If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.
As always, the ladies of the podcast created some great pieces of writing from this sprint prompt. Today’s Prompt: Use the following five words in your story: plant, public, constitution, suntan, repetition We really enjoyed Jamie’s take on the prompt, and we think you will as well! Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!
Today’s Prompt: Use the following five words in your story: plant, public, constitution, suntan, repetition
The plant was in the window, where it had been since the penning of the constitution, or so it seemed to Lorelai. She sighed as she crossed to stick her finger in the soil. She grimaced. Bone dry.
She crossed her father’s dusty office and pushed into the bright and sunny living room, squinting at the change.
“Mom, you need to get some kind of watering system going for Dad’s plant,” she said, tisking and filling a pitcher at the sink.
Her mother, who was stretching before the bay window, assumed a new pose and said nothing.”
“Did you hear me, Mom?” Lorelai pressed, then frowned as she tried to remember a plant watering hack she had seen on tick tock – a trick involving an old water bottle and a q-tip, if she remembered correctly. She resolved to look it up and was a bit startled to hear her mother’s voice actually bothering to respond to her.
“Repetition is only useful in terms of self-application,” she said, before dropping from the waist and allowing her arms to flop.
“What?” Lorelai frowned.
Her mother righted herself and sighed, toweling off with a small piece of material she kept nearby for this purpose.
“I’m saying, I’ve heard you say ‘water the plant’ more times than I can count, to both myself and to your father. I’m just wondering how many times you’re going to keep trying with us.”
“I’m watering it myself, as you can see,” Lorelai huffed, hoisting the pitcher so that it refracted the beams of light pouring in through the massive bay window. She and her mother both stood for a moment, appreciating the dancing dots of light, and then Lorelai scowled as she saw the sun-hat covered head of her parents’ neighbor, Mr. Feckks, bobbing along the fenceline. He appeared moments later, where the privacy ended and the muc lower, much older chain link began, and Lorelai saw he was pushing a mower.
“Don’t you feel a little weird doing your stretches for the neighbor?” She asked her mother, who grinned.
“My public lives for each daily performance,” she said, then put a finger to her chin and bowed.
“That ain’t nothin’,” Lorelai’s father, Ted, said, as he appeared from some further recesses of the house. “You should see the attention she gets when she’s out there nude, working on her suntan.”
“Ted, stop, I do no such thing.”
“Dad,” Lorelai whined, then brought the subject back to the immediate. “You need to start watering that plant.”
“Why should I?” Ted said, with a wink. “I have a lady who comes in here several times a week to water it for me.”
“You’re impossible,” Lorelai said, vowing for the one hundredth time to stop being a caretaker for these ridiculous people she’d been born to.
Of course, her resolve lasted only as long as it took to give the plant its drink, because her father appeared moments later, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Thanks for keeping her alive,” he said.
She’s only still around because of your time and attention. I never have been enough for her, you know.”
Lorelai could not turn to face those steel grey eyes, as she knew they would be filled with tears, as her own, the same color and shape, released hot streams of their own.
They both knew he hadn’t been talking about the plant.
The timer has not gone off but I think this is done enough.
Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter. Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.
