26 Nov – Re-write

Take a post or scene you’ve written and find a new way in by rewriting with another angle.

So, a couple of months ago, I came up with this piece of writing, about Margaret and her dear husband, Walter. However, there’s more to the story.

Daily Prompt – Ready, Set, Done #5

Our ten-minute free-write is back! Have no mercy on your keyboard as you give us your most unfiltered self (feel free to edit later, or just publish as-is).

Erica stepped back, wiping the blood off her face. She glanced down to see her sister, Janine, gasping for air, as the blood began running down her chest. The knife protruding from her blouse.

Daily Prompt – Ready, Set, Done! #2

Our free-write is back by popular demand: today, write about anything — but you must write for exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.

Margaret couldn’t stop thinking about murdering her husband.

Margaret often thought about her marriage. She knew her and her husband were stuck in a rut, and she knew that it was rut that had spanned at least twenty three years.

Margaret knew that her husband had been unfaithful over the years, and she recognised the behaviour that elduded to such infidelities… the mystery phone calls which he strangely needed to always take outside of the house, or the text messages he would receive late at night. She knew that it would only be a fleeting moment in time, and that their years of marriage would always outlast whatever indiscretions came along.

Margaret wasn’t completely alone in partaking in extra-marital affairs either. She did have one encounter with a younger gentleman, whilst interstate at a work conference. Whilst she was away at the annual Stationers Convention 1994 in Adelaide, South Australia, she met a rather handsome gentlemen who worked for a large competitor. There was some shop talk which soon became drinks in the bar, and then drinks upstairs in his hotel room, after much discussion about new ranges of display folders and folios. Suddenly he had began to unbutton her blouse and pressed his lips against hers.

Feeling embarrassed, Margaret had quickly covered herself up, apologised, explaining she was married and left the room. She retreated to her hotel room bathroom and cried for hours, wondering how she could have been so careless and nonchalant about the entire situation until it was too late.

But that was years ago, and it only ever happened once, unlike dear old Walter and his string of young mistresses. Margaret always thought it was quite cooincidental how Walter would start acting funny once the company got themselves a new secretary, and it was always just as cooincidental that none of them seemed to last very long working there.

However, one day she overheard him on the phone, ‘I love you too, darling. It won’t be long, I promise. It’ll just be you and I… I can’t wait either.’ Margaret remained calm and poised as she always did, but inside she was seething with rage.

Plotting and scheming his demise, and ultimately, his murder, she found herself watching numerous shows involving murder and investigation, and she was pretty confident that she had worked out a way to kill her husband, without seeming like a suspect and ensuring the body would never be recovered.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ready-set-done-2/

Daily Prompt – Edge Of The Frame

We often capture strangers in photos we take in public. Open your photo library, and stop at the first picture that features a person you don’t know. Now tell the story of that person.

He generally introduced himself as Kane, but to his friends, he was Khaneesi. His parents were migrants who came to Australia in the late 90’s when he was a child. They came here fleeing rebels who terrorised, raped and murdered those in their home village, and the villages around them. By moving here, he had an opportunity to do things that you and I take for granted: have a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head; food to eat, and clean water to drink. He got to go to school and get an education, and make friends, and grow up living as an ‘Australian’.

But for some reason, he seems to have forgotten that he’s catching the train to work, and not riding his scooter. Or his arms are just too tired to carry it.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/edge-of-the-frame/

Daily Prompt – I Can’t Stay Mad at You

Do you hold grudges or do you believe in forgive and forget?

Correction… I can and WILL stay mad at you for as long as I feel like it…

Give me a reason to hold a grudge… any reason… any reason at all… regardless of how minor it may be, and it’s like setting something into concrete – I’ll hold onto that grudge for as long as I need to.

Hi, I’m a Scorpio, and I’m the wrong person you want to be pissing off. Ever. For me, holding grudges is something that just happens . Naturally. Like learning to walk, or brushing your teeth at night. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always held grudges against people, even when I was a kid. I was always of the mindset that if you’re going to piss me off or upset me, then I want nothing to do with you.

…and that was just primary school!

Apr 28 – Crisis Mode

Do you keep calm in a crisis?

I think that’s dependent on the actual crisis itself. The other factor here is that everybody has their own definition of the term ‘crisis’. Generally speaking, it would need to be quite extreme for me to consider something a crisis and I think that I’d be okay.

I’ve been through more than more my fair share of bullshit over the years, found myself in some less-than-ideal situations unfortunately caused by other people, and although at the time it feels like the entire world is crashing down around me in an extreme path of pure destruction, I feel like I’m going to have a complete breakdown and yet somehow, I come out on the other side. Not necessarily without taking a few knocks along the way, but I manage to end up okay.

Daily Prompt: It’s Friday, I’m in Love

Remember your first crush? Think about that very first object of your affection. Oh, the sweaty palms. The swoony feeling in your stomach. Tell us the story of your first crush. What was it about this person that made your heart pound? Was the love requited? Change the names to protect the guilty or innocent if you must! No judgement here. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Oh, god which one do I write about? First girl crush, or first boy crush??

Daily Post: Take That, Rosetta!

If you could wake up tomorrow and be fluent in any language you don’t currently speak, which would it be? Why? What’s the first thing you do with your new linguistic skills?

Oh easy – German.

German is a language that I’ve always wanted to learn… just for the sake of learning a language. It’s something that is also part of my family. A number of my Aunties and Uncles were born in Germany, and my mothers parents were German. Although I’ve never been to Germany, I would love to go one day. No particular reason other than to just see where our family came from.

…and then I could go exploring all over the rest of Europe!!

One of my favourite things about the German language, is that everything basically sounds quite nasty and intimidating, even if you’re saying something sweet. Especially if you shout it. You could tell somebody that you love them; that you simply cannot live without them; and that you would give your heart to them and follow them to the ends of the earth… but if you shout it in German, it would probably be quite frightening.

On the flip-side, you could probably tell a person that you’re going to beat them with a tyre iron until they’re unconscious, then break every single bone in their body individually before slowly cutting off each finger and toe until they slowly die from shock and blood loss, before burying their body somewhere that it’ll never be found… but if you said it in a quiet, sultry kind of voice, somebody would no doubt think that you were quite possibly trying to pick them up.

This is what I love about languages other than English – they can convey the complete opposite emotion of what they’re saying, depending on the tone used when speaking.

I think if I just woke up speaking German, I would probably use it to weird my friends out, and only speak German around them. Or remove myself from conversations completely until I was expected to chime in with something like a comment or a opinion… and then do so in German.

Now, you didn’t specify can we only speak this language, or can we read it as well? If we can read the language, then I’d be on a flight to Queensland to my cousins place and start going through all the boxes of my grandfathers books and journals that he had, which are all in German, so that I’d be able to translate everything into English so we could then share it with the rest of the family. They don’t really speak German, and probably only know a few key words / phrases, and being able to translate everything grandpa had would be quite an incredible gesture to everybody. Also, it would give me more insight into who this man was – unfortunately he passed away before I was born, so I never met him. He was big into astrology and was one of the few re-founders of Uranian Astrology. He was also some kind of scientist, but I don’t really know much about him other than that.

Also, I picked German because Lady Gaga has a song entitled Scheiße which I absolutely love and secretly wished she released as a single. OMG… imagine the remixes. THE REMIXES!! Musical magic!! Plus, I went to her Born This Way Ball three times when it was in town and it was my favourite part of the whole show, hands-down!!

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/daily-post-take-that-rosetta/

Daily Prompt: SOS

You’re at the beach, lounging on your towel, when a glistening object at the water’s edge catches your eye. It’s a bottle — and yes, it contains a message. What does it say?

I would actually just be content enough with being on a beach lazing around in the sun. If I were to find a message in a bottle, the first instinctive thing to do would be to look around and scan for potential camera crews, like it’s some kind of set-up on a hidden-camera tv show.

If it turned out to be real, I’d probably hide it from anybody else around and wait until I get back to my hotel room before I take the message out and read it.

I uncurl the paper and notice that it appears to have been ripped from a book.

I’ve lost count as to how long I’ve been here.

I don’t remember what happened or how I got here.

One minute I was on the beach with our tour group. I remember seeing people snorkelling in the shallows. I remember seeing others playing volleyball. I remember there being a campfire. Then all I recall is screaming and everything goes blank after that. I feel as though I was being dragged. I remember seeing a lot of blood, and a machete, but that’s it. But i don’t know if it was real or if I was dreaming or hallucinating?!

I woke up in this small wooden boat. My clothes have been ripped. My belongings are all gone except for my whatever was in my satchel. My shorts are stained with blood… but I don’t know if it’s mine or not? I have no serious injuries, but I do have a few small wounds on my arms and legs.

I remember that I woke up to the stench of something rotten. I was the only one in the boat, so I thought it must have been rotten food. I pulled back the canvas sheet, and there she was. I don’t know who she is, or what happened to her. I do know that her hand and half her leg are gone – they appear to have been severed from her body – my guess is that they were hanging over the edge of the boat in the beginning when they put us here, and she got attacked by a shark.

There is blood all down the side of the boat, and there is blood all through the bottom of the boat underneath her body. I made the mistake of trying to flip her over and she has multiple stab wounds to her body – in particular her throat, chest and abdomen. I don’t know whether to dump her body overboard just to get rid of the blood and this foul stench of rotten flesh, or whether to keep up hope that I’ll be rescued.

I don’t know who did this. I don’t know why. I don’t even know where I am, or if I’ll ever see land again.

I’m going to die out here. It’s just a matter of time. If anybody finds this, please help me.

Please.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/daily-prompt-water/

Daily Prompt: My Precious

Who is the person in your life who can do no wrong? Describe this person and tell us why you hold them in such high esteem.

I actually find this a challenging question, given my predisposition to generally hate everybody because they’re all retarded… I don’t actually have anybody in my life who really could get away with murder.

I find that I have no tolerance for people’s bullshit, regardless of whether I know them or not. If anything, I think the only legitimate response I could give would be:

Yep. Babies.

They’re innocent, and they’re adorable. Granted, when they cry, they really know how to scream the place down, and let’s be honest, sometimes they REALLY creep me out when they stare at me. They stare right into my eyes, and it feels like they’re staring into my soul… my blackened, charred, ice-cold soul.

Some people believe that they’re able to see the inner child within me. Who knows, that might be right. Some people believe that we’ve met in another life and we’re two old souls reconnecting… again, anything is possible, but it doesn’t stop the fact that when they stare at me it freaks me out far too much.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/daily-prompt-my-precious/