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Elizabeth: Friday Writing Sprints – I Could do this Blindfolded!

blindfolded-yogaIt has been a crazy week with a business trip, a conference, some presentations, and a moderated panel discussion.  All that adulting in public has left me worn out.  I think that calls for an immediate dose of Friday Writing Sprints.

Care to join me?

Whether you wrote a lot, a little, or nothing at all this week, a few minutes of Random Word Improv are a great way to have a little fun and get some words on the page.  Feel free to include a glass of wine or your favorite adult beverage for a little extra enjoyment.  I’ll be adding mimosa, for the vitamin C of course.

As requested by Michaline in last week’s comments, blindfold is making a return appearance in today’s list, along with 15 other random words.

Ready?

For any of you new to Random Word Improv, here’s how we play:

  1. Pick as many words from the list as you want
  2. Write the first line(s) of a story incorporating your words
  3. Post your results in the comments section.

Here’s today’s list of random words from a randomly selected random word generator:

Blindfold             chandelier       tangled                 stars

Regret                  possess                panic                     finale

Artist                     fortune               brother                average

Hell                       cheerful               heartbeat            official

Okay.  Are you ready?  Go!

*whistling aimlessly while you are off being creative*

Ah, you’re back.  Kind of fun, right?  Can’t wait to see what you have come up with.  .

Happy writing to all.

18 thoughts on “Elizabeth: Friday Writing Sprints – I Could do this Blindfolded!”

  2. To get things started, here’s the next installment of Cassie and Nicolai’s story.

    ————————-

    I awoke to early morning sunlight streaming through the window to my right. A little confusing at first, since my bedroom doesn’t have a window.

    Too relaxed and contented to care, I rolled to my left and snuggled up against the warm, muscled, obviously male form tangled in the silken sheets beside me. Also confusing, since my bedroom is a cotton sheet testosterone-free zone.

    Opening one eye, I lazily scanned the room. Richly textured walls. Heavy mahogany furniture. At the sight of the blindfold dangling from the opulent chandelier overhead, everything clicked into place.

    My attempt to distract Nicolai at the hospital last night had ignited something hot and hungry in us both. One minute we were in the parking lot holding hands, the next we were here stripping each other naked like two horny teenagers.

    I don’t know what possessed us, but I couldn’t regret what had happened. My God, the man was an artist. He could make a fortune over at Barnacle Bob’s with the things he did with his hands and tongue.

    Seriously, I saw stars. And that was before the finale. Just thinking about it got my pulse racing.

    There was nothing even mildly average about Nicolai. If Lucifer had skills like that, I’d have cheerfully followed him down to Hell in a heartbeat.

    When looked back over, Nicolai was wide awake and watching me with a sleepy contented smile on his face.

    It was endearing and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Morning, Eros.”

    “Ah, so you think I’m a sex god, eh?” he asked as he slid his hand up my arm.

    I swatted his hand away. “None of that.” Although my body was screaming out that a repeat performance of last night’s activities was a spectacular idea, the fact that the Chief has an official rule about co-workers dating cooled me down substantially.

    “Are you sure?” Nicolai asked as he pulled the sheet away. “It’s early; there’s plenty of time before work.”

    “Yes, I’m sure.” I grabbed for the sheet and wrapped it around me as I slid out of bed. A little late for modesty after all we’d done the night before, but being naked in the light of day was different; especially since I needed to be able to look him in the eye at the precinct.

    That set my pulse racing in a completely different way, but there was no need to panic. I just needed to think of him like a brother.

    A really hot brother that I’ve seen naked and want to get up close and personal with.

    Oh hell. I am officially screwed.

    I headed for the bathroom and a shower. A cold shower. As I turned on the water, I heard Nicolai call out, “Need some company? I can help with those hard to reach places.”

    I answered, “No thanks,” but Nicolai apparently heard “yes please.”

    I decided it would be impolite to correct him.

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  3. And now we interrupt our previously scheduled story stuff….

    Wind Tossed

    “Brother, am I gonna regret this!”

    Truly epic adventures and the most stupid of hell-bound ideas both start with a statement like that. So, my odds were 50/50. Could be worse…

    It was.

    After my chute shot unexpectedly sideways in a near hurricane wind blast, I’d gotten myself tangled up in a tree. I was hanging upside down, like some sort of floofy, artist’s dream of a cloudy, forest chandelier. I also mentally reset my odds of accomplishing this mission at about 75/25 – against.

    When I first came back to consciousness from the possessed wind and tree knock to my, apparently, only average-thick noggin. I thought I was blindfolded. After a cheerful heartbeat of panic, flailing, and perhaps a small squeak or two. I wrestled some of the silk and lines from my face. Voilà! Still not free at last, but at least it wasn’t my grand finale, I was still breathing, flailing, and now seeing!

    I looked down. There were no stars out tonight- just pirouetting pinecones, pro-flexing pine boughs, and a distinct breeze up my pine-scented backside. Gravity was sure to want the rest of her due shortly, but she would have to wait for Bill.

    “Katherine Maria Boracchio, what in the hell are you doing up in that tree?”

    I looked up, it made my left eye twitch as gravity and the moon tides pulled some extra blood into it and swirled it around.

    “I don’t know Bill. I think I might be having a personal adventure at the moment. Could you come back after I’ve had a chance to pass out again and come into some new existential realizations or an aneurism of some type?”

    “Very funny. We’ve got work to do! Do I have to send you an official invitation? ”

    “Do I have to send you some pee-mail? I could use some critical assistance here, unless you want to break into that facility, by yourself, and hump back here with the payload, by yourself and then maybe you’ll find your ride still waiting for you, or maybe you’ll be by yourself.”

    I heard laughter on the wind, and I don’t think it was the leaves. The altitude was too high, just lodge pole pines and cool, aka frigid, breezes. I felt some extra tugging on my lines and body.

    “Hey, I wasn’t kidding about the pee-mail.”

    There was more tugging, and some ripping noises. I was keeping my eyes closed to ease the throbbing, while trying to breathe calmly through the now noteworthy nausea. And I really did have to pee. Gravity didn’t care if you were upside down or right side up. Every tug on my harness, tugged at my bladder. Then there was one final tug, and down went my heart.

    I didn’t have time to squeak or flail, I just fell, rapidly, and poof! I was floating on a cloud.

    “I would have told you to hang on, but that would have defeated the purpose.”

    I rolled over, out of the silk remains of my parachute, and promptly puked. I wiped off my mouth on a stray shard, patted and kissed it. “You got me down safe baby. Thanks.”

    “Hey, I had something to do with it.”

    I got the harness off and gave my bladder some relief. It was good to be working with gravity again.

    “This is going to cost you a fortune my friend.”

    “It always does, Kate, but you’re worth every penny of it.”

    I went over to give Bill a pukey kiss too, but he decided to pass. His loss.

    I cut a piece off my parachute, wrapped it around my waist, and tied it in a knot, giving me a makeshift skirt-wrap.

    Bill raised an eyebrow, and gravity got his jaw. “I hired you for all your assets.”

    “I know. That’s why I remembered to take cover. ” My smile lifted with the wind. “Rule number one, don’t forget to cover your ass.”

    Bill’s smile was like a solar flare combined with a black hole- it tugged and got my heart all tangled and sideways again. “I thought we had a job to do?”

    My bottom caught some more pine-scented free-breeze, and I waited a moment for gravity to kick back in.

    “Lead on. I think the winds have shifted in my favor.”

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  4. (I’m a little sleep-deprived today, and wasted an afternoon on Reddit. So, today is . . . a bit odd.)

    Hell’s Little Chandelier Shop was never going to make a fortune, but that didn’t bother Brother Francis, the ex-Jesuit who ran the place. He had his own mysterious sources of income, and was cheerfully willing to tell a client with poor taste to fuck off. “No regrets, darling,” he’d tell me. “Now, Trisha, see if you can dust that crystal ball off and tell me what the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to be next week.”

    I never knew if he was joking or not, but I dutifully polished the orb, and peered into the depths until I got bored. Customers were a rare occurrence, but there was a constant stream of characters who visited. The cream of Tinytown’s eccentrics passed in and out of the doors. The local lesbian artist who brought a mobile of tangled stars and planets. A panicked city official who thought the town reservoir might be possessed with demons. The micro-brewer who heard a strange heartbeat coming from his beer cellar. “Darling, don’t be so Edgar Allan Poe,” Brother Francis would pooh-pooh. “Trisha, go down there. Here’s your wooden stake, dear, just in case.” And he’d hand me a sharpened stick, and send me off, blind-folded, to enact a three-act murder of a telltale heart, complete with grand and bloody finale. What can I say? Theater is in my DNA, and I did it with all the melodrama that a 16-year-old can muster.

    It’s remarkable how my mother’s meatloaf, covered in ketchup, could fool a nervous brewmaster. I came up from the basement, covered in tomato sauce and trying to keep the meatloaf in shadow, my eyemask askew. Brother Francis gave me a kiss on the cheek and slipped me a fifty-dollar bill. “Quick, darling, take that awful relic back to the shop and stick it in the Pentagram.” The Pentagram was what he called his walk-in cooler. The shop had once been a vegetarian restaurant, and Brother Francis perversely delighted in filling the cooler with aged beef carcasses, hanging like so many corpses in the dim chill.

    Brother Francis delighted in being the weirdest thing in Tinytown, but it was a hobby, not a perversion. One felt that he could easily throw off his robe and you’d find a double-breasted tax accountant underneath, if that’s what Brother Francis chose to do. We all felt blessed that Brother Francis chose to indulge his weirdness.

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