Going Under

The thwack of the oar knocked James into the water. The last thing he saw before going under was Stewart, standing in the boat, smiling. James struggled to stay awake as water seeped into his nose. He couldn't help thinking back to when his father was teaching him to swim. He'd sucked in more water than a sponge before he finally got the hang of it. 

Unfortunately, his father wasn't around right then to pull him up, and his body felt more like a rock than a sponge. He shook his head the best he could to clear it and tried to push toward the surface. Funny, he thought, I never knew you could cough under water.

Mistaken Idenity

Our exercise for the week was this:

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS. Write a fragment of a story using mostly rhetorical questions. You can write a plain, vanilla sentence that is not a rhetorical question every five sentences, though you don't have to be strict about this. You could do it every six sentences sometimes. 500 words.

How do y'all think I did?

“What did you think you were doing? Did you think at all? How could you be so stupid? How can you call yourself my son? How can you even show your face at the dinner table?”

Patrick hung his head in shame. 

“How did you botch the job so badly? Why was such a simple task so hard for you? Why can’t just follow orders? Why do you have to go off on your own, thinking your way is better? Why?”

Patrick had no answer that would satisfy his father.

“You have no idea? Do you ever think? Or do you just go off half-cocked all the time? Do you know what the worst part is? What really pisses me off?”

When Patrick didn’t answer, his father yelled, “Your sister saw you!”

“How come you stayed around the house so long? Why didn’t you leave as soon as I told you what to do? How many times have I told you to make sure your sister doesn’t follow you? How could you miss a girl with bright orange hair? How could you be so stupid?”

Patrick didn’t bother to tell his father he’d already asked the last question.

“Why are you sitting there with that stupid look on your face? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Are you hearing me? What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry, Pop,” Patrick started, “I didn’t see Patsy, I swear.”

“You didn’t see her? She’s six feet tall and you missed her? How can you not see a woman the size of a small truck? You didn’t see her? Well I guess that makes it all ok, right? 

Patrick wasn’t sure if his father wanted him to answer or not. 

“Well? Aren’t you going to answer me? If you can’t tell me how you missed your sister following you, can you tell me how you offed the wrong guy? How the hell did you mistake Joey Snub Nose for the guy you killed? Did you even look at him? His nose was a foot long!”

“How am I going to explain this to your mother? How do I tell her you not only didn’t get rid of Joey Snub Nose, but you killed a lawyer by mistake? Do you know the shit that’s going to come raining down on the family? How am I supposed to fix this? What am I supposed?”

“I’ll fix it, Pop,” Patrick promised.

“You’ll fix it? And just how will you do that? Can you bring back the dead now? Give that man’s wife back her husband? His children back their father?”

“I didn’t think so,” he said when Patrick failed to reply.

“There really isn’t a way to fix it is there? You can’t unring a bell can you, Patrick? Do you know what you can do? How you can make this up to me? Do you want me to tell you?

When Patrick shook his head, his father said, “You can tell your mother about it.”

Merry Christmas, Y'all

Hey, y'all, hope everyone is ready for Christmas. We still have quite a bit to do around here. Few last minute woodworking gifts we finished up yesterday have to be wrapped, gotta clean house some and get started on the cooking. We'll make it.

Here is a little gift from me to everyone who reads the blog. I do appreciate y'all reading my little flash pieces.

You can pick up a copy of my newest short story, Wax Remover 2000, for free on Amazon today! Please leave a review, good or bad, if you read it. Thanks!

Christmas Wish

 “Mama.”

“Yes, baby?”

“I’ve been a good girl this year, haven’t I?”

Margaret stroked her daughter’s dirty cheek and said, “You’ve been an angel.”

“Then do you think Santa will bring me what I want most in the world this year?”

Margaret turned away so Shelly wouldn’t see her tears. She knew Shelly had asked the shelter Santa to bring her daddy home last year. Margaret had hoped Shelly would ask for something else this year.

“I don’t know, baby,” Margaret answered. “Santa always tries his best to bring good little girls what they want.”

Shelly smiled. “Last year I wasn’t good all the time so I didn’t get my present. I tried to be extra good this year. I washed my hands before we ate at the shelter.” She gave her mother a worried look before she said, “The bathroom at the shelter isn’t very clean though so that might not count.”

“Oh, baby,” Margaret whispered and hugged Shelly close. 

Shelly hugged her mother back. She loved cuddling with her mother. It was the only time she really got warm, especially when it started snowing like it was that night. 

“I ate all my food, too. Even the yucky green beans they give us all the time. I didn’t eat them all last year. I’d dump them in the floor sometimes,” she admitted quietly.

Margaret squeezed Shelly even closer. She didn’t like the green beans either, but she knew they both needed to eat whatever they were given. Who knew when they would get another meal? 

Shelly pulled away slightly and looked at her mother. “I even helped Mrs. Brandon go to the bathroom the other day,” she said and grimaced. 

Margaret laughed despite herself. She knew it wasn’t right to laugh, but Mrs. Brandon was the most cantankerous person she had ever met. Not to mention that the elderly woman hadn’t partook of the shelters shower facility in who knew how long. 

“I’m sure she appreciated that,” Margaret told Shelly. “It’s always nice to help others.”

“I hope Santa saw it.” Shelly thought a minute and then said, “Not Mrs. Brandon going to the bathroom, but that I helped her.”

Margaret didn’t know what to say. Shelly was only nine, and Margaret wanted to keep the magic of Christmas alive for her, but to let her believe Santa was going to bring her daddy back to them seemed cruel.

“Baby,” Margaret started to say, but when Shelly looked up at her, hope shining in her soft brown eyes, Margaret lost her nerve. At the questioning look Shelly gave her, she said, “Try not to be too disappointed if you don’t get everything you want this year.”

Shelly’s lip quivered, but she said, “I will try, Mama, but I really hope Santa was watching.”

Margaret hoped Santa had been watching, too, but she really hoped God had decided to keep a better eye on them that year, because only a miracle would bring Shelly her Christmas wish.

Grandfather's Eyes

Samuel opened the lid to the small trunk, sending dust bunnies flying. After his nose quit twitching and he could see through the haze, he gingerly reached inside the treasure-filled container and pulled out a feather boa.

“Just what were you into, you old freak,” he whispered, smiling at the image of his grandfather prancing around the house with the pink froth around his neck. “I wonder if grandma knew how kinky you were.”

He rummaged around some more, moving aside an ornate locket that was so tarnished it looked to be decades old. Shaking his head, Samuel kept digging. Next, he came to a photo album, opened it and flipped through the pages of unfamiliar faces. He threw it aside, sure they were people from his grandparents’ past in Manhattan, before his time.

He found a few house keys stuffed in an envelope. Tammy, Amber, Rachel, and Tiffany were written on the outside. Samuel assumed they were old girlfriends of his grandfather, although he did not understand why the old guy would have kept them. His grandparents always seemed happy, so his grandfather keeping keys from past girlfriends didn’t fit. Shrugging, Samuel laid the keys aside, deciding it was just another eccentricity of his grandfather’s.

Samuel lifted a shoebox from the trunk and opened it, forced to move to a window in order to see the newspaper clippings inside. The top clipping, dated July 10, 1945, sent a chill through Samuel as he read of a Bronx cocktail waitress’s gruesome murder. Her body had been discovered in a back alley early one morning, clothes ripped to shreds, eyes gouged out, and body bloodied. There was also evidence of sexual assault.

The next article was about a murdered stripper. She had been found in a dumpster outside the strip club. Her eyes were also missing, along with a pendant necklace friends said she was never without.

There were over twenty more clippings, all about women who had been viciously killed. The papers had dubbed the person responsible the ‘Collector’ because of his penchant for taking eyeballs, along with personal items, from his victims.

“No, it can’t be,” Samuel murmured in disgust. He threw the shoebox across the room and watched as the contents slowly fluttered to the floor.

 Timidly, he walked back to the trunk. He did not want to look, but some force subdued his dread and made him reach in and pull out the final secret. His hands trembled when he held the large jar to the window, but the light could not penetrate the black-painted glass.

Samuel turned the lid on the jar, silently praying the contents were not what he feared. He took a deep breath and removed the lid, revealing a multitude of eyes staring back at him. The sight was so repulsive; Samuel’s knees buckled and he dropped the jar. He crawled to the corner and vomited. Knees pulled to his chest, Samuel rocked back and forth, misery and disbelief overcoming him.

The creaking of the door opening at the bottom of the stairs roused Samuel. His mother called to him from below, asking if everything was all right.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Samuel responded, pulling himself together.

He quickly gathered all the incriminating items and put them back in the trunk. He would take the trunk home with him after the funeral and burn the contents, allowing the past to die with his grandfather.

His mother was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, a concerned expression on her face. “We heard a noise and thought maybe you fell.”

“No, I just knocked something over,” he told her.

“Don’t worry about it,” his mother assured him. “Whatever you broke should probably have been thrown away years ago. Dad was always collecting junk.”