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  Dani's Shorts 3

  (A collection of short stories based on the elements from The Iron Writer Challenge)

  Volume 3

  by

  Dani J Caile

  PUBLISHED BY:

  ISBN: 9781310966132

  Dani's Shorts 3

  Copyright © 2014 by Dani J Caile

  Blog

  https://danijcaile.blogspot.hu/

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Dani J Caile 2014

  Table of Contents

  Preface / Acknowledgement

  First Annual 2014 Iron Blog Tour - Waiting for the Equinox

  53 - The Fickle Generation

  Duel 1 (Grudge 4) - Dora and the Invasion of the Flying Vampires

  Dr. Seuss' Birthday Challenge - One Moose

  Dr Suess' Birthday Challenge 2 - Oh, the wonderful things Mr. Orbán can do!

  Weekend Quickie 24 - Second Thoughts

  54 - BBC Surreal Satire at its worst

  Weekend Quickie 25 - Mardi Gras balls

  55 (Grudge 5) - Pimp my ride, Sonny!

  Weekend Quickie 26 - The unexpected

  56 - Hindsight

  Flash in the Pan - Cerreda Medellin Blues - Jack Kerouac

  Flash in the Pan – Palindrome ("I madam, I made radio! So I dared! Am I mad, am I?")

  Weekend Quickie 27 - Mike's Omission

  57 - Dennis is a bad boy

  Flash in the Pan - tiny story based on 2 Shakespearean insults: "Ye Eater of Broken Meats!" and "Have fun, you embossed carbuncles!"

  Daily Flash

  Flash in the Pan - Describe a colour without using a colour word

  Weekend Quickie 28 - Big Chief 'He ya ho'

  58 (TIW Spring Open) – Lost

  Weekend Quickie 29 - Quickie in a Quickie

  59 - Slaughter

  Weekend Quickie 30 - Carlos is dead

  60 - (TIW Spring Open Final) - That 'punk' camera

  Weekend Quickie 31 - Tracer

  61 - No one's perfect

  Weekend Quickie 32 - Each to their own

  62 - Draughts on a Sunday afternoon with ol' Captain Joe Blues Eyes

  Brian's Birthday Challenge - Jello!

  Weekend Quickie 33 - Return to Oz

  63 - Creep

  The Goatee of Neal (Impromu Relay)

  Weekend Quickie 34 - Just to see my face

  64 (Annual Final) - Two my few chair auld err shelf

  The Rotation (Impromtu relay)

  Genre Mash Up Test 1

  Weekend Quickie 35 - Little Red Shiny Jordan

  65 - Oh, Elva!

  Weekend Quickie 36 - Second base

  66 (Grudge 6) - The Universe doesn't Care what You are

  Genre Mash Up Test 2

  Weekend Quickie 37 - When friends are your greatest enemies

  67 - Whoops, there goes the neighbourhood

  Weekend Quickie 38 - Oh, Nana!

  68 - The Hole in the Wall

  The Cat and the Monkey (Impromtu relay)

  Weekend Quickie 39 - Let's make some money

  69 - To Clip

  Weekend Quickie 40 - No time

  70 - For Better For Worse

  Weekend Quickie 41 - Embarrassing

  71 - (Summer Prelim) - Death of another Salesman

  Weekend Quickie 42 - Misunderstood

  72 - Team Building

  Weekend Quickie 43 - Jump!

  73 - (Summer Open Final) The Sun Rises In

  The Iron Writer Party Line (Impromtu relay)

  Weekend Quickie 44 - Joyce

  74 - The Spirit of Aragorn

  Weekend Quickie 45 - Oh, the thrill

  75 - (Grudge 7) The whole world's a stage!

  Weekend Quickie 46 - 5 Years later

  76 - (Grudge 8) – Generation Gap

  Weekend Quickie 47 - Protection

  77 – Ted’s Lucky Cap

  Weekend Quickie 48 - The Fawn of Sertorius

  78 – Twigs

  Weekend Quickie 49 - Intriguing

  List of elements

  Other work by Dani J Caile

  Preface / Acknowledgement

  Wow, it's already Volume 3 of TIW shorts! The third collection of totally pointless exactly 500 Challenge and exactly 200 Weekend Quickie word nonsense (plus a few collaborations and extra TIW things) to entertain you while doing whatever you do when reading. For myself, it was a long and exciting half year in The Iron Writer. It has become a part of my life now, this TIW phenomenon, every week waiting for the next group of elements to hit the site and dwelling on the story which could link them all together in the style of my choice. It's thanks to this challenge that I can say I never suffer from writer's block - touch wood.

  In this third volume, I have also included some collaborations and TIW ‘experiments’, such as the Genre Mash Up from Miranda Hawley and impromptu relays which mainly involve a new and highly talented young TIW writer, Mathew W. Weaver (https://ramblingsandraving.blogspot.hu/), complete in a suit of armour – he is the Iron Writer Protection Program, his identity is a secret. Other writers include Neal Sayatovich (https://www.facebook.com/neal.sayatovich), Jordan Bell (https://jbfiction.blogspot.hu/), and Tony Jaeger (https://www.creativewritingtime.weebly.com/). I'd like to thank these writers for writing their words and allowing me to publish them.

  In mentioning, I also cut the 10 worder 4 element challenge story "He tutted as she stood there in a mini skirt." (Challenge 45) down to a 'zhong', a form made famous by Ernest Hemingway, "He tutted as she smiled, naked."

  To finish, in Volume 2, I separated the Weekly Challenges from the Weekend Quickies though now I see that some continuity of ideas was lost and so everything in Volume 3 is in chronological order to show the development…if there was one.

  I hope you enjoy these short snippets just as much as I enjoyed writing them, and thanks again to Brian and all the other Iron Writers for allowing me into their community…I wouldn’t.

  If you are 'up to the Challenge', then go to...

  https://theironwriter.com/

  First Annual 2014 Iron Blog Tour - Waiting for the Equinox

  (iron, quill, birthday cake, 1 element from 1st challenge (changed to using 1 element from all 52 named challenges in order, except for Challenge 51 element 'no 'be' verbs' which is used throughout)

  "Meteors outside." Tom lay his ruby red slippers over the failed superhero in the elevator and sat down on his favourite coconut opposite the family's 1880 vampire hunting kit.

  "Wonderful, dear." His space monkey, Suzie, did her usual chore of cutting quills with her ginsu knives for the pregnant camel next door. They shared a smile and watched the gyroscope in the corner.

  "What's on the water buffalo tonight, dear?"

  "Same old, same old. Black lipstick, I think," replied Suzie, now jumping on her trampoline. The dead gypsy rested on his theremin, silent.

  "Anything special for dinner?" Tom hung on the clothes line and took a bag of almonds from his own personal group of reference librarians he kept in a casket. Satisfied that the flashing neon lights on the ceiling had stopped due to the malfunctioning pole mounted electric transformer, he waved his semaphore flags and watched his pet trilobite crawl across the floor.

  "Just the usual, dear. Birthday cake." Suzie paused in her jumping and tore the
hand held lawn clippers from her thigh, replacing them with chopsticks. Tom banged on his 1951 Kaiser Drag'n and yodelled like Slim Whitman.

  "Again? Why can't we have something else for a change! Like fried green tomatoes or banana slippers! Why do we always eat birthday cake?"

  Suzie whipped her husband with a feather boa, knowing he'd love it.

  "Did you have a bad day? Another fight with the live Griffin, dear? Would you like a cup of tea?"

  "Oh, yes. Thank you, darling."

  Suzie disappeared into their abandoned outhouse to make tea and look for the jar of bacon fat Tom so often admired. A particularly interesting dressed herring appeared on the buffalo's hind and caught Tom's attention.

  "Suzie, quick! You've gotta see this!"

  She came running in wearing a pair of fishnet stockings and a wooden hanger stuck on the back of her neck. They both lost interest as the Bionic Woman sailed by in a Roman merchant sailing vessel. Suzie sighed, ate the 2000 year old map of the Earth she'd saved for later and went back to making tea.

  "Anything happen today, dear?" asked Tom, now fixing his motherboard with the aid of a voodoo witch doctor.

  "No, dear." By the time Tom had finished saying 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious', Suzie'd brought in his cup of tea and sewed it with needle and thread to the bug zapper on the side of Tom's coconut.

  "Oh, I almost forgot, my latest victim." Braving the haboob trapped within his James Bond Mini Spy Kit he'd taken to work, Tom lifted out an iron ingot, shiny and wet. "Look what I found inside a toilet roll hat."

  "Oh, what a muppet! And so cute!" She stroked its back and tickled its tummy.

  "Some Harpy tried to drown it in the river. Good job I had my lucky Kiwi bird on me."

  "Can we...keep it?" Suzie flashed her nostrils at Tom, knowing his weakness.

  "Well...okay."

  Suzie laughed and punched him out.

  "Thank you, darling!"

  53 - The Fickle Generation

  (The Rotarua Hot Pools, the only lost book in the world, pearl brooch, floor wax)

  They lay in a luxurious mud bath at Hell's Gate, one of the many hot pool spa resorts in the region of Rotarua. Sheila grumbled something but Bruce wasn't listening, he had his headphones on, relaxing on the other side, away from her. Watching her mouth move and her face becoming more animated, he took them off.

  "This mud, it feels like floor wax."

  "How would you know what floor wax feels like, Sheila, you've never lifted a duster in your life, let alone waxed a floor."

  "You're so mean!"

  She was a peach when he first met her, but now getting onto thirty she'd put on a bit of weight and let herself go a little. Bruce was about to go back to Midnight Oil paradise when Sheila started jumping up and down and screaming. What now?

  "Where's my pearl brooch? It was on my top! Where is it?"

  Bruce went closer to inspect her top, clearly nothing on it except mud.

  "You should've taken it off before coming in here."

  "We need to find it! Bruce! We need to find it!"

  "What do you expect me to do, search for it in this hot pool of mud?"

  "Yes!"

  "Oh, come on, Sheila!"

  "Look, I've already lost my copy of "Vernon God Little" by DBC Pierre! I don't want to lose something else! I loved that book, I'm not going to be able to get another around here. And that brooch, that brooch was a present from my mother! My mother! What am I going to say when I see her next?"

  Bruce sneered and laid back to his side.

  "Oh yeah, your "Vernon God Little", the only lost book in the world. When are ya gonna stop whinging about that one? And your mother? What you're gonna say? The truth, that you lost her brooch in a relaxing hot mud pool in northern New Zealand, that's all. What's the big deal?" He closed his eyes and listened to his music. It didn't take long for her to kick his feet in the mud.

  "What?"

  "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "Find it!"

  "Up yours." He closed his eyes once more.

  "Bruce! How dare...! Oh!" He heard her leave the pool and traipse away back to their room, the mud on her feet squelching on the wooden deck.

  "Good riddance."

  Bruce didn't know that another girl had got in until his toe was touched.

  "You back agai...?" He saw her, blonde, pretty, smiling. Forget the music, forget everything. "Hi."

  "Hi."

  "You staying at the hotel?"

  "Yeah. You?"

  "Yeah." Bruce felt the smooth accessory in the mud. "Hey, look what I found, nice, huh?" He showed her the pearl brooch.

  "Mmm, nice, not really my thing, though."

  Bruce thought for a moment.

  "You into books?"

  "Yeah! I specialised in literature at college."

  "Cool." He moved over to her side, almost touching. "Into literature, huh? Ever read "Vernon God Little" by DBC Pierre?" He brought his muddy arm over her shoulder and she giggled.

  Duel 1 (Grudge 4) - Dora and the Invasion of the Flying Vampires

  (300 word limit, and 3 elements: parody of children's literature, Monster Movie title based on your name (mine DJC), and "la bala de plata")

  Hola! I'm Dora and this is my friend, Gucci. Today we're going to my Uncle Vlad's birthday party on Monster Hill. I have some blood sausages as a present. His favourite! Delicioso!

  Oh no! Swiper is trying to swipe the blood sausages! Let’s stop Swiper! Say "Swiper, no manipulating the GDP and implying that the inflation rate is below 1% when it’s clearly closer to 20." Thanks for helping us stop Swi…oh, he did it. Oh, well.

  Now, how do we get to Uncle Vlad’s castle on Monster Hill? Let’s ask Map. Say "Ma…!" Map has gone, but what luck! Gucci has found a sign which says "This is the way to Monster Hill". Excelente! Vámonos!

  We’re at the foot of Monster Hill! And here is Isa the iguana! She is reading a book, ’Invasion of the Flying Vampires’. She looks worried. Isa is Spanish. To say "hello" to Isa, we say ’Hola’. Let’s say ’Hola’ to Isa. Hola, Isa. Oh dear, she ran away.

  We made it to Uncle Vlad’s castle! But look! There are some flying vampires circling above us in the sky! It's an invasion! Can you count how many there are? Let’s count in Spanish! Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis! Six flying vampires! Can you see something in Backpack which can kill them? Yes, that’s right! Silver bullets! To say "the silver bullet" in Spanish, we say ‘la bala de plata’. Say "La bala de plata?". Yay! We did it! The flying vampires have flown away! Excelente!

  Here’s Uncle Vlad. He says thank you for the blood sausages, they are ‘Delicioso!’. He says we are just in time for the start of his birthday party! Thank you for helping us get to Uncle Vlad’s party and stopping the invasion of flying vampires! We did it!

  Dr. Seuss' Birthday Challenge - One Moose

  (200-500 word limit, written in the style of Dr. Seuss)

  One moose, two moose, fat moose, thin moose.

  Some are very small, while others seem quite tall. Oh, let's have a ball!

  Some are old, and some are bold. Some have colds and some have mould.

  Why do some have colds and mould? I guess it won't be told.

  Some are happy, some are snappy. This one has a little nappy.

  Here are some who like to chat, here are some who like big hats.

  Here are some who like to scat, here are some who have pet rats.

  Some have great clothes, others have big toes.

  Some like to compose, others, well, who knows?

  Some are funny, some have money, some like little furry bunnies.

  Some have short tails, some have long nails, some like swimming with the blue whales.

  This one's name is Tom, he loves to take his Mom to go and see the Prom.

  This one's name is Fred, he loves his comfy bed to rest his weary head.

  Why does Fred love his bed? I guess because it's cherry red.

  None of them is like
the other, they all grew up with diff'rent mothers.

  So come along and see the moose, but don't forget the orange juice.

  (Illustration: Dani J Caile)

  Dr Suess' Birthday Challenge 2 - Oh, the wonderful things Mr. Orbán can do!

  Oh, the wonderful things

  Mr Orbán can do!

  He can build a new stadium,

  Giving money to the few.

  Mr Orbán can do it.

  But what about you?

  He can bad mouth anyone

  Mr Orbán can lie.

  How about you?

  Can you lie lie lie?

  He can take your pensions...

  Ker-ching ker-ching

  He can fix elections

  Fling fling fling

  He can censor shh shh

  The news in a flash.

  He can call the secret police...

  Smash smash smash smash

  He can sell the country to the Russians...

  Trash trash trash

  Shh shh

  Smash smash smash smash

  Trash trash trash

  But what about you?

  (Illustration: Dani J Caile)

  Weekend Quickie 24 - Second Thoughts

  (image - girl playing piano in 'room tornado', element - wolf, emotion - a change of heart)

  She hammered the keys on the piano but the music never came. Her frustration grew, her heart beat dangerously fast. A knock at the door left her paralysed.

  "Let me in, let me in!"

  The wolf was at her door but she needed to practise, she had no time for interruptions.

  "No, no, I won't let you in. I'm busy."

  "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!"

  The windows flew open and the wolf blew with all his might, at first displacing only the sheet music from the piano, but pretty soon creating a small tornado which filled the room. Alice, for some reason still in her sleeping gown, desperately tried to reach the keys and play her piece while being pulled into the strong current swirling around her, sheet music hitting her face.

  "What's the time, Mr. Wolf?"

  "Time enough...to eat you!" The wolf jumped in through the window and pounced on her. She woke up with a start, sweat oozing from every pour. Looking at her clock, she saw that it was the morning.