Bang, Extract, Braid

A short piece incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Lemuel saw a crowd gathering in a field just a few yards from the dirt path he’d been following. They seemed to grow in numbers, coming from all directions. He stood on his tip toes but couldn’t see past the backs of people huddling. Slowly he made his way over, moving his head side to side as if a slit or crack would appear.

Reaching the crowd, he made his way through a few people to the front. There Lemuel saw two men facing each other. By each of their sides, a woman was crying. He watched as one of the women took out a knife and cut off her long braid, stuffing it into the pocket of the man on the right. The other woman hugged the man on the left.

Each of the men was holding some sort of object made of metal and wood. They pushed a rod into the holes in the metal and tapped it down a few times. A man from the crowd, holding something in his hand that was connected to a chain that ran to one of his pant pockets.

The man raised his hand and the women dispersed back into the crowd, being held by other people. The two men stood back to back, pressing their heels into the heels of the other. They stood this way, all three of them, for what felt like minutes but really only a few seconds had passed.

The man dropped his hand and made a strange sound from his mouth. The two men began taking long, slow steps in opposite directions, putting both feet together after each step. They did this for 20 steps and then stopped. The man with the chain waved his hands to the crowd on either side of the men. The crowd moved to the side so there was no one facing the men in either direction.

Then the man put the object in his pocket, the chain still dangling. He moved back into the crowd opposite Lemuel. The two men had their objects of metal and wood tucked into straps at their sides, their hands hovering over them. One of the men waved his fingers slowly.

There was silence. Lemuel was fixated. His feet felt rooted to the ground. Then he heard a noise from behind him say something, it sounded like “hey, get that kid out of here.” But Lemuel had no clue what they meant or that they were talking to him. He realized quickly, that everyone, including the man with the chain was staring at him. Someone grabbed his shoulder, but he didn’t budge, he wouldn’t move. He wanted to see what was happening.

Then someone grabbed him around the waist and picked him up. They carried him back through the crowd and halfway up to the path. The man who set him down made more noises and thrusted a pointing finger toward the direction of the path. Lemuel stood still, facing the crowd. The man spun him around and gave him a shove toward the path. Now he got the message.

He reached the path and kicked at the dirt, sending up a dust cloud. He started walking in the direction he had originally been heading.

BANG! Lemuel whipped his head around. A scream and a wail went up from the crowd. Then some noise from someone that sounded like “no, no, no, no, god, no.” He tried to find a crack in the crowd so he could see but the crowd had moved even closer to the men.

Lemuel stood on the path and closed his eyes, wrapping crossing his arms and holding each cheek with the opposite hand, the iterations of the Lemonmouth. Something didn’t feel right and so he looked inside for answers.

Sleep, Store, Offense

A short piece incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Lemuel rested his eyes, just for a moment. The last few days had forced him to be alert, but the moment he let down his guard, he was out. His eyes fluttered rapidly behind his eyelids as his mind processed all its eyes had taken in.

Lemuel watched skeletons running around on a beach with black pebbles. Their bones clacking on the rock as they swiveled their heads around, which, their heads were cameras. Cameras with long lenses that whirred when they zoomed and had cables attached that ran all the way to somewhere Lemuel couldn’t see. The camera head skeletons crowded around Lemuel, pointing their lenses at his lemon stuffed mouth.

The setting and characters shifted. The clacking bones and whirring lenses morphed into the strange noises coming from all the people in the marketplace. All the strange noises from the other creatures in cages also stirred into the blurry soup being made in Lemuel’s mind. He stood in front of a long table, octopi crawling all over each other and up the pillars holding up the tent. A man came out making guttural noises from his mouth and maybe even nose before taking out a giant clever and hacking at the squirming maw of tentacles and beaks on the table. Heads, beaks and tentacles still suctioning flew everywhere.

One landed on Lemuel’s face and he tore it off with a hiss and pop. Lemuel stared horrified at the massacre of the sacred creatures he was taught to hold in reverence. The providers of the ink that allowed the lemonmouth to speak, to stand out amongst themselves and the rest of the world. The ink that allowed them to tell their stories, both ancient and new.

Lemuel began to cry, his tears hot and angry. He began to shake violently. His arms and legs stretching and growing wider all at once. Tiny suction cups dotted his growing arms and he grabbed at anyone with his new tentacles, anyone in the marketplace, but their quick pace and constant noise prevented them from noticing anything was going on. Every person Lemuel grabbed continued making their noises and looking around as if they had forgotten something.

Then Lemuel woke up. Someone was shaking him. He looked up into the eyes of a woman, she smiled but there was no lemon in her mouth and also not a single tooth. She spread her arms wide in the greeting he understood. On her bare chest, between a shirt, he could see the lines of the lemonmouth, from a different ship most likely, and quite old judging by its faded color.

The lines on her chest told a story of motherhood, of disgrace, of shame. There was also a new line, one Lemuel hadn’t initially noticed. It was a skeleton hand, it’s pointer finger and pinky sticking straight up while the thumb and other two fingers were pressed into the palm, almost like a head with horns. Lemuel didn’t recognize that symbol, but in looking up at her face and keeping the new lines in his mind, he noticed a strength.

She motioned for him to follow and he did, this being the only other lemonmouth, or closest thing to one, he had found in a few days.

Confusion, Mosque, Slow

A short piece incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Nothing made sense at the edge of the blue. On land there didn’t seem to be any order, to anything. Nothing was categorized and everyone moved rapidly, never seeming to take a break. Those weren’t even the strangest things. There was nothing in their mouths and they all seemed to be constantly making noises through them.

Lemuel had heard crying or retching or coughing but never the cacophony of sounds he was hearing now. None of it made sense. His eyes darted everywhere for some daubing, some symbols on these strange people to learn something about them.

Opening his arms at everyone coming toward him didn’t seem to be effective, if anything, they walked faster and made an obvious turn to avoid him. There was so much stimulation, Lemuel couldn’t think. He looked for a place that might be quiet so he could gather his thoughts and process what he might do. It wasn’t even that long ago that he had suddenly regained consciousness on shore. He still hadn’t gotten over the shipwreck, seeing all the ropes, sails, wood, and various supplies scattered in the mouth of the bay. All those lemons, bobbing up and down, rolling back and forth with each wave stretching onto the edge of the blue.

Looking up, Lemuel spotted a tall building with round towers poking up above the other tall buildings. Moving toward it, he pushed through people carrying strange objects he’d never seen. Moving creatures in cages, baskets of bright red, round objects, shiny things twisted in dangerous shapes. He had to keep looking up at the towers because at his level, there was only seeing just past the next person.

Finally, he looked up and then down to see the entrance of the building he sought. A giant archway patterned with tiles on each side marked the mouth of what he hoped would be a quiet or at least a quieter place.

Walking slowly towards the entrance, Lemuel noticed shoes just outside the large wooden doors. He took off his sandals and peeked into the door that was slightly ajar. Two men emerged, not noticing him. They carried rolled up rugs and stopped to put on their shoes. Lemuel slipped past and stopped, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.

As his eyes took in the little light available, they began bouncing off information for Lemuel to see. More giant arches marked a long, vacuous hallway but they were not plain. Every wall, pillar, arch and windowsill was covered with carvings. Images of birds, geometric shapes, slivered moons, suns and stars.

Lemuel looked at his own bare chest, seeing the tattoos that made up who he was. Perhaps they spoke his language. He moved forward through archways, looking up at gigantic hanging objects holding, what looked like, thousands of candles. Ahead of him, he saw more men. They faced down on rugs just fit for them and rocked back and forth from kneeling to touching their heads to the rug. They were also making strange noises from their mouths, but these were not the chaotic sounds from outside, these seemed to sooth him. Lemuel knelt down, mimicking what he saw and began to think. The storm, his grandfather losing his grip on the rigging and disappearing over the side of the ship, screaming, blackness, the beach. Lemuel had found a quiet place but his thoughts were booming.

Canvas, Excavate, Term

A short piece incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Stretched out before him was a blank canvas. Lemuel dipped his fishbone quill, into the inkwell fashioned to look like an octopus fanning out its legs, its bulbous head removed and shaped into a bowl. He hovered the pen over the paper, thinking hard of what he should daub. Looking over at the rest of his shiplings who were already daubing the familiar shapes of fish, boats, mermaids and lemons. He looked back down at his canvas and found that ink had dropped in a small crown on the page.

The instructor came by and shook her head. “Lemuel, you must look around you and put down to the canvas what you see. Remember, we are what we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Don’t think so hard, it needn’t come from within you.”

Half paying attention, Lemuel dipped the quill again, this time down to the fingertips holding onto the bone. More drips appeared all over the canvas. He whipped his hand away, sending a line of paint streaking down one side of the canvas. The sight of it excited him. The line curved upwards to a point, reminding him of the crest of a wave. He looked over at the instructor, smiling and nodding at the illustration of fish and boats.

Lemuel dipped his pen again, this time intentionally getting his fingers and half the pen dripping in ink. He whipped his hand in the opposite direction, sending lines and splatters down the right side of the canvas. Something inside him was waking up, something that had been buried deep below everything he was told but something that he felt was right and true to the patterns of ink appearing before him.

Again, he dipped the ink and again he whipped his hand over the canvas until before him was the rough shape of a choppy sea. The dots, he thought reminded him of the spray that splashed off the crest of two waves coming together or from the bow of a ship crashing through the water.

He hadn’t noticed that his fellow shiplings had ceased their daubing and began huddling around him, watching him furiously swish and splash paint onto the canvas. Lemuel felt as if he were the very creator, whipping up the ocean and providing it with movement, light and life. These lines did not resemble anything created by daubers before him, but he wasn’t thinking of that. Right now, he was only following something inside him that told him this was right and true.

“Lemuel!” shouted the instructor. “What are you doing?”

Lemuel was shaken out of his daze. He looked up to see all of his peers staring. Some snickered, some looked horrified and the instructor stomped over yanking the canvas from table.

“These are not the lines of a lemonmouth. This is blasphemy. Perhaps you do not know what you have done but in creating such chaos you have also created an imbalance in the sea. This does not bode well. I will show your grandfather.”

The instructor rolled up the canvas, smearing the wet paint and ruining what Lemuel had thought was something he had never seen before. His excitement turned to disappointment and quickly into fear. His hand was covered in ink and his pantaloons had black splatters. Then he looked at the table, it was covered in wild lines turbulent drops, resembling the waves he was creating on his canvas.

Lemuel couldn’t quite put into words what he had felt while painting but he knew that he needed to feel it again.

Outlook, Violation, Thumb

A short piece incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Lemuel sat at the bow of the ship staring at the thin line that his elders had told him was land. Born on the boat, he’d never been to land, but he was told it was like the deck of a ship that never rocked and often stretched as far as the eye could see. Lemuel was also told that there was no need to ever go there. The ship and the sea had everything they needed. Except for the lemons and a few other supplies.

To go and live on shore among all the evil that existed there was one of the main themes Lemuel was taught time and again. For the lemons and other necessities, special crew members called thumbs were designated and even then, they traveled ashore in groups of three; one with a blind fold, another with a gag in his mouth and the third with earplugs. Each specialized in a sense. The eyes (gag) surveyed and looked for the appropriate vendors. The ears (blindfold) listened to the side conversations of vendors to make sure they were not being taken advantage of. The mouth (earplugs) spoke for the fleet belonging to the Lemonmouths.

Lemuel looked down at his first tattoo, a small black lemon on his right wrist. Made from the ink of octopi and squid pulled up, boiled down and inked by the “daubers”. According to his grandfather, the Lemonmouth needed very little to communicate and in a picture a thousand conversations could be had. By looking at the other’s eyes and down to their tattoos, Lemuel had learned to communicate.

The lemon wedged in Lemuel’s mouth was still fresh, the rind had not yet broken down or been accidentally punctured by a tooth. He wiped away the steady stream of saliva with his water cloth, a strip of sail each Lemonmouth carried around for that purpose. His was brown and crusted by salt but that was normal.

In Lemuel’s world, the lemon was a sacred object. Geronimo Coolidge, their forefather, the lemon prevented scurvy, but it also kept out evil spirits, from entering the body or the world. A world, that for Lemuel, consisted of water and wood, yet he would stare at that thin line near the horizon and wonder what it was like, evil or not.

Fantasy, Census, Mill

A short story incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

There was an explosion in his mind, a spectacular explosion of imagination. A world appeared out of thin air. It moved, breathed, projected light and shadows. Creatures moved in and out of the darkness and light. Buildings pocked the land from castles to shacks. It was a world of his own creation, built from scratch through memory and imagination. A world so vast and ever expanding it was impossible to keep a running record of all its inhabitants.

The walnut shaped mill in his head kept churning his thoughts into fantasy.

Everything was imagined from mythical beasts to majestic feasts. Yet he could not conjure her, even in his own memory. She would not appear in his imagined world.

The waiting room in which he had dozed had grown in occupants. Nearly every seat was filled with someone coughing, bleeding, clutching their chests, or nodding off to sleep. An EMT made her rounds through the room, checking vital signs and taking temperatures, just enough to ensure people were alive in that purgatory before a hospital bed.

He’d come in to the waiting room many times before. Sometimes for food from the vending machine, sometimes for warmth but mostly for a place to sit. He often waited a full day but it was still a nice reprieve from sitting by the highway or sleeping behind the rubble of an abandoned lot. Here he had to be seen, if not immediately, then eventually but he would be seen and heard and felt and spoken to.

Here in the waiting room, they were required to pay attention to him. To hear him out. Listen to him speak and speak back. Here he would be counted among the living, even if just before they died. There would be a record of him, no matter how menial the numbers of his blood pressure were.

He nibbled at the vending machine egg salad sandwich, savoring each bite. Here he was a person, waiting like all the rest to be seen.

Abhorrent, Potato, Illumine

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

In the evenings Peter would walk around to the backside of the mall, where the dumpsters lived. Though the smell of the dumpsters behind the food court inspired in him a disgust and loathing that seemed to come from some unknown place deep within him.

Once in a while, Peter would visit the dumpsters, not for its tangible treasures but for those brief glimpses at illumined memories. Hopping into the rankest dumpster he could find, Peter closed his eyes and breathed normally. He didn’t want to force the memories, he only hoped to inspire them to surface.

The sound of a grown man’s yell might be the only memory.

A glimpse at crocodile skin slipping into murky water.

The weight of a dead body in his arms.

But they were only as real as dreams. They lacked roots in his current life. Living on the side of a highway, looking forward to meals under golden arches but otherwise settling for whatever could be found in dumpsters.

Sometimes, even while awake, Peter would lose all grip on reality and have the impusle to fly. He might stand on the edge of a freeway overpass, stuck between what he has experienced to be gravity and what he feels just might be true.

He’ll laugh when a passerby trips, falls or drops something they hold but if it’s a child, Peter rushed over to help. The guardians, the adults caring for the children tell him to “get outta here” or “get the hell outta here” or “Fuck off.”

More often than not he doesn’t feel right. He feels like a sand storm. Everything he is twisting, shaking and vibrating inside him. The only thing keeping it all in is his skin.

He kept potatoes just so he could watch them grow eyes. They looked like they were trying to escape themselves too.

Few, Differ, Disgusting

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

The few, they trudged across that vast expanse. From the mountain peaks their journey ahead seemed disgusting.

Disgusting?

No, daunting, that’s the word. Their journey seemed daunting.

Daunting? Really, isn’t that a bit cliche?

Why?

The journey ahead was dangerous or daunting. What if they journey ahead was silly? What if it would be mostly smooth but somewhat annoying? Let me decide if it will be daunting and tell me what it was. Enough preamble.

I suppose our opinions differ.

I’m in outer space and you’re trying on the 8.5 size shoe at JC Penny because the 8 was just a little bit too tight in the toes. Yeah, I suppose we differ.

Ok, the few continued their journey ahead with no idea what was in store for them.

Who is that for?

What?

“…no idea what was in store for them.” Is that for me, the reader? Are you smashing me in the nose with the obvious? Why would they know what was in store for them?

It’s just a story.

Well tell it better.

Suddenly a ravenous beast roared across the plain.

So no they’re on a plane?

No across the expansive plain.

And so the journey started and suddenly a beast roars? Excuse me, a ravenous beast.

It’s exciting.

I have no frame of reference. I don’t know who to root for, I mean you make the “beast” sound scary but it could be someones dog. I don’t know who the few travellers are and why they are where they are.

I’m going to tell you.

yes but at this point I’ve read enough.

I shall continue anyway.

I’ve closed the book, so have at it.

Slippery, Provide, Flesh

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator
Story inspired from sketches by mapka_dgjargorn9

Back then dreams were loosely contained, if at all. The structure of nightmares were slippery and sometimes the subconscious came to life; what in the world of the woke were referred to as myths, legends, fables. These were the makings of story.

Sometimes, like a finger dipped in hot candle wax, flesh was wrapped around those things which drive men to create art; giving form to emotion and feeling.

In this dream walked a procession, four deep. They had come from the hill shaded by the Samanea Saman tree at its summit. They walked; the Cloaked Ruby leading her troupe, stretching and yawning at the sky.

The short but Groovy King of Clash and Bang staring at the Cloaked Ruby’s back.

Towering over the Groovy King was William I, King of Scots. He extended his hand which held the souls of all the picts. The energy of their vibrant spirits and blue bodies radiating around William I.

Snarling at the rear of the parade was the gentle Bovix, carnivorous, yes, but only of that dead meat provided by vanquished enemies.

They marched towards the entrance formed by two gnarled tree trunks. Deformed by the wizardry and witchcraft of so many practicing sorcerers passing by. The tree’s marked the entrance into the waking world, tethered by a tangled wire.