#atozchallenge: Ink

Harry had the worse handwriting in the world. Imagine a doctor in a hurry, and you'd get something that approximated Harry's writing on a good day. Imagine someone writing poorly in Jawi, and that would be Harry's writing on a bad day. It made his teachers tear their hair out and sometimes twist his ears, especially if he had used an ink pen, which resulted in multiple ink smudges all over the page.

The Inkwell (TM) advertisement caught his eye one day after he had emerged from his form teacher's room with red ears and flushed cheeks. It was lying innocuously on the floor beside his bag, as if someone had dropped it on their way out.

IF YOU WANT TO INK WELL, USE INKWELL(TM) it yelled at him from off the glossy paper. Guaranteed to make your handwriting readable, it whispered in neat letters. What would it hurt? The only thing they could blame him for was getting outside help.

As soon as he reached home, he dialed the number listed on the brochure.
"welcome to inkwell! The only way to write well!" a cheery voice greeted him. "How can I help you?"
"I'd like to buy..."
"Of course! Why else would you be calling, right? Silly me."
"How much is it?" he asked. "Only I don't have a lot of money."
"Hmm, let me see. Could you open your latest homework?"
He thought it was a strange request but did so anyway. "How will you-"
"My, your handwriting is terrible! Tell you what- this first package will be on the house."
"What do you-"
"Enjoy, Harry!"
"Hey, how did you..." but the line had cut off and all he heard was the dial tone.

He had just put the receiver down when he noticed a little small bottle filled with ink on the table beside his homework.

#atozchallenge: Hammer

It was like using a hammer to kill a fly, or so they said. It didn't matter, she thought, as long as something died. It didn't help that she was sleepy and hungry and overall feeling extremely overwhelmed. There was no fly. But there was a hammer. And the hammer was gleaming in the bright office lights, enticing her.

She picked it up. It seemed to be almost humming to her, a soft simple song that resonated within her chest, magnifying her murderous impulses. It was mesmerizing. She tore her eyes away from the silver hammer, looking back at the piles and piles of work that had yet to be completed. She wanted to kill something.

Two steps. She stopped in front of the water cooler, looking down at the hammer in her hand. She shook her head. She must be having delusions from working late all week, she decided. She placed it down on the counter top and turned to pick up her mug.

Seconds later, she found that she was still standing at the cooler, her mug having mysteriously relocated itself somewhere else, with a silver hammer bearing the name Maxwell gripped tightly in her right hand. She stared at the head of the hammer and hoped that the little dirty spots in the midst of the gleam wasn't what she thought it was.

Closer inspection brought a flattened fly and a paper clip to her attention. She almost sighed as she happily surmised that she hadn't bashed anyone's brains in yet. Her eyes wandered to the paper clip again. As she stood there, pondering, another paper clip flew past her. It didn't make sense and she didn't think she could muster enough energy to bother trying.

She put the hammer back down and went back to her table. There was a huge hole in the middle of her laptop, through the table top and down into a dent on the floor.

It was like using a hammer to kill a fly. She found a tissue and wiped the fly off the hammer.

#atozchallenge: Gum

If there was one thing that really annoyed Natalie, it was stepping on chewing gum. There was that unpleasantness of the sucking feeling on the sole of your shoe when you first stepped on it, the embarrassment of unwittingly picking up stray pieces of tissue paper (or other kinds of rubbish that accumulated on Malaysian roads) as you tried to find a convenient place to stop and then the difficulty of trying to scrape off every piece of gum off from your shoe without tearing a hole in your sole (and bleeding in your soul). She'd stopped chewing gum herself at age twelve just because of this unpleasant experience and found herself contemplating a move to Singapore, where chewing gum was banned, at the age of seventeen, after stepping on another piece of chewed gum for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Don't be such a fusspot, Nat," her boyfriend, Henry, had said. "It's just part of your OCD tendencies."

Natalie put it down as a black mark against him. "Let's see how you handle it when you step on gum," she muttered to herself.

It was with pleasure that she took a trip down to Singapore to stay with a distant relation while she applied for universities there. As she stepped through the immigration office with her passport freshly stamped, she couldn't help grinning and saying aloud to the milling crowd, "Welcome to gum-free Singapore!"

A few teenagers from her bus stared at her, plainly thinking that she was crazy, but she didn't care. She hopped and skipped her way back to the waiting bus to continue the journey into the city, where her (somehow related, she forgot how) aunt would pick her up. It was precisely because she was so happy and carefree that she tripped on the curb and fell sprawling, everything falling out of her handbag.

Like a slow-motion movie, she watched as her favourite earrings rolled out of her bag, continued onto the road and ended by dropping down the grate of the drain. Some kindly souls came by to help her up and to gather her scattered belongings. A little sad sob escaped her as she stared down the grate to where her earrings lay amidst the dust. The iron bars were too narrow to allow anything more than her fingers to pass through, and they were too far down to reach. She tugged at the grate, but found that it was too firmly fixed in place for her to move it even an inch.

Just as she had given up her earrings for lost, one of the teenagers approached her, looking surreptitiously around.
"I have gum," he said in a soft whisper.
She looked up sharply at him. "But -"
"I can help you."
"How?"
"But you mustn't tell on me. Promise?"
She looked uncertainly at him, then looked down at her earrings. "Okay," she finally said grudgingly.

Peering around again, the boy casually pulled out a stick of chewing gum from his jacket pocket and slipped it into his mouth. He chewed furiously, pretending to be talking to Natalie, even as she looked at him suspiciously. Pulling out a long, thick string from his pocket, he stuck the wadded up gum on the end of it and tested it for sticking power. Satisfied, he slowly slid the string down into the drain, wiggling it until it touched the end of one of Natalie's earrings.

Within two minutes, the teen handed Natalie back her earrings, a little dusty and a little sticky, but whole and intact. He carefully wrapped the gum and the string back in its foil and disposed of it in a nearby dustbin.

"Maybe gum isn't so bad after all," she said as she thanked him profusely.

Also, reminder all: submission deadline for Love in Penang is on 30th April 2013. That's three weeks away!

#atozchallenge: Balloon

Three long skinny balloons lay on Thea's lap. She was blowing up another balloon, grimacing a little at the squeaky sound it made as she tied off the knot. That was four done and another three to go. She glanced again at the manual beside her and smiled. Lou had once called it her crazy smile - the one she always smiled right before attempting to pull off some madcap scheme. It was a good thing he wasn't around right now, though she would have much appreciated his help in blowing up the balloons. She had wanted to use an air pump, probably a bicycle pump, but the manual said that it worked best with warm air, so her breath it had to be, since there was no one else around. She had made sure of that.

Seven long skinny balloons and she would have her very own pet. The manual guaranteed that if she did it right, the little monkey would come alive. She felt a little bit like Frankenstein, a little bit like God. Had Frankenstein felt like God when he created his monster? She laid the sixth balloon down and stopped to catch her breath. If it turned out right, she could make a business out of it. Balloons were cheap, and maintaining a balloon monkey, though it were alive, should work out to be cheap. What would they eat anyway?

Thea looked at the seven long skinny balloons laid out in a row beside her. She flipped the manual to the next page and studied the diagrams carefully. She didn't want to get this wrong. She was tired of blowing balloons for today. She decided she felt more like God than like Frankenstein. After all, God had breathed into Man and he came alive, rather like how she had been breathing into the balloons. Frankenstein had still relied on the wind and the thunder - all acts of God, not his own. She scoffed at him.

Twisting the balloons was harder than she expected and her fingers twitched nervously, half expecting the balloons to burst with every squeak they gave. The squeaking was reaching a fever pitch by the time she had finished, and she wondered why the noise was still there even when she had laid the seven inch tall balloon monkey down on the ground and wasn't touching it anymore.

Her next act was to take the terrarium down from its storage above her cupboard and place it on the table beside her bed. It was empty now - she supposed she would fill it up with sand and stuff later on, when she could get it. But for now, she turned to stare at the balloon monkey. She almost swore it had moved. Picking it up, she did the last thing the manual had instructed - she placed it in the terrarium, instinctively stepping back a few paces to see what would happen.

The howl that emitted from the terrarium almost deafened her. As she went off in search of ear plugs, the only thing in her mind was the glum thought that Lou wouldn't be very happy when he came home. Why hadn't the manual said that it would be this noisy?

taken from www.kingdomofloathing.com

#atozchallenge: Asparagus

He crept slowly along the corridor, keeping as much as he could to the shadows. There was a stir of air above him and he paused, looking up. A dark figure stood outlined in the dim window opposite, a stray curtain flapping in the soft breeze. He froze. The figure stood there for a long time, seemingly gazing out the window, and he wondered if it - he or she, he couldn't tell - had seen him. But no hue and cry was raised, nothing startling happened, and in due time the figure disappeared. He closed his eyes momentarily, heaving a silent sigh of relief. He touched the slim packet in his coat pocket to reassure himself.
Glancing about him, he continued on his cautious journey, often casting a quick gaze back at the window until he turned the corner and emerged in the courtyard. The pale crescent moon was reflected in the deep, still pool, floating a short distance above the overhanging trees. At the far end of the courtyard, he could see her slender form hunched over on the long bench, her face in her hands.
She was crying.
"Hush, I'm here," he said as he sat down beside her, placing an arm over her shuddering shoulders.
"I know. But you shouldn't be," she whispered, raising her tear-stained face to his. "You should go. Now."
"Why? I only just got here."
"They're coming, George," she said. "I couldn't stop them."
"Do they know-"
"Yes. You have to go. They'll kill you if they find you here."
"Don't worry, I have it all under control."
She tried to laugh at his confidence, tried to believe that what he said was true. But she knew them. She knew them by heart. They were her family, her friends, her captors.
He took her hands in his. "Trust me on this, Julie." Even as he said that, he wondered about the figure in the window. Who was it, and what did he want? Pushing his fears aside, he told her about his week, detailing his plans to get her out of this place and to make her his wife.
"You love me, don't you, Julie?" he asked.
"Yes, yes I do." She was smiling now, telling him of her plans to decorate their future house, about the light lavender hangings she had seen in the store the other day and how nice it would look draped over the couch he had told her of two weeks ago.
"When, George?" she asked, eyes shining.
"Yes, when, George?" a mocking voice came from across the courtyard.
George tore his eyes away from his love, and looked into the face of his sworn enemy. Julie's nails pressed into his wrists.
"I told you..."
"Stay calm, Julie. I have this under control." George stood up, slowly dusted himself off, and walked towards Julie's brother.
"I know what you want, Harold, and I'm prepared to do it."
Harold folded his arms, narrowed his eyes. "Show me."
George smiled as he put his hand in his coat pocket, pulling out the land title deed that Harold had fought him for five years ago. As he did so, his hand gripped the little asparagus knife he had slipped in between the papers and in one swift movement, he stabbed Harold in the heart.
Julie stared at him wide-eyed.
"Don't worry, Julie. They'll never find the murder weapon," George said with a wide grin as he pulled the knife out. He stooped by the pool and rinsed his hand and the knife in the cool water. Then he popped it into his mouth and crunched down on it. Asparagus was definitely his new favourite vegetable.

taken from www.kingdomofloathing.com

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S/N: SPECIAL SHOUTOUT to Arlee Bird, the founder of the A to Z Challenge! We're having a blast! =)

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ANNOUNCEMENT!!
30 days left for you to submit your short stories for the Love in Penang anthology.

My #atozchallenge list of words

We played a game on Tuesday for icebreakers in carecell. It went like this: "I went to the supermarket and bought..." and each person takes turn to fill in an item starting with the letters A until Z. Woke up this on Wednesday morning and went Voila! Problem solved! I have my words for A to Z challenge next month.
Surprisingly I still remembered almost all the words, except Z.

• Asparagus
• Balloon
• Corkscrew
• Dart
• Elevator
• Flag
• Gum
• Hammer
• Ink
• Jellybean
• Kitkat
• Lipstick
• Monitor
• Nugget
• Orange
• Paradigm Penang Report
• Quilt
• Rumplestiltskin's secret magic potion
• Story
• Tantrums
• Umbrella
• Vampire
• Wire
• Xylophone
• Yellow submarine

Anyone wants to help me with Z?

P/S Sign ups are still open here.

Also, oh lookie! My KOL account still exists!