Collection of entries

HEBETUDE
His voice is vibrant like summer sun behind a tree’s variegated green canopy. His presence on the production floor has me chatty during this graveyard shift. Later, I recognize in other co-workers’ pained eye movements, the struggle to stay awake after pouring over personals going to press. I would easily slip into the same coma of hebetude at this hour, were it not for his interest in me. He thanks me for easing him into the routine on his first day and offers to take me to breakfast. I smile and delete three lines of copy: my own desperate ad.

TAWDRY
“Took her down a notch,” Samantha gloated to three other girls huddled at the locker room’s rear corner. Opposite them, Becky fished the decrepit box in front of Coach’s office, her arm blocking her bare chest. Becky’s humiliation had barely faded from her face as she selected a tawdry grey-green striped jersey, forced it quickly over her head, and ran on the track team’s heels. Becky’s stolen bra was plopped into Lost and Found and Samantha slapped Becky’s identical designer jersey into her mewing friend’s waiting hands.

Coach stepped out ahead of them. “Cosmo girls! Late again. To the hills.”

URBANE
Chester Beaumont was the oddest participant at last night’s Frat party. He’s so quietly reserved and urbane. He’s never watched a second of commercial television and instead, was tutored in all things proper by the family’s aged butler, York.

I know. I became his friend at the age of 12, when my family moved in next door and officially ruined the neighborhood. My contribution? Motorcycle. However, he swayed me to Chess.

Maybe we should have stuck with Chess last night. He broke his neck diving from the balcony to the Doughboy on a dare. I’m sure being sober killed him.

EDIFY
Anakin would edify Council in his ways of eclipsing outmoded justice.

Most would not accept his Master’s edicts without being imperiled. However, his rage moved him beyond mere hostage taking. A swift example of his power: Revealing every Paduwan slaughtered moments earlier. He strode the corridor to the Council’s chambers with soulless deftness. Immediately letting the strands of the remaining Jedis’ consciousness’ free from his mental chokehold, horrified utterances created echoes all about him. He entered the inner chamber where they all saw him as Darth Vader, for the first time.

“Indeed, it will be a severe lesson,” he thought.



HALLMARK
Machelvoy Ross stood at his master’s bedchamber doorway, aghast at the tray still askew in his hands. Luckily, the standard pot took the blow, not a dainty porcelain one, and yet after-supper tea drizzled down the deck. “Why, the hallmark of silver teapots from Boston is in its hammered finish! This slight dent may go unnoticed,” he thought.

“Pinpoint that dreadful clamor!” came a brusque bark from the cabin.

As cabin boy Ross considered confessing, Josiah hurdled up the steps, shouting, “There’s savages overrunning the ship! Tea’s being spilt everywhere!”

“My folly can’t measure up to that!” Ross concluded happily.

FROWARD
The rhythm resonated down the long hallway – rough scratching of a quill, a snatch of silence, and quick, heavy footsteps.

“Write it, froward miscreant! I will not play this game.” Most of the mirthless orphans at St. Joseph’s railed as a standard.

The teenaged girl dourly stuck out her tongue when the shouter turned away. Creased flops of skin wavered above the back of his starched white collar. Father Michael’s fat hand grasped drying examples from his office hearth mantle, discarding them into the fire.

The girl then simultaneously scrawled psalms with one-hand and finger-painted “unbeliever” on the adjacent wall.