Daily writing prompt

Are you holding a grudge? About?

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People ask me how I come up with my silly original characters and their absurd fictional stories.

Reality imitates art, or is it the other way around?

Here is my first concept drawing for the MoronicArts portapotty empress Bernadette Cacca from 1995, more than two decades before I met my former neighbor who shares her name in 2018. Apparently someone thought my blog was all about her. Does she burn her poopies too?

No, Bernadette, it’s not about you, it never was. My characters are fictional, as in pretend, fake, not real.

She does not even look the same, just shares the name because when I started developing her I wanted a woman’s name that could be shortened to “Bern.” I was torn between Bernice and Bernadette and I chose Bernadette, possibly rooted in the previous trauma caused by this person’s harassment in 2018 but at the end of the day I don’t really remember.

Tonight, I was minding my own business photographing the beautiful sunset silhouette by the trees, when one of my neighbors on the other side of the complex who is older than I — and should know better — egged me on.

Trying to mitigate whatever nonsense she was up to, I introduced myself and said “look at the pretty sky.” She mentioned she was Bernadette from next door when I had previously lived there in 2018 and had still a beef with me from when I had lived next to her SEVEN YEARS AGO. I did not even recognize her.

I had not seen her since I moved out. One would think she had matured by now, however she was the same 8-yr-old trapped in a 70-year-plus old body (or was it 80?). “Now you see the real me, I don’t like you. You told (the landlord) on me,” she said. What a dork.

“Mommy, she told on me!”
– Crybaby.

I told her that I handle things like an adult and asked her to stop harassing me. I talked to her neighbor down the hall while Bern was visiting someone else and she went from listening to me, to “Oh you better look out, Bernadette’s coming back.” I said, “so what? That was 8 years ago. I don’t care.”

Bernie cussed me out again as she walked past me back up the stairs, she and her sycophant put on a side show, complete with twerking the wooden fence attached to the apartment building. I kid you not. Then she pretended to dial 911 saying I was stalking her.

MMMMkay. I walked away from those circus freaks and told another neighbour from the same building about it and he cussed me out too!

What in the everlasting…I had no words.

It was a 3-ring circus now complete with flying monkeys and Spucklers. I thought the dude would be nice to me because we had mutuals, but nope, think again. Now he was also cussing me at me to “get the f*** away” like the other empathy-challenged humans putting on a show.

I got away from him, told all the tag team of all three bootlickers I wanted no contact with any of them, hand held up shaped like a big fat zero, as I emphatically said again – “ZERO CONTACT.”

I got to chat with some mature, non-screamy neighbors and had found out from one of them that Bernadettes’s a narc-a-doodle doo, just like my character, looking for supply but going about it differently. One of the maintenance men oversaw what went down, he advised me to call the landlord which I did. I left a voicemail for the him, after I sat down with a friend and opened up.

The landlord’s handling of Bernadette’s malarky with grace and dignity back in 2018 is precisely why I came back here: I needed a landlord whom I can trust.

And no, Bernadette, I still won’t take your crap.

Here’s another view of the imaginary Bern, not one of the real-life Bernies, let alone a famous one.