Tracchus stood outside the house, listening to his parents fight. It was almost dark. He was tired. He still had to clean the fish. But he stood under the deepening blue of the sky a moment longer.
He wanted to hear what his parents were saying. But he didn’t want them to ask him questions.
He made no noise as he entered. His parents took no notice of him, but his little brother dashed eagerly to his side and started tugging his elbow.
“Did you see them go?” Dorel whispered. “Where are they going?”
Tracchus ignored him.
Dorel tugged his elbow again. “What did they say when they left? Did they tell you anything?”
“No,” Tracchus said.
His mother was pacing while she scolded her husband. She kept distractedly putting food into a bag.
His father’s bushy hair was sticking up, and Tracchus guessed he’d been running his hands through it over and over since the afternoon. His face was red. He kept trying to silence his wife by roaring final-sounding statements and turning to leave the room, but she would spit out something else and he would come back, waving his arms and pointing his finger at her.
“I’m not going after them!” His father shouted. “You’re not going after them! Neither is Tracchus. And don’t send any servants!” This last bit he bellowed especially loud and his face got even redder. “I can’t spare them, with James and John gone.”
“They’re your sons,” Mother hissed with flashing eyes.
“They’re grown men!” Father bellowed.
Dorel was tugging at Tracchus again. “Did you see him? What was he like?”
Tracchus turned and slipped quietly out of the house again.
**
He sat down on a stump outside and pulled a bucket of fish toward him. He began to clean them. Dorel had followed him outside and was poking at the fish. He was trying to touch their glassy eyes with his finger tip before they flopped away.
“If you’re gonna be out here, help,” Tracchus said.
Dorel picked up a knife, but he was clumsy at the work, and much more interested in poking the fish’s eyes than slicing them open.
“Did you see Jesus?” Dorel asked again.
“Yep.”
“Did he talk to you?”
“No.”
Tracchus didn’t answer any more of Dorel’s questions. His brother got bored after a while and went inside.
Tracchus finished cleaning the fish by lantern light. He had seen Jesus. He had heard him speak to his brothers. And he had hoped Jesus would speak to him too. He had even expected it. He had waited for Jesus to turn his head, shout out, “Hey, Tracchus! Follow me!”
“I would have,” Tracchus murmured bitterly. Why did he leave me here?
Emily H.
A bitter cold wind slapped Izzy in the face as she pushed through the gym doors into the December evening. But much worse than the wind, what hit her harder was the dark. Izzy hated that she had missed out on every single little bit of daylight for school and basketball practice. She pushed back against the wind, almost defiantly, wishing she were strong.
“How was practice?” her mother asked as soon as Izzy was in the car.
Izzy knew the question was coming. She had been thinking about her answer for the past hour. “Coach made me run laps for saying I was “sorry” too many times. He keeps trying to get me to throw an elbow or two, but when I try it I just feel awful. It’s just not me.” Izzy sighed audibly. She knew this wasn’t the end of the world, but she didn’t know what to do.
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”
That was just what Izzy was hoping her mother would say. No more, no less. But then her mother went on, “What do you think you’ll do about it?”
Huh, thought Izzy, that one took her off guard. The thought of practice tomorrow made her squirm like a fish out of water. She’d never really considered quitting a serious option, though it sure sounded nice. She knew she’d never learn to like hurting other people, even thought it was just a game. Izzy looked at her mother’s face in the rear view mirror. She wasn’t looking at Izzy, but Izzy could still see her concern. She cared enough to keep her own thoughts to herself.
“I guess I’ll just keep going and be myself, and if coach doesn’t like it, well, then it’s a good thing I like running better than basketball!”
Cedar
Jack trudged through the evening drizzle, irritated at the incessant prickles of moisture that kept him clammy and blinking and yet weren’t enough to soak him through. It was only a few blocks from his house to the pub, but it was a slow few blocks on a night like tonight. Cars always drove a little crazier in the rain, traffic blocked the intersections, and people jostled one another in their hurry to get to their destinations. It was for all these reasons that Jack had chosen to walk instead of driving. His car may have been dry inside, but he would have emerged from his car cursing and even more irritable than this walk was making him.
If you had asked Jack why he was so irritable, he wouldn’t have been able to rightly tell you. He didn’t mind the rain, and the jostling crowds weren’t enough to draw out any strong repulsive feelings. You may suppose that he was on his way to face some unpleasant business, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he was on his way to meet some friends who he considered quite dear, although he never in the entirety of his life would actually refer to a friend of his as “dear.”
Jack was simply a cantankerous dude, persistently playing the part of an old curmudgeon, though in actuality he was a handsome young man in his mid-thirties.
Through rain-blurred eyes, he looked up at the street sign he was approaching. 32nd Street. The Bitter Fish Elbow was less than a block away now. He felt himself relax a little as he waited for the “walk” sign, knowing he was only a couple minutes away from the cool and comfortable darkness of the pub, and the easy companionship of his friends.
With a throng of similarly wet and bedraggled pedestrians, Jack crossed the street, half-jogged the final steps to the pub, and then pushed open the familiar door of the Bitter Fish Elbow. Inside he was greeted by a neon sign garishly emblazoned with a sneering fish, pipe in one corner of its mouth, unapologetically flexing a Popeye-esque arm. Jack and his friends had come here so often over the years, they had long since ceased feeling bewildered by the nonsensical image. The absurdity of it was familiar now, like their friendship.
As Jack entered, he immediately heard the unmistakable sound of Michael laughing his distinctive donkey-laugh, probably at some inappropriate story James had just told. Jack looked in their direction. As usual, both Michael and James were impeccable dressed, hair perfectly in place in spite of the inclimate weather. Jack rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin, took his jacket off and shook it slightly, and sauntered comfortably over to the table.
Elisa
Captain Blackbreath stood at the bow of his ship, elbows resting on the railing, his fingers drumming impatiently. Another ship had just passed by through the long afternoon, and upon the passing, he did as he always had: he shouted piratey commands at his crew to do piratey things in order to intimidate the other ship, in high hopes that they’d banter back with “Aaarrrghs” and “Me-harties” and perhaps even a cannon ball fired. Instead, the other ship quietly sailed past. The only thing close to the hoped for animosity were the confused looks from sailors on the passing ship.
He looked out over the endless sea and scowled. He felt bitter.
“I’m bitter.” He announced out loud.
Just six weeks prior, Captain Blackbreath (whose real name was Brian) had no reason whatsoever for bitterness. For he just had come into a large inheritance from his great uncle, Professor Plum who had been found murdered. In his library. With a candlestick.
Having been spoiled most of his life by his parents who lived as though they had money, but really had no money at all, Brian did the thing he thought best with his inheritance: he followed his dreams of becoming a pirate. He ran to Target and purchased a tight fitting black and white striped shirt, brown pleather mid-calf boots (which, to his good fortune, found some his size in the women’s department), a pirate hat and eye patch, a large supply of food, and a succulent that he grabbed as he was walking towards the checkout lanes. Immediately after his Target run, he returned home and searched his local Craigslist ads where he found a decent size pirate ship from a low-budget film, and also hired a crew from the jobs wanted ads.
But now, he stood at the bow of his ship, his eyepatch resting on his forehead instead of eye, pouting. “How am I supposed to be a pirate when nobody wants to get in fights with me ship??”
“Brian!” came a voice from the crow’s nest. It was Allen, whom Brian endearingly called, Bubble Britches because Brian liked how it sounded when he used his best pirate voice.
“For the last time, ye can’t call me Brian! Ye must call me Blackbreath. Arrrrrgh!”
“Er…um…k. Blackbreath! I spy another ship comin’ our way!”
“This is it maties!” Brian shouted. “I don’t care if they don’t want to fight! I have to live my dreams of being a pirate! Fill the cannons! Be ready to fire on my command!”
“But…We don’t have any ammo, Captain!” Allen shouted down.
“What??! We’re pirates, we have to have ammo! Didn’t this ship come with ammo?”
“There’s a little extra gunpowder left here from the film, but no cannonballs I’m afraid.”
Brian thought for a quick moment, then did what he thought a pirate might do. “Arrrrrrrgh!” he yelled. “Then fill ‘em with what we’ve got!”
Among the pirate clothes purchased at Target on that dream fulfilling day six weeks ago, Brian had also purchased an eight months’ supply of onion bagels, strawberry shmear and fish sticks for his Piratey Journey (as he called it). And since they had only been traveling six weeks, the crew pulled half of the food supply from the cellar below, and filled the cannons with it.
As the other ship came within a cannon’s shot, the crew was ready.
“On my command!” Brian shouted is his most piratey voice. “Ready…aim…(here he placed an extra dramatic pause) FIRE!
At once, three cannons fired, and made a noise very similar to a noise that a crew of pirates make about 15 minutes after eating a meal of strawberry shmeared bagels and fish sticks. Only it was much louder, and messier.
——————————————(the rest completed after timer)
The food fired across the sea and a good portion, Brian thought, made it to the other ship and splattered across the side of it.
Although no one was killed as he had hoped, he did find a great deal of satisfaction when he later read in the local newspaper that one sailor experienced temporary hearing loss from an excessive amount of cream cheese getting launched into his right ear. And while he wasn’t thrown in a dungeon like he had also hoped, he was assigned community service, and fined $500, which he delightedly paid in gold pieces.
Emily M.
The challenge: Write a story or story fragment using all three of the words:
Bitter
Elbow
Fish
20 minutes
0 COMMENTS