Category: fiction

Waxing Poetic for Friday

Vampire Eyes

She lies on the bed looking up at him above her
Her pale blue eyes open wide glowing in the dark
Sexual desire and hunger fill the gap between them
She draws him near locking their eyes.

Lost in the depths of her gaze his desire builds
Knowing that death awaits still he draws closer
She arches her back to meet his thrusts
As the crescendo of desire builds
Their bodies move faster fighting against each other.

She moves her body upward pulling him to her
Turning her head her mouth open
Kissing him hard and long, staring into his eyes
She smiles for the first time
Knowing he’s hers forever.

A Short Story for Sunday

Monsters

Monsters are everywhere. Some are large and some are small. Some are mischievous and some are evil. Some monsters are tangible and some are not. Monsters can have great strength and tremendous power. But monsters can only do great damage if we let them. This is a short tale of a woman with a monster of her own. Below is one of her journal entries of her monster.

I am so tired of being in limbo. When will the monster free me? No matter what my head decides to do my heart sometimes is the stronger of the two. I have always thought of myself as pragmatic, but the monster, “Indecision”, won’t release its’ grip totally. I have moments when the monster is sleeping that I can accomplish many things in moving on, looking to the future. Then Indecision arises and I’m back where I started. Hoping and waiting for the impossible to happen.

I travel through the maze of my mind turning left then right trying to find the open door to the promise of the future. One turn looks promising and I can see the future through the veils of Indecision as he teases me by alternately lifting and lowering them. Asking me how much am I willing to give up to be able to move on? What is the right choice?

Sometimes the first step is the hardest. Indecision mires my way with leaden shoes and steep hills to climb with the faint glow of hope just out of reach. Indecision knows that until I quit asking the same questions over and over, he still has the sharp talons of fear deeply imbedded in my back. Talons tugging at my heart, never quite letting go. Indecision teases me by giving me moments of great inner strength and just when I think I can break my bonds and cross through the portal, he slams the door in my face.

I ask why, “Why can’t you let me go?” I rant and rave.

Indecision calmly answers, “You’re not ready to meet the promise of the future.”

Another Career Path Option Down the Drain

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I have learned that being a painter is not an employment option. In fact I suck at painting. The funny part about it is that I actually enjoy painting. Nothing brightens or freshens up a room better than a fresh coat of paint. Paint is also a fairly inexpensive way to update a room or house. The caveat is only if the only thing that gets painted is the walls and ceiling.

My problem is that when I paint I get paint everywhere, the walls, ceiling, floor and me. I’m really good at getting paint on me, every part of my body. I always start off with the best intentions, I am so careful; I remove all of the switch plate covers for the outlets and light switches. I tape the window, door and floor trims. I cover the floor with plastic and newspaper and still get paint on window trim, doors and door trim, and oh how I get paint on the floors. Mitch says, “It’s a gift. You definitely have a gift.” He says that after I cut myself, fall off something, like maybe a ladder or get paint in places that any other normal person would never slop paint on.

I decided to paint the living room to brighten it up and make it look very fresh. I bought two gallons of ceiling paint and two gallons of wall paint just to make sure I had enough. The first mishap happened when I was painting the ceiling the paint roller slipped and whacked the ceiling fan. I had to quickly climb the ladder rag in hand to wipe off the paint before it left a big white smear across the fan blades. After the ceiling was done I cleaned up the roller and paint tray.

The walls came next and that is when true disaster after disaster happened. I thought that if I cut in the top of the walls, window and door trim and the base of the wall close to the floor all the way around the room I would save time moving the ladder around. I still had to go back and start over moving the ladder around the room to get the roller up high on the walls. At first I was doing well, no paint slops, I started to relax a bit and that is when it happened. I climbed up the ladder, lost my balance and fell backwards off the ladder knocking the ladder one way and I went the other way paint roller in hand and across the couch and onto the floor. Luckily the couch was covered in a plastic drop cloth. But in true Susan fashion, I ended up with a nice bruise on my hip.

After that it was all downhill, I bumped the roller against the ceiling, which means I have to go back with a brush and ceiling paint to correct all of the paint splatters. The roller would drip and a paint blob fall across the window trim or the door trim. Paint droplets would mysteriously appear on the floor where a second ago the floor was covered in newspaper. It was like a gust of wind had magically whipped through the room just across the floor moving the newspaper away exposing bare bamboo. I ended up looking like I’d been dipped in a paint can. I had paint on my hands, my jeans and shirt, and even in my hair. I didn’t just have paint down the front of my jeans I also had paint on my butt. I have this ability to bend over to paint low and back into the wall I just painted. I guess it truly is a gift.

It’s not like I’m totally graceless nor have no other skills, painting is just not one of them. The funny part about this is that Mitch hates painting, but is exceptionally neat when painting. He never gets paint anywhere but on the walls that he wants to paint. I’ve even tried bribery but it doesn’t work. There is nothing he wants that will entice him to paint with or for me. I think I hate him.

A Bit of Fiction for Today

It’s way too cold to outside today so I came up with a bit of fiction for the day. I hope you enjoy it.

The Myth the Legend the Truth

The story goes like this; a long time ago there was a story about this mythological creature. The creature was rumored to wander the streets at night searching for a mate worthy of the creature’s efforts. The creature had a keen sense of smell and could sniff out the slightest hint of fear. The creature was also blessed with the vision of a hawk and could see through the best lies. But most of all, the creature had the ability to touch a man’s soul and change it forever.

One night while on the quest for the perfect mate, the creature came upon a man standing alone at the edge of a cliff looking out over the vast void that dropped down into a deep gorge. The creature spoke to the man and asked three questions.

The first question was, “What has brought you to the void?”

The man looked at the creature, sucked in his breath at the terrifying figure and answered, “I came to search my soul and find forgiveness for my sins.”

The second question was, “Were your sins against another man?”

The man raised his gaze to the creature’s eyes, and with an eyes wide open stare answered, “No my sin was much worse. I lost faith in myself.”

The third and final question was, “How will you restore your faith in yourself?”

The man bowed his head, reached his hand toward the creature and answered, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m worthy of a second chance. Who will believe in me if I don’t believe in myself?”

The legend of the story is that the creature reached out and touched the man’s hand and gave him the strength to find forgiveness in himself, so he could become a man worthy of the creature. The truth of the story was much different.

What really happened was that the creature so incensed at the man and his whining she pushed him over the edge into void and watched with a smile on her face as he dropped a thousand feet to be crushed by the rocks below. She then turned and walked away without a hint of remorse. There were many more men to pick from and surely there was one that was worthy of her.

Thursday Poetry

The Face in the Mirror

Looking in the mirror she sees a stranger
The reflection looking back is no longer beautiful
The eyes that once sparkled now hard and cold
The lips usually curved up in a smile now in a downward turn.

The anger and resentment within seeps out
Hardening the heart and soul
A tear slips down her cheek
As she ponders how she came to this end.

She misses the days past filled with hope and laughter
The excitement of each new day
Now dreading the days and what they hold
She turns away ashamed of what she’s become.

Dreams

Looking up at the night sky
Black with tiny lights filling the void
She dreams of faraway places
Free of pain and suffering.

A body racked with disease
The life force within waning
The pain taking its toll
Joints swollen too stiff to move.

She wishes for release from this tortured body
To soar amid the stars
To be light and free floating
To smile one more time.

Monday

Can I please just go back to bed and pull the covers over my head? It started yesterday when we came home around 12:30 and backed into the driveway. I pushed the transmitter button for the garage door operator and nothing happened. I pushed it again, still nothing, so I pushed the remote on my key ring thinking the battery must be dead. Nope, the door didn’t budge. Mitch got out of the car and walked up to the keypad on the garage and punched in the code, nothing. It finally dawned on me there was no power. The electricity was out, it was working just fine when I left to go get Mitch, the sky was perfectly clear no storms, so what had happened?

We walked in the house and sure enough the house had no power too, duh. That meant no air conditioning either. Super. We had friends coming over for dinner at 4pm, no power meant no stove, no lights and no dinner. We called around to make sure we weren’t alone in our misery and found out that a huge dead tree at the other end of the lake decided to fall over and take out the power lines with it. Everyone on our side of the lake from one end to the other had no power. Perfect just perfect. Power and Light crews were on the way, but I wasn’t sure if and when we would get power back on. I called our friends to ask if I could move the party and all the food to their house if the power didn’t come back soon enough. The power was restored about 2pm so we were back in business. I reset the clocks and figured we were good to go. Dinner was great and I totally forgot about the power outage.

Guess what, forgetting the power outage came back to haunt me this morning. When I walked into the kitchen to feed the dogs and check on the coffee pot I noticed that it had already filled the pot instead of just starting to brew and it dawned on me that I had forgotten to reset the clock when I went around resetting everything else, so it started brewing two hours earlier. I quickly reset the time so that won’t happen again and went about feeding the dogs. I took Mitch to work, walked the dogs and got ready for work myself. I walked into the kitchen to fill my thermos and saw the coffee maker was off. I put my hands around the carafe which was still warm but not hot. That’s when it dawned on me that when I reset the clock I forgot to reset the heating time. It has a two, three or four hour on timer and when the power is off it resets to two hours, thus making my coffee lukewarm and I hate lukewarm coffee. I had to fill the measuring cup with coffee and heat it in the microwave before filling the thermos. Microwaved coffee is not so tasty, but I can’t go without my coffee.

I thought, “Please nothing else can go wrong, pretty please.” I took the dogs outside for one last pee break before heading off to work and standing there as big as you please in the neighbor’s yard was a very large deer. The two charged off in hot pursuit, with me yelling, “No, no, no, get back here right now!” That took five minutes to get them back in the yard and in the house. I was not pleased at all. I grabbed two rawhide chews and marched into the living room to hand the chews out and get my stuff. Now I’m running behind and Orso is still pumped up about deer chasing and reaches up to snatch the chew from my hand and missed biting down on my thumb.

I am not holding out much hope for the rest of my day.

Tis the Season

I should have seen it coming. It is that time of the year. Sudden intense storms that blow out of nowhere, with little warning and leave vast destruction in its wake. Yesterday was one of those days. Beautiful morning, cool temperature partly cloudy skies and a nice breeze, a perfect day for yard work and a DIY home improvement project. We had the whole day planned out. Mitch would go rent a jack hammer to dig out holes in the shelf rock under one of the bedrooms on the old side of the house and I would go to the grocery store then come home and mow.

First off I misunderstood where he was going to rent the jack hammer. I thought he said Lowe’s, so I figured he could drop me off at Sam’s Club across the street rent the jack hammer then come back and get me, killing an extra trip for me. But no, he said Home Depot, not even close to where Sam’s is. Strike one against me for the morning. I caused him to have to drive farther out of his way to take me to Sam’s then on to Home Depot then back to pick me up. He didn’t bother to correct me until we were getting off the highway at the exit, so by then it was too late to correct the misunderstanding. It didn’t end up saving any time for either of us, because I had to wait about a half hour for him to come back and get me. The only upside was the looks on people’s faces walking past me standing in front of Sam’s with a cart full of food.

After coming home and unloading food and jack hammer I buzzed off to the grocery store leaving Mitch to attack rock to his heart’s content. I came home and unloaded groceries, made sure Mitch hadn’t jack hammered off one of his toes, changed my clothes and took the dogs outside to commence yard work. I dragged the mower out of the shed ducking for cover because of the growing wasp nest in the door. I keep forgetting that it’s there until I have to mow, then I’m rudely reminded of it when the wasps buzz bomb my head. I pushed the mower down to the driveway, grabbed the gas can and filled the mower. I pulled the cord and the mower started right off then promptly died. I pulled the cord again and again, now the mower wouldn’t even try to start. I thought great, not now, not today.

I was already hot and tired from cutting limbs from bushes and it was 11:30 so I thought it was a perfect time to take a break, eat some lunch then ask Mitch start the mower for me. I walked back in the house to see how much he had accomplished. He had punched out two holes each about a foot and a half square. It was slow going, Mitch had to break up the rock in big chunks, lift the large rocks out of the hole then use a shovel to scoop up the dirt and smaller rocks out of the holes and into a bucket. He then had to carry the bucket outside and down the steps to the trash dumpster. Hard heavy work and he still had many more holes to dig. I suggested breaking for lunch, but he said no he wasn’t ready. I said that I couldn’t get the mower to start and asked that he start it for me, but I was tired and wanted a diet coke and just sit for a minute. Strike number two, since I stopped to take a break, in essence I made him stop what he was doing too. He quickly reheated a leftover steak while I ate a salad and drank my diet coke.

When I was done, he followed me out to the mower. I pulled the cord just to check; it started right up, then died and wouldn’t start again. Mitch pulled and pulled but nothing happened. He told me to push it into the garage so he could work on it. I could tell by his expression, it wasn’t going well. Strike number three, I told him not to worry about the mower that I could do something else and he could go back to jack hammering. He looked at me with that look and I saw the first signs of “Mitch Fit Warning”. I offered again that he could stop taking the mower apart and I would do something else. That’s when I saw the “Mitch Fit Warning, Imminent”. The look that says “take cover things are about to starting flying or get broken”.

He looked at me and said very slowly, “Go find something else to do, right now.” Here it comes “Mitch Fit Imminent” is getting ready to strike and I didn’t want to be in the path of that storm. This had all signs of a major event. He had rented a jack hammer, paying an hourly rate to get grueling back breaking work down and I had just halted the process in order to fix the mower. This wasn’t going to be pretty at all.

So I grabbed the dogs and beat a hasty retreat. An hour later he walked into the house and said, “I got it running for now so go mow right now before it stops.” Thank god we had rocks he could break.

The Silence was Deafening

Every morning I head out on the morning walk with the dogs around 4:30 give or take ten minutes. It’s always dark, with some mornings darker than others depending on the time of year, starry skies or cloud cover. We’re usually alone except for the occasional critter of the night still out foraging, raccoons, possums and deer. When we run across any or all of these critters the morning walk gets very interesting, usually with me hanging on for dear life and yelling “NO NO NO!” The main purpose of the morning walk is to burn off energy and the morning poop, the dogs not me, so the dogs can make it until we get home for lunch to let them out. It’s not a very long walk, about twenty minutes tops.

I am always on high alert walking in the dark, watching and listening for any unusual movement or noise that doesn’t belong there. I’ve been surprised too many times with wild animals, people that are not normally out that early (and are drunk) and a naked man (not a pretty sight). This morning the dogs and I had gone to the distance limit of the walk and turned around to head back so I can jump in the shower and get ready for work. Then I noticed the quiet. I stopped and stood still for a few minutes and just listened. Nothing, no sound at all. The birds hadn’t started their morning calls; there was absolutely no wind not one leaf was moving, no traffic noise, nothing, for that moment in time there was just absolute silence.

For some people this might have been very disconcerting, the feeling of being all alone, but for me it was perfect, the most peaceful moment in time. Just the dogs and me all alone in the dark standing in the middle of the road, soaking up the quiet. In this crazy hectic rush world where everyone wants something to happen instantaneously, hearing nothing was very relaxing and calming. All of my rush mode was gone for a moment, I even forgot what day it was. Then a rabbit ran across the road and I became the boat anchor I was meant to be trying to slow down two dogs, weighing in at one hundred seventy eight pounds and definitely with much more muscle mass than me.

Now I remember, it’s Monday!

Poison Ivy One – Susan Zero

Could someone please explain something to me? What on earth could possibly be the benefit of poison ivy? It grows prolifically, withstands floods and extreme drought and can live despite me spraying it with even the most concentrated herbicide I can find on the base of the plant for five minutes. I find this noxious weed all over my yard every time I turn around. I will be weeding away and reach down to pull a weed and there it is, suddenly visible waggling its leaves at me, taunting me, saying “Come on grab hold, I got something for you. I have a really bad rash just waiting for you. Come on pull me.”

As you might have guessed I am one of the eighty-five percent of people out there that has allergic reactions to urushiol, the clear liquid sap in the plant. I even get the rash from the dogs after they’ve run through the miserable plant. Poison ivy doesn’t bother the dogs, just lays a urushiol sappy coating on their coats, waiting for me to pet them and spread it all over me. I went online to research poison ivy, to try and determine what possible benefit there is to the plant and could only find a brief reference to “some animals eat the leaves and some birds eat the berries”. Come on what self-respecting animal would eat the leaves or bird would eat the berries? I know better, no one knows what purpose poison ivy serves, but they can’t put “I don’t have a clue as to why this plant is on this earth” so the vague catch phrase “some animals eat the leaves and some birds eat the berries” is inserted. Probably because I am the only dummy to ask what purpose does this vicious plant serves?

Look at all of the other creatures and plants, large and small, out there. They all serve a purpose; big fish eat smaller fish and so on. Some are pretty gross such as maggots. Maggots are fly larvae that eat decaying flesh so the world isn’t a stinky rotting mess, even as gross as they are maggots do serve a purpose. The thorns on a blackberry bramble are super unpleasant but the thorns keep a creature from stripping the plant of its fruit in one sitting, leaving fruit for other animals. But what purpose does poison ivy serve?

Could poison ivy be the invention of the Calamine Lotion people? Maybe that’s it, somebody sitting in a marketing meeting comes up with the idea, “What if we invent a plant that makes people itch? Then we advertise that Calamine Lotion is great for relieving the itch from poison ivy.” Then the little lab people go invent poison ivy and use a crop duster to spread the seeds. Pure genius. That has to be it; it’s the only plausible explanation. Why on earth would Mother Nature make such an evil nasty plant? Mother Nature is the great keeper of natural order. Surely she wouldn’t play such a cruel joke on the human race.

Maybe that’s it; it was a joke that got out of hand. I don’t know, but I know one thing for sure, poison ivy is out to get me. It’s stalking me, everywhere I go, there it is growing away happy and healthy, laughing at me when I walk the dogs, tempting them to come and rub up against the leaves.

Maybe I should buy stock in Calamine Lotion.