3 word week: It's a dog's life

The sharp yip from behind informs me that I just trod on the dog’s tail. It happens a lot. He’s a stupid mutt who thinks that sitting inches from my heels will get him food every time I’m in the kitchen.


It never works. Specially in the morning. You’d think he’d know by now that I’m on autopilot till I’ve had my first coffee: a kind of hyperinduction by caffeine. I am at its mercy - an addict – and nothing functions till I’m half-way down my second mug of joe.

Eventually I relent and turn around to pour some Doggybix in his bowl. He looks appalled.

“Sorry pal, it’s the best I can do for now. Meat’s off the menu till I replace that janky can opener.”
 

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Not so much a story - more a scene from something that has potential.  Three Word Week is Steve Isaak's challenge where he provides three words and we fit them into something like a story.  This week's words were: 
 I.) hyperinduction - v. When someone psychically overrides - controls - the will and actions of another person. (Source: Alphas, Season 1, episode #1: "Pilot"; original air date: 7/11/11)


II.) janky - adj. - Inferior quality; held in low social regard; old and delapidated; refers almost exclusively to inanimate material objects, not to people.

III.) yip - adj. - n.
A sharp, high-pitched bark; a yelp.
intr.v.
To emit a yip; yelp.

I had problems with janky. I'm more familiar with shonky, and it still reads to me like I should have used that instead.

3 word week: Chinese whispers

This was not the ideal job for Darren. He didn’t do mornings. Usually he staggered out of bed and rushed through a morning ablution before heading for the door and pausing on his way to work just long enough to inoculatte himself with double espresso. But the City being how it was and the financial health of the country dying rapidly, he’d proved ‘negatively valued’ by his employers and in need of a new position.


The ad sounded good when the JobCentre bloke read it to him. Island setting. Plenty of fresh air. Thousands of girls. And something about Xena. Well that decided him. She was that semi-naked bird on TV, wasn’t she? Sun, sea, sand and sex was right up his pair of swimming trunks. He’d agreed on the spot.

So how had he ended up sitting on a god-forsaken cliff top at the crack of sparrow-fart, and surrounded by feathers and guano? He really should learn to listen harder. What the guy actually said was: "Study the xenobiotic effects of an oil spill on glaucous gulls."

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It's that time of the week again.  Here's Steve Isaak's 3 word week challenge.
Some of my writing readers really should give this a go! 
The glaucous gull really does exist, by the way. I didn't make it up.

This week's words are
I.) glaucous - adj.
1. Of a pale grayish or bluish green.
2. Botany Covered with a grayish, bluish, or whitish waxy coating or bloom that is easily rubbed off: glaucous leaves.
II.) inoculatte - v. - To take coffee intravenously when you are running late. (Source: The Washington Post's Style Invitational, 2005)
III.) xenobiotic - adj. - Foreign to the body or to living organisms. Used of chemical compounds.
n. A xenobiotic chemical, such as a pesticide.

3 word week: Invention

He knew as soon as his boss told him the plan that it was a bad idea. Yes, the device needed to be revealed to the world, but this was not the way to do it. They wouldn’t understand the importance of the find. Thanks to some incontrovertible evidence in the tomb, it was possible to date the parts very accurately, and they proved that mankind invented clockwork millennia earlier than was previously thought. This was big stuff; but would the uninitiated grasp the significance? Of course not – and he knew he’d be the fall guy.

Dennis had spent two years painstakingly copying each of the cogs and wheels and creating a working model. It had been in a woebegone state when it first arrived at his workshop. The rest of the team of archaeological investigators had carried out all of the tests they could on the bits and pieces and then brought him the remains to interpret. Luckily, many of the sections were still intact, thanks to the lack of rain at the dig site, but connecting up all the Heath Robinson gearing had given him a few challenges.

The work had been tough, but the finished article was a triumph. The key mechanism had been the trickiest: making sure it connected all of the rotors so that, when the brake disengaged, the whole apparatus danced majestically. Ratchets engaged, spheres spun, pivots balanced and the two flagellate arms swept delicate arcs around each other, making a soft swishing sound.

It was inevitable that the museum director wanted to make a show and so a press conference was duly called. Dennis was given his orders to set up the machine prominently so that, at the right moment it could be switched on for the crowd to admire. After a gushing introduction, the director handed over to him to explain how it all fitted together.  The journalists made suitably admiring noises and Dennis tried to give them every possible fact he could so that he could avoid the one question he dreaded: the one thing he could not answer.

As he reached the end of his talk and applied the brake to bring the mechanism to a gentle halt he hoped he had got away with it, but he should have known better. Just as the gentle machine hum ended a voice spoke up:  “But what does it do?”

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Three word week is Steve Isaak's challenge.  This week's words were: 

I.) flagellate - tr. v.
1. To whip or flog; scourge.
2. To punish or impel as if by whipping.
adj.
1. Biology Flagellated.
2. Resembling or having the form of a flagellum; whiplike.
3. Relating to or caused by a flagellate organism.
n.
An organism, such as a euglena, that is equipped with a flagellum.

II.) Heath Robinson - adj. - Absurdly complex and fancifully impractical. (The term was coined after W. Heath Robinson [1872 - 1944], a British artist known for drawing ingeniously complicated devices.)

III.) woebegone - adj. -
1. Affected with or marked by deep sorrow, grief, or wretchedness.
2. Of an inferior or deplorable condition: a rundown, woebegone old shack.

Hey all you writerly people....

I know there's a few writers who still drop by. Can I suggest that you try your hand at Steve Isaak's Three Word Week writing challenge. It's fun and a great way to extend your vocabulary!

Disguise on Microstory site

My short story Disguise is featured on Steve Isaak's Microstory a Week site from today (Aug 31).
Thanks Steve!

3 Word Week: Shadowman

One of my previous Three Word Week stories Earwig has been published on the Microstory a Week site. Thanks for choosing it Steve!

Here's this week's:

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You know how sometimes you catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye and it scares you because it looks like a person in the shadows? You glimpse it, you turn to take another look, and then it morphs into your coat hanging on the door back, or a table lamp and a pile of books or something. Well it’s constant in my life, happens every day, but I never get used to it because once, many years back, it really was somebody, and I know one day he’s coming back.  

I had just got home from work, not that I worked too hard in those days. To be honest I was a bit of a waster and was the first to bleat if conditions weren’t exactly how I wanted them. I was drinking hard, ate too much of the wrong stuff, smoked worse than a kipper and was probably heading for an early grave. So I walked in the house and threw my coat and a load of other stuff onto an armchair as I passed it, went straight to the cabinet and poured myself a large whisky. Just as I looked back into the room, there he was; large as life and way more ugly, sitting in the chair where I’d just deposited my gear.

I did a double-take and checked again but he was still there. He looked like he’d been dragged out of a grave, all grey and dusty. His suit seemed like it had once been well cut, maybe Italian styling, but old fashioned. I could see the skull through the skin on his face and he just stared at me. He had no eyes in his sockets but I knew he was staring.

“Listen,” he said, lifting a bony hand and pointing at me, “I’m here to give you some advice.  Unless you want to end up like me you have to lay off the booze, cut out the smokes and watch your cholesterol. You’ve heard about all that karma stuff? Well it’s real, and you already have a debt to pay. We have a job for you to do and you’d best be fit for it when we come to call.”

“What job? What do you mean? Who are you? Who’s we?” I tried to ask, but it was no good. I was talking to my coat. 

Do I need to tell you how terrified I was? Some beast from beyond had paid me a visit with a personal message from…who? Heaven or hell or some place I never heard of.  Next morning I joined a gym and I’ve been living the clean life ever since to keep myself in trim. I daren’t do anything else because I know he will be back. I’ve seen his eyeless face every single day to remind me: in dark corners by wardrobes; in the way the curtains hang in my living room; in my rear view mirror. So far he’s always been a shadow man but one day will be for real. When he does come I want to be ready for him. Though whether I’ll use my new fitness to help him or fight him off I’m not so sure.

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Over at Steve Isaak's blog there's a weekly challenge to write a less than 600 word short story featuring the three words he chooses every Monday.  I've been playing with this idea for a while (about how everyday objects turn into strange people when you catch a glimpse of them) and figured I'd explore it through Three Word Monday. So here it is.

This week's words are:
Listen
Constant
Bleat

And here's the rules. If you'd like to join in,

3 Word Week: Epic Fail

Called on geeky Simon last weekend – or Sly as he names himself. He was always a nerd at school, and he’s no better now, even though he can see thirty coming. He tried quitting home at nineteen but couldn’t maintain his lifestyle, so the hesher was back at his parents’ place before he hit twenty one, living his übergeek ways and missing out on any kind of girl action. He says “LOL. Why should I pay to get my laundry done?” You can get that from the way he smells.

Anyhoo. I wanted to reprogram Sly. Thing is, he’s superstitious: avoids green; touches wood; salutes magpies; the whole heap. Worst of all, he’s afraid of thirteens, and especially Fridays with that date. It’s called friggatriskaidekaphobia; he told me. He knows all his phobias personally.

As he opened the door he said: “What’s up bro?” He talks like that a lot. Like he’s seventeen and living in the ‘hood. Then he noticed the ladder. I’d propped it over the door hoping he’d step outside and walk under it but, no luck.

“Leave it out, bro’. Epic fail. You should not diss my belief system like that.  Show me some respec’.” He gets his street cultures confused at times.

“Belief system?” I spat, ignoring his slang salad.  “That’s no belief system, it’s hooey. The only person round here showing disrespect is you, scruffy n00b. Why don’t you bling yourself up and come down to the pub?”

He looked tempted but something held him back. “We’d have to check out before midnight. I can’t be there on the thirteenth.”

“Whatcha mean, the thirteenth?”

“Tomorrow, Saturday the thirteenth.” He looked at me as if I was vacant, so I decided to try my best shot.

“Sly. Today’s the thirteenth. You know?”

It wasn’t the thirteenth. I only said it for a joke, but his eyes opened out like searchlights as he muttered, without a hint of his usual attitude, “You mean I went to work on Friday the thirteenth? Oh shit.” Then he sort of belched and his eyes rolled up. He tipped backwards like a felled tree and I heard a crack as his head met the floor.

“Simon. SLY!” I yelled, and knelt down to check him over. He wasn’t breathing.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh HELP!” I hollered, grateful his mother was in the house. Then I started mouth to mouth.

That belch had been a vurp because I tasted vomit as I put my mouth over his. His mother called an ambulance, but I had to stick with the paramedic act and eat his puke till they arrived. It was gross.

Huge relief: he was breathing on his own by the time they got him to hospital. When he came round I admitted I’d been joshing and it backfired. He was OK about it, considering. He recovered with no harm, except for one thing: now he’s afraid of Friday the twelfth too.

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This story is in response to the weekly challenge at Steve Isaak's Reading & Writing by Pub Light. Steve offers three words and we have to include them in a short story of fewer than 500 words. (This one JUST scrapes through the word count).

This week's words were what you might call a challenge.

Hesher - the kind of 28-year-old who dresses and behaves like he's 17 and still lives with his parents.
Friggatriskaidekaphobia - the fear of Friday the 13th
Vurp - the kind of burp that brings a small amount of vomit with it

No, I didn't know them either!

Jetsam has been published on Microstory a Week

My 3 Word Monday story Jetsam has been published on Steve Isaak's site Microstory a Week.

Steve issues a weekly challenge through his other site Reading & Writing by Pub Light, which calls for a story of less than 500 words, including three specific words of his choosing.  Then he publishes the ones he likes on the Microstory site.

Thank you, Steve for choosing my story!