Here's a strangle little piece I wrote as a warm up exercise using the phrase "I stand" as my first two words. Who knows where these things come from? I have no idea what to do with this; I hope it will fulfill the function of compost and somehow, somewhere, fertilize something.

I stand on a cliff overlooking the sea, foaming green around hidden rocks. My feet are bare and I feel the prickly summer grass, dry and yellow, tickling my toes. Nevertheless I am not safe. I feel the presence of a dark dark bogeyman creeping up behind me to push me off the cliff. He is wearing a black ski mask and has an icepick in place of a heart. He is like a crazed but effective CIA man, and his goal is to rid the world of me, even though he doesn't know, or care, why. He will laugh when he sends me tumbling into the green abyss below, and he hopes that the sharks that frequent this coastline will eat my flesh and even crush my bones into dust.

Well, I'll show him because he doesn't know that I am Gumby Woman. I have elastic limbs and prehensile sticky toes, and when he at last reaches me and shoves — thwack his fist into my back — I fall, yes, but my toes anchor to the cliff and my legs stretch, stretch, stretch, Gumby Woman at her rubbery best. I stretch all the way down to the rocky beach below and pick up a jagged rock, and I spring — boing! — back to the cliff top and the CIA bogeyman, who has taken off his ski mask, and has his mouth hanging wide open in shock. I smash the rock right into his gaping mouth and knock out all his teeth. Hah! the CIA is no match for Gumby Woman.