Exercise #3: Unreliable Third

500 word exercise using the POV of an unreliable narrator. Schizophrenic bag lady or elderly woman on an acid trip? You be the judge.


Fran screamed and slapped her arms in an attempt to douse the flames burning her baggy sleeves. A gentleman wearing a top hat, calabash pipe, and a large monocle stuck in his right eye rushed to her assistance.

"What's wrong wit you, lady?" he enquired as Fran danced around sidewalk in a panic. "You sick or somethin'?"

"Are you blind?" she yelled as the flames spread all over her beautiful blue silk ball gown, the one with the white pearls sewn into the bodice that her late husband, the thirty-first duke of North Cumberland gave her for their twentieth wedding anniversary. "I've caught myself aflame. Be a dear and find a bucket of water for me."

"What are you nuts?" the man said as he stared at her with a quizzical expression while peering down at her through his monocle. "You ain't on fire."

The flames burned holes through her garment, leaving her skin-mercifully fire proof-tingle from the heat.

"You dare insult me, a duchess of the great house of Cumberland, by calling me a liar?" she exclaimed as the flames raged on, destroying what was left of her expensive gown, thankfully sparing her diamond tiara which was a gift from the queen.

"Listen lady," the man said with a puff of his calabash pipe, "I don't care if you're the duchess of cucumber sandwiches or the queen herself. You ain't on fire and that's a fact."

"Of course I am no longer on fire, you swine!" Lady Fran said, aghast at his total lack of etiquette and doing her best to cover her nakedness with her two dainty hands. "You took too long to assist me. And stop staring at my beautiful naked body. I know it is a tempting sight indeed, but you must remember your station as a gentleman and avert your eyes."

He eyed her up and down, taking in her young, nubile form with a keen discerning eye. "Ma'am, I ain't no gentleman and you sure as hell ain't beautiful."

Lady Fran gasped.

"And I knows you ain't naked, 'cause if you were, I'd be too busy screamin' in pain to look at you for long what from the hot pokers I'd be stickin' in my eyes just for to sear the image of your old, flabby carcass out of my skull."

Lady Fran slapped him good and proper. "Take that you cur!"

"What?" he said, soap bubbles inexplicably floating out of his mouth. "The lamppost done you wrong too?"

"Stop spitting those foolish bubbles at me," she said, wrapping her hands around his thick neck and squeezing for all she was worth.

The gentleman whistled and pulled a purple kangaroo with red polka dots out of his jacket pocket. It wore a saddle of finest Italian leather. The man tipped his hat to her as he climbed onto the beast's back and said, "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say you old bat."

Before Lady Fran could argue, the man hopped off down the street as fast as the kangaroo could take him. He was probably late for the queen's ball, of which, Fran also had an invitation.

"He calls me crazy!" The Duchess harrumphed as she observed his departure through her magical looking device cleverly disguised as a toilet paper tube. "I'm not the one going to the ball riding on the back of a kangaroo."

She straightened her tiara, waved her magic broomstick-cleverly disguised as the broken end of an ordinary broomstick making it inconspicuous to magic broomstick thieves-created another ball gown out of thin air, and made her way off to the ball in her magic coach-cleverly disguised as a rusty shopping cart.