A 144 word story for the dverse prompt.
A cow is screaming across the arroyo.
I read the paper again, wondering, before I toss it into the fire, what in the name of all that’s holy that’s supposed to mean. These code messages are getting weirder and weirder. Last week when the Villefranche road had needed disrupting it had been some garbage about wounded guinea fowl in the rhubarb patch.
I sling the duffel bag over my shoulder and leave the house. The lads will be waiting by the bridge, Jackie, Manu and the others. I’m the explosives boy, stick it where the bastards won’t notice it then scarper, doing my bit.
The bridge looms ahead through the darkness. Nothing moves. They should be at the rendez-vous. I listen, first to the silence, then a mournful bellow puts the heart across me. A cowshed door creaks open, someone swears. Fecking cow!
Jane Dougherty Writes 
Delightful Jane! I am so happy you joined in.
Thanks Linda. I reckoned you’d probably get enough stories about cows screaming without me giving you another one 🙂
Love the intrigue!
Great 🙂
I love where you’ve taken this, Jane!
Thank you, Sascha. A line like that, when you have never set foot in a desert and don’t know a word of Spanish can’t be taken at first degree 🙂
You are one of the few who did not go with the Western motif; fine job; like Navaho code talking.
Thank you, Glenn. Western motifs are outside my experience so it had to be second degree.
I like your description of the road that “needed disrupting”.
Thank you, Frank.
Excellent use of the prompt. My mind drew a complete blank on this one. (K)
Cheers. My mind went blank too. I had to take it for what it was, more or less gobbledygook for someone of my culture.
That’s the trouble with this particular prompt. Flash fiction isn’t poetry. It needs a different approach, and trying to shoehorn a line of poetry into a story, unless the line is actually a line of prose using words you would choose, it sticks out like something in inverted commas anyway.
The prompt needs a phrase that is more open ended. Jim Harrison has plenty of them to choose from.
When the words are so anchored in a particular place it’s very hard to use them outside their intended very specific context.
Ah! Well put together, this one! And … to misquote Freud … sometimes a cow is just a cow … 😉
Thank you! I wouldn’t have written a story about a cow screaming in distress anyway, even if I’d known what an arroyo was and why a cow would be screaming across it.
🙂 LOL. Well, it could be screaming for many reasons across all manner of desert creeks, but … I hear ya! 🙂
I like cows 🙂
I don’t mind them, either! Though I prefer goats, myself … 🙂 (Had goats, not cows, growing up … so there’s that bias right there…)
They all have their attractions. But they all end up eaten, which is what I find so sad.
Oh, yeah, well, we didn’t eat our goats. Did milk them, though, but only after the goat-kids had their fill. Mostly, it was a good life, I believe. I hear you. I’m not vegan but I think that animals deserve a life that is peaceful, healthy, safe, and as unrestrained as possible. And that they should experience the least stress all around. The mass ‘production’ of animal foods these days is not acceptable to me.
Exactly. If only we could accept that meat eating is a luxury, that a leg of lamb is of far more importance to the lamb than it is to us, and if we just took your humane attitude, maybe we’d be able to get out of this environmental mess we’ve made for ourselves.
Amen to that.
Or even hear, hear!
🙂 I’ll take both, thank you. 🙂
🙂
I was intrigued with the opening reference of a coded message which led us to a secret mission. These have been fun to read tonight.
I’m afraid that’s what that line sounded like to me. I’m not familiar with deserts and arroyos. Or screaming cows for that matter!
Very clever, Jane.
Closer to my comfort zone than deserts 🙂
Loved this.
Thank you!
You respond to these so well. The last one made me laugh.
I’m flattered you think so! Though I have doubts as to whether I’m a poet, I know I’m a writer. These exercises always remind me of writing for exams, honing an argument down to the accepted length in the allowed time. It’s a strange sort of prompt for a poetry site, but there you go.
That’s why I love prompts. And yes, you are.
I suppose that’s why I like them too. And I’m working on that last one.
I love the way you took us back to the French Resistance in this one, Jane, so many miles away from the Arizona desert. Code words and messages were often absurd – very ‘Ello, Ello’! I couldn’t stifle a giggle.
It was the only way I could think of to get that line into a story. It’s just not a line I’d ever come out with. It’s an odd idea, to take a line of poetry and try to slip it naturally into a piece of flash fiction. It would make for better stories if the prompt was simply to be inspired by a line of poetry and not have to reproduce the entire line verbatim. The word choices and arrangements aren’t the same in poetry and prose. It would make a good discussion anyway.
Thank you, Jane! Have read it with a big smile. 😉
Glad you liked it 🙂
Oh yes, Jane. You are always bringing new, great thoughts into my life. Thank you!
New maybe. Great? I doubt it! You have enough weighty thoughts of your own 🙂
Have to agree, Jane! But its always a pleasure to read how its going on outside our community here.
You’re right of course. There’s a lot of harm done by parochial thinking.
Nicely done. I like the way you are completely upfront about the difficulties inherent in that line, and then take it somewhere else entirely.
Thank you. To be honest, I think it’s the idea of the prompt that’s wrong. It would be interesting to have a discussion about why it’s wrong.
I do love the secret code which I wonder if it was a code or something else in the end…
Maybe it was just a cow in the end…. I have lived a while in the Southwest of US so I knew what an arroyo is…
I think it was just a cow that had been left outside and had to be let into the cowshed.
Very clever approach!
Thank you! I don’t feel qualified to write about cows in the context of the line of poetry so…
Another damn cow! This is getting good. Have you ever heard that song, “Cows with Guns?”
Good story imaginative and interesting.
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=cjTwXfH9IeOV0PEPg76qoAs&q=lyrics+cows+with+guns&oq=lyrics+cows+with+guns&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i22i30l4j0i333l4.1358.9064..10174…0.0..0.147.2720.0j21….3..0….1..gws-wiz…….0i131j0i22i10i30.4gz90PTeFIY&ved=0ahUKEwjx_qPip6zmAhXjCjQIHQOfCrQQ4dUDCAg&uact=5
Thank you! I didn’t know that song. I wonder why it refers to cows as ‘he’?
The stories inevitably ended up being about cows because of the line that had to be included. Liimited the results just a tad 🙂
Coded messages….spies….the “underworld” of sabotage. Somehow I hope it’s a tale from WW II and not current day. In any case…..is the explosive guy meeting his end? Me thinks the sabotage may be on him. Or it could be!
I think the explosive boy just met a loose cow on his way to the rdv. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.