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Oh nice try, Nano, but no chance. You're in this for good now. Can't work on it myself now but I know there's a way to use them both.

Bloomfield wrote:total: 151 words

The words, the sad, simple, and haunting melody, wove gently through her mind: Talk to Me of Mendocino, they whispered and hummed and spun, but it wasn’t Mendocino, it was Grand Rapids, and it wasn’t Talk to Me of, it was Take Me Back to, so really it was like a whole different song. But Grand Rapids was on her mind. And no wonder: The rain was pelting against the window, and the jukebox was broken, just as it had been in the Loving Spoonful in Grand Rapids the night before. She noticed with a start that she was biting her nails again. She looked down at her hands. The short, chipped nails, the wrinkles that hadn't been there when she had moved north for him. With a shrug, she started rummaging through her handbag for a lipstick, her forehead still pressed against the glass and the rain pelting against it.

She freshened her lipstick, checked her image in her compact mirror, sighed, and went for a second pint to the Jot and Tittle. Her melancholy was growing deeper by the sip; the jukebox there was working, but only added to the muddle with a whining irritation that passed for music. "Bjork", the barkeep said it was. How appropriately onomatopaeic, she thought wryly to herself. Bjork. Enough of these pints and I'll be making that noise myself later on.

(How's that?)

The words, the sad, simple, and haunting melody, wove gently through her mind: Talk to Me of Mendocino, they whispered and hummed and spun, but it wasn’t Mendocino, it was Grand Rapids, and it wasn’t Talk to Me of, it was Take Me Back to, so really it was like a whole different song. But Grand Rapids was on her mind. And no wonder: The rain was pelting against the window, and the jukebox was broken, just as it had been in the Loving Spoonful in Grand Rapids the night before. She noticed with a start that she was biting her nails again. She looked down at her hands. The short, chipped nails, the wrinkles that hadn't been there when she had moved north for him. With a shrug, she started rummaging through her handbag for a lipstick, her forehead still pressed against the glass and the rain pelting against it.

She freshened her lipstick, checked her image in her compact mirror, sighed, and went for a second pint to the Jot and Tittle. Her melancholy was growing deeper by the sip; the jukebox there was working, but only added to the muddle with a whining irritation that passed for music. "Bjork", the barkeep said it was. How appropriately onomatopaeic, she thought wryly to herself. Bjork. Enough of these pints and I'll be making that noise myself later on.

Only it wasn't the Jot and Tittle. It was the Jotkyjevik e Tittledottir, and the realization that her plane had crash landed in this remote Icelandic outpost was starting to bang on her bruised memory like last night's gin & tonic.

Oops, Em! I revised it further. I hate work. It gets in the way of everything.

ENTRY

The Gathering

We sat beneath the willow tree that stood at the top of the greenest hill. Together in silence we gazed in the distance. I glanced at her. Her eyes were bright with unspilled tears. She stared unblinking as if she were keeping watch, and the moments passed like eternity. Finally she spoke.

"We made a promise, all of us. You and I are here, but the rest…" She faltered, dropping her head downwards.

Gently, I replied, "They are with us now, as they always will be. If we think of them, and remember, they won’t ever really leave.”

“That’s not good enough. We vowed that nothing would keep us from gathering. But look what happened. They failed their promises. And now...” Silence once again filled the air.

She and I spoke of our dearest friends. While we were in school together, we were inseparable, six friends closer than family. We would gather every weekend at someone else’s house, but after we left school and went our separate ways, once a year, on this same summer day, we gathered here. We met at sunrise, and parted at sunset. At the end of each gathering, we would say, “See you next year--same time, same place.” This was our day, like a day of magic.

But the magic turned tragic. Each year that one among our group did not make it, they were taken from the physical world the following day. I kept saying it was coincidence, but each year it happened, they believed it was connected. Only I did not see the connection.

The steady wind dampened our mood as the dark clouds gathered. I stood.

“It’s time we go. The storm is coming, and the sun is setting. See you next year—same time, same place.”

She stared into the sky. “No, you won’t.” A sudden thunderclap echoed across the hills as if to emphasize what she just said. The rain started to fall, and she remained on that hilltop as I made my journey home.


I remember that day like it was only yesterday, when in fact it was exactly 366 days ago. Yesterday, I revisited that day as I sat beneath the willow tree, by myself. That was the last day I saw her, for she did not come this year. And when I woke this morning, I found out she had joined our friends in the night.

cskinner wrote:In my always annoying (to others) quest for collaboration, and in the spirit of A Real Reel, I propose a little collaborative writing...

Good gravy, you remember that? Great, now I have to go see if I still have those sound files or people will send in forms stating that my site is down..

ENTRY:

That night, like all others, I had to get to the pool room; after all I had some stupid shoe money to lose. The wait for my favorite table was interminable; I had to sit on that hard wooden chair near the bathroom and get sprinkled by wooden-legged Tony Uzi as he came out cackling to himself: "Hey Phillie (sprinkles water all over me; God, I hope it's sink water), how are ya tonight, eh? "Yeah, yeah, fine, Tony; ya wanna move those jamokes off table six or what?"

A great show, anyway: wooden slat floors covered with tobaco and spit; Danny stripped to his shorts in a death struggle not to lose and drink vinegar again at table four; Bruce getting hustled as always by a guy I could sniff out a mile away on table three; Matty, the Bronx's original openly gay guy trolling at table one.

Ah, an open table, and some action. Ooh, Steve should know better than to verbally joust with Jimmy, the punch drunk ex-boxer with the dead left hand. Imagine if that plaster wall, now with the big hole in it, had been Steve's head?

Just another night at Tony's pool room. Maybe tomorrow night, I'll call that girl from the projects...

Rambling remnants of a misspent youth...anybody for a quick game of nine ball?

Best,

Philo

Nanohedron wrote:Oops, Em! I revised it further. I hate work. It gets in the way of everything.

fixed.

emmline wrote:

Nanohedron wrote:Oops, Em! I revised it further. I hate work. It gets in the way of everything.

fixed.

And what of the italics?

Severe flashback, Phil. I think I've been there - what a dive!

*shudder*

Susan

Nanohedron wrote:

emmline wrote:

Nanohedron wrote:Oops, Em! I revised it further. I hate work. It gets in the way of everything.

fixed.

And what of the italics?

What...I'm s'posed to fix everything? Ok, I'm used to that.

Sadly, Susan, in those days in that pool room, no women allowed. The pool room phone number was given to our girlfriends as our home phone number...you would have been out of place...too nice to be tolerated

Philo

Entry
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"Damn!" I curse as I rummage through the mangled pack for a cigarette that's obviously not there.

Pulling my shoes on, I make one last futile attempt to find a smoke-able remnant of a cig at the ashtray near the back door. Annoyed and unfulfilled, I head out to the store.

It's a short walk, and soon I'm in the store and grabbing some smokes. That's the part I hate the most: going from the darkness to the jarring whiteness of an all-night supermarket. It makes you feel punch drunk.

Coming back into the complex, I see a young woman bent over and cursing her mailbox. My eyes linger on the ass cheeks peeking out from under her shorts. I'm startled when she looks me dead in the eye and says "Hi!"

"Uh, need some help?" I ask, flushing.

"Baby, I need you," she purrs , taking a step in my direction.

"Huh?" I say. Brilliant.

While struggling to come up with something wittier, she lunges at me! She's closer than I thought, because I barely have time to get my hands up. She gets my forearm instead of my throat, driving me backward. She must be on meth or something, because I can't shake her off. Her face is so close I can smell her putrid breath; her lip curled up in a sneer. She's filed her canines into sharp points.

Damn! A psycho.

"Relax baby," she says coyly. "Don't fight."

My heart is pounding a staccato, and it takes all of my will to relax, and stop struggling.

She relaxes as I do, and has enough time to say "That's better..." before the palm of my hand slams into her nose, crunching bone. I kick hard to her knee. There's a wet popping sound, and her hands fly from her face to her leg. She drops to the ground as I turn to run. I take two steps before something heavy slams into my back, knocking me face down.

"Oh my," she rasps in my ear. "I've never had anyone fight me like that before. It's a shame that life isn't fair, because you certainly had my number!"

Her fingers wrap around my throat like talons. "I think I like you, warrior-man. I think I'll let you live," she says. My vision starts to swim as she bends her lips to my throat.

"Sort of."

Wow Wanderer. We're into some freaky stuff here at C&F!

ENTRY (true story) Too long to qualify, so sue me.

Gary, a wild man from rural Arkansas, was a high school football hero, but he was too small to play for the Razorbacks, so he joined the Air Force. We were thrown together at Sheppard AFB in Witchita Falls, Texas in 1973 right after boot camp to do medical corpsman school. We graduated after 9 weeks and walked off base on a Friday night to celebrate. Most of the group would ship out in the next week to permanent assignments across the world. Gary and I were staying for another 9 week course to train for psych ward jobs.

Gary was terrified of needles and was even freaked out practicing giving shots to me. He stuck a small needle just under the skin of my forearm for a sub-q and dropped the syringe so it dangled. That freaked him out even more so I had to pick up the syringe and hand it to him while the needle lay embedded in me. When I gave him an intramuscular into the deltoid, he acted like I was killing him.

We were ten 18yr olds heading off base in blue jeans, t-shirts, and haircuts unstylishly short for the times, even in Texas. We ate pizza, drank much beer, and laughed a lot. Returning to base, we had to produce our military ID cards and show them to the security guards at the gate kiosk. The guards were 19yr olds. Guys were griping about it being obvious we were from the base, and it was stupid to have to show ID, but we were in a boisterous good mood.

We dutifully file past a guard who dutifully compares our cards and faces and jerks his head toward the interior of the base. Gary, who’s really feeling his oats, walks up and bellows, “Yes sirrr, what can ah do for you?” The guard says, “I need to see your ID.” “Mah ahh dee?” The guard stares at him straight-faced. Gary reaches into his back pocket and presents his folding leather wallet with a flourish, opening it like a book, bent forward and twisted like Quasimodo, looking up into the eyes of the guard, never at the wallet, eyebrows raised expectantly. The guard looks at the wallet and says, “What the hell is that?” Moving only his neck, Gary shoots a look at his wallet, no ID in sight, then back to the guard’s face. He says,“That’s mah wallet. Now, I’m fixin’ to show you mah ahh dee.” Drunken laughter erupts all around. One guy is lying on his back in the grass, kicking his legs in the air, shrieking like a chimpanzee. (So, maybe you had to be there. Being drunk would help.)

We move on and I hear the second guard, who never left the booth, say “Man, he got you good.” The first replies, “Smart ass.” The other one chuckles.