Writing Prompts – Creative Copy Challenge #352
Posted: September 2, 2014 Filed under: Copy Challenges | Tags: writing prompts 18 CommentsWho can you share the CCC with? Who do you know that would enjoy the mental stimulation of the challenge along with some great reads as the end result?
Spread the word! Invite your friends to join in. Wouldn’t you love to meet some new writers and see what they bring to the challenge?
Make it your mission to invite 2 new writers this week. 🙂
This is a writing prompt. Bet you can’t do it! Take the 10 random words below and crush writer’s block by creating a cohesive, creative short story! And remember: after (if) you finish entering your submission into the comment field, highlight your words and click the bold button to make them stand out and help you determine if you forgot any words. (If you’ve missed previous writing prompts, we BET YOU CAN’T do those, either.) NOTE: Our bolding plugin is gone, so you’ll have to put and around each of your words if you want them to stand out, but NOT REQUIRED THOUGH.
- Tack
- Cramming
- Appointed
- Granite
- Crooned – To hum or sing softly.
- Acid
- Rubberized
- Caramel
- A low shriek
- Moonless
NOTE: Don’t copy and paste from MS Word. Use a program like notepad that removes formatting or just type in the comment field itself. Also, finish your submission, THEN bold the words. Thanks. (And don’t forget to tweet this and share it with your friends.)
Writing Prompts - Creative Copy Challenge 
The night might as well have been moonless, clouds clumped together like a blanket suffocating the sky. It was the appointed place at the appointed time but he stood there alone. Cramming another acid drop into his mouth, he held tight to his precious bag and leaned back on the granite post to wait.
A low shriek further along the canal told him that something had disturbed the sleeping birds. There were still a couple of hours until morning, and he listened to the mother as she crooned to her babies, calming them so they could sleep again. The trees whispered to each other in the gentle breeze, as though helping her soothe the chicks.
Although his senses were on high alert, he didn’t hear his assailant coming. Out of the darkness, a rubberised face thrust forward into his own, mouth contorted and greedy eyes tacking their way down his body towards the bag. An arm appeared, followed by a grasping hand and suddenly his bag was gone.
The shock paralysed him and for a moment he was unable to move. As the dawn light was being born, he could make out a shape slipping along the canal path and another breaking free from the shadows to join it. A girl’s laugh rode the breeze back towards him and he realised what had happened.
She had betrayed him – betrayed him for fresh, chewy caramel. Not only had he been robbed of his tasty cargo, he’d been robbed of his dignity, too.
How could be face her at school tomorrow?
I just invited one, before seeing your challenge. 🙂
Kathleen
P.S. And I gave someone, a young someone the address last week. 🙂
Excellent. Thanks Kathleen. Things seem to be dropping off lately.
Awww! I love this light fare, Anne. Totally unexpected!
Cheers,
Mitch
Just a bit of fun 🙂
Anne – I love the anticipation you have built. You used these words in a wonderful way, but how I and not come to think to use them. Bravo
~~Kathleen
A low shriek followed each vicious cramming of another tack into the old man’s earlobe.
“I do not refuse it, I am guilty, I do use it. I am the reason we outta spaaaaaace,” crooned Wolfgang. He switched to a rubberized mallet and began smashing the immobilized man’s toes. All too soon, two bloody stumps scraped sickeningly back and forth along the granite floor.
Finally, the old man spoke. “Thursday…”
“Hold that thought, sir.” Wolfgang scooted behind the open shelves and returned with a beaker of acid, which he had disguised by adding caramel color. “Drink up!”
The old man croaked, “No, you fool! I said Thursday!”
Too late, Wolfgang had tossed the liquid into the geezer’s wizened face. “Damn! I thought you didn’t know the appointed day.”
As the dying man’s face melted into a puddle as featureless as a moonless night, Wolfgang made a call.
“George, move the surprise party up to Wednesday.”
Sounds like it is going to be a real surprise party! Might skip that one, I think.
“..a puddle as featureless as a moonless night” is a fantastic line, Mitch. Very visual and evocative.
Thanks, Anne. You have given us some great words with which to play. In fact, I will be doing that instead of going to that surprise party next Wednesday! LOL
Cheers,
Mitch
I think I’d be doing that, too. Your surprise party sounds a bit worrying!
It was December 25, 1955 and I was holed up in a small hay-floored barn with nothing but horse tack and a General Electric radio. Heckuva way to spend a cold, moonless Christmas night, huh?
You try to make the best of every situation, right? I put my head on a scratchy ol’ horse blanket, and tried to dial in some news from WDEV out of Waterbury. No luck. I settled on some unknown station that was playing the crap my uncle and other country folk might listen to. A deep voice crooned some nonsense about a broke guy who had all the luck in the world with the ladies.
“Dancin’, romancin’, always on the go
Sun shining down on Mexican Joe”
The hick announcer told me it was Jim Reeves and I whispered back that it was pure fiction.
I dug through a saddle bag and found a half-eaten old candy bar. It only took a second before I was cramming that baby into my mouth. I’m usually not much for sweets, but hungry is hungry. That caramel didn’t cure the acid in my stomach, but it kept the growling down for a bit.
I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried, I thought about the crazy bastard’s resemblance to Roy Campanella. He had the same pudgy face. The same thick build. He was walking with me. He was carrying half of what was left of the money. If I was the self-appointed brain of our two-man operation, he was the muscle. Emphasis on was.
I was thinking about him out there in the rocks, wondering if I could ever make it far enough away. Even Connecticut might work. I knew a guy there. He could get me on at US Rubber maybe. I heard they were making rubberized asphalt. I could try that. I could work a straight job.
Merry Christmas. I said it out loud with a great deal of disgust. And like an answer, a low shriek echoed off the granite hills.
He was out there in the rocks.
But he wasn’t dead, after all.
That might’ve been a good thing. Then again, it might’ve been the worst possible outcome of our little spat.
OK, I am officially hooked on your story, You sure know how to end it to keep us hanging. This is a ripper of a tale. Well done.
Merry Christmas to you, too CarsonB. Thanks for the lovely present! I agree with what Anne said.
Cheers,
Mitch
Cathy ~~ hooked I am as well. Great opening chapter to a story waiting to be told.
So I hope as I catch up… the next challenge has what comes next!
~~Kathleen
Opps Sorry CarsonB…. that comment really IS FOR YOU.
~~ Kathleen
The cruel words were a tack in a troubled soul. Cramming their way past the appointed guardians, the protective wall fell like crumbling granite.
Mary rocked back and forth as she crooned a web against the acid attack. Would her feelings ever be rubberized from the caramel flow of abuse? In her mind, a low shriek drowned out the sound of another moonless night.
Cathy ~~ Nice little quick ditty! Way to effectively use this list. By the time I got to In her mind, a low shriek drowned out the sound… I could nearly feel this shriek a coming.
~~Kathleen
The moonless night added to the mystery of it all. She could not track his movements. The lack of lighting worked like a blindfold.
His fingers tingled as his hands got close to her caramel colored skin.
“Wow,” he said as his hands made contact and he grabbed her on either side of her neck. A low shriek escaped her lips. He dug deeper taking more of a strong hold on her. “What you are doing here…farming granite?”
“Nnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo,” she said after slowly releasing the deep breath that filled her lungs.
“Is this too hard?” he asked.
“I can’t tell if it hurts good or hurts bad, but I think it best that you don’t stop,” she said after another slowly exhaled breath. “Guess the acid test will be if we can get these muscles relaxed a bit,” her words were a bit muffled but years of hearing other speak into pillows allowed him to understand.
“Very well then. I have been appointed to do just that,” Myles said before striking up a tune. For 28 minutes he crooned “Over the Rainbow” so melodically that it worked in conjunction with the hot oil and muscle manipulation akin to cramming copious amounts of Flexural down her throat against her body’s will.
At the 35 minute mark her appendages were on their way to relaxed, but her neck and back … that was another story. He helped her to sit up.
“We are going to need another session,” he reported.
“Figures,” she said as she rubbed-‘er-ized.
“I want you off to a hot shower and I will see you back here in 20,” he politely ordered her.
He helped her to a standing position.
“Okay, but please bring coffee or Champaign with you,” she requested.
“Champaign it is. I will bring it in to you within minutes.”