The "Creative Writing" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Silver scissors (aren’t they always) glinting in the sun, held by feminine fingers, nails bitten nearly to the white moons, skin the tone of burnt sienna.
Snip
Snip
It’s a curious motion, the fingers-and-blades working in unison cutting a piece of card: black card to be exact: glossy, the size of a topshelf magazine full of those girls—you know the ones.
The girl wielding the scissors would never do anything like that. No. For sure no. Although it should be mentioned that her Aunt Darla is said to have “worked her ass off” in a Nebraskan whorehouse when she was in her late-thirties. But all that was brushed under the carpet long ago. Moma keeps a big broomstick in the larder for all things unmentionable.
Anyway, the girl with the scissors began by cutting out the form of a cat: a fat cat: a fat black cat, the kind medieval doommongers deemed wanchancy and lebbed off belfries whilst the nuns and the monks sang priggish hymns in Latin. Some folk were queer.
Now the feminine hand didn’t stay aligned with the feminine eye, and the girl’s snipping went hopelessly awry (somewhere around the cat’s whiskers), so she settled in the end for the shape of a tiffutee. That’s a tiffutee (tif-foo-tee): what the Native Americans call the individual mottle-spots on a mustang’s hide. In other words: the cutting was something not unlike an unshapely blob.
“What to do with it?” the girl pondered, softly scratching a knee with the reunited blades. She was standing on a sunwashed square of lush grass, surrounded by an amphitheatre of flowers: chrysanthemums, pompom poppies, daisies, dandelions, those droopy stalk-things with bell-shaped buds . . . and beyond the flowers, patchwork fields (gold-and-green) extended to the mountainous horizon like snapshots from a rootless hobo’s memory.
The girl (whose name is Sibbe) was wearing a red chequered dress with pointed white collars, white buttoned cuffs, and a black-and-white wigwam-patterned hem. On her feet were laceless too-big boots, the colour of a stick stripped of its bark. If I said she was a dusty-road Kansas country girl of mixed race with hair like a frisky stallion’s tail, you may just be able to glimpse her considerable charm.
Where was I? . . . oh yeah, “What to do with it?” she thought, when in the midday sky dashed with smoke-signal clouds there appeared—“What is that? It looks like a . . .”—a missile, Sibbe, it’s a goddarn missile!—launched from somewhere so far away you wouldn’t be able to pronounce its name if you saw it written down. Sibbe spontaneously held the black tiffutee-shaped card aloft. “With any luck,” she said (bouncing briefly on tiptoe, scowling prettily), “if I place my cutting over the sun it will make the world go dark and that dangerous-looking thing will lose its bearings and turn back.”
Needless to say her strategy failed to work. Sure her card blocked the Eye of Heaven but the missile (silver like scissors) continued its course ploughing right into Vernon’s Hill, which, unfortunately for Vernon, was where he’d built his ramshackle barnhouse only four months prior. Yet for some inexplicable reason there was a delay in the destruction, as if the missile wanted to chuckle sardonically before exploding: a weird three-maybe-four second silence before the—boom! the loudest boom Sibbe had ever heard. “I bet Vernon’s a goner,” she thought. “And Mama Vernon too. And Cherrycoke the dog wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
She wasn’t wrong. Farmer Vernon, Mama Vernon and Cherrycoke were smithereened big style, like pumpkins in a shooting gallery. Sibbe stared at the burning wreckage on top of the hill. “Looks like a volcano,” she thought in sympathy and in awe, just gaping open-mouthed, which was a shame, for if she’d looked up she would have beheld a most unforgettable sight, namely: the noon-blue southern sky peppered with a thousand-and-one silver stars . . . Indeed. Missiles. The Unpronounceables had launched an attack, an onslaught that would destroy the State of Kansas in the time it takes a coyote to dig a hole.
“Well that’s what it was like,” Sibbe uttered, sliding the black tiffutee card into the pages of her dreambook. Then, almost orgasmically smiling, she rolled onto her back allowing her fingers to explore the dry warmth of the sunwashed grass . . . “I love my big sky,” she said, her brown eyes reflecting the heavenly blue. “I love, I love you.” And she wished the long summer would never end.
Snip
Snip
It’s a curious motion, the fingers-and-blades working in unison cutting a piece of card: black card to be exact: glossy, the size of a topshelf magazine full of those girls—you know the ones.
The girl wielding the scissors would never do anything like that. No. For sure no. Although it should be mentioned that her Aunt Darla is said to have “worked her ass off” in a Nebraskan whorehouse when she was in her late-thirties. But all that was brushed under the carpet long ago. Moma keeps a big broomstick in the larder for all things unmentionable.
Anyway, the girl with the scissors began by cutting out the form of a cat: a fat cat: a fat black cat, the kind medieval doommongers deemed wanchancy and lebbed off belfries whilst the nuns and the monks sang priggish hymns in Latin. Some folk were queer.
Now the feminine hand didn’t stay aligned with the feminine eye, and the girl’s snipping went hopelessly awry (somewhere around the cat’s whiskers), so she settled in the end for the shape of a tiffutee. That’s a tiffutee (tif-foo-tee): what the Native Americans call the individual mottle-spots on a mustang’s hide. In other words: the cutting was something not unlike an unshapely blob.
“What to do with it?” the girl pondered, softly scratching a knee with the reunited blades. She was standing on a sunwashed square of lush grass, surrounded by an amphitheatre of flowers: chrysanthemums, pompom poppies, daisies, dandelions, those droopy stalk-things with bell-shaped buds . . . and beyond the flowers, patchwork fields (gold-and-green) extended to the mountainous horizon like snapshots from a rootless hobo’s memory.
The girl (whose name is Sibbe) was wearing a red chequered dress with pointed white collars, white buttoned cuffs, and a black-and-white wigwam-patterned hem. On her feet were laceless too-big boots, the colour of a stick stripped of its bark. If I said she was a dusty-road Kansas country girl of mixed race with hair like a frisky stallion’s tail, you may just be able to glimpse her considerable charm.
Where was I? . . . oh yeah, “What to do with it?” she thought, when in the midday sky dashed with smoke-signal clouds there appeared—“What is that? It looks like a . . .”—a missile, Sibbe, it’s a goddarn missile!—launched from somewhere so far away you wouldn’t be able to pronounce its name if you saw it written down. Sibbe spontaneously held the black tiffutee-shaped card aloft. “With any luck,” she said (bouncing briefly on tiptoe, scowling prettily), “if I place my cutting over the sun it will make the world go dark and that dangerous-looking thing will lose its bearings and turn back.”
Needless to say her strategy failed to work. Sure her card blocked the Eye of Heaven but the missile (silver like scissors) continued its course ploughing right into Vernon’s Hill, which, unfortunately for Vernon, was where he’d built his ramshackle barnhouse only four months prior. Yet for some inexplicable reason there was a delay in the destruction, as if the missile wanted to chuckle sardonically before exploding: a weird three-maybe-four second silence before the—boom! the loudest boom Sibbe had ever heard. “I bet Vernon’s a goner,” she thought. “And Mama Vernon too. And Cherrycoke the dog wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
She wasn’t wrong. Farmer Vernon, Mama Vernon and Cherrycoke were smithereened big style, like pumpkins in a shooting gallery. Sibbe stared at the burning wreckage on top of the hill. “Looks like a volcano,” she thought in sympathy and in awe, just gaping open-mouthed, which was a shame, for if she’d looked up she would have beheld a most unforgettable sight, namely: the noon-blue southern sky peppered with a thousand-and-one silver stars . . . Indeed. Missiles. The Unpronounceables had launched an attack, an onslaught that would destroy the State of Kansas in the time it takes a coyote to dig a hole.
“Well that’s what it was like,” Sibbe uttered, sliding the black tiffutee card into the pages of her dreambook. Then, almost orgasmically smiling, she rolled onto her back allowing her fingers to explore the dry warmth of the sunwashed grass . . . “I love my big sky,” she said, her brown eyes reflecting the heavenly blue. “I love, I love you.” And she wished the long summer would never end.
unknown kernel wrote:
> I picture Sibbe as the kind of girl who
> stars in Russ Meyer movies. This might be wrong but it pleases me
> nonetheless.
I think visualizing Sibbe like that improves the story no end :-)
> I picture Sibbe as the kind of girl who
> stars in Russ Meyer movies. This might be wrong but it pleases me
> nonetheless.
I think visualizing Sibbe like that improves the story no end :-)
I love the style of this - not many can get away with the asides that make us aware that it's a tale, (ie the spelling out of tiffutee) if I try to do anything like that it takes away from the story too much, but you seem to have a knack of getting it just right, a storytelling voice that keeps us in there, and adds to the piece, rather than taking away from it.
Very nice, this one. Had me smiling a couple of times at the cheekiness of the writing. I picture Sibbe as the kind of girl who stars in Russ Meyer movies. This might be wrong but it pleases me nonetheless.
Delightful. It just trips along and you cannot help but smile :)
Charming little piece. Wonderful as usual. :)
Pretty damn good. Though if I must be honest, just the teeniest bit overwritten.
Silver scissors (aren’t they always) glinting in the sun, held by feminine fingers, nails bitten nearly to the white moons, skin the tone of burnt sienna.
Snip
Snip
It’s a curious motion, the fingers-and-blades working in unison cutting a piece of card: black card to be exact: glossy, the size of a topshelf magazine full of those girls—you know the ones.
The girl wielding the scissors would never do anything like that. No. For sure no. Although it should be mentioned that her Aunt Darla is said to have “worked her ass off” in a Nebraskan whorehouse when she was in her late-thirties. But all that was brushed under the carpet long ago. Moma keeps a big broomstick in the larder for all things unmentionable.
Anyway, the girl with the scissors began by cutting out the form of a cat: a fat cat: a fat black cat, the kind medieval doommongers deemed wanchancy and lebbed off belfries whilst the nuns and the monks sang priggish hymns in Latin. Some folk were queer.
Now the feminine hand didn’t stay aligned with the feminine eye, and the girl’s snipping went hopelessly awry (somewhere around the cat’s whiskers), so she settled in the end for the shape of a tiffutee. That’s a tiffutee (tif-foo-tee): what the Native Americans call the individual mottle-spots on a mustang’s hide. In other words: the cutting was something not unlike an unshapely blob.
“What to do with it?” the girl pondered, softly scratching a knee with the reunited blades. She was standing on a sunwashed square of lush grass, surrounded by an amphitheatre of flowers: chrysanthemums, pompom poppies, daisies, dandelions, those droopy stalk-things with bell-shaped buds . . . and beyond the flowers, patchwork fields (gold-and-green) extended to the mountainous horizon like snapshots from a rootless hobo’s memory.
The girl (whose name is Sibbe) was wearing a red chequered dress with pointed white collars, white buttoned cuffs, and a black-and-white wigwam-patterned hem. On her feet were laceless too-big boots, the colour of a stick stripped of its bark. If I said she was a dusty-road Kansas country girl of mixed race with hair like a frisky stallion’s tail, you may just be able to glimpse her considerable charm.
Where was I? . . . oh yeah, “What to do with it?” she thought, when in the midday sky dashed with smoke-signal clouds there appeared—“What is that? It looks like a . . .”—a missile, Sibbe, it’s a goddarn missile!—launched from somewhere so far away you wouldn’t be able to pronounce its name if you saw it written down. Sibbe spontaneously held the black tiffutee-shaped card aloft. “With any luck,” she said (bouncing briefly on tiptoe, scowling prettily), “if I place my cutting over the sun it will make the world go dark and that dangerous-looking thing will lose its bearings and turn back.”
Needless to say her strategy failed to work. Sure her card blocked the Eye of Heaven but the missile (silver like scissors) continued its course ploughing right into Vernon’s Hill, which, unfortunately for Vernon, was where he’d built his ramshackle barnhouse only four months prior. Yet for some inexplicable reason there was a delay in the destruction, as if the missile wanted to chuckle sardonically before exploding: a weird three-maybe-four second silence before the—boom! the loudest boom Sibbe had ever heard. “I bet Vernon’s a goner,” she thought. “And Mama Vernon too. And Cherrycoke the dog wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
She wasn’t wrong. Farmer Vernon, Mama Vernon and Cherrycoke were smithereened big style, like pumpkins in a shooting gallery. Sibbe stared at the burning wreckage on top of the hill. “Looks like a volcano,” she thought in sympathy and in awe, just gaping open-mouthed, which was a shame, for if she’d looked up she would have beheld a most unforgettable sight, namely: the noon-blue southern sky peppered with a thousand-and-one silver stars . . . Indeed. Missiles. The Unpronounceables had launched an attack, an onslaught that would destroy the State of Kansas in the time it takes a coyote to dig a hole.
“Well that’s what it was like,” Sibbe uttered, sliding the black tiffutee card into the pages of her dreambook. Then, almost orgasmically smiling, she rolled onto her back allowing her fingers to explore the dry warmth of the sunwashed grass . . . “I love my big sky,” she said, her brown eyes reflecting the heavenly blue. “I love, I love you.” And she wished the long summer would never end.
Snip
Snip
It’s a curious motion, the fingers-and-blades working in unison cutting a piece of card: black card to be exact: glossy, the size of a topshelf magazine full of those girls—you know the ones.
The girl wielding the scissors would never do anything like that. No. For sure no. Although it should be mentioned that her Aunt Darla is said to have “worked her ass off” in a Nebraskan whorehouse when she was in her late-thirties. But all that was brushed under the carpet long ago. Moma keeps a big broomstick in the larder for all things unmentionable.
Anyway, the girl with the scissors began by cutting out the form of a cat: a fat cat: a fat black cat, the kind medieval doommongers deemed wanchancy and lebbed off belfries whilst the nuns and the monks sang priggish hymns in Latin. Some folk were queer.
Now the feminine hand didn’t stay aligned with the feminine eye, and the girl’s snipping went hopelessly awry (somewhere around the cat’s whiskers), so she settled in the end for the shape of a tiffutee. That’s a tiffutee (tif-foo-tee): what the Native Americans call the individual mottle-spots on a mustang’s hide. In other words: the cutting was something not unlike an unshapely blob.
“What to do with it?” the girl pondered, softly scratching a knee with the reunited blades. She was standing on a sunwashed square of lush grass, surrounded by an amphitheatre of flowers: chrysanthemums, pompom poppies, daisies, dandelions, those droopy stalk-things with bell-shaped buds . . . and beyond the flowers, patchwork fields (gold-and-green) extended to the mountainous horizon like snapshots from a rootless hobo’s memory.
The girl (whose name is Sibbe) was wearing a red chequered dress with pointed white collars, white buttoned cuffs, and a black-and-white wigwam-patterned hem. On her feet were laceless too-big boots, the colour of a stick stripped of its bark. If I said she was a dusty-road Kansas country girl of mixed race with hair like a frisky stallion’s tail, you may just be able to glimpse her considerable charm.
Where was I? . . . oh yeah, “What to do with it?” she thought, when in the midday sky dashed with smoke-signal clouds there appeared—“What is that? It looks like a . . .”—a missile, Sibbe, it’s a goddarn missile!—launched from somewhere so far away you wouldn’t be able to pronounce its name if you saw it written down. Sibbe spontaneously held the black tiffutee-shaped card aloft. “With any luck,” she said (bouncing briefly on tiptoe, scowling prettily), “if I place my cutting over the sun it will make the world go dark and that dangerous-looking thing will lose its bearings and turn back.”
Needless to say her strategy failed to work. Sure her card blocked the Eye of Heaven but the missile (silver like scissors) continued its course ploughing right into Vernon’s Hill, which, unfortunately for Vernon, was where he’d built his ramshackle barnhouse only four months prior. Yet for some inexplicable reason there was a delay in the destruction, as if the missile wanted to chuckle sardonically before exploding: a weird three-maybe-four second silence before the—boom! the loudest boom Sibbe had ever heard. “I bet Vernon’s a goner,” she thought. “And Mama Vernon too. And Cherrycoke the dog wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
She wasn’t wrong. Farmer Vernon, Mama Vernon and Cherrycoke were smithereened big style, like pumpkins in a shooting gallery. Sibbe stared at the burning wreckage on top of the hill. “Looks like a volcano,” she thought in sympathy and in awe, just gaping open-mouthed, which was a shame, for if she’d looked up she would have beheld a most unforgettable sight, namely: the noon-blue southern sky peppered with a thousand-and-one silver stars . . . Indeed. Missiles. The Unpronounceables had launched an attack, an onslaught that would destroy the State of Kansas in the time it takes a coyote to dig a hole.
“Well that’s what it was like,” Sibbe uttered, sliding the black tiffutee card into the pages of her dreambook. Then, almost orgasmically smiling, she rolled onto her back allowing her fingers to explore the dry warmth of the sunwashed grass . . . “I love my big sky,” she said, her brown eyes reflecting the heavenly blue. “I love, I love you.” And she wished the long summer would never end.