Write the start of a novel...

John Paton

carn the mighty hawks !!
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Years ago at Edinburgh University I climbed the school turret for a dare and in my kilt. It was a cold and windy night.

Although happily drunk I was ambivalent towards any danger and I flashed my bare behind at policemen who were frenetic in their attempts to persuade me down.

I lost my balance and fell 30 feet onto a grassy bank and regained conciousness weeks later.

When I slowly came to, I confided in a doctor. "Will the fall affect my brain?"

He looked uncertain and a little cagey. "I'm afraid it's bad - very very bad!"

atmosphere
cradle
wallpaper
syringe
orchestral
 

Parkinsonsd

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I crouched naked against the wallpaper cradling my arm while the syringe dangled precariously from a vein. Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark blaring "If You Leave" from the radio and the heroin coursing through my veins gave it the atmosphere of a Brett Easton Ellis novel.

"Fucking hack." I mumbled.



frog
gut
pie crust
oven
salt
 
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Pthom

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Note: "pie crust" is two words, but in the spirit of the challenge I shall heretowith treat it as one.

The salt marsh had long since dried up in the oven heat caused by the latest solar flare, this one almost twice as big as any previously recorded. The riparian ecology had the look and texture of a pie crust. Julie avoided stepping on the dessicated remains of a huge frog, its mouth frozen in a sick grin. It didn't stink and for that she was thankful. But even if it had, it wouldn't matter. Nothing could ease the gnawing hunger in her gut.

She peeled the frog from the pavement-like surface, closed its mouth, and without really thinking about it, chewed on a chunk of it as she made her way north.
 

Pthom

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oh boo! sorry folks. sheesh. must be getting old

Here they are.

lid
sole
rib
multiplicity
chagrin
 

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Cynthia screwed the lid back on the rat poison. The sole reason she was determined to get rid of Fred was the multiplicity of hurts he had inflicted on her through his very public liaison with that blond bimbo. How could he prefer someone who looked like--ugh!--Paris Hilton to her? She was sure there was enough arsenic in a teaspoon of RatoMorto to stick to at least one rib, and she had been putting a teaspoon of the stuff into his Ovaltine for a week now. To her chagrin, he was still the picture of health. Why didn't the sonofabitch die?

:crazy:

cinnamon
deflate
abstemious
rugby
insubstantial
 

Pthom

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It was an insubstantial thing. Really. The rat poison that Cynthia was slipping into my Ovaltine, I mean. I guess she never quite read the label completely because if she had, she'd have noticed that copious amounts of cinnamon acted as a buffer, if not quite an antidote. Now normally, I'm abstemious when it comes to my diet, but this is rugby season and I need all the carbs I can get do I've been downing a couple of those really gooey cinnamon rolls from Costco with breakfast. Once I discovered her ruse, I put away an extra two or three of them.

I haven't noticed any deleterious effects from the poison, but it will take some time next spring for my belly to deflate. Of course by then, Cynthia will be just a fading memory of a rather bad decision.

hectare
angstrom
pusillanimous
dissililent
ruga
:D
 

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Fred may have tried to outwit Cynthia, but she knew the pusillanimous jerk didn't know an angstrom from an angleworm. If he thought cinnamon would protect him from poison, he had another think coming. She made a quick trip to Sri Lanka, where on a seven-hectare farm near the city of Colombo a native farmer was cultivating the strychnos nux vomica tree. Visiting the farm at night, she located a ripe, dissilient seed pod and extracted an ounce of pure strychnine. With the lethal substance concealed in a lipstick tube, she took the next flight home. This time Fred's Ovaltine would be much more potent, and each new ruga that formed in his stomach lining would, she knew, cause him the most exquisite pain.

:eek:

gingivitis
concrescence
landfill
fluoresce
kite
 
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Pthom

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Doctor Oliver Magnusen looked into the patient's mouth and felt his stomach heave. This was the worst case of gingivitis Magnusen had ever seen. The man's mouth looked like a badly managed landfill and smelled twice as bad. Even some of the poor guy's teeth showed evidence of concrescence. It would take a hurculean effort to repair the damage. Magnusen gave the man a paper cup of mouth wash and said, "Rinse." Then he left the exam room to consult with his assistant.

"It's really that bad?" Julie was just finishing up dental school and worked for Magnusen on Thursdays.

"Worst oral hygene I've ever seen," Magnusen replied. "Probing his gums is no solution, either; nearly impossible to control the pain. No, I need to determine the extent of the damage. With those swollen rotten gums, I don't know--" He shook his head.

"Want me to prepare a dye tray?" Julie had up-to-date knowledge of the latest techniques. Just this morning, Julie had been gushing over this new procedure involving some kind of new gel. After five minutes of immersion in the gel, disease in a patient's gums would fluoresce--without UV light, even.

Magnusen was an old-school, fill 'em or yank 'em type of dentist and all the new ways of doing things might as well be magic as far as he was concerned. But he nodded. "Yes, go ahead. I'll go start the gas." As he walked back to the exam room, he muttered, "Maybe I'll take some myself. A guy needs to be high as a kite to work in a sewer like this guy's mouth."
 

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Um...Pthom...you know what you forgot? (You can count them on your fingers.)

:D
 

Pthom

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d'oh!

lunar
cover
spray
inconsolate
tar
 

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The lunar tides were always spectacular on that planet. Captain Hamilton was inconsolate that he hadn't been picked for the expedition. Nobody knew why this planet hadn't been discovered previously but he had been told that it was the most beautiful place that anyone had ever seen.

The oceans there were as thick as melted tar and yet the gelatinous sea-water was beautiful to behold, the spray of rainbow coloured fluid that washed onto the alien beaches would leave irridescent streaks accross the turquoise-coloured sands as the tide drew back each evening under the cover of a brooding indigo sky

frog
zombie
cigarette
table
book
 

Pthom

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Feeling like a zombie, Felicity staggered across the room, and searched through the mess on the coffee table for a cigarette. Someone had spilled beer on the big glossy book of covered bridges her mother had sent last Christmas. Well, no big loss. She wasn't all that interested in covered bridges anyway. Now in search of a flame, she turned and felt something sharp go crunch under her bare foot. She looked down and saw it was the porcelain frog that had belonged to her grandmother. Now that pissed her off.

I want everyone to notice I am including the requisite five words here.
hellebore
impotent
kale
larger
probably
 

Nymtoc

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It would probably be injudicious for the Author to divulge, so early in this narrative, the full scope of the disasters that were to befall the House of Rathensdale during that fierce winter of 1883. Suffice it to say that Cyrus Pontius Rathensdale, thought to be the father of twelve comely children but in reality completely impotent, had secretly permitted his beauteous wife Matilda to indulge in certain intimacies with lusty young men of the larger community over the years, as a result of which permissiveness each of the Rathensdale scions had a separate paternal parent. For twenty-odd years the secret had been scrupulously maintained. However, in that fierce winter of '83, a scurrilous wench named Portentia, who lately had been discharged from the Rathensdale kitchen for slovenliness, made the decision to tell the world what she knew. The town reeled with shock. Now shamed and disgraced beyond measure, Cyrus Pontius Rathensdale took it upon himself to wreak havoc upon the soulless slattern who had so callously revealed the family secret. He repaired to a plot of land behind his mansion and cultivated a hellebore plant, whose delicate flowers disguised the fact that its leaves contained a deadly poison.
'Twas on a dark and stormy Wednesday evening that Cyrus invited the wench Portentia to return to his mansion, the ostensible purpose of which visit was to consider the option of her re-employment. Cunningly, Cyrus arranged for the cook to serve Portentia a sumptuous dinner before the discussion was to begin. The meal included a salad of kale, within which Cyrus secreted a copious amount of hellebore juice.
Scarcely had the wench sunk her snaggled teeth into the aforementioned salad before she gagged, grasped her throat in horror, and fell dead.
That, dear Reader, was to be but the first of the disasters to befall the House of Rathensdale that terrifying winter...

;)

cumulative
raisin
concupiscient
thug
malodorous
 
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Joycecwilliams

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cumulative
raisin
concupiscient concupiscent
thug
malodorous

His hair was as a lion's mane, and he possessed the same concupiscent appetite as the beast. Women were naturally attracted to him, and he used it to his advantage. Too often his sexual prowess had a cumulative affect, and he would have to hire a thug to rid his stable of an undesirable. One he has used to his benefit to once too often. The thug, would treat the woman gently at first, and then subject her to humilation so she would leave voluntarily. Once he took one woman who was about to be discarded to a the river bank where a malodorousodor seeped from the banks. He told her she was like that to the Lion man. No longer attractive and pleasant, she was no longer the plum lush on the tree, but as a shriveled up raisin in the hot dessert sand. And when she started to cry and run away, he took her permeated her body until she could breathe no more.

Summertide
pump
spurn
Ace
puppy
 

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Ace Hecklesmith sat in the basement of his three story house. He sat there reading a book. It was a science fiction book. Something by a guy named Sheffield. He was alone in the basement, listing to the sump pump rattle. And rattle.

He sat there, feet in the puddle of raw sewage. He was alone. She left him when he couldn't pay for the Jaguar she wanted. Not the car, a real live jaguar. What the heck did she want a jaguar for? What did they eat anyway?

There was a yelp and the scraping of puppy claws down the wood stairs into the basement. He bought her the puppy instead of a jaguar. Everyone likes puppies. He closed his book and looked at the cover. "Summertide", it read. He didn't like science fiction. What was he doing reading this? He flung the novel into the raw sewage. The puppy yelped. It thought it was a game, his tail wagged.

She spurned him because he wouldn't buy her a freakin' man eating cat. He felt the rage boil. She left him with this damn house and the mortgage. Oh yeah, he would have bought a Jaguar for her, the car, that is. Not the cat. She took the Mercedes when she left. Ace stroked the puppy, and then involuntarily jerked his hands tight around the puppies neck: his golf clubs were in the Mercedes. That Bitch!

He flung the puppy into the raw sewage after the book and stomped up the stairs, leaving footprints of raw sewage on every step.




iris
hora
betadyne
sari
moussaka
 

John Paton

carn the mighty hawks !!
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iris
hora
betadyne
sari
moussaka


I first met Iris at a Jewish wedding. She was dancing the hora and boy did she stand out. Every time the group danced to the right, she would go left.

Iris had a funny name for a Jew, maybe because she wasn't Jewish. She was from Greece and she did the catering for the wedding. Man that Moussaka tasted superb.

But that was years ago, before I had the sex change. Iris, I was certain, didn't love me anymore. I slipped out of my Sari and stood naked in front of the mirror. I thought to myself "I'm gonna sue that surgeon bigtime!"

My boss rang and told me about next weeks convention. "Are Betadyne Cotton Swabs better than synthetic?" I couldn't wait.

innocent
presidential
parking
plebiscite
irrational
 

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Melody Ann pretended to be innocent, but that was merely a ploy to get past the parking attendant and into the White House, where she intended to bestow presidential favors and get some in return. Some observers may have thought her behavior irrational, but it doesn't take a plebiscite to see that Melody Ann knew very well what she was doing.
Her downfall took a lot of people by surprise, but it did lead to a big book contract, which set a lot of would-be writers thinking.

;)

wring
Canterbury
sniffles
lapidarian
bazooka
 

Pthom

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Canterbury street was a dead end. Figuratively and literally. Shunned even by the dregs of the city, the occupants managed to wring an existence from the tailings left by the lapidarian. He, a big bazooka of a man, had a soft spot for the wretched exiles whose cardboard box and plywood lean-to hovels squatted under the dubious protection of the posterior of his shop. Days were, when he would include in the residuum of his craft, a larger than prudent shard of a gemstone. He desired it be spent to cure the sniffles of the dirty urchins who peered longingly through his shop at the sunny world of the living.

grunt
vituperate
existential
gestalt
scrap
 

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Rodolfo crumpled up the scrap of paper and hurled it across the room with a grunt, spittle dripping from his lips. Nothing he had written today had merit--no touch of genius, no brilliance, not the slightest hint of a cosmically soaring, existential oeuvre. Was he never to produce a masterpiece? He swore. He let out a shriek. He wanted to vituperate against the gods. But what good would it do to curse fickle beings who didn't exist?

He was a failure. There was no hope.

He reached for the gun.

He put down the gun and reached for the candy bars. Did he want a Mounds or an Almond Joy today? They formed a totally irresistible gestalt in his mind. Both of them were so good. He just couldn't decide. Maybe if he took a tiny bite of one...

:crazy:

bracket
rhinoplasty
intercolumniation
boar
frumpish
 

Pthom

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Absently, Bernie scratched at an itch in his nose. Slowly at first, then faster, drops of blood spattered the test paper. He leaned back, stared at the ceiling and waited for the bleeding to stop. Maybe, though, just maybe after the bandages came off, the other kids wouldn't taunt him so much. It was bad enough to be named Bernard Boer. Worse that he had, until the rhinoplasty yesterday, a horribly misshapen nose that was as much the cause of the taunts as was his name.

Having to stay after to take a make-up test in remedial English didn't help either. He stole a glance out the window. The heads of Mick and Freddy and Dean were just visible--they must be up on the retaining wall--and they were making faces and hooting taunts. "Hey Barnyard! Your hair looks like boar bristles! Soo-eee!" He hated them, they made fun of him, it was the way things were. Frumpish Mrs. Blankenship, concentrating on grading papers, ignored them.

He looked at the clock above the big green board. Only twenty minutes left of this hell. Twenty minutes to finish this test and then he was free. He sighed and returned his concentration to the paper on the desk before him. Problem eleven. A big word with a bracket on each side of it [intercolumniation] and the instructions: "Use the bracketed word in a sentence." How? Bernie hadn't a clue what the word meant. And now there were these drying spatters of blood on the test. Bernie hated school.

ignominy
perturbations
perilous
qualified
maple
 

Nymtoc

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Setting forth from her childhood home, Prudence Angelheart was bursting with expectations, knowing that she had qualified as a student nurse in Boston. Taking with her only a satchel containing a change of clothing, plus a jug of maple syrup to fortify her during the long journey, she began walking down the road. Her widowed father had warned her that the trip from Vermont to Massachusetts might be perilous, especially for such a young maiden, and she indeed felt inner perturbations as she advanced toward the crossroads where the morning stage was to stop for passengers. Alas, that crossroads was to be her downfall, for it was there that Rafe Rapeswagger came riding on a black stallion, swooped her off her feet and carried her away to a hiding place so foul that it cannot be described here. After seven long days and nights, having had his way with Prudence Angelheart, Rafe Rapeswagger returned her to the crossroads, deposited her there and rode off laughing. The ignominy of the affair was more than Prudence Angelheart could bear, and she never did go to Boston. Instead, she returned to the house of her widowed father, who, upon learning what had befallen his only daughter, dropped dead. Prudence Angelheart, too, was not long for this world, and she pined away and left this vale of tears on Christmas morn.

People still talk about Prudence down at Barney's Bar & Grill.

:D

gimlet
ossify
glutinous
Singapore
yo-yo
 
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John Paton

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Last Christmas I competed at the world yo-yo championships in Singapore. I reached the semi finals and one more win would mean a final shot at glory.

I had given up hip hop the year before but I couldn't function without booze. I ordered a gimlet frappe - long on the gin and short on the lime.

I looked at the hideous carbuncle on my wrist - borne through years and years of agonising practice - and the voice of my surgeon echoing in my mind.

"Wun Hung Lo If you continue to play this stupid game, your tendons will ossify into bone. Your right hand will be useless"

I didn't care - win this and I would be a legend around the world. I had to build my stamina up for the showdown so I ordered a huge bowl of shrimps and glutinous rice.

The match was the closest in the history of our sport. It lasted 13 whole hours. I came second and I am slowly typing this with my left hand and no-one has ever heard of me.

ambidextrous
netherlands
pacify
neophyte
skewer
 
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Pthom

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Gilly was ambidextrous. I know this because what happened that night in Belgrade, the one where terrorists blew up the barge and killed a bunch of tourists from the Netherlands. Gilly and I, happily sated on great food and fine wine, sat on the grassy banks of the Danube enjoying an unseasonably warm evening. Our shadows, cast by the light from the kafanas behind us, extended across the lawn to the water.

Suddenly, our reverie was interrupted by shouts. I looked up. Several young monks were running across the lawn, waving what looked to be kebabs. Bits of onion and savory meat flew into the air as they ran. One of them, with a full head of hair--obviously a neophyte--broke from the pack and came right at us. He fell to the ground, gurgled and died. Dark blood seeped from a small hole in the back of his habit.

"Stop!" Gilly's voice, above me. I looked up in time to see what appeared to be three nuns chasing after the monks. Only they weren't nuns; as they ran, below their habits I saw shiny black oxfords and gabardine trousers. Men in black! One of them, alerted by Gilly's shout skidded to a stop, turned and started toward us. In his hand, a 9-mm CZ aimed at Gilly's chest.

I started to rise, but Gilly shoved me aside, grabbed a kebab skewer from each of the dead monk's hands and from her crouch, flicked them toward the oncoming man. The gun went off and I was sprayed by bits of turf and dirt. The man staggered, the whites of his eyes bright, and as he clutched at his throat, he fell face down on the grass. Almost like earrings, the skewers projected from either side of his neck, little trickles of blood dribbling onto the white cowl of the nun's habit.

I looked at Gilly, amazed. "Wow," I said. "How'd you learn to do that?"

"Oh, there are lots of things you don't know about me." She wiped kebab grease off her fingers in the dewy grass and grinned. "Yet."

"I guess not. But I'm glad of them. Like now." I nodded to the bodies on the grass beside us. Sirens wailed; the cops would be here soon. "Come on. We really don't need to be here when the Politzei show up."

Later, walking arm-in-arm through a park, I couldn't help thinking that Gilly had one hell of a talent. What a way to pacify an attacking nun.

vector
chill
asphalt
pink
petticoat
 

Robert L.B.

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You forgot them again.

Hi, new person to the thread waiting to take my turn.