Tag: #sixsentencestories

Gerald caught up with Snaky, the dragon who kidnapped his wife, Miriam, and told him to gently, very gently, open his mouth and set her down. After Snaky did she went to Gerald’s side putting her hands to her hair to stroke it back in place and then wiping off the dragon slime so they could both pay full attention when giving Snaky a piece of their minds, such as, What has gotten into you?

Raising his chest with snorts of pride and showing grotesque teeth and dragon boogers dripping through his nostrils’ steam, Snaky bellowed that he wanted to rip their hearts out squishing them slowly, very slowly, as sacrifices to his lord and master of the 33rd degree, Illuminatus Illuminati, Satánus Luciferus, marked with the 666 seal, the Supreme Serpent for whom he’d gladly lay down his dragon bones and die.

After pausing to permit this to sink in Gerald and Miriam looked at each other and laughed leaving even Snaky erupting in spooky grunts at his own expense. Pointing out to him that he had unintentionally rubbed his bottom in what looked like dragon-itch poison ivy Gerald and Miriam figured it was time to leave before they started itching as well.

As they turned from the deluded rainbow kingdom of mischievous enchantment, ever troubling the visions of misguided youth and the dreams of the witless old, it faded exposing an underbelly of demented fantasies and wormy delights.

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Denise offers the prompt word stroke to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This is a continuation (and hopefully the conclusion) of Key – Six Sentence Story.

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I am grateful to Sammi Cox, the editor of Whispers and Echoes, for publishing one of my very short stories, Ever Simmering Fluid.

The only thing Gerald wanted was that key dangling from the neck of the sorceress who said as she offered him an apple squishing the worm popping its head from the core: Take another bite.

He tried to recall what he was doing there as she charmed him explaining, But, Gerald, you know you’re addicted and it’s time for your medication. To prove her point she unlocked his chains with the key to show him just how pathetically weak he had become. Besides, she loved watching her victims go through the agony of deciding what they really wanted: freedom or wormy delights?

Thankfully for Gerald the fog cleared in time for him to remember why he entered this godforsaken kingdom of enchantment in the first place. Unchained he rushed off to resume rescuing his wife kidnapped by Snakindegras, a particularly ornery dragon he couldn’t wait to get his hands on, while the witch with the apple screamed in the distance: Run, Snaky, run!

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Denise offers the prompt word “key” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

On one side of the path there was a perilous, downward sloping edge. He walked this mountain trail to reach home.

He crawled when winds blew to avoid being thrown into the abyss. When rainstorms poured he rested knowing those dark clouds would soon move on.

When grisly goats, demonic dragons or other ugly forms of monstrous nonsense blocked his way he told them where to go. Only the foolish hesitated to obey.

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Denise offers the word “edge” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Proverbs 16:7 –  “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (KJV)

That detour Brian didn’t have to take took decades. When troubles knocked some sense into him, he lacked the sense to ride those blessings home. Sliding on curses he went where no one needed to go.

When Brian found his way home he told us, “If I knew how easy it would be to jump off that merry-go-round I’d have done it long ago.” Regretting the waste of life, he added, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

We were so glad to see him none of us saw any need to remind him just how often we had told him.

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Denise offers the word “detour” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Proverbs 15:32 – “He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding.” (KJV)

Who controls the whirlwind? All one can hope when the debris settles is to find something left of value.

When Benjamin saw the twister head straight for the farmhouse he yelled to his wife to get the children. While they were driving away she noticed that the tornado had changed direction as if it were chasing them. With the sound of the wind ripping trees apart Benjamin braked, turned into the entrance of a field, backed out to face the opposite direction, shifted into first, accelerated, shifted into second, accelerated, and shifted into third to accelerate out of the reach of the advancing wind.

If that twister really did want to get them it miscalculated since it left chickens, cows, sheds, tractor, cellar and the farmhouse, all of it, intact and untouched, but glowing with Benjamin’s and his family’s praise rising heavenwards sweetened with gratitude.

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Denise offers the word “control” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Proverbs 10:25, “As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.” (KJV)

People faulted Blake as someone who liked to run around, a term that usually meant he couldn’t stop starting and stopping stuff, popping in here and then suddenly there, or jabbering about this and then that longer than most listeners, they in particular, could tolerate. He wouldn’t dream of denying their charges since he viewed his defects as features except when others exhibited them.

All this running around focused his waking hours on optimizing the quantity of funds he could turn over to questionable, but good enough, causes with little time left over to deal with his own problems. As his future turned into his past and the measurable score of his good deeds exploded, he anticipated that there would be an endless supply of more of the same in spite of knowing that entropy makes a mess of most things.

Reality intervened one day like a waiter bringing a tab he didn’t know he started. Trying to find something of value with which to pay the bill he was surprised to learn that the busyness of his effective altruism provided little, if any, positive value in his present situation to keep the demonic darkness from coming in and taking him out.

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Denise offers the word “term” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

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Whispers and Echoes recently published a 100-word story of mine called Spotting the Heretic. I am grateful to the editor, Sammi Cox, for selecting it. Submissions to this online journal are currently open.

Barry had a handful of chickens on his tiny homestead in the woods which were a handful too many for his dog, Fred. Things might have turned out differently for the birds if they had not taunted Fred while he was chained to his dog house. They knew just how far his chain would reach and teased him until he lunged at them only to be snapped back by the chain.

Things also might have turned out differently, or at least gone on precariously, were it not for Barry taking Fred on walks far down the forest trail and then letting him off his chain to freely romp about in the trees.

Early one morning before the sparkling dewdrops vanished Fred dragged Barry further down the forest trail than usual. Barry’s hypnotic dreaming of what he would do if only he had a homestead as big as this beautiful woodland area popped like a forest faery fantasy when he watched Fred run back to take care of those pesky chickens.

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Denise offers the word “tree” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. Eugenia offers “dewdrops” for her prompt this week.

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I am grateful to the editor, Sammi Cox, for accepting one of my stories, “Splashy“, for Whispers and Echoes.