Today I begin my participation in… (cue the dramatic music)
The Festival of Drabbles
This wonderful event that celebrates those 100 word stories of perfection runs from November 9th until
November 15th and is organized and hosted by author Michael Brookes. The listing of participants can be found here: http://thecultofme.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/festival-of-drabbles-2015-calendar-of.html
I’ll be doing four posts for the occasion: one today, plus one on the 11th (a special Drabble Wednesday segment), Friday the 13th, and a last closing post on the 15th. I’ll also be listing my part drabble book, Passing Fancies, for free on Smashwords from the 9th-15th. You can check the book out here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151594
There is also a Facebook event, if you care to drop by: https://www.facebook.com/events/375605662648575/
I’ll be doing four posts for the occasion: one today, plus one on the 11th (a special Drabble Wednesday segment), Friday the 13th, and a last closing post on the 15th. I’ll also be listing my part drabble book, Passing Fancies, for free on Smashwords from the 9th-15th. You can check the book out here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151594
For today, I revisit three of my literary inspired drabbles,
plus one newly penned tale. So with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Edgar
Allen Poe, and Shakespeare, I present…
Charge of the One
Hundred
Forward into the shortie, write the one hundred. Press
onward, onward, to half the word count, write the one hundred. Forward, always
forward, into the valley of the impossible prompt. Yours is not to reason why,
just to make certain all the words are included and figure how the deuce to
work in the ridiculous puce.
Forward we go, write the one hundred. Charge for the end and
make it a mental twist. Badgers to the right of you, armadillos to the left,
and look out, the slinky Moai are in front.
For the glory you write the one hundred.
(originally written
for a drabble writers group with, as the tale suggests, some very unusual
prompts)
~*~
The Salesman
From the dark recesses of her office, where she tippy taps
on her keyboard, she hears knocking…
“Who is that gently rapping, rapping at my front door? ‘Tis
some visitor, only this and nothing more.”
She peers past her curtain, yet uncertain, to spy upon her
step a hockey masked man, wielding knife in hand.
“This sight thrills me—fills me with fantastic terrors never
felt before.” Yet she rises, walks, and opens the front door.
The man smiles and speaks. “Knives I bring, my only stock
and store. A onetime offer, then it shall be gone. Seen nevermore. Nevermore.”
~*~
Now Is The Winter Of
Our Discontent
’Twas quite the conundrum put before William Shakespeare. To
be the playwright, or not to be, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or join Yorick in his millinery
business.
“Alas, poor Yorick”,
William exclaimed, “Tempt not a desperate man, and dangle your lure of
enticement. Yet, ‘tis our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft
might win, by fearing to attempt. There is nothing either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so and this above all: to thine own self be true.”
And with that he plucked up his quill to write.
~*~
A Shakespearean
Pirate’s Life
To be the scourge of the seven seas, or not to be the
scourge of the seven seas, aye that be the question, methinks. I task myself to
take up arms, to strut and fret aboard deck, and cast aside sound and fury of
convention. What mind me, those tittle-tattle slings and arrows of a jackanapes
society?
Best to give not a wit, nor a thought, to those who say me
nay, but rather tell truth, and shame the devil. `Tis better to have crossed
swords with a scurvy dog Englishman, than never to have sailed under the Jolly
Roger.
© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved
