Photo by Ashtoncircus

The skies are gloomy today in Los Angeles, but I don’t need to buy a bucketful of sunshine from that strange guy on the street corner.

Not when I’ve got Build A Story With Bryan to brighten my day.

I really hope you’ve been as consistently entertained and surprised as I’ve been by where these stories have taken us. Though they occasionally reveal their genre-trappings without warning, each story has managed to find a voice, a tone, and then stick with it no matter the sensibilities of its various contributors. There is, it seems, a collective unconscious after all.

This Round 5’s no different.  And it’s still got legs, literally, and furry ones at that. Read what we’ve got so far and you’ll see what I mean. Then build this story further with your own sentence and surprise us some more.

Mrs. Blendinson had certainly entertained a foolish thought in her day, had even been married to one for twenty-five of them, but never had she been so resolute in her belief that this foolish thought, the one occurring to her now while she rooted through the neighbor’s trash, this was the foolish thought that if acted upon would put her back on top.

“If I can just find that clown nose,” she mused, “I’ll prove once and for all that the circus debacle was all Mr. Freddie’s fault, not mine!”

Mrs. Blendinson’s musings, unlike her foolish thoughts, took on the affect of a nobler woman, usually a duchess of some vague royal lineage, the kind who would never consort with a sad clown and his dim associates, who endured scandal with a stiff upper lip and dry eyes, not a stiff drink and stolen credit card.       

In spite of her contemplative irrational thoughts and ramblings of life on the road with the circus, there were times with Mr. Freddie that were downright playful. Even though there were moments of joy and ecstasy, they somehow turned into long hours of nervous, frightful horror. Mrs. Blendinson remembered the time when she and Issey (Issey was Mr. Freddie’s self-appointed first name) created an impromptu beach setting at midnight behind the pup tent, which was just south of the Big Top. Mrs. Blendinson smiled to herself with the contentment only a woman in her 70’s could understand as she reflected on the unusual foreplay that occurred prior to the laying of the blanket.

But then she remembered that fateful BBQ afterward. She frowned, and her entire visage changed from nobility to something far less regal – vengeful. “That Mr. Freddie, and all the Freddies,” she mumbled. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

And with that, the circus was relegated to a forgotten compartment in the portmanteau of her mind, for her new resolve was building, the resolve that drove her to reach inside the hem of her dress and pull out the thin strip of microfilm hidden within the gingham. She slipped it into the clown nose that she’d finally found, planning on the perfect place to leave it, where it would be found “by accident.” She looked around furtively, the microfilm/nose mélange secreted in the pocket that once held recipes for blancmange and other favorites.

“Outta my trash, Blendinson!”

 She smiled and checked the diamond-studded watch that had been strapped to her wrist when she’d accidentally fled from Zales the other day. Right on time, her neighbor’s five a.m. ritual, a stumble into the bathroom and back, with a glance out the kitchen window, occasionally to check for raccoons, mostly for her. Mrs. Blendinson waved before she looked up and winced. Ruffy was out of his makeup, but his face still looked painted: purple-black around the eyes, yellowed cheekbones. That and a sweaty fistful of G. Washingtons his likely compensation for starring in another Clown Fight video the area college kids were always staging in the alleyway behind the fried chicken restaurant. Ruffy had fallen on hard times ever since the circus stopped employing sad clowns.

 Mrs. Blendinson wondered if he’d like to help her make a different kind of dishonest wage today, although she couldn’t promise his nose wouldn’t get smashed in with a clown shoe for his trouble.

“Well?” he snapped.

She stuck a quick tongue over her shoulder, and yanked a pink and white cheap leather bag from the bottom of the trash. She could use this, even with one strap broken. She slung the good one over her shoulder and the bag became her shield. Now she turned saucily, determined to put Ruffy back in his clown car for good but the window was empty.

She bent and retrieved her Smirnoff, uncapped it and took a sip, acrid in the morning, trash-laced air. She made a face and began her waddle back to her place. She had plans.

As she approached the caravan she called home, she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. She was certain that she’d shut and locked it. She always triple-checked it every time she went out. If Freddie had used his key to go in without her permission again he was going to be sorry!

She opened her door with some trepidation, calling out, “Hello? Is that you?” in her sing-song lilt. “No, it’s not me,” a strange voice answered back, sending chills down Mrs. Blendinson’s gingham-clad spine.

She stepped inside, sensed a presence in the kitchen, and lifted her new bag to her chest once more. But she paused, still in the hall, when she saw the revolver on the kitchen table next to an open Smirnoff bottle, her last. She stepped fully into the light and the view of a four hundred pound brown bear tossing back a shot of vodka with a raspy snarl.

“Daaaaaaaaamn!” it complained, shaking its massive head at the vodka’s bite. It noticed Mrs. Blendinson and swept up the pistol expertly.

“All right, now, Marjorie, easy does it.” He jerked the gun twice to the empty chair opposite.

Mrs. Blendinson slipped heavily onto it and her whole body seemed to slump in defeat.

“Daisy,” she stated.

“Goddamn right, only I’m done with the dancing.” Daisy the Dancing Bear used both paws to draw back the hammer on the gat. “Have a pop,” he commanded.

What happens next is in your hands…or paws, if you happen to be a bear.