Wow…I missed one last week. Totally, completely, slipped my mind. Ugh! Sorry, folks.
Anyway, this week’s prompt is fairly tough: we’re to write our autobiography in six words. Hmmmm….
Includes: One heart. Some assembly required.
That ought to do.
Wow…I missed one last week. Totally, completely, slipped my mind. Ugh! Sorry, folks.
Anyway, this week’s prompt is fairly tough: we’re to write our autobiography in six words. Hmmmm….
Includes: One heart. Some assembly required.
That ought to do.
Just a normal prompt this week! (Although I shouldn’t say ‘just’ a normal prompt, as a lot of times it’s been the seemingly simplest prompts that have tripped me up and made me take hours just to mull them over to come up with something.)
“And these are–?” asked the lady in the floppy hat.
“Peas,” said Farmer Jimmy, behind his stall at the market. “Two peas in every pod.”
“Two?”
“Two. Two peas in a pod.”
“Only two?”
“Yessum…but these peas are three inches in diameter.”
“These peas are genetically modified, aren’t they?”
“Don’t think so. Just good old SuperMegaTechnoCorp seed.”
“OK, thanks.” And the lady moved on to the next stall, not even looking at Farmer Jimmy’s football apples. The exact size and shape, naturally, of a regulation football.
“Hippie farmers with their organic food,” Jimmy growsed. “Probably wear tie-dye under their overalls, too.”
And hey, Centusians, feel free to participate in my twice-annual Ask Me Anything! festival, in which you get to…well, you know.
This week’s prompt is straight-forward, if a bit macabre. I’m going back to my science fiction roots here:
Two robots looked down on the fires of Earth from their orbital platform. They were there to monitor the climate, but with no one left to report it to, what now?
“Do you think anyone will remember humans?” asked the younger robot, with a quivering synth-voice. Its emotion chip was state-of-the-art.
“We will,” replied the older, robot. His emotion chip was first-gen, so he wasn’t given to sentiment. “We know where the bodies are buried, anyway.” He pointed to a screen. “Cold front in North America,” he said.
“Snow in the Caucasus,” said the first bot.
I wonder what did us all in. I hope it wasn’t us.
OK, folks, we’re now far enough into January that life is settling back down in a quasi-normal kind of thing. The Holiday season just past was a wonderful one, but it was also abnormally busy, even by my standards — the Holidays are always busy, but this time it was “Wow, what a whirlwind!” I eventually just had to put some things on the back burner, such as regular features of this blog — the Centus among them. Well, now I’m ready to jump back in again, so here we go…only, this week’s prompt assumes that I’ve done the last two prompts. This, therefore, means that I need to resort to trickery and skulduggery. In short…I am going to cheat, and do all three prompts in one.
Prompt the first was to write a cliffhanger; prompt the second was to resolve it; prompt the third is to give it an epilogue. OK? OK! So, I now offer a haiku. Line one is the cliffhanger, line two is the resolution, and line three, the epilogue.
Will he or won’t he?
He thinks and chooses, “I will!”
And therefore, he did.
A belated Happy New Year to all Centusians, and it’s good to see you all again!
This week Jenny throws a curve: we’re supposed to use only 16 words to write about when we were 16 ourselves. Sixteen constituted most (except for the first few weeks) of my junior year of high school. What do I remember of that period? Hmmmm…one of my favorite English teachers ever, chemistry class, Mr. Jones‘s final year at ACS before moving away, playing Civil War music all year in band, and Dustin died. But anyway, here’s my Centus entry:
When I was sixteen, I knew she was out there, somewhere…but I didn’t know yet where.

Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later…I missed one. I filed away last week’s entry to mull over a bit, but then, with the busyness of Thanksgiving week, I pretty much forgot about it entirely. So, apologies to all Centusians…but maybe I can start a new streak with this week’s prompt, right?
“Always remember,” Bob the manager had said, “never ever ever EVER forget to suggestive sell. I want you to get to the point where suggestive selling is in your blood. I want it to be an instinct with you, more than breathing. Suggestive selling is your LIFE in this business!”
Joe certainly got the message. He didn’t suspect that he had gone a bit too far until the woman standing before him stared at him with a stunned expression when he asked “Would you like fries with that?”…
…after letting her sip from the Communion chalice.
By the way, any Centusians wondering what I’m thankful for this year (and not just this Thursday past) may refer to my partial list of thankfulness. I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!
A day late again…sorry, folks. This time we take the same photo as last week, but we have to write from the POV of one of the orange-meloned soccer kids. OK then:
Agent Triple-Zed glanced out the window of the minivan. “Surveillance in building across the field,” she said into the microphone on her shoe.
“Understood,” said her shoe. “Employ disguise 4-delta.”
“Roger that.” Triple-Zed slipped the red wig over her hair. “Do we abort the mission?”
“Negative,” said her shoe. “Operation Chuck E. Cheese still in effect.”
“Understood. Provide back-up at final location.”
Triple-Zed jumped out of the minivan and ran onto the field screaming, “Yay, TEAM! Go Carrotheads!”, trying not to think about the success probability of a mission that hinged on a half-dozen red-headed soccer youth.
Yup, I’m a day late. I had a job figuring out this week’s prompt, and I was pretty busy yesterday, anyway. We’re given a photo prompt…but what we’re supposed to do is write from the point-of-view of a person standing at the window indicated by the arrow.
Hmmmm….okey doke!
“Home One, Agent Niner-five-alpha reporting in. I’m in position. Over.”
“Acknowledged, Niner-five-alpha. What is the current status, over?”
“Looks like a soccer game, over.”
“Can you identify the target, over?”
“Negative. Our opponents have decoys in play. Repeat, decoys in play, over.”
“Niner-five-alpha, did you say, ‘decoys’, over?”
“That’s affirm. Seven, with red hair. Target is apparently disguised as an eight-year-old youth. I cannot identify target from this distance. Require instruction, over.”
[pause]
“Niner-five-alpha, retreat from your position and reacquire target at the next location. Understood, over?”
“Understood. Proceeding to Chuck E. Cheese. Over.”
“Acknowledged. Report when target acquired. Over.”
This week we’re limited to twenty-five words, and we have a picture prompt, with this, believe it or not, as the picture:
Here’s my take:
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t focus. Look through it.”
“OK….nope. Nothing.”
“Well, let’s move on.”
“OK…wait! Something moved in there!”
“And?”
“It’s saying my name….”
Happy Halloween, Centusians!
This week we get a normal kind of prompt. Here’s my take:
“I planted a little story seed, and it grew into a story tree. So then I picked the story fruit, peeled it, added sugar and cinnamon, and I baked it into a story pie. Then I ate a slice of the story pie with some story vanilla ice cream. And then…”
“What?”
“I think I pushed the metaphor too far.”
“That was a metaphor?”
“It started off as one, yeah.”
“A metaphor for what?”
“Would you believe I don’t remember?”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“You know what the moral here is?”
“Don’t drink decaf?”
“That’s right.”
A bit on the silly side, I know, but I continue to be fascinated by the effects of caffeine on storytelling!