The Toast Point Bad Fiction Contest
proudly presents:
Rosalinda's Rising Passions
and
Run-On Raptures
(with an Occasional Digression
toward
Rambling Rendezvous
or
Dangling Dalliance)
by B. Mushkeau and Flaneur Le Beau
with additional entries by Ecrue Clutch and Robert Williams
Last updated May 5, 1999
Chapter One, by B. Mushkeau
As gentle breezes from the overhead fan wafted down over the torridly
passionate bodies of Rosalinda and Bartholomew who lay entwined in feverish
throbbing desire on the steamy, disheveled rose-colored sheets which Rosalinda,
in a moment of foolish abandonment as well as anticipation of this very instant
of ecstacy, had purchased at K-mart for a quite reasonable price, Rosalinda
(examining her hands that were encircling Bartholomew's swarthy, but not
undesirable, masculine neck) emitted what she hoped Bartholomew would take for
a cry of satisfied passion, but was indeed nothing more than a squeal of
disgust at how the Rose Passion nail polish she had purchased at the same time
she bought the sheets did absolutely nothing to flatter her long, exquisitely
tapering fingertips; and this revelation caused her ardor to cool somewhat
toward both Bartholomew and K-Mart blue light specials (or perhaps the cooling
effect was just the ceiling fan which Bartholomew, in his typically
over-bearing masculine manner,
always kept turned a bit high for Rosalinda's delicate sensibilities),
and she contemplated whether now would be a good time to mention to him (in a
delicate and sensitive way, of course) one of his other shortcomings.
Rosalinda's reveries were cut short, however, by the unceremonious ringing
of the doorbell, causing Bartholomew to lunge from the rose-coloured bower
(somewhat like an ox trying to escape from the chute which leads to the
slaughterhouse, she thought) and grab for his trousers, before leaping into
the mirror-panelled closet, which had conveniently remained ajar, owing to
Rosalinda's penchant for wanting to see both herself and her lingerie
collection while sitting up in bed, which left Rosalinda to grope for a
dressing gown before heading to the front door, all the time wondering two
things: who could be calling at that hour of the evening, for it was too late
for salesmen to be calling, any self-respecting cultist wanting to proselytize
would have done better to approach her early in the morning, before her
resolve had solidified, and the groomer from Poodles-R-Us had assured her that
he would take at least two full days to tease the coif on Miss Abigail's
Champion By The Seashore in Pink (her favourite lap-dog, whose fur
complemented so well the Blossom-Tyme shades of her sofa and loveseat); and
why she had ever chosen to consume three entire white wine spritzers during
the early hours of her encounter with Bartholomew, which were now exerting a
most uncomfortable osmotic pressure on her kidneys and beyond, triggering a
desire within her to head for the lavatory, rather than answer the doorbell,
which was being rung every three seconds, as if by repetition it might
finally get the ear-jarring sound correct.
Always priding herself on her remarkable powers of self-restraint, Rosalinda
ignored the urgings of her kidneys, buttoned her rose silk dressing gown
far enough up to contain the two pendulous pinnacles of Bartholomew's preoccupation
as well as his admiration (he either not bright enough to know that their
charms had been surgically enhanced, or else too gentlemanly to bring the
matter up) lest a stranger gaze upon them, decided to open the door and
end the interminable ringing of the bell which somehow reminded her of
her late husband's incessant whimpering, but before doing so, paused to
ponder just who, or perhaps it was whom (she always had been puzzled by
that particular combination of interrogative pronouns) might be so urgently
demanding her attention; and limiting her possibilities to three - Mr. Murglethorpe,
a neighborhood curmudgeon she'd always remotely considered as a potential
possible next-husband, despite ugly neighborhood rumors that he committed
unspeakable acts involving small rodents and duct tape; old Mrs. Thithletwaithe,
purveyor of the rumors about Mr. Murglethorpe, who always seemed to appear
upon her doorstep on some pretext or other such as borrowing the fax machine
or perhaps the latest issue of Cosmo each time Bartholomew's Porsche was
not quite so well hidden behind the shrubbery , and who seemed, despite
her advancing age and arthritis, seemed to have an uncanny agility to peer
into the rather high windows on the east side of Rosalinda's abode; or
perhaps it was merely the pool-boy, a shy young man of certain physical
attributes most noticeable when he bent over to refill the chlorine dispensers
and who, Rosalinda remembered, she had told to come around some afternoon
and help her order supplies since her pool certainly seemed to use a great
deal more chlorine than usual this season; but as she opened the door smiling
in expectation that perhaps it was the pool-boy and absently wondering
what she might do with Bartholomew sequestered in her closet, she was startled
to see a quite ordinary boy in a blue uniform hand her a telegram, which
she held at arm's length, her vanity being such that she'd vowed not to
succumb to the temptation of buying bifocals, and read the following: DEAREST
WIFE STOP I'M ALIVE STOP RUMORS OF MY DEMISE ON THE SERENGHETTI FOLLOWING
LION ATTACK WERE GREATLY EXAGGERATED STOP SHALL RETURN HOME SHORTLY STOP
HOPE YOU DON'T MIND A FEW SCARS STOP, and, having completed the reading,
was struck with the realization that her elderly (though wealthy) husband,
Harriman Ostlefluger, was not safely and securely dead as she'd been led
to believe, her lifestyle that had changed so much in such a positive manner
since his demise was about to grind to an abrupt and ill-fated halt, and
she'd certainly have some explaining to do about certain adjustments she'd
made in the running of his business once Harriman returned home, Rosalinda,
for once in her formerly flawless and controlled life, lost control and
swooned into the awaiting arms of the telegram boy as the buttons
of her
dressing gown, no doubt a literary metaphor for something or another, also
lost control and let her secrets tumble forth to the delight of the smiling
telegram boy, who had, prior to this moment, spent no small amount of time
contemplating how boring a career choice telegram delivery had formerly
been.
Moments later, as Rosalinda slowly came to her senses, neath the spreading weigela bush (which had, only the week before, come into a riot of bloom so shockingly pink as to jar her own hypersensitive colour-sense, causing her to have no choice but to excise each offending blossom as it opened and toss it into the backyard burn barrel, watching as the flames licked at the tender petals, much as her own doubts about her facility with lion-tamers were now licking at her psyche), her gaze was distracted momentarily by a solitary Lee Press-On Nail of a stunningly irridescent mauve, caught, like some enamelled animal in a granite leg-hold-trap, betwixt two paving stones at the foot of her grand and sweeping fieldstone entrance stair (complete with the white wrought-metal ballustrades which showed her collection of snapdragons off to such advantage), and, as she looked at her own flawlessly self-administered manicure (marred only by its colour - for the Rose Passion polish had clashed so horribly with the new linens she had chosen so carefully during the blue-light special at K-mart, but now, in the waning light of sunset, looked remarkably well-coordinated with the dressing gown she had chosen in such a hurry), she was forced to ponder on who or what had left such a lowbrow (for who would ever stoop to wear a colour so unnatural as mauve on one's fingertips, she reasoned) calling card, forgetting, for a brief moment in time, her impending doom, should her erstwhile deceased husband (whose uncharacteristically youthful stamina she had thought extended only to the boudoir, and not to romps across the Serengheti while being followed by the highly trained lion pride of Mojembe Duku, a man of no small stamina himself, she secretly noted) return, scars or no scars.
Forcing the momentary distraction from her mind (for she did not like to
find herself in a distracted state, however momentary it might be, unless
it was one of her own choosing) and making a mental note to remind Helena,
her personal maid, who was sometimes a bit careless in her personal hygiene
(for indeed Rosalinda had once noticed her remove an offending intrusive
bit of nasal exudate from her left nostril with the tip of of a rather
sloppily manicured pinkie - Yes, indeed!, Helena was the sort to resort to
press-on nails, especially mauve ones, in times of stress, Rosalinda suspected,
and goodness only knew what other artifices Helena might employ, Rosalinda
shuddered to think, that her employment by Rosalinda was forthwith terminated
and to expect no letter of reference) and realizing that the young telegram
delivery man in whose arms she found herself was not the sort of person
she'd want to admire any of her physical attractions, especially not the
ones he was currently admiring with a look of even more ardor than the
occasion called for, she blushed a radiant pink that only made her the
more attractive in his eyes, extracted herself as gracefully as possible
from his grasp, gathered both her dignity and dressing gown about her,
and slammed the heavy hand-carved mahogany door in his face without, Rosalinda
would later realize in a moment of heightened etiquette awareness, giving
him a tip, though of course she decided he had certainly been rewarded
enough; then she returned to her rose-colored boudoir where she felt obligated
to extricate Bartholomew from his hiding place amidst the lingerie in her
closet and to tell him the smallest of fibs - the better to spare his feelings
as he was sometimes known to go on a rampage of shattering bottles of her
expensive perfumes when he did not have his way, and her boudoir was certainly
malodorous enough lately given his rather unstable mental condition following
the hostile take-over of his company by his ethically-challenged twin brother
Osmond, the mysterious disappearance of his mentally-challenged but
physically over-compensated niece Hermione, and alimony suit by his chemically-dependent
ex-wife, regarding her newly reestablished marital status, when it occurred
to her that perhaps the telegram was a fake - for, upon close re-perusal
of the missive, she noticed that the word Serengheti had been inexplicably
misspelled and she, in her trusting naive way, was confident that an establishment
of such long standing as Western Union would surely not make careless errors;
and with the idea dangling in her mind like a misplaced participial phrase,
she wondered just who (or was it whom?) might be trying to deceive her and
in what way and why, but her mind not conjuring up an immediate plausible
answer (or even an implausible one), decided to go ahead and lie to Bartholomew
while perhaps (she allowed herself to wickedly imagine) simultaneously
lying with him, depending of course on what his current mood might be...
Meanwhile,
Bartholomew, left to his own devices amidst Rosalinda's
expansive collection of lingerie, unequalled on the planet, save perhaps
in the warehouse of Frederick's of Hollywood, began organizing (his one
failing, his mother had always bemoaned, was that he had a neatness
streak surpassed only by that of his father Thelonious who, his mother
had drilled into Bartholomew from an early age, had lost all of his
virile spontainaiety when he'd finally finished his correspondence
course in chartered accountancy), first the feather boas, which, he was
amazed to find, had been collected by Rosalinda in every shade of the
rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (the indigo one,
which he began searching for amongst the endless racks of shoes had, he
soon remembered, been draped by Rosalinda across the settee earlier that
evening when she had risen to mix the second of her three white wine
spritzers), then the stockings, laying them out in neatly folded pairs,
coordinated both by fibre type (he was most impressed that Rosalinda
chose primarily silk, but was not averse to dabbling in the occasional
unnatural fibre), and by colour (an alarming trend towards unflattering
pinks and blues, Bartholomew thought, which did nothing to mask the
woman's tendency towards hippiness) and then the garter belts into a
half-hearted but not altogether disorganized lattice loosely constrained
by number of fasteners (so that he might place those with five or more
fasteners seperate from the more sensible two- or four-fastenered
varieties), length (the strappy French brands being separated from the
more utilitarian - and hence shorter - Swedish brands), and texture
(he'd originally omitted the category, but found that he simply could
not bear to place the silken garter belts in any near proximity to the
velvet ones, no matter how akin they might seem in other regards) in a
vain attempt to ignore the ever more increasingly - particularly as a
detached observer that occasionally occupied some small portion of his
brain noted the piles of neatly sorted lingerie mounting; the secret
door in the far wall revealed; the voluminous closet's limits laid bare;
the minutes slinking by - inescapable fact (some other distant corner of
his mind recognized that 'supposition' or 'hypothesis' was probably more
accurate, but he was the sort that happily leapt to conclusions, and
stuck with them like a couple of boots in a puddle of quicksand) that
Rosalinda had been called away not by the exigencies of turning away the
Fuller Brush man, milkman, postman, UPS delivery man, or door-to-door
evangelist, but rather that Rosalinda had merely placed him -
Bartholomew - on "hold", as it were, while she indulged (irksome) in
another (decidedly irksome) simultaneous (most particularly irksome, and
a cut that would have wounded a weaker man to the very core:
Bartholomew, however, was made of sterner stuff, and thus was cheerfully
distracted with a variety of implausible yet entertaining scenarios in
which he was successful in enticing Rosalinda's vivacious and
overendowed younger sister to join him 'neath the peignoirs until the
significance of the door in the back of the closet finally came home to
roost) dalliance.
Upon recovering her equanimity, not to mention securely locking the hand-carved Honduran mahogany door and disconnecting the doorbell lest she be interrupted again, Rosalinda proceeded to the lavatory to freshen up, as it were, to relieve herself of the effects of the three white wine spritzers, and also to check her usually quite ravishing reflection in the lovely Louis XIV mirror in the foyer of her rather lavishly sumptuous (or was it sumptuously lavish? - she could never decide) rose-colored (or was it rose-coloured? - she really must start being a bit more decisive) bathroom to see if her otherwise calm countenance betrayed the inner turmoil raging not unlike one of Mojembe Duku's lions of the Serengeti - Ah, that was indeed the correct spelling her brain has been casting about for! - when, in a moment of boredom not to mention decidedly poor judgment, she had prodded him in a rather delicate place (the lion, not Mojembe - certainly not Mojembe!) - with the tip of her silken sun umbrella, causing the lion to take a
playful swipe that rendered the umbrella useless forever more (and it was one of her better ones, too!) and also causing him (the lion) to take a less than playful swipe at her husband Harriman, and thus establish a pattern of lion attacks that culminated in what she thought was his death, she having returned stateside by that time so as not to miss the opening of fox-hunting season at her country estate, Upper Crustington, where in a moment of reckless abandon as she, perched upon her hand-tooled sidesaddle, galloped her prized Arabian stallion across the carefully manicured grounds, she spurred her steed a bit too forcefully and he pitched her headlong into an artificial bog (installed by imported and - she was proud to note - highly paid landscape artists to give just the faintest touch of rusticity to an otherwise too-perfect setting) which, being soft, did her no apparent bodily harm but mussed her coiffure beyond repair, thus resulting in an emergency summoning of her favorite hairdresser Ettienne,
who petulantly demanded a more than usual tip and (she was sure) no doubt gossiped about her to his other clientele, and a nasty indelible stain on her dusky rose designer riding habit, so that upon returning to the stables in somewhat of a snit she summarily summoned a veterinarian to geld the stallion; and - as she returned to Bartholomew (who had by now extricated himself from the closet, though not from his fantasies of Rosalinda's sister), still not sure of exactly what little story she would concoct to gloss over the fact that her late husband might not be as late as they had heretofore thought, and looked longingly into Bartholomew's limpid eyes, her keen woman's intuition, honed to an especially sharp edge not unlike the veterinarian's scalpel, noted a particular glazed aspect that always betrayed his (Bartholomew's, not the veterinarian's) tendencies to leap headlong into fantasies if left to his own devices for more than a few minutes - either that, or rearrange her lingerie, which a quick peek into her
closet confirmed, or perhaps both - and, as she yielded to his embrace, she could not help but wonder if her younger sister was still safely ensconced in the convent and also wonder how her stallion's disposition had been much improved thanks to the skills of that charming veterinarian, and the wondering of how strange it was that she should think on such things now quite crowded from her mind the fact that she might not be a widow, so why should she - at a moment when so much ran amok through her mind, especially the pesky details of how to put her recently rearranged lingerie collection to rights - bother to tell Bartholomew anything that might somehow spoil the mood of the moment?
As Bartholomew's mind raced over a multitude of ideas, the first being
the possible contents of the room behind the secret door in the lingerie
closet, and the last (causing him to emit a noise which Rosalinda took
for a moan of growing passion, but was really a stifled groan of terror,
as he realized that he had spelled Serengeti wrong on the counterfeit
telegram which he had paid so dearly for his unemployable (yet fiercely
loyal) father, Ethelbert to fly to Kenya and, masquerading as
Rosalinda's deceased husband, dictate to the Western Union Telegraph
Company representative (who always insist on positive identification to
prevent just such fraudulent usage of their messaging system), in a
desperate attempt (on Bartholomew's part) to dissuade Rosalinda from her
persistence in dropping matrimonial hints) being the dispassionate
curiosity as to whether Rosalinda had _indeed_ received the counterfeit
telegram and what her reaction would be to it when she got it, he
absentmindedly allowed his hands (which seemed to have minds of their
own when it came to the amply cushioned curves of Rosalinda's back) to
begin working their magic on Rosalinda's shoulders, causing her to
wonder, as she cast her gaze over Bartholomew's shoulder and around the
room, trying in her most nonchalant manner to notice if the key to her
secret office (securely hidden in its guise as the plunger for her
chrome and mauve-enamelled wide slice toaster, which she kept by her bed
for the double-frosted raspberry Pop Tarts (buttered with curls of sweet
butter from a bar-fridge that doubled as a nightstand) which she
preferred over cigarettes for the post-romantic wind-down) had been
tampered with (it hadn't), if perhaps this would finally be the moment
(their affair, after all, had blossomed into something she thought would
become much more permanent after the untimely final exit (or was it so
final after all?) of her dearly departed Harriman Ostlefluger) he popped
the question, for certainly he was clearing his throat (and Rosalinda
allowed herself a glance of that large Adam's apple throbbing up and
down, which gave her a thrill almost as large as that from a double
helping of Hormel's Irish Stew, though she was not even partially Irish)
enough, and glancing back into the now-dreadfully organized closet
enough, so that Rosalinda imagined he must have the engagement ring
(which she had by now convinced herself he was planning to offer to her
after a decidedly brief moment of passion, followed by two Pop Tarts)
sequestered away under one of the piles of lingerie.
As Rosalinda contemplated the possibility of Bartholomew's expected
proposal (while simultaneously entertaining the thought (or at least amusing
the thought, if she didn't actually entertain it) that she might possibly
in a quite remote way not be free to marry Bartholomew should Harriman
actually be alive - though she still had the death certificate, she was sure,
tucked away in some remote cubicle in the mansion if that maid of hers that
she meant to fire hadn't misplaced it in her futile attempts at cleaning,
which were of course so far below Rosalinda's standards of cleanliness as
to be downright laughable if one was inclined to a rather vulgar sense of
humor, which Rosalinda was not, and surely a death certificate ought to hold
up in court if push came to shove even if Harriman did return in the flesh
or at least in whatever flesh had not been gnawed away by Mujumbe's
lions), she extended toward Bartholomew the second finger of her left hand
which retained just the slightest hint of raspberry Pop Tart jelly, that in
the process of licking it clean for her, he might notice a certain emptiness
and be prepared to cover it with a ring of sufficient caratage, clarity,
and general perfection as to meet her unusually high standards for
engagement rings (though if it didn't measure up, she'd not mention it - as
Bartholomew's ego had once suffered enormously in a previous time when
Rosalinda casually mentioned something else that didn't quite measure
up - and she'd discreetly exchange it - the ring, not the other thing - for
something more suitable to her standards), but Bartholomew, being a bit
obtuse, failed to take the hint and sucked the jelly from her finger with
such force that she feared he'd raised what someone of less delicate
sensibilities than she might call a "hickie," but at the very moment she
extracted her finger from his entwining tongue and was about to vent her
rage (in a lovely and tasteful ladylike way, of course) upon him not only
for the finger-sucking but also for the unprofferred engagement ring, there
came such a formidable knocking on the heavy hand-carved Honduran mahogany
door (Rosalinda having been disconnected the doorbell to avoid the very
intrusion which was now happening despite her best intentions), that the
mood was quite destroyed and she gathered a fresh rose-colored (or was it
"coloured"? Drat her dual citizenship and its ensuing spelling
complications!) dressing gown about her (that was two, or was it three?
dressing gowns already today, for indeed she was so distracted she'd quite
forgotten!), she hastened so quickly to answer the door before the
egregious knocker could do incomparable damage to the door's patina that
she failed to notice Bartholomew, revealing a heretofore unrevealed (at
least to Rosalinda, though alert readers might have already noted this and
perhaps remarked upon it to themselves) surreptitious nature by the faint
flicker of a devious smile emanating from the nether regions of his lips as
he anticipated the thickening - nay, the very curdling! - of his diabolical
plot in which his father Ethelbert would masquerade as Rosalinda's husband
(thereby freeing Bartholomew from Rosalinda's pernicious pressure to impale
him upon her matrimonial staff, which had more than a few notches on it
already, owing to her prodigious propensity to marry, but also still making
her fortune more readily available to him - if Ethelbert were to generously
increase his allowance - in order to finance the overthrow of his evil twin,
Osmond, whom Ethelbert had never really liked and had unsucessfully
attempted, on more than one occasion, to disinherit), amuse himself by
absent-mindedly tinkering with the chrome and mauve enamelled wide slice
toaster's plunger as his idle hands once again took on a mind of their own.
[NOTE TO ALERT DEVOTED READERS WHO HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE
DEVELOPMENTS IN THIS STORY: YOU WILL NOTICE THAT THE PLOT, WHICH HAS
PLODDED ALONG FOR QUITE SOME TIME NOW, APPEARS ON THE VERGE OF ARRIVING AT
A TOO-ABRUPT CONCLUSION NOT UNLIKE THOSE CHEAP TRASHY POT-BOILERS THAT ONE
IS WONT TO READ IN TIMES OF EXTREME BOREDOM, BUT YOU MAY REST ASSURED,
GENTLE READERS, IN THE COMFORTING THOUGHT THAT-AT LEAST IN THIS STORY- A
WATCHED PLOT NEVER BOILS.]
Rosalinda moved delicately down the rose-coloured (or was it
rose-colored) hallway to arrive at the heavy handcarved Honduran front
door, clutching her rose gown to chest, pausing before opening the door
in a grand motion (whoever knew who was going to appear at the door,
though heaven knows she couldn't stand another young, unbronzed delivery
boy) and flung open the door, amid the staccato thumping to reveal, to
Rosalinda's great surprise, her long-dead (she had hoped) husband
Harriman, looking rather crumpled in a bad, she thought, cringing and
peering about for neighbours, safari suit, that looked like it would
have fit one of Mujumba's lions better than him (though you could have
said this about Harriman with everything), leaning against the door
frame in a manner which suggested that he wanted to come in, which
Rosalinda knew would be a disaster if he were to enter her boudoir and
discover Bartholemew (even worse if he saw what he was doing to
Rosalinda's toaster, unbeknownest to Rosalinda); she tried to look
surprised and emotional as she clutched her rose-coloured robe to her
bosom and motioned to him with her readily tear-filled eyes (those
acting lessons had paid off on Harriman if not on Bartholemew) and
motioned for him to pass through the doorframe into her rose hallway.
It seemed to Rosalinda (as much as a new thought could seem to her, for
her mind was was quite busy contemplating a plethora of possibilities of
what actions might ensue in the ensuing minutes) that there was
something odd in Harriman's demeanor, though his was a demeanor given to
oddities—which had been why Rosalinda had once been so attracted to him
in her earlier, less discriminating years, that and his money; but she
could not quite put a finger (with its characteristic elongated,
tastefully manicured and rose-colored, or was it coloured?, nail) on it
to save her life which would not last long if Harriman—if the rather
crumpled looking man in the bad suit was indeed Harriman!—caught sight
of Bartholomew in her boudoir, for the Harriman she knew was a man given
to petty jealousy of the basest sort, and she could always read Harriman
like a book—albeit a small, thin book with a plain cover, a book about
some obscure subject that you’d only read if you had to do a book
report, a book that had only been published in paperback and would never
be made into a movie and certainly wouldn’t make the best seller list
even if they lowered their standards considerably—and, given Harriman's
arrival under less than ideal circumstances, she knew the time had come
for them to turn over a new page in their relationship or possibly just
skip ahead to the next chapter.
As for Harriman himself , well suffice it to say that he, having spent some
two score years as the unwilling and (so his captors thought) dimwitted guest
of a small but(or so he assumed, though in fact he had not actually been
privy to anything , shall we say, unnatural) ruthless tribe of savages whose
name he could never pronounce, their limited vocabulary consisting, as far as
he could tell, of a few rather unpleasant sounds accompanied from time to
time by the slapping of ones buttocks and (though he was not absolutely sure,
even after all those many years, of its grammatical significance ( he could
only assume, as one inevitably followed close upon the other)) by the emitting
of, how shall we say, a particularly foul smelling gas which made his
captivity nearly unendurable , so how unfortunate then that upon his arrival
at his true-loves door his first response should be , not a lovers heart-felt
sentiments, but a loud and quite unexpected gaseous outburst.
Continue the novel.
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