Category Archives: Promptly Penned

Apr10

Promptly Penned

Posted on by
Standard

 

This week’s flash fiction post is a “Promptly Penned.” All of the bloggers use the same phrase(s) to inspire them, the phrases that inspired this are in bold.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Why are you glaring at me?”

“I’m hoping you’ll spontaneously combust. Or at least end up with a terrible headache.”

“Geez, who peed in your cornflakes this morning?”

“You did, Maggie! Don’t you remember?” Reaching the end of my rope, I threw my pen across my desk and stood up. “You want a list of everything you’ve done today, and just today, to make me want to inflict harm on you?” Advancing on her, I was satisfied to see Maggie cringe away from me. Good, I was done putting up with her crap.

“First, I’ve had to hear three, count them three, times about your phone call with your brother this weekend. And let me tell you, it wasn’t that interesting the first time around. Then, you used the last of MY creamer that was in the fridge, with MY name on it. You opened MY mail. And then you told our boss that I was the reason your report was late. Which makes no sense. I have nothing to do with that project!” At this point, I was breathing hard, having really gotten into the ranting frame of mind.

Maggie’s lips had taken on that pucker she gets, that looks like she’s sucking on a lemon. “Well, if you were to just focus on your job and not other people’s business, then maybe these things wouldn’t bother you so much.”

I was speechless, she was completely unaware of how much of a hypocrite she was. Not to mention how annoying.

“Well, Maggie, if you weren’t such a bitch, we wouldn’t have to talk at all.”

With that, I sat down and went back to glaring at Maggie with all the force I could muster. She tried to ignore me, but she kept glancing up and meeting my eyes. Each time she looked a little more frightened. Finally, I felt it. That little spark in my brain that meant I had reached my goal.

Before my eyes, Maggie was engulfed in a huge flame that reached the ceiling. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, leaving no trace behind.

As I was silently congratulating myself, by boss walked up.

“Jules, have you seen Maggie? I need to ask her some questions.”

Using my most innocent, wide-eyed stare I shook my head. “No Nolan, I haven’t seen her. Not since you stopped by earlier.”

And just like that, no more Maggie in my life. I breathed a contented sigh of relief, wondering who I should teach a lesson to next.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jess Jarman | Siobhan Muir | Kris Norris | Bronwyn Green |

Jun8

Promptly Penned

Posted on by
Standard

Promplty Penned

Today’s post is a Promptly Penned topic. We all have same two lines to inspire us and/or to include somewhere in our post.

Person A: “How long have you been standing there?”

Person B: “Longer than you’d like.”

*********

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Longer than you’d like. Long enough to see you bust out some serious 80’s dance moves. What was that?”

I could feel the blush starting in my neck and creeping up my face. What was it about this girl? Every time I saw her, I managed to make a fool of myself. It was like some force in the universe was playing a joke on me.

“Aw, come on Amy,” she said, laughing. “Don’t be embarrassed. It was cute. In a dorky, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, kind of way.”

“What do you want, Mellie?” I tried to sound as impatient as possible. I wanted to make her think I hadn’t been dying for her to stop by all day. That I hadn’t been thinking of every reason possible to stay in my dorm room, so she’d be able to find me. I went back to folding my laundry, like she was interrupting my incredibly important task.

Mellie flopped down on the end of my bed, disturbing my carefully stacked pile of clothes. I shot her an annoyed look but she just smiled at me. She knew she was cute.

“So,” she finally said. “Are you going to ask me out at some point, or do I have to keep making a nuisance of myself?”

The look on my face must have been priceless, and Mellie thoroughly enjoyed it based on the huge grin she couldn’t hide.

“Well, um, yeah, so…”

She motioned for me to continue when my voice drifted off.

Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Do you want to maybe go to dinner? With me?”

“Oh my god, Amy!” Mellie threw her arms around me neck and pulled me close. “I thought you’d never ask.” Smiling she leaned in and kissed me.

 

Check out where this prompt took the other bloggers:

Bronwyn
Jessica
Kris
Paige

Mar9

Promptly Penned

Posted on by
Standard

Promplty Penned

 

Here’s this month’s prompt:

Person A: “I thought I’d made it clear we have a no abduction policy.”

Person B: “She wasn’t cooperating. What did you expect me to do?”

***

From the backseat, Caroline could hear the two men arguing.

“I thought I’d made it clear we have a no abduction policy.” That was the guy behind the wheel.

“She wasn’t cooperating. What did you expect me to do?” This was the shorter of the two men, the one who had stuffed her in the backseat of the car.

“She shouldn’t have even known we were there. It was supposed to be an in and out, grab the money and leave.”

“Well, she must have heard us or something. She came up out of the basement and, uh…” Here the guy in the passenger seat trailed off, sounding kind of sheepish.

“Uh, what?” The driver said, sounding irritated.

“She saw my face, alright? I told her to get in the freezer after that and I was going to lock in her but she wouldn’t listen and since I figured she could probably describe me, I thought I should bring her with.”

The car suddenly lurched to the right in a squeal of tires. “How. How.” The driver took a couple of deep breaths. “How in the name of all that is holy did she see your face? You’re wearing a mask!”

 “I took it off.” It came out barely more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry. You what?”

“I took if off. It was itchy.” This time the passenger’s voice had a definite whine to it. “I told you I didn’t want to wear it in the first place. I don’t like masks.”

“You flaming idiot! The whole point of the mask is so people won’t see our faces. And then you go and take it off.”

“That’s why I brought her with. So she can’t tell nobody what we look like.”

At this point, Caroline had to stifle a giggle in the backseat. These had to be the two worst burglars in the world. Not just inept, but totally stupid. She continued to work at the apron that had been tied around her hands, figuring that if she could get free she had a good chance getting away from these idiots.

The car was still pulled over to the curb so Caroline decided to take a chance. “Hey, fellas?”

Both guys jumped and turned around to stare at her, now sitting up in the backseat with her hands in her lap.

“Hello.” She gave a little half wave and smiled.

“What the hell are you doing up?” The driver turned to the other guy. “Couldn’t you at least tie her up properly?”

“I thought I did!” He flinched as the driver smacked him in the back of the head.

“Boys. Boys!” Caroline smiled again as they turned to look back at her. “Did you maybe forget something?” She held up the bag of money they had taken from the coffee shop and waived it like a cape in front of a bull.

The two men looked at each other in horror. They started scrambling over each other to try climb into the backseat. As they fought to fit through the tiny space, Caroline opened the unlocked (how dumb were they?) back door and slipped out of the car. She wouldn’t have much time, but she thought she could make this work.

Caroline took off running as fast as she could down the dark side street toward the park that was nearby. If she could get enough of a head start she could lose them in the woods on the other side. She wasn’t the captain of her track team for nothing and those guys weren’t going to win any Olympic medals. She could hear them huffing and puffing behind her but their footsteps were falling farther and farther away.

Caroline made it to the trees and slowed to look behind her. The burglars were doubled over in the middle of the street trying to catch their breath, she was afraid one of them might have a heart attack. As they were still trying to recover, Caroline turned and kept making her way through the woods, slower now so she wouldn’t fall in the dark.

Eventually, Caroline made it home without any more issues. She had managed to lose the guys entirely, she figured they had given up on her. Once safely in her room, she looked in the bag and saw the men had taken about half of what was in the register at the end of the night, about a thousand dollars. All of that for a thousand dollars.

Sitting on her bed, she considered. She could return it to her boss in the morning. She could do that. Or, she could pretend as though they had broken in after she had left for the evening and consider this a bonus. After all, her boss was a tool. Always staring at her chest, making her close by herself, it wasn’t a great job. Her boss probably wouldn’t even report it, he didn’t report most of his income so why report a robbery? Yeah, this was going to be nice little bonus.

If she ever saw that burglar again, she just might have to say thank you.

Check out where this prompt took the other bloggers:

Bronwyn

Kris

Paige

Gwen

Jan13

Promptly Penned #1

Posted on by
Standard

Promplty Penned

This year we’ve added a new flash fiction type entry to our blogging activities, it’s called Promptly Penned and it happens once a month on a Wednesday. The idea is that we all start with a phrase or a couple of lines of dialogue. These lines can serve as inspiration or can be worked into the flash fiction piece, it all depends on where it takes each of us. Here’s the prompt for this month:

“Some choices are easy, like fudge ripple or butter pecan, some choices aren’t. Can you guess which one this was?”

***

Butter pecan? Fudge ripple? Butter pecan? Fudge ripple? I’d been standing in the open door of the grocery store freezer case for so long that my face had gone numb and I still couldn’t pick an ice cream flavor. Screw it, I thought. After the week I’ve had I deserve both. I grabbed a pint of each and headed toward the check out.

 As I waited in line, watching each incompetent person ahead of my try to figure out how to use the self-checkout machine, I went through every horrible thing that had happened this week.

First there was the lady at work who insisted on butting into every meeting and project I was a part of, even if she wasn’t invited. Nothing like making me feel completely incompetent. Then there were the redneck neighbors and their blaring country music until all hours of the night. And the neighbors on the other side with the ugly, yappy dog that had tried to take my foot off. Thank goodness for winter boots. The flat tire in twenty degree weather. And finally, the surprise visit from my parents that had left me feeling like a failure, as always.

By the time I got to the checkout, I was about ready to swap out the two pints of ice cream for a fifth of rum.

 Three hours later I was passed out on the couch in an ice cream coma, blissfully ignoring the world. Around midnight, I sat up suddenly, not sure what had woken me. Getting up off the couch, I stepped in a pool of melted ice cream. Great, I thought, a mess to clean up. As I tried to orient myself I realized what had woken me. I could hear the sound of breaking glass coming from the back door. It must have been the initial crash that woke me and now someone was clearing out the rest to get to the locks.

As silently as I could, I made my way to the kitchen where I had left my phone, taking care to avoid all of the squeaky spots in the wood floor. Once in the kitchen, I looked around for my phone and realized I had, in fact, taken it upstairs to charge it.  Damn! Now what?

I heard the back door open and realized I had to make a decision. I grabbed the chef’s knife out of the dish drainer and tip toed over the kitchen door that led out to the back entryway and hid behind it. Could I do this? Could I defend myself against someone breaking into my house and maybe kill them? Absolutely.

Choosing an ice cream flavor was almost impossible but deciding I could kill someone to protect myself was the easiest decision I’d ever made.

I saw a shadow cross the threshold of the kitchen door and took a deep breath.

See what stories the other ladies came up with this week:

Kris
Bronwyn
Jess
Paige
Jessica
Kellie