*****
…it hurts …it hurts… but it won’t matter none in a little while anyway. I’ll just sit here in the dark and wait. Wait for him. And remember. Remember all the reasons, all the nights. I can remember some happy times, but they was scattered about like chocolate sprinkles melting on a smoking gun.
I must have been real little when he started coming into my room to hurt me at night ‘cause I can’t even remember any times when he didn’t come. He would get drunk at Smitty T’s and come home late and bang into the walls and curse. I used to laugh when he ran into things, but not anymore.
And Mama, well, it seemed like Mama was always sick, laying in the big bed, all wrapped up in a ratty old quilt Gram made her when she was little. Big purple bruises showed up like magic on Mama’s face, her shoulders, her arms and her neck. Sometimes a tooth would get loose or her long black hair would fall out in big clumps all over her pillow.
She was real sad. I didn’t like Mama being so sad. I loved Mama.
Nighttimes were the worst. Mama always cried at night.
When Mama got real sick ‘cause she was having a baby soon, that’s when he started coming just about every night. I think I was five or six, real little and scrawny. He was so big his head almost scraped the doorframe. He swooped into my room like a giant black shadow-monster or vampire in those old black and white movies. And his mouth tasted so bad I almost threw up.
Days were okay. He usually slept until I was already gone for school. And when I got back, he was at work or Smitty T’s getting drunk, so I could spend time with Mama. Mostly I just held her hand and helped her make dinner and tried not to look in her face to see how sad and scared she looked.
Then one day I came home from school and he was there, waiting for me. He said Mama was in the hospital having the baby. Then he pushed me into my room.
In the daytime.
Mama came home from the hospital with a tiny wrinkled bundle of red screams and curling fingers. I stayed home a lot from school to help out with the baby. Mama named her Alice. That’s a real nice name. I liked feeding Alice and didn’t really mind changing her messy diapers too much. Pretty soon she sort of smoothed out and got real cute and would smile at the faces I made at her. Mama sometimes even smiled.
He didn’t come into my room so often at night, but I could hear Mama crying again.
Mama got real skinny and could hardly stand. Her face got all white which made the purple splotches look even darker and more scary. Mama needed lots of help with the baby. I stopped going to school so I could help her take care of Alice.
Mama said I should always take care of Alice.
It was usually a lot of fun being with Alice. We played on the floor in Mama’s bedroom so she could watch us. Once Alice fell and hit her head on the corner of the table next to Mama’s bed and cried and cried. I cried, too, and me and Alice held on to each other like we was the only ones in the whole wide world.
That’s when I promised her I wouldn’t let nothing happen to her, ever, ever.
Sometimes Mama would tell me to get the old cigar box out from behind the headboard on her side of the bed. It was stuck back pretty far and I always had a hard time trying to wiggle it out. The first time she told me to get it, I couldn’t figure out what she wanted a smelly old cigar for, but after she lifted the lid I saw lots of money, mostly fives and tens. Mama would take some and tell me to go to Penney’s to get Alice a new dress ‘cause she was growing so fast. I asked Mama where she got all the money and she patted me on the cheek and said she’d been saving for a rainy day.
This I didn’t get at all, seeing how it was the middle of July and really hot and blue outside.
‘Course now I know what she meant. I understand a lot of things better now.
Alice was growing up really pretty. She looked a lot like Mama in those old pictures I found in a book once, with pretty dark hair and great big brown eyes and long long eyelashes. I don’t know who I look like. I’m real skinny and have wavy brown hair and light gray eyes and a big hook nose and nobody here looks like that. Mama said once that I look just like Sam, but I don’t know any Sam and Mama wouldn’t tell me who he was.
Mama got sicker and sicker. Her skin looked like it would fall off if you touched it. And always there was those big marks on her, coming out of different places and then turning green and fading away. And then they started staying green for longer and longer, ‘til she was almost all green and looked like she was wearing a Halloween mask.
Pretty soon she died, I guess. He said she had to go to the hospital but she never came back and I was too scared to ask.
He started coming every night after Mama left. I asked him to please not come so often ‘cause it hurt so much, but it didn’t matter none to him. He just laughed, his big yellow teeth glittering in the dark, and reached for me, clawing at my clothes and hurting me.
Sometimes I hated Mama for going away.
And Alice just kept getting prettier.
I saw him looking at Alice with those creepy vampire eyes right after her eighth birthday and got real scared. So I dressed her in the ugliest clothes I could find at Penney’s and cut her hair real short like a boys’. I hoped he would leave her alone then. But he got real mad when he saw her, grabbed me and some scissors and cut all my hair off, too. He threw me on the floor like a rag doll and kicked me in the stomach. I cried and tried to get away from him, but he kept kicking me all the way down the hall to my bedroom.
It hurt so much, what he did them. It was much worse than anything he did before. The pain went all the way up inside my brain. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die.
But I didn’t die.
I showed Alice how to push the dresser up against her bedroom door at night. I won’t let him do that to Alice.
I have to take care of Alice.
One hot sweaty night I guess he wasn’t so drunk a usual ‘cause he didn’t run into the walls. He pounded on Alice’s door and yelled at her to open it. I got up and went to him. I told him to take me instead.
He did.
And I started crying at night just like Mama.
I kept Mama’s cigar box in my room, way back in the closet behind my old raincoat. I thought about running away with Alice, but there was hardly no money left. I kept having to use it to buy food for Alice and me ‘cause most of the time he was too drunk and forgot.
Alice just kept getting prettier, even with short hair. She started getting little tiny boobies lots earlier than I did. And even though I tried to hide them by making Alice wear great big sweaters, he could see. He kept looking at them and licking his lips and his hands kind of grabbed at the air. I was afraid he would come after her when I wasn’t there, so I took here everywhere with me, even to the bathroom.
Sometimes when Alice and me would walk to the store to buy milk, boys looked at Alice real hard and made funny noises and followed us around until I turned and yelled at them to get lost. They called me mean names but they left us alone. Some construction men whistled at Alice and said nasty things every time we walked by. I always ignored them and we walked real fast to get away. Then one day the lady at the grocery store said Alice was just about the prettiest thing she had ever seen and boy, was her mama gonna have a hard time with the boys in a few years. I knew the lady didn’t mean it was Mama who would have a hard time with the boys.
She meant Alice.
Once when he came home drunk and banged real hard on Alice’s door, I told him to take me but he pushed me out of the way. I saw Alice’s door moving a little with each pounding and could hear her crying, huh-huh-huh, real soft and scared. I got up off the floor. I unbuttoned my shirt and opened it. I yelled at him to take me instead. He looked and grabbed me hard..
It hurt so much.
But he left Alice alone.
There was hardly no money left so I went looking all around mama’s old room for more cigar boxes. I didn’t find any.
But I did find the gun.
I didn’t know they made guns that small. At first I thought it was a toy, but it was so heavy and cold and it felt almost alive, like it was waiting for something. I was afraid of it, but I kept it anyway.
It kept getting harder to take care of Alice. She was so pretty. And he got madder and meaner and kept hitting and hitting me ‘cause I wouldn’t let him get to her. My face got all purple and green just like Mama’s. And sometimes, I hurt way down deep inside, in places I didn’t even know I had.
And everywhere that Alice and me went, boys followed us and men whistled and honked their horns. I got real scared. I couldn’t keep them all away from Alice.
The money is all gone and there is no milk and it hurts so much all the time…
So now I am waiting for him to come home. I am sitting the dark listening to the creaks the house makes and remembering.
Here he comes. He is a big black shadow moving in the lighter shadows. He bangs into the walls and curses. He stops in front of Alice’s bedroom. He pounds on the door. He yells for her to open it.
She won’t answer him.
I turn the warm gun over and over in my hands. My fingers trace the little curly designs on the silver handle. My legs shake. My mouth is dry.
Soon he’ll see my door is open.
And I’ll take care of him just like I took care of Alice.
******
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
I wrote this story many years ago after hearing about a couple of old ladies (sisters) who were very close throughout their lives. The elder sister had protected the younger much like the nameless girl in this story, but they both survived more or less intact.
This story has received several awards, been published a couple of times and was even performed in a dramatic reading about five years ago at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center. Some people do not know how to take it, some are made very uncomfortable, others deny that anything like this could happen and others, after reading or hearing it, have told me their own very personal stories of childhood abuse. I am proud to have written something that seems to affect people as much as this one simple story has.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Teenage Angst
...
I find it amazing, even after raising six (yes, SIX) kids to adulthood, how each of them has manifested their teen angst/brain-fades in completely different ways. The youngest, who is 16, told us that he is sometimes ashamed of us (big surprise), and then is embarassed that his dad drove him to his performance today on the Harley. Apparently, his observations are that only "white trash and middle aged people ride Harleys" (his words, I swear!). This after last year when he LOVED going riding with his dad.
He is also all freaked out that we refuse to buy him a cell phone. Actually my words were, "You can have a cell phone when you get a job and can pay for it, just like a car."
Apparently that makes us BAD parents in his eyes.
And here I sit, thinking it makes us GOOD parents. Too much is just GIVEN to our teens until they develop a real sense of entitlement and don't realize that in the real world you actually have to work to get stuff, and work some more to keep it.
Anyway, just like all of you parents out there, I am often amazed at how well our kids turn out even after being total aliens for one to six years.
From pouty and sullen looks to uncontrollable screaming violent rages, we have experienced an extrememly wide range of teenaged emotional sturm und drang. We often wondered if WE would survive this time, our children's descent into hell; where logic and patterns suddenly dissipate into wildly flucuating emotional storms that pop up like dust devils out of the clear blue sky and throw dust and trash into your eyes... and children with whom you shared very special and adorable beautiful bonds suddenly hate you with every fiber of their being.
Oy.
Every parent who survives this period shares a very special bond. Just mention your own teenage horrors in a group of parents who have lived through it, and the rolled eyes, nervous laughter and their OWN horror stories will flood out, and we can all laugh about it, sharing in the pain, which of course, makes it easier to bear. That laughter gives us release, helps us to realize that we are not alone. We are NOT bad people or horrible parents - something that we all fear in our secret hearts.
We are simply riding out a tumultuous storm that cannot be controlled, only experienced. We are attempting to deal with the sudden dissapearance of our much loved child into a demon possesed creature you barely recognise, all the while attempting to maintain a Family with your partner and any other brothers and sisters with love and patience and guidance (and maybe a touch of humor) every single day.
The hope I offer to anyone going through it, or seeing it come down the road, is that it is unavoidable, but you will survive it, and you are NOT alone.
Just Musing,
Susan
...
I find it amazing, even after raising six (yes, SIX) kids to adulthood, how each of them has manifested their teen angst/brain-fades in completely different ways. The youngest, who is 16, told us that he is sometimes ashamed of us (big surprise), and then is embarassed that his dad drove him to his performance today on the Harley. Apparently, his observations are that only "white trash and middle aged people ride Harleys" (his words, I swear!). This after last year when he LOVED going riding with his dad.
He is also all freaked out that we refuse to buy him a cell phone. Actually my words were, "You can have a cell phone when you get a job and can pay for it, just like a car."
Apparently that makes us BAD parents in his eyes.
And here I sit, thinking it makes us GOOD parents. Too much is just GIVEN to our teens until they develop a real sense of entitlement and don't realize that in the real world you actually have to work to get stuff, and work some more to keep it.
Anyway, just like all of you parents out there, I am often amazed at how well our kids turn out even after being total aliens for one to six years.
From pouty and sullen looks to uncontrollable screaming violent rages, we have experienced an extrememly wide range of teenaged emotional sturm und drang. We often wondered if WE would survive this time, our children's descent into hell; where logic and patterns suddenly dissipate into wildly flucuating emotional storms that pop up like dust devils out of the clear blue sky and throw dust and trash into your eyes... and children with whom you shared very special and adorable beautiful bonds suddenly hate you with every fiber of their being.
Oy.
Every parent who survives this period shares a very special bond. Just mention your own teenage horrors in a group of parents who have lived through it, and the rolled eyes, nervous laughter and their OWN horror stories will flood out, and we can all laugh about it, sharing in the pain, which of course, makes it easier to bear. That laughter gives us release, helps us to realize that we are not alone. We are NOT bad people or horrible parents - something that we all fear in our secret hearts.
We are simply riding out a tumultuous storm that cannot be controlled, only experienced. We are attempting to deal with the sudden dissapearance of our much loved child into a demon possesed creature you barely recognise, all the while attempting to maintain a Family with your partner and any other brothers and sisters with love and patience and guidance (and maybe a touch of humor) every single day.
The hope I offer to anyone going through it, or seeing it come down the road, is that it is unavoidable, but you will survive it, and you are NOT alone.
Just Musing,
Susan
...
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Short Story: UNTITLED HORROR STORY (part 2 of 2) (Rated PG13)
*****************
PART 2 OF 2
*****************
I finally got a ride the next morning from an older couple in an ancient Lincoln. They looked very safe. Or so I thought. They did drive me into the next town but I had to endure an ear-splitting lecture on the state of my EVerlasting EE-ternal soul and how I must let JAY-sus into my heart to drive out SAYYYY-tan and his EEEvil carnal ways of the FLESHHHH which is the road STRAIGHT into EEE-ternal fire and damn-NAY-tion!
You would not believe these people. They were like something out of an old Twilight Zone episode. The lady had a hair-sprayed helmet of blue-silver hair that came directly from a bottle and a high lace collar that was so tight her neck wrinkles kinda spilled down and covered the lace in front like those hangy-down rubbery things on a turkey. And he was no better. Mr. Hell-Fire, with a neck so thick it was wider than his fat face, busting out of an old light blue leisure blue suit that looked about three sizes too small, driving so slowly I thought time had actually stopped. He kept thumping the steering wheel with his fist and shouting “AMEN” every time his wife said something Very Important, which was at least four times per run-on sentence.
Halleluiah, brother.
I think they thought I was a hooker or something. So I like lots of jewelry and tight jeans. And Mr. Potato-Face ripped my lace tank top to shreds. That doesn’t automatically make me some kind of slut.
I don’t know which was worse, the rape or the damn lecture. I least I knew what was going to happen with Potato-man. I think my ears rang for a week from all that self-sanctified and screeching sermonizing for my lost soul. I could have told them I wasn’t lost at all. I know exactly where my soul lives.
After they let me off in the next town (“Are you sure you’ll be okay, honey? We could take you home, get you cleaned up and give you a good hot meal…” All of a sudden they dropped the evangelical crap and wanted to play sweet old grandma and grandpa… no thanks!).
I hung around for a couple of hours, picked up some clothes from a Goodwill drop-box in a parking lot and watched the back of this Italian restaurant for when they threw out the leftovers. I saw some homeless people doing that in a movie once, so I thought what the hell? It was better than a steady diet of granola bars. Or apples. Bleah.
It’s perfectly good food. Nothing at all wrong with it. Lots of people do it. I even saw a couple of really filthy ragged homeless people and the skinniest, tallest man I have ever seen in a jogging suit scouting the same restaurant I did. I had no idea if the rag people were men or women under all those clothes and they skittered away when I said hi. The tall man just ignored me. Maybe he was deaf. He kind of strode after scoring his dinner, chewing up the sidewalk with his long, long legs and scooping half eaten ravioli into his mouth with his fingers, humming to himself and out of sight real fast.
Hey, stop looking so disgusted. Not everyone makes two hundred bucks an hour or whatever the state is paying you to listen to me. You sure don’t keep a straight face very well.
Anyway, I slept in the park that was in the middle of some sort of town square with an honest-to-god-bandstand gazebo. If it weren’t for those rag people and the garbage and graffiti in the alley behind the restaurant, I would have figured I had been transported straight to Mayberry.
I used Sponge-Bob for a pillow, wrapped myself in Mae’s yellow sweater and was quite cozy behind some hedges up against a retaining wall. There was even a drinking fountain and public restrooms that were not locked at night. Not a bad place to hole up for the night.
Oh please. I was not about to sleep on the floor of a public restroom! Eeeeeeew. I have SOME standards, lady!
The next morning I washed my hair with the handsoap from the dispensers in the restroom, splashed some water on my face and pits and changed into the Goodwill clothes. They fit pretty well, considering. The red striped skirt was hardly worn at all and was long enough so I wasn’t painfully reminded that the remnants of my only pair of underwear were decorating a bush in the desert every time I sat down. And the blue blouse was only missing one button. Not exactly Macy’s and I looked patriotic as hell, but hey, I wasn’t picky at that point.
I munched on a half eaten bagel I had found in a bakery bag lying next to a bench in the park, sat down wishing Mr. Potatoface would get His and watched the town wake up. You know, cars starting to drive by, businesses opening and a few people walking by and smiling at each other like old friends. That sort of thing.
Some guy in a truck stopped and filled the newspaper rack right in front of me in about two seconds. Man, he was fast! He spun out a little as he drove away, scattering some gravel up on the sidewalk and stinging my bare legs. I flipped him off, but I don’t think he saw me.
No, I didn’t take it personally. What, you think I am some sort of psycho? The guy probably had a lot of racks to fill, or maybe he had some church social to go to as soon as he was finished. I don’t know and I don’t care. Now YOU’RE getting off track, lady.
But that’s when I saw the headline. Or rather, the photo. Even though it was all busted and twisted to hell, I recognized that yellow Chevy and “JESUS SAVES” sticker on the dented bumper. It was that guy’s car, you know, Mr. Potato-man. The headline said something like “Life Insurance Potato-Head Salesman Rapist Slimeball Has Much Deserved Heart Attack Which Causes Ugly Yellow Car to Fly Off Cliff into Rocky Gorge –Car and Creepazoid Dead on Impact” or something like that.
Okay, so I editorialized the headline a little, but that was the jist.
So he had a heart attack and drove off a cliff. Here I was, I figure almost fifty miles away in mind-numbing Mayberry, munching on my day-old onion bagel, expecting Aunt Bea to come walking around a corner any second, minding my own business and WISHING he were dead, and here he is… dead.
Hmmm.
I did not wish my sister dead, and I figured my mother was already something of a walking corpse, but let’s make an accounting here. Gag-Dad, Nasty-Theo and Mr. Potatohead. I hated them all and they are now all dead. Maybe my magic is not immediate, maybe it takes time and circumstances roll around to MAKE them dead in their own personal pseudo-accidental way. Fate lending me a hand or something. You know, like those movies where everyone cheats death and then gets it anyway in really gruesome and imaginative ways. Like that old kid’s game, you know, Mouse Trap. On seriously messed up acid.
So I sat there on that park bench, flicked the bagel crumbs and gravel from my gaudy striped skirt and thought about it. Any other people I despised who eventually croaked?
It took me a few minutes to rewind my life, but once I started, they came fast and furious…
There was George Rather, the jerk in eighth grade who made my life hell nearly every day for weeks. He chased me home from school, almost always caught me and tripped or pushed me onto the sidewalk. Then he would kick me in the ribs and scatter my books and homework all over the place. I hid the black and blue marks from my mom, and I hated that kid with everything I had in my skinny little thirteen year old body. He was killed in a car accident right before Christmas that year. No one else in the car was hurt at all, just him.
Did I do that?
Then there was Davy Schmidt, who thought he was the best thing since cavemen invented toast. He cornered me behind the admin building in ninth grade, dropped his pants, grabbed me by the hair and shoved my face onto his wormy little penis. He ended up with some rare aggressive bone cancer and was dead within three months.
Was that me?
Mr. Branscomb stopped on the side of the road while driving me home from babysitting his kids and took my virginity when I was 14 and told me he would kill me and my little sister if I ever told. Two weeks later his wife found him in bed with a sixteen year old. She shot him. BAM. Dead.
Kyle Branson told all his friends I was a slut because I refused to go all the way with him. He hung himself in the rafters of his father’s garage over spring break. No note. Dead.
Morris McAffery keyed his mom’s car in the parking lot and told his parents that I did it. They believed their son over me, the lowly foster kid. They all treated me like dirt. I guess I wasn’t really all that mad at him, so he just ended up in a coma.
Mara Timney, a kid at the third foster home I was assigned to, stole my amethyst and garnet ring, the one thing I had of my mother’s. Choked on a jawbreaker. Dead.
Weird, huh? I never pieced it all together before. You have to admit, it sure looks like more than mere coincidence, doesn’t it? I wasn’t actually around any of these people when their… “accidents” happened, but I caused them. They all betrayed me and something in me killed them, pure and simple.
How many is that? Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Now that I think about it, the timing was interesting, don’t you think? These “accidents” all started after I found the... well. I guess you know already, it’s probably in your notes, so what’s the big deal? Everything, you know, all the people dropping dead practically at my feet, started happening right after I got my hands on the diamond. Well, Anne died before that, so I guess that really was an accident.
All that stuff I said before about my CookieLovin’Dad is all true, but he sure wasn’t the one who figured everything out. I am positive he was holding that map in his fist like it was the Holy Grail while he was sliced open and that somebody took it. Pried it from his cold, dead fingers.
Not me, silly. I didn’t need any old map.
You people are so provincial. Everyone was looking for that damned map. Theo-Creep-o and Cookie-Monster-Dad spent hours memorizing it, going out for days at a time and I was the one who deciphered it. At 13 years old, no less.
I bet those knife-guys who sliced Loser-Dad drove themselves crazy looking for the diamond, too. Well, here’s a secret for you: the map was nothing. A diversion. Total wild goose chase that ended nowhere. The real clues were on the metal case, you know the one that was stolen? I guess someone figured at least that part out eventually. Anyway, Mom thought the tube was interesting, so she put it on the shelf with her precious vase, right where I could get to it and read it. It wasn’t so hard, really. Once you got over the fact that the map wasn’t the main event, you just followed the dots, the engraved dots. I ditched school one day, took a bus, found the diamond and was back in time for supper. Who knew it would be so close? Then I hid it a couple of days later. I went back to visit it and changed locations every once on a while just to be safe.
Of course, when I went to Mae’s I brought it with me and hid it again. I never kept it on me for more than a day or so. It made me feel all twitchy when I wore it too much.
Before you go digging up Lewittsville, let me give you a clue. You won’t find it there!
So here I am, here talking to you, Dr. Ms. Dyed-Redhead Psychiatrist. Here in this mind-control free zone of a mental hospital. It is never boring, let me tell you! Some real interesting things have happened... First that pimple faced orderly with the nipple twisting fetish seems to be suddenly off the payroll and then… Well.
Tell me, what happened to the last doctor? I haven’t seen him around here for a while. I think Miss The-Air-Is-Filled-With-Invisible-Flying-Singing-Trout misses him, at least she won’t shut up about it in-between singing with airborne carp.
I sure as hell don’t. Miss him, I mean.
He was a real SOB behind those poindexter glasses. Pretending to care about me personally for weeks, trying to “talk me down” instead of drugging me, because of course, he knew he would get NOTHING if he drugged me. He already tried when I was first brought here. Apparently I need to be completely coherent and drug-free to talk about… you know. Even the tiniest bit of drugs and nada. Blank. Nobody’s home. I can’t even take aspirin; it all makes me go all wonky.
And when I go wonky, really bad things start to happen.
More on that later.
Anyway, eventually I told him about finding the diamond in one of my “what the hell” moods. Well. He must have gone to the police the minute our session was over because they were all over me like flies on three day-old manicotti the very next day, four guys in suits who probably never smiled in their entire LIVES, asking me all kinds of pointed questions. I thought whatever I said here was protected by that doctor-patient privilege thing. I guess he thought different. Or he just got greedy for that reward.
Oh stop. You know what I’m talking about, the reward for the diamond. You keep asking me about it and you don’t know there’s a reward? Pick up a newspaper, lady.
So, where is he, anyway? The old doctor. No, no reason. Just curious, you know? He was always lurking around here prying into everyone’s head, making a real nuisance of himself around here and suddenly… poof. Gone. I just wondered what happened to him.
No, I didn’t tell Dr. Poindexter where it was, I just told him that I knew where it was hidden and the first thing he does is call the cops or FBI or whatever. And now he’s gone. Gone… gone… gone… gone like a soldier in the civil war BANG BANG… Oh. Sorry. Just got a country song stuck in my head.
Am I smiling? Really? Hmmmm. Just having a little happy thought, that’s all.
Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where that doctor is? No? Really? Okay.
Well, I didn’t tell the cops where the diamond was, either. I can be pretty stubborn if I want to be. I just said some stuff to make them think I was crazy.
I’m not, you know. Really crazy, I mean. Hey, you shouldn’t look so skeptical, Doctor Red. It could upset the patients.
Anyway, I looked these cops up and down and asked very seriously why they all had yellow rose bushes growing out of their eye sockets when everyone knows that space smells jello and wearing live red cockroaches for pants was a SOOO last season and I know a four-foot purple and green firefly with fourteen tentacles from planet Vulcan – nanoo nanoo - who winks Morse code at me with his glowy butt and he told me the answer to the secret of the universe just last week. And the secret is… insert drumroll here… PIE. Yup, that’s the secret. Pie. ‘Cause, you know, everybody likes pie. Apple, cherry, pecan, pumpkin, blueberry, lemon… even cannibals would like pie made out of baby toes of you think about it… Plus you can top it all off with ice cream (any flavor), whipped cream, powdered sugar, meringue, dried dung beetle wings, whatever. After all the years of the greatest minds in human history looking, searching, thinking so hard their heads should have exploded and I finally found it! PIE! That’s the…
What? Oh. Off track again. Boy, you sure are getting anxious.
Say, do you have any kids? Oh, no reason. Just curious. I noticed your wedding ring, that’s all. Nice lady like you ought to have kids. You look like a real mom-type. Big house, green lawn, lots of flowers planted along the walkway and in two big terra cotta pots by the front door. I bet you have a nice green painted front door with a pretty frosted glass oval window… Do your kids like to play out front with the puppy or do they stay in the back yard with the swing-set?
Why are you so nervous all of a sudden? Geeze, it was just a friendly question!
Anyway, yeah, I know where the diamond is. All 62 and a half carats of sparkly sky blueness. It’s pretty spectacular, by the way. Really pretty. Did you know it is circled with about a hundred little rubies and some weird milky white stone the size of my pinky at the top of the setting? That’s something that wasn’t in the papers!
Ahhhh, finally! NOW you believe me! I can see it in your eyes.
Do you want me to tell you where it is? I know you do. I can tell. You sure are easy to read. You promise you won’t tell anyone or go looking for it? I’ll know if you’re lying, you know.
Of course, I do know this room is bugged, so maybe you can honestly say you would never tell; you wouldn’t need to.
So, why did they send you in here? Sympathetic mothering type, I know. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you look kinda like my Mom on a good day. Is that why you were chosen to be the sacrifice? Just in case all this killing people with my brain crap I keep telling you people turned out to be true? I know you really aren’t a doctor. You react too much. You guys must think I am really stupid. Were you supposed to get me to confide where I hid it? What is it about that blasted diamond that is so important? It’s pretty and all, but wouldn’t it end up in a museum anyway? Not like you would get to wear it. I wore it several times for a little while, but trust me, it wouldn’t look good with your coloring.
I just can’t believe they would risk sending anyone else in after Dr. Fakey-Smiley died. Yeah, I know he’s dead; I just don’t know exactly how. Hmmmm.
Something to do with fire, I bet. I had a dream about fire…
Hey, are you sweating? Is it hot in here? I hadn’t noticed.
So, tell me, haven’t I proven to be able to take care of myself and make sure everyone who hurts me pays in some way? Oh, I see… you don’t really quite believe me. Well, Dr. Fakey, you have everything scribbled down in that little black notebook of yours. Why don’t you take some time and check it out. Come to think of it, I told you way more than I ever told Dr. Melted-in-the-Fire. I guess that Mom look thing worked a little after all. Anyway, look it all up, all those names and how they all died. You’ll see. You’ll see I am not lying. I left some out, of course. Quite a few, actually. But that’s a good start.
Tell you what, come back in one week and I’ll tell you what happened to the infamous Case diamond if you tell me exactly how Dr. Smiley and all four of those Feds who questioned me last week died. They are all dead, you know. If not yet, then very soon.
I don’t need to calm down. I am perfectly calm. You look a little jumpy, though.
Still you don’t believe me? How about some predictions?
Hmmmmm… That nasty dyke nurse with the mean streak standing behind the door right there watching us through the window, she should get something going on pretty soon. And Ms. Flying Trout in the common room. All her yapping is really starting to bug me. Gotta shut her up. Oh, and that guy right there behind the one way glass in the white coat and granny glasses. Sanctimonious old fart. His PhD isn’t even real. He’ll get his. And hmmm… how about something with a little more distance? Would you like that? How about that old guy with the bad toupee on TV who sells those lame timeshares, you know, the one who used to be famous. What a loser. He should have had the class to die a long time ago. I’ll fix that.
And then there’s your son, Mica. And little Sara, too.
Awwww, have I said something to upset you? I’m sure they’re fine, playing ball in the front yard under the watchful eye of your nanny, Maureen. She just better make sure they don’t run into the street after that ball… you know how careless kids can be!
Oh, you’re crying. I guess that means this little session is just about over.
Well, hello there, Nurse Dyke. Nice needle you have there. And you other guys, wow, so many to handle one little girl.
Ow.
I guess I will have to take a little nap now, Dr. Mommy. Here’s something else for your little notebook, something else I never even told Dr. Extra-Crispy... Sometimes, especially when I am drugged – I told you I get all wonky when I am drugged, right? - I have the strangest dreams about people who have been mean to me and they always seem to come true… and they are always worse than my waking… you know the psychic snowballs… my dreams are always sooooo interesting… So many unusual… painful and weird ways… to die…
…but you just had to know… if the rumors were true… didn’t you… and now your pretty little family… is…
Mmm... I think will make… 51... 52… oh… and your… dog… a beagle, right? …does she count?
and all for a… sparkly… rock…
tell me… was it…
worth it…?
*******************************
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
PART 2 OF 2
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I finally got a ride the next morning from an older couple in an ancient Lincoln. They looked very safe. Or so I thought. They did drive me into the next town but I had to endure an ear-splitting lecture on the state of my EVerlasting EE-ternal soul and how I must let JAY-sus into my heart to drive out SAYYYY-tan and his EEEvil carnal ways of the FLESHHHH which is the road STRAIGHT into EEE-ternal fire and damn-NAY-tion!
You would not believe these people. They were like something out of an old Twilight Zone episode. The lady had a hair-sprayed helmet of blue-silver hair that came directly from a bottle and a high lace collar that was so tight her neck wrinkles kinda spilled down and covered the lace in front like those hangy-down rubbery things on a turkey. And he was no better. Mr. Hell-Fire, with a neck so thick it was wider than his fat face, busting out of an old light blue leisure blue suit that looked about three sizes too small, driving so slowly I thought time had actually stopped. He kept thumping the steering wheel with his fist and shouting “AMEN” every time his wife said something Very Important, which was at least four times per run-on sentence.
Halleluiah, brother.
I think they thought I was a hooker or something. So I like lots of jewelry and tight jeans. And Mr. Potato-Face ripped my lace tank top to shreds. That doesn’t automatically make me some kind of slut.
I don’t know which was worse, the rape or the damn lecture. I least I knew what was going to happen with Potato-man. I think my ears rang for a week from all that self-sanctified and screeching sermonizing for my lost soul. I could have told them I wasn’t lost at all. I know exactly where my soul lives.
After they let me off in the next town (“Are you sure you’ll be okay, honey? We could take you home, get you cleaned up and give you a good hot meal…” All of a sudden they dropped the evangelical crap and wanted to play sweet old grandma and grandpa… no thanks!).
I hung around for a couple of hours, picked up some clothes from a Goodwill drop-box in a parking lot and watched the back of this Italian restaurant for when they threw out the leftovers. I saw some homeless people doing that in a movie once, so I thought what the hell? It was better than a steady diet of granola bars. Or apples. Bleah.
It’s perfectly good food. Nothing at all wrong with it. Lots of people do it. I even saw a couple of really filthy ragged homeless people and the skinniest, tallest man I have ever seen in a jogging suit scouting the same restaurant I did. I had no idea if the rag people were men or women under all those clothes and they skittered away when I said hi. The tall man just ignored me. Maybe he was deaf. He kind of strode after scoring his dinner, chewing up the sidewalk with his long, long legs and scooping half eaten ravioli into his mouth with his fingers, humming to himself and out of sight real fast.
Hey, stop looking so disgusted. Not everyone makes two hundred bucks an hour or whatever the state is paying you to listen to me. You sure don’t keep a straight face very well.
Anyway, I slept in the park that was in the middle of some sort of town square with an honest-to-god-bandstand gazebo. If it weren’t for those rag people and the garbage and graffiti in the alley behind the restaurant, I would have figured I had been transported straight to Mayberry.
I used Sponge-Bob for a pillow, wrapped myself in Mae’s yellow sweater and was quite cozy behind some hedges up against a retaining wall. There was even a drinking fountain and public restrooms that were not locked at night. Not a bad place to hole up for the night.
Oh please. I was not about to sleep on the floor of a public restroom! Eeeeeeew. I have SOME standards, lady!
The next morning I washed my hair with the handsoap from the dispensers in the restroom, splashed some water on my face and pits and changed into the Goodwill clothes. They fit pretty well, considering. The red striped skirt was hardly worn at all and was long enough so I wasn’t painfully reminded that the remnants of my only pair of underwear were decorating a bush in the desert every time I sat down. And the blue blouse was only missing one button. Not exactly Macy’s and I looked patriotic as hell, but hey, I wasn’t picky at that point.
I munched on a half eaten bagel I had found in a bakery bag lying next to a bench in the park, sat down wishing Mr. Potatoface would get His and watched the town wake up. You know, cars starting to drive by, businesses opening and a few people walking by and smiling at each other like old friends. That sort of thing.
Some guy in a truck stopped and filled the newspaper rack right in front of me in about two seconds. Man, he was fast! He spun out a little as he drove away, scattering some gravel up on the sidewalk and stinging my bare legs. I flipped him off, but I don’t think he saw me.
No, I didn’t take it personally. What, you think I am some sort of psycho? The guy probably had a lot of racks to fill, or maybe he had some church social to go to as soon as he was finished. I don’t know and I don’t care. Now YOU’RE getting off track, lady.
But that’s when I saw the headline. Or rather, the photo. Even though it was all busted and twisted to hell, I recognized that yellow Chevy and “JESUS SAVES” sticker on the dented bumper. It was that guy’s car, you know, Mr. Potato-man. The headline said something like “Life Insurance Potato-Head Salesman Rapist Slimeball Has Much Deserved Heart Attack Which Causes Ugly Yellow Car to Fly Off Cliff into Rocky Gorge –Car and Creepazoid Dead on Impact” or something like that.
Okay, so I editorialized the headline a little, but that was the jist.
So he had a heart attack and drove off a cliff. Here I was, I figure almost fifty miles away in mind-numbing Mayberry, munching on my day-old onion bagel, expecting Aunt Bea to come walking around a corner any second, minding my own business and WISHING he were dead, and here he is… dead.
Hmmm.
I did not wish my sister dead, and I figured my mother was already something of a walking corpse, but let’s make an accounting here. Gag-Dad, Nasty-Theo and Mr. Potatohead. I hated them all and they are now all dead. Maybe my magic is not immediate, maybe it takes time and circumstances roll around to MAKE them dead in their own personal pseudo-accidental way. Fate lending me a hand or something. You know, like those movies where everyone cheats death and then gets it anyway in really gruesome and imaginative ways. Like that old kid’s game, you know, Mouse Trap. On seriously messed up acid.
So I sat there on that park bench, flicked the bagel crumbs and gravel from my gaudy striped skirt and thought about it. Any other people I despised who eventually croaked?
It took me a few minutes to rewind my life, but once I started, they came fast and furious…
There was George Rather, the jerk in eighth grade who made my life hell nearly every day for weeks. He chased me home from school, almost always caught me and tripped or pushed me onto the sidewalk. Then he would kick me in the ribs and scatter my books and homework all over the place. I hid the black and blue marks from my mom, and I hated that kid with everything I had in my skinny little thirteen year old body. He was killed in a car accident right before Christmas that year. No one else in the car was hurt at all, just him.
Did I do that?
Then there was Davy Schmidt, who thought he was the best thing since cavemen invented toast. He cornered me behind the admin building in ninth grade, dropped his pants, grabbed me by the hair and shoved my face onto his wormy little penis. He ended up with some rare aggressive bone cancer and was dead within three months.
Was that me?
Mr. Branscomb stopped on the side of the road while driving me home from babysitting his kids and took my virginity when I was 14 and told me he would kill me and my little sister if I ever told. Two weeks later his wife found him in bed with a sixteen year old. She shot him. BAM. Dead.
Kyle Branson told all his friends I was a slut because I refused to go all the way with him. He hung himself in the rafters of his father’s garage over spring break. No note. Dead.
Morris McAffery keyed his mom’s car in the parking lot and told his parents that I did it. They believed their son over me, the lowly foster kid. They all treated me like dirt. I guess I wasn’t really all that mad at him, so he just ended up in a coma.
Mara Timney, a kid at the third foster home I was assigned to, stole my amethyst and garnet ring, the one thing I had of my mother’s. Choked on a jawbreaker. Dead.
Weird, huh? I never pieced it all together before. You have to admit, it sure looks like more than mere coincidence, doesn’t it? I wasn’t actually around any of these people when their… “accidents” happened, but I caused them. They all betrayed me and something in me killed them, pure and simple.
How many is that? Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Now that I think about it, the timing was interesting, don’t you think? These “accidents” all started after I found the... well. I guess you know already, it’s probably in your notes, so what’s the big deal? Everything, you know, all the people dropping dead practically at my feet, started happening right after I got my hands on the diamond. Well, Anne died before that, so I guess that really was an accident.
All that stuff I said before about my CookieLovin’Dad is all true, but he sure wasn’t the one who figured everything out. I am positive he was holding that map in his fist like it was the Holy Grail while he was sliced open and that somebody took it. Pried it from his cold, dead fingers.
Not me, silly. I didn’t need any old map.
You people are so provincial. Everyone was looking for that damned map. Theo-Creep-o and Cookie-Monster-Dad spent hours memorizing it, going out for days at a time and I was the one who deciphered it. At 13 years old, no less.
I bet those knife-guys who sliced Loser-Dad drove themselves crazy looking for the diamond, too. Well, here’s a secret for you: the map was nothing. A diversion. Total wild goose chase that ended nowhere. The real clues were on the metal case, you know the one that was stolen? I guess someone figured at least that part out eventually. Anyway, Mom thought the tube was interesting, so she put it on the shelf with her precious vase, right where I could get to it and read it. It wasn’t so hard, really. Once you got over the fact that the map wasn’t the main event, you just followed the dots, the engraved dots. I ditched school one day, took a bus, found the diamond and was back in time for supper. Who knew it would be so close? Then I hid it a couple of days later. I went back to visit it and changed locations every once on a while just to be safe.
Of course, when I went to Mae’s I brought it with me and hid it again. I never kept it on me for more than a day or so. It made me feel all twitchy when I wore it too much.
Before you go digging up Lewittsville, let me give you a clue. You won’t find it there!
So here I am, here talking to you, Dr. Ms. Dyed-Redhead Psychiatrist. Here in this mind-control free zone of a mental hospital. It is never boring, let me tell you! Some real interesting things have happened... First that pimple faced orderly with the nipple twisting fetish seems to be suddenly off the payroll and then… Well.
Tell me, what happened to the last doctor? I haven’t seen him around here for a while. I think Miss The-Air-Is-Filled-With-Invisible-Flying-Singing-Trout misses him, at least she won’t shut up about it in-between singing with airborne carp.
I sure as hell don’t. Miss him, I mean.
He was a real SOB behind those poindexter glasses. Pretending to care about me personally for weeks, trying to “talk me down” instead of drugging me, because of course, he knew he would get NOTHING if he drugged me. He already tried when I was first brought here. Apparently I need to be completely coherent and drug-free to talk about… you know. Even the tiniest bit of drugs and nada. Blank. Nobody’s home. I can’t even take aspirin; it all makes me go all wonky.
And when I go wonky, really bad things start to happen.
More on that later.
Anyway, eventually I told him about finding the diamond in one of my “what the hell” moods. Well. He must have gone to the police the minute our session was over because they were all over me like flies on three day-old manicotti the very next day, four guys in suits who probably never smiled in their entire LIVES, asking me all kinds of pointed questions. I thought whatever I said here was protected by that doctor-patient privilege thing. I guess he thought different. Or he just got greedy for that reward.
Oh stop. You know what I’m talking about, the reward for the diamond. You keep asking me about it and you don’t know there’s a reward? Pick up a newspaper, lady.
So, where is he, anyway? The old doctor. No, no reason. Just curious, you know? He was always lurking around here prying into everyone’s head, making a real nuisance of himself around here and suddenly… poof. Gone. I just wondered what happened to him.
No, I didn’t tell Dr. Poindexter where it was, I just told him that I knew where it was hidden and the first thing he does is call the cops or FBI or whatever. And now he’s gone. Gone… gone… gone… gone like a soldier in the civil war BANG BANG… Oh. Sorry. Just got a country song stuck in my head.
Am I smiling? Really? Hmmmm. Just having a little happy thought, that’s all.
Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where that doctor is? No? Really? Okay.
Well, I didn’t tell the cops where the diamond was, either. I can be pretty stubborn if I want to be. I just said some stuff to make them think I was crazy.
I’m not, you know. Really crazy, I mean. Hey, you shouldn’t look so skeptical, Doctor Red. It could upset the patients.
Anyway, I looked these cops up and down and asked very seriously why they all had yellow rose bushes growing out of their eye sockets when everyone knows that space smells jello and wearing live red cockroaches for pants was a SOOO last season and I know a four-foot purple and green firefly with fourteen tentacles from planet Vulcan – nanoo nanoo - who winks Morse code at me with his glowy butt and he told me the answer to the secret of the universe just last week. And the secret is… insert drumroll here… PIE. Yup, that’s the secret. Pie. ‘Cause, you know, everybody likes pie. Apple, cherry, pecan, pumpkin, blueberry, lemon… even cannibals would like pie made out of baby toes of you think about it… Plus you can top it all off with ice cream (any flavor), whipped cream, powdered sugar, meringue, dried dung beetle wings, whatever. After all the years of the greatest minds in human history looking, searching, thinking so hard their heads should have exploded and I finally found it! PIE! That’s the…
What? Oh. Off track again. Boy, you sure are getting anxious.
Say, do you have any kids? Oh, no reason. Just curious. I noticed your wedding ring, that’s all. Nice lady like you ought to have kids. You look like a real mom-type. Big house, green lawn, lots of flowers planted along the walkway and in two big terra cotta pots by the front door. I bet you have a nice green painted front door with a pretty frosted glass oval window… Do your kids like to play out front with the puppy or do they stay in the back yard with the swing-set?
Why are you so nervous all of a sudden? Geeze, it was just a friendly question!
Anyway, yeah, I know where the diamond is. All 62 and a half carats of sparkly sky blueness. It’s pretty spectacular, by the way. Really pretty. Did you know it is circled with about a hundred little rubies and some weird milky white stone the size of my pinky at the top of the setting? That’s something that wasn’t in the papers!
Ahhhh, finally! NOW you believe me! I can see it in your eyes.
Do you want me to tell you where it is? I know you do. I can tell. You sure are easy to read. You promise you won’t tell anyone or go looking for it? I’ll know if you’re lying, you know.
Of course, I do know this room is bugged, so maybe you can honestly say you would never tell; you wouldn’t need to.
So, why did they send you in here? Sympathetic mothering type, I know. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you look kinda like my Mom on a good day. Is that why you were chosen to be the sacrifice? Just in case all this killing people with my brain crap I keep telling you people turned out to be true? I know you really aren’t a doctor. You react too much. You guys must think I am really stupid. Were you supposed to get me to confide where I hid it? What is it about that blasted diamond that is so important? It’s pretty and all, but wouldn’t it end up in a museum anyway? Not like you would get to wear it. I wore it several times for a little while, but trust me, it wouldn’t look good with your coloring.
I just can’t believe they would risk sending anyone else in after Dr. Fakey-Smiley died. Yeah, I know he’s dead; I just don’t know exactly how. Hmmmm.
Something to do with fire, I bet. I had a dream about fire…
Hey, are you sweating? Is it hot in here? I hadn’t noticed.
So, tell me, haven’t I proven to be able to take care of myself and make sure everyone who hurts me pays in some way? Oh, I see… you don’t really quite believe me. Well, Dr. Fakey, you have everything scribbled down in that little black notebook of yours. Why don’t you take some time and check it out. Come to think of it, I told you way more than I ever told Dr. Melted-in-the-Fire. I guess that Mom look thing worked a little after all. Anyway, look it all up, all those names and how they all died. You’ll see. You’ll see I am not lying. I left some out, of course. Quite a few, actually. But that’s a good start.
Tell you what, come back in one week and I’ll tell you what happened to the infamous Case diamond if you tell me exactly how Dr. Smiley and all four of those Feds who questioned me last week died. They are all dead, you know. If not yet, then very soon.
I don’t need to calm down. I am perfectly calm. You look a little jumpy, though.
Still you don’t believe me? How about some predictions?
Hmmmmm… That nasty dyke nurse with the mean streak standing behind the door right there watching us through the window, she should get something going on pretty soon. And Ms. Flying Trout in the common room. All her yapping is really starting to bug me. Gotta shut her up. Oh, and that guy right there behind the one way glass in the white coat and granny glasses. Sanctimonious old fart. His PhD isn’t even real. He’ll get his. And hmmm… how about something with a little more distance? Would you like that? How about that old guy with the bad toupee on TV who sells those lame timeshares, you know, the one who used to be famous. What a loser. He should have had the class to die a long time ago. I’ll fix that.
And then there’s your son, Mica. And little Sara, too.
Awwww, have I said something to upset you? I’m sure they’re fine, playing ball in the front yard under the watchful eye of your nanny, Maureen. She just better make sure they don’t run into the street after that ball… you know how careless kids can be!
Oh, you’re crying. I guess that means this little session is just about over.
Well, hello there, Nurse Dyke. Nice needle you have there. And you other guys, wow, so many to handle one little girl.
Ow.
I guess I will have to take a little nap now, Dr. Mommy. Here’s something else for your little notebook, something else I never even told Dr. Extra-Crispy... Sometimes, especially when I am drugged – I told you I get all wonky when I am drugged, right? - I have the strangest dreams about people who have been mean to me and they always seem to come true… and they are always worse than my waking… you know the psychic snowballs… my dreams are always sooooo interesting… So many unusual… painful and weird ways… to die…
…but you just had to know… if the rumors were true… didn’t you… and now your pretty little family… is…
Mmm... I think will make… 51... 52… oh… and your… dog… a beagle, right? …does she count?
and all for a… sparkly… rock…
tell me… was it…
worth it…?
*******************************
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Short Story: UNTITLED HORROR STORY (part 1 of 2) (Rated PG13)
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
..................
No one cares where I was born, where my sister and I lived, or where the murders took place or why I got away with it. No matter what I have done or what has happened, I know you are all only interested in one thing.
Well, tough. You want to know all about it and where it is; you have to listen to my story first. Context and all that. So I’m going to tell you. Everyone has a story, right? You wanna shout from a soapbox, write a book. Or get thrown in here and then someone HAS to listen to you. Ha!
So, this is my story. You probably won’t like it. Hell, I didn’t like living it much, either. But ya know, Mom used to say we can only paint with the colors we are given and sometimes the best colors are taken away. Just like that.
Now that I think about it, it seemed a little philosophical for a beaten down woman who never stood up for herself or accomplished much of anything besides baking cookies all the freakin’ time. Oatmeal, chocolate chip, peanut butter, sugar, all kinds of cookies. The kitchen floor was always a little crunchy with spilled sugar that never completely came up no matter how much you swept.
Oh, and before you get all sentimental at the thought of a real-live mother baking homemade cookies in this day and age (oh, come on, I see you smiling…), let me tell you that I HATE the smell of fresh baked cookies. Even the thought of it makes me gag. Besides, I was never allowed to have any cookies, even before I hated them. They were all for “him”.
Fresh baked cookie smells meant that he was coming home and my sister Anne and I were on our own for a while. Those nights were always about him; that’s Him with a capital H, by the way. Just want to make that clear. Mom always talked about him like he was some sorta god or movie star or something. He Who Must Be Obeyed. Cue the ominous music and make his drinks doubles.
I still can’t figure out what Mom saw in him.
Oh, so now you wanna know more about him? What for? Oh, all right, don’t get your panties in a bunch.
Well, I just thank God or whoever is up there pulling on all the strings that he was a trucker who did long hauls and wasn’t home much. I mean, life wasn’t great even when it was just Anne and Mom and me. Personally I think Mom was trying to make up for being such a damned doormat when he was there. Why else would she be all mousy and “yes Dear” and “anything you say, Dear” and all that when he was around and then suddenly grow a spine and lecture Anne and me on how to live our lives when he disappeared again? She sure as hell didn’t have it all together, so why should we pay any attention to what she said? Hell, I already knew the score at fourteen, I didn’t need some broken down old has-been to tell me to keep my knees together.
Like I had any choice in the matter.
Mom always told us we had to call him Daddy, which was completely ridiculous. I knew his name and he certainly wasn’t MY daddy, I wouldn’t be very happy if he was.
Call me an ungrateful kid, but I just don’t think that chasing a little girl out of the house with a broom stick screaming at her just because she ate the last of the peanut butter so that she runs out into the street and gets hit by a car qualifies him as “Father of the Year”. I mean, they aren’t exactly holding parades in his honor, no matter how many times people said it was a “terrible tragic accident”. Bye-bye, little sis. You didn’t miss much by dying young. At least you’ll be eight and cute and a perfect little angel forever. In fact, you got more and more perfect as the years went by. Mom and fake-daddy always compared me to your ghost and I lost every time. Seems like I was the only one who really remembered you… you could be a little brat sometimes. But even though you drove me crazy, I know you were just doing your job as my little sister. So I remember you, the Real You, the Real Anne, better than anyone else left alive.
So when HE died… What? No, I did NOT kill him. I couldn’t stand the creep, but someone else stuck that knife between his ribs. Personally I think that he probably mouthed off to the wrong person in the wrong place and got what was coming to him.
He just never knew when to shut up, especially when he was drunk. Geeze, you would not believe the crap he came up with! He talked as if he were some sort of modern Indiana Jones, digging up priceless artifacts along the side of the interstate while hauling cases of canned tuna or pork and beans all over the place. He spent a goddamned fortune on one of those metal detectors and said he would get “a feeling” and pull his big rig over on the side of the road and haul it out, sweeping over the shoulder or down in ditches and stuff. He brought home the most useless junk from those hauls. Pieces of metal so weirdly obscure you couldn’t tell what they came from, car parts, rusted pots and stuff like that. I guess looking for all that crap paid off because eventually he found that treasure map in that silver engraved tube – yeah, I said a TREASURE MAP – and he came home slap-happy drunk, screaming that we were going to be rich rich RICH when I was about thirteen. I heard him and his best old slimy drinking buddy talking about it constantly for weeks before Theo was murdered…
And no, I don’t think he killed Theo. And I certainly didn’t do it, no matter how much he deserved it. Rotten slime-ball sick-o bastard. Theo got what he deserved. It’s damned funny how they made all these loud grandiose plans trying to find whatever was at the end of that map and then WHAM! Theo gets a bullet in the head while sitting on the crapper. What a way to go, huh? Too, too funny! Can’t you just picture it…? La-de-dah-I’m just sitting here taking a dump, whistling Dixie and reading my stash of kiddie-porn and BOOM! Show’s over!
Oh, don’t give me that look. It is, too, funny. You don’t know anything.
Anyway, before you get all excited, Indiana-Dad and Theo did NOT find the Case diamond, I don’t care what the newspapers said. They didn’t have the brains to figure out that the map was... Well, I’ll get to that later. Imagine, Mr.You-Ate-The-Last-Of-The-Peanut-Butter-So-I’m-Gonna-Chase-You-Into-The-Street and his bestest child-molesting buddy solving one of the biggest and most famous museum jewel thefts in a couple of hundred years with nothing but a pick ax, compass and a bona-fide treasure map…
Oh stop, I knew El-Stupido-Dad better than anyone left alive, so I know he couldn’t possibly have done it. I certainly knew him better than YOU; you never even met him.
And no, I have no idea where the map went. You sure are full of questions.
Even the silver tube disappeared. You do know about the break-in at our house right after Daddy-kins got knifed in that alley, right? I know the cops said it was a regular robbery since our computer and TV were also taken, but it didn’t really look like anything spectacular (unless you knew what to look for) so why would they take THAT and leave my Mom’s Tiffany vase that was sitting right next to it on the bookshelf, huh? That vase was the only really valuable thing we have in the house; she always said my father – my REAL father – gave it to her and used to spend lots of time polishing it every month with this faraway kinda glazed look in her…
You want to know about Mom? She could barely put three coherent sentences together and spent all her time baking cookies and giving heard-‘em-before lectures to her wayward daughters… Wait, I mean daughter, singular. I was the wayward one; Anne was perfect, even before she got run over. She was even BLOND, not boring brown like me. Well, not anymore! See, I bleach my hair so now I can be perfect, too.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Mom.
How on earth could I have anything to do with Mom’s accident? She drove off a cliff, for God’s sake! I was at school, you can check the records. That’s Wellington Place High School; you want me to spell that for you? Personally, I think she drove off that cliff because he died. She used to read those sappy tragic romance novels by the busload and that kind of end to the story would have appealed to her. No happy endings for her, no siree! So tragic, so sad… One more stupid doormat stunt. Can’t live without the creep. What a crock.
So anyway, after Mom’s accident, they put me in a series of foster homes, but nothing ever worked out. I was nothing but a paycheck to them, the lowest of the low and universally despised and tormented by the parent’s natural kids.
Eventually, and by that I mean after six foster families in two years, they sent me to live with my Aunt Mae in Lewittston. What a dump that place was! Total Hicksville, let me tell you! They didn’t even have paved roads except the one right down the middle of the business district. Yeah, that’s what they called it. I laughed so hard when Aunt Mae gave me the “Grand Tour” of the town, which took all of ten minutes, by the way - I figured she HAD to be kidding! I don’t think Mae appreciated me laughing at her town. I mean they must have had sixteen bars and only one pizza joint… shows you where their priorities were!
Mae, she wasn’t too bright, for all her formal education and five or six framed degrees hanging up on the wall. She really didn’t know what to do with me, what to make of me, classic abandonment case and all that. She must have taken some Psych classes along the way to parchment Glory, because she sometimes sounded like the inside of a textbook. She was something else. Mae never got married and liked to think she was a free spirit at heart, at least as far as sex was concerned. She wore about a quarter ton of gaudy costume jewelry and these huge billowing flowery skirts every single day, snow or sunshine. She made all her own skirts and came home just about every Friday evening with a huge bag of fabric to make more skirts, just like clockwork. Also just like clockwork, Mae went out every Saturday night and got herself laid. Sometimes it was quick and she was home early and sometimes it took just about all night to snare a victim.
Someone shoulda told Aunt Mae that free spirits don’t charge their drinks on American Express or need eighty seven thousand pieces of cheap plastic jewelry.
I think she banged just about very guy in Lewittston, so I guess that counts for something.
Anyway, despite everything, I kinda got fond of Aunt Mae. So I figured it would be best if I left town. I had been there about six months and was starting to get all twitchy inside my skin. You ever have that feeling? Like something’s going to happen any second? Spiders were crawling around behind my eyeballs. A million butterflies stampeding across my skin. Tingly goosebumps and a very real feeling that the world is holding its breath, just waiting for something. That kind of thing. Anticipation with attitude. Creepy.
It hadn’t escaped my notice at that point that people seem to have this habit of dying around me. Anne, Mom, Cookie-Dad, Theo… Most people go their whole lives without even one person who hurt them and deserved it ending up dead and here I had several. Not that Anne deserved it. Or Mom, either. Not really, anyway. Okay so maybe it was just the two, but I was kinda the reason they all died. Anyway, I needed some time to figure it all out…
No, it had nothing to do with the stupid so-called Curse of the Case Diamond. What are you, superstitious or something? That is seriously messed up. You sound like you’re writing a B-movie script. The Curse! The CURSE! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!
What kind of psychiatrist are you? This here is real life, lady. Get a grip.
Besides, THEY never even touched that diamond.
If you don’t mind, I will get back to my story.
So I stole $650 from Mae’s wallet. I figured she was asking for it. Like, who carries $650 dollars in cash around in a purse and then doesn’t keep an eagle eye out? I pretty much cleaned her out of granola bars, lifted an enormous yellow cable knit sweater and a bunch of her jewelry, too. Hell, she had so much gaudy costume crap in about four hundred different jewelry boxes all over that big old creaky house so she probably never even missed any of it. She sure as hell didn’t mention it to the police when she reported me missing.
And she never mentioned the cash or that sweater being gone either, so maybe that was her way of giving me a break. She knew I was getting restless and probably left that money for me to take anyway. Now that I think about it, I’m sure that is what she wanted. She knew I was going to book and so…
No, I do not believe I can read people’s minds! What a stupid thing to say. Look, I stayed in town for a couple of days, out of sight, and watched the newspaper racks. Missing Teen – Distraught Aunt Tells Tragic Story was splashed all over the headlines. See? Nothing supernatural about it.
That town really ate it up. They should thank me for adding some real excitement to their drab little lives. Heck, I remember the lead story the week before I skipped Aunt Mae’s was something about someone going around ripping clean sheets off clotheslines and dragging them through the mud. I am not sure which is more pathetic, the guy who dragged the sheets through the mud for kicks or the people who still hang bedsheets outside to dry when everybody owns a perfectly good washer and dryer.
So I hung around, picked up a couple of loose items along the way and found this really great old tree to sleep in at night. It is MUCH harder to try to sleep up in a tree than you’d think! I was up half the first night starting awake so often I almost fell off about a dozen times. I got the hang of it after the second night, though. There were still some apples left on the trees in the Keppler Orchard, so I liberated some after making friends with their scary “attack dog”. People are so funny about dogs. They think that if the dog LOOKS mean, that it IS mean and will scare off anybody who…
What? I’m getting off track? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I am telling the story, it’s MY story and I will tell it any old way I want.
Oh, all right. You wouldn’t want to hear about what happened to me after three days of eating nothing but overripe apples anyway. Ick.
So I lit out of town after a couple of days, keeping off the roads so no one would recognize me or report me or whatever. After a while, I hiked back to the road and tried to get a ride to anywhere. I walked for a long time. The sound of my old Reeboks crunching the gravel on the side of the road was really starting to get on my nerves. Crunch-it Crunch-it. Crunch-it. I was really hot and tired and kinda hungry for something other than granola, too. The sun was just starting to flirt with the horizon when someone finally pulled up behind me and stopped. It was this big old faded yellow Chevy. I couldn’t really see inside the windshield because the setting sun was glaring off it, but some guy inside stuck his arm outside the window, waved and said, “Need a ride, sweetie?”
I certainly don’t like being called “sweetie”, but like I said I was hot and tired and so I walked to the passenger side window and bent down to look in. The guy inside didn’t look dangerous or anything. He was old enough to be my father, had a head shaped like a potato with a bad comb-over, and wore a white shirt and a boring dark blue tie he had loosened around his neck. Very life-insurance salesman out on the road, or what I imagine an insurance salesman would look like. I figured he was pretty safe.
“Sure,” I said. I tossed my newly-acquired Sponge-Bob backpack (I lifted it from some kid who left it in plain sight on his front porch back in town) onto the seat next to him and climbed in. The torn vinyl upholstery made a rude crackly sound when I sat down.
“Where you headin’,” the Potato Head asked as he pulled back out onto the highway.
“Anywhere but here.” I was too bushed to be careful and laid my head back on the back of the seat. I only meant to close my eyes for a second, but I must have dozed off for a couple of hours because all of a sudden it is quiet and very dark and his hands are on me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” It’s amazing the stupid things you say when you are half asleep and wake up to find some old geezer molesting you. Why can’t I ever come up with something biting or clever?
“Shhh, shhh,” he put one finger to my lips, and ripped my favorite lace tank top pulling it up from my jeans. I was tempted to bite the finger off, but he suddenly seemed really strong and I couldn’t move or even breathe all scrunched up on the corner of the front seat.
I remembered that little death jinx I thought I had on people and thought crazily that maybe if I just thought hard enough, he would get it between the eyes. So I closed my eyes and brought all the anger, the pain, the disgust, the lies I had always been told, every single black thought that creeps up on you when you least expect it, the times I was cruel to the cat across the street. I remembered every petty grasping nasty jealous thought I ever had in my life, all the times I let Anne take the rap for something I did, including eating the last of that damned jar of peanut butter. I took that vicious oozing mess of psychic pain, mentally packed it into a hard dirty psychic snowball and threw it straight between his eyes.
By rights, he should have been dead. I mean, there was a LOT of nastiness there. But all that happened was that he kind of hic-cupped and stopped what he was doing for about half a second, then went right back to it.
After he was done he rifled through the pockets of my jeans and backpack and took all my cash. Creep. He tossed everything else back at me and told me to get out.
I grabbed what was left of my clothes and my pack, got out of the car and slammed the door. He sped away in the dark, leaving me there wearing nothing but a ripped lace shirt in the middle of the desert. I memorized the license plate. Not that I was going to call the police or anything. Just in case I needed it to practice my magic on.
Yeah, my magic. The guy definitely stopped for a second when I hit him with my psych-ball, so I figured I just needed practice to get it right. I stood there on the side of the road, practically naked and bruised in the moonlight and mentally scraped all the black tar nasty thoughts and other gunk out of the inside of my brain until I bled. I visualized a malignant javelin and sent it flying right at the faded “JESUS SAVES” bumper sticker plastered crookedly on his dented bumper.
Nothing. Not even a swerve. I suppose he was out of range or something. Oh well.
I knew, even then with such a dismal failure driving off leaving me coughing and shaking in the dust, that I really am magic. I am. I just have to be. I tossed my panties into the bushes – they had been reduced to a couple of pieces of elastic with a few square inches of shredded satin hanging on by threads - and pulled on my jeans and Reeboks. My tank top was ripped but still wearable. Too bad grunge was out, or I’d be real in.
It suddenly hurt to breathe and I sat right down on the dirt before I fell down. I sat there for a couple of minutes shivering and concentrating on breathing in and out, in and out, trying real hard not to cry. Eventually I got it together and just sat there for as long time, working the tangles out of my hair with my fingers.
I could kill people with my brain. I know I could! I just couldn’t seem to do it in a timely manner. I needed to learn control. Controlled kills. Master the controlled kill. Master the kill. Kill them before they hurt me again. Kill them all. They all deserved to die. All of them. All the dirty, rotten, slimy… Yeah. Starting with that freakin’ potato-head. Kill him first. Now. Make his car explode or some…
Why are you looking at me like that? The bastard just raped me on his sticky ripped vinyl seats in his stupid boring yellow car and then drove off and left me in the freakin’ middle of nowhere in the middle of the goddamned night. You want HIM alive and well out on the streets looking to get at your daughter?
I didn’t even know what happened to him until later anyway.
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CONCLUDES TOMORROW
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No one cares where I was born, where my sister and I lived, or where the murders took place or why I got away with it. No matter what I have done or what has happened, I know you are all only interested in one thing.
Well, tough. You want to know all about it and where it is; you have to listen to my story first. Context and all that. So I’m going to tell you. Everyone has a story, right? You wanna shout from a soapbox, write a book. Or get thrown in here and then someone HAS to listen to you. Ha!
So, this is my story. You probably won’t like it. Hell, I didn’t like living it much, either. But ya know, Mom used to say we can only paint with the colors we are given and sometimes the best colors are taken away. Just like that.
Now that I think about it, it seemed a little philosophical for a beaten down woman who never stood up for herself or accomplished much of anything besides baking cookies all the freakin’ time. Oatmeal, chocolate chip, peanut butter, sugar, all kinds of cookies. The kitchen floor was always a little crunchy with spilled sugar that never completely came up no matter how much you swept.
Oh, and before you get all sentimental at the thought of a real-live mother baking homemade cookies in this day and age (oh, come on, I see you smiling…), let me tell you that I HATE the smell of fresh baked cookies. Even the thought of it makes me gag. Besides, I was never allowed to have any cookies, even before I hated them. They were all for “him”.
Fresh baked cookie smells meant that he was coming home and my sister Anne and I were on our own for a while. Those nights were always about him; that’s Him with a capital H, by the way. Just want to make that clear. Mom always talked about him like he was some sorta god or movie star or something. He Who Must Be Obeyed. Cue the ominous music and make his drinks doubles.
I still can’t figure out what Mom saw in him.
Oh, so now you wanna know more about him? What for? Oh, all right, don’t get your panties in a bunch.
Well, I just thank God or whoever is up there pulling on all the strings that he was a trucker who did long hauls and wasn’t home much. I mean, life wasn’t great even when it was just Anne and Mom and me. Personally I think Mom was trying to make up for being such a damned doormat when he was there. Why else would she be all mousy and “yes Dear” and “anything you say, Dear” and all that when he was around and then suddenly grow a spine and lecture Anne and me on how to live our lives when he disappeared again? She sure as hell didn’t have it all together, so why should we pay any attention to what she said? Hell, I already knew the score at fourteen, I didn’t need some broken down old has-been to tell me to keep my knees together.
Like I had any choice in the matter.
Mom always told us we had to call him Daddy, which was completely ridiculous. I knew his name and he certainly wasn’t MY daddy, I wouldn’t be very happy if he was.
Call me an ungrateful kid, but I just don’t think that chasing a little girl out of the house with a broom stick screaming at her just because she ate the last of the peanut butter so that she runs out into the street and gets hit by a car qualifies him as “Father of the Year”. I mean, they aren’t exactly holding parades in his honor, no matter how many times people said it was a “terrible tragic accident”. Bye-bye, little sis. You didn’t miss much by dying young. At least you’ll be eight and cute and a perfect little angel forever. In fact, you got more and more perfect as the years went by. Mom and fake-daddy always compared me to your ghost and I lost every time. Seems like I was the only one who really remembered you… you could be a little brat sometimes. But even though you drove me crazy, I know you were just doing your job as my little sister. So I remember you, the Real You, the Real Anne, better than anyone else left alive.
So when HE died… What? No, I did NOT kill him. I couldn’t stand the creep, but someone else stuck that knife between his ribs. Personally I think that he probably mouthed off to the wrong person in the wrong place and got what was coming to him.
He just never knew when to shut up, especially when he was drunk. Geeze, you would not believe the crap he came up with! He talked as if he were some sort of modern Indiana Jones, digging up priceless artifacts along the side of the interstate while hauling cases of canned tuna or pork and beans all over the place. He spent a goddamned fortune on one of those metal detectors and said he would get “a feeling” and pull his big rig over on the side of the road and haul it out, sweeping over the shoulder or down in ditches and stuff. He brought home the most useless junk from those hauls. Pieces of metal so weirdly obscure you couldn’t tell what they came from, car parts, rusted pots and stuff like that. I guess looking for all that crap paid off because eventually he found that treasure map in that silver engraved tube – yeah, I said a TREASURE MAP – and he came home slap-happy drunk, screaming that we were going to be rich rich RICH when I was about thirteen. I heard him and his best old slimy drinking buddy talking about it constantly for weeks before Theo was murdered…
And no, I don’t think he killed Theo. And I certainly didn’t do it, no matter how much he deserved it. Rotten slime-ball sick-o bastard. Theo got what he deserved. It’s damned funny how they made all these loud grandiose plans trying to find whatever was at the end of that map and then WHAM! Theo gets a bullet in the head while sitting on the crapper. What a way to go, huh? Too, too funny! Can’t you just picture it…? La-de-dah-I’m just sitting here taking a dump, whistling Dixie and reading my stash of kiddie-porn and BOOM! Show’s over!
Oh, don’t give me that look. It is, too, funny. You don’t know anything.
Anyway, before you get all excited, Indiana-Dad and Theo did NOT find the Case diamond, I don’t care what the newspapers said. They didn’t have the brains to figure out that the map was... Well, I’ll get to that later. Imagine, Mr.You-Ate-The-Last-Of-The-Peanut-Butter-So-I’m-Gonna-Chase-You-Into-The-Street and his bestest child-molesting buddy solving one of the biggest and most famous museum jewel thefts in a couple of hundred years with nothing but a pick ax, compass and a bona-fide treasure map…
Oh stop, I knew El-Stupido-Dad better than anyone left alive, so I know he couldn’t possibly have done it. I certainly knew him better than YOU; you never even met him.
And no, I have no idea where the map went. You sure are full of questions.
Even the silver tube disappeared. You do know about the break-in at our house right after Daddy-kins got knifed in that alley, right? I know the cops said it was a regular robbery since our computer and TV were also taken, but it didn’t really look like anything spectacular (unless you knew what to look for) so why would they take THAT and leave my Mom’s Tiffany vase that was sitting right next to it on the bookshelf, huh? That vase was the only really valuable thing we have in the house; she always said my father – my REAL father – gave it to her and used to spend lots of time polishing it every month with this faraway kinda glazed look in her…
You want to know about Mom? She could barely put three coherent sentences together and spent all her time baking cookies and giving heard-‘em-before lectures to her wayward daughters… Wait, I mean daughter, singular. I was the wayward one; Anne was perfect, even before she got run over. She was even BLOND, not boring brown like me. Well, not anymore! See, I bleach my hair so now I can be perfect, too.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Mom.
How on earth could I have anything to do with Mom’s accident? She drove off a cliff, for God’s sake! I was at school, you can check the records. That’s Wellington Place High School; you want me to spell that for you? Personally, I think she drove off that cliff because he died. She used to read those sappy tragic romance novels by the busload and that kind of end to the story would have appealed to her. No happy endings for her, no siree! So tragic, so sad… One more stupid doormat stunt. Can’t live without the creep. What a crock.
So anyway, after Mom’s accident, they put me in a series of foster homes, but nothing ever worked out. I was nothing but a paycheck to them, the lowest of the low and universally despised and tormented by the parent’s natural kids.
Eventually, and by that I mean after six foster families in two years, they sent me to live with my Aunt Mae in Lewittston. What a dump that place was! Total Hicksville, let me tell you! They didn’t even have paved roads except the one right down the middle of the business district. Yeah, that’s what they called it. I laughed so hard when Aunt Mae gave me the “Grand Tour” of the town, which took all of ten minutes, by the way - I figured she HAD to be kidding! I don’t think Mae appreciated me laughing at her town. I mean they must have had sixteen bars and only one pizza joint… shows you where their priorities were!
Mae, she wasn’t too bright, for all her formal education and five or six framed degrees hanging up on the wall. She really didn’t know what to do with me, what to make of me, classic abandonment case and all that. She must have taken some Psych classes along the way to parchment Glory, because she sometimes sounded like the inside of a textbook. She was something else. Mae never got married and liked to think she was a free spirit at heart, at least as far as sex was concerned. She wore about a quarter ton of gaudy costume jewelry and these huge billowing flowery skirts every single day, snow or sunshine. She made all her own skirts and came home just about every Friday evening with a huge bag of fabric to make more skirts, just like clockwork. Also just like clockwork, Mae went out every Saturday night and got herself laid. Sometimes it was quick and she was home early and sometimes it took just about all night to snare a victim.
Someone shoulda told Aunt Mae that free spirits don’t charge their drinks on American Express or need eighty seven thousand pieces of cheap plastic jewelry.
I think she banged just about very guy in Lewittston, so I guess that counts for something.
Anyway, despite everything, I kinda got fond of Aunt Mae. So I figured it would be best if I left town. I had been there about six months and was starting to get all twitchy inside my skin. You ever have that feeling? Like something’s going to happen any second? Spiders were crawling around behind my eyeballs. A million butterflies stampeding across my skin. Tingly goosebumps and a very real feeling that the world is holding its breath, just waiting for something. That kind of thing. Anticipation with attitude. Creepy.
It hadn’t escaped my notice at that point that people seem to have this habit of dying around me. Anne, Mom, Cookie-Dad, Theo… Most people go their whole lives without even one person who hurt them and deserved it ending up dead and here I had several. Not that Anne deserved it. Or Mom, either. Not really, anyway. Okay so maybe it was just the two, but I was kinda the reason they all died. Anyway, I needed some time to figure it all out…
No, it had nothing to do with the stupid so-called Curse of the Case Diamond. What are you, superstitious or something? That is seriously messed up. You sound like you’re writing a B-movie script. The Curse! The CURSE! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!
What kind of psychiatrist are you? This here is real life, lady. Get a grip.
Besides, THEY never even touched that diamond.
If you don’t mind, I will get back to my story.
So I stole $650 from Mae’s wallet. I figured she was asking for it. Like, who carries $650 dollars in cash around in a purse and then doesn’t keep an eagle eye out? I pretty much cleaned her out of granola bars, lifted an enormous yellow cable knit sweater and a bunch of her jewelry, too. Hell, she had so much gaudy costume crap in about four hundred different jewelry boxes all over that big old creaky house so she probably never even missed any of it. She sure as hell didn’t mention it to the police when she reported me missing.
And she never mentioned the cash or that sweater being gone either, so maybe that was her way of giving me a break. She knew I was getting restless and probably left that money for me to take anyway. Now that I think about it, I’m sure that is what she wanted. She knew I was going to book and so…
No, I do not believe I can read people’s minds! What a stupid thing to say. Look, I stayed in town for a couple of days, out of sight, and watched the newspaper racks. Missing Teen – Distraught Aunt Tells Tragic Story was splashed all over the headlines. See? Nothing supernatural about it.
That town really ate it up. They should thank me for adding some real excitement to their drab little lives. Heck, I remember the lead story the week before I skipped Aunt Mae’s was something about someone going around ripping clean sheets off clotheslines and dragging them through the mud. I am not sure which is more pathetic, the guy who dragged the sheets through the mud for kicks or the people who still hang bedsheets outside to dry when everybody owns a perfectly good washer and dryer.
So I hung around, picked up a couple of loose items along the way and found this really great old tree to sleep in at night. It is MUCH harder to try to sleep up in a tree than you’d think! I was up half the first night starting awake so often I almost fell off about a dozen times. I got the hang of it after the second night, though. There were still some apples left on the trees in the Keppler Orchard, so I liberated some after making friends with their scary “attack dog”. People are so funny about dogs. They think that if the dog LOOKS mean, that it IS mean and will scare off anybody who…
What? I’m getting off track? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I am telling the story, it’s MY story and I will tell it any old way I want.
Oh, all right. You wouldn’t want to hear about what happened to me after three days of eating nothing but overripe apples anyway. Ick.
So I lit out of town after a couple of days, keeping off the roads so no one would recognize me or report me or whatever. After a while, I hiked back to the road and tried to get a ride to anywhere. I walked for a long time. The sound of my old Reeboks crunching the gravel on the side of the road was really starting to get on my nerves. Crunch-it Crunch-it. Crunch-it. I was really hot and tired and kinda hungry for something other than granola, too. The sun was just starting to flirt with the horizon when someone finally pulled up behind me and stopped. It was this big old faded yellow Chevy. I couldn’t really see inside the windshield because the setting sun was glaring off it, but some guy inside stuck his arm outside the window, waved and said, “Need a ride, sweetie?”
I certainly don’t like being called “sweetie”, but like I said I was hot and tired and so I walked to the passenger side window and bent down to look in. The guy inside didn’t look dangerous or anything. He was old enough to be my father, had a head shaped like a potato with a bad comb-over, and wore a white shirt and a boring dark blue tie he had loosened around his neck. Very life-insurance salesman out on the road, or what I imagine an insurance salesman would look like. I figured he was pretty safe.
“Sure,” I said. I tossed my newly-acquired Sponge-Bob backpack (I lifted it from some kid who left it in plain sight on his front porch back in town) onto the seat next to him and climbed in. The torn vinyl upholstery made a rude crackly sound when I sat down.
“Where you headin’,” the Potato Head asked as he pulled back out onto the highway.
“Anywhere but here.” I was too bushed to be careful and laid my head back on the back of the seat. I only meant to close my eyes for a second, but I must have dozed off for a couple of hours because all of a sudden it is quiet and very dark and his hands are on me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” It’s amazing the stupid things you say when you are half asleep and wake up to find some old geezer molesting you. Why can’t I ever come up with something biting or clever?
“Shhh, shhh,” he put one finger to my lips, and ripped my favorite lace tank top pulling it up from my jeans. I was tempted to bite the finger off, but he suddenly seemed really strong and I couldn’t move or even breathe all scrunched up on the corner of the front seat.
I remembered that little death jinx I thought I had on people and thought crazily that maybe if I just thought hard enough, he would get it between the eyes. So I closed my eyes and brought all the anger, the pain, the disgust, the lies I had always been told, every single black thought that creeps up on you when you least expect it, the times I was cruel to the cat across the street. I remembered every petty grasping nasty jealous thought I ever had in my life, all the times I let Anne take the rap for something I did, including eating the last of that damned jar of peanut butter. I took that vicious oozing mess of psychic pain, mentally packed it into a hard dirty psychic snowball and threw it straight between his eyes.
By rights, he should have been dead. I mean, there was a LOT of nastiness there. But all that happened was that he kind of hic-cupped and stopped what he was doing for about half a second, then went right back to it.
After he was done he rifled through the pockets of my jeans and backpack and took all my cash. Creep. He tossed everything else back at me and told me to get out.
I grabbed what was left of my clothes and my pack, got out of the car and slammed the door. He sped away in the dark, leaving me there wearing nothing but a ripped lace shirt in the middle of the desert. I memorized the license plate. Not that I was going to call the police or anything. Just in case I needed it to practice my magic on.
Yeah, my magic. The guy definitely stopped for a second when I hit him with my psych-ball, so I figured I just needed practice to get it right. I stood there on the side of the road, practically naked and bruised in the moonlight and mentally scraped all the black tar nasty thoughts and other gunk out of the inside of my brain until I bled. I visualized a malignant javelin and sent it flying right at the faded “JESUS SAVES” bumper sticker plastered crookedly on his dented bumper.
Nothing. Not even a swerve. I suppose he was out of range or something. Oh well.
I knew, even then with such a dismal failure driving off leaving me coughing and shaking in the dust, that I really am magic. I am. I just have to be. I tossed my panties into the bushes – they had been reduced to a couple of pieces of elastic with a few square inches of shredded satin hanging on by threads - and pulled on my jeans and Reeboks. My tank top was ripped but still wearable. Too bad grunge was out, or I’d be real in.
It suddenly hurt to breathe and I sat right down on the dirt before I fell down. I sat there for a couple of minutes shivering and concentrating on breathing in and out, in and out, trying real hard not to cry. Eventually I got it together and just sat there for as long time, working the tangles out of my hair with my fingers.
I could kill people with my brain. I know I could! I just couldn’t seem to do it in a timely manner. I needed to learn control. Controlled kills. Master the controlled kill. Master the kill. Kill them before they hurt me again. Kill them all. They all deserved to die. All of them. All the dirty, rotten, slimy… Yeah. Starting with that freakin’ potato-head. Kill him first. Now. Make his car explode or some…
Why are you looking at me like that? The bastard just raped me on his sticky ripped vinyl seats in his stupid boring yellow car and then drove off and left me in the freakin’ middle of nowhere in the middle of the goddamned night. You want HIM alive and well out on the streets looking to get at your daughter?
I didn’t even know what happened to him until later anyway.
....................
CONCLUDES TOMORROW
....................
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Poem: The Tree
*****
There was a tree next to the house
when I was young
that loomed large and tangled.
Its dark branches covered the patio
and spilled out over the garage,
Majestic and forbidding.
No one was home,
No one ever actually said, “Don’t”
So
with the spirit of Tom and Huckleberry
to bolster my confidence
I jump to reach the lowest branch
and swing up
like on the bars at school…
Ouch.
In my mind it is easy but
the tiny smears of blood on my arms and legs
as I progress
testify to the contrary.
Never mind.
Climb!
The branches jerk
noisily protesting my encroachment
into its inner sanctuary,
The bark is oddly fragile -
bits break off and crumble to dust in my hands.
Higher, step by careful step,
making sure of each foothold like a mountain climber.
And, there! Lo!
The top of the patio cover!
It is…
Dirty.
Rivulets of rust and
musty moldy leaves.
I am shocked.
And in that moment, aware.
Guilt.
I shouldn’t be here.
Climbing trees isn’t lady-like.
And
empathy for the tree.
Am I hurting it?
I look at my hands,
dirty with disintegrated bark
and blood…
Perhaps we are both wounded.
And yet,
I did it (Yes!).
And the tree
in its rooted silence,
with the wind rustling through its thousand leaves,
Applauds.
*****
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Just a random memory from childhood... one of the few times I did something I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to do becasue it wasn't "lady-like". Remember folks, a different time!!! This incident happened in the mid 60s, I think I was around 8-9 years old.
Just Musing,
Susan
There was a tree next to the house
when I was young
that loomed large and tangled.
Its dark branches covered the patio
and spilled out over the garage,
Majestic and forbidding.
No one was home,
No one ever actually said, “Don’t”
So
with the spirit of Tom and Huckleberry
to bolster my confidence
I jump to reach the lowest branch
and swing up
like on the bars at school…
Ouch.
In my mind it is easy but
the tiny smears of blood on my arms and legs
as I progress
testify to the contrary.
Never mind.
Climb!
The branches jerk
noisily protesting my encroachment
into its inner sanctuary,
The bark is oddly fragile -
bits break off and crumble to dust in my hands.
Higher, step by careful step,
making sure of each foothold like a mountain climber.
And, there! Lo!
The top of the patio cover!
It is…
Dirty.
Rivulets of rust and
musty moldy leaves.
I am shocked.
And in that moment, aware.
Guilt.
I shouldn’t be here.
Climbing trees isn’t lady-like.
And
empathy for the tree.
Am I hurting it?
I look at my hands,
dirty with disintegrated bark
and blood…
Perhaps we are both wounded.
And yet,
I did it (Yes!).
And the tree
in its rooted silence,
with the wind rustling through its thousand leaves,
Applauds.
*****
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Just a random memory from childhood... one of the few times I did something I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to do becasue it wasn't "lady-like". Remember folks, a different time!!! This incident happened in the mid 60s, I think I was around 8-9 years old.
Just Musing,
Susan
Monday, September 21, 2009
Finding the Happy
Have you ever had a moment when it felt as though time were standing still... that the entire world was stopped, holding its breath, no sound, no movement, just a frozen moment in time - no wait, that's "earthquake weather".
Okay, let's be more specific. Time isn't standing still, YOU are. The world is still going on around you, the sights, the sounds, the weather, even. But you are suddenly in a rainbow flecked soap bubble, separated from the world, paused in time. Your concerns and troubles and worries fall like dead leaves all around you, outside the bubble, for the moment, forgotten.
It feels as if you can stay forever in that same spot, that same attitude and stance, holding your breath and the world won't even notice that you have disappeared into stillness.
These moments strike me most often as I sit outside, just watching the trees or the stars or the birds. They are precious times when I can simply relax and simply BE, content with the world. Coffee or wine in hand, dog at my feet, I am completely free of the usual mad whirlwind of the world, with its attendant appointments and disappointments, worries and to-do lists... and can take a deep breath and simply smile.
*sigh*
When I talk about the stars singing, this is what I mean. The earth is singing to me and I have simply chosen to take the time to stop and to notice. This is when I feel the most... I guess "blessed" is the word, but it really has nothing to do with faith. It really isn't about being thankful, either, but more about being perfectly content and alive for just that few minutes.
This is a solitary quest, extremely personal and not always attainable. I don't go out to the spa with my glass of wine and automatically hear the stars every night. Sometimes the world's crashing pressures are too much to allow their song to permeate and dispel the noise.
But sometimes, sometimes... the clouds part and you are treated to a glimpse of your true self, an inner happiness and glow, an aura of peace and contentment, the feeling that you actually are a part of the universe, and your song is memorable.
I imagine that some of you will be rolling your eyes at this post and wondering if I am going all "new age" on you. On the contrary, in this world of too much to do, too many worries to carry, quick anger and feelings of hopelessness, finding a moment of peace in the course of the day seems the only really sane thing to do.
I find it most often outside. Some might while they watch their children or spouse sleep, or in petting a beloved animal, or listening to music, or in dance, or running... Every person has their own special place or way to attain that feeling of joy in being.
So there, Gentle Readers, I have an assignment for you! Try to find that spot, that moment, that Happy Place when you can feel the stars and earth singing and raise your face to bathe in its song, feel it like breath on your skin. Be still. Enjoy the morning, the afternoon, the evening, the night. Open yourself up to a little of that peace, that joy every day.
Slow down, let go of your life for a little while and just BE.
Just Musing,
Susan
_
Okay, let's be more specific. Time isn't standing still, YOU are. The world is still going on around you, the sights, the sounds, the weather, even. But you are suddenly in a rainbow flecked soap bubble, separated from the world, paused in time. Your concerns and troubles and worries fall like dead leaves all around you, outside the bubble, for the moment, forgotten.
It feels as if you can stay forever in that same spot, that same attitude and stance, holding your breath and the world won't even notice that you have disappeared into stillness.
These moments strike me most often as I sit outside, just watching the trees or the stars or the birds. They are precious times when I can simply relax and simply BE, content with the world. Coffee or wine in hand, dog at my feet, I am completely free of the usual mad whirlwind of the world, with its attendant appointments and disappointments, worries and to-do lists... and can take a deep breath and simply smile.
*sigh*
When I talk about the stars singing, this is what I mean. The earth is singing to me and I have simply chosen to take the time to stop and to notice. This is when I feel the most... I guess "blessed" is the word, but it really has nothing to do with faith. It really isn't about being thankful, either, but more about being perfectly content and alive for just that few minutes.
This is a solitary quest, extremely personal and not always attainable. I don't go out to the spa with my glass of wine and automatically hear the stars every night. Sometimes the world's crashing pressures are too much to allow their song to permeate and dispel the noise.
But sometimes, sometimes... the clouds part and you are treated to a glimpse of your true self, an inner happiness and glow, an aura of peace and contentment, the feeling that you actually are a part of the universe, and your song is memorable.
I imagine that some of you will be rolling your eyes at this post and wondering if I am going all "new age" on you. On the contrary, in this world of too much to do, too many worries to carry, quick anger and feelings of hopelessness, finding a moment of peace in the course of the day seems the only really sane thing to do.
I find it most often outside. Some might while they watch their children or spouse sleep, or in petting a beloved animal, or listening to music, or in dance, or running... Every person has their own special place or way to attain that feeling of joy in being.
So there, Gentle Readers, I have an assignment for you! Try to find that spot, that moment, that Happy Place when you can feel the stars and earth singing and raise your face to bathe in its song, feel it like breath on your skin. Be still. Enjoy the morning, the afternoon, the evening, the night. Open yourself up to a little of that peace, that joy every day.
Slow down, let go of your life for a little while and just BE.
Just Musing,
Susan
_
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Short Story: DEEP FREEZE
.
“Jesus, you could hang meat in here!”
Alicia shivered as she set her books down on the small table just inside the front door. She rubbed her hands together and glared at John, knowing damned well that he had turned off the heat before they had left that morning. Again.
John walked to the thermostat with short precise steps. “There is absolutely no reason to heat an empty house.” He moved the dial a fraction of an inch to the right and looked at her reprovingly. “I have to work hard all day to pay the bills. The very least you can do is support my conservation efforts.”
Alicia groaned inwardly at the much too familiar line. “Can’t you at least set it at 65 so we don’t freeze when we come in?” she asked, trying for a sweet reasonable tone. She pulled off her boots and set them on the rack to dry. “60? 50? I swear it’s colder in here than it is outside!”
“That’s ridiculous and you know it.” He stamped the snow-encrusted boots on the mat and brushed his shoulders free of the light wet sprinkles slowly melting on his impeccable faun overcoat. Carefully shrugging out of the coat, he hung it up on the single wooden hanger in the hall closet. “I did some calculations today, and we actually save an average of $347 a month to have you back at school. If you were home, we’d have to heat the house twenty-four hours a day.”
“Really.” Alicia poured as much sarcasm as she could into the single word. “Well, I’m glad I’m saving us money for a change. How awful it would be to heat an entire house just because I am home. And how even more tragic if we had to set the thermostat up a few more degrees because we had children.”
At the stricken look on John’s face, Alicia was immediately sorry for her careless words. Children were an old, deep pain, one that would never be completely healed. After eleven years of trying, Alicia had finally reconciled herself to the fact that they would never have any children of their own. She knew much of John’s current bitterness stemmed from that disappointment.
She raised her hand in wordless apology, but John brushed past her into the cold dark kitchen. He flipped on the light and ran water in the kettle for their ritual evening tea.
“John.”
He remained standing with his back to her, but he stopped what he was doing and leaned heavily against the sink, his head bowed.
“I’m sorry.” She went across the room, the cold from the floor burning the soles of her feet through her thick wool socks, and put her arms around him, resting her still cold cheek against his warm back.
“I know.” John sounded old and tired. In that instant, years of bitterness vanished and Alicia glimpsed the man she had married. He had always been intense and worked much too hard, but he had had a compassion and a vision for humanity that went beyond his work at the law office. It had been why she married him. But now, after so many disappointments both at the office and at home, she knew he had lost most of his idealism. He rarely even took pro bono cases anymore.
John signed noisily and turned in her arms, gave her a quick perfunctory hug and pointedly released her.
He went to the pantry and pulled out a box of flavored herb teas. “What would you like tonight: Earl Grey, Apple Cinnamon or Cranberry?”
What she really wanted was to talk, to get past the wall John had erected around himself over the years. She wanted things to be at least a little like they used to be. She wanted to get on with her life. To get on with the business of living.
She wanted to love again.
But, what she said was, “Cranberry.”
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Written for a Creative Writing class in college, around 1992ish
“Jesus, you could hang meat in here!”
Alicia shivered as she set her books down on the small table just inside the front door. She rubbed her hands together and glared at John, knowing damned well that he had turned off the heat before they had left that morning. Again.
John walked to the thermostat with short precise steps. “There is absolutely no reason to heat an empty house.” He moved the dial a fraction of an inch to the right and looked at her reprovingly. “I have to work hard all day to pay the bills. The very least you can do is support my conservation efforts.”
Alicia groaned inwardly at the much too familiar line. “Can’t you at least set it at 65 so we don’t freeze when we come in?” she asked, trying for a sweet reasonable tone. She pulled off her boots and set them on the rack to dry. “60? 50? I swear it’s colder in here than it is outside!”
“That’s ridiculous and you know it.” He stamped the snow-encrusted boots on the mat and brushed his shoulders free of the light wet sprinkles slowly melting on his impeccable faun overcoat. Carefully shrugging out of the coat, he hung it up on the single wooden hanger in the hall closet. “I did some calculations today, and we actually save an average of $347 a month to have you back at school. If you were home, we’d have to heat the house twenty-four hours a day.”
“Really.” Alicia poured as much sarcasm as she could into the single word. “Well, I’m glad I’m saving us money for a change. How awful it would be to heat an entire house just because I am home. And how even more tragic if we had to set the thermostat up a few more degrees because we had children.”
At the stricken look on John’s face, Alicia was immediately sorry for her careless words. Children were an old, deep pain, one that would never be completely healed. After eleven years of trying, Alicia had finally reconciled herself to the fact that they would never have any children of their own. She knew much of John’s current bitterness stemmed from that disappointment.
She raised her hand in wordless apology, but John brushed past her into the cold dark kitchen. He flipped on the light and ran water in the kettle for their ritual evening tea.
“John.”
He remained standing with his back to her, but he stopped what he was doing and leaned heavily against the sink, his head bowed.
“I’m sorry.” She went across the room, the cold from the floor burning the soles of her feet through her thick wool socks, and put her arms around him, resting her still cold cheek against his warm back.
“I know.” John sounded old and tired. In that instant, years of bitterness vanished and Alicia glimpsed the man she had married. He had always been intense and worked much too hard, but he had had a compassion and a vision for humanity that went beyond his work at the law office. It had been why she married him. But now, after so many disappointments both at the office and at home, she knew he had lost most of his idealism. He rarely even took pro bono cases anymore.
John signed noisily and turned in her arms, gave her a quick perfunctory hug and pointedly released her.
He went to the pantry and pulled out a box of flavored herb teas. “What would you like tonight: Earl Grey, Apple Cinnamon or Cranberry?”
What she really wanted was to talk, to get past the wall John had erected around himself over the years. She wanted things to be at least a little like they used to be. She wanted to get on with her life. To get on with the business of living.
She wanted to love again.
But, what she said was, “Cranberry.”
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Written for a Creative Writing class in college, around 1992ish
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Poem: Some Thoughts in a Darkened Theater After the Show
In the movies
Life is never petty,
The players are always Beautiful,
Jealousies are Grandly Noble, and
Love lasts forever.
A plot twist in the movies
can leave you gasping.
A plot twist in life
still leaves you gasping
but you cannot leave this theater
and walk out into the sun.
Here you must stay
and play it out.
And no one applauds
when the credits finally roll:
the best that you can hope for
is that the audience
will cry.
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Life is never petty,
The players are always Beautiful,
Jealousies are Grandly Noble, and
Love lasts forever.
A plot twist in the movies
can leave you gasping.
A plot twist in life
still leaves you gasping
but you cannot leave this theater
and walk out into the sun.
Here you must stay
and play it out.
And no one applauds
when the credits finally roll:
the best that you can hope for
is that the audience
will cry.
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer
Friday, September 18, 2009
Critter Love...
My husband and I were fortunate enough to buy a charming house on nearly 1/4 acre in Lancaster about one week before the Big Snowfall that caused time to stand gloriously still last December. Most of this land is in the back yard, a sort of truncated pie slice, with the house pretty far forward. One of the best features about this house and this yard is that there are six full grown fruitless Mulberry trees on the property, one in front, five in back.
Well, the trees and the pool, which is so new we were the first ones to use it.
Oh, and the spa. Perfect for starry nights.
And the huge shed... Jim loves that.
getting off topic...
The result of all this land and trees and pool and shed is that we share space with a multitude of critters.
We have a trillion birds. Doves sitting in stolen nests that are far too small for their rather large bodies in most of the trees. Hummingbirds that take long sips of dessert from the feeder in the tree closest to the house in between snatching gnats out of the air about a foot off the ground every morning. Sparrows that flock and twitter all day - one couple nested in our eaves and, unfortunately, we had to hold a funeral for one of their babies which fell 30 feet to its death right at my feet... so sad! Black birds with yellow eyes, mockingbirds with their long tails and dramatic white flashes under their wings (reminds me of the one I saved many years ago - that story is for another time). Robins, huge and with their legendary rosy breasts, that really seem to enjoy the insect smorgasboard of bugs our grass offers in the afternoons (they also like to tease our dog, who hasn't been able to gift me with one, much to her chagrin, I am sure). And a myriad of others I cannot name but nonetheless enjoy.
We have a squirrel who lives under out shed and comes out early in the morning to gambol across the side fence and manages to dash back under the shed right before the sprinklers come on every day. I have named him Henry.
Insect galore. Billions of gnats. Wasps (we did get rid of all of their nests in the eaves... did I say "we"??? Jim did it. I stayed inside and watched through the glass. Ick. Hate wasps!). Dragonflies, orange ones mostly, although they are so fast that I can never tell if there is only one with supersonic speed or several that just stay out of sight and play "Tag - Let's freak out the human floating peacefully in the pool").
Butterflies... Sob. I feel so bad. I was throwing a large rope toy for our Golden Retriever across the grass - huge yard, remember??? - and hit one of the trees and a large gold and black Monarch butterfly tumbled helter skelter out of the tree. What are the odds??? Out of SIX trees I hit the ONE with a butterfly attached... no, I just don't hit the tree, I hit the exact BRANCH this beautiful butterfly is resting on and knocked him out of the tree!!! I dashed over, unbelieving, and saw him, his wings folded shut and gently scooped him up, cradling his broken wings and trying to keep our dog from making a rather small but crunchy meal out of him. I felt the barest scrabbling against my palm, peeked into my cupped hand and his wings fluttered. He wasn't dead! I exultantly but slowly walked across the yard and gingerly placed him on the chain link dog run fence, out of reach of the dog, and stood back, willing to give him some peace. Well, mostly for that, I also wanted to run in and get my camera to take pictures since he was practically tame (some might say... crippled). I snapped off several shots as he valiantly managed to get his rather large wings through the hole of the chain link. I imagine he was trying to get as far away from the monster who broke his wing as quickly as possible... but in butterfly world, that just isn't very fast. I was able to take a bunch of photos and eventually got bored (how callous am I???) and went back inside. A little later I went out to check on him and he was gone. I really hope he was able to fly and flutter away... and wasn't some bird's mid-morning snack. *shudder*
Anyway, back to the critter list (those of you who know me, know what's coming next...)
FROGS! Frogs in our pool! Itty bitty frogs about an inch long to great big six inchers. For a while in early summer I was fishing 3-6 frogs a day out of the pool. I mean all that chlorine can't be good for them. I imagine they have to lotion each other up after a foray into the water... (FROGGER LOTION... FEWER WARTS! LESS SLIME!)Besides, once they get in, it seemed like it was impossible for them to get out. They are actually California Toads, but since all toads are frogs (but not all frogs are toads), and I like the sounds for the word FROG better - it's cuter than TOAD, I am still going to call them my frogs, so stop giving me grief about it, okay?? (You know who you are!)
And then, also attracted to our pool, BATS! Well, one bat. A huge swooping creature falling from the sky and gone so fast it is hard to process the reality of it. I had seen it a couple of times, including on July 4th when son Michael and I were dangling our feet in the water and playing with sparklers. I thought, "Cool! Bats are just creepy enough to be awesome!" Husband Jim, on the other hand, had a different reaction. Although maybe if his introduction to our bat friend, whom I call Flutter, had been less... dramatic, he may have been a little less... freaked. This is how it happened: we were enjoying one of the Antelope Valley's famous glorious summer nights floating in the pool, just talking and watching the stars come out. The breeze was balmy, the sky clear, the nightfall noises muffled, we were both very relaxed, each with a glass of spirits (me with my glass of wine, and Jim had a beer) when this huge black creature SWOOPED down to the water level within a foot of Jim's head and dashed out of sight. Jim yelped and jumped three feet out of the lounger, beer forgotten, legs flailing, arms waving, hands slapping at his head, "WHAT THE %&$# WAS THAT??????" In between fits of laughing at his discomfiture - am I a bad wife? - I explained that it was probably our bat and he totally freaked out. He marched out of the pool (literally walking on water, so great was his resolve) and flung himself inside the house. I stayed where I was. I like the bat. He is certainly startling, but, like I said before, kinda cool in a creepy/awesome way. I also knew what Jim was doing... he was looking up how to get rid of bats on the web. After about a half an hour outside by myself, batless, lonely and my wine glass sadly empty, I went inside. Jim was looking dejected. "Bats eat up to 1000 mosquitoes a night," he said, staring at the laptop, his face bathed in blue light. "I guess it's a good thing."
But he never went outside in the pool without lighting one of the tiki torches to scare Flutter away for the rest of the season. I haven't seen him since.
There you have it. A fairly comprehensive list of the critters with whom we share our little slice of the earth. Oh, and if you see Flutter, tell him all is forgiven and to come home. I miss him!
Well, the trees and the pool, which is so new we were the first ones to use it.
Oh, and the spa. Perfect for starry nights.
And the huge shed... Jim loves that.
getting off topic...
The result of all this land and trees and pool and shed is that we share space with a multitude of critters.
We have a trillion birds. Doves sitting in stolen nests that are far too small for their rather large bodies in most of the trees. Hummingbirds that take long sips of dessert from the feeder in the tree closest to the house in between snatching gnats out of the air about a foot off the ground every morning. Sparrows that flock and twitter all day - one couple nested in our eaves and, unfortunately, we had to hold a funeral for one of their babies which fell 30 feet to its death right at my feet... so sad! Black birds with yellow eyes, mockingbirds with their long tails and dramatic white flashes under their wings (reminds me of the one I saved many years ago - that story is for another time). Robins, huge and with their legendary rosy breasts, that really seem to enjoy the insect smorgasboard of bugs our grass offers in the afternoons (they also like to tease our dog, who hasn't been able to gift me with one, much to her chagrin, I am sure). And a myriad of others I cannot name but nonetheless enjoy.
We have a squirrel who lives under out shed and comes out early in the morning to gambol across the side fence and manages to dash back under the shed right before the sprinklers come on every day. I have named him Henry.
Insect galore. Billions of gnats. Wasps (we did get rid of all of their nests in the eaves... did I say "we"??? Jim did it. I stayed inside and watched through the glass. Ick. Hate wasps!). Dragonflies, orange ones mostly, although they are so fast that I can never tell if there is only one with supersonic speed or several that just stay out of sight and play "Tag - Let's freak out the human floating peacefully in the pool").
Butterflies... Sob. I feel so bad. I was throwing a large rope toy for our Golden Retriever across the grass - huge yard, remember??? - and hit one of the trees and a large gold and black Monarch butterfly tumbled helter skelter out of the tree. What are the odds??? Out of SIX trees I hit the ONE with a butterfly attached... no, I just don't hit the tree, I hit the exact BRANCH this beautiful butterfly is resting on and knocked him out of the tree!!! I dashed over, unbelieving, and saw him, his wings folded shut and gently scooped him up, cradling his broken wings and trying to keep our dog from making a rather small but crunchy meal out of him. I felt the barest scrabbling against my palm, peeked into my cupped hand and his wings fluttered. He wasn't dead! I exultantly but slowly walked across the yard and gingerly placed him on the chain link dog run fence, out of reach of the dog, and stood back, willing to give him some peace. Well, mostly for that, I also wanted to run in and get my camera to take pictures since he was practically tame (some might say... crippled). I snapped off several shots as he valiantly managed to get his rather large wings through the hole of the chain link. I imagine he was trying to get as far away from the monster who broke his wing as quickly as possible... but in butterfly world, that just isn't very fast. I was able to take a bunch of photos and eventually got bored (how callous am I???) and went back inside. A little later I went out to check on him and he was gone. I really hope he was able to fly and flutter away... and wasn't some bird's mid-morning snack. *shudder*
Anyway, back to the critter list (those of you who know me, know what's coming next...)
FROGS! Frogs in our pool! Itty bitty frogs about an inch long to great big six inchers. For a while in early summer I was fishing 3-6 frogs a day out of the pool. I mean all that chlorine can't be good for them. I imagine they have to lotion each other up after a foray into the water... (FROGGER LOTION... FEWER WARTS! LESS SLIME!)Besides, once they get in, it seemed like it was impossible for them to get out. They are actually California Toads, but since all toads are frogs (but not all frogs are toads), and I like the sounds for the word FROG better - it's cuter than TOAD, I am still going to call them my frogs, so stop giving me grief about it, okay?? (You know who you are!)
And then, also attracted to our pool, BATS! Well, one bat. A huge swooping creature falling from the sky and gone so fast it is hard to process the reality of it. I had seen it a couple of times, including on July 4th when son Michael and I were dangling our feet in the water and playing with sparklers. I thought, "Cool! Bats are just creepy enough to be awesome!" Husband Jim, on the other hand, had a different reaction. Although maybe if his introduction to our bat friend, whom I call Flutter, had been less... dramatic, he may have been a little less... freaked. This is how it happened: we were enjoying one of the Antelope Valley's famous glorious summer nights floating in the pool, just talking and watching the stars come out. The breeze was balmy, the sky clear, the nightfall noises muffled, we were both very relaxed, each with a glass of spirits (me with my glass of wine, and Jim had a beer) when this huge black creature SWOOPED down to the water level within a foot of Jim's head and dashed out of sight. Jim yelped and jumped three feet out of the lounger, beer forgotten, legs flailing, arms waving, hands slapping at his head, "WHAT THE %&$# WAS THAT??????" In between fits of laughing at his discomfiture - am I a bad wife? - I explained that it was probably our bat and he totally freaked out. He marched out of the pool (literally walking on water, so great was his resolve) and flung himself inside the house. I stayed where I was. I like the bat. He is certainly startling, but, like I said before, kinda cool in a creepy/awesome way. I also knew what Jim was doing... he was looking up how to get rid of bats on the web. After about a half an hour outside by myself, batless, lonely and my wine glass sadly empty, I went inside. Jim was looking dejected. "Bats eat up to 1000 mosquitoes a night," he said, staring at the laptop, his face bathed in blue light. "I guess it's a good thing."
But he never went outside in the pool without lighting one of the tiki torches to scare Flutter away for the rest of the season. I haven't seen him since.
There you have it. A fairly comprehensive list of the critters with whom we share our little slice of the earth. Oh, and if you see Flutter, tell him all is forgiven and to come home. I miss him!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Poetry - The Birth of Waves
This is one of my favorite poems, written in one of my several forays back to college...
THE BIRTH OF WAVES
The moon has fallen in love
with the sea,
Her gifts of sparkling jewels
dance lightly over his still, deep expanses;
her lonely sighs softly illuminate
his empty sandy shores;
she skisses will silver brilliance
his wide and motionless body.
Touched by her gifts
and intrigued by her silvery grace,
the sea, with a mighty force
arches his back to reach her:
to bathe in her glowing light
and touch her shining face.
But he is pulled back
by jealous Gravity, his wife,
and with a roar of anguish,
crashes
back
to earth.
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer 1995
THE BIRTH OF WAVES
The moon has fallen in love
with the sea,
Her gifts of sparkling jewels
dance lightly over his still, deep expanses;
her lonely sighs softly illuminate
his empty sandy shores;
she skisses will silver brilliance
his wide and motionless body.
Touched by her gifts
and intrigued by her silvery grace,
the sea, with a mighty force
arches his back to reach her:
to bathe in her glowing light
and touch her shining face.
But he is pulled back
by jealous Gravity, his wife,
and with a roar of anguish,
crashes
back
to earth.
(c) Susan Quinland-Stringer 1995
The Beginning
Isn't this wild??? You can set up this space and say anything you want... just toss it out into the Universe and watch it sparkle with a billion other blogs, all fighting for space and attention, pushing and shouting 'MINE IS BETTER!' 'PICK ME' 'READ ME' 'EAT ME..."
But I digress. The point of setting this blog up is that facebook, for all that I adore it, oftimes doesn't quite give me enough room to say what I want to say. Sometimes it isn't much, just the daily anecdotes and observations from a slightly warped mind. And sometimes I have a story to tell and really don't want to get all mired up in the "who owns the copywrite" controversy over there!
I wondered about a theme, like in the movie Julie & Julia, but can't come up with anything that I want to be stuck writing about for a solid year, so you will just have to take it as it comes out of my mind.
Caveat Emtor and all that...!
So, bear with me as I ramp up, rev up the old writing muscles and get back into the habit of daily writing about stuff other than how many frogs I scooped outta my pool or how badly I need another cuppa joe.
Oh, one thing this will NOT be is another Real Estate blog. Yes, I am a Realtor, but frankly, I am much more than that; I am a fully rounded human being (just look at my picture! LOL) and like to step outside my professional self once in a while and just be meeeeee.
But I digress. The point of setting this blog up is that facebook, for all that I adore it, oftimes doesn't quite give me enough room to say what I want to say. Sometimes it isn't much, just the daily anecdotes and observations from a slightly warped mind. And sometimes I have a story to tell and really don't want to get all mired up in the "who owns the copywrite" controversy over there!
I wondered about a theme, like in the movie Julie & Julia, but can't come up with anything that I want to be stuck writing about for a solid year, so you will just have to take it as it comes out of my mind.
Caveat Emtor and all that...!
So, bear with me as I ramp up, rev up the old writing muscles and get back into the habit of daily writing about stuff other than how many frogs I scooped outta my pool or how badly I need another cuppa joe.
Oh, one thing this will NOT be is another Real Estate blog. Yes, I am a Realtor, but frankly, I am much more than that; I am a fully rounded human being (just look at my picture! LOL) and like to step outside my professional self once in a while and just be meeeeee.
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