Athens Marathon

My friend is running the Athens Marathon for a very worthwhile cause. Please read her story and contact her directly if you would like to sponsor.
thanks

mark

On November 8th, I will run the Athens marathon.
26 miles of hills, running the same course as the original marathon centuries ago and ending in the Olympic stadium. After much deliberation, I have chosen a cause to give this event some purpose that is larger than just my personal sense of achievement.

“Wounded Warrior Project” is a cause that speaks to my heart and I am asking for your individual sponsorship which can be made in 2 ways.
Per mile sponsorship (for example:$1 per mile sponsorship totals $26)
“Flat rate” sponsorship (any amount is appreciated)

How I chose this cause
We are fortunate in the USA to have an all volunteer military; it was not so in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was called then) where I grew up in the middle of a civil war. As each of my 3 older brothers turned 18, they were conscripted and went to serve in different branches of the military. All three were wounded at different times. Etienne, the oldest was shot in the leg, a wound that turned gangrenous. Marcel, the second eldest lost hearing in one ear when an RPG rocket exploded beside him; the neurosurgeon was never able to get all the shrapnel out of his brain and face. Neither ever recovered from the trauma of experiencing violent guerilla warfare at such a young age. How do you ever sleep restfully again when you have seen horrors like severed heads stuffed on poles and dried human organs made into wallets and carried like trophies. Both suffered severely from post traumatic stress syndrome and went on to cope with life the best way they could, numbing the pain and trying to forget these images with alcohol and drugs. Marcel died at 39 and Etienne 3 years ago, far too early. Both broken men.

Pierre, my youngest brother claims he was the lucky one. He was driving the Landover that was ambushed by terrorists. Multiple AK47 bullets went through both ankles but he had to keep his foot on the gas – to stop would mean torture and death for the guys in his troop. No one lost their life that day. It took several skillful operations and many months of painful rehabilitation to finally ensure both feet were saved from amputation. Today, 30 years later Pierre lives with the constant dull ache from the steel rods and pins that connect his feet to his ankles and allow him the gift of being able to walk.. Yes, one leg is shorter and one foot does not bend at the ankle so he is unable to run, but nothing deters him from living life with zest and laughter. He is my hero because of his spirit and integrity and every step I run is for him, because he can’t.

We have no idea of knowing exactly what horrors and trauma our military forces experience in combat, but they serve this country to protect our way of life and keep us safe. No matter what side of the war debate you are on, no matter your political affiliation, these brave men and women need our continued support upon their return home. Wounded Warrior Project picks up where the military medical funding falls short. So please check out the website below and sponsor my run with whatever you can afford.

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/content/view/412/875/

I would appreciate you spreading the word and asking friends, acquaintances, even clients (where appropriate) to sponsor.

All you need to do is pledge to me via email, any amount this week and only once I cross the finish line, will I come looking for the checks.

Thank you.
Charmaine
Cell 954-806-6065

Charmaine du Plessis
International Yacht Collection
Executive Assistant
1850 SE 17th Street, Suite 301
Fort Lauderdale FL 33316 USA
toll free: (888) 213-7577
phone: (954) 522-2323
direct: (954) 769-9276
cell: (954) 806-6065
fax: (954) 522-2333

cduplessis@iyc.com
http://www.iyc.com

A Shadow of Truth

“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Abraham Lincoln Lincoln’s Own Stories
16th president of US (1809 – 1865)

Matthew, Matty (Poop) Skyles was born in the spring of 1970 in the Little Duck Key hospital, just outside of Marathon Key. I know because I was laying there squealing bloody hell like the newborn I was right there in the same nursery. My name’s Jimmy Scranton and I suppose me and poop have been best friends ever since. Longer than I can remember anyway.

We’re what you call natives around the Keys and the circle of folks that can honestly still say that are getting smaller and smaller each year. We were pretty lucky; Matty and me. We’ve seen the Keys as they were and looked on them with the innocent wild eyes of children in the 70’s and 80’s; when this little turquoise blue, emerald green part of the world really was paradise. Not the paradise I see plastered up on cute little mailbox’s and silly little restaurant’s called “Paradise Grill” or “Little Conch Paradise Smokehouse.” Nope, I’m talking about actual island hoppin, lobster stabbin, snapper catchin and anything else fun you can think of to do on the water in the tropical balm of summer and winter type paradise.

Lemme give you a typical day in an actual paradise growing up here in these warm rich waters. First, it always, and I mean always, had something to do with the big beautiful half Caribbean/half Atlantic/half Gulf of Mexico Ocean we have down here; all littered with uninhabited (then) little cays and sand-spit keys with cool names.

Names like sugarloaf key, Chub Cay, Boot and Big Torch Key, Snipe landing, Sombrero Light and a million others that we would just make the names up as we went along and then forgot them so we could make up another one the next day. It was like being a pirate! We all had little runabout boats growing up and Matty’s dad got him a fine one; nice little 26 ft Grady White and we’d spend all day doing one of three things:

Fish

Go Bugging

Or work the shoals and breaks for bait.

The fishing part was pretty easy. Up at the butt crack a dawn and hustle up some bait; goggle-eye if they were running, mullet in the fall cause they were thick as thieves or sardines if it was in the blast furnace heat of summer. If bait was scarce, as it could get once in awhile back then but happens all the damn time now, we’d simply run around in the boat through the canals until we spotted one of the neighbors out on their dock and holler up if we could grab a few dozen outta their wells if they had cages dropped and full in the water. If you had bait you always shared when asked, course the payment was a few fillets or tuna steaks later in the day from the borrower. After that shits pretty simple. Head offshore and run to the hump or Mann’s Point or any one of several dozen spots and look for birds to show the way to the tuna, or dolphin (Mahi Mahi) and wahoo or if God shined down, a big beautiful marlin to play with for a few hours. Course you don’t keep billfish, that’s just for the sport and if you weren’t really rigged for them they’d break the line pretty quick anyway. So we’d go looking for the fish, catchem up, put em in the box and head on back to the dock for some grillin. Or if the big boys weren’t eating that day, after awhile we’d head into the shallows and rock piles and crush some grouper or yellowtail snapper or mutton’s. Sometimes if we were feeling like being lazy we’d take the electric reels out and just deep drop for the tile fish and red-eye snappers that lurked in those cold deep reefs several hundred feet down. Easy-peezy man. Sounds like a nice day doesn’t it?

Now bugging was only legal a few months out of the year but back then-hell-nobody much cared when you went. All that entails is doing a slow troll at night, big flashlights searching the dark shallow water until their lights would show up like two little teeny diamonds and then someone would jump in head first with his gig stick while somebody else killed the engine (for safety) and you’d just kick on down to the rock the little fucker was hiding under, rope the little bastard with the gig stick and pull em out. Swim on up to the surface, hop aboard and toss that juicy little Florida Lobster right into the bucket with his friends.

Poop and me would do that a lot just by ourselves, sometimes Goose and Billy’d go with, especially when we all got older but the baiting was something only me and him would do.

It was his idea actually. Matty is a thinker if nothing else and he was always industrious. He figured we could make some good money catching bait for all the other fisheads, especially the charter guys who’s income depended on their customers catching fish so when we’d need some cash for gas and later for gas and beer we’d spend the whole damn day working the water with our cast nets,or sabiki rigs if sardines were around, and sell them bad boys all over the islands. Just go from canal to canal, dock to dock and marina to marina pulling bait outa the big fifty gallon live well he had on that Grady and we’d be set for a week or two. Kids can’t really do that now. They’ve got laws, registrations, regulations and all against that kind of thing.

But back than we were something I’ll tell ya. Bunch island boys, lanky and always tan from the sun and salt having times. Ya mon, we sure would have some times. Matty used to call us Renaissance Men on a reign of terror! He’d say it funnier than hell too; “..reeeeign of terror!” was how he’d say it and we’d all start laughing our butts off.

He could be a terror to when he wanted to, when he needed to, and I guess we were all pretty much fearless back then but Matty, that kid had a way of stepping in it all the time.

We came across a bunch of tourist kids one day, they were older; bout six of them, and they was just beatin the crap out of little Johnny Mafood. Johnny was a Jamaican kid, his folks were poor and Johnny was small for his age, plus he talked with that strange Caribbean accent. Easy target for a bunch of morons cause there’s hate everywhere, even in paradise. So we come across this half dozen kids wailing on poor Johnny, calling him all kinds of stupid ass names and Matty didn’t even hesitate. Before I knew it he launched himself into that scrum and started hitting anything that wasn’t black and dreadlocked. I was kinda committed after that and every last one of them tasted our knuckles before it was through. We both took a pounding but poop got the worst of it. Pretty bad actually; broken nose, busted his right hand, but after awhile those kids lit outta there with their tails between their legs. Problem was a few of them tourist kids had some pretty rich parents and word gets out pretty quick in these parts. People, other locals, started saying “troublemaker” and “white trash” (Matty’s folks lived in a trailer out by sugarloaf) in the same breath as Matty. Those kids told their folks Matty Skyles jumped em and started the whole fiasco; didn’t seem to matter the truth was he was just helping out a kid in a six to one fight.

Then there was the time me and Matty, Maggie Collins and Isie Hollis were all hanging out at Isie’s house. We’d had some beers and were sitting on the dock out back, watching the southern moon sprawled out on that canal water and things got the way things get when hormones are moving through you like the Gulf Stream. Matty and Isie started mashing and after awhile me and Maggs left to, well to kinda go find our own little spot to do the same thing. Isie’s dad, Carl Hollis came home and discovered Matty’s tongue wrapped around his little girls’ tonsils and about blue a fucking blood vessel! Ole Carl Hollis owned a whole lotta property around the islands at that time and he cast a pretty large shadow; over the town and in his own family and before you could say boo all of a sudden Matty Skyles is some sort of lurking pervert; ready to pounce on young girls virtue at a moments notice. I know Isie tried to stand up but once people like Carl Hollis started saying things is like this, in parts like these, there isn’t a lot you can do about it. Poor girl never stood a chance.

It got worse to as we got older. That’s when the snowbirds really started rolling in like an avalanche of god damn Hawaiian shirts and socks with sandals. I blame it on Jimmy Buffet and his freakin cheeseburgers in Paradise.(But that’s another story.) They started pouring down from New York and Philly, Chicago and Atlanta looking for their little slice of paradise. We both got jobs working the charter boats so not only would we have to rub elbows with all these masses of khaki shorts and sunscreen but we’d have to teach the ignorant bastards how to fish! And if they didn’t catch enough by their asinine calculations they wouldn’t tip!

I mean, we got by, me and poop but it was frustrating; we’re waiting in line for tables at dive’s we used to be able to just wander half drunk into and sit down for a nice grouper sandwich and a beer. And they started staying too. All these people with all this money and not a thread a manners among them. They’d say, “Well shit Gloria, look at that lovely little beachfront there. Perfect place for a nice big condo now is it not?”

Well money rolls I guess don’t it? And it rolled like a rogue wave into these parts; in a few years we had more people down here than we had sand, condo’s throwing up shadows on some of the best tarpon and bait lagoons and shoals we’d spent so many hours on as kids. I guess the whole thing started wearing Matty down. We’d always been drinkers; what in Christ’s name goes better with some nice snapper and lobster than a few dozen cold ones and some rum drinks? Well, he started drinking quite a bit and not just like we’d always done before, with a reason and all but just because I don’t think he had much better to do. Started getting in fights with snowbirds and local’s alike, sometimes about nothing and sometimes about something. Like the time some jerkoff named Goldstein started yammerin about how all these “uneducated, foul mouthed locals couldn’t even manage to do the landscaping correctly” at his brand spanking new slice of blue-haired condo paradise. So Matty said something I’m sure was not very welcoming and they ended up on the floor of the “Prime Catch” bar throwing insult and skin at each other.

Then early last year Matty and Celia Barton managed to get themselves preggers. Now Celia’s a peach but her old man wasn’t all that pleased with his daughter carrying around the seed of what most folks around here consider a cross between the devil’s spawn and James Dean. And I don’t mean the cool James Dean; I mean the one that had no direction, the one that stole women into the night, the one that died because he was stupid.

And that put a lot of pressure on poop. He loves Celia, he loves her crazy and he’s got his pride, like any man has. Well he wasn’t going to be supporting them and their little baby by mating on charter boats, all we’ve both ever done is work and play on the water and the only real paying type jobs around here are construction. And for the love of irony most of the construction round here is being done by one Mr. Carl Hollis so even if Matty had any actual experience at it he’d be shit out of luck.

Celia was working for as long as she could at the Pirates Cove; one of the new restaurants that seem to open up with every wane tide, but with the baby coming she had to cut that out about a month ago so money was getting really, really thin. Matty knew some guys, like we all do, that were running weed up through the straits and down into some of the smaller keys and he got to thinking about how easy that money would be. Me and him both know every back water, every hidden shoal and every unmarked cove from Islamorada to Key West. He knew he could run wide open on that Grady without running lights all night long if he had to. Plus half the damn Coasties know him from still spending three quarters of his time on the water so even if a cutter came up on him he could most likely talk his way out of it. I didn’t like it. I told him I didn’t like it but once an idea pops into his head he’s never been one to back off it until the wheels fall off; good or bad.

Well he ran into the other half of the Coast Guard. They didn’t know him and even if they did, who knows, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. So know Matty’s sitting in the sheriff’s cooler in Marathon, baby on the way and waiting on federal charges to be filed in a little necklace of island paradises where finding a handful of people to say one good thing about him is gonna be a stretch.

Of course, when the time comes, I’ll say all I can good about Matty Skyles. I’ll sing it from the god damn rafters if it’ll do any good; but I know it most likely won’t. What I can’t tell them, what won’t matter one bit are some of things I know about my friend.

Like the time he ran headfirst to defend a little Jamaican kid he barely knew.

Like the time he got called a pervert by some fat ass big shot who was lying through his teeth when he said it.

Like the time we were spear fishing and I got hit by a Barracuda. Stupid thing, me still wearing my watch down there; Cuda ain’t mean but they sure as shit are fast, stupid and have a mouthful of teeth. Ripped my hand to ribbons and we were half a mile offshore with a strong current blowing out. He swam me back, fixed me up as best as he could and carried me on his back two miles to the same hospital in duck key we were born in.

I’d like to tell them about the time he found Larry Peters wallet down on the beach. Had a shitload of cash in it, I mean it was loaded. Matty didn’t even ring the bell; he just dropped that wallet into the mail slot in their door and never touched so much as a dollar of it.

I’d like to tell em about a lot of things regarding my friend. I’ve known him thirty eight years and I’ve never seen him do a mean thing. I’ve seen him do stupid things, lots of them but never a mean thing and very much more often than not somebody had something coming to em and he’d walk away. I’d tell him we’re just two native boys trying to live, trying to make it down here because living anywhere else wouldn’t be thinkable. I’d say that God Damn it, we’re just trying to find our own little piece of paradise.

I guess maybe ole Don Henley was right; you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.

First Rate Girls

The old money families of the City all shared three basic things in common. The mostly summered in Martha’s Vineyard or at the Cape. They were peculiar in secret, hidden ways and the men of these families always married first rate women, who went on to bare and raise (with the often overwhelming help of nannies and nursemaids) first rate boys and girls. The Thurber family was no different and it was now, while Milton Thurber sat alone on his porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in late May, after an afternoon bridge game with the usual suspects, that this third birthright was giving him a considerable amount of troublesome thought.

He took a long, thoughtful pull on his martini and read, for the fourth time, the letter in his had explaining to him that his youngest daughter who, although in her final year at University, had been regretfully expelled for what was innocuously called “ ..violation of moral code.”

It had arrived this afternoon with the bank and broker statements and he hadn’t yet shown it to Abigail, his wife of thirty two lackluster, predictable years, who had gone into town to shop or gossip- or both. He took another drink and thought about that for a moment. Just how he was going to breach this that with her was something he couldn’t imagine. Good God, he thought; seeing the hysterics and crying and wondering aloud “how this was to be explained” to all “our” (her) friends.

Milton let a small laugh escape then at the further thought of it. Whatever “this” was he thought, it was serious business to be sure but the gaping look of shock and fright of societal jeopardy that would surely appear on his wife’s face couldn’t help but make the poor man smile.

He read the letter again then and the smile disappeared as the thoughts of a father’s concern came rushing back in.

“Just what the hell is a violation of moral code.” He said to the sea.

Obviously she was in no danger, no personal injury had occurred, no great tragedy had happened. The school would have called. She would have called. Certainly nothing of financial issue had happened either. They absolutely would have called about that. So what could it be? Just what in the good green earth had his beautiful Olivia done to account for expulsion in her final year at a school overflowing with the petulant, conniving, entitled and bored offspring of New York’s wealthiest first rate families?

He thought this with a lifetime’s knowledge of her classmates; of his own classmates in fact. Milton was, always had been, a good man. He had realized both is luck of birth and its responsibilities at a young age and accepted them immediately. He had worked at his fathers, fathers, firm since graduating from his own ivy covered walls of learning and he’d married Gloria Spencer just like he was silently expected to do. But he had been rich his entire life and had witnessed the underbelly of having much and wanting more early and often.

He remembered Richie Barstow laughing at lunch break in the eighth grade after he told the headmaster Mr. Miller had “touched him” and subsequently ruined the poor man’s life forever.

“Bastard wants to fail me!” Richie had said, “Look who’s failed now!”

He remembered Thomas Fulham pointing a manicured finger at Nigel, the only colored student in their school, his senior year and screaming, “Niggers don’t belong here unless they’re serving me lunch or mopping MY floors!” Then he and his friends had pummeled Milton with abandon for choosing Nigel as a lab partner because nobody else would. He remembers his mother weeping in the bedroom while his father explained how a man needed variety.

“..a violation of moral code.” He read the words again, finished his martini and carrying the letter rose up to make another from the corner bar on the porch. The sea had found an inland wind and the welcome smell of its brine calmed him as he thought about his daughter.

He knew it was wrong but he had always loved her the most. The others, they were fine and they looked perfect but were fractured in so many ways. They talked so much and did so little.

Michael had been sixteen and enthralled them all at the dinner table with his perfectly executed report of the Great Depression. Olivia was eleven and began a sidewalk food drive on the corner of their uptown block the next morning.

Constance, bless her heart, had “found “ a dog one day and in pigtails and sundress demanded that they keep it because Debbie Harold had one JUST LIKE IT. The next day she left for school with a brief pat to the dog’s head and Olivia spent the week putting up fliers until the relieved owners called to reclaim him.

Milton sat back down on the porch, sipping his fresh drink, and had all these memories and thoughts bouncing around his head along with the worried theories of just what his Olivia had done. She was no Saint of course. He knew this but her “disturbing” (as his wife called them) qualities had always been so close to his own hidden ones. The acting without thinking at times and seemingly inherent ability to locate trouble when it could be easily avoided, to call a spade a spade when it was so obvious to say nothing at all. To all too often choose fun for fun’s sake regardless of appearances and propriety. These were his gifts first and he had willingly given them up for necessity; seeing those in her, from the very beginning had given him more pride and joy than any of the others could ever bring. He sighed a bit at the thought because until now it had only brought him pride and happiness in seeing himself so clearly in his own child.

But now; what was this? The layers of his mind could only wonder. She was due in on the ferry tomorrow morning, home from school, He would meet her at the landing with flowers, Gloria would be there to unless an event at the club demanded her attention. He wished she would call but thought then that the letter had just arrived. She most likely would think she would beat the mail and explain whatever this was in person. She would explain in her normal measured tone, her loving and caring voice the exact nature of this new turn of fate. She was first rate and she would always make him proud.

He was thinking this as their housekeeper came out onto the porch wrapped in an apron of blue checkers and carrying a fresh pitcher of lemonade.

“ Mr. Milton?” She said. “ Ms. Olivia is on the phone.”

“I’ll take it out here Rose.” Milton said as he folded the letter and put it on the table by his drink.

“Yessir.” Rose said and turned to bring out the telephone.

Staring out at the clear Ocean Milton put his feet up on the small table in front of him, laughing again to himself at the picture of his wife’s rapidly approaching look of dismay and horror.

“Rose…” he called out with a tilted head, “ can you please bring me a fresh martini?”

Passing Beauty

The vase sits now half full; brown speckled dingy water inside. The explosion of color that met the sun through my window with delight days before have withered.

They are not sad, merely finished with their work and spent.

Tomorrow; I will buy more flowers

Special Garden

Percy spent all morning thinking about it; dreading it but knowing it would have to be done. So when the early afternoon sun was warmest and he knew it would make him sweat some as he worked he walked outside with his little bucket filled with the gardening tools he would need. He wasn’t a gardener really but he’d watched her so often he knew what to bring.

The entire length of the left side of their house had been something of a neighborhood legend the last several years. Mrs. Haggerty had often called it always in bloom and during holidays, Easter especially, Tallulah would cut bouquets of lilly’s and roses; handing them out on the sidewalk as if they were Halloween treats. The garden that began as the desperate hope for a woman who no longer felt whole or loved or human that beauty could still exist in the world and that she could be its creator. “And she had,” Percy thought as he stared down at the dry cracked soil, shriveled stalks and dead vines that now remained where blooming color and life had been only three months before.

“Fuck.” He lightly exhaled as he sat down in front of the decaying mess and remembered that first day, almost eight years ago now, when his wife, Tallulah, had finally and mercifully declared she had suffered about enough of his selfish self-pity and her own wallowing self loathing.

“My tits are gone Percy; they sure aren’t going to grow back.” She had said with the bloodshot eyes from her binge drinking from the night before that also seemed to hold the building luster of defiance in them that had been absent for so long.

“You do what you have to do.” She had continued, “stay down in the basement playing with your goddamn trains and watching MASH (she said sarcastically referring to the disturbingly large volume of porn tapes he had in the basement innocuously labeled as the old T.V. drama) for all I care.

He remembered thinking then to himself for the first time since the operation and long hospital stay that my wife is not sick. She is not going to die. He had looked up at her and found her standing in a long white sundress with her thick brunette hair twisted back in a ponytail with a bright red scrunchy and a little green bucket in her hand with little spades and trowels sticking their little gardening tool heads up over the lip.

“Do what you have to do,” she had repeated. “I’m going to do some gardening.”

And she did just that, all that day in fact. She had one before, a garden along the front left side of the house because it captured the best sun. It was before she brought home the news, before she had gotten sick. It had been plain and normal but she had tended it with pleasure and pride but between the surgery, then the chemo and the furious landslide into the lonely darkness they both had fallen into afterwards the garden never really stood a chance and had become nothing more that a long patch of dry dead earth.

So she had grabbed the keys and an hour later returned with a truckload filled with things of petals and color and life. She spent that entire day toiling away in the ground and he had watched.

He sat back from the window and watched her lightly water the dirt, turning it from dusty brown to a rich black.

He watched her till the earth, then create wide, strategically placed holes for planting, and then gently place her flowers of hope in them. She would then knead the wet soil, almost caressing it, into place and then rise up gently, wipe her perspiring brow and step back to take in the placement for final approval.

She did this with each one and she had purchased several dozen. He watched her as she did this. He watched the brown mane of her hair his hands hadn’t felt for too long as it became playfully disheveled. He watched her long delicate fingers that hadn’t felt him for too long as they worked the soft earth. When she stood he watched the outline of her long and slender legs as the sunlight flowed through her thin white dress and Percy felt desire and shame in equal measure.

The late afternoon sky turned red and yellow as the sun went to sleep and he watched her for awhile longer as she proudly watered her creations with the garden hose; the freshly planted colors bright and new and dripping with water. He went upstairs then but paused briefly in the kitchen to leave a note on the table for his wife which simply said: Come to bed. Don’t bother taking a shower.

She had come to bed that night smelling of flowers, and earth and sweat and Percy made love to her while he whispered things in her ears only two people in love can truly ever say to each other. Afterwards they ate cold chicken in bed and softly talked about grief, and shame and loss. The spoke to each other about these things, their own frailties and failures and then they made love again.

The next day Tallulah went out early and returned with all the bits of nature people landscape gardens with. Old stones, rustic little wooden trellises and weather beaten railroad ties and she spent the day filling in the empty spaces of her garden like she was putting a puzzle together.

That evening Percy made love to her again and would in fact, while their garden grew, make love to her every night for the next seven years.

Even when she became sick again they made love each night and when the relentless bitch disease had taken to much from her physically; when she once again was forced to return to the hospital, they made love still. With their eyes and their words and the light touch of a hand on a clammy forehead they still made love.

Then one day during an early spring shower she died. That was two months ago and he sat now at this dead parcel of dirt and decay that hadn’t been touched in over half a year.

He rose slowly to begin his work.

The dead things were an affront and had to go quickly. He raked the withered, hollow stalks and vines away with ferocity and gathered them all up in large green plastic bags to be put out with the trash the next day. Then he watered the hard soil until it became black and moist. He dug small planting holes to the map he had already plotted out in his head and then he walked to the garage.

Percy returned with two small rose bushes. One red, one yellow. Then he brought out some perennials and a then a hibiscus to go next to one of the trellises; then a purple bougainvillea for the other trellis.

He worked the earth, carefully placing each offering into its new home, and sometimes he found himself crying. He wept not as much for her death as he did for those wasted days and months so many years ago. He cried for the time when he couldn’t bring himself to touch the only person he had ever really wanted to touch because he had thought her changed and broken instead of saved and given back to him, like a gift from death.

But then as he worked he would also laugh. The memories of millions of seconds of joy and love flooding into his mind like they had just happened; knowing they would never happen again. He worked most of the day and when he was done stepped back to take the garden into full view.

It was not a special garden. It was plain and normal and although would grow to be lovely would never, ever truly be beautiful. Not like hers was. He accepted this with a small smile as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. No, nothing would ever be as beautiful as that again.

Art and War

Very rough draft. A reminder to all intelligent crit is always, always welcome.

At fifteen he decided he was going to be a painter. His mother said he could be anything he wanted to be. His father being dead didn’t have much of an opinion on the matter. He was not a frivolous boy and meticulous by nature. Not exactly the normal primary colors of nature assumed by an artist but he was diligent, patient and in two short years was something of a well known commodity in his small uncultured town.

The mayor commissioned him for a fresco on the south wall of the newly built library and although it was not his favorite form he loved Diego Rivera mightily and with that in mind captured a very nice adaptation of Day of the Dead . This lead to a public showing of all his canvas work that fall coinciding with the annual High School football team’s corn boil; where afterwards over a dozen of the town’s residents proudly displayed his work on the walls inside their homes and offices-he was within their limited confines now fairly famous.

The finished product was never really something he cared for; never had been. It was the process of creation, the discipline, the exact skill of line and colors all coming together for the common goal that was the voice that called to his heart. He felt as he gripped the brush in his hand and slowly stroking the canvas with firm deliberation that he was creating something that would never be created exactly the same again. Not by anyone; even by him.

The summer he turned eighteen he found Jasper Johns while on a trip into the city with his mother. The walked among the colonies of writers, musicians and artists in the village and stopped at a showing of the man’s work going on in an open air gallery.

He wandered among the explosions of color and form wide eyed. He came across a piece called False Start and stood for a full fifteen minutes staring at it without blinking once. Never had he seen something so brilliantly ambiguous and concrete at the same time. He would, he knew then, paint something just as perfect one day.

The mail came one Saturday late that summer. He had been eighteen for almost 3 weeks and they had called his name. His mother cried and fretted and then cried some more and then, twelve weeks later he marched along with the rest of his green laden brothers on the sweltering airport tarmac in Vietnam.
They marched together, all thirty of them, in perfectly synchronized olive steps. Their faces, both black and white, barely able to carry a beard let alone a gun and their eyes were full of both known and unknown fear. All except his. His eyes were soaking up every detail. The sky was a blue he was sure he had never seen and as he marched enjoying the unifying cadence of the group he found the lush landscape before him on the outer reaches of the airfield so beautiful and rich that he formed a mental painting of them instantly.
A week later his company was ambushed in the morning as the crept though a dense jungle while he was noticing the throbbing large veins on the leaves as he brushed them away from his face. As he fought the enemy mortar blasted in the earth around him shooting up spectacular showers of black earth, the bullet fire rushing past him seemed to leave behind light trails of smoke as they passed.
Later, when all was quiet again, he held a boy named Tim, from Muskegon Michigan, in his arms as rivers of ruby blood poured from the boy’s body like the spreading tributaries of an ocean delta. He cried as he stared at Tim’s perfectly severed leg, directly above the knee, and he traced the line of the round bone with his eyes as it protruded from his leg like some ghoulish country ham.
He wrote his mother by flashlight that evening telling her, among other things, that he wanted to be a soldier. Several weeks later, as a white jungle moon danced across the starlit treetops a bullet tore through his brain as he walked point and as his soul floated up to meet the heavens an airplane landed carrying a mother’s letter telling her son he could be anything he wanted to be.

The Vain Ones

The jukebox sat hunkered down in the smoky corner of the bar and started playing Neil Young. And I mean old Neil Young, not that Crosby, Stills and Nash crap and if there’s one thing I loved it’s Neil Young singing out to my better self while I sat in a dark bar getting slightly lit. Since the bar was in fact dark and I was well on my way to other part of the business I was feeling pretty damn good about the whole Trifecta.

I leaned back against the comfortable padding of the top rail sipping on my beer with satisfaction. Ole BJ right next to me, as always, doing pretty much the same thing except his preferred libation was J&B neat and he was sitting forward talking to Arty Burton; the bartender and quite possibly the oldest living thing on the face of the planet. My eye had drifted over to a stringy haired blond who was drinking alone at a table by the dartboards. She had her eyes closed lightly and her head was swaying back and forth in rhythmic enjoyment to our friend Mr. Young.

“She ain’t much to look at is she?” I said to BJ who turned with the suppleness only buzzed languor could provide and squinted into the darkness towards the lady.

“Ehh,” he committed, “guess not…. You ain’t exactly anybody’s first prize either.”

“Booby prize maybe.” Arty added chuckling through his ancient jowls.

“Prize pig maybe.” BJ laughed. “Hey; fair’s next week. I can probably still get you entered!”

“Fuck you both.” I finished my beer and handed it backwards to Arty as I studied the women a bit further.

“Lemme have another please… and a glass of gut rot for my comedically challenged friend here.”

She wasn’t really all that bad. Late thirties, looked like her rack had held up ok which meant she wasn’t shooting out rugrats every other year. I couldn’t really see her legs or ass due to the fact she was sitting down and her face was kinda strange. Not in a demonic or ugly tree kind of way but just kind of off center. Her features skewed to the right like the whole pie needed a front end alignment. In a way though the dysfunctional symmetry of it was kind of attractive; plus she did have great taste in music.

“Fifty bucks I tear that ass up tonight.” I turned to BJ clinking my beer against his glass.

“Hell you say.”

“Hell I do say my furry little friend.” I replied and with the suddenly new potential of lost income he swiveled his stool to study the decidedly un-fair maiden more closely. She had gotten up at this point and with drink in hand was pulling darts from the corkboard on the wall.

I was relieved to see the more than serviceable ass and legs since the ball, as they say, was now in BJ’s court. I was expecting plume’s of smoke to begin wafting from his head with the process of actual thought while he decided.

“Unless of course you’ve spent all of your expendable income again on dry cleaning the skid marks from your panties.” I added simply for shits and giggles.

He took a long pull from his drink and looked to Arty for another. “So what’s your plan?” BJ asked. ” Going to impress her first with your kingly dogcatcher salary and then sweep her off her feet with your string bean arms, cottage cheese ass and move that bird beak nose outta the way enough to kiss her madly with that mouth full a teeth that could eat an apple through a picket fence?”

You just can’t find friends like ole BJ. He’s a one of a kind for sure.

“First of all you moron it’s Animal Control Engineer… how many times do I have to correct you?” “Second, third, fourth and fifth you soggy-headed, natural born butt-fuck…” I rose up and spread my arms both for effect and to hopefully show the young lady they were not, in fact, string beanie at all….

“I have something in abundance you will never know the pleasure of owning.” I said.

“Genital warts?” BJ quipped and then slurped down the remainder of his drink.

“Personality.” I said loudly and undaunted. “Person-fucking-all day long-ality.” I had more; loads more, but seeing my error I paused. He knew it was true and I needed the fifty bucks almost as much as the piece of ass.

“You in or out douche bag?” I asked.

Why had I worried? I had him at skidmarks.

“In.” He said. “This ain’t no honor fucking system Ringo, I need proof.”

“Are we really ten years old.”

“PROOF.”

“Fine.” I said and turned to the shaking head and smiling old leather mug of Arty and asked him for a beer and whatever the lady was having.

With beer and vodka tonic in hand I sauntered over to her. She was standing at the white tape line on the floor lining up her dart with the board and I stopped at a respectful two inches from the back of her.

“Nice darts.” I said to her stringy head which was apparently more very old dishwater than blonde.

“Lame.” She said with surprising ambivalence as the dart flew from her hand and smacked directly into the red bulls-eye like it was ordained to do so.

I took a step backwards and whistled with appreciation.

“Drink?” I asked her back.

“Better.” She said with a warmth that would melt an ice cube in around ten-thousand years or so.

She turned and took the drink while offering me the darts at the same time. Her slightly cockeyed eyes studied me up and down briefly and I suddenly felt like a horse auctioneers voice would ring out at any moment.

“You play?” She asked.

“I do many things.” I said

After soundly kicking my ass five out of five games we sat down at a table for prerequisite banter. Two further drinks had put a slight thaw into her and I was feeling pretty damn fine as the inevitable sounds of “Freebird” rang out from the jukebox.

“Like clockwork.” I said as she looked at me with a cocked and remarkably thin eyebrow.

“Skynnard.” I offered for explanation. “There is no bar in existence that will not, at some point in the evening, avoid playing Freebird.”

She looked at me with something that felt like a patient owner trying to teach a stupid dog to roll over.

“So what do you do again Ernie?”

“Government work mostly.” I said. Feeling this was insufficient I added, ” I do some consulting in the animal cruelty area.”

“Ohh, I love animals.” She said and leaned forward a bit. She seemed to be looking at my nose but that would be ridiculous.

“Who doesn’t?” I said. “Another drink?”

She was telling me about her life a bit later and if you haven’t guessed by now I’m no fool so listened with intent rapture to her blah blah blah and yadda yadda yadda. She worked in some Dr’s office as a dental hygienist and when I told her that explained her pretty smile she almost let go a genuine laugh. When she mentioned something about wanting more out of life I told her she seemed smart enough to do anything she wanted.

It’s all about key words. You really have to pay attention.

She was saying something about something when she stopped suddenly and looked me in the eyes. Finishing her drink in one swallow she gently took the cigarette I was smoking out of my fingers, drew back on it and asked,

“So if I just blow you in the car will that be enough to win the bet?”

The beer almost shot right out of my nose as I coughed with shock and fear. I really didn’t have the fifty bucks to lose and I was really starting to like the girl in some abstract, maybe there’s more here than stringy hair and a crooked face kind of way.

“Look….I don’t know what you’re….” I started but her frozen look told me I’d be better served telling her I didn’t speak English.

“You heard us?” I asked with shrinking testicles.

“How could I hear you all the way over there.” She stated.

I stared at her wondering just how evil a person could be.

“Women’s intuition.” She said simply and then a small, feline smile bubbled up on her lips and eyes. She was mulling something over and I had a sinking feeling the cat had now become the mouse.

“Make me laugh.” She said.

“What?”

“Make me laugh.” She repeated. “Hard.” She took her finger and ran it gently across my hand and up my arm. “If you can do that I’ll fuck you silly.”

Now although this glimmer of hope was intriguing I thought it certainly was unfair. I am a pretty crafty guy, good sense of humor too. Hell, I can tell a dirty joke with the best of them but this simply was uncalled for. Spur of the moment like this… on command even! I’m good but I’m no porn star. I can’t just cum on cue!

This was a predicament but I couldn’t just fold now; not with a light (dimly lit) at the end of the tunnel now could I? I pondered briefly, casting aside numerous tales of brevity and jokes of questionable moral fiber. What would make this goddess of challenge laugh? Something came to me. There was something about her that seemed wonderfully iconoclastic.

“So are you a religious woman?” I asked and dammed if she didn’t almost laugh out loud at that but checked herself just in the nick of time.

“Do I look like I believe in anything more than a paycheck every other week and the slim hope that not all men are complete dickheads?”

Taking that as a no I got up and went to the bar and ordered two double vodka and tonics and while BJ smiled at me in silent laughter grabbed a pen from behind the counter.

I sat back down, gave her a fresh drink and began drawing on a cocktail napkin.

“I’ve actually come up with a bumper sticker which I’m having made up to sell at the fair next week.” I explained as the drawing continued. I could feel her leaning in with curious attention as she sipped her drink but I blocked her sight with my arm as I finished.

“Here it is.” I said proudly and handed it over to her. As she read it her eyes widened with joyousness and the laughter, the laughter exploded from her mouth like a thousand cannons!

She was laughing still and drying her eyes as she stood up and said simply,

“Let’s go.”

I walked beside her as we passed the amazed gaze of BJ and old ass Arty. I threw a crumpled up white wad at BJ as I went by and with one arm around my lady put the other behind my back and offered up a glorious one finger salute to my friend. He opened up the crumpled napkin I had tossed at him and read the simple words written there in bumper sticker style and a tight little smile fell across his face.

I opened the door for my lady and as we walked out into the cool night and I whispered into her beautiful ear, “umm, I’m going to need some proof.”

Zombie Poker

Very, very rough initial draft so feel free to let me know what you don’t like or what doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest from the trees!

Nate and Andy cowered in the bushes facing the hulking mansion; their faces, flushed white with light of the full moon, bore the expression of delighted fear only children summoning the courage to do something truly stupid can know.

The two boys stared up at the decaying house; its broken windows, peeling paint and fractured stone stairs leading up to the monstrous dark door that resembled a giant maw; open and needing to be fed. They were both thinking it but Nate was the first one to force it from his lips.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” Nate said.

“It’s just a house. Andy said as the sharp ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Illinois wind pushed dry dead leaves across the bare concrete porch of the house. The night was silent save for the scratching of those leaves, like fingernails on sandpaper, signaling the coming of winter, and the distant hoot of an owl.

“Yeah, big scary house.” Nate said.

Andy hit a button on his wrist and the green glow of his watch lit up his eyes and betrayed the courage in his voice.

“We gotta go if we’re gonna go.” Andy said. “I gotta be home by ten.”

Nate’s answer was silence.

“All we do is take a picture of one of us in the basement and send it to that kid’s myspace,” Andy said, holding up a small digital camera, “It’s a dare…we have to…everyone knows about it.”

“A dare? What, are we twelve?” Nate asked.

“No..we’re fourteen… Let’s go.” Andy said and slowly rose from the bushes and started for the front stairs. He walked on deliberate feet, like a soldier making his way through a minefield. A muffled “shit” escaped Nate’s mouth. He stood up, hitched his pants up once for comfort and then, as gingerly as his friend, started for the house.

They stood together silently looking up at the blackness of the eight foot tall front door in the momentary forever of fear and appeared as if one was waiting for the other to knock on the abandoned brass door knocker. If they had been wearing Boy Scout uniforms they could have been selling cookies, or tickets to the Pine Car Derby; if wearing costumes, waiting for October candy gold. They were neither however. They were just two scared boys on a dare; each with the hundreds of stories- myth and legend- of and old house left empty and dead decades before their birth, running wildly through their heads.

The house had been a sanitarium for the criminally insane at the turn of the century. That was fact. Old man Lancaster Turnbull had smashed his wife’s head in like a ripe pumpkin with the oiled base of a shotgun, and then turned the gun on himself in 1926. That was also fact. After that fact and fiction had blurred together through the years to become one: suspicious lights in the abandoned house at midnight each Hallows Eve, mysterious shapes floating past broken window’s in the dead of night, strange sounds…screams… music…laughter heard by citizens on late night walks. Over the decades the stories passed down from childhood to childhood, from father to son had grown in stature in the small town and now had made the myth of the old house as solid as the foundation it sat on had once been.

These were the stories running through their heads as Nate and Andy stood there slowly building up courage. Finally the feelings of fear and excitement mixed together like a strong cocktail, intoxicating and addictive, and Andy simply put one of his little boy index fingers against the door and pushed lightly. The heavy door gave way as if made of feathers and swung wide to invite them into cave black emptiness inside. It didn’t even squeak protest and the boys entered together; each flipping on a small pen flashlight to light their way.

Inside was quiet and the air smelled like a pair of much too old sneakers.

“Smells like feet.” Nate whispered.

“Sshhhh.” Andy whispered holding up the light to break through the void of darkness around them. The house was still filled with furniture, half eaten by mold and occupied now by cobwebs and spiders, and directly in front of them was a wide straight staircase leading upstairs. It was carpeted and their lights showed the color to be dark red. Their beams traveled up the stairs onto the landing and found a massive portrait hanging crooked by a single side attached to the wall. The painting was of an old couple; they were dressed in clothes the boys had only seen in history books and the grey haired man and women, long dead, looked out from the canvas of time to be neither happy or sad. Because the portrait hung askew they also appeared to be looking straight down into the house; through the house maybe, towards the depths of hell… or possibly, just the basement.

“Friggin ugly…..” Andy began to whisper as a shriek exploded through the darkness and the boy’s breath caught in their chest as they whirled around towards the sound; their tiny rays of flashlight shaking with fear.

The two cats appeared briefly in the light, their four eyes shinning like beacons of fire and then ran off into some unknown darkened reach of the house. The laughter from both boys erupted with the loud stupidity of relief and the house seemed to lose its menacing grip as the boys walked farther into the house now with confidence, their feet falling with the unconcerned weight of conquering invaders on the hardwood floor.

“Jeeesus Christ.” Nate laughed out loud.

“Friggin cats.” Andy said.

“Think that was that Turnball guy and his wife.” Nate asked.

The boys walked together down a hallway to the right of the staircase. The hall seemed to empty into a large room which was the kitchen as Andy’s light shot down the dark hallway and found a large iron stove sitting against the back wall. Two doors sat in the left side of the hallway wall, just before the kitchen entryway.

“I guess. Andy said. “My pop said they was the last people to live here.” Did you see her fucking neck?”

“Thicker than a linebacker.” Nate said. “Don’t blame the guy.”

They stopped at the two doors that sat almost side by side; one held a rusty but large lock that barred entry, the other, a well worn iron handle that, unnoticed to the boys, was free of rust or age.

The childish fear from before now replaced with ownership and Andy reached out without pause and pulled back on the handle as the door swung open soundlessly to reveal a staircase, lined with an old wooden rail, heading downward.

“Basement?” Nate asked.

“Duhhhh.” Andy said. He stood at the foot of the stairs and in green glow quickness, checked his watch. “Let’s get the picture and then check out the upstairs; I’ve still got about an hour.”

Andy tested the stairs softly with one foot for safety and lead the way down. Three quarters of the way down the walls from the upstairs floor lifted away from both sides and they both, at the same time, stopped short. Their tiny flashlights barely affected the blackness of the basement before them. They could see the steel foundation pillars covered with dust, a small workbench sat against the wall in front of them with a table saw unplugged on its top and a large plastic Black and Decker work banner against the wall with little plastic holders that held multitudes of wrenches, screwdrivers and chisels in its grasp.

To the right, against a wall that seemed to be miles away was another door. A soft orange glow, like lamplight from a parlor escaped through the crack at the bottom of the door and carried with it the light sound of music. ‘Landslide’ to be specific; the Stevie Nicks song and it slowly made its way through the orange light, floating up through the darkness to the two boys standing frozen now, on the stairs.

“…mirror in my heart, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above…”

Nate was the first to find his feet and made his way down the rest of the steps. He waited at the bottom and Andy gave him a little poke in the ribs as he joined him. They locked eyes and pulled enough courage from each other to walk softly to the door of music and light. Courage only gets you so far though and the boys stood at the door, listening to the song, finding themselves unable to move. A voice carried through the doorway and smashed directly into their heads. The voice was a man’s and had the lyrical laughter of a gentile southern accent beckoning them to enter.

“Nate…Andy… come on in now boys, my luck I fear, has abandoned me and we have two fresh seats that need some company.”

Curiosity can make young boys do strange things and they pushed the door open and walked in finding themselves surrounded by lush carpeted parlor complete with wall sconces, dust free portraits of landscapes and still life’s, a state of the art surround sound stereo system turned down low and in the middle of the room a large green felt poker table at which sat four very real, smiling and cardholding members of the undead… Zombies.

Andy and Nate could only muster the blinking of their astonished eyes and at the exact moment when their brains caught up with their feet, screaming at them to turn around and run as fast as they could the voice came at them again.

“Now boys… I realize this is a bit on the unusual side of things but please, I promise you, have no worries or fears. If harm was to befall you it would have already occurred. We do not have ill intent my young friends, in that you can trust.”

“Whaa…. What do you want?” Andy asked.

Only the talking zombie looked at both of them directly, the other three simply staring at the cards they held in their hand and seemed to be debating, like they were members of the World Series of Poker, on their next move.

“No limit hold em son.” The zombie said. “Everybody knows you need six for a proper game of no limit.”

Nate watched wide eyed as a zombie in a moldy Members Only jacket sucked on a cigar, the smoke pouring out from his decaying neck as he inhaled.

“You want us to play poker?” Nate asked.

At that the talking zombie stood up from his chair and waved a flopping, almost disconnected hand in amusement.

“Yes boys. Of course.” The zombie said and then pulled at his disintegrating suit jacket, covered in dirt with country club perfection. “My apologies; I am a rude host…. My name is Tyler Deacon.” He said with aplomb. Then, pointing to the others at the table:

“This wretched wreck here is Chester Lawrence.”

Chester looked up briefly enough from his cards to smile a hello just as a rotting tooth fell from his mouth and dropped, without ceremony, into his lap.

Tyler pointed to another member at the table and said, “Our friend here is Mr. Steven Andrews…lovely man however does not say much.”

Nate turned to Andy with shock and whispered in his ear, “Steve Andrews was the Mayor in the 70’s; my dad said he caught his wife boning some guy and they both disappeared and he moved to Fort Lauderdale.”

“Fucking Bitch.” Was the only comment Mr. Andrews had and then went back to studying his cards.

“Hmm, yes; well that appears to be all he ever says,” Tyler stated. “Although Mr. Deerfield here is an excellent conversationalist… wine, music, the theater… oh I do miss the theater…”

Mr. Deerfield rose up a beer in salute to the boys and drank it down in full and they watched as it drained out of his decaying neck and belly like a sponge to full with water.

“So you see,” said Tyler, “we all have names, we are properly acquainted…please, join us boys.

The music was pleasant and the company seemed unconcerned with them and yes, of course, they were dead , but neither Andy or Nate found anything really disturbing, other than that, in the group they looked upon now.

“What’s the buy in?” Andy asked searching his pockets for money.

“We play for the sport of it son.” Tyler said. “Something to pass the time, although we do keep record and if perhaps one of the living happens to say… do well; then markers are of course called… We’re waiting for our living friends to hit the lotto.”

With that the boys sat down and played poker. The conversation went something like this:

“Don’t you guys eat brains?” Andy asked.

“We do.” Said Tyler as he dealt the next hand. ” Although we refrain now to animals and homeless people…. We find it helps in the effort to keep a low profile.”

Nate discarded two and finding himself sitting on a flush, bet four dollars.

“Why are you zombies?” He asked.

“Fucking Bitch.” Was the answer Steve Andrews offered.

“Yes well, that is a topic of much debate,” said Tyler. He spread his flesh dripping arms open to his undead friends and said, “We only know each other but it does seem we have in common a certain…issue while living with dealing properly with our problems.”

“Call.” Chester said and threw his chips down staring unemotionally at Nate.

Cards were laid down and Chester, sitting on a straight flush, picked up the winnings.

Andy picked up the deck as it was his turn to deal and asked Chester who was pulling the mound of chips towards himself with glee.

“So what did you do Chester?”

“I like little girls.” Chester said as he counted his pot.

Andy and Nate looked at each other briefly and then Andy said, “You mean you’re a molester!”

Chester never looked up and said simply, “I like little girls.”

The game went on like that for an hour or so; dealing cards, bantering with the dead about things long forgotten by the living and it turned very quickly, almost without notice, into a friendly game of cards where both, living and dead, where quite at ease.

Nate gave Andy a nudge under the table around 11:30 and pointed to his wrist. They both had a large stack of chips in front of them and the friendly, toothless grin from Tyler came across the table at them and in the middle of the current hand pushed all of his remaining chips on the table.

“All in.” Tyler said and shot up from his chair with the quickness one wouldn’t suspect from a zombie with half a hamstring and dangling wrist.

Andy was working the mother of all poker hands; a Royal Flush and only needed the queen of diamonds to complete it.

“All in.” Andy said and stood up to face the zombie’s confidence equally. “Last hand though… my mom’s already going to kill me for being late.”

Tyler laughed hard and full with that and slapped Chester on the back so hard Chester’s last remaining tooth fell out and tumbled into the pot of chips at the center of the table.

“It is late,” Tyler said, “we’ve kept you boys long enough. I’ll thank you for your company and your patience however and with this hand, bid you fair adieu.”

The last card was dealt and the queen of diamonds flopped down on the felt like something heaven sent. Andy stared at his hand with wonder, looked at the big pile of chips in the middle of the table and then sank back in his chair with confident glee. At that moment he felt the strange feeling of something warm and wet on his cheek and noticed a few spots of red dripping down onto his cards. There was a pain in the back of his head he could not quite register and it was then he noticed Chester no longer sat at the table. All he remembered then was staring across at the dark nothingness of Tyler’s black eyes that seemed to be shining with glee and he felt a vice-like grip around his head as he heard his skull shatter and the screaming of pain and agony coming from Nate’s mouth.

Letter To a Stranger

To whom it may concern,

I wanted to say I love you because when we do eventually meet, it won’t matter. I thought I knew you, long ago in the relics and rituals of my childhood. Through the sweet wine and stale, flat bread I can still taste in my memories. I thought I knew you because I was told that I did.

And then I knew I couldn’t know you at all. My friends lay splintered and bloody on the other side of a broken guardrail, they wanted to have some fun was all, a few beers and maybe get laid. What they got was shattered skulls and stupid fucking crosses buried where the new guardrail sits now. I knew you had to be something other than the promises of goodness and caring I was told.

Then I went away, got some wisdom and the patience to read the paper, watch the news. I saw the word nigger written on the library wall, read the stories of a million dead soldiers, fighting for freedom, or so they were told, and called babykillers when they came home. I saw the fire hoses on television, knocking down men, women and children like bowling pins because they wanted to drink at the wrong fountain. I still wanted to know you then but I wasn’t sure where to find you.

And then they called my name and I was shot into the wide, wide world. The world they told us you looked after. It wasn’t your world, couldn’t be? Open bellies dripping viscera, friends shooting friends, children shooting and being shot at; a constant symphony of explosion, fire, and death. I didn’t want to know you then, I told you to fuck off and stay away from me. And I meant it.

I came back and they spit on me too; I got through it though. I did, me- by myself and life’s stream took me down through the years. I watched all the madness and forgot about you completely. Assassinations, abominations- innocent men in prison while evil men stay free and rich- and they don’t just shit on each other, they shit on everything! Trees raped! Animals destroyed until they disappear! They spill their crap into the oceans until they gasp and choke and die! I had a friend who said he found you; I asked him what the fuck he was thinking! Look around I said? Do you see him? Do you for one baby-dumping, gang-slaying, corporate-raiding, mother-fucking minute think God exists?

When I got married they wanted you there and I said sure, whatever- as long as the beer’s cold and the bride shows up- light the candles and bring on the wafers. I laughed at the empty promises of your words and knew it didn’t matter. My wife felt the same, it was for the old family she said, and they still thought you were around.

We had a baby, my wife and I. We named her Chloe and she died when she was 2 weeks old. She came too early and she left us in the morning. And I wanted to kill you. I knew you weren’t there and I still wanted to fucking kill you. It was the strangest thing. I sat there in the dark, drinking and listening to my wife weeping upstairs and I wanted to smash your head against the rocks and hear your skull splinter in my hands.

And then I went numb inside and didn’t know anything. Everything was pale and soundless and I was just walking through it. I couldn’t hear my wife weeping. The rain would fall and I couldn’t feel it, or hear it and the whole world was my chair in the dark and the face of a dead child. That was a month ago. Even if I saw the bus coming I wouldn’t have cared.

Then you showed up after all this time. I know you now. You aren’t what you where supposed to be, not what I was told you were, but I know you. And I love you. They’re turning the machines off tomorrow; I know because I can hear them talking, they don’t know it but I can.

So before they do I wanted to say I love you. If you can somehow let my wife know I said that, and that I mean it; maybe if you can do that, she’ll be able to know you too.

The World Ends…It’s Relationship

Her name would not translate to English, or any language but their own for that matter but she was the most beautiful women in her tribe. A child possibly by the standards of the civilized world but in her world she was a mother, a wife, a priestess; and so much more than that.

Her earlobes hung down to her jaw line from carrying the weighted stones since the time of her birth, her skin was the color of liquid milk chocolate. She sat in the grass weaving the basket that, in the traditional way, would take her several months to complete and thought about things as she worked.

Her husband was a skilled hunter, respected neighbor, patient father and tender lover. He was out with the other men of the village as that morning wild boar was said to have been seen in the lush forests of their tropical valley. She thought about him and wished for their safe return. Tonight, with luck, their village would feast on the bounty.

She had bore him 8 children and she watched the young ones play as she weaved. They were down by the little stream than ran on the edge of the village and she laughed out loud when remembering what her middle daughter had said that morning at breakfast. The older ones were out doing the many chores required to maintain their simple lives. Cutting back overgrown trails, chopping down the hard trees for the good long fire they would need for this evening, bringing up water for cooking and washing. Her second son had gone on his first hunt this morning with his father and that pleased her. The correct passing of time always pleased her and soon her first daughter would begin to learn the weaving ways her own fingers followed now almost without thought.

She thought of all these things as she sat in the cool midday air and worked.

Suddenly a noise blasted down from the sky. A roar of uncountable thunders. Her first thought when she looked up into the sky was that the sun was falling. But it is still light she thought so that is impossible. A ball of red steaming fire as big as a mountain passed by high overhead, higher up than the air even; a thick tail of orange fire trailed behind it. The whole of the village exploded with shouts and pointing as women and children rushed from their places to gather and wonder at this curious thing. They shouted curses at it and held their hands over their ears to dull the noise.

****

Five minutes and eight thousand miles later Becky Slayton sat on her porch drinking a late afternoon cocktail with her neighbor. They talked as housewives do on the silliness of their husbands and children; they gossiped and giggled and Becky wondered aloud, with the sun on her face, what she should make for dinner.

The streaking mountain of fire appeared as if from nowhere, lower than before now and within the moment of a breath exploded into the ground several hundred miles away.

Becky’s last thought was a roast would be good as her body was turned into ash.

The young village mother, wife and priestess was fixing a bad loop in her weave when the streaking wave of heat, fire and a wind of unspeakable fury rolled up from half a world away and melted her skin from her bones as her lush forested valley exploded into nothing.

***

Two days earlier all the worlds civilized nations had finally come together as one. At first they had argued how this could have been missed. All the eyes constantly lurking through the heavens and not one person had seen it? But then the calculations were made, the emotionless truth of science prevailed and it didn’t matter then; the why’s or who’s. They deemed it a planet killer and the massive scope of the world suddenly became tiny and weak when faced with the infinite coincidences of an infinite universe.

Nothing could be done, there was no halting time so they decided why bother. Let the people live while they could.

****

Twelve thousand years in the blink of an eye and single ray of light broke through the dust covered planet…