Redolent

fragrant; suggestive or evocative (adj)

[under construction]

Red sat on the proch as he had sat every morning since he could sit upright. He wore the blue plaid shirt and overalls his mother dressed him in and a clean white undershirt with clean white breifs underneath the overalls. His face, as it had been since he entered the world through the drug-abused gates of his mother's legs twentysomething years ago, was crumpled into itself. Every facial muscle stretched or flexed or tensed towards his nose which was pristinely tanned and the only well-built structure on his face. His eyes were shit tight and his eyebrows wrinkled in and his mouth screwed up upwards and his cheeks were set square from a perpetually clamped jaw. All lines connected and pointed to the olfactory center of his face.
His mother, his caretaker, his only companion, came outo n the porch with a plate of bacon, eggs, and grits and Red's hands went flying toward the food, his face unchanging except an accented noise from his nasal inhalations raking against his sinuses.
"Alright, alright, Reddy, hold on," and she dodged his flying fingers to tuck in a hankerchief to catch the food that he would inevitably spill on himself.
"You want to look good for your visitor today, don't you?"
Red couldn't reply. He could only swing his hands around the wafting prefume of the food. His mother brought it to his face and he began to grasp the good and stuff it into his mouth, chewing with thell athose tensed muslces, sucking in air through that perfect as he ate. Pieces of yellow egg landed on the hankerchief, chips of burnt bacon clicked on the wood floor of their little house.
When the plat was almost cleaned off completely a car drove up the dusty path kicking pebbles and dirt up from its tires. The olive sedan parked in front of hte porch. A young, attractive woman with dirty blond hair and turqoise blue eyes exited the car and closed the door and pressed a black button on her key chain so the car beeped. She carried a notebook and pen in her hand as she approached the porch.
"Miss Melly?" Red's mother asked the young woman.
"Hi Mrs. Gretchen, how are you today?"
"Fine, thank you."
Melly walked up the steps of the porch and Red's mother walked to her, seemingly trying to keep her away from her son. They stood several feet away from Red, but Melly looked over Red's mother's shoulder and addressed Red anyway.
"I'm very excited to talk to you today, Red," she walked forward as she spoke and continued to Red's mother, "You know it's so rare to find a case like Red's--he could really help us answer a lot of questions about how much humans rely on smell and pheromonal--"
Red's mother looked away from Melly with a confused face. The scientist caught herself in her scientific excitement and decided to stop talking. They both looked down at Red, who was sitting in his chair. When the two of them were closer to Red his hands began waving through the air. Innocuously at first, but their movements became more desparate and almost violent as they got nearer to him. By the time Melly and his mother were standing in conversation range his hands were flying like they were swatting dangerous bugs.
Then one of the hands found Melly's forearm and squeezed it and pulled the young woman toward Red, who used her weight to help lift himself to a standing position. Another hand found her other arm and Red wrapped himself around Melly and hugged her forcibly.
"Red, no!" his mother yelled.
But he didn't stop, he stoof up, the dirty and egg-ridden hankerchief fell to the porch floor and he brought the young scientist to his face and he pressed his nose into her neck with strong lunges, sniffing her everywhere he could and Melly felt an awkward protrusion protruding from the middle of the man who could only smell and she kicked the erection and the hands released her and she pulled herself away. Then she took a breath, leaning on a post of their porch, looked at Red's mother, and opened her notebook to make a note of something.

Die

part of a machine that punches and shapes holes (n)

God and Death were drinking jasmine tea at a teahouse in Heaven and Death was reading the Bible, holding his steaming tea in one hand the Good Book in the other.
Death chuckled at something.
"What?" God asked.
"Nothing," Death said, still laughing.
"Tell me."
"Naw, it's nothing, really."
"It's not nothing," God insisted, "it has to be something if you're laughing at it."
Death chuckled under his breath and tried to keep it down in his throat. He took a breath to collect himself and closed the Book and let his hand hang over the side of the plush teahouse chair. He took a sip from his tea.
"It's just that, you created them in your image, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"And you can't die, right? I mean, you're immortal."
"Uh huh, yeah, what about it?"
"I just thought of this one guy I saw recently. He worked at a big hyrdoelectric dam making sure these huge pistons pumped up and down. Real nice guy. Had a family and a kid and everything. And I guess he was looking at a picture of his son and--because he was leaning forward and looking down at the picture--his head got caught in one of these this big pistons and the thing just smashed his head to little bits all over the place."
God took a sip of his tea.
"So?" he asked.
"So, nothing. I was just reading you Book here again and I remembered this man and I'm finding it all terribly funny all of a sudden."
God shook his head and brought his mug to his face.
"You always did have a morbid sense of humor," he said.

August

majestic (adj)

It was said that a certain king
only went out among his people
in the summer
because he thought that
only in times of overwhelming heat
was it suitable for him to be seen.

Alloy

to commingle; debase by mixing with something inferior (v)

Al was nervous about meeting Annie's father. The old man had bought, managed, and sold three successful alcohol corporations and became a reclusive billionaire in a mansion that had been in Annie's Protestant lineage for generations. Being unemployed, Catholic, and engaged to Annie didn't help Al's nerves.
The three of them ate dinner in the great dining room of the mansion where signs from liquor companies from recent and distant history hung next to crosses and stuffed elk heads and bear claws and a series of old painted portraits that included a likeness of Luther.
Al felt a growing need to say something after the salad portion of the dinner passed without conversation.
"So, Mr. Ferguson, may I ask you what you're secret is...I mean, with your wild success as a businessman, you must have some ideas about success or achieving one's goals?"
Annie's eyes widened at Al and she looked horrified at the reality of this broach and watched as her pale father, who was wearing a white undershirt and a blue bathrobe and large brown-rimmed glasses, asked Al,
"Wild?"
"Y-yes," Al stammered, "I mean, your success and all..."
"Hmph," Annie's father said, "wild."
Then a long silence sat among them, punctuated only by the clicking of soup spoons and intermittent slurping.
"If you really want to know I put spiced water in the whiskey and all the goddamn rest of it,"Annie's father broke the quiet, "Halved production costs and the drunk fools couldn't tell the difference and we kept prices where they were and tripled revenue."
Al nodded and made some sort of noise that was supposed to indicate his interest. Then the old man rose from his chair, making it clear that he wasn't wearing pants, and he shuffled over to Al's side and stood over Al and raised his old fist in air and brought it down in a striking motion on Al's right hand, which was laying flat and unprotected on the table.
Annie gasped. Al felt a slight shock of pain.
Annie's father had stabbed his son-in-law-to-be with a little medical needle and the old man's eyes squinted at the trickle of blood that peeped through the rupture in Al's skin.
"You're goddamn blood is red," he said. Then he looked over at Annie and then up at all his liquor signs and at the crosses and at the stuffed elk heads and at Luther and then back at Al, who was holding his stabbed hand in a napkin.
"The whole damn world's mixed up if you ask me," said Annie's father as he shuffled back to begin the main course.

Surfeit

excess, overindulgence (v)

I knew a surfer that wanted all the sun
he could get and get as tan as he could get
so he spent all his time surfing and tanning
and then all the melanin in his skin burned up
and the doctors told him he couldn't be in sunlight
unless he was in a plastic bubble that refracted it
so my friend the surfer went surfing in his bubble
and sat out in the sun after the waves rolled him in.

Minatory

Menacing, threatening (adj)

A minataur went to an analyst that specialized
in the psychoses of mythical creatures
and laid down on the analyst's couch
and said, "I hate that everyone hates me,"
and the analyst said,
"this is a common problem for characters
who are created by humans to be a certain way
and then start to ask why
they were made the way they were made--
unfortunately, you must continue
to be as you were made to be..."
And the minataur turned around to the analyst
and growled and barked but caught himself
and he looked down at his goat legs
and his hairy hands
and his long nails
and he looked up at the analyst
who was a human being
and the analyst shrugged as if to apologize
and the minataur thought this was
the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen.

Parry

To block or evade (v)

Barry didn't dally
to parry larry
who was angry
when he married sally.