Sentence 10

Another entry into the Sentence Project. This one is suggested by dakini_grl. As always I welcome your comments and hope you have new sentences if you'd like to submit one. I'm going slow but hope to get more of these things done in the new year.

Dakini's sentence is bolded in the story.

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Sedra McMahill often had a hard time explaining her job to people. Not that her career was difficult to understand, she just rarely wanted to get into it with folks she hardly knew. And most of her time was spent with folks she hardly knew. Airplanes, insurance company satellite offices, car rental companies, distressed families, and stressed fire department personnel made up the majority of her haunts and contacts. Though the last two groups usually knew exactly why she came around and were guardedly polite, either scared of her decision or resenting her presence.

With the other people whose company she found herself thrust into the "What do you do?" question arose within seconds. A basic, neutral conversation starter for those who enjoyed conversation. Sedra didn't.

She suspected her reticence to gab was a function of her paternal Scottish blood. The McMahill's tended toward the taciturn Scot tradition, despite the influence of her Irish grandmother's more garrulous Fallon blood.

Any gathering with both sides of her family present was always awkward at first, but when enough whiskey was introduced the islanders and the northerners ended up singing together around a battered piano. Sedra often wondered if the need for a rickety upright was another genetic trait of her bloodline. She'd never been to a house within the extended family network that didn't have one along with at least two people - herself one of them - who knew how to bang out ballads without spilling the tumblers that inevitably festooned the top of the Wurlitzer like an inverted chandelier.

Single malt, novelty drinking glasses, or sheet music. Sedra hadn't had to think about what gifts to get her family since puberty.

The gatherings, and her whiskey consumption, were few and far between, so when asked what her job was by others she usually fell back on fireman, despite the gender implications of the title, and worked it into a conversational dead end that would allow her to get back to the in-flight magazine's crossword puzzle.

It wasn't a lie, exactly, just creative use of tense. Sedra had spent years in a station, heeding calls and saving lives. It was her nose that had shifted her career. A house that didn't smell right after a devastating fire. She mentioned the sharp scent to her chief and the investigator was called in.

When they found the evidence of arson Sedra was booted into investigative training. Though she imagined that getting her out of the station house and replacing her with a man may have been a factor.

Still, investigation was interesting work and she found it was a relief to enter buildings after they had burned for a change.

Blind chance put Evervigil in her path, just one of those things that came together - meeting a rep at a burn site, a couple of cases she testified about for their side - and she was offered an job with the national insurance firm. Second-guessing the municipal investigators when they didn't find indications of the uninsurable act of arson, basically. Turning on her own, is what her supervisor called it, but his heart wasn't in the scolding, knowing he would have snatched up a similar pay increase if they'd offered.

Today she was in Kentucky. Away from home at the distance of two failed airplane conversations, a frustratingly unfinished crossword puzzle, and too many hours in a crappy rental car trying to find this backwoods address.

A red and white truck was waiting for her at the site. If not for the vehicle, the man kicking at the dirt by the edge of the scorched foundation looked like he could have been there by accident. No evidence of his official capacity adorned his figure, his body had obviously once been alarm-ready hard but now showed signs of a desk-job gut. The checkered hunter's cap, a fringe of graying hair sticking out the back, and quilted jacket looking comfortable and casual over jeans that had faded from use instead of fashion. He didn't turn around until Sedra had cut the engine and popped open her door, simultaneously tugging on the trunk release.

"Mornin'," he called to her, wrestling a thick hand from his pants to wave laconically as he approached, dirty work boots crunching along the fall leaves.

Sedra nodded at him, leaned in to pull the trunk lever and then shut her door. "You Hanson?" she asked, shaking his proffered hand once before turning toward the back of the car.

"Yup." He watched as she pulled out her waders and rubber boots from a duffle bag, a bouquet of airport tags flapping along the handle. She stepped into the waterproof overalls and strapped them on, the bib cinching against her breasts. Sedra adjusted them unselfconsciously before remembering her companion. She glanced up to see him nonchalantly, if deliberately, staring to the right.

The gesture pleased her, as did the fact that Hanson hadn't started yapping or bitching as soon as she showed up. With practiced motions Sedra yanked the boots on and reached for the duct tape in her duffle.

"I gotta assume you're McMahill, 'cause the fishing is lousy out here." Hanson said, looking back at her, leaning against the side of her rental car with a slight smile on his face. A nod to indicate her outfit.

Surprising herself, Sedra felt a slight flush of shame cross her cheeks over her brusque manner. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Pushing it from her mind she stuck her hand out again. "Sorry, yes. Sedra."

He shook it once, still smiling, "Mornin'," he repeated.

Watching her tape the top of the boots to the waders, Hanson's forehead creased for a moment before relaxing as he spoke again. "You're flying out tonight." It was more statement than question, confident he'd figured it out.

That was another surprise. Sedra's unconscious book-cover judgment of the man was rapidly reforming. "Yeah. I hate flying covered in soot and grease."

Hanson smiled again. "Just go ahead and assume I've said something funny about smoking sections on airplanes," he drawled, then turned to amble back to his truck.

When Sedra was strapped into her protective gear Hanson had unrolled a blueprint of the house on the hood. The awkwardly large papers showed a single story house with a quarter basement and attic.

The plans were old, the blue leeching away to white, the lines becoming indistinct. The paper crinkled like parchment under their fingers as they each held an edge flat. McMahill swiveled her gaze between the prints and the ruins. Blackened stakes, all that was left of walls, poked up in random directions from the charred rubble.

The front of the house was marked by a collapsed bulk of porch partially covering a thrust of steps leading from the foundation to the ground, making them impassable. Sedra carried the plans over to it, orienting them to her position. She did the same on each of the four sides, staring intently at each stop.

"So," she said to Hanson who had followed her along the circuit, "where did the fire start?"

The man's eyebrows went up, though that was the extent of the surprise on his face. It was a moment before he spoke. "Not to be rude but can't you tell?"

"Yes. But I want to know if you can." The words were impassive but she held his gaze and watched his face redden as she spoke.

"A test for the hillbilly inspector? See if the bumpkin can find his ass without a map?" His drawl almost unnoticeable in the flat tone.

Sedra smiled widely, "Almost. But my bias isn't regional, Hanson, it's occupational." The smile disappeared, "Most municipals just take the two week course and leave it at that. Their investigations involve twenty minutes poking at charcoal and blaming gasoline or electricals depending on if they want an arson charge or not."

Hanson stared for a moment and then nodded, prompting Sedra to add, smiling again, "If it were a bumpkin comment I would've called you Gomer."

The man laughed, a spontaneous burst of surprisingly lilting sounds that reformed his face along younger lines. "OK, sarge." He took the blueprints, rolling them as he approached the side of the foundation, and stepped up into what was left of the living room. Turning he offered a hand to McMahill, hoisting her easily. The clasp lasted a second longer than necessary. She wondered if he had lingered in the handhold or if it was her, the moment ending when he turned to regard what was left of the great room.

Sedra patted her hair once before scowling and forcing herself to abandon the gesture.

Taking a few careful steps Hanson approached the bowed and empty front-doorframe, stopping just past it. "This was a picture window. Big sheet of glass, sheer curtains and heavy drapes. I could see it everyday when I drove to work." He pointed down the road, indicating either where he lived or where he worked.

He put a toe on a pile of debris, "Table with a lamp, right in the middle of the window. Don't think I ever saw it turned off, night or day."

"Old lamp?" McMahill asked, pulling out a camera and aiming at the pile.

"Yup. Big ol' shade. Little crystal things dribbling around the edges. Kind that would end up on some fool's head at a party in a Playboy cartoon."

"When did that stop being funny? Say cheese." The camera clicked and whirred. Hanson arched an eyebrow just before the flash went off, the top of the inverted V disappearing beneath the bill of his hat.

"Round the time Kennedy got shot, I figure. So, ancient lamp means ancient cord, coiled up on itself right about here." He poked his toe at another spot. "Frayed cord, dusty drapes, wooden house, etc., etc."

He turned and spread his arms wide, taking in the destruction around them. "Ta-da." Letting his hands fall he regarded McMahill with a smile. "How's that, yankee?"

She wagged a finger at him, "You took more than a two week course, Pyle, admit it."

"Surprise, surprise, surprise," he drawled in a startlingly accurate Jim Nabors impression.

"I still have to send in the samples," She pulled out a bag and moved to the flash point. "No offense." Hanson stepped aside, watching as she scraped up several bits of house into bags of various sizes. They disappeared into her overalls after she had sealed and marked them.

Straightening, Sedra looked down the length of the foundation. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to the back of the house and a standing section partially hidden behind a collapsed wall.

Hanson followed her gesture with his eyes. "Ah, yes. The mystery door. C'mon." He picked his way along the floor, threading a path through the rubble. "Floor's ok along here, just keep in step."

They wound through ruins that Sedra identified through smell and small visual clues. An unmistakable reek of burned furniture stuffing and upholstery marking the couch's final resting place. The wreck of a bookshelf, fluttering black wings the only remains of the book covers. Cheap plastic panes of a china hutch melted around the delicate fragments of shattered dishes and cups across from a pile of burnt wood with colored puddles in the center.

Sedra waved at the drippings, "Fake fruit or plastic flowers?"

The man stopped and regarded the detritus. He pointed to a smoke stained piece of curved glass, camouflaged at the edge of the table's remains. "I'm guessing fruit in a bowl."

Hanson continued on, leading her into the kitchen at the back of the house. The destruction was less complete this far from the lamp in the window. The refrigerator was mostly intact, it's metal door warped from the heat. The sink cocked at a jaunty angle over the collapsed cabinet, a slick in front of evil looking liquid from the burst bottles of cleaning fluids underneath.

And there, by the fridge, stood a door. The paint scorched and bubbled but otherwise unmolested by fire. Three stout boards, browned by flame and temperature, crossed the frame. They were firmly secured with large gauge nails.

"It ain't the back door, must have gone down to the cellar," Hanson nodded his chin at the door and unrolled the faded and crackling floor plan. It wasn't so much the architect's familiar blue lines as a map; the basement door had been nailed shut for what looked like a century or more. The fire damage having aged the wood, giving it the look of an ancient portal.

Sedra ran her hands over the boards, scratching soot away from a nail head as big as her thumb. "Why's it sealed off?"

"Natural question. Whenever I find a free standing door in a house destroyed by fire, shut and nailed closed as though the demons of hell were going to burst through, I tend to ask myself the very same thing." He stepped past McMahill, indicating the area just behind the door. "Look at this."

She moved next to him, craning her neck to see around the thick doorjamb. Directly behind it two steps led down, ending in a jumble of rubble. The staircase was choked with wood, linoleum, and roofing.

"There's gaps and such you can peek in with a flashlight. 'Bout four feet down or so you'll see the water." He pointed and gestured with a twisting motion to indicate the water traveling through the tangle of blockage. "Had to go somewhere once it left the hoses and it brought just about all the loose garbage that could float. I figure most of the wall lathe is down there."

"What's the family say?" Sedra couldn't fight the disappointment in her voice. The sudden denial of an answer made getting one that much more desirable.

Hanson shrugged, taking his cap off and rubbing a hand through a surprisingly full head of hair. The tousled grey and abashed expression gave him a boyish appearance and McMahill reduced her estimate of his age.

"The poor woman who lived here got too much smoke in her. Only people she had was a niece who hadn't been around for 15 years. She hadn't any idea what the old lady wanted to keep down there."

He kicked a piece of something into the pile. "We got theories at the station but it's just B.S.ing. Everything from ape men to vampires. Probably ain't much more than old Christmas decorations and canned peaches." Hanson pursed his lips in though for a moment, "Maybe bags of that vile old-lady candy…"

Groaning at the thought of the hard candies she had been subjected to when visiting her great-grandmother, Sedra took several pictures, the door, the stairs, the boards before letting out an exasperated sigh. "Well, are they going to dig it up?"

"The mystery door got a hold of you, too." Hanson grinned at her. "Tends to do that to a body." He followed her off the edge of the foundation, leaping nimbly to the ground without taking his hands out of his pockets. "Ain't nobody gonna pay to get it dug up unless they want to rebuild. Don't know when that's going to happen. This isn't exactly a seller's market."

Sedra tossed her camera into the trunk and leaned over to pull tape off her boots. "So you got a theory?" She asked, looking up at Hanson who had resumed his spot leaning against the car.

"A few. Wild stuff." He resettled the hat on his head.

"Tell me over dinner?" She straightened to look at him as she asked.

Hanson's eyebrow went up again, "Don't you have to fly out tonight?"

Sedra shrugged, looking back into her trunk at the duffle and the large rolling bag. Tags festooned both handles from a dozen airports, some of their arcane initials doubled or tripled from multiple trips. She knew exactly what was in each bag. It was hard for her to remember what clothes were in the dresser drawers in her apartment. Looking back at Hanson she saw the smile on his face.

"Always another plane in the morning," she said.

Sentence 9

Here's another story based off of a provided sentence. This time it's one suggested by flonkbob and much thanks for both his sentence and the extensive medical research he did to lend authenticity to the story.
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The doctor had left half an hour ago. Hugh could tell that the man hadn't wanted to give a backward glance or any indication that he knew what was coming next. But his head had twitched at the doorway to the bedroom. His graying temple and sharp chin clearly visible in profile, left eye swiveled deep into the outer corner to catch a final look at Hugh sitting in the chair by his father's bed.

Hugh saw it but said nothing and knew that he wouldn't. Not ever. Doctor Mann was a good guy, didn't deserve to get into any trouble, he understood, he got it. But how could he not? Hugh's father had been under Mann's care from the start. Had been his friend since before that, even. Tennis, Hugh suspected, from what he knew about his father. It was almost a vice with his dad, according to Mann and other visitors that had come by in the past four months. Wasn't much else for him, Hugh thought, quickly regretting the uncharitable musing.

But a flash of anger replaced the regret a moment later. He scowled at the withered and still face of his father, lying in state (almost) on his twin bed, hands clasped over his chest, barely moving with each weak rise and fall of breath. What else was there for him, really?

This apartment, white and sterilized by a cleaning lady once a week. Art that spoke of money and taste but hung on spotless white walls that seemed to absorb the passion of the painted canvases. Country club friends paying homage to the stricken out of some patrician sense of duty, none of them, save Mann, visiting more than once. Duty done. A twin bed, white sheets and ivory duvet, fit for one alone. One who doesn't expect or possibly even desire company.

And a son. Twenty years gone and now back by that same sense of duty. Bound to the chair next to the narrow bed. No more paper knots to untangle for accountants and lawyers or phone calls to machine-run insurance companies to make. Nothing left to subsume and swaddle Hugh's mind from the quickly shrinking man in the bedroom. Not even any words left to speak, no more of the histories Hugh had never had a chance to hear before, the tales of a life lived in the years since he had left.

An apology had been in there somewhere. Sketched in negative space by the flow of words and stories his father had spoken before he couldn't anymore. Pauses and looks laced into their conversations of extended family, trips, or young life.

Hugh had clenched his jaw and waited during the significant pauses, stared blankly back at the sad eyes when they came. He wanted to hear it out loud but wouldn't ask. He never asked.

And now, silently, he regarded his dad a moment longer before shifting his gaze to what Doctor Mann had left. Each of the bottles on the end table looked just like they did on TV. Squat and clear, a short, narrow neck with a silver band around the top, a neatly printed label girdling its belly. A membrane at the top that the needle would pierce neatly without allowing any of the liquid out.

"Remember the dosage," Doctor Mann had said earlier. "More than that… could be dangerous." He expertly wound up his stethoscope and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Moments before he had used the iconic tool to confirm that Hugh's father was alive but no longer responsive.

It was just official notice of something they had both known for days. The deteriorating slide had been quick for the old man, as these things go.

Hugh looked up at Doctor Mann from the padded chair he had pulled up against the side of the bed weeks before. "I got it," he said with a nod. Mann held his eyes a second then nodded back. No more was said though there was that final little look as the doctor let himself out of the bedroom.

Hugh rubbed his face and reached for the bottles. With practiced ease he filled several syringes, one after the other. He'd been administering the pain-killer for the past three months. Mann had given him a lesson on a grapefruit, injecting water into it several times before overseeing the first shot. His father had joked that he'd always wanted a doctor in the family, barely registering the injection his son gave him.

Hugh looked at the syringes, each cylinder clean and straight with ruled hash marks up their lengths, numbers counting off the CCs at regular intervals. He picked one up, the pencil sized tube filled to the 10 etched in black next to a long horizontal mark.

"Six for good, 10 for bad, 12 for sleep," he muttered the sentence under his breath, his own mnemonic device for the dosages he'd had to administer. He looked again at his father's face. It was grey and old, older than Dr. Mann though they had lived the same amount of years. The skin of his forehead creased above the tightly closed eyes. As though he was concentrating on staying asleep.

Hugh twiddled the syringe between his thumb and forefinger, frowning. He'd seen how the shots had eased his dad's face, but Hugh hated going into this blind. He needed to know and made the decision quickly, acting on it immediately.

Pushing back his own sleeve he jabbed his inner elbow with the needle. The whisper thin steel bit dully, the small pain thudding as he pressed the plunger down to the "6" mark. Pulling the hypodermic away he folded his arm up, sealing off the tiny hole.

"Four for Hugh," he said with a laugh that spoke of fear and disbelief.

Wondering and waiting, the drug crept up on him sooner than he'd thought it would. Muzzy and calm, he realized that the effect of the morphine and the afterglow of orgasm were pretty much the same thing. And he couldn't see anything wrong with that.

"What a way to go," he said out loud without meaning to. Hugh replaced the syringe on the end table with a bit of difficulty, warmth replacing strength in his limbs. Leaning back, he flexed his fingers, savored the feeling and spoke out loud again. "I can do this," slightly surprised, muddy determination in the words.

Torpid and slow, he watched his father from the chair. It may have been the drug but he couldn't recall why they'd stopped talking. No single thing that he could point to and say, that was it, the straw that broke it all to pieces. All he could come up with was a deep and wide sense of anger, layered thickly over disappointment.

"You started it," he accused the lightly breathing man in the bed but there was no heat in it. Struggling to dig through memory, Hugh tried to recall the day he realized he had stopped speaking to his dad. It was raining and he had been left alone again. There was no one he had wanted to tell. Sitting in the dark, bare apartment walls where her stupid posters had been, ticking down names of friends who wouldn't care enough or would care too much for him to bear. And family…? The name at the bottom of the list jolting him as he tried to remember when they'd last spoken. The memory slipped away as Hugh nodded in his chair, head lolling then snapping up.

"Shit," he mumbled at the indistinct figure of his father, "I'm sorry." And Hugh, aided by the morphine and every moment of the past four months, fell asleep in his chair.

Sentence 8

Here is a story based around a sentence suggested by my lovely wife nonosays. It's complete, so no cliffhnager this time. I've bolded the sentence in the story. Plus I've added a little commentary at the end in the comments.

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It wasn't an unusual tree. For Los Angeles, anyway. A stubby palm, as palms go, the top of its crown just barely taller than the roof of the two story craftsman house that suffered the tree to live in its backyard. Perhaps it was necessary, being in L.A., to have the tree right there on the property. A symbol, proof that the house was at the foot of the Hollywood hills, even if it was only one street up from the flat ribbon of Franklin Ave. The road the house faced was only a gentle slope that presaged the steep and winding curves in the more affluent areas above. The squat palm a link to its soaring, slender cousins on the boulevards that everyone has heard of.

The tree had taken root on the west side, very close to the south west corner, and grown unhindered until the trunk almost completely blocked the side-by-side windows in the second smallest bedroom. The boy living in the room didn't mind. First he had known no other way, the tree having been there for as long as he could remember and, in fact, longer than he had been alive. Second he had figured out that the setting sun, it's sometimes blistering heat and blinding light, was dampened considerably by the plant. And finally, he had windows on the south side, giving him a view of Los Angeles unrivaled by any other in the house so the lack of a view of his own backyard was a small thing.

He hardly ever thought about the palm, truth be told. It was a fixture, like the doorframe. Even with his high bed under the west windows it was rare that he gave it more than a cursory glance. In his 13th year there was a sudden burst of intense interest in the trunk. But it lasted only until the lapped, saw-toothed edges of the trunk proved completely unsuitable for climbing to effect an undetected escape into the night to do whatever his parents would forbid him to do at 13. It was only four feet from his sill (he measured) but the edges, each one the truncated end of a branch that had fallen away as the tree grew, wouldn't allow for an unscathed descent. Instead he learned where the wooden stairs creaked and became adept at climbing them silently. The palm once again shuffled into the background of his mind as teenage exploits took precedence.

It was perhaps a year later that the palm tree spoke to him for the first time.

The weather was hot and the old craftsman had no air-conditioning. A feature he complained about, secretly certain that his parents refused to upgrade out of spite rather than finances. He understood quite clearly about heat rising, the climb up the stairs to the second floor the only object lesson in that phenomenon anyone would ever need, and threw open all his windows on these sultry summer nights in an attempt to flush out the interior air with the slightly cooler atmosphere of the greater L.A. basin. It never helped as much as he hoped, adding frustration to his physical discomfort, but doing something seemed better than stewing.

And on that night, the one he'd remember for the rest of his life, he was laying on his sheet, windows open and eyes closed. His lids were shut with conscious nonchalance as though the act of keeping them closed would be a baited trap to lure sleep through the thick air and into his body.

The voice was dry and rasped at the beginning, smoothing and cooling as it worked through the words that sounded above him.

"I need the rain, but I like it better when the air is hot. Though I sleep better when it's wet. Do you like the rain?"

Opening his eyes, the boy saw a girl's face looming over him. The image and surprise made his breath catch in his chest. Her skin was crossed in overlapping lines like deep, neat scars marking a herringbone pattern over her features. Her color reminded him of fancy mustard, the kind his father coveted and he hated, a dusty beige with flecks of brown like freckles. A weak chin rested in scaly hands, the knuckles like gauntlet joints, the backs scarred in the same pattern as her face. The girl's hair grayish green in the low light, each strand finger-thick and stiff. She lacked lashes and brows, giving her an innocent and open look despite the other alien attributes.

The boy tried to breath and he tried to yell, the opposing reflexes compromising on a gasping cough as he scrambled out from under her view and flipped up onto his knees, facing her.

She followed him with her eyes but made no other move. Her elbows rested on his windowsill, her body stretched out like a plank across the open air, toes tucked into a lapped edge of the palm tree. There was no strain on her face, no indication of the effort it took to hold herself so.

"Ah," he said at a conversational volume. It was supposed to be a scream but lungs and brain hadn't sorted themselves out from the initial shock. "Ah, ah, ahhhhhh," he continued.

The girl's eyes opened wider and her mouth turned down in a sympathetic pout.

"I see I've already worried you," she whispered, "but that wasn't my intention."

Her hands gripped the sill and she folded the rest of her body forward, bringing her feet under herself slowly and ending in a crouch on his window. It was a feral pose, a creature collected in on itself for a pounce, and it registered as such somewhere far back in his mind.

Closer to the front, however, he was 14. And, it could not be denied, she was naked.

The curves of her body were not pronounced but they were evident. The swell of hips and tapered waist. Rounded breasts and feminine legs. The angular scars, he noticed, covered her frame, the color of her skin unlike any he had seen on the very colorful streets of Los Angeles. Darker in between the lines, grading to a light gold the nearer it got to the scars. She moved with a lithe grace though he couldn't see any muscles under the skin, limbs smooth and straight. Her short hair fanning out from the center of her head like a hat brim, green, he realized now.

He felt a tug somewhere within himself, a pin being pulled and releasing a new feeling. His eyes widened and moistened, the breath in his lungs deepened, each draw seemed to fill him full of a tingling liquid that suffused his skin and sparked between his fingers.

It was a frozen moment. And in it he learned why his mother had books of paintings, why she dragged him to museums to look at images of haystacks and dead people. His father's obsession with restored houses and deco posters. With a clarity he wouldn't have been able to explain just then it became obvious why his parents always pointed out mountain views during long car rides that he'd rather have skipped. Why they would stop to look at the still quiet forms of trees that didn't do anything and, to his mind, didn't serve any purpose.

"I wanted to talk before you go." The girl said. She stared at him a moment then became interested in his pillow, a rough hand poking at it cautiously, then sinking into the soft material with a grin.

"Go?" he asked, unsure she had heard him over the sound of his heart.

She slapped the pillow once more and looked back at him. "Don't you have to go soon?" Her stiff lips parted to show jagged saw-blade teeth as she spoke.

"Go where?"

"Leaving the nest, right? Don't you do that?" She stood and stretched, arching her back to avoid the bottom of the window frame. Stepping onto the bed she left a dusty foot print on the sheet before stepping down to the floor of his room. Bending at the waist, almost folding in half, she touched the hardwood floor. Her fingers stroked the grain.

Suddenly worried he scrambled from the bed, standing by the door to his room as he gestured to the floor. "I…uh, I didn't do that." He stammered.

As though she hadn't heard, the girl straightened and stamped her foot on the boards. He could feel the surprisingly heavy thud travel up his legs.

"Oakish," she snapped with a frown, "hate 'em. Oh, I'm so old, so smooth and pretty with all my leaves." She stamped again and gave a dry and rustling snort. "Well now you're a floor, stupid twig."

He felt her anger melt as she glanced at his book shelves. Unsure how she'd feel about paper he grabbed through his brain for the question she had just asked.

"Leave the nest? Uh…you mean move out? I won't be leaving for a while. I've gotta finish school, maybe when I go to college…" he was babbling.

She regarded him again. "Soon though, you'll have to go."

"Well," he was still struck by her, watching her sway from foot to foot as she stood there, "well, not for five years. That's a long time."

It was odd to hear her laugh. "Five years?" she asked incredulously. She clapped her hands and hopped in amusement. "You don't talk to many trees, do you?"

He didn't figure that was worth answering.

"In five years," she continued, her tone softening, "…how do I put this?...I may remember something funny I wanted to tell you tonight. And in another fifty I might figure I should check and see if you're there to tell it to."

She reached out a hand and rested it on his arm. Her skin was cooler than his, rough and itchy. He could feel loose, fibrous strands like small threads where her fingers were worn from use. The touch was evidence that she was there, solidifying her presence.

He hadn't even begun to consciously question the encounter, the reality of it all. Then the contact made him realize that some part of him had been reeling, unsure and off-balance. He noticed it only for a moment, her fingers stroking down his arm soothing away the doubt.

"Do you see? You have to go soon."

Numbed and slightly embarrassed, he nodded.

She smiled at him, gave him a motherly pat and twirled once around. "I just wanted to say hello before you went. I hardly ever get to talk to anyone."

With that she bounded up onto his bed and launched out the window, her body stretched to it's full length as she leapt onto the palm. The smooth arms and legs wrapped around the trunk in a hug before she started to hike herself up.

The boy went quickly to the window, stumbling onto the bed, his face hitting the pillow before he leaned out to look up at her.

"Wait, wait!" he shouted, then looked behind himself quickly, as though his parents were going to burst through the door at the noise.

She stopped her ascent and looked down at him, saying nothing.

And he didn't know what to say. There was so much he wanted to ask.

Or was there? What was there to ask? He thought furiously for a few seconds, the girl staring with her wide eyes and a patient calm. No questions came that didn't sound dense. His mother had read him myths, he knew what the girl was. And beyond that, what was there?

One question, but it revealed something. And at 14 it was hard to ask. Haltingly, he spoke.

"Will you be watching me?" his lips pursed tight, fearing the need was too evident in his voice, that laughter or worse would follow.

The girl smiled, but without any meanness in her eyes. "Of course, stupid. I'm right here." She gestured to the four foot gap between the palm and his window. With grace and speed she turned back to the trunk and scurried up into the branches at the top, disappearing from his sight.

The boy stared for a moment longer, then pulled his head back in the window of his room.


"Oh, hey," her voice dragged him quickly back out, craning to see her face, hanging upside down from the fronds. "Don't get caught talking to a tree too often, ok? It didn't work out so well for the last one."

He laughed at that and with a final nod she drew back up into the foliage and out of sight.

Sentence 7

The starter sentence I used this time was: "When the bartender asked me which ship would possibly have let me aboard, I could only reply, 'What makes you think I can read?'" from one of tshuma's friends.

Which, to be honest, I found irritating at first because it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But in the end it was very satisfying to have worked it in (I bolded it in the story). So take a look if you like and suggest another starter sentence if you want.

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I paused outside the inn, adjusting my sword belt in an attempt to stop the edge from chafing my hip. As my fingers worried under and around the stiff leather I looked up at the sign. A cracking egg of considerable size was painted on the dark wood, the ovoid overlaying a blue anchor. The colors were mostly bright, though the edges looked dull and worn, as though the last touch-up artist had worked from the middle out and given up.

Confusingly, elaborate scripted words underneath the picture declared the inn to be the "Slap and Tickle" which had unsavory connotations of illicit coupling that made my unworldly heart race. But the icons above the lettering seemed correct and the captain had been insistent that I was to meet him at the inn on this street, a stone's throw from the wharf and even closer than that to the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied it. No other inns were on the dirty street so I loosened the uncomfortable belt and pushed into the gloomy common room.

The first sight made me reconsider the wisdom of my recent actions and commitments. A score of men sat in various states of repose and drunkenness. Their countenances showed wear and weathering, carefully cultivated from years on English ships. Their clothes seemed part of them, a smooth fur molded to their bodies by sweat and salt water. Not completely filthy, mind you, but…connected to the wearers. Folds and creases that followed the line of their limbs perfectly through incessant use. I doubted any of them had been out of their trousers more than once a fortnight for as long as they had possessed them.

For a moment I froze, looking about (gawping, really). My neck tightened and a very strong urge to back out of the door clamped onto my legs. In that moment I was certain that the seamen in the inn would attack me, beat me, and toss me out onto the street for trespassing on their ground.

Luckily my mind took a firm hold and made me look around with clearer eyes. Aside from a casual glance when I first entered, no one was paying me any mind. Smoking pipes and dice and conversation had their attention.

With new confidence in my disguise, the sword belt and sailor's garb borrowed from the captain for the very purpose of walking the wharfs unmolested, I strode to a high, long table set to one side. It clearly served as a bar, the man behind it pulling ale from casks against the wall for those that wanted them.

I leaned a forearm against the table, aping a man who, by the look of his rheumy eyes, had been there for some time. The tender stared at me but made no move toward my position, idly rubbing a spot on his chest and worrying his teeth with his tongue.

Annoyed I rapped the table with my knuckles. "Hey there, my man, I would speak with you."

His eyebrows (a considerable portion of his low forehead) went up in what I can only describe as a mocking arch. Despite the look he stepped over to me.

"I'm meeting a ship's captain here to…ship aboard," that didn't sound quite right but I kept on, "draw me an ale while I wait, that's a good man."

Still itching at his shirt the publican seemed not to have heard me. "Good day, yer lordship," He leaned in, his face smiling not unkindly as he spoke, "are you certain a posh fella like you is in the right tavern? Did you read the sign closely?"

I had thought my disguise was adequate, but the man obviously wasn't fooled. So startled was I by his insight that when the bartender asked me which ship would possibly have let me aboard, I could only reply, "What makes you think I can read?"

His smile broadened and he leaned back, hooking both thumbs into a wide belt at his bulging waist. It was then that I noticed the pair of knives, both on his right, that hung at his side.

"I am glad you asked, your lordship. My craft goes unappreciated by most of these sots and sailors and it's a treat to share it with a man of learnin'." He seemed truly pleased, baffling me further.

"Yer sword is on wrong, right handed hilt, hanging at your right hand side. You had a look about you when you walked in that said 'Lord almighty, who are these murderers and which one of them is going to put it to me?' It's in the eyes, mostly, but the hands say the same thing." One thick finger jabbed at my face, though I say with some pride I did not flinch away. "And yer cheeks were red as you stepped acrost my threshold."

I was annoyed at this list, though more through my embarrassment at being found out so easily than from his effrontery. He wasn't talking sense and I feared I had walked into a den of drunkards run by an idiot. The thought that Captain Hawkins had sent me here for sport burned my cheeks an even deeper red. I silently vowed to do…something to him.

And there it was. My failure to come up with even the image of a suitable revenge was a crashing reminder of just how useless I was. Father had been right, no man in me. James' laughter echoed once again through my mind and I deflated.

"Here now," the bartender's voice was tinged with an unexpected concern, though he misinterpreted my slump, "no shame in being a reader, no matter what they may say." He turned to the casks and pulled a pint as he continued, "Do a fair bit meself. Missus don't drag me to the pews if'n I get a few pages of the Book in a week." The drink was set gently in front of me.

I looked at it a moment and felt I had made a friend. The barkeep's trade secret, I suppose, making a man feel welcome. Drink goes a long way in comforting a misery, surely. I drank.

"My cheeks were red?" I asked, considering the unexpectedly pleasant taste of his brew. He smiled again, clapping a hand on the bar.

"Aye, as apples. Dead giveaway that. No posh fella of your age would read 'Slap and Tickle' without looking flushed. Either aghast or excited, don't matter which, it'll get the blood to the face right quick."

"So…this is the Egg and Anchor?"

"Quite so!" He said with obvious pride, thumbs hooking back into his belt as he stood straighter. "That bit o' script is to keep the prudish knobs at bay. My clientele," he pronounced the word slowly, waving at the men stationed around the room, "is a certain type and don't like another certain type snoopin' around."

"Does that work?" It seemed a particularly feeble ploy.

He gave a sly look at the man leaning heavily against the bar next to me, his head nearly touching the table top. Then the tavern-master winked broadly at me as he spoke. "Spotted you didn't I?"

And with that I became much more comfortable. A clever man with a wide capacity for amusing himself I could understand. I was sure that the knives, though surely useful in his rough hands, would not be drawn against me if I minded my manners and didn't break too much of the furniture. And I might be excused a chair or two if the circumstances were entertaining.

I raised the mug to my companion and drank again, relaxing for the first time in what seemed like months. Setting it down after a draught I held my hand out.

"Fletcher, at your service."

He clasped my hand in both of his and shook it once, high and then down hard like he was working a pump handle. "Roberts, and a pleasure, your lordship."

"I'm not much of a lord, Roberts." I unbuckled my sword belt, shifting it to the proper side.

He tapped the side of his nose with a finger, "Right you are, Mr. Fletcher. In-cog-knit-o, aye?" A wink and a laugh at his joke. Or was he joking? I couldn't get a handle on whether he knew just what I was or not. Another barkeep secret, perhaps. Act as if you know all and soon enough you will.

"Now, about your captain. If he sent you here it's a good chance I've met the man."

"Definitely not a 'prudish knob' from what little I know of him." I got the sword straightened out and worked the leather belt snug again. "Captain Gregory Hawkins. D'you know him?"

Roberts' face went blank. The smile smoothed out into a line. His eyes, a moment before twinkling and amused, went flat and dead. Even his body seemed to go quiet and still. The bar keep stood that way for a long second. When he spoke it was a whisper.

"Know him? Aye. That I do, Fletcher."

Sentence 6

Just had a nice little chat with MS Word so here's the sixth sentence story. The suggested sentence is the first line of the piece

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"…And now I wonder--did I really fail, or in some obscure way did I actually succeed?"

I stared at her for a minute to see if she were serious. From the contemplative knit of her brow and the languid way she raised the beer to her pursed lips it became obvious that she meant it.


"No, you definitely failed." I said.

She continued staring out through the barred railing of the balcony, lowering the bottle and handing it to me without glancing over. Her head tilted to one side and her eyebrows went up in what I assumed was supposed to be a philosophically questioning way.

"Did I? Did I…really?"

I grabbed the bottle and tilted it only to find she had finished the last of the beer. I stuck my arm out, between the rail bars, and let the bottle drop. Three stories later it smashed into the concrete below. At four in the morning I was reasonably certain no one was going to be under it. Though I wouldn't have been upset had Randy been walking by just then. Asshole.

"Yes, K, you did, you failed, you really failed. Really." It was brutal, if you didn't know K. But two semesters of her bullshit had made me unwilling to mince words with her anymore. Just being willing to talk to her at all could be taken as a sign of my own masochism. No one else in the residence hall would come near her anymore.

She turned to me, straightened her head and then tilted it again with a small shake. "But…" she began.

"No! No buts!" I held up both hands and waved them back and forth like signal flags. "Failed! Failure. No obscure anything. Very clear failure. Jesus, K!" I ran both hands into my hair and gripped it. "Are you even here? Like, in this world? Do you know the meaning of the terms 'success' and 'failure'?"

I paused just long enough for her to open her mouth, then interrupted. It was a trick I used a lot with K. Not very nice, but it was cathartic and kept me from killing her.

"I mean, shit! Look at it. You set out to complete a four-year degree in two semesters. One quarter of the time! You took more classes then they actually ALLOW anyone to take. How you managed that I'll never know. Some of them overlapped for fuck's sake!" She wasn't looking at me, which just fed my rant.

"What the hell was it all about? Some kind of fucked up attention getting device? Oh, look at me, I'm doing the impossible, aren't I weird! As if being a vegetarian who eats beef jerky or those goddamn shoes didn't already prove that." I pointed to the jester toed high-tops that she wore everywhere. On special occassions she put bells on the tips. She wouldn't tell anyone where she got them, I suspected she made them. "I mean you couldn't have believed you could do it so what was the point?"

I leaned forward and tapped the small pile of paper that was between us, neatly printed letters and numbers were in the light and dark colored horizontal lines that covered the middle of the pages. "You couldn't do the work, you couldn't attend all these classes and so you got F's in at least half of them."

I sat back and held out one hand, palm up. "And as we all know, F…" I stuck out the other hand, palm up, "equals 'Failure'." I bounced my hands up and down to mime a set of scales. "And so your dad is insisting you go home. Back to the small town, right back where you started, accomplishing NOTHING."

K didn't say anything. She looked at the grade sheets on the concrete between us. With a thumb and forefinger she riffled through them. Then, crumpling them up in her fist, flung them over the rail and into the early-morning air. The papers didn't float or catch in a passing zephyr. They stayed crunched together and plummeted to join the shards of beer bottle below us.

Her hair, shaved short on one side and kept long on the other, swayed forward with the movement of her arm. It swung back and forth, revealing her profile and then covering it before settling. I watched the line of her nose, followed it down to her lips and over her small chin.

"Fuck!" I crossed my arms and looked away, through the vertical bars that cut the facing residence hall into strips.

K turned to look at me. "What?"

I stared at the dark windows across the way, "I'm going to miss you." I pulled my arms tighter around my middle. "Goddamnit."

K stood, stepped over to my side of the balcony and sat next to me. Her right side pressed up against me as she scooted in closer and tilted her head again so she could rest it on my shoulder. For a moment I did nothing, not wanting to uncoil from my snit. Then I shifted and put my arm around her.

"Or in some obscure way," I sighed, kicking at her shoe to make the bell jingle, "did I actually succeed?"

Sentence 5

Here's the fifth sentence story sent to me by T. The original sentence was: "Filled with a mixture of dread and anticipation, he took a deep breath and opened the door."

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With a tray balanced in one hand, Martin smoothed the lapel of his white jacket. He touched the bow tie but didn't move it, the gesture merely ritual. The glasses on the tray rattled against one another as he shifted his shoulders under the coat. The motion made him aware of his damp underarms.

A wave of panic rose up his throat and threatened to jump out his mouth on the heels of a deli sandwich he had grabbed and gobbled in haste before his shift. A quick glance, however, assured him that the sweat had not gotten through the jacket. From the neck down he was still a calm and composed waiter. With an effort Martin forced his face into relaxed lines. By concentrating on smoothing his forehead the rest of his features were fooled into complacency.

He was ready. This time it would be different.

"This time," he murmured aloud, "it will be different."

Filled with a mixture of dread and anticipation, he took a deep breath and opened the door. In two steps Martin tripped on a diner's foot and his whole body shot forward. The tray went into the air, the delicate glasses floating above it, momentarily unaware of gravity and beautiful in their ignorance. Stretched to his full length, Martin thumped onto the ground, his hands clawing forward but the tray was far, far out of reach. It clattered to the ground a second before the glasses, the colored liquids in them catching the light prettily, as they smashed cruelly onto the hardwood floor.

Dainty in flight, they were now ugly and dangerous wrecks. Staggering to his feet Martin could only hear a roaring thud in his ears. He lunged, too soon, at the mess and plowed into the lap of a female diner, his head ducking under her skirt and colliding rudely with a surprisingly yellow floral print material.

Martin's legs were still concerned with reaching the tray and kept pumping even as his neck whipped back to extricate his face. The skirt prevented this and the sudden swing up combined with the push forward dumped the chair onto its back, the occupant still seated.

This did free Martin's head, but exposed the floral print to the entire restaurant. Thinking quickly, Martin grabbed the table cloth and yanked it to cover the woman's weakly kicking legs. This had the desired effect but he hadn't thought about the woman's companion, who had ordered soup.

The bowl tipped and splashed into the companion's lap, causing him to leap to his feet, flailing his hands at the hot mess on the front of his pants. This knocked his chair into another table of diners, and his hands struck another waiter who was carrying a lit chafing dish.

One minute and twenty four seconds later Martin was standing in a ring of culinary disaster, his hands clutching one end of the forgotten table cloth.

A man with a fondue fork stuck in his arm was glaring at him. Two women, each with hollandaise sauce blanketing once-immaculate hairstyles, consoled each other and dabbed uselessly at their heads with napkins. The maitre'd had said nothing to Martin but this was obviously due to his having been struck unconscious by an airborne salami chub. It had had an impressive flight from the open kitchen door to the front podium which was cut short by the man's head. Most of the small fires were under control but the bartender was having some trouble with a blaze that had reached the aperitifs. The wine steward sobbed over the shattered remains of a '62. The pastry cart had been violently overturned, the custard and fruit fillings spattered across a wall like the leavings of a sweet slaughterhouse.

A small dog was licking Martin's shoe clean of the au jus from table four's beef dish. Peter, a busboy from Martin's section, approached.

"At least this time," he said as he dusted powdered sugar from his face, "I didn't get hit with the shrimp cocktail." Martin dropped the corner of the table cloth. "I'm allergic."

Sentence 4

OK, here's sentence number four, but I'm not going to tell you what it is ahead of time (it's the line in quotes at the very end of the story). This is a one-off joke more than a story, but it amuses me so I will subject you to it.

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Joseph stepped up to the voting booth with a mix of fear and anticipation. It was an exciting time to be an American voter, and even more so to be one in Ohio. The reports were pretty clear that it would come down to one or two states, and Ohio was set to be the last of them.

So Joseph, voter pamphlet in hand and mind full of the political chaff that had exploded over the country for the past year, stepped forward to face the glowing face of a touch-screen voting machine. It was warm and friendly, the brightly lit monitor familiar from hours spent in front of an office computer and home television. Like sitting down in the seat of a new car. The shape may be different but the pedals were in the same place and the steering wheel could be counted on to be set just in front of the driver's seat.

And so he tapped at the glass to start the process. He spread out the pamphlet and got ready to enfranchise the hell out of himself. Right up front, the first choice on the screen was presidential. Like starting a meal with dessert. A name in red and another in blue, both primary colors bright and inviting, eager to have his fingers stroke their spot but retaining dignity. They weren't there to beg, but he imagined them glancing at him sidelong, coyly, suggesting rewards and pleasures if only he would choose them over the rival. Joe chafed his palms together and readied the index finger on his right hand.

Then something caught his eye. It looked like a line of dirt on the screen. A single bit of text that nearly disappeared into the background just under the name in blue. Joe leaned in close, squinting. It wasn't dirt. It was text, floating serenely below the blue candidate's button.

He got closer still, the line resolving into seven words.

"This offer void where prohibited by law"

Sentence 3

This is the third sentence I was given. The sentence was: "Indira had no idea that something so simple could hurt so much, and for so long."


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He had said yes seven months ago and broke her. Plain and to the point. It had taken him a long time before he spoke, but when he did there was not a hint of hesitation or doubt to his answer. She had asked and he sat there, his hand dry as she clutched it between both of her palms, warm and sweating with the exertion of her heart. The throbbing beat surged in her hands, echoing through his fingers as she looked him in the eye and asked her question.


It struck him like a frost. He went still as a frozen pond, unblinking, allowing Indira to see the thoughts speeding from one eye to the other as he pondered.

Two weeks later she had realized that he wasn't considering what answer to give her, but how to give it. The instant she had asked he had known what he would say. There was no chance of another outcome, but he went still and weighed the different ways he could break her apart.

It was mercy. Fast and sharp, a needle jab. Medicine instead of slow poison. The answer could have been longer, could have brooked argument or hope, left her hung and twisting. But he chose the single, deft blow. And then he stood up and left her, taking back his hand as he rose. Indira had no idea that something so simple could hurt so much, and for so long.

Sentence 2

This is the second sentence I received. The sentence I was given was "Thaddeus was stuffing the KY jelly, peanut butter and durian into his backpack, when he realized that the weed-whacker was out of gas."

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"Before you go," mother shouted up from the bottom of the stairs, "make sure you edge the lawn!"

"Yeah, yeah," Thaddeus said under his breath.

"Did you hear me?" mother shouted even louder. The rising tone in her voice wasn't impatience so much as worry that her son was going deaf.

"Yeah, yes! OK!" he shouted over his shoulder as his hands worked feverishly, packing quickly with the fear that mother would come up to see he was ok. Thaddeus was stuffing the KY jelly, peanut butter and durian into his backpack, when he realized that the weed-whacker was out of gas.


"Shit!" he exclaimed, yanking the zipper closed and slinging one of the straps over a shoulder. He couldn't skip the edging or mother would call around his friend's houses trying to find him. Which meant she'd start with Will's place and find out that he wasn't, as he had told her, staying the night there to work on their science project. But getting the gas would ensure he missed the bus into the city.

"Shit," he repeated again quietly, locking his door behind him. He stood for a moment in thought and then turned back to his room, fumbling his key out and twisting it in the lock.

A quick dig through his closet revealed a three foot length of plastic tubing left over from a less than satisfactory experiment. Next time, Thaddeus promised himself, he'd spring for rubber hose instead of the less flexible plastic. He looped it and stuffed it on top of the other contents in his bag and hurried down the stairs after re-securing his room.

He slid down the hall and out the back door silently, knowing that he had about five minutes before mother came to check that he was edging the grass. With three long strides he crossed the backyard to the shed and hooked up the empty one gallon gas can with his fingertips as his foot hit the woodpile. With a step up the stacked logs and a jump he was over the back fence and into the alley.

Mr. Cadre's OIdsmobile was parked outside his garage, as Thaddeus had hoped. The old man's life, it seemed, had been spent gathering piles of useless crap that filled his garage. After learning how to jimmy the lock on the side door when he was ten, Thaddeus had spent hours searching through the stuffy building. Moldering furniture and discarded sets of golf clubs took up the bulk of the space, but he had found Mr. Cadre's nearly unbroken run of an Italian pornographic magazine called Ciao! At thirteen Thaddeus had spent the summer staining the most accessible couch and learning Italian phrases that would have killed the Pope.

The packed items had made the garage unusable for parking a car so Mr. Cadre's boat of a car had always lived just outside. It was cared for but shabby looking. Cadre had never bought a locking gas cap.

Thaddeus quickly uncoiled the plastic tubing and set the gas can on the ground. He flipped up the license plate and unscrewed the cap. Sticking one end of the tube into the tank he sucked on the other. The fumes made him choke and gag violently.

He twisted his head to the side and retched, tasting bile and lunch mixing with the stink of fuel that seemed to cling to his teeth. Steeling himself he turned back and sucked again. He watched the piss colored liquid snake through the tube and pulled away at the last second, shoving the end into the gas can to let the gasoline siphon into the can.

He let it flow for only a few seconds, enough for his purposes, and then pulled the tube from the tank. He screwed the cap back on the car with one hand and twisted the cap on the can with the other. He prided himself on the dexterity it took to do this. Others had commented on this talent, but in much different contexts.

He stood with the can just as the hand grabbed the bag strapped to his back. Thaddeus didn't look back, it was obviously Mr. Cadre, but took a long step as he started running.

The hand didn't let go and the zipper of his bag simply ran open to the bottom on both sides, spilling out its contents onto the alleyway. The glass peanut butter jar didn't break though it made a loud clinking noise when it hit, then rolled to Mr. Cadre's feet.

Thaddeus had stopped, startled, when his bag had opened. He was perfectly frozen by fear at being caught, horror at someone else seeing the contents of his bag, and abject misery that he was now certainly going to miss the bus and not get a chance to use the durain. It had been extremely hard to find.

Mr. Cadre, letting go of the bag, leaned down slowly, favoring his old knees as he squatted over the peanut butter jar. He picked it up and then looked at the KY, the spiky Asian fruit, and the very telling bits of clothing that had scattered in a small circle at his feet.

"Sta migna! Iarrusu!" he said, looking up at Thaddeus.

"I am not," Thaddeus replying with a calm he didn't feel, "a faggot."

Mr. Cadre's eyebrows shot up, "Eh, you speak Italian?"

Thaddeus knelt to gather up his things, not looking at the older man. "I've picked up a few words."

He snatched the peanut butter from Cadre's hand. The man let him take it easily and then pushed himself back up. When he had groaned upright onto his complaining knees he suddenly snapped his fingers and slapped his forehead simultaneously. Thaddeus was impressed with his dexterity.

"Ciao! You seen the magazines, yeah?" He stressed the "you" so hard it was clear that this had cleared up a long-standing mystery for Mr. Cadre.

Thaddeus just nodded, sealing his bag and squeezing the zipper heads together nervously as though that would help them stay closed. Mr. Cadre surprised him by laughing. "Hey, that's ok!" He patted the boy's arm, "you're ok, yeah? Take the gas now."

Thaddeus released a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"But," Cadre added, shaking a finger at him. Thaddeus drew another breath and held it. "Next time, you ask, ok?" With a smile the older man tapped the boy's cheek with his fingertips, then turned away to head back into his yard.

Thaddeus made the bus and Will covered for him when mother called to ask why he hadn't put the weed-whacker away properly.

Sentence 1

This is from the first sentence I got, from Lisa. The original line was: "I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer."

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I lost most of a night once when I was younger and less prone to caution. I proved that recklessness to myself and anyone around me by frequenting bars in parts of the university town that did not welcome university people, which I was. Shipped in from the middle states, but already speaking the language of my rural parent's enemies. I was out of the country and into the city as I had planned since I was eleven years old. A decision made after football and cowboy hat boys stomped me flat for using words in class that caught on the teacher's ears and were converted into fawning praise. A sin that was atoned for with a boot-to-the-ass catechism twice a week for the rest of that year.


I hated my parents for it. Making me live in that town around those people after letting me enjoy books and plays. They had planned my suffering, I was sure, and to punish them I arranged college as far away as possible. Even years away from the bullies, but not yet out of town, it still burned every time I looked up and saw again where I was and who was there with me. I wanted it all to go away and finally cast the spell of scholarship and plane ticket to make it vanish.

And I found the city, and the people there who looked down on the world from a position of education and profession instead of arm strength and fist. I could climb with them and see the boys from my town disappearing below, disregarded and powerless in this new world.

From that vantage point it was giddiness, really, that brought me to abandon. Having trudged brown streets, pacing a small town cage, and then landing amongst color and noise in such profusion wound me tight in the other direction. At home I'd been sullen and coiled with the anticipation of flight. In the city I had reversed the spin, a spring-driven joy-toy keyed up to the point of breaking. I was soaking in the city, washing away everything past and drinking.

Not metaphorically. I was drinking for the sheer pleasure of knowing it was a bad habit. To keep the spring wound up and the colors bright. But I felt my parents creeping in at the edges. Methodist distrust of the glittery trappings that swaddled the alcohol. The places got noisier and the lights were irritating. The music wasn't understandable, the people unreal. I drew back from each by degrees until the package was completely unwrapped to reveal the core. It was bottle shaped and lived in dark bars on the outskirts of campus life. Old places with tinny, grubby jukeboxes playing randomly or not at all since no one would waste money on two minutes of distraction from their pastime. And it became a single bar, with multi-colored bottles gathering dust on the wall since they didn't fit into the pattern that the customers had forged years earlier. Half a dozen brands were constantly drained and replaced while the others sat unused, outside the ken of the shabby men and frayed women whose elbows shined the wooden bar for hours out of every day.

Days and nights I sat with them until they stopped noticing when I came in. I was in tight when I was ignored, when no glances were directed toward me, when a gaze wandered across my face without seeing me. My time at the bar became fluid and indistinct. It's passage marked by the change left in my pocket as I scrabbled for keys that didn't want to find the lock on my car door. Nights to mornings and class, then evenings to nights.

And then came the night I mostly lost. It is closed to me. I remember the entry, striding into the bar and putting my elbows on the wood, placed on the clean ovals I had worn into the surface. A quick glance at one of the spots to notice a faded reflection of an unkempt face and small town eyes sunk into big city sockets. Then it's gone. The film isn't cut, but it shows nothing I can see. Memory snapping off like a light in a windowless room.

Only the man remains. I knew his shape, hunched and curled around a glass. The familiarity of his shoulder blades and the nape of his neck testament to my having seen him there often. But this time, on this night, he pulled his head up, looked at me and spoke. It was a story. About his life. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. His god was not listening but he spoke so I could hear. The tones carrying me deep within him, rhythms that pulled at my ear and kept my face away from the glass loosely gripped in one hand. His voice a wordless chant that pierced and coddled, wrapped and shoved.

The rest of the night is a smoky gray. I woke in my own bed. The morning was bright and the radio that constantly murmured through the thin dorm walls was chattering to me but I didn't mind either. My thoughts were clear and my body clean as I swung naked feet to a cold linoleum floor. Last night's pants hung neatly on the back of a chair, the shirt folded on the seat. I pulled them to me, intending to put them on but stopping as I caught the scent of the bar on them.

Cloying and warm, the smells of malt and ash scampered under my nose and brought back the man and his voice. Nothing else. No words came with the image, just sound as his mouth moved and he stared at me with small town eyes in a big city face.

I put down the bundle and padded naked to the closet for fresh clothes.

Explanation

It's not always going to be like this, sometimes I'll put in something different, but the cornerstone of Read Planet is the Sentence Exercise.

The origin of the S.E. is varied and murky, I'll explore them later on, but the concept is pretty simple. Give me a sentence. Any sentence. I will take it and write a story or a teaser or a couple paragraphs that utilizes that sentence exactly as written.

That's it, really. So send me a sentence. Doesn't have to be specific, doesn't have to be in any kind of context.

So. Where did this come from? Couple three ways.

First, I grew up in L.A. On Sundays (after the good Saturday cartoons were fading memories and vague impulses to buy He-man action figures) a guy named Tom Hatton hosted a Popeye cartoon show. In between cartoons he'd do a segment where he'd take a squiggle that some kid had sent him (or some PA had whipped up) and he'd turn it into a picture. Didn't matter what mess of black spaghetti he was handed, Tom could turn it into a finished cartoon. You couldn't even tell where the scribble had been.

Secondly, I read about Harlan Ellison doing a stunt at A Change of Hobbit in L.A. to help bring in customers. It was a book store (Another Change of Hobbit still exists in Berkeley and they have a basement that would make a genre bibliophile wet themselves) devoted to sci-fi/fantasy. As a child I went there several times with my parents. A clerk explained to me why the bumper sticker that simply read "He's Dead Jim" was funny. Anyway, Ellison apparently spent a week in the big display window of A Change of Hobbit. Every day he sat at a table with a typewriter and wrote a short story. At the end of each day he sent the story of the day off to a magazine for publishing. Seven days, seven stories.

Thirdly, I once said with confidence that I could write anything. Sadly, I didn't add that it would always be good.