Love Comes Full Circle

10 word exercise #8

Dynasty, hypocrisy, regret, contentment, issues, suave, interaction, in-law, examination, mechanic

Jason Mullens didn’t need the weekly cross-examination from Nancy’s family to let him know that once an in-law, always an in-law. He got the picture. But here he was preparing to walk into the lion’s den once again for Sunday brunch. Her father would take shots at him for everything from being just a lowly mechanic to how he wore his hair but what it all boiled down to was that he’d never be forgiven for having the audacity to marry the youngest daughter in the Laing Dynasty.

Daddy’s little girl, that was Nancy Laing-Mullens, and after ten years of marriage to Jason’s deep regret, his interaction with Nancy’s family was always, would always be, a sore spot between them. Not based solely on those issues, but he’d pretty much given up hope for any sort of contentment for either of them. It was time to move on.

“So, you come to the table with grease under those nails, son?” her father asked in the same derisive tone saved for criminals, the unlucky, who had to face him in court.

“No sir.” Jason bristled, but kept his cool. This wasn’t the time or the place for a confrontation.

“You prowling around again with that brother of yours? If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, he’s no good. The Mullen boys will never amount to anything.”

Since before he’d even met Nancy, Jason hadn’t wasted much time hanging out with his older brother, Garth, and it irked to think he’d always be tarred with the same brush regardless of how clean he’d lived his life.

Garth had been in court more times than Jason could count, and had always found a way to make the problem go away before having to do time…that was until he stood before the stiff face of Judge Richard Laing and was sentenced to two years for armed robbery.

“That’s enough. This has to stop.” Spoken so quietly, Jason wasn’t sure he heard correctly until he noticed that his look of stunned surprise was mirrored on the faces around the table of Nancy’s brother and sister-in-law, her sister and her mother.

“Have you lost your mind?” Her sister, Angela, hissed as she elbowed Nancy in the ribs. “You’ll ruin it for everyone!”

They say the eyes are the window to the soul and if that’s true, Nancy’s was crying out for something they’d both lost sight of. “No, I haven’t lost my mind. In fact, I’ve finally found it again. It shames me that I’ve let this go on,” Nancy said, making and holding eye contact with Jason, looking for some sign that it wasn’t too late. Seeing hope there, she turned to her father. “Not saying a word while you brow-beat my husband, talk down as if you’re better than him. Well, Daddy, not anymore.”

“Maybe you should leave and come back when you’re ready to be civil. No daughter of mine is going to talk like this to me; must be from hanging around with this white trash.”

“Suit yourself,” Nancy said as she pushed her chair out, preparing to walk away and give her marriage a second chance.

“Sit down.”

“Patricia, this is none of your…”

“None of my what? Concern? Business? You’d like to think that. It keeps us all under your control. Well, it’s every bit my concern; I know my daughter well enough to know that if she walks out that door now, she won’t be walking back. And Richard? If she walks, so do I.”

“Mom!” Angela and Richard, Jr. exclaimed in unison.

“It makes me proud to know I raised one of my children to be the kind of person who’ll stand up for what’s right, not for what it will get her,” Patricia said as she looked at each of her children in turn. Noting the look of chagrin on Richard Jr’s face and the look that passed between him and his wife, Sally, she knew she’d at least started to reach him, but Angela would be another story.

Angela had high hopes of living the life where the worst she had to think of in a day was where she’d go for her next manicure. What she did to need a manicure was a mystery to Patricia.

In the beginning, Patricia had thought her husband to be very suave and debonair but after twenty plus years of marriage she was tired of the hypocrisy of having to pretend she was something she wasn’t, for she too came from what her husband so freely referred to as, ‘White trash’.

“When I get back, everyone had better have come to their senses!” Richard said as he stormed off, unable even in light of a family crisis to miss a tee time with his cronies.

With the kitchen and dining room put back to normal, having settled Angela’s histrionics to a dull sulk, and with promises to keep them all posted she said her goodbyes to Nancy and Jason, Sally and Richard, Jr. before seating herself on the front porch swing in the waning light of the afternoon sun. Sipping her tea she patiently waited for her husband to arrive home. The conversation for tonight had been a long time coming.

“I adore you, you know. You know that, don’t you?” She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t heard Richard come home.

“Before you say anything, I never made it to the golf course. I made it as far as Rockford Park and have been there ever since…thinking,” he said as he sat beside her. “Thinking that for a man who has such a brilliant career, how could I be so stupid? When did I turn into such a snob? Can you ever forgive me for being such an ass?”

“Of course I forgive you,” she answered, snuggling into him, “but it’s not me you owe an apology to.”

“I know. The advice I give to all who pass through my court room is to ‘own it, take responsibility for what you’ve done and find a way to fix it’. Easy to preach, much harder to practice, but it’s high time I did, don’t you think?” And first thing the next morning he made through his rounds of apologies and hugs with more hope for the future than even he’d had in a long time.

The End

Rumours Lie Broken

10 Word Exercise #5

Basket, rickety, yellow, anvil, alcoholic, snow, tremendous, candlelight, yarn, pizza

The candlelight glowing softly from the windows cast a yellow glow on the path I walked, guiding me through the deep snow to the beautiful two-story house. Where once stood a set of rickety, old stairs, there now gleamed newly painted wood. “Yes!” My now exhausted and beyond-cold limbs exclaimed. With the tremendous effort already placed on them to carry me and my basket of yarn this distance they were profoundly grateful not to have the added worry of falling through rotten wood.

I could see him sitting there as I looked through the window. I looked to the floor rather gauging the safety of knocking but before I could turn tail and run, the door flung open and there he stood. If the look in his eyes told me anything, it was that I’d just poked the proverbial bear with the sore paw. “What do you want? If you’re here for the church, turn around and save your breath. Well, SPEAK! I don’t have time for little church mice.”

The smell of pizza wafting to nostrils I had thought were frozen had been enough to warm my courage. “I’m not here for the church. My car broke down. Yours was the only light I could see.” A hit in the face with an anvil would’ve surprised me more than the turnaround old Mr. Farley took.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Step on in here,” he said as he ushered me into his home, closing the door behind me. “I assumed the way you’re dressed, well...never mind that. I was just sitting down to dinner, come and join me.”

I couldn’t rely on the part of my brain that clanged warnings to me at times like that. It was too frozen to even clink. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I had to stay on my guard until my poor body thawed.

“Rumour has it that I’m an alcoholic. I’m not you know, so don’t worry your pretty head,” he said as, with perfect dexterity, he handed me a slice of pizza and a glass of what looked like brandy. “People around here don’t know squat.” That my brother was the cop who escorted him off the street not two weeks before to keep him from taking a drunken stumble headlong into traffic was a fact better kept to myself, but before I could come up with an appropriate response, he continued.

“I’m an epileptic,” he said. “A night in a drunk tank is not going to change that. And most people around here know very well that imbibing would work against my seizure medication.”

Well knock me over with a feather, I was not expecting that. I’d arrived there that night hoping Roy Farley would be sober enough to call me a tow truck but instead left feeling guilty for having believed the worst of a man I’d known nothing about, but for the lies from the rumour chain.

My two-year tenure with Mr. Farley proved to be more beneficial than once I thought, for I now live in that two-story house with an outlook on life as new as my surroundings. All because I’d befriended a gruff old man one stormy night, and soon after was hired to be his caretaker. 
Many of life’s lessons I learned as I watched age take over a once proud man; a man who among other things, taught my previously jaded self that anyone can tell a story but only you can decide what you believe.

The End

What Price Vanity?

10 Word Exercise #4


Halcyon, Facetious, Epiphany, Cantankerous, Fishing, Amongst, Fortune, Resemblance, Beautiful, Haunt

Halcyon days were had by none while the cantankerous woman abided. Her desire to be the most beautiful woman in the world had her endlessly fishing for compliments. Very few wished to be in the company of this facetious woman. Those few who did did so hoping to one day share in her vast fortune.

Until the day, while staring at her resemblance in her mirror once again, she had the epiphany that changed her life; that amongst her followers was only one who’d stand proudly before her and call her friend. And, in a vain attempt to be liked, she gave away all but a few of her nicest finery to young women she believed would spend their time in awe and envy of her.

Why her past continued to haunt her, she could never decipher.

10 Word Exercise #3

Acknowledgement, green, heritage, squire, resolution, needle, assignment, measurable, fortified and landscape.

The only reading George Freeman had time for prior to his cruise on the Resolution, was to retrieve, then destroy, his next assignment. So it was with measurable relief he read, Heritage: A Knight’s Tale, simply for pleasure while aboard-ship.

The tale told of Robert Green, a squire who’d become one of King Edward’s most trusted knights, and his adventures riding the rolling landscape of Scotland assuring the King’s battlefronts were well fortified with enough men and supplies to stand protected against the enemy. And, right up to the part where King Edward knight’s him Sir Robert to reward him for being trustworthy, it was a story George could relate to.

There was little more than acknowledgement when an assassin, prepared to kill or be killed for his country, retired, as George well knew. What did he expect from an establishment whose needle on the dial of life was set to obscurity? Obscurity that, most of the time, he well understood was for his and his fellow agents’ protection.

Without it, he wouldn’t be retiring with all his limbs and faculties about him; he’d be dancing to the enemy’s tune. For that he was, and would always be, grateful, but once in a while something - fact or fiction - would tweak his desire for what others would consider a normal life.

10 Word Exercise #2

phosphorous, argon, kettle, Bunsen Burner (you may count this as 2 if you wish), anniversary, cocoa, November, date, numbers AND fire

The scientist in him couldn’t regret the amount of time spent lighting a fire under his Bunsen burner, but he knew the man, if he’d excluded his wife from his experiments, would. Oh, how he missed her. Lana had been the only woman, outside the scientific world, who was only too happy to listen to conversations that would have bored a lesser woman.

When he touted the benefits, and dangers, of phosphorous acid -- or similar chemicals -- instead of rolling her eyes as most would do, she’d found it fascinating to learn that something she used to kill root rot in her Winery’s greenhouse could be so beneficial...or deadly...depending on how one handled it.

Victor knew he was being maudlin today, but as this was the anniversary of a date he was not likely to forget, he felt entitled to be. On the morning of November eighteenth one year ago, while he’d waited for the kettle to boil for his wake-me-up cocoa, his wife was at her Winery struggling unsuccessfully to get air into her lungs.

Safety in numbers couldn’t save her, and like chickens to slaughter, the argon gas leak from a faulty tank claimed her life and the lives of her Bottling Attendants. 

More Challenging?

If anyone wishes to make my 10 word exercise more challenging, please write 10 words in the comments below and I'll turn them into a story.

10 Word Exercise

Recently in a writing forum we were given a ten word exercise. We had to pick ten words, then write a story start to finish using those ten words. 

Once the confusion many of us had - how to possibly use only ten words and tell a complete story - was cleared up, that the story could contain as many words as we wanted, as long as those ten words were in it, I got down to work.

Our forum leader was quite impressed with the story I wrote, sorry that I'm unable to post it here, and suggested expanding it into a children's book. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I'm undecided at the moment on that particular avenue, but I truly loved the exercise. So much, that I've decided to do it once a week here on my blog. 

So here are this week's ten words, and story. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Bottle, Picture, River, Philodendron, Thimble, Water-skiing, Birthday, Woman, Boat, Picnic  

Sleep was elusive as the picture of the four year old child, and tears of a distraught woman pleading with them – owners of The Philodendron Detective Agency - to find her daughter, Lacey, kept running through their heads.

One minute the child had been sitting at the picnic table with the other birthday party attendees, holding her bottle of pop, in the next she was gone. A thimble found at the edge of the nearby woods the only possible clue.

The couple hoped, in taking their boat out on the river to do some water-skiing, to see their way clearer to solving the case they’d been working on round the clock when they spotted something bright red under some brush along the riverbank.

Drawing closer, they saw the girl, huddled, hugging a knitted doll, spilling tears quicker than she could tell her story.

“I saw Mrs. Kinsey walking up the path, carrying an armful of dolls. She gave me one as I ran to her. She forgot some cookies she’d made and had to go back, and asked me to help her. But when we walked through her door, she got scary. Her eyes got real big as she slapped at her chest and fell over,” Lacey explained. “I’m sorry I hid in the corner; I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t understand what she was saying so when she stopped talking to me I ran out, but I didn’t know which way to go. I want my mommy.”

This case had a happy ending – many don’t – as Mrs. Kinsey, having suffered a mild heart attack, was now recovering nicely in the hospital, while Lacey, a daily visitor, read stories to her about her adventures in the woods.