20/08/2018 – tnkerr-Writing Prompts and Practice

Playing with punctuation here The title of this piece is a quote from Faulkner giving advice on how to read his mispunctuated manuscript

Written for OLWG#64

We were sitting in the shade of the wide covered porch, not on the swing we weren’t courting or anything we were just friends but we occupied a couple of wooden rockers that my Grandfather had made years ago they were starting to get loose and I’d been thinking about regluing or rescrewing or whatever I had to do to make them last another 50 years

I’d brought out a bottle of cheap tequila with two jelly jar glasses and sat ‘em on a mismatched table between us she picked up the bottle with her right hand and filled one of the glasses about a third of the way up keeping the bottle in her grasp she downed the drink with her left hand before immediately refilling the jelly jar that she had claimed as her own only this time it was filled about halfway she pounded that one down just like she had the first one she poured a third

You might wanna go easy with that, Darlene I said you’ll feel like shit in the morning

Yeah maybe but I’ll feel better tonight she replied and she swallowed the third one down

What’s got you in such a tizzy I reached for the bottle and poured a bit in a jar for myself

Nothing

OK I said and drank my shot I put the bottle back on the misfit table

You remember a couple of months ago when I went to the river fishing with Larry she held up her empty glass to the porch light and studied it as she reached for the bottle again

No not really I answered her

Well we stayed overnight at the fish camp the story continued now I’m not blaming him or anybody else for that matter it was all consensual and everything

There was a long pause and she poured another tequila I figured I knew what was coming she threw the drink back

Shit Billy she said I’m late I don’t know what I’m gonna do

I reached out and took the bottle from her set it down on the wooden boards beneath my rocker then you really better go easy on that, Darlene

I reached over and took her hand her jar slipped from her grasp and clattered on the deck we sat together that way late into the night

This week’s prompts were:

beat poets
go easy with that, Darlene
in the desert

Written for the August 16th Flash Fiction Challenge

I was twenty-four the last time it came, that periodic star that causes ships to ground. She was twenty-six. We drove to the desert’s edge and climbed Blue Mesa in the dark; leaving behind the city lights, the traffic sounds, and the strains of club music that floated incessantly through the downtown streets. In the stillness, we spread our blanket and made love waiting for and watching Edmund Halley’s dirty snowball with its retrograde orbit and curved tail. She speculated that lovers had done the same for thousands of years before and will continue to until the comet dies.

The prompt and instructions were:

In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about a comet. You can consider how it features into a story, influences a character, or creates a mood. Go where the prompt leads.