Sunday, April 08, 2012

A Severing: A Trifecta Writing Challenge

Here is this weekend's prompt:
For this week's Trifextra, we're switching things up a little bit. The 33-word stories are fun to read, but we wanted to give you a bit more leeway this weekend.The challenge is to write a response that is between 33 and 333 words long and uses the words listed below.
Use the words however you wish, but make sure that all three appear in your response. Oh, and they must appear in order. Good luck!

cacophony
soap
insects

My response, in 245 words, is entitled A Severing.

"They don't deserve you."
It was not the first time she had said such a thing, but this morning that sentence was a wedge. An echo in his left ear, surrounding him now as Higgs prattled on -- a severing is what it was.
Steepled hands on his brow, Jim listened to his latest proposal being shot down with the same old gun, stray bullets entering previous holes in the clattering roof of his mind.
"Recent projections show the Wellesly account in a collapse unless…"
"I know that Higgs, but not a damn one of my recommendations were followed since our last meeting. Who is in charge of…"
"We're all in charge, Jim -- it's a collective ass we're talking about here!"
But Dominique was right. There are limits to democracy. I climb the tree. I see as clear as falling from it, what is right, and bring it back to everyone else, to a cacophony of inept common denominators. For God's sake!
His fist coming down shocked them, pitchers of water rippling.
The mind is funny. What it remembers.
As he rose from the table Jim saw the bubbles slipping down her back as she spoke those four words. Soap trickling across her It's all good! tattoo.
We have enough to retire with, three times over.
Done with it. Finished with these insects of idiocy.
Jim tore off his tie and shook every shareholder from his lapels, slamming the door to a doomed boardroom.

_____

Click on the Trifectacycle© above. Visit. Read the inventive, diverse submissions.
Submit your own. Writing is fun [or should be].
*****

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Insects of idiocy' - I haven't heard that before and I like it!

booguloo said...

A pretty complex story line with so few words. Nicely done.

k~ said...

This was a fantastic example of figurative language used succinctly. There are several phrases that I really enjoyed, one of them is: "a cacophony of inept common denominators" wonderful use of the prompts!

Trifecta said...

Thanks for linking up this weekend. We hope you can come back for the weekday challenge too. Remember to check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for news on what's happening on the site.

Anonymous said...

Love your story.
Good for Jim!
C.

Cipriano said...

Thank you all for these lovely comments.
I find that writing with these sort of artificially inflicted parameters, is a lot of fun!
Happy writing to you all!
-- Cip