Hazer

Thank you again mum23. This has turned out to be a busier then usual day and I will not get this posted before the majority of you are sound asleep. The word list is as follows...

adept

arcane

collaborate

disjointed

dismal

fierce

freely

har monica

irrespective

obliterate

pseudo

reeducate

unearthly

Word count.....312....give or take a word or two needed to finish a thought.

This may be unprecedented but I would be ever so pleased if you would consider weaving your story around my little cast of characters called "The Family". i have them posted on page 8 of the community forum if you care to look them up. This is not necessary to win the challenge of course, but I would love to see where your imaginations would take them.
I look forward to your submissions. Challenge will run until March 1.

marg

Congratulations, Hazer - what a great winning entry v:)

You've offered quite an 'educated' list of words, but hopefully I can think of something appropriate.. and as pages tend to change, I think this is the topic you're talking about ?

The Family: http://www.thinkdraw.com/forumPosts.php?topicId=1226

Hazer

Thank you marg. Yes, that would be the one. And I just noticed harmonica looking a bit disjointed!

Qsilv

“Har har-har! Monica yer a riot Ain’t she a riot, Vinny? Look at her, Vito… Jersey… hilarious, no?! Why I could almost stuff her in one of my pockets now,” chortled big old Pockets-Paesano, giving that unearthly cackle he’d typically let loose whilst emptying a particularly fruitful night’s haul from his capacious great-coat.

Eager to collaborate with a superior, Jersey-Boy-Jon crooked up one corner of his mouth, but Cousin-Vinny just looked fierce… and Uncle-Vito was looking everywhere BUT at Monica. What ALL of them were NOT doing was looking like they thought ANYone was a riot just now.

If The-Don were here, they might have been laughing, Well, Baby-Tooth might not; he was never much inclined to open humor. But that was the problem. The-Don was missing. Baby-Tooth-Bambino was the last one to have seen him, and now… well now HE seemed to be missing too. Which pretty well killed the idea of his having exterminated… er… re-educated the older power boss in a bid to take over the territory.

Monica was tied up in thick white cording like a graceful if somewhat disjointed pseudo-caterpillar, lying on her side on a dismal gray scrap of carpet. She was staring over at Pockets, and doing that slow lowering-and-raising of her eyelashes thing… if she hadn’t had a gag in her mouth, they all knew her tongue would’ve been doing that same slow movement.

Pockets was an adept pickpocket all-right, but his hearing wasn’t the best. Irrespective of that small flaw, he was amazingly alert so he might be forgiven, just this once, missing the cue. But you know, in this arcane game, there’s no forgiveness. Jimmy- the-Greek suddenly appeared behind him, seemingly right out of nowhere, and freely took (ahem) appropriate steps to obliterate any trace of Pockets’ EVER having been there,

Monica spat out her gag, winked at the others –and laughed!

Qsilv

(well it'd be 312 IF I hadn't let a space slip in between "Jimmy-" and "the-Greek" ...tsk! No forgiveness there either...) ;-P

Hazer

Oh Q, what a great job of using the word list and fitting in all the characters plus an extra one out of my typo...har-har! Love it!
Will anyone else take up the challenge? Marg...are you there??

Qsilv

These things are fun --loved your word list, Hazer!

I think these are easy enough to do, but admittedly there's a trick to it. Once I find a story line using just 2 or 3 of the words and utterly ignoring the rest, I just blather along til it hits approximately the right number of words.

THEN I begin subtracting and adding back until the other words are forced in! Half the time the whole story winds up changed... pffft! If I've found a punch line or two, I'm uber-smug.

In this one tho', your characters threw me for a while. Remembering our audience I didn't want to get too coarse, but hey, I thought... it's Hazer ...and she did 'em in candy... I'm missing something here... so I Googled 'em and discovered a whole world of pizza parlor/pool hall/pub life that I WISH we had around here! (Never could find the ad tho'.)

Words are a lot like palette pieces, aren't they??

(...tossing a few around like a bread-crumb trail for temptation..... and pointing out that I never did get the ACTUAL word "harmonica" squeezed in here.... so c'mon marg.............!) ;>

marg

In a dismal bar off 38th Street, Vito and Ronaldo huddled together over their whiskey sours.

‘It’s that Greek’, muttered Vito at last. ‘Monica never would’a left me if it hadn’ta been for him’. Ronaldo grunted in assent.

Vito’s words became disjointed.. ‘No good. .. gotta do somethin’. ..can’t take it.’

Ronaldo looked up at Vito’s face. Vito’s eyes were fierce in the dim light, sweat pouring freely from his brow, hands knotting as he gripped his glass… ‘Help me, Roni.. you gotta help me.’

Ronaldo glanced surreptitiously around the bar, then leant forward and returned Vito’s pleading look.

’There might be a way’ he murmured.

------------------------------------------------------------------

From the pseudo-smart heights of the Palisades, ‘Joysey-boy’ Jon, known adept of the arcane arts of financial reallocation, looked across the dark river and wondered how much time Vince would need to close the deal.

Damn the Greek, he thought, if it hadn’t been for him, they’d have landed the mark a week ago, irrespective of what the market was doing.

Coming to a decision, he buzzed Paesano to come in.

He'll know of a way, he thought.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Vinny left the mark at his hotel and wandered back downtown, empty handed and cursing the Greek for his failure.

He was almost down to 42nd when the dark green, 70’s model Impala eased down the kerb alongside him. For one unearthly moment his heart seemed to stand still, but then he saw that Monica was alone – and what was more, tears were streaming down her face.

Sliding into the empty passenger seat, he patted her dimpled, slightly damp arm and said ‘You too, huh ?

Don’t worry, I’ve thought of a way’.

------------------------------------------------------------------

‘So …’ summarised the Don, carefully inspecting the polished tip of his Gucci spat.. ‘so, you all believe that we can no longer afford to collaborate with our erstwhile partner, Dimitrios ?’

No one spoke.

‘So.. in effect..’ continued the Don, taking a pristine tissue from his pocket and gently furbishing his Marc eye-glass..’..you are all suggesting that there needs to be a program to re-educate our, ahem, ‘ex’ colleague ?’

There was a quickly suppressed ‘Har !’ from Vito at the ‘ex’, but no one spoke.

The Don eased himself up and wandered over to the oak sideboard to sniff appreciatively at a late-blooming rose. Turning, then, to face the room, he swept his gaze paternally over the assembly. ‘Well, well..’, he said.

No one spoke.

As he wandered back to his chair, with everyone’s eyes riveted on his back, he paused to ruffle the hair of his favourite grandson.

‘Hey, bambino – you up to it ?’

Ronaldo grinned up at him. ‘Sure, Pops – I’ll obliterate every trace of, uh.. anti-family sentiment – without prejudice, of course !’

The Don smiled. ‘That’s my boy ! Vinny – help your cousin; and you too, Pockets..
..but we do this my way.’

marg

I'm so sorry - I was planning to make it funny, but the words just came out a bit dark and manic, so I let them run..

.. and blow, I never included 'harmonica' either.

Well, I'm out of the race but I do have a highly-(self)-polished halo shining over my head for having a go

Hazer

Bravo, marg! I love how Monica has made her way into your story...I almost feel compelled to do a caricature of her too....maybe later. Thanks for "having a go" at this cast of characters. I was quite intrigued....wouldn't want to be in "that Greek's" shoes. I think if I presented these stories to Baby Tooth's you and Q would both be enjoying a free round of your favorite brew.

Hazer

One more day if anyone else wants to have a crack at it. I'm very curious to see what chelydra and mum23 would come up with. And, please don't let the caricatures scare you away...it doesn't necessarily have to be about them.

marg

Hey, come on, Hazer - how's about you having a go - you know the Family better than we do ?

Hazer

Well, I guess that would be only fair considering I'm the one who posted them, although I 'm feeling totally inadequate at the moment. Let me sleep on it. One day left...no pressure.

mum23

Oh no... you're pushing my guilt buttons!

The thing is, I love your word list, and a story formed in my mind almost immediately I saw it, but I haven't had a chance to write it down yet. I'll try... just to show willing...

Qsilv

(Guilt buttons! Yay mum! ...and they look soooo good on you!) ;>

~~~~~~~~~~~


Three angels were lounging around on a cloud. Angels are adept at that stuff. Not that their lives are boring… once they rise to an arcane level where they entangle themselves in the disjointed affairs of mortals, their lives get really full. But that’s the point --even angels need to take a break. The part of them that thinks and feels, or thinks it feels, based on pseudo-memories of what endocrine-based-feelings used to be like, needs refreshing, re-stabilizing, re-… well… down-time, now and then.

One of them pulled out a harmonica. The others grinned. “Where’d you learn THAT trick”, asked the pudgy one in the middle. (The youngest one had noticed they could freely choose to be svelte or cherubically-rounded or muscle-bound --and rather fierce, actually, quite irrespective of their original forms. S/he was still tinkering.) “Well”, said s/he, “I got to playing with metals and somehow...” s/he shrugged... “I don’t know, exactly, this just… grew! Still can’t play worth fish though. Did any of you?”

“Did any of us what”, asked the tall skinny dark one, idly blowing wishes off a dandelion. “Play an instrument? Just my voice... if that counts.”

“Oh it does! It does!” They started laughing...

...the air filled with …not music exactly... but a celestial feeling... harmony… resonating with everything... birds, of course... other things too... trees moved as if there were a breeze... even fish, undulating... the sparkling waters themselves... live people down-below started looking around…

The angels stretched like cats (you can’t obliterate a habit like that... it stays with one forever), stood up slowly... a little too gracefully for normal mortals… and nodded.

“Well, that was nice... shall we go deal with that Dismal-Don-Dude and Baby-Tooth-Bimbo and…” (“Bambino’”, whispered one...) (...“Whatever”, said the other) “We can collaborate --but YOU get to re-educate Monica!”

(...and down-below, people heard an unearthly moan...)



…

Qsilv

(...hands the tin of polish back to marg.....)

mum23

I’m sorry Hazer. I tried. Really, I did.

The story that came into my head immediately I saw the word list had lots of potential, might even have been beautiful, I think. It involved the kind of reality that the likes of Vito and Vinny, Jon and Jimmy and even that yet-to-be–drawn har… Monica, I refer to, of course… wouldn’t recognise if they fell over it. A world of expansive skies, guitars and a harmonica, plaintive chords dissipating into the deep silence of a moonlit night, and love…

But, you played so beautifully in the previous challenge that I really wanted to play nicely in yours, so I did my best to write you a story involving The Family. The problem is that I can’t even read stories of the gangster, be fierce and shoot-em-dead or otherwise obliterate everybody genre, let alone write them, and irrespective of how hard I try, every attempt thus far has ended in a pseudo-gangster story, dismal and disjointed and accompanied by a silent, devastatingly unearthly scream of frustration on my part. I just can’t do it

It’s fine for the likes of Qsilv and marg to collaborate on this… they’re obviously adept at this kind of thing; the words just tumble out freely and naturally as if they have some sort of arcane understanding of that other world. Such lovely folk I always imagined them to be; I can’t easily imagine how or where they would have come across such people. I’m afraid I just don’t get it, and I have no desire to re-educate myself.

Unfortunately, now the other story won’t work for me either, so I’m afraid I’ll just have to sit this one out and enjoy watching how the experts do it. There’s still time for marg to add some more, and hopefully some of the other regulars will join in too…

marg

ooohhh.. you wicked, wicked (and essentially brilliant) person, mum..

.. thanks for the tin of polish, Qsilv - I know exactly whose head I'm going to throw it at..

mum23

ahem... you're the one that can write this stuff, marg. Mine was an act of desperation, because I really couldn't make it work! Better look again at who's brilliant...

Luckily, I have the luxury of knowing that I'm not in the running, so it's fun just to join in.

Waiting with bated breath to see who's going to wear that tin of polish...

cathyallheart

Ta-dum, my fingers click, Ta-dum, the only sound. I hate the sight around me, a few meager chairs. The gray paint is peeling, everything is grey. That is, everything but me.

I can’t really remember when I last saw a human being, it’s been many years. My index finger falls before the rest, ta-dum. If I try I can hear a harmonica. Visions of laughter and sunshine try to greet me, But they are of days long past.

Still, I remember our meadow was one of the last places to loose color, with the little garden gate with ivy, the purple flowers.

I slip up and walk around the room to the window. I sigh; everything is an unearthly shade of gray. Arcane almost. The disjointed voices of those, who chose to be obliterated ring in the silence.

I press my face into the window; the glass is cool. I close my eyes and I picture the flush of pink as the sun had rose in the sky long ago. Those who were not adept with this world had freely collaborated together to find a way out, or so they had said. They wanted to forget, forget everything, and make everyone else forget life too. They were mad that I tried to stop their plan. Their fierce words seem to never be free to leave my head.

I laugh, I’m a ghost town. In this pseudo world, I’m trying to reeducate myself. This world is a fake, artificial, and me? Irrespective of that fact, I’m still here, trying to live.

“And all I have left is my lofty dreams and idealism,” a tear trickles down my cheek.

Katherine bleats, “At least I have you.”

I have to get out so I run, letting my feet lead. As I slow I can’t help thinking that, like a murky river, this town is dismal.