Day: June 4, 2024

The Chocolate Shoppe

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

For Fandango’s Story Starter #152

Photo A.M. Moscoso Rogers’ Chocolates Victoria BC 2017

Anna always hated chocolate, so she was surprised and a little confused to find herself standing outside of the quaint chocolate shop on the outskirts of town  just after sunset.

It was cold that night and it was going to snow. She could feel it in her bones. She could smell it.

She put her hand to the back of her neck, she licked her lips. She reached for the door and before she could pull it open she stepped back.

” What are you doing? ” she scolded herself. ” You hate chocolate. You don’t like the smell or the way it coats  your teeth. You despise the way you are forced- forced to run your tongue around your mouth and are made taste it yet again in order to get rid of it. Step away from the door. Turn around and leave! You hate chocolate!”

Anna turned away from the door. She took one step. Then she took another. She was walking now, not slinking, not running, but taking confident brisk steps away from the Chocolate shop.

Then she stopped in front of the window.

The Chocolate shop was decorated for Christmas.

There was a toy  train in the window, there were nutcrackers and angels holding candles from the tops of the shelves to the corner of the store,  and there were lines of people- tired distracted people waiting patiently for their turn at the cash registers at the counters for their free samples.

Anna stopped at the window. She pushed her face against the glass.

Her mouth was watering.

She hated chocolate- she hated chocolate with a passion.

The door swung open and shoppers with bags and boxes of chocolate stopped out of the store and some went inside

Anna closed her eyes and she allowed the smells from the shop to flood her senses.

Anna, as I have said hates chocolate.

Her tongue darted out of her mouth and she licked the cold window and then she closed her eyes and she opened them and she told herself how much she hated chocolate- she needed to leave right now

her eyes followed one shopper and then another and another-

but she was hungry.

God. She was so hungry.

 

Be My Guest

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For RDP Tuesday: Housework

Lee Morris -Worlds made in Midjourney

If I lived in a haunted house

and it was stuffed from the basement to the attic with restless spirits and wandering

ghosts, demons with an attitude and boxes of bones hidden in the walls

would I clean it?

Would I paint the rooms and hang curtains from the eyeless window frames?

Would the kitchen be cold or would it be warm? Would there be food in the

cupboards, plates and bowls and cups and saucers stacked neatly behind cabinet

doors?

Would there be meat in the freezer?

If I lived in a haunted house would I tend to the  garden?  Clean the dead leaves from

the fountain?  Would I have a dog named Champ  roaming the grounds?

Would I have a cat with no name   that watched the birds and the mice pick

away at the corpses of my long dead fruit  trees and flowers, shrubs and roses all day

long and far  into the night?

If I lived in a haunted house and I invited your over for tea or pizza or maybe a dinner
by candlelight, would you accept my invitation ? Would you pretend you never got it,
would you burn it? Shred it?
Would you dream about my invitation? Would your dream about me living in a haunted house
stuffed with bodies and bones and ghosts
and a dog named Champ and a cat with no name?
You would.
I’d bet your life on it.

Lee Morris -Worlds made in Midjourney

Magic Books

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These are three of my favorite childhood books- the blurbs are from on-line sources.

WP Daily Prompt asks if I remember them and indeed I do! They’re on my bookshelf and I’ve had them with me for over 50 years.

A friend of the Persever family, Miss Eva Penalty, agrees to house-sit and look after the three children while their father is away managing a small tin mine and their beloved housekeeper, Mrs. Coverlet, is away participating in a baking-contest. (Their mother is long-since deceased.) The children are not happy about this, especially the youngest, Theobold “The Toad” Persever, because Miss Eva is a demanding, fastidious disciplinarian who interferes in their lives and feeds them too many vegetables. However, shortly after her arrival, Miss Eva’s personality changes: she develops chronic fatigue, spends all her time in bed, and also becomes happy and indulgent. The two older children, Malcolm and Molly, learn that “the Toad” has been practicing magic on her using a recipe he obtained by answering an advertisement from the back cover of a comic book

Sandy James loses a coat button. When her friend Janet Kramer gives her a bone button shaped like a pilgrim man from her grandmother’s button bag, she finds out that the button is really a man named Silas, who has been turned into a button by a witch named Betsy.

“Come Back, Lucy” centred on a little girl named Lucy who lived with her Aunt Olive in an old Victorian house. Upon the death of her aunt and the subsequent loss of her home, Lucy is welcomed into her cousins’ house though she does not know them very well and has difficulty feeling at home. As time moves on, Lucy is visited by the ghost of a Victorian little girl who wishes for Lucy to become her friend –

and invites her to ‘join’ her in the past.