“From.” A word that assumes you’ve been somewhere.
“Oh, I just came from …”
The kitchen. That’s about as far as I go these days.
I just bought a treadmill today, so I have no excuse not to walk even when it’s cold enough to freeze the nuts off a squirrel, or hot enough to melt, … um … the nuts off a squirrel? I wouldn’t know. Squirrels tend to bury their nuts, so I don’t keep track of them.
Hopefully the squirrels do.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah. So I might not even be coming in from a walk unless it’s nice outside. I might be coming from the treadmill. I hope it fits in the living room.
My “point and write” word came from the manuscript I’m working on. A really original word, isn’t it? I’ve used it 37 times in the 8032 words in the first four chapters. I’m sure you wanted to know that valuable nugget of information.
What is the book, you ask? Well, let me tell you. (Because I’m sure you want to know.)
It’s The Magician’s Soul, the third and final book in my paranormal romance series, The Great Dagmaru. And it’s coming out in 19 days!!
You can preorder it by clicking on the picture of the cover. (It’s an Amazon affiliate link.)
Ahhhh!!!
Isn’t the cover great? It’s a lovely cover by the even lovelier Belinda Borradaile. Or should I say “from” Belinda…?
The first thing I should do in the morning when I sit at my computer with coffee in hand is open up whatever I’m working on. Supposed to be working on. Because if I don’t and I end up on social media instead, I get lost. And the next thing I know, I’ve finished coffee, breakfast, and it’s half way to lunch time and I’ve got nothing done.
Why? Why is social media so damned addictive? Is it really the whole FOMO (fear of missing out) thing? Or is there a secret ingredient on those pages somewhere that they’re not telling us about?
Salt. Probably salt. Or chocolate.
If I’m lucky during the day, I get out for a walk. I got a picture of the snowmen again … they’re a little worse for wear. You can see what they looked like last week here.
And now? It seems Mrs. Smith Sr. has lost her head as has little Bobby Smith, and Mrs. Smith and little Susie are nowhere to be found.
Things do not bode well, at first glance.
Last thing I do at night before I go to sleep? Read a book. Necessary to get out of my own head. It’s very crowded in here. Especially with the FOMO.
Order. Order. The meeting will please come to order.
*ahem*
We won’t bother with the minutes of the last meeting; the matter of Skippy’s garbage being pilfered by his ex-wife is trivial compared to what we have going on today.
Voice from the back of the room: Well if Skippy would just pay his child support!
Voice from the right of the room: Damn Skippy! Let’s listen to Exalted Leader!
*ahem*
As I was saying. It has come to the attention of the board members that the Tall Ones can no longer be trusted. So we believe it is time. Puddles, bring out the rocket.
Puddles: Yesth, exthalted leader.
*ahem*
The board has decided we will, forthwith, enter the rocket and go to the moon.
Voice from the back: I’m not getting on that thing with Skippy!
Skippy: I’m going! You can have my garbage! Woohoo! Sucker!
*ahem*
As I was saying …
Voice from the front: Why the moon?
Puddles: Becauth itsth made of cheethe, of courth.
Voice from front: Beg pardon?
*ahem”
Puddles is a brilliant scientist, but he lost his front teeth in an unfortunate accident with a fishing pole and a peanut.
Puddles: Don’t asthk.
*ahem*
As Puddles was saying, the moon is made of cheese, and … Wait! Stop! Order! Order! I am your Exalted Leader! We must board the rocket in an orderly fashion! I call the Royal Order of Rats to order!!!
(Jill’s prompt was “What if the moon was made of cheese? ” and Cheryl’s was “Damn Skippy.”)
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
Let’s start with unlimited bread sticks, shall we?
They call them limitless, but what happens when the kitchen runs out of them? Do you go to another restaurant? Do you get your meal for free for false advertising? That would be a disaster of a night for the establishment.
We call things countless the same way we often use the word “literal.” Given enough time and patience, most things on earth can be counted. Literally.
I’m talking about physical things, though. What about dreams? What about ideas? What about love?
What about that moment you look into the eyes of someone you love? It may only be a moment, but it can last forever in memory. Does that memory die when we do? I don’t think so.
BUT! Can bread sticks be limitless if you love them enough?
PART 4 – (FIND PART 1 HERE, PART 2 HERE, AND PART 3 HERE, IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THEM YET.)
Petra gasped. “You can’t fire me!” she said to the old broomstick of a butler. “Who will serve the guests?
“What guests?” Geeves asked with a smirk.
She listened. The house was silent. It felt empty, for that matter. Just to be sure, she stepped over to the door and opened it. They’d all left.
“Well, then, who’s going to help you clean up?” But that was a stupid question. She’d been one of a dozen servants working tonight. As though to punctuate the point, three of them pushed past her with loaded trays for the dishwasher.
Geeves continued to smirk.
“Where am I going to live?” Petra asked, for she had a room in the upstairs back of the house with everything she owned in it.
“We’ll have your room cleared out in the morning.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s your severance pay. I suggest you find a hotel to stay in tonight. Goodnight, Petra.”
With that he turned up his nose and left the kitchen.
Defeated, Petra hung up her apron, changed her shoes for boots, and stepped out into the snowy back yard with no idea what she was going to do or where she’d go.
“Fired you, eh?” The deep voice of the guy from the cellar came from the corner of the house.
“You! This is all your fault!” she said, stalking toward the shadowy stranger.
“It didn’t matter. Watch.”
Sure enough, a few minutes later the servants began leaving the same way Petra had. They all had envelopes in their hands.
“What … What happened?”
“They do this every five years on January first. When did they hire you?”
Petra thought about it for only a second. “January second, five years ago.” She turned to the stranger. “But how did you work here for twenty years then?”
“I was the head butler. Before Geeves. Little does he know, his time is up tomorrow, after he cleans out all the rooms.”
Petra giggled. “Serves him right.”
“Would you like a ride into town to get a room?” the man asked. Petra looked at him sharply. “A room for you. I have my own place. And I’ve got a snow mobile. All these poor suckers have to walk.”
It was true—no one had cars.
“Thank you,” Petra said. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”
When they got to town, the stranger let Petra off and reached into the bag strapped on the back of the snow mobile. He pulled out a bottle of “Mother’s” wine and handed it to her.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s a key,” the stranger said. “There’s a secret door in the back of the cellar, and the indent on the bottom of the bottle”—he turned it over to show her—“fits into a device on the wall outside. Every year at New Year’s Eve I go in and stock up on wine. You’re the first to notice.”
Petra blinked at the stranger, who was starting to grow on her more by the minute. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“Because I hope you’ll be back next year for a drink with me, to celebrate the New Year.”
“Thank you,” Petra said. “I just might.” She got off the snow mobile and he drove away into the night.
“But … what’s your name?” she called out to him, but he didn’t hear her. Petra turned around and trudged through the deepening snow, happy to have shelter in her sights.
The next day, Petra called a taxi and made her way back to the mansion to collect her things.
Geeves was there, his nose turned toward the heavens as he handed her a suitcase which, she assumed, had all her clothes in it, as well as a box with her pictures and all her other worldly belongings.
She was about to leave when a thought came to her. She turned back and asked Geeves, “Who was the butler that worked here before you did?”
“Henry,” he said simply. “He died the night before I was hired. Twenty years ago almost to the day.”
A shiver ran through Petra’s body. She thought about the bottle of wine that she’d left back at the hotel. But no, that couldn’t be. He couldn’t have been a ghost.
“Weird,” she mumbled as she walked away. She turned the corner to go back to the taxi that she’d asked to wait for her, but instead she found a fire truck with half a dozen firemen standing around it.
As she approached, she heard one of them say, “Butler got out, but they don’t know if he’ll make it.”
The fireman beside him shrugged. “They’ll rebuild, then we’ll be back again in five years.”
She started to ask what the man was on about, but instead she followed their gaze back to the house.
It was smouldering, collapsed, burnt to a crisp. In the flowerbed sat a bottle of “Mother’s” wine.
THE END
(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)
(This story came off the top of my head. I had no idea how it was going to end. Don’t judge my storytelling skills by it. Haha!)
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
PART 3 (FIND PART 1 HERE AND PART 2 HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THEM YET.)
Icy fingers of fear skittered up Petra’s spine as she turned toward the sound in the dark corner of the wine cellar. The gurgle was followed by a quiet laugh. Definitely not a mouse.
“This wine is crappy,” came a deep voice from the direction of the far corner.
Petra turned slowly to find a bearded man in a dirty gray-green raincoat and pants to match. He was drinking “Mother’s” wine. “Don’t hurt me,” Petra squeaked.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Just came in here to get outta the cold.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but you have to get out of here,” Petra said, sounding braver than she felt. She started edging back in the direction of the stairs.
“Nonsense,” the man said. “Why don’t you come and join me. You look like you could use a drink.” He held the bottle at arm’s length.
“No,” Petra said. “Get out of here or I’ll … “I’ll …”
“Tell ‘Mother’?”
Petra’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know ‘Mother’?”
“Pfft. I worked here years ago.” He hoisted the bottle again. “Worst twenty years of my life, my employment in this house was.”
“Why do you come back, then?”
The man laughed. “To piss off ‘Mother.’”
“That’s it,” Petra said, balling her fists and turning once again for the stairs. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Good luck with that!” The man called out from behind her. The last thing she heard before she closed the cellar door was gurgling from the back corner of the wine cellar.
She ran into Geeves on the way through the kitchen to find the man of the house.
“Where’s the bottle of wine for ‘Mother’?” he asked.
“It’s all gone! And there’s a man—”
Geeves headed for the stairs before she finished her sentence. She followed him and waited at the top of the staircase, listening for the inevitable scuffle.
And she waited. And waited. A couple of minutes later, Geeves appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
As he climbed them, he said, “There’s no one here. And all the wine is gone.” Geeves looked her right in the eye. “But I did find an empty bottle. And you. are. fired,” he said, poking Petra in the collarbone with every syllable of her dismissal.
(To be continued on Friday.)
(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
PART 2 (FIND PART 1 HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT YET.)
When Petra had first heard about “Mother,” she imagined a big, furry Newfoundland dog, such was the atmosphere of this strange house she’d been hired to work in. But no—“Mother” was indeed a woman, the mother of the lady of the house. Not knowing her employer’s maiden name, she couldn’t call “Mother” anything else. And “Mother” didn’t seem to mind.
Petra walked down the hall and knocked on “Mother’s” bedroom door. She hated when it was closed—she never knew what she’d find “Mother” doing when she walked in. One time she’d been staring into a crystal ball she’d set in the middle of her massive bed, mumbling at it in what sounded like backwards English. Another time, Petra had opened the door to catch “Mother” scrambling to hide someone under the bed, even though she’d called out to Petra to come in.
“Mother” had hiked up the straps of her bra (she wasn’t wearing a blouse) and asked Petra, “What do you want?” as she gathered up a deck of cards from the bed. Petra suspected “Mother” had been playing strip poker with whomever she had hidden.
“You called me, ‘Mother,’” Petra had said.
Which was what she said when she walked in tonight. “Mother” was in bed, her bedcovers clutched in both hands all the way up under her chin, her teeth in a small pink pot on the antique nightstand.
“I need a bottle of wine,” “Mother” croaked. “My wine. Not that cheap crap my good-for-nothing son-in-law buys.”
“Yes, ‘Mother,’” Petra said as she turned to go.
“And don’t bother with a glass. I’ll drink it straight out of the bottle.” Without her teeth in, the word “straight” came out “schtraight.”
“Yes, ‘Mother,” Petra repeated. She left the door open a little as she retreated, wondering as she descended the stairs why they didn’t just give “Mother” a cell phone so they didn’t have to keep going up to see what she wanted.
Downstairs, the party was still humming away. Petra avoided the guests by ducking between them with her eyes down. She ran into Geeves again on her way through the kitchen to the wine cellar.
“How did you find ‘Mother’?” he asked.
“Toothless and wineless,” Petra answered.
Geeves sniffed at her and off he went again.
Petra hated the wine cellar. Lit with only one bare lightbulb, the corners smelled of black, oily dust, and it was quiet enough to hear the mice scurrying around.
She hurried down the wooden stairs and turned down the corridor whose walls were lined with bottles in ceiling-high racks, to the back corner where they kept “Mother’s” wine. Only the rack was empty.
A gurgling sound came from the far corner of the cellar.
(To be continued on Thursday.)
(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
Petra was practically dead on her feet. But working the New Year’s Eve party for the Jones’s did that to her every year.
Midnight had come and gone and the be-tied and be-gowned guests were showing no signs of wanting to go home. The men with their “haw-haw-haw” laughs and the women who gossiped about one another the moment they were out of earshot made Petra’s eyes roll so many times, she’d been able to count her own eyelashes.
So she was less than amused when she went into the kitchen with her umpteenth tray of dirty champagne glasses and Geeves, the elderly butler that looked like a fireplace poker in a waiter’s tux, turned to her and said, “‘Mother’ wants you upstairs.”
“Why me?” Petra asked, but Geeves just turned up his nose and walked out of the kitchen with a sniff in Petra’s direction and not much more. She was almost positive “Mother” hadn’t asked for her personally, but what was Petra to do? She needed the job.
So usually twinkletoed Petra weaved her way through the stuffiness of the living room full of guests and trudged up the massive, winding flights of stairs to “Mother”‘s room, passing portraits of “Mother” on her way.
(To be continued on Tuesday.)
(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, theys and thems,
Thank you all so very much for being here. I’d like to start off by saying it’s not my fault. I know, I know. Calm down. I know you’re angry at me, but hear me out.
I’m not the one who brought you the fires and the murder hornets and the plague. I didn’t stick you in your homes and not let you out, and I’m certainly not the one who made you forget what day it was.
Random person from the crowd: Then what did you do for us?
I gave you the time you wanted. All those extra hours in a day you’ve been asking for? I might not have given you extra, but they sure felt longer, those days.
Random person from the crowd: You still suck!
Fine, fine. I suck. I’m leaving now. But know this: if you survived me, which you did, you can survive just about anything.
All of the crowd: You suck, 2020!
*2020 leaves the stage, mumbling, Thanks for being here.*
Here are the JusJoJan Rules:
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.
3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.
7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.
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