Write The Story Piccadilly

An Assortment of Short Stories

Prompt: A strange request at a piano bar
Words: carnival, sprained, mask, oxidation, awkward, apple, juvenile, controversy, twirl, sassafras

A STRANGE REQUEST AT A PIANO BAR

The carnival filled the downtown, the streets swelling with people and the billowing tents and the monstrous metal rides overflowing into dirty side streets. It was one such spinning hunk of metal, the Octerror, that had caused the swirl of controversy. I had worked the ride for three years and watched as oxidation ate away at the steel. The rouge rash had spread up five arms, causing the gears to catch at the elbow and shed crumbling rust.

Discussion with the ring master only led to a dock in pay, and awkward glances from all the other Carnies who worried that my supposed guilt may be contagious. That is until a 3 by 4-foot section of metal plating shook from the ride and slammed into my ankle.

The EMTs assured me it was only sprained. My lack of insurance made the ambulance ride a no go, but I had to escape the sea of eyes of shocked onlookers because the wave of questions and concern was becoming hazardous to my health.

So, I hobbled down an alley and slipped in a piano bar. Immediately I felt my flight was juvenile, as was my costume. I yanked my mask off. And suddenly our eyes met.

The piano man clad in a silky tuxedo stared into my soul with forest green eyes. I moved toward him without thinking, barely feeling the limp. Sassafras filled my nostrils and I remembered the loamy soil, a grove of apple trees, and a forbidden dance.

I could hear my mother's shouting echoing in my ears as I had slammed the door shut for the last time. "You are not to see him again, ever!" I had believed her even as the lights drew me to the Festival. Even as I had signed my contract.

But here he was.

He smiled, "Could you give me a twirl?"

*WRITER'S NOTE -- The main character, Tara, is a girl who left home to become a carnie after her overbearing mother refused to let her marry a boy from the town, Gregory, whom she had grown up with. Tara and Gregory had danced in the girl's family's apple grove and the mother had separated them. For some unknown reason, Tara had not been able to contact Gregory and so Tara had runaway thinking she would live her own life, alone. But after running to a piano bar to escape onlookers after she was injured by metal plating falling from a damaged carnival ride Tara sees Gregory again, working as a pianist in the piano bar. He asks her to dance a nod back to when they danced in the apple grove.

Prompt: Ocean
Words: Billows, deep, brine, offing, wave, flux, tide, current

THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA

She was in the offing. 

I knew as soon as I saw her blonde ringlets—like golden waves—among the sea of dark-eyed sailors as their pale rowboat cut through the blue. She was a rare treasure only to stay for a moment before a pirate king carried her off to hide her on his own island. The escort had brought the marriage contract as proof, but the heavy jewel encrusted engagement ring was evidence enough. But I knew I had been caught in a strong current when she smiled at me. Flashing a mischievous smirk, her blue eyes shimmering, as deep as the sea.

I plucked her from the boat to set her on land, hands encircling her narrow waist. She was as light as the breeze, yet I felt a heavy anchor in my chest. I wouldn't leave port today. I couldn't.

She quickly commanded the tides of men. They all rushed forward at her beckoning. She thought one should write poetry instead of drinking. So, the men wrote sonnets while sober until she fell asleep. I had written mine but not spoken a word aloud as we stared at each other across the room.