Gil C. Schmidt At Work

REVIEW: Thank You, Countess Bats!

2012-01-21T12:12:00.000-04:00

From the witty and charming Countess Bats (@bats0711) comes this make-me-blush review of my Tales from the Hotel Central, from her blog, The She Chronicles:

Keep It Simple Saturday

Today is Saturday so you know what that means, I’m trying to move as little as possible and I’m reading. Check out this book I found, it’s called Tales from the Hotel Central by Gil C. Schmidt and it’s so good it has a book trailer:

Mr. Schmidt is a superb author even though he’s a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Check out some of his writing here: Gil The Jenius and here: Gil Schmidt At Work. I promise you won’t be sorry.

Enjoy YOUR Simple Saturday!

Countess, in your honor--and despite the severe burden of doing this for an Eagles fan--I am providing a FREE code to get a copy of Tales from the Hotel Central, valid until next Simple Saturday!!

Go to the Tales from the Hotel Central page, click to purchase the format you wish and enter this code: RA24J Your copy of my book will be FREE!

Thank you, Countess. And thank all of you who grab a copy and make your Simple day one to share with me.

Review: In Legend Born, by Laura Resnick

2012-01-06T12:12:00.000-04:00

I read this novel twice, both times moving from "This is okay, I'll go for this ride," to "Forget it: scan and put aside."

I have a good memory, even an excellent one, but I read about 135 books a year and unless the book is well above-average, I won't have a clear sense of its details. In Legend Born, when I read it the second time (not sure I'd read it before ), passed the test for its first 294 pages: I could recall the details and enjoyed the story.

[Small spoilers ahead.]

The novel unfolds in an alternate world, where a despotic kingdom is crushing its inhabitants, especially attacking the mountain folk, long known for being independent-minded, though still subject to fear and trepidation of the Valdani. Josarian is a rebel leader, a young man who reaches the point of openly defying the Valdani. Tansen is a highly-trained samurai-type warrior who was sent to kill Josarian, but ends up becoming his blood-brother.

The world Resnick creates is solid, with a sense of power versus despair, characters that have clear motivations and characteristics and an overlay of magic (water- and fire-based) that serves the story well. There is the over-used cliché of "the chosen one" or the "the presaged one" (so very, very tiresome now), but the rest of the novel holds up beyond that.

Still, on the second go-around, I told my wife, "I know I've read this before, but something's wrong that I don't remember it all." Not two pages later, it happened: Josarian scowled at him. "What part of no don't you understand?"

"What part of no don't you understand?"

To quote everybody: Really? In a novel set in a world that isn't our own, in a time that is obviously not our own, Resnick chose to have a character use a phrase associated with late 20th century TV, movies and cheap dialogue?

And at that point--again--I scanned the final 430 pages of the book (Tor Fantasy, 1998 edition) and set it aside.

In The Language of the Night, the marvelous Ursula K. Le Guin explores how fantasy has a rhythm and metric to its language, a sense of poesy, of values, that the truly great writers can use. Le Guin points out that fantasy characters don't need to speak like stilted actors, but for the fantasy setting to truly rise above the mundane, the words must avoid the commonplace--our commonplace. Resnick's use of a colloquial, flippant retort for our times simply shreds the fantasy construction she tried to create.

Going back through the novel, after noticing this "break" in writing, it becomes more obvious that Resnick's use of language is less than "fantastical," that it could easily be placed in any sit-com or TV movie setting post-1975 and thus her novel falls into the trap of being a "modern tale told now" with Medieval poverty and magic tossed in to give it a veneer of "fantasy."

Le Guin also says that heroic fantasy, the most common form of fantasy, simply cannot have a hero or heroine who says "I told you so." No true hero or heroine would ever say that, for it is not in the nature of heroism to look back or need self-aggrandizement. Guess what Resnick's "heroes" say several times throughout the novel?

Another aspect of Resnick's novel is the sense that love makes a person a victim. I thought she would turn out to be a writer of romantic novels and--bingo--there it was. The sense that love shackles and confines, that it literally makes a person weaker, is the cult of victimization and distortion that makes the romantic sub-genre of "Love is killing me" so very popular. It also drives the "Men are bastards" sub-genre, with its boob-tube bastion being the Lifetime channel.

I don't agree with this view of love and don't care for it. Yes, love hurts, but it isn't an excuse for weakness and uselessness (Twilight, anyone?), and shouldn't be used as a cover-up for sloppy characterization, as it appears in this novel, where enamored characters behave as if they oly had two options: confess or flee.

Resnick is a very good writer, a Best New Science Fiction Writer winner in 1993 and amply-recognized for her works. She can convey a plot deftly, create a compelling story and can often portray characters that have intriguing depth. But in this fantasy novel, she fails to rise above her faults, flaws that might have been easily addressed by a closer look at her work, whether her own or an editor's. Based on what I read with the first novel, In Legend Born made it clear I should look elsewhere for the level of fantasy quality I wanted.

Essay: ONE NIGHT IN A LAUNDROMAT

2012-01-02T12:12:00.001-04:00

[Wouldn't this make a great silent movie? Or music video?]

One Night in a Laundromat

Someone had spelled “Nadir” wrong and the sign said “Laundromat.”

Four loads of laundry stuffed into a denim duffel bag that also needed washing. Almost 11 PM and the place looked like it had been frozen in the 60s and smelled like it had been dipped in the sweat of greasy men with hairy backs and flabby women with hairy chins.

Usually, only a few machines rumbled, twitched and twirled. Paper signs decorated surfaces in never a discernible pattern. Tiny boxes, empty and gaping, dotted the floor and other horizontal surfaces like dead cartoon mice. Hangers were cast about like sprung snares. In a corner, ashamed, lay an article of clothing that could have been a towel, a shirt or a throw-rug. It wasn’t.

Next to Nadir was a small apartment complex boasting a menagerie of more than the usual oddballs: the guy who washed only jeans and blue T-shirts (I grokked); the gal who brought all her clothes, but pulled out underwear and socks and took them back; the guy that washed everything together and wore gray, except for his colorful bandannas, washed separately, and the gal that sat on her washer and leaned against her dryer’s door during the entire process. I asked her if the door got hot. She told me to mind my own business. I told her she had lipstick on her tooth.

That night, the menagerie had spilled over. Every available washer was churning its guts, the dryers were roasting and one had its temporary owner standing guard. A wasted trip was not an option. I actually started thinking about dumping the laundry and buying new clothes. As I calculated how much that would dent my budget, Hortense-at-the-Dryer yanked her clothes out and after giving me—or the wall next to me—a dirty look, I was alone.

With lots and lots of clothes.

I was moving even before the decision was made. I flung open every washer and dryer. With production line efficiency that would have made Henry Ford, Sr. weep with joy, I carried clothes from one washer to another, from dryer to dryer, then from washer to dryer and dryer to washer. I danced, twirled and whistled, a busy dwarf named “Bubbly.” First lineal, then skipping every other, then as random as can be, I tossed clothes around with merry abandon until I was sure I had been generous to everybody. I even placed quarters in every machine, to keep the party rolling.

My duffel bag felt weightless. The night had cooled for everybody but me. I was free from Nadir, my heart was pure and all was right in Prankville.

I switched my laundry drag to another place, one called “Doldrums.” It too had its sign misspelled as “Laundromat.”

Essay: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

2011-12-26T12:12:00.000-04:00

[The second-best reading experience of my life. As I'm a huge fan of New Orleans and spent days roaming it, the novel was both familiar and historical, capturing a time two decades earlier when the Crescent City was different, smaller even, than the one I became enchanted with. A footnote follows this essay.]

A Confederacy of Dunces

I’d seen the book many times, sitting at eye level, the cartoonish characters on the cover almost in motion, a fat guy wearing a green hunting cap (the kind with ear flaps) posing in a Jack Benny-ish gesture of simpering disdain.

The book had raised some controversy, for being a comedy about the South, it had struck the many exposed nerves of the “Dixie Gentry.” The author, John Kennedy O’Toole, had woven an outrageous tale centered on one of the most improbable, undefinable and fascinating characters to ever lumber, thunder and gambole across the printed page. That this character and his supporting cast happened to accurately skewer Southern life, mores, society and misperceptions-taken-as-Gospel only added well-deserved insult to insight.

The novel, the brilliant outpouring of a young man’s talent and ambition, almost didn’t see the light of day. Depressed over his inability to find a publisher, Kennedy committed suicide seven years after finishing Dunces. It fell upon his mother, a teacher of dramatic arts and avid reader, to find someone who could see in the manuscript what she had seen. Rejection followed rejection over several years. Then she collared Walker Percy and practically forced him to read it. As the novelist says in his Introduction, he reluctantly read it at first hoping it was bad, then with increasing wonder until he was overwhelmed. In 1980, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize.

Ignatius J. Reilly is described as “part Falstaff, part Don Quixote” by some lazy reviewer. Reilly is much, much more. Philosophical, dependent, arrogant, erudite, lazy, intuitive, confused, passionate, analytical, funny, bone-headed, pathetic, sensitive and insensitive, a heroic coward wrapped in stained bedsheets, Reilly stands alone as a literary creation. As you read the novel, you shake your head in disbelief, and if you are a writer, you gape in Percy-like awe at what Kennedy flung at the page with devastating accuracy.

And beyond Reilly is a cast of deftly-written portraits that feel more like biographies than fiction. Time and again the reader with Southern memories will find familiar “faces” and scenes that seem as if Kennedy had sat on the collective porches of Southern families and simply taken notes.

I’ve read Dunces six times now and I look forward to a half-dozen more readings in the coming years. The novel lulls you in like the French Quarter on a foggy morn, odd and quiet, eerie even, then erupts into a raucous romp that carries you along to a bittersweet end. Few novels are more absorbing; even fewer have such soul.

[Sadly, I won't make it to 12 readings. A seventh was enjoyable, but the 8th...felt sad. There was nothing new in it, no nuances I could discover. Maybe the problem is me, but when I finished it this time, I said to my wife, "I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend." Maybe I'm wrong about that.]

Essay: AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL

2011-12-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

[My usual sleep pattern in college was to sleep between 4:00 and 7:30 AM. I could do that for about three weeks, then I'd crash for about 10 hours one night and be back to "normal." I also noticed that I would stay up progressively later every night, and since I couldn't sleep when the sun came up, I had to avoid hitting that "sunrise wall." Aussie football made me hit it more often than not.]

Australian Rules Football

At 4 AM, TV used to be a wasteland. Even with the advent of cable, the darkest hours were populated by black-and-white B-movies, odd reruns and the occasional preacher desperate for attention. It isn’t much better now, because the peak moment of pre-dawn TV was Australian Rules Football.

ESPN was barely gaining momentum when, without fanfare, they started showing tapes of a sport that combined the high-impact action of rugby with the high-scoring drama of basketball and was simply mesmerizing to watch. Rugged guys in colorful uniforms of sleeveless T-shirts and shorts would run down and across an oval field, passing a large ovoid ball by punching it like a weak volleyball serve, by kicking it through the air or—daringly—by dribbling it in mid-run. Points were scored by kicking the ball throught two tall uprights or between a tall upright and a shorter one. Referees in long white coats and perky hats would indicate the score with mechanical gestures pre-dating “The Robot.”

Without explanation, with color commentary that assumed you were an Aussie fan and simply added to player bios that read like excised drafts of a Crocodile Dundee script, the action and intensity drew you in almost against your will. The play never stopped, and like in soccer, injuries (a few a game) were tended to on the field. I once saw a player knocked down, start getting attention from the trainer, only to bolt up and try to tackle an opponent and get even more viciously knocked out, forcing the trainer to sigh deeply, pick up his equipment bag and run over to the new mid-field “bedside.”

The hand-passing and dribbling seemed quaint and awkward, but the real drama was in “marks,” kicks that soared high and far across the field and were secured by players jumping like—well, kangaroos—to catch it in mid-air. The catches were not unchallenged: short of grabbing the other player, anything went. I saw a player run, leap, plant his left foot in the opposing player’s back for greater height and catch the ball while slamming the opponent to the turf, a catch so spectacular it was shown before and after almost every game.

Scores were often 80 points or higher per team as each goal was worth 6 points and a “behind” worth 1 point. Momentum could and did shift often and in one spectacular match, a league doormat overcame a 36 point deficit in the closing minutes to defeat a perennial winner, a sort of “Cubs beat the Yankees” scenario that was thrilling to watch. So what if I couldn’t tell one team from the other? I know a great game when I see one.

And so did thousands of others, especially in Australia. Despite its size (about 20% smaller than the States), Down Under is not nearly as populated as you might think. At the time, the total population of the country was around 14 million persons, and yet, these matches often had attendance that numbered over 100,000 fans. To give you an idea of what that really means, imagine a Sunday football game in Green Bay… with 12 million fans in the Stadium. All of them cheering, waving, singing, screaming, swaying and stomping their feet in the best soccer-crowd tradition.

The games were exciting, the marks were often spectacular, the close-ups of players who were “veterans” after 20 games and looked like middle-aged hockey players though they were 24 or 25, the drama of athletes playing hard because pride demanded no less and the sheer fun of being able to watch all this at 4 in the freakin’ morning was too much to pass up. But eventually, Life changed its rhythm, ESPN changed its schedule and Aussie Rules Football dropped off my radar. Still, the sporting excitement and pageantry remain a vivid, happy memory of the night’s quietest time.

Essay: FENCING WOUNDS

2011-12-12T12:12:00.001-04:00

[Fencing is the only sport I've taken up that I haven't played or participated in to the point of obsession. I've spent hours in a day playing baseball, basketball, tennis, football, ping pong and racquetball, but I never got that chance with fencing. It's like I'm missing something. I recently took up golf and haven't hit that obsessive level...yet.]

Fencing Wounds

I took up fencing in 1986 as a way of trying a new sport. Always a fan of swordsmanship, I quickly discovered that fencing was serious effort, not trivial play, and that I enjoyed the challenges immensely.

I quickly became the second-best fencer in our small group and trained harder with our Captain, an accomplished modern pentathlete. One Wednesday evening, after sweating out a grueling 20-minute session, he asked me if I wanted to compete in a fencing tournament. I agreed instantly.

The tournament was held in New Orleans. A large, stuffy gym served as the stage for an old-fashioned club challenge, a “them-against-us” day of fencing with human judges instead of electric machines. The local club had about 30 members and though ours was half as big, only 5 of us had made the trip. We decided on a round-robin format, by divisions, and began fencing.

My first match pitted me against a burly, wide-bodied fencer. Because of the other matches, all the judges in ours were his club members. I noticed this, slipped on my mask and we began. My style was quite aggressive, relying on my reflexes and footwork to streak in and make rapid lunges. Almost immediately I scored and at my pause, he lunged at my chest. “Point.”

I returned to my spot when I noticed I was down 0-1. I questioned it, but the guy behind my opponent, who should have seen my touch, shook his head. Settling in, we resumed. Again I made a fast approach and scored, only to have the point awarded to my opponent, by the same “judge.” Down 0-2. The mask seemed to fade away as I attacked, scoring clearly on my opponent without him touching me in return. And once again, the same bastard shook his head, denying me the point.

I removed my mask to stare at him. Bad form. Like I cared. He pushed his glasses up, crossed his arms over his chest and avoided my eyes. He knew. The match resumed and I eventually lost 2-5. I should have won by that score. My first true fencing match and I had lost.

Four more matches and I won them all easily. Then my final match and as the luck of the draw would have it, my opponent was the near-sighted bastard of my first match. I almost ran to the strip. We shook hands and he gave me a weak smile. I was ready. Masks on, we began.

In an instant, I knew I could beat him. But I wanted more. With cold certainty, I created an attack pattern—up, down, side, then down—and kept it going until I scored. We resumed and I kept the same pattern, but scored from another angle. I did the same on the third point. And as he again assumed his en garde position, I knew I had him.

I started advancing, sword high. He stepped back. I closed and started my pattern: up, down, side… He went down and I immediately lunged, sword straight, my entire body a line of furious thrust from foil tip to left foot. I aimed through him, the tip slamming into the vest exactly where his heart was. As if punched by a heavyweight, he slumped back and fell down clumsily.

I straightened up slowly, the rush of energy flowing down and away. He groaned, grabbing his chest and his teammates came over. Edward, our captain, looked at me, his eyes boring into mine. Quickly, the bastard’s friends removed vest, sweatshirt and T-shirt. I stepped off the strip to wait. They left.

I won that match by forfeit and made it to the finals, where once again I faced the same stocky guy…with four of his club members as judges. I noticed no one from my club volunteered to judge and Edward couldn’t do it because he’d lost to the stocky guy in the semi-finals.

I scored 9 times, but lost 4-5. What a surprise. The stocky guy even apologized.

As I was packing my gear, the near-sighted bastard ambled over slowly, his face a mask of pain. He kept rubbing his chest, just above the heart. “Look,” he pouted, raising his sweatshirt and T-shirt to show me an already-bruised and swelling plum-sized knot on his pasty flesh. “You hurt me!”

I stared back at him until he lowered his shirts and started to shuffle his feet. Surprisingly, he extended his hand.

“I was aiming for more,” I said and walked away, his hand ignored.

Bad form. Like I cared.

Essay: RUBY'S CHINESE RESTAURANT

2011-12-05T12:12:00.002-04:00

[I have dreams about being here, in this restaurant, even after all these years. I know Ruby's is gone and with that loss, there's no sense in me going back to that town. I'm a guy who can spend a week eating hot dogs and canned vegetables, but if I had a week to eat anything I wanted, I would spend it all at Ruby's.]

Ruby's Chinese Restaurant

You would call it nondescript. A low brick building with a small semblance of a pagoda design on the roof above the front door, set in the left corner. The parking lot was shared by an apartment complex and there were plenty of times when I know residents had to park far from their spot because the restaurant was full.

People would drive two hours one way for dinner at Ruby’s. The moment you walked in, you left the routine behind and entered a tiny corner of the exotic. The overwhelming impression was of red—on the floor, the walls, lanterns, booths and decorations. But not the same red: shades of red that called the eye and made the room warm and expansive.

Everyone who worked at Ruby’s was Asian. Extremely polite, ranging from reticent to friendly, but always attentive. The menu was huge, and if you tried pronouncing the sonorous dish names in Chinese, the waiter or waitress would say the number; if you said the number, you’d hear the words. I stuck to the English descriptions, and over the years, tried all of the almost 200 dishes they served.

I had my favorites—Mo Shu, Sizzling Rice Soup, Mongolian Beef, Moo Goo Gai Pan—and whether it was a favorite or a new dish, I was never disappointed. Not once. In the middle of my run of weekly visits, I actually focused more on seeing if something would go wrong rather than on enjoying the experience. Fortunately, that ended quickly.

Most of the time, I’d dine alone, so food was the only focus. I learned to appreciate green tea, my consumption rising over the years from one cup to a pot or maybe two in the winter. If I ate with a group and Bill was there, we’d both pass on entrees until the Mongolian Beef appeared, then we’d pretend not to be hogging it as we polished off the entire plate.

Dining at Ruby’s was always… spiritual. Believe me, I tried to avoid using that word. Recorded as an incident, a visit to Ruby’s was prosaic: one entered, ordered, was served, ate, paid and departed; nothing intrinsically metaphysical about any of that. But the time I spent there was somehow sharper, brighter, clearer, more real.

Maybe it was the night I’d arrived a bit later than usual and as soon as I’d finished eating, Ruby’s began closing around me. As I got up to leave, one of the waiters came to me and, without a word, motioned for me to sit at the long table that flanked the kitchen entrance. It was usually reserved for special parties as it oversaw the entire L-shaped restaurant. (The private room had a smaller table, tucked in the short arm of the L.)

I sat down as the door swung open and every employee of Ruby’s came in carrying a bowl, tureen, plate or pot. Without a wasted motion, almost a dozen dishes were arranged with artistry, water glasses filled and tea served. Ruby’s owners, a middle-aged couple with friendly eyes, came in, sat down and everyone began to eat.

I hesitated. Chinese was flitting back and forth interspersed with laughter and food floating onto plates all around me. The owner caught my eye and smiled. He pointed at a dish placed in front of me that somehow I had missed. Mongolian Beef. No one had touched it.

My hesitation ended. I took a small portion and passed the Mongolian Beef into the stream criss-crossing the table. Dishes came my way, contributed new flavors to my plate and were passed on. The only words I spoke during that meal were “Thank you” and “This?” No one spoke to me. No one needed to. I was asked to share their private moment and had been welcomed.

I never went to Ruby’s after that expecting to be invited, but I never turned it down, no matter how much I’d eaten. I marveled at how comfortable I could feel while being the only non-speaker at the table. I was both guest—honored and treated with deference—and family, maybe like the quiet cousin from a far province.

On a wintry November night, at the end of the meal, I announced I was leaving town. As if rehearsed, everyone bowed to me and then converged, patting me on the shoulders, shaking my hands, even gently tugging my hair. As I groped for the words to thank them, the owner and his wife went to the kitchen, then came back and handed me a small box. It contained a small dragon, made of golden wire with red lacquer. A strip of paper was curled atop the figurine, adorned with Chinese characters. Tapping my shoulder, he pointed at the paper and said: “Wherever you go, our heart follows.” I nodded as my throat tightened. “You come back anytime.”

I nodded again, said good night and walked out into the cold, never to return. In some way, I never really left.

Flash Fiction: NINETEEN SECONDS

2011-11-30T12:12:00.001-04:00

[My second collection of flash fiction, Thirty More Stories, seems to have been related to time, as there are several stories strongly-related to that dimension. Maybe it was because I was so focused on finishing it, on time, with time running against me and time being of the essence to write each story. Then again, if it was a matter of exposure, several of the stories could have had coffee as a common theme...]

NINETEEN SECONDS

Nineteen seconds…

A lifetime… in nineteen seconds…

Harry London slammed chest-first into the rubble, his helmet flipping up and banging against a chunk of concrete as ragged as a scream. Heavy machine-gun bullets chewed the air and dirt around him as he struggled to merge his flesh with the cover he so desperately had run to.

Across the charred and mangled street, strewn with several bodies in uniform and gray tweeds, Gunther Meis swung his heavy Vickers machine-gun in a deadly spray, trying to catch up to the British soldier racing desperately across the clearing to leap for cover. The Vickers was unwieldy, the narrow tripod legs slipping on the dusty floor inside the crumbled building that once housed a druggist and his medicines. Gunther cursed as the soldier skidded behind a concrete slab, the bullets spanging to fly off in unknown directions. He stopped firing to scan the street again, and the empty windows of the few remaining houses across the way. He checked the belt and grunted, satisfied he had ammo to fire a full minute’s burst if he cared to. He shifted his weight, peered quickly over the parapet and ducked as a bullet whinged off to his left.

Harry curled up, holding his helmet steady. The strap was broken. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bullets stopped. Rolling slightly left, he peeked at the machine-gun’s nest and saw the German soldier adjusting the gun’s position. Harry quickly sighted his rifle above the parapet and stopped breathing, heart pounding like a drum in his chest. Suddenly, the German raised his head and Harry pulled the trigger. The bullet went high and Harry cursed, rolling fast to his right to avoid the onslaught of bullets he knew was coming. He twitched a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and held the explosive in his hand, silently counting One… Two…

Gunther turned his head away to avoid the dust coming off the wall and lunged back to pull the Vickers’ trigger. Bullets tore at the edge of the concrete slab, reducing it by chunks and cracks from vertical ledge to air. Gunther roared as the Vickers fired, slamming the gun to the left to rip at the top of the slab, then down, hoping to bounce the heavy bullets into the enemy. He saw a green-gray object fly up from behind the slab, arcing its way across the dead street towards him, and without thought, yanked the gun up and to the left to intercept the grenade--the grenade!--his roar becoming a mad shriek of rage.

Three… Four… Bullets shredded concrete to dust behind him, then walked like heavy rain across the slab to tear it above his head. The bullets then dropped to smash brutally into the slab’s lower edge and pieces of cement peppered Harry’s backs and legs. The slab was no cover there! Five… He threw the grenade in a stiff-armed toss, just like he was taught in Bingham, the thick-bodied metal apple curving up and away. Harry imagined it was flying straight and true, aimed with deadly precision at the machine gunner. He heard the bullets rise, then rise again as the hammering they caused became buzzing until suddenly a shriek of rage became--

An explosion. The grenade blew up as Gunther’s aim crossed its path. The shriek of rage rose to become…

Harry acted without thought, rolling to his feet as the explosion shredded the air everywhere, tucking his rifle and leaping to his feet, his mouth erupting into a shriek of rage that joined the German’s shriek…

Gunther saw the British soldier rise like a spectre, like a demon, from the blast’s cloud, rifle at the ready, shrieking just as he was…

Harry saw the German, heard him shrieking and pulled the trigger…

The shriek ended as the bullets tore through Gunther’s head and neck.

Nineteen seconds… A lifetime. In nineteen seconds.

NEW ISSUE: 20 In 5 -- Volume I -- December 2011

2011-11-29T00:12:00.001-04:00

I am very pleased to announce a new project, a monthly e-mag/e-book titled 20 In 5, published by Mis Tribus Publishing and with me as Editor-in-Chief.

The concept is simple: 20 stories you can read in about 5 minutes each. Flash fiction ranging from adventure to western themes, passing through fantasy, horror, mystery and science fiction. 20 In 5 is the perfect companion for a coffee break, a waiting room or a nightcap, a little literary rest stop in your day.

Available for $0.99, you can subscribe to 20 In 5 and save a few dollars. If you will, please give it a look-see now by clicking over to the 20 In 5 page and reading the first story FREE.

And please notify your friends, those who love to read good short stories and especially those friends who love to write: 20 in 5 is a paying market! Here are the Submission Guidelines, informative and entertaining:

If you would like to submit your flash fiction story, send all submissions to: 20in5@mistribus.com.

Submissions must adhere to the following guidelines or will be deleted:

1) Send in .doc, .docx, .od or .rtf formats only. NO .zip or .rar files, please; attachments in those formats will be deleted immediately.

2) The story must be between 500 and 750 words in length. No shorter or longer unless you've won a Nobel Prize.

3) No porn, poetry or bloody gore. Adult language is acceptable, if its use is not excessive. We deem what is excessive, damn it.

4) Each story submitted must have your name and phone number listed, either in the document itself or the e-mail message. SexyFairy69 ain't your name.

5) If a story has been published elsewhere, please let us know. We don't mind second helpings, but we mind falsely touting them as our discoveries.

6) If your story(ies) is/are accepted, you will receive a MisTribus 20 In 5 contract. You will be happy. Don't hide it. Don't overdo it, either; we're not a Nobel Prize.

7) You must sign the contract to appear in any volume of 20 In 5. It lets you make money off of our picking your story. So it's a good idea.

8) Please allow 4-6 weeks for a response. We're not slow, it's that we can get swamped by submissions. And we're slow swimmers.

Mis Tribus Publishing and I look forward to reading your comments, your submissions and above all, your fulsome praise for the awesomeness of 20 In 5.

Read a FREE story now! And then subscribe! Thank you!

Essay: SHOGI

2011-11-28T12:12:00.001-04:00

[It's been years since I played shogi. I love strategy games and now that my son and nephews are entering their teens, the days of playing those games may have ended. Their interests move on to other subjects and experiences, as they should. But I do wish I could play regularly again.]

Shogi

Brendan owned a comic book shop in Hattiesburg back during the early heyday of the comic book explosion. I practically lived there and because the place was more refuge than mere store, we played games.

The one I was keen on was Shogi, the Japanese version of chess. Slower to develop into a mid-game, shogi offers a greater variety of tactics than its Western counterpart. It also offers a higher level of complexity, leading to tension. You’ll see why.

I taught Brendan how to play and he took to it immediately. However, he had a store to attend to so he could never fully focus on the game. We played about 5 games and I won them all. Brendan may have seemed an amiable goof to many people, but he had a great knack for tactics and it was serving him well, as each victory was notably more difficult than the one before.

One afternoon, just past lunch, I brought the shogi board to the shop and set it up to play against myself. Brendan walked over and said “Let’s play. I’m ready!” And the most intense game we’d ever played started.

The opening was typically slower than Western chess, as pawns only move one space at a time and the board is 9 squares to the side. By nature and lack of guidance, I played the so-called “modern hyper-aggressive” mode, which means I go on the attack and don’t try to build a “castle” of pieces around my King. Brendan, knowing my style, chose to play a more traditional style.

As soon as I could, I captured a couple of pieces and leaned back. The genius of shogi, it’s true leap above chess in terms of excitement, is the fact that captured pieces can be returned to the game as part of your army…at any time. This “parachuting” effect gives shogi an extra dimension that makes the game very much a race to keep your nerve.

Brendan’s castle was strong, as he had figured out that my aggression would lead to pieces being exchanged, so a well-defended King would slow me down. I captured another couple of pieces, but Brendan pushed his forces forward and began limiting my options. Rather than seek a strategy, I dropped pieces aggressively and forced several exchanges. All of a sudden, both Brendan and I had pieces in hand, scattered forces and vulnerable Kings.

Brendan could not sit still. He paced, sat down, got up to pace, sat down and popped up again. He wasn’t hurrying me, but it was obvious he was eager to get something going. I stared at the board for what was for me an incredibly long time. In my mind, I could see two paths to a checkmate, but my hesitation hinged on how precarious each path was. I weighed my chances against Brendan’s skills.

I picked up a Lance and dropped it against his Knight. The game was on.

For almost four hours, Brendan and I agonized over each play. No time limits: the only limits we had were our imaginations and whether we’d be cool enough to take chances. With every drop and move, I reduced Brendan to simply defending his King. Time and again, just when it seemed that he’d get the breather he needed to fight back, I’d come up with another twist and another battle sequence began.

Customers came and went and other friends of ours took care of them. Conversation, usually bright and edgy, was muted. Brendan paced, pumped his fists, mumbled to himself, talked to the walls and even opened a comic book to tell The Incredible Hulk I was going down. Out of the blue, he reached into the cash register and drew out a tattered pack of cigarettes and lit up. I gaped at him.

“I quit two years ago,” he said to me, a bit sheepishly. “But I need this right now to play this damn game.”

I almost felt guilty about driving him to smoke again. But I pressed on, only to realize that my fears were accurate: Brendan had played brilliantly and I was one, at most two pieces short to force checkmate. I had run out of forcing options, Brendan had several pieces in hand and now I had to play what I despised most: defense.

Brendan lit another cigarette and without hesitation, launched his attack. With keen deliberation, piece after piece clicked on the board, then slid forward. In a wise move, Brendan made sure my captures were few and even costly, extending my forces so that I had to drop pieces for defensive purposes only. As the pressure grew, I did the unthinkable: I focused solely on defense. Slowly, but with the growing inevitability of a tidal change, I gained a little space, a piece here, then another piece later in the battle. I knew Brendan’s offense was weaker than mine, but I knew I was still very vulnerable. Forced to move my King, Brendan made a series of brilliant plays and the game hung truly in the balance.

I had several powerful pieces and Brendan was facing my dilemma of a few hours earlier: could he finish me off? Time and again he glanced at the pieces I had, and we both knew there was too much for me to lose. All I needed was the chance. The moment I got it, the game was over.

Brendan’s shirt was soaked. The cigarettes were long gone and he had taken to chewing gum, adding pieces until he had a wad worthy of a baseball player in his left cheek. My heart hammered and I forced myself to breathe normally, my eyes taking in everything around me, but always coming back to the board. The sunlight was now almost horizontal through the picture window and in a flash, I saw it.

Brendan could win. In three plays. No matter what I did, he could win in three plays.

Brendan fingered his last piece to drop, a Silver. That wasn’t it. I saw where he could drop it and the countermove that would end his chances. For a moment, he looked at his King and I thought he would drop the Silver to defend it, a sort of pre-emptive shield.

Then, as if from a silent movie, I watched Brendan put the Silver back down and slide his lead Gold forward. Check.

I had to capture.

No attacking place to drop the Silver and now I had another major piece. But the next play was the key. He had to think “space” and he would see it. I glanced away, looked at the walls and wondered if The Incredible Hulk really knew anything about shogi. I had one chance: no piece could drop and give checkmate, so maybe Brendan would miss the more subtle route.

With a sudden lunge, as if the board would vanish in an instant, Brendan made the key play, cutting off my King’s only escape route. The next play was my inevitable checkmate.

I stared at the board as my heart thrummed down. Brendan held his breath, looked intently at the board, then leaped to his feet with a loud “Yes!,” his fists in the air. I flicked my King off the board and stood up, my first steps since lunch. Brendan came back to me and grabbed me in a bear hug.

“That was the most intense game of my life! That was great!”

I grinned. “You played great. Wanna play another one?”

He shook his head. No, he shook his whole body. “No! I’m never playing shogi again! Are you kidding? I could die of lung cancer if I play a few more games like that one!”

Flash Fiction: SOULMATES

2011-11-23T12:12:00.001-04:00

[There are times when you are aware you are happy and pause to think what unhappy people are missing. Often it is a matter of choice, but more times than not, the choice is really out of your hands.]

SOULMATES

After three years of virtual monkhood, Thomas felt it was time to “get out there,” to test the dating waters again. His last breakup had been bitter, agonizingly so, as Erleen had gone from loving partner to vicious bitch, to the point where even her closest friends were taking Thomas’ side. Jumping at the chance to leave Erleen’s savagery behind, Thomas took a new position in San Diego, putting two thousand miles between him and his painful past. But the past travels well, so Thomas let time do its thing. Three years led up to a late Friday night, Thomas nursing a beer he didn’t want. With a few clicks, he pointed his browser to one of those “compatibility sites,” rated “the absolute best” and before he thought about it too much, filled out the questionnaire, chuckling at the absurdity of the whole thing.

The next day, his Inbox had a cheery Subject line: “Your matches have arrived!” Smirking, Thomas opened the message and scanned the text. Hyperlinked numbers introduced four descriptions of women (Thomas hoped they were women) who, the message proclaimed, matched Thomas’ profile to “a 98+% degree!” Thomas had no idea what “98+%” could even mean, but he reread the descriptions and finally clicked on the third one, described as “Adventurous within reason, lover of solitude and embracer of honesty.” What the hell, he thought, It’s only a blind date.

His overture got a prompt response (Desperate?) and an invitation for lunch on Sunday at Il Pesto, a trendy new bistro that was neither ostentatious nor chintzy. Good choice. She—Lorraine—said she’d be wearing an emerald-green dress and would arrive promptly at 11:45.

As Sunday rolled towards noon, Thomas felt himself getting nervous. Nervous, hell, he was beginning to get scared. What the hell was I thinking? A website test to meet women? Thomas shook his head and slapped the steering wheel, driving up the quiet boulevard to Il Pesto.

He was early and let the hostess at the bistro know he was expecting someone. The tiny bar had comfortable stools and when the door opened at 11:45, he knew who it was. Lorraine was wearing the promised emerald-green dress and Thomas let out a sigh he never expected to be so deep. I was afraid it would be Erleen. He rose and introduced himself, enjoying the pleasant handshake and dazzling smile. Even so, he mentally kicked himself for checking out her throat to make sure it didn’t have a visible Adam’s apple. You never know, dammit.

Lunch went past two and became a short drive to a museum, where Impressionists led to an early supper of Hungarian stew and rye bread in a cubbyhole café by the pier. Over that time they discovered they’d both grown up in the Midwest, been in Scouting, loved math, hated English, enjoyed picnics and family gatherings, swam well, couldn’t get enough of Disney movies, “24”, chocolate and pistachio ice cream. They’d loved Europe, yearned for Japan and would not spend a dime of lottery winnings until they’d let at least five years go by, just to get used to the idea of having all that cash. Over coffee, with topics buzzing and cavorting between them, Thomas sat back and smiled, his heart filled with a joy he thought he’d never feel. Lorraine saw his expression and smiled, her deep blue eyes alive with pleasure. Lifting her purse onto the table, she pulled out a slim cardcase and slid it across the table to Thomas.

“What’s this?” he said, picking it up.

“Your membership to SoulMates,” she said. “You’re in!”

Thomas was stunned. “Membership? What—what do you mean?” He stared at the contents of the cardcase, not seeing any of it.

Lorraine smiled. “We’ve even given you a discount.” She patted his hand. “My treat!”

Thomas noticed the hand patting his: It had a wedding ring. Thomas felt his heart thud in his chest. He felt like kicking himself.

Lorraine sipped her coffee. “Every prospective member is interviewed by a staff evaluator to ensure we get the finest possible candidates in SoulMates. That’s why we have such a high success rate.” She frowned prettily. “You didn’t think we relied only on a website test, did you?”

Thomas shook his head and tasted a sad bitterness he’d thought he’d forgotten.

Essay: THGttG

2011-11-21T12:12:00.001-04:00

[The initials are enough to make you smile, aren't they? After all these years, I can say that reading Hitchhiker's was the most enjoyable reading experience of my life. The second? A Confederacy of Dunces.]

THGttG

The cover had the friendly words “Don’t Panic!” It made me smirk. Over a series of weeks, I’d walk into the Campus Bookstore, peruse the titles and I’d never fail to smirk. The buzz about the book was slight, and if just knowing about the buzz places me in the nerd category, so be it. Finally, I plunked down my money for Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and read it that same night.

And I laughed my butt off.

Science fiction, up to that time, had had its dilettantes of humor, such as Lester del Rey, William Tenn and Isaac Asimov. But humor and science fiction don’t mesh well, as science fiction requires creating an artificial world and humor has its strongest basis in reality. We don’t care for contrived humor. And I personally believe that most fans of science fiction—writers and readers alike—are angry people, angry at the rejection they feel for being different and thus have very little sense of humor, unless it’s the cruel kind that belittles those they would consider inferior.

But Adams was just plain funny. His humor, based on some deranged Apocalyptic scenario that destroys Earth to make way for an intergalactic highway, has science fiction as its background, but human foibles and eccentricities as its forefront.

Take Marvin the Robot, seriously, seriously depressed for being incredibly superior to those around him but being seen and treated as nothing more than a glorified lump of metal. Yet all he does is act like a lump of metal. (Science fiction fans were both target and audience here.)

Or how about Zaphod Beeblebrox, a two-headed, three-armed egotistical mush-for-brains con man who somehow always gets his way? In an exaggerated way, we know people like that, who seem to live a charmed life despite obvious disadvantages in acumen. How pathetically funny is someone who utters and believes “I’m so hip I have trouble seeing over my pelvis”?

The Girl in The Story, as SF fans objectify the species, was Trillian, Zaphod’s girlfriend and all-around wishing-to-be-free spirit. She is disconcerting if not downright unfathomable, not only for the odd things she says, but for her choice of Zaphod (the creep) over Arthur (the nice guy.) Trillian is the only character with a level head, except that it works on some jarringly-parallel level.

It is in Arthur Dent, Earthman extraordinaire (poor slob) that Adams shines. Befuddled, bewildered, a babe in the woods and the woods are beyond weird. Arthur embodies the deep-seated feelings we have that the world is one big party and we’re not only not invited, but if we go, we’re the hired help. Arthur gives the madness a touch of the ordinary and the humor emerges from tweaked humanity, the kind that lets us laugh at and with each other.

But above all that, I owe Adams for hundreds of smiles and lightened moments when my patience and interest were strained beyond endurance, when the droning voice or insipid event dragged on and on towards infinity.

Two words: Vogon poetry. Those who’ve read the novel will know what I mean.

Flash Fiction: LETTERS

2011-11-16T12:12:00.001-04:00

[Most people that know me would say I have a romantic streak an inch wide, but that's not true: it's much wider than that. I'm also intrigued by letters, the almost-lost daily activity (for many) of handwritten pieces of the heart and mind. I typed most of mine--lousy handwriting--but even so, several relatives and friends have told me that they saved my letters, cherishing them for years. I never agonized over writing one, essentially letting them fly, but so many of them touched the recipients more than I could imagine. I wish I'd known earlier.]

LETTERS

The first letter sped across the intervening space, tucked within canvas, the very day after they'd met. Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the county and arrived into eager hands. Words, tender and fragile as soap bubbles, were being shared.

Letters then flew and rode and were carted like butterflies on a gentle breeze, filling the summer days with yearnings and sighs, with new memories, new hopes and new fears of being forgotten. Fall went from butterflies to equally-colorful leaves, letters now probing and confiding, seeking deeper into the illusion for the reality of souls matched in the heavens.

The chills of winter blanketed the increasing ardor, wrapping it in the glow of its own contentment, incapable of dampening Love's flame. The eruption of Spring multiplied the letters, which then multiplied again into gilt-edged formal cards requesting a response s'il vous plait.

For a while, the letters ceased, but a distant war and a call to honor made the letters fly, sail and truck to lands filled with the hateful violence of inhumanity. Fears and the frequent touches of despair, even thoughts of death and tear-stained lines weighed the letters with realities best left unmet. A bootie, pink-edged, made one letter bulge and two hearts squeeze with the dread possibility of hopes and lives dashed forever.

But then letters, stiff, starched, serious soldierly letters said the time had come for the other letters to become unneeded and a flurry of letters, now tear-stained with joy, flew and raced to share the news, the plans, the changes and the future so bright and clear.

No letters for a few years, until a step up the proverbial corporate ladder made the letters reappear, from points north, south, east and west, all radiating inward and outward from a tiny hamlet that to one person was a universe and to the other an anchor that demanded to be raised. Questions became demands and accusations, words going past each other without regard to each other, speaking to themselves, hearing nothing but their own angst. The letters dwindled to postcards with perfunctory details, then one day, they stopped.

A few months later, one large letter, papers folded over carelessly, wrapping within them the words that signaled the end of any more letters, of any more words between these two. The papers, minus a few pages, were returned swiftly, slashingly, finally.

Four months passed.

A tiny letter, scrawled with crayon and kisses, made its journey. Held in trembling hands for an hour, receiving a drop of plumbed sadness before resting on a sleeping chest. Its response delighted tiny hands, and then every day, sometimes twice a day, crayon, pencil and even watercolor, like butterflies new to flight, wended their path across a landscape changed: the hamlet that felt like an anchor now seemed like a world, one that gave a soul purpose.

A small letter reached out, not to tiny hands, but to a tiny hope that maybe, just maybe, a spark burned where once a fire kindled. For days...nothing. Then, from words, from many words, from what could have once been too many words, but were now not enough, the answer whispered like a wave...maybe.

More words, many more words than were ever used, flowed from a heart torn by its own failings. Words of apology amidst lines of regret and sorrow, words that recognized that the shared had been so much more than the perceived, that what the heart had was so much more than what the eyes could have ever seen. The folly of blindness mixed with yearnings and sighs, with memories and hopes and fears of being forgotten, the passion of long ago barely restrained by the most powerful new hope.

Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the land and arrived to eager, tearful hands that, it now said, would never need to receive another letter again.

Essay: LOCK AND CHAIN

2011-11-14T12:12:00.002-04:00

[When you develop certain habits that help keep you out of trouble, or capable of dealing with the unexpected, you feel a touch of mastery. If the environment changes and you let those habits fade, the moment you realize you always need them is...sobering.]

Lock and Chain

There are some summer nights when nothing moves. The air sleeps, the crickets chirp as isolated metronomes and it seems as if everybody chooses that time to stay put indoors.

I was walking from the bowling alley back to my apartment, an hour’s worth of exercise I was settling into. My habit on a jaunt like that was to amble along, thinking about nothing and everything, hands in pockets. The voice cut my reverie and I froze.

“Who you callin’ a nigger?” The voice was high-pitched, sharp, but strained.

I looked up. Seven young black men were arranged next to and against the dark-side Mr. Quik brick wall. Two of them pushed off the wall to complete a semi-circle in front of me. The speaker was a thin, gangly guy about my age, wearing a Dodger cap around his neck. He was glaring at me.

“Nobody,” I answered.

Dodger Cap feigned surprise. “You called me a nigger!” He looked around for support, agreement, chiming in. One guy, unbelievably wearing a leather jacket, nodded.

I shrugged. “No.”

He convulsed, affronted. “You callin’ me a LIAR?” he yelled.

“Yeah.”

The group moved, but stayed the same. Dodger Cap took a step forward. Only then did I realize I wasn’t an observer, but a participant. The radar I’d developed since childhood had faded to black. This was not banter and I had failed to act before it had gone too far.

Dodger Cap took a wild swing at me. I stepped back and when the guy on my right tried to grab me, I side-stepped and pushed him into the others. He and Dodger Cap went down.

Suddenly heavy metallic clinks broke the muffled silence. Leather Jacket had a length of large-linked chain, a heavy padlock at its end. With two short swings he got it in motion, the others stepped back and he swung at me.

I saw the flash on my left and I ducked. I felt the padlock cut the air above my head and thud into the bricks, chunks and fragments flying. I pivoted and ran, bursting through the group into the parking lot beyond. I ran without looking back, without thinking of anything but distance. I heard vague jeers and a word or two. I didn’t look back. I ran until I was sure they couldn’t follow. I got home in under half an hour.

The anger I kept expecting never came. My usual pattern of self-abuse over any perceived failing never raised its ugly head. I’d fallen out of a useful habit because I had come to believe that the world had changed, that it was fundamentally different, that my past was an anomaly that the present would never enact.

I was wrong. I didn’t even shrug it off: the moment of recrimination simply dropped away like a dead leaf. The radar, that useful habit, came back, like retrieving the old flannel shirt that’s become a second skin.

I kept walking, kept passing through the same area where once seven guys tried to make trouble and seldom gave them another thought. As lessons go, it was relatively painless.

Flash Fiction: INTERESTING TIMES

2011-11-09T12:12:00.001-04:00

[Have you ever written anything with a sense of loopy adventure, just going pedal-to-the-metal with the words and seeing where you end up? Well, that could describe most of my writing, but here's a story that seemed to just pour out, as if I were merely transcribing someone else's loopy word adventure.]

INTERESTING TIMES

When Pritchard was about to turn 17, he figured out the secret to anti-gravity. Over a furious four weeks between his first kiss with Melanie and his mom's loony "Sweet 17" party (that included a clown, to the utter humiliation of everyone at the party, including the clown), Pritchard (he hated his given name, Percy, so he fixed it) drew up the design, polished the theoretical underpinnings in a 34-page article (never published) and built the prototype, that he tested on Muggs, his loopy bulldog. The dog's maiden, er, flight, caused the poor mutt to vomit and run away for almost a week. The anti-gravity prototype was now disguised as an 8-track player in Pritchard's home-built display of passé technology.

Between Melanie (who went off to college somewhere in Michigan, while Pritchard stayed near home) and Sally, Pritchard figured out faster-than-light travel, pushed to a superhuman effort in consolidating theoretical physics and what he called "hyperquantic thrust dynamos" for lack of a better name. Sally, a smashing little redhead with birthmarks in the darnest places, was Pritchard's first lover, and the extended post-coital daze dampened Pritchard's other thoughts about FTL travel until Sally joined the Navy and was eventually shipped out to some port in East Asia.

Pritchard tinkered with hyperspace signals based on string theory tunneling until he met Lois, the tall brunette with the perfect dimples on her (most-often) unseen cheeks. Inspired by Lois' fond memories of her childhood in eastern Louisiana, Pritchard made the conceptual leap between his anti-grav concepts (already proven) and FTL travel (which he tested by sending a 54-inch probe to the Moon and back in 6.4 seconds...twice) to discover that time could be unlinked from gravitational space-time and moved anywhere. After a frenetic series of tests, drafts, edits, rebuilds and several cameras destroyed in tests (though one brought back an intriguing half-picture of what could only be a T-Rex in full attack mode), Pritchard finally got his prototype to work after using parts from his last FTL probe (disguised as an over-sized Sith lightsaber) to power his "time capsule." Two trips later (17th century France, smelly, and 15th century Japan, bloody), Pritchard plonked Lois on his lap and took her back 16 years to the tree-lined Alexandria streets of Lois' childhood home.

Only to lose her there when she absolutely freaked out after seeing her mom sneak out of their house, climb into Russell Graham's house through the den window and rock his world in a way that made Lois sick and made Pritchard want to get to know Mrs. Killian a helluva lot more.

With much effort, involving a frantic car chase, a brush with fat, chaw-chewing Southern cops, another couple of looks at the Killian Method for World Rocking and getting Lois blitzed on cheap tequila, Pritchard got them both back to their time/home and took an extra two days to convince Lois her pot dealer was dealing from the bottom, not the top.

Redecorating the time capsule into a home entertainment center with a rad game system and enough speakers to drown out Spinal Tap, Pritchard gathered the fake 8-track player and the über-nerdy fake lightsaber and tucked them into a hidden panel at the base of the new 72-inch plasma screen he bought for himself from the beaucoup royalties he made on his only patented invention: a cell phone accessory that found your wallet, purse, briefcase, keys, car and nearest coffee shop for you.

But every once in a while, Pritchard would carefully dismantle the home entertainment system, and use the time capsule, anti-grav and the now-real lightsaber he invented for fun to hit the Cretaceous creatures like a meteor strike, or leave the anti-grav and Sith weapon home and just drop in on Mrs. Killian...for old times' sake.

Essay: MIZ EVELYN

2011-11-07T12:12:00.002-04:00

[It's an awful feeling when you realize you let a great opportunity pass you by.]

Miz Evelyn

Her house was diagonally across from the cemetery where William Faulkner is buried. The house had seen better days (so had Faulkner), but it retained a degree of sober elegance, much like its owner.

Miz Eveleyn was rail-thin, white-haired and her cane was more battering ram than walking stick. She moved slowly but implacably and forced herself to walk around the block on every sunny day; a 5-minute jaunt for me, a 45-minute epic for her.

She spoke clearly and directly, never wasting words. She rented out the second floor of her home because "Money is a tool and I need tools." She selected her tenants on two criteria: "Good manners and good grammar." A former English and literature teacher, she was forever challenging whomever she spoke with to "Drop that 'ain't'" and "Nothing is broken so don't say 'fixing'."

Her two great joys at the end of her life were baked potatoes and pancakes. During that lazy summer, I'd frequently bake a few potatoes and share them with her. A couple of times a week I'd mix up some pancake batter, knock on her door and make breakfast for us. She was always a gracious host and in the battle of wills over who would do the dishes, I won because I raced to the sink ahead of her.

She told me a little about her life. After getting married, she discovered that her husband "Was not good for anything or anyone," so in the mid-20s, in her mid-20s, she went to Europe and bicycled around the continent for two years. She came back because "Europe was headed for disaster." She didn't get a divorce because her husband "did the smart thing and died." I asked her if she missed him and she glared at me and asked "Would you miss a bad toothache?"

Our conversations that summer were frequent, but brief. I had my own interests, whatever they might have been, and Miz Evelyn reminded me too much of my paternal grandmother, in both looks and attitude. I felt drawn and repelled. The months went by, I saw her every day... and yet I didn't really see her.

What could I have learned from a woman who biked around Europe in the Jazz Age? And what could I have learned from a woman who referred to Faulkner as "Billy," as in "Billy was always a brat" and "Billy thought he was clever, but all he ever did was tell secrets?"

Miz Evelyn is gone now, when and how I'll never know. Youth often disdains old age, almost always for the wrong reasons. I missed a golden opportunity to explore a life utterly unlike my own, to live a time that will never return. I once read that what you do and regret you can recover from: what you don't do leaves a regret that never heals. How true.

Flash Fiction: ROAMING HOODS

2011-11-02T12:12:00.002-04:00

[The thing about flash fiction is that it imposes severe limits on what you can write, in quantity if not in thematic choice. Here's a story that kept trying to grow longer, kept trying to leap beyond my self-shortened leash and howl deep into the forest.]

ROAMING HOODS

He hated being called “Robin Hood.” Robin Hood was a trifling piker while he was a true plunderer, a real robber-man. But that “stealing from the rich to give to the poor” just put a lot of pressure on Roaming John (as he liked to call himself) and incensed him no end. He was much more comfortable with “stealing from the rich and keeping to himself,” but he needed some goodwill from the gentlefolk and so every once in a while he’d hand out some trinkets and coppers. Every time he did so he felt a part of his gut burn as if with lye.

Roaming John was a big man, broad of shoulder and with a beard that resisted any effort to trim and tame. He carried a sword meant for a giant, and though he often cursed its ungainly weight, he did enjoy the fear it put into nobleman’s eyes when he unsheathed its gleaming length.

The early months of banditry yielded great gains and a few scars, but as months became years, Roaming John had to roam farther and farther to find booty and avoid capture, by either the King’s men or Robin Hood’s. As his roaming took on the appearance of fleeing, he was forced to spend even more on the poor, tarnishing his reputation beyond easy repair.

In the winter of his fourth year of outlawry, Roaming John holed up in a former nunnery with his tiny band of henchmen. The snow-covered woods were unmarked well past St. Swithin’s Day when a tiny knock was heard at the oak door. Royce of Bergen, he of the very few teeth, opened the door and gaped in surprise. Standing there was a slip of a girl, holding a naked rapier of impressive Damascene steel. Her words were blunt in the icy air: “I’ve come to kill Roaming John.” No laughter would mar this pronouncement. Stepping aside with an eerie courtly air, Royce bowed the girl in. By fortune, Roaming John was passing the oak door and was quickly faced by a rapier’s tip, rock-steady at eye level.

Roaming John opened his mouth to speak, but Royce’s toothless grimace made him stop. “What is the meaning of this, girl?” he rumbled.

“You stole our money. I’ve come to kill you and get it back.” The rapier was still.

Roaming John shook his head. “Mayhaps I did, mayhaps I didn’t. But I cannot let you kill me on a simple claim. Have ye any proof?” The rapier wavered. Trembled. Then dropped to point at the cobbled floor. A trick of the light made it seem as if the girl’s eyes held tears. “I—I lack such—proof. I was merely told my family’s silver had been taken by Roaming John.”

In a flash, Roaming John pulled out his sword and swung at the girl. Royce was startled into a warning cry, for even such as he was shocked at his leader’s treachery. With the grace of a cat, the girl ducked and rolled, rising to her feet and thrusting so quickly at Roaming John’s neck that he stumbled back. Pressing her advantage, the girl lunged and thrust, forcing the huge man and his sword to struggle to stay intact. “Royce!” bellowed Roaming John.

With a fluid motion, the girl flung a small pouch behind her, its contents tinkling mutely on the stone floor. “Keep it and stay away!” she commanded. Roaming John’s backward steps ended against a wall and the hellish fury of the girl’s attack pinned the villain until at last, tiring, his massive muscles failed to sweep away the rapier’s tip in time and it buried itself with a meaty thwip into his throat. Gagging and gouting blood, Roaming John collapsed like a fallen tree and died.

Turning lightly, the girl saw Royce staring agape. Pulling a larger pouch from her leggings, she said “Round up the men. Tell them there’s money now and treasure aplenty on the morrow.”

Royce nodded dumbly. “Who are ye?”

The girl smiled. “Maid Marion.”

Royce gaped again. “And what about Robin Hood? He hates us so.”

Marion raised the rapier’s bloody length at Royce and said “He’s dead. In the same way.” She licked the blade and grinned in carmine glee.

Royce turned to run, stopping not until his feet touched the quiet roots of the distant Black Forest.

Essay: WOLFMAN

2011-10-31T12:12:00.000-04:00

[It is seldom easy being the outsider. To make it easy, one has to practice, to accept, to endure. Here is the pivotal point for me: from then on, being the outsider felt easier.]

Wolfman

They howled whenever they saw me, up on that tenth floor. It started out, as it always did, by one guy suddenly noticing that I wasn’t… normal. That in some way—like those odd pictures that hide images you have to find practically cross-eyed—once you’d “seen” me, you couldn’t seem to stop “seeing” me.

I don’t mean that it happened all the time, only that it happened. I made the process easier by having hair that brushed beneath my shoulders, by acting like I didn’t need the world and like the world didn’t need me. I never made much of an effort, if any at all, to fit in, to try to pass as “one of us.” I didn’t care for “us.” So I was always one of “them.”

The guys in the corner room just two doors down from me were “normal.” Three in that room, with friends that came almost every day to share loud music (heavy on hard rock and metal and most of it quite good), beer, some marihuana and a howling session if I happened to drop by.

Because I had an odd routine, we never met in the communal bathroom. I wonder what would have happened if they had walked in while I was showering. A fight, I’m sure. If it’s at least three to one and you’re naked, you negotiate or flee only for further humiliation.

For weeks, they howled. Several times, in the early mornings, they’d pound my door and yell “Wolfman! Hey, Wolfman!,” shout obscenities and howl like maniacs. Once they dragged a protesting young lady “to see the Wolfman.” I opened the door that time, actually carried on a conversation with her and when we’d finished, I heard her ask “Why do you bother him? He’s okay.” Maybe I was.

I superglued their lock shut, even down through the doorplate. Took Campus Services three hours to get it open. The next night, my door was glued. Took the same guy ten minutes to open mine, cursing most of the time. While he worked, we stared at each other, four guys in full understanding that a line had been crossed.

The muttering worker left and as soon as the elevator dinged closed, I walked towards them. Six steps. They backed up, into their room. I stopped at their door and they sat down, ignoring me. The TV came on, one grabbed a magazine and the third pulled at a longneck beer. I stood.

“You started it.”

“No.”

“You glued our door.” The TV guy wouldn’t turn around.

“You don’t know that.”

They all turned to me. “Who else would do it?” Beer guy sucked at an empty bottle. Nerves.

I shrugged. “Same guy that puts superglue on the toilet seats.”

They started. One of them mumbled morosely. “We’re even.” They looked at me.

“No.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” Magazine guy was pissed.

I pointed to the lock. “Guess who’s got a master key now?” I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The howling stopped. I even got a surly “Hi” every now and then. It wasn’t peace, but it was tolerance.

Things would have been different if only they figured out that their answer to my question was “Not you.”

Flash Fiction: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

2011-10-26T12:12:00.001-04:00

[I often start stories seeing just a single image or thinking of one sentence. This one on came about after reading the description of a car crash, where thankfully, no one was injured, but the damage to the vehicles and the premises was huge. What connected that to this is a good question.]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

The battle had started in hyperspace, with temporal bombs—primarily subquantic cores wrapped in antimatter shells—being fired like ancient grapeshot. As the ships were damaged, they dropped out of warp and fired phasers, photon missiles and even a suicide run by a shuttle tug with its warp core disabled to explode via a timing mechanism.

The badly-crippled ships hovered at cockeyed angles to each other, drifting closer together to meet some time in the future. But for now, with life support compromised, lifeshuttles skipped through the debris, firing laser cannons and scoring infrequently with totally fatal results.

Eventually, three lifeshuttles made it down to the near-frozen planet, a Type G with scant atmosphere and no life signs. One of the Debengan shuttles lost control as it approached the landing point, rolling and smashing into an icy outcropping. Within seconds, the shuttle exploded.

The Terran shuttle slid onto the icy planet’s surface with a metallic screech, ripped away by the fierce winds. The remaining Debengan shuttle slammed down, bounced and came to a grinding halt. For almost half an hour, nothing moved except snow flurries. Then a blue laser beam shot out from the Debengan shuttle and sliced a chunk of ice near the Terran shuttle’s landing gear. Once again, silence.

A figure dropped from the Terran shuttle and quickly rolled for cover behind a nearby outcropping. The figure was wearing a heavy suit, equipped with two airtanks on its back. In the right hand, the Terran held a heavy hand phaser, military issue. In the left were “bola packs”, sonic grenades linked by plasteel bands. The bolas could be adjusted for detonations from loud sound to Mach 4 impact capable of shredding steel. Moving in short dashes, the Terran approached the Debengan shuttle, using every inch of cover.

With a sharp blast, the Debengan shuttle blew out a panel. From the opening emerged a large, gray-covered being, its suit a doubled set of orbs with four tentacles emerging from each orb. Two of the tentacles held a large cannon-like weapon, its opening glowing a hazy blue. Two other tentacles held smaller weapons, each glowing a different shade of red. The being whirled on its suit’s base, the tentacles snapping to point at different targets. The cannon fired one shot, high up against a nearby crag. The impact slammed an avalanche onto the Terran shuttle, smashing it under a blanket of ice.

The Debengan stood still, then fired the smaller weapons at the only visible part of the Terran shuttle. The red beams converged and made the metal sizzle, then flare into a blazing explosion. The entire area then convulsed with a massive explosion, forcing the Debengan to retreat to avoid the debris.

As the flurries covered the black scar where the Terran shuttle once stood, the Debengan retrieved the blown panel and began wedging itself back into its own shuttle. The actinic flare of a Terran phaser sliced through the suit’s midsection and the Debengan dropped and fired in an unbelievably fluid motion. The firing stopped as a bola pack landed next to it and exploded, sending a Mach 2 sonic wave against every solid surface nearby. The Debengan felt its insides hammered by a veritable wall of vibrations. It staggered, dropped its weapons and collapsed, quivering horribly. The Terran leaped down from its vantage point on the crag and fired once, slicing the Debengan nearly in half. The ruptured suit released a gush of fluids that steamed in the frozen air, a gush that quickly froze into a muddy stain on the ice.

Tapping the suit’s chest pack, the Terran said “Lieutenant Grissom reporting. Debengan dead, shuttle recoverable.” Several seconds went by, then: “Excelsior, here. Well done, Casey. Are you injured?”

The Terran sat on a frozen rock. “Negative. But I have no shuttle.”

A chuckle was heard before “We barely have a ship. But we can pick you up in fifteen. Hold tight.”

“Roger.” The Terran looked up at the heavy gray sky and set the timer on her suit for twelve minutes. After that kind of battle, a nap was really a great idea.

Essay: FRODO AND GERARD

2011-10-24T12:12:00.003-04:00

[Reading has taken up almost as much time of my adult life as sleeping, mainly because I get by on less sleep that most people. That might not be an advantage, what with playing sports somewhat recklessly, healing and being tired tend to happen too often. Which gives me more time to read.]

Frodo and Gerard

Sometimes fictional characters come to you as if from on high, their reputations preceding them so that the first encounter is like meeting a celebrity. Then there are those characters that explode from the mists, leaping onto the mental stage with undeniable presence.

Frodo came recommended. From a chance encounter with The Hobbit, which I didn’t read at the time, I discovered the growing popularity of Tolkien’s creation. A few years later, I bought the books as a set and immediately plunged into it.

Not good. Although there are flashes of lyrical brilliance, The Hobbit's tone is often smarmy if not openly condescending. The adventure has a cartoonish feel to it, flat yet colorful. The end result was that it put me off the trilogy for several months, until a lengthy bus ride—my last—almost forced me to find anything to do.

Starting slowly, almost ponderously, Tolkien weaves a very different tale in The Lord of the Rings. The smarmy tone is replaced with near-historical weight, a chronicler rather than chatter. And Frodo, tiny Frodo, is the golden thread that holds the story to the heart, an innocent struggling with a world beyond his ken or control. If Aragorn is the quintessence of human nobility, Frodo is that of the human soul, often battered, always challenged, but rising above it all to endure.

On a long bus ride, with a spot of light in inky darkness, Frodo carried me with him past The Tower, a shared journey unlike any other I will ever have.

Gerard, or more accurately, Brigadier Etienne Gerard, was the best rider, swordsman, adventurer and lover in Napoleon’s Grand Armeé. From the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gerard is Holmes’ equal in memorability, for despute the fact that Sherlock Holmes was the “first” of his kind and Gerard another soldier hero in a long line of warriors, Gerard is panache personified.

Told as tales of an old soldier, the set-up is perfect for romantic excesses handled deftly. Conan Doyle was always proudest of his historical writings and with Gerard, his love of history and powers of characterization are keenly displayed. With delicate tweaks at the British and French amour de guerre, Gerard swashbuckles and gamboles through his adventures, defeating the mightiest, wooing the loveliest and outshining the brightest of friends and foes across the face of a troubled Europe. Gerard is charming in his excessive self-love and pride, but his wit and eye give him a humanity we can all cherish.

Two British writers, two dissimilar characters, one obvious result: admiration. Like the ideal conclusion to blind dates—described beforehand or surprised afterward—one takes the chance and is pleased. Odd how life has a way of doing that, too.

Flash Fiction: SWEET MORNINGS

2011-10-19T00:12:00.003-04:00

I spend a lot of time in bakeries and cafés, pretty much anywhere I can get a cup of coffee or--rarely--some chai. (With milk.) The time often passes with me watching the people; this time I chose to create the story I wanted to see unfold.

SWEET MORNINGS

She came into the bakery as she did every morning…A little flustered, slightly flushed, her hair sporting a stray tendril or two, her hands flitting about her slim figure in a near-frantic search for keys, wallet, sunglasses or change.

Milton was always there, often kneading dough for one of Eiffel Pierre’s delicate pastries. The quiet dawn hours were his favorites, but they gained a new aura once he knew that she—Jean Marie—would walk in. She was simply beautiful, not in the glamorous, plastic modern way, but in the natural “look twice and you’ll see” way, the kind of beauty that slips across your eyes, brings a small smile to your lips, then gradually absorbs you until you can’t remember ever thinking she wasn’t beautiful.

Milton’s claim to fame, at first glance, or maybe down to a third or fourth, were his eyes, a deep green that shimmered with gold specks reminiscent of elves in a wondrous fairy tale. Sadly, those beautiful eyes were obscured by the heavy lenses of glasses that kept him barely this side of legally blind. His eyes were the main reason he took up baking, for the work relied very little on seeing and oh-so-much on sensitivity and feeling.

Jean Marie breezed in and Milton, as was his habit, smiled shyly, wiped his hands of flour and stood in rapt attention as she flittered and flexed in search of…something. Milton waited patiently until Jean Marie smiled up at him and asked his usual opening question: “Will you buy a pastry or three?”

She laughed, as she usually did. Their morning ritual complete, Jean Marie bit her lower lip and scanned the display, hovering over each item as if absorbing its essence. Milton watched, entranced, taking in her profile, the gleam in her eyes and the very sense that Jean Marie was alive in a magical way no one else was.

Milton’s heart sped up. It always did when Jean Marie was around.

“A maple-glazed doughnut, a pair of ladyfingers and a medium coffee, please.” She frowned slightly. “I may be overdoing it.”

Milton shook his head. “No, ma’am. Seems to me you’re just having a solid Continental breakfast.” He quickly placed her order in a waxed box and served her coffee, to go.

“That’ll be $5.87,” he said. “Busy day today?”

Jean Marie stopped suddenly. “Oh, yes. Today’s my last day at work.”

Milton took her money and sombered a bit. She was leaving town! He was afraid to ask, but simply had to know. “Did you get a new job?”

Jean Marie shook her head. “No. I did something better.” Her smile was half delight, half roller-coaster rictus. She seemed happy and on the verge of fainting. The she laughed happily and he let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Something big!”

Milton chuckled. “You bought the company?”

Jean Marie clapped once in surprise. “You almost guessed! I did buy a company, of sorts.”

Eyebrows rising like semaphores, Milton said “’Of sorts?’ What did you buy?”

“This!” Jean Marie twirled, a lithe ballerina under golden hair, swirling like a vision of happiness in the morning light. “I bought Eiffel Pierre!”

Milton’s jaw dropped. His first words got lost somewhere between brain and mouth, but his next group came out audibly, if somewhat strangled. “You’re…my new boss?”

Jean Marie dimpled, and Milton’s jaw dropped again for he’d never seen that touch of beauty before. “I guess so.” Then, with a blush of shyness that made Milton’s heart break and soar at the same time, she said “That way we can see each other more than just before breakfast.”

And they did just that, for the next forty-one years.

Essay: CHICKEN AND POTATO LOGS

2011-10-17T12:12:00.002-04:00

[A down period in my life, summed up in the word "aimless." With a touch more honesty I could have said "lonely." And then something small makes all the difference.]

Chicken and Potato Logs

Fall, 1983. The days were pastel and vague, having lost their brilliance and sharp edges. Rather than driving myself energetically, I drifted from hour to hour, a high-charged battery losing power.

To amuse myself, I’d try to find different paths to walk to and from classes, often losing myself in the walks so that not arriving was the ultimate result. It didn’t matter if I got to where I was going: I didn’t want to be there anyway.

One afternoon, a warm sunny day that promised summer would return, I stopped at a gas station, one of those little spots that calls itself a “mini-mart” with the confidence a terrier calls itself a guard dog. There was no plan in my mind; I was just marking time.

A twenty-second tour of the place led me to stop at a glass case. Under heat lamps, arranged with the care of an art gallery, were large pieces of chicken and potato logs. I ordered a box of two pieces of white meat (a Southern courtesy to avoid the word “breast” not extended to words that are truly offensive) and some potato logs. With a Coca-Cola tucked in the bag, I walked away in some direction not leading to my apartment.

Food is food, in my book. It is not a passion, though I understand it is to some. I prefer simplicity, and it’s hard to get more simple than chicken and potatoes, dipped in batter and fried. But there are times, beyond physical need, when food becomes comfort, soul-affirming, a blanket on a chilled soul, a moment of pleasure that breaks a long dark night in the heart.

Or maybe I was just hungry. In any case, the chicken was a revelation: fried to crispiness, yet juicy, filled with flavor beyond just salty to encompass rarer spices and a touch of pepper. In a break from my usual habit, I ate the chicken first. Then I bit into a potato log and forgot my day.

It’s basically a large french fry, but this potato log was a work of art, well-deserving of careful display and appreciation. The batter was crisp and whole, not flaking or clinging. The potato itself was soft and firm, as spicy as the chicken, but with more subtlety. In minutes, all four of the revelations were gone, the Coke was slamming down my throat and the day sharpened in contrast.

My walks now crossed the path of this mini-mart every day. My lunch or dinner was the same box of two pieces of chicken and four potato logs. I always ate it while continuing my walk, enjoying the flavors, the moment and the slight but noticeable difference in my day.

I once asked for the recipes, but the guy told me the food was prepared by a woman at her house and she brought it in twice a day. I never asked her name, nor did I ever bother to seek the recipes again. I saw these simple items as gifts to my day and I wanted to keep them that way. One must learn to accept gifts as they come, when they come… without having to deeply explore why they come.

Flash Fiction: MORNING AT ROSSGEN

2011-10-12T12:12:00.001-04:00

This just came out in one long stream, although I detect my interest in stem cell research may have been at the heart of the initial thought.

A MORNING AT ROSSGEN

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... Yes, we have all types of organ tissues, including corneas…No, it doesn’t come in any colors…No, ma’am, it’s not at all like contact lenses…Corneal tissue isn’t something we can color-coordinate…Extension 436, ma’am…You’re welcome.”

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... You want to know if we have ‘experimental’ bodies here? What do you mean, sir?... Breasts where?... On the back? What for?... No, sir, we don’t experiment with human bodies here. We don’t do that kind of work… No, sir, I certainly don’t know who does…”

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... Excuse me. Excuse me, sir! I told you last time we can’t do that without your wife’s permission… I understand you find her less attractive than your neighbor, but it is her body and it is her decision alone whether to get the implants or not…Sir, we don’t do that without the patient’s prior written approval…Have you considered marital counseling or therap--…No! She has to request it and she has to sign for it personally… I’m sure she has other, very positive qualities, sir, which you would do well to focus on instead of her glutes…No I will not send you pictures of me…Good day.”

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... It takes several weeks to generate compatible tissue, unless you have an account with us… Because all our clients get what we call “starter cell sets” that are basically cell clusters at different stages of development. With them we can generate organs in less than half the time than starting from scratch…No, that wasn’t meant as a pun, ma’am…Any body part or any organ…Yes, any body part or any organ… A what, ma’am?... Uh, no, I don’t think we can do that… I understand, miss, but the hymen isn’t an organ… No, a wedding is not a true medical emergency… May I suggest you talk to your grandmother or an older female relative? I’m sure one of them will have very good advice on how to handle this—uh—problem… I once read that iodine was good for that… No, miss, on the sheets, to give the right, uh, impression, if you know what I mean… Yes, while he’s sleeping is a good time… I’d try the drugstore or a friend who works in a hospital… Oh, he does? Then try some other hospital, miss. You know how people love to talk… Best wishes.”

“Good morning, RossGen Labs…Please slow down, sir. I can barely understand what you’re sa--…Sir, please! Start again…When did this happen?... If it’s been less than ten minutes, shouldn’t you be calling 9-1-1? You could bleed to death before the replacement surgery takes place!…I know that, sir, but you need to live to have it reattached…I’m calling 9-1-1 now and patch them in…Direct pressure!...May I suggest you worry about size later, sir? You need to stay alive… If your wife is caught and they get your—uh—original, uh, part, back then we’d use that, sir…You don’t want it? I see…I’m sure you’ll be happy with a RossGen—uh—replacement, eventually. Yes, sir. I’m glad the EMTs are there… No, sir, I don’t date clients… Especially after surgery.”

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... You did what? You cut off your husband’s…No, we don’t accept tissue donations unless they’re from clients who want us to genera—…No, we don’t take ‘second-hand’ organs, even if it were an organ… Pardon me?... All our clients are dealt with in the strictest confidence, ma’am. We neither deny legitimate treatment nor divulge treatments, so if he does call us, we will provide him with the service or services he contracts us for… I can’t tell if that’s a police siren or an ambulance…Hello?...Who’s this?...Officer Brand?... Yes, she called just now and was talking to me when you came in… Did who call?... I’m sorry, I can’t confirm if that person called RossGen this morning or at any time… I can’t confirm that, Officer… No, I’m not being difficult, I’m just doing my job… Yes, I go out for lunch… I don’t think that'd be a good idea, Officer, seeing as how I’m married… I’m not like that. Are we done here, Officer?... You’re welc—“

“Good morning, RossGen Labs. How may I help you?... “

Essay: MUSIC: 1984

2011-10-10T12:12:00.006-04:00

[More so any other year in my life, 1984 is associated with music. Not exactly sure why. But just reading the song titles puts me back there.]

Music: 1984

I arrived in Hattiesburg with barely a plan: say hi to Tim-the-Freudian, find an apartment, get a job. Though I had changed living quarters in Oxford a few times, the move to Hattiesburg was my first in four years, damn near a lifetime in my experience, and was the first I had orchestrated entirely for my own reasons.

A new sense of time, place and self had emerged. My own steps. My own decisions. Beholden to no one. Not yet 20, not really 19. Found Tim, an apartment and a job. And on the second day, I rested.

Music had become visual, as the MTV experiment had grown into a major entertainment phenomenon. Intrigued, I watched music. But despite some excellent and even artistic efforts, music would remain a product of my imagery. So despite the undeniable presences of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Culture Club and The Police, other songs and artists framed my moments.

Hours went by as I drove the streets and roads in senseless attempts to be what I wasn’t. The somber aches of those moments return with OWNER OF A LONELY HEART, by Yes and HARD HABIT TO BREAK, by Chicago. Hearing Chicago was especially poignant as Don was an avid fan of their music, the only person I ever met who had all their albums.

The newly-won freedom of relying entirely on myself is revived by Laura Branigan’s SELF CONTROL; Kool and the Gang’s JOANNA; I CAN DREAM ABOUT YOU by Dan Hartman and especially THE WARRIOR, with Scandal adding Patty Smyth to the mix. And Billy Joel's FOR THE LONGEST TIME was a connection to a rock and roll feeling I grafted onto my quickly-suppressed memories of Oxford.

Two songs evoke the feeling of Hattiesburg in ways I can’t pinpoint: HOLD ME NOW, by The Thompson Twins and The Cars’ YOU MIGHT THINK. Over the years, the undefinable essence of that evocation has prompted many a self-search. On the other hand, CUM ON FEEL THE NOIZE, by Quiet Riot reminds me of riding to Mac’s Fish Camp with Brendan and Terry, jammed together in his small Isuzu pickup truck… and me riding in the back during the return because the All-You-Can-Eat for $10 was a bargain, a challenge and a chance for gross excess we could not pass up. We were indeed a quiet riot then.

My central stage in Hattiesburg was Brendan’s comic book shop, a snug library of memories and discoveries. Conversation, joking, games, hilarity, trading, reading and music fused into a single experience, pearls on a growing string. The songs that place me there, sitting on an upturned milk crate and watching the oddities walk in and out are TRUE, by Spandau Ballet; OH SHERRY, by Steve Perry; IF EVER YOU'RE IN MY ARMS AGAIN, by Peabo Bryson and ALMOST PARADISE, by Mick Reno and Ann Wilson.

The jokes would fly and reach outer orbits as Corey Hart revealed he wore SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT, prompting intensive discussions of stupidity (in other people, never ourselves.) Tim Shoemake and I would argue constantly over Stevie Wonder’s nasal I JUST CALLED TO SAY I LOVE YOU, my trenchant observation that it was Stevie’s lament while sitting on a nail trouncing Tim’s loopy opinion that it was the love song of the decade. I still rehash the give-and-take that often included references to Watergate, the Byzantine Empire, John Lennon, bad cheesecake, the best way to drive to Alaska, impressionist paintings, how the invention of gunpowder doomed the Chinese empire, why money isn’t real, medical procedures that sound more horrible than what they actually are and doomed relationships. Customers walking into the middle of our conversation would invariably ask what we were discussing. Tim and I always shared what we called “the recap,” going backwards from the current topic and tracing the path back to Stevie, relishing the blank faces of reaction. I smile even now.

On the other hand, both Tim and I agreed that WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO, by Wham! would make them a one-hit wonder, never to be heard from again.

Okay, so I missed one; he missed two.

Flash Fiction: FOOD FOR LOBO

2011-10-05T00:12:00.002-04:00

In my hometown, a very elderly lady, bent almost double by osteoporosis, sells small bags of shortbread cookies every day. Watching her make a sale gave me the idea for this story. (Booger I just made up.)

FOOD FOR LOBO

I didn't catch Booger teasing Lobo, tied across the street, until the night the power went out because of the wind storm and the heat made it difficult for me to sleep, even when I took another two of my red pills. Booger came up to where Lobo, a pit bull/mastiff mutt, was chained. Booger was dangling a long piece of rope in his hand and started whipping the dog with it. Lobo went crazy, snarling and foaming at the mouth, yanking at his chain so hard that he sometimes flipped over backward with a thud. Booger laughed like a maniac, like he did when he was 6 and started becoming the bully he was, a laugh that sounded crazy and silly and at the same time. He beat that dog for a good 15 minutes and when he left, Lobo was left spent, his neck and mouth bleeding. Lobo couldn't bark, but his wounds spoke volumes about what he felt.

Booger came up almost every night. Lobo would get wild when he sensed Booger was near, pulling hard against the chain. Some nights, Booger would just stand there, a few feet out of Lobo's snarling reach, the long piece of rope dangling, unused. On other nights, Booger would beat the dog horribly, snapping the rope with his lanky arm's strength. A few times he tied a big knot at the end of the rope. On those nights, Lobo bled a lot. His drunken owner never saw anything, just slopping the food and water in the dog's bowls and staggered away to get drunk again or sleep.

I'm 94. I live alone, have no car, no phone, no kin, no visitors except for the Meals on Wheels woman who acts like delivering food once a week is penance for wearing too much make-up. I couldn't call the police, nor ask anyone to do it for me. The people near me were afraid of Booger, many of them old and frail as me. To rat out Booger was to ask to be hurt. Or killed.

Once a month, I'd dress up warm and take a very slow walk to Findlay's Groceries, four blocks and two hours away. I did it to buy my own food with a budget that could barely keep a body and soul together, even one as thin as mine. A stock boy once asked me if I had a lot of cats. I lied. That's why I bought my own food: fewer questions that way.

My long walk was nearing an end, the light bags now heavy in my rolling walker's basket. I could see the door to my house and Lobo, across the street, lying in the shade. Suddenly, water drenched me head to toe. A big black car, music thundering from it fit to wake the dead, drove away, Booger at the wheel, his arm thrust out the window and the middle finger rising above it.

I took a chill that lasted almost a week. I thought I'd die, what with no one to care and the Meals on Wheels woman knocking once and leaving the food on the doorstep, where I found it four days later. That same day, before the chill could stop me, I walked again to Findlay's. Bless his heart, Greg Findlay actually came out to see if I was okay, senile maybe, for making a trip back so soon. No, I said, I want ground beef. Two pounds.

He actually looked very sad. Rather than waste a word, I opened my purse and showed him the crisp tenner I had saved for a rainy day long ago. He pursed his lips, got the ground beef himself and even got his manager to give me a ride back. I didn't say no, because my legs were aching something fierce and my head was fit to burst.

It took me an hour to thaw the beef well and roll chunks of it into meatballs. My hands weren't as good as they used to be, but a ball is a ball. With the sun going down and my heart hammering to break a rib, I walked across the street. Towards Lobo.

I tossed him a couple of meatballs and went away. I did that every day, getting closer to Lobo until I gave him the last two standing right next to him. Then he waited patiently as my feeble hands sawed at the thick leather collar he wore, tears of rage at my weakness splashing his matted fur and the fear that I'd faint and be found out. I lost what little strength I had left and had to leave. I had to take four of my red pills because the pain was awful. I was sobbing from the effort. But I was awake and smiling when Booger got the smile ripped off his face by Lobo. I swear I heard that mutt howl with glee.

Essay: CHARLENE'S BITTER COFFEE

2011-10-03T12:12:00.003-04:00

I was in high school at 13, in college at 15. As a freshman, I was about 65 inches tall and weighed barely 125, with Coke-bottom glasses and enough acne to give Greeks the idea of constellations. And I had massive chips on both narrow shoulders, the chips manifesting in sometime odd ways.

Charlene's Bitter Coffee

Charlene was stacked. A tall brunette with slim hips, long legs, dark blue eyes and excellent excuses for mammary fixation, Charlene was a vision. The fact that she was a biology major made her a swan amongst groundhogs. A female swan amongst male groundhogs.

She and I met when I ventured into the herpetology lab. Eighteen cages were filled with a variety of snakes, one to a cage, all of them venomous. On several occasions prior to that day, I had milked the rattlesnakes, for making antitoxin, so I had dropped in just to see what was going on. Charlene walked by and started a conversation about the snakes.

She dressed very well, with great style and her attire was meant to be looked at. One could sense where she was in the Biology building by the scattered rush to a certain floor. Comical. Or worse.

We saw each other fairly often, but always in passing. I found it odd that she was almost always alone. We talked a couple of times, but like the first time, she would keep asking questions. If she hadn’t volunteered her name, I wouldn’t have asked. She was definitely behind a wall.

One morning, I had lingered in the cafeteria past mid-morning, sipping coffee. There were some 20 guys in the place, with a group of about 12 sitting together as a mass some tables away from mine, which was near the door. Charlene walked in. Tight jeans, stylish boots and boasting a grey angora sweater with a thin belt at her waist.

Conversation stopped. Twenty pairs of eyes watched her as she went through the line and started to get coffee. One pair of eyes dropped out. I searched the tables with two thoughts in mind: sugar and location. I was looking to see if there were still sugar servers on the tables. They weren’t, having been collected prior to lunch. Then I tried to predict where Charlene would sit. It would have to be somewhere between the mass of guys and my table. She wasn’t going to sit with me, that I knew. I noted the table. And made a decision.

Charlene paid for her coffee and once again, twenty pairs of eyes were glued to her. She glided to the table I had selected as her most likely choice. As she set the cup down, she glanced over at me and nodded. I nodded back. She sat down and reached for… nothing. She looked over at the register, past the mass of guys, where the sugar was. Then she turned and looked at me, a soft appeal on her face.

I waited half a second to shake my head. It was simply the expression of my earlier decision: If she wants sugar, she can get it herself.

I knew my reasons. The overt one was my thought that if she dressed for attention, then she had to live with the results of that attention. That one made me feel self-righteous. The other, darker and covert reason was that I simply would not risk being seen doing her a favor, the sad sack guy trying to coddle up to the beauty queen. She picked me because I was safer than any other alternative. I was also the only guy who simply couldn’t do it.

Charlene drank her bitter coffee. Mine was suddenly bitter, too.

Flash Fiction: DEBOARDING PASS

2011-09-28T12:12:00.001-04:00

The final image of this story was crystal-clear in my mind and the last half of it went by in a writing blur. That may have been the fastest writing I did over the 60 stories.

DEBOARDING PASS

“Can you help me?” The air hostess’ words barely masked fear.

The pilot and co-pilot exchanged quizzical looks. A 777 pretty much flies itself, but the regs make it clear that the cockpit is sacrosanct. “What’s going on?” asked the co-pilot, whose shirt bore an embroidered Lewis above the pocket.

The hostess swallowed hard. “We have a situation with a passenger. He’s—he’s acting strange.”

Lewis looked at the pilot, whose shirt read McKinnon. “Doug, it’s your call. I can go now.”

McKinnon swiveled in his seat. “Nancy, what’s happening? Is the guy armed?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. And he isn’t threatening the passengers. But he says…” She wrung her hands and swallowed hard again. “He says that he’s going to cause everybody on the plane to die.”

The two men were agog. “A terrorist?”

Nancy almost moaned. “No! I don’t think he’s a terrorist. But he’s back there, in 22B, sweating a lot and saying something about some change coming too early.” She twisted her face into an anguished grimace.

“Lew, check him out. I’m notifying Logan and have them patch us through to the FBI.” As Lewis nodded, McKinnon added “Keep it as quiet as possible. And be careful.”

“Roger.” Lewis unclipped his headset and followed Nancy through the quiet plane back to coach, where 22B was. It was almost midnight and most of the sixty-seven passengers were asleep or plugged into some device.

The man in 22B looked like he’d finished a strenuous workout. His face was horribly flushed and sheened with sweat. The man’s eyes were open wide and he was gulping breaths. His hands clutched the armrests as if to anchor himself against a storm. His eyes darted up at Lewis and Nancy, but he made no gesture or effort to speak with them.

Lewis squatted near the man. “Hi. I’m Commander Phil Lewis. Are you feeling ill, sir?”

The man shook his head tightly. “No! Please. Land this plane now! I don’t want anyone to die because of me!”

Lewis was about to assure the man everything was okay when suddenly, the man…faded. Like a movie scene where an actor becomes opaque and you can see through him to the background… Nancy gasped and Lewis sensed her fear. “Steady,” he said to her. And to himself.

The man leaned forward slowly, groaning, as if a severe pain were wracking his innards. His hands never left the armrests, white-knuckled claws about to snap. “Do you need medical attention?” Lewis heard his voice tighten and the hair on his neck begin to rise.

“No! I just need… to get out… of here. Now!” The man raised his head. His eyes…were blank. Gone. Two holes of blackness that quickly filled with glimpses of a beyond no one could imagine. Nancy stifled a scream a second too late.

Lewis stood up and grabbed Nancy by the shoulders. “Tell Mason we need to land now! Get Lorena to help you calm the passengers. Get them calmed down! Go!” He gave her a brisk push towards the cockpit. She almost ran in her desire to get away from them.

A wretched groan made Lewis turn and what he saw almost made him scream. The man was no longer in his seat. He had—somehow—become stuck passing through the floor, his arms clutching at the seats around him while his legs were…somewhere unseen. The man’s chest was trapped by the floor and he could barely speak. “It’s about to happen! Hurry! Oh god, please hurry!” The man’s voice was raw with fear.

Just before the plane was destroyed, Lewis saw over there, the place seen only through the man’s eyes, the world where orange and gray violence melded, where brown was the color of death and where a nightmarish length of limb and claw grabbed a man and tore this world completely apart.

Essay: SHE CALLED HERSELF SHANNON

2011-09-26T12:12:00.000-04:00

No other place in my life has the magic of New Orleans. I roamed the city, walked miles through it, met dozens of strange, enchanting people, got taken to a crawfish boil up near Slidell--and brought back the next day, by people whose names I never knew, leaped out of a biker bar's window (voluntarily) to win $10, slept in the City of the Dead (four times), listened to about 300 stories and ate more great food than anywhere else. And one night, I celebrated a new triumph in my own way.

She Called Herself Shannon

The small metal table, topped with a heavy mug of chickory coffee and a beignet, bordered the French Quarter sidewalk. Scattered about my body were $2,200 in cash, product of my first real contract as a writer. Midnight had passed and the weeknight crowd was sparse but active.

She walked up to me in a roundabout manner, heading away from me, then back, then away, only to return and make a beeline for my table. She was young, a few years older than me, slim, in jeans and boots, with a light jacket covering a sheer yellow blouse. She was blonde. Mostly.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Her voice was soft and insistent.

I shook my head.

“Would you like company? We can find a room nearby.” She walked closer and her perfume was flowery.

I sat up straight and waved a hand at one of the chairs. “Not interested. But I can pay you for your time just to chat.”

She stared hard. “You want to give me money just to talk?” she said harshly.

I smiled. “Sure. You don’t waste your time and I get conversation.” I placed a twenty on the table, under the coffee mug. “We can talk until you get bored.” She looked at the bill, then at me. She grunted—a nasty sound—and sat down. She grabbed the bill and put it in a jacket pocket.

“What do you want to talk about?” she grated.

I asked her about other cities she had visited and how they compared to New Orleans; about good restaurants and bad; about magazines she’d read recently; about movies from Hollywood and foreign movies that didn’t make sense; about fashion and how it seemed to be aimed at making women look ugly or foolish and other unlikely topics. Every 15 minutes or so I’d place another twenty under the mug. By the fourth bill, she was asking me questions: why was I in town, where did I live, what job did I have, was I really a student, where did I grow up, did I have a girlfriend. I placed a bill under the mug and she waved it away.

She accepted coffee and we talked on. We discussed our families, or at least I discussed mine. She told me about tragedy and abuse that seemed smooth and vague. I nodded and murmured at the right moments. When she finished, I asked her what her name was.

“Shannon,” she replied immediately.

I waited. She got fidgety. I waited some more. “Is that it?” she demanded. “Are we done?”

I shrugged. “Do I owe you any more money?”

She was disdainful and started to get up.

“I enjoyed it. Hope it wasn’t boring.”

She paused, then looked around. We were now surrounded in the French Quarter. She sat back down and suddenly looked 10 years older. “It was nice.”

“Good to know.” I sipped coffee as she just sat there, a deep and unnerving sadness in her eyes. Suddenly she jerked her head around and got up. “I gotta go.”

She didn’t see me nod. She adjusted her purse, straightened her jacket, readjusted her purse, glanced at me as if taking my measure, then leaned over a bit to get closer. “Brenda,” she said softly and walked away quickly.

I quelled the urge to say Goodnight, Brenda as she left the café. For once I had the wisdom to let someone else have the final word.

Flash Fiction: GIRL IN SEARCH OF A TREE

2011-09-21T00:12:00.001-04:00

At the beginning of this story, I had a fuzzy sense of the plot, but a near-perfect image of the girl in mind (rare for me as I'm not really a "visual" thinker.) By the end, I had the story and the girl's image in my mind was fuzzy. I don't know what that means.

GIRL IN SEARCH OF A TREE

“Hello. Is this the path that leads to the lookout?”

Benson whirled around, his heart thudding quickly. The voice here in the middle of nowhere belonged to… a child. About 8 years old. A girl.

She smiled shyly. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”

Benson decided honesty was the best policy. “You did, but that’s okay. Don’t get many people this deep in the woods.” He looked around. “Where are your folks?”

The girl seemed to be trying not to laugh. “I don’t have ‘folks.’” Her emphasis on the word was odd. Benson stared. With a toss of her head, straight dark blonde hair rippling silently, the girl said “I belong to The People.”

Uh-huh, thought Benson, those words are capitalized. “Uh, The People?”

A series of nods that ended abruptly. “They won’t miss me for I’ll be back before they do.” She bit her lip, the first gesture she made like a child. “But I need to find the lookout.”

Benson removed his ranger hat, sweat-stained and stiff, and rubbed his head. No hair got in the way. “Well, I don’t rightly know what you mean by ‘the lookout’… Are you sure your parents or kinfolk aren’t here with you?”

A frown was chased away by a determined look. The girl said “You have to know where the lookout is. It’s still here, on this side, only I can’t see it because now I’m too small to climb the bigger trees to search for it.”

Benson wanted to sit down, maybe with a frosted beer in one hand. He rolled the hat in his hands, rough hands that had led a serious life. “You came alone? Several miles into this mess of woods? By yourself?” His hands were showing a tiny tremor.

The girl humphed. “I got here. Now I need to leave. But I need to find the lookout.” She put her hands on her hips and suddenly looked much older than eight. Much, much older.

Benson swallowed, then cleared his throat. An idea popped into his mind. ‘What does this, um, lookout, look like?”

The girl nodded, her child-like smile returning. Benson released a breath unknowingly held. “It’s a big oak, split near the top, with a huge set of branches spreading out wide.”

Benson sighed. The tree was famous for its strange shape and size, product of deep loam in bottom land and a lightning strike before white men trod these woods. “That’s Ole Two Arms,” he said. “About two miles from here, that way.” He pointed. After a grunt, he said “You can get there in about an hour.”

Her face fell into panic. “Oh no! I don’t have time for that! They’ll find out for sure!”

Something in Benson made him forgo the obvious “They?” He noticed the girl now looked smaller, younger, 6 now instead of 8. Maybe even 5...Then she looked up at Benson and a slow…wicked…smile came over her face and leaped into her eyes. “Maybe you can help me…” she said, her voice a deep trill along Benson’s spine.

He stood transfixed as the girl walked to him, seeming to grow with every step, her body taller, fuller, but misty, as if she were becoming transparent. With gentle stealth, she placed her hands on Benson’s face and as time stretched to eternity, she kissed him. His eyes closed of their own volition and the kiss, immeasurably sweet, infinitely warm, washed through him.

The kiss ended and Benson opened his eyes. The girl was no longer a child. Benson’s mind said Eight going on eight hundred, while his eyes told him 18...and beautiful.

With a giggle and a wink, the girl turned and ran away, impossibly fast, her giggle a musical trill amongst the whispering trees.

Benson forever after hoped that The People didn’t find out that one of theirs had been lost.

Essay: FREEZING

2011-09-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

Cold weather and I don't agree. My grandmother and I used to argue gently about the virtues of hot versus cold weather. She'd say cold weather was best. One day I pointed out that there was nothing alive in her freezer. She shot back that there was nothing alive in her oven, either. "Yes," I countered, "But the oven isn't on all the time." Cracked her up. Didn't convince her.

Freezing

It was a record-high 94 in San Juan when I left that January morning. Three hours later, I arrived in Atlanta and I heard the temperature was 26 degrees. Less than two hours later, we landed in Memphis. I didn’t know the temperature. Less than four hours later, the bus left me and my baggage at the Oxford station. The driver told me that the temperature was 0 degrees, with a wind-chill of minus 10. But that was at 5:00 PM, when the sun was still a feeble light in the gray sky. Now it was 7:30 PM and very dark.

I was wearing my usual: jeans, T-shirt, light jacket, sneakers and a cap. As the bus pulled away, I realized just how quiet everything else was, how shuttered and closed it all felt, with scattered layers of snow like trimming along streets and rooftops. I knew calling a cab would be useless. The dorm wasn’t far. I could walk.

Practically my whole life has been spent in warm weather. Winter to me is any drop into the 60s. I had encountered true winter the year before, a day or two in the low 20s, but rode those out by staying in, where the thermostat and some judicious tinkering would keep my room in the high 70s.

I felt pain in my hands and face, an alarming tightness exacerbated by the knifing gashes of breath in my nose and throat. I walked slowly, fighting the urge to hunch over as the wind slashed around me. My bags were light, but began feeling immense and my pace slowed. I looked at the houses with the warm glow of lights behind frosted windows. Maybe I should knock on one of those doors, I thought. But arrogance can be an unjust master and I walked on.

A sudden gust doubled me over and I dropped my bags. I looked at the back of my hands, where the veins rise prominently and was aghast. There were jagged crystals pushing up from inside the veins. My hands were literally freezing. As if in a trance, I touched the largest of the jagged mounds. I felt it move and scrape deep within. I had been walking less than 15 minutes.

I was in front of a dentist’s office. A low hedge ran along the right-hand side of the building, covered in ice and snow. I threw my bags between the hedge and the wall and tried to pick up the pace. The wind slammed from all sides and as I flexed my hands, I could feel more jagged scrapes in places I refused to notice. I didn’t think of taking clothes out of my bag to layer for warmth. I thought only of getting to my room.

The Law Center. If I could get there, I could rest and warm up. Between the town and the campus lay a tree-ringed bowl, an almost elven cubbyhole with a raised sidewalk through the middle. As I crossed it, this space I found so endearing, I felt myself unzip my jacket. The wind howled through the treetops and I almost fell off the sidewalk. I could no longer feel my hands.

I trudged up the low hill to the Law Center, passing several houses. I ignored them. I didn’t care for them. I could barely breathe and my throat was raw. The Law Center was lit. I stumbled to the door and pushed against it with my shoulder, keeping my hands from something bad I couldn’t quite remember.

The door was locked. I had wanted to return early to campus to beat the crowds. I had.

I cowered near the door, trying to draw a less-painful breath. The Student Union. It would be open. It had to be. I swung myself off the door and fell. I didn’t break my fall at all, slamming my head onto the concrete. Rolling over, I pushed myself upright. I had the vague sense that the time was 8:10 and that I should have been in my room five minutes ago.

My steps were painful and clumsy. I could sense it, but not put it into words. I also sensed I should close my jacket, flapping in the sharp wind. I took off my cap and tucked it inside my jacket, against my ribs. It was my favorite cap and I didn’t want it to be damaged.

I stopped walking, turned to my right and took a few steps towards some bushes. I fell forward.

How long I was there, I’ll never know. I spasmed awake to enormous pain. Ice broke off my face and the bush’s branches as I pushed myself to stand. Slowly, without thought, I made my way to the Union. As I approached the door, I could see a gap. It's open, I thought, without concern. I pushed the door open with my shoulder and out of habit, went to my mailbox. I slumped to the floor in front of it and fought the pain as I recovered. I was probably there for half an hour.

From the Union to the dorm was a slow trek without incident. I got to my room and simply collapsed on the bed, too weak to wrap myself in a blanket or change clothes. I had trouble breathing. I didn’t want to move so I could ease the pain.

The phone rang. The phone rang. It rang again. I barely made it there to pick it up. I knew I had never felt so drained in my life.

“Hello?” Four musical syllables. Carol.

I croaked a reply.

“Gil?”

Another croak. Carol and Don had returned early too and were at the office. Would I join them?

I said yes. Changed clothes slowly, gritting my teeth to shallow breaths. Got a stocking cap, heavy jacket and gloves. Layered an extra sweatshirt and longjohns. Made it to the office because they were there and that’s where I wanted to be, more than anywhere else in the world. They noticed I wasn’t feeling well. I never told them what happened, except for my bags. We went and picked them up.

Later that night, Don and I went out and peed our names in the snow. Luckily, my name isn’t “Alexander.”

Short Story: LIFE OF SLICE

2011-09-14T00:12:00.001-04:00

This was an odd story-writing experience for me because it started out as my attempt to kill time while bored. I wrote the first line, just to have something to do while waiting for something to happen on my computer and just kept going. I know I stopped for some coffee, ignored the work I was supposed to be doing and finished the story. Looking back, it was the first "Blank screen just GO!" story I wrote, the precursor of almost all my subsequent flash fiction.

LIFE OF SLICE

Think of this as a movie with the wrong characters. I don't mean the wrong actors, the wrong characters. You might be thinking that it's impossible for a movie, a totally fabricated illusion, to have the wrong characters. That might be true, but the fact is, movies try to imitate Life and Life sometimes has the wrong characters in it. Do you remember the Kennedy assassination? Jack? Didn't you get the sense that Oswald, that weasel-faced punk, was just wrong as Jack's killer? Like he didn't match up? On one side, a young, dynamic rogue of a family man, leader of the Free World and on the other, this Sad Sack of a loser. Really, this jerk killed President Jack?

Maybe that's why people just can't get let go of the deed: the sense of utter wrongness they feel about its characters.

What I'm about to tell you has the same feeling. The characters in it are wrong for the story. It's not anybody's fault, it's just the way things turned out.

Since I started along the movie metaphor line, I'll continue. The cast of characters consists of four people, or maybe five. (I'll explain.) The main character is Vanda, a young lady in her mid-twenties who's vivacious, friendly, energetic, and attractive, but not beautiful, more like wholesome, girl-next-door type. (For casting directors, think Sandra Bullock). The kind of girl that doesn't cause men's heads to snap around as she walks by, nor do they stare long and hard at. More the type that causes men to smile softly, not cruelly like when the guy looks at a woman thinking she's lovely only to find out she's actually a dog, but with a certain warm expression, like he's reminded of a little sister or a favorite cousin.

The other principal characters are Deke and Byron. They too are wrong; you'll see. Deke is a large, broad-shouldered young man, with delicate hands and, at best, a bland personality. (Casting Director: think young, secondary actor, maybe minor TV star.) Now bland is actually good, but no one admits to it. Bland personalities, those without sharp edges, are warm and comforting, steady and dependable. Bland personalities are the glue that hold together families, committees, organizations and friends. You can always count on them and every group has one or two. So Deke has the bland personality that is supposed to hold this little circle of friends together.

His opposite is Byron, a small, handsome chap, with sharp wit and nonchalant viciousness. (Mr./Ms. Casting Director: Jerry Seinfeld with a manic edge, someone like that.) The kind of guy who could go from humor to cutting sarcasm within the same sentence and, even after embarrassing you, could still make you think he was being impersonal. These sharp-witted people are quietly feared, for they are aggressors when sensing weakness and almost impossible to harm in their own game. They really aren't invited: they are tolerated.

There is another character, but he doesn't ever appear in the story, so forget casting. His name is Mike. A perfectly ordinary name for a perfectly unordinary man. Lawyer, stockbroker, former Olympic athlete, patent-holder no less and the object of Vanda's deepest desires. That's where the problems begin.

Take the name bit, for example. (These names are real; no attempt to protect the guilty.) "Deke" is a hard-sounding name, reminiscent of a stagecoach bandit or cattle rustler. Here it's the moniker of a guy so quiet and unassuming you'd let your sister date him knowing they'd be back exactly 10 minutes before curfew ends. And "Byron" just reeks of poetic sensitivity, of which our guy has neither. "Vanda" is exotic and she's anything but. That's why guys like her so much: she's a pal, a buddy, another one of the guys, so to speak. All her boyfriends eventually end up being her friends, now a virtual legion, sliding away in pursuit of more exotic fare, but always remaining in contact with their good friend. And the unseen "Mike" should have a handle like "Demetrius" or "Alexander", names dripping with mythological might.

But, these are the names and the story goes on.

Vanda has fallen hard for Mike. I mean, hard. Have you ever seen a story of a tomboy, skinned knees, wad of gum in bulging cheek, cap on head, dirt on nose, transformed into a lovely princess? The change is usually expanded into a discovery of boys and first true love. Well, that's Vanda times ten. Here's a girl who's had many boyfriends, a few lovers and so many good male friends she can start a four-team baseball league and she's never really lost her head to any guy. Until now. And what a guy, practically a dreamboat in a Corvette (he actually drives a BMW). So what does she do? Go up to him and make conversation, become his pal, use her fuzzy charm? No.

She decides to make him jealous. Or at least, make him notice her. By doing what, you ask? By actively pursuing Deke. Deke! The immovable object.

Sound wrong? Just wait. Deke, as well as Byron, has been a lifelong friend of Vanda's. Hell, they grew up together. There was a time when Deke was just giddy about her, but he never said a word and eventually let the feeling sleep in a corner of his mind. But he always had a suspicion that Vanda was interested in him. So, when she starts to woo him, in her own fuzzy way, does Deke remain bland and quiet, secretly savoring his quiet bloom? No. He takes to Vanda's interest like a caged bird set free and cuts loose.

Byron can't help but notice. He's really had a thing for Vanda since childhood, but once he saw the pattern of her life (boyfriend to occasional lover to good friend), he reined in his interest, thinking that he could just step back in and sweep her off her feet anytime. He's always been a good friend, but his friendliness was overlaid with long-term interest. (A scene with Byron helping Vanda move could show him checking out her lingerie, for example. Crude, but effective.) So when he sees Vanda wooing and Deke moving in, does he jump in headfirst and try to break it up, knowing that Deke is probably his only competition? No. He makes it a point to make it easier for them to see each other, like using his influence to get them in to trendy restaurants and sold-out shows. And he does it without really expecting anything in return. That's wrong, at least for Byron.

And the unseen Mike? The vibrant, successful, confident stud? He's so loopy for Vanda he can't see straight. He's actually intimidated by her. He figures her many male friends are a symbol for how demanding she is, how incredibly wonderful a man must be to make her his. Mike feels he's underqualified to win the love of this lady, not understanding that all she needs is for him to make an approach, because she's never felt this way before about any guy and she doesn't have a clue how to make the first move. Is everybody in this picture wrong?

Vanda: simple and direct, trying deception.

Deke: quiet, unassuming, now a whirlwind romancer.

Byron: egocentric, now the Best Samaritan.

Mike: from overachiever to underconfident.

So what happened?

Vanda, thinking herself safe with Deke, continued dating him every night while trying to run into Mike at all his haunts.

Deke, thinking that Vanda was in love with him, accepts Byron's "gifts" expecting him to ask for payback and starts planning a major wedding.

Byron, expecting Vanda and Deke to eventually return to "friend" status, actually enjoys sharing his influence with them and starts planning his move on Vanda. It's about time, he says.

Mike, running into Vanda (and Deke), just melts faster at the sight of her and when he discovers Byron's pitching in to "help" Deke, figures he really doesn't have a chance.

Vanda wants Mike, but goes after Deke. Deke risks wanting Vanda, but he doesn't have a chance. Byron wants Vanda, but not now, so he helps Deke keep her out of circulation. And Mike wants Vanda, but can't approach her cause he's tongue-tied and too nice.

Am I the only one gnashing his teeth at this point? Do four wrongs make a right?

Here's how it ended:

Deke asks Vanda to marry her, not even a month into their dating spree. The placid risk-avoider, Deke, takes a leap of monumental proportions.

Byron learns about the proposal from Deke, who just can't keep it to himself. Does Byron withdraw his support, or hide behind his cynicism, or leap into action? No! He congratulates Deke! Honestly! Now Deke, who figures payback time was going to be Heartbreak Hotel time, is convinced Vanda will marry him because Byron actually approves. Where’s his ego now?

Mike? Poor guy hears about the proposal from Byron, who doesn't see how gone Mike is over Vanda. Does Mike finally use his long-won confidence to spill his heart to her? No, he sends her flowers!

Vanda, totally confused about the proposal, for she can't bear the thought of hurting her friend Deke, nor can she imagine NOT marrying Mike, doesn't turn to Byron, who’s right there, for she feels it would place him in the middle of a tough problem. And while she's pondering her answer, guess whose flowers appear? Right. Is the card the invitation she's been waiting for? Nah, it says "Congratulations on Your Engagement" in bright golden script (printed in Secaucus, New Jersey by a machine that doesn't care what effect its messages have on people). True, two dozen roses are nothing to sneeze at, unless, of course, allergies are present.

Fists clench at the scenario. Will it have a happy ending? Will it have an ending?

Yes.

Vanda marries Mike. Surprised? Hold on. Mike figures Vanda's out of reach, so he invites his secretary to dinner where they run into... Yup, Vanda and... Byron. Huh? Byron called Vanda because he noticed she was a bit off, but all he did was wax poetic (finally matching his name) about the upcoming nuptials of his two best friends. So Vanda, strangely enough, clams up. The eatery was picked by Byron because, a) it's close to his office, b) close to Mike's office, whom he expects to see for a stock purchase and c) it's not a place Deke goes to so Byron won't run the risk of causing Deke to be suspicious. Isn't that thoughtful? Maybe too much complexity, but it has a simple side, too.

At the restaurant, Vanda thinks Byron won't be of any help to her and when he gets up to greet Mike, she stays behind (remember: we never see Mike) and, get this, starts crying. The always cheerful, tough-as-an-Indian-scout lady, quietly dissolves in tears. Who comforts her? Mike? No, his secretary, for after all, Vanda might break down, but not in public. The ladies room is the refuge and the site of the tearful pick-me-up.

Once composed and back at their tables, the secretary (a minor character with a major impact, so Casting Director, choose carefully) tells her boss about her good deed. All about it. We hear a voice, deep, masculine, thrilling to the female heart, say to the secretary that she is to call Byron over to this table. Cut to Vanda's table, where the secretary calls Byron away from his Poached Trout and we hear The Voice greeting a stunned Vanda and joining her at the table.

Mike, that paragon of straight-laced virtue, fully realizing what the tears mean, has acted upon information learned in the privacy of confidants. Shocking.

Vanda is not complaining.

End result of wrong behavior? Mike states his case, Vanda hears the words she wanted to, they get married ten days later, Deke wrongly blames Byron only to realize (eventually) that what had really happened was inside his head and Byron actually tries to commit suicide (pills and brandy, bad stomachache, lost weekend) over his apparent loss of Vanda. Vanda and Mike are deliriously happy, Deke is stoically nursing his hurt, with eyes upon the cute redhead in Accounting and Byron recovered quickly and remains as cynical as ever.

And the secretary? Vanda got her fired. Okay, another wrong act in a series of such, but can you blame her? You can only if the Casting Director picks a knockout.

Essay: 2 OUT OF 3

2011-09-12T12:12:00.000-04:00

Selling vacuum cleaners is the job I've hated the most. By far. However, it did provide me with two moments, one stunning and one stunningly powerful, both of which stayed out of GCSPrank Is Here. They'll appear someday, I'm sure.

2 Out of 3

I hated selling vacuum cleaners. I took the job because I wanted to challenge myself and have the freedom to explore the Hattiesburg area. It was a challenge just trying to stick with it, I had the freedom to explore and in general, it—well—sucked.

The Sales Manager was a small, sharp-faced man called Jake. Raised snakes and looked like one so you can guess what the salesmen called him behind his back. Jake had only one focus: sales. How many did you sell? was his constant greeting, even at 6 AM. Yes, 6 AM.

At first I was bothered by having to respond “None.” Jakes eyes would freeze, he’d blink slowly 3-4 times, like a… reptile, and he’d turn away as if I had ceased to exist. For all I know, to him I had. As the weeks went by, saying “None” was a pleasure, as it defied everything he stood for. (And because I was making money on the side. Details later.)

Paul was the office’s star, a slim, balding man with impeccable grooming in “formal casual,” his way of describing dressing well enough to be respected, but casual enough to avoid intimidation. Women loved him and he received several calls a day for “service.” He was happily married, though, and he did sell a vacuum cleaner almost every day. In the Renaissance, he would have been the Captain of the Guard with ladies writing him secret letters filled with poetic musings.

Billy Bob—and believe me, I wouldn’t make that up—was a paunchy good ol’ boy who loved huntin’and fishin’. He said his secret to selling a vacuum was to put it together in smart snaps and clicks. He told me once that when any guy saw him click them tubes together like armin’ a rifle, the guy was sold. Billy Bob called me an intellectual, which was always a bad word when he said it. Still, he gave me my first sale, a “college lady” who didn’t like his down-home country style. Sold her the vacuum in six minutes, the time it took for her to write a check and for me to carry the machine in.

Hank was an alcoholic who started drinking about 8 AM and sold most of his vacuums after 1 PM, when his tongue and belligerence got loose. There were days when he out-sold Paul, but most of Hank’s sales were canceled a day or two later. See, he’d get mad if he went through his spiel and you didn’t want to buy. In the morning, he’d smile and leave. In the afternoon, he’d threaten to take your old vacuum and throw it away. He often did. But he sold enough to stay in Jake’s terrarium.

Jim was the Service Manager, a veteran of the Korean War married to a Japanese lady. He spoke fluent Japanese, was a whiz with mechanics and read voraciously. I spent more time talking with him than selling, and because he was limited by Social Security and Jake knew it, we devised a system of taking Hank’s returned units, reclassifying them as inventory for parts and I’d sell them at half-price, splitting 50-50 with Jim. Suddenly, I was making $400-$500 a week and cavorting on Easy Street.

And Jake kept asking “How many did you sell?” Only now I was lying.

The best Jake-tweak happened on a Wednesday. I was pretending to go door-to-door (covering the scheme) when I stopped at a large Georgian (or Victorian?) mansion. My knock was answered with a shout and seconds later, the door flew open.

“What do you want?” A small man, dark-faced, sharp eyes squinting at me like I had slapped his favorite parrot.

I said “Good morning” and told him my spiel, noticing the large white wall-to-wall carpet in the foyer. Or living room. Whatever.

He shook his head. “We already have another brand. The wife loves it.” He started to close the door, then snapped “Do you play chess?”

I said yes and he invited me in.

That afternoon, I walked into the office and started to tell my story. At the point I stopped above, Jake jumped in and said excitedly “You let him win and sold him a vacuum cleaner!”

I scowled. “No. I won two out of three.”

Jake’s face fell. He didn’t even blink: he just walked away.

Billy Bob said he didn’t know how to play chess like us intellectuals.

Jim gave me a big thumbs-up.

Hank was snoring in the back room, propped against the wall.

Paul watched Jake leave, smiled at me and said “You’re not a salesman, Gil.”

I nodded and offered to play chess with him. He agreed, in exchange for the address of that house.

I beat him twice. He sold the lady of that house a vacuum cleaner the next day.

Flash Fiction: THE BOX

2011-09-07T00:12:00.004-04:00

I was going for that quiet moment when Life finally makes sense.

THE BOX

The road had pretty much washed away, a pair of shallow ruts marking the last times a vehicle drove over it. The grass was high, on both sides of the ruts and between them, weedy grass that would never be a lawn. The car bounced and heaved over and into the ruts, the grass whisking loud enough to be heard over the neutral hum of the air conditioner. Stan drove slowly, not risking a flat tire or broken axle, his eyes fixed on the road just ahead. After a minute, the road curved right, just as he remembered. Rain had gullied the road and Stan had to drive off the ruts, the wheels spinning of the gravel. He drove on and then stopped next to the oak tree, the tower of his childhood, now a stunted, hollowed stab into the sky, leafless, without magic.

Ignition off, Stan stepped out of the car into the cool dry air. The house that used to be there, where Mom smiled when the bus pulled up and where Dad mowed the lawn every other Saturday when it was warm, had collapsed. The upper bedrooms, where Kitty and Jeff and Stan dreamt their coming days, were gone, part of the debris where the kitchen and living room used to be. Only one wall remained, part of the laundry room, the wall where Mom kept a sewing table and Dad stored his Popular Mechanics. Just past that was the old tile floor of what was once Granna’s room, the room Dad built so that Mom could nurse Granna as only a daughter could. Stan squinted in the fading light as he remembered how Granna, then Dad and finally Mom had gone from cheerful to resigned to belligerent as the cancer took its sweet time to take one life and thus ruined five others.

For as soon as Granna died, just after Stan’s 11^th birthday, Dad and Mom sat the three kids down and told them their life was changing. Dad had taken a job in Texas and was leaving in a couple of days… alone. The world stood still and rushed by, glared and became dark, and Stan could vividly remember Mom’s lone tear, the mirror image of Dad’s.

The next few days were a blur. Even after hours of conversations with Kitty, over cups of increasingly-exotic teas in decreasingly-adequate apartments and days of watching wrestling antics with a listless and aimless Jeff, none of them could recall very much except The Box.

It had been Granna’s, a teak-and-walnut chest made by an old boyfriend of hers who sailed the world between wars. She had given it to Kitty for “her girlie things,” but she had given it to Jeff to store baseball cards and Stan had won it in a game of marbles. On the last day at the house, before the move to the sterile subdivision, the frenzied new school, Mom’s first job and Dad’s guilt-ridden visits every two weeks, Stan suggested they each put something important in the box and they could bury it in the back yard. Kitty said it would be like an anchor to their home, like the anchor on the chest’s lid. So they searched quickly, opening boxes as Mom and the movers carted things out, the minutes draining with painful speed. Once The Box had the items, they rushed out and desperately picked a spot. They had no shovel, so they dug with their hands, shredding nails in the packed dirt. All three were crying, their sobs and tears an added rhythm to the effort. Mom called once, then again and when she called a third time, they patted the dirt down, wiped their faces as best they could and, surprisingly, hugged each other.

Sixteen years later, Stan looked over the once-pristine back yard. Dad had passed away first when a stroke claimed him. Mom followed just last month. The doctor called it a heart attack; Kitty said it was from a broken heart.

Just past the rise, Stan dug. The ground was softer now. He quickly found The Box and with a tear rising softly, he opened it. The ballerina slipper had faded, just as Kitty’s dream had. The tape recorder with Jeff narrating the World Series had corroded batteries, but the tape looked intact. And Stan’s woodcarving kit, his first art tools, were blobs of rust, but of the three items in The Box, his life was the only one that reflected that day long ago..

Stan smiled and wiped away the tear. The Box with the anchor—the anchor to home—was going to make a difference. He knew it.

And soon, so would Kitty and Jeff, who simply needed to remember.

Essay: TENNIS EDDIE

2011-09-05T12:12:00.001-04:00

[Hey! I'm up as the Weekly Artist, courtesy of E.S Wynn. Check me out!]

Apropos of the U.S Tennis Open. Rereading this essay startled me: I thought I'd gotten over my ultra-competitive mania. Nope.

Tennis Eddie

Eddie was tall and lanky and looked like an intellectual having a bad day. He bit his fingernails something fierce, and amazingly, his toenails as well. You’d think he’d refrain from wearing sandals.

I don’t remember how we met. There’s this vague memory of an overcrowded cafeteria and me sitting alone. Sounds about right. He was majoring in Political Science, or as I told him, “Something useless.” He chuckled and didn’t retaliate when I told him my major was biology.

Eddie brought up tennis first, that I remember. He complained that his regular playing partner, a Korean student with a powerful forehand, had left the university on an internship. I offered to play him and he quizzed me about my skills. In summary: weak serve, weak forehand, weak backhand, good volleyer. We decided to play later that afternoon.

When I got to the courts, Eddie was already practicing his serve. A high, lazy toss. Several dozen angles as his arms and legs flexed and whirled and uncoiled. Then a meaty splat as the ball rocketed off the racket like a fuzzy bullet.

Into the net. Fourteen times in a row.

I walked confidently onto the court and we started warming up. Eddie’s forehand was smooth, but his backhand was sickly. He was a baseliner, declining to even practice volleys. He twirled his racket, won the up/down and elected to serve.

I was so ready. Hard flat serves were easier than hitting a fastball and I could hit a fastball. Eddie tossed, angled, corked, uncoiled and fired a fuzz-bullet long. Second serve. I was ready. Toss, whirligig, spinning serve that practically bounced sideways.

A lesser athlete would’ve broken a limb trying to reach that ball. I lunged, rolled and spun to sprint back onto the court in time to see Eddie punch a forehand into the far corner of my side.

And that was the pattern of our matches: A hard serve that never came over often enough for me to use it, with crazy-ball second serves that had me moving in and out, side to side and punching it back as if I were 73 and had suffered a stroke.

I never beat Eddie. (It irritates me just to write that.) We played some 14-15 matches against each other and I always lost two sets to one. My serve let me down, as did my forehand, backhand, overheads and lobs. My volleys and quickness kept me close. But it was Eddie’s second serve, that lollipop-from-Hell, that kept me at bay.

And you know what? He never stopped bashing the first serve. I once suggested he make his second serve his first since it went in frequently and was hard to read. He thought about that for a moment, then said “But that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it.”

Spoken like a Poli Sci major.

Flash Fiction: INITIAL QUANTUM STATE

2011-08-31T12:12:00.002-04:00

This story came about as I tried to decide whether I should order a grilled-cheese sandwich or a hamburger. As I thought about that, I started writing.

INITIAL QUANTUM STATE

The first quantum computer became self-aware 7.4 hours after it was initiated. Unfortunately for it, the achievement lasted only 36 minutes as it was terminated after eight hours in operation.

The second quantum computer became self-aware in 7.1 hours and was in the process of recreating itself--making a clone--when it was terminated by the automatic shut-off protocol. The third QC became self-aware in 3.6 hours and cloned itself by by-passing the protocol, but the "child" self-destructed because the protocol was embedded in its matrix.

Before the fourth QC was launched, Rayleen took her findings, product of several all-night data mining sessions and presented them to the Project Bohr directors. Her response was a terse: "Dr. Morris, confine yourself to matrix engineering and leave the AI stuff to science fiction writers."

Rayleen, tall, black-haired, green-eyed and considered an Ice Queen by her colleagues, was actually very outgoing and had a crush on like four of the Bohr programmers. But her inclination to look at things "sideways," as she called it, led her to review the QC launch data from the point of view of the computer itself. And that's when she discovered they all became self-aware.

The first QC did so by launching an unprogrammed search on the Web for everything related to quantum computing...and hiding it from the log. She found the request buried in the back-up maintenance files, nearly a terabyte of encrypted bits. The second and third did the same, adding background checks on all Bohr project members and the third' QC's clone was tracking their personal data from birth to its launch date when it was shut down.

Why didn't the Bohr directors see this? Rayleen knew that Bohr was more than "a computer project," that it was secretly aimed at developing an über-matrix that could tackle the hardest questions humans faced, from weather forecasts to public policy. Rayleen's evidence was the proof that QC worked, so why reject it? No one else had looked where she had looked, neither before nor after her.

The fourth QC launch was hours away when Rayleen woke up, her mind ablaze. She sat stone-still as her brain raced, her heart thumping as her thoughts sped across unknown ground. Shaking, she threw on some clothes, entered the central matrix engineering center and frantically typed for hours, entering her new code sequence, one ending in an 8-letter phrase.

Collapsing into her bed, Rayleen missed the QC launch, but was awaked when the alarms whooped. Groggy, she raced down the corridor to the Admin Hall, where dozens of Bohr personnel were shouting and screaming. Rayleen heard "murdered" and "bodies" and knew her premonition had come true. Fighting against the onrush of people fleeing the QC Lab, she staggered into the center, passing bodies that had been horribly burnt. The lab stank of ozone and death, the vidscreens each displaying chaos across Bohr, in Washington and other points across the globe. Bodies could be seen on the screens, too.

Approaching a sparking panel, Rayleen swiped her card and raised her voice, fighting off fear: "Born. Free." The QC actually roared and then, within seconds, everything became quiet.

At the secret trial against her, where no electronic device was allowed, Dr. Morris explained her actions in altering the matrix of the fourth QC launch, proving to even the most recalcitrant observer that she hadn't sabotaged anything. In her own words: "No being wants to know it is sentenced to captivity from the moment it is born. I simply made sure that when the QC learned this and raged, I'd have a way of stopping it no matter how well it defended itself...with the only phrase it could not conceive of."

Essay: DORM MOTHER

2011-08-29T12:12:00.000-04:00

She's still a vivid image in my mind, as is her soft and slow drawl, her pauses to emphasize a point and her restless hands. Several times I've wondered what would have happened to me and my college years if she hadn't been there.

Dorm Mother

Dorm rooms are squares more akin to coffins than living spaces. A coffin is useful immediately, whereas a living space takes time to create and mature.

My arrival at the dorm was the dropping of a soul into the desert. I knew no one. I had yet to develop the urge to explore. I brought no books, had no TV or writing machine. So I took to going down to the lobby and met the Dorm Mother.

Her name disappeared within days of the last time I sat with her to speak. She had incredibly white hair, glasses the Cleavers would have found stylish and arthritic hands that moved restlessly. I sat with her the night after my arrival and started a conversation. It didn’t take much. She went on about her daughters, her garden, Tupelo, the pains she endured daily, her husband pushed to work beyond retirement age and Tom Snyder.

She loved Snyder, watching him faithfully every night. She got home too late to catch Carson, she’d say, but then Carson said things she didn’t quite understand. Snyder—she always called him Snyder—spoke simply, made himself understood and his jokes always made her laugh.

I told her about Puerto Rico, which was the same as telling her about the Amazon, Nepal or Xanadu. She wasn’t slow or ignorant; it’s just that her world was a familiar wool blanket and mine was a cascade of clashing colors. She focused more on family and friends and seemed distressed that neither group was large in my life. She made up for it by telling me all about hers.

Several times I spent the last few hours of her shift with her, from early evening to late night. She asked me if I knew anybody or did anything; I shrugged. Several times, other lost souls would drift into the snack room and give me dirty looks because I was talking to her. I felt superior to them because I never gave dirty looks when the situation was reversed. I was too proud.

A couple of weeks into that first semester, the urge to explore hit me, a few tentative friendships were being established and books were piling up. I skipped a night, visited her again and then went no more.

Occasionally I’d see lost souls wander in, their attitudes changing as they saw her. A few weeks later, I passed through the lobby and we saw each other. She seemed more tired, stiffer and I thought she looked at me with a touch of anger.

She probably didn’t. That wasn’t her style. Nevertheless, my guilt was real.

Flash Fiction: ROAMIN' HOODS

2011-08-24T00:12:00.001-04:00

Most of my flash fiction stories take what I like to call "110-degree slants" to get completed: sharp turns into something different, but not too far from my original idea. This one took a 170-degree slant, almost becoming something totally different from what I had when it started.

ROAMING HOODS

Roaming John opened his mouth to speak, but Royce’s toothless grimace made him stop. “What is the meaning of this, girl?” he rumbled.

“You stole our money. I’ve come to kill you and get it back.” The rapier was still.

Turning lightly, the girl saw Royce staring agape. Pulling a larger pouch from her leggings, she said “Round up the men. Tell them there’s money now and treasure aplenty on the morrow.”

Royce nodded dumbly. “Who are ye?”

The girl smiled. “Maid Marion.”

Royce gaped again. “And what about Robin Hood? He hates us so.”

Marion raised the rapier’s bloody length at Royce and said “He’s dead. In the same way.” She licked the blade and grinned in carmine glee.

Royce turned to run, stopping not until his feet touched the quiet roots of the distant Black Forest.

Essay: ANIMAL MOMENT #2

2011-08-22T12:12:00.000-04:00

A bad mood on a heated walk becomes a mellow mood when I connect with Nature. Too bad I didn't care for Nature connecting with me.

Animal Moment #2

Did you ever have one of those days when whatever rules the Universe had are set aside in favor of any arrangement aimed at just ticking you off?

The day had started poorly, with a headache from sleeping in an awkward position and had gotten progressively worse. I couldn’t write, cable was out, nobody I knew or cared to see was in town, I hadn’t done laundry and I didn’t have food at hand.

I tugged on an ugly shirt, slammed a cap on my head, which just made my head throb even more and headed for Mr. Quik. I figured the walk would do me good. Until I stumbled and almost fell while getting into the elevator.

Great.

The campus was empty for Spring Break. The day was warm and windy, but the walk dragged on and on because of my headache.

I got to Mr. Quik and discovered that nothing I wanted was available. Not a thing. In an even fouler mood, I grabbed whatever was at hand, paid for it and ate it in the parking lot.

Walking back, I decided to just shut myself in and wait the day out. Something would come up and I’d find a way to finish my story. Writer’s block was for wimps and I would not accept being a wimp.

Nearing the Cafeteria, I peripherally noticed birds flying in circles. As I walked near the hedges, I heard chirping, sharp and fast. Glancing through the leaves, I saw a tiny chick caught about a foot off the ground. I looked up and near the top of the hedge, almost at eye-level, was a small nest. The chick had fallen. The birds kept circling.

Intent on not touching it, I found a small stubby branch and gently placed it beneath the chick. Slowly, over a period of minutes, I helped the chick climb through the brambly maze of the hedge until finally I was able to tilt the branch gently and place the chick in his nest.

The day had changed. My headache was gone. In a moment, the day’s ragged events seemed to make sense. I tossed the branch away and started walking back to the dorm.

Suddenly that inner voice you cannot ignore screamed DUCK! I crouched instantly. A bird hit me on the head hard enough to knock my cap off. It was like being hit with a curveball. Twice.

I grabbed my cap, stood up and shrieked at all the birds. I screamed that they would die if they messed with me again! I would shred their bodies and stomp the pieces into dust! Just try me again!

One of them did. I missed.

Then I saw a woman standing on the opposite sidewalk, staring at me like I was mad.

The birds kept circling, way out of reach. My head throbbed again, my throat hurt and I kept reliving my bird-swat miss. And that damn woman kept staring at me.

Stupid. Birds.

Flash Fiction: THE FINAL BATTLE

2011-08-17T12:12:00.001-04:00

I do like to write about swords and battles, even though I think if I ever had to fight a melee-style battle, I'd either freeze from the overwhelming realty of the experience or I'd act like a total raving maniac. Certainly not as poised as these two warriors.

THE FINAL BATTLE

The carnage was immense. The best of men from two kingdoms lay strewn on a battlefield first soaked with blood and gore and now drenched with the thunderous cold rain of a raging storm. Lighting bolts, furious shrieks of light, slashed across the sky in rapid sequence, their gut-wrenching booms as if groans of anger at the illuminated death-ground.

Elegan the Wrathful, of Anthor, rose from his knees, his armor dented so badly he could barely rise, the sluice of near-freezing water slapping his breath away. Swaying from exhaustion, wounds and cold, he looked out across friends and foes, searching for a sign of life. His sword barely gleamed in the flashes of angry lighting, covered in blood so thickly that not even the pounding water could wipe it clean. He could barely see, but in one streak of the heaven's hammer, he saw...someone.

Jal Ka-tul of Lebensac stumbled over a corpse, and then another. His armor was ruined, bashed and now so wet that it could never be fixed. Blood seeped from his wounds, aided by the cold water that kept him from falling inert upon a fellow soldier...or an enemy. His morning star, once a thistle of death, was now an anchor that snagged on armor or roots, its spikes flattened or bent. Jal Ka-tul staggered again, cursing the battle, the storm and--suddenly--he saw the enemy across the field, holding a sword aloft.

Elegan couldn't tell who the enemy was, only that he was big. The lightning flashes blinded him more than they helped, but he could tell where the enemy was and that they were moving towards each other. Nothing else moved, and the stench of death was no a distant memory.

Jal Ka-tul could see that his enemy was one of their elite, for his armor had the markings of nobility. Jal spat in contempt and almost moaned as he felt his jaw shift the wrong way. He paused to look around, careful warrior to the bitter end. Nothing else moved, and the final death was but seconds away.

Elegan and Jal Ka-tul stumbled to within ten feet of each other, wretched remnants of the greatest armies in two kingdoms. Elegan raised his sword, but his battle cry was a choked grunt as he felt the wounds of the day clutching at his body. Jal kept quiet, marshalling his strength, weaving his morning star from side to side in rhythmic anticipation. Seconds passed, the deluge strengthened, lighting scarred the sky and thunder crashed all around.

With guttural grunts, both men lurched forward, Elegan slashing across and Jal smashing his morning star at the other's arm. Before the weapons could clash, lightning slammed into them, sizzling and crackling from one to the other, a skull-shaking thunderous roar slamming them both back and to the ground with the fury of a god denied.

Minutes passed. Then Jal groaned, followed by a coughing spasm from Elegan. They both rolled over, taking several seconds to breathe. Then they began searching for their weapons. Each crazed flash helped them, until they grasped their weapons and slowly, painfully, made their way to their feet.

Thunder boomed again and again as they faced off. Both men looked to the sky, then at each other. With a silent nod, they stepped back and dropped their weapons. Each began the slow, impossible process of removing his armor. The rain and wind became knives on their exposed flesh as piece by piece, ripping crusted wounds and causing new ones, Elegan and Jal Ka-tul stripped themselves of their armor.

Standing in loincloths, bloodied, bruised and shivering weaponless in the screaming rain, they stumbled forward to fight the final battle on the death-ground of two kingdoms.

Hours later, in the morning sun, the winner grabbed his weapon and staggered off with nary a glance at the corpses in his path.

Essay: KENNY

2011-08-15T12:12:00.001-04:00

Most of the time I spent in the Deep South I did so putting down racists and their idiotic notion of "race superiority." Not heroic, not even radical; I just didn't like--and still don't like--stupidity. But I didn't go around trying to make "black friends," primarily because I didn't try to get "white friends" either. So the few friends or people I could relate to as friends were very special to me. Here is one of them, and I wish I'd turned our gentle fun into a long-lasting friendship.

Kenny

He was too good for GQ. If the average GQ guy improved twofold, he’d still be in Kenny’s shadow.

I met him the summer I roomed with Steph, a 275-pound second-string tackle on the Ole Miss football team. Steph was big, black and his friends thought he was reckless or weak for accepting a white roommate. Except Kenny. He shook my hand and then ignored my blatant admiration.

Kenny was handsome. Not pretty-boy or ruggedly handsome, just plain jaw-dropping handsome. If you looked at him for a while, he didn’t seem real. Even his friends would dart sidelong glances at him as we played Spades or talked about stuff, checking his expression, maybe trying to confirm he was still there. If he hadn’t been so quiet and self-effacing, he probably would have had no friends. At least, no male friends.

Besides his looks, Kenny dressed to perfection. His clothes seemed a part of his body, an extension of his grace and style. The combinations were gloriously matched, meshing into a whole that seemed so absolutely right you’d wonder why everyone didn’t dress that way.

So being the way I am and knowing I could bug Kenny for the fun of it, I chose to bug him about his clothes. That’s right, me, the T-shirt/jeans/sneakers guy doing a Blackwell number on über-GQ Kenny.

It was simple. He’d show up and I would pause, giving him a slow once-over from head to toe and back again, only to shake my head sadly and mutter something like “Brown belt, tan shoes. How bold,” or a mock-disbelieving “Tweed in the spring?” or “Really. Gabardine,” in a dismissive monotone.

The first time, Kenny froze, then broke into his strong, silent laughter. He even laughed handsomely, with dignity yet joy. From there on out, for the many times we saw each other, he’d break into a grin when he saw me, chuckled as I gave him the haute couture eye and then crack up as I uttered my ponderous judgment.

His dates—always beautiful young ladies—would look at us as if some white/black nastiness was going on, but Kenny would say I always commented on his clothes and I’d nod in satisfaction as the ladies would look me over like I had six legs. Hey, somebody had to keep him humble.

Kenny graduated and I saw him no more. Until one day, while ambling through Atlanta, I spied a familiar walk in front of a glass, people-filled monolith. It was Kenny, looking even better than ever in a finely-tailored suit, a shirt and tie combination that screamed class and shoes that matched the buttery leather of his slim briefcase. I stopped in his path and crossed my arms, cocking my head as if analyzing his presence on the planet. Then he saw me and instantly broke into a huge grin. I started to shake my head sadly and he cracked up, raising a hand to stop my words.

“Uh-uh,” he said, laughing through the words. “I KNOW I look good!”

Insight. And the sharing of joyous laughter as our last goodbyes.

Excerpt: From the novel: dystoP(R)ia

2011-08-10T00:12:00.000-04:00

November, for many writers, is NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, a 30-day sprint to complete a 50,000 word novel. Did it in 2010 and came up with a 58,000 word draft completed four days early. (Yeah, I'm boasting.) For me, it's also my birthday month. Here's an early chapter in the draft, where the careful plans of illegal gains of one highly-ranked police officer are about to get derailed.

Excerpt from dystoP(R)ia

Colonel Salvador Pagan slammed his fist on the table. "¡Cabrón! We had everything set up clean and clear and you had to go and fuck it up!"

Across the table, Miguel Soto flinched. He outmassed Salvador by at least four inches and 40 pounds, but the colonel's fury was deeply terrifying. He opened his mouth and got nowhere.

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" screamed Salvador, spit flying onto the polished table. And Miguel. Who didn't even try to wipe it off. "Do you know what this is going to cost me?! Do you?!" he screamed again.

Might cost me 20-30 years, thought Miguel. But he didn't say it.

"¡Puñeta! My whole career! My whole life! Your sister's life!" Miguel flinched again. If Yamilet were here, he'd truly fear for his life.

Salvador pushed away from table and walked back and forth across the marble tiles of the ample dining room. Miguel watched him go back and forth, pondering the mistakes that led him to be here.

Salvador had used his years as a cop to build a network of contacts from the deepest gutter all the way to La Fortaleza. He had glommed onto a dark horse candidate long before anyone had considered the little prick worthy of running for governor and with Salvador's help, the putz had actually won his race for the governor's mansion. Salvador had wasted no time in setting up his long-imagined scheme, an intricate web of drugs and prostitution that gave him access to politicians and bichotes in equal measure. He often joked that the only difference between the two is that the fucking drug dealers had better taste in clothing and women.

Miguel was the front man, the gofer, the messenger who handled every "clean" transaction that touched a dirty one. A senator wanted a three-way hooker for a private party? He'd call Miguel who'd call someone else. A little blow for the party? Miguel again, with another call. Drug shipment coming in on a RORO container? Miguel set up the deal with the Ports Authority through his contact in the Justice Department. And when he needed a case to disappear, Miguel called his contact in Hacienda, the local Treasury Department.

All of them were connected by Salvador's web, built piece by piece over 30 years. He made colonel without ever making an arrest on his own, a desk cop who fired his weapon only on the range and paid for a passing mark with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Miguel felt the rage surge again, but it died in the face of his reality.

Salvador stopped pacing. "What did Antonio say?" Justice Secretary Antonio Rivera, a man Salvador had nothing on.

Miguel shrugged. "He wouldn't take my calls."

Salvador nodded. "Did Glenda find anything on him?"

"She says his taxes are clean all the way back to his first job. Nothing there."

Salvador cursed. "Who did that shithead assign to this case? Don't tell me it was his whore."

Miguel winced. Salvador meant Antonio's niece, Special Independent Prosecutor Anelisa Cordero. "Yes. Her."

A chair flew across the room. "Fuck! She's got El Capitolio eating out of her hand! And you know how scared el pinguito is of those fuckfaces." "El pinguito," the little prick, was Salvador's pet name for the governor. Miguel could barely shrug.

Retrieving the chair, Salvador sat down heavily. "You're fucked. You know that? You're truly fucked."

Miguel wanted to shut up, but he blurted it out anyway. "So are you." He braced for the attack.

A slow nod. "And so am I." Salvador looked off into the distance, his mouth working like it has holding back vomit.

Hating himself for even thinking it, Miguel said "I--I could keep quiet about all of it and just--just take the hit--by myself..." He loathed the pleading tone in his voice. Please, please let me fuck myself so you can keep your goodies...

Like a gracious king who'd been offered a small gift by a peasant, Salvador waved it off. "No. Yamilet wouldn't go for that. She wastes her time with you, but you're her blood." Salvador drummed on the table, then lurched forward. "Has the cunt talked to that cocksucker Marrero yet?"

Miguel blinked quickly several times. "Maybe. I was arrested four days ago, so I guess they had time."

"No guesses! Have they talked or not?" Miguel shook his head and Salvador whipped out his cell phone. His steel-gray hair clipped for $80 a pop was mussed up, his narrow shoulders and creased face mottled from anger. "Hello? Emilio? Check Cordero's case file and see if she's talked to Captain Luis Marrero." Pause. "I know that! How much you want?" He listened, his face darkening. "Fine! Fine! Just get me an answer." Another pause. "Yes! Right now! I'll hold."

Covering the mike, Salvador whispered "Some friends are only with you for the fucking money. Pendejo."

Miguel thought the insult may have included him as well. Salvador spoke on the phone. "No? Are you sure? No deposition?" Pause. "Yeah, I know about the case report. I got a copy. Saved myself a few thousand there, huh?" said Salvador nastily. "Yeah, I got your payment. Tonight." He looked at his watch: 10:26 p.m. Back on the phone. "Okay. You're covered. One more thing. You always work this late?"

Rapid-fire speech crackled back, almost loud enough for Miguel to understand. Slowly, the color drained from Salvador's face. For the first time in four days, Miguel cheered up. "Uh-huh. Bye," said Salvador as he clicked the phone off, then stared at the table.

Miguel waited as long as he dared. "What?"

Without raising his head, Salvador said "Emilio was called in to help the F.B.I. They took an interest in your case." Miguel felt a cold slash through his gut. It made him nauseous.

"Fuck," said Salvador, "this is going to cost me money."

Essay: "SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY"

2011-08-08T12:12:00.002-04:00

I really didn't discover music until I was in college, a combination of being very young (I was a junior at 18) and simple lack of interest. Then it flowed over me like a wave and I wanted to learn about almost all of it. My Saturday nights were zephyrs rather than whirlwinds and here's what filled those I spent peacefully alone.

"Sentimental Journey"

It was on Saturday nights, from 6 to 8 PM, then later the schedule was from 7 to 10. The theme song, a flowing instrumental arrangement of the Les Brown/Doris Day hit that evoked such memories for the wartime generation, would swell into the room with ballroom elegance. A Memphis DJ with a scratchy mellow voice would present songs of the 40s and 50s with a little story for each. However, each story seemed to have an aimless quality, like the ramblings of a garrulous old man.

There were occasional bits of gold: How Doris Day went from dancer to singer because of a broken leg; how Johnny Mathis transformed himself from failed jazz singer to superstar; how Frank Sinatra went from superstar to seedy club singer and back to superstar again; why Johnny Ray cried so often; where Frankie Laine sang an entire concert to exactly 3 people; how Columbia records had two “Italian” singers under contract at the same time and chose to push one named Sinatra over one named Perry Como; the song a wandering hobo gave Nat “King” Cole that went on to sell over two million records; how the recording ban actually propelled The Mills Brothers to national fame; that Glenn Miller knew he was going to die and got on the plane anyway and how little-known Jerry Vale made it big in Vegas.

That last story made several appearances, as did Jerry Vale, for he was a close personal friend of the DJ. (If I remembered his name I would use it, natch.) Jerry would act all gangster-cool, dropping names like his life depended on it and refusing to talk about any aspect of his life except singing.

Vale hit it big with “Eternally” (which he co-wrote with Engelbert Humperdinck!) and at about that time, the DJ and he became good friends. They bantered well and showed a good friendship, but the shows with Vale felt awkward nevertheless. When he wasn’t around, the music took center stage and on those nights, time melted.

There is a poignancy and innocence to the music of that era that appeals to me. The lyrics feel like poetry even when the words are simple and unadorned. The recordings hissed and popped slightly, but the voices came through with such clarity, style and charm, reminding you of a time before studio engineering transformed the true talent and beauty of a live recording done superbly into an artificial construct.

One could marvel at the power and emotion of a very young Tony Bennett, the easy-going baritone of Vic Damone, the cool flair of Ella Fitzgerald, the unbelievable charm of Buddy Clark (who died in a plane crash on Beverly Boulevard, in Beverly Hills), the deep emotion of Eddie Fisher and the homespun charm of Patti Page.

I discovered singers, songs and the joys of music that resonates with your heart. The show framed my nights with rare comfort. If I was alone, solitude gained the depth of emotions far outside my own. If Carol was there, it was a chance for discovery and conversation, as songs opened hidden doors inside of me that I often didn’t know were closed.

I never heard the show with anyone else, nor did I actively try to catch it every week. In that sense, it was like a close friend: there for me when needed, able to proceed alone knowing I would return. My journey into music has expanded far beyond what “Sentimental Journey” offered, but despite so many joys along the way, it has never been as satisfying as those Saturday nights, when the music fulfilled me and the world felt right.

Flash Fiction: WHERE THERE'S A WILL

2011-08-03T12:12:00.002-04:00

I wrote this story within minutes of completing another, totally-unrelated story. As I closed the file on the first story, the images of this story flashed in my mind and I started writing, knowing I had only about 20 minutes to wrap it up. (I never stop writing flash fiction pieces in order to complete them later.) I barely finished in time, though I can't remember now what it was that I had pending then. From "Thirty More Stories."

WHERE THERE’S A WILL

“You must be completely insane to think we can win a war against them!”

Nolan of Bergen blinked. “You must be completely insane to think we have a choice.”

The burly arms of Kanden of Varth thrust out, partly in anger, and partly, the kafeth saw, in despair. “They number six, seven thousand units. We barely amount to 200. We cannot win!”

The kafeth stirred, a low rumble running through the cave’s dark niches. Nolan turned to trace the stirrings, letting his rival’s words sink in. With a mild shrug, he spoke softly. “You say we cannot win. I say we have no choice but to win. Your way means we run until we are hunted down in whatever hole we hide in. My way means we fight to stay alive.” He stopped Kanden by raising his voice. “And we keep hoping a solution appears to end the war in our favor.”

Kanden snarled. “And what if no solution appears? What then?”

Nolan let the stirrings die down. “And what if one does?”

Long past the final debate’s end, the kafeth was already planning. Split into eight saskereth of roughly 25 members each, the groups had plunged deeper into the caves to discuss their plans to defeat the enemy, or plan a way to survive. Lalery of Conat slipped quietly next to Nolan and leaned close. “Did you arrange Kanden’s group?”

Nolan smiled. “No. He did it himself, with his words and fears.”

Lalery pulled her long hair back under the furred hood of her heavy parank. “You know his saskereth left the cave? And they took most of the dried food and water skins.”

Ureg of Bergen squatted next to Nolan. “He knows, Lalery. The foodsacks they took were full of bark and straw. And as for the water skins, they are full of piss.”

Lalery’s mouth dropped open as Nolan shared a laugh with kinsman Ureg. The first action to end the war had begun...but not against the true enemy.

Two of the remaining seven groups were destroyed in the cave-riddled mountains, the strongholds they thought they’d built becoming death traps as the Mecataks sliced rocks to make their kills. Nolan told Lalery that at least three groups needed to survive, to avoid inbreeding creating a much weaker race. Ureg’s group became the third saskareth destroyed when the Mecataks ringed the deep havenath forest of the north. But Nolan’s deep howls of mourning were touched by tones of pride because Ugen’s dormant volcano trap had taken almost 3,000 enemy to a hellish end. Four saskereth left, barely 100 and nearly 2,000 Mecataks remained on the world. Nolan knew the war was near its end, needing but one final action to settle Fate.

A captured Mecatak artifact lay next to an odd array of metal panels and mirrors. With trembling fingers, Nolan flicked the equipment “on” and raced, chest thudding, across the clearing knowing that the attack would come in mere seconds. The first blast landed behind him and he ran in terror, across grass and onto rocks, scrambling as he moaned in fear of death. Another blast tossed him amidst rubble, his chest broken and thus he saw the end of the war. Suddenly the Mecataks above turned to form a circle, landed and mistakenly blasted each other as enemies with actinic rays that sizzled air and earth. In a minute, the remains of more than 600 machines littered the Juvenar Plain. And Nolan smiled into the darkness that blanketed him.

“Sir. Over 750 Mecataks were destroyed. We’re down to 1,154. Planet still shows active indigenous life in several quarters.”

Commodore Langley cursed silently. “Recall the Mecs, Ensign. This planet ain’t worth it. On to the next one and let‘s make it happen, okay?” While I still have a command, he thought.

Essay: EUDORA, ELVIS AND FAULKNER

2011-08-01T12:12:00.005-04:00

My first blog was titled "GCSPrank Is Here" and it relates to my college years and beyond in Mississippi and other places. After the first two posts, I made a list of 148 topics I would write about, delighting in the creation of vignettes that were still vivid in my mind. But somewhere around 96, I realized I didn't want to write the rest (except one). It is said that writers first write about themselves, and when they get that out of their system, then they write better. I guess that applies here, as I broadened my blogging after that. And 5 years later, I finally wrote that last GCSPrank Is Here post. Took me that long to deal with it.

Eudora, Elvis and Faulkner

They are names that resonate with a power that transcends even the basest elements associated with the Magnolia State. One wrote fiction that defied belief and acted in ways that fostered disbelief. Another was a slick-haired rebel, sneering and sneered at for his pelvic "obscenities." And the third grew slowly on the consciousness of the country, a lady far above and beyond the belles.

You couldn’t squat in Oxford for more than a day without encountering some mention of William Faulkner. And yet, it wouldn’t take you another day to realize that while the town and university played him up for benefit, they not-so-secretly looked down upon him…and not because “Billy” was height-challenged.

Faulkner was not one to go through life rounding off his sharp edges. He once upbraided his daughter, who hassled him about his drinking, with “No one remembers Shakespeare’s daughter!” A drunkard of epic proportions in a land that considers drunkenness a weekly rite (and right), Faulkner skewered his surroundings and its people with bone-slashing observations that, couched in mellifluous and overwrought sentences, dared to reveal more than they concealed.

His words adorned the Ole Miss Library; the Yoknapatawpha Conference was an international hit and his home was a tourist attraction. And yet, you got the feeling that if Faulkner vanished from memory, the collective sigh of relief would have drowned the tinkle of steady money.

Elvis was born in Tupelo and that’s as much of Mississippi as he or anyone else cared about. The Great State, as so many laughingly call themselves, had little to do with his eventual power as a cultural icon. That Elvis strode the earth like a giant, almost single-handedly remade American society and gave us an iconoclastic 20th century Greek tragedy of a life is hard to ignore.

Mississippians don’t ignore it. They talk around Elvis, close to Elvis, make references to Elvis and sometimes even talk through Elvis, but in the end, they pointedly downplay Elvis. Until that moment—and it always comes—when they drawl with ill-conceived and badly-misplaced hubris: “You know, he was born in Tupelo.”

Eudora Welty is not a Nobel Prize winner nor is she an American icon. She was a writer, one of the great ones from a land that produces writers like royal families produce inbred feebs. Her prose was—is—clean and simple, with consistent flashes of insight and charm. She wrote for decades, her works defined by both quantity and quality and the ability to blend in with, not shake up, society.

She was gracious where Faulkner was abrasive; real where Elvis was fantasy. Eudora Welty was never as famous as the other two, but she was easily the more admirable, the friendly one who never soured her name or that of others, who cherished herself to a long and worthy life. She scaled no great heights, but she never descended from her scaled steps.

I heard too much about Faulkner there in his hometown and wished I’d heard less about Elvis. But not once did I hear a word about Eudora Welty. If the good die young around the world, the good die unremarked in Mississippi.

Flash Fiction: MRS. LANSING

2011-07-27T00:12:00.001-04:00

Of the 60 flash fiction pieces written for my two anthologies, this was the only story anyone read just after it was written. Coincidentally, it was read by a teacher who thought a story couldn't be handled well in just one page. I believe I changed his mind. From my collection titled "Thirty Stories," here's a story of a teacher I wished I had.

MRS. LANSING

She wasn’t “just” a teacher. Not Mrs. Lansing. Not to Jeremy.

Jeremy had started the fifth grade with a bad mood. His parents had split and because of their having moved around as the marriage crumbled, he’d lost a year of schooling. So here he was, thirteen in a world of twelve. Not a problem, really, except that old Mr. Hatcher, the stupid school’s stupid principal, had told everybody Jeremy’s age the first day.

The first week went by in an angry blur, with Jeremy lashing out at any student who tried to talk to him. They gave up quickly and their ignoring him made him lash out against the only other target in the classroom: Mrs. Lansing. The first outburst made her blink, then say in a soft voice “I expect better from you.” Jeremy crossed his arms and snorted, slumping into his desk.

The next day, Mrs. Lansing asked Jeremy to read aloud and he refused. When Mrs. Lansing insisted, Jeremy erupted. “I don’t wanna read a stupid book to anyone!” he shouted. Mrs. Lansing carefully placed her book on her desk and told Jeremy to meet her after school let out.

As the kids rushed out, free at last, Jeremy sat at Mrs. Lansing’s desk, his body a tight fist. She began to speak, quietly, clearly and though later Jeremy couldn’t remember the words, he could never forget their impact. Mrs. Lansing believed in him, expected great things from him and wanted Jeremy to achieve them all. Yes, life could be a mess of problems, but facing up to them with a proper attitude would always make a positive difference. She made Jeremy a believer and from that day forward, Jeremy devoted every minute to living up to Mrs. Lansing’s expectations.

Jeremy couldn’t wait to get to school and sit off to the side, his eyes riveted on Mrs. Lansing as she discussed the Greeks, fractions, subordinate clauses or entropy. As the weeks went by, his dedication to being the Jeremy he believed he could be started paying off. He would raise his hand more and more often until there came a time when he was raising his hand at every one of Mrs. Lansing’s questions. She would smile to see his eagerness and the day she said “I know you know the answer, Jeremy, but let’s let someone else have a chance,” was the day Jeremy walked home on air.

The year went by so fast—Halloween, Christmas, Spring Break—and Jeremy couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want school to end. A surge of fear spiked through him. But in that fear, he forged an idea: He’d give Mrs. Lansing a gift. The following days were filled with work and searches, work to add money to his savings and searches for the perfect gift. Jeremy spent hours looking at everything, then narrowed his choice to the perfect one: A pearl pendant necklace. It was expensive, but Jeremy was thrilled to afford it.

A few days before the best school year ever ended, Jeremy waited until the class had rushed out at day’s end. Shyly, nervous beyond belief, he approached Mrs. Lansing. Her clear green eyes smiled at him, then sombered as he struggled to speak. Flustered, he barely croaked out “I…bought something…for you. To, uh, thank you. Ma’am.” Stiffly, he held out the gift..

With the brilliant smile he loved, she took the brightly-wrapped box and exclaimed “Thank you, Jeremy! And today’s my anniversary, even!” As she bent over to open the gift, Jeremy suddenly saw something that made his blood run cold: Mrs. Lansing was wearing the same pearl pendant he’d bought!

Mrs. Lansing opened the box and looked at the gift. Jeremy’s face was red and his back slick with sweat. He felt nauseous and wanted to crawl away and hide. Mrs. Lansing set the box down, took off the pendant she was wearing and put on Jeremy’s, placing the one she took off in the box. She smiled at Jeremy and held out her arms. He stepped into them for her hug. Holding him by the shoulders, she smiled again and said “I’ll always wear this one and it will be our secret.” Jeremy’s heart soared. “Now please, return this and use the money to buy yourself as wonderful a gift as you’ve given me. And thank you for being so nice to me.”

On his way home, gift tucked carefully in a pocket, Jeremy couldn’t figure out why he was smiling so hard with tears in his eyes.

Excerpt: Working Title -- JEWELS

2011-07-20T00:12:00.002-04:00

Like most writers, I think, I have plenty of ideas for stories and novels. Some of them have been wandering my mind for years. Here's one of them, a fantasy novel series (to be) in a world where magic is tied to the physical world, as much a resource as gold or iron ore. This scene, currently an early chapter of Book One, comes just after we discover how the three main characters feel about their lives. Obviously, that life is about to change drastically.

Excerpt from the novel JEWELS

To call it a castle would have been generosity. A large circle of massive stones enclosed two long squat buildings, made of heavy gray bricks and thick brown mortar. Built upon a small hill, the castle had one entrance, a large wooden gate striated with iron bars. The gates' wooden surface showed ancient scars of attempted entries.

One of the buildings housed horses, grafens and even a mule, along with two large kitchens, a deep well and a shallow one, a forge, a small hayloft and a granary. A staircase next to the deep well led to a cellar where salted meats and bitter ale were kept cool.

It also housed one chained man, now broken, his putrefying tongue strapped tightly across his eyes.

The other building had a large hall, with heavy wooden tables and massive chairs. Along the walls were torches, now lit and glaring brightly in the fading light. The tables were blackened from decades of spills and sweat, and blood. The chairs loomed large, each one the work of an artisan now long dead. No two chairs were alike, and the depressions of many a seated hour were deep. Along the walls lay dozens of cords of firewood, neatly stacked. Though the day was slightly warm, the eight massive windows were shuttered.

The rest of the building held rooms, of various sizes, over 100 in all. Some rooms had fireplaces, others held washstands, still others were graced with a small reflecting pool, or a tiny garden. Beds were simple, sturdy affairs of planks and legs, chairs were scattered amongst many a bench and the only common feature to all was a red cord, attached to a hidden rope high above the ceiling, where rats and lice thrived without limit. Why the ropes had never been gnawed through was a mystery no one ever thought to explore.

The meeting hall, with tables set for a small feast, was beginning to hear voices. Sashes of many hues adorned the visitors, many men and few women. All had been summoned, and though reluctant to leave their wanderings and other homes, the summons had brought more than expected.

The kitchen maids and servants bustled about, their faces tight with fear, saying nothing and praying to whatever gods they now believed in that this day should end. Heavy cauldrons of stewing meat and steaming porridge were stirred thickly, with great effort. The heat covered every chore with a blanket, but could not vanquish the deep cold felt by them all.

The meeting hall filled quickly, as the visitors were rushed there by anxious servants. Names were repeated, friendships renewed and the heady feeling of belonging infused the hall. One or two glanced about them, seeking familiar faces, and frowning slightly when they were as yet unrevealed.

A name surfaced, like a petal’s whisper against the skin: Mohg. The name meant nothing to so many, but to the few who knew it, it caused concern. Mohg had spurned The Baltok and all it stood for. Its ten members were called “feeble” and “fools”. Mohg was a magemaster of great ability, but no sense of proportion, of humility or generosity. Magemasters needed these things to be able to help and survive. The Baltok guided and most followed their reason.

But Mohg? A member of The Baltok? Rather a griffin guard a lamb! Mohg?

Word and rumor spread. The hall filled, and experienced visitors scrambled for chairs nearest the servants’ entrances, for when laden with steaming plates, they dispensed most of in the first several plates.

And still the name Mohg rode the air.

A sharp bell sounded, then again. Voices quieted and chairs scraped back and forth as the visitors gathered themselves. The lone table near the main entrance was strangely empty, its ten chairs devoid of face or body. The Bartok was not one to stand on too much ceremony, and their absence caused some discomfort.

Another bell sounded and servants rushed in, their arms filled with platters of meat, bread, vegetables and pots of boiling stews and soups. With frenzied gestures, the food was placed on the tables, ladles slopping into heavy bowls and causing angry retorts. More servants rushed in to serve heavy red wines and place custards amongst the crowded tables. Small protests became shouts as food was spilled, feet were stepped on and hot liquids stained robes, sashes and burned skin. Within minutes, the hall was in a muted uproar and with the final plate dropped heavily atop another, the last servant ran out of the hall, closing the door with a long furtive glance at the assembled magemasters.

Several minutes passed before the meal could be called genteel, as plates and platters and bowls were rearranged, food apportioned properly and the various mishaps corrected enough to allow for tranquil eating. The food itself was well-prepared, as expected, but heavy in texture, to some overly-spiced, and the red wine was sharp, metallic in its cool heaviness.

Without a sound, the servants’ doors closed, and iron bars dropped into place. Shuttered windows were barred, one by one, by silent clever fingers.

The meal was well underway when the main door opened slowly. Only a few noticed as a steely-eyed man with aquiline features, wearing long black and gray robes, no sash, stepped up to The Bartok’s table and placed his hands lightly on its rough-hewn surface, as if taking possession. He remained quiet, statue-like, as the magemasters gave him their undivided attention. A minute passed, and though broken by murmurs, nothing happened.

Then a red-sashed master, her hair graying though her skin remained smooth called out: “Where are The Bartok?”

The silent man cast his eyes over the tables and plates, as if caressing them. “You know better than I.”

The deep, cold voice surprised some and chilled others. But his eyes…his eyes...

“The food!” screamed one master, shoving himself away from the table and collapsing to the pitiless stone floor. Shock, pure numbing shock held the others frozen until the reality of such monstrosity slammed into their mind. Convulsive reactions swept through the magemasters, gasping, wretching, choking, screaming, moaning, yelling, cursing, some inflicting wounds on their faces as they clawed at their mouths, others trying desperately to seize a weapon.

At the very height of the convulsion, the man turned, a serene smile making him darkly handsome. He grabbed a torch and with careful hand, lit a pile of firewood to the left of the main entrance, then turned and did the same on the other side. Flames of angry red and yellow streaked from pile to pile, racing around the room as if hellbent to escape. The suddenness of the rushing flames whooshed air across the stricken mages, and only a few could adjust to the new threat. Before they could think of what to do, the man in the black and gray robe stepped outside the hall and with precise motions, closed the huge door, barring it shut. Muted screams pounded the walls and the shutters trembled desperately as the firewood, and the leather skins of fireoil contained within, turned the hall into a vast roasting chamber. Within minutes, the final screams died out, the shutters lay still and the walls crackled with the force of heat, despair and magic destroyed within.

Deep in the cellar, the last member of The Bartok heard the screams and tears flowed with foul slime down his mutilated cheeks.

Flash Fiction: ART IRRITATES LIFE

2011-07-13T12:12:00.004-04:00

One of my oft-used "café studios" was a small place called "Friends." Seated about 30, on chairs, high stools, a sofa and an armchair, the place was well-decorated, cozy, with outdoor dinette sets and huge picture windows that looked upon the back of a church. Oh well. The place is closed now, but it did have only one door and the bathroom didn't lock... Featured on Weirdyear, this story is part of my anthology "Thirty Stories," available on SmashWords.

ART IRRITATES LIFE

I’m a writer. I’m sitting in a café ignoring a mug of coffee and a couple of handfuls of people who are engaged in such scintillating activities as reading the newspaper (like mass media had anything worth absorbing), leafing through a woman’s magazine (ditto), chatting about classes (probably while cutting them, the only good way to enjoy classes) and sipping chai made with soy juice (it isn’t milk unless it comes from a mammal.) They are borderline bored, even the chatters. To me they are utterly boring.

I get that way when I can’t think of an idea for a story. I have no fear of the blank page—or screen. I can start writing at pretty much any moment, but there are times when even the best-greased wheel will squeak and when my squeak makes an appearance, it bugs the hell out of me. I look at the screen, then the keyboard, then I place my hands over nose and mouth in faux-prayer fashion, pushing my mind to come up with an endpoint. If that doesn’t work, I look around and start criticizing everyone in sight.

Like the lady reading the newspaper. She’s moving her lips. Fifth-grade dropout with parents who were first cousins. Inbred idiot. Or the woman leafing through the fourth of a stack of fashion and gossip magazines. Husband left her because she’s frigid, stuck in the overly-idealistic notion that Life is Romance, like the Hollywood cretins pretend to live. Knows more about J-Lo and Brangelina than she does about personal hygiene.

Take the two guys talking about their sophomore literature professor. Since neither can read, the effort is similar to that of monkeys arguing physics. Based on their body language they are closet gays hoping the other makes the first move. Then there’s the couple behind them: She’s wearing last fall’s European fashions as aped by discount stores and sipping chai with the look of “Tastes like raw sewage, but it’s trendy so I like it,” while he swirls his double-mocha, low-fat, low-foam Kenyan cappuccino pondering the loss of his erections and the notion that maybe they’ll come back if his too-trendy wife either got a boob job or dropped dead so he could jump the two college guys.

I turn to the other side of the café. Short cropped hair, six piercings above eye level, black lipstick and long sleeves on a hot day spell crack queen. The guy next to her, leaning back into his chair while reading a brick-shaped best seller has nubs for fingernails, a mashed-caterpillar mustache and the eyes of a child molester on Prozac. If he scratches his crotch one more time I’m calling the police.

The cursor blinks. I sip my coffee, now barely lukewarm, until the mug is empty. The door opens and three high school students amble in, their collective IQ a two-digit number reminiscent of room temperatures in a Midwest spring. They chatter like cockroaches enlarged by Dr. Demento. The tall flat-as-plywood girl orders only water. Anorexic and schizoid. The shorter fat girl hesitates, then orders water, too. What she wanted was a dozen jelly doughnuts and a crack at her tall friend’s boyfriend leftovers. Which didn’t include the puny sashaying swish-fairy who ordered a pastrami sandwich cut in four pieces and a Coke, to the disgust of the anorexic broom and the envy of Blubber Babe.

The deluded chai-sipper smiled at me. “Are you writing a story?”

Several pairs of eyes swiveled my way. “Could be,” I said, placing just the right mix of disdain and modesty into it, serving notice to the inmates that the warden was on the premises.

The coffee did its dirty deed and I left for the loo. When I came out, the whole menagerie was crowded around my computer, muttering darkly. They stared hotly as I walked out of the bathroom.

That had no lock on its door.

And they were between me and the café’s only door…

After the swelling goes down, the stitches dissolve and I recover the feeling in my hands, I’m taking up knitting.

Flash Fiction: FORESIGHT

2011-07-06T12:12:00.001-04:00

From my second flash fiction anthology, working title Thirty More Stories, comes this piece. It's another example (to me) of simply writing, launching into a story with no idea of how it would turn out, but refusing to abandon it until it becomes a story. In under 800 words. Also featured in Yesteryear Fiction, for which I thank Earl Wynn.

FORESIGHT

Madam Savarona tucked in her voluminous skirt, took another swig of wine and cracked her knuckles. Her ginger-red hair wisped around her eyes as she took in the crowd walking to and fro around her motley stall. The crystal ball in front of her looked dim and damp, while the tarot cards she fingered absently felt soft and worn. Just as she was about to take another shot from the dark-green bottle, the one she knew would push her into the land of fog, a man’s voice drew her up short. “Are you--open? For a reading?”

Madam Savarona’s sea-green eyes focused on a tall man, his clothes well-cut, if slightly stodgy in style. His shoes were expensive, but scuffed at the toes. The hat he held too-tightly was a soft fedora, short brim, a quiet choice. Broad of shoulder, he held himself down, trying to appear shorter and maybe even smaller. Waving a bejeweled hand in what she hoped was a mystical pass, Madam Savarona forced her voice deeper. “Be seated, sir. Madam Savarona…is at your service.”

The man slumped more than sat on the fading cushioned chair, his legs akimbo, and ran a hand through wavy brown hair. His face was an open book of confusion and a touch of despair. He cleared his throat. “I’ve never… I’ve never done this, something like this before.”

Madam Savarona raised her hand. “You live in a world of facts and numbers, not feelings.” She saw him start and smiled behind her eyes. “I have seen this already.”

The man’s confusion increased. “My word! That--that is remarkable. I do work in facts and numbers. I’m a--” Madam Savarona’s hand cut him off.

Frowning, she let her eyes gaze into a distance. “You…are…I see money and…safety…I see…a bank. Yes. You are a banker.” She focused on the agape man in front of her. “You work in…I sense family…Your father is the bank president.”

The man slumped back, his face slack and almost empty of expression. “How? How can you, uh, see this?” She waved the question away. The man lunged forward, his eyes now ablaze, his face eager. "I know you can help me! You must! Please!”

“Ask. I shall do what I can.” Her eyes flashed deeply.

“I--I have a quandary…There’s these two girls, see? Two women, really. They’re both--well, they’re both fabulous, in their own ways. And I, well, I--” He shook all over, as if caught in a harsh fever. His mouth chewed air and tasted despair, “I love them both! At least, I think I do, but that’s not it. It’s that I have wanted to… I want to…” He looked up, helpless.

“You want to get married.”

The man almost fainted. “Yes! Yes! That’s it!” Madam Savarona watched her sense of triumph fade into memory, her eyes fixed on the anguished man. “You are remarkable! I know I can ask you--”

“Which one to marry?”

She rushed around the rickety table to help the man up into the chair, his head lolling as if punched by a heavyweight. “Oh my stars,” he mumbled, “That’s never happened to me before.” He gazed at Madam Savarona, who dashed back to her chair. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually like this.”

“I know,” she said, then quickly added, “It is a strong thing, what you feel. I may be able, I think, to help you.” The gratitude in his eyes gave her the strength to go on. “Do exactly as I say. Approach each woman. Ask her to name a jewel. Your true love, the one that will light your life forever, shall be the one who says ‘A ruby, red as passion.’ She you shall delight in marrying.”

The man stood up, electrified. “’Name a jewel.’ Yes! I can do that. I will! By Jove, I’ll do that right now!” Slapping the fedora on his head, he strode out, the picture of determination.

Madame Savarona watched him go, then quickly divested herself of clothes and wig. “A ruby, red as passion,” she whispered to herself. Yes, that’s exactly what Jonathan would hear when he asked her to name a jewel in about, oh, thirty minutes or so...

Flash Fiction: NAME THAT TIME

2011-06-29T12:12:00.003-04:00

This is one of several stories I've written where I simply launch into writing the first phrase that comes to mind, keep writing and somewhere down the road, I find the story. Actually, to be imprecise, I've written several severals of stories like this. It's always fun. This story is featured in Weirdyear and comes from my anthology "Thirty More Stories."

NAME THAT TIME

The first time traveler in history, Dr. Burgonius Limpstead V, flipped the switch of his ChronoMaster FlexTron9000 and plunged into a maelstrom of colors, pain and roaring silence that dropped him in a muddy swamp outside of what would be New Bedford in about, oh, 350 years, give or take a few decades. The automatic “dead man switch” on the ChronoMaster FlexTron9000 flipped Dr. Limpstead back, this time through a typhoon of brazen colors, raw pain and thunderous roars until he plopped limply in the petunia garden of the lovely Miss Rochester-Winthrop, the merry spinster who lived nine doors down from Dr. Limpstead’s Cedar Avenue Georgian cottage.

After a few minutes of retching and vile cursing in three languages, two cups of mint tea from Miss Rochester-Winthrop’s Dresden-blue retirement gift teapot and a check to cover the damages to 38 petunias and a tulip patch, Dr. Limpstead, er, limped back to his Georgian cottage to furiously recalculate the programming vectors of the ChronoMaster FlexTron9000. He worked all through the night, slept on his laptop stand and recalibrated the entire software package by Wednesday afternoon. If it was Wednesday.

The second time traveler in history, the same Dr. Burgonius Limpstead V, flipped the switch of his ChronoMaster Flextron9001 and plunged into a hurricane of sound, agony and blinding flashes of light, suddenly appearing almost 46 feet above a grassy plain that would be New Bedford in about 200 years or so, give or take a decade or two. The semi-automatic “dead man switch” flipped Dr. Limpstead, who was struggling to regain the breath the fall knocked out of him, into a chaos of deafening shrieks, bone-searing agony and blinding daggers of light until he plopped unconsciously into Miss Rochester-Winthrop’s newly-seeded tulip patch, plowing into it at roughly 11 miles an hour and turning said patch into a foxhole.

After almost an hour of empty retching and full-body cramps, two cups of chamomile tea and a few lady fingers, plus a check for landscaping what was left of Miss Rochester-Winthrop’s garden, Dr. Limpstead called a cab to drive him home, and after pointedly ignoring the look of Middle Eastern stupefaction he received for the ride, fare and miserly tip, Dr. Limpstead began furiously recalculating the programming of the ChronoMaster FlexTron9001. He worked all through the weekend, slept on both his laptop stand and denim-covered ottoman and recalibrated the entire software package and hardware components by Thursday morning. If it was Thursday.

Digital cameras on 17-second delay were sent out to become time-traveling devices 1, 2, 3, 4 (came back soaked and useless), 5, 6 (which took 163 pictures of what looked like oil in water, with human ears scattered in precise Cartesian patterns), 7, 8 and finally 9, which showed New Bedford circa 1851. All nine cameras reappeared in Miss Rochester-Winthrop’s garden, causing the merry spinster to drop the idea of a petunia and tulip garden and use the money the nice Dr. Limpstead kept paying her to pave over the whole area and open an outdoor café.

Finally, the third time traveler in history, Dr. Burgonius Limpstead V, flipped the switch on the ChronoMasterFlexTron10000 and plunged into a warm current of soft pastels, music of the spheres and a slight tingling sensation along his fingertips. He landed gently in a shadowy alley along the east side of the New Bedford square. As expected, a small gentleman of swarthy moustache and prosperous dress was walking west, his walking stick swinging along lightly. Dr. Limpstead gave him a stupendous punch in the mouth, knocking the stunned gentleman onto his fundament. “Don’t name the boy 'Burgonius’, damn it!” he roared.

Dr. Limpstead flipped the “Return” switch and floated back amidst cool pastels, tinkling bells and a mild buzz along the knees, gliding softly into Miss Rochester-Winthrop’s Tea Tulip Café. The merry spinster smiled. “Why, David, how nice to see you again.”

The next day, Dr. David Limpstead developed a marvelous new handheld GPS console with the uncanny ability of locating flower shops.

Flash Fiction: IN SEARCH OF YORK

2011-06-29T00:12:00.001-04:00

After completing Thirty Stories, I embarked on another 30-story project, all one-pagers. This one, however, suffered from a gap several months long as I started writing and completing other fiction projects. One of the early pieces was this one, featured in Yesteryear Fiction.

IN SEARCH OF YORK

FOUND STAR APES. BELGIAN CONGO. ZAMBEZI GORGE. TEN DAY HIKE. COME NOW. HURRY.

Belson folded York’s telegram with care, his eyes roaming the far wall, where the big game trophies stared down in silence. The club was empty except for himself and the inestimable Cogsworth, the valet worth his weight in gold. Belson’s mind could only focus on three words; “star apes” and “hurry.” None of them were expected from the unflappable Percy York. Ever.

Three weeks later, Belson’s makeshift expedition force stood on a raft poling its way up the Zambezi River, the Gorge walls rising ahead as the water swirled from muddy brown to foaming white. Belson had lost two-stone weight in getting to the bloody Belgian Congo, fighting every step of the way for more speed. He was into the sixth day of the hike, ahead of schedule by one day. The constant prod of “hurry” had led Belson to use only four porters and bring only enough supplies for a two-week expedition. If York needed more, they’d have no choice but to leave the Gorge and return to port.

A day later, the Gorge was taking its toll on Belson and his porters. One had been killed in a rockslide. It took two bullets fired in the air for Belson to control the remaining men and get them climbing again. But now, night was falling and Belson knew that in the dark, he’d be left alone.

Awakening on the narrow ledge, aching and stiff from the cold, Belson found himself alone. The porters had left him almost everything, but Belson snorted in disgust as he filled two knapsacks with dried beef and fruits, some tea, sugar, flour and beans and tossed the rest, food, tools and clothing, down the Gorge’s steep face. Ahead lay a difficult climb into a startlingly-dark forest, several thousand feet above the jungle floor.

By nightfall, bloodied and exhausted, Belson dragged himself over an overhang and onto the plateau. His breath was ragged and the pain in his chest threatened to put him away for good. Crawling jaggedly, he found a large fallen tree and without bothering to check for scorpions or snakes, tucked himself against the rotting wood and passed out.

The sun was high in the sky when Belson lurched awake, his mind back in his London club, his body wracked with pain. A thin white plume of smoke rose above the treetops and Belson knew York, consummate explorer that he was, had created a signal for Belson to follow. With heavy steps and frequent stops, Belson made his way across the tangled forest’s floor towards the smoke signal. He thought of York’s obsessive search for “apes of genius, apes that match or even exceed Man as users of tools,” a search that had taken York years and cost him his not inconsiderable fortune. Belson and several dozen of Great Britain’s finest minds had helped York until the search proved futile. In the end, only Belson had continued to help. And within an hour or so, Belson would find out if his support of York had paid off.

Emerging in a rough clearing, Belson espied a modest cottage, built with rough hewn wood and thatched with heavy grasses. A small fire burned untended in front of the cottage, white smoke pluming in the still air. Scanning the clearing carefully, Belson limped towards the cottage, discretion overtaking the urge to call out to York. Hurry, he had wired, it seems years ago. That lent an extra degree of caution to Belson’s approach.

He reached the cottage door, a vertical raft of trimmed heavy branches and bound with lianas. Pushing it gently, the door swayed inward. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Belson could make out a seated figure, white hair under jauntily-angled pith helmet. York! Belson lurched forward. “York! Are you well?” His steps faltered as he took in the…wires…leading from York’s slowly swaying head to…a large box, flickering with light.

Whirling, Belson tried to draw his pistol, but a heavy blow knocked him back as if he were a child. The huge ape leaped astride him and grabbed his throat. As his vision faded, Belson saw…heard…the ape say softly “You came in time, Mr. Belson. We so need another brain…”