Month: March 2021

Escape

This is my contribution—late—to the Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog challenge. As always, it’s 99 words, no more no less. The challenge is to write an escape. I’m trying to condense my novel-in-progress into 99 words. Let’s see how it goes.

Analog Recording System Broke Down. Now All Digital

She sat, shredding tissue in her lap, waiting for a counselor. Once he’d passed out, she’d tied her husband, spread-eagled, to their four-poster bed using two pairs of thigh-hi nylons. Then she beat him with his own belt—the buckle end. Bruises and abrasions on her own body still throbbed. The old ones made her skin a rainbow. He was a lawyer. Every time she’d tried to leave, he’d found a way to block her. If she could make them believe she was a danger to him, maybe they would check her in and save her life—and his.

Cream Puffs

What follows is a Carrot Ranch Literary Community 99-word blog challenge. The challenge this time is the idea of a deep wish.

My mom before she was my mom.

Frigid wind blowing off Lake Erie.

Door blows open; tinkles shut.

Warm smells of baking—golden loaves, croissants

Sweet scent of cookies, cakes, cream puffs.

Crisp crust flakes; filling fills senses

Warm vanilla pudding envelopes the tongue

Eyes widen; an ecstatic surprise.

Me, only three, shy in my Shirley

Temple curls, little fur hat and muff.

We left in winter, ran from open skies, silence.

I remember almost nothing, except

This bakery with a tinkling bell and cream puffs.

Later, we returned to Dad and stayed together,

But I long to buy Mom one more cream puff.

Corona Virus Mania

You may have noticed if you drilled down (only two posts) that I essentially repeated the same post with one of the same photos. Can you believe, only a few days apart, that I forgot the first when I wrote the second? YIKES!! I need to get out of the house. So here’s what I’m looking forward to in the same area.

Bluewing Teal on Sandhills marsh

Categories: Our Prairie Habitat

Frigid Covid Journey

This is a Girlie-on-the-Edge six sentence blog challenge post. The prompt word is journey.

Gudmundsen Ranch Road, February 2021

Martin Bay, Lake McConaughy, February 2021
  1. Covid fatigue; cabin fever; can’t stand it anymore.
  2. Photo excursion into the Sandhills
  3. Wind chill minus thirty; twelve inches of show; too cold to get out and walk; wheelbase too low to drive off road.
  4. North into the teeth of the wind, looking for road kills; photos out the car windows—open of course with wind pouring in.
  5. Trees clumps of naked grey sticks on a field of white—white earth, white sky.
  6. Then sun; on Gudmundsen Ranch Road north of Whitman; sunset on Martin Bay—frozen lake stretching as far as the I can see.

Fire on Ice

This is a Carrot Ranch 99-word Nature Challenge Story

Afflicted with cabin fever, I drove north into the Sandhills—wind chill -30o with a foot of snow. All photos road kills—too cold to walk far, wheelbase too low to drive off-road. Lonely tree skeletons rode the choppy waves of Nebraska’s grass frozen sand sea. The ranch road north of Whitman curled up and down hill contours. My wide 285-mile loop ended at Martin Bay next to acres and miles of frozen Lake McConaughy. Driving the tall dam with little in the way of markers induced adrenaline in the frozen dusk, sunset a band of fire on ice.