Katy Perry
Guess what guys I added an email subscription so you can get regualr updates of my blog posts right in your in box. Over there on the right is the place to put your email if you would like to. :) whoo hoo I am moving into the technical era.
Okay it is Friday, definitely Friday all day right until the end of it. Today I had friends visit and they lent me a treadmill and it is a 'you bewt' 'bonza' 'ripper' of a treadmill with electric bits and adjustable bots and bibbety bobbety boo stuff. I have it in my bedroom at the foot of my bed and it is just far enough from the computer and close enough so I can put on my headphones and listen to music while I slog up the incline at .5km/hr breaking into a sweat just stepping onto it but I am planning on doing that every day until I can increase the speed of my walk to .7km/hr and one day I might even get to gosh golly ohm-g 1km/hr. I haven't actually forgotten back in the healthier times of my body being able to actually ride, run, climb and skip rope. Back when I was fit and not pre diabetic with a human suit over my actual self. I am twice the woman I should be and carrying around this other person is hard on the joints and very hard on my vital organs so treadmill be my friend. I shall reach for the stars, well I shall reach for regaining my health one tread at a time. :) wish me luck.
one of the celestial bodies oil pastel on primed paper I did for the 52 week challenge but did not upload
and the same piece reversed.
So it is day 9 of the story a day challenge and I am about to upload day 8. I am hoping to get up to date but here it is anyway...day eight.
The
Prompt
Write A Story Where Everything Hinges on Your
Character’s Most Desperate Desires
Tips
- Spend some time with a blank sheet of paper, before you write.
After you decide on your character and their need, jot down 15 scenarios
that could grow from that desire. (Writing 15 different scenarios means
that you’ll blast through the obvious storylines straight away, then
you’ll get to the weird and interesting ones that will make your story sing.
Keep going until you have 15 even though the last three will probably be
truly terrible.) Pick the one that interests you most then start writing.
- Make the desire all-consuming (for this instance, the duration of
this story). Focus on this moment in the character’s life. Mine it for
details, humour, horror or whatever you can get out of it.
The deepest most desperate desire: Revenge against
the cruel, unkind, violent, neglectful narcissistic, charismatic, evil parents
1
Character becomes immeasurably rich and has a security person throw parents out
2
Character invites parents to a dinner and has them ‘accidently’ poisoned with
mushrooms or seafood.
3 Character
cuts out all the vouchers from magazines and has thousands of parcels,
pamphlets, charity pleas and samples sent to their doors.
4 Character pays a stalker to shift things around in
their houses so they go crazy
5 Character has their handwriting forged and sends love
letters between them (after they have been apart for 35 years)
6
Character writes an expose of his/her childhood and makes a million dollars
telling the world what scummy parents they were
7
Character turns childhood into a block buster movie
8
Character reunites with parents and does everything to make them leave their
estate to him/her believing that they had reunited and all was forgiven
9 Character purchases rats, mice, scorpions, snakes and spiders from the black
market and infests their
houses
10 Character puts sand in their petrol tanks, cooking oil in the water tank,
removes all the toilet roll,
11 Character
pays a hacker to empty their bank accounts
12 Character
sends them a false letter saying they have won a cruise or better yet
purchases them one way tickets
13 Character pays to have them abducted and dropped in
the middle of the desert with each other
14
Character names their pets after the parents
15 Character re-enacts silence of the lambs and feeds
their livers to the pets
16 all or most of the
above…
The farm spread out across the base of the mountain. Neat paddocks
dotted with cows, tidy farm gates and cattle grids, long straight rows of fence
posts and the efficient work sheds.
Terry surveyed the picture perfect farm nestled amongst the surrounding
remnants of forest and shuddered. The
spare key they didn’t know about slid into the front door. Terry stood quietly
in the hallway, thrown back into memories of childhood trauma by the scents
that permeated from the house. He had not set foot in this place for years
trying to right the wrongs inside his head, avoiding them at all costs to hang
onto his fragile sense of self and biding his time for the moment he could make
their lives the hell they had made his.
The clock chimed the hour as it had for the 27 years of
Terry’s life, every single hour of every single day for twenty seven years.
“That will be the first thing that changes.” Terry reached
on top of the grandfather clock for the key, inserted it in the little brass
lock and opened the glass front. He reached his hand in and wrenched the
pendulum on the left then dragged the hour hand down with a vicious stab of his
index finger. He calmly locked the clock again and returned the key to its
original place. He wandered into the vast kitchen with its gleaming benches and
highly polished wood. All of the rodent traps and baits were easy to find and
dropped into the rubbish bin. Terry found a packet of biscuits and some
crackers and crumbled them into piles where the poison had been. He sat back
and smiled as the cabinet beneath the sink closed with a click. A thin trail of
honey across the bench would soon encourage six legged visitors.
In the pantry it was short work to swap sugar and salt,
flour and rice, coffee and brown sugar into their opposite containers. The salt
shaker soon contained baking powder and the pepper mill held cloves.
Terry looked around for another target.
He screwed the ornate ends off the curtain rods in the
living room and packed the hollow centres with tuna and small dead sea
creatures he had collected at the beach. Terry switched on all the heat lamps
in the bathrooms and collected the toilet rolls including the spares from the
laundry. He knew what his father’s internal fortitude was like and grinned as
he put all the toilet rolls in his car. One each of his mother’s precious
silver cutlery set went into a plastic bag, one dinner fork, one salad fork,
one fish fork, one fruit fork, one cake fork, one coffee spoon, one tea spoon,
one fruit spoon on and on ad nauseum and he recalled all the times he had had
to pack the things away after one of her show pony dinners in which she
humiliated anyone not intelligent enough to know which fork went with what. One
steak knife, one dinner knife, one bread knife he intoned as he slid them into
the bag with the tuneful clang only silver can make. He included the small soup
ladle and one half of the salad servers, the bone handled bread knife and of
course the lid of the gravy boat. Terry felt his face fix into a grim smile of
satisfaction envisioning her distress when she discovered the loss. He climbed
the step ladder to open the man hole and slid the bag of cutlery and assorted
silverware inside the roof then replaced the cover.
Terry put away the step ladder and stood with his hands on
his hips wondering what would be next. A few of the balls from the pool table
fit snugly under the mattress in the master bedroom. Spare glasses in the
inside pocket of the second best coat, one half of each of the best pair of
shoes placed on the top shelf of the laundry press behind the never used spare
quilts.
“Okay my beauties, it is time for you to make yourselves at
home, no wait I need to do one more thing before I set you free.” He replaced a
large canister from on the floor near the front door and picked up the
telephone. Fumbling inside his pocket he withdrew a scrap of paper with fifteen
digits on it. 00 11 7 812 100. A voice
came through and continued to drone repetitive words in a monotonous fashion.
“I haven’t a clue what time it is but thanks for asking,
pity I don’t speak Russian.” Terry lay the handpiece on the side table and
walked back to the front entry. “Okay lovelies now you can get out and find
your new home.” He unscrewed the lid and tipped hundreds of small spiders onto
the carpet. They were all young huntsmen who would quickly grow into large
huntsmen. They scuttled away from the door and climbed furniture and curtains.
Terry went back to the car and bought a shoe box and a second jar filled with
daddy long leg spiders and set them free in the kitchen and bathroom. He lifted
the front of the automatic air freshener on the hallway wall and removed the
floral spray and replaced it with a can of fart gas he had purchased at a joke
shop. He squatted down near the front door and gently opened the shoe box.
Dozens of mice, brown, white and mottled, scuttled away to any hidden crevice
they could find.
“Enjoy your holiday little fur fiends. I can only give you a
brief reprieve from death but this is a mini paradise compared with being snake
bait in a glass case.” He carefully closed the door and locked it again. He
threw the rubbish bag and the shoe box in the boot of the car and took out a
four litre bottle of cheap vegetable oil. The ladder was in its usual place in
the shed and was not too heavy to carry. “This bloody thing seemed to weigh a
ton when I was a kid. Okay let’s see how oil floats shall we.” The ladder
rested easily against the water tank and Terry enjoyed standing on top watching
the golden liquid drop and spread across the top of the water in the darkened
tank. “No mosquitoes that’s for sure but this is going to taste rancid by the
time the next storm pours in.” The last drops glooped into the pool below and
Terry put the ladder back. He laughed as he threw the plastic bottle into the
boot with the other rubbish. “Okay one last thing to finish this masterpiece.”
He took a small stick from his pocket, a skewer from his kebabs three nights
ago and found the valves on every tyre on every vehicle on the farm. The skewer
and the rubber gloves he wore joined the rest of the rubbish.
Back in the city he dropped two plastic bags full of
envelopes into the mail box, each one requesting a magazine subscription or a
ceramic doll, minted coins, decorative plates, commemorative coins and ongoing
subscription items from mints or requests for samples of tampons and oats,
coffee and custard powder and any item that was being hawked in a magazine or
newspaper from the past six months. All addressed to his parents.
Terry dropped the rubbish in bins in various suburbs before
finally arriving home. “Did you miss me, Father?” he ruffled the fur on his old
Labrador. “I missed you, you old fur brain. Where is Mother? I am home old
girl. Want some tuna?” A sleek grey cat slunk from the bedroom and looked at
him with disdain before deigning to curl around his legs and purr in welcome.
“Oh Mother you are such a sour puss, come on I have only been gone a day. I had
such a lovely adventure, I will tell you all about it over dinner.” Terry led
his pets to the kitchen. “I think when the olds return from their holiday I might
wait a few weeks and reconcile with them for their past wrongs. I might just
have to become the most dutiful son they could imagine and commiserate on all
their woes. What do you think Father? Mother? I believe they owe me an
inheritance to make up for my lack of childhood joy. I’ll wait a while and see
how they react to that fake cruise win they will receive and how they cope with
the dreadful problems with their bank accounts. They really should not be so
arrogant. I have known their bank details since my teens but they always
treated me with such bewildering underestimation. I am their son after all.”
Terry slid the food bowls onto the floor and petted both animals. His smile
radiated his pleasure.
“We might have to have a celebratory dinner to welcome home
the prodigal son who will save the farm and rescue them from bankruptcy. Not
too soon of course but we should have their favourite foods cooked once they
rewrite their Will to make me their sole beneficiary, and they will. You know
Mother, your namesake always did like mushrooms and Father yours likes them
too. I think mushrooms will be on the menu for that celebratory dinner. What do
you think?” 1560
My daughter came home after school and informed me her brand new saxophone had disappeared from the school music store room. She only had it a week and I was immeasurably upset by its disappearance. I began tracking down phone numbers and trying to find if anyone else had picked it up by mistake instead of their own sax but to no avail. I am hoping it will be returned by band practice in the morning. I spoke to the school reception and told them of its disappearance and was later told that the music department head was attempting to call students who may have accidentally taken it. If I was in that mythical realm where writers are rolling in cash and living the high life I would not bat an eye at losing a trifling musical instrument worth the equal of two months of household income but alas alack I live in the reality of writer making not one cent living on a shoe string so the loss of such an item puts a long term serious pressure on the budget. I laugh when I am asked how much money writers make.
