Saturday 30 January 2010

Saturday Wordzzle 97

Saturday again so soon? Must be Wordzzle time then! Go to Raven's Nest to get the poop on how to play this game.

I chose this week's words and I apologise if they were annoyingly hard - I struggled with marshmallow and Telfon.

The mini (ripen, shelve, laminate, goofy, Siamese)

This is part of of an ongoing story. A blind seer has had a vision about a young man coming to some as yet unspecified harm from an old man living in a tower. To try to avert this fate, she has anonymously paid for him to take a holiday somewhere far away. The young man has arrived at the holiday town and has noticed an interesting tower, which he plans to investigate the next day. The seer has a nightmare which she believes is connected to the young man's fate and resolves to go after him. She finds herself in the holiday town and realises this is the very place the tower is located. She gets lost trying to locate it and hears footsteps approaching. The young man, on his way to the tower sees a blind lady trying to cross the road...

The young man speaks...

I am thinking I should shelve my idea of helping the blind lady across the road before it can ripen into an embarrassing encounter. What if she‘s insulted by my offer to help, my implied view of her as incapable? It’s a goofy idea, surely. She’s still hesitating though. What to do, what to do? Oh, get on with it man! What’s the worst that could happen? She might tell you to get lost is all. She starts at my hand on her arm and I apologise and explain that I’ll help her if she’s willing. She wants to go to the tower. That’s handy for me, I tell her. We can go together. I wrap her arm over mine and we set off. I’m quite tall and she is very short, so we must look like a set of bizarrely mis-matched Siamese twins. We chat a bit as we go and soon a thin laminate of friendship is laid over our initial shyness with each other. She’s actually quite pretty behind the dark glasses. I tell her about my windfall anonymously-donated holiday. Oh, no! What did I say? She’s like a woman possessed, she’s throwing her arms around me and crying. What’s that all about?


The 10-worder (Teflon, idealistic, marshmallow, opportunistic, kittens, beef, sawing logs, slapped, tickled, scissors)

New to Harold? Click here to catch up.

    The phone rang . Mr Teeth set down the scissors he had been using to open his morning sachet of protein drink (beef flavour today) and picked it up.
    “This is Peck. “ came the cultured voice of the private investigator . “Your boy is back in town. He was seen hanging around the club last night. Unfortunately, he left there in the company of some others – two men, two women. We have a licence plate though and my contacts are tracing the owners.”
    “Thanks,” grunted Mr Teeth, “I still want to speak to that boy, so keep on it, will you?”
    “Of course,” came the smooth reply, “I’ll let you know if anything changes.” The phone went dead. For 1500 dollars a day, the man might at least say goodbye occasionally, thought Mr Teeth.

    They had given Harold a tiny, hastily emptied-out office with no windows (to prevent opportunistic escape attempts, presumably). Someone had rustled up a camp bed and they had left a desk and chair in there too. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was better than nothing.
    Teatime was still delicately sawing logs when Harold woke from a pleasant night of quiescence, wondering what the day would bring. He dressed, opened the door and stepped out into the main operations room of OGS. This place had fascinated him on his last visit but he had not exactly had a chance to explore.
    Even at this early hour, the place was far from deserted: there were agents tapping reports into computers, agents on the phone, agents scouring the internet for information – a veritable hive of activity. A fresh-faced young agent at a nearby desk noticed Harold.
    “I don’t think you’re meant to be wandering about out here.” He said, rather timidly. Harold guessed that he had probably not been in the job long. It was wrong of him, he knew, but he could not resist having a little fun. He placed his hands on the desk in front of the agent and leaned over him, forcing him to lean back to maintain eye contact.
    “I was just looking for something to eat,” he said, bestowing upon the agent his most friendly grin. “Know where I can get hold of some nice fluffy kittens?”
    The young agent looked horrified.
    “Err, I don’t think we can do that.” He stammered, “I can get you something from the canteen. Will that do?”
    “That would be lovely.”
    “Stop that!” India snapped, having just arrived.
    “I’m sorry,” Harold said to the young agent, “I was just having a little fun. Some food would be nice though. Teatime will be hungry by now and he gets really grouchy when he’s hungry.”
    Relieved, the young agent scuttled off.
    “Do anything like that again and there’ll be trouble.” India said angrily, looking like she could have slapped him.
    Harold held up his palms apologetically, “I’m sorry. You idealistic types have a certain stereotypical view of us demons, so I was just living up to it. Won’t happen again.”
    The fried egg of his apology splatted against the Teflon coating of her cool stare and slid off, leaving no trace of humour in her eyes. Mind you, when Harold thought about it, he had been a bit mean to torment the young agent like that. The young fellow had been about as tough as a marshmallow and not really fair game. He sighed. Guess it was just his wicked fallen nature coming out.
    “Get your monkey-thing and come with me.” India ordered.
    She was back to being dark-haired again today for some reason which tickled Harold’s curiosity somewhat. He’d have to ask her about that at some point – after making sure her taser was well out of reach first, of course.

13 comments:

  1. You handled the words with such ease (or so it seems to me). I enjoyed the teflon line. Like something out of a detective novel. Thanks for the words. I've been over tired and depressed which I think was part of why I had such a hard time with them. They were perfectly reasonable words, just hard to mesh together.

    Anyway, loved both your stories as always. I love where the blind seer seems to be heading (at least where I'm hoping it's heading).

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  2. @Raven - You're very kind. You're a real romanic soul aren't you? But you may well get you wish in the blind seer story. I thought the Teflon line was possibly the cheesiest thing I've ever written but I kinda liked it afterwards. The real story is about to begin...

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  3. Good job as usual - I'm with Rave & hoping for a bit of romance - in both stories would be fun LOL.

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  4. @Bug - What is it with everybody wanting romance? :-) Romance is more likely in the serr story than in Harold plus I get embarrassed writing slushy stuff so even if the characters do get together it might not be that romantic. But you never know....

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  5. Ah! I have at last caught up! (reading five or six episodes in a row) This time I was most curious to see what you'd do with the kittens. Made me laugh, although for a demon I'd say it was a pretty lame attempt at being scary (LOL)
    "The fried egg of his apology splatted against the Teflon coating of her cool stare and slid off..." That's like from Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe or something... She's a tough one that India!

    Parallell I've also caught up with the Seer story so that's quite a bit of reading this afternoon! :)

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  6. @DawnTreader - Glad you managed to catch up - quite a marathon you had there by the sounds of it. Harold is very lame at being scary, his heart's not really in it and when he does try it he feels bad afterwards - not a good character trait for someone in the evildoing trade. In one of your earlier comments you say you didn't realise Harold was meant to be eye-candy, that's interesting to me as Watercats thinks he's handsome, my hubby thought he was balding and middle aged looking. For the record, he's meant to be blond and blue-eyed, somewhere in his twenties but he can be whatever anybody wants him to be. Thanks for taking the time to read all the back issues, your comments were much appreciated. The seer thing will end soon as I can't keep 2 ongoings running without my head exploding. Re: editing, there's definitely a few whole scenes that would be dropped becuase thye were only there for a tricky word to be used. But at least I could write longer scenes where I want to without dragons roaring at me :-)

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  7. Yes, I know what you mean about those dragons (they are cute but opinionated) As for the wordzzle words they do have the double function of inspiring and getting in the way. I would never have started or got on with my story without them but they also keep snaring me so that I don't know how to get out of my own tangled web! :D

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  8. I like that analysis - inspiring and getting in the way! The Harold story would never have been if Raven hadn't included the word 'demons' in one of her lists one week. Then the next week I was still ondering what to write so thought it might just be fun to do another story about the character I created the previous week. People seemed to like it, so I carried on and here I am 26 eps later!

    Of course, I've had to go off and create a 'proper' story with background and some attempt at continuity and internal consistency.

    In fact, it's only been this week or so that I've actually managed to sort out in my mind what exactly is happening to the demons and why - now I actually know this, we can stop shilly-shallying and get on with the main narrative.

    I'm wondering just how long I can keep this up. The story I have in mind is novel-length, but will people want to read it if it takes a couple of years to play out in Wordzzle form?

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  9. aw man! your writing is just fantastic.. I love the fried egg thing (I'm a sucker for colourful metaphors) :-) I would have had a go at the wimpy kid too if i was a fallen, it toughens em up in the long run.

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  10. @Watercats - I'm glad you liked the fried egg thing. I thought it was possibly the most overdone thing I written so far but I've only myself to blame seeing as I came up with the words! I would also bait the wimpy kid too because I am mean and wicked and I can't be doing with humourless goody-two-shoes types.

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  11. I finally caught up on your stories, too. I had to go back all the way to some time in November. Most of the reading was done last week. Both of the stories are coming along nicely. It's interesting that an angel has shown up, and Harold has joined forces with the good guys. Don't be too quick to throw out scenes. Sometimes they say things about the characters, or add something to the feeling of the story. Sometimes, too, major things can come too close together without something to bridge the gap between them.

    On the subject of Harold's appearance, I tend to think of him in the 30 to 40 range, sometimes a little older, sometimes a little younger, with light brown hair that's perhaps two to three inches long on top and shorter on the sides, and uncombed. There are a few times when I've pictured him with longer hair. He's also slim, perhaps a bit on the thin side and medium to a little short in height. Part of the problem with age is that he seems to have a lot of experience in playing music, though I suppose that could happen with him still in his twenties. I imagine demons tend to be essentially ageless anyway.

    A possible partial explanation for people's differing perceptions of him is that unless he's described, at least in part, fairly frequently, people tend to forget what any original descriptions might have been, because of the long time period in which they're reading the story here. It may not be necessary to do much of a description, though, if you're satisfied with whatever people picture him to be.

    Stephen from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
    http://stephen-has-spoken.blogspot.com/

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  12. @Stephen - I really apreciate the fact that you took time to catch up on my stories. Your comments are wise and no scene will be chucked unless I genuinely think it is not doing any work in the story. Plenty of new material will be added though when I get to it. The Wordzzle format does tend to force brevity in areas that could benefit from deeper exploration. Harold is thousands of years old of course and has been playing music for all that time, hence his level of skill. When he came to earth he crafted a youthful and good-looking vessel as he assumed it would make the job of tempting souls a bit easier. I'm happy for everyone to have their own picture of him and filled with joy that people actually do imagine what he might look like. I'm off to visit your stories now.

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  13. Information is communicated in an understandable and interesting manner. I'm not wasting time. Hopefully, chto knowledge that I received will help me to develop successfully.

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