'Objects In Space'
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
New drabble time!
Challenge #139 (brand-new) is now closed.
Because we haven't done them in a while (thanks, Lee!) challenge #140 is pictures from the Look at Me website. Drabble about any or all of them, and please mention which picture it is so that people can go back and look at it if they'd like.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Number 10 [link]
Aunt Beulah was always so proud when people said she looked like Mamie Eisenhower. She took special care when she and the girls went off to the State Championship. But she refused to do what Edna and Katie advised.
"We're a bowling team, not a tea cotillion! I am not wearing pearls with my bowling shirt!"
It just killed Edna that the sport she loved forced her to associate with women like Beulah. "Ever since the war, standards slipping everywhere."
Still, when Beulah brought in the tournament winning split, Edna was the first to jump up and fling her arms around her.
Number Five [link]
In what was to become a familiar and shocking scene repeated around the world, the witnesses of the attack said there was no warning that the family automobile was about awaken to violent life. If the reader looks closely, this photo taken just minutes before the attack shows the now-recognizable warning signs of the car headlamps developing pupils and the front grill transforming into a toothy maw of destruction.
Hee! I love both of those.
"Toothy maw of destruction" is particularly good, but I adore "standards slipping everywhere," too.
Number Two [link]
Don't Be a Nob
It was the year Duane had to come out for a proctologist’s convention and Jean thought they could turn it into a vacation. High time for the two of them to have that getaway she’d felt they needed to revitalize their sex life. San Francisco was far enough away from Chicago that they could explore a little, maybe even find a group of swingers like they’d once talked about.
Until last night, when Jean followed Duane into the Castro and found him giving unsolicited proctologies in the bathhouses. She would, by damn, leave the city with her head held high.
Oh, Sail! That was a surprise.
Look at Me Challenge #9
It was supposed to be a fresh start. A new dress, baring her shoulders and showing off the weight she’d lost. She’d bought the earrings and shoes to match, saving nickels and dimes from the housekeeping account for a month. A smart hairstyle, and some Lush Life lipstick, a pinky red that looked like iced cherries in the tube.
But he didn’t notice anything except when she’d overcooked the pork chops or put too much starch in his shirts. He didn’t care who she was, what she wore. Only what she did for him, whether she liked it or not.
Future so Bright
He was so handsome, she thought, so sophisticated - like Sinatra. He strutted, proud that his prom date looked like an un-starved Audrey Hepburn. The U.S. had won WWII a mere half a decade ago. (Those other folks, pshaw - they held our coats.) America would always be stalwart and true - eternally the best of the good guys. They would get married; he would join the army; she would stay home and raise kids and apple pies. Who knows, by 1964 he might be a Colonel or even a General, bring liberation and enlightenment to some exotic far-off land.
Oh, Sail! That was a surprise.
Hehe. I love it when I can take a picture and turn it upside down and inside out. I looked at the picture you chose and it reminds me of some pictures I've seen of my aunt Ruth in the late 50's, early 60's and it makes me sad because it was so true of her life. And so many other women of that era.
Six [link]
The Other Sister
It wasn’t quite the same thing as listening to the oompah band Onkle Oskar played in, but Elsa was determined to enjoy the afternoon anyway.
What she really wanted to do was join the other couples dancing in the warm afternoon sunshine. Underneath her primly pressed skirt her shoes kept time along with the accordion, and she smiled as if Gerd weren’t sitting right next to her yet completely oblivious.
It didn’t matter how carefully she dressed her hair, or how pleasantly she laughed. Her husband would spend the entire afternoon wishing he’d married the other sister.
Seven [link]
He’d just gotten this camera, and he was as excited as a little kid with a new train set.
All us kids posed for him in turn. Moving us around to the angle he preferred. Twisting the lampshade slightly to make sure the shadow fell just where it should.
He was creating his own perfectly composed world. No job at the garage that left him with hands so rough Mom wouldn’t let him touch her. No sickly son who wasn’t going to live out the summer.
No daughter staring from the half shadow plotting escape.
Unfortunately, eventually you have to pull the shutter, and the picture changes.