Monthly competition – September 2023

[Squidge]

Your prompt this month consists of three words:

wheelbarrow, street lamp, and a pipe (smoking)

Use them however you would like, in no more than 300 words. Have fun 😉

 

[Sandra]

“Stealing and giving odour “ [Twelfth Night]

From my very first whiff of the pipe tobacco I was a sucker for the scent of Balkan Sobranie. Given its name, thirteen-year-old imagination conjured red-jacketed hunters chasing yellow-eyed wolves through night forests. My Dad’s dour, ‘Four Square far cheaper,’ confirmed its blend  of leaves — Latakia, Oriental, Turkish and Virginia — too exotic for the likes of us.

Twenty years on, having attained the rank of detective sergeant,  a lingering of smoky incense at a crime scene sufficient for me to evidence a suspect whose lupine features conjured thoughts of more than night forests. I assigned myself an undercover role.

Two days later, in an aisle seat of a north-bound train, he two rows further forward, my main problem resisting the deliberate reminders of his peridot eyes. Night ensured the only view from the window glass my competent reflection. We were on time. I felt the application of the brakes, the slowing of the train. An amber streak of blurred streetlamps confirmed arrival imminent. Separately, he and I gathered our belongings, stood, pulled coats from the rack and donned them. He caught my eye, his smile more knowing than was comfortable.

I checked the slow-passing platform, relieved to see, stationed between each geranium planted wheelbarrow, like archers readied between battlements, the several bulky figures of my back-up team.

He’d not evade us this time.

Too smug, too soon. I should have kept watching his reflection.  He’d moved to stand behind me. A pound-coin-sized circle impressed itself against my ribs. Breath warmed my ears as he murmured,  ‘They let me go or you die. Tell them.’

I shook my head. He’d no idea how little I wanted to live without him.

[279 words excluding title]

[Janette]

Strange tastes

 

Oh, I did miss my Bert. Watching him through the window, wheelbarrow-in-hand, shaping our garden into all sorts of strangeness: gaudy, modern art in bloom.

Me, I preferred order. Neatness. A little chintz perhaps; a Capo Di Monte on the sideboard. ‘Let go, Pammy! Unstiffen your lip,’ Bert would say while waltzing me round in his merriness, though not drunk. Never drunk. I’d rather that than the pipe he’d sneakily puff on, thinking I didn’t notice the drifts of smoke rising from his shed, or the earthy fumes following him inside like an old dog when mealtimes beckoned. Meals I’d not share with him again.

Oh Bert.

I wandered down to his shed. Found his tobacco pouch, drinking in its – his – woody odour as I closed my eyes and held it close.

Go on, give it a go.

Dare I? It appeared to cheer him up.

 

Goodness, but a lonely mind could play tricks. A world of colour came alive, flittering in from the garden like butterflies, tickling me as he once might. I found his laughter and his visions and shapes and flavours in soooo many words and, hey, why didn’t I dance to them? Do a flamenco on the lawn – ta-darrh!

I blew out whisps, long and slow, knitting them around my fingers. Prim old Pamela, smoking, would you believe it? Mother wouldn’t.

He’d strange tastes, had Bert. Rather like his tobacco, which I think he harvested from his attic garden, window blocked but lights as luminescent as a street lamp. I once failed to fathom his ways, silly I. But not now.

Thank you, Bert. I did have to let go, didn’t I? I’ll carry on your gardening, my love, outside and in. As for chintz, Screw it! It’s Andy Warhol for me.

 

296 words

[Libby]

When My Favourite Employee Really Gets Going, He Quotes Churchill

(300 words)

 

I stop in Steve’s doorway. He looks up from his laptop. Angled at his side, his PC screen glows with the photos and primary colours of our online edition.

At the opticians recently, he told the young woman he’s a journalist on the local rag and when off duty he reads classic French and Russian novels. She’s given him glasses big enough for windscreen wipers.

“That man charged with bigamy,” I say, propped against the doorframe. “He’s been convicted. How about a piece on bigamy?”

Pause for Steve’s cheek blowing. I wait for a complaint about lifestyle columns. Steve is what both romantics and cynics call an old-fashioned newspaper man, which in his case includes his physique. He takes more care of his job than himself. It’s not his grey hair but his roundness. His wife wants him to retire and take up gardening because pushing a wheelbarrow will do him good.

But he doesn’t complain about my suggestion. “Michael Garton, 45, of Winslade Road?” he says. “A-ha, not just bigamy. Financial irregularities with the council’s lighting contract.”

“The same Garton? That fraud isn’t definite.”

“The council was overcharged for street lamps and Garton worked for the lighting supplier.”

Steve rubs thumb and forefinger together. His next silent message is just as clear. A smile.

“Time for some interviews?” he says.

This is how he works on me. He knows I know he’s our best proper journalist, as he calls himself. We both know he loves investigating the apparently never-ending combo of dodgy deals and local politics.

“Go on, then,” I say.

On one of his corkboards is a card from colleagues depicting Sherlock Holmes and his pipe.

Steve picks up his mobile. As a phone rings out somewhere on his contacts’ list, he says, “Beaches, landing grounds, never surrender.”

[Seagreen]

UNTITLED (300 words)

 

Betty Hoskins – aged 95 years – and probably a pipe smoker for the last 85 of them. She’s at the allotments, perched on a ragged, weather-beaten wicker armchair beneath an arch of bamboo rods and green netting, enveloped in a haze of what she calls her ‘medicinal’ blend.

It’s late evening, the sun is bedding down behind Marley Jenkin’s shed in a corona of red and gold tie-dye, and most of her fellow gardeners are packing up to go. An attentive breeze nudges Betty’s shoulder to remind her of her vulnerability, so she takes the pipe from her mouth and taps the bowl empty before gripping the arms of the chair to push herself up.

Ah.

‘Marley,’ she calls, and a thread of inevitability laces its way through her words. ‘I need some help.’

 

Betty refuses the offer of a 999 call, even though she hasn’t the strength to walk home unaided; refuses all but Daz’s light-hearted comment that they pad her out with the cushion from Eliza’s sunbed and chuck her in the wheelbarrow to wheel her up the road. Marley phones ahead to warn Lauren and Sandra that Betty is being stubborn and they might need the heavy artillery to persuade her to go to the hospital.

 

In a parade of noisy friendship, Owen and Daz take turns pushing the barrow and Eliza fusses because there’s not enough padding for someone with so little meat on her bones. Lauren meets them with a flask of tea and Sandra brings a pillow and a blanket. They laugh and scold on their way up the hill.

When they stop under the streetlamp for a breather, Betty smiles at each of them in turn. The pipe slips from her fingers and her eyes flutter shut.

 

Nobody calls for an ambulance.

 

[Alex]

Rusty

Killing a man is easy. The hard part is disposing the body. Was disposing the body. Until I tried a wheelbarrow. Yup. Same type of wheelbarrow Mavis used in the garden, but mine was rusty.

Last year, I made the beginner’s mistake of using a garbage bag, but the lower back isn’t at forty-eight what it was at twenty-eight. Thanks to cricket on weekends.

The plan tonight was to dispose of this body without getting caught and head home. That should be a piece of chocolate cake because Fern Hill was nothing but shrub and frogs. Besides, the overcast sky blocked the incriminating moon and out here had no street lamps.

I grabbed my pipe. Lit it. Nice and bitter.

“This is the ideal place for a photoshoot,” a woman’s voice said.

I fell flat on my stomach. Nestled in the shrubs.

Another female voice said, “It’s so isolated.”

“Just what we need for these photos.”

Could they see me?  Don’t panic.

My shallow breathing didn’t obey.

My mobile rang in my pocket. I hit the green answer button.

“Did you hear something?” one of the women asked.

“Not sure …”

“Must be hearing things,” said the other woman.

I whispered, “Hello.”

Mavis’ annoying voice boomed into my ear. “Why are you whispering?”

“I’m at work.”

“You don’t whisper at work.”

Damn it.

“Boss is in.”

“When did that ever stop you from talking normally?”

The two women talked about their silly photoshoot.

“Are those female voices I hear?” Mavis asked.

“No.”

“I’m no fool.”

“I swear -”

Mavis cut the call off.

The models didn’t see me, but I slept the next month in the shed beside Mavis’ wheelbarrow.

Word Count: 280 words

[Athelstone]

A great batch of entries. Sadly, my good idea didn’t finally coalesce until I was dozing off last night.

[Squidge]

Wowser…spoilt for choice! Thank you all for taking my three little words and turning them into lots of great stories. As always, the three objects were used in very different and clever ways. So…

Sandra – there’s something about a pipe-smoking detective, isn’t there? Lovely piece, with the rat almost in the trap until the detective took his eye off the ball.

Janette – loved the idea of Pammy sampling Bert’s wacky baccy and dancing round the garden! You turned what could have been a sad piece of writing into a real comedy.

Libby – loved the pictures you drew here. And the fact that the focus of the investigation had such a clever association with a street lamp…

Seagreen – the sun is bedding down behind Marley Jenkin’s shed in a corona of red and gold tie-dye. Simply gorgeous. This was a real kicker when I got to the end – was not expecting it at all.

Alex – loved that your narrator got into so much trouble, and not for disposing of a body!

As always, there has to be a winner and a setter of the next challenge, and for me, that’s….drum roll…Seagreen. Basically because the story of Betty hit me right in the feels, and yet it didn’t feel like a sad piece at all, it was full of joy and friendship and fun. Well done.

 

[Sandra]

Congratulations @ Seagreen, and thank you Squidge for prompt words, comments  and competition – a lot of fascinating uses of the three words.

[Seagreen]

Oh, crikey! This has caught me on the hop. Such a great catch of entries!

Squidge – thanks for the prompts. I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to do them justice.

Libby, Sandra, Janette and Alex – there wasn’t a single story I wouldn’t have picked to be a winner ????

[Seagreen]

Anyone else getting question marks instead of the smiley face?

[Sandra]

Yes, I’ve got ??? : -)

 

[Libby]

I love your story, Seagreen. Congratulations!

Janette, Alex, Sandra – all great stories. Thanks for setting the competition, Squidge.

[Libby]

I’m testing!

🙂

🙂

[Libby]

Seems OK, both in the ‘text’ option and the ‘visual’.

[Author]

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