Fiction Friday: about a tree

about a tree
5/2/2008 - Monday (not so) light verse, special FF edition
Fiction Friday prompt: Write about a tree (Join Fiction Friday here.)

There are many things that you can see
when you walk about a tree.

Two small impressions, little boots
poked in among the old oak's roots
where Sean climbed Danny's back for height
to rescue their branch-tangled kite.

And further on, a chipped black stone
where Danny slipped and broke a bone
and Sean ran home their ma to tell
that Danny got hurt when he fell.

Now in the bark some letters etched
where Danny took his knife and stretched
up high, his Sarah's name to write
before he left for war that night.

And pencil shavings on the ground
dropped to the dirt without a sound
as Sarah's love and gentle tears
filled many letters through the years.

And here, upon the westward slope
where lovers sat to smooch and grope
in sunset's glow at end of day;
Sarah loved Sean with Dan away.

A bottle piece, a broken shard
where Danny had been drinking hard
and thinking vengeful, evil thought
since Sean and Sarah there he caught.

And here, a blood stain on a root
where Danny held his gun to shoot
his brother Sean who died that day
as Danny watched him bleed away.

And now a shadow, dark and deep
where Sarah comes each day to weep
for Danny's soul, which he did loose
amongst the branches, with a noose.

I kept that rope that Danny used
because his love I had abused;
I keep the gun upon a shelf
and soon might use it on myself.

The things I see about this tree
are Sean and Danny, dead for me.

One of my writing goals for 2008 is to write at least one light verse or poem every week in addition to my haiku wednesday and fiction friday posts. I will try to do this on Mondays.

Fiction Friday: only a fiver

only a fiver
3/28/2008 - Monday light verse, special FF edition
Fiction Friday prompt: Describe a time your character was wronged; even though it was insignificant to the one who wronged them, your character never got over it. (Join Fiction Friday here.)

You got drunk in Reno while in a casino
and gambled your money away.
And when you drew four threes, you bet him your car keys
but too bad it wasn't your day.
Cause he had four sevens, and cursing the heavens
you hustled off, lost in dismay.
You wandered to my place, and begged for some bed space,
and graciously I let you stay.
I gave you a warning that early next morning
I'd have to be going away,
and while I was sleeping, you set yourself creeping,
your honesty going astray,
And then, you conniver, you took my last fiver
and snuck out to go back and play.
So now I'm disgusted, you'll never be trusted.
Our friendship you just threw away.

One of my writing goals for 2008 is to write at least one light verse or poem every week in addition to my haiku wednesday and fiction friday posts. I will try to do this on Mondays.

Fiction Friday: A Night at the Zoo

This Week’s Theme: Tell about your character's feelings toward animals and why she feels that way. A Night at the Zoo 3/14/2008 (Monday light verse, special Friday edition) Gwendolyn Rice thought it would be nice to go with her mom to the zoo. She begged and she pleaded cuz she really needed to find out what animals do. Her parents were vegans (just like her friend Megan's) so Gwendolyn hadn't a clue. But old Missus Rice said, "Sorry, no dice," while stirring her lima bean stew. Well, Gwen was no quitter and when the urge bit her she snuck out at quarter til two. She felt like a sinner and thought she'd miss dinner but knew what she needed to do. She rode cross the city while humming a ditty of lions and rabbits and gnu. She got to the gate at a quarter til eight, and the man there was closing the zoo. She snuck past that guard and into the yard just as the "we're closed" whistle blew. Now Gwendolyn Rice, in two winks and a trice, around all the cages she flew. She saw bears, fox, and minks, a giraffe and a lynx, and even a hippo or two. She saw monkeys and birds and elephant turds and llamas and three kangaroo. She saw snakes eating mice while gorilla picked lice, and sad grazed a lone caribou. She went round and round, taking in every sound, every odor and all the sights, too, and when she was done she'd had so much fun she just couldn't utter adieu. So Gwen thought she'd stay til the break of the day even though she'd be way overdue. And then she thought, "Gee, don't they want to be free? These animals are people, too!" So around them she walked, to each inmate she talked, and at each the latch she'd undo, To be nice she was tryin' when she let loose the lion but it wasn't a good thing to do Cuz the lion thought, "Nice, I so rarely get Rice as dessert for my beef brisket stew." One of my writing goals for 2008 is to write at least one light verse or poem every week in addition to my haiku wednesday and fiction friday posts. I will try to do this on Mondays.
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Fiction Friday:

This Week’s Theme: Start your entry with a fire. Reminder: Over the weekend you can participate in judging the Write Stuff photo writing contest. My entry is posted here. As Daniel fished his chemistry text from his backpack, he glanced out his bedroom window at the night and was astonished to see an orangish glow dodging about under the bridge. Shadows writhed along the half-frozen river and clambered up the rocks of the embankment. Phantoms made from firelight waved at him, beckoned him to come out and play. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. Walter was dead. That was not Walter's fire under the bridge. When Daniel opened his eyes again, he dropped the book with a solid thud. Someone was down there, with a fire, in Walter's spot. That wasn't right. Daniel hustled through the door, snatching his black hoodie off the floor as he went. Down the stairs three at a time, his sneakers squeaking on the hardwood steps. Mom wasn't home yet, probably wouldn't be home for an hour or two, some work meeting keeping her late again. The front door resisted and squeaked as he yanked it open and felt the rush of winter flow over him and up the arms of his sweatshirt. Mom would yell at him to wear his parka, or his boots at least. But it wasn't far, and he didn't plan on being out long. And someone's fire was warming Walter's little home under the bridge. He trudged out into the night, up the street and around the corner. Just past the Falks' house, at the fire hydrant, he turned from the sidewalk onto Walter's path. A thin, wobbly track in the frozen grass between the Falks' place and the Delanos', some sort of sewer or power company easement that wound through the rocks down to the river's edge. Scattered seeds of moonlight fell through pine branches above, and his breath made pale patches in the darkness before him. The snow along the path was old, and its crust crunched under his steps. The temperature had dropped fast after the sun went down, faster than he'd expected, an already he began shivering. He couldn't see the bridge from the path because of the bend in the river and the steep bank. His house was up there somewhere behind the fences, and he gave one glance up at yellow windows before turning onto the groomed path that followed the river. During the day, this path would be thick with joggers and dogs, even in this frigid weather. In all his evenings with Walter under the bridge, he'd never seen anyone walking this late. It would be in sight... now. As Daniel came around the big rock that pushed the river left and then let it flow right again, he stopped. The span of the footbridge arced over the water, a slim and graceful gray line against the black trees across the river. It flowed like a dark rainbow into the riverbank, blending as if it had grown right from the dirt. Walter's path staggered down this side, around the buttress and disappearing beneath the bridge into the darkness. Where there should have been an orange glow was blackness. Where he should have heard crackling and popping of dried sticks and shards of wooden crates and palettes, he heard only the whispered hiss of the water passing by. Where he should have welcomed the warm odor of a campfire, he smelled only the pines and the river mud and the cold. Daniel found himself running the last twenty yards, dodging down under the bridge to Walter's home. It was black, blacker than the cloudless sky, there under the bridge. He knew the place by feel, by memory, but he could see nothing. He knew that a few feet to his right was where Walter lay as he passed away, alone in the cold of a November night, passed out even before the last of the vodka was gone. He knew the fire would be a little farther in, where the bridge could collect and hold on to the heat. He knew how the light would dance in the beams and cables above, how it could mesmerize and fill the silence on those nights Walter had faded beyond speech. Daniel shivered hard under his sweatshirt and hugged his hands under his armpits. He turned and started back up the path, wondering how it was possible to walk away from that place without the sound of Walter's hard snoring behind him.
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Fiction Friday: Two Lost Souls

This Week’s Theme: Insert this song lyric into your fiction: ‘We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.' Charlie: Dude, answer your phone. Gilbert: Eff you. I'll answer my phone when I want, dude. Charlie: What the hell is your ring tone, anyway? Gilbert: Dark Side of the Moon. Charlie: Dark side of your butt. Gilbert: What? Charlie: You heard me. You gonna answer that? Gilbert: Nah. It's probably my mom, anyway. Charlie: You got a special ring tone for your mom? Pink Floyd? Gilbert: No, dude. She's the only one that ever calls me. Well, her and you. And you're here, so why would you call me, right? Charlie: Check out that dude over there. Gilbert: What, the homeless dude in the tie-dye? Charlie: That's not tie-dye, dude. That's like his breakfast or something. Gilbert: Barf omelet. Sick. Charlie: Dude. Gilbert: So, what guy? That guy over by the red pickup? Charlie: Dude! Are you blind? That's a chick. No. The guy in the window. Behind the chick. Gilbert: Oh, man. Charlie: What's he doing? Gilbert: Um... marketing, I think. See, he's like got some... something there. Charlie: Yeah but he's all up in that window, like he's on display or something. Gilbert: You wanna get lunch? Charlie: It's like he's a goldfish. Gilbert: Tuna fish, dude. I need sustenance. Let's get lunch. Charlie: I wonder if they ever let him out? Maybe he has to stay in there, dude. Gilbert: You're twisted, man. Let's get lunch. Charlie: Like those fish at the dentist, just waving their fins and doing that mouth thing. Gilbert: Mouth thing? Charlie: You know, like this. Charlie opens and closes his mouth like a fish. Bwoop bwoop bwoop. Gilbert: Bwoop bwoop bwoop? Dude, I think your blood sugar's low. Let's go eat. Charlie: They just swim around man, day after day, week after week, month after month. Gilbert: Looking up to the heavens. I just want lunch! Dude, get a grip, OK? We're not philosophers, dude. We're just two lost souls. Charlie: Swimming, in a fish bowl. Year after year. Gilbert: Forget it. Charlie: It must be really boring being a fish. It must be really boring being that guy. Gilbert: Yeah, maybe. But I bet they give him lunch. Charlie: Gilbert's phone rings again. Dude, you gonna answer that? Gilbert: Yes. Charlie: Don't you wanna get lunch instead? Gilbert: Eff you, dude.
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Fiction Friday: Flip a coin

This Week’s Theme: Flip a coin. Heads, and your characters hates Valentines Day, Tails, and they love it. Now come up with the reason your character feels the way they do. I had no idea how little of Interstate 40 my three paperbacks would occupy. At our last stop, a dusty cafe with unbroken windows and unstained porcelain coffee cups, the driver told me we were still only halfway to Albuquerque. Another six hours or thereabouts. "Greyhound Gus" didn't want to stay at the Desert Bluffs Cafe and Gas Stop any longer than I did. He removed his hat and wiped his sweaty, balding head with a spotted handkerchief every few minutes, but he refused to remove his company coat. The other eight passengers all ate something because where we came from it was lunchtime, but the desert heat had baked away my appetite. I only wanted to keep moving, to get as far away from Jimmy as quickly as I could. I spent most of my time at these stops gazing east along the interstate, looking for the wobbly shimmer of Jimmy's Chevy emerging from the horizon. He wouldn't follow. As long as I didn't call asking him for money, he wouldn't try to follow. A poor little girl was fairly wilting in her yellow sun dress, but her brother had acquired a set of plastic army men at the last stop and had yet to conclude the war that had raged for over a hundred miles and now had encroached into the sand-swept serenity of the Desert Bluffs. Their father leaned on the pay phone in the parking lot sucking on a cigarette, his blue shirt soaked to the seams. His wife watched through the window with the same look of patient annoyance I'd perfected in waiting for Jimmy when he stepped outside to call one of his "business associates." For the past two years, the business associate's name was Margaret, and he'd been paying her rent in Tulsa. He thought I didn't know. The young man with the brown eyes leaned over a pump off to the side. He'd taken off his black tee shirt and was bent over, slamming the handle of the pump down so water gushed over his head and down his muscled back. He'd sat down across from me out of Tulsa and introduced himself to me as "Dan--Danny--Dan" and then with jittery fingers shook a cigarette out of a pack to offer me. I said nothing, shook my head no, and looked back at my book. I read my book the next hundred miles, knowing he sat and stared at my breasts in profile. Why shouldn't he, after all? There wasn't anything worth looking at out his window. And he couldn't possibly know how they looked under my shirt, what with being forty years old and having nursed three babies. I glanced up the road again, expecting the shimmer of a Chevy to pierce the horizon. But it didn't. And with a deep breath I told myself--again--that I was free now, that the sensation of a ring on my finger was not from gold any more but just a depression left from years of relentless pressure. Dan Danny Dan stood up from the fountain, and my gaze traced the rivulets that coursed down his smooth skin and slipped inside the waistband of his jeans. For a moment I imagined my fingers following them. I looked away, at the ancient cash register on the counter with its one-dollar placard stuck up and bent. At the newspaper spread behind black-soled cowboy boots where the cafe's owner sat with his feet on a table. The newspaper, some local edition, ran a front page story of the Valentine's Day dance tonight down at the Lazy M Ranch. I looked down at my own table, where a quarter and a dime rested next to my empty coffee cup. Jimmy wouldn't follow, would not try to stop me if I asked for a divorce. But Dan Danny Dan was barely older than my first son. How could I even think about it? But we had five hours, maybe more, before he'd leave the bus in Albuquerque and I'd keep on to Los Angeles. I was a free woman, I reminded myself. My fingers stretched out, reaching first for the cup but detouring to the quarter. The eagle on its back was spoiled by a black spot. I rubbed it off with my thumb as I noticed the children's mother sitting rigid, holding back tears as she stared out the window at her husband, still on the phone, now turned away from us. What the hell. I flipped the quarter into the air and caught it, turning it onto the back of my hand but keeping it covered. Heads I do, tails I don't. My heart pounded and my stomach churned from too much coffee and not enough food. Dan Danny Dan stepped onto the bus, and I watched his silhouette glide the length of the bus to the very back. As the round, dusty blue figure of Greyhound Gus the bus driver stepped up next to me, I realized I hadn't breathed in nearly a minute. "Ready to leave, ma'am, whenever we're all on board." I smiled up at him, feeling my own sweat running down the empty space between my spine and the clasp of my bra. "Thank you, Gus. I'll be right there." "Your hand all right?" He stared down at my hands on the table, the right still clasped over the left with the quarter tucked safely out of sight between. "Oh, yes, thank you." He looked concerned a moment, then shrugged and turned away. "I'll wait for you, but we still have a ways to go." I could feel the cafe owner's eyes pointed at my profile as I watched Gus waddle across the half melted parking lot and puff his way up the steps. The family bustled themselves up the steps behind him, the father crushing out his cigarette before disappearing inside as well. "Well?" The scratchy drawl of the cafe owner broke into my silence. He looked mostly Indian, and I wondered if we're actually on a reservation. "Well, what?" I answered. "Heads or tails?" "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," I snapped, sliding the quarter off my hand without looking at it and bolting up out of the chair. He just grinned and scratched the side of his nose with his thumb. "Have a good trip, miss." He lifted his newspaper again and disappeared behind it. As I stepped away from the table, my eyes caught site of the quarter, no longer with its eagle side up. I paused in mid stride and then continued, trying to swallow that dry lump that just appeared in my throat. I was a free woman after all, and Jimmy wasn't going to follow. And Dan Danny Dan would be out of my life in five ours, maybe a little more, when he got off in Albuquerque and I carried on to Los Angeles. I climbed the steps of the grumbling bus, the door closing with a creak behind me. I continued right on past my sweater and three paperbacks in the seat midway back, and I grasped my way to the last row as the bus lurched forward. Dan Danny Dan was staring out the window, and without a word I sat down next to him and slid my hand behind his back, feeling the wet shirt still cool from the deep well at the cafe.
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Fiction Friday: singin' in the rain

This Week’s Theme: Your character was singing out loud in public but did not realize it. I couldn't stop quivering each time I thought about seeing my name on that playbill. It was only college theater, but to be selected as the female lead! I couldn't wait to call Mom and Dad back home and let them know, but they were sure to be out to their Saturday night dinner. Jimmy wanted to take me out to celebrate. He said we were going to do it in style, so I wanted to shower and get dolled up. Maybe wear that champagne colored dress I wore to Annie's wedding last June which Todd Flanders liked so much. He actually fell off the porch because he couldn't keep his eyes off me! That was exactly the reaction I wanted from Jimmy tonight, and in that dress and my heels I was sure to get it. I slipped out of my dress and grabbed my bathrobe and towel, then sauntered down the hallway to the bathroom. Most of the other girls would be down in the living room or out at the library. This big university lifestyle with its big dorms had been difficult to get used to last year. For the really shy girls it was tough knowing that anyone could walk up those stairs and see you in your robe without makeup, or worse, with curlers! Sometimes even boys came up the stairs if they had permission from the dormitory mother. But I didn't care, floating down the hall with my head in the clouds, my mind on opening night two months from now, on the adoring crowd cheering curtain calls and delivering roses backstage. In the bathroom, I chose the shower stall by the back because it always had the best pressure and hottest water, and I pulled the curtain shut behind me before disrobing. Steam rose from the green tiles on the floor and the wall, and the hot water fell on me like a summer rainstorm. And I just couldn't help it. Lead in Singin' in the Rain! I was going to play Kathy Selden and have everyone fall in love with me! The water poured down on me, and the steam clouds filled my senses, and I closed my eyes and started in... what a wonderful feeling, I'm happy again! I'm laughin' at clouds, so dark up above! The sun't in my heart... oh yes, I was ready for love all right. Jimmy would be here soon. I turned off the water but not my song, and I toweled off with the second verse, slipping my robe back on. With a stage flourish, I belted out, "And I'm ready for love!" as I yanked back the flimsy, vinyl curtain that smelled vaguely of mildew and bleach. The bathroom was full of people--girls from the dormitory, boys from who knew where. There must have been a dozen people crammed into this little room, and all staring at me in my bathrobe with a shower cap blobbed on my head like a giant, melted marshmallow. And in front stood Jimmy, his arms crossed and an enormous, smug grin across his lips. My summer shower turned into a thunder storm, and as the crowd in front of me broke into mixed applause and laughter, I quivered in rage. I felt tears coming to my eyes, but I didn't want them to think I was embarrassed for singing in front of them. Let them hear. It was a free performance for them. No, my tears were born from anger. I could barely breathe as I watched Jimmy with his crocodile smile studying my reaction. So this was his doing, bringing all these people here. Most were my friends, but there were a couple of strangers there, too. I put ice into my glare as I stood there, exposed and ugly, wanting nothing but to get back to my room. Alone. We stood there, face to face, with the jeering crowd behind Jimmy, for what seemed like for ever. Eventually, he said, "Come on, baby, don't be mad. I just wanted to give all your friends a chance to congratulate you before we went out!" He stepped toward me and opened his arms to welcome me in a hug, but I just glared back and didn't move. "Hey, baby! I just wanted tonight to be for us. I didn't want anyone else interrupting to congratulate you. Come on, baby. I did this for us." His smile changed a bit, and I watched his eyes change with his tactics. "I thought you'd like the attention. You're a star, after all!" I yanked my shower cap off, letting my crinkled hair collapse around my shoulders. I shoved the cap into his chest, and as he grabbed it in surprise I pushed past him and elbowed my way through the crowd, which had now fallen into a sort of awkward hush. Let my gray clouds chase everyone from the place. I wasn't going anywhere tonight, not with Jimmy or anyone else.
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Fiction Friday: Danger!

This Week’s Theme: Describe a first brush with danger. Even though this is "fiction" Friday, I decided to tell a true story from my youth. By eleven a.m. the autumn sun had warmed an October chill from the Cambridge air. I grabbed my sweatshirt anyway and tied my sneakers, then checked my pocket to make sure I had fare for the T to go meet my brother in Boston. One dollar was all I had, crumpled up in my pocket. It was all I needed. I liked visiting my brother at MIT, but the morning had been boring. He lived off campus in a cool townhouse with cooler roommates. I was barely fourteen, and spending a few days with college guys who drank beer and used bad words thrilled me. Except when they were at classes or work, like this morning, and I was bored stiff after already having read all my books and the newspaper. I headed out, confident in my ability to navigate the Boston train system, transfer from the red line to the green line, and get to his stop at the lab. But getting to the T stop was new for me, and my brother had given me good directions. Go one block south, turn right, then turn left down this long alley to the main street, turn right, and there it would be. Easy. Hands in my pockets, I trudged along between the buildings, trying to stick to the warmer, sunny side of the street. Half way down the long alley, though, I heard a shout. "Hey! Hey, kid!" I turned to see another kid, about my age and in jeans and a sweatshirt, a black kid, running toward me. Two others, one bigger and one smaller, followed close behind but not so quick. "Hey kid!" I stopped and waited for him to arrive. He looked OK, but as I stood there I noticed how long this alley was, at least fifty yards in either direction, and no one else around. He was in front of me before I knew it. "You from around here?" I shrugged. "I'm staying with my brother, over that way." I kept my hands in my pockets but waived my elbow in the general direction back up the alley. "Yeah? Got any money? Give my your money." I was never confident in strange places, so my pulse already was racing. Now my heart was pounding, too. My whole body felt like shivering. The other two boys showed up, and I saw now that all three of them were slightly bigger than I was. One of them was pretty hefty, too. I didn't move. "I don't have any money." "Don't lie, you got money. Where you going anyway?" "I'm going to meet my brother." "Your brother? How big is your brother?" One of the other kids piped up now. "Get out your knife!" He looked at me. "He got a a knife. Get out your knife!" I weighed my options. I could run--I was fast, probably faster than any of them, but the one that approached me first was wiry and maybe as fast as I was. I could fight--I had been taking Bando lessons (a Burmese martial art) for two years and was pretty good, though not very advanced and never field tested. And maybe they really had a knife. "I got a knife. Give me your money, man." "Check his pockets." I didn't move, and the first kid shoved his hands in my pockets and found my dollar. "You got more?" I shook my head. "No. Just T fare to go meet my brother." The three of them backed off, eyeing me, and turned to run back up the alley the way I'd come in. I waited and watched them go, then followed when I thought they were going to leave me alone. I returned to my brother's townhouse and tried to slow my heartbeat and stop shaking. At fourteen, and I was embarrassed to cry about this, even alone. It was a dollar. A stinkin' dollar. Finally, I called my brother and explained what happened. I don't remember the rest of the day.
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Fiction Friday: Lifelong Dream

This Week’s Theme: What is your character's lifelong dream? Why did she not pursue it? I've decided to take a character from a Fiction Friday from over six months ago. The room had the musty smell of old bath towels and once-flooded carpeting, that vaguely sour odor of mildew that even the hardest scrubbing with bleach won't eliminate. I didn't bother looking at the bathroom yet, preferring to sit on the edge of the stiff, double bed and stare at the telephone. The table-tent sign next to it said fifty cents for local calls, a dollar plus long distance charges for toll calls. At least the HBO was free, according to the perky night clerk at the front desk. It was just before midnight, and part of me wondered why I'd wasted thirty dollars on a motel room. My bus was scheduled for seven a.m., and no way in Hell would I be able to sleep with Dustin's last words still ringing through my thoughts. "Thanks, mom. For everything. Write to me." While Jimmy and the boys watched their football, Dustin saw right through me and knew, in some way, that I'd already left. He would love California, I tried not to tell myself. He'd thrive on the different foods, the different languages, the different people. He'd find his true self instead of languishing among all these meatheaded, testosterone-soaked men here. But I couldn't support him. And if he came with me, he'd get lost and I'd get lost, and I'd never be able to break away, truly break away. All these thoughts tumbled around me on the bed, just as they had orbited my head on the six miles from home to the motel, just as they were bound to linger next to me on that long bus ride to Los Angeles. God, how I needed to call Dustin, to explain it all to him. To tell him I had actually been discovered, once, by someone other than his father. It was the dress rehearsal, the night before we were going to open Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Sitting on the bed now in this motel room, I still remembered the line I was on when that producer from the big stage in Dallas, Frank I think his name was, walked in and started listening. I whispered it in the quiet hum of the electric window heater: "I don't mind making a fool of myself over you." That next day, I said those very words to Jimmy in his car out by the lake, and five months later I was engaged and already showing and off the stage for good. "Feel embarrassed? Well, I can't live on this way." That was my next line that night, and I whispered it over and over to myself now as I sat in the room with the stifling, electric-blanket air and the occasional rumble of a truck on the highway. Closing my eyes, I thought back to last night when channel eighteen aired that old movie. Elizabeth Taylor in the fifties, beautiful and elegant and sexy... all those things I'd known I could be on the stage when I was nineteen. What had happened to me? Where had I gone? Age and loneliness was all I really had now, and an empty sense of regret. And an entire roomful of terror. I'd left my husband tonight, my boys. Dustin. In my small suitcase next to me on the bed hid a Greyhound ticket to Los Angeles, four outfits, some makeup, two books, and six hundred dollars in cash. Seventy two dollars that ticket cost. So that was the price of resurrecting a dream, reviving a life that had once been worth living. Lying back on the bedspread, I spoke up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but today is the day I stop sharing that cage you call a home." But in my heart I was already composing the first few lines of the postcard I'd write when I got to California: "My darling Dustin..."
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Fiction Friday: departure

This Week’s Theme: Write a scene that ends with your character saying, "I never want to see you again." "But what does it mean?" Crystal could be so dense sometimes. I'd been sitting on the corner of her bed, and as I stood I saw her profile in the dresser mirror. Long, blond hair; petite, upturned nose; those infuriatingly natural eyelashes framing her deep, crystal brown eyes. I looked away from the mirror, out the window. I didn't want to catch her eye until I composed myself first, so I shrugged. "Debbie..." Crystal knelt on her bed and grabbed the pillow to her chest. It had been a mistake to read the letter out loud to her, but she'd helped me so much in the past week. Ten days ago we were not much more than school friends, chem lab partners who hung out at free period so boys wouldn't bother us. This morning before the letter arrived we had become temporary roommates, and her mom did all the mom sorts of things for me--made my lunch with Crystal's before school, picked me up from the drug store each evening when my shift was over, set a place for me at the family table every night. I leaned against the frame of the window, feeling the deep bruise in my ribs and my arm and savoring the dull pain. Ten days and I still didn't go to gym class because I couldn't bear changing in front of everyone with those huge blue bruises yellowing around the edges. "Deb..." I breathed deep and turned to Crystal. She'd been such a good friend. "Does it say anything else?" I had stopped reading my mother's letter out loud at the point where it said, "and I'm moving to Houston with Jimmy." Crystal had gasped out loud because she knew what Jimmy had done to me, that the bruises were from his big hands and his empty vodka bottle. She knew I'd told my mother what he'd tried to do, that it was only because he was so drunk I got away before he could do it. For ten days Crystal had been preaching faith to me that my mother would kick the bastard out of the house, knowing I wouldn't move back in until she did. Crystal reached out and took my hand. I could see tears forming in her eyes. "Debbie, does it say anything else?" "Yes," I whispered. It says, "I never want to see you again."
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Fiction Friday: be it resolved

This Week’s Theme: What is the first New Year’s Resolution your character breaks? How soon? Why? Laura Tiffany Tate McSmother had it in for her little brother. She'd punch one arm and then the other and run away when he'd tell mother. Oh, She was cruel and she was sly. She'd pull his hair and make him cry, then pour Tabasco in his eye, and whisper "Joey, Mamma hopes you die." When Christmas time approached this year, and Santa asked if she'd been dear, she said, "You bet your big, fat rear," and grinned all toothy, ear to ear. But Santa must have seen her soul cuz in her stocking he left coal. She wept into her breakfast bowl and vowed herself a New Year's Goal. "I won't set Joey's hair afire or call my little brother 'liar' or wrap him up in fishing wire or tie him to the pickup's tire. I won't paint his favorite teddy green or switch his juice for gasoline or force him to eat lima beans... I will no longer act so mean! I will be kind, I will be sweet! I'll say hello to those I meet. And I won't stomp on Joey's feet. My resolution is complete." On New Years Day she tried, she did. She really, really, really, really, really, really, really did. It helped a lot that Joey hid. By nine a.m. she'd tried to smother her incessantly annoying brother, and lied about it to her mother. Poor Laura Tiffany Tate McSmother.
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Fiction Friday: merry axe-mas

This Week’s Theme: Your adult character just got a guitar for Christmas–a gift very out of character. What changes, if any, does this cause in her life or personality? "Is the man sick?" I knew Cara was only trying to help, in her typically brute-force, tactless way. I handed her the note that had come threaded between the guitar's metal strings. I watched her eyes scan across the dozen or so hand scrawled words, watched the revulsion grow in her grimace. "Oh my God," she said as she handed the note back to me. "Hope you get better soon? Motivation for your recovery? Holy crap, Dan, your dad is one sick jerk." "Not sick," I replied, "just... misguided." I swallowed back my desire to let the tears flow again, but it would only get Cara on another rant. "Still a jerk," she murmured, her fingers fiddling with the needles on a miniature Christmas tree she'd brought to cheer my hospital room. "I mean, didn't you tell him--" "Yes, I told him." I did not want her to say it out loud, again. My left hand throbbed enough under its club-like, white bandage to remind me every few seconds of what I'd lost. I kept trying to remind myself of what I hadn't lost. I hadn't lost my life. I hadn't lost my sight, or my entire arm. And if I worked hard at therapy over the next hundred years or so, I might find I hadn't lost my sense of humor. But that was unclear. What I had lost was three of the fingers on my left hand. "Sorry," Cara mumbled. She looked down at the fake, little tree, eager and sincere amid the austere, sterile room. Two books in Christmas wrap sat under it on my little side table. The TV behind Cara's head showed some claymation reindeer in silence. Somewhere, children were watching this show and experiencing the wonder of Christmas and the magic of Santa Claus. Here, I lay recovering from a drunk driver's selfish indulgence. A tear fell from Cara's face onto my sheet. She shook her head slowly. "Doesn't he realize that you'll never play again?" She looked up at me, a deep pain swelling inside her. "That your dream is gone? That our dream is gone?" I wiggled my phantom fingers, the ones that had been crushed to pulp when the SUV slammed into the door of my car and crumpled it into my side. I breathed deep, as deep as I could before the pain in my chest became unbearable, and let it out. I looked at the guitar leaning against the wall in the corner. A beauty, it must have set Dad back nearly a thousand dollars. "One dream is gone," I whispered as I reached my one complete hand across and put it on top of hers. "But we still have others." She did not look up at me but let a few more tears fall from her eyes onto the back of my hand.
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Fiction Friday: solstice celebration

This Week’s Theme: What happens when your character gets dragged to a solstice celebration? I knew I was in big trouble when I saw the "Wicca for Dummies" book poking out from under Saturday's newspaper. Pushing aside the paper, which once again screamed about slumping home sales, I gathered a breath and readied for the coming inanity. "Mom?" "Mm hmm?" Mom did not look up from her cookie spritzer as she squeezed out another perfect little dollop of... wreath, or maybe camel. No, it was a Christmas tree. Or maybe a star? "What's this?" "What's what, honey?" She pried the cookie dough off the tip of the spritzer, mauling it into some other unrecognizable shape. At least the cookies would taste good. She licked her fingers, wiped them on her green apron, and then plunged them into the bowl of dough to fill the spritzer again. "This, Mom." I held the book up and raised my eyebrows. I knew what it was. It was the latest in Mom's quest for meaning since Dad died so suddenly two years ago. She had tried Buddhism (fortunately I convinced her not to shave her head), escapism (in four months she hit every roller coaster in California), and even Church. I sighed. At least she was trying. "Oh!" No pause in her cookie work. "You should read that. It's fascinating. I've only read the first two chapters, but I'm hooked. By the way, I hope you brought your boots." She hummed a few bars of "Let It Snow" to herself as green sprinkles skittered over the blobs of dough on her cookie sheet. "I'm afraid to ask..." "Didn't Jake tell you? Oh, that boy. I made him promise to tell you." "Tell me what, Mom?" I tried to keep the frustration and apprehension out of my voice, I really did. "We're celebrating the Solstice today! I've picked out a lovely spot out in the back woods, some beautiful trees and after last night's snowfall it should be just like Heaven." She seemed not to notice the irony in her choice of simile. "Though," she frowned at nothing in particular, "it might be cold even in the sun." A glance out the window and a quick shrug, and she was back to her multicolored dough blobs. *** "Where is your brother? He's always late." "I don't think he's coming, Mom," I said, not admitting out loud that had I known her plan I'd have stayed away, too. "But my whole knitting group is going. Liz is bringing her new gentleman friend, and Peggy has invited her children." She had come down the stairs with her long overcoat already buttoned, a thick, black scarf wound round her neck and Dad's old hiking boots on her feet. The gap between Dad's gray wool socks and the bottom of the coat showed bare legs where I expected slacks. "Mom, are you wearing a dress?" I wasn't sure she even owned dresses any more. "Mmm. Now, where is your brother? Well, we'll just have to go. I've left a note for him with directions to the spot. He'll just have to show up when he shows up." She popped open the door and bustled out into the sunny but chilly day. "We need to get there by noon or they'll start without us." I followed, shaking my head at her naive exuberance. We listened to her Nat King Cole CD of Christmas songs on the way down the highway, pulling off at a trail head mostly frequented by teenagers looking for a good place to drink beer on Friday nights in the summer. I followed her up the trail, neither of us talking. The day really was astonishingly beautiful. My breath hovered in wisps before me, and the new snow sat on the naked branches with grace and serenity. One tree near the top of a rise had frozen into a crystal wonder and glistened in a way that no artist could ever have recreated. Mom trudged ahead with purpose and resolve. After a few minutes, she followed footprints off the side of the trail, and I heard a murmur of voices. We emerged into a clearing where a dozen people loitered, chatting with each other. Mom turned to me and said, "Oh, good. We're not late." I saw Peggy and Liz, her reluctant boyfriend hovering behind her with a blue beret on his bare head. He wore a suit as if dressed for Christmas Mass, and his eyes darted from woman to woman like a cornered animal looking for an escape route. I tried not to give the same impression. I recognized them all. My mother's friends from the past thirty years--women who changed my diapers. Women who brought meals to my mom and sat with her late into the night after Dad died. Women who had come to my high school graduation, who had sent me generous gifts when I graduated medical school. Women who had come to my E.R. with fake ailments just so they could be treated by their friend's daughter. I smiled to see them all supporting her once again, even this nutty idea of a solstice celebration. Peggy came over to us. "Oh! Wonderful! Now we can get started!" She turned to the group. "Ladies! And Ken, of course." She winked in his direction. "It's time to start the revelry!" I started at the resulting whoop from the other ladies. Then my eyes went wide and my first thought was that they had all been drinking. I glanced at Ken to see his reaction mirrored mine. All at once, the ten old ladies, every one of them at least sixty years old if they were a day, threw off their overcoats. And every one of them was naked except for wool socks and heavy boots. They leapt about and formed a circle in the middle of the clearing, and they started dancing about. Some twirled, some bounced up and down--which was not flattering from the front or the rear--and others pranced around and around the circle. Every now and then one of them would whoop or shout something subtly Christian like "Praise be!" or "Hallelujah!" I stood rooted, unable to move. I could tell my mouth was agape. The doctor in me started worrying vaguely about frostbite and heart conditions, but the daughter in me was nothing but mortified. I couldn't stop myself from looking around to make sure no one but us saw this. I glanced at Ken, who seemed to feel as I did. Then, suddenly, his face changed. He shrugged at me, smiled, and threw off his coat. As he started unbuttoning his shirt, I turned to leave. "Where are you off to?" demanded someone's voice behind me. "I'm going to wait in the car." And if Jake shows up, I thought, I'll keep him busy so he doesn't have to see this.
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Fiction Friday: we're not all perfect, you know

This Week’s Theme: What is the skeleton in your character's closet? For this exercise, I am using one of the minor characters from my new NaNo novel. This character will become a major character by the end of the third book in the series, but now he appears as an honorable, courageous father figure. Below is a scene from his not-so-distant past in rural Virginia, a scene leading up to his decision to join the Gold Rush and move to California. "Cold night." The stranger's drawl oozed from his mouth in an exhale of pale steam and hung in the moonlit darkness. He wore a floppy, bumpkin hat and a thick, woolen coat that was two sizes too big for him. Bill Mitchell couldn't see the young man's shoes, but he was sure they would have holes in the soles. "That it is," Bill replied. The young man stood in the middle of the road, unmoving. His hat shaded his face from the moon's light, creating deeper shadows. Bill watched and waited, unable to spur his wagon forward with the man standing there. Becky, the horse, seemed content to wait and rest a while. The man coughed once, sniffed, rubbed the coat of his sleeve once across his nose. Neither man spoke for an uncomfortable time. Finally, Bill broke the silence. "If you don't mind making way, I've got a ways to go tonight before I'm home." The stranger waited a moment more, then spoke in his long, drawn-out words again. "Neighborly thing would be to invite a man in for some warmth." Bill felt himself tense. The man had said it in a kind enough tone of voice, but it was a challenge nonetheless. Had this stranger appeared at Bill's door, perhaps he would have invited him in for a meal, offered that he could sleep in the barn for a night, given him food. But here on this remote track still miles away... "I'm sorry, son," Bill said, "but I've got nothing to offer you tonight." "Ain't that a shame," the man whispered, but still he did not move. Bill climbed down from the seat atop the wagon, lifting his rifle as he went. "Son, I don't mean to be inconsiderate," he said as he stepped in front of the smaller man, "but I'd appreciate you moving on so my wagon can get past." "Something good you got there? In that wagon of your'n?" "Never you mind. Just step off the road and I'll be on my way." The night closed in around him, and he raised the gun barrel, pointing it at the stranger's chest. "Now, that don't seem neighborly neither," the man said simply. "We ain't neighbors." The man still did not move, and Bill waited two minutes, then three. His throat was dry, and his hands were shivering in the early November night. Clouds were moving in across the moon, covering the sky, and the snow would come soon. He needed to move on. This stranger, a young man of perhaps twenty years, stared back at him from his ragged coat and threadbare pants and motionless boots. Bill felt the cold in his bones now, and the weariness that had been settling on him all evening now weighed him down. "Please, mister, just step aside and let me pass." "No." Bill did not mean to do it. It must have been the shivering, the exhaustion, the cold, the darkness. But his finger squeezed the trigger on his rifle, and the shot cracked out in the silence, the bullet thudding deep into the man's chest. Bill dropped the rifle as the man crumpled to the road without a sound. Confusion and despair spread through him as he ran to the fallen stranger. The man was dead, there was no doubt even in the darkness of the thickening night. Who he was, or why he chose that remote road on that night, Bill would never know. Quickly, Bill grabbed the man's feet and dragged him off the road and into the woods. Only a dozen yards in was a deep thicket, and Bill shoved the body under it. Within minutes he was back atop his wagon, riding quickly for home, his hands still shivering, but no longer from the November cold.
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Fiction Friday: Karma's A Bitch

This Week’s Theme: What happens when a character, while cleaning out a house before moving out, finds a roll of film? Dear Crystal, Since you weren't around today, I had to get my things from your closet. Remember my gray sweater you never gave back? Now I know why. Red wine doesn't come out. Just like your red lipstick didn't come out of Ricky's underwear. I'm sure you two will make a great couple, just right for each other. Conniving, backstabbing, klepto bitch and smug, arrogant, heartless prick. Anyway, I also found that CD I lost months ago, you know, the one signed by Bruce Springsteen? That JJ gave me for my birthday last year? I can't for the life of me figure out how it fell into that shoe box behind your old suitcase. And my diamond studs, the ones my dad gave me for my birthday two weeks after I moved in here with you? Yeah, also in the same shoe box. Along with my shoes. Go figure. Since you felt it was OK to "borrow" my things for so long, I thought it would be OK if I "borrowed" one thing I found while getting my stuff from your closet. Remember that disposable camera you bought one night, that night we went clubbing and you got wasted and all "curious" and brought home that Rachel girl from that gay bar? Yeah, Crystal. Welcome to instant internet fame. See you on the Web, bitch. Love forever, Your newest ex-roommate, Shaundra.
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Fiction Friday: sentimental endings

This Week’s Theme: Use this quote as the spark for anything you want. “I’m not one for sentimental endings. Not this time.” "I'm not one for sentimental endings. Not this time." It wasn't the tone of Adam's voice that chilled my blood, or even the words. It was the stark emotionlessness of his steel gray eyes. At just eight years old, he had already seen more pain and death than most men see in a lifetime. The problem was, he was the one causing it. "Sedimentary what?" His sister, Grace, bless her heart, had just finished fourth grade but no one could quite figure out how. She glanced away from the mirror at Adam, then back to continue gazing at her own deep, stunningly blue eyes and golden hair. Adam rolled his eyes in just the way that an eight year old shouldn't. I knew what was coming, and I also knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. Adam had already sensed the fear and anger in my heart, so deep this time that I couldn't hide it from him. His mind was set. Poor Donnie. To Adam, Donnie would look no different from the insane pit bull that had attacked Grace last year. At the time, it was a blur, an unbelievable sequence. I found myself watching Adam watching me, his clear gaze appearing so empty yet hiding so much power. The choking rumble of Donnie's pickup filled the darkness outside the window, and a brief flash of headlights reflected off Grace's mirror and then snuffed themselves out. The loud screeching creak of the old truck's dented door shut up the frogs momentarily, and the uneven scuffing of Donnie's work boots in the gravel let me know that he'd been down to Danny's tavern again. He'd have been better off getting in a wreck off the old drawbridge and drowning than coming home drunk and mean. Adam's gaze slid sideways to the door. I found myself wondering if Adam would wait until Donnie... did something bad. Like that crazed dog. A knock on the door. Among the three of us only I tensed. My hair stood up all over my neck, and my feet tapped, ruffling the hem of my flowered dress and making an almost raining pitter-pat on the threadbare carpet. "Manda!" Donnie's drawl clawed through and around the locked door. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore I could smell the bourbon on his breath. "Ain't it time I met those cute little ones of your'n?" His voice dripped sarcasm. "How come you been hidin' them from me? You know we talked of this." I didn't want to answer. My feet tapped, but my body felt glued to the sofa. Another knock, more determined and threatening. Adam gazed at the door, impassive and curious the way a normal eight year old might look. Grace hummed to herself, twisting and twirling her golden hair in the pale light of the dim bulb hanging unshaded from the middle of the ceiling. "Manda! Don't keep your man waiting on the doorstep now!" Adam swiveled his gaze to me. "Shall I let him in, Mom?" I tried to think nothing, tried to feel nothing. Did I want Donnie to come in? Did I want what I knew was going to happen? Or did I want... what? More pain? Grace tilted her head to one side and smiled at me in the mirror. "Let him in, Mommy." Her smile was so genuine and innocent, so untroubled by the past, so unconcerned with the future. My eyes flicked to Adam, and he knew. A moment later, just when the pounding on the door was about to begin again, the door vanished. It didn't explode or open or disintegrate; it just ceased to be. The children seemed not to notice, but Donnie noticed as his hand, in mid-pound, swung down where the door had been and carried his body with it, stumbling out of the darkness into my dim living room. "What the hell?" He righted himself, wobbling slightly, his eyes squinty and his hair jagged from under his cap. He looked first at me, triumph and disdain mixed in his sneer, then glanced past Adam to have his drunken gaze rest on Grace. Just eleven, she had the body of a voluptuous sixteen year old, and I saw the hunger, the lust rising in Donnie's eyes. "Well, Manda, you didn't tell me you had a sister." I tried to speak, but my mouth felt filled with dust, and my body began to quiver. Adam observed us both at once, watching Donnie with his eyes and watching me with... some other part of him. Donnie moved toward Grace, his hands greasy and his shirt sweat-stained, and I felt it then. The anger, the revulsion. I glanced at Adam. "You're doing it, Mom." He watched, a little smile curling the edges of his mouth. "Don't hold it back. Let it happen. You can do it, too." His mouth didn't move, but I heard his voice in my head. "It's the right thing. You know it is." As Donnie's hand reached out to touch Grace's hair, I let go of something inside. I didn't understand it, didn't know what I was doing. It felt like that moment when you've been holding in the pee for hours and you finally let it loose, a relief, a breaking of something, a flooding of energy. And Donnie vanished. He didn't explode. He didn't disintegrate. He just ceased to be. Adam's smile had made itself complete now. And I understood. "I guess," I said to him, "I'm not one for sentimental endings either."
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Fiction Friday: Newlyweds

This Week’s Theme: Give a virtuous character a sordid past. "Shh!" Karly stopped in mid-moan, her breasts glistening with perspiration in the moonlight filtering through the rattan blinds. The blinds rattled a little when the ocean breeze came up, a sort of lonely sound that made it feel like we were alone in a beach hut, not on the third floor of a full service resort. So far it was a great honeymoon, and I had no interest in shushing right at this moment. "Seriously, Tom, stop." An edge I had never heard in Karly's voice before chilled me, and I stopped moving and tried to slow my breathing so I could be quiet for her. Even in the darkness of the room I could see her intense frown, a look of sheer concentration in her eyes. Her warm weight on top of me was tense, absolutely motionless. "What the..." In a swift move that only an Olympic gymnast could have managed, Karly slid off me and rolled off the bed, landing silently in a low crouch just next to the window. She glanced briefly back at me, where I lay on my back feeling pretty naked, then lifted the rattan blinds a half inch and peeked out. "Oh, shit." "What?" I whispered it, barely breathed it. Something in the way she crouched looked catlike, predatory. Something in the way she'd said "shit"--the first time I'd ever heard her curse since meeting her three years earlier--announced danger. Without answering, she stood and padded without a sound to the closet. She rummaged in my suitcase and threw my blue sweatpants and my black fleece jacket at me. "Put those on." Her voice carried to me with urgency and precision. Then she was in something black herself, and she was hissing at me to hurry as she moved to the door. I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the bed, pulled on the sweatpants. I had heard of new brides going a little nutso on their honeymoons, but this was new. Maybe she wanted to take our lovemaking out to the beach. Maybe this was a kinky side of her I didn't know about before. Maybe this elementary school librarian had a sexual appetite she hadn't shared with me. I had to admit that I found it a bit exciting. But the way she was going about it was weird. Pop, pop-pop. A noise outside, somewhere on the resort grounds, sounded like someone had just let loose on a snare drum buried under a pile of leaves. Then there was a yell, a man's deep grunt of a syllable. And I looked at Karly. "Russian," she said. "I think it's an AK-47. That's what they'd have. Probably." She glanced at the window. "Hurry up." "What--" "Hurry the fuck up, Tom." She said it casually, like a drinking buddy eager to get out to a party and being held up by his friend combing his hair or something. She raised one eyebrow at me. I slipped the fleece over my head. "Forget shoes. Too much noise. No time." She pushed open the door to the hall and walked out. I followed, trying my best to remember how I used to pretend, when I was little, that I was an Indian and able to walk silently through the forest. I never could then, and now I found I was just as noisy in a carpeted hall. Karly made no noise whatsoever. If I didn't know she was right in front of me, I could have stumbled past and never noticed her. We took the stairs to the ground floor, then went through the deserted kitchen and out the back door of the hotel into the service parking lot. Dark trucks huddled around us, and every few steps Karly stopped to listen. I felt like a puppy on a leash, or maybe like a five-year-old following his mother. Or following a stranger after picking the wrong pair of legs in a crowd. As we hustled and paused among the trucks, then across the pool patio among the umbrellas and lounge chairs, then on into the tropical garden that bordered the jungle, I watched her. I'd known her four years. We met through one of those online dating services. She was young, only twenty three when we met, only a year out of Berkeley and newly hired as the school librarian at my nephew's school. Four years later, here we were on our honeymoon, and she was acting like some sort of soldier of fortune, leading me into the jungle, talking about foreign firearms. Suddenly she stopped and put one hand out behind her in a clear signal for me to stop and be quiet. My breath was heavy again, but not like it had been in bed just a few minutes earlier. With a glance, she indicated I should come up next to her and look at something ahead, just inside the jungle, just outside the resort compound. I looked, and at first I saw nothing. Then there was a brief flash of something in the moonlight, and my eyes found it in the darkness: A man, holding something that glinted black. He wore dark clothes, maybe even camouflaged. He moved the black thing again, and I realized he was whispering into a walkie-talkie. Karly made some hand signals that I interpreted as "stay here, don't move, don't make any noise." OK, I figured, but what are you going to... then my eyes went wide as I saw her do that gymnast thing again and slide silently between two low hedges, coming up on the man from behind, and doing something to his head or neck. He fell backwards quietly into her arms, and she lowered him gently to the ground. Within seconds she was back at my side. "Twelve others, I'm guessing. Eight inside by now, and three others stationed at the obvious watch points. I'll take care of them first. You. Do. Not. Move." Her whisper was a hiss I could not disobey even if I wanted to. But I was distracted by the pistol in her hand. I felt like my heart had stopped and my breath would never come again. Karly noticed me staring at the pistol. "Oh. Yeah." She hefted it. "Not mine. His." She jerked her head in the direction of the man she'd just apparently overcome. She grinned in the dark. "You didn't know I shoot lefty, did you?" As she sped off across the pool deck again, I observed my brain trying to grab hold of the scene. Yeah, that was her left hand. I think it was her left hand. I didn't know she shot lefty. Jesus, I didn't know she shot at all.
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Fiction Friday: Oh no, it's velcro!

This Week’s Theme: Pick an unusual phobia and explain why a character has it. It's that sound, you know? That tearing sound that makes your teeth sweat, like the sound of tendons ripping away from bone. But sounds will do that to you. I was told that smells bring back the strongest memories, but I don't believe it. Sounds, man. Think about it. Any good thriller or horror flick. What makes it scary? You know the stupid bimbo who just ran out into the deserted forest in her nightgown is about to get filleted by ten inch knife. It's the soundtrack. A good soundtrack is what makes that scary. There's no smell but popcorn in a movie theater, but you're still scared shitless. Sounds. Like the sound of a dripping faucet in the middle of the night. The drops echo, and you open your eyes to the darkness and think there's water dripping over by the TV, or in the closet. Makes you disoriented. Where the hell am I? What's that noise? You'd think I'd hate pocket knives, or sand paper. After all, that's what the sick bastard used on me. Somehow he always found me. Seemed to know, every day, where I was hiding. I had some good hiding places, too, but damn he found me every time. Every time. Scars in hidden places, patches of pinker skin where no hair grows even though I'm forty-six. Mom never realized what her "boyfriend" was doing in those hours late at night when she was off working at the hospital. Not til that night she got laid off. What could I do? I was eleven, scrawny, bookish. He spent his days tossing luggage at airplanes and his night tossing back Millers. I hid. He came after me. Always had a reason, even if he had to make it up. Maybe one night I didn't wash all the dishes, he'd say. Or I left the toilet seat up, he'd say. Anyway, I needed some discipline, and by God he was going to give it. He wore a back support harness, one of those things that looks like some freakish neo-Nazi Blade Runner fashionista interpretation of lederhosen. Black, it was. He'd wear it all day at work, throwing luggage around. Even wore it in his pickup on the way home. He'd open the door and come in, and I'd be buried in a book, maybe already hiding, and then my world would freeze and the air would turn solid in my lungs and I'd hear that ri-i-i-i-p of the industrial velcro straps being rent away from him, releasing him into the house. She came home that night. It was a Thursday. She looked sad when she walked in, then confused. She saw him over me with the pocket knife, my own cub scout knife, open and drawing a fine, crimson line down the left side of my back. My hands were held behind me, wrapped tight by a black velcro strap. I saw her eyes. He saw her eyes. He lost it, lunged at her. He knocked her down... I don't remember too much. I looked away. I was crying, I know that. He was nuts. He'd gone nuts. Lost it completely. I remember more sounds of velcro, and then Mom lay beside me, her mouth strapped shut with a thick, black velcro strap, another around her neck. Her hands were wrapped tight, and she was bent in half, unnatural. Her eyes looked scared, and she stared at me. Then I felt the knife touch my back again, this time burning and, I could tell, cutting deeper. I tried to block it all out, closed my eyes so Mom wouldn't see the pain I felt growing in my legs and back and wrists, bound too tight. When I looked again, Mom's eyes held no more fear. She still stared at me, but her gaze was vacant, her eyes glassy and unfocused. It was then I noticed she wasn't breathing.
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Fiction Friday: Three wishes...

This Week’s Theme: A character gets three wishes... Her mama called it ghost breath, this late September fog that lifted from the nearby pond and swirled slowly around Clara's ankles and calves. It was thicker over near the old, wooden bridge where the stream came down from Parker's Hill and fed the marsh that became Braden's Pond. A ghost breath night, Mama used to say, was a sure omen of death. Soon the ghost breath would swell until Clara couldn't see the stooped, stubby trees across the old gravel access road. Already the bridge had been swallowed up by the silent mist as darkness gradually defeated a reluctant twilight. Clara sat on the embankment, the train tracks a few feet behind her, and watched the pond disappear into the darkness. Gravel poked through her thin skirt, but the night was warm and she didn't mind the mist seeping through her threadbare school shirt. The moisture gathered and made the shirt cling like a second skin to her shoulders and breasts. Clara closed her eyes and imagined Mama out there gliding across the pond, floating above it in the air like a graceful dancer, pale and white and glowing. Maybe Mama was the lonely soul bringing the ghost breath with her tonight, back to visit the living. Maybe she'd come to take Clara away with her. Clara opened her eyes and was startled to see the fog glaring bright-white at her from the direction of the old bridge. The brightness was moving, slowly, creeping closer and growing. Her heart jumped and thumped as she held her breath and barely dared to think of Mama coming to her as she'd just envisioned. The feeling lasted only a moment, though, as the brightness clarified into two burning white dots ringed with rainbow coronas: headlights. And now she could feel the vibration of its motor not far off, now sense the rumble of its tires on the gravel road, coming nearer. For a moment, she hoped the car would drive on by and not see her. Her white shirt might blend in with the fog, her gray skirt with the gravel. But it was Friday night, and as the car lurched to a halt only ten yards away, Clara knew it was already too late to try to run away. She watched the driver's door open, saw Charlie step out and say something. Nick popped out from the other side, laughing with his evil-looking sneer. Finally, Bill slid out from the back, pushing his greasy, black hair back and slouching behind Charlie. The three boys sauntered toward her. Sometimes, Clara knew, her deafness could be an asset. Now she tried not to imagine all the things the boys were saying to each other. Even ten feet away the stink of bourbon flaked off them and melted into the mist swirling around them all. Maybe she could run after all. Maybe she could make it to the marsh and they'd let her go. Without hesitating more, Clara pushed off the embankment and drove hard past Charlie, straight into a pounding run aiming for the bridge. They would catch her if she didn't get a good head start into the darkness, into the ghost breath. She passed Charlie, but Bill lashed out with his foot. Pain seared into Clara's shin, and she fell, her hands ripped open by the sharp gravel of the road, her knees ground into the dirt. Then they were on top of her, before she knew what was happening, and they hit her, hard in the legs, or maybe they were kicking. The pain in her leg and now a new wet pain on the side of her head dazed her, and she was only partially aware of the skirt being torn from her amid the stench of new sweat and stale cigarettes and bourbon. She was pushed and rolled and yanked like a rag doll, and every inch of her hurt so much. Mama, she thought, Mama please come help me. Please come take me away with you. She closed her eyes and retreated inside herself, clinging to the vision of Mama gliding across the pond, a shimmering vision of death, vengeance--salvation. Unable to hear, choosing not to see, Clara shut out the outside world and ignored her body and what was being done to it. She imagined Mama coming to her, kneeling beside her, hugging her like she used to. She felt Mama's arms around her, felt Mama's heartbeat, Mama's warmth. "Mama," Clara whispered to the vision, "Mama take me with you. I wish I was dead. I wish to be with you." Her mama looked her in the eye with sad calm. "Hush, Clara. Don't say that. Why, you're just fourteen. You've got so much good ahead. Don't wish that. Wish something else." The vision embraced Clara again, this time with strength and solidity. "Then Mama," Clara whispered, "I wish Charlie would die. I wish Nick would die. And I especially with Bill would die." Mama pulled back from Clara and looked into her eyes again, sadness now mixed with that look she used to give when she was very proud of Clara. Mama nodded slowly and began drifting away, backwards so they kept looking into each other's eyes, until the bright figure merged into the mist and faded into the brightness that now was all around Clara. Later. How much later, Clara had no idea. She had fallen asleep. No, she had passed out. She knew because she felt the pain growing as she became aware, as she floated up out of the depths of unconsciousness. The pain, everywhere, so intense she could barely gasp in enough breath. Then, a familiar rumble began building in the ground under her. The gravel vibrated beneath her, and she opened her eyes. In less than a minute, the freight train would barrel past. All was darkness around her. The mist still loitered, now still as a frightened rabbit, waiting for something. The train would stir up the mist good, Clara thought. In the distance, she saw the glimmer of the train's headlamp glowing small and orange-white, a little sun in the dark mist. It was going fast tonight, Clara could feel it in the vibration of the gravel. She pulled herself to her knees, then stood up. The car was no longer next to her, but the stench of bourbon still lingered. She felt her head, found the blood still sticky in her hair. Fifteen seconds, perhaps. The train was heavy, too. It was an insistent rumble, an unstoppable determination. She looked at the tracks on top of the embankment, their rails black as onyx, almost sucking what little light there was around her. Then she saw it. The car. Parked on the tracks. She could see the boys' heads through the windows. They looked asleep, maybe. As the train bore down on the car, Clara realized it was too late to save the boys. She felt a shudder through her chest that must have been an urgent blast on the train's whistle, then a grating grinding as sparks leapt from underneath the engine. In the bright white of the train's headlamp, the car became a brilliant centerpiece in the black surroundings. Charlie in the driver's seat, asleep. Nick in the passenger seat, asleep. Bill in the back, lifting his head, his eyes growing wide as he watched his million-pound death pour down upon him at eighty miles an hour... Clara did not close her eyes at the impact. She did not flinch. She watched in vague curiosity as the car first buckled and shrank, then sprang away from the train like a bead of oil off a hot griddle, up and away, off the tracks into the night beyond. Limping, she turned to the gravel road and began slowly trudging toward the bridge where the ghost breath still lay thicker than anywhere. Away in the distance, over the pond, she thought she saw a shimmer of pale white gliding away from her and disappearing into the mist.
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