The exercise:
Let us return to the Random CD prompt. Go find a song, as randomly as you wish, and borrow its first line as your own. Then... take it from there. Credit blah blah due blah blah blah.
Between this morning and this evening I managed to finish weeding around all of our squash plants. It was a bigger job than I'd been expecting, mostly because the plants really spread out and all of their little runners just love wrapping themselves around any and all weeds they can get a hold of. So I'm glad that's done for now.
I'll probably spend most of my time in the garden tomorrow mulching the new strawberry patch. It's possible that I'll get it finished, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
Mine:
Feel by Robbie Williams
"Come on hold my hand, I want to contact the living." Yelram reached for me with a confidence I despised. Like there was no question that I would do as he wanted.
"Who is it this time?" I asked, fists buried in my pockets.
"What does it matter? You know it's always a good time!"
"Always, huh?" I could feel myself entering dangerous territory but for some reason I just couldn't shut my mouth. "Like that time in the woods when we nearly gave those two kids heart attacks?"
"Yeah, that was a blast!" Yelram cackled before realizing his hand was still empty. "What, are you going hot on me? You know the living deserve all that we give them and worse."
"No, I don't know that." It was like I was watching the conversation from outside my body. Like I had no control over what I was saying. "I think they're doing the best that they can and maybe they could even use a little bit of help from us every now and again."
"Oh, Repsac... you must be the lamest ghost in the afterlife." He shook his head slowly, his expression a mixture of disappointment and disgust. "Later, dude. I'm going to go find some ghouls with a sense of humour who are actually into haunting the living."
2 comments:
Are the squash plants putting out the runners to the weeds so that they can choke them to death themselves? Or are they just trying to keep their friends from being ripped out of the ground and brutally murdered by you? :)
Hmm, I spotted that Yelram was Marley spelled backwards straight away, so Repsac was easy after that :) I like the way you've handled the ghosts and their desire to scare the living though, and some of the little twists ("are you going hot on me?") really add to the atmosphere. And it is rather neat how you've pulled the Friendly Ghost together with Robbie Williams!
Bad Wolf (Hollow Moon) by AWOLNation
I've been running from it all my lifetime. It's a secret, most people I do business with would probably laugh at you if you told them I was scared of anything. In fact, the man I'm sat opposite now, his hands gripping the arms of his chair so tightly his knuckles have gone white, his face the purple of an incipient heart-attack, and sweat trickling from his forehead down the open collar of his shirt, would probably put his fear of me aside for long enough to laugh at you.
I lower the taser and he relaxes a little. I can hear the leather padding on the arms of the chair creak as the pressure is released.
"Red," he says, and he stumbles over it because his mouth's gone dry with fear and he needs to get the saliva flowing before his tongue will work. "Red, I never said I wasn't going to pay you."
"Frankly," I say, frowning, "I'm suprised you even brought the topic of my fee up at all. We agreed it at the beginning and I was clear then I don't negotiate."
"I thought...," he says, and I watch his eyes dart from side to side as he tries to work out how to say his piece without upsetting me further. "I thought you might like to know that there are other services now available. Uh... competition, if you will."
"It's not a service if it never delivers," I say. "I know who's running it, and I know you'll never get what you pay for."
"You know Wolfe?"
He's lucky I'm calm and in control because my finger very nearly spasms at the mention of that name, and Mr. Phillips very nearly gets 240,000 volts in his chest and that wouldn't do his pacemaker much good at all.
"We have history," I say, and I can hear how stilted I sound. Mr. Phillips seems not to notice, but perhaps the taser has his attention still. I sigh. "Tell you what, Mr. Phillips," I say. "Pay me for the work I've done and we'll terminate the contract. You can go see what Wolfe will do for you and how cheap he can be." I have to suppress a shudder.
"No, no...," he says, his face back to a normal colour now. "No, I'm happy for people to know that you're handling my business interests, Miss Hood."
"I'm glad to hear it," I say, putting the taser away at last.
Greg - I chose the first explanation, as I prefer to think the plants are actually on my side :P
Love the take on Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. I wonder what the services being rendered are... but I'm not sure I actually want to know!
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