It took stealth.
It took cunning.
It took bribery.
Mostly it took outright thievery.
Yes, I got my fin on a SECOND ARC of DIVERGENT!
Please don't ask for details, they will only terrify you. Sufficient unto the day to say duct tape has many fine applications.
So, let's do this again!
WRITING CONTEST will open tomorrow, SATURDAY 1/15/2011 at noon. It will run until Sunday at noon. All times are EASTERN SHARK TIME.
Here are the rules:
1. Write a story in 100 words or fewer
2. Use the following words in the story
Mildew
scandal
snooze
flair
jasper
Bonus points if you correctly identify what links these words.
Post your entry in the comments column of this blog post.
If you want a second shot, a mulligan, just enter again. I'll delete the first entry.
One entry per person will be considered.
Prize is a copy of DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth and trust me, you WANT to win this.
Ready, set, JUMP!
83 comments:
Mildew stained his hands as he read about the scandal: The watchman's untimely snooze, the flair of the theft, the priceless jewellery never recovered.... He heard the librarian call closing time, and regretfully restored the yellowed paper to the archives. As he stretched he smiled, feeling the familiar weight of the jasper pendant in his pocket; a last reminder of his glory days.
That mildewed curtain was useless. Jasper promised daily to throw the damned thing away.
Jasper was lazy, always was and will be. He loved that snooze, once hitting it thirteen times. Two hours in bed, two hours late for work.
I can’t blame his boss for firing him. Jasper did. His constant threats toward his former boss, the man’s wife and three kids caused scandal in our small town.
Jasper’s plan had style and flair. He had neither. Must have gotten it off the internet.
Maybe that old curtain had one last purpose: as a shroud.
Janie picked her way across the bedroom floor, noting the scattered things tossed about. Had the tabloids seen it, there'd be a scandal. She'd always had a flair for the dramatic.
She opened what had to be the right door. The scent of mildew clung to the bathroom, melding with the jasper colored tiles in a queasy way. She shut it quickly.
Behind her, she could hear him reach over and slap the snooze button for the third time that morning.
She really ought to wake him up before she left him this time.
I hit the snooze once more, but not to sleep. Just to think. My stomach twisted as it had all night. I had to find a way out of the scandal before my name--my life--got intertwined. Before it crept in on me like the mildew around the windowsill.
The red jasper pendant I pulled from under my tee shirt had become a concrete block around my neck. My fingers touched it gingerly, tracing the intricate setting. Too much flair for me. Not my style, but it wasn’t about appearance. It was about power.
Power that wanted me gone.
When she opened the lid of the box he woke from his snooze and immediately looked at me with those startling green eyes, for which he was named. Jasper was my pedigree silver tabby, with black and honey stripes softened by a faint dusting of mildew-white.
He was most beautiful cat in the world and he knew it. If he were a person, his flair for insolence would cause a scandal. His expression said I needed to take better care of him. ‘Thank goodness you found him’, I said to the stranger with gratitude. ‘I thought I’d lost him forever.’
Jasper was confident he would win the bet; he had a flair for orchestrating such things. Most notably Miss Mildew, whose fantasies were fanned by a winning glance, was sure to play out her part. She was easy to find too, so often did she loiter in the lobby wearing too much rouge in case Jasper should pass. He coughed to wake her from her snooze on the chaise longue.
Twenty minutes later, Miss Mildew delivered an envelope entrusted to her to an esteemed gentleman (and covert editor of London's foremost gossip rag). The scandal broke with the following morning.
Flair. No. Genius. MaMa never saw it. Color-coded serfs? Native animals for labor? High-speed handwork? My ideas!
And Coal? Again? I’ve used renewable energy since 79 AD. Passive-aggressive oaf. Buffoon!
I dropped in while his entire campus snoozed, even the Starbucks. Still. So. Tired.
I considered Rudolph—but found the nose unappetizing—and chose Jasper. Our Guest was more difficult. How could a woman so decrepit withstand four tasers? I can bring down my trophy harem with a shot.
I entered. Jasper was bound to the chair, his lolling head reflected in silver chafing dishes.
“Mildew. Where is Mrs. Claus?”
Title: Whatever Happened to (Baby Jane) Angelina?
“Her name is Snooze? And she’s Oompa Loompa orange?” Jasper asked, incredulous.
“No,” I said, laughing. “It’s…Snooki.”
“And she has a pickle fixation? That’s weird. I mean, cupcakes, sure. But pickles?”
I shrugged. “She has a flair for craziness and an Oscar the Grouch fixation. She repeatedly passes out in mildew laden trashcans.”
“And that’s a scandal?”
“No, it’s just stupid,” I replied, yawning. It was early on Sunday morning.
“So, why do you watch the show? If it’s that bad?”
“Oh, I used to be on it.”
Disclaimer: I don't watch Jersey Shore. I swear. I need more coffee.
Taking advantage of a snoozing guard, his escape has caused a prison scandal. Larry finally stepped across the Jasper county line a few minutes after noon. He had a flair for tragedy that spanned his entire life and would now mark his end as well. As he approached the church he slipped on a rock covered in mildew, fatally striking his head. He lay there bleeding, waiting. Finally he saw her. Her white dress appeared pink through the blood now stinging his eyes. She was, he thought, the one good thing his life produced.
Jerry slid his finger along the foundation bottles, settling on Morning Blush. Carl never got it right, especially the men. A too-light foundation accentuated stubble, making the unfortunate soul look like Casper’s mildew-speckled cousin. Jerry shook his head. Here in the boonies, the town’s dead endured their final sprucing in the hands of the village bastard or the village idiot. After lipstick (Rose of Sharon) and eye shadow (Lilac Kiss), a lace bow under the chin added a touch of flair. Nothing like a new scandal to slap Jasper (pop. 799) from its self-righteous snooze.
“See you in hell, papa.”
Maybe it was thoughts of her that kept me from sleeping. Hell, I couldn’t even catnap or snooze on the sofa. Why couldn’t I get her out of my head? Because I loved her? No, love was too complicated. Because I liked her? No, I didn’t. Maybe because I needed her. Her talent, her flair for that, for making men need her, was a scandal here in quiet, quaint Jasper. But it wasn’t a healthy, clean need. No, it was mildew; worse, it was rot. I won’t call her again. No, I won’t. I reached for the phone.
“Have you ever been to Jasper?” warbled the stranger, sounding like an injured hound dog. “In the car with Bill Malone….”
Jimmy scowled to hisself. Would be a real scandal if he lost the Appalachian Ballad Contest and bottle of Jack to that yahoo.
He hitched up his overalls and spit, avoiding his polished wingtips. “Got the flair of a Yankee, he does,” he muttered.
Jimmy used his knife to clean some mildew from under his thumbnail, and then lay in the shade for a snooze. When he woke, everyone was gone, including the Yankee and his friend Jack Daniels.
The snooze button on his blaring alarm clock was just out of reach and while it was a scandal to sleep to the hour on the display, he didn’t care. The simple things no longer mattered. Just days before he had been lying in a cardboard box covered with mildew, with only a dream, that all changed in one lucky moment.
The memory was from only days before, but it felt like a dream. He reminisced about the numbered balls as they brought him into his new life filled with flair, gold and jasper jewelry, and wealth he couldn’t imagine.
Jasper had a flair for scandal.
To the neighborhood kids, he was just an old man given to taking an afternoon snooze in his mildew-stippled recliner. But it was during one of those naps, when the kids decided once again to play ring-the-doorbell-and-run, that they realized what Jasper was really capable of.
Billy let out a shriek so chilling that the other kids ran as they never had before. The porch floorboards had given way beneath Billy’s feet. As he fell into a pit, a bear trap silenced him for good.
Old Jasper never even opened his eyes.
The jasper gripped my neck like mildew, each banded red stone marking me as that woman, making people stare. And remember.
I hated that necklace.
I’d watch him from the corner of my eye as I pretended to snooze, my heart in my throat, wondering if he’d let me alone tonight. Please. Just one opera without it, one cocktail party. He’d give his cravat a final twist and stride past me, not fooled. “The jasper, Evelyn.”
Always, the jasper. I wore it shrouded under schoolmarm lace, with defiant flair over strapless gowns.
But I wore it.
My shame. My scandal.
It was the jasper desk, in particular, that caught her eye. A fine piece of work. Grooved but not to the point of disfigurement. The recent corporate incident had led to her promotion, moving her out of that old broom closet she once called an office. No more drafts, no more mildew. Clean and professional.
But within a day, she was bored, dissatisfied. And after a pleasant snooze in the sun through the eastern blinds, she wanted action. She had a flair for danger. So on that wooden bureau, with the copy chief, she created her own scandal.
“Will you look at that?” exclaimed my father as he backed out of Grandma’s crawlspace, batting away mildew spores and dust.
He brandished a tattered, musty hat with flair then sat down, staring at the label inside the trilby and smiling sadly.
“It’s Jasper’s. The summer I was nine, your Grandma would send me outside to play. She’d say, ‘Jasper is coming for a snooze and I don’t want him disturbed so don’t come back until suppertime.’”
Dad sighed. “One day, Grandpa found them. I reckon the scandal tied the noose round his neck but the sorrow pulled it tight.”
When the anesthetic wore off, Bertha discovered the surgeon's unfortunate flair for removing organs. During her light snooze in the OR, he had divested her of her appendix, as scheduled, and also her left kidney, gall bladder, uterus, ovaries, and half of her liver.
Hours later, sprawled in the hospital bed with the smell of mildew lingering in her left nostril only, she began to suspect the loss of an olfactory gland as well.
A large, gilded cross, inset with jasper, hung opposite her, but she couldn't pray. She missed herself. Damn organ donor box, she thought. What a scandal!
Better Things to Do
The musty stink of mildew assaulted Jassy’s nostrils as she started down the basement steps. “Tell you what, Jasper,” she said to the Golden Retriever at her side, “let’s go out under the trees where it’s cool. You can snooze in the soft green grass and I’ll curl up in the hammock with “A Bad Day for Scandal”. How’s that sound, old boy?”
And, with her usual flair for avoiding unpleasant household chores, that’s just what Jassy did.
I like keeping watch over the alley behind Jasper Avenue.
Ray sleeps late. Stumbles out, slumps into his lounger, snoozes into his first coupla beer. The loungers are real beauts. A pair of red Lazyboys I picked outta the alley last Spring, perfect except for a touch of mildew.
Ray strings up patio lanterns. He’s got a flair for decorating.
“Any word on Lisa?” I ask.
Lisa’s the latest scandal on the alley.
“Touch and go. Methamphetamines,” says Ray.
A car sidles up to the back fence. Ray heads over, asks if they want a quarter or half bag.
(Thanks for giving us another chance!)
Ahh, the scent of mildew in the morning. Jasper woke from his brief snooze. He had a cup of coffee while he read the scandal sheets.
“Looks like the Fleas are splitting up,” he mentioned to Vera.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” she said, laying her third egg of the day.
He had a flair for interrupting her. “Oh. Sorry. Well, I’d better go eat. It’s been a few days and Johnny will be up soon.”
“Bye, dear.”
Jasper journeyed from the warmth of the sour sock under the bed. He reached Johnny’s cheek and latched on. Mmm. Succulent blood.
(ps - I found flair & scandal mentioned in this jabbing yet complimentary review of Ghost Country… http://thebiglitowski.blogspot.com/2011/01/janet-reid-earns-012-with-ludicrous.html)
Shades of grey speckled my cat Mildew, taking her hundredth afternoon snooze.
The lazy beast moved slower than a sloth in last place.
Such a scandal.
I’d expected more from Farmville.
Mildew had no ambition for mousing, no real flair, minus those deplorable buttons on Facebook.
So, I complained.
Rose a stunk my mama said.
Then one day, muggier than ALA last July, a mysterious stranger arrived on my stoop, wearing a jasper pendant in the shape of a great white shark.
Holy Helvetica.
If that was the cat whisperer, I was tuna fish.
I lazed in the mildew-scented heat, viewing my ring with distaste, fighting the urge to snooze as nightmares crouched in wait. The jasper cabochon glared back, its mottled red surface should have been black for the soul stain it represented.
A hiking accident, no scandal. The rock fit my hand perfectly, made to be held by me. He fell, hit his head. I’d bereave with flair.
I called 911 from the gemologist’s. Before they arrived, I cleaned the rock and had it cut. My weapon became jewelry; the part that had connected with his head was dust on the floor.
Perched on the roof with only a washcloth for cover, dignity was difficult.
"Well, officer, it began when my sister Mildred flung open the shower door and ripped into me."
"What did she say?"
"No saying involved. She shrieked, 'Scandalous! You had an aflair with that woman!'"
"Aflair?"
"Mmm. Screeched it." Recalling pitch reminiscent of his morning alarm, Jasper shuddered. How he'd longed for a snooze button. "I attempted to calm her, but when Mildew came out of my mouth--"
"Mildew?"
"Mmm. Childhood thing. No sense of humour today."
"Not a very big window."
"Mmm. Big enough."
The bloodstone rests against her chest, which is liver-spotted and wrinkled but still somehow voluptuous. I can’t stop staring at the green jasper veined with rust red. It gives the madame a regal flair, but all I can think about is blood.
“My eyes are up here, sonny,” she says with a lewd grin.
“I’m sorry--I just,” I stammer. There’s a gray spot on her nose--can skin mildew? And why can’t I concentrate?
“I suppose you’re here to ask about the scandal,” she says. “Shame about that girl. It looked like she was just taking a snooze. Friend of yours?”
The whole house stunk of mildew. An alarm clock buzzed annoyingly in the background. “Hit snooze! Turn that damn thing off!” the lead detective yelled. Ginger Ellingsworth lay in a crumpled heat, her face bashed in until it was unrecognizable. A jasper brooch added flair to the dead woman’s designer sweater, now spattered with her own blood. The detective shook his head as a news van pulled up. The richest woman in town getting bludgeoned to death in a crack house was a scandal alright, but when that woman was known for drug binges it hardly seemed newsworthy.
With flair, Jasper Mildew plunged into scandal.
He woke the snoozing Senator, dragging His Drunkeness to the closet and slamming the door on his outstretched leg once, twice, three times before moving it safety inside.
Turning to the bed, nausea burned his throat. He’d have to disrobe. He’d have to slip into bed with a . . . his nose wrinkled . . . a woman with unfortunate taste in perfume. He mussed his hair (which was NOT Gavin Newsom-esque!) and then froze, unable to continue.
Outside the door, footsteps approached.
The woman sighed, reaching for him.
The butler stripped.
Rain Dance
She left this world doing what she loved - naked rain dancing.
The neighbors had many names for her. Most popular were Senile, Scandal or from the nicer folks, Colorful. I always went with Gram.
They were just jealous, after all. Envious that while they were hitting their snooze buttons, she greeted the new day and the next life with flair perpetually beyond them.
The rain left with her, making the basement my only choice. For a long while, I sat with the small jasper urn, surrounded by the comforting must of mildew and the ghosts of long ago tea parties.
The asp coiled protectively around the piece of jasper. It had woken from a short snooze to slither through the slush pile ooze that had once been just a mild case of mildew. It really was a scandal that no one had yet been able to scan the pages, but the upside was that this lovely gem had been also overlooked until now. The snake really did have a flair for finding hidden treasure in the lair.
(So, obviously, I think the connection between these 5 words is the 5 smaller words hidden within.)
Scandal’s ‘Goodbye to You’ warbled through static on his Trans Am’s radio. Mildew beneath the seats stank of old beer and fried food.
“You booze, you snooze, Flair Bear.” The pet name once warmed me, but my older brother fell from idol to scoundrel in my jaded eyes.
“It doesn’t go like that.”
I regretted getting in the car. He reached for the fisted hand on my thigh. I pulled back. His skin, mottled like jasper, told me all I needed to know.
The door protested as I climbed out. “Don’t come back.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“No. You won’t.”
The mildew scandal turned out to be a snooze--to the rest of the media. Jasper wondered if he just didn't have a real flair for attracting the press; his past success in bringing attention to cross-dressing under the solemn robes of Supreme Court justices may have had more to do with the subject matter than with the pieces he wrote for Huffington Post. Not a single Fox anchor invited him for comment, this time. No one seemed to care. So, he packed his carefully preserved samples (proof!), left them with his elderly mother, and headed back into the showers.
Small town scandal was such a snooze.
Mildew on the food at Grazer's market, new meat mixed with the old to make it red again, eggs a week off date, and the not-so-well-kept secret that the stains on the cooler floor weren't made by leaking antifreeze.
No sizzle. No flair.
Talley dreamed of writing a column in some fancy New York paper. Or even better, one of those blog things her nurses chattered about. An overnight sensation.
Of course, she also dreamed of leaving Jasper, Wyoming and her five-year, hospital bed prison.
Dreams are torture when you can't wake up.
Kidnapped (mully)
I didn’t know if he was snoozing or fast asleep, but the stench of mildewed clothing and sound of heavy breathing gave me tools to monitor the slumbering beast while I quietly searched. They said he’d simply left and my flair for scandal was blinding me. I knew better. Our love was too strong. Gently sliding back the closet door, he was there, weak, frightened, but alive.
“Jasper!” I reacted, bringing sudden halt to the nasally snores.
“Freeze or die,” growled the groggy fiend.
“Shut up, Cooter. Your gun’s a finger and I’m telling Momma you stole my cat again!”
Jasper had been in the business long enough to know the scent of scandal. Like the must of mildew it rose up dank and pungent from the Strip’s nether region.
The starlet had a flair for pretending she wanted to be left alone. But they all thrived on the attention. The flash of the camera was like sunlight to their flowered faces.
Finally she exited the club at 3 a.m., ankles wobbling on six-inch Manolos, mascara smudged beneath her eyes. The unflattering picture would be worth ten grand easy.
“Snooze you lose,” Jasper said, rising from the bushes.
Maurice’s flair for understatement drove me barmy.
The biggest scandal to hit Boon’s Mills since the Great Cattle Rustle of 1873, and he shrugs and says he supposes all men have needs. Needs? The mayor made a harem out of the bridge club!
Then there was the time we bunked in the Jasper Arms off the I-204... Vile doesn’t even begin to describe the mildew, grease, and disturbing bodily fluids splashed haphazardly around the room, and he says, “Hey, two free TV channels.”
Maurice is gone. I’m gonna miss the bastard.
Maurice, old friend, I hope you enjoy your snooze.
The Beginning
By the time schoolyard bullies realized they were prey not predator it was too late.
The skinny unassuming 10-year-old, first considered victim, was on them like mildew on damp fabric. He was destruction with flair— and cold dead eyes. Jasper discovered early that mauling bullies rather than cats avoided scandal.
Jasper’s mother thought of him as a misunderstood shining gem— the hapless bullies thought otherwise.
Jasper’s victims fed his bloodlust. As predator he found if you snooze you lose— he rarely snoozed.
His parents often moved ahead of anticipated questions. Moves pleased Jasper. New schools meant new prey.
Jasper Mulligatawny was in the soup with Millie. Again. This time, he’d been muttering to himself—but not softly enough. She had heard him call her Mildew.
Wielding a rusty pan, she swiveled around.
“Going to fry some kippers, love?” he asked hopefully.
“I have a flair with this pan, you know. It gets you right up from a snooze.”
He rubbed his bald head in acknowledgment. What a scandal if his mates learned of the abuse he endured. Well, he wouldn’t let her get the better of him today. Nope. Not this woman, who had no relationship with soap.
Mildew covered the walls of the room she was being held prisoner in. And now here she was, breathing it into her already weak lungs.
This was all Jasper’s fault.
Threatening to expose the scandal was supposed to get them the money she needed for her operation. Apparently, blackmailing took a certain flair. A flair she obviously lacked.
She should be in bed right now, hitting the snooze button for the third time. Instead she sat in the darkness, listening to her own ragged breaths going in and out, wondering if she’d ever see her scheming partner-in-crime again.
Jasper hit the snooze button and buried his face in the mildew-scented pillow.
Another day, another hotel room. He'd been on the lam since the scandal broke three days earlier. Images of the drag queen and Jasper, himself in a sequined bra, filled the covers of newspapers everywhere.
The United States still wasn't ready for a President with flair, particularly not after the drag queen had turned up dead.
It was going to be a long day.
From the moment he was born, Jasper had a flair for villainy. He began gathering minions at the age of four and built a supercomputer at six.
“Chip off the old block,” said his father. “Bit of a scandal, really.”
“Hmm,” said his mother. “He tried to spike my food with black mildew this morning.”
“I told him it was poisonous.”
“You would.”
Around the corner, Jasper smiled. They thought he was asleep, but soon they’d be the ones taking a snooze – thanks to their doctored tea.
He couldn’t have them interfering. Parents simply had no place in villainy.
Jasper sighed when he saw the mildew in the rental house. It had looked so appealing on the real estate site, a neat Cape Cod decorated with flair and a complete lack of wicker sofas and “artful” assemblages of shells and dried starfish.
Helen hadn’t liked the place but Jasper’s motto was, “If you snooze you lose” and he’d put down a deposit without consulting her. It hadn’t seemed necessary since he knew she wouldn’t be joining him. His solo appearance would raise eyebrows but no one would question his story that Helen had left him. People loved a scandal.
He waited until after lunch, until she’d settled into her snooze set to the soundtrack of soap opera scandals.
The boy slipped down to the mildewed basement, intent on one item crammed into the clutter. The pencil box rattled as he opened the lid. His eyes skipped over rose quartz and iron pyrite, searching out instead a mud brown rock hiding amongst the flair.
“This is called jasper,” his father had said. It was the boy’s last, best memory of him. He shut the lid and replaced the box, minus the jasper. He put that into his pocket.
I wouldn't say her death was a surprise, but when they escorted a hand-cuffed Jasper across the mildew and towards a whole new kind of scandal it was definitely enough to wake me from my pre-breakfast almost snooze. Jasper always did have a flair for the dramatic and I don't think anyone expected him to swallow that explosive, let alone actually explode.
Alfredo knew with a glance at the mildew-encrusted jasper necklace that he had reached his journey’s end. At last the scandal was over, his heritage was proven.
He carefully removed the relic from Cassandra’s hand. She was just pretending, he told himself, just having a snooze. Cassandra had a flair for acting. She was acting. He hadn’t killed her when he pushed her because of her refusal to relinquish the necklace and caused her head to strike the edge of the table.
Not that he was going to check her pulse to find out.
Some things are best left unknown.
“Mildew? Mildew. Mil-deeew!”
Mildew jolted awake from his snooze. “What, Ma?” He grumbled, prying one stubborn eye open to stare dolefully at his mother.
Ma wrung her hands. “There’s a scandal afoot!”
“Jasper!” he breathed, suddenly wide awake. He had a flair for solving mysteries. Grammy and Gramps loved to argue if Mildew was more like a Sherlock or an Encyclopedia Brown. “A scandal? What happened?”
As Ma recited the things that had happened in the past two hours in fretful whispers, Mildew couldn’t help but smile a little. His lazy Sunday had suddenly become that more interesting.
“Why don’t we have the McClonkey scandal?" My boss shouted over the phone. "Why am I reading about it on the Post’s website?”
It was a shitty way to wake up. I stared at the pattern of mildew on my bedroom ceiling. It looked like a lasso. Or a gaping mouth.
I mumbled an excuse and hung up. Those jaspers the bartender had mixed at the Manhattan game must have been strong.
“You snooze, you lose.” Derek, already dressed, flipped his Blackberry back into his pocket. I had to admit the bastard had flair.
“The Post still sucks,” I replied.
(Please count this version as my entry. Thanks.)
I crinkle my nose as I sniff his pant leg. There’s no TV drama flair finding clues to a murder, its old all school. Ignore the stench, the mildew and the crusty blood. Just grab the damn pants and inhale. Yep, there’s urine. It’s impossible to catch over the general decay of Jasper’s body. I grab the screaming alarm clock while my Proby looses his breakfast in the corner and jam my finger onto the snooze button.
Jasper’s old lady screams about a scandal while she rocks his corpse. Takes about thirty seconds to figure out she killed him.
The Shark drew back. She’d need more diving room if the time came to attack.
He saw her shudder. “Sorry, I have a flare for the dramatic.”
She revealed a fine row of sharp teeth.
“I meant flair”. She did not relax. “Cliche” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
Sweat added to the stench of mildew and stale beer he brought into the elevator. Suddenly he announced “I have written a fiction novel! Based on my personal life experience!
“Snooze.”
“Represent me or I’ll cause a scandal!”
She licked her lips, wondered why these jaspers always showed up at lunchtime, and dove.
Because she was old, famous, and had a flair for drama, scandal followed her everywhere.
From LA to a small campground outside Jasper, Wyoming the has-been’s life became a production of sorts; ancient REI sleeping bag, hers...new Wal-Mart his. Though he was more than thirty years her junior, poor and beautiful, she liked nothing more than sharing a snooze in a borrowed mildew scented tent. She relished the looks of other campers when they walked to the latrine together.
That morning she emerged alone, he had been loved to death by an Oscar winner from the sixties. Her name...Indignity.
The twilight made it difficult to see. I continued sifting. “Don’t go up there alone,” the townsfolk warned. “A girl disappeared there. Huge scandal.” I trekked up the hill in broad daylight after a quick snooze fully intending to trek out before dark. A tiny sparkle got my attention. I lifted the pan to inspect it. “Damn it, it’s not gold, only jasper,” I said aloud. A distinct smell of mildew assaulted my nostrils. I froze looking around. “You have a flair for the dramatic,” I said then my bag began to glow.
The radio shattered the quiet of the little bed room.
...scandal involving a walrus, a politician and Taylor Swift...
"Mildew, hit the snooze button. Mildew!"
"Milton."
"Whatever."
... now for a thief with some flair for the dramatic. 5,000 pounds of jasper were stolen from...
"Mildew!!"
"I'm trying! Keep a lid on it, Sandy."
"Sally."
"Whatever."
I find snooze on the clock radio and kiss Lucifer’s chest. He tastes like pistachios and my tongue lingers. He doesn’t stir. A crow chuckles outside and threads of sunlight have snuck past the mildew stained curtain. In this light, Luc’s nipples are shades of jasper, and his grey chest hair looks brown.
Downstairs, my mother drops something, and I think about what she had said, “The scandal will kill your father.” I don’t care, I love him, and she has a dramatic flair. I’m not sure what bothers her more: that he’s older than dad, or because he’s fallen.
Thirty seconds before Jasper died in the shower from carbon monoxide poisoning, he thought about the mildew snaking its way up the tile walls.
Did mildew thrive in coffins?
The old bitch had found a way to kill him. It’d been a scandal when the police had discovered his wife buried in the rose garden. Dear old Mom had helped him make bail because he’d taken the fall for her. She possessed a flair for feigning innocence and orchestrating violence.
“What?” she would ask. “I thought he was taking a snooze in his room. Been awful tired after his ordeal.”
*HAHAHA! This was fun. I will have to try my hand at these more often.*
His old face was seamed like picture jasper, a landscape baked under a desert sun, but his eyes were keen and sharp.
"I read that book you're looking at," he said. "Real snooze-fest. Like watching mildew grow. Girl like you wants some flair in her reading. Try this 'un." He handed me a copy of "Numb".
He was right. He always is. It doesn't matter that he's three times my age. If not for the scandal, I'd ask that old book-rat to marry me.
Emma wrapped her ankle-length trench tighter around her chest and minced across the stained carpet, careful not to let her thousand-dollar Jasper Eccol heels brush the walls. If her friends could see her, the scandal would spread faster than mildew, which covered every wall.
The apartment was worse than she remembered. Tiny feet scrambled in the ceiling and nextdoor she heard a screeching alarm and muffled curses as a fist hit the snooze.
It was on the wrong side of town. No style, no flair...no chance at passing a safety inspection.
Emma tilted her chin toward the toady landlord. "I'll take it."
I read the sentence again. “Something’s wrong here, Papa. You can’t mean ‘Jasper flaired his way out.’ It doesn’t make sense.”
“Let me take a look.” He scanned the words. “It says flailed. Can’t you read? Dummy. Scandal-bait. Tribble-gibbit!”
The word still looked like “flaired” to me, but I learned years ago not to argue with Papa, the famous author who could write no wrong. But what the dickens was a tribble-gibbit? I must have snoozed through that vocabulary lesson.
“Mildew, give that paper back to me. Now, Mildew.”
My heart sank. “Mildred, Papa. My name is Mildred.”
This summer job sucked mildew.
My least favourite seasonal camper exited the pool, his flair to disgust at the ready. He honked snot into his hand and wiped it on the chain-link near the garbage bags by the gate.
“Miss your snooze cleaning up? Heard there was some party here last night. I love a good scandal. It livens up the place. You know who?”
“New lost and found on the fence,” I said.
He ripped the jasper necklace from his snot and left.
I snapped my swimsuit against my cheek, swung up into my chair and opened my book.
Eileen groped for the snooze button. Her eyes popped open. Silver dust motes danced in light from the uncurtained window. She hurried to shower, noticing again the chipped sink, running toilet, and mildew around the tiles. The landlord’s rate for these shabby digs was a scandal. She dressed in thrift store duds: short cream blazer with a back flair, chocolate brown wool pants, knotted beige scarf, and some dead woman’s low-heeled pumps. Finally, she placed her grandmother’s jasper ring on the left ring finger where the wedding ring wasn’t. She planned to ace the interview; she needed the job.
Jasper paced back and forth not knowing what to do. The scandal hung in the air like mildew from a damp basement. In his anger he punched the wall injuring his pinky. Shaking his hand from the pain, he walked backwards stumbling over the footrest which caused him to fall to the ground.
"What the freak is wrong with me?" he shouted. "Everything is going wrong." Lately he had a flair for getting in trouble. If only he could just snooze for an hour to clear his head. Then he could think straight and find a way out.
“Mr. Brown, this says you worked at the Met(?)”
“Yup.” After a pause, “Got fired.”
She had a flair for facial expressions: she could diffuse most situations with a few muscle contractions. “Get caught snoozing?” She smiled.
He eyed her suspiciously. “Not exactly.”
She raised her eyebrows, waiting.
After a pause, “It was the god-damn mildew.”
A memory started to ascend to her consciousness. “Mildew?”
“An unacceptable accumulation on the Jasper Johns.”
The memory was taking shape, some kind of scandal. “Well that's...” The memory surfaced. She recalled the Times headline: Janitor kills curator over mildew. She tried to smile.
Connor swore. The house was like all the others, dark and destroyed. The damp of the ocean had taken its toll; everything was covered in growth and mildew. Here and there were remains of an appliance or piece of furniture, most of it useless wood or plastic. His partner attacked the mess with flair.
He was so tired of this life of constant, unproductive recovery operations. He missed scandal, excitement, laziness. Taking a mid-day snooze just because. His partner came to him eagerly, a necklace of jasper and gold in his hand. He sighed. At least it was something.
Something tickled her foot, and she shuddered. A whiskered roach skittered across the shower mildew, slipping down the drainage grate into the bowels of the campground’s septic system. It was a dump, a cruel post-nuptial joke. Perched above an abandoned jasper quarry, it felt like a place where animals went to die.
After a failed marriage to a city councilman with a flair for underage scandal, she’d found Todd’s reliability calming. Less than twenty-four hours after their vows, stability had already ossified into snooze, frugality into miserhood.
She shivered into the negligee, pulled close Todd’s anorak, and faced the tent.
“What is it about Jasper that makes me want to manufacture some sort of scandal? It’s British f-ing Columbia, for God’s sake – you’ve dragged me to one of the most beautiful places on earth, yet I’m fighting the urge to strangle every mildew scented tree-hugger we encountered on the way here. I’d swipe his bag of grass first, but there’d be an eco-smackdown, I assure you…”
Stan had always had a flair for the dramatic, but his choice to interrupt Sarah’s rainy day snooze would unfortunately be his last. Stretching, she padded to the kitchen to make Stan some “tea”…
Jasper had lots of flairs, just not the right ones for reality tv. He was too bonded to his snooze button to survive a survival show, too vain to put his faux-hawk in the hands of a makeover team. Still, with all that personality, the producers knew they could dig up the right scandal. They dropped by his house, hoping maybe they’d find some hoarding. But it was Jasper’s flair for mildew that caught their attention. The tub ring was distinctly shark-shaped. In the kitchen, black dots created a Seurat of Jesus. They’d found their ratings jackpot.
Don't act like you didn't know I'd be trying again....
* * *
When the scandal broke, they assumed he’d been the one to have the affair, but three million in the bank was enough for him to hit the snooze button on retribution. She smiled, watery-eyed, for the cameras, her flair for the dramatic garnering her the pity of millions: trust-fund baby done wrong. He burned in virtual effigy.
A year later, the money gone, he made the call. They promised emeralds; he’d have taken jasper. From the mildewed basement of his self-respect, he confessed.
No one believed.
* * *
And I'm guessing what links the five prompts is that each, on any given day, can be found within 10 feet of the Shark's desk.
“Jasper. Jasper! Wake your lazy ass up! I know you’ve hit the snooze button at least three times now. You promised to clean up the guest bathroom days ago. There’s mildew everywhere,” I said.
“No one told you to invite your mother to stay here with us. Clean it yourself,” said Jasper.
“You know she’s had a hard time ever since that gardening club scandal went down.”
“No one told her to buy aphids online and set them loose on old Miss Daisy’s roses! She’s almost ninety!”
“Well, you know Mom. She’s always had a flair for the dramatic.”
“You call this a flair for the dramatic, Greedo?” I stole a glance at the murky waters far below. “It’s a snooze-fest, if you ask me.”
He snarled. “The Emperor tires of your scandalous behavior, Solo. She paid me handsomely to disappear you.” He raised his piece, but I drew my hidden blaster faster than a Wookie’s sneeze.
BAM!
“GET OUT, JASPER! I’m not cleaning mildew off your dolls again!”
“MA! They’re ACTION FIGURES! And I’m thirty-two – I can stay in the tub as long as I wanna!”
“Oh, really?” Click! Off went the lights.
Well played, Emperor. Well played.
Auntie was killed with one swift blow to the head. The weapon was green jasper, a jasper that looked a bit like the color of mildew.
It was quite the scandal back then. At 4 PM, poor dear Auntie had left the drawing room with her usual flair to take her daily “snooze." And on that day so long ago, she never saw the enemy coming.
She was killed by her lover, Jasper, during a heady sex session, and the shame of it was she actually never did see him coming.
It seemed a scandal to claim her victory now; she needed him to witness her revenge. Flair scrutinized the empty bottle of Professor Pete’s Health-Filled Tonic. “Good health never tasted so sweet!”, boasted the peeling label.
“Or so quickly set your brain on snooze,” she scoffed, staring down at the big man on the floor. He appeared to have been inspecting a fist-sized jasper gemstone when Professor Pete’s sweetness caught up to him. The stone was mottled green, like mildew, with a vein of white crystal, and looked to make a terrible pillow. It was the crystal she was after.
Pete, the chief editor, interviewed his final two candidates.
Karen said, “The features page should be useful as well as interesting. The information should really help readers.”
Dave snorted. “Snoozeweek. How about something people might actually read? They love scandal, the mildewed jockstrap in the gym bag of society. And write it with a little flair. Not just “Mr. Jones is Banging Mrs. Smith,” but “Sex Fiends’ Orgies Rock Town!”
Pete didn’t hesitate. And yes, there was trouble along the way, but until they all got expelled, the Jasper Valley Junior High Journal boasted the highest circulation in the state.
Edy didn't mean to snooze through the middle of the show but, really! A Broadway rendition of the friendly ghost entitled "Japser?" Surely the producers had more flair than this. Bad theater was the worst kind of torture. Not to mention the money spent to watch it. She thought of Julie Taymor's Spiderman. "Now that show is a scandal. This? This just sucks. It's like eating mildew off the floor without anything to wash it down."
She flailed at the alarm, a heavy hand both successfully hitting the snooze button and knocking a jasper snuff box to the floor, spilling its bounty. He thought it old fashioned, his personal flair. She found it repulsive.
Her head throbbed and her bladder screamed, but she feared moving might wake him. Yet if she stayed, he could warm to the wrong idea. She dreaded the scandal in the office when word spread that she slept with the boss. Again. And in this seedy motel that’s more mildew than carpet.
A groan and a stir beside her. Time to bolt.
My ant teased me through the prison bars. The blue outlines on his crimson body gave it flair.
Jasper snorted. “Let’s snooze, Herman. If it’s edible, it won’t stay long.” I despised my brother, but he was right. That skinny bird always ushered my delicious ant away, warbling loud enough to make my tongue curl. It was a scandal! That despicable pest and my ant, roaming free outside my mildew covered, poo-strewn home.
The bird arrived. “You shouldn’t wear your Spiderman costume to the zoo, son. That anteater thinks you’re dinner.” I clawed the dirt.
Dinner indeed and very soon…
In the weeks following Lela Bixby’s murder, sales of the Mountain Eagle, historically known as a conduit to an afternoon snooze, more than quadrupled. Word of young Dick Shelby’s investigative talent spread well beyond Jasper City. It was said his flair for detail and poison pen rivaled those of any big-city journalist, with or without the pretext of a scandal of such proportions.
When the autopsy results confirmed Shelby’s outrageous premise, he could have run for mayor; the mildew under the victim’s fingernails matched the samples taken from the leather upholstery in Senator Tony Scrievener’s den.
All words linked by an author.
Mildew: the acronym MILDEW (mothers-in-laws do everything wrong) created by two authors Liz Bluper and Renee Plastique.
Scandal: A movie written by Michael Thomas
Snooze: an episode from the British sitcom, Goodies, obviously written by someone.
Flair: The last name of wrestler Ric Flair, who also wrote a book.
Jasper: the name of a television character, created by author Stephanie Meyer.
She was on the second floor of the abandoned house, in a bathtub caked in mildew and dirt.
My assistant stared at the mummified body. “Wow, someone never got up from their snooze.”
I said nothing. My assistant had a flair for tasteless jokes.
He found her purse. “Who do you think she was?”
I knew who she was. Just as I knew her ring bore stones of chalcedony and jasper.
He held up a card. “It’s your old assistant, Ms. Pettigrew. Didn’t she move away after some scandal?”
“No,” I said as I stuck the blade in his chest.
Something woke her up. Ah, a jasper pebble striking her window. (That Geology degree DID come in handy at times).
Had Thomas finished scrubbing the mildew out of his bathtub sooner than expected? The thought of an early morning rendezvous titillated her, but not enough to keep her from hitting the snooze alarm with flair.
Yes, she knew the scandal that would ensue . . . not just from ignoring Thomas, but from opening a story with the MC waking up. But it was a risk she was willing to take, just this once.
I woke from a pleasant snooze when Jasper jabbed me in the ribs.
“We’re there?”
“God, I hope not.”
I blinked a few times and Nuraby Manor swam into focus through the windshield of Jasper’s Porsche.
“Yup, this is it.”
“It has mildew.”
“It has flair.”
“And a lot of mildew. This will never work.”
I had a talent for picking optimistic partners, but he actually had his head in his hands. So this was probably not the moment to mention the scandal or the ghost.
Jasper is my favorite Vampire - from the Twilight Saga - I know, I know, there's alot of scandal associated with the writing - No flair, the critics say.
Made me snooze, another said.
Too many adverbs...
What do they know?
Jasper's Hot!
No mildew's growing on my hardback copy.
Jasper rocks, and so does Stephanie.
It was the new office scandal. The second in just a week. Maeve had rested her head against her keyboard for a snooze and not opened her eyes for a whole fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, somebody had wriggled her jasper ring from her finger, without her having felt a thing. And the very morning after the office Christmas party.
Someone had a flair for criminal genius. And somebody else would be getting something special on Christmas morning.
The only clue Maeve had - her hand smelt oddly of mildew.
Inside her cold, empty palace, the aging actress waited while the silver tabby snoozed on her lap. She wore a royal blue shawl which exactly matched the color of her jasper and diamond ring. Even at her age she had a flair for style.
A trail of dirt led from the open cellar door to the mildewed and stained duffle bag that lay at her feet. She smiled when the sirens finally sounded in the distance.
Even at her age she had a flair for scandal.
Sally felt the warmth of the fire and smelt the burning wood. But when she opened her eyes there was no fire, Mal didn't snooze in front of it and her nose picked up the faint smell of mildew.
Without her grandmother the house was nothing but an empty shell.
Hours later Sally put the only thing she took, a small box made of jasper, into frail hands. Ignoring the vacant look in her grandmother's eyes, she said, "Once upon a time there was a young woman surrounded by the flair of scandal. And it all started with this box..."
**
It's probably wrong but somehow those words made me think of Barbara Poelle ... mildew sounds like an improved smell for her new radiators and scandal, snooze, flair and jasper is kinda self-explainatory, isn't it?
I need a mulligan! use this one please ::
“God, this place is a snooze,” I said, adjusting the jasper cameo on my restaurant uniform vest. “You like my new flair?”
Mallory nodded. “We do need some excitement. Go give Pastor Tim over there a lap dance.”
“Pastor Tim?” I couldn’t believe she would risk bringing him here. “With his wife?”
“His hot new wife, no less.”
“Bring your camera to the bathroom in two,” I said. “I’ll give you scandal.”
I grabbed a pitcher and bottlerocketed to their table, offering her a hand into the bathroom once water overflowed upon her lap, decency mildewing inside our thirsty mouths.
::
Thanks for the second contest!! KD
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