Comments | viking_cat: 100 words: ritual

viking_cat

100 words: ritual

Feb 02, 2009 10:54

Ritual is a crucial part of life that not enough modern people consider. Rituals can be as simple as the annual pilgrimage home for Thanksgiving, or as complex as an obsessive-compulsive counting of floorboards before leaving a room. Or, you know, that traditional thing with the knife and the cultists and the creepy chanting ( Read more... )

100 words

Comments 7

pstorminator February 2 2009, 17:56:46 UTC

Mondays… always the Mondays… The developers are running out of things to code. Once a week, book the conference room, gather the experts, ride herd on twenty seven thousand good ideas until we can scrape up enough concrete requirements to chain the coders to their desks once again… document changes, rewrite the schedule, clarify, clarify, clarify, redirect, reexamine, reimagine, report to the boss… what? It’s Friday already?

pstorminator February 2 2009, 17:57:17 UTC

Sigh. Off to a meeting...

PS

Lost jydog1 February 3 2009, 17:57:36 UTC

Sometimes he picked out her clothes, sometimes his wife did. Underpants first, then a t-shirt with some sort of Disney character on it. Jeans next, then socks - she always liked them to be mismatched, for some reason. Red with gray, black with white. It was winter now, so a sweatshirt as well.

He placed them on the bed, as he'd done countless times before. Her comforter was getting a little dusty, but with this snow they wouldn't visit the cemetery today so he could take care of it later. He put yesterday's unworn clothes in the hamper and closed the door.

Re: Lost viking_cat February 4 2009, 22:49:06 UTC

That's heartbreaking.

Re: Lost jydog1 February 5 2009, 13:53:05 UTC

it's one of my worst nightmares. These exercises take me to some very dark places in the recesses of my mind, it seems.

Placing Blame viking_cat February 9 2009, 13:11:06 UTC

The stuffed animals line up facing the door, with Gregory Bear to the right. It’s important they be in order. The nightlight should be on, the door shut, and I always say the rhyme before sleep.

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little old for that?” asked Mommy last night as she kissed me. No, I thought, but let her put the animals away. I lay awake for a long while wondering if I should put them back, and fell asleep still wondering.

This morning I woke to the sound of Daddy crying, my closet door open half an inch.

Re: Placing Blame viking_cat February 9 2009, 14:07:33 UTC

So, this clearly said "closet monster" to me. Then I reread it, and it seemed more opaque. Opinions?