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Showing posts from June, 2011

Flash Fiction Challenge: LittleWatchGirl

This week's challenge was here . I just noticed that I was at exactly 1000 words (MSWord says), so I guess I'll stop. In Which LittleWatchGirl Plans her Obsolescence so She Can Retire TrainMaster (catch phrase: "Keeps the trains running on time!") couldn't have sent FutureMan over to me to explain how the campaign was supposed to work because I was the best person to explain it. In fact I felt like I was the weak link. When your superpower is about office meetings, you can't be expected to be good with weapons. They had chosen mine for me thinking I'd be good with springs and winding. Perhaps TrainMaster had heard that I'd asked SteamBoss who would be going on this campaign. SteamBoss (catch phrase: "Black belches bad; white belches good!") had said "What do you mean?" I'd said, "Is anyone I hate going?" SteamBoss couldn't see my eyes. Wearing goggles all the time protects your secret identity. My superhero name is

Flash Fiction Challenge: Familiar

The challenge was here . My sister had read the “dollheads” challenge and asked what happened next, so when I was thinking about robots (and I hate robots) I wanted to find a way to make one in Bucklepunk world. A familiar would have warned her before the man was in sight of the house. He'd come up the streambed, hopping one stone to the next, balancing in an imaginary duel. She didn't recognize him, but his fancy dress said he was official. Abigail and her daughter Susannah had hidden in the burnt-out shell of their house, made not a sound as he wandered through the yard, poked at the garden, the foundation, the pottery shed, the wires she'd run to the mill to siphon power from the waterwheel. After a tense hour he left, back the way he'd come, towards the mill. "We need a familiar," said Abigail. "It would give us away," said Susannah. "Not if no one recognizes what it is," said Abigail. Always the familiar gave witches away. It followed

How I learned to do Crow

Crow is a yoga move wherein you crouch down and put your hands on the floor, shoulder-width apart. Then you put your knees on your elbows and launch forward to balance on your hands. I was first introduced to crow when I was doing the Monday night yoga class at the Y. I, and most everyone else, would roll from our toes to our hands and back, never really committing ourselves. Then one class I fully committed, and did it for about six seconds, before falling off onto my knees, getting some of my most spectacular bruises EVER. I was able to show them off for a couple of weeks. They were awesome, because everyone seems to think yoga is so gentle . Anyway, after that bad experience, I was back to pathetically rolling from feet to hands and back, no commitment, no risk, week after week. Then a couple of weeks ago I was screwing around at my Acro class, and the boy asked what I was trying to do, and I showed him, and he crouched down, hands shoulder-width apart, and launched into the pose, w

Flash Fiction Challenge: Axilism

The challenge was here . I found most of the stuff at the prompt’s link pretty horrible, like really women-hating even. And I only got to the end of the As before I found my title. This story may be offensive to some--triggering, maybe. But it’s the story I wrote. It was Greer’s idea. He phoned me up. "Dude, we're going to have a rape gang down in La Salle Park." Rape gangs hadn't really come up in grade 8 sex ed. Maybe Greer knew, because it came up in the grade 10 version. "You going to come by and pick me up?" I said. "Nah, it's getting late," said Greer. "It's getting late. Meet us there at 2." I threw a bottle of water, three apples, and three granola bars into my backpack, along with my cell. Greer never eats the apples I bring, but I packed one for him anyway, just to be polite. I figured Johnny would be coming with us too. We met at the edge of La Salle park. If Buffalo is the armpit of America, then it’s not a very sweaty

What Flows Downstream

The challenge was here . I had the world BucklePunk in my head (someone had tweeted it in an offhand manner) and in my interpretation, it’s Steampunk populated by Puritans, who didn’t have steam power... so not steampunk at all. “You should check the run down to the waterwheel,” said Cotton Brown. Technically, that was Cotton's job. They had portrayed the situation as a win for everyone -- the mill got an assistant, and Cotton was out of the village, so everyone's daughter was safe. In reality, it was just a win for the town, with a spy at the mill. Nathaniel Proctor had never asked for an assistant, anyway. He sighed and went outside. The morning air smelled like honey, and hummed with the sound of bees. Of course, bees led to screaming, followed by accusations of being afflicted by a witch. Everything was a potential plague in Massachusetts Bay Colony. The run above the sawmill was pulled over so it wouldn't turn the waterwheel; he'd disengaged it before the storms ha

Take Down the Lot of You

The challenge came out on the Friday before karate camp. My first thought was “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” but that’s kind of been done. I was in the dojo, marching in line, and I started catching sight of my toenail polish, and the floor was terrible. And this year we didn’t have to cook for ourselves, but in previous years we did, and often people would discuss what food item it might have been that made them sick. The first thing you do when karate camp starts is to deal with the floor. Savannah set pairs of junior belts to running back and forth across the room with whippy straw brooms. "There's a better broom in our cabin," said Tonio. "You could come with me and get it." This to Savannah, of course. When they did pairworks this weekend, she wouldn't be partnering him. There's a real broom in the dining hall," said Susan. "Wide, with felt." "It's probably sticky with fallen foodstuffs?" asked Tonio. They swe

Out there -- May 2011

"Dolphin". Still at market #1. I need to stop being so disfunctional and figure out what's up with that. “Bezoar”. At market #1.