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Tag Archives: flash fiction
Punishment
Hey ! Hope you like my blog ! Leave a comment if you wish :)
This is the third in ThrowWordsGetFiction format. I asked cousin to give me 5 words and I tried to spin a small story around it. To keep the readers curious, I ask you to identify the words 
As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
__
The usual day of Borak was to lead sheep up the hill for grazing, or to the fields at its bottom, to sleep under the shades of a tree by keeping his pet sheep with him. Drink water at a near by pond, and if he packed and carried food for that day eat it. Most days, it is only water that quenched his hunger too. At dusk, his important task was to count the number of sheep. If they matched the morning count, he is quite relieved. Else, it is the search across the fields and the hill, the thought of the task itself was scarier.
His counting methods were simpler. He collects, in the morning, the number of stones as exactly as the number of sheep. So evening, he discards a stone for each sheep. These days, if only one stone is extra, he aborts the stone rather than reproving the search for the last sheep. The only problem, if it happens quite regularly, there is a chance his father might find out about it.
Some days would be different. Like the day when he met few children who were of his age, wearing all similar clothes, marched right across him and he stood amused. Where do all these people go together and why do they not have any herd behind them. From next day onwards he made a point to come to that spot right at that time, so that he could try to make sense out of it. Soon enough he learnt, they go to a place where they have lot of fun. But his father said that was untrue, and they were taken to be punished.
Some of those people were benevolent to him and gave their food to him. Those days he overslept. Often waking up from the nightmare of having lost more than one sheep. Those days he felt even more scared to return home than normal. His father was a drunkard who berated every action of Borak accusing him of making attempts to steal his clandestine belongings.
Stood besides the place where those children went to get punished was a rectory. Borak decided to follow the children that day and hid behind the rectory. He noticed later that there was nothing happening that remotely seemed like punishment except for an old man saying something loudly and other children repeating it. It didn’t seem like any fun.
He didn’t realize he had spent quite some time there, and along with it lost a few sheep too. More stones than the number of fingers were left extra. This horrified him. He searched for lost sheep till late, but found only one. He decided to part with his beloved sheep and made it a part of herd to be returned to father.
More agony was waiting at home. Not only his father beat him almost to death, accusing him of selling the extra sheep, the very act- selling the herd- which he was about to do.
On being woken up, Borak realized that his herd – along with his beloved sheep – and his father were missing. After crying half a day, Borak felt, his going to that place – where other kids assembled for punishment – was indeed a place of severe punishment. And his going there has definitely resulted in his punishment – what else could explain his current fate.
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Words were Berate,Benevolent,Reprove,Clandestine,Rectory
Mysterious Bird
This is the second in ThrowWordsGetFiction series. I asked cousin to give me 5 words and I tried to spin a small story around it. To keep the readers curious, I ask you to identify the words
As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
__
“Oh Sottu … come .. lets go there…I see a throng in the field” shouted Kitta on top of his voice over to his neighbour while keeping his eyes transfixed on the far field on an early morning. The early mornings for these kids, during this summer vacation, is the most exciting time of the day. Dads getting ready to office, mothers busy in kitchen, these kids are left to themselves – save the worry of homework for the later part of the day.
While most of their classmates preferred to wake up late, these two guys, as if competing with each other’s energy and enthusiasm, wake up early and find new ways to entertain themselves – be it a beach hockey played with a cricket bat, or a stroll to a nearby police station. Yes, police station – a place where any normal children would forbid themselves from going, these kids were brave enough to go near it. They overheard the conversation, came back home and enacted the same, often tried to find a solution by one acting as a police and the other as another party in the case.
Summer vacation, was perhaps the busiest time for these two kids. Often they built a castle from the empty matchstick boxes and cigarratte boxes they collected through out the year or sometimes just spent entire time reading a book together and enacting the story by themselves. Their passion and curiosity was uniform in fields ranging from science to astronomy to history to mythology.
Sottu, who was hurriedly brushing his tooth, swallowed half of it in a hurry and washed his mouth and ran hurriedly to mother asking her for a pair of dress. She was preparing pooris – his favorite breakfast. While watching her prepare, he also noticed, her work carefully. She was preparing the round shaped objects from the flour. In between she was stirring the delicious-by-smell sagu by left hand while using the right to fry the already prepared ones. He was quite awe-struct at the rapport and speed of her eyes and hands.
Lost in the observation, he was again alerted by the shout of Kitta, who was now shouting on the top of his voice and in absolute hurry. “If we don’t run now, we can’t see what others are already seeing… come fast, this is my last call for you, I am going otherwise.” Sottu quickly responded “WAIT, only a second”, without waiting for his mother to give him clothes, he put on yesterday’s and ran outside the house, neglecting his mothers question “When are you returning?”
Both ran towards the field where more people were joining every minute, this usually happens during an accident scene. But this was no highway, it was a big playing ground. Both the kids squeezed in between the people, shoved and managed to go to the front of the gathering. They were astonished by the sight ! It was a dead huge bird and not known to alive in this era. Sottu said “Oh my !! Was it hiding in our town ?” Kitta replied “This bird has been surely obsolescent..probably from dinosaur era”. Both were, like other people there, not stunned by only its gigantic size, but more about the mystery behind its finding in that field now.
While Kitta looked at the sky for some clues, Sottu looked at the lorry that stood at the corner of the field. The lorry looked dysfunctional and aborted. It surely wasn’t there previous day, recalled Sottu. He grabbed Kitta and pointed him towards the lorry suspiciously. They tried to look for any other hints at the spot. On finding more crowd and camera men coming to the spot, they both deserted and headed towards home – discussing the possibilities of that bird being there.
That night, Kitta said Sottu, let’s keep a watch on the lorry. Sottu had other star gazing plans, but that could be put off to some other day, he thought. They both went and hid themselves at a considerable distance for long time in the night. Nothing happened, they returned home with mosquito bites. Sottu suggested they could watch the lorry from home using the telescope he was hoping to use for star gazing. For next few nights they watched the lorry in the night, while searching for clues about the mystery in the day. They visited local library to collect the information about the bird, they tried to obtain the lorry registration information and also learnt how the bird was being moved out of the city to a museum in the capital city.
After nights of result less watching in night, in addition to the scoldings by their parents, they finally decided to try one last night. That day, the bird was moved out of the city. And finally some people came to take the lorry. Sottu and Kitta jumped out of house and followed those guys.
Rest, as they say is, history. The local lads had become world famous in the small town, thanks to the front page city news paper article “Kids help bust a smuggling racket in town”
**
Few lunch break after the school re-opened were filled with sessions of question and answers by their classmates. And their explanation of the story in animated style. “That night …we were sure some one would come and take away the lorry..we knew it.” “They pushed the lorry till some distance ..so that the sound of it does not disturb ..when they started it, we both jumped into it.” “It went for a long distance..we tried hard to keep us awake. Finally it stopped and we got down and hid behind the bushes…..”
In such detail their narration went. The newspaper article had put it briefly thus:
“Two kids who were suspicious of a lorry parked in the field for few days, decided to follow it. They found that that lorry was one of the lorries used to smuggle various illegal goods out of the city. They were waiting for this day when the entire police was diverted to the transport of the huge bird, which was a fake replica these smugglers created and planted in the heart of the city few days ago.”
Sottu and Kitta waited for their next vacation adventure !
___
The words were : obsolescent, throng ,rapport,passion,forbid
Loud music and Dim lights
AuroraWonders, during a chat asked few words so that she writes something around them or using them. I had given 3 words. She has asked for 5 words from C too.
I realized it is similar to the Playback_Theatre concept I had watched during the play “All you need is love” where the audience throw sentences/story and actors act.
While C is yet to come up with her version of story, this is my attempt to create a flash fiction, using those words. It would be nice if Aurorawonders and C each could dish out something
Readers, can you guess the words ?
I am using a fancy tag – ThrowWordsGetFiction as I intend to do few more of these.
Since this is my first attempt to “create” something, your comments are welcome and are appreciated.
___
Meetu sat there, alone in the corner of the pub. It was unusual for a pretty young woman to be sitting alone in a crowded pub in this town. But everyone was busy with their, umm.. drinks. Few couples did a spirited jig, probably at the celebration of one of their engagement, and got tired and sat to sip second round of drink. Pub, like temple, is one of the few places where one gets to see happy and sad people at the same time. Some cheering the beer, some reclusive, like Meetu.
Enter, Novian, an optimist by other name. “Optimism, is often a result of helplessness.”, his friend Jignesh usually taunts him, but he knows better. Money for him is a game – he loses some, he wins some. Unlike hearts, which he always wins. Novian, intended to party tonight with a gang of his friends, who usually tag on to him only due to the weight of his pocket and leave him soon after that weight transforms into their stomachs’ weight, but at the last minute decided to be lonely and dropped into this new place. He had never been to this pub, not even during his pub hopping session in April – usually accompanied by girlfriend hopping session – by mutual consent.
Novian noticed Meetu. “What a serendipity !” he thought to himself. He could make no mistake – this was the lady who was seated in front of him during his previous visit to Race Course. He had lost quite an hefty amount of money that day in horse race and yet he realized he hadn’t drowned himself in a melancholy that day. It was quite unusual. He had tried his best resources to locate this girl and today he finds her just like that. Never to believe in stars, he thanked his that time. Beliefs last only till next change !
As is natural, he progressed towards her. He probably had misread her just like a driver in the dark miscalculates the danger when the on coming lorry has only one light on. Yet, he approached her – if not to floor her right away, he felt confident to woo her over the time.
To his surprise, she knew him. She talked to him easily. When he tried to know her reason for lonely visit to pub with a painful look, she opened up all too easily. Said, she feels cheated. Cheated by boy friend, cheated by parents and by colleagues at work. His face turned pale and struck with horror and disbelief as if he has just seen the Tsunami approaching, when she said her boy friend was Jignesh. His very friend, who had ‘helped’ him in searching her, but didn’t even let him know ? That thought drifted Novian to his own world, her words barely falling on his ears but getting lost in the noise around. Today Novian may have deserted his friends, but his friend had him, long back.
He left the place silently. Tomorrow is another horse race. “Optimism is…” as his once- friend Jignesh used to say.
___
Notes:
1. I wanted to keep the story very, very short. Lack of time.
2. Had to discard an ending I first wrote- while trying hard to keep from sleeping, as it was too abruptly off-the-cliff.
3. What would be the title you would have given ?
4. If you guessed the words good, let me know that you did. Otherwise here are the words – Serendipity, Melancholy, Party, Horse Race, Reclusive, Tsunami,April, Lorry.
5. This is shockingly similar to what I had written years ago, and I realized after I wrote this. That way my next one is much different (It’s already written!). Stay tuned.
6. No, this isn’t autobiographical or anything related to anyone I know. Heh! Trust me, real stories I know sound even more unreal.
7. Also, this isn’t reflective of my mood or anything. Heh!
8. Any comments, ANY, are welcome.