The Great Whimper

Trifecta's weekend prompt this week is "... to give us a 33-word opening line to your book. That's it. Make us want to read the next 333 pages of your work."  Below is an opening line I always wanted to use:

The Universe ended on a Tuesday, which was confusing to Farley Trumatter, for the latest itinerary in his possession had the “Great Whimper” scheduled for Friday; obviously, he shouldn’t have missed that meeting.

Elementary

Entry for Trifecta's weekend challenge.  This week, they are paying homage to the forty-third anniversary of the first moon walk, and asking for exactly 33 words about someone who took a giant leap:

Dusty yard, hot afternoon.

Flies and cicadas buzzing, birds singing.

The dog lies in the dirt, head down,

tongue lolling out of his mouth.

Quickly, the brown fox jumps.

Lazy dog doesn’t move.

The Houseguest

An entry for Trifecta's weekend prompt, which is borrowed from Benjamin Franklin, who once said, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."


The Houseguest

"It's so nice to have company around," she thought, "someone to talk to at the dinner table."

It had been so long since she had had anyone in the house.  Ever since her husband died, seven years ago now, mealtimes had been the hardest.  She always longed for those days when he would sit there, reading the paper and chewing his food, while she told him all about the latest happenings in neighborhood, and what the gossip was down at the hair salon.  Her husband hadn't been much of a talker, of course, but that had been alright; she had always been able to carry a conversation herself.  "A regular Chatty Kathy," her mother had always called her.  
    
So when Father McNulty had offered to come for supper Sunday evening, she had jumped at the chance.  She had prepared her best Chicken Parmesan, and opened a bottle of Italian wine she had been saving for just such an occasion.  She had been so excited when the good Father didn’t leave that night, but remained with her for a couple of days. 

But it always ended like this.  Ever since her husband passed, every guest she had wore out his welcome by the third day.  She sat at the table, looking at the priest across from her, the newspaper spread out in front of him, his face expressionless. 

"Yes, it's nice to have company," she thought, "but after three days, the stench is unbearable.  Maybe it's the arsenic..."

Life

Something a little different today.  A poem inspired by the pictoral prompt over at Magpie Tales.

Here's the Pic:

Chilmark Hay, 1951 by Thomas Hart Benton

Here's the poem:

Life 

In springtime I was born anew,

Young I was, and green.

But carefully tended that season through,

I matured, both strong and lean.

My golden head grew straight and tall

With every summer rain;

And I, the king of my furrowed hall,

Knew naught of want and pain.

But come the autumn, colored red and brown,

I began to feel my age;

And knew my fate was to be struck down,

No use was it to rage.

Gathered in, I was, then ground to dust,

My life had run its span.

A victim of time’s insatiable lust;

So goes both grain and man.

So, since my last entry to the Trifecta Writing Challenge was a bit of a downer, I thought I'd try my hand at something a little more upbeat.  You know, more in keeping with the spirit of the weekend's prompt:

The world will end in three days.

Thus, I give you the following 333 words:

“Good morning, and welcome to another installment of ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,’ your number one source for Christian inspiration and survivalist advice, broadcasting live here on KYWH, serving the greater Hell Gate, Montana area for over 30 years. I’m your host, Rev. Warren Pease, of the Isolationist Church of Christ, United. “

“My brothers and sisters, I have a serious topic to discuss with you today, so please, put down your auto-loaders, call the kids in from burying the land mines, and gather ‘round your radio. For I have had a vision from our Lord; a ‘revelation,’ if you will. Our heavenly father has imparted to me that the end is nigh! Indeed, in just three days, the righteous will be called home. So my question to you, my brothers and sisters, is: ‘Are you Rapture Ready?’”

“Now, some might ask: ‘Reverend War, what makes your prediction of the impending Rapture this time different than the ones in 1987, 1994, 2006, and last Tuesday?’ To them I say, ‘Ye of little faith, beholdest not the mote in thy brother’s eye, if your camel can not pass through the eye of a needle.’ Think about it, my brothers and sisters.”

“As the Almighty covenanted with Noah to never again destroy the Earth by water, he has devised an even more horrible fate, in His mercy. Yes, my friends, in 72 hours, every cell phone in the world will receive a call which will be a recorded message from Justin Bieber reading from the novel Twilight, that will be impossible to turn off. This will, it goes without saying, be the cause of destruction of civilization as we know it.”

“I am out of time for today, as are we all in three short days. Before I sign off, remember, like Jesus, you too can save at Big Sal’s Auto Emporium and Falafel Stand, a Hell Gate institution since 2011. ‘Till next time, keep your Bibles handy and your powder dry.”

Promise

 Yet another entry to Trifecta's writing challenge.  This week, it was to work in the third definition of "Fireworks:"

3. plural a: a display of temper or intense conflict b: a spectacular display "the fireworks of autumn leaves."

He was promised fireworks.  From the time he was young, he was told he could do anything; be anything.  He was led to believe that he would find something in his life, and that it would ignite his soul, light up his mind with brilliant flashes of insight, blooms of white-hot intensity that would burn out only as the next one exploded in a dazzling new design. 

Instead, he wandered listlessly from event to event, each one either fizzling in acrid smokiness, choking off further interest, or thudding to the ground, an inert mass of unexploded potential.  Oh, there were sparks, to be sure; small ones that held the promise of future spectacular displays of emotionally and intellectually satisfying pyrotechnics.  But each time, as he stood, waiting for the finale, his mind’s sky remained dark, void of the blasts of joy and fulfillment that seemed to light up others’ psyches. 

Eventually, he decided to stop expecting them, to keep his eyes focused on the ground immediately in front of him, to avoid stumbling over the flotsam life inevitably leaves in everyone’s path.  Every once in a while, though, he’d catch himself, head tilted back, scanning the darkness above for a glimmer of what he’d once thought was going to be his life’s illumination.

It was during one of these episodes, in the midst of a berating from his own ego for being so careless, that another thought occurred to him.  Maybe it wasn’t the components of the putative explosives that were to blame.  Conceivably, the external sources of his mental missiles were not the problem. In short,  perhaps the fault was not in the starbursts, but in himself.