Late, as always. You can almost set your watch by my late posting of the drabble topic. Which is ironic.

Challenge #100 (commemorating an event) is now closed.

Challenge #101 is disguise[s]. I know we used "masks" as a topic a little while back, but this feels different to me, as a topic. And I'm the autocrat around these here parts, anyway. So. Disguise[s]. Go to it.

Ailleann, I'm not sure how much help I'd be but I am certainly willing to try (that and, yeah, I'm bored). So, if you're still around and looking for input, I'd be happy to take a look at it. melon underscore m at-sign hotmail dot com

Edited because I just noticed this is totally irrelevant (I didnt look at the date of your post, sorry)

listless

today i took too few steps
too few steps to make myself real
to make myself realize i was alive
i was alive and could take more steps

today the sky is uniformly grey
uniformly grey from horizon to horizon
horizon to horizon outside and inside
outside and inside the sky stayed grey

today i wore too shabby clothes
too shabby clothes to echo my fear
echo my fear and my apathy
my apathy moulders in too shabby clothes

tomorrow i must rise and assume my disguise
assume my disguise as a human being
a human being functional, healthy and hale
healthy and hale will be my disguise

Liese, that's a punch in the gut. Goes well with your mask drabble.

...a trifle disguised...

It's in Heyer's novels: "disguised", in Regency London, was slang for drunk.

When you first begged for help, you were visible. Help me stop, love - this is killing me. For awhile, it worked. You were there, yourself, shining through. I could see you.

Then you left me: nearly two years, back in Surrey, London, where the work was, where your wife was. You couldn't take it and you came back to me, drinking again.

And I didn't know. This time, no help was requested, and none was offered.

I couldn't see through you, a trifle disguised.

Oh, Deb. That one hits hard.

That one hits hard.

So does the realisation, all these years later.

God, I want a time machine. So much that needs fixing, so many things I'd love to not have any reason to write painful little drabbles about.

Every time I post one of these, I imagine y'all thinking "Dag, not her Identity Issues again?!" But I hope you don't, because therapy is a pain in the ass, so...

You see me and you don’t see me, because I am both of your world and a stranger...maybe even a double agent. A poster child who carries the stylebook.An angelic telethon singer who comes prepared with, not “Tomorrow” but maybe “I Am Woman” or maybe Carlin’s Seven Words...that’s why I never got to do that...Lord knows what I might say. I am every neighbor on every block who was a little...that way, and so have answered people’s questions, saved up for twenty years, because we are lefties together and I’m fairly sure that you’re not prejudiced.So you think I am, you know, So. Great. Every time they ever ask “Are there any media here?” for half a second I want to raise my surprisingly undamaged looking hand, for the other tribe that halfway didn’t claim me, but makes me pause an extra beat when hearing something described as “sexy” and wonder if it will call for a negligee or my thinking cap. This is the person that counts all the smut on the local news and tells her family “Not to worry, all. It’s sweeps month.” Who says I didn’t use my degree? This is written for all the people who see me at workers’ events and wonder why, because you think “their” holiday is in July. Thanks for noticing. We love you too. This is written for all the people who would expect to see a medical bracelet before one that says “choice” or especially one that says “Never Surrender” This is written for my drunken “sister” in Kansas who made extra time in disability demonstration to tell me I was a sellout for getting my journalism degree. I can’t decide if you are a bitch or our community’s answer to Lenny Bruce, but seven years later, I would finally know what to say: Sellouts have money, all I ever have is words. You probably don’t even remember having made that mark on me, but now I have another costume.

Sellouts have money, all I ever have is words.

And all the richer for it, erika. Excellent drabble.

Quick! Kick me in the ass and tell me I have to write ALL WEEKEND.

I'm so screwed having lost a week.