Friday, May 29, 2015

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

You gotta put on your normal face, your normal clothes. Look at people like you know something about 'em - it keeps them on their toes. Don't go staring off into the distance like some kind of goddamned hippie. What's out there? Nothing. Here. Here is what matters, and all your devil-dreams aren't going to change that. 

You gotta play the game, that's what I'm saying. Toe the line, nose to the grindstone. No, I didn't say tie the noose to the headstone! Jesus, yeah, maybe it sounds a little similar, but that's what I'm talking about - that's the shit that makes people talk about you after church. 

I know it sucks, and it all seems stupid to you. I've been there, see? I've been caught in the riptide madness, tumbled in despair. I know. All the words that sound like 'noose' - there are a lot of them.

ATTENTION! I AM SICK AND WILL BE SLEEPING ALL DAY. #BREAKTHEBLOG !!!

Post your pieces on your blogs, telephone poles, passing pedestrians, etc. if you like...it's a fun web o' writing.

#2minutesgo

119 comments:

  1. “If that’s for me, I just left,” Ed said as that sassy bartender Cody picked up the phone in the bar on its fifth ring.

    “Why do you always say that?” Ed’s drinking buddy Sal said, turning in his stool from the uniform day-drinkers’ prayerful position four other guys shared at the bar.

    “I dunno. She’s called a bunch of times before, checking on me, making sure I’m a good boy. I already have a mother. I don’t need another one.”

    “Yeah, I get it,” Sal said, and took another pull on his glass of Bud. “Ever think you might need checking on?”

    “You too? Look, I work hard five and a half days a week, always going, just to keep a roof over her head and dinner on her table. And that fancy-ass ring on her finger. A guy needs a little diversion. I deserve some me time to decompress, that’s all,” Ed said. He waved down Cody and pointed out his about-to-be-empty glass to her. She drew him another beer.

    “Here you go, Eddie. Just one more after this, though. You gotta drive home,” Cody said, fishing a fiver from the stack on the bar in front of Ed.

    “Jesus Christ, you too, Cody? I thought you liked me.”

    After that beer and half-way through his last, the phone at the bar rang again.

    “Yeah, if it’s for you, you just left,” Cody said. And, with that, Ed did.

    By the time he got home, Ed pulled into the darkened driveway and went in through the kitchen door. There on the table sat a plate of the dinner his wife Allie had made. But she wasn’t in the kitchen waiting for him with her usual concerned look on her face and tapping toe on the tile floor.

    “Allie? You here?” Ed called, to no answer. Then he noticed a note under the plate. He sat and read it.

    It said, “This is for you. I just left.”

    That’s when he noticed the sparking ring sitting perched atop his dollop of mashed potatoes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nicely timed irony, has the ring of truth to it.

      Delete
    2. Ahhh... a girl needs her diversions, too. Well written, sir!

      Delete
    3. This is great. I love the come uppance. love the "hoisted on his own pitard" Skewered on his own fibs...

      Delete
    4. Get well soon. See, you can even write well when you're sick! :)

      Delete
  2. Late, but, damn good piece, Dan. You really scare me when you provide the other part of my conversation like that. Great way to open the floodgates.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What she said. Really feeling this piece, Dan.

      Delete
    2. "Riptide madness"... beautiful... the whole piece is! Hope you feel better soon.

      Delete
  3. The end of each of those hardshell paragraphs provided their own gut punch. Feel better soon, Dan.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Get some rest, Dan. We'll break the blog with words that rhyme with noose...you silly goose.

      Delete
    2. He lives in a hoose (house but pronounced with UK northern accent).

      Delete
  4. My biggest problem isn't the drinking or the smoking, or the random guys. Well, I'm sure that other people will tell you differently, but who gives a fuck what other people think? This is my God damn story. And I say that I've got those things under control. No, my biggest problem is that I think of death as a plot device. I try to make life into one, big, cohesive story. And who wouldn't? There is too much that fits into place to believe in coincidence. But there is too much randomness to believe that there is a plan.

    So, I make up a story in my head, and then get horribly disappointed when it doesn't come to fruition. And if anything random and tragic happens, well, it doesn't do nice things to my world-view.

    Maybe I need to start my own damn world. Find the people, make them cooperate. Write the script. Enjoy delivering the final blow to the asshats who deserve it. Because so many people deserve death, and most of them live to piss the rest of us off, for fucking forever. But the ones who deserve to see how far they can go? They get cut down before they ever get the chance.

    So, maybe it's time to do my own culling. Get the rocket launcher and go. See how long it'll take the cops to catch me. I like that idea. It is different. It has merit.

    See you on the flip side.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Little peek into the dark side just to shine a little light. Well done.

      Delete
    2. Feeling this piece, too. "Get the rocket launcher and go." Yep--I like that plan. ;)

      Delete
    3. I like the idea of starting my own damned world...you all will be invited, of course...

      Delete
    4. Me too, me too! Who hasn't prayed to the alien gods, saying, take me! Take Me!

      Delete
  5. The rules were unspoken and unbroken. Eye contact strictly forbidden at all times, to this end hand held devices are require. Cell phones, iPods, iPads or anything beginning with an inexplicable lower case are strongly recommended. Pleasantries are allowed provided they are terse and insincere, though simple nods are preferred and in most cases considered “over the top public displays of affection.” In an emergency there is a newspaper bin where one can grab a current copy for temporary use. Warning, paying for a newspaper may mark you forever as an outsider. If you must, make a note to never return to this coffee shop. We have video surveillance though it is strictly for the entertainment value and not shared with anyone not subscribed to our youtube account. In addition, if you do borrow a paper be sure to work all puzzles and place it back on top. This punishes those luddites who buy a paper in hopes of doing the crossword since executions are not within our purview. Yet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like this coffee shop, even though I find it a tad depressing. It reminds me too much of everyday life.

      Delete
    2. Ouch. I've been in that coffee shop. Well played satire.

      Delete
    3. ha! Life in the city. I was chatting to a friend about this today. We are early 70s kids and we were saying how the 80s and 90s kids are different - that technology has removed imagination, etc. Interaction is more distant maybe.

      Delete
  6. It was the dawning of what promised to be another scorcher outside. Temperatures had been triple digits all week. But inside the third floor of the modern hospital it was always comfortable. The night nurse was just finishing her charting when she noticed the call light was on in one of the corner rooms. All the rooms had beautiful views of the pastoral landscapes which surrounded the small community hospital in the lush river valley but the corner rooms had always been Marge’s favorite. Three walls with floor to ceiling windows gave a panoramic, air conditioned view which looked like a mural of rural Oregon.

    As soon as Marge entered the room she knew the old gentleman had passed away. He faced that gorgeous view peacefully and with a kind of stoic silence reserved for monks and the dead. Using the bedside phone, Marge made the call to notify a loving family who had left very specific instructions to call them no matter what the hour and to leave George exactly as he was until they could arrive to pay their final respects. It was 06:30. After hanging up the phone, Marge paused at the door and enjoyed the cool calm view before her with her now silent patient for just a few minutes before closing the door behind her to sign off on his chart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Almost pastoral... and yet, I wonder, why did they want him to remain exactly as he was?

      Delete
    2. This seems a tale unfinished. But I Like it!

      Delete
    3. This seems a tale unfinished. But I Like it!

      Delete
  7. Bill and Bob where the day shift transportation orderlies. The “night guy”, warned by Marge about the corner room on the third floor, was somewhat apologetic as he explained the situation. “The family lives in Bend where the old geezer was a big deal cattle rancher till his descendents had him put in St. Swank of the River of Money a few decades ago. They checked him in to our best room with a view when his doctor (one pay grade above a mortician) told them his one foot on a banana peel had slipped too close to the edge of the grave for the aides at the home to be comfortable.”

    Bob asked, “So we’re just in a holding pattern till they get here?”

    “That would be a yes, but it gets better. They want to spend time with him. Apparently, they expect to enjoy his company a lot more now that he can’t talk back. Anyway, his day nurse will page you once the family has come and gone.”

    The page came at nearly 15:00. In other words, just before Bill and Bob would normally clock out. Bill took a gurney and headed toward the elevator. Bob, not really having anything better to do, came along to lend a hand. You know, stiffs don’t usually give you any trouble but why chance it.

    The room was like a sauna. The drapes had been open on that beautiful view all day and you could start a garden in that hot house of a room. Bill was closing the drapes when Bob announced, “Hey Bill, we might have a problem here.”

    The Hill-Rom bed had been left in the “cardiac chair” or semi-Fowlers position. Knees bent, head up thirty degrees. When Bob leveled the bed and raised it to the height of the gurney, the patient remained in the same position. When Bob pushed the patient’s head down, his lower half shot up in the air. Bob tried holding him down while Bill pounced on the man’s stiff legs which propelled Bob off his feet several inches. They repeated this grim version of teeter totter several times before with a shrug, Bob pushed the man over into a sort of partial fetal position. “Works for me,” said Bill has he spread the morgue pack shroud over half the bed before together they rolled George over onto it. Bill filled out the toe tag and with as much decorum as possible given the circumstances, attached it to George’s right gouty, pale toe. After wrapping George up like a stiff pretzel, they used his bed sheet to slide him gently on the gurney. Bill retrieved a clean sheet from the linen closet and improvised a tent for George by raising the guard rails on the gurney and draping the sheet over the enter thing. George rode out of this world looking like a race car driver in a KKK costume.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. and now we know why... and bless George's heart... on the highway to heaven....

      Delete
    2. There's a lot of dark humour in this that made me laugh, like the banana line and how they'd find him more interesting as he couldn't talk back. And the orderlies going about their work unfazed and moving the body in this really undignified way, like it isn't a person anymore, which it isn't -it's the shell, so we shouldn't be shocked. Also interesting thoughts on the human condition. When we're gone we can't choose how we are treated by others.

      Delete
    3. Seen and heard MANY stories of this kind of thing including something called "angel lust" I swear. it never gets old. :)

      Delete
    4. I agreed that the first part of this felt unfinished. If I'd known you would finish it like this I wouldn't have made the mistake of drinking something while reading. This is hilarious. And the best part is that it's made hilarious by embracing the ridiculousness that is life.

      Delete
  8. It always comes back to you. It always comes back to choices I didn't make, things I didn't say. They push me, these undone things, to do, to see, to live, to laugh.

    But not to love. Don't ask me to do that. It's inviting pain for everyone. If I love, the mountains will fall into the sea. The sun will scorch the Earth. It will rain down cats and dogs, and aliens will take over the world.

    Don't ask me to love. Don't ask me to open up my heart. Ask anything else of me. I will save the world. I will learn to breathe water. I will make water out of wine, because, let's face it, that is far more useful. I'll be a friend, or a sounding board, or a prophet if you want, but I won't be a lover.

    And I can't be trusted. I just want to tell you these things at the beginning, so when I let you down I can twist the knife by saying I told you so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cruel, well written, and completely releasable.

      Delete
    2. ouch... and I wish some of my exes had come with this warning.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, I know that end line. Killer. It's a lesson you have to learn in life - run like the wind from anyone who tells you that cos they're telling you who they are.

      Delete
    4. Getting a big time whiff of Amy Winehouse. Don't go there, just keep writing.

      Delete
  9. Across the desert, we chased a twisting inferno to a dry village, a beige settlement without breath. From its crumbled perimeter, it seemed empty of life, everything the colour of sand, except for a lone figure up ahead a ways.

    When we got close we could see she was a young girl in a torn and bloody dress, faded apricot, her thin arms embracing a pockmarked boulder the shape of a broken yellow tooth (all colour here the ghost of colour, except red).

    At first she shied and wouldn't speak; then after three days, she did nothing but.

    She said: "War come storming from the hills, and we wunt ready, and my ma is gone now. I dont mean dead, but she am or she amnit, an now we hear her cry in them same hills of a night, dusk while dawn."

    And later: "Fetching water, I sees two soldiers on the dust trail, and they was full a angry talk, but later I saw a third walking aside them, had on a dirty hood, couldnt tell if a man nor a woman, and the fighting men growed quieter like they was thinkin'."

    And then: "Big sounds far off like bad weather, but up close the worst men took us from our loves."

    Right then, a rooster burst from some hidden place, loud tawny feathers blurring against grainy fawn. A great cry erupted from the throat of the sky, dry brutal thunder without rain. Lightning scratched the horizon like indecipherable runes.

    But we needed answers, so I kept asking.

    I admit, at some point I grabbed her by the wrists and was rough with her, aggravated by her strange recalcitrance. She was all noise, no signal; all heat, no light. Children can be infuriating, the way they filter everything, turning routine horror into some passive, ineffectual fantasy while cold reality churns on regardless, relentless. People, including the children themselves, can be torn limbless while we wait for the young to tell their ersatz truths.

    We asked her where everyone else was, demanded she tell us when the soldiers had left and where they were headed. She looked at us, her brows arched with skepticism, and her scrawny frame trembled like aftershocks in the brown and naked hills.

    Narrow-eyed, she continued: "Theyre still here. All a them. Silly men. Dont you hear the screams?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The little girl totally creeps me out. She is scarier even than the world you created in the first two paragraphs. Feels like the opening paragraphs of an epic dystopian novel.

      Delete
    2. I love this. It's hauntingly true, and brings the reader into the scene.

      Delete
    3. Yep... I'd read this novel. I am enchanted with your use of color... beige, apricot, tawny... sets the tone as a production designer would on a Hollywood film. Well done. Oh, and "She was all noise, no signal; all heat, no light." Yeah, that's just genius.

      Delete
    4. It's great, emotive and creepy. Full of foreboding.
      Fave line - 'her scrawny frame trembled like aftershocks in the brown and naked hills'.

      Delete
    5. Look, you nailedf it. The scene the frustration, conflict between the "world" and the indigenous world view. I know it, seen it done it. In fact, you're SO good, every time I make a comment on your stuff, I feel like asking: Does This comment make me look Fatuous?" :)

      Delete
  10. Everyone dies. We accept that it is a part of life, and get religion, or get set-in-stone beliefs about what happens after there is no after, or get weirded out. But close to adolescence we all choose our opening gambit for dealing with death's existence.

    I know how I feel about death. I knew how I felt about death. But now I have to reconsider. Because I'm waiting for someone to die, while everyone else dies instead. Actors and musicians pass. Other relatives, friends, family friends all disappear from our lives, but this one woman who means so much and so little to so many still hangs onto life.

    She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to go. She's in so much pain and so scared and so confused that I wish she'd just go. So many people treat her like she's already gone. But she's still here. And they aren't.

    Please don't tell me that life is fair. Tell me everything has a reason. Tell me two wrongs don't make a right. Tell me that someone has a plan. But don't tell me that life is fair.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A game where everyone makes their own rules can never be fair... or perhaps it always is. You pulled me right into the despair... good writing.

      Delete
    2. Exceptional insight and realism.

      Delete
  11. As I lay in her bed, I can't stop thinking about what I did to my last victim the other night.

    The way she had dropped into my arms after I took her life.

    The feel of her body struggling as I took the air out of her.

    My hand firmly placed around her small throat.

    The feel of her soft warm skin underneath my hand starting to lose its warmth as I extinguished the life from her.

    I kept thinking about what she said to me before I ended her short life. That she was in love with me. That she never wanted to leave me. She wanted to start a family.

    But what she didn't know and could not understand was that I was a cold-blooded killer. A serial killer targeting young attractive women like her. Women who have been successful in their young lives. What she did not understand was that I did not feel any love towards anyone. Especially women. But my first victim was a man. My old roommate to be exact. He had pissed me off by going into my room and stealing money from the stash I kept hidden in my closet.

    The cops still haven't figured out that it was me who killed him. His case was still unsolved and sitting in a warehouse as a cold case.

    I was that good at making sure nobody would trace the death of my old roommate back to me. Nor would they be able to trace the recent deaths of four prominent women back to me either since I always covered my tracks.

    Plus I always made sure that there was no evidence of me being anywhere near these women. I always paid cash when I would take them out to dinner or to a movie. And I always made sure that anybody who knew them didn't know my real name.

    The cops couldn't find me and they couldn't trace any of the deaths back to me. Or so I thought.

    I hear a loud knock on the door downstairs and what sounded like a mans voice yell out, "LAPD, open up. We have a warrant to search the residence."

    The knock had made the woman I was laying next to wake up. She looked over at me and then got out of the bed. She wrapped her robe around her thin athletic frame and started towards the door of the bedroom. I called for her to come back and wait here while I handled it but she insisted on answering the door......

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tension in every paragraph as you keep the cards close to the vest. Great story telling and interest keeping techniques on display.

      Delete
    2. yep, dark, bloody, and grisly...

      Delete
  12. Godwin swung the thurible vigorously, choking on the acrid fumes it trailed in its wake. “Oh my Lord,” he coughed, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “Excuthe me, Jethuth. I meant no inthult,” he added as an afterthought.

    The priest's assistant sniggered into her sleeve. “I'm sure he'll understand.” She opened the monogrammed case she was carrying, checking the integrity of the vials of Holy water it contained. “We're good on all offensive and defensive measures. Fifteen shots of aqua sanctus, ready for use. Demon ass for the kicking of!”

    Godwin nodded back, his eyes still streaming. “In that cathe, we're ready to lock and load. Path me the Apothles' Rifle.”

    The undercroft of the church suddenly rocked, the shelves of dusty hymnals to either side falling into a pyramid above them, showering them with the forgotten words of the the already dead. The earthen floor mushroomed up between them.

    “No! Not now!” Davina stepped back, the forgotten weapon dropping to the ground. The apparition rising up gained solidity; firming up, its eyes glowing demonic red.

    Balthazar towered over them, turning to face Godwin. “Prepare to die, priest,” he growled.

    Godwin sank back on his heels, his robes collapsing to the ground beneath him. “This is it,” he said. “Defeated by the Plinth of Darkneth.”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dark, and yet humorous... well done...

      Delete
    2. I agree, a tight piece with good dark humor yet a very sharp dramatic edge.

      Delete
    3. I Love it. the path to salvation always has a glitch!

      Delete
    4. I love this, especially the lisp.

      Delete
  13. Down

    It’s the little things
    Cacooned in the big
    Marooned into a whole
    Picked at with knives
    In ravaged glee
    Eaten upon a spoon
    Relished for the pure taste
    Of it

    Driven into the blinding
    For this is the way of things
    The eventide we bring
    Upon the face of change
    The underneath within
    Hidden upon a sigh
    For into this deft descent
    We rise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only in a skilled poet's hands can we entrust all that is opposite. Those oppositions help us understand the "big picture." As always, your skill touches my heart and my brain. Thank you.

      Delete
    2. Ah, Leland, you're making me make big sighs over here in London. Big hugs to you. You really touched me with your supportive words :) I love your feedback. THANK YOU!

      Delete
    3. You're welcome! Oh, one tiny thing... I believe it's "cocooned" rather than "cacooned"... just in case you're adding this to your next poetry anthology!

      Delete
    4. LOL!!!! I'm changing that quickly! Saviour of the silly!

      Delete
    5. Wonderful contrasting. Brilliant really. You spoil us.

      Delete
    6. The best poetry always leaves me feeling like I don't know shit. You did that. Good job! ( I think?)

      Delete
    7. Thanks Teresa! On most days I feel like I don't know shit ! :)))

      Delete
    8. On most days I just feel like shit.

      Delete
  14. For forty-some years, he’d tilled this garden, knew the smell of its earth, knew where the lilies slept during winter, knew where garlic waited for spring. As he hoed between the rows of vegetables, his thoughts turned to those who’d cared for this space before him. His grandmother, God rest her soul, had helped her mother break the native sod to plant her garden here. His mother fed four sons from this plot of land. It was here that she was working when word of her eldest son’s death crashed into her world. Here, too, where she lost her wedding band the week before her husband—my father—died in his rocking chair. She blamed herself for that, said that if she hadn’t lost the ring…
    Superstition. Don’t plant the same kind of plants in the same place year after year. Plant according to the moon cycles. If there is no rain, pray with your knees touching the parched earth.
    He was a man of science. He prided himself on leaving all the mumbo jumbo of his German family behind. He wouldn’t do anything unless he knew the reason why.
    So he put away the thoughts of his grandmother, his father, and his mother, and began to wash the heirloom carrots he’d brought in to his tiny kitchen.
    He thought about how the knobby old varieties looked like orange fingers, gnarled with arthritis, not unlike his own fingers.
    He blinked twice when he saw it. Without even thinking, he made the sign of the cross on his chest, just as his mother might have done. There, on the gnarled finger of the carrot, was his mother’s wedding ring.
    “Well played, Mother. Well played,” he whispered to himself and laughed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yay, well played. Love the carrots as gnarled fingers. Brilliant ending.
      I like how you're giving things characterisation - like the sleeping lilies and the garlic waiting - so they're more alive.

      Delete
    2. I agree, the ending was totally unexpected and brilliant.

      Delete
    3. This is freaking beautiful! I wish I had the flas thing down as well as you you do. Complete, satisfying. Great.

      Delete
    4. Thanks! it's fun... and Teresa, I think you do brilliantly! we all do better with practice, so I expect by the end of the year, we're all going to be rich and famous...

      Delete
    5. This reminds me of Mom's garden, and of the endless discussions about "planting days" and all of the old superstitions that I just didn't get. Great piece, and wonderful twist.

      Delete
    6. Love the ending; was hoping that was how it ended.

      Delete
  15. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” Grandma used to say.
    Funny how things Grandma used to say came into your head every now and again. Especially today, the day you are moving Grandfather to an “assisted living center.”
    It’s past time, really. The man can’t remember the day of the week, can’t remember whether he’s eaten, whether he’s taken his medicines, or anything else. All he does, every day, all day long, is stare at his wife’s picture.
    Nearly everything has been given away or put into storage. A few clothes, his toiletries, and the picture are all that you need to move. You brace yourself, paste on a smile, and walk into the living room.
    “How are you this morning, Grandfather?”
    You are met with silence.
    “Today’s the day! You’re going to love the new place. They even play bingo on Tuesday nights.” The false cheer in your voice eats at your conscience.
    More silence.
    “I found out your old friend Tom is going to be right next door! You two will have so much fun getting all caught up!”
    You wonder if the exclamation points in your patter make you sound like you’re lying.
    “Will your grandmother be there?” he asks.
    You find the strength to tell one more lie. “Sure she will. I’m sure she’s waiting for you.”
    He picks up the photograph in its wooden frame, and shuffles toward the garage, where your car awaits, to take you both to different kinds of hell.
    At least you know the road is well paved.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a sweetness in this piece that is as endearing as the heartbreak of the realism is.

      Delete
    2. Thank you... this is for all those caregivers out there who have to make hard decisions, and never get a thank you...

      Delete
  16. “She’s hungry like mad for you Dog.”

    “Don’t call me Dog. It’s ridiculous.”

    “Oh right man, they call you Ice don’t they? I guess I see why. You’re a cold motherfucker.”

    David didn’t acknowledge he’d heard the man pull his old nickname out from the back of the closet he’d hidden it in. Instead he slumped, knees spread wide watching Tempest. She was dancing for him, that much was clear. Her tight little body writhed and undulated in ways that reminded him of a movie he saw once about unpredictable twisters squirming all over the mid-west and landing without warning before the devastating force majeure.

    Taking another long slow sip of his whiskey he wondered if that was how Tempest got her nickname.

    She was dancing to percussive East coast hip hop with very suggestive lyrics. With each syncopated swing of her hips, she came closer to him. But she always stayed just out of reach – a Salome to his Herod – not saying yet whose head she’d request.

    And did it matter? He was no Herod was he? He was just a broken man with a broken heart and a lonely dick. The music stopped.

    Tempest just stood there looking down at him, panting slightly, her chest pulling the air in deeply. She was smiling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your biblical references are a wonderful shorthand for creating a full scene... well done!

      Delete
    2. Really robust scene. My favorite part is the "David didn’t acknowledge he’d heard the man pull his old nickname out from the back of the closet he’d hidden it in." Made me thing of collections of nicknames marking different eras of my life, how absurd they become in a brief amount of time.

      Delete
    3. I love the fact that e this sensual and lonely at the same time. And the biblical reference throws in a shot of humor. I really want to know more, but you picked a great place to stop. Well done.

      Delete
  17. Sally was a girl of exotic beauty in this gray and barren place. Her skin as smooth and brown as a caramel apple, she owned a face men dreamed to make art about.

    She had but three things keeping her from perfection --

    The first was the plain fact that she was a whore, a prostitute in a world where she was one of many who could be declared such, but she, unfortunately, was one by definition.

    Second, she had that scar at the corner of her left eye that ran down and around her cheek, curving back toward where it began. The track of a tear she decided to uncry, perhaps. It was given to her by the man who introduced her to this Life and to that third strike against her flawlessness.

    She used his Mexican and Afghan powders to quench the other burning pain he gave her, twining her need for his love with his need for her to prove it to him by loving others.

    And when it wouldn't deaden the burning anymore, she used it to snuff the flame, her flawless soul finally and serenely leaving the streets. Perfect angel. Ugly world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. wow..... this is good all the way through, but the last two sentences... absolutely perfect...

      Delete
    2. It's sad. And you feel for her.

      Delete
    3. Yes, I feel her and yes her flaws are sadly beautiful. Perfect angel. Ugly world. That is brilliant and an apt description of the character I came to know in your story.

      Delete
    4. God thanks you for that tribute to those who don't get them..

      Delete
    5. Poignant, and a truth that society sees fit to ignore. Thank for opening a window for those who might otherwise never see or care to understand.

      Delete
  18. Asa stomped through the screen door from the blistering heat. Dinner was on the table already; fried chicken and biscuits, cold sliced ham, some manner of salad and sweet tea rounded out the menu.
    Claire round the corner from the sitting room just as he hollered, too loudly: “Goddamn machine’s down again. If I ever get my hands on that worthless piece of shit Thompson…”

    “Eat,”murmured Claire. She was a woman possessed of an unflappable personal space. A kind of perpetual calm that unnerved him. At times, he thought he might one day walk into that same kitchen and blow his brains out just to see some reaction, but he reckoned it would be no use. She’d just walk that same unhurried walk as she went around and cleaned the mess, picking bits of brain from her skirt.

    He tucked his napkin under his chin and waved a chicken leg in the air. “Need rain, goddammit.” It was true, too. He didn’t like the look of the fields he had left and even the cows had an anxious look, though the trough was full enough. Yet they twitched continually against the flies, raising little clouds of dust as they moved, exuding that smoke from some invisible fire.

    “Don’t curse, beloved.” She said, her head bent over some embroidery. She was different no doubt about that. Said her V’s like W’s all the time and other things, too. It was not her custom to dine with him and he never knew why. She took coffee in the morning, standing at the stove and occasionally brushed a telltale crumb from her bodice to indicate she’d had a biscuit, but what else she subsisted on remained a mystery. “Besides, it vill rain all right. You betcha. They forecasted it on the radio.”

    “It better. And not just some rain, either. We need enough. Don’t get what we need at the top of June, won’t do no good at the bottom. Then it’s down to nothing all over again.”

    With that, he kicked back a chair leg, took his sweating tea and moved to the porch for a hint of breeze and a plug of tobacco he kept in his overalls pocket. He settled stiffly in a rocker, squinting in the glassy light, seeking out the spidery cracks that had spread around the kitchen garden.

    “Trust God,” she told him through the kitchen window.
    “Hmmph,” He reckoned he’d rather trust a woman than God. Both could be sneaky, but at least a man didn’t expect so much of a woman. Besides, they sometimes had an explanation when things didn’t go right. Which was more than God ever had.

    Then, like an answer to some prayer, he heard the thunder rumbling from the west like the growl of a lazy dog and the sun skittered behind a cloudbank like a frightened passerby.
    Asa sniffed the air hopefully; it had water in it. “I’ll be damned,” he thought.
    Claire hummed softly as she pumped the water to do the dishes. “Probably,” she answered in her mind. Some tune from the old country made him shiver and she finished her duties and sang to those skies.
    “Harder,” he thought at the first sprinkle.
    “Dis is wonderful,” she murmured over the sink. “The longer it goes, the greater the drink.”
    And so they watched the lazy storm, loving the earth into casual flashes of lazy lightning; the sometime clap clouds moving through, accompanied by an hour of cool, light rain that healed the cracks in the welcoming earth and soothed the cattle. It wasn’t enough, but it would do.
    He’d wanted a regular soaker. Something to give him a guarantee.
    He’d wanted passion and water and fire and light.
    But what could you expect from a mail order bride?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Totally took me into a world I know nothing about and then surprised me when I had no expectation. Not an easy thing to do to a reader. You're good. :)

      Delete
    2. Oh wow! Kudos! You surprised me with the ending, too! and the whole description of dust and drought, perfect... I felt dusty as I was reading it! Nicely done!

      Delete
  19. Rrawk was aware of the legends. It only made sense that in order to keep a stable population in the relatively small area to which his people belonged, there would be some provisions other than the obvious ones. In addition to a deep obligation to keep the secrets of the Cove, his ancestors also felt it important to share what was for a lack of a better way of putting it, their philosophy about nature. So occasionally, one or more of his people would voluntarily leave their native land and go out into the word. This was rare, but of great benefit, not only to the people of the Cove but even more to the Aliens who dominated their planet.

    When a young ethnobiologist named Levi appeared in the village that day, everyone recognized the difference between him and other Aliens who had come to ‘study’ them. He was curious about them, sure. Kind and good mannered as many of his predecessors where. But beyond that, he accepted them as equals.

    But the first time Rrawk read the young man’s thoughts he suspected something deeper in Levi. Something they had in common and something that bound not only their pasts, but their future. Something good and important. A rare combination with Aliens in Rrawk’s considerable experience with them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like! Are we going to be getting another book from you, my friend?

      Delete
    2. We can hope so! If not, I can see one about doctors etc coming :)

      Delete
    3. Levi and Rrawk had a history before my books so I was just playing with some ideas about Levi's first trip to the Cove, etc... Kind of a prequel, though some might think of it more like a Nyquil the way I write it.

      Delete
    4. I like this bit a great deal. There is so much setup in so little time. I have not read you previously, though now I may have to just out of curiosity!

      Delete
  20. Her history was told in a box full of rosaries.We found them stashed somewhere under her bed. She'd prayed them to pieces and stashed the fragments like some secret too sacred to share.There was one of sandalwood that smelled like Egypt, another of rosewood I sent from Mexico. Blue beads for the Virgin, and a crystal from the Vatican still dangling its tourist tags.
    One of smooth pebbles fashioned of precious stones, amethyst and jade, carnelian and turquoise, with a note for my daughter to keep it with her when she traveled.
    The dark blue beads missing a decade for the daughter she'd lost when she moved away.Ebony for the brother she gave up for adoption, broken links and missing beads and secrets she just didn't share.
    One for my father and two for his sons.Three for my sister, but I didn't know which ones she'd intended for me, save the glow in the dark, missing its cross maybe, but never its spark.
    Decades of prayers, of sweet mysteries, the joyful, the sorrowful, glorious or luminous,
    Mama, what mystery did you pray for me?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ahhh.... I love this.... I'm always fascinated by rosaries and other prayer beads, and by what memories they must hold of those who use them to pray... I really like this a lot.

      Delete
    2. Wonderful collection of prayers marking the major and minor roads traveled in a life.

      Delete
    3. Yes, and a mystery right at the end. I love the colours for each person. I really like the line at the start - 'She'd prayed for them to pieces' - you can just picture it and the emotion shaking them.

      Delete
  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  22. The way you wear it

    The way you wear it takes me by surprise -
    It confounds me, numb, speaks to me,
    Renders me complete in a timeless way

    I feel I can sense the way I could always be -
    Living in the momentary grasp of this,
    Travelling as a stranger in my own town

    Do you see the way you wear it tears me?
    Reminds me of a boy I used to know,
    Back in the day when the stranger was not I

    He rests here, some feet below my feet -
    Perhaps he listens intently to our futile words,
    Or maybe he sleeps the dreams we once lived.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Truly beautiful... and the strongest line, I think, is this: "Back in the day when the stranger was not I", for eventually, we all become strangers, don't we.... thank you.

      Delete
    2. Once again, your depth enchants and mystifies me.

      Delete
    3. Thanks, Leland. I wrote that line twice. It was originally ' back in the day when I was not the stranger' - and it didn't work :)

      Delete
    4. Thanks, Ed. And once again I'm really chuffed and honoured :))

      Delete
  23. Edges

    Moments scrawled
    Artless
    I find time stops
    Slinks and crawls
    Eels
    Away into the dark
    I cannot follow
    Where lies the edge?
    Into the pitch
    A light sparks
    Peels, reveals
    Seconds
    Chosen wrongly
    A faint path
    Tripping at the edges
    I grasp
    Nothing
    I feel
    Nothing
    I can’t climb
    The edges overwhelm
    And this endless sea
    Rushes
    Over me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Again you explore boundaries... I love when you do that. Boundaries, "in betweens," edges, borders... they're all about transformation, aren't they? our own or another's, or an obects... I remember as a child filling a glass of water just slightly overfull, so that the water was slightly higher than the edges of the glass, held in by surface tension... and thinking if I lived on that scale, I would be skating along the edges, held in place by surface tension... thanks for reminding me of that!

      Delete
    2. Fantastic imagery. The last four lines are extremely powerful.

      Delete
    3. Yes, Leland, you've got it - edges, reflections, change, who we are/were/can be and all the greys in between. I think. And loss - strongest emotion maybe? Thanks for liking it.

      Delete
    4. Thanks, Ed :) Guys, thanks for getting it.

      Delete
  24. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  25. She was thinking about bread when Liam came in, He was wearing black scarf with his hair tied up, black boots with little wear on them, tight-fitting black pants that could only be leather, and a billowing black shirt. She had never seen him look so silly or so dangerous before.

    "All you need us a rapier to cut a fine figure of a swashbuckler," she said with a smile.

    "You don't think it's too much?" he asked.

    "I like the contrast against your skin," she said. "I hope all the barmaids can resist." She worked to keep the pain out of her voice.

    "That can be a problem," he joked.

    "Have you had many of them recently?" she asked conversationally.

    "Barmaids?"

    "Yes."

    "No."

    Why didn't she believe him?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like the playful tones, underscored by jealousy. This feels like a new, unsure relationship. Great job.

      Delete
  26. The aches of immediate withdrawal subsided after a few weeks, but they were replaced by bitterness, frustration, and anger. Tim knew these were irrational thoughts, but he still thought, “Why? Why the fuck can’t I just be high all the time? Why should I deal with all this stupid bullshit? Everyone is a boring, whiny, insufferable piece of shit. Go fuck yourself, world. I hope you all choke.”

    He felt badly about it, and tried to hold it in, but occasionally he couldn’t help snapping at people he cared for. In hindsight, he appreciated them all the more for tolerating him as he battled his demons, and in hindsight, he could only attribute some of the awful things he said to some kind of demonic possession. Tim Callahan wasn’t exactly a Christmas Angel of Light to begin with, but in grappling with the physical and psychological struggles of addiction, he sometimes said some vile, hateful things, even as he dreaded that they’d be seen as indicative of his true character. Even as the racial slurs and cheap personal jabs passed his lips, he thought “oh my god, I am so sorry about what I’m saying right now,” and hoped that his years of history with these close friends were enough that they’d understand, and not hold it against him. The experience was, in a way, cathartic for Tim: he said all those awful things partly in hopes of being put out of his misery, and his loyalty to those who refused to do so, despite his overt obnoxiousness, was cemented even further.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love this, partially because it reminds me of what I went through on both sides of the equation. Any time you can evoke memories you're on the right track. Well played.

      Delete
  27. Terry clenched the gun in his hand nervously, fighting the impulse to curl his index finger around the trigger. He was glad to be reunited with his big brother Tim, but not so sure that that was such a good thing in the big picture. He was in the driver’s seat of a probably-stolen Chevy, with a loaded Smith and Wesson, while Tim and a couple of his homeboys knocked over a gas station in Walnut Creek.

    It all took maybe two minutes, in and out. The three gunmen piled into the car and barked, “Go! Mash it, boy!”

    Terry only had a learner’s permit and maybe an hour or two driving around empty parking lots and suburban streets, but he knew how to throw the automatic transmission into gear and beat a hasty retreat, the gun resting in his lap as he turned into the onramp to Route 24, west back to Oakland.

    It took a little getting used to, this life. After his mother died, and his father got sent up the river, Terry had been living with a nice, straight-laced foster family in a quiet suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Las Vegas. After a few years, once Tim turned eighteen, he reclaimed his brother and quietly extricated him to his squat in a desolate part of Oakland. It was far less clean, safe, and comfortable, but Terry felt like he was finally LIVING, as opposed to just going through the motions and doing what was expected of him.

    ReplyDelete
  28. As usual, you all knocked it out of the park!

    ReplyDelete

Please leave comments. Good, bad or ugly. Especially ugly.