It’s First Line Friday over at the MindloveMisery’s Menagerie blog. This week our first line is The rose bushes lay a siege with velveteen petals and curved thorns.
The rose bushes lay a siege with velveteen petals and curved thorns.
These multi-faceted flowers were not your average narcissistic, depthless blooms. No, there was much more to them than that. Although they appeared harmless enough with their fuzzy velveteen petals, their curved thorns were deadly when leveled against an enemy.
It all started when Svetlana Mazurski rescued the then-raggedy rose bushes from a nursery that had gone out of business. She brought them home and planted them in her barren garden. Over several weeks, Svetlana nursed them back to health and beyond, with the help of her babcia’sPolish Power Plant Potion (aka P4) from the Old Country. With the help of P4, the roses grew bigger, stronger, and even smarter than plants raised in the traditional manner.
The rose bushes were so grateful to Svetlana for their rescue that they vowed to always keep her safe from people who did not have her best interest at heart.
Like whom, you ask?
The protective posies stood guard against unwanted solicitors, crappy boyfriends, and even process servers disguised as normal human beings. You see, Babcia’s P4 also enhanced the psychic ability of all types of flora. There was no getting over on these bad-ass blossoms.
One day, a man started up the path to Svetlana’s home. The rose bushes instantly went on the alert and assessed the situation. What appeared to be an unassuming magazine salesman, was in fact a burglar casing the area. The rose bushes stifled their respective maniacal giggles and sprung (like Springtime) into action.
First, their sweet aroma mutated into a smothering stench; a combination of a pig farm and wildcat sanctuary. This rendered the intruder’s eyes to water like Niagara Falls and brought on violent waves of nausea. Next, the velveteen on the rose petals imbued themselves with poison ivy pollen, while the curved horns grew temporary spikes — spikes as sharp as stiletto switchblades.
It didn’t take the posey posse long to work over the intruder, whose remains made for a fabulous fertilizer.
Best of all there were no leftovers, i.e. evidence.
It’s the Saturday Mix – Lucky Dip over at MLMM! This week we’ll be crafting a Tableau. Any topic. A tableau consists of one or more verses, each having six lines. Each line should have five beats. There is no set rhyme scheme, although rhyme may be present. The title should contain the word tableau.
So, I was walking along the same old dirt road I walked every day to wait for the school bus, thinking about how much I hated school. It was stupid. I wasn’t good at it, nor was I interested in any of the subjects. Eight years of school ought to be enough. I could read, write, and do simple math. What more did a girl need? I was gonna marry Bobby Sanchez from 10th grade anyway, and he already had a job at Burger King. I was all set!
And that’s when I saw it from the corner of my eye: a glint of gold in the sunlight. I walked over to investigate and it was one of those magic lamp things like on I Dream of Jeannie. I picked it up and looked around. Not sure what I was looking for but that’s what people do when they find something cool. Next, I started rubbing it, hoping some smoke and a genie would come out.
Sure enough, after a few minutes that’s exactly what happened! After the smoke cleared, the genie said I could have three wishes.
Hmmm… I thought for a minute and blurted out wish number one: I wished I’d never have to go to school again, ever!
The genie made some kind of magic sign with his hands and said, “It is done. What else you want?”
“Ummm….. I know! A set a fake fingernails with lavender nail polish on them.”
See, my mom absolutely would not let me buy or wear fake fingernails, and I wanted them more than anything!
“Okay,” the genie shrugged. And BOOM! suddenly I had ten beautiful lavender nails!
Then the genie asked what I wanted for my final wish.
I was sort of hungry so I asked for a package of Twinkies. In a puff of smoke, the genie was gone and a package of Twinkies was in my hand.
Now what?
Twenty years later I have an 8th grade education, three kids and no husband. Bobby turned out to be a jerk although he still works at Burger King. I live in a dump and I’m on welfare. The fake fingernails fell off after two weeks.
I was a homeless, pregnant calico cat living in an upscale residential neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama. I’d had humans at one time, but they moved away and left me behind. After new people moved into our house, I realized my people weren’t coming back. I wondered for a long time what I’d done to make them not like me anymore. But, life goes on, as they say.
Most of the time, living outdoors was manageable. Not pleasant, but manageable. There were woods nearby which were perfect for hunting and hiding too, when necessary. Mobile in the summertime is hot, humid, and sticky. Even the thick woods weren’t cool enough. However, I found a storm drain that worked pretty well. At the time there was a lot of construction going on and the half-built houses were a huge plus for nighttime.
My biggest problem was food. Usually, I was a pretty good hunter, but being pregnant and weak is not conducive to successfully stalking prey. I was beyond weak when I gave birth. Only one kitten survived.
And then I ran out of milk for her due to lack of food.
I made the rounds one more time, hoping someone could spare some food. One more time was all I had the energy for.
And then it happened: a kind human heard my cries for help and rushed out with a plate of food. It wasn’t that cheap stuff either. This was primo cat fare that came straight from a can. She continued to feed me every day, which made it possible for me to feed my remaining kitten.
The human even gave me a name. She called me Io, which is a moon of Jupiter. Why she picked that name I haven’t a clue. It grew on me though.
After I was 100% sure this human could be trusted, and when my kitten was old enough I brought her with me. The human was thrilled to see her and gave her a name too: Zelda. She began feeding both of us. This went on for a couple of months. Every day I could count on her for a fresh bowl of water and two meals a day for my kitten and me.
One day after the kind human fed us breakfast, she brought out two cages and put catnip in one and a couple of toys in the other. My baby was too young to be interested in catnip, so I partook. It had been such a long time! I swear I only took my eyes off her for a moment, but that was all it took. Zelda wandered into the cage to look at the toys, and the human closed the door. There was nothing I could do but cry as the human put my baby in her big, loud machine and took her away.
I trusted her. I trusted her with my baby and she stole her! How could she?
Luckily, I could track a scent for miles. They were way ahead of me in the machine, but I still had the scent.
Then they drove down a busy street. It was so loud! Big, noisy machines whizzed past me right and left. There were two lines of them on each side, going opposite ways. It was hard for me to tell when it was safe to run across. I’d never crossed a street like that before, but I had to. The human made a left-hand turn and I was on the right side of the big street.
I was scared. I was so, so scared but couldn’t risk losing my baby. She was all I had in the whole world. I panicked and made a run for it and hoped for the best. I was halfway across when one of the machines ran in to me and knocked me to the side of the road.
That was the last of my nine lives.
Life, such as it is, on the Other Side is different. I can’t even explain it. You’ll see what I mean one day.
The best part about it is that everything becomes clear. No more mysteries; it all makes sense.
For instance, the reason the human ‘stole’ my baby was to help her. She took her to the vet to get her shots and spayed. If I’d gotten in the other cage, she’d have done the same for me.
Also, remember the humans who moved away and left me? Well, it turns out that they were involved a bad car accident and never made it to their new home. Had I been with them, well, who knows what would’ve happened?
I know the kind human still blames herself for what happened to me. On her way back home, she saw me on the side of the road, but there was nothing she could do. I was already gone. I wish I could tell her that it’s okay.
It all worked out for the best, especially for Zelda.
This happened in 2002. My Zelda is 17-years-old now, and still living with that same kind human. There is no way she would’ve lived nearly that long had she stayed in the woods with me. Her life wouldn’t have been as happy, either.
Isn’t it funny how it looks like a person is doing one thing, then you find out later they were doing something totally different?
Today at MindloveMisery’s Menagerie we are asked to write a story or poem in which opposites attract. Here’s mine:
∞
Theirs was the kind of love that even Calliope could not charm into verse. Though inspired to the brink of madness, troubadours were graceless to make melody of it.
Simply, it was its own symphony.
Universally taboo, yet pure in its essence. Unnatural and inescapable. Illogical, inexplicable and endless.
**
At first, both families thought it was rather sweet: a puppy love, a curiosity, an infatuation that would surely wane. They viewed it as a mere “jumping the fence” phase that some kids go through.
But it wasn’t.
Rather, as time passed, this all-encompassing desire and devotion flourished. It grew beyond even itself.
“What will people think?”
“What about children? Think about what they’d look like and the living hell their lives would be! You could never…could you?”
“Think about your future…Please, stop this now, while you still can!”
On more than one occasion, either family would move across the country in an attempt to quell the sweet sting of Cupid’s misguided arrow.
No matter. Even when separated by miles of interstate, the hapless inamoratos always found their way back to one another. Vladimir and Vivienne were two halves of a whole; one was the missing piece to the other’s puzzle.
Eventually, the families acquiesced, but on one condition:
Vladimir, the Russian Wolfhound, would be neutered and Vivienne, the Maine Coon, would be spayed.
So you see, in the end, love conquers all, as true love is wont to do. This is why it is so important to make sure our pets are spayed and neutered.
∞
Ergo, the Ogre 