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Hunter/Tyrant: A bedtime story

Rapturous applause struck my ears like thunder. The hunter/tyrant drank it up like a greedy crone feasting on the soup of her lover’s bones. She was all, “come hither”. She had not done any work, but there she was, rebranding herself as an artista. As I went to challenge her, she tousled her hair. She let the strap of her camisole drip lazily off her right shoulder. In that wilfully helpless way, she contrived to divest every man of self-doubt.

Black and white GIF of a woman, removing her top

I wanted to denounce the pantomime but you should have seen the men. One handsome youth in his fifties raced away from a tequila sunrise. His younger buddy abandoned an espresso on a wet, wooden deck. A third party smacked his face on a utility room shelf while sneakily texting her in the dark.

Tom Hiddleston hugging Viggo Mortensen, in Return of the King

Eyeing a Sharpie in my purse, I thought about defacing the screen of her android device. Something like, “Sit down, xoxo. You are a fraud.”

 

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Hunter/Tyrant: A bedtime story
x SB

GIF image credits:
“Faust Murnau damsel in distress”
courtesy Ensalada de lengua de pajaritos via Tumblr;
“Tom Hiddleston in Return of the King”
courtesy Sherlockspeare via Tumblr.

By ΠιCΘLΞ

Life is short, so let’s be decent.

49 replies on “Hunter/Tyrant: A bedtime story”

Thanks so much for reading. Based on a true story. Please let’s compare notes. The story came to me in one cohesive string and I thought, wow. I was reading a study this week that said if you want someone to fall in love with you, you have to get them to help you. Or get their heart racing to trick their brain into thinking they’re reacting emotionally just before declaring yourself. I am a terrible actress, though. No one would buy “SB the damsel in distress.” Need to brush up on my acting skills, alas and forsooth. xo

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Sadly, I don’t have the skill. I spent a lot of time in school. Being cerebral is like a repellent. Turns out I should have taken lessons from her.

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I love the word “hither”. And “a handsome youth in his fifties”, that’s me! Once again, neurons short-circuited. 🙂

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I love this piece!! You have a fabulous gift for creating strong imagery w equally strong emotion and amazing to read such a long story in such a compressed format! Very impressed!! Oooh, you should animate this! It would make for a powerful short!

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Thanks so much for your encouragement. I really want to try short films. I feel so pressed for time these days that I have to make do with GIFs. But it’s on my list. The compacted story is something I’ve worked on since getting to understand readers. It’s easy to write longish dialogues but most people prefer to drink the story rather than chew it. It has been a fun personal challenge.

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Very interesting imagery in word picture. Come hither has it’s lusty appeal and there are some that while enjoying the game can stand pat.

Looking and waiting for clues I saw in comment. I say poker. If you’re going to show me your cards, I’m going to look.

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Thanks for reading, Gary. Objectively, I think the men in the story know exactly what’s happening and are playing along to win big. The narrator’s issue is the veil of industry that is used to cover the hunter’s real agenda. Her fear is that her work will be stolen to prop up this pantomime. If this does not happen, the objection is a moral one. x

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N – There’s no comment option appearing at your Copycat post —- am I blind? Anyways: Copyscape sends me monthly notifications when my posts are copied, but, when I go to the sites to post warning comments, the sites do not permit my comment. I mean, Copyscape sends me emails, LISTING the plagiarists web sites, but I can’t know what I should do following said notices. Maddening.

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Don’t even bother with them. They’re silly. Trite. I’ve not left comments open because it’s not open for discussion. Reading my own post on someone else’s blog has happened just once too often.

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I check posts in the tag to make sure there are no overlaps. Some of the copiers and I have subscribers in common. So when I commented on a blog, they clicked on my Gravatar saw my post and then copied it thinking I would never it. Someone else had clearly been following the tag and landed here from there. She used words from readers’ comments to praise herself. Silly person. I don’t want to go down the list about everything but let’s just say it was disconcerting.

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Good Grief. I remember attending a summer teacher workshop one year. We were all given a sort of racing game – we had to determine various locations across the globe. I was too vocal, thinking out loud. A girl from the other end of the state was watching me. I realized that she was waiting for me to give her free clues. Amazing what people reveal about their character during benign activity.

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It’s interesting that she wouldn’t have welcomed the chance think for herself. The risk of failure is too great even for something as benign as a game. That’s the personality type I’m talking about. They use your resources and collect rewards for using your work. They think this makes them superior to you.

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They think this makes them superior because of the Total Quality Management “business model” for “success” – namely, find the best and brightest, subsume, blatantly steal their best ideas, and take all the credit. It is a poison, and it will bring down the whole society.

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It has brought us down to a degree. I hope it will bring them down. I notice how these types have no taste in anything without a third party assessment. That’s why they’re always ending up looking silly when they mimic someone’s faux pas.

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Thanks again. I had been working on this for a while and this is literally the 200th edition. I was trying to write a bedtime story for grownups. The first edition was more sarcastic; she didn’t check the ages of the men before flirting and got checkmated when they showed up. But I decided it would read better with the images illustrating the mood. I think that explains the intensity. x

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Thank you for that, Wild Cat. The right shoulder is blinding. Someone should tell them it’s an avatar. Jerk turkey sounds yummy, too. (It’s nearly that time of year). x

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