Random Challenge III?

[Alia]

When I first joined this site, earlier this year, the first thing I did was participate in the random writing challenges, orginally set up by Knivesout. Here's the rules... write a 15 minute story no longer than 500 words (which I was never able to keep) about this picture, which is a baked apple.

 

[Alia]

This isn't my creative writing talent, but a close and dear friend.

Liquid swirled, creating a vortex of suction that swallowed the tooth as it fell inot the mixing bowl. Sarah gasped and drpped the wooden spoon as her fingers dove through the mix. Where could it be? She'd loose her job over this, it wasn't the first time she'd lost things while she was cooking. Just last week Sarah had lost a ring and a customer accidentally found it in their bread. And yesterday she had accident let the flies fall into the pudding. Andrew the owner of the Squeeky Wheel Inn had let her have it after she ruined the food and had smacked her so hard she thought a tooth was loose. Then as Sarah was stirring the filling for the baked cinnamon apples, the wooden spoon slipped out of her hand, hitting her in the face. The loose tooth needing that little extra budge, fell out. Sarah couldn't find it though she strained the liquid. As she did it fell out and onto the dirty floor. She searched and found that the tooth had dropped into the wood pile next to the fireplace. She reached down to pick up the tooth and the fire seemed to reach toward her as well.
"Ouch!" Sarah exclaimed trying again but the fire again moved and twisted toward her hand yet didn't set the wood pile on fire.
"Strange," Sarah thought, "I've been around fire before and this never happened." she took a stick from the wood pile and jabbed at the fire. Streams of fire quickly twisted along the stick until it wrapped around her arm. At first Sarah thought she could feel the flesh blister and burn, but then a cooling sensation rippled through her body. She was on fire, but she didn't feel hot. Sarah cupped her hands together and flames arose out of ther palms. Andre stepped into the kitchen and started to grab water from the bucket next to the store. Sarah started to say something but the flame lept from her arms to Andrew's head and he burned into cinders within a brief second. Sarah collapsed in fear, "Waht do I do now? Why am I not burned? What's happening to me? Exausted Sarah turned to the side door. Whatever happened she knew she had to leave before she was suspected.

 

[yebastick]

Sheez, how did I end up in the bowl?

I dreamed of big things when I was still a bud. Mother tree was all praised for me. Of all the bud, I was the freshest, robust looking. When I flowered, everyone was all gaga at my leaves. When I began showing lines and curves, they were awed, praising also how shiny my skin is, glistening in the morning sun. If it was not for mama's branch swiping, those eeky wormies and stupid birds would have fouled me.

Oh, mama, I missed you.

If it was not for that silly little boy who could not lie, mother would still be here. I could have been like the one that inspired that sickly kind master Isaac.

Oh, I wish Im more than a dish. I could have inspired great things and have myself written in the annals of history. At this point, I would even choose to be the one in Eden, ghastly and horrying that maybe. (Well, it was not exactly said my kind, but that's besides the point)

I dont deserved this. I am green. Not those silly little red ones.

"Honey, you going to eat it?"

"Coming."

Bye, cruel world.

 

[flynx]

I don't know what a 15 minute story is but...

"This is a joke Selice." I said as I unzipped the skin of my Tempora. I was in no mood for jokes. The staves on the lineout had come unstrung at 3 am and I had just spent fourteen hours in the Paleozoic gasping lungfulls of re-churned air after the phase link went kablooey and began sending pure nitrogen instead of the oxy mix. Karl and Jurgen were still upstream getting decompressed after they failed to notice and switch to selfpump.

Thirty minutes in and they were unconscious and returned before I could turn around. That was one of the major drawbacks of time travel: stay conscious and in the past or sleep and auto-return. It saves a lot of lives but sure plays havoc with long term stints. That left me no team and a two hour, three man job to do on re-breathe. I was in no mood for practical jokes.

“Sit down Jack.” Selice said stroking her pianist fingers down the bare skin of my arm as I tried to shuck the Tempora skin. She traced the tattoo there with her silver nailed index, mouthed the words of dead skin. Semper Fidelis Tempora. “Always Faithful in Time.” She translated. “What does that mean Jack?”

“It means I’m married to the job Selice.” I said as I brushed her fingers away in irritation.

Selice made a moue of disappointment which scrunched up her nose which she knew always made me smile. I did. She laughed. “Sit down Jack, you need food.”

Well that was true. Whatever I could live without, a wife, a home, real friends, I couldn’t live without food. I sat.

Selice spoke from the kitchen as I sipped imported water. Imported from 9th century England. Just about the purest and sweetest water anytime. “We had a breakthrough Jack.” She called. “A big one.”

I held still with the water glass inches from my lips. “A big breakthrough?” I asked “On the Nazarene?”

“Bigger than that Jack.”

Bigger than the Nazarene? What could be bigger than finding Jesus?

In two thousand and something, way before I was born, before even Selice was born with her apparently indestructible cell replacement therapy before that got lost in the war. Before then, before Selice was thirty (which she still looked after 212 years) They’d discovered time travel, which is what the war had been about but was absolutely futile in fighting for, history doesn’t change it can only be looked at.

After the war and billions of losses on both sides, time travel became the research tool that it always could only be. The knowledge was widespread and more expensive than the ark which they’d sent towards Proxima. So there was only the one machine. The machine that I was paid incredible amounts to maintain in the dim recesses of pre-history, keeping the staves apart and the lineout taught.

The grandest and greatest project in all that time was The Nazarene. The project to find Jesus. Time travel was the easy part. The language, the politics, the war, the suspicious subjugated people, the world conquering, occupying invaders. They were the devil. They were the details in which he held sway.

“So what’s bigger than The Nazarene?” I asked, as Selice paraded through the kitchen door with the ceramic pot holding my food.

“This is.” She said, laying down the crockery on the table. “Did he exist? Was he the son of God? Those were the questions we’ve been aching to find answers for.”

“And you’ve found something bigger?”

“Oh yes.” She said as she removed the lid from the pot to reveal a baked apple, stuffed with raisins and glazed with honey.

“Well it certainly looks delicious, and I know you’re an excellent cook Selice, but what does your culinary cunning have to do with Jesus?”

“Taste it Jack.” She invited. “Taste the fruit from the tree of knowledge.”

 

[Azure]

I wrote this then saw the date of the first post! Woops here it is anyway:
My brother told me that my biggest problem was lack of preparation, I tried my best to improve; I started to write to-do lists in battered reporters notebook. It might have worked had a not lost thing, I can prove it but I think Lew the family familiar ate it. He did things like that, I’m sure it was he who ate my homework. I don’t think my brother would have the stomach for it.

Things came to a head just after my fifteenth birthday. George, my brother was out with his friends, it was only Lew and I. Dispite his tiny frame, he seemed to take up more than his fare share of the kitchen. He eyed the green dish as I took it from the cupboard, I was preparing George’s favourite dish again –baked apple. Every time I did so, Lew and I would have a furious mental battle as my bright green eyes met his dark red ones. I hated every inch of him but it was the eyes that got me. Often I felt I won only by the smallest margin, by a tiny sliver of the contract, which bound him to my family. This day the thread snapped. As I took the dish from the oven Lew leapt forwards and tried to grab it from me.

“ Lew get down I command you!”
He grinned.
“ Lew I’m warning you!”
He laughed.
“ Fine if you want it so much have it!”
I grabbed the dish –apple and all from the kitchen counter and smashed it over his head. Lew groaned and collapsed, a trail of blue blood trickled down the side of his shrunken head. His read eyes dimmed and then went out.

“ What is that racket?” the voice called out, it was my brother George. He surveyed the scene silently, the bleeding familiar, the pieces of roast apple strewn across the place. Lew had been in out family for generations he would kill me.

“ Your problem,” he said, I looked up “ Is lack of planning what will I have fur pudding tonight?”
He turned on his heels and left the room.