Our neighborhood became a gauntlet of death and was suitable for most of us. I kept my divergent thoughts to myself, however. You had to.

"Coming to the hanging?" Brooke, our appointed mayor, asked.
"You know I'm not a drinker."
"It's ugly business, but it brings us all together," she said, looking over one of my avocados for ripeness.
"You can have that one, just don't pressure me to go."
She raised her eyebrows and stared me down as she put the avocado in her crocheted bag. "Nobody's pressured to go."
I let out a laugh but caught myself before drawing the attention of other vendors.
"Is that not the case?" she asked.
"We just want to be able to stay in for a quiet night." I patted D-Triple, my psyonic Maine Coon cat who watched on with no interest.
"I don't control anyone. Besides, it's healthy for them to get the anger out. You get the bars on your window fixed and the security door replaced?"
"Yeah. Did that this past week."
"You'll be safe then," she said. "How much in twenty-two for a tomato?"
#wss366

The Cock Joust

What exactly does a cock joust entail?

I can tell you there are many trips to the ER, but more than that, there are spectators involved.

She looked at him, fascinated by his distant stare over the flock of pedestrian passersby and his noncommital attempt at humor. You are joking, right?

As best as I can joke about a serious sport. He drew in a deep breath and kept watch over the crowd. I used to love smoking, and now I am utterly offended by it.

By seeing people smoke?

By any of it. If I catch a whiff of tobacco or cannabis, I get angry and want to find the culprit and beat their brains in.

Ah, the hardened words of a veteran cock jouster.

I'm just an announcer these days.

#wss366 #mastoprompt #microfiction #wordweavers

Chained to the Cross

I couldn't face the true nature of events. Keeping the reality at bay was a struggle enough.

"Can you run through it again for me?" The profiler needled me for every detail. "One last time?"

And so instead of the truth, I told him again about the scene from the perspective of an avant-garde artist who had struggled to find meaning in my work. I told him I had been thinking of aesthetics and symmetry. I told him I wanted the eye of the viewer to be drawn from the left of the cross to the center of the priest's chest, to then linger on his stuffed mouth before moving to the right and then up the rest of his body, past where his genitals had been and to his feet, above, which I nailed with silver nine-inch spikes. The chains were to prevent the body from falling. I criss-crossed them across his center mass, making an X.

The more I focused on this alternate telling, the more my mind was freed from the positive feedback loop concerning the existence of demons.

#mastoPrompt #wss366

Unbroken Cycles

When Henry couldn't articulate the reason for the nick in the top corner of the desk, the principal decided it was enough to be done with him for good.

Ray Wendel told her Henry had pulled out a butterfly knife and threatened him. His only proof was pointing out the location Henry had slammed the knife into the desk to intimidate him.

Ray didn't tell her it worked.
He didn't tell her he skipped the rest of the school day to go home and throw his jeans into the washing machine. He didn't tell her he fretted all night, a nervous wreck, thinking about what he should do.

'I know how you kids think,' she said to him. 'But don't let it get to you. You had to tell someone.'

The principal told Ray's father, as per protocol.

That summer, Ray began to grow hair all over his body. As much as he didn't want to believe what his father had told him over and over again, he knew he was turning into a rat.

#mastoPrompt #wss366 #microfiction #wordweavers

Numb

'Could a smile bring feeling back into the wandering self I've constructed? A laugh, or a trifle and a tussle? Or perhaps, a frolic through a magic garden?'

He looked away from me and into the fire. 'No, I think you went numb a long time ago. Sometime between crashing televisions and whole countertops swept clear. Avalanches of tupperware and corningware and pots and pans and broken drinking glasses crashing and colliding until you were so far buried, you could only hear the faint outlines of shapes.'

'I can feel the cold out there,' I said, indicating the ring of forested mountains surrounding us.

'That's a different kind of feeling.'

'At least when i was burying myself, I dug deep enough to find you.'

He pulled his gaze from the fire and looked at me again, and I could see the reflection of the flames dancing in his eyes. He didn't need to say anything else that night, and so he didn't.

#mastoPrompt #wordweavers

Oh what a terrible fate, to be tasked with using the word pate. #wss366

When the weak seek power, they manipulate. There is no better evidence than the manuscripts of the Abrahamic religions.

Without regard for the continuous nature of life, they sold apocalypse for flesh. At first, it was the flesh of gazelles and of wild goats and of deer.

The hunters hunted to feed the tribe. The letchers remained in the encampment and had visions of a god who gave them the knowledge of good and evil.

The hunters started hunting to feed the god first, and then they hunted to feed the tribe. The lechers remained in the encampment, watching the mothers closely as the mothers cared for the cooking and the children.

God spoke to them, the lechers said.
He gave them the law of how things should be.

The lechers stayed back in the encampment in a separate sukkah, watching closely and sometimes teaching the mothers.

Then they said a mishkan must be made, and they said a temple must be erected.

The hunters continued to hunt, more and more, to appease an ever-hungrier god.
#wss366 #mastoprompt

They called us The Leftovers.

There was Ringworm, named for the cigar scars dotting her face and neck and, from what I could tell, her entire body. Then there was Gritty. She audibly gritted her teeth before every match, something we all grew to love. Aye-Poc had an eye that could look in any direction she wanted. Thank evolution for the superficiality of human judgment, because I don't know how we would have survived without her. China got her name for stereotypical reasons. She talked loudly, which helped the rest of us figure out how to communicate. She did anything to win. And she knew kung fu. Finally, there was me, but I don't like to talk about myself.

None of us were picked by the six captains who made it through the Golden Gauntlet Royal. So China became our captain, and I became our master-at-arms.

"What do we do now?"

The Skuds were dead, and the electricity of murder ran through our veins.

"Now, we go for him." China nodded toward the King. "He'll never see us coming."

#wss366 #mastoPrompt

You believed in me again.
I left you lost and deserted.
You thought I'd be there forever through the rough and tumble.
I didn't believe in forever.
You thought the bodies would stop being hidden in the walls.
I could only find more to hide.
You thought I'd regret.
I sought freedom from regret and human judgment, while you kept telling me everything would be fine, scooping more ice-cream than you had to share.

#wss366 #mastoPrompt

Until the Thaw

He arrived in the night, exploding through the portal, bringing a frigid burst of snow, the cold sent spindrift into every dark corner, into the cracks in the walls, and into the floor. I thought the end had come, until he made a fire and brought a warmth I hadn't felt since--

He arrived alone, just like me.
At first, I watched from safe places. The long bridge high above everything. The crevase in the wall by the fire. Under the table where he ate, and I never ate better.

One time, I fell asleep on the woodpile, my belly full of bread. I awoke tucked beneath a pair of thick wool mittens.
He had started talking to me, even though we didn't understand how to speak each other's language. I would talk back, and he would laugh.
I remember the day he said, "Did you come to visit me, Fireside?"
I wanted to tell him, yes. Yes, I did come to visit you.
I would sleep on his lap, close by the fire.
The day he went cold brought a cold I hadn't felt since--

#mouse #wss366 #mastoPrompt #microfiction

The Sweetest Honey

We've hived the entire inventory into structured echo chambers.
Initially, these were delineated by their trigger mechanisms, but within a week the trigger mechanisms converged. This allowed for vast segments to be heavily corded. The architecture of this weave leaves no room for effective reflection. Therefore, the same code is sticky throughout the braid with a simple subject change for each thread segment, allowing for maximum dwell time.

"Jim, that's a fancy way of saying, local honey, imitation honey? It don't matter. They'll stay wrapped up."

#mastoPrompt #wss366 #socialmedia #micrononfiction or #microfiction, you decide #wordweavers #writerscoffeeclub