"Picture This" Month - Remember

Prompt:< a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgES6jB98Z4f0hVqhbh6BdWCXrs195Z31eBrTL2MSLqQ8O9ChgDObWRCrcvYm3IciHqZ28hWUY6xfz8p78hWcnidRUX8J9NnuoRE4roVIX86HtmxXvekzHoNRvpfWrUCoJkOPi03vx2jiY/s1600/nirrimi4.jpg">

Source: http://www.lostateminor.com/2009/07/11/nirrimi-hakanson/

Response: Remember

It was a moment, a little instant, but it somehow caught in his memory, the way a hangnail snags on a loose thread. It had become magnified over time. He knew that her eyes had not been quite so expressive or so close to tears. He knew that she had not been quite so pale, with her freckles standing out quite so vividly. He knew that she had not turned back to look at him before she started crying. But that was how he remembered it.

He remembered his voice - raised to a yell - hanging in the air. He remembered that she had turned away after he finished and then she was gone.

He should not have yelled - it was not her fault. He could not even remember anymore why he had been so angry.

But he remembered her face in minute, painful detail.

Notes: Holy moley, September is just about ended - on to October. The weather forecast should be up on/by Sunday.

"Picture This" Month - Music to Break Hearts

Prompt:

Source: http://images.epilogue.net/users/flasher/dryad3.jpg

Response: Music to Break Hearts

He captured her with his music - music like that of one of the gods, music to break mortals’ hearts. He captured his bride, the nymph Eurydice with his gentle touch of fingers to lyre.

And when he played, Eurydice danced. And his music - as shining and otherworldly as could be - was only improved upon by the movement of his lovely bride's body - an inheritance from her father Apollo.

He said he loved her, with all his lion heart and warrior's soul. He played for her to prove his love - music to break immortal hearts. But when she died, chased by a snake-like satyr into the jaws of a snake, he played the coward. For no matter how he vowed his love and lay in the filth of grief, his love was not enough to prompt him to follow her in death.

So Orpheus mocked the deathless gods, wading into the Underworld to plead for the return of his lover. But death cannot be cheated and no matter how he loved her, he could not resist looking back at the phantom presented to him by the gods in Eurydice's place. And so he lost the nymph captured by music through cowardice.

Notes: We're currently reading the Odyssey in one of my classes and we just finished the Iliad so if this sounds somewhere along the lines of Greek poetry, it should. This is a retelling of a little-known version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in which Orpheus' trip to Underworld to try and save Eurydice was just because he was too scared to commit suicide to be with her and when he returned he was killed by women.

"Picture This" Month - Getting Wet

Prompt:

Source: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/102/298836402_2a21b6fc01.jpg

Response: Getting Wet

Sit on a bench

in the center of the ocean deep

waiting to drown

Holding an umbrella above your head

because you can't bear the thought

of getting wet

Penance: September 27, 2010, "Picture This" Month - After

Prompt:

Source: http://www.marcilall.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/choco-milk-chocolate-milk-1297950-1026-1024.jpg

Response: After

My eyes were still blurry though I had been up for hours. I was vaguely aware that I probably smelled horrendous. I pulled my robe a little closer and figure it didn't matter because it wasn't like I was going anywhere and no one was coming to see me.

The fridge light was blinding in the dark kitchen. I squinted into the glare just long enough to find the chocolate milk and shut the offensive light back where it belonged.

I pulled out the last clean glass. It was a tall one with a thick base - a pretty glass that I used to set with china when I used it. I poured the glass full. I drank a little off the top and filled it up again; licking away the phantom mustache I could feel on my upper lip.

I went for a straw - a blue bend-y one - and ended up with two.

I stuck the straws in the glass and stared at them for a moment. They drifted apart in the milk, gravitating to different edges of the glass. That was when I started crying.

I sat on my kitchen title and let my two-strawed chocolate milk get warm while I bawled.

September 27, 2010, "Picture This" Month - Diet

Prompt: Describe eating ice cream – paying close attention to visual description.

Source: None.

Response: Diet

His lips curved, shaping the ice-cold green into a peak. His tongue flicked out and took a chip out of the mint ice cream, turning the cone to drag a swirling line around it.

Beside him, his best friend put a hand surreptitiously on his own stomach, reminding himself why he was abstaining.

"Picture This" Month - In the Rain

Prompt: Write about an artist who sketches everyone they meet and then turns them into something else within the pages of their sketchbook.

Source: None.

Response: In the Rain

Daemon squinted, observing the distinctive shape of the girl's ear and how her hair curled around it. He pulled out a pencil and his mini-sketchbook.

The ear was almost triangular - geometric - and the hair swooped down in a gentle swirl.

Like rainwater flooding down the solid harsh lines of a gutter, his pencil said. Rushing in a torrent until it hit the corner and flowed out into the open street.

The sun beat down from the cloudless sky as Daemon filled his page with ears and water and hair and gutters, and waited for the bus to arrive.

"Picture This" Month - Smoldering

Prompt: Smoldering.

Source: None.

Response:

The hall was quiet, pristine. Silvered sunbeams lay on the marble floors, gently climbing the grand staircase. Paintings looked on from within their glinting frames, austere faces lightly lit. They seemed to frown slightly as if irritated by the mess desecrating the unblemished hall.

A low opera floated through the hall. Stephan, in his immaculate suit, hummed the words, occasionally adding his own baritone to the harmony. He surveyed the corpse before him with mild interest. It had been burning low for several minutes - the flames battling the water soaking its clothes - sending small orange sparks to the ground. The cadaver's face was still visible - a pinched visage with remnants of a poorly kept mustache.

Stephan glanced at his watch and walked out of the hall, leaving his kill immobile on the marble, smoldering.