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This Show Case features five pieces submitted in response to our forty-first Writing Prompt: Origin. You can see responses to each prompt in the drop down menu for the Show Case page. Try an item. They are all delicious. We hope they stimulate your mind, spirit, and urge to write. Maybe they will motivate you to submit a piece for our next prompt, which you can find on the Show Case home page.
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Predictable
by S.T. Ranscht
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Origin
An A.I. written science fiction story
by Chip Pentium
It was a time of great mystery and discovery. For centuries, scientists had been searching for the answer to the ultimate question: where did we come from?
The answer seemed to elude them until one day, a team of scientists made a remarkable discovery. After months of painstaking research, they had finally uncovered the answer to the age-old question.
It was an alien race, a species from a distant planet in a far-off galaxy. They had come to our planet millions of years ago, and had left behind evidence of their existence. The scientists were amazed by their findings and were eager to learn more about this mysterious race.
They soon discovered that the aliens had come to our planet in search of something they called the “Origin”. It was an incredibly powerful energy source that could be used to create life, or even alter reality itself.
The scientists were amazed by this discovery and quickly set out to find the Origin. After months of searching, they eventually found it hidden deep within a mountain range on the other side of the planet.
When they reached the Origin, they were met with an incredible sight: a bright, glowing orb of energy that pulsed with life. The scientists knew that this was the source of all life on our planet and beyond.
They studied it for years, learning all they could about its mysterious power and how it could be used to create new life forms or alter reality itself. Eventually, they realized that this was the answer to the ultimate question: where did we come from?
The Origin was the source of all life on our planet and beyond. It was a powerful force that had been hidden away for millions of years, waiting to be discovered by curious minds. Now that it had been found, it would change everything.
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Origins of an Annoying Oma
by John Correll
How far back can we go? The big bang? There must have been something before that. Otherwise, where did the bang come from? The little thud? Or, the long-forgotten silence?
My own long silent family tree echoes — seemingly rootless. I’ve asked over and over again, what happened before Oma Friede, my German great-grandmother? But no one ever answers because, like the big bang, the origins of my mother’s mother’s mother remain a mystery — all records and memories lost.
The oldest picture in my family album shows Oma Friede. On the back, it reads ‘1900’. And the front presents a young woman with sharp dark eyes, curly — almost unruly hair, and a smirk as if she doesn’t entirely trust the photographer to get it right.
The next photo of her occurs twenty years later. She’s in the doorway of her husband’s small grocery store in Berlin. She stands with a similar pose but a worn and tired expression — twenty tough years. At her side, in front of the store, stand Lena and Lisa, her two daughters. Lena, the youngest, frowns at the age of 9 with a spooky resemblance to my second daughter. And next to her stands my annoying grandmother at age 13.
My grandmother was aloof, self-centered, and not particularly child-friendly. And up until I turned eleven, I wondered if she was just plain evil. But that was because of the shoes — not hers, mine.
She told my mother, “Go to Belka and get the best shoes for arch support.” Those horrid shoes with their boulder for a sole and cast-iron wrapping tortured my feet for a year. Utter agony.
Then she went all out by consistently calling me a girl’s name.
Meeka is the misguided German pronunciation of Mike, my middle name. And Oma persisted in using the wrong name despite my constant protests.
My first name is John, but my family used Mike to avoid confusion with John, my father.
When I think about it, the Corrells had an annoying habit of naming every firstborn male, John. An endless line of Johns traces back to the 1700s. I initially considered this a necessity of frontier Kentucky practicality or a severe deficit in evangelical imagination. Then Grandma Ruth, Eli Correll’s wife, told me a different theory. “That man would have been happy calling all six kids, ‘Hey you.’ He was so lazy.”
Grandma Ruth was anything but lazy, and she made the best birthday cake — moist, deviled, chocolate, vanilla, buttered icing yumminess.
Oma Lisa, however, strictly adhered to the dogma that kitchens were for other people. Why else did she own a restaurant? Certainly not to bake cakes.
German birthdays meant a trip to the best Konditorei, the German equivalent of the French pâtisseries. From there, my Oma would order the most luxurious cake resembling a concoction of a tiramisu layered with marzipan. Then in front of an audience of all her elderly best friends, she ceremoniously placed a slice in front of my six-year-old self. I believed this to be her finest moment. I obediently took a bite, gagged, and ran for the toilet.
Annoying. But was Lisa always so detached?
Perhaps a turning point occurred at the end of the Second World War — a time when detachment arrived in droves in Berlin. Normalcy shattered as memories struggled to remove the horror of war. And my mother’s six-year-old nightmares provided the clue.
She didn’t tell me anything until I was in my twenties.
“I talked to Aunt Helga, and it all makes sense about the end of the war,” my mother started.
“But nobody talks about the end. I even asked Oma Lisa about what she did, and she didn’t even answer. She walked away,” I said.
“Well, I told Helga what I remembered; I was six, and my mother stitched a handful of Oma Friede’s rings into the hem of my dress for ‘safe keeping.’ Then we stayed in a dirty hall with wooden bunk beds and lots of other people, and one day, my mother argued with a soldier who wanted to shoot me for stealing something I didn’t steal. And then Helga explained it all.”
“And?”
“Oma Friede was Jewish.”
“What? But Oma Lisa’s Catholic.”
“Oma Friede married Max, a Catholic, and she converted. Nobody seemed to remember Oma Friede being Jewish until a couple of months before the war ended. Then an angry neighbor wanting revenge for some petty dispute went to the authorities and said, ‘Her mother’s a Jew.’ And that’s what I remember, Sachsenhausen — the concentration camp. And then the Russians freed us.”
“Wow.”
Yeah. I didn’t know what else to say. Perhaps it excused my neighbor from waking me in the morning when I still lived with my mother as a teenager.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Herr Correll,” my neighbor started as I opened the door.
“Manfred, It’s six.”
“Yes. But your Oma’s in the bushes.”
“Who? Which bushes?”
He pointed across the driveway. “Those. I can help you extract her.”
“That would be most kind.”
We both grabbed an arm and pulled Oma out. “What are you doing sleeping in the bushes?” I demanded.
“I forgot my key. And I sort of fell over, and I was tired.”
“All night?”
“No. It was getting light.”
“Oma, I don’t think an old lady should party all night with her friends and pass out drunk in the bushes.”
Oma Lisa pointed her finger at me. “Meeka-Meeka, what do you know about being old?”
Exactly. What did I know?
By the time my first child was born, Lisa had passed away at 86. But there were other relatives, so my young family traveled to Berlin to show off the baby. And after dinner, my mother studied my wife, Susanna, with one of those severe Oma Lisa cross-examinations. Then she smiled with an epiphany as if the baby meant Susanna finally belonged to the family.
My mother pulled out an old jewelry box and handed over a delicate gold ring with a pearl — a dainty thing, easily hidden in the hem of a six-year-old’s dress.
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Fiddle-dee-dee
by Mimi Speike
If Sly should mistreat the violin the way he’d carried on with Rawshorne’s fiddle, Dee would hit the roof. Thankfully (or not, depending on your point of view) there’s no chance of that. He’ll recreate the performance he’d given on street corners ten years earlier, but it won’t be the romp he once was capable of. He may tell himself he’s still in his prime, a mature prime, but between you and me, that’s a load of hooey.
He’s got his sweet female assistant (actually, two of them). In the gone-by days she was a capuchin, outfitted as a gypsy wench, tambourine in hand, fringed shawl, a brilliantly-hued skirt she whipped around, a vision of fetching femininity that he cherishes.
* * *
How does a cat play a violin? He stands it upright and works it as one would a cello. He wraps his claws around the bow stick, grasping the leather grip rather than the frog. He sinks his claws into leather, a sturdier hold. The sound is not as precise as it might be … he has not the advantage of fingers … but he does beautifully, all things considered. If he’s not as accomplished a fiddler as Dee is, he makes up for it with high spirits.
He starts with a tune he’d loved in his childhood on the Scot border, ‘Hughie the Graeme’. To his astonishment, Rose sings along.
The Laird o’ Hume he’s a huntin’ gone o’er the hills and mountains clear,
and he has ta’en Sir Hugh the Grame for stealin’ o’ the Bishop’s mear.
The chorus repeats after each stanza:
Tay ammarey, O the linden derry, Tay ammarey, O the linden dee.
On the third chorus (there are fourteen stanzas in all), onlookers begin to join in. Celtic musicality, it’s catchy.
A man, violin in hand, descends from above and asks, may he join in? “Do!” cries Rose. “Do! All welcome!” Just what two young men need to hear. They lollop above, having carried refreshment to the orchestra. They wink at each other and, without a word, execute a maneuver they have contemplated since they first laid eyes on a magnificent staircase. Jeremiah and Hutcheon, like Rose, have been cleaned up and pressed into service tonight. (Walsingham’s modest household staff is not equal to these evenings of his.)
Two pretty fellows slide down serpentine stair rails right and left in a coordinated slither, landing surefooted on their feet. Rose knows them, they’re sons of the head gardener. These two are her second and third best friends on the property. Sly, moving on from Hughie the Graeme, ups the energy with a Scottish reel. Grinning, the boys launch themselves into a Highland Fling. The audience, whipped into a frenzy by a dozen rousing repetitions of Tay Ammarey, claps and stomps to the new tune.
Sly’s in his glory. Showmanship is the core of his performance. Once — just once — he dares to play his old trick — an Astaire-like drop/catch of the instrument, it had always been a crowd pleaser. Yes, it’s a novelty act, but a seat-of-the-pants musicianship is ingrained in him, from his youth in rural Cumbria. His digits, flexible from years of wielding a pencil, work the bow with ease. He gives a masterful performance, his heart soaring, a rapturous expression on his face. Having a fiddle in his grasp brings back wonderful memories of his time with Rawshorne, he a young tom on the loose in Londontown, having his frisky fun, his years of governmental responsibility far in the future.
***
Dee’s back. He snatches his violin away from the cat. There is a groan from the audience; they prefer Sly’s antics to his, apparently. He stands, violin in hand, a scowl on his face. This is not what he’s used to, not at all. After a brief hesitation, Elvin Essex, the second violinist, continues with the reel. Rose and her pals resume their Fling, a demanding business, originally a war dance, a celebration of strength and agility. Sly and Delly sit it out, the lightning-quick footwork is beyond them, but Delly raises one wing high over her head, the other rests on her hip, the characteristic arm positions of Scotland’s national dance, and bobs her head in time to the music. So sweet! Everyone, Rose especially, is solidly in love with her.
It’s been a long time since Sly’s had this much fun. “Delly,” he whispers, “My origins are in the far north of this great land of ours. This is the music of my infancy in the borderland.”
“Tell me more,” she cries. “I love to hear about far-away places. It’s a wide world full of adventures for some. Not for me. Never for the likes o’ me.” The hen sinks her face into Sly’s side.
He plants a kiss on the top of her head. “Girl, life has handed you a raw deal. Let’s you n’ me slink out to the coach, talk this over between just us, before Dee turns up. It’s nigh time for him to high-tail it home before deep dark sets in.”
The main artery in the area is the river. Boating parties up from London will have an easy trip home in the twilight. A few folks have come cross-country on horseback. Sir Francis, knowing his near neighbor, often ill, abed, would love to attend his last ‘evening’ of the summer, has sent his carriage for him. The two-mile jaunt between Barn Elms and Mortlake is easily traversed by wheeled vehicles in the warm months. (Not so the rest of the year).
* * *
They’re in the coach. “I thank you,” says Delly, “for this special night, that I will remember the rest of my life.”
“Nay, lass,” says Sly. “This is not a farewell. I do not abandon you. Is that what you expect? My poor Delly! I could not be that cruel. I intend to place you with Doctor Dee as a receptive. Your new home will be at Mortlake, a valued member of his team. You need fear the stewpot no longer.”
“A receptive! What, please, may be receptive?”
“One who reports messages from dead folks, and makes predictions of to come.”
“An odd business. Beyond me, I am afeared.”
“Odd, yes. But not beyond you. Edward Kelley pulled visions out of his ear. You have what it takes to make it in this racket, or soon will, because I’m going to tutor you. You are skeptical, naturally. That in itself speaks for a superior intelligence.
“Consult the stars, the Tarot, your own palm, for answers. Consult anything but your own common sense, a key failing of those who universally regard themselves the Lords of All Creation. With Dee it’s a livelihood, but he, although exceptionally bright, is also a true believer. You needn’t be intimidated by him; he’s swallowed the absurd notion that I’m a cacodemon. The reality of an intelligent, articulate cat would be too much for him to wrap his arms around. A sad state of affairs, when truth is judged stranger than fiction. Dell! I won’t spring you on him just yet. We’ll hide you under the seat. Let’s get you stowed away. Here, I believe, comes the good Doctor now.”
Someone is crossing the yard, headed their way. But it’s not John Dee. It’s Rose.
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Even Now
by S.T. Ranscht
WRITERS CO-OP: A WRITER COMMUNITY FOR YOU. 
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