# Literary Maneuvers August 2021: Picture Prompt



## Harper J. Cole (Jul 31, 2021)

*Literary Maneuvers, August 2021*​Introduction
We have a picture prompt! What story can you spin out of this image?
650 words, deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Sunday, 15 August







This picture is by the artist Mike Lynch. You can find more of his paintings on this website.

Any questions about this unusual format, please feel free to ask in the Coffee Shop.

If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2022 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.

Judging

The judges this month are myself, vranger, KeganThompson and robertn51. 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 *August 31st,* 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.


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## Matchu (Aug 5, 2021)

https://www.writingforums.com/threads/lm-secure-thread-august-2021-picture-prompt.195079/
		


SPIRIT OF THE NORTH


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## TheChristianWitness (Aug 9, 2021)

The Voice of the Trees



			https://www.writingforums.com/threads/lm-secure-thread-august-2021-picture-prompt.195079/post-2363243


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## bdcharles (Aug 9, 2021)

*The Muttering Sophosopher*​
The end times were characterised not by panic but by people packing, closing and unsubscribing from lists. And the muttering sophosopher was perplexed because he reckoned we should be more upset than those few loose ends warranted.

_Hereafter I decree_, he wrote, cooped up in his cosy cabin, but then stopped, because no-one would read it. In the town, the vet rolled down the metal shutters for the last time.

“Well,” she said. “Good while it lasted.” Was she sad? She was mostly tired. Frankly it was all a bit of a relief, what with the winding-up of everything.

“No more unpaid bills,” replied the real estate agent. Their business had been struggling for a long time. “That’s that.”

_Let it now be said_, wrote the muttering sophosopher, keenly aware of how short his words fell when it came to reflecting what was really going on. Again he stopped.

His heart hurt. He alone, or so it seemed, didn’t want the world to end. There was still so much to do, be, learn. But people had had enough. Time to wrap it up. Even the woodland animals had stopped coming by. Perhaps sensing no way out, they had burrowed deep to shut matters down.

The muttering sophosopher looked at the blue sky, which would continue with or without everybody. No clouds, no vapour trails, no birds. It was a suitable closure, yet somehow not enough. But what were the options? The yellow sun was a picture of uncaring.

He put down his pen, laced up his hiking boots, and made a move for town. There must be a more fitting way than this to say goodbye to everything. But what? And how? As his boots tramped the sidewalk past the now empty school, he thought some more.

_I will gather the people in the church and_ –. And what? Attendance figures had been piddling before all this. Now there were maybe three people that went, all of miserly account and influence.

_I will point at the flowers and –_. And what? When all the value had been sucked out of everything, when the curtain plunged down, what was to be gained by looking at a flower?

_I will do something that’s never been done before_. Now, that had legs. But what? The sophosopher’s life had been long, and he had accomplished a fair bit. Besides, there was in all likelihood such an infinitude of things yet to achieve that it would be impossible to ever decide.

He sat on a stone bench in the town square. You know the one; you can picture it now.

You can picture the bus collecting someone to whom he has dispensed great wisdom, and who will go on to a new life in the city. But there was no bus, and no new life.

You can see three tearaway teens running across the street and calling him _hey grandpa_. But there were no teens.

Maybe a plucky kid would pass by and offer him her chips. Then something would connect and someone would make a movie. But no. The muttering sophosopher was pretty much ignored. Movies were done. The tail of the last car vanished around the corner of a drugstore. Not even a lousy dog.

But that mandate persisted; _something not done before_.

He had it. He would stop muttering to himself and talk to someone. In a normal tone of voice. The simple unexpectedness of it would reroute this quiet derailment and people would notice, they would be reinvigorated.

But the people were dispersing. As if a grand holiday had ended and everyone was heading home. Just about the only soul left was that rather unsavoury individual manning the gas kiosk.

The sophosopher shambled across the forecourt, past the pump and the sign proclaiming a sale that might never come. The bell dinged.

There was only one question: what would he say?


_*#650*_


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 11, 2021)

HOME


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## noisebloom (Aug 11, 2021)

*Visitors (CW/TW: Blood, Death)*


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## JBF (Aug 14, 2021)

We doing trigger warnings?  I'll throw on, anyway.  Violence and threats thereof.  The usual stuff from this quarter.  

*The Witching Hour*


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## SueC (Aug 14, 2021)

*The Minimalist's House*


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 14, 2021)

Moonbeats


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## VRanger (Aug 15, 2021)

*A Glow*

(649, and not eligible for securing a place)

Last night marked the third time I paused across from Mrs. Kaminski’s house. I knew Mrs. Kaminski well. I’ve worked for the country store at the crossroads since I was eleven, and I biked groceries out to deliver. She always handed me a tip, and I felt guilty because I didn’t think she could afford it after her husband died, but I didn’t know how to refuse gracefully. I tried once, but she smiled and wrapped my fingers around the four bits.

She’d always smile then. Otherwise, I seldom saw her smile.

There was just enough drizzle last night for me to wear my rain slicker. I had a fifteen-minute ride from the store to our house, but nights like this took longer. The mist gave the streetlight an extra glow, but its light didn’t reach as far. The city finally fixed it. It had been out two years. With the house empty since a year before that, I guess it didn’t rate high.

The house stayed empty once Mrs. Kaminski passed away. I found her. Mr. Jordan, he owns the store, called me to the counter one morning.

“Jimmy, Mrs. Kaminski hasn’t called her order in this week. Go check on her?”

Her kitchen door faced the road. I knocked … no answer. I tried the knob, found it unlocked, opened it a crack. I called. No answer, so I crept in. I was nervous, but I was worried. I found Mrs. Kaminski in bed. Her hands were cold, so I called the police and waited. They took down what I knew and told me I should leave.

Back of Mrs. Kaminski’s house is an open pasture to the west, and woods east. As kids we played in those woods every summer. I think our tree fort still waits for us to come back. We loved that place, and it wasn’t rare for us to stay out late and get in trouble. But we never saw anything like this.

There was a glow at the edge of the woods. This was the third time I’d seen it this week.  It didn’t belong, and I didn’t know why I decided to watch longer last night, in the rain. I didn't pause long the first two times—laughed imagining a will-o’-the-wisp. Last night I got scared, I admit. I knew there was nothing back there to reflect the street light.

I crossed the bar with my right leg and walked the bike over to the sidewalk.

“Hey! Someone back there?”

The light went out.

“Look. Don’t be afraid. I’m not the cops or nothin’. I just wanta know who’s back there.”

I leaned my bike against the grassy slope, took out my flashlight, jogged forward a few steps, and turned it on the spot I remembered. An old man huddled there, with a rain slicker much like mine propped up with a stick as a makeshift tent. He held a flashlight and a book.

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be no trouble.”

“Got no place to stay?”

“Not for a long time, son. I get by.”

I thought of Mrs. Kaminski’s house right behind me, empty more than three years, abandoned, and untouched by a man who’d sleep in the rain.

“You need a job?”

“Not much work around. I tried.”

“There’s a store a mile back. I work there, and Mr. Jordan just lost a stock clerk. You could talk to him tomorrow.”

His face brightened. “No kiddin’?”

“No kiddin’. And come on out of the woods. No one lives in this house, and I think the lady who did would be happy to save a man from sleeping in the rain.”

I had a few groceries for home in my basket, so I handed him a loaf of bread and a block of cheese. He looked grateful enough to choke me up.

This morning, he got the job.


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## Sinister (Aug 15, 2021)

Finally Home

-Sin


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## Ibb (Aug 15, 2021)

*Keeping It Real Estate (649 Ways to Fail Your Real Estate Exam) (Language)*

I’ve been a real estate agent now for about five whole minutes, I’m standing there with my license and wiggling it at different angles in the sunlight making sure it’s real when a breathless octogenarian with a clubbed foot and notable limp and bits of spittle dangling off his lower chin ambles upwards and asks, “You an agent?”

*

Now naturally I can’t believe my luck, as besides the nits grits and tits of real estate Law and Ethics and etc. there’s the practical side of things, the_ salesmanship_ side of things, yet the prospect of fishermaning for clients via blitzkrieg snail mail stratagems and vomiting tepid hohum dingaling dingdong shit across social media fills me with such soul diminishing gusts of grief that I exhale a sudden and solemn puppy yap, my right hand clutching my left titty, and thus I go, propulsively southward, my head nearly colliding with the pavement until I recall the positivity and optimism with which this sentence began, whereafter I immediately careen into an erectile posture, rightening myself, coughing sagaciously, tempering the mood with judicious nods of the head.

“Yes,” I say, and wiggle my sun-winking new license for his benefit. “How may I help you?”

*

So we get to the house and it’s dark as shit out, _unnaturally_ dark, like what the fuck even happened?, but being that I’m a professional and newly minted and etc. I keep my trap shut, I play it cool, and now it’s suddenly fucking _cold _and I’m rubbing my arms and watching the back of the old guy’s neck and he hasn’t a goddamned speck of gooseflesh on him, not even a shiver, and I start to say, “Hey… Wasn’t it just light out―?”

But he ignores me, his limp is gone, he’s pushing through the front door to give me the lookabout and the entire goddamned thing is darker infuckingside than it was _out_side, I can’t see_ shit_, and newly minted or not I have my limits, I can’t feel my _scrotum,_ and I’m just about to hottail it out of there when the octogenarian turns around and reveals he isn’t an octogenarian at all (“Ha-ha!”) but a newly minted warlock of all about five minutes, a PraCTitOnEr of tHe dArK Arts (sic.), thereupon snapping his fingers and illuminating the room in flickering swaths of viridescent light, and surrounding my feet’s a sigil (“You’re trapped!”), and now I can’t fucking _move_, and thereafter the floorboards start to rumble, the warlock to cackle, the windowpanes to rattle―and does that walling need spackle?

*  

Now for a suddenly unveiled Evil Spirit he/she/it/uh?/they/xem is rather curt, saying little and letting the warlock do most of the talking, which so far as I understand it involves trading _my_ ass for _his_ unlimited power. _The vessel, my liege,_ and that’s that, the Spirit starts to shimmer and blossom, but I’m not so newly minted that I can’t sniff out a bad deal when I see one, and I scream, “Five percent!” and the Spirit/Warlock both: “Huh?” and again I say―

“Five percent! I’ll only charge_ five_ percent!”

Mr. Wizard: “Of what―?”

“Of limited power.”

And this, naturally, gets the Evil Spirit to thinking.

Mr. Asshole: “Silence, _peasant! _Do not think you can _swindle―_”

But in the next instant he’s a ball of histrionic screaming, shriveling, contorting, the life juices flowing vampirically out of him and―whodathunkit―directly into me, infusing my brainspace with all the requisite knowledge of the Dark Arts as subsumed into the ethically bound and explicitly implied contract of representation in the transaction of real estate.

* 

And that’s the story, people love it, now if you’ll just watch your step, and stand right… _There,_ perfect, and yes I apologize for the A/C, we’re getting that fixed, I promise, as soon as I turn this light on, you’ll know―this house?

It’s been waiting for you.


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## Megan Pearson (Aug 15, 2021)

Summer's Eve


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 16, 2021)

A Voice in the Dark
650 words, language (blanked out)

Along the fog-corridor of a gray suburban street, a knight in armor walked alone. Chain mail glittered, draped in a blood-red tunic, and a longsword hung at his side. A great helm, with a makeshift visor attached at the eyeholes, covered his face. The power station at the street's end hummed, wind turbines turning and turning.

A street lamp flickered above him. He jerked, hand to his sword; the light went out. The street fell slow to blackness as lamp after lamp sputtered and died.

He made out a lank figure flitting through the night, and stepped out, knowing they'd hear the clank of his armor. The figure turned.

"Well, what have we here?" came a familiar voice. "Is it a lost time traveler? Or maybe it's Don Quixote returning for a final round of glory."

Noah tapped his hand pad, and pink-LED words flashed on his visor. <Michael> <?>

"Oh, I know who it is," Michael said in mock realization. "It's just the r------ed kid from Ceramics 1001 who runs around in a Halloween costume because he likes to think he's a hero."

<You caused this>

"Me? No, I just normally wander around outside during power outages."

Noah's hand hovered over his sword. <?>

"That's sarcasm, if you can't tell--and you can forget the sword. Too late now--it's already changing at the source--windmills turning churning out Things even Merlin would've called nightmares."

<This is senseless>

"The artist's soul is a harbor," Michael quoted. "Material shipments, from this pale world we call reality, come in, and are exchanged for new cargoes, things touched and bent by dark places beyond, which are called distorted by those with mortal eyes." He laughed. "You wouldn't understand. You're not an artist--you're a copyist. You've only ever imitated your betters."

<I'm a student> <Learning>

The lamp burst above him, black tentacles oozing out. "You know, some people overcome their silence through their art--they find a voice." Light after light exploded, and the sound of slithering tentacles filled the street. "But you've always been silent. And now everything changes without you, and you can't do a thing about it."

<This> Noah drew his sword. <is the sound of my voice>

"Very well," Michael snarled.

He raised an arm. Tentacles shot forward; Noah cut through them with a swift stroke.

Then he darted down the street, toward the power station.

"Don't even try." Michael flew after him. "Nothing's stopping that."

The station glittered darkly, wriggling and pulsing. The big electrical line, the root to which all the cords and lights and houses were joined, ran out from its center.

Noah approached the line, sword raised.

"I wouldn't do that," Michael said.

Noah cut it. It writhed like a smashed worm, ooze scattering. Tentacles, sprouting teeth-rimmed mouths, enveloped Noah, snapping, gnawing, holding fast to his armor. They jerked him to the ground. He rolled, kept hold of his sword, but they dragged him into the station, into the slime, under the eye of those churning windmills, spinning like black suns above a darkened earth.

He managed to grab hold of a metal post. His sword was knocked loose from his other hand.

There at the center of the station, where the tentacles dragged him towards, was a Thing, colossal, spider-like, mouth--for most of it was a mouth--gaping like an abyss. His sword lay inches from its edge. He held tight and prayed.

Michael came through the station. "I warned you," he said quietly. "If it can't move through the wires, it'll take what it gets." He shrugged. "Dragon eats knight. The End."

Noah let go. He rolled with the tentacles, freed his hand, snatched up his sword. Teeth scraped against his armor as he struck upwards.

It squealed, tentacles flailing, and went limp.

He breathed out. Wiped his sword on his tunic. Whispered a prayer of thanks. Turned to face a staring Michael.

<Is that loud enough for you> <?>


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 16, 2021)

I Saw a Man Who Wasn't There


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## piperofyork (Aug 29, 2021)

Ach, I'm sorry I missed this...! 

I have a quick question, though: do you ever have challenges of this sort in which the genre is predetermined for all? Or is it always up to the writers to determine the genre in which they'd like to write?


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## SueC (Aug 29, 2021)

Piper, the only thing you missed were the suggestions for the September prompt. When the votes are tallied at the end of August, the chosen prompt for September will be announced, and I hope you can participate. Sometimes we do something different. A couple of months ago, we had no prompt at all, which was a little different. Sometimes we do picture promts, but those are just from the list of prompts and the one that is chosen. I've never seen a pre-determined genre and that's one of the reasons why the LM is so much fun. No matter your personal genre interest, you can always try to bend your genre to the generic prompt. Sometimes it may take a little work to find something that fits, and other times it comes quickly. Hope you'll join us in September!
Sue


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## piperofyork (Aug 29, 2021)

Thank you, Sue! I voted for my favorite prompt and I'm looking forward to giving it a go when it is determined. But I'm bummed that I missed out on the picture prompt competition - I love the idea and the picture. Ah well! I hope there are more picture prompts in store down the road...


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