Who's Afraid of Big, Bad Me?

Ah, come on, Mom!  I’m the Omega Wolf of the pack.  Nobody is afraid of me, and the females won’t come near me, even when they’re in heat and horny as the deer that we have for dinner.  Why do I have to take all these Big Bad Wolf tests, just so that I can learn to scare a few humans?

Okay, okay.  Rite of passage and all that.  I don’t have a choice, right?

How come you only agree with me when it means I have to do something painful?  No, I won’t shut up.

Did I hear you right?  You want me to go into this FROZEN lake and swim around?  You want me to catch pneumonia?

I know wolves don’t get pneumonia, but we get other rotten diseases.  You want me to get a rotten disease?  Again, I will not shut up.

Okay, I’ll step into the water.  Look, I’m stepping in.

OW!  This water is COLD!  What am I, a polar bear or something?

Okay, okay.  I’ll walk in further.  I’m doing it right now.  I’m up to my thighs in icy cold water.  Pretty soon I’ll freeze to death, it will be all over, and you’ll be very sorry you made me do this.

AAYYEE!  Something just touched me under the water!  A rattlesnake!  It must be a rattlesnake!

Oh, it was just a minnow.  Did that big, graceful, ballet-like leap I just made count toward my grade?

Yes, I’ll shut up.

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Inspired by a picture prompt posted on the Facebook page of the Writing Prompts Group on 6/14/2018 by Michele Rice Carpenter.

Always Plan for Death and Other Events

Note:  This story describes a Catholic wake and funeral.  We writers always hear, “Write what you know.”  Being a Catholic church singer, I know Catholic funerals very well.

My name is Eunice O’Neill, and I died in a car crash five days ago.  Why am I still hanging around, you ask?  I don’t know.  I went through the whole thing:  the tunnel; the light; seeing all my dead relatives, two departed dogs and a hamster; everything.  Then they told me I would have to spend some more time down here because this is my Purgatory.  Eventually, they’ll let me in up there, but I don’t know how long that will take.  In the meantime, we have to make the best of things, so I decided to haunt my wake and my funeral.

One of the nice things about being dead is that you don’t have to walk around anymore because you can float!  Floating is fun, especially when you float right through someone because you can see all their insides when you do that.  I know that doesn’t sound like fun, but when you’re a ghost, you have to take what you can get.

I floated into my wake early, out of habit.  I forgot that there was no need to get a good seat because I don’t get tired anymore.  Of course, nobody was there yet, so I took some time to check everything out.  Hmmm.  Big wreath of flowers from Uncle Joe and Aunt Kate.  One, two, three, four ... twelve Mass cards.  All those Masses should cut down some of my Purgatory time.  Guestbook, holy cards ... right where they should be.  Some nice pictures of me from fifteen years ago.  So far, everything was in order.

I put off the most important thing until last because I didn’t want to face it:  how I looked in my coffin.  The coffin was fine.  It didn’t scream “cheap,” but it wasn’t extravagant, either.  It was somewhere in the middle, just like my family.

I had to know if I looked presentable, so I took a peek at myself.  If a ghost could scream, I would have done it.  There I was, wearing the one dress that I hated, and a pageboy wig that looked like the Dutch Boy on an old paint can.  It wasn’t even the right color.  My real hair was light auburn; the wig was dark auburn.  My sister Alice must have picked it out.  She never had an eye for color, but she was Mom’s favorite.  So, of course, who else should be in charge of my hair?

Tammy Faye Bakker must have done my makeup.  I looked like a $10 hooker.

You can imagine how I felt later when my sister Alice and her husband passed by my coffin.  Alice was crying, and she said, “She looks so peaceful and nice,” meaning me.  That idiot brother-in-law of mine answered with, “Yeah, she looks better than she did when she was alive.”  If I still had legs, I would have kicked that bastard right where it would hurt the most.

The funeral Mass the next morning was okay.  Only the family and a few friends came, but almost everyone I knew had been at the wake the night before, so that was okay.  Cousin Lizzie, who insists on singing at every family function, even though she has a voice like a foghorn in a hurricane, butchered the “Ave Maria.”  The organist managed to keep up with Lizzie, who doesn’t read music and can’t count, but I could see he was suffering through the whole number.  The regular church singer sang everything else, and he has an awesome set of pipes, so it wasn’t a total loss.

A lot of people said they would miss me because I was a lot of fun.  Maybe I’ll use my time here on earth haunting them.  It’s only right.

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Inspired by a prompt posted by author Rachel Christiansen on Facebook’s Writing Prompts Group on June 8, 2018:

Write about a funeral from the dead person’s viewpoint.

A Dilly of a Dildo

Dear Mother Hildegard:

As a good Catholic alum of your school, and according to the penance imposed on me by Father Riley in Confession on Saturday, I apologize for my behavior to your sister nuns last Wednesday.  I acknowledge that my actions put them in the occasion of sin by tempting them to impure thoughts that should never enter into the mind of any good Catholic woman, especially a nun.  Father Riley also made me say two Rosaries.  He did this after he was finished laughing so hard his nose was running.

In my defense, I would like to explain why I was walking down the street in front of the school on Wednesday carrying a huge inflatable penis.

 

To begin with, It never occurred to me that a nun would even know what that thing I carried represented.  I forgot that Sister Mary Eloise teaches biology, that she used to be an exotic dancer and that she likes to talk.

So okay, it all started on Wednesday morning when Angie Ricciardone and Lourdes Valdez decided at the last minute to give Mary Frances McBride a bachelorette party that night.  Mary Frances married Johnny Burke on Thursday.  The reason they didn’t get married on Saturday was that they could get a catering hall cheaper in the middle of the week.  Mary Frances and Johnny are both cheap as a $2 dress.  Mary Frances even wore her mother’s old wedding gown, which I have to admit did look pretty good after forty years of lying in a box in the closet.  Knowing Mary Frances, she’ll preserve it until it’s almost petrified then pass it on to the next female in the family who gets married.

Angie and I put ourselves in charge of decorations.  One of the places we hit was Eros’ Lair, which sells (excuse me for saying this to you, a nun) sex toys and other erotic paraphernalia.  I only knew about the place because other people had told me about it.  To this, I can swear.  We bought a few items, which I won’t mention to a nun, including the thing I mentioned earlier, which I had to tell you about because this whole story is about it.

I asked the clerk behind the counter how big it would be when inflated.  To show us, he took it out of its package, brought an air pump up from behind the counter and inflated it right there.  Holy Moly, that thing was HUGE!  Of course, we bought it.

By the way, if you’re worried about the effect of a giant you-know-what on Mary Frances, don’t.  She and Johnny have been going at each other for a year now, and he wasn’t her first by any means.  She knows what a man looks like.  It’s okay now, though.  She’s gone to Confession, and she got married in St. Brendan’s church, wearing white, figuring that if she wore white nobody would guess what a tramp she had been in former days.

Angie and I figured we had better bring the inflated hoo-hah out of the store as it was because none of us had an air pump and we weren’t about to blow that thing up ourselves.  We were in a hurry, so we took a shortcut.  That’s how we ended up on the corner across from the school with me carrying the big piece of junk and a group of startled nuns across the street.

Again, I apologize.  I have now done my entire penance, so it looks like I am forgiven, even though I smiled and waved at the group of nuns just for the fun of it, to make sure they saw me.  It was all a big joke, and I’m sorry I made Sister Bernadette faint.

Yours truly,

Annie McNeely

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Inspired by a picture prompt posted by Audrie Michelle on the Writing Prompts Group page on Facebook.

The Harebrained Royal Heir

ANNOUNCER:  I present Her Royal Highness Princess Ivory Eugenia Barbie Margaret Dollie Alexandra of the House of Dummschaff, Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Allwettia

PRINCESS:  As you all know, I will soon be Queen, if everything goes right.  My poor father, King Rudolph, known to you commoners as Rudy the Wolf, is dying.  He has had one of these attacks at least once a year for the last 20 years, so there is always a chance that he’ll come through this one.  In that case, I shall remain Crown Princess, and my only duties will be to look good, get married, produce some royal kids, and show up at all the right ceremonies.

You wouldn’t want my life.  Believe me.

By the way, I love a joke as much as the next person.  But will whoever has been posting all those “I’ve had Ivory” notices all over the place, please stop it!  I have never had casual sex in my life.  Well, okay, I’ve had a few encounters with strangers just for the fun of it, but only a few.  And I have never had an illicit affair.  What?  Well, that one doesn’t count.  The Duke and I were only long-term friends with benefits.  We could only get together, anyway, when the Duchess wasn’t home.  Hmm?  No, that one doesn’t count, either. ... Neither does that one. ... Oh, just take those signs down!

You over there – what did you say?  Something about the apple not falling far from the tree?  Well, let me assure you that my father’s reputation is grossly exaggerated.  If he had bedded as many women as everyone says, he wouldn’t have had any time to do anything else.  And the first person who makes a wisecrack from THAT will have his taxes audited for the last 20 years!

It seems that everyone wants to know how much energy I will put into ruling the kingdom.  According to rumor, I have never shown any desire to do any work or anything requiring thinking.  Well, that’s why a Queen has advisors, secretaries, and servants.  After all, I can’t do everything myself, and I can’t think of everything.  It’s much more pleasant if I can trust everyone else to do things right so that all I have to do is sign things and show up at the right parties and balls and whatnot.

Yes, please?  Why, of course, I will be a real monarch!  I will not be a figurehead, even if other people are doing all the real work.  Anyone who has any ideas of taking over my job will be fired.  I plan to keep all the power, with as little trouble to myself as possible.

What will I do for poor people, you ask?  Well, poor people don’t dress well, and they live in such awful houses.  I’m sure they are chagrinned to appear in public.  I will have high walls built around all the poor districts of every city and divert all roads away from poor villages.  This way, the poor can hide from everyone with dignity, and we won’t have to know they are there.

Yes?  No, I will decidedly NOT be imprisoning the poor inside ghettos.  They simply won’t be able to go through the gates unless they are properly dressed.  I can’t help it if they don’t have the money to dress like billionaires.  They’ll have to share, or something.

I beg your pardon!  That remark was not necessary!

I think it’s time for me to flounce out now, so I can go to my room and sulk in peace, like the princess I am.  Good-bye, all.

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Inspired by a writing prompt by Jenalyn Cloward Barton

Posted on Facebook’s Writing Prompts Group on May 14. 2018,

“You may be the rightful heir to the throne, but you’re definitely not the right one for the job.”

The Monster has Risen

**

In other news, scientists, tourists and startled gondoliers have reported a sighting of the famed Grand Canal Monster, popularly known as "Grandie."

Unlike the Loch Ness Monster, which is usually seen as a long neck with a little head on the end of it, the Grand Canal Monster appears as two gigantic white human arms and hands. In the past, Grandie has been mistaken for some large, submerged ancient Roman statue, but that idea was debunked when it was seen by two people who were selling knockoff Gucci handbags to let go of a building it was grabbing and sink back into the water. In addition, Venice was not an ancient Roman city, so no statues were built there by the Romans. Other people built statues there later, but not the Romans, because they weren't there to do it.

The appearance of the monster has caused great concern within the ranks of the Venetian municipality. They are wondering if the creature will wreck some kind of havoc on the annual Regatta and on the gondola business. Tourists, on the other hand, are heading to Venice in huge droves and bringing their iPhone cameras with them. Several people have been accidentally pushed into the polluted water, causing them to get very angry. Venetian police are putting in a lot of overtime trying to control the crowds of people, most of whom can't even speak Italian.

We'll have more on this later. Right now, let's go to Jim James for the latest sports news.

This was written in response to a photo writing prompt by author Jody Townsley Morse, posted on Facebook on February 3, 2018.

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**The image is of the sculpture "Support," by the artist Lorenzo Quinn.  It set up in the water of the Grand Canal to call attention to the problem of Global Warming, which is causing sea levels to rise.

A Telling Defense

Author CAMERON GRAHAM posted this writing prompt on Facebook on 1/17/2018:
 Challenge: Make a character portrait of someone with a huge blind spot in his or her self-awareness--something that everybody else sees but to which the character is oblivious. But the portrait should still be three-dimensional and complex, not cartoonish.

Always tells the truth and never
gossips.Yeah, right!

I, Rose Marie Lapazza, freely make this written deposition, witnessed by my nephew Salvatore, who is a notary and who knows that I always tell the truth and I never gossip, in spite of what everyone says, including his mother, my sister Angela, who drives her husband crazy and can be a real pain in the ass.

Last Sunday, January 14, 2018, I was coming out of the 11:30 Mass over at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.  I stopped to talk to Mary Ryan and Father Rizzo because I always stop to talk to Father Rizzo and Mary was standing there talking to him before I got there.  She has a hard time getting around because of her bad knee, poor thing.  It’s her age.  She’s older than she looks and a lot older than she admits to being.  I had some pain patches that I had been meaning to give to her, so I took them out of my purse and handed them to her.  She said thank you.  She always says please and thank you because she has manners.  Sometimes her manners are too good and you want to clobber her for being annoying, but most of the time she’s nice to be around.

I talked to a bunch of other people after that, because I like people and I like to talk to them and help them out with things.  That’s what friends and neighbors are for, and here we were right in front of our church.  You have to be nice to people when you’re standing in front of a church because you’re standing in front of God, and acting like a jerk when you are standing in front of God is even worse than acting like a jerk when you are just walking around somewhere.  I was being as nice as possible.  I even told Tommy and Kathleen Marco that I thought their ugly kid was cute.  I feel so sorry for that kid.  She’s going to have a hard time when she gets old enough to go to school.  Of course, the kid can’t help it.  She looks like her father.

So there I was, fussing over the little Marco girl (poor kid), when up popped Philomena Grillo.  She came charging at me like a damned torpedo, yelling loud enough to be heard in three counties, accusing me of telling people she has been having an affair with Jim Piscitelli the newsstand guy.  I never said she was having an affair with him.  She couldn’t, anyway.  Jim Piscitelli is as gay as New Orleans on Mardi Gras.  He tries to hide it, but everyone knows, anyway.  He and Philomena are friends and they sometimes go to the movies together, but she could never get anything going with him, if you know what I mean.

So there was Philomena, screaming about how I was ruining her reputation and calling me things that should never be said in front of a church.  I had to calm her down, so I hauled off and slugged her in the shoulder.  I did NOT hit her in the face, no matter what she says.  I might have pulled some of her hair.  I don’t remember.  Anyway, she didn’t calm down.  She got mad as a bull seeing red.  She jumped on me and we ended up in a big fight.  She probably would have won, because she’s a lot bigger than I am and she looks like a man, but Father Rizzo came and broke us up, just in time.  He was mad at both of us and told us to stop acting like a couple of animals and go home.

Philomena brought this lawsuit against me for slandering her, which I never did because I never said she was having an affair with Jim the gay guy.  I don’t gossip.  If I say anything about anyone, it is always the truth and it is always something everyone knows, anyway.  I should sue Philomena for giving me a black eye, and if she keeps this up I might do that.

Attested to this 17^th day of January, 2018.

___________________________________

Rose Marie Lapazza

___________________________________

Salvatore Pazienza, Notary Public

The Hair Papers

Author Lucie Guerre posted the following writing prompt on Facebook:

Found an advertisement on Facebook for "100% human hair". Create a story in which someone buys 100% human hair off a Facebook ad and why they would make such a purchase.

Memo

To: Invasion Preparatory Staff

From: General Zork-Snut

In our efforts to transform our Invasion Force into the likeness of earthlings, it has become painfully obvious that we are lacking in one resource.

Unlike the people of our planet, humans have hair on their heads. If this mission is to be successful, we must acquire a large amount of human hair ASAP.

Sclat Dok, one of our advance scouts has found an advertisement on something that humans call "Facebook" for 100 percent human hair. With this memo, I authorize Ms. Dok to buy enough human hair to cover the heads of 50 members of our invasion force.

Ms. Dok, please do this ASAP. Our people have never had hair on their heads before, and they will need time to adjust to it before they invade Earth and try to pass as humans.

The success of our mission depends on this.

===================================

Memo

To: General Zork-Snut

From: Sclat Dok

It might not be necessary to buy so much hair. In the last several years, it has become a fashion for male humans in some countries to shave their heads. I might be able to save the mission some money by buying hair only for the females in the invasion force.

Please advise.

PS: I wish you would get email. It's a real pain having to send these memos back and forth.

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Memo

To: Sclat Dok

From: General Zork-Snut

Just buy the hair. If we end up with too much, you can always sell it to a movie studio for their next sci-fi flick.

I will never get email. I can't figure it out, and if I can't figure it out it has no right to exist.

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Memo

To: General Zork-Snut

From: Sclat Dok

Okay, Pop. I won't argue with you. Say hello to Mom and tell her I am safe.

By the way, what would you like me to bring you from Earth?  Some nice Gucci shoes?  A case of Twinkies?  Let me know.