The Gonk

The following was a quickie written for the yahoo group Lucid Lit Lines

The prompt was: Take three songs titles and use them in one piece.

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Friday night, they were all at The Gonk as they always were. Not because it was a particularly great place to be, but because it was the only place they had in town to go.

"So, what the hell is a Gonk anyway? It sounds dirty. Or stupid. Dirty and stupid, like boys. Boys are stupid."

Preston rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored the jab.

"Cassie, I think you've had enough to drink. Here, here, hold on to this for me okay?"

Devin propped her friend up against the nearest stable object, which turned out to be a pinball machine. The machine blinked and whirred and gonged, and Cassie lay her head against the side of it, closing her eyes.

"That was a song, right?" Brittany asked. She blew a huge pink bubble, then popped it in a series of snaps and cracks that Devin had never manged to accomplish. "Like, you know, at the end of that one movie with the zombies. It was creepy fun-house music, like.
Carnival music you know?"

Preston reached over and yanked on Brittany's blond ponytail.

"No," he said. "We DON'T know. Nobody ever knows, LIKE, anything you're talking about."

"Guys," Cassie moaned from her spot against the pinball machine. I don't feel so good."

"RED LIGHT INDICATES THE DOORS ARE SECURED!" the machine proclaimed as
Preston dropped in his quarter and stared banging the paddles.

"You remember that thing that looked like a walking trash can in the Star Wars movie? THAT is a gonk. A gonk droid."

"So," Devin said, "They named this place after a walking trash can?"

"Eww...." Brittany offered, before rattling off another round of bubble pops.

"Preston," Cassie said from a little lower down the side of the pin-ball machine "I think you are a Gonk. No, Pres, really, you are THE gonk!"

Someone came up to them, stepping between Cassie, now on the floor, and Brittany, who had another huge bubble blown covering the lower half of her face. His hair was slicked back, and looked wet. His face was plastered with a huge grin more suited for a car salesman as
he approaced Brittany.

"I bet you look good on the dance floor," he said.

"Guys," Cassie said, before bending forward and letting out a stream pizza colored spew all over the pseudo salesman's shoes.

His smile melted quickly, Brittany's bubble popped in one loud bang instead of a million tiny ones. Devin squealed and leaped backwards, managing to avoid the splash zone.

"Scummy," Cassie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

--

Song titles in this piece:

The Gonk (from old dawn of the dead soundtrack end title) no lyics
Red Light Indicates the doors are secured by the artic monkeys
Lyrics:http://snipurl.com/5qead
I Bet You Look Good On the Dance Floor by the artic monkeys lyrics:
http://snipurl.com/5qebf [www_lyricstop_com]
Scummy by the Artic Monkeys lyrics: http://snipurl.com/5qe9j

I might be a NaNoWriMo dropout

So, my NaNoWriMo novel decided it didn't want to be a teen drama story but wanted to be more about betrayl and murder.

I'm cool with that.

But I've had NO time to write it. I've got a word count right now of 3022. Thats all.

All my free time has been filled up by the list of house painting related chores the hubby has been leaving me.

If I do still keep plugging on, I doubt I'm going to make it anywhere near the word count.

NaNo Day 1

I'm off to a slow start, thinking about skipping ahead and working on some future chapters, but the story as it stands right now is at 904 words.

Chapter One
Halloween and Swing sets

Fall. Autumn. Halloween. Pumpkins carved into jack o lanterns, and leaves raked up into big piles to be jumped. Later they would go trick or treating. After that they were going to build a bon-fire and roast hot dogs and make s’mores.

Halloween was her favorite holiday, because she got to be whoever she felt like being. Sometimes they would get to go home for her to change costumes.

Bryant did not like having to go home though, so they might not get to do it anymore. He said that having to go home for a costume change took away from candy getting time and that just was not acceptable.

All that was later though. Right then she was trying to get a kitten to quit wiggling so she could dress it up in her doll’s witch costume.

She was also watching the movers take things out of the big truck across the street.

Ms. Callabra used to live over there.

Ms. Callabra had a small white dog that barked a lot. The dogs name was Muffy, and Ms. Callabra boiled chicken to feed her. The house always smelled like boiled chicken, and Muffy was always barking.

Sari had not liked Muffy very much, but she had like Ms. Callabra. She was a little woman who always wore a blue dress and had a lot of big hats. Sometimes she would go over and play dress up with Ms. Callabra’s big hats. Her favorite one was blue, like Ms. Callabra’s favorite dress, and it had a big purple bird on the front of it, with big purple feathers on the back of it. It looked that the birds tail was poking out of the back of the hat, and it always made her smile when Ms. Callabra wore that one.

But one day the ambulance had come and taken Ms. Callabra away. Mommy had told her that Ms. Callabra had been taking Muffy outside, and had fallen down the steps.

Sari had fallen down the steps before, and it had just skinned her knees. Mommy had put a scooby doo band-aid on the scrapes and it had been all better. She offered to take Ms. Callabra one of her band-aids.

Ms. Callabra had never come home. The dog pound had come and taken Muffy away, and the house selling people had come and put a big sign in front of the house.

FOR SALE, meant that Ms. Callabra was not going to be coming home again and that had made her sad for a little while.

Eventually the house selling people had come and taken away the sign, and now the big truck was there, moving different things into the house that used to be Ms. Callabra’s house.

Sari was very interested in the things coming out of the truck. Most of them were boxes of stuff, so she could not really tell what they were. There was some furniture too, some of it looked fun. Not like Ms. Callabra’s old brown sofa.

She was looking for things that might mean the family moving in had a kid. She hoped the new neighbors did have a kid. A little girl, her age.

She did not really see anything that would mean a kid though. Just brown boxes and furniture.

She finally got the witch dress buttoned up the kittens back, and the witch hat on its head, the elastic strap keeping it in place.

“There,” she said, sitting the kitten down. “Now you are a little witch. You have to go knock on all the cats doors tonight and say, ‘trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.’ If you do that then all the kitty people will give you candy.”

Sari tilted her head to the side, her short brown hair falling over into her face and her forehead wrinkled in furious childhood concentration as she thought.

“No,” she told the kitten. “That is not right. Kittens do not get candy because it might make you sick. They will give you mouse tails. You like mouse tails right?”

“MEOW!” The kitten said, then it ran a few steps and shook its head. The witches had twisted sideways, pressing the kittens ear flat to the side and making it look very, very funny.

Sari laughed as the kitten ran away, its black tail waving in distress from the back of the dolly witches dress.

Then the most amazing thing that had happened all day happened right at that moment.

The men who were taking things out of the big truck took out something that meant one hundred percent that there was a kid moving in next door. They brought out a swing set!

Sari had learned a few things in her life, and she knew that grown ups just never did get on swing sets. Even Bryant almost never got on the swing set any more, and he was only just almost grown up.

She loved her swing set. Daddy had built it for her, and it was HUGE. It had a metal slide, and a tree house, and swings and monkey bars. It was the best swing set ever.

She used to have one like the one coming out of the truck next door though. It was all metal, and the side was plastic, and if you swung too high it would tip and tip and even fall over.