Six Sentence Stories: The Safe House Women VS The Masked Man

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Starburst masks small ad. 1987.

I’m linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and everyone is invited to write a story or poem constructed of six sentences based on a cue word given.

This week’s cue word is Random

 

 

Editor’s note: the following is an extract from a larger work in progress, a ghost story, and features the characters Henry and Marling. This new instalment introduces two other major characters: Wendy Harper and the the Masked Man. You can read previous extracts here and here.

The Safe House Women VS The Masked Man

When they entered the bedroom they saw that the window was wide open and the curtains were flapping about like two demented phantoms, and that two metal coils were bobbing in the distance between Mrs Parker and the bed, which made it evident to the women that Mrs Parker had deployed her taser – further confirmed by the hooks of the coils which had attached themselves to the torso of the biggest man any of them had ever seen, a man wearing a mask – a buffalo mask of all things – and who was slouched upon the bed with the grin of the devil beneath his disguise, and Wendy thought… there’s no goddamn way this creep is gonna get the better of her and her friends.

Eighteen female eyes burned like lasers into his massive form, and his devilish smirk was wiped clean from his mouth as Wendy launched her knife – just missing the head of Mrs Parker in its trajectory, before embedding itself into the man’s left bicep… and the man – he didn’t so much as blink or yelp or cuss, but did nought else than pluck the blade from his arm and toss it to the floor, and then he growled, and then he roared, and he snorted, and he bellowed, and he made to rise his bulk from the bed to charge at the nine women standing before him, as though they were flimsy matadors to be tossed in the air before the goring began of each of their throats, which he swore in unsaid oaths he would rip open in one minute flat.

But the launching of Wendy’s knife served only to set off a wild and impressive catalyst, as the women began shouting and hurling missiles at the man who received body blows and headshots from such random items that included books, slippers, a bottle of mineral water, a table lamp, a cassette of Blur’s Greatest Hits, perfume, shampoo, a hairdryer, a set of hair straighteners, and a Hello Kitty toothbrush.

The man, understanding then that the women were about to charge him, did nothing more than leap from the bed and flee his tormentors, and in two long strides he was among the flapping phantoms the curtains still made, and hurling himself from the open window to return from whence he came.

They stood there in utter exhaustion, the nine women, puffing, panting, exclaiming enough curses between them to make a sailor blush.

“Well, that’s something to tell the grandchildren about one day,” Wendy said to no one in particular.

24 thoughts on “Six Sentence Stories: The Safe House Women VS The Masked Man”

  2. So he was a GHOST?

    The 9 women made me think of the supreme court (if only we had 9 women on it!), and how they were meting out their ruling on him. Great story!

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  4. That was a well crafted, vivid story that had me gripped from the start. I was definitely in that room wanting to throw something at the buffalo. I was reaching for my teacup reading this and had to hold myself back. I particularly liked the image of the matadors and the bull and the knife piercing the bicep as a matador would pierce the bull. Very enjoyable and hilariously dark story.

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  6. Although I have not ever been a fan of ghost stories, I am glad that I read your SSS! This piece is one that could be a study piece for one such as I, meaning I have so much to learn about the art of writing.

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    • Thanks, Pat. I like to think I’m doing something different with this ghost story of mine, but in many ways it has its roots in classic ghost tales like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and the more supernatural Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Maybe not so much in the six we just read, but in other parts yes.
      A ghost story is one thing… but add a doomed love affair and it becomes something else 🙂

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  7. That’s it! Hit ’em with the old one-two, lol. Sentences 1 and 2 that is 😀
    Total action through and through. No easy task. Heck, I was practically puffing and panting my own self by the end of your Six 🙂
    Well done, sir.

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  11. I’m with Frank on this one.
    “…a set of hair straighteners, and a Hello Kitty toothbrush.”

    (As I read, my eyes grew wide and elbowed my mouth into a grin)

    I want to believe there is a cool term in rhetoric for what we will call, lacking any technical knowledge, or for that matter, self-restraint, listifying.

    You’ve done a masterful job employing this technique. The ‘assortment’ of items, (in a list), is remarkably difficult to achieve, the mind being an orderly creature.

    The killer is, the rhythm. It is not simply one word after another, (imo), it is a secret clue to the emotional state of the participants.,
    very cool.

    PS props on the ‘eighteen eyes’. lol. I was, like, “wtf! No time to re-read! Action going on here, people. Trust the author.”“

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    • Cheers, Clark. You’re so right about getting the rhythm to work when making a list, and that it’s no easy task to do.

      That list of mine has chopped and changed so many times, and even now I know I need to iron out a wrinkle I just saw. Ah, the edit… it never ends.

      Having nine female characters together helped in making the list, but the setting was a bedroom with en suite washroom – so all items had to be found largely in this type of living space, and easily at hand.

      My fave launched item? The hair straighteners – ouch! But that Hello Kitty toothbrush still gets me all the time I don’t mind admitting 🙂

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