A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End

That is the name of a book about writing (books), which was talked about at First Tuesday. Nice to be back, and doing some creative writing. I really think we need to work on our process for choosing prompts, we didn't like any of the suggested ones so we ended up with two that weren't objected to... hah. Writers.
Prompts: "Goody" and "Blur(ry)." Here's what I scrawled.

It was a dark and stormy night. Oh wait, it wasn't. On a lonesome island in the Caribbean, it was anything but "dark and stormy." A tall bearded man sat under a palm tree, thinking out loud to himself.
"Hmm, fiction, fact, or exaggerated history? I could write about the moron under the only other palm tree on the other side of the island... But I've only got this one slab of rock to carve on, and a history of his stupidities would fill an encyclopedia."
The memory came to him in a blur - the reason the 2 marooned sailors on a godforsaken strip of sand in the wopwops [Australian slang for "the middle of nowhere"] would be forever enemies.
It was a hot day, and they were arguing over whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday [it was actually Saturday] when this box had washed up on shore. It was an old worn wooden cask, with printing in bold black letters that spelled out, "GOODIES." They proceeded to argue over what language it was, because nobody would be stupid enough to just write "goodies" on a crate that would end up floating in the Caribbean. The argument raged on while they scrounged for shells to pry the box open with...

I actually like it, kinda reminds me of a Garry Larson cartoon. The one where the one guy finds a crate with an ACME Sand Blaster, and is looking sinisterly over at the other guy, who is happily building a sand castle... Anyways, this scrap of creativity interests me enough to want to extend it, maybe even make it into a story (!), what an idea. My only problem is that currently I can't decide on what exactly should be in the box. It can't be empty, I already thought about that... Well I suppose technically it could, but then I'd have to think about some other way to bring a big catastrophe about. Maybe let the little grey cells work on that one...

Rare Occurrences

Well, I seen to be having more energy today, the third day at sea; I’m finally adjusting to the watch schedule. I had a lot of energy during my watch last night, which is funny because a couple things happened that were out of the ordinary.

I actually got some prime sleep during the late afternoon, with the exception of weird dreams that left me puzzling about something I couldn’t remember. My regular watch is from 9pm to midnight. I was in the subconscious, during some weird dream, when there was a cold tapping upon my arm. It scared the heck out my subconscious self, and I awoke to find myself gasping in fright. It was my mom waking my up for my watch. Nothing can scare me when I’m sleeping, absolutely nothing. That was the beginning of an unusual evening.

We had been sailing without the motor when I had gone to bed, and I must have slept through the period in which the engine was running. I got up, brushed my teeth (that always makes me feel less groggy), and headed up into the cockpit. The hatch to the engine room was open, and I heard my dad doing something on the engine.

“Oh yeah,” my mom mentioned before going to bed, “the engine’s been overheating, and dad’s trying to figure out what’s going on.”

The GPS beeped while I looked at our speed and position: 2 knots, and about halfway from Cabo San Lucas to Puerto Vallarta. The voice came from the engine room, “Krista, are you up?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“We’ve got something plugged in the water intake, so I need you to keep us going under sail for a while.” I thought upon this while me and Julie pulled the genoa out and trimmed the sails in the 3- knot breath of wind. The engine almost never goes out. I heard a comment from below that there was a squid stuck in the through-hole. This was getting to be a weird night!

About a half-hour later, the mutant, deranged, foot-long squid having been pried out of the through-hole, dad went to bed, and I sat in the cockpit, the motor rumbling away once more.

I should have mentioned that it was an otherwise beautiful night, with the constellations blazing overhead, and about 3-5 knots of wind off the beam. Julie hung out in the galley, while I listened to music, checked the horizon, radar and GPS, enjoying the warm weather. It went on that way for a long time, and I suppose I just figured dad would come up for his watch when it was time.

I went in the galley for some water, and found Julie sacked out on the seat, and the clock reading 1am. It was the last of the rare occurrences of that night. Dad is never late for a watch; on the contrary, usually he’s a bit early. I chalked it up to the squid being caught in the through-hole, and today has been surprisingly ordinary compared to last night.