Sweet Elise – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge.   This week’s photo prompt is provided by The Magicsticgoldenrose. Thank you for our photo prompt!

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Here is the photograph and my story:

Sweet Elise

Remember when she passed for white? Not that she knew it. Of course she didn’t know it. But then it started passing around her Ivy League sorority…  The Homecoming Queen had something to hide.

The Homecoming game was, as anticipated, won by the home team. As their Queen, after the game, she threw pink and red and white rose petals onto the field. She was lovely. So beautiful and regal. A prize for any man who’d claim her. Until…

Later…  “Move away, now! Move away!” ordered the campus police. They were waiting for  local enforcements to arrive.

She’d remained untouched since her body had been found in her dorm room. Gold safety pins, holding good bye notes, were attached to her homecoming gown. One in particular came to muddy the day:

“So much more I wanted for thee and me, love…Sweet Elise.”

Ellespeth

One Open Moment – Poem w/Some Prose

Here is the poem encompassing the feeling tone of my novel.  I’ve written three paragraphs.  I could be onto something.  🙄

I’m 4 months into recovery from a serious fall.  It’s slow and painful.  I’ve had to put away my manual typewriter and begin to use this laptop more  😞  Something about punching down the keys on the manual was keeping my arm in pain.  I’m not sure I can master the voiced typing whatever thingy.  It still doesn’t recognize my voice.

One Open Moment

I remember
the sounds of crickets on the bayou
and moonlight shining through moss
making lace patterns
on the window shade.

I remember your moist lips against my cheek
and that little wave
you always gave
to tell me
see you later.

Where are you?
How could our world
just open
and steal you away like it did?

Ellespeth

At The Corner of Lust and Desire – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge.   Thank you Yinglan for our photo prompt!

Please follow little froggy for more stories.

Here is the photograph and my story:

At The Corner of Lust and Desire

When it comes to planning our family’s summer vacations, I can always count on Mom.  Like the summer we visited ‘famous cities and their streetcars’.  One such streetcar,  on our itinerary,  was even named Desire. The one you never want to be seen stepping in or out of,  at 17,  no matter who you’re with.

“But Mom,”  I protested,  “I will not get on that streetcar. Why,  the name of it makes me blush.”

“It’s a streetcar,  Kayla,  and the name of the street it used to run on.” It was mid-July, in New Orleans. Mom threw me a side glance that could have killed. “Don’t make a scene, Kayla,” she pleaded.  “Let’s not add linguistic phobia to our vacation list of things to avoid.”

“Oh my!”  I adjusted my sunglasses,  smiled,  and took in the guy who’d just boarded Desire.  I watched his eyes sweep over me.  “Okay, Mom, whatever you say.”

Ellespeth

I’ll Remember Him So Sweetly

Can’t say how  many Allman Brothers concerts I’ve been to – including the one at which I fainted sometime around here – 1970.  I loved Gregg Allman’s blonde-ish hair and his bluesy voice and just about everything bout his band’s music.

Now he’s dead…but it all lives on in memory.

Ellespeth  ♥

Sugared Aloe Tips – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge.   This week’s photo prompt is provided by loniangraphics

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Here is the photograph and my story:

Sugared Aloe Tips

The first time the doctor took my cast off, I cried. Whose dead and shedding leg skin was that staring back and mocking me?

“OMG!” I wailed. “My skin is forever changed!”

“Oh don’t worry about that part,”  said some gum chomping medical assistant.  Her hair was a popular shade of purple.   She wore a nose ring and had several layers of earrings on each ear.

“But my skin!” I protested.  My skin!  The softest part of me you’d always claimed.

“Don’t worry about that now honey. Skin’ll grow back softer and stronger when you rub a little aloe and sugar on it now and then.”

But I did worry.  Like any other woman would worry.  I’d spent a lifetime taking care of my skin.  Making it that soft barrier between leather and silk.

Ellespeth

Post Grocery Thoughts

Three months since my injury.    (See here for more about that)   Some minor set backs and some major steps – literally – forward.

I’m walking, a little bit, without the leg brace.  I can get in and out of the shower.  Physical Therapy is brutal and painful – and that’s just the arm.  Friday we begin therapy to the leg.  Arrrghhh!

We went to the grocery today.  Another first.  We brought my wheel chair and then…right there at the door, we saw one of these:

“That would be fun!”  I said as you whizzed me by it.

We laughed and spent an hour shopping for your birthday dinner ingredients.  You’re going to be 75 Friday! More on all that later.

I’m thinking about writing a novel.  I’m gathering notes and photographs and all.  Mainly letting what I have in mind take on some sort of other life.

It’s going to be a struggle.  I write micro-poetry and flash fiction.  On the other hand,  it’s not like I have anything else to do for the next 6 months or so…I have to figure out how novels are written.  I’ve begun to read with a writer’s mind.

Hopefully, I’ll have an entry for this week’s Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  If not, please click the link to read stories.

Here, also, is a link to my fiction blog…it’s not very organized but some of you might like to visit.

I’m off now…mainly stopping by to say ‘hi’…

Ellespeth

Learning Love – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge.   This week’s photo prompt is provided by Loretta Notto.

Please follow little froggy for more stories.

Here is the photograph and my story:

Learning Love

The loggers came before Cousin William was three weeks cold in his grave. They would have come sooner, but it took that long for the family to haggle out who got how many acres and where.  What was left of the woods was sold to a timber company.

My daddy got 10 acres adjoining Cousin William’s cottage and my daddy’s sister, Sissy, got 10 acres on the other side of the cottage.

I won’t deny it.  I had a crush on Aunt Sissy.  It didn’t matter that she was married to Buck some 20 years. After all, everyone knew that Buck was half nuts. I was sure that Sissy would be mine one day.

That day never came. What came was the day the timber company started logging Cousin William’s pines and Buck streaked his bare butt right up in front of the hauling truck.

Sissy stayed with Buck.  She told her sister that it would take more than a naked protest for her to leave him.   Pieces of a woman like Sissy stick to a boy’s mind forever.

Ellespeth