Tagged: tune in next time

My Doily Levitated

  • by Kentthis referee with a weird little beard
  • with this hottie laying right next to you
  • first impulse was to tell her of my love
  • We should get married more often
  • one writhing, festering, pulsating blob

Tune in next time part 91                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

My doily levitated above my lap as Isolde ducked in through the tent flap. She greeted Fleur with an embrace, showing no notice of my magic trick in her honor. When my turn came for felicitations, things would surely become awkward.

I had no idea. Behind Isolde came a rotund man in traditional Contrarian riding garb, including the fluffy boa and the tufts of pink fur at the tops of his glossy green boots. The thing that made him notable, though, was his facial hair. Equestrians of Fleur’s homeland usually wear muttonchops, but his formed a corkscrew on his chin. He stood over me, this referee with a weird little beard, and said, “It could get distracting with this hottie laying right next to you, so my job is to help you focus on answering the questions.”

Isolde had by then stretched out on the ground alongside her sister, so I wasn’t sure which hottie he was referring to. I looked Fleur in the eye, and my first impulse was to tell her of my love for her sister. Faking a sneeze to cover my agitation, instead I said, “We should get married more often.”

Isolde batted her lashes at me. “Let’s begin. My pedicurist is holding an appointment for me and I can’t be late. So, I have only one question: identify this.”

From an inner pocket of her diaphanous gown, she pulled a small round box which she dumped out onto one of the silver platters. The contents slid out and landed in one writhing, festering, pulsating blob.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

With Much Effort I Kept the Revulsion From My Voice

  • by jenconfiscated her hip flask
  • a more appropriate resting place
  • If you don’t want to cry today
  • tiny bubbles from his angelic lips
  • a photograph of Harry’s mother

Tune in next time part 92                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

With much effort I kept the revulsion from my voice. “That,” I indicated the gelatinous blob, “is what the artist has dubbed a photograph of Harry’s mother. Why he calls it a photograph I don’t know, since it is clearly a sculpture.”

Isolde and Fleur were impressed at my knowledge. After last year’s embarrassments, I spent considerable time studying the minutia of Contrarian culture.

“You have stunned Harry!” Isolde cried. She indicated the referee looming over me. “See the spray of tiny bubbles from his angelic lips?”

“If you don’t want to cry today,” Harry said, “you will say something flattering about my mother’s likeness.” He cracked his riding crop on the sand beside me.

I gulped and stared at the blob on the serving tray. “There does not exist a more appropriate resting place than a bed of silver for a woman such as your mother,” I stammered. “Such opulence becomes her.”

Harry roared his laughter, then turned and carried the tray out of the tent.

Isolde pouted in a way that I had not seen since her father confiscated her hip flask at my wedding to Fleur. Clearly she loved Harry and his twisty goatee. There was no other excuse for her to consider his lips angelic. Unfortunately for her she thought she would not be free to marry until her eldest sister, my wife, delivered an heir.

Fortunately for me my studies of arcane Contrarian marital law found a loophole. The wording could be interpreted to mean that she would be marriageable as soon as any of the warlord’s daughters conceived by the eldest’s husband.

“Isolde,” I began.

bonus points for using them in reverse order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

I Explained My Proposition Bluntly

  • by KentSo a Spanish lady one time
  • only a hunter of the eider duck
  • plenty of myopic, gung-ho investors
  • out with friends
  • was a very funny man

Tune in next time part 93                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I explained my proposition bluntly, knowing Fleur didn’t have any reason to mind what I got up to with her sister. Isolde fluttered her eyelashes with a playful smile.

Fleur also smiled, but it was chilly. “So a Spanish lady one time found that her nephew was also her son’s half-brother. Shortly after that the boy was an orphan, so she adopted him. I always admired how that Spanish lady behaved.”

My doily settled onto my lap.

Isolde laughed and left the tent.

Fleur laughed as well. “You are only a hunter of the eider duck, so leave the swans alone.”

It was an old Contrarian expression, usually applied in financial contexts but apropos here as well. In the 1970s, plenty of myopic, gung-ho investors lost their fortunes on Contrarian pillow futures.

“Father’s waiting,” Fleur prompted. “He grows impatient to be out with friends, in with enemies.” Another old saying from her homeland. “I can’t wait to show you Grandfather’s mausoleum. He was a very funny man.”

She stared me down, waiting for me to realize she meant to pack me off to Contraria with her.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

“Speaking of Prince Edward”

  • by jenI lost a lot of sleep
  • didn’t tell him to fire his pulse-gun
  • the young lady’s whereabouts
  • The result is awesomeness.
  • Speaking of Prince Edward

Tune in next time part 94                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Speaking of Prince Edward,” I said, in reference to Fleur’s grandfather, and trying to hide my dismay at the thought of a transoceanic voyage at this particular moment, “wouldn’t he want you to stay out of Contraria? I believe it was he who said, ‘When a Contrarian lass weds a contrarian lad and they mingle their stock, they should do so on neutral ground. The result is awesomeness.‘”

Fleur quirked her eyebrow. “You certainly have been studying, I’ll give you that. But I know you aren’t really concerned about the customs of my tribe.” She smiled coldly. “You are concerned only for Tessa. And even now, here in our marriage tent, naked with me, you are wondering about the young lady’s whereabouts. You and I may not care for each other over much, but we are married and it is imperative that I get knocked up this year. You’re coming to Contraria with me.”

She snapped her slender fingers and a hulking brute stepped into the tent with us.

“This is Viktor,” Fleur said. “I didn’t tell him to fire his pulse-gun if you try to escape, but I didn’t tell him not to either.”

I lost a lot of sleep over that comment, or I would have if Fleur and her relations ever gave me a moment’s peace. In between rounds of copulation and Contrarian Q&A, Fleur and I and all of our belongings were packed onto her father’s waiting zeppelin and we began the long flight to Contraria, a region I had never visited.

bonus points for using them in reverse order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Airship Design Au Contraire

  • by Kentbut there’s a hitch
  • and its lingering afterburn
  • you and I have nothing more to say
  • said in a stern voice, “Take his skates off.”
  • minor aristocratic Prussian military family

Tune in next time part 95                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Airship design au Contraire is similar in most respects to that of the rest of the world, but there’s a hitch for towing lighter-than-air campers. In this case it was a floating boudoir wherein Fleur and I would experience fiery passion, and its lingering afterburn.

Three days into the voyage, I lay dehydrated and sticky on the helium-filled mattress in our airborne conjugal trailer. We hadn’t said a word since the first hour. Fleur announced, “You and I have nothing more to say,” and from that point all was coitus. When a soft thud sounded from the roof and our chamber listed slightly, my first delirious idea was that Tessa had used her ninja skills to mount a rescue. My rising hopes were dashed when Fleur opened the top hatch and dragged John down through it to bounce beside me on the bed. She said in a stern voice, “Take his skates off.”

John blanched, eyes darting nervously from the nude woman standing over him to my own unclothed form sprawled next to him. I groggily pawed at the laces of his roller skates, barely able to form any curiosity about them. The knots were stubborn.

“Thanks for bringing me in, you saved my life,” John stammered. “The roller rink on top of the zeppelin should probably have steeper banking in the turns, or your father will lose the whole team before we even get to the tournament. He surely doesn’t want another forfeit to that minor aristocratic Prussian military family. Their team is just a goat.”

My punch-drunk neurons got their act together for a few seconds, long enough to remember that John was likely to have information about Tessa, but not long enough to keep me from blurting out, “Where’s Tessa?” right in front of my wife.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

John Laughed at the Expression

  • by jenI’m not going to go to the bathroom
  • “But where are the huts?”
  • forbidden within city limits
  • haven’t spoken Romanian in decades
  • People are disgusting.

Tune in next time part 96                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

John laughed at the expression of fury on my wife’s face. “I think you have better things to worry about than Tessa, buddy.”

I swallowed, but my throat was dry.

Fleur tied the laces of John’s roller skates together and hung them around his neck. She unzipped the door at the front of our buoyant boudoir, grabbed John, and in one quick motion hooked the zip-line to his skating harness and shoved him out into open air. He fell only a few feet before his tether stopped his descent with a jolt. Fleur pointed at the zeppelin ahead of us. “Haul yourself back and beg my father’s forgiveness for both your ineptitude at aerial roller derby and for interrupting my fertility ceremony.”

As John pulled himself along with shaking hands I heard him repeating, “I’m not going to go to the bathroom in my shorts,” over and over again.

Fleur rezipped the door and said to me, “Tessa is the least of your concerns right now. We are already in Contrarian air space. In a mere 24 hours we will land in the capital. I better be pregnant by then.”

I wanted to remind her that conception wasn’t an instantaneous process, that it might take several days, but I was distracted by the view out the window.

“But where are the huts?”

“The entire populace of Contraria awaits us in the capital. They took their huts along to camp in the streets. Usually that is forbidden within city limits, but this is the Year of the Monkey, so special rules apply.”

And then she told me to shut up again, and the next 24 hours passed in a sweaty blur.

When the airship arrived at the Contrarian capital, it went into a holding pattern. Fleur and I were reeled in and given the opportunity to clean up before all the pomp and circumstance. I was assigned a manservant named Nicolae. I haven’t spoken Romanian in decades, but we were able to communicate well enough to get the job done.

When I exited the spa, refreshed and clad in Contrarian ethnic garb, I passed by a laundress who was carrying the linens from the bed Fleur and I had just spent the better part of a week befouling.

I heard her mutter as she passed, “People are disgusting.”

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Looking Down at the Tangled Streets

  • by Kentto protest the city’s substandard sanitation
  • uphill would be difficult
  • the engine of the pumping plant
  • — it cannot be — no, for he is dead
  • made him look exactly like a Japanese pug dog

Tune in next time part 97                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Looking down at the tangled streets and overcrowded market squares of the capital city, I recalled some of the Contrarian history I’d studied for my wedding. It wasn’t so much the sights as the smells that brought my lessons flooding back.

Funkistan takes its name from Ploot Funk, who martyred himself with fire to protest the city’s substandard sanitation. This despite it being among the first major population centers with a sewage system. In grand Contrarian fashion, the planners had placed the main treatment plant on a mountainside several miles away. Knowing that conveying so much waste uphill would be difficult, they designed the engine of the pumping plant to be extra powerful. They did not, however, connect the pumping plant to the treatment plant in any discernible way. The sewers are perpetually backed up. Implying anything ironic or humorous about the country’s capital being literally full of shit is punishable by death.

I glanced to my left where someone had joined me at the railing. It was Ploot Funk, unmistakably — it cannot be — no, for he is dead two centuries. He smiled, reading my recognition and puzzlement, and the resemblance grew even more uncanny. All the history texts say that when Ploot Funk smiled, it made him look exactly like a Japanese pug dog.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

The Sewer Martyr Laughed

  • by jen“Always, Daddy.”
  • entering its treacherous swamps
  • I could tell by his eyes
  • she didn’t give you a lot of horse manure
  • and delude your visitors

Tune in next time part 98                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

The sewer martyr laughed at the expression on my face, and the spell was broken. This was not Ploot Funk, merely John dressed up in a very convincing costume.

My warlord father-in-law strode up to the railing beside me and I gestured at John. “Is it Contrarian tradition to try and delude your visitors into thinking they are seeing ghosts?”

“Not ghosts,” the stern man said. “Holy visions. We need the populace to accept the new sewer taxes if we are to ever get the pumping station operational. Funkistan is a beautiful city, but she does not attract many tourists. We did a survey and learned that foreigners would like our fair metropolis better if she didn’t give you a lot of horse manure to the nostrils” He shook his head with amusement. “Of course it’s not horse manure that they are smelling, or at least not only horse manure, but we didn’t bother to correct them.”

I could tell by his eyes that this was a man who was deeply concerned about the future of his realm, and I knew that I and my yet-to-be-born children played a large role in that future. I felt like I was no longer in control of my destiny. I had my life mapped out before me, but now it felt like Fleur and her father had destroyed that map. I was navigating my future blind, and now entering its treacherous swamps. Would I ever find my way back to the life I had planned for myself?

Fleur appeared at my elbow, resplendent in her Contrarian royal garb. Her father looked at us and said, “You will do your duty?”

“Always, Daddy.” Fleur glared at me until I nodded. “My husband and I are ready for the pregnancy test ceremony.”

bonus points for using them in reverse order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

As Soon As the Airship Docked

  • by KentI spit it out.
  • “When the Stars Weep Blood”
  • out of touch (at best) and disgusting (at worst)
  • until it actually grows too hot to bear it
  • in her uncle’s yam garden

Tune in next time part 99                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

As soon as the airship docked we proceeded among hanging gardens and colonnades to what looked like a temple. At the entrance we were served ceremonial wine, and in keeping with tradition I spit it out. My research into Contrarian customs hadn’t included any of their medical practices, however, so I was interested to see how a pregnancy test would be conducted.

I should not have been surprised that it consisted of trial by combat. My opponent’s rabbit costume was something I felt I could legitimately find surprising. Another surprise was the music, death metal blaring over hidden loudspeakers, a song titled “When the Stars Weep Blood” by a band called Not Particularly who had been exiled from Contraria the previous year.

“Now we will find out if the rabbit dies!” bellowed Fleur’s father.

“Symbolically,” came John’s voice from behind the rabbit mask. “If you win the fight, that’s good enough.”

I grimmaced. Even knowing that the beliefs in Fleur’s homeland were out of touch (at best) and disgusting (at worst) I couldn’t convince myself this was something I’d really have to go through with.

My father-in-law handed me a large axe, and a net and trident were presented to John. The weapons looked real.

“Ready, set, DIG!” declaimed Fleur. I raised my axe in anticipation of a charge from John, unsure I’d heard correctly. But he attacked not me, but the ground. I chopped at the soil around my feet, trying to figure out the objective.

John scooped up a lump of something and ran with it around the edge of the temple courtyard. I kept hacking at the ground as I watched his progress. Before making it halfway around, he began tossing the lump up and catching it again, bouncing it from hand to hand.

“You must race with the yam until it grows too hot to actually bear it,” Fleur coached. “It’s like that game from your country, ‘hot yam.’ Of course you need to find one first!”

The tubers we unearthed reacted to air exposure, quickly bursting into flames if they weren’t quenched in a pot of water. Such pots were positioned around the courtyard, and our score was calculated by how many yams we deposited and how far we ran with them.

Fleur continued my education, telling the story of the young unwed princess who blamed her pregnancy on the hares in her uncle’s yam garden. My hands blistered from the heat of the yams as well as the inefficient digging tool I had to use. I had no idea who was winning, or what would signal the end of the contest.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Part 100!

r-avatarIt’s been just over a year since we started our chain story, creatively titled Tune In Next Time. To celebrate part 100, we’re going to write this one together! We’ll also use a longer list of prompt phrases, just to make it fun.

Jen will start things off and she’ll hand the keyboard over to Kent as soon as she incorporates the first prompt phrase. He’ll hand it back after he includes a prompt snippet. And so on.

This is not actually how we write our novels, at least not so far. But if it works well today, who knows?

  • punches a screwdriver into the paper
  • agreed that she could “take other lovers”
  • clutching his free hand
  • not managed to untie the convoluted ribbon
  • I can imitate any kind of a bird or beast
  • kind of a lingerie feeling
  • (who’s also probably looking at porn)
  • you wave the red flag
  • I just don’t have enough middle fingers
  • pressed her thumb against her lips

Tune in next time part 100                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“How long do I need to keep this up?” I panted to Fleur, wiping my sore and sweaty hands on my embroidered trousers. John was even worse off than I was, confined as he was inside the furry and constrictive rabbit costume.

My wife waved vaguely at a large, colorful piñata hanging from one of the pillars. “You will stop when my father punches a screwdriver into the paper effigy of the hare. If candy spills out, it means that we succeeded and I am pregnant.”

As the pyroclastic yams accumulated in pots of water around the battleground, I wondered about my wife. We’d spent very little time together, going our separate ways immediately after the honeymoon when I agreed that she could “take other lovers,” mildly amused at her insistence that I make air quotes when I said it.

She never made air quotes when she said it about me, but she generally didn’t seem jealous. Would things change if she was indeed now pregnant? Would I be expected to stay in Contraria and play a part in the child’s life?

As I ran around the perimeter of the courtyard with a flaming tuber, I looked at Fleur, trying to imagine her with a baby. She stood beside her father who held a large screwdriver, Fleur was clutching his free hand which I saw now was wrapped up like a mummy’s in a bright blue ribbon.

The ribbon’s color seemed significant, but try as I might I couldn’t recall whether Contrarian custom associated blue with boys or girls. Did my warlord-in-law foster the stereotypical hopes for male issue, or was he hoping for the next generation to emulate his formidable daughter? John began another frenzied lap with his next yam, bunny mask askew and fluffy tail darkened by soot and dirt. How would all these exertions matter, if the piñata determined the outcome? Then I saw the second hare-shaped paper sculpture, discreetly poised for substitution. I poured on a burst of speed, realizing my victory relied on Fleur having not managed to untie the convoluted ribbon from her father’s hand.

Needing to gain an advantage over my cunicular foe, I let loose the shriek of the Himalayan Snowcock. John has had a deep-rooted terror of that bird ever since his childhood misadventures in the Tibetan monastery. John dropped his flaming yam and clapped his smoldering paws over his ears (the human ones, not those of his fanciful costume). Fleur looked at me agape as I snatched up John’s root vegetable from the dust and dunked both it and my own into the ceremonial pot, quenching them in a hiss of steam.

I smiled and said, “Something you may not know about me is that I can imitate any kind of a bird or beast.” And then, just to be a dick, I did the Snowcock cry again and watched John flounder on the ground. It took him several minutes to fully recuperate, time I used to extend my lead.

The blue ribbon now trailed almost to the ground between my wife and her father, the two of them smiling smugly at one another. If they were pleased, that was a good sign for me. I hoped.

I lapped John again, feeling regretful for exploiting his weakness when he was already encumbered. “Gotta be miserable in that suit,” I muttered as I passed.

“Eh, it’s not so bad,” he panted. “Has a nice lining, silky, kind of a lingerie feeling.” I sped up so I couldn’t hear the rest of his explanation.

Fleur’s father waved his now benuded hand in the air and shot a look at the scorekeeper, the rotund man who wore a flowing silken caftan, the man who held my future in his hands, the man who was keeping tally of our yams on his ipad (who’s also probably looking at porn). The rotund man nodded slightly.

By now the water in all the pots was boiling from the residual heat of the incendiary root vegetables piling up in them. I watched the rotund man, barely paying any attention to where I was running. I stared at him, willing him to end this before all the blisters on my hands burst open. You’re my favorite person right now, I thought, because when you wave the red flag I can stop doing this.

But there was no red flag. Instead, my father-in-law strode across the temple courtyard and stabbed his enormous screwdriver straight into the heart of the rabbit piñata. He awkwardly worked his middle fingers into the resulting hole, enlarging it.

“Who made this damn thing?” he bellowed. “I just don’t have enough middle fingers to make the hole big enough!”

Fleur scampered over to him and plunged her own impudent digits into the paper maché rodent, and suddenly the ground was covered with brightly colored gummy babies, the only Contrarian export.

A blare of trumpets rang out from all around the walls, in honor of the good news. Fleur scooped up handfuls of the sticky candy and skipped over to where I had slumped in the dirt. I spotted John hopping away. My father-in-law raised his arms in triumph. I smiled up at Fleur.

I began to speak, but she leaned down and put one of the dusty gummy babies in my mouth. She pressed her pinky against my lips, and pressed her thumb against her lips, and made puckery little noises at me. I was too tired to ask what it meant, and too grateful that the ordeal was over to even care.

bonus points for using them in order!

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!