Autumn Color, Southern Style (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday.

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Words for Wednesday

This month, Cindi is hosting Words for Wednesday, in which two groups of 6 words are provided, and you are challenged to write a story for each set, or one story incorporating them all.  

Last week, i did not have the time because of work to get a story written, so i have two weeks worth of prompts and two parts of the story this week.

The list of prompt words and my story follows:    

October 17 words:

1. Clown

2. Tunnels

3. Children

4. Nightmares

5. Water

6. Friends

and/or

1. Visions

2. Red

3. Courage

4. Asthma

5. Recurrence

6. Hide

VISIONS of what the house once was and would be again when she got finished with it helped drive out the NIGHTMARES Alice sometimes had.  The bad dreams involved CHILDREN being chased through TUNNELS by a CLOWN.  They would eventually be cornered by a stagnant pool of RED WATER, and she would awaken realizing she was one of those being chased.  She also would realize, when she awoke, that under the make-up the one doing the chasing was one of her relatives.

At every RECURRENCE of the dream, she would get right out of bed and go get out the plans for the house, poring over every detail.  If it was late enough in the morning, she would call one of her FRIENDS and ask for suggestions or just talk over the agenda each had for the day.  They knew Alice still needed COURAGE to finish what she and her aunt had been working on, and to get the house back in order, and they stood ready to talk whenever she needed it.

As difficult as it was to simply go about her business, Alice knew she could not HIDE, that although they stayed away as the restraining orders commanded, her relatives knew where she was and kept up with her.  She had never had ASTHMA before, but working with the choking clouds of dust in the house left her wheezing.  She would go back to the hotel, regroup, and go back again with the workers.  No way was she going to let them see her weaken.

October 24 words:

1. Pendulum

2. Haunted

3. Seven

4. Wax

5. Raven

6. Scream

and/or

1. Tales

2. Fly

3. Tingler

4. Invisible

5. Usher

6. Diary

Alice pushed aside the DIARY she'd retrieved from one of the hidden drawers of the workbench and tried to gather her thoughts.  In the SEVEN weeks since she'd taken possession of the house and gotten all of the other properties and moneys put into her name, she had done wonders in getting workers in to do the repairs.

The house was very close to being ready for her to occupy, in fact, she really could have moved in the week before if she'd not minded the unfinished bits.  Her excuse that she did not want to live in a house while it was being remodeled was partly true, and partly it was that she was still HAUNTED by everything that had happened in that house since the last time she'd lived there.

In two days she would FLY out to the destination wedding of one of her dearest friends, and she did not want to cloud the joy of the occasion with TALES of what she was going through.  When the work crew was finished at the house for the day, if she stayed for any length of time every moment was a spine TINGLER.  She knew no one was there, and did not believe in ghosts, but couldn't USHER out the feeling of something INVISIBLE being there.

I'm a scientist! she would sternly tell herself.  My parents were scientists, and my Great Aunt Edna was a scientist, and I have everything I need to finish the research we were working on, and gain patents on chemicals that will revolutionize how we deal with garbage materials that can't be recycled or composted or reclaimed in any other way.  WAX dripping off of a candle shouldn't spook me, a RAVEN flying suddenly past my front door shouldn't make me SCREAM.  My mood shouldn't swing like a PENDULUM, from elation at the work that's getting done on the house to terror that one of my relatives will show up and harm or kill me.  Somehow, some way, I have to get a grip, I can't let fear of them win.

Today is:

Armed Forces Day -- Romania

Children's Day -- Australia

Constitution Day -- Lithuania

Day of the Basque Country -- Basque Country

Feast of Forty Martyrs of England and Wales -- Roman Catholic

International Artist Day -- invite an artist to lunch, buy that painting that you've wanted for so long, go to an art gallery or the symphony or a play -- celebrate how art adds to your life daily!  

Lung Health Day -- US (on the Wednesday of Respiratory Care Week; some sites to explore about lung health are www.lungusa.org/ and www.aarc.org/)

Munzipan Feast -- Fairy Calendar (a fairy delicacy, and you don't want to know how it's made)

National Greasy Foods Day

Punk-for-a-Day Day -- internet generated; if you've always wanted to be a punk, try it out for a day

Republic Day -- Kazakhstan

Retrocession Day -- Taiwan

Sourest Day -- as a balance, because we have so many days that emphasize sweet

Sts. Crispin and Crispian's Day (Patrons of cobblers/shoemakers, glovemakers, lace makers/lace workers, leather workers, saddle makers, tanners, weavers)

Thanksgiving Day -- Grenada

World Pasta Day -- as established by the first World Pasta Congress in 1995; a related website is here 

Birthdays Today:

Katy Perry, 1984

Midori, 1971

Tracy Nelson, 1963

Brian Kerwim, 1949

Jon Anderson, 1944

Anne Tyler, 1941

Helen Reddy, 1941

Bobby Knight, 1940

Marion Ross, 1936

Billy Barty, 1924

Minnie Pearl, 1912

Leo G. Carroll, 1892

Pablo Picasso, 1881

Georges Bizet, 1838

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Victor/Victoria"(Musical), 1995

"Newhart"(TV), 1982

"Le Repetition"(Anouilh play), 1950

"The Time of Your Life"(Play), 1939

Today in History:

Seljuk Turks defeat the German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum, 1147

Battle of Agincourt, in which the Welsh longbow defeats armored knights, 1415

Christopher Columbus, aboard the Santa Maria, lands at the Dominican Republic, 1492

Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the Western Australian coast, 1616

Governor Bradford of the US colony Plymouth disallows sport on Christmas Day, 1621

Wedding of future US President John Adams and Abigail Smith (the marriage lasted 54 years), 1764

Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay, 1813

Opening of the Erie Canal, 1825

Battle of Balaclava, memorialized as the "Charge of the Light Brigade", results in the deaths of 409 troops, 1854

The Toronto Stock Exchange is created, 1861

Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution in Russia, which corresponds to November 7 on the Gregorian Calendar, 1917

The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing  music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell", 1938

Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba, 1962

Uganda joins the United Nations, 1962

Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison, 1962

The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China, 1971

Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague, 1980

Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia, 1991

Fidel Castro announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned in Cuba, 2004

Sony removed the original cassette Walkman from the market, 2010

Scientists announce that the completion of the nuclear genome study of a 24,000 year old Siberian boy's remains shows 2/3 of today's Native Americans are of Eastern Asia origin, and the others from Western Eurasia, 2013