Round 18 is afoot!

[Tricia]

Okay it's not really a foot.


I have recieved the words from RD and SG... lets get this party started!

(RD)
Executive
Perpetuity

(SG)
migraine (because i have one)
confection (because candy is goooood.)

(TW)
wounded
virus

[sidra]

if it is a foot, then does it wear a boot? and if it does wear a boot, is it leather with stilletto heels? because i think it might be tricia's foot if that's the case. it got broken off in my ass the other day when the shenanigans in the coatroom went too far. here it is back, if you need it. maybe you don't. maybe you're like a starfish, and they just grow back. i imagine you must loose your foot up lots of asses.

um... is there a deadline? not that THAT'S relevant. any sort of theme we should be going with here? no? only the general debauchery and evil doom? wheeeeee!

[ThatWickedWench]

Yea, so when's the story like due? I mean I can have it ready by Christmas if we're going by LAST rounds standards...
So I'm a smartass, but you should be used to that by now. So, no theme and open deadline as usual. I can deal.
And Sid, the coatroom is closed for cleaning and general repair.. er maintenance due to destruction indirectly caused by last weeks activities. No worries, however because all debauchery will re-convene under RD's skirt.. I've heard the confection in there is quite tasty!
Hehe! WooHoo, let's go!

[RedneckDiva]

Ah, Wenchie, glad you like the confection up under me skirt. Anything for me fans... Now where is everyone? I haven't noticed much debauchery. But then again, I may just be used to all the ruckus under the skirt by now.

Whoohooo!! New round, no deadline, no theme - things are back to normal around here!

[Chaos]

*pokes head into the room and looks around, just making sure it's safe to enter. You never know what these crazy women are doing in here...

"Uh, hey, guys? It's me, the Chaos Queen...anybody here?"

*shrugs*

"Oh, well, guess not. Anyway, I just came by the check in and I see that things are pretty much on par here at the Forum. An insane mixture of words, no deadline, and no direction (theme, whatever).

"It's so nice to have a warm, familiar place, where nothing much ever changes. Ahhhhh....."

[sidra]

i swear to god i thought i always did better when we had a definite deadline. but... now that we don't... i wrote something right away. me first, hee hee! ;D

this is soppy and romantic. there is more to it coming up. maybe you shall see a continuation, yes? anyway, here it is, for good or for ill...

[sidra]

SG1

“What,” said my roommate, standing above me with her hands on her hips and a disapproving expression on her face, “the hell is your problem?”<br>
Generally I don’t let people get away with talking to me like this. But Ivy kind of had a point. I had a problem. An infantile, high-school drama, God-What-Is-The-Matter-With-You problem. I wish I could define it more clearly than that. If I could condense all of the emotion I was feeling into a bottle right now, that bottle would be three times the size of the planet Earth. I was past even crying at this point. I was past laughter, tears, smashing things, all of that. I was stunned now, spiritually wounded, wrapped up like a burrito in my comforter and staring at the T.V., not even sure of what I was watching.

“Sarah,” Ivy continued, “seriously, what is going on? You haven’t spoken for like five days.”<br>
I tried to say something back, like: Don’t exaggerate, Ivy, it hasn’t been freakin’ five days, but all I could manage was something along the lines of “Nuuuuh.” Ivy sighed in exasperation and turned off the T.V. “Muh!” I said in protest, reaching my arm out of my cocoon and pointing at the television. I think I meant to say “Hey, I was watching that!” but of course coherent speech failed me. Hell, maybe I hadn’t spoken in five days. I’d lost count.

“Seriously, girl, you’re about to give me a migrane. You’re so fucking frustrating when you get like this.” Ivy was still attempting to make me speak the English language. I tried to apologize, because I knew she’d been through this with me before, but I couldn’t do much besides groan.

“Perhaps this will loosen your tongue,” Ivy said, waving a brightly-colored envelope over my head. I recognized it and my blood went cold. It was The Letter. More specifically, it was The Letter That I Finally Got From Roland After Not Hearing Shit From Him In Nearly A Year. Roland was my ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t my choice that he was my ex. He was just gone one day. Things had been fantastic between us; we had been in boyfriend/girlfriend bliss for nearly nine months. No arguments, no hard times, none. It was like the most fantastic dream I could have ever had. It was the perfect relationship; hell, it was the best relationship I’ve ever had in my life. Not that it’s been a long life; I don’t dare think that I’ve experience everything by the age of twenty-five. But I’ve been in enough relationships to know the good from the bad. Roland was perfect. Of course shit would all go wrong. I should have expected it. But I was expecting maybe a couple of lover’s spats, maybe some awkwardness with his ex-girlfriend; nothing that couldn’t be solved with some patience and understanding. I was fully prepared to deal with that. What I wasn’t prepared for was him leaving the country.

Yeah, he just left. No note, no phone call, no nothing. I found out he was gone when I went over to his apartment and no one answered the door. His neighbor, Phil, had told me that Roland had left to go on a year-long trip backpacking trip to Europe. Phil thought that I knew about it, that I was going to Europe, too. He said that Roland had been talking about it for ages. I didn’t know a damn thing. I was in shock. One minute I had the perfect relationship, the next I had nothing and no one. I went home and had a nervous breakdown. I was in bed for two days, as if I had been struck by a malignant wasting virus that wouldn’t let me eat or sleep or anything. Ivy did the best she could to help me through it, and so did my other best friends, Clay and Stuart. Hell, Stuart had come all the way down from where he lived in Washington DC to help me out. Eventually I got over it; all of the heartbreak and the confusion and the anger. It took a while… but I was really starting to think I was over him, finally, a year later. I was even thinking I could make it work with someone else; someone close to me that I had sudden, unexpected feelings for. Well, not entirely unexpected. But I was finally ready to make it work with him, and I had been on the brink of telling him so…<br>
And then Roland sent me this letter bomb. A beautiful, eloquently written letter covered in his beautiful artwork that I envied and admired. A letter filled with a sugary confection of contrite apology and professions of love. The letter that I had thought I would never get from him; the letter that I’d dreamed of countless times. I remembered reading it several times, and then retreating to my Safe Place. I didn’t remember what I did with the letter. Obviously Ivy had found it sitting somewhere, and had finally understood my odd behavior over the past few days. Still, the sight of it waving over my head was enough to startle me into speech.

“Give me that! Where the hell did you find that?”<br>
“Ah-hah!” Ivy said. “So you do speak!”<br>
“Not funny,” I growled, reaching up for the letter. “You didn’t read it, did you?”<br>
“Normally I would not have,” Ivy replied calmly, keeping the letter just out of reach. I realized that I would have to emerge from my little Sarah-burrito if I wanted to get the letter back. “But I made an executive decision to do so. You were incoherent and incapable of human communication, and I had to figure out what the hell was going on. Something had to be done. I used my amazing powers to get to the root of the problem. And now. We are going to talk about it.”<br>
I unwrapped myself and lunged after the letter. She let me have it, and then sat next to me on the sofa, pushing her blue hair back from her face. “All right,” she said. I tried to get back into my comforter, but she was sitting on it and I couldn’t wrap it around myself. I gave up and resigned myself to a serious conversation.

“First of all,” Ivy said, “I understand why you’re reacting the way you are. It was quite a hell of a thing to read.”<br>
“Yeah,” I mumbled, “that’s the understatement of the year.”<br>
“Second of all,” Ivy said, “I also talked to Clay.”<br>
My insides squirmed. My emotions threatened to spew out of their bottle and cover the universe in hysteria. “About what? When did you talk to him? God, he must totally hate me.”<br>
“Calm!” Ivy said, raising a thin, ring-covered hand to silence my hysteria. “He’s been calling here every day for the past three days, you know. So I finally got the story out of him. And this brings me to my final point, which is this: Roland deserves to be shot down. He should have told you all that stuff beforehand. I believe that you should ignore him and ignore his stupid fuckin’-with-your-head letter. But this is only my humble opinion. Now I want you to tell me what you think of what happened with Clay.”<br>

[sidra]

SG1 (continued)

I buried my head in my hands. Where to begin? Clay was my best friend; he’d been my best friend for years. We’d seen each other through horrible relationships, and life-changing dramas; we knew each other like we knew our own selves. But while I was recovering from Roland, and he was always there to support me (but never once take advantage of me) I was beginning to realize things in the back of my little pea-sized brain. The truth was that things had been different between Clay and I for a while now. Up until recently, I had been able to suppress my attraction and changing feelings towards him. I had been able to convince myself that I was only feeling that way because I was lonely, and that I was only thinking about Clay day and night because he was so gorgeous (let’s not lie here; I have always had a thing for bright green eyes and long dark hair and he fit the bill and then some) and I knew he was a good person. Every woman is attracted to that, I’d tell myself, there’s no reason for me to pursue it. I don’t want to ruin our friendship. But then I started to notice that the attraction was obviously there on his part, too. He had even actually started, a little shyly, to flirt with me. The way he looked at me and the way he touched me had changed; and the same was true for me. I wanted him, and he wanted me, and we both knew it. And finally, three days ago on a cold February night, we had finally given in to our secret passions, and taken our friendship to the next level.

Yes, the sex had been incredible. Yes, I remember waking up in his arms, feeling deeply and strongly that this was really IT, this was true love, this was true happiness; seeing his face next to mine when I woke up. I had thought that. But we hadn’t really been able to talk about what had happened between us the next day. I had to work that morning, and he had to work that night, and we didn’t get in touch with each other before I received the letter bomb in my mailbox from Roland. Well, you can imagine the confusion and emotion in my young, barely twenty-five year old heart. I tend to shut down for a few days while processing such things. The fact that I emerged from my room, finally, to wallow in self-pity on the sofa instead of in my bed was a sign that I was willing to finally talk about it. But when I tried to explain my feelings to Ivy, I failed coherence yet again.

“I don’t… I… god, he’s so great, Ivy, and I know I could be happy with him, but… I must still feel something for Roland because… I don’t know! Oh, god, I wish he’d never written me that letter! What do I do about all this mess?”<br>
“I already told you what I think,” Ivy said. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve known that Clay’s had a thing for you for a long time.”<br>
I stared at her. “How did you find that out?” I gaped.

“He told me,” Ivy said. “Of course he was extremely drunk and made me swear to never tell you this. An agreement that unfortunately, as of now, is not longer binding in perpetuity. But also you should know that before you try and pull some ‘it was a special moment, but we should just be good friends’ crap on Clay, I will not stand by and let you dump him for someone who took off and left you without a word. I hope we're clear on that.”<br>
“It’s just so confusing, Ivy… I don’t know what to do. I wish I did.”<br>
“You should do what I tell you,” Ivy said pertly. Then her expression softened, and she put an understanding hand on my arm. “Listen, I know you’re confused. I’ve had dilemmas like this before. I know you’re feeling so many emotions at once you feel like you’re going to explode. I’m just trying to give you a rational option for getting out of all this mess. I’d expect you’d do the same for me.”<br>
“I… just feel like I need time,” I said slowly. “I just have to get all this straight in my head. And my heart. Right now I feel like if I saw or talked to either of them I would explode. A big messy explosion of blood and snot and all kinds of grody stuff.” Ivy laughed, and then I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. She let me lean into her as I laughed and laughed, tears running down my face.

“Okay, enough with the hysterics,” Ivy said. I tried to calm down by taking big, gulping breaths, and she went and got me some tissues and some water. “Listen. You know I’m your best friend, right?”<br>
“Right,” I nodded, trying to re-establish control.

“And you value my opinion, right?”<br>
“Right.”<br>
“Damn right. So. When did Roland say he was going to be back in town?”<br>
“Um… the beginning of March. About a week from now, I guess.” I looked at the nightscape that he’d decorated the letter with. His style had always been very Van Gough; and he knew that Starry Night was one of my favorite paintings. He'd said in the letter that he’d seen the original, and it had reminded him of me. It melted me. But Clay would have said the same thing, done the same thing… he was everything that Roland was except frightened. And what had I just done to him? Cut him off after our night together; I hadn’t called him or anything. I knew that I should at least call him and explain what was going on to him, because otherwise I would be doing to him what Roland had done to me. Ivy told me as much, and then added:

“You don’t have to see him or anything. I won’t make you. But don’t you think you should at least call Clay and tell him what’s going on? I mean, ask him to wait a bit while you get your emotions in order. He’s an awesome guy; he’ll understand. And you need to know how he feels, too.”<br>
“I know,” I said, running my hands through my short (and currently unwashed) blonde hair. It stood up in greasy fingers when I was through with it. “All right. I’ll take a shower and then I’ll call him.”<br>
“You will?” Ivy said eagerly. “You’re not just saying that to placate my nosy ass?”<br>
“No, I’m not,” I said wearily. I was starting to feel a little more like a human being again; and, though I hadn’t expected it, the thought of talking to Clay was actually comforting. I had been torn up inside with guilt that I hadn’t called him when I promised I would. I knew the phone conversation would be emotionally trying, but it would also get things set straight. I actually stood up and started to stagger towards the bathroom when the phone rang and I froze. Ivy picked it up after it rang three times, seeing that I wasn’t going to make a move towards it.

“Howdy-do!” she said cheerily. Ivy always answered the phone in an unconventional way. “Oh, hey! How’s it going? Yeah, she’s right here. Hold on.” She covered the receiver with her hand and smiled impishly in my direction.

“Who is it?” I asked, even though I knew.

“It’s Clay,” she replied, handing the phone to me. I took it with trembling hands and managed to hold it up against my head.

“Hello…”

[Chaos]

Well. You never could've convinced me in a zillion years that this would happen here at Fizzle and Pop Forum...my very own father's name was used in a story! How odd, considering it's a very uncommon name. In this century, anyway.

Aside from that, though, great story, Sid!

[ThatWickedWench]

OKay, so I've done something unconventional (*lol to THINK a Wicked Wench being unconventional*) and I am posting a continuation of a previous story. This is Part II of my 'cabin story' that won Round 13, however this one is written in the first person AND features a character previously presumed dead. (HeY, Soaps can do it, why can't I?) So go back and refresh yourself first if you like.. here comes the story.

[ThatWickedWench]

Wench 1

I awoke from a smoky, charred and tortured nightmare full of chaos and deception. The sounds and smells of sex, lies and roaring flames lingered vaguely in my mind as my eyes adjusted to the early morning darkness in the curtained motel room.

I turned on my side and squinted at the clock, causing my migraine to pulse more loudly. Under the thick bandages, the searing pains in my chest screamed like a scalded bitch. According to the x-rays, the bowie knife that my husband had attempted to murder me with had missed my heart narrowly, but had maliciously mauled my breasts.

The emergency room at Mountain Memorial had been very understanding of my reasons for not involving the police. Apparently that area was popularly known to have a safe house for battered women and the locals were accustomed to ‘no questions asked’ situations. Also, I had miraculously managed to salvage my purse, a sweatshirt and some jeans before the cabin roof caved in- so at least I had some clean clothes and access to cash and my ID which I needed when I rented the cheap piece of shit parked outside my room. (I cursed Randy venomously for causing my BMW to blow up at the cabin).

I had lost a lot of blood from the knife wound, but the sorry sack of shit had failed to cause any major internal damage. Funny how my husband was a failure at just about everything -relationships, honesty, satisfying me in bed… but he was amazing with money. Investments were his forte. I knew this well seeing as I was an executive over his estate. Big mistake on his part.. But I’m sure he’s kicking himself for it now.

That son-of-a-bitch was going to fucking pay for a hell of a lot more than just my new set of tits, I’d make sure of that. It truly would have been in his best interest to check my fucking pulse before he torched the Goddamn place. As I lay there, wounded and bleeding in seeming perpetuity, I was watching him the entire time through glazed over eyes. He was doctoring the scene of the murder to make it tell a different story indeed.

Randy bagged up the decapitated head of my former lover, Graylon. He scattered (what I discovered later to be his own teeth) around the lifeless body. He then hurriedly disappeared into the cabin to retrieve Graylon’s wallet and swap it with his own. My seemingly clever husband finally exited in a blaze of fucked up glory, presuming me dead. Silly bastard.


According to the Mountain View Chronicle that I now held in my hands, Randall Ian Pruitt, 39, had been pronounced dead in the fire, identified by unmistakable dental work. The local police stated in the blurb in the paper that ‘Mr. Pruitt was survived by a wife who was known to be on vacation out of town at the time of the incident and had yet to be notified of the situation.’ A silly thought ran through my head upon reading this- it was the first time I'd noticed my husband's initials were 'RIP'.

So, my husband of fifteen loveless years was so desperate to prevent me from obtaining anything if and when I filed for divorce, that the bastard decided to kill ‘both’ of us. It wouldn’t cost him anything at all to buy a new identity and hit the border when the smoke cleared.. With me out of the way, his precious investments would remain safe.

However, he had NOT counted on me surviving the fire once his ‘death’ had been announced.. we were BOTH supposed to be proclaimed dead and I had defied his evil little ploy. Now I was in the position to get everything that Randy had worked his miserable life for. Did he really and truly believe that he was going to live fucking happily ever after under some new identity? Did he think a plastic surgeon and some dentures could save him now?

I should have seen what the asshole was planning from the beginning. His affair with my best friend, Tanya had not been the first. In fact, several of my former friends had been unwittingly sucked into my husband’s manipulative web of deceit and I was determined to change my fate. I had nothing to lose at all.. Any love that Randy and I had shared had died the moment we signed our insurance policies.

Currently, my husband was nothing more to me than a nasty virus gnawing away at my chance for happiness. I needed this reprieve in the lumpy motel bed to concentrate on how I was going to vaccinate myself against him.

I dropped the newspaper next to the bed and attempted to stretch out my sore limbs the best I could. Wherever Randy was, he had surely had a chance to see the paper by now. He would be a sweaty and paranoid mess until he was able to locate me. It would not be long before he had some greasy henchman scouting me out to finish the job he couldn’t. I needed my plan straight, and soon.

A faint odor of smoke was present as I ran my fingers through my normally lustrous hair. Gingerly, I made my way to the tiny bathroom where I proceeded to draw a steamy hot bath in hopes I would be able to clear my head to devise my next move. As I sank my aching body into the water, I could not help but smile devilishly. I really did have the upper hand now.. I certainly had my stupid husband by his useless balls this time.

My revenge was going to taste sweeter than the most enticing confection.

[Tricia]

Okay...
so a deadline would have been nice!

Why didn't you email me???

You know what I did?
I forgot to hit the notification of posts.
I wondered why no one had post ANYTHING all week.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

Imagine my surprise
*bats eyes*

Okay then... deadline tuesday night.

I'd better get busy writing!

See you all soon....

Oh yeah... and email me when I screw up... I just love those emails
"Hey you screwed up again!!!!!!!!"

[Tricia]

So... extension anyone... say til Thursday night?

Hello...lo...lo...lo

Damn, what an echo!

My story is almost done... frickin' confection!

See ya'll then!

[RedneckDiva]

Crap....deadline. Oops.

Yeah, Thursday....please.

[HIM]

A story from:

HIM

Mr. GreenGenes

I just got rid of a migraine as big as the building I used to work in. That building here in the hills outside town, now completely hidden by concrete and plastic, would never see the light of day again - nor would my now former boss. The walking sphincter, executive director of the project I worked on is now not only my former boss but is also a former employee and a former everything else for that matter. It’s been a very long night.

My interview was short and while not pleasant, not particularly threatening either, at least at first. The Guys from the CDC and some unidentified (but obviously military) guys questioned me like they had done such interviews a million times before. The first thing they did was tell me that I was in absolutely no danger; the “incident” did not involve a contagion and that all of the employees would be receiving an extremely generous severance package, we weren’t even being quarantined. I was a low level employee, low enough that I was not supposed to know much about the full nature of the project or have any direct access to what we really worked on and I made sure that they believed that I knew nothing more than I should. However; I knew enough to know they were telling me the truth about my safety. My company clearance was not sufficient to get me any direct access or knowledge of this hush-hush “trade secret” project as they called it. I was told when I started that only the scientists and honchos were to be in the know but it’s hard to keep secrets in a small facility and rules sometimes get bent a little. After the interview they threatened me extensively and promised that if I kept my mouth shut; none of it would come to pass - an “offer” I’m sure they made to each of us in turn.

We were required to wait in tents and as I left the trailer to return I watched workers pour concrete into huge forms around the building. A full shell of thick black plastic and concrete tilt-up slabs already encased it. I guess they were adding another layer. Huge girders supported a concrete slab roof and those in turn were supported by even larger girders that had been planted and pounded into the ground starting late last night. There were truckloads of pressurized gas being emptied into and onto the top of the structure while the work was going on. It flowed over everything and looked like liquid nitrogen but who knows what it really was, the trucks delivering it were unmarked as was all of the other equipment.

Just yesterday morning we were going about our business creating whatever it was we were creating. We had a little office party for the Sphinctimus Maximus’s birthday though there is a rule against regular employees having similar activities. There was a cake and even a few presents. He got a gold pen, a gift certificate for a fancy dinner and a fine confection, some Italian chocolates. It was just a couple hours later that Mr. Big Shit comes staggering out of the lab like a wounded dog. Everyone stares at him like he just stepped off the mother ship; he’s green, literally, all of his exposed skin is forest green! Now this is a bioresearch lab so we all had the same reaction to a guy stepping out of the secured lab looking like that. We all ran while he fell over. Before we even made it to the doors the fire alarm went off but we knew there was no fire, it was really a biohazard alarm. It was because of him. We all followed our procedures and met in the parking lot per our drills and training but no one got real close to anyone else. The fire department didn’t arrive but a bunch of cars and big panel trucks did. “The men from Glad” had arrived for a real live bio-containment event, just like in the movies.

So our fearless leader had come down with some mysterious, lethal, very fast acting but not contagious virus. Nobody officially knows what it is or how he got it, and I’m just sitting here in this stupid tent intermittently watching my office building be sealed into a sarcophagus of concrete and plastic where it will sit in perpetuity like a miniature Chernobyl. I’m planning on having that severance check sent to me in Tahiti I think. I’m daydreaming about sunshine and sandy beaches, sitting here, eating Rocher hazelnut truffles from my jacket pocket.