Everyone else has contests and I can to, damn it!
The majority of people who read my blog are writerly types who I find procrastinating their days and nights away on Facebook and Twitter. Well, I want to see what you writers have in you.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, (and if you don't accept it, I might hunt you down with my broadsword)is to write me a flash fiction piece less than 100 words. And if writing a 100 word story isn't hard enough, you must incorporate the five words I have posted below.
These words are inspired by my new work in progress, it's working title is "Musings of a Twenty-Something Misanthrope." Catchy, no? Well, hop to it. The contest closes on Wednesday August 18th @ ten AM my time (that's six pm for you Brits) Winner should be announced the same day. Post your pieces in my comments! And don't forget to use all the words.
Oh yeah, there will be three prizes, first, second, and third. I can't tell you what the prizes are because I don't have them picked out yet, but trust that they will be good!. If you do win you will have to send me your address, if this is a problem, don't enter the contest, or write a really crappy one so you won't win. And guess who's judging...ME! In your face. Don't worry, I'm fair...but easily bribed.
One, two, three....GO!
Oh, right. The words:
Gremlin
Kerouac
Loner
Beauty
Heart
Now, go-go-go!
*If you have trouble posting a comment please send me your entry to tltyson@live.ca and I will post on your behalf!*
18 comments:
Here's mine. Whew...that took a lot of cutting.
No one can truly prepare you for having kids. "Kids'll change your life" is an understatement. My two gremlins are the loves of my heart. My son is a loner, and named after my husband's favorite writer, Jack Kerouac. My daughter, Alexandra, is the beauty of the family. She turned 16 and just got her license. I was so worried about her, but I shouldn't have been.
As they sit in the church pew, dressed in black, all I want to do is hold them and let them know it'll be alright. But they can't see me, floating above them.
This is John Booth's entry:
"On the road like Kerouac" I told the blonde with the pinprick pupils.
"Is that some sort of car?"
I ignored her ignorance, because judging by her skin tight jeans she had charms other than her brains. I'm a loner but her brittle beauty touched my heart.
My hand ran up her thigh and she sighed. She stood and led me out the back of the all-night café. Her jeans fell, she spread her welcoming legs and locked her hands behind my head.
The neon sign above exploded in a million sparks.
"Gremlin's baby" I said as I entered her.
SO SO tough Tee!
John was convinced there must be a gremlin in the house. He knew the Kerouac he was reading had been on the night table, but now it was nowhere to be found. In his heart of heart's he realized he was too much a loner, and that the beauty he found in the written word couldn't really compare to the joy of having another person in his life. So, he headed down to the bar to try and mingle, consoling himself with the fact that, he would, at least, be several blocks closer to his favorite all night bookstore.
On behalf of:
=Polyester=
by Miles Brandt
The loner in blue, from umbilical rue, worked harder and longer than anyone he knew.
His boss, a gremlin without beauty and heart, asked to have a word, for civility’s part.
“Because of this and that and so-and-so, there’s a division-wide layoff, and we’re letting you go.”
“This is most inopportune.”
“Please have your locker empty by noon.”
“That’s it?” he asked, “A simple effacement?”
“Spare me the tears; call it replacement.”
“With whom and whereof? Kerouac, Bo, Harry or Joe? Don’t tell me it was Vanhove.”
“None of the above; we hired Jackson, don’t blame me, it’s affirmitive action.”
On behalf of Paul Freeman:
ALONE
I’ve always been a loner, never quite seeming to fit in. I’ve never been a people person, think I give a shit? Well I don’t, people look at me as if I am some kind of gremlin, well fuck them.
Only once did I lose my heart, I saw her in a bus station, her beauty just struck me dumb, not gorgeous in a classic way but I’ve always had a different way of looking at things. She was reading, something by Kerouac I think, she looked up, smiled and looked away.
I will always be alone.
Messy, red, shredded muscle pulp of what was once a beating heart sat in the hands of a metallic creature. Dripping, sticky and beauty incarnate. At least it was to the machine. It had begun to feel. It was pondering the concept of loneliness. And when it ripped the gremlin called heart from it's master's chest, it found meaning in what humans called a “loner”. The room was now bare. Lifeless. And it was alone. And it liked being alone. It would go on the road, like Kerouac even, but to find meaning for itself in absolute lifelessness.
Anything to get your attention, 99 words(exclamation point.)
Love,
Nick
Also, can it be a signed Polaroid of your boobies? One of the prizes. And if not, can I get one anyway?
(You've been Flashed by Dadoo)
Accept loss forever. -Jack Kerouac
The loss is mine. The blade that cuts my heart.
Sometimes I think she’s not real. She never was that beautiful.
Then I see her again. Perfect. Complete.
She smiles, and I smile upwards, to the sun. Outshining its brilliance.
A face appears.
“Are you OK man?”
I scream obscenities at the Gremlin, clawing at the demon that replaced her.
It retreats, shocked…
Her luminosity blinds me again…
“ Feckin’ Freak” The young man brushes the grimy touch from off his jacket.
“He’s just a loner” his girl says, eyes brimmed with pity.
Arrgh...err...
Could you replace the line "she never was that beautiful"
with "Her beauty, but a myth"
Put the wrong word in there...
I blame the northern lights...
Bob
Evelyn wore the Kerouac shirt Jacob bought for her last time, a symbol of her aspirations. He sat across the table, a kind of loner. His dark green eyes shimmered in the coffee house light. He was telling her about his dream: gremlins had chased him around while he was naked at his high school. She took a sip of her extra-hot latte to hide her heart thumping. The beauty of him naked excited her to no end. That’s why she’d asked him out the second time. (88 words)
via @snowppl
He’d had a few drinks before he got to my place.
“A snifter of Kerouac, please.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Brandy. That bottle there.” He pointed to the shelf.
“Courvoisier?”
“That’s what I said. You heart of hearing?”
He scowled at how much I poured then drank it like a shot.
“Now give me a vodka gremlin.” He squinted to focus and looked around the bar while I mixed a gimlet. “Any hot chicks ever come in here? I need a beauty call.”
“The redhead, Fran. But she’s a loner.”
“Perfect. I’m just lookin’ to borrow her for a few minutes.”
Posted on behalf of Eddy Currents:
Call me a sad sack loner, but I like to get fucked up before I fly. Biggles comes over the tannoy: “Due to gremlins in the gubbins, the 7.00am departure to Tripoli is delayed by one hour”. I stumble to the jacks for a piss. A pre-pubescent boy guards the entrance. “Hey mister, ever get a really good kick in the Kerouacs?” he smirks, kicking my balls so hard, I’m on my knees, puking. Cross my heart - there, in my swirling vom, is the face of my dead mother, and she whispers, “Ah, my beauty, I told you so.”
On behalf of Ian Smethurst:
His name was Jake, Jake Kerouac, a loner by nature, he was also a San Francisco police detective, and right now was on a stake out, watching from a dark, grimy alleyway at a ford Taurus parked across the street. Rain patted of his wide brimmed hat and long coat.
His mole was in danger, she possessed a haunting beauty; capturing the perpetrators heart quickly.
He hoped the night would go smoothly, he didn’t want any gremlins ruining the stake out.
He watched as the perpetrator held a knife to the girl, the mole was compromised, he had to act.
“Drop the gun! Now.”
“Fuck off, pig.”
“Move away from the woman.”
“She’s mine. I created her. I wrote her in my mind. I gave her a heart that beats just for me. I destroyed the ugliness, the putrid gremlin she once was. Don’t you see? She’s mine … I wrote her, I gave her beauty."
“Drop the fuckin’ gun. Now! She needs help. Move away.”
“She is a Kerouac original creation, don’t you see, Pig? She was a loner. Not anymore. I gave her a world nestled between my minds pages.”
“Drop it!”
“No.”
One shot rang out.
It was Kerouac that encouraged me to buy a Gremlin. Ok he didn’t actually, call me up and recommend it but his extemporaneous style. Rather like Bruce Lee’s it was not an actual style but a philosophy of improvisation. I’ve always been a bit of a loner so it wasn’t that hard for me to just hope in my new-to-me car and drive west, where most of my memories of beauty lie, in search of the girl who could mend my heart.
For Jo Ellis:
The emptiness claws through me like a gremlin on crack. My mind so errant it reminds me of a Kerouac story playing out a life in my head. To live the adventures in my mind would be freeing but a loner I remain in life. If only I had the beauty to carry me through the obstacles that throw themselves mercifully at my feet. To be beautiful would cure the ever present rejection that hangs inside my soul and destroys my heart. Slow and steady my sanity ebbs away and the screaming voices torment me. Will I ever be free?
On behalf of Mardi Johnson:
Just like Jack Kerouac, he was a loner. A beige Gremlin to be ignored. He saw no beauty in the mirror when he looked. And God knows, he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.
Instead, his longing for life lay in his love of difference. Content to be trudging along, invisible, he watched the others in their frantic struggle for acceptance. While they played the desperate game of trying to be the same, his glory was in being unique. Any conformity, on his part, was quite accidental and so could not be termed conformity at all.
He was himself.
On behalf of Gordon Kuhn
Death Fells a Minister
"I think," the Right Minister of Kerouac said, slipping his new blade into its sheath, "this sword should do nicely." He smiled at his companion. "I shall be too happy when it is plunged into the only remaining operating heart of Three Toad the Loner."
"They say," a voice spoke behind him, "that the Right Minister of Kerouac is not only a stupid Gremlin but cannot tell when an enemy is nearby."
"But, that is why I have you my lovely."
"Ah," she said, "beauty is my mask." Then plunged a dagger into the ministers back.
Post a Comment