Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Words For Wednesday

 


Words for Wednesday will be here for the Month of April. All the way from Newfoundland, Canada, which has its own time zone - 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada. Thanks as always to Elephant's Child for keeping this feast going. 

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. 

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Here are the words for this week, In two batches with an image in the middle, use some or all of the prompts.

Good luck!

From "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway. Photo from front cover of book. (an annual read for me)


Colourless*

Slaughter*

Moustache*

Jockey*



Eliminate*

Whiskey*

Thermometer*

Wickedness*

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Here's mine, using all the prompts and the picture.

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Roseanne pulled the curtain aside and looked down at the colourless shell-shocked road four floors below. The war seemed like yesterday, she still couldn't get used to the silence. Normal life had not returned even though the armistice was a few months ago now.

She sighed and glanced back at the bed where Antoine was lightly snoring, his grown-up moustache still strange on his face. He had changed in uncountable ways. He had witnessed and participated in acts she could barely comprehend, slaughter and wickedness which would never be eliminated from his fun loving spirit, now gone forever.

Her deep love for him was now jockeying with feelings of pity and revulsion for what he had seen and done. The unknowable within him.

Last night at the café where they had met with his comrades in arms the whiskey had run freely and the ribaldry and war stories had pushed the atmospheric thermometer to an unsustainable pitch.

She had wanted to walk out the door. Antoine, her gentle artistic fiancé, had vanished forever.

But a few old strands were still not unravelled, holding her there with thin threads of hope.




30 comments:

  1. You did well with this interesting selection of words. My story will be on my blog on Friday.

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  2. You did indeed do well. Sadly the victims of war include the families of those who went, including the families of those who returned, altered beyond recognition.

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    1. Even growing up I had heard terrible aftermath tragedies from all these sodding wars. No one is ever the same having witnessed the horrors and participated in them.

      XO
      WWW

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  3. David noisily slurped a healthy slug of whisky through his soup-strainer moustache.
    ‘Your desk jockey journalist friends know nothing’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. If they realized that I have the government in my pocket and approval for the new development was in the bag, they would be beside themselves. Red and green tape be damned. The new Minister for the Environment is in my pocket and he has eliminated them. Money doesn’t grow on trees – and those are the only trees I can see any point in saving.’
    David noisily slurped another unhealthy slug of whiskey through his soup (but not thallium) straining moustache. Ernest had promised her that it was colourless, odourless AND tasteless. But not painless, very soon now David wad going to know pain like he had never known it before. Jenna smiled. He often talked of ‘lambs to the slaughter’ and tonight he was becoming the biggest and ugliest lamb of them all. Wickedness? Perhaps, but sickness like his couldn’t be diagnosed with a thermometer. Jenna’s cure was permanent, and all over the country other Jennas were prescribing the same medication for their Davids. And those snuggled deep in his/their pockets. A Moveable Feast. A very Final Feast.

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    Replies
    1. Hi EC - what a turn of events ... a real murder mystery ... part of a dystopian one, perhaps ... I hope she and others can enjoy a peaceful life ahead. All the best - Hilary

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    2. A brilliant story EC and so very well told. A secret army of women safeguarding the planet.

      XO
      WWW

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    3. Do two wrongs make a right? How i wish there were a better way.

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    4. Your story is so very good and makes me even more ashamed of mine.

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  4. I'll be round and comment later on. My story is here - yet another chapter of Susan's story. Due to a mistake (auto-publishing stunt), it was published shortly after midnight my time - before the prompts were even published. I'm sorry, but not going to take it down and rewrite after all. Maybe I can write some more with the prompts.
    Link: https://krydderuglen.blogspot.com/2021/04/birch-manor-summer-part-6.html

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    1. Hi Charlotte, no problem this time zone difference does my head in at times too. I publish the prompts at midnight Tuesday my time which would be your 5.30 a.m. I'm thinking if my brain is not too addled at the mo.

      XO
      WWW

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  5. Hi Wisewebwoman – well done … War must have been absolutely terrible for those youngsters – in my case, our parents … the artistic ones, would have suffered so badly.
    Mine is up next ... Hilary

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    1. So much talent and creativity lost forever with these poor victims of war too. I remember seeing one man "shell shocked" as they called it then. Endlessly counting buttons in a box with shaking hands.

      XO
      WWW

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  6. Hi Wisewebwoman - the second set:

    Really had they not realised they needed to eliminate the whiskey from her medication … the wickedness of the thermometer reading would be more easily ignored. Yet that relief obviously gave her pleasure, and kept her quieter …

    Hilary

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    1. It was Brandy that was considered medicinal in our household. I am sure that it worked much better than the proverbial spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

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    2. Let her keep her whiskey ;) Well written.

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    3. So much said in so few words, Hilary, well done!

      XO
      WWW

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  7. Oh well told story WWW. Yes war is cruel in so many subtle ways.

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    1. Endless heartbreak in the aftermath. Uncurable. Thank you Charlotte.

      XO
      WWW
      WWW

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  8. Since i got home late, i am posting very late.

    My story is over here.

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  9. WWW, your story is piercing and sad and well written.

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  10. Your stories are so concise and well-told.

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  11. Sorry for this late post. I had it ready but had to leave the house and did not remember to post it until this morning. Hope you don't mind what I did with your lovely words and picture.

    WHAT WAS SHE DOING by Granny Annie

    Was she picking her nose? Too much whiskey seemed to have
    loosened her up. The picture taken could only eliminate the true celebration and turn it into shameful wickedness. The fellow next to her with the moustache seemed to be a thermometer for the group. He tried to jockey the photographer away before this gathering would slaughter the joyful occasion into a colorless party of slander. Now the man across from her was considering picking his nose too.

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    1. I suppose it's like sneezing, contagious, Granny Annie. You evoked many forced picture taking in my past!

      XO
      WWW

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  12. WiseWebWoman, not only were your prompts good, your story was excellent.

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