Home » Posts tagged 'slag'
Tag Archives: slag
Out of the Fire
Slag comes out of the fire as a by-product of industrial or artistic alchemy. Iron produces a rough glassy silica and molten glass creates colorful mixtures. In this raw state it has potential. In humans, another definition implies trash as in a lewd or promiscuous woman, and carries a more destructive meaning.
No matter the interpretation or tone, writers went where the slag prompt led them. And it makes for an interesting collection, this week.
The following stories are based on the March 2, 2017 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) include slag in a story.
***
Geocaching by Ann Edall-Robson
“We need to go over there!”
“Not according to the directions!”
The argument was consistent on any geocaching trips they made. This was their fourth trip to the area, an old mining town back in the day. They stood at the end of the trail overlooking mountain meadows and rocks. The GPS on their phones said they were close.
The realization they were standing on the old slag pile from the mine. Mountain grasses disguising historic remnants of the cache left behind. Mother Nature showing off what she’d accomplished over the years, reclaiming the once murky tailing pond nearby.
###
Slag Hill by Pensitivity
You could see it for miles, this landmark in time, rising up on the horizon as you turned the corner.
Some called it an eyesore, some saw it as a monument to times past, but passing it meant I was twenty five minutes from home, where Love, a cup of tea and a warm bed waited for me.
In my time, it was called Slag Hill, but within ten years, it became just The Hill.
It’s gone now, moved or used for heavens knows what, and the landscape is flat and featureless.
I’m glad I don’t live there anymore.
###
Evidence of Existence (form Miracle of Ducks) by Charli Mills
Danni knelt by the fire ring, rain dripping off her oiled hat. No campers remained, and she surmised the last ones had children with chalk. They left stones colored with pastel hearts. Layered coals hid what she sought. Digging with a stick, she unearthed a piece of glass Ike had broken when they last camped here. She couldn’t explain why she wanted the slag. She was an archeologist, proving existence of human habitation. She wanted to prove Ike had existed. G-Dog barked from the truck, bringing her attention to the dogs. Hers now.
The slag would outlast them all.
###
A Faultless Piece by Michael
She poured over the slag heaps looking for that piece that was the shape she required, the textures and colours needed to create the perfect article of jewellery.
Her fingers combed the debris that was left from the old iron foundry. She’d been lucky a few times in finding just what she wanted.
Many were contemptuous of her work. Said they were pretend trinkets. Gaudy, ugly fakes. She paid them no attention when they slagged her off ridiculing and jeering at her attempts to make some needed finery. One day she’d show them when she found that faultless piece.
###
Slag (Jane Doe Flash Fiction) by Deborah Lee
Oh, thank God you found it. ” Jane’s hands shake as she fumbles with the clasp. A stroke of good luck, that she lost it at work.
“Yeah, so, ” the cleaning woman says. “It was under the sink.”
“Look.” Jane holds out the pendant, an iridescent greenish-goldish-brownish cabochon glowing as if from within. “Slag glass, it’s called. We found a bunch in a ghost town that had burned. My grandpa made jewelry out of it. He made this.”
The cleaning woman sniffs. “Doesn’t look like so much to me.”
“Yeah, you’d probably rather have diamonds, like everybody else,” Jane snaps.
###
Victorian King Midas by Luccia Gray
Their skeletal remains were found in the hidden attic room of their Victorian home. She was wearing glass slag amber earrings, necklace, and an evening gown with amber slag gems sewn on.
A note on the bed-side-table, held in place by a priceless Victorian amber slag glass lamp, read:
My husband fancied he was like King Midas and everything he touched turned to gold and became his property, like me. I thought his blood might be amber, but it was bright crimson.
He would have been pleased it was his favourite slag amber lamp which had cracked his skull.
###
My Slag is Not Your Slag by Joe Owen
Karina twisted in front of the shiny 5 x 5 sheet of slag. Allie smiled while watching from her register at the door. It’d be great to sell the sizable piece of art, but her hopes were slim.
“I need to convince my husband” she said covering her cell phone as she neared the station.
Karina felt the swell of optimism, but breathed it out just as quickly. Being in the business meant disappointment was more often your closest friend.
“If you could see my reflection you would agree. I look like I did in Aruba,” Allie said. “Buy it? Okay!”
###
The Heirloom by Kate Spencer
Jim wiped droplets of sweat from his forehead. He and Gladys were spending their Saturday cleaning out the attic and reminiscing over silly items they’d found in boxes.
“Looky here Jim. It’s my great-grandmother’s Diving Dolphins bowl,” said Gladys holding up a purple dish. “I remember my Granny loved it. She always had gumdrops in it.”
Jim reached for the artefact. “Wonder how much it’s worth.”
“Looks like a rare piece of slag glass to me. I’d like to keep it. I’m thinking that some ol’ things are worth keeping around.”
“Like me?”
“Just like you, you ol’ goon.”
###
Flash Fiction by D. Avery
The box itself was a treasure, with its iconic graphics and rich smells, the hinged lid bestowing sanctity. Inside were her rare and special collections, including molten glass, twisted and smooth from a long ago fire; and the purple hued, cratered rocks that were surely meteorites, come to earth from the far off spaces between the stars. Later, when she was older, she would also keep a small notebook in that box, her foundry where she tried to forge something of enduring value. Later still, though she realized it was all slag, she continued to treasure these precious artifacts.
###
Transformation by Sarah Brentyn
I struggle to find what’s real.
I’m picking up sounds—buzzing and static. I think they’re trying to talk to me. Or maybe it’s me saying something. My words are lost in a haze of unrest.
My mind feels like melted glass, being stretched and twisted into something I don’t recognize. If someone were to put my mind on display, it would be unsightly and puzzling. I hope it doesn’t turn out that way. If the glass can be manipulated as easily as pulling taffy, I think it can be made into something beautiful and useful. Perhaps a vase.
###
Desire and Disappointment by Kerry E.B. Black
Henry’s head drooped until his chin rested on his chest. His scribbled calculations littered hundreds of pages and filled notebooks. He’d scoured creaking tomes thick with ancestral dust for research, divining ancient secrets for alchemical experiments. Flames flickered beneath miniature cauldrons and beakers. Metals melted into liquid luxury, but none refined as he wished. Just beyond the glow of his workspace, whispers populated the shadows. “He’s close, but he ignores the elemental marriage.” “They never realize the steps they miss in their haste.” With a wave of demonic hands, the metals produce not desired gold but slag and disappointment.
###
Where Nothing is Wasted, Nothing is Lost by Liz Husebye Hartmann
Pushing the goggles back on her forehead, she waved away the acrid smoke and smiled. Number nine hung from a slender wire, shards of red, yellow, and cool blue joined at their edges and reinforced in their many corners with spare strands of lead.
This was indeed her best spell, one that might save the shire from the Goblin Raiders. She hung it in the shop’s doorway, next to the other eight stained glass salmons. They rotated and collected the full moon’s light.
She brushed the slag into her hand, blowing the remnants, and a prayer, towards the fjord.
###
Volcanic Words by Irene Waters
Setting off at dawn Joshua and Darryl picked their way up the side of the volcano in silence.
“I’ve never met anyone with such a revolving door as Rhonda. The other night I saw Henry and Peter both visit.” Joshua broke the stillness of the morning, puffing out the words venomously as they neared the rim of the volcano.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?”
“Just think you should know you’re sweet on a woman with ….”
“Look at this slag,” Darryl interjected pointing at the scoria remaining after numerous volcanic eruptions. “look at those colours. Beautiful……. like Rhonda.”
###
Reunion of Innocents? by Jules Paige
Clementine anxiously waited for the 5:40 out of the city,
wondering if he would be on board…How much would
he have changed?
Takes time but the crescent moon morphs to full ~
Even the exotic afflatus jailer teasing the pasty longanimity
held captive with stew cooked with mouldy bread ~ will get
his comeuppance, Clem thought.
Thomas Glas had little light from the ledge of a barred window ~
Cringing at every noise trying to filter night from day…The slag
of his wrongly imprisoned heart may not form a diamond, but
an emerald was just as good…for her.
###
Arrogance by FloridaBorne
As my knuckle approached the musty old door, my outspoken personality fled into the background. No! I must get this over with!
A gruff voice said, “Enter,”
“You wanted to see me Professor?” I asked.
“You called me dense. My IQ is 170!”
“I don’t care if it’s 360,” I said. “You told a guy with Down Syndrome…”
“He is developmentally disabled.”
“I’m in your slag heap, too. Mine’s called Dyslexia, you just can’t see it.“
“He belongs in an Arc.”
“He’s making B’s!”
“Students,” he sneered, pointing toward the exit.
I opened it, allowing the university president inside.
###
The Good Girls by Anne Goodwin
They spat that name as she shivered down the corridors, taunts that slapped her ears. They were the good girls with glossy hair and proper parents, while she was ….
It hurt the first time. And the second and the third. But he bought her stuff she needed, and drugs that made it hurt a little less. He promised to protect her. Until he didn’t.
Next time, she’d call the shots; the good girls could call her what they liked. After all, her body was built for pleasure; it was time she took some for herself.
###
Slagged by Bill Engleson
Shelley has moments when the torture of her teens rises up in the wee hours.
She doesn’t scream out so much as squeal the pain.
“No, I’m not,” she sleep-says.
I stir, thinking, momentarily, that she’s awake.
“Wha…?”
But no. It is that distant time intruding.
“They made me into something I wasn’t,” she has told me repeatedly.
I remember my school days, the things I said, carelessly, cruelly, about others.
I’ve tried to tell her how small I once was, am no longer, I pray.
“Words… like rats-teeth. They never stop gnawing at my soul,” she has cried.
###
Slag by Reena Saxena
My sister called to say that Dad was terminally ill, and we should go see him once. Mom was happily settled with her second husband and kids, and would not bother to check on him.
Just before I left, I kissed my daughter in between her play, and invited protest. She wanted to be left alone.
“Sure, darling! But Mom and I will always be there for you.”
I could give anything to provide her the snug comfort of loving parents. I could not ever forget being referred to, by both of them, as ‘slag’, from their failed relationship.
###
The Artist by Norah Colvin
They, each with a single colour, used packaged accessories to form identical sets of flat, life-less shapes. He worked by hand, collecting and incorporating their slag, as he explored the properties of his clump of multi-coloured dough. They proudly displayed neat rows of unimaginative templated shapes. With humble satisfaction, he regarded his creation with its countless possibilities. Each time they started again, they repeated the same familiar fail-safe patterns. Each time he began anew, exploring, seeking, discovering the dormant, hidden potential, sculpting to allow uniqueness to shine. They remained stuck in what is. He focused on creating the future.
###
March 2: Flash Fiction Challenge
What had been murky pools a few weeks before are now flats of cracked mud. The kind of cracks that call to be pressed with the toe of a boot. It’s like nature’s original bubble wrap. You know, the kind you can snap and pop?
I’m walking down a desert road with ruts that have dried to resemble molded plastic. It’s not so dry yet that it’s dusty, and I know the moisture of an intensely wet winter in southern Utah (Mars) will bring an explosive spring. Already the desert has a different hue from when I first arrived in early September when temperatures were still topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It was dusty red beneath blue sky with faded brush.
Ahead of me, a rabbit runs from mesquite to sagebrush, both which are green. Not grass green. Sage is silvery blue-green and mesquite is dark like pine needles. I look to yucca plants and prickly pear, hoping this landscape transforms with flowers as only a desert on Mars could bloom. Until then, I hunt for spring-signs and rocks. There’s no rocks of interest on this plane beneath the shadow of Hurricane Mesa. So I look up.
Was this area where the monkeys landed?
Beyond my focus, I can discern something white at the edge where I know the tracks aimed off the mesa to launch test monkeys in test ejection seats. I imagine a monkey in a pod drifting slowly overhead, its parachute white as the snow that lingers to the west on the Pine Mountains. If I can see the ghostly memory of the past, what else can I see? Shoshone boys chasing rabbits, a Mormon wife hanging laundry. This would have been a safe place to live, high enough above the flash flood washes, close to sources of water, flat for a house.
And there are foundations. I kneel to examine the rock foundation of a home or barn. Old chunks of seasoned beams lie scattered. A tangle of wire rusts near tracks of modern all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs). Broken glass glitters. Upon a closer look, the glass is modern. A strange pile of old debris, as if a homestead had burned. I poke around and find slag: cobalt blue streaked with white as pure as monkey parachutes; green like grass that doesn’t grow here streaked with black; golden and brown.
What were these remnants? Its not clear like bottles, more opaque like iron slag, yet way too colorful. A desert mystery from a kitchen long ago on the spot beneath an Air Force test site. How strange when life is like multiple disconnected plays that share the same stage over and over. Eventually, the stage changes, but not as fast as the flashpoint of a human life or the drift of a flying monkey.
It’s been a long journey for me to get to this flat stretch of ground, picking up the slag of my own life. Like these transformed pieces, I’m changed, too. I’m not as polished as I once was. My edges are sharper, my color deeper. When I set out to conscientiously write a novel about the spouse of a veteran who decides to return to Iraq in mid-life, I wanted to explore why soldiers serve. Perhaps in the beginning of exploring service, I had high ideals of duty. I knew my husband was closer to his Ranger brothers than any other friendships or even family ties. And he has lots of cousins and hometown friends.
In fact, I think that day last summer when we finally got the Hub in front of a VA psychologist for an assessment, I realized something deeper about all those relationships he grew up with. In describing how easily he was friends with people, I nodded. The Hub never meets a stranger. But when pressed about his service and specific events, it became clear how detached he became from those formative ties. After service he was changed. Anger became a low-burning fuel that propelled him through life. Others describe him as intimidating. I learned (as did our three children) that he’s all bluster. He’s not dangerous or frightening, but that doesn’t change perceptions in the workplace. All these years he’s had us, his past ties and his Ranger brothers. Yet, he’s still on mission.
Duty isn’t to country and service is not driven by an ideal. He’d die for any one of his Ranger brothers, even now, and he continues to keep my perimeter safe and drive defensively. Why would he go back to Iraq if he were my character Ike? Training.
When you are in an elite force, you use your brain, brawn, morals and emotional strength to train. It’s important to understand that after all these years of seeing cracks in my husband’s behavior that it wasn’t simply PTSD. He does have PTSD, mild, as numerous evaluations state. As he describes to me, PTSD is merely a survival trigger to push a person into fight. The elite forces are not populated with flight responders. It’s the extreme training in this heightened survival mode that becomes like a switch turned on. And they want to do their mission. They train for their mission. They protect their brothers on mission. They dream of home; idealize it, but can’t stand to be still in it. They want to go on serving.
The Hub was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder just weeks before we came to St. George, Utah for the job that didn’t work out. It had no chance of working out. We had so many stress factors going on, stemming from our bout of homelessness, that his anxiety was off the charts. I never thought of my husband as anxious until I realized what it was. The gruffness, the anger, the mistrust of authority, the refusal to let others walk over the top of him, the idea that others wanted to walk over the top of him and not recognizing how work-culture behaves. That training to do the mission no matter what has created a beast of anxiety within him. Serving in Iraq would relieve it.
But that’s not the answer. Unlike my character Danni, I said no way. Instead I kept my husband home, but he grew more restless and frustrated, detached and demanding. I was certain the behavior stemmed from undiagnosed and untreated PTSD. I also believe (and this is pure opinion) that the high rate of veteran suicides in the Hub’s age range (over 50) has more to do with longevity of suppressed PTSD, anxiety or depression from service than anything. Younger soldiers undergo readjustment therapy and the VA offers programs my husband never had. Yet fighting for VA service can be a battle of its own, and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard veterans and their doctors minimalize their disabilities. Wiser veterans and advocates in the system warn other vets against “soldiering up.”
It took four years to get the Hub to “soldier down.”
By the time we got the diagnosis that leads to the care, we moved to Mars. To this date (March 2017) the Hub has yet to receive a primary care physician in St. George (and he’s been requesting one since September 2016). When he was placed on unpaid temporary leave, he was shocked and I was angry. Angry because I knew he was reacting to his anxiety poorly and the reasons cited for his eventual dismissal were related. I helped him write a letter to his employer asking for legal accommodations to his service-related disability. It was ignored. I called the VA and said we were in crisis. No one called back. I called the director and had a response in 15 minutes, an appointment the next day and a referral for CBT or EMDR.
And not even that came easy. Although we are taking classes and doing group therapy, the Hub’s first individual appointment was two days ago. Mine is tomorrow. I’m actually excited. Rarely do spouses or family members get mental health care or support. The Vet Center does allow for it, but they’ve been short a therapist. Poor woman arrived Monday and me and numerous other spouses from couples group therapy for vets with PTSD are ready to beat down her door.
We are slag forged in the fires with our veteran spouses, and want to fully transform into something of beauty and purpose.
We are the home-makers and although I aspire to be more than that with my own individual hopes and dreams, the home-maker role is as important as any.
And I have an update on our young and dedicated home-maker, bank-teller and overall Sweet One with her family’s new home after living in shelters and cheap motels. Her son is doing well in school, and thanks to all the books we collectively sent (I’m sure it was writers who sent books!) he has discovered a joy of reading. I’ll be certain to keep that joy alive.
Sweet One wants to thank all who sent house-warming gifts and to say she is cooking dinners for the family, making her first pot of chili in a crockpot. I had to laugh when she soaked the dry beans overnight and then texted me her concern the next day — are beans supposed to smell? I’ll keep fostering that joy of cooking.
For privacy, I can’t share full photos, but Sweet one approved these to be shared in a thank-you to you all:
How can I thank you and your friends for everything?? Hosting the welcome home party and all the wonderful and amazing beautiful gifts??? Thank- you just isn’t enough.I’m overwhelmed…. And both of the guys are as well. J LOVES all his packages he gets, but last night a tie between both the tupperware and crockpot he helped me pick out. If possible more excited then I was. It was SO funny and cute we were both doing our happy/ excited dances and he was happier than I was about them!Thank YOU ALL SO much for everything and ALL the love in each and every package.
March 2, 2017 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) include slag in a story. Slag is a glass-like by-product of smelting or refining ore. Slag is also used in making glass or can result from melting glass. It can be industrious or artistic. Go where the prompt leads.
Respond by March 7, 2017 to be included in the compilation (published March 8). Rules are here. All writers are welcome!
***
Evidence of Existence (form Miracle of Ducks) by Charli Mills
Danni knelt by the fire ring, rain dripping off her oiled hat. No campers remained, and she surmised the last ones had children with chalk. They left stones colored with pastel hearts. Layered coals hid what she sought. Digging with a stick, she unearthed a piece of glass Ike had broken when they last camped here. She couldn’t explain why she wanted the slag. She was an archeologist, proving existence of human habitation. She wanted to prove Ike had existed. G-Dog barked from the truck, bringing her attention to the dogs. Hers now.
The slag would outlast them all.
###