butterflies in his stomach

It took us a while to find out where the sound had come from, but when we got there we saw all three cases tumbled to the floor, glass everywhere. And what Charles so aptly calls That Damned Idiot Mastiff Hound was just sitting there, unharmed, licking his lips, crumbs of rare butterfly wing clinging to the edge of his mouth. So that is where grandfather's legacy went.

Wednesday's Prompt: Saying, Quote, or Cliche

Wednesday's prompt is a saying, quote, or cliche, grabbed from the internet as randomly as possible.

Your quote, due by 6 pm Wednesday, is at last a cliched phrase: "butterflies in his stomach."

Where have we seen the butler story before?

Unsung, he keeps always to the shadows, opening every door for you, greeting your guests, nodding his head solemnly at your atrocious comments, blending in with the stark black-and-white decor of your house, as modern and decorative as all your furniture.

Unappreciated, he starts to think he is more ghost than man, and perhaps if your guests and relatives were ghosts as well, they would notice him.

Unnoticed, he slips poison into every last dish.

Where Have We Seen the Butler Story Before?

I don't get it. It wasn't a problem when we hired the nanny, or that cleaning lady -- what's her name? -- or the groundskeeper. But Antoine opens the door for them just once and now your family goes apeshit ballistic?

Monday's Prompt: Stolen From the Headlines!

Write about the selected headline by 6 pm Monday. Do not quote or rephrase it.

Your headline for Monday is: Where Have We Seen the Butler Story Before?

Liminal

Mrs. Preston always looks so happy in the moment before she is absolved of her sins, and the priest wonders why. He decides that she must look forward to her reconciliation with God.

In fact it is the only time in Mrs. Preston's life that she is not looking forward to anything - suspended between sin and absolution, she exists in a world without penalty or offense, a world without expectations.

Friday's Prompt: Liminal

Friday's prompt is a word, defined and grabbed as randomly as possible. Write about the experience of the word without using it in the story, trying to capture the meaning or essence.

Today's word is liminal, defined here - 1. At an intermediate state. 2. At the threshold of consciousness.

Post your story by 6 pm Saturday. Have a good weekend!

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

"None of it means a thing," he said, tossing back another glass of scotch, "it's empty and void and meaningless, like passing rains, or the crops that rise and fall and spring up again."

"But they don't know that," she said, quietly, "they sing our names and make likenesses and fill their poor heads up with such nonsense..."

"Then I'll give them fire and you'll see, it'll burn a hole right through their chests and their heads and the very world they stand on," rejoined Prometheus, pushing back his mop of hair and sitting fully upright, "and they will doubt everything."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

He spends months building the wardrobe, adjusting his accent and his vocabulary, practicing his expressions in the mirror as grainy hand-held video clips play in the background.

At first he fears discovery, but no one recognizes the obscure dead musician whose persona he has adopted. Everyone loves his style, his hair, his coat - they smile at him in the streets, and he smiles back, knowing he is no fake, but an avatar.

Wednesday's Prompt: Saying, Quote, or Cliche

Wednesday's prompt is a saying, quote, or cliche, grabbed from the internet as randomly as possible.

Your quote, due by 6 pm Wednesday, is the charmingly ironic: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." (Oscar Wilde)

Digging Up A Piece of Hollywood History

A childhood star emerges from obscurity with a scheme to blackmail the celebrity with whom he'd had an underage affair. He digs through his old lover's past, learning he was far from the only secret hidden there. After they arrest him on suspicion, sitting in his cell, the clues coalesce in his mind -- and suddenly, he realizes the stone-cold bitch who did it, and that she had just been waiting for a fool to pin it on.

Monday's Prompt: Stolen From the Headlines!

Write about the selected headline by 6 pm Monday. Do not quote or rephrase it.

Your headline for today is: "Digging Up A Piece of Hollywood History."

Edacious

A jeep blindsided him out of nowhere, in the middle of morning traffic. And from the moment I laid eyes on the hideous knot of wreckage that took my husband from me, it was like a curtain had been pulled away. Now everywhere I looked, death lurked, greedily, hungrily, just waiting to lunge at the oblivious living world.

Edacious

"Today, I'm really going to pay," she tells me as she takes her chai.

"Sorry," she says as she hands me back the empty mug, "I lost track of the time and plowed through it."

She buys her chai every day, so I put up with it - but I still won't let her post fliers for her speed-reading classes on our walls.

Edacious - Based on a True Story

Yes, the hunger may be intense, overwhelming, all-consuming, endless, ceaseless, mindless. But you still shouldn't tell your almost-entirely-male team "God, I could totally shove FOUR DONUTS in my mouth right now" to express how hungry you are unless you want to hear an intense discussion on the subject of your mouth's capacity for the rest of the day.

So I learned.

Friday's Prompt: Edacious

Friday's prompt is a word, defined and grabbed as randomly as possible. Write about the experience of the word without using it in the story, trying to capture the meaning or essence.

Today's word is edacious, defined here - devouring, voracious.

Post your story by 6 pm Friday.

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

The man set a silver coin on the counter, one imprinted with the king's seal - no provincial money, this.

But when the barmaid took his order, he gave it in a language I had never heard. My heart sank - it seemed I would never learn news of the city.

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

I hadn't talked to Lisa since she'd slapped me and called me a whore two years ago - radiation sickness, my family said, she'll be better soon, but I knew she'd always hated me. Now I sat listening to the doctor give me some delusional bullshit about how the diagnosis was alarming but I had a really great chance of survival if we got started on the treatment right away. Fingers nearly in fists, I called the one person I knew would be honest to me now.

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

As I was walking in one direction, and she coming from the same, I paused to ask what was behind her.
"The world is round," she said. "It's behind you, too."

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back"

I met my self on the street, coming the other way. I looked more haggard and lost than last time, and I knew it wasn't long now. Knew, too, that my clone could remember what had yet to happen -- and I felt my tongue catch with terror in my throat at the instant I should have asked.

Wednesday's Prompt: Saying, Quote, or Cliche

Wednesday's prompt is a saying, quote, or cliche, grabbed from the quote on the bag of tea I just brewed.

Your quote, due by 5 pm Wednesday, is: "To know the road ahead, ask those coming back," which my peppermint Good Earth teabag claims is a Chinese Proverb.

The Great Prostate Mistake

They all disappeared early one morning.

"We told you this would happen," said the conservatives, the nanoskeptics, the simple lifers, the religious leaders, the antisingularitarians, and the independent scientific advisory boards.

The glitch was fixed in the next nanosync, but for that week, there was a look in everyone's faces that would be immortalized in media coverage as emblematic of the age - bemused and uncomfortable, like teenagers trying on clothes from the previous summer and finding they no longer fit.

The Great Prostate Mistake

A man comes into our lives, charming and pathetic, with a weak laugh and a tragic past. We let him in of course, poor soul, who wouldn't, as the details mount, an escalating list of hysterical crises for which we feel duty bound to rescue and console. Then, one day, he makes a slip, goes too far, and we realize suddenly there was no dying father, no slow-moving cancer, no past addictions or allergies; just a charming and pathetic jerk who will have to skip town again, like he's surely done before.

The Great Prostate Mistake

You're fingering that trigger awfully hard. Your finger's slick, sweaty, aching to squeeze. But if that thing goes off, your life will change forever.

Monday's Prompt: Stolen from the Headlines!

Write about the selected headline by 6 pm Monday. Do not quote or rephrase it.

Your headline for Monday is: "The Great Prostate Mistake."

Steenth

Sixteen candles, eff that, we said, and sent Martha's brother Jake off with all the bills we could pool. It was Tuesday night so the school stadium was so desolate it was like a slasher flick. We huddled, sang happy birthday Shelly, and sixteen wild firecrackers blazed like thunder into the empty April sky.

Steenth

Opportunity knocks, but anticipation waits by the phone. A few years ago, you might have been waiting by the phone, but now the phone waits in your pocket. You anxiously round the block for the steenth time, wondering why, why doesn't she call?

Friday's Prompt: A word!

Friday's prompt is a word, defined and grabbed as randomly as possible. Write about the experience of the word without using it in the story, trying to capture the meaning or essence.

Today's word is: steenth, defined here on a word a day.

Post by 5 pm Friday. Then go out and have a drink, you've earned it.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

Does it matter how it started? It's a little tradition, something we do every other weekend or so just for fun, something we've been doing for so long that I can't really remember who started it, and can't help but think that's not important, that it's missing the point. Officer Browning doesn't seem to agree.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

She didn't look back as she took each painful step up the trail. She pictured the mountain crumbling behind her: each footfall leaving nothingness after it, the dirt and fragile flowers and gritty rocks falling into a hungry abyss. Not possible, she knew, but she also knew that if she ever looked back, she would never make it to the top.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

I stood on the corner and cursed the lifeless watch on my wrist. Pedestrians passed me, traffic lights changed, but the hands on the precision-crafted, military-grade timepiece never moved. All I could think was: worst botched international diamond heist in history.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

You never remember being hit in the face. It's always bang, flash, reel. And then the long, agonizing process of putting it into context before the next blow.

Saying, Quote, or Cliche

Wednesday's prompt is a saying, quote, or cliche, grabbed from the internet as randomly as possible.

Your quote, due by 5 pm Wednesday, is: "I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present." (W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)

How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard

Hope slunk past the waste allotments in the dark, the stench awful, the dim carcasses of all humanity's trouble and woes piled high. Hope walked past, hands in pockets, head down, deep in thought over her own grief at the loss of a mother whose death only had been crueler and more wounding than her life. Hope stepped at last into the broad expanse, the piers and rough, rocky beach laid out before her, just in time to see the first orange welling of the hot filament of dawn.

How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard

Pandora sat, body still and mind whirling, for a long time when she heard about the new model: it was not an easy decision that she came to but it was one he had programmed her to make. She was a beautiful machine, inside circuitous and outside draped in gleaming gears like jewelry, and the world could not afford to lose her. Night came and she pressed the pillow down on his face until he stopped struggling, crying tears of rust at having to do it, but knowing that she did not deserve to be made obsolete.

How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard

The junkyard is full of horrible things, shapes sinister and half-unmade. And so is Pandora's box... but the junkyard shrinks back when she walks by. Not from fear, but from jealousy.

Monday's Prompt: Stolen From the Headlines!

Write about the selected headline by 5 pm Tuesday. Do not quote or rephrase it.

Your headline for today is: "How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard."

I am the moderator. The prompter. The pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Also, I exaggerate, sometimes. Every week I will post a prompt. Every week stories will follow. Or there will be consequences.