A Man of Much Importance: Parts 7 to 9

These micro-stories were written for the Word Improv writing challenges set on Instagram by @WordSleuth. Each challenge provides six rare words to be included in each story.

I used these challenges, and the rare words, to create backstories for my upcoming short film 'AWAY'. The six rare words from the Word Improv challenge are listed after the story. Enjoy.

PART 7: Rules and Rumours

Lord Illingworth’s annual Bacchanalian feasts were the ultimate show of his loathing for the banal. Surrounded by his guests who had come from far and wide to indulge in all manner of frippery and excess at his sprawling estate, he boasted to the assembled throng about the upcoming sport he had planned for them. With a flourish, he unrolled a paper scroll bearing his own devious rules to maximise the thrill of the chase.

"We shall ride into the chthonic depths of the forest, and emerge victorious with the spoils of the hunt!" his voice slurred, as he continued to make an exegesis of the scroll’s text.

His guests laughed and cheered, swept up in enthusiasm.

Except Mrs Arbuthnot, who had already heard Illingworth’s hunts included apotropaic rituals performed in the woods, and now his words did further vex her due to her son Gerald’s relationship with the man, both professional and personal.

As his voice boomed on and the boasts grew more extravagant, Mrs Arbuthnot became convinced his guests, and her son, were venturing into the unknown with a man whose appetites were as insatiable as they were dangerous.

Improv Words: banal, frippery, vex, exegesis, chthonic, apotropaic

PART 8: Ready for the Running

Lord Illingworth’s Bacchanalian feast was held every year on the last day of February, but this year being a leap, he pushed it back one day to the bissextile. And to make it a truly splendiferous affair, he had instructed his secretary Gerald Arbuthnot to acquire a magnificent fox for the day’s hunt.

Gerald approached Illingworth, surrounded by his eccentric guests, and whispered in his ear, the very words he had been waiting for. Lord Illingworth jumped up from his chair, spilling his wine, and exclaimed, "Prepare yourselves, my friends. The fox is awake!”

Illingworth had always been somewhat oddball. As a child, while others toted the occasional teddy bear, little boy Illingworth was a complete arctophile. His nursemaids found him unctuous at the best of times. And while it was clear he would not grow into a feirie young man, his excesses for food, wine, women and all manner of deviances became far greater than any had expected. His transfiguration into the enormous man that stood amid his guests today seemed the ultimate perversion, as if he embodied all debauchery and corruption.

And now the fox was awake. Lord Illingworth raised a brass trumpet to his fat lips, ready to deliver the blow that would begin the hunt.

The hunt for a woman of no importance.

Improv Words: bissextile, splendiferous, arctophile, unctuous, feirie, transfiguration

PART 9: Tunnels and Trumpets

Thirty feet below Lord Illingworth’s terrace, Charlie’s eyes flickered open to the dim light of the underground chamber and the muted sounds of the raucous party far above.

She sat up, groggily, and surveyed the room that now imprisoned her: the rough stonework of four cyclopean walls, the single light bulb dangling above, and the timber slats of a small palisade set in one wall – the only visible weakness to exploit.

Despite being an opsimath, Charlie knew she had the mettle to escape. When the timbers refused to budge, she began to pullulate ideas. Then it struck her, “The hinge!”

Slowly, she pushed out the iron and pried open the timbers to reveal a long tunnel with a beam of sunlight at the distant end. As she crawled, she forced herself to overcome the sum of all her fears: claustrophobia, nyctophobia, gephyrophobia. Even the anatidaephobia she shared with her brother.

The light at the end of the tunnel beckoned. Closer and closer, she crawled, until finally she emerged in a sun-dappled garden.

Freedom, at last.

In the distance, the sounds of the unruly soirée. Then, the trumpeting of a bugle and the barking of dogs.

“The fox is away,” bellowed the voice of Illingworth on the breeze. “Unleash the hounds!”

Charlie was a woman of much importance.

Improv Words: mettle, cyclopean, pullulate, opsimath, palisade, anatidaephobia

THE END