Swamp Creatures

If you missed this morning’s prompts post, I’m responding to Hiding in the Swamp.

For today’s images I cut an alligator filter and a turtle filter. I also used the cut-outs in the jagged outline filter.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Today, Linda G. Hill’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “material.” I thought it might give me some ideas for the OctPoWrMo prompt so I started my day with some stream of consciousness. Here’s an excerpt from my journal:

Yesterday, I finally finished the back for my pocket quilt calendar. It’s amazing how one day Dad brings over all of the fabric scraps from my childhood of sewing and I say there’s nothing in there I can use, but I pulled out some fabrics that looked like they had been meant for quilting, and now I have a beautiful year-round advent calendar for daily rewards for myself for reaching my goals and forming new habits, and also to decorate my office so it has more color.

Fabric is the first thing I think of when I read the word material, but what about the swampy mad scientist speaker for my poem? What’s her material she’s studying or working with? Does she believe she’s discovered a new element? Or is she very excited about swamp plants? Has she genetically manipulated an alligator and a man? Or made a turtle that can fight a gator attack? So her material is DNA. Or, what other materials has she found in the swamp? Maybe she uses mosquitoes to get blood samples for her genetic experiments and has created an alligator turtle man. But the creature is a failure because it won’t stop wrestling itself and trying to eat its own turtle head which stays retracted into its body most of the time.

Today’s stream of consciousness prompt inspired me to push through and finish this first version of my year-round advent calendar quilting project I’ve been working on. Each of the quilt squares is a pocket attached to the black background by velcro. The top row represents Sunday and the week moves downward. I can fill each pocket with little rewards for myself that I can retrieve as rewards when I accomplish a goal. The thing that’s so fun about my design is I can move the quilt squares around, and replace them with new squares as I make them. I can try out new quilt square designs one square at a time. I see this as an ever evolving project and I’m really excited it’s done in time for NaNoWriMo prep and NaNoWriMo. Thank you, Linda G. Hill for the inspiration to work on it that I got from today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

OctPoWriMo 2023:Facing Our Fears

Sammi Cox has a Weekend Writing prompt word which is “Absquatulate.” That came in handy for Little Project number 8.

Swamp Experiments

Creation is a cypress swamp
Blended mosquito blood its building blocks
Their buzz the cry of new birth
The hot, moist stench of vegetable rot its mother’s milk
Swaddled in Spanish moss, its three mouths scream my praises

I taste the impossible made real, and it tastes like turtle soup
I work like Jean Lafitte smuggling in Barataria,
like a gator beneath the surface, camouflaged
My creation is not a cypress swamp, it is a three-headed monstrosity:
a man, a turtle, an alligator
It is a failure as it wrestles, trying to eat itself,
and the turtle head absquatulates into its neck
which frustrates the alligator and makes it attack the man,
but laissez les bon temps rouler

The greatest discoveries of life are turtles all the way down,
so I’ll dine and dance with my three-headed mosquito-blood baby
and Dr. Swamp lady will accept this defeat and put them out of their misery
and the next batch of building blocks will build better
the beautiful blood swirling will combine to my will
and my genius will finally be celebrated

Que sera sera, but only as I make it
Oh, now the turtle head is speaking which will only make this harder
Beneath the surface the cypress roots entwine and speak the turtle’s language

Writober 2023

The Day 2 prompt of of Sammi Cox’s 13 Days of Samhain is “Speak of the Devil” which I found fit well with today’s image prompt.

Free Hugs

We were walking through the tall grass, Kevin swinging a stick at the spit from the spit bugs, and making grasshoppers fly. Jackson whistled some unknown tune just to annoy him. I took up the rear, watching our six as usual. No one really comes out here but us. That’s why we like it, but it’s a pretty sketchy area, so my job’s important.

Jackson suddenly stopped whistling and said, “Hey, did you guys hear? The creepy clowns are back.”

“What?” said Kevin. “That was like years before lockdown, wasn’t it? Why would anyone start doing that again? It never made sense in the first place.”

“Wasn’t it promoting some movie, or something?” I said.

“Nah, it was a bunch of crazy people all over the place, just wanting to freak people out. And they’re back,” said Jackson. “Right here in town. Jenny McFearson told me she saw one on the edge of the woods by her house.”

I felt a chill along my spine, and now I had to add homicidal clowns to my look-out.

“Speaking of crazies wanting attention,” said Kevin, “Jenny would say anything to get you to listen to her.”

“Would not,” said Jackson, kicking a rock. Then he laughed, and said “Yeah, she would. But you can’t blame her. “

We had finally started down the hill that went to the abandoned bunker under the land bridge where we liked to hang out. We could smoke and drink and just be away from our parents or anybody else that might object. Kevin’s older brother used to hang out there, so it was kind of passed down to us, and nobody else knew about it.

Kevin stopped, and Jackson ran into him almost pushing him down the hill. I couldn’t see through them, but they were obviously looking at something.

“Speak of the devil,” Kevin said. “What the hell is he doing here? Do you think that’s the same one Jenny saw?”

“I don’t know. But look what he did to the bunker,” said Jackson. “Hey, Ray Ray, go take him up on it, and see what happens.”

I held onto Jackson’s shoulders and stood on my tip-toes to see what they were looking at. I had to stifle a scream. There was a clown—white face,bald with frizzy red hair sticking out over his ears, red nose, frilled collar, polka-dot pants, huge red shoes, the works—standing in the entrance to our bunker, and somebody (we’re assuming him) spray-painted “Free Hugs” on the wall with an arrow pointing at the door.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of clowns,” said Kevin.

“Not at the circus or on a kid show, but that guy,” I said. “Yeah, I’m afraid of that clown. There’s something wrong with that guy. How’d he know we were coming?”

“She’s right,” said Jackson. “Let’s go hang out in my basement. We can’t smoke, but we can watch a horror movie.”

“We can’t just let that guy take the bunker from us because he’s dressed up like a clown. Come on.” Kevin pulled out his knife. “Jackson you got your knife?”

“Sure, but I ain’t gonna stab a clown with it.”

That argument ended abruptly when the clown jerked its head toward us, opened its arms as if asking for a hug, but then put his hands on the ground and started coming at us on all fours, fast and jerking like some Korean ghost. I screamed and ran as fast as I could, not looking back until my feet hit pavement and traffic was whooshing by me. Jackson was right behind me.

“Where’s Kevin?” I gasped, my lungs burning.

Jackson held my shoulder panting, “I don’t know. I thought he was right behind me. Must have wanted that free hug.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. “Should we go back?”

“Hell no. Kevin probably just went a different way.”

That was the last time we went to the bunker. It wouldn’t be the same without Kevin.

NaNoWriMo Prep

So far, all I’ve come up with is I want to use my new Big Five Contradictory Abstract nouns for my characters and I’m leaning toward Supernatural Horror for my genre. Here’s what I brainstormed about that:

I think for a supernatural horror, or magical realism Doubt/Certainty would make a good main character or Creativity / Actuality. A magical realism novel about a person who likes to create her own reality but is forced to face a different actuality would be a good main character. For a supernatural horror a person who needs certainty faced with the impossible in a world of doubt would make a good main character. The side kick would be determination / reluctance. The villain would be value / worthlessness.  And the comic relief  or mentor would be patience/impatience. what would creativity / actuality be? The supernatural entity? So something the main character thought up or somehow created?

If you are working on your novel during NaNoWriMo this year and would like to be my writing buddy just search marialberg at the top of the NaNoWriMo.org /dashboard page and you’ll find me. I’m getting excited to explore a new novel idea.