"Karma" #Fridayflash

Not that she wasn’t pretty. Her eyes and lips told a different story. Leaning there against the door frame, smoking a cigarette with her arm over her head. Wide-set doe eyes, and balanced precariously on twig-thin heels. Beaded bracelets slid down her wrist, drawing attention to how delicate her bones were.

“And then, he just turned…dark.” She pulled hard from her cigarette, and released a plume of smoke in her words. “I never saw it coming.”

I shifted my weight to relieve the pressure of the holster against my hip. The page in my notepad was almost full. For someone who had nothing to say, she had plenty. It must’ve been the drugs. I’d have to arrest her. I felt like a criminal.

She slid a foot from one of her shoes and propped it against the wall. Her hair was bleached almost white, and made her red mouth look like a bloodstain in her pale face. Track marks pocked the inside of her left elbow. Which made her right-handed.

I looked at my watch. “Anything else, Mrs…”

“Smith.” The th in the word brought out her slur. “No, that’s it. Can I go now?” Her pupils were pinpoint, tiny holes of nothingness.

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not.” I expected her to cry, but there were no tears, only indifference. Maybe she was too high to care.

Crime Scene came in, interrupting us. “We need to take the body.” Nice boys. Stevo and Kieran.

“Look, Mrs. Smith, you’re a prime suspect in this murder case.”

 I felt sorry for the clean-up crew. They’d need a mop to pick up what was left of him. Prime suspect was the understatement of the year. She must’ve showered and gotten dressed before making the call. A chill snaked down my spine.

Her smile was coy, but her stare was icy. “Karma’s a bitch.”

I blinked first.

Photo credit: jdurham from morguefile.com

"Geetar" #Fridayflash

Momma don’t stop me from playing the geetar out on the front porch. I sit and fiddle with them tuning pegs, twistin’ this way an’ that ’til I get the sound just right to my ear. I don’t need nobody to tell me how, I just know when I hear the right sound.

The neighbors walk by an’ stop to hear me play. Sometime they smile, sometime they frown and shake they head. I don’t mind none, just keep on picking them strings, humming under my breath ‘til them words break out like sun from behind a gray cloud.

Miss Johnson from three houses down bring her kids by sometime; they like hearing me play. Miss Johnson say I’m gonna be a big star someday but I don’t believe it. I just like to play. My fingers get itchy without strings under ’em, so I scratch them by playin’ songs out here on the front porch.

I don’t know where the words come from, they just roll out of my head onto my tongue and drip from my lips into the air. I get loud sometimes, an’ Momma come out and tell me to hush it down now, baby’s ’sleep. But the baby like my songs, he giggle and coos like he havin’ a ball. Sometime he claps his little hands and to me, it’s better than any ol’ big audience.

I look out from my chair and there’s a few folks out there, all lookin’ up at me. I stare at the dusty planks on the porch, I don’t know how to keep eye contact an’ all ’cause it sometime make me nervous. When I finish my song, they all clapping for me and I kinda shrug, mumble a word of thank’n and go on to the next one. An’ it is just fine. Right as rain. I smile for the people gathered out there at the gate, an’ I go on to the next song.

I play for awhile, ’til my head get tired and I feel out of breath ’cause I singing loud again, only Momma don’t stop me. She see that everybody just fine with me a playin’. An’ so is she.

(Photo credit: gianni from morguefile.com)

"Five Minutes Alone" #Fridayflash

Photo credit: western4uk from morguefile.com

There’s broken glass on the floor. I feel it. Shards, digging up through the soles of my feet, letting the blood seep through the little holes to make the slick. It’s there. In the shadows. I can’t see it except out of the corner of my eyes, ‘cause when I turn around it hides. It’s a sneaky bastard, slim and dank, reeking of mold and poisonous spores.

I spin around, bark out a little laugh. Ha. Got you.

No. No I don’t.

Bricks form walls on all four sides and I rush one and pound on it. There’s no goddamn door. No way out. Nothing but me and it.

How long has it been? Years. Days?

Five minutes. Fuck, it’s been five minutes.

There. Jerk my head to the right. No. There. Glance to the left. Easy. Easy. Where is it? What is it? I’m pissed now, and punch the bricks, which is heinously stupid. Idiot. My knuckles are bleeding like my feet. A twisted stigmata. Clumsy shit. I think I broke something. Not really bone, just deep down inside, where black is something even bleaker; where the splash of the trunk in the well isn’t heard for hours. Weeks.

Five fucking minutes.

I can’t take this…this not-knowing. That thing is in here with me, with icy breath drifting over my neck and shoulders. I reach back in one swift motion and clamp my fingers around its neck. It’s growling and clawing at my back, shredding my shirt to dig its talons deep into my skin. Screams everywhere and it’s just me, echoing off the walls.

Let me out…get this thing off me. Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff!

I sink to my knees. Consciousness is growing dim. A ring of brown, deepening to gray. Gray to…

____

“How long did you say it was before you sedated him?” Dr. Masinchino glanced up from his tablet. To his right, two aides were receiving treatment from the patient’s attack.

“About five minutes, doctor.” She was a pretty thing, not too old, not too young. Doctors couldn’t date nurses, but he’d imagined. Those legs looked like they went all the way up.

“Any idea what caused this?”

“None, doctor. He just showed up in the waiting room and began shouting after about a half-hour.”

“Any records on him?” The doctor looked over at the nurse again. “Anything at all? We don’t even have an ID on him.”

She shook her head.

Dr. Masinchino sighed through his nose, slipped his stylus into his breast pocket, and waved for them to unlock the door.

"Dead Horse" #Fridayflash

Hooves drummed the loose-packed earth. Arrows whizzed overhead. Somewhere, the sound of another man dying. Arcien turned to see he was no longer being pursued by the mob; instead they’d stopped a distance back, obviously distracted by something else. He drew back the reins, jerking his horses’s chin to its neck with an objecting snort as it halted. The dust cleared around them as he turned the stallion back the way they’d come.

The sun hung low in the bleeding sky, warning of impending darkness which would bring the battle to another standstill as forces separated and returned to their respective camps. Blood was not permitted close to the city walls; this was no-man’s land. Parched ground was grateful for the warm moisture of red seeping over swollen cheeks and bruised arms.  Rigid fingers still clasped their valued weapons.

Curious, he urged his horse back towards the battlefield at an easy trot, slowing as he drew near.

They’d circled around a single man who cursed, covered in sweat, as he flailed his horse, which lay there on the ground. The poor animal was obviously dead. The mob fell in at last, carving hunks of flesh off the great beast’s side with their crude daggers and swords.

When one of the scrawny aggressors looked up and caught sight of him, Arcien kicked his horse in the ribs to ride away. The war was never about land. The opposition was made up of nothing but starving men.

He recorded his recommendation and sent the sealed message to his Caesar.

Photo credit: jade from morguefile.com

"Under the Dogwood Tree" #Fridayflash

Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com

It began with a family picnic on that cool November day. Gray shredded clouds lay feathered against the elusive blue of sky. Frosty eddies of air mingled with scents of cinnamon and apple pie, buttery mashed potatoes and sweet raspberry lemonade. A deep-broiled brisket, browned and tender with gravy awaited us as we picked our way through the old cemetery that occupied the corner of Pinecroft and Hillsbury. Warm summer had persisted through the weeks prior to the day and emboldened by a confident forecast, we’d settled on this day to gather and eat in the waning sunshine.

Ours was a strange custom, born of generations encouraged to remain close to those that had gone before us. Memorial parks were still parks after all, and with the headstones flat and nestled in among the freshly-cut turf, one could pretend this was only a place in which to rejoice in the bounties of life.

Lilly, with her little velvet coat and matching dusky rose ribbon in her gold-spun hair, walked with Theodore in his gentle navy blue frock to compliment his dark curls and shining leather uppers. My children. I’d brought them along with Anthony, my loving husband of more than twenty years. His urn sat silent and patient as I chattered to it as if he were lying in the grass beside me. I knew his bones were ash; he never wanted to lie rotting in the ground as his father before him. Still, dinner was had here in Hillcroft Memorial Park, a clever combination of names from the two intersecting streets, and Anthony came along, though he never had much to say.

I glanced up to watch Theodore and Lilly hop over gravestones and relate spooky stories to one another, their high voices carrying bits of their tales to me over the breeze. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate Anthony’s portion anyway. Today was special.

After the children returned to settle and eat, we cleaned our area and locked the basket in the car. Anthony came with us.

“Did you find it?” I asked Lilly, older by two years than her smaller brother.

She blinked and pointed in a direction and we detoured our path. Under the spread embrace of a dogwood tree, I spotted it. The children broke away to reach it before I did. A simple square, set in the ground, blades of grass drooping inward to it. I regarded the urn in my hand. A tear escaped to slide down my cheek.

Only now could I afford to lay him to rest not rotting. He was dust already. Memories of his laugh, his smile, his hand on my cheek raced through my mind. A year. Nothing more. An unstoppable sequence of days, carrying him away from us.

I knelt beside the hole and set the urn in place.

Next year’s picnic, we would eat under the dogwood tree.

"Resurrection" #Fridayflash

Photo credit: click from morguefile.com

The earth lay covered over with a blanket of fresh-fallen snow. Grave diggers cleared away a patch and broke ground. They worked well into the day, their sweat and breath steaming in the chilly air. When they’d finished, a doorway stood open, sunk into the ground. A haven for the dead. A subterranean bed. A regal casket was carried out by solemn pallbearers, silver watch chains winking in the gloom of black. Fingerprints marring the elegant brass handles were wiped clean with a white handkerchief, produced from an unknown pocket.

Mourners stood in quiet rows, swaying to hypnotic drone of the priest’s eulogy. He blessed the raw earth’s open wound.

I am the Resurrection and the Life.

The coffin sank into the earth on whispering pulleys.

I am the Resurrection and the Life.

Holy water rained down without a sound.

A sharp cry from one of the onlookers punched through the priest’s words. The woman fainted. Prayer continued, though no one was listening.

Light faded from the heavens. The ceremony had come to the final words.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

The fragile form within the luxurious box was sandwiched between heaven and hell, forever locked in earth’s embrace.

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust.

A star shot through the yawning sky. Gentle mists of dew shook from the upper branches of trees in the early morning breeze. Birds  stirred and flitted about overhead, busy already capturing fleeing insects. They chirruped like crickets themselves, obviously pleased with the day’s bounty.

It was a golden sunrise, like the exterior curve of a ripe apple from the fabled Herculean myth. Shrouds of woolen clouds framed the skies, idyllic and yet ignorant in their silent grandeur.

Day returned.

"The Light" - A Paranomal #Fridayflash

Photo credit: streetfishing from morguefile.com

Rain spattered over the cooling hood like blood, tinted carmine and blue alternately by rotating lights. Stein got out of the car. Ahead of him lay a dead woman marked pale and still by the patrol car’s headlights. He greeted the officer and together they gazed absently at the grisly scene before them.  Her dress, once a deep blue satin, was ripped and sullen. The impact had left her barefoot, as being struck by a speeding vehicle often would. The chance-shower paused, as if catching a breath.

“Around what time was she found?” Stein dipped his fingers into the inside pocket of his wool overcoat to fish out a cigarette. A stray breeze caught the Zippo’s flame, wrestling with the golden tongue before he cupped his hand over the determined tiny fire. The dead woman’s blonde hair was soaked in almost equal halves of blood and rain.

“Around midnight.” The officer’s badge read C. Johnson. His face may as well been carved in flint. He dragged his dark fingers up under his plastic-covered police cap through the wiry salt-and-pepper hairs, reseating it on his head afterwards. “The coroner estimates time of death to be about nine yesterday evening, but the cold could be fucking with her temperature.”

Stein grunted in assent, his eyes dazzled again and again by the camera flash as a photographer captured each fatal detail. The dead woman’s diamond wedding ring cast off a shine like a distant star.

“The driver never stopped. No signs of braking at all. Since the road is so far out, we’re figuring it took hours for the next motorist to drive by and see her lying there.”

Stein shrugged. “Or there were more, but you know people…they don’t like to get involved.”

Johnson snorted. “They would have had to drive around her then, with her right there in the middle of the road.”

Blood pooled around the dead woman’s head, sticky and diluted from the light shower. The cleaners were attempting to separate her body from the blacktop. Stein exhaled a plume of smoke and dropped the cigarette at his feet, fating the fading glow into final darkness on the damp pavement.

The crime scene dissipated like fog in the sun. He turned to the woman who stared with wide eyes, her fingers covering her mouth.  Her deep blue dress lay in solemn folds against her legs. She stepped forward on tentative bare feet.

“Do you remember anything?” Stein considered lighting another cigarette, then decided against it. He stood patient, awaiting the woman’s response. She’d stopped at the edge of where the blood stain had been moments before.

She shook her head. “Teddy and I were fighting—he said some words. We were on our way to my mother’s. He was saying awful things about her.” She turned to face Stein, her makeup smeared in black tracks over her pallid cheeks with tears.

“Go on…”

“I told him that if he hated her so much he shouldn’t have come. He told me he didn’t trust me driving alone. We argued.”

“And then what?”

“He…hit me. He was yelling terrible things. He stopped the car and told me to get out.”

“And did you?”

She nodded. “Yes. He drove off and left me there on the side of the road.” She tucked her bottom lip behind her teeth. “The next thing I knew, you were there. Waiting for me.”

“That’s what I do. Wait.” Stein put an arm around her shoulder, walking her back to his car. Long and low, people said about it when asked. Black, or the deadest shade of purple they’d ever saw. He opened the passenger door and she lowered herself into the ashen seat. Stein got in behind the wheel. Cool blue light washed over his features as the engine rumbled into life. “I’ll get you to where you need to go next.”

The woman instinctively reached for her seatbelt, but found there was none. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home.” He glanced at her huddled against the door with eyes the color of tombstones. “Your name is Allis Forn. You died in 1979. Do you know what today’s date is?”

“No…what is it?”

He told her and she broke into tears. Thirty-two years she’d waited.

They drove towards the light.