Prompted: Awesome is as Awesome Does

 

“So what are you in for?”

Awesome.

If she heard the word even 1 more time today, she feared she might lose a few brain cells from beating her head against the nearest wall.

Mainly because ‘awesome’ meant nothing of the sort.

At best, it was patronizing, like patting a dog on the head for sitting on command.

At worst, ‘awesome’ was the equivalent of a condescending kiss off and came with the boobie prize of first hearing a boxing bell and then hearing The Lego Movie song, (everything is AWE-some!) play incessantly within her head for days at a time.

Exorcising the song from her brain meant having something unfortunate-make that unfortunate but not life threatening, she was no monster-had to befall an unsuspecting innocent before the awesomeness could leave the building.

It was all very exhausting, to put it mildly.

She was a rational human being. She was perfectly willing to consider alternatives like amazing and stunning or fearless but nothing was awesome and that was that.

Hence the reason she was tromping along the sidewalk, muttering to herself and scaring people to the other side of the street. She was up to her ears in awesome and she needed the peace found inside the quiet confines of her corner oasis.

Both for her sanity and for the safety of those who had to work alongside her.

When she arrived at the little cafe, she was surprised to see him there. Uh oh. The king of all that is awesome (clang!). This was unexpected and didn’t bode well for her mental stability.

“Hey! Great to see you,” Oh man, please don’t say it, please don’t say-“Just wanted to tell you how-don’t do it, for the love of all things you hold dear in your life-“amazing you did with that order. You really pulled it off.” whew, that was-“You’re so awesome.”

Clang-clang!

“So? So what are you in for? Hey, I’m talking to you.”

“Naw girl. leave her alone, she’s crazy.”

“I heard she stuck ketchup covered french fries up a guy’s nose today. All because he told her she was awesome.”

Clang-clang-clang!

 

 

 

 

Prompted: Love Hurts

 

 

Authors Note:

Flash fiction written under the influence of a temperature. Because life is meant to be an adventure and this qualifies.

Love Hurts

He hadn’t been looking for a savior. Knew that love never conquered all. Despite what the fairy tales said. But when she came along, things…changed.

He found himself grinning stupidly for no reason other than in response to her batting her long eyelashes. He did things he wouldn’t normally do. Like suffer through a movie with subtitles. Seriously, if that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was.

But he had never said it. Not those three words she often, to the point of being downright annoying, had longed for him to say.

He just wasn’t that type. So sue him.

To him, love meant showing it in your actions, not in meaningless words that conveyed nothing but hot air. And hadn’t he done just that?

She had said with a sigh about her birthday wish for the year being for him to rid their yard of the multitude of oak leaves before snow flew. Because it would be so much prettier to look at. Since he wouldn’t (sigh, whine, hint) say I love you.

Well, fine.

He got the hint. He was on a mission. He would prove his love to her even if it meant their yard would be a bare lot before he was through. He had attempted several things but…then he had had an idea.

This time he was sure his plan for dealing with the fallen leaves would work. She would know once and for all, that he, yes-he-loved her.

Maybe then, she would shaddup.

And he had succeeded. Not with gas, matches and a bare lot, that would be crazy, but in the leaves be gone sense.

“He’s not out of the woods yet.”

Geez. The voices in his head were back. Why wouldn’t they leave him be? Or… had he gone round the bend? Maybe she had driven him bonkers, it wasn’t too far-fetched.

And where was he? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t someone turn off that infernal beeping and why wasn’t he hearing the dulcet tones of her-his love, his crazy in the making woman, his beauty, his lif-“Damn him.”

Wait. What?

“Why he thought re-wiring bug zappers around all the trees and to those electric nets was a good idea, I’ll never know. All I wanted was a rake and sweat.”

Aha. Idiot. Right.

The things he did for love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prompted: School Blues

 

 

He waited outside the high school principal’s office wondering what trouble his son had gotten into this time.  What had he done? Why couldn’t the kid give him a break between escapades? Was that too much to ask?

And why were these chairs so uncomfortable? Did they purposely look for the meanest ass breaker chairs possible? He supposed they did.

There was no predicting what the ornery little brat had done. He sincerely hoped it wasn’t anything involving flames, or wigs or requiring monetary compensation. Payday wasn’t til the following week.

This year his kid had awakened with the need to drive people insane and was doing a damn fine job of it. He’d been summoned here 3 times already and it wasn’t yet winter break.

In September, he’d been presented with a laundry list of foul terms, phrases, and bad choices in music when his son had hacked into the PA system and used it as his own personal radio station.

He’d had to yes ma’am and no ma’am that sourpuss principal with no sense of humor for what seemed like hours and then when his son admitted that he’d gotten the idea from him, that he’d heard his dear old Dad reminiscing about his high school days?

Yep. Definitely could kiss the Parent of the Year Award buh-bye.

October had brought the smuggling in of a universal TV remote so that the day’s planned educational video had been replaced with Jerry Springer reruns the second the teacher had left the room (privately, he rather thought that one had been genius) to which he’d made the horrific mistake of laughing.

Not laughing,  but belly laughing hard and loud and hearing it echo up and down the corridors, that most certainly had done little for the damage control he was up attempting to try, well…

Not one of his finer moments to be sure.

It was November and here he was again. So what the monster done?? And why was he waiting and sweating as if he’d been the one who’d done something wrong?

The school should really consider handing out stress balls to the parents they made sit here for any length of time because this just sucked a-

“You may come in now.”

ugh Here we go.

Plastering on his best smile he slunk into the stuffy dim lit office and saw his son beaming with a mischievous smile from under his bright blue eyes from which the devil in him shone.

Oh crap.

“Dad! I figured out how to get fresh milk at school. I brought Baby in so I didn’t have to drink the pasteurized stuff you said the buttknuckles who work here serve us but …”

That was it. The kid obviously wanted to kill him.

Tahiti. Tahiti might be nice this time of year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prompted: Secrets are Dangerous

Author’s Note:

I thought it high time I dipped my toe back into some flash fiction. I’m pretty rusty though, so be gentle. It was the best I had in me for 5 minutes of writing…

~

Secrets.

To be human was to have at least one. As small as clamping down on a bottom lip to avoid emotion spillage in a valiant effort to protect the heart against pain from others to those more sinister; things that would leave tooth marks were they to come to light, everyone carried their own.

Funny thing about secrets though. They always seemed to get out no matter how tightly they were held. Some seemed to bubble up as if from an underground stream and no one knew where exactly where it had come from.

Others blew wide open, exploding with grand dramatic flair, leaving a swath of mayhem and chaos. And annihilating all within it’s wake.

No one was safe when they had secrets.

This was a fact she knew only too well. She had many such secrets and her soul was heavy with them. Because she knew things. She couldn’t help it, didn’t ask for it, definitely didn’t want it-but there it was. Such was life and it wasn’t going to change.

So just how she had worked for him for ten years without knowing what the company’s real business was, well, it was beyond her. How could she hear the whispers in her mind-the whispers that never ceased unless she was alone and safely shut away within her soundproofed rooms, but fail to catch this?

Worst of all, now that she did know, what was she to do? She couldn’t continue working for him, the man who had alternately scared and seduced her time and again. Silly. What did it matter now? What she would be doing would be condoning the unthinkable.

That she could not abide.

She felt she had just enough room for one more secret.

And it would belong to her alone.