Hey, a sonnet's nothing to sneeze at. Particularly that one, which was lovely.

Just stupid Stepmonster asking "Why is it wrong to cross a picket line?" I should have told her it makes your butt look big.

Suh-nerk.

New topic, Tep?

I know you're exhausted today. You want some suggestions?

I'll throw out:

bed
leaves changing color
ride
ghost

I like leaves. "bed" and "ghost" are too obvious.

I don't know. I'm obviously biased, but I think there are a lot things you can do with both "bed" and "ghost". 'Cause beds ain't just for porn, and ghosts can be lots of things other than stock Halloween creatures.

ghosts can be lots of things other than stock Halloween creatures

Sing it, sister. What in hell else is the Kinkaid Chronicles, if not a ghost story?

::nodding madly::

Actually, I had a topic, and then my boss came to talk to me and then I went to the hospital and now I'm back. Anyway.

Challenge #76 (strike) is now closed.

Challenge #77 is behind the door[s].

Drabble on!

Tommy is still lobbying for a book, I think.
It’s a reality Tommy’s tried to adjust to for...oh, Christ, close to thirty years, damn, that went fast. He stands at a lot of doors. Fancy security doors, sunfaded section 8 apartment doors, the “push” marked door of a Jack in The Box in the early morning hours(that place is now a chiropractor’s. He guesses people don’t want to eat anywhere knowing somebody got shot in the storeroom over the deposits they let pile up.) He’s stood at a door hearing screams of “Oh, God, he’s killing me.” from an address most people would think was too fancy for such things and almost taken it in the noggin with a frying pan from She after separating her from He. Behind that door could be anything.

Shocker. I did a fairy tale again.

~

Shouldn’t have looked. Should have obeyed.

Forbidding her to open the door had stung. She wasn’t a child. She was a woman now, a wife. Wife to the man no one wanted, the freak who made girls cower behind their hands and seek refuge in their mothers’ aprons. The man whose other wives had not survived him.

Shouldn’t have looked…

Now she knew why. Now she knew where those other poor lasses had disappeared to. Now she knew what death looked like, when it was angry and thirsty for blood.

Now she knew what happened to wives who didn’t obey.

A happy memory, yes indeed.

Paradise Found

Water running, gargling. So scared.

He has no reason to be nervous. It's his house, his bedroom. You came because he asked you to, weeks ago; he's been too sick, kicking alcohol, kicking heroin, his missed dialysis, to consider bedding the pretty girl who probably saved his life.

You're nervous, though. You're in vintage velvet; you dressed to seduce him. All you want is behind that bathroom door, brushing his teeth.

In a moment he'll come out, and unbutton those buttons. The only thing on the other side of the door will be the cats.

And the closed door opens.