Merc's Micros

And here are a bunch of 30-word micros from the November 2008 Your Messages challenge:

She preens and pimps, coddles and massages bodies and egos; she does sums in her head and wonders at the fuss about women who say they want it all.

When my feet grew too fast for my shoes, I ran barefoot. Later I danced in Blahniks, ignoring the blisters. Bunions split my slippers, but soon I won’t need them.

When the curly-haired ticket collector refused to take mine, I was devastated. Months of electric fingers now fizzled and deflated my dreams. Talk about rotten rejections! No don’t!

Pikelets aren’t little pikes, crumpets aren’t a baker’s trump of crumbs and a goblet of tea has little to do with teetotalling goblins. But they all make a fine breakfast.

I lolled in my glass of champagne, puffing on my pink Sobranie. I’d forgotten a thing or two: where to flick the butt, and how to get to my negligee.

I pretended they were glass when I blew them, wanting them to last longer than a blop.
So I hung them on my unpierced earlobes and listened to them tinkle.

He was a bit of a leech, you know. You had to unfasten each of his suction caps; but then the blood would flow. He had two hearts, it seems.

The soldiers killed all the dogs. They were scared the dogs would warn us they were coming. They were scared, my mother said, her mouth bloodied. They were so young.

The only silence in my house is that of the peeling paint, the straining pipes and the glowing rafters as the fires lick into the corners of my tiled life.

I believed my watch but it had stopped. I’m late for my thirties and I doubt if they’ll let me in. But I’ll sneak in and watch the pc tick.

When I told them I was leaving France they all wanted a spot in my suitcase. They came in wheelchairs and with crutches. Frog legs ain't no dish in Austria.

I have a champagne taste on a beer income but when I wear my necklace of bottle tops, pour ale into my slipper and close my eyes, I’m almost there.

When you cry you may not be noticed while in the act. It’s just afterwards that your puffy face and bleary eyes give you away – and the empty tissue box.

King Pipper covered his boobs with some macramé and with his alpenstock skewered the tenderloin, had a chomp at the flageolet and then washed down the poppadom with a demijohn.

I am learning to go with my gut when smelling roses, jasmine, BO, the odd whiff of rotten-egg gas; how easily odours can turn and undo what the eyes see.

Peanuts. I lift my face and get a big slurpy kiss. I swing up on his tusks and he tiptoes down the stairs, out the door and into the sun.

Transplanting is an art in some places; in others it’s a crime. Take Oz. You can’t even slip in on a banana skin so don’t think about catching a tumbleweed.

The bottle of silence was on special offer. She drank it all in one go, hoping it would be enough. It almost was, but it couldn’t drown out her hangover.

Some see you as a bloom of welcome. But I know you. You cling, you cloy, reminding me of years I left behind while racing sunsets to escape you, Frangipani.

My husband always says he’d have to kill me twice – once to get me six feet under and the second time to stop words from coming out of my mouth.

His getting pregnant and having a baby turned the world upside down. But his somersaulting began when he found his clitoris and saw that it bore the tiniest of penes.

My German-speaking parents spoke to me in English. My daughter’s mother tongue is French but I’m not. She speaks to her father in argot while I just reminisce in strine.

Endings are always tricky. Closed? Open? So are beginnings. Once upon a med res? And if eyes glaze over in between? Call the salvage police and duck. It’s a memoir?

- They’re just like big rabbits.
- It’ll bring down their carbon footprints.
- They’re high in protein.
- Low in cholesterol.

- No way am I going to eat Skippy!

The devil admired the way the pair of red stilettos disguised her. What if she were to keep just one and give the other to Versace, or was that Prada?

In 1955, Dame Edna of the lilac hair first waved her gladioli in the Land of Oz. Fifty-five years later the flowers had become extinct. You’d better believe it, Possums!

Underwater underwear is what they wear Down Under. Dangerous are just the sharks that care bubbles about the gender of the wearer and the ability thereof to hold his/her breath.

Stiletto condoms

Now lives at Merc's World - writings.

Tock tocking

They made me take off my bra and the gold chain round my neck. It had been my grandfather’s and used to be linked to the fob attesting to the passing of time. He died before the war could get him. My grandmother died of cancer as did her son, my uncle. Dad hung in there until the pacemaker batteries died. Mum’s willing herself away.

As the tunnel closed over me and the tock tocking dulled my senses I figured I’d had a good run for my money. I’d seen the world, known love, never lost it, shared my life and my words. I was at peace with myself for those few minutes. I get the same feeling every time I take off in a plane. Then I forget.

But it’s different now. How much time is left to do all the things I must do? An essay to finish. What madness made me commit to such research? But commit is commit. All the sins know that. Do I need to revise them? Leave them part of the story. A novel. Almost there. At least I’ll be saved the rejections. Maybe I’ll have time to be there for Mum. And to see our daughter’s graduation. But there are so many papers to go through, mess to clean up, arrangements to make. And there’s the dog.

I’ve put the gold chain back on. It just links to itself. No interfering fob anymore. Time is today. Every moment. Move on. Regrets? Not really. In fact, none at all. Not even the smoking, but I’m glad our daughter doesn’t. Maybe I put her off. Maybe I saved her life, for a while at least. The chain gleams in my fingers in the way of old gold. Tonight, I’ll be getting back the results.

Christmas goose

Now lives at Merc's World - writings.

The Memory Box

Lives on as The Memory Pod at Kaffe in Katmandu.

Uncle Henri

Has been revised and is now at Fictionaut.

Knives in their lives

The message went out. Reunion! Knives in their lives. Come one and all. So they came from all times and places, some flying through the air and landing pointedly in the trunk of the oak tree, others clattering through the door, others still, just plopping into the grass.

First one to speak was the penknife her father gave her when she flew up from Brownies. “She whittled boughs with me to make arrows to protect her from the brown snake. She flicked me shut and hung me on her Guide belt.”
“What about me?” said the flick-knife. “I´m longer than thumb to little finger. My point can find your heart. He got caught at the border and said he just had me for protection, used me to clean his nails, peel the skin from potatoes. They didn’t buy it. Confiscated me, let him go, though.”
“He was in love,” said the Solingen bread knife. “And I was a gift. But I slipped and cut into her finger. Three stitches. She´s ignored me ever since. He sometimes winks.”
“We just try and hang in there,” said the three plastic knives in chorus. “Keep a low profile. She forgets we´re fragile.”
“Fragile/smajile,” said the cheese knife with the Emmentaler holes in its stainless-steel blade. “Now it´s a matter of design, darling.”
Victorinox concurred, blowing on his toothpick attachment. “But they don’t take us along anymore.”
“We tried,” said the hot-pink Swiss army knife. “But perhaps it’s better like that. Have you seen the riff-raff at the airport? In those plastic boxes? Exposed for all to see?”
“They could put us in their checked baggage,” said the Finnish hunting knife sulkily from inside its sheath.
“Er-hem,” said the oil stone. “You´re all much better off at home with me. Let’s sharpen up now.”