Renaissance: Prissy’s Story

Day broke over the town of Renaissance, but it wasn’t the only thing that was broken that day. Not by a long shot. Three hearts were broken, one heirloom dish shattered into 789 pieces, a few legs, arms and toes, some more things…and one life. Not a life that was soon forgotten. Broken way too early.

Josh Dunning was only 24 years old when Prissy Sykes killed him. People in Renaissance who came across young Josh liked him, admired him, lusted after him (a good many), trusted him, looked up to him, wanted to be like him, and just plain out loved him. Some, more than others. Prissy Sykes loved him so much, it hurt her. It eventually hurt him, too.

How people thought about Prissy was just about the opposite. Josh was good people, did for others before he thought of himself and had been like that since he was young. He was always there to help and be a friend. Not so Prissy. She was tied up in her own little Prissy world, thinking Prissy this and Prissy that, and thinking “Why aren’t you paying attention to ME?” thoughts. Except…except… the one thing outside of PrissyWorld that she thought about most of all, when at all, was Josh Dunning.

It started out as a young girls like, then a crush, then a need, then grew into a burning want as she went into puberty overdrive. Her want became her. “How dare he love Cara! How. Dare. He!” she wailed to herself, at night, under her covers, as her hands were Josh’s hands in the dark of night, the hands she wished were there. It was on August 3oth, her twenty-second birthday, alone in bed for her 8030 days of life, and Prissy determined it was going to be her last night alone.

Day 8031, and Prissy had invited Cara out for a picnic. Cara Fleming was surprised by the invitation and was reluctant to go (she  knew Prissy was jealous of her over Josh), but it was Josh who insisted she accept. Reluctantly, she went. Josh said he’d be along later to meet up with her and then go to the End of Summer party Renaissance threw every year since the reformation of the town after The Crisis so many generations ago.

Prissy was kind, for Prissy, in the walking to the picnic grounds with Cara. By the end of the next hour, Prissy had unloaded unto Cara all of her bile, her loathing, her desire to have Josh for herself. To hell with her parents, she said. To hell with everyone in Renaissance. Josh should be hers and hers alone. The only reason Cara stayed through all of this was simple: Prissy had brought out a gun and leveled it at Cara’s heart for over a half hour.

Prissy enjoyed the power she had in her hands. This was real life power, and she relished it.

She turned her head when she heard Josh call out to them, being true to his word to come for Cara. He yelled at her when he saw the gun. “Yelling at me?”, thought Prissy. “NO!”

She turned back to Cara, gritting her teeth, and began to lift the gun as Cara had gotten up to run to Josh. Taking aim, or so she thought, she fired.

Josh dropped to the ground, blood pouring out of the bullet hole in his neck.

Cara screamed and dropped to the ground by Josh, trying to staunch the wound. She babbled and cried and yelled for help. None came. Josh died in her arms.

Prissy, watching all this unfold, lifted the gun one more time, squeezed the trigger, and the noise turned Cara around.

Prissy was true to her thoughts. Last night had been her last night in bed alone.

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Welcome to the first story in the Shared World/Town of Renaissance and the Rule of Three Writers Blog Fest.  Created with fiction writers in mind, October 2011 will see a month long blog fest/hop. The rules are being finalized now and Damyanti Biswas at  Amloki and Lisa Vooght of Flash Fiction and I (with hopefully the addition of one or two more administrators) will be posting the rules soon. Right now, click on the link above for the Rule of Three  and you will get the shared world info for the town of Renaissance.

Where the writers who join us go with the stories is their own thing. They have to have THREE main characters; we have supplied the world and will supply some prompts. Once a week the writers who sign up will add their tale-ONE main character at a time-for three weeks. On the Fourth Week: the story culminates: the three characters  lives intersect, or not, into one last tale.

If this interests you, let me know. We’ll be posting more rule info soon. Real soon. This was a tease. Hope you were, and are, intrigued.

ANY genre style. ANY time period.