Fun Writing

Below is a series in which we narrate scenes based on poorly done museum diorama and waxworks. We aim to give the

dummies genuine motivations, pains and aspirations, affectionately.

1. "Sea Slacker"

“Sea slacker!” Lt Blanchard muttered at the sight of Dent. As Dent

swung around the mast pole and his blond hair flopped in the

gunpowdery haze, Lt Blanchard gripped, python-like, the pearl handle

of his saber. It soothed him to consider lifting that boyish head from that

useless body. Not that he would actually swing his blade (even though

they were in the thick of battle and Dent's corpse possibly somehow

could be construed as a casualty of war. True, too, that no one was at

present in the vicinity).

Round and round the pole swung the giddy Mr Dent whistling the

tedious ditty of last evening’s ‘All-Hands Get Together’; that rain had

overtaken the Captain's ill conceived fiesta was the only touch of Providence the entire voyage.

Mr Dent hadn't lifted a finger since embarking. Yet he was the most industrious idler the Lieutenant had ever known to

waste sea air. Dent rose at dawn, fresh faced and bright eyed to a new day of gallivanting the deck and uncannily appearing

over the shoulder of sweaty, sun-browned sailors with the most irksome questions on the most trivial considerations at the

most inconvenient times. Once, during a midnight gale, when the canvas was shredded and dangling by a thread, Connolly

had shimmied aloft and, in the middle of securing the line, Dent's face appeared and queried, “Are you using a rolling hitch

or a round turn and two half hitch?” (In point of fact, it was neither, but a clove hitch).

Why Dent was taken aboard as a sea cadet was anyone’s guess. Typically in such cases of sea slackers a family

connection is behind it, but that was known not to be so. He had no evident business. Why the Captain tolerated his active

and meddlesome idleness was the real mystery.

2. The Angel of the Battlefield

The woman in the white bonnet spoke. As she did her elderly voice cracked. She swallowed hard and tried to infuse her

response with some cheer, or at least, conceal her shattered nerves manifested in her quivering, faltering diction.

"Honey," she began, "I'm not a nurse. I wish I was one, but

I'm not."

"Well, can you check to see if I'm still bleedin'?"

The old woman recoiled. "I wouldn't know where to start,"

she chuckled, shrugging her bony shoulders under her

midnight cloak. Her eyes scanned the soldier. "You look

peaked, mister, God's truth, but seeing that you're talking to

me and wondering and all, well, I imagine you'll be home

telling all your stories to your mama soon enough, sure."

She looked around at the silhouettes of the stiff, jagged

corpses, the smoldering stumps and ruins and rubble of

farm and church, and the stagnant swirl of sunset going

down on the low horizon like drainage. "By the looks of

some of your fellows, I'd say you got off pretty lucky, mister, and that's a fact."

some of your fellows, I'd say you got off pretty lucky, mister, and that's a fact."

The soldier lifted himself on an elbow and winced. He made a great effort to prop his head and looked at her face full on. "If

you reckon not bein' able to feel my legs as good luck then I reckon I'm the luckiest of the lot." His eyes narrowed and he

cocked his head now. "Say, ain't you the lady they call 'The Angel of the Battlefield?"

She blushed, but there was a positive pride in it, a sort of satisfaction evidenced in a beaming that accompanied the blush.

She smoothed her skirt and fidgeted with the clasp of her cloak. "Why, yes. I am."

"I was kinda hopin' I wouldn't meet up with no angels today, begging your pardon, ma'am, if you know what I mean."

3. A Night in the Bastille

Escape? Escape to where? And dressed like that? Besides no one thought of escape. Instead their minds mulled meaner

concerns: who would get the blanket come night in the frigid cell, and where and how one was to relieve oneself when

nature called.

They sulked around in the stubble, taking turns plopped down on the hay bale that was, along with a slimy barrel in the

corner, the sole furniture in the cavernous white washed cell. A low arched ceiling bore down on them. On the narrow walls

prior captives had scratched defiant slogans or else desperate prayers. One read, "Damnation to All Crowned Heads."

de Montfort read the words, mouthing them to himself, tracing his fingers over each letter as if, in contemplating them, he

might read meaning into the absurdity of the last ten hours that had swept them thus. He dropped his shoulders and his

arms fell limp at his sides. "I should have been in Malta by now," he moaned.

AP Cadiz, Ohio, USA by Tim McKinney

arms fell limp at his sides. "I should have been in Malta by now," he moaned.

The princess, the back of her dirty yellow gown turned to him, continued to lean upon the wall and stare blankly at the cell

door, mannequin-like, cornered into a numb cocoon. Her shoulder was probably separated; but it was her disheveled hair

that would have alarmed her more were her mind alert.

Theodore alone hadn't given up. He sat on the bale of hay and invoked that very goddess of Reason that had inflamed the

hearts of their captors to grant some plausible angle he might use to persuade the magistrate for their release. An answer

was unlikely.

4. The Courting of the Cricket Sisters

What happened the night the Petersens came courting was this. All

gathered round for the dance. The boys had practiced six months to try

for the prize - the best dancer was to get the pick of our late mama's

litter. We girls were coached by custom not to betray, by smile or scowl,

our impressions, so we stood still as a doll collection while the Petersens

offered the floor to one another, each one cutting the most rigorous,

riotous caper in his turn.

Jacob Petersen, second to eldest, carried into the house, along with

some dried mud in the nooks of his boot heels, a reputation for the

highest kicks in the county. His Dionysian gyrations set a high

benchmark for the rest of his clan to the effect that, Carl, second to

youngest, conveyed his pudgy frame to the porch for a series of philosophical puffings of consolation on his clay pipe.

Father set to playing his fiddle. Soon his bow scratched out the most woeful chords, a peculiar old tune brought over from

the Druid Hills. This rare selection was doubly unusual for the mirthful eve, for it was the same eerie warp and woof of sound

that had always wet mama’s eyes. Just why father played the ghostly number to fill the room with a spectral gloom, I cannot

say. In retrospect, it was a fitting choice. For just as Paul had begun to dance (or I might say begun struggling to find a

rhythmic entrance into the unnatural cadence of the number), no sooner had he clicked his first pass, than his black fedora

was - supernaturally - yanked off his fair head and hung in the middle of the room suspended in the sight of all eyes.

It was a wonderment. Father pretended to take no notice of it, and sister Junie, next to him remained still as a statue. For my

part, I took up a walking stick and made to arrest the hat. As I did so, our poor suitor was cast violently into the air just as if

an invisible rug had been snatched from under him by some incorporeal hand.

I need hardly relay that we have not seen hide nor hair of our suitors, nor any other young townsmen from that night.

5. Humble Pie

In 1830 a second generation homesteader of the Ohio Valley served the very first ‘humble pie’,“a figurative serving of humiliation usually in the form of a forced apology or retraction.”

Though the woman’s name is unrecorded, the heinous faux pas

that launched the fourteen inch blueberry dessert is well attested. In a recapitulation of the witch-hunting

hysteria that had swept the eastern seaboard earlier, the

hysteria that had swept the eastern seaboard earlier, the woman had filedrepeated claims of local school children in visitations with the Devil. The school doors were quickly chained and the building burned to the ground. Within two weeks, the woman had realized she had mistook a simple series of ‘bad

dreams.’

The shower of stones of grieving, irate parents pelting her tin roof suggested to her mind the neighborly pie and she presented the dish, complete with vanilla ice cream, ironically left over in the reserves of the schoolhouse ice chest.

Though the parents readily gobbled up her delicious apology, scholars continue to question the sincerity of the woman’s contrition.

6. The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks

"The reason you Southern men will not release your slaves is simply because you like to have hanky panky with the females." The senate burst into laughter and Senator Charles Sumner, in a shower of paper airplanes and confetti, gathered the leaves of his speech from the podium and headed back to his seat, grinning widely, winking and glad handing his colleagues.He glanced at his pocket watch and peered out at the gathering clouds that threatened his larger concern of the day, his attendance at the Potomac Picnic Charity promised his wife. He sighed. Behind him, the good senator from Tennessee was overheard to say, "That fool is going to get his head smashed in by some other fool."

Preston Brooks stood before Senator Sumner's desk wearing a confederate greatcoat, a neat cravat and wielding a heavy blackthorn cane. "Sir, I have made certain of your remarks, and I mean to do you bodily harm." So resolute was the demeanor of Brooks, from the constancy of his glare and his firm jaw, to his firmly gripped, raised stick and the dilation of ashen faced onlookers in an instant ring around the men, that Sumner dropped to his hands and knees and crawled under his desk. He took the first blow on his back.Brooks grabbed the coward by the ankles and yanked him back into open field. The cane pounded on the man's skull and pulverized his torso. No one on either side of the aisle tried to intervene.When Brooks returned home that evening he kissed his wife on the forehead and raised his left arm over his head gingerly, lowered it slowly then repeated the motion. "I think I pulled a neck muscle or something," he said. "Could you reach up on the mantle for me and get my matches? I'm gonna need an extra special massage tonight. Them crazy girls back from the fields yet?"