Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Three word week; Jetsam.

I have just discovered 3 word week over at Steve Isaak's blog.  This week's words are Her, Outrage and Seashell.  If you want to know the rules (or have a go!) you should go over to his blog and find out more.  Meanwhile, here's my first attempt. (Very swiftly knocked out during a coffee break at work!)

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Jetsam

Eliza was a beachcomber - not that she made a living out of it or anything (nor was she like that weird old man who lived in half a wrecked boat at the shore).  She would walk along the sand as the tide went out and pick up the jetsam that was stranded there, imagining how it had been lost.

She never picked up pebbles or a sea shell. She was only interested in the abandoned, manufactured items. She would take her finds back to her tiny flat in the middle of town and arrange them on ledges and bookcases and shelves around the walls. Then she would sit and look happily at her treasures, while she talked to the spirits of their previous owners.

When the building collapsed, the inquest jury agreed that the structure was never intended to hold such a weight of junk and the old woman’s eccentricity had contributed to her death.  Her neighbours agreed it was an outrage that no-one had done anything about it before.

The old man watched from his half-boat as the merpeople returned to the sea with their recovered possessions, then he headed up to the church on the cliff where he was the only mourner at Eliza’s funeral.

9 comments:

Ellie Garratt said...

I loved the ending - I didn't see that coming! Loved it.

Ellie Garratt

Sandra Davies said...

So many legs to this piece - it was wonderful - I am in sympathy with the collecting of only the man-made and love the idea of talking to the spirits of their owners. The outrageous neighbours adds a totally different, and pertinent, direction as does the old man in the boat and the mermen.
If this is what you can knock out in a coffee break I'm totally awed,

MorningAJ said...

I toyed with the idea of making her one of the merpeople who had given up immortality for love - then been rejected. But it got too complicated. So I stuck with Eliza's reality v everyone else's reality.

Previous posts on here and on MorningAJ will show you that I'm sort of going through a phase of it.

Ellie Garratt said...

You are going to laugh. I read your first comment re: Newley on the way to work, and can't get videos on my phone. Thinking you meant I'd got the quote wrong I deleted it. Now on break and just seen the second comment you made. That will teach me to stop jumping to conclusions!

snafu said...

Crikey! I had better put all that junk back on the beach...

Anonymous said...

Great piece. I was hooked from the beginning. Enjoyed tghe ending too :O)

hyperCRYPTICal said...

This is very good and the ending is perfect.

Anna :o]

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Morning AJ .. this is so evocative and just so possible .. and we can read so much into the waves wanting to reclaim their own for their peoples .. Interesting .. thanks - Hilary

Steve Isaak said...

I really liked this. Would like to publish this on my Microstory A Week site - the link: http://microstoryaweek.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in doing this, I would ask that you take this post down for the week I publish your work - after that week (which ends on the next Wednesday), feel free to repost it. (I do archive author's stories.)

I'd also need a 75-word-or-less bio from you. I also attach a Copyright logo to the work in your name and promote your story on multiple fronts.

Regrettably, there's no financial recompense, but I do - and continue to, long after they publish with me - promote author's works, when they publish books or other works on other publish-sites.

Please let me know ASAP if you are or aren't interested - my email: arterialgush@yahoo.com. =)