Badmovies.org Forum

Other Topics => Off Topic Discussion => Topic started by: indianasmith on September 06, 2016, 11:01:42 PM



Title: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: indianasmith on September 06, 2016, 11:01:42 PM
As you may have heard, our very own ER issued me a challenge to write a short story featuring several - shall we say, unusual and diverse elements? - last week.  Well, I did it, I liked the way it came out, and the story - with a brief account of its origins, is my blog post for this week.  Enjoy, and leave your comments!!


(Warning:  This wound up being a very creepy little story, so if you are easily frightened, avoid! Bwuhahahahaha!)


http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/ (http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/)

PS:  I returned the challenge and dared her to write a story that included:

 A compulsive lizard catcher
 Jellied toast
 two nuns
 a random celebrity cameo
 and a Hamster named Albert

Her result was hilarious but a bit too inappropriate for my kid-friendly blog.
But I bet with a bit of encouragement she might post it here.
Come on, ER, pretty please??




Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on September 07, 2016, 12:06:06 PM
Nice.... And you'd used Romancing the Stone as a reference :)


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on September 07, 2016, 12:56:48 PM
As you may have heard, our very own ER issued me a challenge to write a short story featuring several - shall we say, unusual and diverse elements? - last week.  Well, I did it, I liked the way it came out, and the story - with a brief account of its origins, is my blog post for this week.  Enjoy, and leave your comments!!


(Warning:  This wound up being a very creepy little story, so if you are easily frightened, avoid! Bwuhahahahaha!)


[url]http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/[/url] ([url]http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/[/url])

PS:  I returned the challenge and dared her to write a story that included:

 A compulsive lizard catcher
 Jellied toast
 two nuns
 a random celebrity cameo
 a doctor with twitchy hands
 and a Hamster named Albert

Her result was hilarious but a bit too inappropriate for my kid-friendly blog.
But I bet with a bit of encouragement she might post it here.
Come on, ER, pretty please??





All right, here's my story.....


The Unholy Beginning of the Holy Vocation of Sister Alphonza: Or The Whole Story of a An Infamous Hole---Amen!



In the summer of 2016, two seasoned nuns were flying back to Los Angeles after attending a conference on multi-cultural Catholic schools, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago, when a smiling stewardess appeared and discreetly said, “We have an unexpected opening in First Class, and the pilot would like me to offer it to one of you.”

Each nun insisted the other be the one to take the seat, but finally they settled on a coin toss. The nun who won, Sister Alphonza, was slightly younger than her companion, only in her late-fifties, and guiltily took advantage of the upgrade. She went into the First Class section and settled into an aisle seat next to a man wearing camouflage, with a pith helmet in his lap.

“Hullo, Sister!” this man said with a hearty Outback accent, “The name’s Charlie, Charlie Monroe, licensed wedding photographer and avocational---and between you and me rather compulsive---lizard catcher. I’m back from givin’ a talk on herpetology in Chicago and looking forward to flying home to Queensland by way of the good old City of Angels.”

The nun, Sister Alphonza, introduced herself and soon found that she liked her First Class companion almost immediately. He had an earthy sense of humor and a good heart. She reached into a pocket on her habit and pulled out a baggie with jellied toast inside, the crusts neatly trimmed away, and offered one to her new friend.

“Well if I ain’t a wallaby’s behind!’ the Aussie exclaimed. “How’d you get that lot past airport security? Why they wouldn’t even let me have a bite of the vegemite sammich I packed!”

“Being a nun has its privileges, even in 2016,” Alphonza said slyly as she handed over a piece of toast.

In truth Alphonza was a bit dyspeptic and growing moreso now that she was past fifty, and airline food did not sit well with her, so the situation was either she brought her own or had nothing til they landed. In fact it was because of her poor digestion that she had taken an early interest in medicine, which led to her first career long ago, two years spent as an emergency room nurse in the San Fernando Valley.

Feeling unusually expansive, she mentioned this to her Aussie companion and he said, “Really?! First a nurse and then a nun? And how did that transformation come about?”

“Well the official story is I quit ignoring the persistent voice inside me whispering that my real calling lay in helping others less in a medical setting and more in holy orders, so one day I heeded my Vocation, and have never looked back.”

“Beeeyooteeful!” Mr. Monroe the lizard catcher whistled. “But you said that’s the official version, and truth be told, Sister, I’m a man who can’t abide a mystery, be it where your Jimmy Hoffa ended up, or how porcupines make love—begging your pardon---so if I might ask, what’s the unofficial version you referred to? If I may ask, that is.”

He nibbled the last of his toast and wiped a figment of jelly off his fingertips.

Sister Alphonza hesitated, but only a second. The friendly Australian seemed down to earth, and she also appreciated him treating her with good-natured bonhomie instead of the seriousness far too many people reserved for those nuns who crossed their path, as if there was no human being under the habit, just some sort of one-dimensional icon, so it only took Alphonza three seconds to decide to tell her secret story to this colorful man she figured she’d never see again.

“Back,” she began, in the very early 1980s, when I was still Monica Miller, RN, and not yet Alphonza of the Cross, I was going through a difficult time, struggling to reconcile my inner sense of greater destiny according to God’s plan with my satisfaction in being a nurse laboring for the common good. Before I went to work on one particular night I asked God for a sign. Should I retreat into holy life, or stay in the world. ‘God,’ I prayed, ‘if You want me to become a nun, give me a sign. Show me how corrupt this world is, and I will retreat from its allure.’

Well, I was doing the graveyard shift at a county ER in the Valley, Dr. Perez and I had just finished bandaging a sprained wrist, when we heard a man come into the waiting room very upset saying, “I think I’ve killed him! I think I killed my lover!”

Well we knew crowded ERs were panic-prone enough without that kind of announcement, and so we hurried the man away into an exam room, and he was obviously in quite a state, this fellow. He was sweating, he was disturbed, and his face and hands was badly marred with tiny scratches. Oh, he was quite the attractive fellow, dark hair, tan, but very much in a sorry state. His expensive clothes were disheveled, as if hastily donned, and his hair was tossed around as if he’d been having a passionate night before something went badly wrong. I also couldn’t help but notice he was walking… oddly.

We tried to sit him on the table but he insisted on standing. “I can’t sit right now. It’d be too painful,” he told us.” Then he keened, “Oh, I’ve killed him this time. I’ve killed my lover. I know he’d dead this time. Please, I need your help, I am in a lot of pain right now. It’s…it’s my…” He couldn’t say the words but he pointed to his backside.

Ah, I thought, well judge not lest I be judged. You see a lot in the ER and gay sex gone rough was only one part of it. Dr. Perez did what he could to get the man calm and asked him his name.

“It’s Richard,” our patient said.

“All right, Richard,” asked Dr. Perez, “and what exactly happened?”

“It was only a sex game, a game we play all the time, but it went too far and he’s dead. I felt him die! I killed my lover and best friend!”

Well Dr. Perez looked at me and I looked at him. This sounded like serious stuff, and while we had strict protocols to summon the police when faced with evidence of a crime, our first duty was to give medical treatment, so the doctor had the man remove his slacks, expensive Milanese slacks as it happened, this man had money if nothing else. Then down came his undershorts, silk boxers, also pricey, and we saw that like his face and hands, Richard’s buttocks were all scratched up. It looked painful, and though I was disgusted, I was a professional caregiver and did not flinch away.

“Lord, “I thought, “is this Your sign? I’ve seen men hurt over gay sex before. I’d wanted evidence that the world was too corrupt for me to be part of it, and that the holy life was where I belonged, but I'm not sure yet. If this is Your sign to me, make it clearer, please.”

“By golly, I’d want more proof too before I changed my entire life’s path,” Monroe the Australian agreed in his seat beside Alphonza. “It’d take a lot to get me to give up catching lizards and become a monk. Not like there ain’t poofsters aplenty in the world. So what came next?”

“So,” the Sister continued demurely, “Dr. Perez donned a nylon glove and some warmed lubricating gel and had no sooner begun the necessary examination when I heard him gasp and saw him jerk back, so disturbed his hands became twitchy.

“Richard,” he said, his native accent thickening with shock, “is that a hamster lodged in your rectum?”

“It’s Albert, my poor Albert!” Richard wailed. “I’m a Buddhist, I’m supposed to treat all life with respect, but I couldn’t help it. Albert always seemed to enjoy this as much as I did, but he went in too deep this time and….” Here Richard blubbered. “Suffocated inside my butt!”

“So it was,” Sister Alphonza told her Australian friend, “I found my calling staring down at the corruption of the outer world in the form of good Dr. Perez removing a dead hamster from a celebrity’s fundament.”

The Australian beside her had been listening aghast, and then began to guffaw. “You don’t mean to say that old urban legend is true?”

“Yes,” Sister Alphonza confirmed, “my Vocation to the nunnery began on the night I helped remove a hamster from inside Richard Gere!”




Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: alandhopewell on September 13, 2016, 12:58:44 PM
As you may have heard, our very own ER issued me a challenge to write a short story featuring several - shall we say, unusual and diverse elements? - last week.  Well, I did it, I liked the way it came out, and the story - with a brief account of its origins, is my blog post for this week.  Enjoy, and leave your comments!!


(Warning:  This wound up being a very creepy little story, so if you are easily frightened, avoid! Bwuhahahahaha!)


[url]http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/[/url] ([url]http://lewisliterarylair.blogspot.com/[/url])

PS:  I returned the challenge and dared her to write a story that included:

 A compulsive lizard catcher
 Jellied toast
 two nuns
 a random celebrity cameo
 a doctor with twitchy hands
 and a Hamster named Albert

Her result was hilarious but a bit too inappropriate for my kid-friendly blog.
But I bet with a bit of encouragement she might post it here.
Come on, ER, pretty please??





All right, here's my story.....


The Unholy Beginning of the Holy Vocation of Sister Alphonza: Or The Whole Story of a An Infamous Hole---Amen!



In the summer of 2016, two seasoned nuns were flying back to Los Angeles after attending a conference on multi-cultural Catholic schools, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago, when a smiling stewardess appeared and discreetly said, “We have an unexpected opening in First Class, and the pilot would like me to offer it to one of you.”

Each nun insisted the other be the one to take the seat, but finally they settled on a coin toss. The nun who won, Sister Alphonza, was slightly younger than her companion, only in her late-fifties, and guiltily took advantage of the upgrade. She went into the First Class section and settled into an aisle seat next to a man wearing camouflage, with a pith helmet in his lap.

“Hullo, Sister!” this man said with a hearty Outback accent, “The name’s Charlie, Charlie Monroe, licensed wedding photographer and avocational---and between you and me rather compulsive---lizard catcher. I’m back from givin’ a talk on herpetology in Chicago and looking forward to flying home to Queensland by way of the good old City of Angels.”

The nun, Sister Alphonza, introduced herself and soon found that she liked her First Class companion almost immediately. He had an earthy sense of humor and a good heart. She reached into a pocket on her habit and pulled out a baggie with jellied toast inside, the crusts neatly trimmed away, and offered one to her new friend.

“Well if I ain’t a wallaby’s behind!’ the Aussie exclaimed. “How’d you get that lot past airport security? Why they wouldn’t even let me have a bite of the vegemite sammich I packed!”

“Being a nun has its privileges, even in 2016,” Alphonza said slyly as she handed over a piece of toast.

In truth Alphonza was a bit dyspeptic and growing moreso now that she was past fifty, and airline food did not sit well with her, so the situation was either she brought her own or had nothing til they landed. In fact it was because of her poor digestion that she had taken an early interest in medicine, which led to her first career long ago, two years spent as an emergency room nurse in the San Fernando Valley.

Feeling unusually expansive, she mentioned this to her Aussie companion and he said, “Really?! First a nurse and then a nun? And how did that transformation come about?”

“Well the official story is I quit ignoring the persistent voice inside me whispering that my real calling lay in helping others less in a medical setting and more in holy orders, so one day I heeded my Vocation, and have never looked back.”

“Beeeyooteeful!” Mr. Monroe the lizard catcher whistled. “But you said that’s the official version, and truth be told, Sister, I’m a man who can’t abide a mystery, be it where your Jimmy Hoffa ended up, or how porcupines make love—begging your pardon---so if I might ask, what’s the unofficial version you referred to? If I may ask, that is.”

He nibbled the last of his toast and wiped a figment of jelly off his fingertips.

Sister Alphonza hesitated, but only a second. The friendly Australian seemed down to earth, and she also appreciated him treating her with good-natured bonhomie instead of the seriousness far too many people reserved for those nuns who crossed their path, as if there was no human being under the habit, just some sort of one-dimensional icon, so it only took Alphonza three seconds to decide to tell her secret story to this colorful man she figured she’d never see again.

“Back,” she began, in the very early 1980s, when I was still Monica Miller, RN, and not yet Alphonza of the Cross, I was going through a difficult time, struggling to reconcile my inner sense of greater destiny according to God’s plan with my satisfaction in being a nurse laboring for the common good. Before I went to work on one particular night I asked God for a sign. Should I retreat into holy life, or stay in the world. ‘God,’ I prayed, ‘if You want me to become a nun, give me a sign. Show me how corrupt this world is, and I will retreat from its allure.’

Well, I was doing the graveyard shift at a county ER in the Valley, Dr. Perez and I had just finished bandaging a sprained wrist, when we heard a man come into the waiting room very upset saying, “I think I’ve killed him! I think I killed my lover!”

Well we knew crowded ERs were panic-prone enough without that kind of announcement, and so we hurried the man away into an exam room, and he was obviously in quite a state, this fellow. He was sweating, he was disturbed, and his face and hands was badly marred with tiny scratches. Oh, he was quite the attractive fellow, dark hair, tan, but very much in a sorry state. His expensive clothes were disheveled, as if hastily donned, and his hair was tossed around as if he’d been having a passionate night before something went badly wrong. I also couldn’t help but notice he was walking… oddly.

We tried to sit him on the table but he insisted on standing. “I can’t sit right now. It’d be too painful,” he told us.” Then he keened, “Oh, I’ve killed him this time. I’ve killed my lover. I know he’d dead this time. Please, I need your help, I am in a lot of pain right now. It’s…it’s my…” He couldn’t say the words but he pointed to his backside.

Ah, I thought, well judge not lest I be judged. You see a lot in the ER and gay sex gone rough was only one part of it. Dr. Perez did what he could to get the man calm and asked him his name.

“It’s Richard,” our patient said.

“All right, Richard,” asked Dr. Perez, “and what exactly happened?”

“It was only a sex game, a game we play all the time, but it went too far and he’s dead. I felt him die! I killed my lover and best friend!”

Well Dr. Perez looked at me and I looked at him. This sounded like serious stuff, and while we had strict protocols to summon the police when faced with evidence of a crime, our first duty was to give medical treatment, so the doctor had the man remove his slacks, expensive Milanese slacks as it happened, this man had money if nothing else. Then down came his undershorts, silk boxers, also pricey, and we saw that like his face and hands, Richard’s buttocks were all scratched up. It looked painful, and though I was disgusted, I was a professional caregiver and did not flinch away.

“Lord, “I thought, “is this Your sign? I’ve seen men hurt over gay sex before. I’d wanted evidence that the world was too corrupt for me to be part of it, and that the holy life was where I belonged, but I'm not sure yet. If this is Your sign to me, make it clearer, please.”

“By golly, I’d want more proof too before I changed my entire life’s path,” Monroe the Australian agreed in his seat beside Alphonza. “It’d take a lot to get me to give up catching lizards and become a monk. Not like there ain’t poofsters aplenty in the world. So what came next?”

“So,” the Sister continued demurely, “Dr. Perez donned a nylon glove and some warmed lubricating gel and had no sooner begun the necessary examination when I heard him gasp and saw him jerk back, so disturbed his hands became twitchy.

“Richard,” he said, his native accent thickening with shock, “is that a hamster lodged in your rectum?”

“It’s Albert, my poor Albert!” Richard wailed. “I’m a Buddhist, I’m supposed to treat all life with respect, but I couldn’t help it. Albert always seemed to enjoy this as much as I did, but he went in too deep this time and….” Here Richard blubbered. “Suffocated inside my butt!”

“So it was,” Sister Alphonza told her Australian friend, “I found my calling staring down at the corruption of the outer world in the form of good Dr. Perez removing a dead hamster from a celebrity’s fundament.”

The Australian beside her had been listening aghast, and then began to guffaw. “You don’t mean to say that old urban legend is true?”

“Yes,” Sister Alphonza confirmed, “my Vocation to the nunnery began on the night I helped remove a hamster from inside Richard Gere!”





     That was totally strange, but cool.


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Flangepart on September 13, 2016, 05:00:03 PM
Interesting challenge!
I'll submit this to my writers group, and see if we can't use the idea for a test of out imaginations. Thanks, you loons!


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: indianasmith on September 13, 2016, 09:18:12 PM
I hadn't done anything like this before, and I think we both really enjoyed it.


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on September 26, 2016, 08:18:13 AM
We should do another one of these.


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on September 30, 2016, 11:06:02 AM
A range rover
A living doll with a taste for the good life
An Irene Adler drag queen
The Old Quarter of Prague
A reformed Quaker
A mute duck
A suspicious glass of water
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.

Simple enough, right? Go!


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on September 30, 2016, 11:08:58 AM
A range rover
A living doll with a taste for the good life
An Irene Adler drag queen
The Old Quarter of Prague
A reformed Quaker
A mute duck
A suspicious glass of water
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.

Simple enough, right? Go!

I might take on this challenge :)


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 05, 2016, 10:45:13 AM
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.

I don't know much about TS Eliot but wow... it seemed that he was frighten by Syphilis. I do think it was odd that TS Eliot told a friend that he's only marring Viv to lose his Virginity. (originally I thought you wrote this as a joke but now I see)... I'm not sure of the month but it looks like July, 1915...

:)


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on October 06, 2016, 10:13:37 AM
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.

I don't know much about TS Eliot but wow... it seemed that he was frighten by Syphilis. I do think it was odd that TS Eliot told a friend that he's only marring Viv to lose his Virginity. (originally I thought you wrote this as a joke but now I see)... I'm not sure of the month but it looks like July, 1915...

:)

You rule, skull!


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 06, 2016, 02:28:38 PM
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.

I don't know much about TS Eliot but wow... it seemed that he was frighten by Syphilis. I do think it was odd that TS Eliot told a friend that he's only marring Viv to lose his Virginity. (originally I thought you wrote this as a joke but now I see)... I'm not sure of the month but it looks like July, 1915...

:)

You rule, skull!

LOL, so it was July - TS Eliot is such a creep.  I did like the year 1915 but the Range Rover throw that off. The vehicle was sold to the public starting from 1970... :)




Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: indianasmith on October 06, 2016, 09:30:38 PM
Sounds like your story might involve time travel . . .  :teddyr:


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 07, 2016, 05:28:22 AM
Sounds like your story might involve time travel . . .  :teddyr:

I have an idea. Not time traveling but the story is going to take place in mid 1970's or early 1980's... as well as July :)



Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on October 18, 2016, 09:34:56 AM
How goes the story, Skull?  :smile:


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 18, 2016, 10:58:41 AM
How goes the story, Skull?  :smile:

It's going ok. I got like 760+ words so far. The reformed Quaker got me stumped because I didn't know much about Quakers and I had to read about them, yet a reformed one.

I'm not sure how many words this may take me because I still have not hit the living doll, the drag queen, mute duck and the glass of water... but it's looking good. And I'm hoping to post it by this weekend :)



Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on October 18, 2016, 12:36:04 PM
Good grief, man, you are going all out!


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 19, 2016, 09:41:05 AM
Good grief, man, you are going all out!

I'm having fun with this :)


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 20, 2016, 05:23:56 PM
wow I'm finished. :)

This story was inspired from ER's challenge

A range rover
A living doll with a taste for the good life
An Irene Adler drag queen
The Old Quarter of Prague
A reformed Quaker
A mute duck
A suspicious glass of water
And the month in which TS Eliot lost his virginity to Viv.



The story is 4,500 words. Most likely I'll rewrite this story but I'll end up adding 4,000 more words.


https://www.wattpad.com/324490726-a-girl-from-a-paperback-novel (https://www.wattpad.com/324490726-a-girl-from-a-paperback-novel)




Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: ER on October 20, 2016, 06:23:28 PM
I am like....sooooo impressed, dude! Should I read it now or wait for the re-write?


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 20, 2016, 07:41:43 PM
I am like....sooooo impressed, dude! Should I read it now or wait for the re-write?

Thanks I really enjoyed the list you posted.

Please read it, tell me what you think. And I'll be happy to explain how I came up with the story :)


Title: Re: My response to the Short Story Challenge!
Post by: Skull on October 25, 2016, 09:11:24 AM
I had so much fun writing this short story:

https://www.wattpad.com/324490726-a-girl-from-a-paperback-novel (https://www.wattpad.com/324490726-a-girl-from-a-paperback-novel)


Now I feel I should make my short story Challenge.


The year when Ed Wood wore an Angora Sweater
Mad Doctor
Zebra
Hot Water
Somebody with a hump on their back (it don't have to be a hunchback)
A quote from George Orwell's 1984 (please list the quote)
A quote from Prince (Rogers Nelson) (please list the quote, and the quote can be a song lyric)
A Vincent Price Character. (please list the character)

Please have fun :)