# Literary Maneuvers June 2022: Picture Prompt



## Harper J. Cole (May 31, 2022)

Introduction
Something a little different this month, as the picture above is the prompt. The photo-taker (*Phil Istine*) had named the picture "Portal", but you can take another spin on it if you prefer.

650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Saturday, 18 June
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2023 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.



Judging

Our judges include* Kegan Thompson, Ibb, SueC *and* Vranger*. If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* June 30th,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.

*Literary Maneuvers June 2022
Picture Prompt*


----------



## Quelhallow (Jun 4, 2022)

Death’s Door
(650 words)​
A winter sun was rising, its pale light twisting down through frost-covered hickory and elm. On a hilltop, Melody stopped to catch her breath, bending at the waist, her hands on her knees. She had been running non-stop through the long night.

In the fields below, snowfall shrouded the tussocked grass and clung to the length of a barbed-wire fence. Startled, a raven cawed and took flight, the rippling undulation of its wings a dirge upon the wind. Melody watched it fly away, a hollow sorrow building within her. When the bird disappeared into the horizon, she wiped back the tears that had formed at the corners of her eyes and tightened the straps of her backpack. She pulled down the heavy wool parka, her hands lingering over her swollen belly, and then she began to run once more.

Her numb feet churned through the snow and mud for hours. She fell more than once, her knees and palms scratched and bleeding, but she pressed on. This pain meant she was still alive.

The countryside became a blur. The trees thinned into grasslands as the sun crept westward. Melody never stopped running. She couldn’t help but look over her shoulder from time to time, her neck corded with steel. She stuffed granola bars into her dry mouth, choking on the crumbs. She pissed herself, the urine cold against the inside of her thighs. Her body was afire in a dozen places as salty sweat rubbed into chafed skin. But she never stopped running.

Night fell once more. This time she could see twinkling lights in the distance: the town of Campo. It had to be! The border was within her reach.

She thought she had been careful when she fled Amarillo. She hadn’t been stupid enough to buy a test and she had avoided searching the web for the best ways to escape Texas. This was how others had been caught. She couldn’t take a train or a plane. She couldn’t take the roads. There were armed checkpoints and forced insta-’grams on every woman under the age of sixty-five. Feverous cash had blown into the state like juniper pollen since 2022. Border Patrol had grown in manpower, shifting its gaze inward, turning its odious methods into doctrine.

So Melody had left her home on foot. A refugee in the land of the free.

The wind howled over the moonlit prairie. It bit into her face and whispered into her ear. Ahead loomed a copse of trees, twisted tree branches reaching out for an embrace. _Rest with us_, they beckoned. As she approached, the wind gusted and ripped a limb from its trunk with a great cracking sound. It hung limp in midair, its broken body split in twain and forming a frame. It was at this moment that Melody caught a picture of her life.

A golden glow of memory washed over her. _Her mother knitting in her rocking chair on the veranda. Her father passed out in front of the television, the chain of the ceiling fan clinking against the ceramic lights. Catching grasshoppers down near Bushland. Ages spent skipping stones at Lake Meredith._ A childhood rich with a thousand little moments.

The picture wavered like a mirage, each flashing image pulsing with the beat of her heart. There she was as an adult. _High school dropout. A dead-end job. The one-night stands._ All the choices she had ever made up until the moment they took the capacity to choose away from her. 

Melody quietly swayed like the trees before her, the flickering images of her life slowly beating within… now quieter… now muffled… now drifting… free.

When the Border Patrol agents found her, one of the men grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her corpse back to the pickup truck, her heels scraping along rock and root. The other man whistled cheerfully, a hunt successfully won.


----------



## Sinister (Jun 7, 2022)

*a phil is(a) tin ē bit me*
By Sinister (647 words)​
'_Where were we? A forest? That's right._' I thought. '_I'm starting to remember. The Schwarzwald sumpfe, Germany._' Then I thought: '_We?_'

A girl with golden hair danced by me. She chased literal butterflies, while skipping over sandbanks and rising slips of water that forked off of a great belching child of the Danube. She was Melismata. I found her in Stuttgart, at the palace square. She had been bored with Baroque architecture. We had shared a common language in a strange land. It was all coming back to me, now.

I held an upturned leather boot in my right hand, a sodden sock in my left.

"Phil, look!"

My head turned as she gasped. Her face was beaming as she held a single flower pinched in her fingers. It was hideous. It was a fuzzy pale bloom with uneven sepals and stubby petals. Its center was a collection of lumpy pollen that looked like a malignant tumor.

I shook more brook water out of my boot and smacked the same out of my sock on a nearby stone.

"What is it?" I asked with a sneer. "It looks unwholesome."

"It's an Edelweiss." She said, reproachful. "They don't grow in places like this at all. Don't you wonder how it got here?" She spun it in her fingers and stared at it. "How did you get so lost, little one?"

My attention was snapped up by drops of water too vertical to be spray from the brook. I held out a hand and felt it splat against my fingertips. ‘_A sun-shower_,’ I thought, cursing to myself.

Melismata dropped the Edelweiss like it was used tissue paper. This time her gasp was interrupted by a splash as she grabbed at a puddle of water. Using her abused skirt, she rubbed at something in her fingers until she held it up in the broken sunlight.

"A moss agate, Phil! It's so beautiful. See how its patterns look random, like the markings in jade?""

She thrust the rock at me, and I looked at it. It could've been a jagged piece of chewed bubblegum, mottled black and white in messy splotches.

"Those aren't patterns, just random nonsense." I said.

"Random nonsense is a pattern you're just not understanding because it's too big. If you just look at tiny patterns, it would be like being tone deaf and listening to music note by note or living without memory."

Once her sermon was over and I had re-equipped myself with dry footwear, we continued upstream, avoiding a little patch of quicksand. Melismata was captivated by every cluster of violent color or mess. I was looking up for the rainbow that sun-showers promise when-

"Mushrooms!"

I was getting tired of her constant interjections, but looked anyway. They were Fly Agaric. There was a beautiful round fruiting body with its universal veil clinging to it in perfect circular dots. Melismata picked one that had flattened and looked like a Jackson Pollock work. Of course she had done.

Then it happened. Then I saw it. Some wonderful black willow who had fought off his sandy shrub-like brothers and, had attained the dignity of a tree. His monopodial trunk had risen into the German sunshine and this single connection with the world had peeled and splintered, by force of a German storm, into a perfect rectangle. Each opposing side of the figure was equal; each angle of the split was ninety degrees. No more could have been done to it with a protractor or compass. It was beautiful. It was in the shape of a doorway, as if designed for a house.

"Look at that." I called aloud.

Melismata looked in the direction of the natural sculpture.

"Huh." She said, shrugging. "Weird."

I approached and trailed my fingers across the inside of the frame. It was precisely my height.   "Thank God."  I said and walked through it.


----------



## Harper J. Cole (Jun 8, 2022)

The Wonky Tree


----------



## Harper J. Cole (Jun 8, 2022)

The Portal of Unparalleled Enlightenment


----------



## Louanne Learning (Jun 8, 2022)

*A Door Opens*

(650 words)

It was the predictability of her life that soured Frances’ mood. Expectations were placed on a young lady of her position. She must only seek fulfillment in the role of homemaker, but that did not excite her.

Not even her opinions were valued. That morning, she had tried to engage Papa in conversation about the recent presidential election. “Grant will be a greater friend to the American citizenry than was Johnson,” she had offered.

Papa barely lifted his eyes from his newspaper. “Do not bother yourself with such matters,” he had advised.

Frances complained to Mama. “I am not taken seriously,” she pouted.

Mama laughed. “Your life will become serious enough as wife and mother.”

“I want more.”

“More? My dear child, there is no more profitable course in life for a woman than to enter into the holy state of matrimony.”

Being the good girl she was, she tried. Charles, respectable and upright, called on her that evening, and they sat on the porch swing. Large hands on his knees, he shared happy news. “My situation improves,” he reported. “Mr. Callahan praises my work. I say, let’s get married this coming summer.”

He did not ask, he told. Frances watched a moth fluttering around the wall-hung oil lamp, the glass keeping it from the light. She felt invisible barriers, too. But if the moth should fly away, it would enter into the darkness. “Charles, why do you want to marry me?” she asked.

He grinned. “The answer is obvious. I want to marry you because you would make a fine wife.”

She sighed. She was fond of him, she truly was. But something else there tugged at her heart.

The next day, Frances poured over Papa’s newspaper. A small announcement caught her eye. A convention was being called to discuss the social and civil condition and rights of women. She became determined that she would attend this public meeting.

She let Charles know. “We only want what men have,” she gushed.

“What next, will you wish to grow a beard?” he joked.

The day dawned bright and clear. The walk down Main Street was invigorating. The building’s oaken doors were swung wide open. Frances smoothed her voluminous skirts, took the concrete steps, huffed a breath, and entered the lecture hall.

A few dozen women in hats were already seated, chatting amongst themselves. Frances slinked into an empty chair. The woman beside her gave a prim smile, nodding with approval. “It is good to see such a young one as you join us,” she said, “in our fight against the tyranny of men.”

A woman in spectacles appeared behind the podium, on the stage. Frances opened her ears to talk as she had never heard before. The speaker declared, “I am married. As such, I am legally dead.”

At home, Frances relayed what she had learned. “We are deprived,” she rued to Mama. “I wish to participate.”

“Here,” Mama snipped, shoving a basket of laundry at her, “participate in this.”

She exclaimed to Charles, “The Republic must keep its promise of 1776 to all its citizens!”

He scoffed, “Too radical!”

But the door to freedom cannot be closed once the other side is glimpsed. That night, she sat in the open window of her bedroom and looked up to the stars, bright in the darkness. If she reached, they could be hers. She could have meaning beyond the four walls of home. Something to live for. Something to strive for.

She would abide in the fullness of her creation.

Frances became the editor of a small women’s weekly. She remained active in the cause. She was heckled and spat at, but her courage never wavered. And in 1920, at the age of seventy, she cast a hard-won ballot for Warren G. Harding.

Exiting the booth, Charles took her hand. “I’m proud of you,” he said.


----------



## Vodyanik (Jun 12, 2022)

*Youth** (634 words)*

“Woah! Look at that cool tree!” said Tommy, pointing to the edge of the clearing. The other two boys followed his gaze, and Anderson pushed Tommy to the side and began running.

“Race ya there!”

The boys reached the finish line one by one. First Tommy, who was part of the track club, followed shortly by Anderson. Long after the other two boys, huffing and puffing, Gaddum cleared the finish to find his friends arguing. 

“I won! Even with your cheating.”

“I didn’t cheat!”

“Yes you did! You pushed me! And you started running before me!”

“Doesn’t mean I cheated!”

As Tommy and Anderson argued, Gaddum regained his breath and looked up at the tree in front of them. Tall and skinny, it’s base stood crooked, supported by the top half of the tree, which lie on the ground. About halfway up the trunk the tree had split into two diverging pathways and later re-converged, forming a hole in the center.

“Why’s it like that?”

Tommy and Anderson had begun wrestling, but prompted by Gaddum’s question, they relaxed their grips on one another and both turned to look at the tree.

“I dunno. But it’s pretty cool, right?”

As Tommy and Gaddum looked at the tree, which was pretty cool, a clump of grass sailed into view and went through the center, landing on the other side. The two turned to see Anderson, his hands up in the air and doing a victory dance.

“He shoots, he scores!”

Inspired, the other two boys find their own clumps of grass and all three start to throw their gathered clumps at the tree-turned-goal.

“Whoever gets the farthest goal wins!”

And, without anything else needing to be said, the rules were set. Each boy took turns, attempting to be the furthest shot. At first, Anderson and Tommy would take turns in the lead, Gaddum trailing behind. Occasionally he would take the top spot, losing it again almost as quickly as he gained it. The game continued on in this way until, wanting to dominate, Anderson stepped back as far as he could. He wanted the goal that would end all goals. He missed throw after throw, but knew that if he made it he would be the undisputed king. Tommy rose to the challenge, standing just as far back, and it became a duel, a grander challenge within the game, to see who would be the ultimate winner.

The sun had started to sink in the sky and, despite a few close calls, neither Anderson nor Tommy had made their mythical goal. The furthest shot was currently held by Tommy and right at the edge of that range stood Gaddum. He had worked on this shot for as long as his friends had been trying to make the world-shaking throw, and once again it was his turn.

Gaddum eyes narrowed and he lined up his throw. His arm swung back and forth, a pendulum, gaining momentum, waiting for the right moment. Releasing his grip the grass flied forward in an arc. The shot looked good and a bead of sweat dripped from Gaddum’s forehead as he watched the grass ripple through the air, sailing straight through the center of the tree.

His hands shoot up and he yells, “GOAL!” and a whistle pierces the air. The boys turn their heads.

“That’s my dad, gotta go guys. See ya tomorrow?” asked Anderson.

Tommy and Gaddum nodded and waved as their friend headed home.

“I should probably go to, it’s getting late,” said Tommy.

“Yeah. Same here.”

Tommy started to run home, but partway through the field he turned back and put a thumb up, yelling to Gaddum,  “By the way, nice shot!”

Gaddum threw a thumb up in return and walked home, a winners smile on his face.


----------



## S J Ward (Jun 13, 2022)

Sorry. Post removed because I realised I broke the rules and edited one bit of punctuation two hours after I posted the thread. On advice from Harper, I have reinstated the mistake and posted the original story (inclusive of error)


----------



## S J Ward (Jun 14, 2022)

*Letter home*


Dear Mum and Dad.

Have you ever had that feeling that you’ve travelled through time?

Maybe you’ve been driving the car down a country road. Suddenly your peripheral vision pieces together that things are moving in reverse—trees are overtaking your forward motion. It’s then you realise that you may have lost some time. You can’t remember those last five minutes, not until the scenery catches back up with you. Now you’re back in the present again.

It’s not the motion, it’s the place! The split tree in the woods is as good an example as the road I lost a whole five minutes on. Just a pity that this transition seems permanent.

You know me, always looking for that next great photo opportunity. The tree provided for an elevated shot of the brackens. So I clambered up and into the rent-open trunk. It was only when I lost my balance and fell backwards through the rectangular space that I knew something weird had happened. I lay—uninjured—in a bramble, upon my back and started checking over the camera—it was fine. But that would only have taken a couple of minutes and when I checked my watch… two hours had slipped my grasp.

I climbed back into the tree’s void and—experimentally—jumped down the other side. It wasn’t high. I don’t know what made me think it would change things. In truth, it didn’t. On the ground my watch had inexplicably gained another two hours. So I checked out the watch this time. I shook the casing and scrutinised the hands—they didn’t move. I tapped it hard against my palm… nothing.

Back in the tree I wondered if I could reverse the time I might have missed. I steadied myself inside the lightning-ripped, oblong gap. With one hand on the upper half of the trunk and bracing my feet firmly to the lower half. I stared at my watch and swayed the majority of my body through the hole, outwards and into the space on the other side. The hands didn’t even blur another two hours of time into the future.

Swaying my bulk in the opposite direction… two hours, again, forwards!

It was fun! Me, swaying into the future without a care in the world. In seconds... night. A few more… day again. I’d discovered a way to move two hours through time, but always into the future.

I’d never forget the spot that the time-tree sat in and I was quite confident I’d find it again. I did need to think, however. How I could use this apparent time travel to my advantage, so I set off towards home. Before I got to the edge of the woods, by the field behind our house, I realised I had left my camera and case by the side of the trunk. I raced back to retrieve it but I couldn’t find it. My initial thought was that some thieving git had beaten me to it. I now know better.

Mum, Dad, I’m really sorry. I knew when I entered the field behind our house. Where the house should have stood at the field’s edge, it didn’t. I looked about and I didn’t even recognise the field anymore. It’s moorland now.

I’ve been here about three weeks. The people in the small village have accepted me even though I’m quite different from them… better educated, I suppose because I can read and write.

But had I known that every time I went through that bloody time-tree I actually propelled backwards in time… I’m guessing the total loss to be about four-hundred years. At least they’ve got paper and ink. If I can imagine a way for you to get this letter, one day you’ll know what happened and maybe you can join me here. Just find that tree!

Your loving son.


Phil


----------



## PrairieHostage (Jun 15, 2022)

Visitors
(650 words)​
The bent tree branches formed a portal that still allowed passage from P2 to Earth in the year 2089.

Blue tore at his suit which itched his skin.

"You all right?" Sander laughed as the men landed on the forest floor.

"Damn propulsion gel. Wait 'til you're on your tenth jump." Blue grumbled to his assistant.

The gel increased velocity and reduced friction moving from one parallel universe to another.

Supplies slung around their necks, the men traipsed out of the forest to the hills surrounding Kennerst, a settlement they populated after the winds stopped.

It was only five thousand strong, but down to the last man, woman and child, after ten years, no one showed signs of radiation poisoning.

Blue thought how ironic Earth's fate had been. In 2035, just when they'd developed enough technology to address climate change, a freak of nature wiped out humanity.

A hot star of photospheric photons absorbed by spectral lines, penetrated Earth's plasmasphere and initiated radiation winds that ripped across Earth for two years.

Research into climate gave a surprise discovery that travel through nature portals was possible. Pioneers of this technology jumped out before the winds hit. They populated what became known as P2, a verdant flat land in a universe where vegetables and rice grew well.

P2 might have been acceptable except for its incessant torrential rain. Living indoors made some men crazy. Others explored, but returned empty handed, soaked, and demoralized. Gradually, the pioneers agreed to use the portals to repopulate Earth once emission levels became safe.

Blue and Sander stopped on a hill which overlooked crops of wheat and beans. Years of planting sunflowers had absorbed toxic metals and radiation from the soil. An ion exchange parumbulator made clean water possible.

"Looking good, Kennerst." Jumpsuit stripped to his waist, Sander laughed as he ran downhill, his bare arms fanned out to feel the glorious sun.

Blue shook his head and followed. He was born on P2, but his father, who'd shared memories of life on Earth, told Blue he missed animals the most.

Several men filtered out of the fields to greet their visitors.

"Welcome. I'm Gall." A tall bronzed man held out his hand.

"Blue and this is Sander." Blue shook his hand.
"Crops look good."

Gall motioned the men to follow him into a prefab building which housed a laboratory and kitchen.

Sander tarried under the sun.

"We've been here ten years." Gall steered them into the kitchen. "We must be the oldest settlement?" Every settlement wanted to host P2's population.

Sander gaped through a large window, his eyes transfixed on all that he could see in daylight.

"There's six in America." Blue nodded to the woman who brought him a cup of coffee. "Oldest is Shaybal by about six months."

"Still no jumpers from other parts of the world?" Gall asked.

Blue shook his head.

"Maybe the winds hit before they got to the portals." Gall suggested.

"Or maybe they jumped to P3, some other universe." Sander had joined them at the table.

"We saw a deer in the woods." Gall leaned back, hands behind his head, looking proud.

"Fifty years for the forests to grow back. You wonder where animals lived all that time." Blue motioned to Sander and the men unpacked their supplies.

After radiation scans and soil tests, the visitors said goodbye. Blue led the way with Sander trailing sluggishly behind.

At the top of the hill, Blue turned to his companion and smiled. "Sander, can we make a deal?"

Sander nodded, his face filled with curiosity.

"I'm going to find that deer and bring it back to my father. I know it's against rules to bring any life form back. If I let you stay here, will you help me find it?"

Hope filled the young man's eyes and Blue envied him. The men entered the forest to begin their search.


----------



## piperofyork (Jun 16, 2022)

The Ideation Tree


----------



## Harper J. Cole (Jun 16, 2022)

The King of the Fae


----------



## Harper J. Cole (Jun 16, 2022)

Glynis and Maxx


----------



## Matchu (Jun 18, 2022)

WARNING: ADULT THEMES AND LANGUAGE

NASHVILLE 630

‘Marjorie, I am walking the dog,’ I said to Marjorie.

Frankly speaking, I was not walking the dog quite as yet.

I twisted on the bedside, scratching my bollocks and ran a brush across my scalp. No, I brushed bollocks. I brushed my teeth if I recall correctly, ‘bollocks,’ I said.

‘Bollocks,’ I said, that’s right.

‘What?’ said Marjorie.

‘I am scratching my bollocks,’ I said.

‘Say hello from me,’ she replied, a pointless contribution from my wife, not worthy even in this journal.

‘Make love to me now…’ she requested and she yawned, her black teeth inviting, delicious.

‘Please oh please, how many times must a man tell you I am walking the dog. I shall make love to you later on, after the dog-walking in the woods.’

‘What?’ said my wife, ‘I was dreaming…’

‘The Nashville box set…again?’

‘Yes.’

I pulled on my jeans, the check shirt, gillet, the authentic sombrero swinging down my spine. Rhinestone hush puppies awaited along the corridor.

‘See you later, alligator,’ I said.

She said nothing. Nothing, nobody says it no longer. In a while crocodile I muttered alone under breaths.

Below the trees aside the stream, myself and Bonzo meandered aimlessly. The elm collapsed across the pathway. I stepped through this square of elm branches. Suddenly flashes of Dixie, cannon balls, lightning crashed, coated my eyeballs in fire. I squeezed my eyeballs, opened lids, the mind on fire beyond the giant portal, above it the words STAGE glittered, and the words invited.

‘All the world is a stage,’ I said, and heard a great response of people, an audience 10, 000 strong stood smiling at my footfall.

Yes, with each word I spoke, it came as song.

Each word greeted in the collective jiggling and joy of my audience in their faces, all a clapping, all heads and shoulders a bobbing. Teeth sparkled like stars and bars of this greatest nation in the sky.

I swallowed hard. Bread and butter I said, or I sang the words indeed, and the crowd whooped and hollered in raptures at my delightful singing voice, a falsetto. Mince and potatoes I sang on, along. They adored every syllable, lapped up every word of my musical medley. Each time I blinked new fresh melodies emerged from my lips. Bonzo, my baby transformed into an incredible banjo weapon. I plucked my dog, his yelp an E-string or chord. I was Enrico Hairy Guitar to these people who purchased tickets online probably.

But was I in of myself prepared - for Nashville? I needed my morning tea, my read of the newspaper, the men’s club Wednesday fry, online meeting at ten am, and also I had made a pledge to my wife you might recall in the narrative, so with a crescendo of wheels on the bus, all day long, I waved for folk, stepped back a while longer, anonymous through the stage doors once more, returning to my puddle in the wood.

‘Wow, such great adventure,’ I said to Bonzo, dropping him gently in foliage.

We walked, savoured the memory, the tinsel, the showbiz atmospheres that quite tempted at my tassels. But no, with my key upon the door, dutifully I returned as a shadow, rested a palm atop Marjorie’s crusty shoulder, her eyes alight at her laptop on episode 27666 of Nashville upon her screen. But what did she know?

‘I am going for a poo,’ I said, ‘and afterward, perhaps, my love?’ I said.

'I have a business call at 9.00, 9.30, 9.40, 10 and at 11 and one is at 12’ she responded.

‘Good,’ I said and fluffed bodily up the stairwell, knowing my own true Nashville box set lay but one half mile walk away in the copse of woods.


----------

