Dani's Shorts 4 Read online

  A TIW spokesman, when asked about the Deadly Duo, said "Who?". It seems that this infamous twosome is already lost in the threads of time...

  Weekend Quickie 53 - To the's guy?(59 words)

  (300 words max, write a postcard to an enemy, 5 words to use - freckles, heckles, pickles, jeckles, spinach, postcard image - couple at ComCon)

  To the's guy on the balcony, left centre!

  I's had enough of your gibes and heckles,

  Ands your jeering remarks as you sat there with your jeckles.

  So I's soaked up alls your taunts which got me alls up in a pickles

  Ands I's take your girl, even with alls her freckles!

  ?.ands I's didn't need any spinach, Popeye?

  The Mirror

  (Impromtu Relay (18th September 2014))

  (with Mathew W Weaver, Christopher A Liccardi (and Jordan Bell))

  Based on a particularly 'scary' facebook profile picture of Jordan Bell in a steamed up mirror

  Mathew W. Weaver

  The muzzle was still warm when he laid it down on the sink. The metal hit the ceramic with a clang loud enough to make a normal man jump, any man with the nerves of jelly after what he had just done. But this was no normal man.

  Dani J Caile

  No normal man at all. His reflection in the mirror seemed foggy and...distant. Who was that person staring back at him? Those eyes, that nose, the lack of hair on the top of his head were all so familiar and yet...

  Jordan Bell

  Uh oh. Here we go again!

  Christopher A Liccardi

  Strangely different. He had been wearing another face the last time he looked at his reflection. It was a woman this time. She was pretty, or had been, blonde and naive. Her first mistake was to open the door when the bell rang at...

  Dani J Caile

  ...two minutes til the witches' hour. How was she to know that keeping awake at that hour procrastinating with her buddies on facebook would lead her to such a violent and lethal fate? The hynoptising trancelike backbeat of a Justin Bieber song still rang deep in his mind.

  Mathew W. Weaver

  It was all so confusing. He leaned over and gripped the edges of the sink tightly, his knuckles whitening. He breathed out, glanced at the mirror, and looked away. His gaze fell on his hands. In the dim light and the steam off the shower, he could barely make them out. Were they thick, burly red sausages or slim, dainty white feminine digits?

  Dani J Caile

  Shaking his head, his vision cleared and he breathed a sigh of relief. His manly hand , strained and tense, grasped the thin long ungrilled vienna virsli he'd taken in those last stressful moments of the struggle. But that face...?

  Christopher A Liccardi

  and those memories; flashes of another persons life. He was an intruder in those things he saw. Each familiar, but each one glaringly not his own. He wasn't going to have them long. He needed to feed again... and soon. This time he was thinking about that writer who had run into him in the Stop and Save parking lot. What an...

  Dani J Caile

  ...absolute waste of pen and paper, those King clone scribbles he'd noticed over his shoulder. It would be a blessing to the world if that writer was his next victim.

  Mathew W. Weaver

  And then, with that thought, everything became so much more clearer. The throbbing headache faded and his vision, inexplicably clouded again, spontaneously cleared. He saw the blood on his hands. He saw the pistol within grasp. He knew what he needed to do....

  Dani J Caile

  Go and grill those vienna virsli!

  83 - Karma

  (image of seeing people stadning over a grave, Saggitians, theme song people would play if you walked into a room, W7JFQ ham radio call sign)

  Hovering a foot or so above the coffin, I could see the mourners, with the priest giving me those final words, my wife weeping into a little white handkerchief...hang on, that's not a handkerchief, that's my life insurance cover! Damn woman! And my brothers are all here, smirking down at me, the gits. They'll soon take all I had, my small 'empire' of ABC corner shops I'd built up since coming to England. My wife being only a woman won't stand a chance against them.

  How did it happen? How did I die? My own stupidity. Was it a punishment from Allah? Probably, but why is my soul here? Why isn't it...somewhere else? Why can't I remember? Having no physicality is disturbing. They don't mention this anywhere. Why did I have to die now, in the prime of my life?

  It had started as such a normal morning, too. The wife was doing her business in the kitchen making the food for the day, while I got ready to make my usual daily tour of the shops. I'd switched on my ham radio just to see if anyone was on but I gave up, deciding to go to the toilet for my morning ablutions.

  Then, like a banshee in the forest, I heard it.

  "W7JFQ? W7JFQ?"

  It was the voice of one of my many wonderful mistresses coming through the radio calling out my sign. If my wife had heard her, I'd have had a lot of explaining to do. A mere "Shut up, woman!" would not have surficed. With my trousers down at my feet, I flung myself off the seat and into the bedroom, trying desparately to get to the radio. I caught a glimpse of myself in the array of mirrors on our bedroom wall and I looked like that small gang of dumbass street Saggitians I'd had trouble with a few weeks ago, hassling one of my shop assistants. For a split moment that image took my attention and I tripped and impaled myself on the wife's exercise bike's exposed metal tube seat holder that I never ever found the time to fix. I watched in amazement as my blood covered the frame and then tried to push myself off. Succeeding, I crawled over to the radio and turned it off in my last moment of consciousness. And now here I was. I guess my wife never heard the radio.

  At least they played my song, 'The Fight Song' by Marilyn Manson. I loved to annoy the neighbours downstairs at night with the heavy bass set to max and me headbanging to the beat. The ceremony itself went quite well too, my younger brother giving a wonderful elergy, the old charmer?in fact, is that him with his arm around my wife? Hey! Kasun! Get your grubby little hands off my wife! Hey! What? Don't you do that again! Do you hear me? You wait until I'm reincarnated, then I'll get you! Hey! Kasun! You dirty little?!

  Weekend Quickie 54 - A nice meat soup (91 words)

  (Genre: Horror, Time: 5 minutes, Start with: He liked to eat their skin first, ?

  End with: He sat with a smile on his face and his belly full.)

  He liked to eat their skin first, slicing each square inch off from the layer of fat and muscle beneath with his ivory handled silverware, sharpened every morning on his stone wheel. When his appetite for this tender delicacy diminished, there lay before him an exposed limp body, ready for boiling and seasoning. He was never one for a roast. His favourite was a nice full meat soup which he could savour for days. This time was no different. He sat with a smile on his face and his belly full.

  Weekend Quickie 55 Sunday Edition - True story...ish (293 words)

  (You just got pulled over by a cop for speeding. You are poor, and way too clever to get a ticket. Write down the scenario below with what you would say to get out of it? It is never too late to practice the art of B.S. No more than 300 Words. No more than 10 minutes.)

  I spun my alloy wheels and thrust my XR3i into first, smoking up Death corner over by the old church, chasing after my pals in their dinky Fiesta. Last to the Old Hare had to pay for the whole round. Only Tuk and Goodge agreed to ride with me. It didn't take long for those flashing blue lights to fill up my rearview mirror.

  "Good evening, sir. Would you mind stepping out of the car, please."

  My Fiesta pals had already parked up nearby and were taunting the pigs from a safe distance.

  "Do you know what speed you were doing around that corner, sir?"

  "I think about 35mph, officer, well within the speed limit."

  "It's a 20mph zone around that corner, sir. Please blow into this bag."

  "Sure."

  I blew fr
om my mouth rather than my lungs, filling the bag so it wouldn't detect the 5 pints of cider I'd just drunk. Tuk and Goodge sat quietly in the car, smiling at the pigs when they popped their heads in.

  "Clear off, ya pigs! We know where ya live!" shouted one of the girls from the Fiesta.

  The pigs checked the breathalyser and found me to be clear but were becoming increasingly aggitated by the commotion over by the Fiesta. Especially when a stone found its place through one of their sidedoor windows.

  "Thank you, sir. Remember to always look at the road signs, they're there for a reason. Don't do it again. Have a nice evening."

  "Thank you, officer."

  We watched as they marched across the road, stopping the traffic as they did, and demanded IDs from all those present. When we got to the Old Hare, I still had to pay for the round, though, 'cause the others never arrived.

  NEWFLASH: Where is Maureen?

  (TIW Blog)

  by Scallywag

  On Monday 22nd September 2014, there was growing concern for the whereabouts of a certain Ms Maureen Larter, Aussie extraordinaire and longtime member of the TIW community. The disappearance of said member Maureen had many members talking as to where she may have gone. Some say, being an Aussie, she had gone on a 'walkabout', a traditional aboriginal journey to find oneself, a journey which could last for an indefinite time, perhaps even as long as 3 days without Facebook. Others mentioned she may have joined an expedition group to find the heart and soul of the lost capital of Australia, Canberra, something which many have tried before but have failed miserably. A small minority of the TIW community have also mentioned that she may only be out shopping for wattleseed and witchetty grubs and lost her way between the jumping kangaroos, climbing koalas and running emus within her neighbourhood. Much to the picturesque efforts of Bobby 'Salmon' Salomons and infantile taunting from Brian Rogers, founder of TIW, Maureen still has yet to reply to any tagged comment or post. If she does not reply soon, the community will send out Tony Jaeger to look for her. If he does not find her, then at least he will bring back some mushrooms. A TIW spokesman, when asked about this strange disappearance said "It's difficult to contact anyone who lives in the Outback at the best of times, let alone when the Fosters and Vegemite sandwiches run out. Maybe we should put some more prawns on the barbie."

  UPDATE: Maureen has been found safe and well, sipping a concoction of homemade lemonade and gin under a Gympie-Gympie tree.

  Grudge 11 - The Purple Result (1st attempt - unpublished)

  (Written with Jordan Bell)

  (Neo (from Matrix) holding a Sooty Puppet, one character must be riding a pogo stick, must contain at least three characters with no spoken dialogue between them, must implement every line of the William Carlos Williams poem 'The Red Wheelbarrow' in order (lines may be interspersed with other prose but individual lines of the poem must be intact.))

  "Sorry? What's that, Sooty? You think I should take the blue pill? How about I give you my finger?" The leather-clad young man sitting on the grassy knoll like some assassin of logic and reason shoved the yellow hand puppet into his ear once more, nodding to its imaginary non-existent babble, his face made from solid stone. Madness is a naked man dancing atop the ruptured remains of reality's raiments, who apparently happened to be over by the dying tree, bouncing incessantly upon a pogo stick.

  "So much depends upon accuracy, clarity. Language is then kept?efficient!" shouted the rakish man through many comical flapping parts of his anatomy. With each impact on the soil, mud splattered this crazed man's bare shins. "Language charged with meaning to the utmost possible severity!"

  Reluctantly, I reassumed my earlier fetal position in a red wheel barrow and swallowed my frenzied smile.

  "We are all born mad. Some even more so, in certainty, to carry the damp blue globe of fantasy towards the pure purple clutter of chaos." Popping my thumb into my mouth once more, the buzzing voices inside my mind increased until I could no longer hear their bombastic tirade.

  "A slave is someone who frees him and goes?ahh!" A belly flop on earth glazed with rain water cut short the poor man's howl, causing me to peep over the edge of my casket. The floating flotsam of jello secreted its ooze on the confines of the civilised world.

  "Is this all we have? Are words all we have?" My tongue wrapped around my shrivelled thumb. "Regrets, none. Having been born, I so wait for the long tiresome business of death."

  "But Sooty, how can I make a choice?" The yellow puppet fell, buried in the grass, its wand digging deep into the ground. One quick snap of the wrist and the puppet sat confidently face to face with its controller. "The question is, how can I trust you?"

  "I see trees! Five, six, seven?ten trees! An ordinary man would see one!" screeched the foul man making strange movements in the mud. "I am the eyes of an angel!"

  The young man held the puppet once more to his ear.

  "What's that, Sooty? You want me to say the magic words? But you haven't answered my question."

  An annoyance of sound, inverted end over end, vanishing with a sudden flash.

  "A stain upon the silence, nothing more, nothing less. I don't know, I don't know, can we go on, we can't!"

  I forced my thumb to stifle my unwelcomed intruding negation while the naked man, dangling like some throttled turkey, stood up and straddled his trusty pogo stick, recommencing the destruction around the sacred perishing tree.

  "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!" screamed the young man, jumping to his feet and frantically waving the puppet in the air, its wand held high.

  Tiny lights exploded behind my eyes and I searched for focus, meaning. Grains of wheat lay beside the white chickens, untouched, unnoticed?unpecked.

  Grudge 11 - Down on the farm (2nd attempt - published)

  (Written with Jordan Bell)

  (Neo (from Matrix) holding a Sooty Puppet, one character must be riding a pogo stick, must contain at least three characters with no spoken dialogue between them, must implement every line of the William Carlos Williams poem 'The Red Wheelbarrow' in order (lines may be interspersed with other prose but individual lines of the poem must be intact.))

  "What's all this then, eh?"

  When I'd gone to bed, all had been normal but now, at the break of dawn, with the cows out in the meadow and the chickens scattered about, the scene before me was mystifying.

  "What's that, Sooty?" A leather-clad Neo from the Matrix was standing over by the coop, stone-faced, with a yellow puppet shoved up to his ear. It was Sooty from the Sooty Show. Where was Matthew Corbett when you needed him? Or Sweep and Sue, even? And as if that wasn't bad enough, a crazed naked man on a pogo stick, with parts of his anatomy dangling like some throttled turkey was ranting on about some literature nonsense.

  "So much depends upon accuracy, clarity. Language is then?efficient!" He bounced around the muddy farmyard until his pogo stick hit a red wheel barrow and he went flying into a heap of wet manure.

  "What the hell! Get off my land!" The usual line didn't work with these nutters, so I went back in for my shotgun. When I returned, all was quiet until finally a noise came from the old barn. I cautiously made my way over. In the shadows, far over in the back, I could see Sooty, held high over a stall, his wand waggling.

  "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!"

  "I'll give yer 'Izzy bloody wizzy'!" I fired a warning shot. Hay exploded into the air as man and puppet crashed through the slats of the old barn and into a startled sow glazed with rainwater from last night's showers.

  I loaded another shell into my shotgun as I ran out of the barn and around to the pigsty. Here, I was met with another vision of absurdity.

  The naked literati, thus removed from his pogo stick and now covered head to toe in shite, wrestled with 'he-of-the-not-quite-there-spoon' for control of Sooty. I levelled my shotgun at the mad duo and growled, "Oi, you lot! Get off my pigs!"

  Sooty in hand, the naked man sprung to his feet and dashed across the farmyard towards the coop, screaming in the morning ai
r, "A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression." I looked to Neo who sat in the mud defeated and took off after the sullied poet.

  Nearing the coop I slowed, having lost sight of the puppet-wielding Pound. I heard yet another voice nearby. There, on the ground, a man in a tweed suit tossed grains all about and addressed his non-existent audience.

  "Only those who will risk going too far can know how far one can possibly go," he said, seated beside the white chickens as they darted after their food. He reached into the grain bag again and said, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

  Suddenly feeling quite ill, I staggered on, soon coming to an abandoned Sooty. I laughed, quite madly, and with a whoop snatched up the vexatious puppet leaving my last remnants of sanity in its place.

  Weekend Quickie 56 - The homemade wasp repellent of Richard

  (Genre: Fantasy, Word Count: Exactly 250 Words! Start with: The Alien Forces were moved among the?Include the words: carnage, litter box, Facebook Status, and Charlie Brown. While writing, listen to this song. Play over and over until finished. https://youtu.be/jY9dQ8hUi7U (Edge of Night (Pippin's Song from Lord of the Rings))

  The Alien forces were moved among the districts of Milwaukee by their all-seeing Queen, a sight we'd grown accustomed to over the last few days. After the carnage in Chicago, where this grotesque entity and its thousands of 'soldiers' had first appeared and wiped out the entire population, news reports came in of fighting further up the coast until we could see what was to come. The Guard had settled themselves in the suburbs, but were no match for these fast, winged creatures.

  "Richard!" shouted Bob from the back door.