WHAT THE FORK IS GOING ON HERE?

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hat the fork is going on here,” asked the fat man with the shiny forehead. 

I had to turn to look at him because the words did not match the tone. 

My first vision of him was one to behold. He was wearing a button up Hawaiian shirt in muted tropical colors, like it had become intimate friends with the hot water laundry over many years of beloved service. He was wearing khaki shorts that came down to his hairy knees. He was wearing loafers with white crew socks. He had his hair combed, or combed over, straight across his head, greased down to almost a perfect crease, obviously done with great care in front of the mirror. 

He looked out of place in the bar, where business men and women stood waiting for their glasses of wine or craft ale. He held out his brightly colored cocktail toward the bartender, with a bewildered look on his paunchy face. He was rather short, so he had to look up to the bartender as he spoke.

“Why is there a fork in my drink?” He asked. “There is supposed to be a festive cocktail umbrella, like I ordered. A fork looks nothing like an umbrella, I am not sure how you could have mistaken the two.” 

It was clear the man had partaken in a few of these tropical concoctions as the night had passed. He did not appear angry but more affronted by the bartender’s mistake. 

“I can’t do anything with this fork. I can’t drink through it like a straw, and when I try to use it like a spoon, the drink just goes right through it back into the glass. It would take me all night to drink it like this, and I really don’t have all night.”

The bartender smiled kindly at the man, and offered to fix him a new drink, this one with a foldable, paper umbrella, just like they had in Hawaii. The man nodded in appreciation. 

As he turned to walk back to his table with the freshened, newly umbrellaed drink, I saw that he had a red carnation pinned to his left lapel. 

It hit me like a hammer. This was my tinder date. What the fork.

That was a very short story I wrote in my writing group prior to COVID. We would meet every other week at a coffee shop, a different one each time, and work on writing prompts. This one was simply “What the fork is going on here?” What came after was all from our imaginations. I loved that group. We all loved to write, read our work, and play writing games before we would go back to our own lives which were dominated by non-writing activities. The group tried to stay together after the lockdown, but just like everything else, it faded away over a very short time as we all adjusted to our new lives.

I love going back and reading the little tidbits of stories I wrote back then. They were whimsical and fun. So much different than writing chapters for books, or whole books. They captured mere minutes in life, fleeting thoughts and actions. Something small and trivial until put to words on “paper.”

I always enjoy sharing my work, so I will treat you to a couple more today.

ALTERNATIVE VAMPIRE

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She had not fed for days. She could feel the weakness in her limbs. It had started with the tingling in her toes. She wiggled them in her Converse sneakers, and at the same time that she was developing an unsightly hole in the left shoe. She would have to take a trip to the outlet stores on the weekend to buy a new pair. Black high-tops. Chucks. She had been wearing them for 3 decades, one pair after another, through all the trends and styles. They always seemed to be in. Now she pushed that thought away and found herself shaking her wrists, like one used to do with a mercury thermometer. She hated that feeling of pins and needles. She felt uneasy, and was sure that all around her could sense her discomfort. She did a quick survey. She was sitting at an outside table at a coffee shop, her latte in front of her, ignored as she contemplated her dire situation. If anyone was looking, it was due to her spaced out appearance, not because they knew her secret. She had kept it to herself for over a century, and today would not be the day it was revealed. She had been too careful. She had lost friends and lovers to carelessness over the decades, and now, as she sat alone, watching the city dwellers go on with their daily routine, she thought it might be her time. No, I am not ready, she insisted to herself. There is too much to do, too much to fix. I must find a way to go on. She had been weak, she had succumbed to the urges to leave her past behind and move on, not preparing for what was to come. She sipped her drink and grimaced. She twirled around the contents, as if to believe that the heat resided at the bottom of the cup, just waiting to be released. She sipped again. Cold. She stood up and walked to the trash can and threw the cup inside with a look of disgust. As if she thought this could save her. How long could she go? Did she have the strength to get to where she needed to be, to get what she needed, to thrive again? 

She thought of her mother. She had not seen her since that fateful night so many years ago, when she had turned …different. Her parents and brothers would be long gone now. She did not know if they married, had children, grandchildren. It would probably be easy to find out, but to what end? How could she ever explain her affliction, how she remained forever young, and had to feed….

It was time to make a plan. She took out her cell phone and started to search. She found a likely place not too far away. It was one train and 2 bus rides from where she was. She could be there by 4pm. It was a start. 

She walked to the train stop and stood apart from the others. She could not stand the smell of humans when she was hungry. They repulsed her. It was hard to believe she used to walk among them as one of them. It was easier early on, when one could go days without seeing a neighbor, and had to make an effort to be in a crowd.  Now she could not get away, no matter where she went. They did not understand her any more than she understood their modern ways. 

The train pulled up and she got in the front car. Sat in the front and wondered if this would work. Every time was a struggle. But it was worth the effort, to keep going, to keep vital.

An hour later, she got off the bus and approached her destination. She paid her fee and went inside. She walked around looking for the most likely target. There it was, in the corner, by itself, apart from the crowd. She looked around. No one could see her, no one could stop her. She stepped over the fence. She approached it. She stooped down to its level. Now, if only she could think of a way to get the goat to surrender its tears.

MAGIC WAS THE KEY

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Magic was the key. He had been practicing since he was a child and learned about Houdini. He adored escapes and sleight of hand, although an occasional card trick kept him entertained. He was in high school now and trying to work out a plan. 

The idea of pursuing magic came on him like a strike of magic! He would pursue his dream of entertaining the masses with his tricks and illusions. He would tempt them with his deceit and reel them in with his revelations! He had to find a way to make this dream a reality. He had never heard of a college major in magic. That would be his ideal, to spend the remainder of his formative years immersed in his passion, learning from the masters, perfecting his trade and adding his own illusions to those that came before him. But the dream might not come to fruition if there was no place for him to go to learn. There was no Hogwarts University, and no owl to invite him to study with witches and wizards. If there was something like that, he had not been made aware, and had to look at all of his options.

He needed a trick. One would reel everyone in. With everyone having computers now, he would be able to video tape his new trick and entrance the world with his glory. He would have to get a video camera. He could use his savings, that was set aside for college, as college now did not seem to be his calling. He would bring the world of magic to its knees. Magicians would be lining up at his door, seeking to learn his secret, but he would not reveal it, not yet. Not until his notoriety had hit a crescendo, until he was producing new tricks and drawing new audiences. It would be fantastic. No one would ever call him four eyed McGee anymore. They would be begging for his autograph, just to touch the hem of his cape.

So now he needed to invent the new trick. He looked around his room. He listed his assets. A box full of D and D dice, half spilling on to his desk on top of his loose papers and gum wrappers. An apple core that he had hurled toward the trash bin on Tuesday, but it bounced off the rim and onto a pile of dirty jeans and briefs. His fish tank with the single Siamese Fighting Fish, sitting still in the center of the tank but for the wagging of a dorsal fin. Muddy dog prints on the carpet on his white tee shirt on the floor near the hamper. Not much to go on. He could make an apple disappear, but that was simply by ingesting it. Nothing new or fancy. 

He opened the window to air out the smell of dirty socks, and to try to extend the time until his mother told him his room smelled like the inside of a gym locker. He took a deep breath of the late spring air, and caught a whiff of baking bread coming from the bakery down the street. His mind started to drift toward the rumble in his stomach. He knew the magic trick to make that go away. Just at that moment, there was a call from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”

As he headed barefoot down the stairs, taking them 2 at a time, he pondered asking his mother her trick for knowing when it was just the right time to feed her family. That was the real magic. 

If you are interested in writing groups, you can probably find them on Facebook or Instagram in your search bar. Many are on-line, but there are also local groups that meet too. We enjoyed using word or prompt generators to come up with ideas for our fifteen-minute writing sprints. There are a lot of options to choose from online. I wish you luck in your writing! Happy Summer!

Here again are the links to my Facebook page, Debby Meltzer Quick Author, TikTok, @dbmquick and Instagram, quickdebby_author. Please follow me on these pages. And please explore my page here at debbymeltzerquickauthor.com.

And here is the link to my new book, Don’t Say a Word