QWC #2: Handful of characters

[Redlass]

I probably shouldn't post these all at once, 'cause I have a limited number of ideas. Then again, I can always toss the ball to one of you, right?

Anyway, here's another Quickie Writing Challenge.

Write a tale (in any format, style, etc. that you wish) that incorporates these five characters:

• A candy maker
• A senator
• A 9-year old boy
• A duchess
• A jockey

They led her into a small dark room with a table, a pair of chairs, and a glass wall. As they sat down, the lights came up behind the glass and one of the policemen said they were ready to start.

"Are you sure you can go through with this, ma'am?" asked the Sergeant.

"I don't know," said Leslie. "But I guess I must. For Muffy's sake." She looked down near her ankles. "Isn't that right, Muffy?"

Muffy yipped, wagging her tail in joy.

On that fateful day, thought Leslie, Muffy hadn't been yipping or wagging her tail in joy.

"Bring them in," said the Sergeant.

A man in a white smock and chef's toque was led in first. He shuffled to the end of the row and turned facing the glass wall. From the lines behind him, he was less than five feet tall without the hat, more than six feet tall with the hat, and just as wide as he was tall.

Next, an austere man in a fine suit strode into the room. When he got to the man in the white smock, he shook his hand and asked him if he was registered to vote in the upcoming Senatorial election.

The man in the smock shrugged. "What do I know?" he said. "I just makes my candy."

"Quiet, you two," said the Sergeant. "Next!"

A smallish boy still in school uniform meekly entered the room. He looked around, confused, and he wandered over to where the Senator and the candy maker were standing.

"Right over there," said the Sergeant.

Next was a lady in a frumpy, but expensive coat and pearls came in. She went over to the others and leaned against the wall. She'd had a little too much to drink by some measures, which wasn't enough by her own.

Finally, a dwarf of a man in rider's gear, no taller than the boy, walked in bearing a saddle his shoulder.

The Sergeant ordered them into place and had them stand against the wall. Each of their faces were brightly lit and easily visible through the glass.

"Okay, ma'am, which one of these people raped your dog?"

Leslie looked at the five, looked at Muffy, and then shrugged. "Shouldn't they look something like each other?" she asked. "Every time I watch a movie or see a television show with a lineup in it, they all look something alike."

The Sergeant grumbled. "We could try masks, but there's been a few budget cuts," he said. "This is the best we could do on such short notice. Maybe if you took your glasses off it would help.

Leslie did so, and she smiled as they all faded into a meaningless blur. "Oh, that's so much better now."

The Sergeant nodded, and he waited as Leslie went from suspect to suspect.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "Are you sure there wasn't any DNA evidence on Muffy?" she asked.

"We tried," said the Sergeant. "But there's just so much damned hair on that dog of different colors that we couldn't tell which was hers and which was... you know... and the fact that your dog insisted on using a condom didn't help, either."

Leslie blushed. "You can't be too careful these days." She peered through the glass. "Can't they each say something?"

The Sergeant thought for a moment. "I think we can do that one better," he said, and he picked up Muffy and handed her to one of the other policemen. "We'll just make each of these perps do your dog and then whichever sounds right, that's our man."

"Why, that boy couldn't be any older than nine years... how could he... and wasn't that Duchess Someone-or-Other I saw there in the lineup?" Leslie asked. "How is she going to... you know..."

The Sergeant grinned. "Oh, we pick up all sorts of things searching through people's homes. That shouldn't be much of a problem at all for your Muffy or the Duchess. In fact, if there's anything that you've got on your Christmas list that-"

Suddenly, a howl pierced the air, and grunts of pleasure. The Sergeant jumped from his chair, and in the hallway he saw the policeman he had given Muffy to with his pants around his ankles, and Muffy looking terribly uncomfortable and displeased in his embrace.

"That's the man!" shouted Leslie, pointing at a blank wall.

The policeman looked to his left... and his right... and then waited for a minute. Finally, he grew impatient. "Shouldn't someone be leading me away in handcuffs or something?"

"I'm a little busy at the moment," said the Sergeant, comforting Leslie and trying to help her choke back her sobs. The policeman took his own handcuffs, cuffed himself, and led himself down the hallway as he knocked himself against the wall.

"Try not to brutalize yourself too much," yelled the Sergeant. "We're not blowing another case against you because of that crap."

As everyone was led out of the room, the jockey sighed with relief. Just horses and corpses from now on, he swore silently.

[phoenixx]

*snort* >>snicker<< *giggle*

hee hee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha

ROFLMAO

Whew!

Leslie <- wiping tear from my eye

[Redlass]

Man, file, I gotta be careful what I ask for around here, don'ts I?

Too, too funny. You really are making these exercises seem too easy.

Actually, if you look deeper at my little story I cheated. The five characters were throwaway characters in a standard police lineup template of a story. Toss any five characters at it, and you could easily modify a sentence or two and you can fit them in.

The real characters were the Sergeant and Leslie.

[Redlass]

Very nice, Satan, by combining four of the characters into two, you tell a coherent story where we get a deeper insight into each of them. (And you manage to do it all without giving a single name!)

That's saying nothing about how hilarious your story was. I giggled uncontrollably in parts.

[Redlass]

Here's my contribution--I won't even try to compete in the humor department.

Of Sugar and Spice

Jean Finsworth sighed. There would be no grand royal entrance here, merely the whispered greeting of a hall full of funeral fans flapping, the whimpers of overdressed children eager to escape into the exuberant summer, and the wheezy breaths of blue-haired ladies humming prayers over their hymnals. Jean once mistakenly believed that as the Duchess, she would get assignments replete in luxury and fine society, not orders to infiltrate sweaty prayer meetings at the crest of August.

Clutching her Bible and brushing the strands of dandelions off her florid cotton dress, Jean moved into an aisle. The rickety wooden chair creaked as she sat, catching the attention of the young boy sitting two rows ahead of her. He turned to stare, first at the large metallic pin on her left breast, then at the snug yellow hat that hugged her bobbed hair. He stared openly at her until, in exasperation, she stuck out her tongue and inverted her eyebrows in the scariest face she could make. The boy giggled and was promptly smacked on the head by his previously inattentive mother.

With the boy’s attention directed elsewhere, Jean cast her eyes upon the stage where Nebraska’s only Baptist senator was about to introduce the revival’s flamboyant minister. She fumbled with her pin, turning on the receiver that would broadcast every syllable voiced in the hall to the grubby backroom of the confectioner’s candy shop, where the store proprietor sat tied to a chair with his own taffy.

The minister shook hands with the senator and took his place at the lectern. Jean slowly scanned the crowd, idly wondering whether any of the devout would notice a change in the minister. Unlikely, she concluded. As a jockey several years ago, her mark had learned both the art of showmanship and the craft of invisibility. Even if the minister’s wife were in the crowd, she probably wouldn’t be able to tell that the man at the pulpit was not her husband.

His sonorous voice reverberated through the hall with an authenticity that troubled Jean momentarily—then she saw the microphone clipped to his lapel and assured herself that the plan was still intact. At the speaker’s invitation, everyone in the hall rose for prayer, a few waving their Bibles in the air grateful for any bit of circulation on this sticky day. Jean also waved her Bible, letting her fingernail flick on the laser beam concealed in the spine. She trained it carefully onto the lavaliere microphone and slowly widened the beam until it triggered the supersonic feedback. The worshipers gasped as the would-be minister collapsed in a sweat. Jean flicked off the beam and picked up an unused funeral fan, waving a face filled with faux concern. She carefully suppressed her smile as the sound of a siren wailed outside the hall; it was the siren of the “ambulance” that would take her jockey nemesis off to the sugared hands of her comrades in crime.

[Redlass]

Originally posted by file13
Actually, if you look deeper at my little story I cheated. The five characters were throwaway characters in a standard police lineup template of a story. Toss any five characters at it, and you could easily modify a sentence or two and you can fit them in.

The real characters were the Sergeant and Leslie.

Didn't I respond to this? I remember typing it, can't find the post. I must have fallen asleep in the middle of it.

Is it really cheating, though? After all, the exercise said you simply had to incorporate--in any fashion or style--those five characters. It didn't say they had to influence the plot or be important to the story. It's one of the things that I thought was clever about the way you handled the story--you met the strictures of the exercise without letting the strictures dictate the story you were telling.

Back when I was taking music theory, I was fascinated by all the rules that said certain notes always had to follow other notes and a musical phrase always had to close on a certain note, etc. I, of course, wanted to know what would happen when you broke those rules. The answer was that it sounded bad.

So, the trick becomes stretching those rules until they screech so that you create something creative and fresh, but still musical to the ear.

I think you did that exceedingly well--and told a very funny story in the meantime.

[phoenixx]

If using a pat formula to write a story is cheating then Stephen King and others have made a very successful art out of cheating...

LOL - Leslie

[AuntieEmma[$]]

"Sweet Week!"

"Yes," said the Senator from Pennsylvania. "That's a catchy slogan."

"So you'll do it then? You'll bring it up in the Committee?" He leaned forward, his eyes positively bulging, planting his elbow with a thud on the table, missing the butter dish by a quarter of an inch.

The Senator stared at the block of butter with the Turf High Club's logo, a grinning jockey, stamped on all of its four sides, and imagined that buttery grin smeared on the sleeve of Bob's ill-fitting suit. Poor Bob. He would never be the man his father was. But Yummie Chocolates was a national institution, and even Bob couldn't run it into the ground. "Sure thing," he said. "National Candy Week. I like it." Time to wrap this up. The Duchess would be coming any minute. "You know I would do anything for you, Bob."

Bob's elbow slid closer to the butter block and his arm quivered with excitement. What was wrong with the man, the Senator thought for the hundredth time, and he snuck a glance at his watch. Far below, the horses were lining up and a bugle sounded, its call muted by the double-glazed plate windows.

"I can always count on you, Walter," Bob said.

"I wouldn't be where I am today if not for you," the Senator said, which unfortunately was true.

Troubled Times had taken the lead, with Paramount's Pride a close second. The Senator had no bets on this race, and he leaned back in his leather chair. "Thank you so much for stopping by," he said, but Bob's bulging eyes were riveted to the track below, and he seemed not to hear. "Thank you--" he said, louder, but over his shoulder he caught a glimpse and -- yes, it was her, Phoebe, the magnificent Duchess of Lark, the beloved spokeswoman for Slimmer Sooner, the best-selling author of "Sugar Makes You Ugly and Sick," Phoebe of the flaming red hair, a short curly piece of which he had plucked off the middle of his sheet this morning and saved in the pencil well in the locked drawer of his desk -- oh Phoebe, she was out of his league, you can take the Senator out of the hick town of Yummieville, but you can't take the Yummieville out of the Senator -- but miracles happen, and hey, he was a good-liking guy, didn't all his women tell him that, and --. Christ. Timmy, her nephew, Prince Timmy, the royal brat, trailing after her. What was he doing here?

"Senator." She extended her hand. He clasped it briefly, and regretfully let it go. Bob was openly staring, and, oh this was disgusting -- was that a drop of spittle on the side of his mouth? Phoebe and Timmy settled into their chairs.

"Phoebe, this is Bob Carnell, the CEO of Yummie Chocolates. Bob, the Duchess of Lark."

Phoebe smiled politely, but lifted her eyebrows a fraction of an inch.

"Can I bet on the horsies, Auntie? Can I? Can I?"

"No, dear. Read the menu."

"My Mummie always lets me bet."

Nine years old now, the Senator thought. He'd be grown in less than a decade. England was doomed.

"I was just telling the Senator," Bob said, his entire body quivering, "about my plans. Americans don't eat enough chocolate! The Senator promised to help. 'Sweet Week!' Wattaya think? Great slogan, huh?"

The Duchess' smile faded. Bob didn't notice; he was rummaging through a canvas bag on the floor. He emerged with two foil-wrapped boxes and held them triumphantly over his head. "For you, son, our newest product, Terrific Truffles."

"Yes!" Timmy yelled, and he reached toward Bob's outstretched hand.

"No, Timmy, no," the Duchess said sharply, her well-bred well-modulated voice on the verge of hysteria.

"And for you," Bob said, turning toward the Senator, "Our classic. Yummie's Smooches. Perfect gift for your beautiful wife. How is she anyway? I haven't seen her in a while."

Candy is dandy, the Senator thought, but liquor is quicker, and he drained the rest of his scotch in a single gulp.

[Redlass]

I love it! Talk about a man getting his just desserts!

It's a perfect ending too--let's you imagine the impending explosion.

Very well done!