Gettin' Spooky Out There (Wordless Wednesday) and Her Victory (Words for Wednesday)

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday.  

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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.  The list of prompt words and my story follows:

1. Electricity

2. Grief

3. Laboratory

4. Slaughterhouse

5. Kiss

6. Amuse

and/or

1. Melancholy

2. Murder

3. Ravine

4. Laugh

5. Sensations

6. Violent

Alice shivered with GRIEF at what she saw through the only unbroken window on the porch.  It was also the only one not covered with a board.  Taking the old key out of her pocket, she steeled herself to enter Great Aunt Edna's house for the first time since she'd left for college all those years before.

There was no ELECTRICITY, of course, so she'd brought a large battery operated lantern with her.  The door didn't want to open at first, but she doggedly kept at pushing it until it gave way.  In fact, it gave way faster than she expected, and she was launched with almost VIOLENT force into the home she'd grown up in and that her other relatives had tried to take from her.

She was hit with waves of MELANCHOLY and sadness, just as she had known she would be.  All the therapy in the world couldn't erase or ease these SENSATIONS and feelings, just prepare her to deal with them.  The house was a wreck, all the furniture topsy-turvy and covered with the dust and cobwebs of the years.  Evidence of rodents and spiders and who knew what else was everywhere.  Evidence also that the relatives had taken whatever they wanted and destroyed the rest in their searches before the sheriff had locked the place and told them to stay out until the estate was settled.

Great Aunt Edna had adopted her when her own parents were killed in a very mysterious accident, their car plunging into a RAVINE because the brakes were damaged.  Edna had always maintained it was no accident, although she'd only told Alice that after she was old enough to understand. 

Walking across the foyer Alice turned her head away from the kitchen where the MURDER of her aunt had occurred.  Hurrying into the LABORATORY where her parents and then she and her analytical chemist aunt had worked, she saw with relief that the bench with the hidden drawers was intact and it did not appear anyone had figured out what was in there.

"Our 'relatives,' and I use that word loosely," Edna had told Alice right before she left for school, "will stop at nothing to get this house, my money, and our secrets.  When I go, they are going to fight my will, try to run though the money keeping it in court, and stop at nothing to get what your parents and I were working on and what you and I have almost perfected."

At that point, Edna broke out in a sarcastic LAUGH and added, "They will try, they will not succeed.  Eventually you will get it all.  Even then, do not trust that you will be safe until the experiments are completed and the patents applied for, and under your name, too.  You are young enough and smart enough, just like your parents.  No matter what they throw at you, don't give up or give in, and make sure your own will is iron clad and leaves everything to the family you will have one day.  Promise me!"

Alice had promised, and Edna had given her a KISS.  She remembered like it was yesterday, and tears stung her eyes.  She winked them back as hard as she could, and started opening the hidden drawers.  All the work was there, Edna must have heard whoever was coming for her and got it all secreted and herself into the kitchen to use the phone to call for help.

She thought about how it would AMUSE Aunt Edna if she could have known the details of all the relatives had tried to do from that moment until the estate was settled in her favor and the clever ways she and her attorney had fought back.  She wished her aunt could see her now, and hoped that somehow she did.

They tried to beat me, tried to dry up the money for college, tried to steal everything Edna and my parents had worked for, even tried to turn this beautiful home into a SLAUGHTERHOUSE and a wreck, Alice thought, but they didn't succeed and they never will.

Today is:

Armed Forces Day -- Abkhazia

Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work Day -- at your own risk! sponsored by Susan E. Schwartz of "Teddies Are The Answer"

Cephalopod Awareness Days:  Myths and Legends Day -- celebrating the most intelligent invertebrates in the world; for all the cephalopods of legend, literature and movies

Emergency Nurses Day

Frankfurt Book Fair -- Frankfurt, Germany (world's largest international book fair; through Sunday)

General Pulaski Memorial Day -- US (celebrating Casimir Pulaski, "the father of American cavalry")

International Top Spinning Day -- sponsored by the Spinning Top and Yo-Yo Museum, to recognize the Earth as a large spinning top; add your spins to the total and e-mail results to the sponsor 

It's My Party Day -- so go have one!

Meditrinalia/Vinalia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (tasting of the year's new wine; in honor of Meditrina, goddess of health/medicine, longevity, and wine, and Bacchus, god of wine)

National Fossil Day -- US (National Park Service information) 

National Pet Obesity Awareness Day -- because about half of pets in the US are overweight or obese 

National Sausage Pizza Day

National Stop Bullying Day -- sponsored by Hey U.G.L.Y., which stands for Unique Gifted Lovable You 

National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day -- US (sponsored by Kiwi Magazine, encouraging parents to go to school and have lunch with the children, learning what goes into a healthy lunch) 

Old Michaelmas Day -- Celtic Calendar

Revolution Day/Uprising Against Fascism Day -- Republic of Macedonia

SAVE Today -- US (Stop America's Violence Everywhere, a day created in 1995 by the American Medical Association Alliance)

Shemini Azteret -- Judaism (Jewish completion of the annual cycle of reading of the Torah; begins at sunset, through sunset tomorrow)

St. Gomar's Day (Patron of childless people, courtiers, cowherds, glove makers, people in difficult marriages, separated spouses, woodcutters; Lier, Belgium; against hernias)

Sunbeam Sliding Sunday -- Fairy Calendar (only occasionally on a Sunday)

Tavistock Goose Fair -- Tavistock, Devon, UK (known locally as the Goosey, dating back to 12th-century Michaelmas fairs, this orginal livestock fair is now mostly a fun festival)

"You Go Girl!" Day -- in honor of Kathy Sullivan, first American woman to walk in space

Anniversary Today:

William Jefferson Clinton marries Hillary Rodham, 1975

Birthdays Today:

Emily Deschanel, 1976

Stephen Moyer, 1969

Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, 1969

Jane Krakowski, 1968

Luke Perry, 1966

Joan Cusack, 1962

Steve Young, 1961

Dawn French, 1957

David Morse, 1953

Daryl Hall, 1948

Robert Gale, 1945

Ron Liebman, 1937

Dottie West, 1932

Roscoe Robinson, Jr., 1928

Elmore Leonard, 1925

Art Blakey, 1919

Jerome Robbins, 1918

Charles Revson, 1906

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884

Harlan Fiske Stone, 1872

Henry John Heinz, 1844

George Williams, 1821 (founder, YMCA)

Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, 1759

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"(Play), 1984

"Saturday Night Live"(TV), 1975

"Imagine"(Lennon single release), 1971

"Allegro"(Musical), 1947

"The Silver Tassie"(Play), 1929

The Comptometer (the first adding machine known to be accurate at all times, patented by Dorr Eugene Felt), 1887

Today in History:

Massive earthquake strikes Aleppo, Syria, 1138

Columbus' ship sites land on the horizon (the Bahamas), 1492

Huldrych Zwingli is killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland, 1531

Peter the Great becomes tsar of Russia, 1689

Explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee at the Grinder's Stand Inn, 1809

The first steam powered ferryboat, the Juliana, begins operation, 1811

Australia's oldest university, University of Sidney, is inaugurated, 1852

The Great Chicago Fire is finally extinguished, 1871

David Houston patents roll film for cameras, 1881

First female FBI "special investigator", Alaska Davidson, appointed, 1922

With the opening of store # 1252, in Milford, Delaware, J.C. Penney becomes a nationwide company, with stores in all 48 states, 1929

CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, 1950

Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years, Vatican II, 1962

NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, 1968

The NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the host and Andy Kaufman, Janis Ian and Billy Preston as guests, 1975

The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth, 1982

The record high of the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurs at 14,198.10 points, 2007

A ban on fracking is upheld by the Constitutional Council of France, 2013