The dog nudged my feet, waking me up.
“There’s a big light in the sky!” he said.
“That’s the moon,” I said.
“But part of it is gone!”
“That happens.”
“Let’s go outside to see it better!”
So we did.
(The dog didn’t exactly say that, verbatim. I’m doing some interpretation.)
Hope is a duck
“Hope is the thing that floats,” he said.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” she replied.
“So, hope is a duck, then.”
“Duck. Goose. Swan. Whatever.”
Everything changes
Everything is in transformation and all lives continue in different forms, the werewolf realized as the full moon rose. But if that was true, why was no one else suddenly getting much hairier?
The Love Story of LuLuBelle and Billy Bob
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats, she thought. Then she realized, naw. Billy Bob never was big on thinking anyway.
The end.
Apple name-based fiction
The Prairie Spy Malinda rode her horse Melrose to Court Pendu Plat, there to meet with Reverend Morgan and the man who had ruined her life, Lord Lamborne. Not even the lord’s men, the Black Amish, could keep her from stealing the Golden Pearmain with which she would ransom the freedom of her family from the lord’s foul clutches.
“And then I will be free to marry Crown Prince Rudolph,” she said to herself. She’d developed a bad habit of speaking to herself. It was the stress.
She just hoped the prince hadn’t done anything rash in her absence, like marrying that American Beauty of the Bayou, Orleans Rennette. Her father, the ruthless VonZuccalimaglios Rennette, would stop at nothing to see his daughter at the prince”s side.
But Malinda still had a few friends behind the scenes at court – the scullery maid Pixie, the stable boy Oliver, and gentle Merton Russet, the very blacksmith who had shod Melrose. By the time Holiday arrived, she and her family would be free – or dead.
And in the end? They all lived apple-ly ever after.
Autocorrect, a genie, and my birthday
If a genie used Autocorrect:
Me: (blows out birthday candle; smoke turns into a genie) Wow! A genie! Do I get three wishes?
Autocorrect: Here are your three fishes.
Me: Not fishes! For my birthday, I have three wishes?
Autocorrect: Granted. Here are your three dishes.
Me: NO! NO! Birthday WISHES?
Autocorrect: Here are your birthday witches. poof; disappears.
Me: looks at the witches Anyone for some cake? I also have fish.
Are you sure?
A writing exercise:
The exercise was to visit a nearby cemetary, sit down next to the oldest tombstone you could find, and write about the person lying underneath you.
The sun was shining that day, and the grass was just turning green after the long winter. I knew the cemetary. I had friends and family buried there, but not in the oldest section. There were some grand, ornate monuments; none on the scale of Ozymandias, but impressive nonetheless. Others were thin, or leaning, or broken. But the oldest tombstone stood as upright as the day it was placed. It was deeply pitted, though. The writing chiseled into it was barely legible.
I sat down, took the pen from my shirt pocket, and started the exercise. “They’re dead.” I wrote.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there was a soft voice in my ear. “Are you sure?” it said.
Ebenezer Scrooge, P.I.
I am going to write a new version of A Christmas Carol where Scrooge is a hard-boiled private dick solving Marley’s murder:
The name’s Scrooge. Ebenezer Scrooge, P.I. My partner Marley’s been deceased these past seven years, and I won’t rest until I know why.
No corner of the past or present are safe from my hunt. I’ve made bargains – dark bargains – with spirits to assure me of that.
Marley’s murder may lie in the past. But the future will not find him unavenged, or my name isn’t Scrooge.
Ebenezer Scrooge, P.I.
This is why the wind cries
This is why the wind cries: it cannot hold a pen. The wind writes on the surface of a lake, and every first draft is the last.
Chili cheese dog
My most recent short fiction.
Me: Mmm! Chili cheese dog! (turns for napkin) Hey! It’s gone!
Dog: (innocent look)