A Drabble from a Rabble - Twenty Nine

 Thanks person who thought it would be a good idea to drag a Tumblr argument over to my writing blog, you reminded me to do this.

 Our theme today is The Sea.

Where Worse Things Happen

 You’re not made for this.

 You can’t support your own weight, you gasp and pant as you slither around, attempting to push yourself around on land with limbs made to push through water.

 Your eyes are dry, you fear that they’ll split and crack, but you can still see as you turn back towards the world you were meant for.

 A blue green blur gently lapping against the shore, looking so calm.

 If you could sigh, you would as you slither back. Back towards where you can breathe and move freely.

 Where the monsters live, and where you will die.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Eight

 Today we start filling out the last theme for the rabble of drabbles, and the theme is ecstasy.

 We're going to start off with the obvious one, and I tried to go for something more realistic and less scaremonger-y than a lot of drug related stories.

 Still don't recommend taking recreational drugs, though. Especially if you're on any kind of medication.

Molly

 “You’re very warm.”

 She grinned at me from between my hands.

 “And you’re hot, have I ever told you that?”

 My cheeks burned hotter than hers.

 “No, no you haven’t.”

 She wrapped her arms around me, face slipping from my hands.

 “Shame.”

 “Er, you’re very huggy today.”

 “Hmhmm, ah, you’re super cuddly. Like a big fluffy bear. I should hug you more often, it’s really nice. Like you, but not like me, I’m not super great. You’re super great though.”

 “You’re rambling.”

 “Yeah, I am. It’s a side effect.”

 I sighed.

 “I should have known. Let’s get you some water.”

A Warmer Star

 I got a new microphone yesterday, so I threw together this video for A Warmer Star.

 I hope you enjoy it!

A Drabble by a Guest - De Vulgari Eloquentia

 Sorry about the lack of posts these last couple of days, I've been super tired and not eating properly.

 So that was fun.

 Here's the second post in the 'Dante Aligheri is a jerk' diptych by my friend Doug over at Fission Mailure.

De Vulgari Eloquentia

 He can sense the boy’s disdain, bubbling under the bright-eyed worship and the breathless praise. Heretic. He knows the word is drifting around the boy’s empty head somewhere, that the smiling and praise is partly a performance, building up to him being left in the grey and the dark while the boy smiles at him from the light.

 Once, climbing down a wall of frost-clogged hair, he considers abandoning the boy and letting him wander for eternity. He quenches the thought as quickly as his mind will let him: Enough innocents have become lost in this place without adding another.

A Drabble by a Guest - La Gloriosa Donna

 I'm pretty much dead on my feet right now, so my wonderful friend Doug from Fission Mailure has written a wonderful drabble for us.

 So wonderful I have requested a matching drabble for next week!

La Gloriosa Donna

 She feels him poisoning her with every sphere they pass through.

 This man - this bitter poet herded through the castles of the dead to make note of them, whom she had never met before this moment, stared at her like he could burn her onto his eyes, rhapsodised on her beauty.

 I am as real to him as a painting, she thinks, and the thought rolls like a bezoar in her gut.

 When she takes her place amidst the rose petals, she hopes that the same flame that burns this last poisonous thought out of her will incinerate him.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Seven

 This is one of the first few drabbles I wrote, but I hated it so I didn't make a post about it.

 I've given it an edit and now I feel as though it's presentable.

 The theme is denial.

Variance

 “I killed my wife.

  I didn’t do it with one of those manly, violent methods. No, I poisoned her.

  She didn’t eat or drink anything. It was subtle, something no autopsy could find.

  I poisoned her mind, I littered her with compliments to build up her self esteem before I destroyed it, killing her.”

 The doctor looked at Robert Jenkins over her glasses, she was alarmed by the glee with which he confessed to causing a woman’s suicide, but was more concerned by the fact he’d never been married.

  He just smiled at her affectionately, “but we’ll be different, darling.”

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Six

 Here's another drabble from the anger prompt.

 It's weirdly appropriate to post it now because yesterday's Cucumber had a plot which was kind of similar.

 (If sex and violence doesn't make you sick, you should totally watch it. It was one of the most effective things I've ever seen. I was an motional mess for over an hour afterwards.)

 It wasn't inspired by Cucumber, I wrote it during the day. It was just a coincidence.

Don't, Get Mad

I wish he hadn't said those things about my mother.

She was no saint, but she tried her damn best on minimum wage with a string of abusive boyfriends.

And I don't deserve to be here, rotting away, waiting for my trial to start.

It was just a wild swing in the heat of the moment! It wasn't supposed to actually hit him! Or send him flying backwards to smack his head open on a brick.

I didn't know what to do. I think I just stood there, staring until the police and an ambulance came to take us away.

A Drabble from a Rabble - Twenty Five

 There's this trend for heroines in Europan fairy tales to be blonde.

 There are a small handful that are explicitly described as having a different hair colour, but there is a disproportionately large number of blonde characters.

 The reason for this is that it's a cheap metaphor.

 Blonde hair looks golden, so it implies both worth and morals (see: 'as good as gold').

 So gold is today's theme, and sometimes bucking a trend can be an interesting experience.

Not as Good as

  Eyes as blue as the Aegean and hair that shone like the gilded sun, Princess Roisin sat in the rose garden playing with the birds.

 The king sighed as he leaned against the archway into the garden.

 “Roisin!” he barked, making her jump, “let the birds go!”

 She pouted and released the doves caught in her traps.

 Her father strode over and picked up the one lying on the bench with its guts hanging out, breaking its neck with deft hands.

 “The servants told me you were doing this again.”

 “Which ones?” she asked brightly.

 “Not after last time, Roisin.”

A Drabble From a Guest

 (Sorry about the lack of post yesterday, the delays with my laptop are really getting to me. But today, we have a marvelous guest post from Doug at Fission Mailure.)

I took a prompt using a random prompt generator to generate two words from a list here. The words were Horror and Eternal, which sounds like the title of the survival horror game.

Kay Mee-mee A-tah

My hand freezes on the airing cupboard door. It had been a decade since I’d shut it, years since anyone had heard the voice, it must be dead by now. It’s safe. I’m safe, and this is just silly anxiety. 

I see the beak in my mind. The fur. The slow-blinking eyes. I shut the memories out and crack the door open, reaching in, groping blindly until I find a towel.

Click. I see the eyes open. Turn to face me. The beak snaps. “Kah toh-loo may- …”

It sounds like forgiveness. I slam the door. The voice follows me.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Four

 What? No, I totally didn't promise to put an extra drabble up yesterday and then forget because I was really into doing things for the Beyond Oasis Let's Play, don't be ridiculous!

 ...

 The theme is denial.

Tsundere

  I stared at the dragon in horrified awe as it lay there, head twitching six metres away from its body and blood still leaking from the neck.

 “That’s what you get for kidnapping Take-chan!”

  I looked up at my rescuer.

  “T-Tomoko?”

  She looked at me.

  “You- you saved me.”

  “You bet I did, I wasn’t gonna let some stinky old dragon eat you.”

  My shock was overcome by joy, and I smiled.

  “Thanks, Tomoko.”

  She blinked at me before averting her eyes and blushing.

  “I didn’t do it because I like you or anything!” she protested.

  Of course she didn’t.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Three

 Let's start filling up another one of the themes for my drabbles.

 Today I went with joy.

Prodigal Son

 It had been twenty years, but he stood on my doorstep looking sheepish and shy like it had been a week.

 “I, uh, sorry I didn’t get in touch.”

  I don’t think he had aged a day since I last saw him, but it didn’t matter. Whatever had happened, why he was like this still, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

 “C-come in.”

 I stood aside and he stepped inside, looking like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

 “Would you… like some tea?”

 He nodded, “um, milk, two sugars.”

 I smiled and headed into the kitchen.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Two

 Today's theme was chosen by my friend Luna (she has a tumblr) and she picked The Globe.

 I apologise in advance for any translation errors, I used Google Translate. I did make sure to translate what I got back into English, so it should check out, but just in case, sorry.

 I also used this not at all handy Tunneling Tool from Free Map Tools to work out where this was taking place.

 So, with that out of the way, here's the drabble.

Antipodes

 The crash took me God knows how far from the I-45.

 Serving away from that truck had left me bleeding on the grass.

 Everything hurt and I couldn’t stop the tears soaking into the ground.

 “Dios , ayúdame,” I mumbled through an aching jaw into the grass.

 I was always scared I die alone.

 “Shhh,” a gentle voice whispered, “Semuanya akan baik-baik saja.”

 I could hear it as plain as day and a hand stroked the cheek that was buried in the grass.

 I relaxed with a sigh. 

 “Semuanya akan baik-baik saja,” they whispered again, as a helicopter approached.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty One

 Today's drabble is inspired by something I vaguely remember from a documentary I watched years ago.

 The theme is snow.

West of Java

 It’s too warm.

 Lazing on the chaise, staring at the ceiling, cooking in my own skin.

 My mind’s cooked in my head and I can feel my nerves boiling.

 Warm wind blew loose strand of hair into warm sweat.

 This must be what Hell feels like.

 I want to go home, back to cold north with the snow.

 I turn onto my side and stare out of the window.

 My mind was already broken, the white flakes falling from the sky were no surprise.

 But when I ran to touch them, they didn’t disappear.

 Even the snow is warm here.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty

 Gosh, it's been a while since I did one of these, hasn't it?

 Well, today's theme is Snow and it's a little bit out of season, but eh. Who really minds?

 Also, inadvertant prose poem.

The Feast of Stephen

 The snow fell as we opened our presents, and our parents promised to take us and the old sled to the park to play the next day if it stuck.

 We dragged the sled up the hill in the park together, and Mum and Dad watched Penny and I sled back down.

 She headed for a big lump to smash through, but it was solid, and we took it with us until we ground to a halt.

 Mum skidded down the hill as I dug through the snow until I found a dark face with staring eyes and purple lips.


 

A Drabble From a Rabble - Nineteen

 Today's drabble has the theme of anger.

 (I don't really have much to say today, sorry.)

Dastardly Drivers

 These are some dangerous roads.

 To be fair, it’s not the roads themselves. The council does a bang up job keeping the tarmac pristine, potholes aren’t a problem.
 No, it’s the drivers.

 Firstly, they’re all over the place, and secondly, they overreact to the slightest thing.

 If somebody gets cut off, the giant comedy inflatable mallets come out of the glove boxes in seconds and we’ve got a fight on our hands.

 At least the council clamped down on the giant retractable scissors in people’s bonnets.

 I swear I’ve nearly been cut in half more times than I can count.

A Drabble from a Rabble - Eighteen

 It's my bithday today! Woo!

 So today's drabble is inspired by one of the things that happened during the run up to my birthday, which is going to seem a bit weird, but just run with it.

 The theme today is shadows.

Like a Ninja

  Okay. I am up, I am dressed, I am caffeinated.
 

 She can’t take me surprise, she can’t get past me.

 I wonder what kind of tea she’ll want? I’ve got three kinds of black and two kinds of green. There’s some rooibos somewhere too, just in case.

 Should I bake something?

 Hmm, I’m not sure I’ll have time. Besides, there are mini rolls somewhere. There might be others too…

 Just a quick visit to the bathroom and-

 Dammit, again?

 Grandma! Why, why must you deliver your birthday cards by hand if you don’t want to be invited in for tea?

A Drabble From a Rabble - Seventeen

 Today the theme is today.

 Wednesday.

 Also, Shadows.

Remember

 Don’t forget the plan.

 That’s the most important thing.
 

 Not whether it’s right or wrong, the plan.
 

 I’m not sure it even matters if it’s right or wrong anymore. Desperate times, desperate measures.

 …

 If I die doing this, is it suicide?

 Will I go to Hell?

 I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

 The plan.

 Set them around underneath the supports, light them, then get out.

 Dear Lord, please don’t let them have got wet.

 Right, this barrel goes here, and this one goes here.

 Wait, what? Light?

 No!

 How did they?

 “Hey! I’ve found someone, he’s got gunpowder!”

A Drabble From a Rabble - Sixteen

 The last of our bonus spoopy drabbles, and this one it themed for love.

 I think we all know what's coming.

Chocolate Box Romance

 I’m always happy to see your face covered in chocolate, you know.

 It makes me glad when you enjoy the things I get you and the trouble I go to.
 
 Oh, you’ve got it in your hair today, don’t worry, I’ll wash it out later.

 …

 Of course, I wouldn’t have to keep washing the chocolate out of your hair and off your face if I didn’t have to shove them in your mouth myself.

 The fact I have to force you to chew is why your tongue’s gone.

 Things would be easier if you hadn’t made me kill you.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Fifteen

 Another of the bonus spoopy posts, this one is in honour of the start of NaNoWriMo and revolves around the theme of pain.

Quite Literal

 This is abysmal.

 I can’t believe that I ever thought this would get published, let alone be my magnum opus.

 The adverbs, there’s so many of them. They burn my eyes.

 It’s all so tell-y too. I show hardly anything and it doesn’t do the lacking plot and three identical main characters any favours.

 Seriously, they’re the same.

 The romance is awful too, it’s pointless and makes me look like a raving misogynist.

 And I haven’t even started on the blood.

 Why on earth did I think writing the first draft in human blood would be a good idea?

 Ew.