Trifextra: Week Twenty-Eight

Your flights were infinitely more interesting than mine.

First place in this week's Trifecta challenge goes to Writing In The Margins, Bursting At The Seams for her piece, Easy As Floating.  We loved the descriptions here and hope you do, too.

Minutes before his four o’clock appointment, the tattoo artist disappeared. His kid sister, home for spring break, sat at the reception desk, obsessively straightening neat piles of papers while the four o’clock appointment watched the clock and tapped his foot against grimy yellow tiles. She cleared her throat and stood. She smoothed her skirt, noticed the half-finished scene climbing up the man’s arm: a family tree, she supposed, a name scripted into each leaf.

“Let me see if he’s finished.” She checked each of the back rooms again, quietly opening doors and peering intently into rooms. She dialed his cell phone. He didn’t pick up.

* * *

The flight ended. The tattoo artist unbuckled; stepped from the plane; made his way to the baggage claim; waited for his suitcase to circle around. He blinked at the sudden brightness of the happy people reunited at the exit, hugging and kissing, some even crying. He counted sixteen bouquets of cut flowers wrapped in brittle paper. Ten bundles of helium balloons, yellow and green and pink, bobbed in the musty air. A young couple held a sign Welcome 2 America, Cassidy! An elderly woman gripped with eagle talons a gift bag bursting with purple tissue paper begging to be rustled. All around him, people expressed in gifts what they could not say in words.

Outside, the wind stole a red balloon from the grasp of a child. He wailed; pointed; demanded that his mother reclaim it from the sky.

“I can’t, honey.”

“But why?”

She shook her head; bit her lip. “Let’s watch it disappear.”

They stood, necks bent, as they stared at the balloon becoming gradually smaller until it was just a tiny dot of red ink against the backdrop of the sky. 

The tattoo artist smiled. He will make his life anew, rendering sketches and inking designs into the skin of strangers.

You can’t easily make tattoos disappear.

But disappearing a tattoo artist? Easy as floating a helium balloon into the blueness of the sky.

Second place goes to Barbara from The Purple Moose Gazette for her piece, Text To Mom.  It's not uncommon to throw a man under the bus for making the couple late to an engagement.  It is, however, a touch unusual to make Mars the engagement.

Third place goes to Word Cut for The Dog Walker.  Scatological references aren't always effective; here, it was perfect.

We hope you enjoyed reading this week's responses as much as we did.  Congratulations to the winners and a huge thanks to everyone who took the time to read and comment on one another's work.

On to Trifextra, where this weekend we're borrowing from the musical world.  Noted blues musician, Lead Belly, was quoted in Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet as saying:

You take a knife, you use it to cut the bread, so you'll have strength to work; you use it to shave, so you'll look nice for your lover; on discovering her with another, you use it to cut out her lying heart.

He uses one object, a knife, to flesh out a character and to tell a story in a basic three-part dramatic structure.  We want the same from you.  Give us 33 words (exactly) that tell us three different uses for one object.  But don't just tell us that a can opener can be used to 1) open cans, 2) open beer bottles and 3) break a window in case of a fire.  Tell us a story, like Lead Belly did, if you can.  It won't be easy, but you guys are far beyond needing easy prompts.