The promise of Christmas

Walking on Cobblestones

This is the opening paragraph to a WIP that I am playing around with. I am not sure if it will go anywhere: maybe it will... maybe it won't. The Main Character is an archaeologist who is in search of her holy grail and winds up with less than she hoped for. Unfortunately her hopes make her blind to the facts and the maneuverings that follow leads her on a winding road through political intrigue and religious squabbles.

For starters: What do you think of the title? The character: Love her? hate her? Is she sympathetic sounding? Intriguing?
As always: The characters and events in this post and all connected posts are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. 


Gleaming white against a backdrop of cerulean sky, she ascends amidst the rock and clay, angel of light rising up in an intangible dusk that has followed her halfway around the world. She stretches her arms outward as though to take in the broken and shattered, hands aching palpably. Involuntarily, she rubs the hollowed center of her hand, sensing the inarticulated connection. She stares into the clouds, heart aching for the brokenness she senses crying out in the darkness. She looks up, her mute supplications carried up on the wings of the wind as it whips up and over the rock, lifting her scarf vertically out from unyielding shoulders, a semaphore for change in the days ahead. Oblivious to the gales that assault and batter, she is statuesque, patiently awaiting the days ahead. Gray pillows boil toward her on the desert’s horizon, hungrily swallowing all that is in their path. The laying out of battle plans: gathering of forces, placement of reinforcements, lines being laid for attack are in full operation by the forces that will bombard are all that concerns her. Alliances have been made, the enemies of her enemies moving together, whispering conspiracy that her eavesdropping ears picked up in the halls she once dominated. Impending attacks from distant shores are what she deliberates and prepares for, knowing they will attempt to assail her position so she will be vulnerable to a full on assault with the final aim of making her their inverted Hypatia. Her arms raise involuntarily once more, vulnerability in gesture and frame, yielding to heaven as gracefully as Henry the Eighth’s second wife.

meeting place

On the mountaintop...

Come sit with me, my friend
with pen and paper we shall sit
and from such views we shall write
wondrous tales of
Crossing the harsh Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter,
     skeletons along the way their stories untold

Death of a Blogger

The characters and events in this post and all connected posts are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. 

The Final Post

            A bolt of lightning ridges out across the sky as torrential rains cascade down onto the asphalt outside your window. You glance up, too engrossed in what you are reading to be impressed by nature’s sudden onslaught except to reach over to shut the window to keep the computer screen from getting dowsed. A second take at the date on the blog entry and you’re convinced it’s time to move. Two days since the body was discovered and the case is already in active decay. Opening the file, you glance over the police report and nestle the receiver under your chin as you absentmindedly dial. “Can you get in here? We’re going to take another look into the Thebeauld case.” Without waiting for an answer, you drop the receiver into its cradle and tap out the seconds as you wait for the appearance of your reluctant partner.

The Game is afoot!

The characters and events in this post and all connected posts are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. 

Death of a Blogger

            Sagging into the chair, fingers tingle and palms itch as his heavy limbs reluctantly bend making him suddenly aware of the cement blocks at the end of his legs. Nerve deadened shoulders alarm even as the anesthesia creeps up the neck and refuse the brain's command to turn. His cornea sloshes sluggishly sideways and attempts to focus on the figure that reclines a few feet away.

            “Din think I dran tha mush. Strong stuff!” the words slur and stumble past an enlarged tongue just as the edges of his companion blur and enlarge. “Gla you came. ‘Appy we go to ace-to-ace after all ‘is—” a sob breaks off the incoherence. His ghostlike guest slips into the air next to him then suddenly explodes into jigsaw puzzle pieces as a murmured reply breaks through, “Your okay. Relax— Sleep— off. See—  tomorrow— John.” Then louder, insistent and closer “John? I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.”

            The shards of broken body filter out of view as the room silly putties into shapeless lumps of darkness. The heaviness on his eyelids drags them down and pulls him finally into darkness.

**************************

Local High School English Teacher found dead

Teacher found with both wrists slashed

By Stephen Johnson in Salina, Kansas

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Local high school English teacher facing an ugly divorce has been found dead in his Salina home, his wrists slit and a bottle of sleeping pills by his side.

The apparent suicide of John Thebeauld was discovered early yesterday morning after the neighbors noticed his dog scratching wildly at his screen door. When they knocked to let him know the dog was loose, they realized the door was unlocked and investigated to make sure the neighbor was okay. What they found was chilling.

Sitting at his darkened computer, the teacher and failed writer had placed a waste paper basket partially filled with water, his hands dangling down into the buckets. A carving knife was on the floor beside him but no apparent suicide note was found. The police and emergency personnel were immediately called but it was too late. Investigators were not yet ready to give comment but they seemed to indicate this might be connected to the rancor of the divorce.

Thebeauld lived with his wife in Salina for the last fifteen years, was beloved by his students, known for his  involvement with the regularly held Shakespeare Festival in the area and his annual booth at the local craft fair where he sold wood carvings. The couple had no children.

**************************

The report crosses your desk. Just another writer committing suicide. A cliché really. If you weren’t so bored today you might have filed it away and never looked at it again. But you decide to google his name and came up with a single hit which led to a blog that left you with more questions than answers…

**************************

where do you go from here?

Writing is... easy?

The second crusader challenge has been posted and here are the guidelines: 
Write a flash fiction story (in any format) in 100 words or less, excluding the title. Begin the story with the words, “The goldfish bowl teetered” These four words will be included in the word count. 

The Writer

The goldfish bowl teeters as I lean forward to toss the page into the chasm between houses that stand back to back against the onslaught of weather. Falling back into the chair, I begin my opus -60 a fifth time. I palm the stem that sits at hand. Wine washes down a sob. Murmuring quietly "not writer. Hack!" I push myself away from the table. Catching on the corner of the chair I tip… teeter-totter… steady myself before avalanching off the balcony and tilt toward the nearby Jacuzzi, falling gracelessly into the womb warmth of the water. 

******************* 

Death and Politics at the end of the world

Sunday is the day I am going to be posting from my WIP so bear with me. If you are lost you can go back and read the first few pages here. The character is driving and this section is stream of consciousness so you are jumping right in to her drive down to Key West...(Thanks for any input you care to give!!) Little note: I think the paragraph immediately following this will be formatted differently... not in a paragraph. On the blog I'll leave it for now but visualize it as a chain down the left side of the paper with each shade and size of font on a different line. I think it works better...   

Maybe I should call, has to be there has to be she can’t be gone—mistake has to be—missing? That can’t be right She can’t be. Missing Went for a drive and ran out of… or maybe just needs time. Time? Maybe met someone. Left Dave? No. Can’t be right! Loves Dave. Means the world to her. She’d never. Don’t believe it for an instant. But she’s… Missing. Time for herself working too hard stress restaurant not doing well… maybe.    Said “gone” right? GONE as in they don’t know where she is. Didn’t mean dea—not dead. Gone dead?  She’s MISSING… Murdered? Oh my go- NO It can’t be that! Too terrible Think logically, doesn’t make sense. Make Sense All right… She doesn’t just take off. Not a runner, a fighter. If things weren’t going well? she wouldn’t just… not a bird. NOT her But if she were taken by force she would fight and they might… OH MY GOD

                                    The median!

Pay attention, drive, can’t think about it right now.

                        Fifty-nine miles→already

Radio… distraction…can’t think… FOCUS   

Sailing away to Key Largo…

We had it all …

Just like Humfy and Bogall..  

Starring in our own la—

John may call…

doesn’t,

shouldn’t matte…

It’s over

Too many differences…

couldn’t work it out…

if I -- younger… prettier…

didn’t see it coming…

Finally, the Train Bridge: famous…  

calendar, paintings- palm trees, train track, ocean… postcard perfect…

                                                            oops, Original Overseas highway-

still a beautiful… umm, twenty feet.  

Just like Bogey and Bacall…

Watchin those old movies- fallin in love so ten-- tend --er…

                      er-rrhmmmm.  

Idiot.                                        Stupid love song IDIOT

                                 Too stupid to be believed- hormones.

Aunt missing, MISSING, MISSING

breaking up….

had to do it now, stupid man

 No more crying.

Seven Mile Bridge

  not a good place for car trouble

So high… swerve… Dive! Dive!

Eyes on the road—

A tiny key, Mini Key… Mini Mouse Key

…a piano with too many keys.

Breathe--- Breathe-- water’s beautiful… on and on. Read the signs.  

Hungry…

thirsty

Key Lime Daiquiri, Floridita--- Marguerita! 

Wastin’ away again. . .   looking for my mmm, mmm.

Banjo’s…

lots to drink...

dance,

sing…

stars…. 

End of the world… wizards and angels… 

Key West chooses you.

                     

Sunset Key.   

                                                                        hmmm hmmmm . . .

Searching for my lost shigger of salt-

Some people claim that there’s a ma-an-n to blame- Yeah there is---

It’s his damn fault.

His damn fau---

Nearly there.

God I hate Buffet…

What was that music…?     

                                     Something like…

So magical: Should have fairies,             

Palm trees … forget this

                                                            spray … forget that

Or, forgetting specialists, hmm---

In the real world…  bartenders

Six miles.

Drive right into the ocean…                                                   real dead end! 

Five miles to the BEST Key Lime pie

Number One Key Lime Pie…

Favorite Key Lime Pie…

Award Winning Key Lime Pie…                               Who decides these things? 

Key Lime cookies-

Key Lime cake-

Key Lime ice cream

Key Lime soup

Chocolate-covered Key-lime-on-a-stick

Key Lime off-a-stick

Key Lime Lemonade

Key Lime Margueritas

Key Lime edible underwear…    hmmmm

Some people claim that  

there’s a ma-an to blame

                                                        Song’s a virus

Hog’s Breath—God’s Breath—hamburger yummers!… with everything… fries, Bartender’s special drink---

P-Thingy.

Do these people know how to drive? For God’sake

Bone Island: Boner…

Boner Island?

Key-

Boner Key—Bonkey… 

Don key Otee.

move! I need to go!

“Land of the Free because of the brave”- MOVE, moron.

Left turn, right?

Right… Right?

No! left… right.

Southernmost Point

Southernmost Real Estate

Southernmost Hotel

Southernmost Café

Southernmost Bank

Southernmost Key Lime Pie

Southernmost oxygen.

Most Southernmost

turn…

Busy!

People everywhere.

It’s a zoo…

Death and Politics at the end of the world

I was hoping to get a bit of feedback on my WIP from my blogging friends. On Sunday evenings I will post a page or two of Death and Politics at the End of the World and I'd like to hear what you all have to say! (I will make one disclaimer: the formatting that I use does not translate on blogger. In Word I use Fonts and WordArt in order to achieve a certain effect which you will not have the benefits of. Hopefully you will enjoy it anyway...)

The air envelops, vacuum-sealing the skin with moisture, ill-fitting and alien. Clothes react to the alteration in the physique, ironed pleats melting. Tendrils of mouse brown bangs cling- cooked spaghetti in a pan. It isn’t until the Ft. Lauderdale airport fades from view and the Florida toll road that the air conditioning in the rental beats back the sullen mid-afternoon July heat.

            Palm trees and sprouting developments dapple the landscape, the tropical foliage out of place among the hastily built habitations, dubitable monuments to William Levitt. The loosely coiled expressway through Miami is pleasant: Toll booths unfortunate dams in the Gulf Stream’s trafficked flow. I cynically wonder if the state doesn’t encourage rental agencies to recommend the “road less traveled” to ensure the population of their taxable byways. With Christmas morning anticipation, I strain to get my first glimpse of the exit to Homestead and Highway One, the expectancy of arrival heightens as I contemplate the solitary dime jingling in my pocketbook. They can pave the everglades on someone else’s penny. They’ll have to.

            I tuck my wallet away, relax into the leather of the import and set the cruise control, realizing even as I take my foot off the accelerator that the stop-and-go flow of the mostly one-lane highway will make cruising superfluous. I gaze off to the side, anxiously awaiting my first blush of the ocean… new time, new place. Key West is a different world—anything is possible; the real world, paradoxically, is the unwanted dream. The carbon dioxide in the back and deepest section of my airway passage loosens, releases…

At last…

Blue, turquoise, green, indigo, cyan, white surf spraying, rolling, pulling, dragging out… nothingness.

Sailing away to Key Largo

Here’s looking at you, kid…

 Buccaneer Drive… hey there Buccaneer!

                         

               Stomach’s rumbling…

won’t starve, lardo…

Key Lardo…

   hate McDonald’s.

Key West,

97 miles

            two hours    tops . . . 

Captain Jim’s Diving and Shoveling

… shoveling? …

fish?

Pay to shovel fish?

Snorkeling! More like it. 

Ann’s Beach… sand, warm water, sinking, drifting, kelp anklets, slimy, green things… used to hate it-

grew on me.

Wonder if he’s heard anything. . .

                       Surely has-          

                                                                        happens all the time. . .

misunderstanding, miscommunication, misplaced, missing, mistake… 

Poisonwood Road. 

One mile to Islamorada—Ila,

or Eeesla?

Yzma!

What poison… poison for Cusco? Yes, that poison… wood.  Bible. King --  who???                     . . . solvent?                             solver! 

Hey! C’mon, move it! Want to be there before the sunset… or sunrise at this rate! Need to get around this beat up bug, long-haired potsmoking lib--- “Oh look honey, another pro-lifer for war”... hilarious! 

Squinting.

Glare is horrible…

beautiful.

Just like Bogey and Bacall…

starring in my own late, late show…

I told it all.

Deer Key

deer crossing-

drive slow- or… speed up

deer burger.

L              o              n              g                                      Key.

          --ish

Houses with legs -- 

elevators for handicapped? Water would swirl…

 a personal Jacuzzi…

worry it would crash—

                        debris,

swirling waters,

sharks,

I—

can’t sw-

sssswiii-

ssswiiiiimmm!

Theater of the Sea      Catchy!

Servile sea-life:

And Now Ladies and Gentlemen… for your viewing pleasure.

And next door: Sea-food Buffet. That makes it easy: A retirement center- Flipper in a whole new show!

Ladies and gentlemen… now for your dining pleasure.

                                        Dolphin Preserve...

  ...Dolphin Exploitation! 

First date

This is a work of Fiction...

One life had been filled with vows, promises, children, pets and mortgages. After he'd gone the sweet comfort and reliability of the days gone, just heaviness and day after day of getting through. The children called to report on lives they lived, little thought given to the echoes in the rooms or the coldness of sheets. "Kids are great! You should have seen Jack! Just like Dad! You okay? You should go down to the Retirement Center. Have some fun for once!" 

Fun.......

Loneliness consumed her, swallowing her in gaping jaws with insatiate animal appetites. She breathed the tattered flannel shirt they'd tug-o-war'd over (the worn material made perfect dust cloth) and turned up the sound on the shopping channel for the soothing sound of chatter. Occasional conversations with friends were marked with echoes of empty chairs "Vera's husband passed away and they don't expect Ruth to make it..." 

  "You have to dance with me!" he'd spotted her before she'd decided to hang up her coat and stay for the Christmas party she'd been reluctantly talked in to. "I do?" He swept her into his magic act, disappearing coats, transformation tricks, waltzing as he laughed into her ear that she was the most beautiful woman capable of doing much more than shuffling in the entire building. Air and a rasping wheeze were the prelude to exploding convulsions that nearly doubled her over "Is THAT your line? The best you can do?" Their twinned laughter broke past the band's front lines and caught the attention of the elderly in the front row whose faces immediately pruned with distaste. His laughter belled through to the rafters and she hid her face on his shoulder.

"That was ten years ago today..." she leaned back into the gentleman on the couch at the Inn at Charlotte where we were enjoying champagne and a light snack in the final hours of the afternoon. "We've been laughing ever since. I hope you all have as many happy years together" We clinked our glasses in a final salutation and we watched them depart.    

A mother's gift

This story was told to me incompletely by my grandmother (the picture of the doll is not a real likeness but I image that it might have been like it- simple and possibly faceless or just button eyes) but when she was in her 70s perhaps even 80s it was still something she spoke of. I have weaved a story together that may be fiction but contains the realities of how she was raised and what her life was like. I hope you enjoy it...  

"Thou must the doll leave, Evelyn. Thou art too old for puppets now and thou must a bag hold" The man's workworn hand rested heavily on the young girl's shoulder while he eagle-eyed his family's earthly belongings a few feet away.      

"It was a gift from Mama," Beseeching eyes sought the employed eyes well above her own. She train whistles his sleeve in a last ditch effort to drag his gaze down to meet her silent petition. "Please, please, please, let me take her... please, please, papa, pleeeease..." the prayer flutters through the air, an unnoticed gnat flying past his head and off into the clouds. 

The straight-as-an-arrow-back moves purposefully away from his youngest child, pleased that the difficulty of the extra bag was solved without extra charges. He musters his sons and offers the play-by-play of what to do with the luggage, the whos, whats, and wheres given out in short order. The command to move is indicated with a nod and the boys jostle off, tossing bags like balls, laughing and calling to each other, a center ring show for the passengers waiting to board as the stern patriarch overseas, his disapproving glare an attempt to remind them they are God's Chosen not wild bucks fresh from the plains but he remains silent allowing for boyish exuberance- time enough for them to grow up. 

The child stands watching her older brothers, a silent stream flowing down her cheeks. She strangles a sob in her throat, fearful of the sound that will erupt, afraid of drawing attention to her grief. She clings to the doll fiercely as though it were the blurred edges of memory, the fading image of her mother's grip on hers. She plants her feet and studies the platform for possible escape. A cool gust of wind blows through the gates, recalling the bitter Saskatchewan winter they'd just survived. She thrust the doll under her hand-me-down coat in defiant possession of the remnant of her childhood... of her mother. 

The train's deafening call for boarding finally sounds and her brothers and father wave that the rest of the family should follow them aboard where the bags will be divvied up and they will travel for days to the new place in America. The hustle and bustle is at a peak and the young girl is hopeful that her deceit will work. She heads up the stair and buries her head, snuggling her bulky middle so that it is less noticeable. 

"Evelyn," the woman's hand landed on her shoulder as if descending of the heavens. "Thine father hath told thee that the doll must be left. Give it to me." 

"Please Miss... I mean, Mother. He won't notice. I'll hide Miss Margaret and he'll never see her again. Please, can't I just... she was a gift, my moth---" the words faded into murmured nothingness as the child understood futility, the eternal "No" in her eyes. 

"Give it to me." The doll was dislodged from her hiding place next to the child's heart and taken into the woman's lanky fingers. The woman stepped quickly down the steps and glanced around for a quick place to dispose of the ragged toy and spotting nothing close by, she dropped the doll to the ground next to the wheels of the train.

The writer and I

She studied the elderly gentleman, pecking his keyboard as patiently as a hen finding her dinner from the grass beneath her. In one fluid motion, he yanked the paper from the roller, basketed it with one hand into the wicker basket, got up from his chair and stretched in front of the window, irritation set in his shoulders. 

"Why do you let it get you so upset? Why don't you just type away, get the words down and worry about changing it later? You're just writing a rough draft..."

The etch in his brow was deep so that it nearly knit two into one. "You don't just "type away."" The words tripped in his throat and he coughed on the flem that came up with his disgust. "Typing away... anyone can do that... you'll never be a great writer... You didn't come here to be Anyone. You came here to learn how to be a great writer, you said, to learn from me! And I'm telling you, you have to write from your Truth and writing from your truth isn't always easy. It doesn't, that word you young people say, "flow." Sometimes it means writing the same sentence over and over again until you've got it... Perfect, the way you want it." He gathered himself up and marched out of the sunlit room his disgust still articulated in my hearing "young people... write from truth... not about rules about writing, words on the page... about Truth." 

I stood back watching as the door slowly closed, leaving me alone with the echo of his relicked ideals... 

My truth? 

Send in the Clowns

She basks in the light as though the moon has turned it's eye on her alone and left the rest of the world unlit. Her face is rent with sadness and a waterfall of tears has gathered at her feet. Words pour forth as she shares her heart's brokenness with the few hundred who spectate on her sorrow and she moves forward to gather them into her grief. Her woe moves into agonies that stir the hardened beholder to near tears themselves as the soliloquy reaches its desolate orgasm. A pin dropping would be ashamed to have broken the stillness and the actress bends forward to weep in the fading spotlight...

The silence is deep and profound and appreciative of the moment so the actress doesn't move, patiently awaiting the bone crushing response such performance is due.

Silence.

She peers up from her pose on the wooden floor out into the dim faces of her audience to find their gaze intently on her, yet mute and motionless.

The curtain lowers, slowly hiding their watchful stares and the stillness of the nearly full auditorium continues as the chains and actress hit the floor as one. "Don't they get it?" Rising, she moves quickly to where she can fix her stare on the stage manager who tiptoes back into the darkness, abandoning curtain and call for safety. "Don't they understand what they saw? Can't they acknowledge it and show some appreciation?" She spins toward her fellow cast members. "That was great." No questions asked. "Don't they get IT?" As a group, the thespians scuttled back to their dressing rooms to avoid the possibility of flying props or tossed tools. They knew their leading lady too well...

As they scamper from view, the diva pivots in uncertainty then pauses, pregnant with idea. She walks to the corner of the curtain, yanks it back and thrusts herself back out onto the lip of the stage, the crowd restlessly poised for departure.

"What is your problem?" Her voice is perfectly trained to reach the uppermost seats under the balcony. "Don't you understand what you saw here tonight? Don't you get it?" A few faces turn toward her, smirking slightly, then turned to follow the rest of the exiting crowd. "Are you so stupid?" At her full voice the windows rattle threateningly. "I am fucking good and That..." she gestured back towards her final moment. "deserved a standing ovation, I think. Don't you think?" The crowd moves more quickly with each word, pouring through narrow doors with an urgency that speaks volumes. "God damn it, would someone answer me? Don't you get it? The silence is killing me! Was I really that bad?"

The final question, overflowing with insecurity and fear, catches a young man's attention just before he herds out of the building. He pauses and looks back at the wannabe starlet exposed as a child longing for attention. "You're the one who doesn't get it," he steps a foot or so forward so he will be heard. "We were moved beyond words... beyond applause. It seemed we had been allowed into the privacy of your soul... clapping seemed a mundane response to the moment. We didn't respond because we didn't want to intrude. You were wonderful, you stupid cow. And now you've ruined it all by screaming for applause." Then he turned and walked swiftly out the door as she puddled to the floor...

Tiger imagination

Dinner lies hidden in the bramble, quietly napping in solitude spotted only by Ace Hunter of the Jungle also known as mighty Prince Balaji the Bengal Tiger. I creep up, stealth and clandestine as though my very feet are made of feather, behind my prey until a rustle in the brush on my left causes the deer to jump very nearly ending my ambush. I pause, statuesque, a crackerjack stalker, until the unsuspecting mark reclines back and closes his eyes. I step forward allowing my foot to break a limb causing a panicked response but I know just which way he will go. He doesn't stand a chance...          

"Rowr!"

The coin

         A penny lay on the pavement unnoticed by most, but the coin collector spotted it amidst the yards of pavement and bent down to pick it up. "Guess what year?" He held it up so she could scrutinize it's smooth edges and dark coppered tinting.

          "1986" a random guess as good as any other she shrugged.

          "Close. 1982... If you could go back, what three things would you do differently?" An everyday question that had no everyday answer.

          1982.... the world turned upside down and inside out and wrongside up.

          "I'd change... everything." No place to begin or end in this story. "Everything needed to change.You?"

          He shrugged. "Dunno. Not much. Nothing really, I guess. It was good."

          "You were fortunate. Most of us have something we wish we could change" She noted the obvious and they walked down the street, their arms around each other in a deep silence that held regret, satisfaction, contentment and love.    

Stretching

Shadows of darkened buildings reach across the street, clutching the byproduct of the sun’s golden strands and pulling it into its famished jaws, melting the night’s lustrous sheen into solidarity with the night. A shard of laughter trumpets into the night, the night crowers as familiar to the town as the feathered braggarts that stroll the streets as confidently as… The door clicks behind her and stillness as solid as the shadow causes her to pause into the night’s trepidation. She stumbles onto a still-lifed street, veering away from contact with the nightcrawlers that give the city for a reputation that rivals this big Apples, Easies, and O’sies and her ankles quiver uncertainly, hinting at alcoholic influences. She reaches a battered two-door and leans heavily on grime frosted side panels, pausing for an uncertain moment.