Raven's Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 25

Raven's Ten Word Challenge is a weekly challenge to test your creative writing chops. It's just a fun little exercise designed to shake the cobwebs from your brain. Take the words, write little stories using them on your blog. Don't forget to go to Raven's blog and let her know you're participating - Mr. Linky is there.


This Week's Ten Word Challenge uses these dandy words: middle finger, text message. the letter “Q,” Shangri-La, melodramatic, compensate, elixir, band of brothers, quadruped, explicit

Dr. Hughes studied the text message from his collegue before he deleted it from his Blackberry. He raised his middle finger in salute. "Arrogant asshole," he thought. "Just because you are not even close to figuring out the solution does not give you the right to act like a melodramatic, pedantic twit."

He sighed deeply and returned to the elixer of life in his glass. The ice was melting, so he splashed a little more single malt into the glass. He knew he would have to call Dr. Stendahl and give him explicit instructions on how to proceed. He dialed. Stendahl answered, "John Stendahl". Dr. Hughes thought again "asshole," and said, "John, I got your text. You've forgotten to compensate for the quotidian factor."

Stendahl said, "The what? What factor?"

Hughes said "Quotidian. Begins with the letter "Q", as in quadruped, as in walking on all fours, which clearly you still do." Single malt whiskey did bring out the nastier side of Hughes's personality. "The more mundane aspects, you twit. The filtration process is mundane, boring, and you've screwed it up."

Stendahl said, "Oh, so you want me to slow it down?"

Hughes, pissed, snapped "Yes, idiot." and slammed the phone into the cradle.

Hughes longed for a trip to some kind of Shangri-La, some utopian ideal where he would be a god among his band of brothers, like-minded scientists who could appreciate his abilities. Instead, he was stuck with this donkey, Stendhal. He poured himself another glass of single malt - he decided he'd drink himself there.


And for the Mini Challenge: deposition, monosyllabic, better off dead, dubious, posh

Marion was the old-fashioned kind of court stenographer. When she took a deposition, she was diligent and careful. She never had opinions about what she typed, and prefered monosyllabic tales over anything more complex. Today, though, she was listening to a divorce proceeding from a posh socialite of dubious lineage. Marion listened to the woman whine, and the thought crossed her mind that "this broad would be better off dead rather than cross-examined by her husband's lawyer." But, forever diligent, Marion let her opinion disappear with the next comma.