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In March it seems that hares go mad. They chase each other, jump and frolic, even have boxing matches. For March, somebody has done/is doing/will do something mad. It might be you, or not – whatever you wish. 500 words maximum please before midnight on 31 March.
Madness on the Ides of March
493 words excluding title
All those years ago she had been teased relentlessly by friends about her wedding date, the Ides of March. ‘Beware!’ they had warned her. ‘You must be mad,’ they said, laughing.
But here the happy couple of that March day were, celebrating a Big O anniversary and enjoying a holiday in the Caribbean. They had arrived a fortnight previously and she thought again that she must be quite mad, as she was not a strong swimmer and a little afraid of the sea.
However, she had joined her husband each morning taking Scuba diving lessons ready for today. Their small group of beginners was going to be escorted down to a shipwreck quite a long way from the shore.
The lessons had given her some confidence it was true, but she still shivered at the thought. They were waiting at a beach cafe in the hot sunshine drinking coffee. She felt her heart beat quicken when her husband spoke.
‘Time to get going, so drink up.’
He was incredibly eager and not at all fearful. She envied him his gung ho attitude and his enjoyment of a few extreme sports back home. But she had promised; had taken up his dare when he reassured her it would be a wonderful way to celebrate and that she would never regret it.
All kitted up and having listened intently to the safety guidance, the group was guided towards and deep down to the shipwreck. It was rotting, but she could see that it had been a magnificent vessel and hoped that the sailors had survived. The colourful fish and other marine life teemed around the wreckage and the sight was more wondrous that she could ever have imagined.
Briefly, a thought crossed her mind that sometimes the maddest of ideas could lead to the most wonderful of experiences.
Back on dry land later that day and refreshed from a siesta, the couple sat imbibing pre-dinner champagne. The sunset was particularly brilliant on that Ides of March and they sat in silence soaking up the view.
Her husband gave a contented sigh. ‘So, my idea was a good one?’
‘Oh! Yes. I thought I was mad to agree, with my poor swimming skills and my fears, but I didn’t want to disappoint you and I am really grateful that I’ve had that once in a lifetime experience alongside you.’
He raised a quizzical eyebrow, ‘Once in a lifetime? You mean that you don’t want to repeat this on our next anniversary; here or somewhere else equally exotic?’
She noticed the grin he was trying to suppress and just batted his arm playfully.
After a special anniversary dinner, they were sitting on their balcony looking out at the moonlit sea when her husband took her hand and suggested that, if not more Scuba diving then perhaps she might like to try water skiing with him next year.
She laughed. ‘Now that really is a mad idea!’
Not yet mad enough …
Wine-heavy eyes and naked, she was cleaning her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror when he came in through the door. He stood behind her, serious-faced, saying nothing, but unignorably attentive. She finished brushing. Spat, rinsed and spat a couple more times then put the toothbrush back in the glass on the shelf, straightened … and meeting his eyes in the mirror again, offered a smile.
‘All done, love, if you’re waiting to get here.’ She thought he might have held her bum as she bent, or would now reach round and cup the paler triangles of her breasts, but instead, without replying, and unsee-able in the mirror, he reached a finger out to her back, and proceeded to draw a series of ‘x’s down her spine, while holding her eyes. His eyes were usually described as ‘sleepy’ but she saw that at this moment they were not so. There was a weary sadness there, but as she watched she registered increasing anger. Her unthinking smile retreated, diverting briefly – cowardly? – to appeasement before disappearing, and from dreamy her eyes became … not defiant … not ashamed … not scared, exactly. Alarmed? Nervous, for sure. She had not realised he had seen them on the beach
He spoke quietly, almost softly and she had to strain to hear him above the noise of the blood rushing in her ears. But having heard that other note in his voice on previous, well-deserved occasions, she made sure to listen this time too.
‘There is a part of me that would do that with a scalpel blade, that would like to think I would do it with a scalpel blade if I ever found you with him. I don’t know that I ever could do it … but don’t bank on it, my darling. Don’t bank on it. But if you know what’s good for you, you won’t do it again,’
[322 words excluding title]
You asked for mad? Well, here’s the slice of crackpot absurdity I came up with .
The necklace of tiny silver bells about her neck tinkled softly as she backed against the garden wall. ‘You’re all mad, you know,’ she muttered holding the sharp seed dibber, labelled ‘Mr Pointy’, like a knife at the advancing crowd.
At the front of the group, Mr Spratt adjusted the crumpled tinfoil hat he was wearing, drew a carrot from the holster at his waist and pointed it at her. ‘Mary, Mary, ‘ he said, with a dramatic flourish of the vegetable, ‘why are you so contrary?’
Beside him, his wife wiped grubby fingers across her grease-stained bib.
Mary eyed them and the wilting carrot. A small smile twitched on her cheek as she hefted the dibber to her other hand and twirled it expertly.
For a moment no one moved.
A small, bent, man wobbled shakily through the crowd. He leaned heavily on a gnarled, crooked, cane, before waving it at Mary.’ You were the last person to visit me, you stole my money.’
‘And our dinner,’ piped up Mrs Spratt
‘My tooty horn too,’ added a young lad, dressed in a cornflower blue uniform.
‘A tray full of pies rumbled the pie man.
‘My favourite sheep, ‘added a young shepherdess.’ You know, the rambunctious one with the diamante bow.’
‘Oh, come on, it wasn’t me.’ Mary launched the dibber into a nearby tree trunk with a satisfying thwack. ‘Some of my garden decorations have been stolen as well. Just think, who would be mad enough to steal so many things from us?’
There was a noticeable silence.
An eye- widening look of understanding passed between everyone.
‘It IS March,’ whispered the crooked man.
‘THEY have been mighty quiet of late,’ added the pie man.
Mr Spratt holstered the carrot. Both he and Mrs Spratt looked a little uncomfortable, ‘sorry, Mary,’ they said in unison.
Mary shrugged and retrieved the dibber. With a cursory wipe she stowed it in the tool belt at her waist, ‘I s’pose you’ll be wanting ME to reclaim as much as I can from the larcenous little layabouts then?’
‘Well, you’re the qualified…assass …er…monster hunt… um, retrieval expert,’ the boy in the blue uniform managed to say.
There were nods from the group.
Mary shrugged again, ‘fine, but only the goods. I won’t hurt the sticky-fingered, amateurs.’
There were more hurried nods.
Somewhere in the woods, in a clearing, hidden from prying eyes, a sheep, adorned with an enormous, gem studded, pink bow, stood, tethered to a tree while a tall hare, in a dark velvet waistcoat, capered triumphantly around an out of place dining table. He stopped every so often and trailed a hand through the pile of ill-gotten items scattered on the tabletop.
A fat, semi-conscious, dormouse lay face down and burbling into a half-eaten pie in the centre of everything, while a grinning Hatter sat, boots on the table, and trickled a crooked sixpence expertly between his long, nimble, fingers. ‘Well, that was fun,’ he said to no one in particular.
500
Running
499 words
My sister’s boyfriend dumped her so she booked a day at a willow-weaving workshop – in the countryside, calming and therapeutic. She’d make a sculpture of a hare though she’d never seen one in real life. Ironic, I thought, as she’d never seen herself either.
I admit the dumping had been nasty. Sis waiting to meet the boyf in a pub, trying not to check her phone while people round the bar studied her with quick, and slower, glances. A young woman alone must be waiting for someone, or maybe she’d some other reason for being there that was worth pondering as an accompaniment to a slow pint. Sis’s phone pinged, she read the screen and everyone watched her eyes closing and when she opened them to collect up her bag and jacket, her lower eyelids, which had dammed tears, couldn’t help let them spill as she rose and walked, almost ran, out of the pub.
In the end she told me she couldn’t do the workshop because of some team event at her office and it was too late to get her money back and so she offered the place to me. I thought the workshop sounded woo-woo and full of people doing pseudo therapy. But losing the money, neither of us going, felt like a win for the boyf, Sis forfeiting something because of that idiot and her not seeing what he was really like. Blindness all round. Anyway, no point me wondering if the work excuse was her invention, off I went to deepest Devon, steeply banked lanes and primroses just like the blurb had promised before it added, ‘Bring your mind closer to nature’.
I’d seen a hare once. Thought it was a rabbit.
The workshop was in a barn next to a farmhouse. Coffee, tea and juice on a side table were available all day, and a lunch of bean stew and dumplings and homemade cheesecake was brought over from the house. Everyone seemed normal, not taking the nature side of things too seriously, laughing at their sculptures, willow ends stuck out like a hedgehog or shapes sitting dumpily like overweight dogs. A screen showed a video of a real hare running along a field boundary, haunches strong like a kangaroo’s, the hare stopping for a look round, eyes at the sides of its skull, sited proud of their sockets, seeming able to encompass the full circle of a horizon. Long, perked ears, listening for extraterrestrial activity or just for threats such as wandering humans.
The more I made my sculpture look like a hare, the more I felt like a usurper, trying to absorb the animal’s senses. I went outside for air, walked down the lane. The bank dipped, the hedge on top was half in leaf and through it I saw endless green fields. With strong legs I climbed the bank easily, nipped through a gap in the hedge, leaped away and ran, lured by a portent of disclosure, my real self revealed.
The madness is all mine for thinking I could do this!
All words taken from Rod Judkins’ The Art of Creative Thinking.
DRIBBLES AND SPATTERS
Inner demons
chisel
creative confidence
Ideas so strange
wither.
Radiate defiance
Salvage mistakes with freedom
and
transform the message
Come alive!
That’s a great shame. All best wishes to Ath.
How about finding another judge?
Could anyone else reading this be willing to judge the comp? Five delightful entries. Then the winner can set the April comp.
Simple, I thought – judge a few stories for the March competition while Ath is out of action (Ath, if you’re reading this, sending BIG healing vibes and willing a speedy recovery). But – what a dilemma to be handed. These are all excellent and worthy to be winners in their own right.
But judge I must, as promised, so here are my thoughts:
Jill – Madness on the Ides of March
An obviously successful marriage here, celebrated on their big O anniversary. Loved the mood of the piece, like being on holiday with them. Sounded totally believable too (is there an element of truth here?). Thoroughly enjoyed.Sandra – Not Yet Mad Enough
Big contrast to Jill’s piece (and hopefully no element of truth!), here a couple not so cozy, especially she, having been discovered straying. The subtext of this gave me chills down my spine, and it was deliciously descriptive. Wanted to read on.Terrie
I adored the madness of this piece, the references to nursery-rhyme characters. Menacing – yet not. Gave me a satisfying chuckle and had to read it over again. Loved the lightness and the voice.Libby – Running
The descriptives throughout were stunning. Poor Sis, all eyes on her in that pub. Then cut to the willow-weaving workshop and her sister becoming so immersed in her ‘hare’ making project that she literally did make a hare – by way of transformation! Brilliant surprise ending, so original, and another strong voice.Seagreen – Dribbles and Splatters
I loved the swell and the ebb of her (very familiar) inner feelings, doubt fighting certainty. Satisfying that strength won out. Remarkable that so few words can say so very much. Clever indeed.To help with my decision, I read through what Ath had asked for (not much help – you all nailed it), but the maddest story of all, I felt, was Terrie. Take it away, Terrie, and thank you all for trusting me with your brilliant writing.
Thank you, Janette for stepping in and for your kind comments. (Only bit of reality in mine is that we did get married on The Ides of March a very long time ago and are still here to tell the tale!)
All the other entries were so imaginative, well written and enjoyable to read.
Congratulations, Terrie – yours was very clever and truly mad! Wonder if the April theme is going to be equally mad … Jill
Thank you Janette – you did us proud with thoughtful comments, and well done for every other entry, all of which fitted the remit much more closely than my hastily-grabbed from a long-ago hidden in the drawer novel.
Congratulations, Terrie! What a wonderful story. Loved it.
Thank you, Janette, for stepping in. Btw does Ath know he doesn’t have to worry about judging?
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