It’s that time of the week – story time. Can you tell a story in 37 words using the following words in it somewhere:
- PROPHET
- DUNGAREES
- SWAGGER
- CASTLE
The previous challenge was to write a story in 52 words using the following five words in it somewhere:
- TIGHTROPE
- GOTHIC
- SQUEAMISH
- MANNEQUIN
- VIOLIN
Here are your superb stories:
Nicola Daly:
Ugh, just look at that mannequin?’
‘You’re surely not squeamish about seeing him in all his glory?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind a few dangly bits. But it’s seeing him balancing on a tightrope playing the violin in lacey ruffles. It’s a bit.’
‘Gothic?’
‘Yeah. And… he’s moved! That’s not a mannequin!’
‘Aaaaaaaagh!’
I am not usually squeamish, but to balance upon a tightrope in the ruins of the Gothic Whitby Abbey, in order to perform Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, made me feel quite queasy. My violin-work, usually fluent, stuttered, then halted; a telling silence fell; and there was I, a veritable mannequin, upon a high-wire.
While I very carefully walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls I feel squeamish while a live gothic mannequin pretends to be ready to catch me. While he pretends to catch me, his friend in the background plays a somber tune and taps along on the violin.
“I prefer the colour black,” he said to the nearby dummies, who were dressed for the circus. “I’m a gothic mannequin, not a comedy Harlequin. And tell your colleague to stop massacring that violin; he’s walking a tightrope with me. What? I’m not squeamish. The way he plays I’d say I’m squeakish.”
Out There
If gothic mannequins were ever in fashion, it would be at the circus. The contrast of stark white bodies and pitch-black accents was ghoulish. Positioned at the entrances, they collected tickets for the tightrope show, where blindfolded, one-legged deaf miniature monkeys played violin while strolling across. Not a show for the squeamish!
At midnight, a gothic clock tower overlooked the fair. A mannequin escaped a shop window and stepped onto a tightrope above silent streets. Though squeamish about heights, it carried a violin and played. The music summoned crows, who guided it home before dawn, where applause awaited from shadows at the edge below.
Lou by the Sea:
No Wedding Bells
I felt squeamish. The groom gingerly crossed the tightrope, waltzing with his mannequin bride. The violin serenaded them, eerily beautiful in this gothic abbey. The Whitby sea churned below. A missed footing, a crowd gasping. The wedding was over before it had even begun. The Goths wailed. The seagulls cried. Darkness descended.
Own It!
He looked like a Gothic mannequin.
Dressed in black with a ‘plastic’ complexion, Brock stalked the neighborhood with his violin under one arm. He hoped to make the kids squeamish because of their incessant teasing. Nerds walk a tightrope that many never understand. He wouldn’t cower like others. He would “own it”!
He tied the tightrope between two Gothic towers above the streets of London. He concentrated on suppressing his squeamish feeling as he picked up his violin and started to play as he walked from one tower to the next. Below him, people looked up at him, holding their breath, looking like mannequins.
Song of Seduction. Makes You Sick
Come here my little mannequin
Show to me what hides within
Listen to my violin
A gothic tune preceding sin
Wear me as you would a glove
And walk the tightrope of our love
Spread your wings. Fly like a dove.
Are you squeamish there above?
The gothic violinist crossed a tightrope above the abandoned theatre, while a mannequin audience stared silently below. I felt squeamish watching, certain she’d fall. Instead, her music stitched shadows into light, and for one trembling moment, fear forgot my name, leaving wonder balanced delicately between silence and sound.
Bring too squeamish to walk a tightrope, the gothic mime instead, made it appear that the wig mannequin was playing the violin, to the delight of the king.
The Free Woman
The sounds of a lonely violin wafted over the packed square. The audience was spellbound, watching the tightrope walker who danced a slow waltz high in the air. A real person would have been squeamish but Lottie, the mannequin dressed in gothic garb, just sank in his arms and let it happen.
Sandy was walking through the mall in her gothic attire when she saw an undressed male mannequin. Walking a tightrope of emotions as she stared, she started to feel a bit squeamish. She walked on in search of a violin she wanted to purchase but something drew her back to the mannequin.
Return To The Cabin
Torres returned to the Gothic ruins of the swamp cabin. Inside, a mannequin sat posed with a shattered violin. The grotesque display was meant to make her squeamish, to shake her resolve. Instead, she walked the tightrope of her duty, collecting the final evidence needed to ensure his dark fate was sealed.
He dreamed he was being chased by a tightrope walking gothic mannequin playing a violin.
It was a ridiculous scenario brought about by a Z rated movie with even worse acting and enough plastic gore to reduce anyone squeamish to hysterical laughter.
He screamed when he saw the bow on his pillow.
Murray Clarke:
Billy Smart’s Circus Comes to Town!
Instead of a traditional marquee, the extravaganza was being held in a spooky Gothic church – a location certainly not for the squeamish! The most bizarre act was a mannequin swaying across a tightrope, playing a rare Stradivarius violin. The audience was in raptures and clapped enthusiastically.
The gothic theater creaked as I walked its abandoned aisle, feeling squeamish under the mannequin’s glassy stare. A lone violin rested beside it, bow poised like a dare. When I touched the strings, the mannequin rose, balancing on an invisible tightrope, crossing the stage as if finishing a performance it never got to complete.
Susan Batten:
Not for the squeamish, the tightrope was set up in the gloomy Gothic tower, but the director substituted a mannequin for the body below – the victim went off for a fag instead – and exquisite music from twiddling violins ramped up the tension in the new film, “The Phantom of the Circus”.
Lost Map
Steele felt squeamish when he thought of that day when he had to give his gothic-designed map to Agent Boogie. Now, the word was, Boogie got lost in the canyon because he lost his asset. Apparently, he decided to cross the canyon on a tightrope with a mannequin and violin. Dead drop?
Circus
She was infatuated with the man who walked the tightrope. Pierre, the knife thrower, used a mannequin who looked like her in his act. She saw this and became quite squeamish.
When suddenly, she woke up to violin music and vowed to never read another gothic romance before she went to bed.
High Wire Romance
A farmer was playing an old violin,
High up on a tightrope, ever so thin,
He tickled a gothic mannequin under her chin,
Said, ‘Let’s dance the tango, if you’re not squeamish, you’re in!’
She smiled and they bounced through puddles, upside-down,
Ending the evening at a nightclub in town!
High Wire
The gothic cathedral watched as the young woman swayed on a tightrope strung between its twin spires. Below, a crowd gathered… some squeamish, some transfixed. In the nave, a mannequin stood guard over an abandoned violin; she had played her last note before climbing. Now only wind remained to carry the melody.
The haunting gothic violin music filled the Big Top where a spotlight focused on the tightrope platform. There, a lone person stood motionless, resembling a mannequin in a store window. The music stopped. The body in white performed maneuvers that caused onlookers in the gallery below who had squeamish stomachs to gasp.
***
Image credit: Pinterest
Esther Chilton 
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