The best thing I've found
The irony of this has been killing me for days.

I'd been reading last week's QOTW until it hit me what I could write about, what I really wanted to tell everyone about, yet couldn't quite work it into a story.

Must have been around the end of last weekend I started getting The Bug to do something with it, even if was to be buried under a pile of posts.

Trouble was, I had no time; either working, out, knackered or simply running low on inspiration. Then Thursday came and I found myself on a train on the way to site, with both the time to think and the will to act. T'was now or never. All the way there I plotted, and all the way back I wrote, my laptop finally charged up after a hectic day in a dark server room.

I got in, made a cup of tea, waited for B3ta to load, and there she was: Closed.

My preparation in tatters, I scanned up the page, opening the latest challenge and sat, po faced, tea dribbling down my chin and on to my creased shirt, as Chthonic's QOTW opening taunted me:

Procrastination.

And so, you lucky, lucky people, almost two weeks late, my entry for the last comp:

---
We'd walked for miles on legs made of jelly.

From the wilderness we'd traveled, sighting the lights of town and trudging through it, we'd shared many adventures, the warming thought of tea keeping us going as we swam through a thick mist inside and out.

We shared stories which stretched back many years to the night before, trading tales of half remembered conversations with our new, temporary best friends, cursing the DJ we were still deeply in love with for our broken legs.

Just one more corner, then it would be the last few corners, then tea, perchance to smoke and welcome the dawn from a more relaxed and sleepful perspective.

Then I saw it. Whether it had been lost, carelessly discarded, or had placed itself there deliberately to be found, I did not know, I did not want to know.

I circled it several times, barely daring to believe. I picked it up, holding it with both hands to make it real.

"What have you found?", my friend asked me

"It's a tin of cheese.", I breathed

His eyes widened: "It comes in tins?"

"It comes in tins."

"May I see?", he asked. "Sure", and gently handed it over.

"I wonder what it tastes like, out of a tin?", he mused. I quickly took it back.

It lives on the top shelf of my cupboard now, my tin of cheese. Sometimes it catches me by surprise, and I gaze at it, wondering if its contents are a lie.

I can't decide if I'll be buried with it, my tin, my Tin of Cheese. Maybe I wont be, maybe it will be opened at my wake, served, as it should be, on small sticks, possibly with some pineapple.

---

(Length? Less than a half my bitterness.)
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Sun 16 Nov 2008, 16:39, 3 replies)

Excellent piece of writing
MrO...whoever you are...new person? Or old sock?

Either way - *click*
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Sun 16 Nov 2008, 21:47, closed)

Ta very much :-) :-)
Old, lurking sock, but decided to push the boat out and lurk properly as a member about a month ago...

Did you enter this one?
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Mon 17 Nov 2008, 18:15, closed)

Not yet
Probably won't either as I haven't any particular story I can just rattle off and I've too much work around at the moment to Write something just for qotw...lame, I know. Maybe next week.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 17 Nov 2008, 19:49, closed)