Face down, there is a hole. Gunpowder claims another victim. Her awareness fades inward as distant voices implore her to stay. Lightning strikes her once, then twice. Gliding on her tips stretched to her superstar, she contemplates the all in all. Arriving ever-clear she remembers. At the crux, there is a mirror.
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“Look, Daddy. That one’s smiling!”
Billy was laughing as he gazed at the creature through the zoo’s cage. Then he darted to the next enclosure, and made funny faces at the resident there. Billy looked truly happy taking in all the zoo had to offer. “So nice to see him having fun, isn’t it, dear?” Marvin asked his wife. “Wonderful,” replied Renee. “We really ought to come here more often.” “But, when do you think Billy will be ready to hear the story?” Renee stretched her long, orange neck as she gazed at the humans in cages. “In due time.” Sipping his water, he tried to remember anything from her profile that he could ask her about. Oddly, the only thing he could recall was that she was in the Scouts.
“So I see you were in the Scouts,” he said. “Yes.” “Single sex or combined?” “Single sex.” “Do you mind sharing why?” “Not at all. I was in the Girl Scouts. But when they started letting boys in, I quit.” “I quit the Boy Scouts when they started letting girls in.” Until then, she hadn’t noticed his strong jawline, and he hadn’t noticed the soft curve of her cheek. Brad was enjoying a pleasant evening along the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv. The orange sky turning pink, Brad thought about his young son in a US Navy destroyer, patrolling somewhere along the same shoreline for the security of the smaller countries. However, the democracy back home is in peril, as in many other countries around the world. That’s when he realized that he had been standing at a crossroad of civilizations encompassing ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Israelites, Babylonians, Romans, Byzantines, the Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, the Ottomans, the British, followed by modern-day Israelis, and Palestinians.
“History needs humanity”, thought so Brad. Every night Annie’s mom tucked her into bed and said goodnight. Annie was 8 years old. She would try to keep her eyes open because she knew the monster would come. In the mornings she didn’t feel good but she couldn’t explain what it was. Annie looked under her bed and saw the friendly dead man, it wasn’t him. She checked her closet and said goodnight to the ghost inside. She waved to the clown in her mirror, he was harmless. Annie felt tired and went to sleep. Then the real monster creeped into her room. Daddy was his name.
Based on the news item below that Fliss found during the week... A log floated silently upstream as John watched on that misty morning in October. “UP-stream”? Curious he walked along the towpath. It moved at the speed of the waterflow - but wrong direction! A happy splash of an early-morning Labrador made him look up. “Sherlock, here boy!” The owner was scanning the river frantically. The dog had disappeared, but now there was frenzied splashing. The dog, on the end of a snout, appeared briefly. “SHERLOCK!” The man was screaming at the now-silent river. Shivering, John gazed at the water. “So, it’s true. There is a crocodile in the River Thames.” A log floated silently upstream as John watched on that misty morning in October. “UP-stream”? Curious he walked along the towpath. It moved at the speed of the waterflow - but wrong direction! A happy splash of an early-morning Labrador made him look up. “Sherlock, here boy!” The owner was scanning the river frantically. The dog had disappeared, but now there was frenzied splashing. The dog, on the end of a snout, appeared briefly. “SHERLOCK!” The man was screaming at the now-silent river. Shivering, John gazed at the water. “So, it’s true. There is a crocodile in the River Thames.”  Image courtesy of the Mirror Freddy Bulls stands at Ninth and Haith before Breaks, a pool hall, weaving a quarter between long fingers. At a high-rise window, sundown cresting dirty Brownstones, an Irish kid named Tommy Lang eyes Freddy in the cross hairs of his scope. Ten blocks east, travelling 110 mph, Sup, a fresh Crip, races a red ’69 Impala toward the intersection. As Freddy’s bus slows, brakes hissing, a scrawny addict named Edgar Face asks for spare change. Freddy clutches his coin. An oil slick on the street shimmers a psychedelic dusk of violet and green as the bus door opens. Freddy boards.
There were always rumours about sleazy Les.
He wasn't alone: plenty guys regarded it as a perk of the job. But for the rest of us, having sex with girls in his care was unprofessional, reprehensible – you name the word, nothing quite cuts it. A few women did it, too. Sadly, none of his victims came forward. I think they just felt too dirty and ashamed, so he escaped. Sort of. Les shared some virus with one of his girls. She died, he's in a wheelchair now, dying a slow, miserable death. Can't bring myself to feel sorry for him. Jacob’s life was Free Fallin’, but he’d met the perfect woman--An American Girl. He just knew there was Something in the Air. He made his approach, but Sheila rejected his offer for a date. “C’mon--Don’t Do Me Like That,” Jacob thought. “I Won’t Back Down from what could be true love.” He mustered his courage, and asked again. “You Got Lucky,” Sheila replied with a smile. “I just couldn’t bear to see you Break Down.” “Always Listen to her Heart,” Jacob told himself. “The Waiting is tough, but now? Here Comes My Girl. A match made in heaven.” * * * Dedicated to Tom Petty ... R.I.P., sadly. All songs above are the work of Mr. Petty – Russell. Ed: Desperately sad to such a great guy taken too soon. I've taken the liberty of adding a video of the very moment I personally discovered Tom Petty. Bought the album the next day and still have it. Her first memory was of watching TV. The images and sounds drew her in. TV mesmerized her. It cast a spell over her.
Growing up, she watched TV every chance she got. She watched it when other kids were playing outside. She opted out of kindergarten so she could stay home and watch TV. All that interested her was on TV. She had few friends. She never went on dates or got married. She worked as a bookkeeper and lived alone. Her only companions were on TV. She died in her recliner, watching a movie with a terribly sad ending. How he held forth on anyone from Chaucer to Ishiguro! Knowing the ins and outs of deconstruction and postcolonial theory, he was the doyen of the literary journals.
Colleagues’ reputations were demolished with one savage review. He never lost an argument in seminars or in print. He would dominate dinner parties with his scintillating conversation and wit. His wife endured his affairs with postgraduate students under the spell of his intellect, proud he would always return to her. Yet when at 58 he was told he had terminal cancer, words, which had been the foundation of his existence, failed him. It began, as so often, with a simple misunderstanding.
She said something he thought was wrong, but he'd misheard her. When he questioned her, she took his tone to be accusatory, which he didn't intend. From there, things spiralled out of control. In no time, he had a sharp kitchen knife in his hand, she, the rolling pin. She made pastry, he sliced apples. The time that it needed in the oven was just enough to sort things in bed. It's how they always settled arguments. The apple pie was slightly overdone on this occasion, but neither of them cared. A loud, whirring noise had made the youngster look up. History showed she’d been the first to see Them.
“Aliens! Aliens!” She’d flown down the mountain to the village and, gasping for oxygen, had thrown her hand against the early-warning button. Linked sirens shrilled across the globe. They had come down in their hundreds of thousands, travel-stained crafts hovering, dis-engorging the aliens via invisible elevators. Soon, 95% of the population had been slain, great cities destroyed. The leader – others called him Admiral – looked around satisfied. “Air’s oxygen-rich, but it will do. With Planet Earth dead, it’s the best we’ve got. "Nazi scum have closed the night club," shouted Fritz.
"Not so loud, my friend," warned Hans, "they have spies everywhere." Hans was sad remembering Weimar days when Berlin used to be the party capital of the world: mind-altering drugs at the local chemist then pretty women, beer and decadence at the clubs which sprinkled Berlin like stars. Now the National Socialists considered themselves the new drug, the opium of the people. He passed Brownshirts, as always masking his contempt for the beer-swilling hooligans. Hans thought about Sarah. Naturally, he had no idea how brutal the years ahead would be. The man followed her from the restaurant, drawing closer in the darkness. He grinned as she quickened her step, following the pavement lighting to the door of the underground carpark, and chased her down the smelly stairwell into the basement.
Turning round at the sound of squealing tyres, he had just enough time to make out a veiled figure behind the wheel before the car hit him and sent him flying through the air. As he landed in a heap his eyes alighted on the headline of the “Al Riyadh” newspaper lying on the floor: “Women Granted Right to Drive”. “Mom, tell a fairytale! Can you do it in six words?”
“Hmm—” “Alice in Wonderland?” “Well, it’s 2017… The Mad Hatter gets himself elected.” “You made it political!” “I teach politics.” “Aesop’s fable about hard work?” “Grasshopper ran. Ant voted for him.” “Come on. Try The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” “‘Failing’ boy spreads fake news. Sad.” “Mom!” “Boy Who Cried Wolf: nobody tells that story anymore.” “MOM!” “Jack and the Beanstalk: Beanstalk? We’ve giants to kill—here.” “I can’t even—" “One more, sweet daughter: Kissed frogs. Lived joyfully. Beautiful tadpoles.” “What do you call it?” “Happily ever after.” No, nothing would ever change in this country, so thought John!
It is that sacred Second Amendment: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." So what if only 59 citizens died while another 500 clinging to their lives in a recent carnage? This country already had witnessed murder of innocent little children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and fun-loving youths of Orlando. But pro-life patriots, the modern militia, have a sacred duty of honoring the constitution. Guns are here to stay. As a boy, he used to venture out with his friends on Saturday mornings, escaping the safe and neat confines of their subdivision to explore the still wild woods nearby.
One Saturday morning, deep in the woods, they discovered a dilapidated log cabin. The only sign of life were vines snaking through holes in the chinking of the walls. Large stones formed a step at the base of the door. Dared by his friends, the boy stepped up and yanked the door open. That was the last Saturday the boys would leave the safe and neat confines of their subdivision. Gilbert James fully committed himself to life as a train robber. Given that he'd bought a house next to those iron tracks, what else could he do?
Of course, the fact it was a minor spur only servicing those grain elevators didn't turn out to be the best news. Worse, that grain company had moved on years before, the ties long overgrown. In fact, he might never have robbed one at all if it hadn't been for getting stuck in traffic by a random coal line that spilled everywhere. Still, that was a robbery and Gilbert was fully committed. Fully. He was a strikingly handsome man.
He made a practice of having his picture taken wherever he went. Being a senior executive, when he traveled on business, there was always someone more junior who was quite happy to perform the task. And when he traveled with friends, they would hand waiters, waitresses and even passersby their cameras and iPhones so they could get in the shot. Over the years, he collected thousands of pictures of himself. He kept them in albums. Sometimes when he would look at them at home, alone, he wished he had someone to share them with. Ten hollow-eyed men, ill-fed, tortured, sentenced to hard labor and death, were marched into the courtyard.
Ten soldiers, faces flushed in the glaring sunlight, formed a line, then executed the order to "Fire!" Ten men lay dead or dying in the hot and blowing sand. Church bells rang out the noon hour. Somewhere a donkey brayed a nervous laugh. The dictator took several sips of cool water, rose languidly from his chair, raised his hand and issued the command: "Bring in the next ten men!" Two years ago, Jason landed in Yangon, Myanmar to explore this Far-East Asian country, long isolated but recently opened its borders. After visiting the country’s famous attractions in the southern and eastern regions, he would request his guide Mr. Hwe Kyi to accompany him for a visit to north. Mr. Kyi politely advised him not traveling there citing some local “disturbances”.
Now those “disturbances” came to global limelight. Thugs belonging to Buddhist majority, led by a young monk ironically dubbed as “Buddhist Bin Laden”, have been busy in ethnic cleansing of minority Muslims, while the world watches from the sideline. The airliner is in a steep dive, seconds from slamming into the ocean. Michael, seat belt buckled, follows instructions and braces for impact. No soul should suffer this kind of all-consuming fear.
There is a white space. An angel with open arms kneels before a white shimmering veil. Michael is propelled through the veil into the angel’s arms. Her wings fold into an embrace, an embrace like a thousand comforting arms. Waking from hypnosis, he sits on the psychiatrist’s couch. The doctor asks, "How do you feel Jason? I have a story to share with you, and a few questions." |
