Thursday means new story challenge time. So can you tell a story in 41 words using the following words in it somewhere:
- WARLOCK
- LANYARD
- ROCKET
- CROCHET
The previous challenge was to write a story in 64 words using the following six words in it somewhere:
- NURSE
- TABASCO
- INVISIBLE
- SPIDER
- WINDMILL
- MOUSTACHE
Here are your excellent stories:
Night nurse Mara guarded the quiet ward while a storm spun the old windmill outside. A bottle of Tabasco warmed her soup. Suddenly an invisible spider tickled her moustache. She laughed, thinking exhaustion. But charts rustled, doors sighed, and tiny prints crossed the desk. Mara saluted the unseen patient, whispering, Easy there traveler the night shift welcomes all wanderers tonight without questions asked friend.
Boy, was She Mad as a Hornet?
Someone added Tabasco sauce to Janie’s collard greens. It was invisible because they stirred it in. Muffling her screams, she stood up quickly, her arms windmilling. She needed milk to nurse the pain. With a milk moustache, she walked back into the dining room like a spider looking for her prey and asked who had done the dastardly deed. No one dared take credit.
A Lucky Moustache
My moustache doesn’t twiddle but spins like a windmill. Siting in the café, I noticed a spider sitting on my spinning gem of a moustache. I leapt from my seat, knocking the jug of tabasco sauce onto my invisible neighbours arms. Screaming, “I’ve been burnt,” she fainted. At A&E the Nurse impressed by my moustache slipped me her telephone number.
Lou by the Sea:
The veteran
Ivan huddles under the discarded sack in the corner of the windmill. Icicles hang from the once active sails and the wind whistles through the floorboards straight into his heart. He longs for tabasco heat inside him. A spider scuttles across his foot and stops to say hello. His moustache hides his lips, once kissed, by his saviour, his nurse, his love. Invisible. Gone.
I live in a windmill, and the sails are so noisy that the spiders there make as much noise as they wish, and I don’t hear a thing.
Worse than a spider in the windmill, is an invisible one; and they climb into your mouth when you sleep.
To stop this, I spread Tabasco sauce along the length of my moustache.
“Nurse! My medication!”
Nicola Daly:
‘I don’t want any of that tabasco flavoured medicine, nurse. That last lot had me hallucinating. Thought I was stuck in a windmill with a spider with a pink sparkly moustache. The sails kept going round faster and faster and he kept bringing me sacks of grain to grind. Had to put my invisibility cloak on to get away. Got a whiskey shot instead?’
Tony:
At dusk, I cross the drunken roads under a creaking windmill.
My mustache smells of dust and the Tabasco of revolts.
An invisible Spider, weaves storm maps into my skull.
The nurse of dreams comes to stitch the fever in my temples.
Yet I leave again, a fiery bohemian, swallowing the night, certain that dawn lies and the stars conspire in my pierced pockets.
Itchy Interloper
The nurse used a magnifying glass, but the teeny-tiny spider remained invisible. Clyde was going crazy since the scan revealed his unrelenting itchy moustache held an interloper! He’d tried soaking it in tabasco to ‘smoke’ the stubborn invader out to no avail.
In desperation, an electric razor was deployed. As the blades whirred like a windmill, the spider made a dash up Clyde’s nose.
Career wise, Spider liked to keep busy with a variety of jobs. When younger, he led a metal band, grew a long moustache, and would windmill his arms as he loudly shredded his axe. Now retired, he regaled his home health nurse with captivating stories. She figured the tabasco he added to his food to spice it up, made him imagine these invisible tales.
Susan Batten:
I told the nurse the Tabasco stain on my shirt was nearly invisible now I’d used the new “Windmill” miracle cleaner, but it didn’t seem to work on the spiders in my moustache.
Gift Her Swiffer
Attempting to nurse her wounded pride, she spilled the tabasco that was meant for her tomato juice and vodka cocktail. Now, her favorite tulip and windmill kitchen towel was stained. But things being what they were, she just wanted to become invisible when her blind date with the awesome moustache, admired her clever spider web holiday décor. Come on now, it was Memorial Day!
The spider caressed his moustache, spying the gilded mirror above the banquette. He enjoyed living up to his villainous name, tonight included. He held the poisoned tabasco sauce and poured an invisible bit onto the spiced meat dish he knew she loved. No doubt she would call for a nurse, but too late. He would pretend upset in the windmill of chaos that ensued.
The nurse with the moustache, who tries to remain invisible, got his butt in a windmill when he injected the old guy with some kind of spider juice. No one would have known had the old guy not asked for flies in his Bloody Mary instead of Tabasco.
The nurse had a phobia about facial hair, and the patient with the moustache made her uncomfortable.
After lunch, the smell of tabasco sauce lingered in the room making her queasy and when a spider shot across the sheet, she screamed and waved her arms like a windmill in her fright.
She then felt foolish and wished she was invisible to save her blushes.
Murray Clarke:
Edmund McLlhenny, raised in Louisiana, was the creator of Tabasco – the world-renowned American spicy sauce. Formerly, a psychiatric nurse in his teens, Edmund sported an enviable handlebar moustache. He lived, in his twilight years, in a windmill in old Amsterdam – overrun by scary, hairy spiders that appeared to be almost invisible. He died a horrible death after ingesting an overdose of his own sauce.
My first introduction to a male nurse was during a post-op dinner. I was just splashing the tabasco to liven it up when this nurse rushed in, arms like a windmill, screaming about having a spider on him. We did look but it must have been invisible; until his moustache started moving. Screaming, he fainted. We ignored him, and watched the spider scurry away.
Kate in Cornwall:
Breezy Miller’s tranquil life in his windmill was being ruined. The nurse who visited daily to change his dressings (don’t ask) never stopped moaning: “Tabasco Sauce down your front, Weetabix in your moustache, and look at all those cobwebs!”
Persuading Jennifer, his Black Widow spider, out from where she’d rather remain invisible (all that screaming does her head in), Breezy set her to work…
The nurse laughed when the old man with the grand moustache claimed an invisible spider lived in the hospital garden. “It guards the windmill,” he whispered seriously. To prove it, he sprinkled Tabasco on the grass. “Spiders love spice.”
That night the windmill creaked, the grass stirred, and the nurse wondered if some stories are stranger — and truer — than they seem.
What of the Windmills are Real?
I thrust my knife forward, but my foe is invisible in the darkness. That’s alright. I can wait.
Then the dark is pierced by light, revealing a nurse. The ugly one with the mustache and spider veins. Smelling like tabasco and beer.
“You’re tilting at windmills again aren’t you dear? Let’s get you into bed.”
I comply. I can wait. Her time will come.
Attack of the Invisible Tabasco Thief
At the village clinic, a nurse swore, that an invisible spider kept stealing her Tabasco. Patients doubted her, until the windmill outside began spinning, while indoors, a floating moustache sneezed.
The spider, apparently spicy, had climbed a gentleman’s face and powered the windmill with hiccups. The nurse prescribed milk, applause, and a tiny apology note to tabasco immediately, while everyone applauded loudly that ridiculous miracle.
Nurse Nichola sat at the lunch table. She was having enchiladas with tabasco sauce. She liked hot food. Meanwhile an invisible spider was sitting in the windmill opposite.
It’s presence was not known to the nurse. But its venom had been collected, added to the food and soon she would sport a huge black moustache. Her old rival sat quietly and sniggered to himself.
The Name
He twirled the fork like a windmill. Unhurried.
“She’s a nurse. Night shift. Tabasco sauce, scrambled eggs, every morning, 6 a.m. Window seat.”
Torres’s stomach dropped.
“You’ve been watching her.”
He smoothed his moustache with one finger. “A spider doesn’t watch. It waits.” His eyes found hers. “She’s almost invisible now.”
“Where?”
“You’re already too late, Helen.”
Billy rushed to the hospital. After sitting in the waiting room for a couple of hours he had an hallucination where he witnessed an invisible spider making a windmill with his webbing. A nurse came over to talk to him and noticed a Tabasco stain on his moustache and let loose a chuckle. Was this really an emergency or just stupidity playing it’s part?
The romantic village down in the valley with its deep, deep secrets
On the wing of the windmill the spider decided to weave its almost invisible web. Unexpected surprises – the best shot a predator had.
At the foot of the hill, the mayor twirled his moustache, put more tabsco sauce on the grilled steak and asked the nurse to repeat her story one more time. His former partner had confided in her in his final hour?
My handwritten grocery list looked like a spider had free rein in ink and slid across my page. Tabasco sauce. There, my list is complete. While I finished up my coffee, I decided to sketch a windmill and a gentleman with a Victorian moustache looking out to the field. Semi-invisible eye floaters blurred my view, so I nursed my eyes with eye drops.
The Nurse, the Windmill and the Spider
A nurse giggled wildly by the windmill, Whispering Tabasco secrets while balancing a pill, An invisible spider applauded somewhere near here, Though no one saw him clap- they heard him quite clear
'Observe,' said the nurse, 'this poem's strict limitation!
Each rhyme must behave with no hesitation.'
The windmill bowed slowly, his moustache it did sway,
While the invisible spider... he just tiptoed away...
A Bit of Espionage
I was to meet The Nurse at the windmill at 9 PM sharp. I had the elusive photos of the Black Widow Spider in my possession. Arriving at 9 PM without acknowledgment from anyone, I began to feel invisible; that is until a man with a hairy mustache approached and whispered, “Tabasco for my tacos?” I never would have imagined that this hunky guy was “The Nurse.”
Cafeteria Capers
Bixby, the hospital nurse, harbored a hidden talent for crafting intricate, nearly invisible spider webs which he’d carefully construct around the cafeteria’s bottles of tabasco. Today, Dr. Fillmore, known for his grand swirling moustache that resembled a windmill in a tornado, reached for the sauce. His fingers met resistance, and he struggled to break free! Bixby snickered with delight as the webs held fast.
Spider watched from the woodpile. Every morning, the human stood in the doorway, staring out at the windmill, sipping a concoction of orange juice, raw egg and a hefty dollop of Tabasco sauce. Spider thought it amusing that the man’s handlebar moustache twitched with every swallow of the liquid nurse.
“Morning Spidey.”
“I’m supposed to be invisible,” Spider thought, scurrying away.
“See you tomorrow.”
Rall:
nurse tobasco
disliked moustaches
when her patients were sedated
she removed them
claiming that they housed
invisible spiders
a health hazard
she liked windmills and tulips
searched relentlessly
for a dutch boyfriend
Escape from the Mental Facility
Asking nurse to please be kind
There is a windmill in my mind
Either that or, holy flip!
She’s put tabasco in my drip
But this ain’t no hallucination
And these spiders aren’t imagination
So I’ll escape, and in disguise
As I change avert your eyes
With false moustache, a beard and glasses
Please don’t notice as me passes.
A smartly dressed man sporting a handlebar moustache and bowler hat, strolled into the local supermarket. He headed for the spice shelf and picked up a bottle of tabasco sauce.
He espied a spider running out of its invisible hideout. The man lost all dignity ,flaying his hands in the air like windmills ,then he fainted .
The manager shouted for a doctor or nurse.
the nurse
was my mom
and the sauce was
mchillhenies tabasco
hot cha ching
my pleasure was not invisble
as the spider veins
making me a new moustache!
***
Image credit: Little Treasure
Esther Chilton 
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