Was Mother Really Marrying This Man
Time is broken. Somehow the adorable little chain story we brought home from the hospital what feels like merely a few months ago is now a moody 700-part teenager! Loyal readers know how we approach these centenary increments: Jen and Kent share the keyboard and alternate the prompt phrases. Also, instead of our awesome writing prompt generator (which you should really check out), we choose all of the prompt phrases from a single source.
To celebrate this chain-a-versary, Jen bought a Tesla.* So it only seems appropriate to coordinate everything by pulling our prompts from “The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.” Jen pulled the phrases, Kent randomized them, and voila!
* Jen got the Tesla because she needed a new car. She ordered it back in December. It’s just a fun coincidence that it arrived in time for the platinum jubilee.
- that fascinating little book
- the lowest organism we know
- convey the vibration through my body
- touch the keys of an instrument with unerring precision
- I take in my hand a simple
- changed the destiny of nations
- A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant
- confined to the neighborhood
- an expensive vacuum pump
- might meet the fate of St Polycarpus
Tune in next time part 699 & 700 Click Here for Earlier Installments
Was Mother really marrying this man in the beaked mask, or was this merely another of her espionage exploits? I’d found her diary when I was a child and the stories in that fascinating little book were quite alarming to read. Of course they’d been written in code, a code I was quite proud to crack at the time, but one which I suddenly realized must have been meant for me to break. She’d placed a hint about the key right inside the front cover: “to read this book, think like the lowest organism we know.” Naturally I knew who she meant by that. Bookworms had no eyes. They sensed their surroundings through vibrations. That meant that in addition to reading the words on the page, I had to run my fingernail across the indentations her pen had made in the paper, like a stylus on a stereo, to convey the vibration through my body. My keenly trained mind would combine the two sources of input into a single coherent message. Just as a concert pianist is able to touch the keys of an instrument with unerring precision, even as a child I could read such codes with ease. In order to prepare myself I thought, “I take in my hand a simple nail file and with it sharpen the nail on the pinkie of the opposite hand.” And by this humble means I unlocked secrets that had changed the destiny of nations. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant, where that ray of light’s name was Zsa Zsa and that tyrant was her first mark, was merely the first of many lurid tales in that cursed manuscript. Her diary made it seem that all of Zsa Zsa’s secrets were romantic, if only in a visceral, unsentimental way, and that the partners in her assignations were confined to the neighborhoods of politics and espionage. By the time I was done reading (and vibrationally interpreting), I felt like I wanted an expensive vacuum pump to suck all the images from my brain. And I wanted to believe that Mother’s disturbing little book might meet the fate of St Polycarpus, to protect future readers. But the tales were so sordid I felt sure the very ashes of the diary would retain the power to convey them. I shuddered at the memory.
700 bonus points for using them in order