Thread: LM 05/07/2010 – Four Words

Hello everyone.

After a slack period (my fault. I had to adjust to life without a 24/7 moderan) it’s finally time for your next LM:

Four Words
In 500 words or less, not including the title, we want an original story penned by you, including the following words (handpicked by the judges) in any particular order.

Charred
Strawberry
Fuzzy
Effusive

We can thank ppsage for this very cool prompt!

Submissions may be posted in this thread or in the thread provided Here in the Writer's Workshop.
If you wish to protect your first rights (in case you want to someday submit the work to a magazine or whatnot). Please remember to provide the judges with a link to your story in this thread. You can get your link by clicking on the number in the top right-hand corner of your post, then copying the link from the address bar.

So just to be clear. If you want to enter the LM Challenge and protect your first rights, what you do is post your entry here (in full—title, text and all), then click on the number in the top right-hand corner of your post, copy the link from the address bar and post that link in this challenge thread.


Everyone is welcome to participate.
Judges are welcome to participate but their entries cannot receive a score.

Submissions will be accepted until midnight my time, July 19th (2 weeks)
(I’m in Australia y’all so this means July 18th for most of you).
Judging period: July 20th - July 27th
Results will be posted on or before July 28th (my time)

Get scribblin’

Your judges for this round are:
Alan
Kat
Moderan
and Me



No comments please - Entries only to be posted in this thread.

Edit - Apologies for any confusion - I hope this is all clear now.

Strawberries and Roses

'There are three things you need to know,' said Papaw O'Donnell. 'The first is, no man is complete without a woman by his side. The second is, you'll always feel trapped with a woman by your side.'

I waited. 'So, what's the third thing?'

'That is for you to figure out for yourself, just as it's been for every man who's ever lived. One day you'll understand.'

Papaw was 75, I was 12, and more than 60 years have passed since the day the old man explained the mysteries of life to his grandson.

Papaw O'Donnell had picked a fine time for this particular lesson in life. We stood beside the charred ruins of his house. A single strawberry plant, embittered by Winter's first frost, had survived until the blaze the night before had engulfed all of the house and most of the patch that had been so carefully tended beside the back porch.

'That strawberry patch was your grandmother's,' he said. 'Every morning when they were in fruit, she'd come out early and pick a bowlful of them for me.'

Papaw stared at the strawberry plant, its leaves fuzzy with grey ash. There was no way to know if it lived.

'I was always effusive in thanking her,' he said. 'She never knew.'

'Never knew what?'

'She never knew I hate strawberries.'

He walked to the plant, knelt, and began carefully, almost tenderly, brushing the ashes from the leaves.

'If I were free, even at my age, I'd walk away from this. Let the bank take the land and let the 'possums have the apples. But your grandmother has me trapped.'

I wasn't sure what to say. My grand mother had died when I was nine.

'I know what you're thinking,' Papaw said. 'But this bush was part of her. I loved her so much. If this plant lives, then I have to stay.'

The plant lived. Papaw built a new house and lived to be 82. He used cuttings from that one plant to start another patch and every morning in the Fall he'd pick a bowlful of strawberries and have them for breakfast.

Today I'm an old man, and I'm finally figuring out the answer as I stand in the yard of my house and look at her roses. She's gone now. Even at my age I'd move away from here if I could, start over somewhere if I could. I loved her so much. She planted those roses. I cannot leave them.

Now I understand.

My LM Entry - Owed
http://www.writingforums.com/showthr...=1#post1367343
(Contains Adult Content)

Just put my entry up.

A New Acquaintance

http://www.writingforums.com/showthr...=1#post1367599

Anticipation

Taking the time to find the perfect, secluded camp is always worth it. I move leisurely, lest I miss such as the dark, round strawberry leaves, three or five per wild vine, strewn generously across the dunes. I wonder on whose lucky tongue the sweet fruit melted… some two months ago, it would have been. Long legged shore birds, racing hither and thither, and the ever evolving clouds keep me company as I veer from the sight of man, the sound of road, and the whirring of my own thoughts.

So you might imagine my twisted visage as first I came upon what would have been my ideal campsite, and a heartbeat later, her naked form, dappled dark and light, halting me in my tracks, taking my breath. The sun glances through windswept brush, its ethereal fingers, warm, stroking the flat valley that rises, falls, between her hungry hips. Relieved, I inhale at the sign of life. My spot was taken, and had I come from the opposite direction, I’d surely have walked off in dismay at the site of the forlorn camp.

As it is I cannot move. Not for long minutes, but in that time I take in her broken tent, reinvented. The footprint became a makeshift canopy, rope and sticks crisscrossing and knotted in the fashion of a woman that doesn’t know how and doesn’t care, so long as it stands, mostly. A fire pit, cold and empty but for a chunk of charred log and big tin cup, is made of an assortment of oblong rocks, chosen, I think, for color.

Unbuckling my pack, setting it down, nearing her, I keep thinking she’ll wake. Sitting cross legged at her side, I watch her until goose bumps spread across her forearms and breasts, my traitor blood running effusive from my head to my dick… and now, of course, her eyelids flutter open, dark blue, taken by surprise and yet she remains still, watching.

“I wonder if… I could make you some dinner.” I blurt.

Taking her eyes from mine, she lifts bony knees and elbows with an effort, examining her slender limbs as though she hadn’t known.

“I think so.” She whispers.

“Okay, I’ll get to it then.”

For lack of firewood or the time to collect it, I dig for my stove, pan, a bag of soup, water and my spoon. Smoothing a space to set up, I turn my back to her, preparing our meal, listening, waiting. When it’s done, and her share poured into her cup, I find she’s only turned over, chin resting on the heels of her hands, her fair cheeks glowing in the last light of evening.

“Aren’t you getting cold?” I ask.

“Do you have a fuzzy?”

“Don’t you?”

She shakes her head and stirs the proffered soup, blowing on it.

“Could I wear yours for a while?”

So I give it, and she zips herself in it, grinning, and it covers her bottom, not quite.

Alrighty! Five great entries. Time to close this baby up.

Have at it my judgmental friends.