Prompt #5 Response

Donovan looked over the rail.  The waves rocked the small ship, crashing against the bow.  Every now and then he’d spy the silver-blue flash of a dolphin riding the crest of surf thrown up by the prow of the sturdy sailing vessel.  He’d never imagined a life as a sailor.  He figured he’d grow up and go into farming, just like his father, meet a nice girl, get married and grow old all without ever leaving the confines of his small town.  Perhaps a trip into the city for special occasions.  But overall, a hardworking, though largely sedentary life.

All that had changed when his father had taken him to the port city of Shiloh to see the prince.  It was a rare opportunity for folks in his part of the kingdom.  The royal family so rarely ventured outside the capitol.  But it wasn’t the royal procession that had caught Donovan’s imagination.  It was the tall ships, standing proudly at anchor out in the harbor, or tied up alongside the quay.  Masts thrust into the sky like naked trees, sails billowed and the rich scent of exotic spices and the strange sight of foreign cargos promised adventures just over the horizon.

All at once, the possibilities of life lay open to Donovan.  The sea promised escape.  An asylum from a life of drudgery and boredom that he had never felt, but now desperately feared.  His father hadn’t taken it well when Donovan first broached the subject.  But eventually he gave in, realizing that he really couldn’t keep Donovan on the farm – that he would just run away.  And deep down, he had felt the constraining nature of life in the small hamlet he called home.  He could hardly begrudge his only son the opportunity to see more of the wide world than he himself had seen.  So Donovan left with his father’s blessing, and headed back to Shiloh to try and make his way in the world.

In the year and half since leaving home, he had traversed the narrow sea and the broad ocean.  He had travelled to foreign ports and met foreign women, very different from the girls back home.  Whenever they pulled into Shiloh, Donovan would post a letter to his father, to let him know that he was alright and to fill him in on his latest adventures.

Of course, it wasn’t all fun.  Life on a sailing vessel was no easier than life on a farm.  In some ways, it was a good deal harder.  His first month on board, Donovan could scarcely keep a meal down.  The other sailors had a good laugh at his expense, but eventually he found his sea legs.  Perhaps the worst experience happened that first winter.  The weather had turned nasty, and while Donovan had lived through winter storms before, he had always done so on the farm, where you could depend on the ground to remain firm, no matter how badly the howling winds shook the rafters.  But a winter storm on a ship was a very different matter.

He both cursed and blessed the pounding rain and blowing winds, as they hid both his tears and his terrified wails from his fellow crewman.  As the ship stormed up tall crests and plunged into deep troughs, Donovan was sure he was about to die.  He tried to hide under a dry space near the bow, his head tucked under the gunwale to keep the rain off.  He used his body to shelter the piece of parchment as he scratched out a goodbye to his father.  The words were barely legible due to the rocking of the ship and the streaming rain.  But Donovan spelled out how much he loved his father and then jammed the paper into a bottle, corking it as well as he could.

He closed his eyes, said a small prayer that his missive would somehow find its way to Shiloh, where perhaps the postmaster would read it and send it on.  Then he rose up over the rail and hurled the bottle into the storm, one final letter, without a stamp.

Prompt #5

Write a story using at least three of the following five terms:

Cloud, stamp, marble, sailor, asylum

Due: May 10th

Prompt #4 response

We pulled up the Japanese Garden and I knew that this was it.  This was where he was going to propose to me.  Earlier in the week, he'd told me he had a plan, but that the ring wasn't going to be ready.  What did I want to do?  I told him to go ahead and I got a ring my grandfather brought home from Vietnam for my mom, had it polished and lent it to him for the big day.  Now, we were finally here.

I ran quickly to the bathroom and when I came out he was on the phone.  He hung up and I offered to grab his camera bag for him out of the back of the car.  It was incredibly heavy.  I wasn't sure why.  We went into the Japanese Garden and wandered around.  It was a beautiful place, but I wasn't really paying attention.  I just kept wondering when he was going to ask.  This had to be it.  Didn't it?  I mean, we'd talked about getting married and he knew my answer.  He had spoken with my dad and gotten his blessing.  Hell, my parents may have loved him more than I did.  (Not really, but it sure could seem like it).

We kept wandering through the park and I was beginning to wonder, was I wrong?  Was this not where he was planning to ask?  I knew we had reservations at our favorite restaurant later.  Was he planning to go cliché and propose at dinner?  How would I handle it if he did it so publicly?  He knows me better than that.  Doesn’t he?

Finally, he suggested we wander up to the oriental gazebo up on the hill. I saw two older couples leaving and realized he must have been waiting for them to clear out of the space.  We entered the shaded space and sat on a bench.  He took his camera bag off his shoulder and unzipped a pocket and pulled out….

His laptop.  What?!  “What are you doing?” I asked, completely confused.

“Just, trust me,” he said, as he booted up the laptop.

“Is that why your bag was so heavy?”

“Yes.”

“Ahh.  I was wondering.”

At this point, he had the laptop booted up and handed it to me, hitting play on Windows Media Player.  I was highly confused, until the video started to play.  Suddenly, I was presented with clips of The West Wing, all starting CJ Cregg and Danny Kincannon.  I smiled.  This had been a metaphor for our relationship since we started dating, since, like Danny, he had asked me out a bunch of times, and like CJ, I finally said yes to one of them (or asked him out, if you believed his version).  We were both huge fans of the show, so it worked out well.  He even brought me goldfish crackers on our first date (but thankfully, not a real goldfish.  My cats would have eaten it). 

The clips ran through all seven seasons, including our favorite CJ and Danny moments.  He sat next to me, watching with me.  Finally, the clips came to a close.  He got down on one knee, on the hard concrete of the gazebo floor and pulled out a beautiful ring box.

He told me how happy I made him and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.  He asked me if I would marry him.  I couldn’t hold back my smile and barely held back tears.  I said “Yes” immediately.  We kissed.  It was the happiest day of my life.

Prompt #4 Response -- The Slow Fade

Steve calls her “Ice Queen.” She's no royalty, so I call her “Cold Bitch.”

I’ll admit that she is beautiful. She has thick dark hair and penetrating blue eyes. But her frigidity overpowers her beauty. She rarely smiles. Instead, she seems to celebrate her own aloofness. Revel in her ability to distance herself from others. She never even looks at me, apparently, because I’m his new girlfriend.

I despise her, not only for everything she did to him, but for her refusal to be decent to me. As if its not bad enough that she broke his heart and treated him cruelly, she’s relegated me to ride in the back of her mini-van, shivering on the floor like a refugee.

When Steve had first mentioned that since he didn’t have a car, he’d ask her to drive us from the airport to his apartment, I thought he was joking. He assured me that Cold Bitch owed him a favor and she was his only friend with a car. But when he’d lost his phone at the airport before we’d left, he didn’t have anyway to let her know that we’d arrived. She wasn’t waiting for us inside at baggage claim or at the passenger pick-up area outside. When we were waiting outside, shivering in the winter cold, I could only hope that she’d come.

After about ten minutes, she pulled up to the curb and rolled down her window. She didn’t acknowledge me; the chill in her voice was for him alone. “I have been waiting for almost half an hour. You can find your own fucking ride home.” She continued to yell about how she'd wasted another thirty minutes of her life on him and why hadn’t he answered his damned phone.

He screamed back at her in a failed attempt to explain. They weren’t yelling at each other, as much as over each other. Their angry outbursts were practiced and bitter. I started singing in my head to distract myself and I was startled when Steve defiantly ran in front of her van as she was rolling up the window.

She looked at him, then over her shoulder like she might back out of the parking lot to avoid him. She sighed and rolled the window back down.

“Get in,” she said acknowledging me for the first time. “Don’t break anything.”

I reluctantly reached for the door. I was surprised to see that she’d removed every seat in the van except for hers. The floor was covered with stuff – clothes, a guitar case, books. I tentatively started pushing things out of the way, wondering if she’d removed the seats just for picking us up. Steve was more aggressive and he pushed her stuff into a pile so there was a small place for us to sit.

The quiet tension was unbearable.  I thought maybe I could diffuse the situation and that she’d be more kind if I showed some appreciation, so I told her, “Thank you for the ride.”

“I don’t want to hear a single word from either of you. I swear if you talk again, I will fucking kick you out of my van. I don’t care where we are.”

Steve wrapped his arms around me and whispered in my ear that it was going to be okay. He kissed me on my cheek and I believed him. I thought about how we’d laugh about this later. He’d tell me other stories about the awful things she’d done to him when they’d been together. He’d tell me again how much happier I made him. He laid his head in my lap and I rubbed the base of his neck where his boyish unruly curls ended until he fell asleep.

I noticed that I could look at Cold Bitch in the darkened rear view mirror without her seeing me. She was watching the road with her piercingly blue eyes. When she suddenly looked away I was afraid that she’d seen me looking at her until I saw she was reaching for a CD.

She put it in and sang along quietly to a Rilo Kiley song. I wasn't sure if I could hear her but I was sure I saw her lips moving in the mirror. “The slow fade of love." Her gloved fingertips tapped the steering wheel with the beat of the acoustic guitar.

I couldn't believe it, I loved Rilo. She kept singing, louder now, so that her voice was audible, “It's my gradual descent, Into a life i never meant.” Her voice, softer and sweeter than I’d guessed it would be, revealed her fragile side. She lost her inhibitions as she slipped into the lyrics. I realized then that her icy exterior was her protection from the hurtful world. I saw her not as Cold Bitch, but as a girl just like me looking for true love and grasping for happiness. Maybe she’d admired his curls once too, long before their mistakes and regrets replaced their love.

I wanted to tell her all these things, maybe even suggest we could be friends, but I was afraid if I spoke, she’d return to her icy façade. So instead, I sang along with her, quietly whispering the lyrics under my breath.

Prompt #4

Think of a scene from your own life and write a brief description of it from the point of view of someone else who was there. Due May 2, 2014

Prompt #3 Response -- The Dancing Shoes

The stress of the last few weeks had weakened her.  Under usual circumstances, she was charitable toward her husband.  Since the night they met, and he’d asked her to dance in the crowded room, she’d admired, and eventually loved, his boyish smile and contagious glee.  Whenever she thought she heard disinterest in his voice or felt that his touch was dismissive, she made a conscious effort to reexamine her judgment of him and to assume her assessment was wrong.  Although the hardships and years they’d shared together had aged him, she still found it easy to forgive him when he smiled.  She’d avoided most arguments with him simply by thinking of him favorably.

But that evening, she was too tired.  The responsibilities that she’d been juggling and the emotional weight of the last few weeks had taken their toll.  Their upcoming cross-country move had brought domestic upheaval and extra duties at work and her ailing grandfather’s health had worsened considerably. 

So when he’d asked her, casually enough, if she had remembered to pick up more boxes on the way home, she’d been incapable of charitable thoughts.  Instead of treating it like the innocent question it probably was, she’d heard in his voice a tone of disrespect of her stress and a critique of her forgetfulness. She’d already criticized herself when she’d realized, only moments before, that she hadn’t remembered to stop at the store.  But now, she resented him for pointing out her faults.

She came to the conclusion that he was criticizing her so quickly that she’d responded, “No, I didn’t, did you get them" in a voice slathered with sarcasm, before she’d even consciously realized that she was angry with him.  He hadn’t sensed her mood before then, but her tone was so unmistakable that he quipped back, “I didn’t get them, because you’d said you would.”  It wasn’t a particularly clever remark, but the simple truth of it, spoken so cool, unnerved her.  She was shouting back at him now in a high-pitch strain, “Only because I am doing everything for this damned move.  Maybe I wouldn’t have forgotten them if you helped with anything.”  He responded, still cool.  The rhythm of the argument continued jaggedly as she shouted long-winded rants and he responded with calm staccato.

When she'd shouted as much as she wanted, she’d picked up a shoebox that she'd intended to throw with furious deliberation to punctuate her point, but he stopped her, grabbing the box.  “Are you putting on your dancing shoes?”  She was flustered and speechless until she saw the slow boyish smile spreading from his eyes, looking youthful now, to his mouth.  She was startled that he still transfixed her, as he had when he first asked her to dance, despite her anger and the heaviness of the years.  Charity swelled back into her, and she laughed, “Only if you put yours on first.”

Prompt 3 Response

“We’ve detected the use of weapons of mass destruction, sir.”

“How many times is that?”

“At least the third noted instance, sir.”

“Run through them for me, would you?”

“Yes sir.  Let’s see, first was the use of a chemical weapon by an aggressor against a defending force.  Second, the use of two nuclear warheads, fairly low yield.  Finally, and most recently, the use of chemical weapons against rebelling forces during a civil war.”

“Well that’s it then.  Prepare to invoke the Wolfram Protocol.  Third strike and they’re out, to use their metaphor.”

“Sir, if I may, there has been some debate that the use of the nuclear weapons may have actually saved tens of thousands of more lives than they cost.”

“Noted.  However, we can’t take a utilitarian view of these things, and you know it.  Once they’ve unleashed that beast, there’s no putting it back in its cage.  Just look at the way it’s affected the last half century.”

“Yes, sir, of course you’re right, but can’t we do something less drastic?  Perhaps if we put in an appearance—“

“And what good would that do?  You’ve seen their cultural output.  There’s every likelihood they’d turn their weapons on us.”

“Yes sir, but with their primitive technology—“

“Enough arguing, Ensign.  The Treaty of Magrathea is clear.  Unchecked aggression cannot be allowed to expand beyond the confines of the planet’s surface.  If they are willing to use such weapons on themselves, they’ll have no qualms about unleashing them on others.  They were given nearly a century to reign themselves in, and multiple chances.  According to the logs, the Protocol was almost unleashed 30 of their cycles ago, when they planned to weaponize space with these things.  But they managed to agree to keep them terrestrially based.  That was the only reason they were allowed to go on this long.

“They have failed to check themselves and so it is our responsibility to do it for them.  It’s the reason we were stationed here.  Now, prepare the Protocol!”

“Yes sir.”  The ensign straightened up and saluted before turning to a nearby panel.  “There appears to be a suitably large asteroid in the belt out between the fourth and fifth planets of this system.  We’ll begin altering its trajectory in towards their orbit.”

The captain nodded.  “Any chance they’ll be able to avoid it?”

The ensign shook his head.  “No sir.  They may not even detect it until it’s too late.  They haven’t invested the resources into planetary defense.  I’m sure they’ll spot it.  But even if they were to detect it as soon as we’ve completed the shift, they lack the technology to do anything about it, their cultural output notwithstanding.  Ironically, the best data we have indicates they’ll probably launch their nuclear weapons at it.  But the asteroid we’re targeting will be too large.”

“Well then,” the captain said, “the only thing for us to do is to make sure that any weapons they do launch either hit the asteroid or some other body within this system.”

“Yes, sir.  By my calculations, the asteroid will hit in this time, next cycle.  It will be an extinction level event.”

“Very well, Ensign.  See to it.  We’ll stick around long enough to make sure everything goes according to plan, then request a new assignment.”

“Yes sir.”