I have seized control! Round 9 is on!

[jenn]

She stood salient at the apex of the cliff, peering down she could see the rocks jutting out at her over a hundred feet below. The thought of jumping was incipient; she had just been walking; trying to hush her mind. The longer she stood there the more the thought haunted her, but she knew her courage would fail her as it had so many times before at these moments. Her damask dress fluttered around her ankles in the warm summer breeze, but she could no longer feel the warmth of the sun. Her world went cold when the glowing flame of love had died, not even leaving an ember to rekindle the fire. His words stung her and left a bitter metallic taste, as he told her he never loved her. She knew she was lingering on the fringe of sanity, but did not want to pull herself back. She leaned forward just a bit and the rocks beneath her feet started to slide. She leaped backwards, not yet ready to surrender to the pain. She glanced down one last time, and turned to walk the path back to her little house, as the thought of failure consumed her once again.

[smalls]

man.. its a plot to ruin me isnt it.. you cant use words like that in a poem... i hate you!

*sigh* this is gonna be a tough one

[Heather]

You guys made Derek S cry! Shame on you!

Salient, huh? Shit, where's my dictionary? I knew this Widefield education would be the death of me...

[guestdawg]

He should be able to use the thesaurus to pick words that mean the same thing, but rhyme!

You suck Jay! Making people cry and shit!

[smalls]

DS1

Watch me run
Watch me fly
Watch me die
Watch me throw the rocks
Ripple the pond
Watch me screw up
Ruin my life
Watch the stars
Holy glow
Ignore my presence
Pass by
Ignore
Look away
By pass the stare
As I curse your existence
Watch the blade
Metallic hue
Rewind, reverse
This isn't some damask
Linen on the couch
Waiting to be crafted
This is life
Watch as it passes us by
Watch yourself ignore it
You really don't know do you?
Hush child
It'll come
Until then, leave me
You destroy me, you create me
You pump my blood, you bleed me dry
You light the flames, you smother them
This is not some clean cut love story
Fringe lines this
you try to cut, try to hem
But you cut on angles
Cutting the life line threads
Intentions? Good or bad
You never express
Salient feelings
Nonsense scribbled from my pencil
Scribbling faster
Rougher
Climax
Apex
Or disappointment
Waiting and waiting, for nothing
Slowing down
Smoother lines
Weaker writing
Nerves calming
Only because you're gone
Feelings incipient
Until you return
Nothing is evolving
Nothing is becoming
You ruined it
Ruined my peace
Ruined it all
Made me feel
Made me feel alive

[Tricia]

TW2

He stared over the rail at the bloody mess.
He had missed his target completely.
He could see her body lying on the rock below, crumpled like a broken doll.

The moon was just beginning to rise and the weak light made the engagement ring on her finger glow, like a metallic beacon, begging to be discovered.

He had chosen this side of the canyon because of the jagged peaks and salient outcroppings. This is one area that climbers avoided and the possibility of rockslides made it too perilous for rafting.

What were the chances that someone might pass by or get a flat tire and just happen to glance down from this high, rugged apex and notice a body below?

Well, up until now, the chances would have been pretty damn slim. There was no sign of the others from here.
He had rushed too much this time. It was just becoming so easy that he was beginning to get sloppy.

Just like usual, he had smashed her face with a brick to hush her screaming and then, when he had finished doing what he wanted to her, he had brought her here to join the others.
The difference between her and the rest of them, besides the fact that she wasn’t a whore, was that stupid purple damask dress she was still wearing. It stood out like a neon sign as she lay on the rock below, eye’s wide open to the incipient moon.

He had stripped the others.
He used to be afraid of getting caught. He had made sure that he hosed them down and had dropped them further down the canyon, where the water was deeper.
Once the bodies had smashed through the trees they could not be seen from the road.
Damn, now what would he do?

He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter. As he lit the cigarette, the flame illuminated his face in the night. He had a face that was almost angelic, but his big brown eyes appeared troubled. Standing on the side of the road next to his van he could have been a college kid with a flat tire or just you’re average twenty-something who had run out of gas and was waiting for a friend to pick him up.

He turned and leaned over the rail to look at her body again.

Shit, what a mess.

Her head was lying at an odd angle and the muddy water lapped at the fringe of black hair hanging over the edge of the rock.
She definitely had a broken neck.

Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Even if he managed to make his way down there to move her, without breaking his own neck, he would never be able to climb back out and he was not about to spend the fucking night down there with them.

He took a last drag off of the cigarette and flicked it over the rail.
He heard the sound as it hit the water beside her head and was snuffed out by the foul river water.

He’d better get home and start packing.

He knew that it was time to move along again.

[JayJay]

JJ1

December 29th, 1890
When Dr. Eastman arrived on the reservation, he realized how unprepared he was for the poverty he would find there. The Sioux, once a proud nation occupying hundreds of square miles, was now reduced to a government assigned reservation along the fringe of Minnesota. Leaving behind the powdered faces and damask gowns of Boston, Charles became a salient figure confronted with thin, dark-skinned, dark-haired women who’d seen easier times and known better days.

“Good Morning, Doc. Glad you made it,” the Lakota peacekeeper said when Charles’ wagon pulled up. “They have traveled far, some of them, to see you.” His arm swept behind him and for the first time Charles noticed the sea of faces in the distance, huddled in groups around warm flames to fight off the December cold, watching apprehensively as the stranger arrived.

“Thank you…” Charles waited, but the man did not offer his name.

“There is tension here, since his death. The Calvary will be here soon.” Before Charles could ask when, the peacekeeper had left.

Charles knew exactly whom the man spoke of. Sitting Bull’s death at Standing Rock 10 days ago had made the news nationwide. White men cheered, calling it “Custer’s Revenge” while the Sioux nation mourned, feeling the incipient demise of their heritage as the U.S. Government closed in on them.

Less than ten minutes had passed when Charles heard the door to his cabin open and shut, over and over again, a pattern that would be echoed throughout his first day. He watched, anxious, as the unending string of Sioux poured into his cabin, filling it from wall to wall. A low murmur rumbled through the group until a final figure entered, silently hushing the group with a raised palm.

Iron Hail, which Charles recognized as the Lakota tribe member who’d greeted him earlier, requested medical aide for his family to treat various sicknesses. Charles cared for each of them, speaking in Sioux rather than depending on Iron Hail to translate for him. Flying Dove, a young Lakota member eight months heavy with child, gave him a colorful blanket after he assured her the red show was normal and her baby would be fine. Others paid him in similar fashion. By the end of his first night Charles had earned two metallic bracelets, a Ghost Shirt which is a traditional Sioux garment, and many handmade dishes and utensils. They were poor in material wealth, but Charles could tell they were rich in emotional wealth. They had a history behind them, a pride within them, but also a nightmare ahead of them.

For many hours later after Charles had crawled beneath his new blanket, exhausted and cold, the sky to the west would glow orange above the Hotchkiss gunfire at the apex of the hilly area known as Wounded Knee. The 7th Calvary had arrived. All 300 Lakotas would be ruthlessly massacred as they fled for their lives, many of them unarmed, some of them bearing white flags of truce…and a few of them heavy with child.

*Fictional story based on one chapter in the autobiography of Charles “Ohiyesa” Eastman, Sioux doctor, entitled “From the Deep Woods to Civilization.”<br>

[jenn]

Ok I am following in Collins footsteps, game time is extended until like noon tomorrow.

[Collin]

CB1:

I was crumpled on the ground where I had landed with a metallic taste in my mouth.

I could barely move my head to look around and either a hush had come over the city or I was now deaf after being so close to a noise that was so loud. The rest of my body was cold and numb.

Everything around me was coated with rock dust, glass and bits of metal with even more still falling from the sky.

About ten feet away from where I had been, the front of a bank was shattered. Flames were dancing in the gaping holes of the former windows. The sidewalk and wall where the door had been were still glowing from the heat of the explosion. The apex of the building had turned into a chimney.

I wasn't the only person on the ground. Around me I could see dozens of people scattered about. Some of them were moving like broken toys, in slow, uncoordinated motions like they were trying to remember how to be human. I could see some of their crying, screaming faces, but couldn't hear a thing. It was surreal.

Even more of the people around me would never move again. One young woman who had been walking just ahead of me had landed a few feet to my left. She had been wearing a lovely damask dress with a gold fringe. Now it was shredded and scorched and her lifeless eyes were staring at me from a misshapen and bloody face.

If there had been any strength left in me I would have joined in the silent scream at that point. But I had nothing left.

I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open.

My last salient thought was that I wish I had stopped for a minute to give that bum a dollar,then I gave in to the incipient darkness.

[Collin]

Yay for my footsteps! I thought my story would be too late and that I would continue in my state of suck.

[dknight818]

Lawrence sat at his desk, completely befuddled by the grouping of words that lay in front of him. He knew that he had to pass this vocabulary test lest he be held back another year. His father had warned him, it'd be military school if he failed. Despite his studious nature over the course of the last 4 weeks, the words he now had to define appeared as foreign as a bowl of menudo. "I'm screwed," thought Lawrence. "I don't even know what the Hell 'salient' means...um...maybe it's like...Sailing! Yeah..." Lawrence quickly scribbled his makeshift definition, "to have gone sailing, used as past tense. 'we done gone salient, y'all shoulda' come too.'"

"Hot damn," he thought. "One down, 19 to go." Lawrence knew that he was amongst the fringe when it came to earning a passing grade. Doing well on this test really could be the difference between a D- and an F. He knew that he had to think hard for the next word. Soon, the lightbulb over his head began to glow and the words flowed from his #2 pencil with relative ease...

"'incipient': when the clerk at the Piggly Wiggly forgets to give you a receipt. 'I'd like to return this item, however I am incipient.'" "This is easier than I thought! I rock!" thought Lawrence. Ready to take on the task of defining more words, he swapped out his pencil for a metallic ink Sharpie® (for added effect) and set to work.

"'damask': what da catcher wears to protect his face."

"'hush': what makes a puppy edible."

"'apex': the left chest muscle (bpex being the right)."

"'flame': shorthand speak for 'not very good' (that was fucking lame or f'lame)."

Having completed his test to his satisfaction, Lawrence proudly walked to the front of the class and handed the paper to the teacher. "I guess I won't be seeing YOU again next year!" Lawrence announced. As he turned triumphantly to walk from the room, his teacher, having glanced at Lawrence's definitions, answered "Indeed, we won't be seeing each other next year. Enjoy the military academy, dumbass!"

(at press time, it was learned that, rather than face "Hell week" at the military academy, Lawrence fled to Canada where he now holds down a day job as a panhandler.)

[Tricia]

TW3

She lay looking at him in the glow of the candlelight.
He was beautiful… dark and muscular.
There was something about him that always turned her on.
She hadn’t been with a man for a long time until he came along.
It wasn’t like she was unattractive, she just had her own priorities and making partner was a salient part of her plan. As a matter of fact it had been at the top of her to-do list since she first came to work for the firm.

She knew that most of the men she worked with called her a bitch, but that was okay.
When the shit started flying guess whose desk they all lined up in front of? Yeah, they needed her… and hated it.

She had met him when he first came to work for the firm. He wasn’t like the other men she worked with, not jealous of her success, not threatened by her strength as a woman.

From the moment that they met there was an incipient attraction.
When they started meeting outside of work they had to keep it quiet. She wouldn’t have cared if the whole world knew, but he was the picture of office tact.
“Look, when you get partner we’ll tell them all to kiss our asses, until then… I don’t want to be the reason that you don’t make partner”.
He was like that, always the voice of normalcy in her otherwise crazy world.

They had been together for almost two years now. She had to fight her way to the top at the office… knocking coworkers out of her way like a linebacker.
He just sat back and watched her with amazement and amusement.


And today it had happened… everything that she had dreamed of.
They had announced her partnership in the morning and he had stood at the back of the room and clapped along with the others.
At lunchtime he had poked his head in her office door. He had a big boyish grin on his face. 8 o’clock… he mouthed the words to her and held up the house key she had given him. Then he gave her a wink and was gone again.

As she walked through the front door at 8:30, she was greeted by the smell of food cooking and the sound of him singing, terribly off key, to Marvin Gaye.
He was always telling her “I sing badly, but I do it really loud… so it’s okay”.
She put down her briefcase and laid her jacket on the back of a chair.

When she entered the kitchen he met her at the door with a glass of wine.
He took her hand and led her to the living room. Candles flamed in their metallic holders. Fresh flowers overflowed in a vase on the table.
He had fed her shrimp with his hands, refusing to allow her to feed herself. Every time she tried to talk to him he hushed her mouth with his.

When she finished eating he had carried her to the bedroom. He had made love to her, starting slowly and working her to a fevered apex that left them both exhausted.

He had reached over then and picked up the box from the bedside table. He opened it with a boyishly embarrassed look on his face.
“So, will you… please”?

She stared at the rock. Wow, he must have saved up for quite a while for this.
They didn’t discuss salary. They both knew that she made three times as much money as he did at the firm, but he always said that if she wanted to, he would quit his job and they could hitchhike around the country… and she knew he meant it. He would go anywhere to make her happy.
As she lay there on the fringe of sleep he reached over and pulled the soft damask cover up higher around her shoulders.

“You okay, baby?” he asked in a not quite awake voice.

“Yes”, she whispered, her head next to his on the pillow.

She closed her eyes and let herself float away.

[jenn]

all right game over sorry I forgot

Lets vote, like usual 2 votes and ya got until thursday night.

[Tricia]

Jenn,
I don't mean to be a pest (like Collin),
but can we please extend til Friday night?

Zach has his heart surgery procedure thing on thursday and I won't get a chance to read everything before we go to the hospital tomorrow.

Plus I like to read all the stories twice... just to really FEEL them.

Thanks babe... let me know if that's okay.

[jenn]

Tricia girl I wasn't even thinking when I posted. yes we will go until Sat morning I think that will be better. That way you have plenty of time.