Saturday Centus (Page 6)

Oops. I wrote it last week, I swear. I just forgot to post it. Joe staggered, cursing, into the bathroom. Getting up at six for a construction job? How had his life come to that? “Oh yeah, that’s how,” he thought as he looked down at the newspaper wadded up in the trash. “Scarpoliti Guilty”, the headline read. Poor old Nick Scarpoliti was goin’ up the river, and partly on Joe’s say-so. He’d taken the offer of a new life to sing the Feds a nice song about old Nick. Joe looked up at the reflection in the mirror. GuyDown the rabbit hole….

Owing to connectivity issues during the first part of the week and the Blogger outage the second half of the week, I wasn’t able to do last week’s Centus. I thought I’d just miss one…but then I decided to cheat and do last week’s Centus and this week’s Centus at the same time! So, here we are: 200 words in which I use two different Centus prompts. Heh! “Daddy, where are you taking me?” asked a blindfolded Princess Th’ron, as her father the King led her by the tentacle. “It’s time for your birthday present!” replied King Fr’xon. They slitheredDown the rabbit hole….

Wow, I’ve been a crappy blogger this week. Only two posts. That’s pretty weak. A weak week. And now I’m reaching for lame puns. Sigh. Saturday Centus celebrates one year of writing prompts today. I haven’t been along for the whole ride, but I’ve enjoyed the parts I’ve been around for. So…. As Emily received her anniversary gift from George, she remembered his proposal, in the empty big top after the show. And the jugglers and stilt walkers and lion tamers who stood up for them at the wedding. Their vows being interrupted by the elephants. The popcorn and cottonDown the rabbit hole….

So this week we’re supposed to offer a review of one of last week’s entries [link fixed]. As is my wont, I shall cheat. Mr. Shakspur’s new play, Pimplius and Dimwittica, is precisely the kind of farce that the Queen (God Save the Queen!) has sought to eliminate from her Royal Stage. Mr. Shakspur’s thinking is beyond our guess; his characters are dolts, his plot idiotic, and his tiresome iambic dodecameter only reminds one of his cross-town rival. He is even rumored to have cast live women. Pimplius‘s ending, wherein all onstage die in a pie-fight using poisoned pies, evenDown the rabbit hole….

This week’s prompt is one of those that seems prosaic at first, but it really isn’t, because it’s the prosaic ones that really make one dig a bit deeper to come up with an idea. Anyway, here’s mine. I went in a much sillier direction than usual…. (From a teenage notebook of one Bill Shakspur, Stratford-on-Avon, 1578.) Florolominio: Sweet, sweet Rosalinimundia! Hath I come to you but too late to enter your embrace that outshine’d the very Sun? Rosalinimundia: Verily, knave, too late thou art. Another doth carry my troth now. Stew, then, in the vile pot of your ownDown the rabbit hole….

Before I get to this week’s prompt, an apology to other participants: I’ve been lax the last two weeks on reading your own efforts. Really lax. I’ll try to do better, I promise! And now, without ado of any kind: “This was your spot?” Molly asked. The sign above her read “Exit 181, 1/2 mile ahead.” Her father nodded. The country highway crested here on a hill that overlooked a distant lake and the town on the other side. “We’d come up here on July 4th and watch that town’s fireworks reflect off the lake. On our third 4th together,Down the rabbit hole….

Late with this week’s prompt as well, because yesterday was an abnormally packed Saturday here at Casa Jaquandor: we got up freakishly early (for a Saturday, anyway) to drive ninety minutes for a pancake breakfast, and then I had to grocery shop, and do two loads of laundry, and put away all of those groceries (which included dividing the 6.5-lb package of ground beef into 8-oz portions for the freezer), finishing a book that I need to review (and for which I started the day with more than 300 pages left to read), and…taking a nap or two. So IDown the rabbit hole….

Obviously, since I was out of town, I was unable to do this week’s Saturday Centus on Saturday. So here it is, on Monday. “Father,” I said as I followed him, “is it true that the lower classes choose their mates themselves?” “I believe so,” Father replied. “Disgusting practice…but then, I suppose marriage is meaningless to the workers, isn’t it? They’re not like us.” We stopped in front of the Bridal Curtain. “It is a good match,” Father said. “Our family corporation, merged with your bride’s, will dominate six entire industries.” “Yes, Father.” Together we recited the Pledge to theDown the rabbit hole….

Wow! It’s mostly a matter of luck and intuition, but this week’s Centus prompt suggested its story to me almost instantly. I’m serious: I knew within seconds of reading it what my tale would be. The actual writing, however, was a bit difficult; I actually generated four different drafts of the same notion, with each of the first three making me think, “Come on, I can make this punchier. It’s gotta hit harder.” I think that Version 4.0 is the most successful of my lot. So, here it is, with the prompt in bold. (No science fiction this week forDown the rabbit hole….