Human Faces, Faces He Knows

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Andrade remembered almost nothing of his father. A small man, like Andrade himself, quick-tempered, silent. He was never home during the day. Other tradesmen might get rained out, but Andrade’s father was a master stonemason and worked indoors. He would leave the tenement before dawn and return long after the children were asleep. Sundays he spent in the park with the other masons, sitting on benches or playing bocce. On cold winter days they would play dominoes in a café, drinking Strega and cups of bitter coffee.

Many years after Andrade’s father died, a graduate student contacted him about the cats. He said that Andrade’s father had created hundreds of stone cats that decorated archways and cornices, each cat a unique masterpiece of the carver’s art. The student showed him dozens of photographs from buildings all over the city.

Andrade was stunned– the  faces of the cats were human. He recognized his mother, his brother Carlo who was killed at Bastogne, his grandfather, himself.

Sunday Photo Fiction

A Quiet Conversation

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“What’s it like?”
“You don’t remember? It’s only been a year.”
“No. I really can’t remember. Except that it used to hurt all the time.”
“I don’t hurt.”
“You don’t always feel the burning of the air in your lungs? Your heart banging away inside your chest and never getting rest? All the acid churning in your stomach? You don’t feel all that?”
“I don’t.  I’m too busy touching things, smelling things, feeling the grass under my feet like now. I don’t pay much attention to the stuff you mention.”
“I miss it. Even though it hurt, I miss it.”

 

 

Friday Fictioneers

Thanks to Rochelle for using my photo. I took this at a church graveyard in Red Hook, NY . I wasn’t aware of the figures when I took the picture. It was only when looking at it later that I saw them.

It Has To Be Different

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You want so badly for it to be different this time.

It will be different, you keep saying.

Different different different. Like a mantra.

For one thing, it will be morning. For another, you’re older now.

The longest journey begins with a single step.  You saw that once, on a poster at school.

Or maybe it was drops of water turn the mill.

You’re putting it off. You said you want to go, want to finally face it.

You don’t want to go.

You have to go.

Look at you standing there in front of the mirror, practicing what you might say, trying out new words, trying anything.

Anything.

The sun breaks over  the horizon, spills its light over the valley and the town.

It won’t be morning long.

If it’s not morning, it won’t be different. Not as  different.

You can’t lose the morning. You mustn’t.

Why are you like this? You ask. It was a tough time. You got through it. You will get through this too. 

You are not convinced.

You look at the clock. You look at the mirror.

It’s time to go.

 

 

 

 

Sunday Photo Fiction

Letters to Himself

Letters to Himself

The pink water had long gone cold when she found him.

Why is it pink? was her first question, answered when she saw the gash on his submerged wrist.

He must have taken pills too, she thought, since the cut looked superficial.

Insanely, she wondered if he’d used her bubble bath while running the tub.

Only after she had found the hidden folder on his hard drive and had seen some of the pictures did she find the shoeboxes in his closet, close-packed with journals full of densely written script in some kind of cipher.

Letters to me?

Letters to himself?

 

It’s Never Really Over

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I was stop-lossed twice, so I did four tours.

The first time it wasn’t so bad coming home, since I knew it was temporary.

Midway through my second tour we started calling the enemy insurgents instead of soldiers.

They changed the game, making bombs out of TNT and old 105 shells.

IEDs could look like a paper bag on the road, a wire in the dirt or nothing at all.

Plus, there were always snipers

Now when I go on a walk around the neighborhood, it sometimes takes everything I have to not flinch or run screaming.

The terror never ends.

 

Friday Fictioneers

What Is It, Girl?

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“Ruth! Will you shut that damn dog up? I’m trying to take a nap.”

Ruth wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron. Paul was always crabby on Sundays before dinner, especially if Pastor Bean’s sermon hit home as well as today’s. Paul really did drink too much sometimes.

“Sorry, Paul.”  She looked out the window to see if there was a deer or maybe a hobo. She herself wasn’t overly fond of the dog, but it was a good alarm system– these days, you couldn’t be too careful. And her stepson loved it so.

The dog barked and barked.

She heard Paul heave himself off the couch, slam cursing out of the screen door.  Through the window a white and russet streak of dog bounding away as Paul tried to kick it.

“Goddamn mongrel mutt!” he screamed. “I should put a fucking bullet in your head!”

He stormed into the kitchen. “Where’s that goddamned boy? Where the hell is Timmy?”

 

 

 

Sunday Photo Fiction

Reblog: The Working Parents’ Guide to Winning NaNoWriMo

It’s November 26th, do you know what your word count is? If you’re competing inNaNoWriMo you undoubtedly know what it is now, what it was yesterday and what you are aiming for tomorrow.

NOTE: if you’ve already won NaNoWriMo, congratulations! This post won’t be of any interest to you. January is just around the corner so you’ll want to get busy polishing that manuscript for Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel contest in 2015.

Okay, great. Now that the overachievers are gone, let’s talk.

Writing is hard. Work is hard and so is that overtime job turning runny-nosed static-urchins into productive citizens. But we love a challenge (obviously) and so here we are: X days left of NaNoWriMo and XX,XXX words to go.

So, in the spirit helping frustrated and exhausted writers everywhere survive the 50,000 words in November challenge, I’ve pulled together this concise list of handy tips:

  1. Unplug. Completely. Unplug your internet connection, your phone, your cable. In fact, go outside with some hedge clippers and cut the cord completely. Avoid Twitter, Facebook, all forms of social media and blogs. In fact, what are you doing here right now? Seriously, don’t even answer your door. Trust me, you’ll be glad for this later.
  1. Set aside a quiet time every day to write. Note that this might be at 3:00 am. You should try to be awake for it. Do not rule out the use of ear plugs and duct tape.
  1. Clean laundry is overrated. Look, kids don’t care. My daughter would wear the same pair of dirty pajamas for the entirety of summer break if I let her. And as far as you go—by the time your coworkers catch on that you’ve been wearing the same pair of black pants since Veterans Day, this thing will be all over.
  1. Clean anything is overrated.  Housework will wait. How many people have actually died from a cat-hair embedded sofa? I suppose maybe someone…but those people just need to steer clear. Remember, you’re not answering the door (see item #1). Handy, eh?
  1. Ignore your kids completely. C’mon, it’s only a month. Of course I’m not talking anything that would merit a trip to the ER. But that spelling review? The book report on Divergent? Reading them Llama Llama for the 4,987th time? All that can wait until December.  After all, what’s more important? Well actually, it’s your kids. But still, what are they gonna do about it? You’re the parent—you’re in charge.
  1. One word: Depends. As in the undergarment. I know right now you’re probably thinking gross, but really, it’s better than some of the medical interventions I contemplated. This is also where not answering the door comes in handy. Just think of all the time you waste on any given day. Bahaha! Ah well, I guess it all Depends on how bad you want to win. (The puns practically write themselves! Ahem, as opposed to my manuscript.)
  1. Yes, you can all survive on carryout. Leftover pizza keeps indefinitely and consists of all the major food groups. Breakfast, lunch and dinner–all solved! Theoretically, I suppose someone could call the authorities on you for feeding your kids pizza for ninety consecutive meals. But you’re not answering the door, remember? Those people can’t get in. I told you you’d be glad you weren’t answering that door.

There you have it, that’s not so hard, right? And if all else fails, remember: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. After all, it worked for Jack Torrance.

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The Thing That Broke Him

Photo by Dale Rogerson

It looked odd, using the big gutting knife to clean  his nails. I guess he did it to put a scare into the man, scare him without threatening outright.

Speers is smart like that, doing just enough that you get your imagination working against you. He told me that a man is always his own worst enemy, that if you can say or do the right thing  you can break him easy as a twig.

Maybe it was the knife, or the fact Speers and me had him tied up in the jonboat. Or maybe it was the swamp itself.

 

Friday Fictioneers

They Just Don’t Know Him

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By the time he turned eighty-five, the old man was done with marking the day and would have none of it. His granddaughter called herself a “party person” and tried to organize some kind of surprise celebration in spite of his wishes. When he got wind of it,  he called the local paper and told them he had died, disguising his voice on the phone and even sending them an obituary he  typed up himself.

By ninety-one, there was no more talk of parties, but  they would still try to give him gifts––mostly gadgets of one kind and another that he invariably refused. His great-granddaughter gave him a book about Jesus set in extra-large print.  He just shook his head, saying “Not a damn one of you knows me at all.”

After that, he stopped speaking to them altogether.

This bitterness was so successful that his centennial, a landmark in any life, passed unnoticed. But the day he turned one-twenty, a young intern from the college came around for an interview. A polite girl, she brought him a gift, a small replica of an old-time highboy bicycle, the very type he had learned to ride in the waning years of the century before last. She placed it on the windowsill where he could see it, got out her notebook and sat down in a little wicker chair across from him.

“Well, my dear,” he said, staring at the little bicycle, the deep seams around his eyes creased in a smile, “what do you want to know about me?”

 

Sunday Photo Fiction

Not Our War

copyright-ron-pruitt

Pa insisted I come along with him to see Pake off. I didn’t want him to go at all.

Jefferson doesn’t have a proper bus terminal like a real town, so we stood out in the parking lot like shoppers.

“Just  always do what your sergeants tell you to do, but remember you’re a Barnes and don’t take shit from nobody.” Pa had served in Vietnam, but he’d been drafted.

Pake stood tall. “Yessir.”

“Your mother doesn’t understand. She says this is not our war.”

“Well, I figure all them terrorists got to pay for what they did to them buildings.”

 

Friday Fictioneers