I wanted to create an imaginary situation, something different and non-plotted. Happy 25th! This is also my hundredth post of my beccaaudra blog 😀
Prompts:
junk :: captivity :: edible :: sombre :: full moon
Let’s eat from supermarket rubbish bins, you can get birthday cake unblemished from the junk. Still edible, barely out of date. We could rummage in the depths, our hands grazing huge black plastic swathes, unpeeling sandwiches from mouldy banana bunches. Their sealing is starting to mist but they are still good to eat, tuna mayonnaise, tuna and sweetcorn, ploughman’s style. There are some old candles in the back of the cupboard; we could scrap at the lighter with our thumbs and open the flame with a final stern flick. Light them and scatter them around the cake like throwing breadcrumbs to ducks. Then we could open the door of the small cupboard, allow the small being curled into the corner to unroll and pass it a paper plate. It would pick at it with its finger tips, gnarled with long smooth nails. We would laugh, and pull at each others fingers to hear the joints click. Our mouths would be heavily loaded with icing, and when we became sombre, we would shut it back away, the sweetness dying quickly. The moon would be waxing to full, and we would link hands and drink the cheap ales in heavy bottles, the tapping from the cupboard slowing to a sluggish pulse.
beccaaudra 
Really great images and juxtapositions Becca. Enjoyed your piece. Congratulations on your 100th post as well by the way!
Thanking you :D. I’m going to make myself a cake.
Really great images in this streamy kind of thing. I could picture it being read at a quick pace in some kind of beatnik coffee house. the sounds in “with a final stern flick.” are great..
congrats on the 100th post as well/
Cheers Craig, I hoped the images would appeal. Lets go Amsterdam.
Congratulations on 100 posts — it’s an accomplishment when one sustains their writing.
The “we” here reminds me of a group of Dickensian slummers, the way they are reveling and rummaging in filth; the way their danger is implied in the way they drink on merrily, ignoring the sound from the cupboard.
Who do they have in there? 🙂
Thanks Anthony, I like the idea of it being Dickensian! I kind of wanted it to be the imaginary figure of age. Like we’ve locked age in a cupboard and it is rattling the door, you only let it out to eat birthday cake. Yep.
I like this. I like the way the word “would” is repeated at the end it emphasises that all of this is based on what would happen if they went rummaging in supermarket bins and what that could offer them. the imagery works reallt well to evoke atmosphere and setiing and character.
Thank you hun, I’m glad you got that emotion from the would, as yeah it’s meant to be a kind of ghost situation. 😀 Thx for stopping by and commenting.
‘This is great, I love exploring difficult family relationships like this, particularly a mother/daughter. I think I got a bit mixed up in where/when we were at first, because you jump from the present straight into a memory, then come back out again. But when I glanced back at the start I got it I think the cookie bit feels a little pushed in – for the prompt? It might be neater if it ended on ‘No I never did’, it would amplify some feeling of regret or of the time she lives in now being totally removed from that past. Hmm. Just rambling.’ Sarah Logan
I like this a lot. I think the ‘would’ gives it a very sad atmosphere, as if it’s something they’d like to do, but they can’t or won’t. It remains an abstract.