stake

Six Sentence Story — Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Fandango21 Comments

At her passing, Marc’s grandmother had left her quaint cottage in the country to Marc with the one stipulation that he tend to the flower garden, just as she had done for forty years.

Working under the hot afternoon sun, Marc pounded a wooden stake deep into the soft, fertile soil at a spot he’d carefully chosen to mark the corner of what would become her memorial garden.

The glint of what appeared to be a small metal box buried just inches below the surface caught his eye, making him wonder if it was intended to be so easily discovered.

He pulled the metal box out of the soil and opened it to find, wrapped in an oilcloth, a handwritten letter and a faded photograph of his grandmother as a young woman, standing hand-in-hand beside a tall, handsome man he’d never seen before.

The letter clearly revealed a secret love affair that had quietly defined his grandmother’s entire life, and while shocked by what he read, Marc suddenly understood why this particular corner of the garden had always been her favorite spot to sit and remember.

Marc carefully reburied the box beside the stake, knowing now that he wasn’t just planting flowers, he was tending to the roots of a story of a woman more amorous and adventurous than anyone ever thought.

Written for the Sunday Six Sentence Story prompt from Girlie on the Edge, where the prompt word is “stake.” Image conjured using Copilot.

OLWG #425 — One More Hand

Fandango6 Comments

The saloon doors creaked behind me as I stepped into the scorching midday sun, dust rising around my boots like smoke from a fire I couldn’t stomp out. I had a handful of dimes and a heart full of regret, and both were worth about the same out here.

I’d just lost my last stake on a two-card bluff against a drifter with a twitchy eye and a tattoo of a snake biting its own tail. Others do it faster, they say — gunfighters, gamblers, liars. But I always played the long game. Patience. Nerve. Turns out, none of that matters when your luck’s run drier than a preacher’s flask.

What the hell was I thinking, coming back to Tombstone? Thought maybe I’d find redemption, or at least a clean shirt and a drink. Instead, I found the sheriff’s cold stare and Clara’s even colder shoulder.

I flicked one of them dimes into the dust and watched it spin, then fall flat. That felt about right.

Behind me, spurs jingled. I didn’t turn. Just listened.

“You got one more hand in you, Cassidy?”

I didn’t know if it was a challenge or a warning, but it didn’t matter.

I always had one more hand.

This post is in response to a prompt from TN Kerr at The New Unofficial Online Writer’s Guild. TN’s prompt is called OLWG and he posts two, three, or more prompt words or phrases from his vast collection of writing prompts weekly. Our task is to choose one of them, choose all of them, or choose none of them and incorporate them into a story or poem. This week, his three prompts are:

1. what the hell was I thinking
2. others do it faster
3. a handful of dimes

Image generated using ChatGPT.

FOWC with Fandango — Stake

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FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “stake.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Fandango9 Comments

BAC5010C-BC9D-464D-A383-3314F09EE39DWhat is the nature of your trickery?
You are clearly using some form of witchery!
You have made the moon in the sky disappear,
Causing all of us to cry and cower in fear.
What demon tool is it that you use,
To make us all behave like fools?
Be warned that you have made a grave mistake,
And we are going to burn you at the stake.

You cannot burn me, don’t even try,
If you want your yellow boulder to shine in the sky.
It’s no witches trick that I implement.
Such a deception was never my intent.
I am a person of astronomy and so I allege,
That the moon will return if you watch the edge.
Returning your moon to you, that’s my thing,
And then you will bow down to me and kiss my ring.

Written for Paula Light’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are “kiss,” “boulder,” and “yellow.” And for Teresa’s Story Starter Challenge using the phrase “watch the edge.” And finally for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (trickery),  Word of the Day Challenge (moon), Ragtag Daily Prompt: (tool), and Your Daily Word Prompt (implement). Photo credit: biancamentil@Pixabay.com.