Write the start of a novel...

porridge
clematis
foray
jumped
lemon

I couldn't believe I was sitting here, trying to choke down a plate of cold porridge and staring out the window at the twining clematis plants that were trying to swallow the tiny cottage, when all around me the rustic people were planning their next foray. It was a dream. It had to be. Any moment my brother would jump through the little window and wallop the lead marauder on the head, and the nightmare would end the way it always did.

One of the men leered at me and spoke to his companion in his coarse language, they laughed roughly; I shivered at the merciless sound. The noise was quieted by a fierce look from the leader, and they left me alone.

I went back to my imagination. My brother jumped through the window...he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a huge bear hug like he always did. He'd lead me through the door and take me home, and the next thing I'd know I'd be sitting on the front porch in a good frock, entertaining our mother and sipping lemonade from a frosted glass, a slice of lemon perched daintily on the rim.

The dream did not go away...

Home
Strawberry
Hate
Chapel
Go

She liked nothing better than staying at home on Saturday morning listening to oldies from the ‘60s like “Chapel of Love.” She couldn’t feel hate on a day like this, even though Linda Mae had stolen Greg right from under her nose. Eventually she would go out, but just now she would rather lie in bed with her panda and listen to the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields.”


dunce
locomotive
anguish
thematic
rhubarb

dunce
locomotive
anguish
thematic
rhubarb

(Now you're just being mean )


Their discussion last night had escalated into a real rhubarb, and now, as Nancy stood on the platform, straining for a glimpse of a locomotive approaching along the eastbound tracks, she wondered if Jeff would even be on the train. The wait was anguish. She still felt that his paintings weren't thematic to the exhibit she was assembling, but she'd been a dunce not to give more forethought to the way she brought it up if she wanted to keep seeing him. Which she definitely did.

corporeal
bland
futon
crisscross
potent

Dr. Frankenstein reclined on his futon. His eye's examined the creature he had made as it lay on the work table. At best it's appearance was bland, at worst hideous. It's corporeal being was a crisscross of pieces from various bodies that he and his servant had scavenged from the cemetery. It had been made into a potent thing. He shuddered inwardly as his considered the sins he'd committed to make it. He was damned he knew.



Blind
Mellon
Tired
Cat
Sandwich

Being blind was't so bad, she thought as the cat curled up in her lap. You could close your eyes and people wouldn't be sure if you were tired or not - it's not like it made any difference to your senses whether your eyes were open or not.
"Claire," came Dr. Mellon's voice from the kitchen, startling her out of her introspection.
"Yeah?"
"Want a sandwich? I've got meats."
She thought for a moment. "Ham and cheese?"


foliage
crown
share
donut
imbricated

He knew he had done a rotten job laying the imbricated tiles, but that part of the roof was shrouded in foliage, and the owner of the house probably wouldn’t notice. He munched on a donut and wondered why, in this rich f**king country, he never got a share of the good stuff. He was smart. He had skills. He should be a boss by now, or a mayor, maybe even a senator. Why couldn’t he be a f**king president? Hell, he should be a king and wear a f**king crown!


elevated
gnarled
synthetic
anthology
burp

elevated
gnarled
synthetic
anthology
burp

Jared elevated his right hand in an ineffective attempt to stifle a burp. It was an automatic gesture his right arm still performed, despite the uselessness of the synthetic appendage attached to its end. Eventually, he was told, the stiff prosthesis would be replaced by something more functional. Meanwhile, the constant burping was, itself, the result of the veritable anthology of injuries he'd sustained, including the gnarled mess the physiotherapist cheerfully insisted would one day perform again as a left foot. However, none of the damage inflicted had been to his brain, unless one counted the constant low simmer of hatred through which percolated an endless stream of plans for revenge.

callous
protrude
falsify
canon
respectable

Considered a respectable academician, Otto continued to falsify "lost" literary works and sell them to gullible collectors. Having added to the Doyle canon with Sherlock Holmes and the Callous Clergyman, he started to write Tom and Huck Go to Sea. One morning, as he set out to meet with a rich bibliophile, he inadvertently allowed a printout to protrude from his bag and fall to the ground. Members of the Jane Austen Society picked it up and were able to prove that Otto had written Trust and Tractability on his home computer.


shame
multiplication
revivify
ragamuffin
atrophy

shame
multiplication
revivify
ragamuffin
atrophy

Every street had that one family of ragamuffin kids--snotty noses, lunch-smeared t-shirts, dirty bare feet... Not bad kids, not even unloved kids, just kids with no visible supervision.

That was back in the day when dogs cruised the neighborhood unleashed, pooping on crotchety Mr. Branson's lawn and joyfully crashing backyard barbecues for handouts. "That" family had such a dog, and as a result, that family always had puppies.

My parents would see those kids tear-assing down the street, sucker sticks protruding from sticky red-stained mouths, puppies yipping at their heels, and would tsk-tsk at what a shame it was they had to live like that. But, sitting in the high-backed chair at the dining room table, studiously doing my multiplication, I would look out the window at those kids squatting at the curb, trying to revivify a two day old squirrel corpse that had started to atrophy by poking it with a stick, and I envied that family.


park
bluster
foam
tangible
terrifying

He never slept well on a foam mattress. He didn’t know why, but he always seemed to have nightmares, and last night was truly terrifying—a dream about being attacked by dinosaurs in the park. But now, awake, he was surrounded by tangible things. He turned TV to a sports channel and laughed as he thought of old Mr. Krumwalt, who taught chemistry and who used to bluster about boys wasting their time on the athletic field. The girls, naturally, had a different attitude.


loam
needle
deny
corrugated
whisper

loam
needle
deny
corrugated
whisper

The whisper would thread through the corrugated folds of his brain, burrowing along sulci, crawling across gyri, implanting itself in the fertile loam of his conscious thoughts. It would needle him to go ahead, to not be a wuss, to dare, to defy, to act. Today, he would no longer deny the whisper. He would kill.


potential
querulous
torrent
upheaval
bottom

Jeffrey had potential. No question about it. But his querulous tone put everybody off. If he kept on with his snarky remarks, there would be an upheaval in the department, and a torrent of complaints would send Jeffrey to the bottom of the pool of the chronically unemployed.


filter
zoom
decipher
swordfish
presume

I look up at the restaurant's name, "ZOOM", displayed in Nordic font above the door. Why Nordic, I can't decipher, given that swordfish--billed as the day's special--are temperate water fish, and the decor visible through the plate glass is black and white modern. I filter these thoughts to the back of my mind as I enter and scan the tables for Elise, my contact, who, I was told, would be wearing emerald green satin. I presume emerald is not the fashion color of the year, minimizing the risk of competing entries in the Elise category. Exchanging top secret information with the wrong blond could prove embarrassing.

paradox
climate
festering
cobalt
balance

It was a paradox. Many thought all fossil fuels should be banned, while others believed coal and gas should continue to be used to keep the climate in balance. And then there were the festering political issues that threw the whole argument out of whack. He sat on the beach and looked out over the cobalt expanse of the Pacific Ocean, wondering if it was already too late to save the planet.


murder
minuet
mime
meringue
muffle

murder
minuet
mime
meringue
muffle

(Liberties taken with tenses etc.)
Maria murdered Marvin. Motive? Marvin's monotonously miming mincing minuets. Method? Maria meted melted meringue molarward, mortally muffling Marvin's muted moans.

Christmas
tether
bland
expatriate
subvert

Melinda didn't know that it was illegal to tether geese to churches. There was no specific laws or anything that said you couldn't. Sure, she shouldn't have done it, especially not on Christmas. It wasn't the best idea to subvert the cop working the case by mocking his bike. After that the swan bite kind of seemed planned on her part. Assaulting an officer by goose proxy, unlawful tethering, and since someone recorded it the damn thing went viral and now Peta was breathing down her throat. If she had known it was illegal, she'd have walked the stupid geese all the way to the petting zoo and dropped off the deposit later but she didn't know and now she was sipping a bland coffee on the back of a ship illegally. An expatriate amongst crates full of dogfish.


motor oil
iced tea
corndogs
poster
worm

I noticed her sitting in an Adirondack chair about two places away from the barbecue, a poster girl for composure, casually fanning the smoke from Bob's overzealous culinary endeavors downwind of her face. She was smiling and nodding at the person in the adjacent chair--someone I didn't know. I didn't know her, either, but I decided I wanted to to.

The iced tea I was drinking like a good little boy--saving my baser self for later--tasted like motor oil. I surreptitiously deposited the plastic cup in a planter of pink-striped flowers and began to worm my way through the crowd toward her, dodging kids waving corndogs like light sabers, and real dogs following them in hopes of a corndog-leaves-stick encounter. But by the time I arrived where I'd seen her, she was gone. And the person I'd seen her conversing with had no idea who I was talking about.

fracture
perilous
mouthy
blaze
current

The current must have blown. The lights were out, and so was the TV. The evening had been fine, and all of a sudden he was in a perilous situation. The house would catch fire! He would be caught in the blaze! He would fall and fracture his leg! As he made his way to the door, he fumbled for his phone. He would call Felicia, but she was so mouthy she would only make things worse.


delve
rescind
eel
marzipan
lucky

Having to delve into their old correspondence only made the breakup worse. Mellie wished she could rescind the last three years. Carrying the box of letters as if it contained a slimy eel, she sat on the sofa with a sigh. This was not going to be fun.

She set the box on the coffee table and began to pull the letters out one by one. A haphazard pile of magazines occupied the space she needed for sorting, so she scooped them up. To her surprise, beneath the magazines was the half-full box of marzipan she had mislaid last week. How lucky -- maybe it wouldn't be such a bad day after all.

wordless
disguise
rats
mayonnaise
healthy

I could feel my mother's wordless disapproval. She might be silent, but if I whirled around fast enough I'd see the scowl she'd be too slow to disguise. She was of the opinion that Greg wasn't healthy for me. "Healthy." Like he was mayonnaise or something.

I finished reading the text he'd just sent me. Well, rats. This time my mother might just be right.

bull
paper
monarch
mastiff
curious

He printed out 150 pages and knew it was a waste of paper. Rudolph, his mastiff, sniffed around the wastebasket and didn’t even seem curious. Readers wouldn’t be curious, either. He was destined to be a great writer? Bullshit! The greatest acclaim he would ever know would be as the owner of this damned trailer. He was a monarch in a broken-down palace on wheels.


drift
catalogue
murmur
skeleton
zinc

Gerald spent an inordinate amount of time inspecting dirt. Dirt from tire treads, from shoe prints, from under fingernails... Today's dose of dirt was courtesy of a skeleton found in an unofficial grave off a side road in Napa County. The samples from around the face and hands contained a high concentration of copper sulphate, which was corrosive to skin and suggested an attempt to hamper identification when the body was still fresh.

Being wine country, Napa County wasn't short on copper sulphate, which was an ingredient in an anti-fungal sprayed on grapes. Of course, wine country was also artist country, and copper sulphate could be used to etch copper jewelry or zinc intaglio plates, or in ceramic glazes, or as a stained glass colorant... The artisan uses were extensive. But figuring out the chemical's source was someone else's job.

As he finished entering the data into his catalogue of the dirt's components, he could hear the murmur of approaching voices drift in from the hallway. He hit "Save" and turned to greet Detectives Brandt and Kresge, the someone elses who would have to find the copper sulphate's point of origin.

classic
photograph
crenelated
false
braggart

Jim handed me the photograph. It showed him standing in front of the crenelated wall of a castle. I recognized it as a famous castle in Scotland.

"Pretty impressive, eh?" he said.

"Um...yeah." Pretty impressive use of Photoshop, I thought. Classic Jim--such a braggart. I wouldn't have minded so much if all his claims weren't completely false.

(Had to look up crenelated!)

frog
resourceful
thesaurus
licorice
succulent

The thesaurus of magica synonyms and antonymsas was starting to make his eyes droop, from the seemingly endless amount of words he knew he would be required to memorize for the coming school term. He glanced out the window of the rail coach to the countryside beyond; then at the licorice frog laying in it's candy wrapper upon the tray before him. It wasn't as succulent as chocolate frog, nor did it have the trading card inside like the chocolate frog had. Though, if he were resourceful enough , and a bit clever, he might be able to trade it to his nice, but dimwitted, classmate from Gryphlpuff.

Cat
Chair
Cup
Cigar
Cracked

(Crunchy Frog? Anthrax Ripple?)

The room had a Dickensian aura of tired gentility. Dark wallpaper, heavy drapes, random piles of dusty hardcover books... On a small mahogany side table, a cracked, tea-stained cup, patterned with cabbage roses, shared a saucer with the remains of a cigar. The kraft-paper-colored butt trailed a fat, two inch roll of undisturbed grey ash. Apparently the cigar had managed to outlive the smoker. In an overstuffed chair beside the table slumped the body of a man not long dead--still warm enough to be acceptable to the Siamese cat that blinked slowly at the detectives from from the dead man's lap.

partridge
cupola
berry
boots
luck