back Bar.
It was like stick fight and the two drew power from the crowd. The lines were drawn and the crowd behind each stepped quickly, swirling and shuffling, a liquid unit behind them as they as a postured, throwing long shadows into the corners. Some of the people were out for laughs others out for blood. Most of them were looking for a kinda passive vengeance at some slight or hurt feel from either Trixie or Fancy that they hadn’t the courage to carve out for themselves.
It was an ancient dance, slow and rhythmic, with sudden syncopation like lightening when they sliced the air with their chosen bois. Fancy’s was the long barbershop razor she kept hidden in her breasts that she released with soft flick as Trixie had break her bottle. Is like she know what was coming. The signs was showing tonight.
The noise of the crowd pierced through everything: crying screaming women, men laughing, side scuffles and tables being thrown around the walls. Underscoring the story unfolding just as the drummers would by the fire at the edge of a Gayelle.
Then sirens. Just so the fight mash up. People start to run out the bar and some of the regulars try to drag Fancy and Trixie away.
“I never once disrespect you and you mad to break bottle for me? Well mam Trixie from today, today yuh meet yuh death with me! Anywhere I see you I goin to lick you down!”
“Fancy you does get on like you know something d rest of we dont know. You so mighty dey on yuh bar stool like you better than some-fuckin-body.”
“I BETTER THAN YOU. I AM BETTER THAN YOU!” The shout cracked and turned almost to a wail. She was enraged but I could hear real tears in there. In all my days I never see Fancy get on so. Never hear her shout and certainly never hear her talk anything but the queens very English. “Is I who clean you up and carry you to the hospital de two times you lost them chirren right here on the barroom floor. Is I who had to buy bleach to come back to scrub blood off the people floor! After that, you went back again and is I who carry you by Mother John for Bush Bath and rituals when you said that God was taking too long to give you another baby. Is I who sit down here the j'ouvert morning filling out forms by the light of the Rhythm Section, missing my sweet j'ouvert to make sure the boy get the small scholarship while you in the back, drunk, taking prick for rum money before you disappear with the Indian who yuh say look like a Bollywood star. Same said Ash Wednesday morning you were nowhere to be found is I throw mihself together to get to the school in time to lie and tell the people that he mother home, sick. Is I who… Trixie girl you still don’t know what life is? Well then I’ve failed you because I know exactly what life is. I know that stinking, ungrateful people like you will look back on your life and never remember what friends have done for you. You will sit there in your rocking chair and say boy I had it to do but somehow I made it work out. And that's the way it's supposed to be. That's what friends are for to make sure you get through.”
This was more like the Fancy I knew although now she suddenly looked old and sad.
“I’ve spent all these years trying to make sure that you don't end up like me. An old whore with no one to claim you the morning you wake up dead. How many more years do you think I have out here? You can't be a ho forever and my time has expired twice over. I can barely afford to pay my room and buy toiletries. How much canned tuna will I eat until I turn into a real fish? I tryin to save you from this shit i livin. So if you don’t want him, let me have him because that is my child as much as is yours. Let me have a familiar face to save me from my own black future.”
@winter, tha's plenty story, dread, and clearly have more turns to make; intriguing excerpt (well, will-be-excerpt, when book/play done). yes, enjoyable, and when you finish finessing the voice to the level of trini-ness you want throughout, it go read vibesy.
walk good.
@ sweet trini thanks for the comment. OH yes the voice especially of the narrator needs a lot of finessing.
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