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vocab_drabblesTitle: Carpe Diem
Fandom: Jeeves & Wooster
Rating: Teen
Length: 600
Notes: Bertie's friend Rocky Todd produces a poetry anthology called Carpe Diem.
You might think that my friend Rocky Todd, that poet chappie who lives a life so quiet and peaceful as to be trance-like in the wilds of Long Island, would be content. After he secured that allowance from his aunt in the affair I recorded for posterity in “The Aunt and The Sluggard,” you would think he would be happy to rest on his laurels for the natural life. In fact, you might suppose, as I did, that Rocky Todd would be precisely the kind of person the laurel inventor had envisioned when he set about his ground-breaking work.
You’d think Rocky was set for his whole, retired, tranquil snail-watching life. No more scribbling exhortations for young men to lead the strenuous life in unrhymed verse. No more wowing American magazine editors with classics like ‘Be!’ No more poems at all, even ones illustrated with photographs of half-nude coves bulging with muscles giving the dawn the glad eye!
You’d think there’ll be no more work for Rocky Todd.
And you’d be right. Mostly.
Rocky Todd didn’t work, but someone, a Rocky Todd enthusiast of the first order, thought it would be a corkin’ good idea to do an anthology of the sluggard’s works. And not just a pamphlet, like the kind Jimmy Munday hands out to entice sheep to his flock, no.
On my last visit, Rocky confessed himself that it was going to be large affair with glossy photos.
And the title?
Carpe Diem!
‘Seize the day’ was the leitmotif, if I may borrow the Gallic twice, of Rocky’s whole oeuvre.
Seize the day, well, yes, I mean, of course, notwithstanding the fact that Rocky Todd’s day usually started somewhere around half two in the afternoon and adjourned about four hours later with him never getting out of his flannel pajamas.
This last fact, by the way, is why Jeeves never joins me on my sojourns to Long Island. There are some horrors a man cannot force a gentleman’s gentleman to endure.
It was about a year after my last visit to New York that I received an unexpected parcel on my Berkley Mansions doorstep.
“Jeeves, whatever can this be?”
Jeeves was as puzzled as the y. m.
I slit open the box. Inside was a large tome, its title screaming from the cover in large print.
CARPE DIEM!
“JEEVES!”
“Sir!”
We were both arrested by the photograph on the cover. It was the back view of a nude chappie, crouching, muscles taut, haunches poised, ready to spring, to make a dive into the bucolic body of weater in the background.
A certain mole at the top of the right thigh gave us both pause.
“Jeeves, I give you permission to state the obvious.”
“It’s you, sir.”
“Rocky must’ve taken it when he and I went for a bathe at that lake near his cottage last year. I didn’t know I’d be modeling! Or on the cover!”
“It’s flattering, sir.”
“A bit fruity, though.”
Jeeves made a noncommittal noise. He lifted the book from the box and began to flip through the pages while I pondered the meaning of it all.
“It appears that is the only likeness of you, sir.”
“That’s enough. Thank goodness they don’t show my face. I suppose they were looking for a more willowy figure. The usual illustrations for Rocky’s works are much beefier.”
“Shall we give it pride of place, sir?”
Jeeves and I exchanged significant glances.
“For a while,” I conceded. “Art is art, after all.”
Jeeves floated into the sitting room and placed the book in the centre of the table.
Title: Spurious
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Notes: Based on the ACD short story "Lot 249" and might be considered SPOILERS for some elements of that story
Summary: Holmes and Watson confront a man about force another man to destroy an Egyptian mummy.
“That’s enough, Smith,” intoned Holmes as I stepped out of the shadows and cocked the revolver which was aimed at Smith’s head. “It’s over.”
Smith’s own gun was aimed at the crying, sweating Bellingham.
“This is justified,” growled Smith. “You don’t understand.”
“Your justification,” replied Holmes. He held up a document, then made a show of leafing through the pages. “Oh, yes, I obtained it from Professor Peterson. “Very entertaining. If you like that sort of fiction. Watson does.”
“It helps to pass the time on the train,” said Watson dryly.
“You claim Mister Bellingham has resurrected an Egyptian mummy, and that he employed that mummy to attempt to murder Mister Monkhouse Lee, the brother of Mister Bellingham’s then fiancée, Miss Eva Lee.”
“He has! And he did! And now I am going make him cut up that terrible creature and destroy every stone, stick, and seed he used to animate it.”
“You’re mad!” cried Bellingham. “As mad as I am about ancient Egypt, you, Smith, are just as mad about the notion that I am some sort of evil alchemist! I went to Mister Holmes because I knew this absurd mania would end in violence!”
“And this manifesto of yours, Mister Smith, is a spurious claim by, if I may be so crude, a spurious heir,” said Holmes
Smith turned purple and began to shake.
“What?!” sobbed Bellingham.
“Yes, Mister Smith has been waging a very long campaign to discredit you, to dishonour you, and, yes, in all probability to murder you, Mister Bellingham. This campaign was launched years before he became your neighbor, sharing a set of stairs at your college at Oxford.”
“He did want your fiancée,” continued Holmes, “make no mistake, but before that, he wanted your inheritance. You see, you and Mister Smith are half-brothers. Your father had a second son, and in a fit of conscience, he provided for Smith in his last will and testament in the event that his first son, and heir, predeceased him. Smith wanted to ensure that you did, in fact, predecease your elderly ailing father.
“Lies!” growled Smith.
“You don’t know me, Mister Smith. I don’t normally make claims I can’t prove. If Mister Bellingham lives long enough, he can view the documentation himself, but we also have the cooperation of Tuk.”
Bellingham’s gaze went to the door. He gasped. Then he looked from the emaciated figure in the threshold to the mummified body in the open sarcophagus.
“There’s your mummy, Mister Bellingham. Tuk is an agreeable, helpful chap when he isn’t being forced into playing the part of an undead, thousand-year-old king. You aren’t really as good at necromancy as you believe.”
Poor Bellingham. The strain of the drama was too much, and he collapsed.
Watson took advantaged of the distraction and pistol-whipped Smith to the ground.
Holmes blew a whistle, then pounced, helping Watson to hold Smith fast. They let Tuk have a sharp kick at the prone man’s ribs before the police overran the room.
Fandom: Jeeves & Wooster
Rating: Teen
Length: 600
Notes: Bertie's friend Rocky Todd produces a poetry anthology called Carpe Diem.
You might think that my friend Rocky Todd, that poet chappie who lives a life so quiet and peaceful as to be trance-like in the wilds of Long Island, would be content. After he secured that allowance from his aunt in the affair I recorded for posterity in “The Aunt and The Sluggard,” you would think he would be happy to rest on his laurels for the natural life. In fact, you might suppose, as I did, that Rocky Todd would be precisely the kind of person the laurel inventor had envisioned when he set about his ground-breaking work.
You’d think Rocky was set for his whole, retired, tranquil snail-watching life. No more scribbling exhortations for young men to lead the strenuous life in unrhymed verse. No more wowing American magazine editors with classics like ‘Be!’ No more poems at all, even ones illustrated with photographs of half-nude coves bulging with muscles giving the dawn the glad eye!
You’d think there’ll be no more work for Rocky Todd.
And you’d be right. Mostly.
Rocky Todd didn’t work, but someone, a Rocky Todd enthusiast of the first order, thought it would be a corkin’ good idea to do an anthology of the sluggard’s works. And not just a pamphlet, like the kind Jimmy Munday hands out to entice sheep to his flock, no.
On my last visit, Rocky confessed himself that it was going to be large affair with glossy photos.
And the title?
Carpe Diem!
‘Seize the day’ was the leitmotif, if I may borrow the Gallic twice, of Rocky’s whole oeuvre.
Seize the day, well, yes, I mean, of course, notwithstanding the fact that Rocky Todd’s day usually started somewhere around half two in the afternoon and adjourned about four hours later with him never getting out of his flannel pajamas.
This last fact, by the way, is why Jeeves never joins me on my sojourns to Long Island. There are some horrors a man cannot force a gentleman’s gentleman to endure.
It was about a year after my last visit to New York that I received an unexpected parcel on my Berkley Mansions doorstep.
“Jeeves, whatever can this be?”
Jeeves was as puzzled as the y. m.
I slit open the box. Inside was a large tome, its title screaming from the cover in large print.
CARPE DIEM!
“JEEVES!”
“Sir!”
We were both arrested by the photograph on the cover. It was the back view of a nude chappie, crouching, muscles taut, haunches poised, ready to spring, to make a dive into the bucolic body of weater in the background.
A certain mole at the top of the right thigh gave us both pause.
“Jeeves, I give you permission to state the obvious.”
“It’s you, sir.”
“Rocky must’ve taken it when he and I went for a bathe at that lake near his cottage last year. I didn’t know I’d be modeling! Or on the cover!”
“It’s flattering, sir.”
“A bit fruity, though.”
Jeeves made a noncommittal noise. He lifted the book from the box and began to flip through the pages while I pondered the meaning of it all.
“It appears that is the only likeness of you, sir.”
“That’s enough. Thank goodness they don’t show my face. I suppose they were looking for a more willowy figure. The usual illustrations for Rocky’s works are much beefier.”
“Shall we give it pride of place, sir?”
Jeeves and I exchanged significant glances.
“For a while,” I conceded. “Art is art, after all.”
Jeeves floated into the sitting room and placed the book in the centre of the table.
Title: Spurious
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Notes: Based on the ACD short story "Lot 249" and might be considered SPOILERS for some elements of that story
Summary: Holmes and Watson confront a man about force another man to destroy an Egyptian mummy.
“That’s enough, Smith,” intoned Holmes as I stepped out of the shadows and cocked the revolver which was aimed at Smith’s head. “It’s over.”
Smith’s own gun was aimed at the crying, sweating Bellingham.
“This is justified,” growled Smith. “You don’t understand.”
“Your justification,” replied Holmes. He held up a document, then made a show of leafing through the pages. “Oh, yes, I obtained it from Professor Peterson. “Very entertaining. If you like that sort of fiction. Watson does.”
“It helps to pass the time on the train,” said Watson dryly.
“You claim Mister Bellingham has resurrected an Egyptian mummy, and that he employed that mummy to attempt to murder Mister Monkhouse Lee, the brother of Mister Bellingham’s then fiancée, Miss Eva Lee.”
“He has! And he did! And now I am going make him cut up that terrible creature and destroy every stone, stick, and seed he used to animate it.”
“You’re mad!” cried Bellingham. “As mad as I am about ancient Egypt, you, Smith, are just as mad about the notion that I am some sort of evil alchemist! I went to Mister Holmes because I knew this absurd mania would end in violence!”
“And this manifesto of yours, Mister Smith, is a spurious claim by, if I may be so crude, a spurious heir,” said Holmes
Smith turned purple and began to shake.
“What?!” sobbed Bellingham.
“Yes, Mister Smith has been waging a very long campaign to discredit you, to dishonour you, and, yes, in all probability to murder you, Mister Bellingham. This campaign was launched years before he became your neighbor, sharing a set of stairs at your college at Oxford.”
“He did want your fiancée,” continued Holmes, “make no mistake, but before that, he wanted your inheritance. You see, you and Mister Smith are half-brothers. Your father had a second son, and in a fit of conscience, he provided for Smith in his last will and testament in the event that his first son, and heir, predeceased him. Smith wanted to ensure that you did, in fact, predecease your elderly ailing father.
“Lies!” growled Smith.
“You don’t know me, Mister Smith. I don’t normally make claims I can’t prove. If Mister Bellingham lives long enough, he can view the documentation himself, but we also have the cooperation of Tuk.”
Bellingham’s gaze went to the door. He gasped. Then he looked from the emaciated figure in the threshold to the mummified body in the open sarcophagus.
“There’s your mummy, Mister Bellingham. Tuk is an agreeable, helpful chap when he isn’t being forced into playing the part of an undead, thousand-year-old king. You aren’t really as good at necromancy as you believe.”
Poor Bellingham. The strain of the drama was too much, and he collapsed.
Watson took advantaged of the distraction and pistol-whipped Smith to the ground.
Holmes blew a whistle, then pounced, helping Watson to hold Smith fast. They let Tuk have a sharp kick at the prone man’s ribs before the police overran the room.
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Date: 2022-10-03 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-03 07:01 pm (UTC)