Use Your Words - Halloween

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once, and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: 

owl ~ bat ~ orange ~ Halloween ~ gremlin

They were submitted by Stacy sews and Schools  - thank you, Stacy!

Remember Pauline Gower? She was a British writer and pilot who was one of the first people to experience a gremlin encounter -  the mischievous creatures who sabotaged aircrafts in WWI. 

For the sake of this post let's assume she had a granddaughter, Louise, who was born 1942 in the U.S. She grew up to be a pilot, too. She flew rich people's private jets out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California. 

One day - it happened to be Oct 31, 1969, she was supposed to fly a group of guys to Seattle. As she prepped for her flight, she noticed that her engine didn't work properly. As always when there were technical difficulties, she couldn't help but wonder if her Grandma might have been right about the gremlins. 

Louise never met her grandmother in person because she died when she was giving birth to Louise's uncle. So even if they never spoke to each other, Louise's mother made sure to pass on all the stories. When Louise was a little girl she wanted to listen to the gremlins story over and over. Pauline told Louise's family about the day she was supposed to fly a mission, however there was an incident with her plane, and she and her fellow airforce colleagues were convinced that gremlins must have cut some wires on her aircraft.

While engineers were trying to fix Louise's plane in 1969, she asked for permission to leave the airport to grab a bite to eat. She was dying to go to the Peach Pit in Beverly Hills. On an intersection in Hollywood she almost ran over a guy who came out of nowhere. She hit the brakes and honked, adrenaline was rushing through her body. Stupid tourists, looking for stars on Sunshine Blvd, they'd better pay attention to traffic!

She hopped onto a bar stool, ordered a mega burger and started feeling better. Except for the music. Somebody must have paid a fortune to play every "Hair" song available on the jukebox. "Let the Sunshine in" - my ass, she thought. They guy she was in love with went to Vietnam and got himself killed. She was going to end up a spinster, she was convinced. True love only happened once.

"Mega burger with extra cheese, here you go, enjoy!" the waitress said. Louise took a huge bite. Now we're talking!

"This seat taken?" A guy just entered the restaurant and asked permission to sit next to her. 

She couldn't believe her eyes. It was intersection guy from earlier! He was handsome, she thought. Tall, athletic. Charming. They started chatting. His name was Marty, and he was visiting friends in L.A. He would have loved to join them to a Halloween party tonight but he needed to go back for work.

"Louise?" The waitress shouted, with the phone receiver in here hand. "Phone call!" Louise got up and took the call. It was one of the mechanics who advised her that the aircraft was in perfect shape again. In fact there must have happened a special kind of bird strike, he smirked. "Can you imagine we found an owl in your engine?" he said. "We are used to many animals around here, bats, geese, even hawks, so we'll just add an owl to the list today" he said, "on Halloween night, no less, booo!"

"Nice meeting you, take care" she said to Marty, put some Dollar bills on the counter and left.

"But.. phone number... see you again?" 

She barely heard him anymore. Business always came first in Louise's life. She arrived at the airport where she expected to meet her party, a dozen guys. Instead there was one man. "One of the guys is looking for his lucky rat", he said. "His teammates are helping him to find it. They'll be here momentarily." 

Just what I needed, she thought. Crazy folks couldn't have a cat or a dog as a pet, they carried around their ugly rat underneath their sweater, eewww!

She took her book from the purse and started reading. It wasn't just any book, mind you - it was her grandmother's diary from back when she was an airforce pilot. Fascinating stories, Louise couldn't get enough of them. 

"All set" they guy said. His name was Joe, he was the manager. "Everybody is accounted for." 

"Wonderful", Louise replied. "Now about that rat", she added "please make sure it won't run off during the flight." 

"Rat? What rat? Who said anything about a rat?"

"You did! Earlier. Someone has lost theirs?"

He started laughing. "Hahaha, you misunderstood" he giggled "I was talking about a bat - no animal for that matter! I am here with my baseball team, and everybody needs their bat, otherwise we'll look a bit stupid when we play the Chicago White Sox tomorrow, don't you think? C'mon over, pilot guys, meet our lady pilot!"

"Pilot guys?"

Louise looked up from her book.

"So we meet again!"

One of the guys was Marty Patton who was playing for the Seattle Pilots! 

Now please go check out what words the other bloggers got and what they did with them:

Baking In A Tornado 
Spatulas on Parade 
Stacy Sews and Schools
Follow Me Home…
Battered Hope
The Bergham Chronicles
Evil Joy Speaks
The Momisodes
Someone else's Genius  
Confessions of a part time working mom 

Eileen’s Perpetually Busy



I wrote this at a Starbucks store in Victoria on Vancouver Island, courtesy of the missed ferry. That's a whole other story, though...