Prompt - FROG

Frog. Prince. Frog. Prince. Frog. Prince.

When you're young it's possible to love someone madly one day --- he's a prince! And to despise him the next --- the toad. Ideally your man will become a frog prince. Not because he's been transformed with a kiss and some careful instruction into what you want him to be or think he should be. But because you have learned to see him in his entirety. As a frog prince ---

warts and all.

Prompt: Lost and Found

"I once was lost but now I'm found," Carla sang, not loudly, at the back of the church. She stopped, let her mind travel from Uncle Bob's funeral. She thought about God's Lost and Found, wondered if He had a big box sitting next to Heaven's door, a box full of things people had forgotten, had left behind. What would you find there? Lost souls, of course. She imagined these must look like Peter Pan's shadow: flat and flimsy as silk, easy enough to scrape apart from a body, and then there's no telling whose is which. What would happen, she wondered, if somebody accidentally picked up someone else's soul, didn't realize it, just draped it on and went on living. Of course if you took someone else's soul on purpose, that's different. Of course you'd go straight to hell. But what if it was an honest mistake?

Carla looked down at her scrawny body, covered in black out of respect for her dead uncle. She wondered if this was really her own soul, or if a wild wind one night had blown hers off and down the road, if that wind had slammed her neighbor's soul right into her insides while she dreamed at night. Maybe that explained her naughty thoughts. Maybe that explained her confusion.

--Alida Thacher

Prompt- Most Scary Experiences

Laurel Canyon. Just the place itself -it's full of history, myth, legends, stories. And right across from the old Houdini mansion, right off Lookout Mountain- was the house. It was owned by an old man-Parker Cole, who let all us Hollywood juvenile delinquents hang out there. We called it Cole's Hole or just Parker's. I'd always wanted to live up there. And now, just a year or two after I would have graduated, we had the opportunity to rent it for like- nothing. It was up a winding, dark path. Not really a street and the path was filled with rocks and stones planted by a mean old woman-the only other person who lived on the path. It wound around 'til there was about a thirty foot drop right onto Laurel Canyon Blvd. No fence, no lights, it was perfect. We moved right in- me, my two best friends and my boyfriend. And found that we had roommates. A young boy named Craig and his boyfriend, a very clean cut ex-marine. Very straight looking, kinda scary.

The house was huge, log cabin style, stone fireplaces-all wood. At least 5 bedrooms. Craig's boyfriend was apparently suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and he had a gun with a bayonet. Craig didn't seem in the least bit fazed......

Herbs and Salt - Adolescence

Sam tugged the edges of her blue, one-piece bathing suit down a little farther to cover her butt cheeks and smoothly rolled over onto her stomach. Her red Coca-cola beach towel was hot and rough against her cheek and through it she could feel the prickle of the grass against her sun-tender skin. It was the height of summer; one of those long, lazy days where there's nowhere to be and it doesn't matter what time it is.

The muggy air seemed to cover her like a blanket, and she felt a little surge of joy at being comfortable outside with naked limbs. The still, summer air was so close to her body temperature that it almost felt like part of her. She flexed her hands and feet for a moment just to feel the distinction between herself and her environment.

A neighbor was running a sprinkler, and the steady chick-chick sound coupled with the heat was making her drowsy. She began to wonder if Marcus would call her tonight and whether they'd have another chance to go to the beach together this summer. She thought for a moment about his lanky brown hair, how the fuzz in the middle of his chest smelled like herbs - clean and spicy, and the salty taste and softness of his lips. Sighing she turned her head, aware that the towel had likely carved a pattern into the side of her face.

Prompt: A Compass

It was dark enough now that sight was irrelevant, probably inhibiting because she was trying to see, putting so much effort into willing to see what was in front of her that she was ignoring her other senses. This was dangerous, for smell, touch, hearing, these were things that could help her. The compass had long since failed her, or her it. It was trying to tell her where to go she was just too inexperienced and scared to understand. As the dark pressed in making her eyes ache she had the wisdom to simply shut them. Shut them and rely on other things. The sound of water bubbling over rocks, that was to her right, the bird to the left, the rustling behind. Or was the water on the left? It seemed like the harder she tried to make out where sounds were coming from the more impossible it was to determine. She started breathing more quickly now, just a bit, and once that seemed OK, once she convinced herself she wasn't panicking, her breath came quicker still. The ground beneath her feet rose and fell unevenly. What in the daylight were irregularities on the path became mountains and valleys. She stumbled, started to reach out to grab something but thought the better of it. Was this a joke? Was this really happening to her? It was cold and she was sure she was no longer on the path, but she could hear the water. The water. Keep following the water.

Water of Love

Alida Thacher's Erotica Workshop

I swim with you in the dark water,

entwined,

sliding beneath the waves,

drowning.

I love you in the steaming water,

moisture like glass beads,

floating in shadow,

slippery as a seal.

I love you in the alley rain,

face to the wall,

teeth to the brick

your words like a dark river.

I love you eye to eye, thirsty,

breath the hot liquor, the water of love.

The Cold Winter has Come

The cold winter has come.
Rose hips red, bejeweled,
dip in the wind, blood on snow.
Firs dark on white
cast snowy mist upon the wind and
icy panes, crystal ticking glass
in the morning light.
Deer step lightly through the frost.
Birds press shoulder to shoulder on the wire.
But you are warm my love,
breath on my ear,
your whisper.
Your heart at my breast,
the hot blood,
my lips at your brow,
enfolded against the winter's cold.

By Amy Holmes Hehn

Jennifer's Thursday Evening Group
Short free-write


FALL

Autumn light angles amber through the blinds,
striping rumpled sheets,
warming floor for dozing cat blinking, stretching,
dust drifting like snow.

Autumn light on entangled limbs,
dozing,
quiet breathing,
sounds of passing cars and mowing lawns,
goldfinch busy in the turning leaves.

Afternoon light the color of change,
the great wheel turning
garden fading, resting the eye,
your hand in mine, heart beneath my ear,
summer winding down like an old clock.

By Amy Holmes Hehn

Girlfriends

On a dark and stormy night, back when the market was screaming hot (so I frequently worked into the evening), I ducked in to Sungari Pearl to order Chinese takeout. A while-you-wait Grey Goose martini with olives and a twist seemed like a good idea too. There was one other woman at the bar, but the tables were all full.
My girlfriend lived across the street. I could see her office light glowing in her third floor condo and I decided to give her a call to join me in that Martini. I dug for my cell phone in the pockets of my bag. “I’m across the street at the bar in Sungari Pearl. Come over as you are; there’s no one here who cares. I’ll have a perfect Martini waiting for you in three minutes.”
As I tossed my phone back into the abyss of my working shoulder bag, I felt the woman on the next stool considering me. Turning, I said hello in a friendly way. “I can’t believe you could just dial the phone number of a friend from memory!” she said. And then, “I don’t know anyone’s phone number by heart; just my home number.”
I smiled at her. This I know for sure. You have to have a few phone numbers that you know by heart, and one of the most important ones is for your best girlfriend. You might have an emergency broken heart, or you might need advice on whether or not to spend a third of your next commission check on a single pair of shoes with heels so high you can’t walk in them. Someone in your family might have died, your dog might be diagnosed with cancer or for that matter, you might need a friend to pick you up from your doctor’s office after some really unsettling news. Your best girlfriend is who you call for a quick drink, no agenda. She is the one who, in thirty minutes, can listen to your worries, give you her worries in return, tell you not to spend that money or to go ahead and blow your entire wad on something totally decadent. She will invite you to a meet up at the art museum, remember your special color of lipstick and call you when she sees it in the gift with purchase bag at Saks. Your best girlfriend sends you clippings from “O” that laugh at your on line dating experiences, and comics from the New Yorker that remind her of the road trip you took last summer. Your best girlfriend knows who your children are, and how to interpret the ultimatums from your daughter or a loan to your son.
Just then my girlfriend blew in from the cold and settled on her own barstool. She thanked me for the drink and scanned the bar for someone she might know, or someone she might want to know. And then, we did what girlfriends do. We laughed and talked and enjoyed our drinks, and thirty minutes later, we split the bill down the middle and waved good bye. The woman at the bar was still considering. I think she was concentrating on improving her memory.

Musical Prompt: Bela Fleck, Flight of the Cosmic Hippo

Sneaking behind pillars in a camel-colored trench coat, collar up, tan brimmed hat down over his eyes, Mr. Sasso stalked Mrs. Bettle. He knew she did not have his best interests at heart. He had overheard her in the telephone booth, speaking in Finnish--which he just happened to speak--telling Rosco she would meet him ten minutes after sunset at the beach. She would be sipping absinthe in a red-feathered hat.

Who was Roscoe? Mr. Sasso wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he suspected he was the jeweler. There were rumors of some hot rubies entering the market last week, and corresponding rumors that the prince was a few jewels short of a crown.

How did Mrs. Bettle fit in? She always seemed to have her long gloved delicate fingers into everything nefarious in this town. How she stayed out of prison had everything to do with her Olympic gold medal in fencing.

Men were fascinated by her biceps, her triceps, the rhythmic sway of her hips. The government felt an enormous debt to her for putting their little country into six billion livingrooms during last year's games in Madrid. For this, she expected protection for life, and if there was ever any question, her stilletto was still razor sharp, her perry quick and fearless, her lunge silent and deadly.

But how Mr. Sasso got into the espionage business was frankly a much more interesting story....

Alida Thacher, Friday Mornings, Summer 09