I spent all day yesterday transitioning to a new computer at work – clearing out old files and making sure everything was configured correctly. Mind-numbing to say the least. I definitely need a dose of Friday Writing Sprints to reboot my brain cells.
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. Try it with juice, tea, and a toasted bagel, for a nutritious start to your day.
Today’s random words started with love and lust and then headed off in some very random directions. Can’t wait to see what you do with them.
Ready?
For any of you new to Random Word Improv, here’s how we play:
- Pick as many words from the list as you want
- Write the first line(s) of a story incorporating your words
- Post your results in the comments section.
Here’s today’s list of random words from our randomly selected random word generator:
Love hallucination puppy bacon
Operatic lust furniture weird
Relationship robotic arrow felon
Fever future bluff plaything
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.
Eight Ladies Writing 
I had been hallucinating puppies for three days. Not nice little doggies like you see on YouTube, but hellhounds-in-training. Foam dripped from their adorable little mouths, and their eyes shot red laser beams of fear into my heart.
It bothered me, but not as much as when the furniture went robotic. I’d be sitting on the couch, watching Netflix, when suddenly the sofa would go “beep-beep-boop.” It wouldn’t be so bad, except it seemed to attract the puppies. “Beep-boop.” “Grrrr-yip! Grrrr-yip!”
I felt like a plaything of my mind. Ignoring these things made it worse; paying attention sometimes helped, but sometimes it brought on the most amazing delusions of operatic lust. Huge Vikings, bearing bows and arrows and sometimes bacon, which they’d toss to the puppies who would scamper off under a shrilly bleeping buffet with their salty trophies.
As soon as I began to worry about ants invading and eating the bacon crumbs, the rats came in. I’m pretty sure they were not real rats, for they began to form relationships with the older puppies, waltzing and dancing in intricate courtship rituals with bacon and beer. I tried to bluff them with real rat traps, but the steel snaps just passed through their necks, and they danced away, laughing at me and my pretensions of control.
I still don’t know who brought the beer.
Then the fever broke, and I found myself once again a felon with no future, sitting there wishing on a cement floor. I almost preferred the hallucinations.
(And if you think I need to use the “weird” in this story yet, you may have missed the point (-:. I’m off for a mini-break! Not a romantic one, but one with girlfriends! Just whipping this off before I head to the airport. I’ll be back on Monday, taking a look at the comments. Have a great weekend, everyone.)
Fantastic effort Michaeline. I can’t believe how quickly you did this. I loved the “I still don’t know who brought the beer” line. Great job capturing that fevered – hallucinating feeling too. I remember that well from when I was a kid.
I want to hear more about this sometime, Elizabeth! I’ve only hallucinated once in my life, when I was about five, and I saw Frankenstein’s monster in our pantry (it was late at night and dark, and on the way to the toilet — still don’t know what caused the brain flash. And it was a brain flash because Frankie looked just like the prank items advertised in the back of old comic books.)
Michaeline – my brother and I both used to hallucinate when we had fevers as kids. It was usually a perspective thing. Stuff appeared much larger or much smaller than it really was. Also, objects had a tendency to move in ways not found in nature. I never saw Frankenstein’s monster, but I was certain I saw a man in the hallway, sitting on the laundry hamper late on night. No idea what I really saw, but I was absolutely sure I’d seen something.
Oh, now that you mention it, I have hallucinated a little bit, then. Once I was drunk in a bathroom where the owners decided that tiny black and gold checkerboard on all the walls would be a good thing. The focus problems I had . . . definitely freaky.
My Frankenstein was so, so real, too. I was quite freaked out for years until I realized that a real ghost or apparition would probably not look like a comic book advertisement. I’m susceptible to creepy feelings, even though I don’t believe in that sort of thing anymore. I’m quite irrational in my disbelief, as a matter of fact. I don’t know how I wound up to be a speculative fiction writer.
I love this! Like a hellish version of Disney’s Fantasia.
Enjoy your weekend 🙂 .
These were along my first thoughts when I first woke up at 5:30am and saw the word list too! I wonder if it has to do with the time of day. 😀 Very fun.
LOL, I think it was the formatting. Hallucinating was just nudging out the puppies . . . . I saw this in on my mobile phone on Sunday, and thought I’d have a completely different story to tell if I’d seen it there first.
My relationship with Hector was a disaster of operatic proportions.
Bringing him home had seemed so right, and by the time I understood I was channeling my lust for the hot dog training guy on TV, I was in over my head.
From day one, Hector resisted my attempts to set the rules. I tried to develop the command voice that worked so well for Hot Dog Guy, but my attempts ranged from robotic to plain weird, and Hector ignored them all. The only thing that got his attention was bacon.
My performance at work slumped. I spent my days in a fever of hallucination about how long the next dog-sitter would last and what fresh disaster I’d come home to. Every stick of furniture in the house bore the hallmarks of Hector’s displeasure at my absence. It was as though the furry felon treated my psyche as his personal plaything.
At least once a day I said he’d have to go, but it was a bluff. He was a permanent part of my future, and he knew it. When I came through the door and that warm bundle of fur and love flew like an arrow into my arms, I melted.
No two ways about it. I was puppy whipped.
(And also channeling Jeanne’s hero, who would have been the answer to all my problems 😉 ).
I want to see this hot dog guy! 😀
Ah, the hazards of lusting after a hot, dog-training guy 🙂 Love the affection that comes through for the “warm bundle of fur” in this piece. Good job.
Aw! Puppies! Oddly enough, the friend I met in Tokyo said they’d adopted a problem puppy — so mentally unstable, but really just the sweetest little thing. It’s very easy to get puppy-whipped!
Super Puppy Love
Since when did my expensive, custom, titanium-vibranium arrows become puppy playthings? Oh, yeah, since I found out my future felon has this weird thing for robotic furniture, can swat smart cars the length of a football field with just a slight paw tap, and if he gets too much bacon he has fevered-hallucinations that he can fly… just like Underdog. He never bluffs, he just jumps. Who knows, one day he might be right and I’ll need to get him a flying permit.
Oh, and did I mention he can chomp through a cell tower with a casual bite. He loves to bring the poles home. I try to put them back up, but he keeps bringing them home. We’ve been labeled as the number one menace to communications and technological advancement in the greater southwest. Considering Silicon Valley is kind of in our extended front yard, that might be saying something. I’ve taken to recycling the un-restorable poles. I built him a cell-tower-pole log cabin out back. I keep getting bills for the poles, so I figure I might as well use them.
Being titanium-vibranium, my arrows don’t seem much affected by his chewing, they just ignore it. I tugged the arrow away from him. He let me. Anyone else trying to play tug with him would lose and arm, not because he would bite them, simply because normal people’s arms would just pop off like a Barbie doll’s.
I nocked the slobbery arrow, “Loki, fetch!” I aimed high and long, fired, and off he went. He had a lust for fetch that most dogs could never match. Trying to wear him out sure could wear me out. I sure hoped he would bring the arrow back, rather than another cell tower pole. If we got too many more poles, his house would soon be bigger than mine.
Our relationship isn’t perfect, but it is both operatic and poetic. The superhero and the super-dog, saving and menacing the world. Sometimes on the same day. As he bounded back, probably from somewhere near Vegas, arrow in mouth. I thought about how much I loved him and what a lucky girl I was. I can’t imagine ever adopting a more perfect pup.
Obviously I should have named this sprint “puppy tales.” I loved “as he bounced back, probably from somewhere near Vegas.” What a fun piece.
Love the idea of a super-hero and her (?) supercharged super-pup. And I want custom titanium-vibranium arrows. Excellent fun.
LOL, super heroes need more pets. I think there are a few wonder-dogs out there, but not enough! I love him bringing back the cell towers.
Here’s the latest installment of Cassie & Nicolai’s story. A little different from the rest of this week’s entries, but hopefully equally enjoyable.
——————————
“It was just lust.”
“It was not just lust and you know it,” Nicolai insisted.
I sighed. “Don’t make last night into something more than it was. We were attracted each other and had sex. End of story.”
We were waiting to pick up our breakfast orders at the Rise and Shine Café on the way to the precinct and had been having this argument since we stepped out of the shower earlier this morning.
Nicolai refused to let the topic drop. “You felt something.”
“I felt a lot of things,” I said with a smile, trying to keep things light. “Thank you very much.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Sure, I knew it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it. Thankfully the server called our number at the pickup window and saved me from answering. Don’t get me wrong, last night was good, well, okay, phenomenal, but that didn’t mean I was ready to declare undying love and adopt a puppy or start picking out furniture and flatware. It certainly didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it.
We took our food to one of the picnic tables on the patio and started to eat. “Why are we even having this discussion?” I asked as I stirred milk into my coffee.
Nicolai set down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “Because I think there is something between us. Something more than just one night of sex. I think you feel it too but you just don’t want to admit it.”
What I wanted to do was enjoy my bacon and egg sandwich before it got cold. “Look, I’m no good at this stuff, okay? Relationships are not my super-power and I don’t like thinking about the future much less talking about it. Can we just focus on the case for now?”
“Okay.” Nicolai spread jam on his toast. “Why won’t you let me talk to Demitri?”
Talking about our relationship and the future suddenly sounded much more appealing. Certainly preferable to explaining to Nicolai that his potential felon brother was in the psych ward recovering from hallucinations of operatic proportions
“Fine. You’re not just a plaything and it wasn’t just lust,” I said with a sigh. “Are you happy now?
“Very.” Nicolai flashed one of his dazzling smiles, the kind that made my brain cells short-circuit and various body parts tingle, then his expression sobered. “Now let’s talk about Demitri.”
Oh hell.
Ooooooh boy. We have to wait until next week now?
Good job!
Penny, glad you liked it. Yep – we all have to wait until next week and not just because I have no idea what happens next 🙂
LOVE Nicolai! Love this. Great work, Cassie and Elizabeth 🙂 .
Can’t wait to see what next week brings! I identify with Cassie, and I think Nicolai is just adorable. Nobody’s fool.