Game Pod Challenge: 4 Phrases

Today's Game Pod challenge rules?
Simple.

Write a 300 to 500 word count flash fiction or scene that used the following four phrases as dialog, text, theme, metaphor, action, etc. in the work. 

A windmill full of corpses
Passive-Aggressive Post-it notes
Getting drunk on mouthwash
Licking things to claim them

First up, G...

Scavengers

 by J. G. Walker

 

Three men entered the hotel dining room. As the door shut behind them, Tom--the middle-manager, the one with the most seniority, and the man in charge--spotted a book on a table. 

He pointed. “There!”

No sooner had Tom uttered this than his teammates, Pete and Stig, scrambled away in a blur of khaki and denim. Pete, benefitting from longer legs and an elbow deployed to Stig’s chest, reached the table first.

While Stig sulked, wheezing, Pete picked up the hardbound book, and Tom stepped closer to look at it: An aged, bedraggled knight wielded an enormous sword, leaning back against the door of a rustic windmill. Around the door’s edges, various bloody arms protruded, some with hands, some without. A few hung limp, but others still appeared intent on strangling the knight.

The title: Don Quixote: Zombie Exterminator.

Pete sat on the table, dropped the duffle he’d been carrying, and began to scan the book. He eventually stopped, unpeeling a purple sticky note from one of the pages, reading aloud: “Are you doing your best for the company? Answer: You can always do better. Spread the word.”

He smiled at Tom. “Mark the dining room off the list.” He folded the note and shoved it into his shirt pocket with the other gems of company propaganda they’d collected.

Then he lifted the book to his face and ran his tongue across its dusty cover. Twice.

Stig recoiled. Tom was too stunned to move.

“Why’d you do that?” he said.

Pete held the book out to Stig. “Do you want it?”

“No,” Stig said, clearly horrified. “Not with all your slobber on it.”

Pete looked at Tom again, grinning. “That’s why.” He placed the book on the table and reached into his jacket, producing a bottle, a blue one with a familiar label.

“Is that what I think it is?” Tom said.

Pete unscrewed the lid. “Probably.”

Stig shook his head. Apparently, he knew something Tom didn’t.

“Here’s to me,” Pete said.

Tom watched, amazed, as Pete upended the bottle of Listerine.

All things considered, mouthwash was probably a good idea for Pete. Even on a good day, he could stand it, but especially after licking that book.

He did seem to be drinking a lot of it, though.

Finally, Pete finished, but instead of spitting the mouthwash, he swallowed.

“Gah!” Tom said. “That stuff’ll kill you.”

“Common misconception.” Pete smacked his lips. “Gives quite the buzz, actually. And kills germs.”

“You’re crazy,” Stig said.

Actually, Tom realized, considering Pete’s daily office behavior, the Listerine explained a lot. An question occurred to him.

“Have you licked everything we’ve found this morning?”

“Yup,” Pete replied, then belched. “Which room’s next?”

Tom passed the list to Stig, who consulted it.

“Scullery.” Stig pointed. “That way.”

Tom sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Team building exercises, he thought.

A scavenger hunt.

With these two idiots.

Ten more items.

Bloody terrific.

Next up, M....



 

MINE

By Michelle Ladner

Nick knew instantly the post-break-up agreement had been broken. He stood at the door of the apartment he’d shared with Kay and stared at the bright yellow square stuck to the faded green paint. On the note, a scrawl of purple marker read:

TOOK WHAT I FELT WAS MINE. HOPE YOU DON’T MIND. JACK HELPED MOVE ME OUT. BE BACK TONIGHT FOR THE REST.

Let’s keep things civil, Kay had said to him. There’s no need to get your family involved. You know how your dad can be.

Nick teeth ground together. Jack sure had moved her out, hadn’t he? He plucked the note off the door and crumpled it, stuffing it deep in his pocket.

He turned the key in the knob and flung the door wide. All the furniture he’d charged to his credit card last year with her urging was gone. Worse than that, the artwork his gran painted him last Christmas was gone too. A few odds and ends were still scattered about the studio apartment. He saw more yellow squares with ridiculous purple script stuck to what Kay deemed her remaining things.

The space smelled mustier than he remembered. He paced around, cataloging all the things she’d already taken, their things.

In the middle of the kitchen counter sat a cardboard box. Stuck to the front of it, another angry yellow square with purple script stared back.

YOUR STUFF

He shook his head and rifled through the heaped box, chewing on his bottom lip. He realized these weren’t his things, but instead an odd collection of trash and random incidentals retrieved from under the bathroom sink.

Heat rose to his forehead. He decided to grab a beer from the fridge. She didn’t drink beer.

All his beer was gone. As well as the milk he’d just bought on Monday. Only half a wrapped sandwich stared back. On it, another Post-it…

DONT EAT THIS. IT’S JACKS. COMING BACK FOR THE REST OF MY STUFF TONIGHT AT 6.

Nick slammed the fridge door.

He plucked a full bottle of mouthwash from the heart-gouging box of his stuff. Imagining her skinny, slutty body pinned to a windmill full of corpses. He wrenched off the top and gulped down half the blue minty liquid.

After a moment, staring at the mouthwash bottle on the kitchen counter and experiencing a strangely fresh and warm feeling overcoming him, Nick opened the fridge. He unwrapped Jack’s sandwich, peeled it apart, and licked both halves. Carefully, he placed the halves back together, rewrapped the sandwich, and laid it back on the fridge shelf.

He packed everything in the apartment with a Post-it on it into his car. Sitting on the curb, sipping on the mouthwash, he dialed his father’s office.

“Markham and Markham and Whitley,” the secretary answered.

“Hi, Carol. This is Nick. Can you ask Dad to meet me at the apartment at six tonight after all?”

“Sure thing, Nick.”

Nick smiled, hanging up the phone, and downing the rest of his mouthwash.

 

Hope you all enjoyed our Game Pod! Let's do it again!!!

What I Miss Most

One of the things I miss most about being in a university setting is the accessibility to like minded people. It's really an amazing experience and, in a way, intellectually utopic. It's been almost three years since I graduated with my BA and I miss school. Not because I particularly miss writing papers (or the hour long one-way drive) but because I miss the hallway and coffee shop conversations with my classmates and professors. I miss my peers. I miss having access to all those writers and readers I engaged with daily. 

Developing Pea Swag--Bookmarks Anyone?

I think that's why I like the idea of the blog. But also why I failed at it several times when I'd tried to do one on my own. I like to talk about writing and reading more than anything. And a blog is a venue in which I'm able to engage in that dialog frequently from my home. Without the blog I have to rely on infrequent and quite expensive writers conferences. But I get bored with just my own thoughts and debates. Of course I have my Peas. That's not always enough. And it's not that my Peas aren't terrific smart ladies. But having access to intellectual and cognitive diversity is a wondrous thing. Which is why I've made a push to pull other voices into our blog. Not just so you, our imaginary readers, don't get bored with us. But, because I, your M Pea in the pod, am already bored with myself.

Along with the launch of my three part blog project with friend and award-winning screenwriter Kristall Burke, I plan to engage with others in interviews and blog prompts, as I can, to keep myself (and hopefully you) entertained. We, of course, have the occasional visit from Honorary Pea J.G. Walker but I hope to introduce you to many more of the writers and readers in a Pea's life. We hope to have Kristall come back, also tap into conversations with other writers we know, and introduce you to the many wonderful readers in our lives. 

Which brings me to a series I will launch week after next and the upcoming Friday blog post next week. I have a few writer blogs in the works and several posts that will involve a twelve (or more) question interview with several readers from many walks of life.

So stay tuned on Fridays for the next few weeks and we will see how this goes. I hope you enjoy the peek into other's thoughts and ideas as much as I do. Until then…

Peas to you. 

Guest Pod: Writer Blog by J. G. Walker

The Peas love talking about reading and books as much as (and sometimes more) than writing them. Delving into the topic of what books turn readers on and why we became readers is something we spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing. It's fascinating to learn the origins of how people we know come to reading and what compels them to pick up that next book. We asked our honorary pea, G (A.K.A.  J. G. Walker), to write a little about why he reads what he reads. Pull up a cushy corner of the pod and relax as he gives you his take.

I don’t remember learning how to read.
Well, you might say, maybe the process was traumatic enough that I somehow relegated it to the dark recesses of my mind. I should point out, though, that I absolutely remember learning how to swim, and that experience is one I’d gladly forget. No, I think the reason I don’t remember is learning to read is that it happened so early.

My mother was a budding kindergarten teacher when I was young, so that could help explain why reading came so early. My dad says I used to sound out the words on billboards when we took him to work at Fort Rucker, Alabama. I have no recollection of this, since I’d only have been about two or three at the time, but it seems likely, since I still have a compulsion for reading billboards today. Now I make stupid jokes about them, of course.

Whatever its origins, reading became enough of a reflex for me that not much in the way of books escaped my attention. As I got taller, I grew more selective, out of necessity more so than anything else. There was only so much time, after all, and lending libraries then weren’t what they are today. I didn’t read much mainstream fiction or non-fiction as a kid, either, having decided in my ultimate wisdom that it was too ordinary (Spoiler alert: I got better).

What I would read, however, was anything out of the ordinary --science fiction, horror, fantasy--and if I found someone I liked, I’d devote myself to slavishly devouring that author’s entire canon. (It’s also worth noting that this was also when I discovered I was quite the night owl.) Isaac Asimov, Madeleine L’Engle, Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin--these and many more writers succumbed to many late-night reading binges.

Later, high school came along, and I moved on to slightly darker fare. Stephen King, Anne Rice, H.P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, and Clive Barker were my go-to scribes in those days. The classics? Not so much. I was still a snob, and the thought that I would eventually go on to get three degrees in English would have rendered me downright apoplectic.
 
One day, however, I read a book that would change my life. It was the first mainstream, perhaps even Literary-with-a-capital-‘L’-novel, I’d read that had such a drastic effect on me. Yes, it was ‘realistic,’ in the sense that it was about normal people living plausible lives in an authentic world, but it was nothing even approaching ordinary. The book was John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meaney, and it’s still one of my favorite novels. It also has the distinction of being the work that made me want to become a writer and give up the idea forever, both at the same time. It was that good.

This caused a drastic shift in my perspective. Maybe, I reasoned, some of those classics and other mainstream novels I’d snubbed were worth a try as well. And they were. My horizons broadened, new genres opened themselves to me, and I realized there was no way in hell I’d ever be able to read everything I wanted. There are worse problems to have, I know.

But what about my exacting, snobby standards? The truth is they remained the same. The only change that occurred was the new realization that when looking for new things to read, I now had a lot more places to search.

What do I read now? That’s pretty simple. It should be something new, it should be interesting, and the author should be attempting to tell a unique story. That’s really all there is to it. Oh, and it should be well-written, but that sort of lines up with the uniqueness.

If a story tells me something I don’t already know, or even if it tells me something I’m familiar with but does so in a new and unique way, I’m on it. There are only so many tales, as the saying goes, the trick being to tell them in new ways. It may be fiction, non-fiction, horror, humor, fan-fiction, dark or light.

Whether a story is about a borderline-sociopathic Victorian detective, a kid with a wrecked voice, a pair of comic book creators living in New York City in the 1940s, a vampire (okay, maybe not a sparkly one, but that’s just me), a time-traveling World War II soldier, people climbing Mount Everest, an orphaned boy wizard, a haunted hotel, or a possessed Plymouth Fury, if it’s exceptional in some way, then it’s up my alley.

And the story doesn’t have to be set in a far-flung galactic empire, an alternate history, or be populated by furry critters, geometric shapes, or homicidal telepaths, either. Although those can be pretty nifty, too.

J.G. Walker is a writer, editor, and writing coach who lives with his wife in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His fiction and nonfiction have been featured in such publications as Oracle Fine Arts Review, Lullwater Review, and Aoife’s Kiss. Walker is currently trying to create the impression that he is at work on his third novel, Visitation: A Novel of Death and Inconvenience. To find out more, check him out at www.courtstreetliterary.com or www.jgwalker.net 


Next week, more impromptu flash fiction! We love to write it and you seem to love to read it. Let's hope you still feel the same after next Tuesday. Peas out.