Storytime 1

Me and Goldie spent a few weeks writing up articles in the February and March of 2024. Eventually, the stress of applications + writing these weekly got to us and we stopped after four articles but we are proud of them nonetheless. The rules are simple, we would spend a day devising a list of 20 words and we then had to make a story using those twenty words. I don't remember if we were tight on the ordering of the words, but from my observation now, they seem arbitrary, so as long as all words were used in the article, it was fine. We then rated each other's work, and it was nice. Wish it was less burdensome though, but it was fun while it lasted. This is the first and the remaining 3 posts will be in this series. Enjoy!

Word List:

1. Bartheimer

2. Radiance

3. Malicious

4. Abstract

5. Smell

6. Martini

7. Electric

8. Girl

9. Spy

10. Mantra

11. Watt

12. America

13. Cliffside

14. Nicholas

15. Arcade

16. Franchise

17. Speaker

18. Academics

19. Michael Phelps

20. Happy

HuMan:

He was terrible, he wasn’t Michael Phelps. He couldn’t even try. It would be a doomed endeavor. The smell of chlorine went deep into his chest every time he took a dive, and every time he would come up for air, he would be pushed back down by his mother. His mother, a stereotypical Russian woman, tall and attractive, wore a floral scarf and contained a misleading coy disposition. Her radiance was a trap, hiding a malicious dark secret. Her son would never guess nor be enlightened about the truth of what she was or what she had done but he simultaneously would never get the chance of leading a normal life. He was constantly expected to focus on his academics and also learn all the survival skills expected from a WW2 veteran. Was he happy? How would he know? He didn’t know any other life. He wasn’t really introduced to luxury. To leisure and to peace. He found the suffocation in the pool to be his usual, and the girl holding his head down below the surface being the same person who helped him make his ends meet. Nicholas Bartheimer would later that day go home and hold no grudges against his paranoid mother. He would simply turn up the volume on his speaker and recite his daily mantra of cursing America, the land of the despicable and the pathetic. His mother would prep a martini and the pair would comfortably sip and consume. Never questioning the events that transpired in the morning. Nicholas never once wondered or questioned why he did what he did. And why should he? He gets to end his day with decent food on the table and a place to call home. Mother said to always be grateful for his blessings.

What was the deal with Mrs. Bartheimer you ask? It would’ve been anything. A compromised spy with a dark past? The ex-wife of an oligarch who ran a Russian franchise on the tip of his fingers? It never really mattered though, definitely not to Nick, not to anyone, but even generally. She had her own image to maintain in her small little suburb which she did quite elegantly. Every Sunday she would cook cookies for the neighborhood, and distribute them for no discernable reason. Other than to justify her made up hobby of baking. That she was good at baking had nothing to do with the fact that she probably really despised each second of it. Every Sunday, Nicholas got to visit the arcade. His mandatory attendance in regular environments. It is unclear if Mrs. Bartheimer could ever specify who exactly she was trying to satisfy with that façade. And for her to dawdle in such affairs would seem fine, but little Nicholas only dragged along. If Mrs. Bartheimer asked Nicholas to jump off of a cliffside he wouldn’t volunteer to do it, but he wouldn’t stop his mother from pushing him over the edge either.

They all guessed these were the thoughts going through Mrs. Bartheimer’s imagination as every single watt of electricity was charged into her skull as she was executed at the electric chair. She only had enough time to build an abstract of the life she wished for. A pushover child, and a welcoming neighborhood that didn’t ask too many questions. If this theory of what she wished for, was truly her definition of a perfect life, then the executors decided, that they really had no guilt. Otherwise, well, there never really was an otherwise.

Goldie:

Bartheimer knew that he was possibly the world’s greatest secret agent. The key to being the world’s greatest secret agent was simple- putting on a show of absolute radiance when in a public setting. One would think that drawing so much attention to oneself when on a secret mission would prove to be fatal, but Bartheimer knew just when to turn his charm on. You see, it had been his show of dazzling confidence and exhuberance that had won him access to the classified documents of the malicious President of Russia, which ultimately led to him saving the world from a potential Third World War. Quite suddenly, Bartheimer was abstracted from his thoughts by the distinct smell of a very specific perfume. He locked eyes on his target, and with laser-like focus, walked towards the bar. He ordered his regular drink, a vodka martini on the rocks, shaken, not stirred. His order caught his target’s attention, just as he’d hoped. He met her electric gaze with a bright smile, and proceeded to ask if he could buy her a drink. She ignored him and looked the other way. The girl, to her credit, did not hold herself one bit like a spy. To anyone else, she would seem like an innocent young woman, bored at a party that was being held in the honor of her much older soldier partner. But Bartheimer, oh she could not fool him. He knew she’d be a difficult nut to crack, and he was more than ready to take on the challenge. True to his little mantra, he put on his signature million watt smile, and tried to approach her again. Again, she rebuked his advances. He tried to think of everything he knew about her that could help him win her over. He knew she’d grown up in coastal America, on a house by the cliffside. He knew her father, Nicholas, had double crossed the country and leaked secret information to a foreign government. Which is why he also knew that she could not be trusted one bit. “I’m Bartheimer. What would a beautiful young woman such as yourself be doing at a boring party for academicians?,” he relented.

She turned to him, slowly, and asked “Do you remember how it felt when your favourite arcade shut down after large video game franchises began taking over?”

The question puzzled him, and just as he was beginning to answer, an unpleasant mic feedback echoed through the speakers of the large hall. The noise was so loud, it resulted in a massive commotion, with the academics in the room holding their hands over their ears to stop the ringing and running around in a daze. In this distraction, Bartheimer did not even notice that his lady friend had long disappeared. He looked around frantically, only to see her on the balcony upstairs, running towards the restricted section of the hallway. But Bartheimer could do little about this; the noise had apparently hypnotized him and everyone else in the room, and his vision was beginning to swim, and the more he tried to run, the more he felt like Michael Phelps in a swimming relay. Bartheimer knew he was possibly the world’s greatest secret agent, and he was far from happy that someone else had just outsmarted him.