August 2014 Prompt Call #3 - "Murder at the Theatre?"
Oh, I had fun with this one. Bringing back my more journalistic side from university, this is for Rix-Scaedu's prompt of "A review of a performance of the great play (insert name or proper noun here)’s Revenge where something untoward happened and there was an actual death in the performance." It's not quite a review, but likely from someone who would have been reviewing it. I hope it fits the bill, though I may be willing to write more...? Set in the Rather Large Puddle universe. 197 words.
More on this story as it is available.
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For Rix's prompt of "Arrivals". 270 words. Written in the world of A Rather Large Puddle, with all attempts at spoiling the (rather obvious) ending avoided. VPC: Jade Rivers.
She wasn't quite sure why she was nervous. It's not like she was having her parents fly in to meet her boyfriend's family or anything.
...Well, then again...
Instead of her coming home this summer, her parents had agreed to fly out to London for two weeks instead, so that they could see the city, and meet her new friends, and save her the money of flying home. She was excited – CJ had agreed to come out too, and it would be nice to have her brother around – but at the same time, she was nervous.
Her parents had never met her boyfriend. Even when he'd been in the States, it had been...well, a bit of a dance for the two of them to be around each other. And that was a story in and of itself. He hadn't been her boyfriend at the time – because that would have been a whole kettle of haddock that they hadn't touched – but now he was and now she was nervous.
So she stood, in the airport, waiting. Alone.
She hadn't wanted to be alone, but the boy had insisted that it was better if he didn't meet them at the airport. They'll be tired from the flight, he'd said. That's no time to be meeting your daughter's new beau. Let them rest, sleep off the jet lag at the hotel, and then they can meet me properly.
She'd wanted to argue. He'd had a point. She had no leg to stand on.
United Flight 3206 EWR → LON 21:20 Landed
Now it was only a matter of moments.
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Thanks to Rix's donation, here's the conclusion to the story!
(Mild spoilers for the end of the book – though that's not a hard ending to see coming)
Jade held her breath, standing up and waiting for the plane to disembark. It had been a long time since she'd seen her parents, and even longer since she'd seen CJ – though they talked on Skype often enough.
What felt like years later, people started emerging from the walkway – among them, a familiar group of faces. Jade beamed as CJ came darting toward her to give her a tight hug. “Look at you, precious little ex-pat you,” he laughed into her hair.
She giggled. “I'm not sure that works this way around, CJ. Aren't ex-pats the Brits that move to America?”
“It works because I say it works and you have a British accent now.” CJ grinned, and Jade rolled her eyes, turning to hug her mother and father as they walked up.
“Hey Mom, Dad. How was the flight?”
“Uneventful,” her father commented, kissing her hair. “It's good to see you, Jade sweetheart.” It'd been a few months since the car crash that scrambled her father's brain back in order – oddly enough – and it was good to see him out and about, and remembering people's names properly. It had taken some getting used to that her father actually did know her name.
Then again, it had taken some getting used to that CJ and her father were on sort-of speaking terms again. That had been an ancient battle hatchet partially buried, and Jade for one was happy to see it gone.
“No big plans for tonight, I hope?” her mother added, and Jade had to laugh.
“No, Mom. Allen didn't even come to the airport with me, so that we didn't overwhelm you.” She was grinning – it was so wonderful to be able to talk about Allen without feeling like she was a criminal. “I'll make sure you get to your hotel, and then you can meet Allen and the rest of the Taylors over the course of your stay.”
“Sounds good to me.” Her mother kissed her hair as well and gave her another hug. “You seem so much happier now.”
“Best I've ever felt.” Her voice was softer than she'd expected, and CJ gave her a one-armed hug. “This is the best choice I've ever made.”
“And we're all looking forward to meeting him, now that he's properly your boy,” her brother added, ruffling her hair. “You got a chance to start over. That does a person good.”
For Rich's prompt "A professional writer loses interest in their book series, but rekindles it when rediscovering some old literary friends.". 360 words, in the world of "Contrary to Popular Belief" - the sequel to Rather Large Puddle. VPC: Gannon Cutel - who is a student, but likely published thus making him professional.
It was November, and he hadn't written a single word.
November was supposed to be the month where he finally caught back up on his writing. He'd been managing his assignments and basically nothing else. So he'd decided that for National Novel Writing Month, he'd bring his book back to life. He had the time. His teachers were in support of it. The worker he'd been seeing from the counseling center approved. Tara told him to focus more on his writing and less on his skating – which was saying something, given that the tournament was coming up in a matter of months and he hadn't been skating consistently since the last time they'd been in the BIT.
...But he couldn't find the characters' voices again.
The collapse of his relationship with Adele had been devastating. He didn't like admitting that eight months later, he still wasn't back on his feet – but she'd been the first serious relationship he'd had, and she'd used him for the fool and broken an already tenuous reconstruction into a thousand more pieces. The group of friends – the skaters, as it were – that he and Tara had created had helped; they'd been there to pick up the pieces and make sure that he hadn't crashed as far as the last time.
The last time didn't bear thinking of.
Still, he was finding it difficult to find his way back to the surface. A series of books he'd started back in high school was still waiting for him, glaring off of his computer screen, desperate for attention. And he couldn't bring himself to care. The drafts were old, they needed work that he couldn't articulate yet, and it was all simply reminding him of how much of the last year he'd lost to a manipulative and abusive girlfriend.
Who'd wanted to date his roommate more than him. How stupid had he been?
He'd set his head down on his desk, entirely ready to go out to the arena and skate until he fell down instead – when his Skype window started ringing.
“...Now there's a name I haven't seen in a long time.”
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This is in response to rix-scaedu's prompt of "Roses are red, violets are blue." It's written in the world of A Rather Large Puddle, from the perspective of the main character, Jade Rivers.
February snuck up on me, way before I was ready for it. I'd been talking to Maggie about my covert operation she'd dubbed Operation: Union Jade (which I found incredibly amusing) to get to London for a college interview without Allen finding out. Of course, he knew I was going to be gone for about a week in February, and that it had to do with college...but I hadn't told him where I was going.
My English teacher didn't need to know all the details, right? Right. Just my teacher. Nothing more. Not like I was conspiring with his younger sister whom I'd met only three months before to try and go to higher education in his native country. Not like we'd been secretly flirting via email for almost as long.
Nope. Nothing like that.
So when all of a sudden, Matt popped up next to me at the end of class and asked what we were doing for Valentine's Day, I honestly did a double take. “Oh God, I hadn't even thought about it. I don't know.” I turned in my chair and looked back at him. “You wanna get dinner or something?”
“Sure. I'm surprised, usually you're right on top of this.”
Well, normally since we've only been talking again for something like a week and a half, I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder if I was going to have a boyfriend for Valentine's Day anyway... I kept my snark to myself. I didn't want to burn bridges with Matt. I wanted to weather this storm until graduation...and then run away to college in London.
...God, I was a coward. Was it possible to love someone and want to run away from them and never see them again all at the same time?
“Yeah, I just...college applications and all that.” I waved it off, knowing he wouldn't question more – and he didn't. “Yeah, let's get dinner. Wanna pick me up at like...six? We can go to the Blackberry?”
“I was thinking we could hit the Cup and Crown instead.”
My eyebrows must have shot into my hairline. “Yeah, sure, if you wanna do that – that's fabulous, Matt.” He was clearly trying to win me over again. Cup and Crown was quite possibly the nicest, most swank restaurants in town.
“Okay. At six?”
“Six.” I grinned at him as he walked away. But even then, I stalled until the rest of the class had filtered out and looked up at Taylor. “Doing anything for Valentine's Day, Mr. Taylor?”
He gave me a small amused smirk. “I plan to sit in my house and watch the worst romantic comedy I can find, drowning my bachelor sorrows into a pint of sorbet.”
I grinned, rolling my eyes. “Such a girl.”
“Yes, of course. No, I shall probably treat the day like any other. I'll contact my family, make up a lesson plan, grade papers, eat dinner, and go to bed. I'm terribly boring.”
“Well, try to do something fun anyway, okay? Write a love story.” I winked; we were still sending each other short excerpts of our work in our emails, so he'd know exactly what I was insinuating.
“I'll see what I can accomplish. Have a good evening, Miss Rivers, and enjoy your holiday.”
“You too, Mr. Taylor.” I walked out, trying to ignore the cold as I pulled my coat collar tighter and drove home.
The conversation with Matt had left me mildly confused, but I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to have a nice dinner with my still-boyfriend at a fancy restaurant. I'd almost made it into my house and all the way up the stairs before my mother's voice stopped me. “Jade sweetheart?”
I stopped. “Yeah?”
“A package came for you.”
I frowned and walked back down to the foot of the stairs, where my mother was waiting with a long box. “A package? From who?”
“A florist. I assume it's from Matt.”
The frown just got deeper. “But...okay, thanks.” I took the box and darted back up to my room. If Matt's taking me to dinner, there's no way he had flowers delivered too. That's ridiculous. As I fired up my computer, I opened the box.
Inside was a note and a single white rose. I smiled at the flower – I'd always liked white better than red – but it was the note that really make me grin.
Roses are red,
Well, this one is white
I'm dreadful at rhyming
So forgive me tonight.
It's a poor excuse for a Valentine's Day gift, but it is the best I can do.
(And forgive my poetry – it is not my genre.)
-A.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
I had to make this choice before I left, didn't I?
