Weekly Writing Challenge: Backward

Posted in Challenges by angloswiss

You can start at the end, and then lead us straight back to a traditionally ordered sequence of events (it worked for Citizen Kane). Or you can give us the full Memento treatment and take us backward one step at a time to the very origin of your story. Whatever works: just hook your readers with a powerful conclusion (that comes first!), and then captivate them with the story of how it came to pass.

This story was based on a discovery where I live. The Skull

Skeleton

I was preparing to go to bed. There was a storm outside. I awoke to a clap of thunder and lightning and there he was, sitting on my bed, sort of semi transparent.

“Who-who-who are you?”

“Me? I suppose a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

“You know the one they dug up today outside where they are building that house.”

I remembered, there was quite a performance. Whilst digging the foundations they had uncovered a severed skull, the rest of the bones were scattered around. The newspaper men were there, the town archeologists, and it was discovered that many years ago the beheading block was in our village for the local criminals and villains.

“You are the skull they found?”

“Yes, that’s right Miss, at last. I had been waiting a few hundred years for a bit of freedom and stretching my legs. The place looks different to when I knew it: all these strange houses. To my time it was a hill with a chopping block at the top surrounded by fields, cows and the like. I had better be going, have a few hundred years to catch up with, although it is nice and cosy here.”

I became curious. “I would offer you something to drink and eat, but I suppose ghosts do not eat or drink. Before you go, tell me what happened.”

“You really want to know, well nothing special, but this is what happened” and he commenced.

“Yes, that’s me although I wasn’t dressed in my best at the time. When you are beheaded you have to wear what they give you. I was a good looker in my time and the ladies knew it. Unfortunately that was my downfall and one of the reasons for my early demise.

I was caught red handed I suppose you could say, but it was a little embarrassing, for Lady Von Kappeler and for me. Of course my hands were not red, they were the colour of my skin, but so was the rest of me and the Lady? There was no mistake, she certainly looked like a lady wearing what she brought into the world. Lord Von Kappeler, her husband, was supposed to be in town with his colleagues, probably doing the same as I was, but not with someone’s wife, just visiting the local ladies. I had paid Maggie to keep him occupied all night, so that her ladyship and I could have fun together, but Maggie was greedy and wanted more money for her services to his Lordship. They had a little argument, his lordship decided why pay for it when it is all free at home and was off.

Now if it was like today when you all have these iPhones and mobile things, Maggie would have warned me that he was on his way, but in the eighteenth century when the Lord had a horse, there was no escaping. So me and her ladyship were having fun, my ears were only open to her squeels of delight and pleasure and not to the sound of hooves on the cobblestones in the courtyard. I didn’t even have a chance to cover my private bits, the door opened and there he stood, the husband, the Lord.

There was a little argument, her ladyship telling him that I had forced her to do what she was doing. Now that was a joke. She could never get enough, but what is the word of a highwayman and thief against that of a lady, so I had no chance.

“I should challenge you to a duel” said his Lordship “to rescue my honour”.

I laughed. “When they know that you were spending the evening with Maggie at the local brothel I think your honour might be questionable” was my answer while I wrapped the sheet around myself – it was cold in that castle bedroom I can tell you.

“Guards, seize this intruder” he shouted and I had no chance with six of his men grabbing me. They pulled me down to the cellar. He was a crafty bloke that Lord. He even had some of his gold and silver deposited in my abode, which was a wooden hut at the edge of the forest. My place was searched from the town guards and they found it all. What was I to say. Of course I denied it all, but even Maggie held evidence against me at the trial. Yes the Lord had paid her and Maggie did everything for money.

Lady Von Kappeler gave me the rest, telling how I had climbed through the bedroom window and forced myself upon her. She had no chance, she said, with tears in her eyes (did I smell onions). I escaped a duel with the Lord which was a good thing as he was one of the best gunmen in the town and he would have certainly killed me with the first shot. I was condemned to a beheading. Now I was a pretty fellow really and I treasured my head above all. Unfortunately the law did not find this was the case and so it was up the hill on the beheading block and there I was since, until they dug me up.”

With that he took a bow and walked through the wall. I never saw him again. I wondered, shall I call the newspaper, but I somehow think they would not believe my story.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Backward, The Skull

Some Backward Pingbacks

11Sep2013

Daily Prompt: Thank You

Posted in Challenges by angloswiss

The internet is full of rants. Help tip the balance: today, simply be thankful for something (or someone).

Photographers, artists, poets: show us THANKS.

Wasp dinner

I begin with my photo of wasps having a feast on our grapes. We were completely unthankful for their presence on the porch when we were eating lunch or dinner. They were everywhere. I even saw a wasp carefully cutting a piece of ham and flying off to his home where the children and other wasp tribal members were rubbing their legs together in anticipation. Of course we were annoyed; unthankful for their presence, but then I had an idea. There was only a remainder of the grapes that they were so keen on, so I placed them a distance away from the table on the ground in a dish and left the wasps to it. You have to give to take. I had a collection of thankful happy wasps. Their tiny wasp stomachs were full of grape juice and the main thing was they left us humans alone. This was a week ago. The grapes are still there and I have not seen a wasp since on the table. Even a wasp has a positive purpose in his little wasp life and Internet tells me that they are

Predators of spiders, caterpillars, ants, bees, and flies.

Pollinators of plants.

although I do not mind spiders and bees, but the other points on the list are positive so you see wasps also have their purpose in life. Let us be thankful for the wasp plague that visits us every Autumn.

The Internet is full of rants – I suppose it depends on your surfing path on Internet. Of course, I would be so glad to thank the people concerned for my Pulitzer/Nobel prize for literature, for changing the course of history, but I am still waiting for the opportunity.

It seems to me that Internet balances itself with rants and praise. Although this is not just Facebook, it is the best example for judging things. There are now more than a billion members to this social site, like it or not. Nearly 800 of them are connected to myself although it is a basic one hundred that I really know. The rest are just passengers picked up during my gaming addiction. The only thing I know about them is how their fictional kitchen/farm made progress by me satisfying their wishes for various gifts. We were only there for the ride it seems and I jumped off the train a few years ago.

If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend then it is better to play low and nice. Do not cheat or act mean otherwise you run a risk of being exposed to your friends, friends of friends, and according to how your profile is, to half the world as being mean, thoughtless unnecessary ballast in life. Everyone will know and you will be avoided. On the other hand Facebook has a positive side. We can show the world that we love our mother, father, brother, sister, dog, cat and there is even a lable for brothers-in-law and sister-in-law as well as cousins. There is no end to the thanks you can express in this make believe world. Of course a religious side also exists – something for everyone.

Today is 11.09. – a date engraved in the minds of most of us in the Western world. Facebook is full of this, as well as other sites I belong to and quite rightly. I remember the day because I was staying with my father in London, watching television in the afternoon and waiting for my cousin to arrive who I had no seen for many years. He was picking dad and I up with the car to bring him to his house, where his mother was, my father’s sister-in-law, my aunt. There was an old black and white film running on the television and then the picture changed to show a plane crashing into a tall building. I had not really been concentrating and thought it was a preview of some sort of catastrophe film. Then I realise it was reality. My father entered the room asking what that is for a film. We were both somehow caught in the reality of an unrealistic world. Slowly I realised what was happening. It was unbelievable, but I automatically said to dad I am sure Bin Laden is behind this. He asked who Bin Laden was – do not forget my father was eighty years old at the time. Although I am English, this crime was against humanity and so today I am thanking the people that did what they could to help. I see this all over Internet today. I once stood on the top floor of one of the towers, ate in the restaurant, sometime in the 1990’s when the towers were still standing. All the more the impact realising that these two towers just collapsed with their inhabitants, never to exist again.

So just let it be said that I am thankful for living, being lucky and an environment where I do not have to fear for my life. I just hope it remains this way. Are you reading this Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad, or does it not interest you?

Daily Prompt: Thank You

Thankful Pingbacks

Being honest the title is based on a remark made on one of my blogs by a supporter.
"You always turn a topic inside out and on its head" were words also applied by a visitor to one of my blogs. I think she hit the nail on the head.

Prompts are there to act on, not just tell everyone what you had for lunch or your likes and dislikes. I trust that on my blog you find something spiced with humour. Mr. Swiss, my other half, has been known to say that not everyone always understands my humour (I do not always understand his).

Blogging is for me coupled with having fun. I do what I want to and not what I have to.

Disclaimer: Not reponsible for any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I do my best, but having two langugages revolving in my brain (yes, I have one), sometimes the result is more bi- than unilingual.