Random words of the day

[mactombs]

Here's a little practice I do to write something when I can't think of anything. Latro gave me some random words of the day to use in a story.

Todays words were: pen cap, recycle, elephant, photo quality paper, queen sized mattress, rain deer rack, pulled toe muscle, hub caps, Smirnoff's, hair gel, and ice chips

Today's story:

Dan clawed the makeshift shower curtain aside (like so many other moving day foibles, he'd bought a sheet for a queen-sized mattress, not a king, and forgotten the shower curtain altogether). He stepped out of the shower in time for the over-burdened shower rod to collapse behind him. He groped for a towel, knocking over a bottle of hair gel, Pepto-Bismol, Tums, missed the towel, upended Suave "For Extra Curly Hair" on the rebound. He kicked aside the Tums, found secure footing to reach the towel. His next step went something like Splurt! to which Dan responded:

"Dammit!"

This would be, from retrospect, an excellent word to start the day.

And the phone was ringing (surprising, since till now it only chirruped in a lonely sort of way when it got too quiet at, oh, four in the morning).

Wrapped in the towel, Dan paused half-way to the phone, deterred from its plaintive r-i-i-i-i-inging by the mass effect of shampoo and hair stuck to his feet. His modesty or his feet? No question. Even if the curtains weren't up yet.

"Hello?"

"Dan, my main man, did I wake you up or something?" The voice on the other side of the line broke into a guffaw clearly descended from a frat boy who technically had never even graduated from grade 12. "I know, I know. You drank it, didn't ya? The whole goddamn welcome basket. Woo!"

Dan glanced at the table where he had left the "welcome basket": a Styrofoam ice box filled with sludgy ice chips and five-sixths of a six-pack of grape Smirnoffs (in the original quantity). "Gary," Dan said, using the name to catalogue a list of one-syllable words he could use in a conversation with the pudgy forty-something technician whose only aspiration was to kill the remaining ten brain cells that somewhere, somehow managed to live on and give Gary (limited) vocal and (considerable) drinking ability.

"I'm almost dressed now, Gary. I'll be in soon." Dan sat back on the recliner (like the phone, it had come with the place, probably because the previous owner couldn't be bothered to move it, and mostly because an elephant had once sat there -- Dan had no other possible explanation for the state of the cushions, the way the armrests bulged outward, or the smell).

"Oh, don't hurry yourself," Gary went on, "I's just callin' to let you know Ned ain't commin' in today."

"Really?"

"That's right. Done got hisself a pulled toe muscle, or some shit."

"Right." Dan clearly saw, in his mind's eye, Gary sitting under that web-strung reindeer rack, nodding his double chins with a sincerity doubtless intended as saintly. From a man of his word. "Gary, don't nod your head at me when you're on the phone -- you know what? Just don't do that anymore at all -- that's first, and second, you know that I know better."

"'Bout whut?"

Dan balanced the pea-green receiver between his ear and shoulder while he tied his shoes. "Gary---" Dan paused, took the receiver and held it out. It looked like someone had stuck gum on the receiver and then tried scraping it off long after it had turned to tar. He held the phone a more sanitary distance from his ear. "Gary, I don't care where Ned is right now, I just need those photos."

Just the sound of Gary chewing on his pen.

"Gary?"

Now a gasp; cough, hack, cough; the bang of the phone on the other end hitting the floor; the sound of other things clattering to the floor. Gary breathing, those deep, desperate breaths you breathe when you've just been drenched with cold water.

"Gary?"

"I'm here, bud. Darn near nearly died right here, right in front of you, chokin' on this here pen cap. Shee-it."

"Gary, the photos?"

"Yeah, yeah. I can print 'em out for ya. Don't got no fancy photo-quality paper or nothin'."

"I don't care. Get paper out of the recycle bin for all I care, I just need those photos."

[Samurai Lincoln]

That was too long to read, but on a related note i was discussing with people today words that aren't used often enough.  Today's word was "dregs."

[Latro]

sweet... I love those short stories.  When I was working with Mactombs we'd have these daily to occupy ourselves until something important needed done....     

We saved a bunch of them and were going to combine them into the BEST screen play ever....           

[The Grandfather]

Great can't wait for that jumble of jumbling words. 

[sarahstaby]

So... I'm wondering when the next set of words is coming.  This "words of the day" thing is turning into the "words of the year". I think you should keep posting them.

Just wondering, since you mentioned you were going to combine all the scenes, do you try to make them interrelate or will that come when you combine them?

[Latro]

Words of the day:

Fruit snacks, dollar bill, dog, slide, hiding, jeep, lotion, rose, jungle, laughter, nail clippers, horn, pillow, dried wood, rusty door.

[mactombs]

Today's story:

Dan followed Rose into the alley, leaving the bar and the deafening laughter behind.

Rose carried her whiskey out with her, holding the glass in front of her; she stopped near the trash bin, downed the whiskey, and threw the glass at the wall hard enough to shatter it. Rose grimaced, more from the trash stink than the whiskey (which had ample company in her stomach).

She turned back to Dan. Behind Rose on the alley wall, a bulb in a rusty cage buzzed like a cicada, and its sickly amber glow lit the outer wisps of her hair like cobwebs. In this gloom, the layers of her cosmetics became apparent, like grafts of skin patched together from different cadavers; her sockets were dark, her cheeks sallow, and her lipstick the color of crusty blood. As though subconsciously aware of Dan's observations, Rose reached into the purse slung over her shoulder, got out some lotion and rubbed it into her hands and face.

"Okay, Dan," she paused, looking over Dan's shoulder at the rusty door, expecting someone from the bar coming out for a piss, or maybe just paranoid. "Okay" -- trying to steel herself, the way she had tried to make it easier with the whiskey, and she tried skirting it with: "Do you have the photos?"

"No?"

"Simple as that, just 'no'?"

In the parking lot on the other side of the bar, someone's horn went off: a tripped alarm that set off a dog in one of the apartments above the alley. "No. I'm working with people of limited competency here. The photos you're talking about, apparently, consist of a set reproduced on a single Kodak slide for archival purposes. I received a grainy Xeroxed copy of something that looks like a close-up of dried wood. You're going to have to provide me with the information."

Rose spat, unladylike, shaking her head. The covering noise of the alarm and dog made her more free with her words. "They're terraces, all those lines. The photos are overlaid by a shot of some farmer's rice paddy in 'Nam. They're part of a long, boring photo essay that's mostly jungle and rice paddies."

"That would explain the age of the slide."

"It's from an original set from a war correspondent--AP, I think. He had other employers. The photos you're supposed to have are hiding in that rice paddy, overlaid."

"Clever."

"Too clever for your people, apparently. It's not my fault if they can't do things right."

Dan shrugged.

Someone shut up the alarm. The dog kept going.

In the unstable mood of a drunk, Rose abruptly went from harsh to pleading. The whiskey slurred her words, "This isn't working. It's not working. I'm done with this . . . Get me out of here, Dan!" She started pacing the alley, hands on her hips, restless. In the light of the bulb, her shadow split into three, slanting long and thin against the alley walls. The tang of urine bit through the garbage stench. Behind the rusted door, the bar thrummed.

"I can't do this anymore!"

As Dan watched, Rose seemed like a ghoulish stage actor pacing in the throes of her soliloquy. "You know what it's like? Being the kind of woman who begs strangers for a dollar bill so she can snort coke? You know what that's like, huh? Living like some crackhead anorexic whore? You know what I've eaten today? Fruit snacks."

Dan responded to Rose's histrionics by taking a pair of nail clippers out of his pocket.

"And you sit there clipping your nails, you homo fag!" Saliva strung between Rose's teeth; the enamel was rotting, her teeth beginning twist and fangle. "You think you got it bad? Huh? 'Cuz you work with morons? At least you're not living out of a Jeep that you have to park under the cover of gas station pumps because if you don't, your pillow gets soggy when it rains!"

Still attending to his nails, Dan replied, "So you're angry and wasted. You know what comes next?"

Rose, cocked on one bony hip, just stared back at Dan. Her features softened a little, maybe with some nebulous hope.

Dan said, "You cry."

She did. And she begged. She wanted out. Dan just looked at her a while, then he asked her for her lipstick. She gave it to him. While Dan started drawing over the graffiti of the alley's wall, the dog in the apartments above howled once and went silent.

Then, Dan stepped back. He gestured toward the upside-down pentagram on the wall, like it was a door and he was holding it open for her. The lines seemed to wiggle restlessly in the sputtering light. "After you."

[Big Rig]

i got a some words for the day.. or "a" day

Dildo, razor, wall, beaver, crystal meth, pipe, whore, cucumber, pinapple, cotton candy, clown, all purpose degreaser, windex, phonebook, tofu, jelly, ice cream, and baking soda.

[Latro]

Well, I now know what Big Rig did yesterday...

[Big Rig]

Well, I now know what Big Rig did yesterday...

hahaha yea i wish i went to a dildo circus with clowns all amped on crystal meth..