Month June 2013

Dulce et decorum est – Friday Fictioneers

freyathewriter 36 Comments

Here is this week’s entry into the weekly challenge brought to us by the lovely Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Here are the rules: Use the photo as inspiration, write a hundred(ish) words – and share! Here goes my offering for this week – and I welcome your comments again!

Copyright - Managua Gunn

Copyright – Managua Gunn

– Dulce et Decorum est… –

‘Soldier, soldier, won’t you marry me? With your musket, fife and drum…’

Jonathan whistled the tune through his teeth, sighed, and pulled his shoulders back again, shifting his ceremonial rifle slightly on his shoulder. Four more hours to go and he could already feel pins and needles tingling in his weapon-bearing arm.

This wasn’t what he had signed up for – solo ceremonial guard of a deserted palace in the empire’s most inaccessible territory.

He pictured his imaginary alter ego, leading a charge on the enemy – a hero, with a proper, working weapon.

Life could be such a let-down.

——

Click the blue froggy to read other writers’ offerings – and enjoy!



Club – Trifecta Week 82

freyathewriter 29 Comments

So, now I’ve been well and truly bitten by the Trifecta bug!

Below, is my offering for week 82’s challenge word, which is ‘Club’. As you will see from the relevant blog post, the challenge is to write between 33 and 333 words of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose, based on the 3rd definition from the Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary.  This week the 3rd definition of ‘club’ is:

a : an association of persons for some common object usually jointly supported and meeting periodically; also : a group identified by some common characteristic <nations in the nuclear club>

b : the meeting place of a club <lunch at the club>

c : an association of persons participating in a plan by which they agree to make regular payments or purchases in order to secure some advantage

d : nightclub

e : an athletic association or team

Here’s my offering below – I hope you like it! Please check here for the other entries!

***********

The Quiet Times

Back in the Quiet Times, when the air wasn’t thick with Thought Traffic, a club like this was where we went to break up the monotony of our lives. We were young, then.

We would queue up outside, comparing our fake IDs, calculating how old we would be at our next pretend birthdays, just in case. The bouncers didn’t ask and they didn’t care. They would stand, arms folded, pretending to scrutinise us as we shuffled past, each implicit in the other’s deceit.

We would clamour at the sticky bar for a pint of lager, or a vodka and orange for the girls. The throb of the music snaked up the inside of our thighs, the bass notes singing between our teeth. We wanted it loud, long and to last forever.

That was the Quiet Times for you. We had no idea that twenty years later, we’d be back here again, together with our lady friends. The young ones stay away, too cool to admit that the incessant Thought Traffic streaming all day, every day, is too much to bear. They love that you can tap into someone else’s mind just by picturing them in your head. They don’t care that you can’t switch the damn chatter off. They want to know everything and have the attention spans of gnats.

We’re separated, just as we ever were. Young divided from old, like in the Quiet Times. But it’s us, the old guys and the grey women, queuing outside Top Spots. It’s us pressing our hands against the walls, touching the vibrations seeping through the brick, our eyes closed in pure ecstasy. We’re desperate to get inside, to drape our bodies over the speakers, to overload ourselves with rhythm and noise that makes our ears bleed.

Only the throbbing amps, turned up to the maximum, will empty our heads – of our thoughts, of their thoughts – and take us back to the Quiet Times.