WeAreNotThis is out. One of my short stories was accepted into this charity anthology.
Some things have happened this year to make me … exasperated with the government of my adopted home state of North Carolina. The people are amazing. The state beautiful. The NC Legislature needs to learn (pardon FDR for the rip-off) the only thing to hate is hate itself.
https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Not-This-Carolina-ebook/dp/B01M5FVA7A/
Image Courtesy of Kittisak at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
“So who are you voting for?”
I jerk up from my reading to see the hottest senior in school motion at my stack of biographies and autobiographies. Blinking, I refocus my eyes behind my glasses. “I’m investigating.”
Collapsing in the chair next to me, all male and taking up twice as much space as me just sitting down, Grayson pulls out “The Art of the Deal” by Donald J. Trump from my pile and starts thumbing. New ink and paper scent waft to me, my personal aphrodisiac, sending my heart double-time. The town library hadn’t been able to keep up with the demand until the most recent book order came in. They called me immediately since I donated to the special election order, and I think I have the only one still left in the building.
I set down “Living History” by Hillary Rodham-Clinton on top of “Hard Choices” by the same author. “I’ve already checked that out.”
“I’m only looking.” Grayson snaps the book closed and tossed it on top of “Seven Principles of Good Government” by Gary Johnson.
“Have you decided yet?”
His dark eyes roll before he pushes his hands through his hair. “Who knew adulating would be so hard?” He links his hands behind his head, leans his chair back on two legs, and looks at me. “I was ranting at my mom since she was forcing me to finish my homework early so I could watch the debates. I mean, what does it really matter? I’m stuck with whatever people decide, right? She stopped me cold when she pointed out my birthday is the day before the election, so I will be 18 and get to vote.” He gives me a half grin, making my heart beat even faster than opening a new book. “The next day after school, she dragged me to the board of elections and got me registered.”
“Did you do that draft registration thing too?” I smile back. Grayson and I have been teamed a lot since junior high for group projects, mostly by teachers to keep the star running-back’s grade point high, so him talking to a nerd like me didn’t make me go all tongue-tied.
He rocks a bit. “Nah. I’ll just run by the post office the week of for that one. I just got to get it done before the summer job starts.” The chair clicks as all four legs returns to the floor after the librarian wiggles a finger our way. “So what is a brainiac like you still doing in school at 18? I figure you would have skipped a grade or two.”
“An accident kept me out of school for four years. I’m lucky to be on level. My birthday is November first.”
He whistles softly. “That was some accident.”
I glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, it was.”
“No fly zone. Gotcha.” Grayson stands. “But, you know, if you need to talk about it…”
Smirking, I cock my head. “And why would I talk to you?”
“I don’t know.” He reaches behind his head to adjust the hair band holding his dreads, blushing a bit. “I thought, maybe, we were, like, friends.”
I bite back a laugh. He was serious.
I frown.
“We are, kind-of.” I stand, stacking my books. Hell, why not. If the people I am reading about can run for president, I can at least ask. “So are you taking anyone to the prom yet?” I glance sideways, causal-like.
A smile starts spreading wider and wider on Grayson’s face. “Depends. Are you asking?”
My eyes immediately drops to “A Woman in Charge,” and I gulp. Women can be anything. Firmly putting the books back on the table, I turn to face Grayson, clasping my hands in front of me. “Would you do me the honor of escorting me to the Senior Prom?”
He leans forward and grasps my right hand. Reluctantly, I let him pull it up towards him. I’m sure my face was a mask of confusion. He gently kisses the knuckles while staring down my arm into my brown eyes. “The honor is mine.”
What? He wasn’t joking.
Breathless, I couldn’t keep from asking, “This is for real. You aren’t going to a locker room and joking about this later.”
“I don’t do locker room talk.” Grayson’s tenor hardens. He hadn’t let go of my hand yet. I feel his breath brush my fingertips.
I swallow again. “Okay.” I step closer as my arm is a little uncomfortable with the way he is holding it. I apply a little pressure downward.
He guides the joined hands down but still doesn’t let go. “You have my number, right?”
I nod.
“Good. I still got yours from the science fair project.”
I nod again.
“Would you like to go for pizza?”
Pizza. A date. Think. “Who’s driving?”
Grayson shrugs, pulling my hand up a little with the motion. “My provisional license won’t let me have passengers, how about you?”
“I’ve got a full license, but no car. I was going to walk home.”
His eyes drop to the table. “With that load of books?”
“A girl’s got to do.”
Grayson grabs my other hand and wraps both around him. “How about this? You drive my car. We go for pizza. You drive home. And then I can get home from there.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
A new smile crosses Grayson’s face. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. “Deals should be sealed.” And his head drops until I feel his lips on mine.
(925 words – first published 10/23/2016)
http://www.environmentalcaskets.com/
You are born. You die. In between is when the world exists. Or that is why people say.
Maybe they believe in heaven, or hell, or reincarnation, but the only surety is the here and now. Between birth and death. That is what people say.
People lie.
Waking up inside a coffin can rearrange your world.
Trying to escape the top-of-the-line casket your family bought with the unused portion of your college fund can drive you half mad. Sure the adjustable bed and mattress are nice during the breaks between claustrophobia panic attacks, but the chemically treated interior isn’t exactly fresh air.
Eventually the white satin lining, cotton padding, strong metal interior and beautiful mahogany wood exterior gives way to your screams and pounding. To your sobs and clawing. To your whimpers.
It’s not like the fancy locking mechanism is on the inside.
You wonder if you would have to pay extra for that feature.
Of course once you break the casket, you got a pile of dirt to get through. Worms, roots and the flowers your family left. Hopefully you don’t loosen the headstone so it falls on you as you emerge.
And for that trip there is no adjustable bed and mattress to rest on. You only thought you knew claustrophobia in the casket. When you breathe dirt and can’t move your fingers because of the earth falling down, you go truly mad.
Rain fills the spaces between the dirt. Don’t even try to move after a downpour. The disorientation will make you dig in the wrong direction. But you won’t care. All you want is out.
Eventually your reach it. The surface. Hopefully it’s night, because after the endless dark of digging your way out, the sun bloody hurts. Hopefully no one is around, because after all the effort to get out, you are hungry beyond measure.
If you are lucky, you are a zombie and those worms were tasty snacks on the way up. You may be able to pick and choose who your grab.
Vampires have it much worse.
The madness makes it easier to do the first kill. But the nourishment heals you, body and mind. So you get to go mad again when you realize what you have done. What you have become.
You get to go mad every night for the rest of your life.
Vampires have it easier. Most walk into the sun before they hate themselves forever.
Zombies have to find someone to kill them.
Which is hard, because it ain’t exactly assisted suicide. The monster in your head has a will to live. It dragged you kicking and screaming through the casket, dirt and first kill. The monster that is you doesn’t want to die.
So you got to trick it. Trick yourself. Something only the mad can do. Fortunately you are already there. And if you are lucky, you have someone who loves you enough to kill you.
(words 496 – first published 5/24/2013; republished new blog format 10/2/2016)
Image Courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
“There you are.”
Turning her head from where it was buried in her hands, Rafaela squinted against the sunlight coming through the storm drain opening, barely making out a head turned sideways looking in. The shimmering lock of dyed red head confirmed who had hunted her down. “Jenna.”
“The one and only.” Her friend carefully stepped into the round opening to walk on the curved inside of the pipeline. “So what is it this time?”
Leaning back from here she had been curled against her knees, the Latino-American waited for her friend to join her. Once Jenna reached where Rafaela sat, she braced her feet against one side of the drain and her back against the other. Her dark hands rested against the concrete surface steading her in the semi-awkward position. For a second her eyes closed and she stroked the concrete. After breathing a sigh of relief, she opened her koi-lined eyes and brought her hands to her knees.
“Just thinking about the case.”
“Oh god, you’re taking it? The guy is as guilty as shit.”
The right side of Rafaela’s mouth turned up and she shrugged.
“Don’t give me that lawyer crap of confidentiality.” Jenna waved both her hands. “You forget, coz, you had me touch the evidence.”
“Bagged evidence.”
“Like my psychometry cares when that level of emotions is involved. The money was his, the gun his, my god his emotions from when he shot the officer were so strong. He hated Officer Galuppi’s guts, personally, not just because he was a cop.”
Rafaela winced at the rush of words and the truth behind them. “But the drugs were not.”
“The guy is a drug dealer.”
“Still the drugs were planted by the cops so they didn’t need a warrant to search his car and that is how they found the gun and blood-coated bribe money. Thank you for seeing that.” Rafaela squeezed her left hand into a fist and released it a few times. “I really wish they hadn’t planted evidence.”
“Nunez would have dump the gun before they had a chance to get a judge’s signature. That bastard has killed before.” Jenna leaned forward and whispered. “I think he’s an ejecutor.” Returning to bracing herself against the curved surface, Jenna slapped her hands against her legs. “How can you defend a criminal?”
Contemplating her left hand, Rafaela squeezed it into a fist and released it a couple more times. “Because it protects the innocent.”
“What?”
“Everyone needs their day in court. It’s how our justice system works.”
Jenna’s hands swept wide. “He’s guilty. Justice is going to jail.”
“In this one particular case, maybe, but not if the whole system is going to work.” Rafaela looked into her friend’s dark eyes. “Only by protecting the rights of each individual are we able to protect the rights of all individuals.”
Shaking her head, Jenna soften her voice. “I never realized you were a social activist.”
“Yeah, well.” Rafaela shrugged and looked deeper into the shadows of the dark side of the drain pipe. After nodding at something that wasn’t there, she stood in the pipe. She hunched much lower than Jenna, being just shy of six foot instead of Jenna’s short five foot two height.
Rolling on her hands and knees to stand, Jenna led the way to the lip of the drainpipe. She tossed her hair to look over her shoulder. “Care to give a girl a lift?”
“Not a problem.” Rafaela reached forward, touching Jenna on the shoulder and then closing her eyes against the bright afternoon sun beating its way into the darken pipe to focus on her task.
Once Rafaela muttered “All done,” Jenna bounced outside of the drainpipe and quickly ran up the steep sides of the concrete channel. “God, I love that!” She continued to bounce in a circle at the top, reaching heights of five and six feet while waiting for Rafaela’s more sedate ascent to the top of the drainage system.
Rolling her black eyes, Rafaela made an adjustment to the gravitational field surrounding Jenna and herself, bending the light, making them effectively invisible. Jenna’s whoops continued to echo throughout the city drainage system.
(words 698 – first published 9/25/2016)
Image Courtesy of renjith krishnan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Dialogue Tags
Should you do it or not?
I’m talking dialogue tags.
What on earth were you thinking?
Debate rages in the writing realm. Some point out that “he said”, “she said” has no real effect – people are trained just to glance over these cues of who is speaking. So we may as well go back to using them. Whereas for the last couple of decades “said-isms” have ruled – muttered, sputtered, growled – but these start getting annoying after awhile.
I am from a totally different camp entirely. I like to write short, which means every word counts. Why would I use words people just glance over and do not contribute to my story. And for the longer works, again, why add something annoying or invisible when I can use description to enhance the dialogue. A writing weakness is keeping scene description and dialogue separate; once a writer gets in one mode, they tend to stick with it. But using the scene description to provide the dialogue queues instead of dialogue tags, the two required writing tools do double the work in half the time.
WRITING EXERCISE: So this month’s writing challenge is write a scene – likely you will need more than 100 words. Make the scene about the dialogue, but without dialogue tags (both saids and said-isms). The reader should clearly be able to tell who is talking. An example is below.
*****
Clifford & Rozetta 2
“Oh God, Clifford, why are you here?”
The man jerked, spinning around to see his wife. “Roz!” He crumpled the racing form and stuffed it into his shirt.
She pushed her way through the lines around the betting booths. “You promised!” Tears formed in her eyes, but the panicked edge to her near-screams were what made the crowd give them room. “You were doing so well with the 12-step.”
“Roz, Rozzie, Rozetta, it is okay hon. Just this one time. I have a sure thing.”
“NO!” Her voice broke. “No more.”
Clifford reached towards his wife but she stepped back. “It’s for us sweetie. A way for us to get our house back.”
“The house was lost two years ago.” Roz’s mascara ran in streaks. “We just got back on our feet enough to stop living in the cars.”
“Yeah, got really lucky last month.” A proud smile crossed his rugged good looks.
Her voice dropped to a hush, still audible in the crowd because everyone was quietly trying to ignore the couple. “How long have you been betting again?”
“After two trips to the Y, I realized only losers are part of the program.” The man grabbed the shoulders of her tread-bare coat. “We are winners, you and me.”
“You Lied To Me?!?” Her quiet accusation carried to the front of the line while they unconsciously moved forward as the betting lines continued to be processed.
“Honey, you weren’t ready yet.”
“No, no more lies.” She shook him off. “No more luck, no more sure thing. We’re done. I’m done.”
The last person in front of them cleared. Cliff pulled the betting form out of his pocket. “Give me a second honey.” Smiling, he turned to the window.
Roz screamed. Even the bored cashier paused pulling Clifford’s form and cash through the drop slot.
“Don’t come home. No, do come home to that shithole apartment. Me and the kids will be gone.” She stalked off, the betting lines parting like the Red Sea before Moses. Crazy beats obsessive.
Clifford shook his head in exasperation. “It is a sure thing.”
The cashier nodded his head.
“She’ll be back when I am rolling in the dough.”
(Words 366 – first published 2/19/2015; republished new blot format 8/23/2016)