tooth soup

photo credit: BUR?BLUE

water/comets/Cambridge

from Dino’s prompt

It was Summer, and my cousins and I were swimming in Lake Karapiro on the North island, a perennial family gathering favourite. There was Marcel, the oldest cousin, Thomas a year or two older than I, and Julianne, whom I shared a birthday with. Thomas, Julianne and I had been splashing at the edge of the lake while our parents cooked the barbeque. Marcel sat on the sand, digging up the ground with a stick and watching us mess about. I had just been dunked by Thomas and when I resurfaced, spluttering and giggling, Marcel was standing and pointing his stick behind our heads.

`A comet, a comet just landed in the lake!’ he said.

Thomas, ever the pragmatist even at this young age, sighed dramatically and said, `No, it’s not a comet. It’s a meteor. Comets are in space.’

I immediately jumped in line behind him, always eager to get one back on Marcel. `Yeah, it’s a meteor, dummy.’ I said.

`Fine,’ said Marcel, throwing the stick out to where the celestial streak had supposedly landed. `But it’s still cool and I bet none of you can get it.’

For the next hour or so, Thomas and I took turns scrabbling our bodies further and further down into the silt-ridden dark. Even little Julianne, whose delicate lungs were nowhere near up to the task of reaching the bottom, tried her best. I didn’t even know what a meteor looked like, but I imagined it might glow a warm orange. Marcel wandered away, bored by our ignorance and unsatisfied with the lacklustre results of his joke. Eventually our parents called us in to lunch and we forgot all about the meteor in the rush of sausages and soft drink.

photo credit: SixRevisions

insane/lapel/augury

from Aditi’s prompt

Chris was on his way to a meeting with his financier, striding briskly through the plaza. His face was dug into a deep furrow, the cause of which could be seen spreading across the front of his suit jacket; a coffee stain, milky brown. It had resulted from the driver’s foot slipping off the brake as Chris had exited the taxi. No doubt a rebuttal to the tip he felt he was entitled to, but which Chris had not given.

As he crossed the plaza, a shadow detached from a distant pillar. Chris checked his stride to avoid crossing paths with what was obviously a filthy bum, but the bum adjusted his course correspondingly. Within a few steps, Chris found himself face-to-face with the foul-smelling creature. He was already reaching inside his trouser pocket to retrieve the few coins jingling there when the bum surged forward, gripping Chris by his jacket front.

Chris was too shocked to do anything but gasp and mutter as the bum stared intently at the coffee stain that marred his lapel. After a few seconds, Chris regained enough of his composure to wrestle the bum’s hands off. The bum cried out and pointed a finger—blank, bloodied flesh replacing nail—at Chris. `Plaguebearer! Plaguebearer!’ he shouted, before loping away. Chris, shocked at the obviously disturbed man’s display, adjusted himself and, when nothing else jumped at him, continued on to his appointment.

Days later he would cough in the middle of an important presentation. The long silence following it would puzzle the investors, and worry his managers.

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