"The Arrangement": 6 fifty-word Tales, 1 story. Humpbuckle Tales 125-130
The Arrangement 1 of 6: “can of worms”. Humpbuckle Tales 125
The Ambassador calls Sebastian into his office.
"Whisky?" the Ambassador waves a glass in the air.
Sebastian makes a show of checking his watch. Ten in the morning.
"Why not?"
"Look, old boy. Bit of a situation. Can of worms and all that..."
Sebastian sips the single malt and listens.
…
The Arrangement 2 of 6: “drop of water”. Humpbuckle Tales 126
Anabel is livid.
"You agreed to what?"
"It's for Queen and country, darling."
"We'll be the laughing stock of the Home Counties! You'll lose your pension!"
"It's a drop in the ocean. The terms are really very good. A lump sum, monthly payments and a Manor house by the coast."
…
The Arrangement 3 of 6: “salad plate”. Humpbuckle Tales 127
Anabel sometimes wonders why she married Sebastian.
"Mums the word," he says. "You can't tell anyone. Not even Helen."
Anabel throws a plate at him. It misses his head by an inch.
"Steady on, dear."
Secretly, Anabel is pleased. She dislikes Paris and always fancied being Lady of the Manor.
…
The Arrangement 4 of 6: “seaweed”. Humpbuckle Tales 128
The Manor looks the part from the outside.
Grand building, beautiful gardens, a lake.
Inside it's a mess.
The previous owners had began to convert it into hotel, but gave up halfway through.
"What do you think?"
His daughter sneers.
"It's a dump. It smells of seaweed and dog shit."
…
The Arrangement 5 of 6: “tell us a little bit about that”. Humpbuckle Tales 129
The locals are ugly and stupid.
Helen hates them.
But she invites them to tea because it annoys her mother.
"You used to live in Paris," an acne-faced boy called Jeff says. "Tell us a little bit about that."
"We'd eat snails for breakfast," Helen says.
Jeff's eyes widen.
…
The Arrangement 6 of 6: “ambassador”. Humpbuckle Tales 130
Helen spends school holidays in Humpbuckle-on-sea.
The Ambassador's arrangement includes paying the fees for her private boarding school.
She hates the town, its residents, the Manor House and her parents in equal measure.
She starts seeing Jeff, one of the local boys, simply to wind up her mother.
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These fifty-word stories were written using the six @freewritehouse freewrite prompts @mariannewest gave us this week (see her weekend freewrite single prompt post. Check out her Three Prompt challenge for more weekend Freewrite fun!
These are the 125th to 130th fifty-word stories in the Humpbuckle Tales series. You can find all the tales reblogged on the @humpbuckletales account.
These six stories are part of the Humpbuckle Tales series I am writing. Each tale is 50 words long. They can be read individually but when read together they make up a much bigger story. The 6 weekend freewrite stories are an obvious example of this because you can see that one follows on from another. The other tales might not be so obvious as they are sometimes set a few decades earlier or later than the others.
There are author readings available of the first 22 Humpbuckle Tales on the Humpbuckle Tales YouTube Channel or you can listen to the Humpbuckle Tales podcast.
On Hive, you can find the first 10 tales read here, and Humpbuckle Tales 11-22 are read here
Hive has it first!
Humpbuckle Tales are always published first on Hive!
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