Justin Bog's Blog

A Play Demonic: The Queen’s Idle Fancy continues with the 32nd serial installment of the horror tale. When last met, a strange force had arrived on the island and hid itself above the clearing at the top of Mt. Erie, where the audition for the role of Queen Stormag had taken place. The final decision will be made in this chapter, and more complications, future worries, developing.

I hope you enjoy this section. This story will continue at a much more frequent pace if time allows, along with The Volunteer since both stories are related by demons and characters.

“We are all demonic!” —Queen Stormag

If you would like to read the beginning of this dark tale, click HERE to read Part 1. To refresh your memory from the last installment, click HERE to read Part 31! Please enjoy and know that I welcome any comments from you. Who do you hope wins the coveted role of The Queen?

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A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy) — Part 32

by

Justin Bog

*

“Enough,” Waltzcrop said. The pouring rain lessened. In the shelter high up on Mt. Erie the players stopped acting, Leonora and Kate grew still, their expressions slackening. Belloon stood near Waltzcrop and took a step away hoping not to be noticed.

“What should we do with you? This has never happened before. I can’t decide between the two . . . who is stronger? Who is the more cunning? A believable queen needs to have the same spark of fire, willfulness, obedience to a higher power only she knows about . . . and this presents the most delicate of decisions.”

“I am Queen Stormag,” Kate said, obsequious as ever.

“I am the only rightful Queen,” said Leonora, trembling now.

“See, Frenalto? They cannot contain themselves. The part of a lifetime. A swansong. The role to cap all roles. What say you, Belloon?” Camoustra walked like a shade around the clearing in a circle surrounding the players, a wicked smile firmly in place. She approved.

“You know my only loyalty is to the play.”

“You, and whomever I choose to play Queen Stormag, will be in service to “The Queen’s Idle Fancy” and no other. Back when the playwright was searching for a title, he scribbled A Play Demonic in the margins with his ebony quill, and then scratched that out. My word is final, but this play demonic calls out for another sacrifice, something that must be delayed. One of you won the role of Queen Stormag tonight, had always been the queen from the first moment, but the other? There is such fire there. For the first time in the history of the production, the role of Queen Stormag will have an understudy. Come here Leonora and Kate, and listen carefully. Both roles come with sacrifices too weighty to shirk. Belloon, light the fire, here.” Waltzcrop pointed at a circle of stones filled with driftwood in the center of the dry clearing. Belloon crouched down and began to light a thin piece of kindling, blowing, sweating, worried he wouldn’t be able to produce flame.

Leonora, her facial features drooping, matching Kate’s obvious disappointment, walked away from the cliff’s edge and stood in front of Waltzcrop. Kate came up beside her as Belloon’s campfire began to sputter to life.

“You both performed marvelously. One of you embodied the role better, by inches. The understudy will take the queen’s role if she fails to uphold the bargain we’re entering tonight.”

With the campfire blazing, more wood piled higher, a triangle of crackling wood, Belloon backed towards the rear of the enclosure. He felt true relief. He didn’t care who became the queen.

Waltzcrop took out his cane and placed the tip of it into the fire until it glowed orange, fiery red.

“Kate Denisov step forward.” Waltzcrop removed the cane from the fire. “Hold out your dominant hand, palm upward. You are Queen Stormag.” Kate’s lips pressed tightly together for a moment before breaking into an insane grin (yes, insane, she could hide this now, but it’s there), and then her features whipsawed back into a sedate smile revealing cautious elation, showing her pleasure as only a queen could do without vocalizing her joy. She stuck out her hand, a willing player.

“Do your worst,” Kate said, “I am Queen Stormag.”

“Leonora, step forward and show me your palm. You are Queen Stormag’s understudy.” Leonora didn’t say a word, resist, or act like she was hurting from the decision. She’d failed too many times in her life to ever let anyone see her pain. She’d rise above this setback. In the back of her mind, she thought of Kate taking ill before the first curtain, poison, blackness, a soul charring, and then cleared these dark thoughts. She held out her right palm beside Kate. “The understudy must be ready to be the queen if anything untoward should take place to make Kate unable to get to the theater for the first performance. You both must pass the final test to begin practicing for the play, and we have all winter to do so, you have all winter to pass this test. Choose wisely. Take your time. Find the right player.”

Waltzcrop took hold of Kate’s proffered hand and pressed her palm against the burning-hot cane, the metal searing, melting skin, the pain almost too much for Kate. She screamed. He held the cane there for seconds, an eon, and then removed it, putting the end back into the fire. Kate cradled her hand. She couldn’t close it, couldn’t touch it. Tears rolled down her chin, and this made Leonora happier than she’d ever admit.

“Leonora? You’re next.”

“Certainly,” she replied, defiance still part of her tone. She wanted to let Waltzcrop know that he’d made the wrong choice. She should be Queen Stormag out right. The first, not the second, not the lady in waiting, since in all her years as part of the theater, she’d never once allowed any of her roles to go to the understudy. Even on her hardest days, the ones filled with flu, a sprained ankle, a loss in the family, she’d never missed a show. She could take the branding, the pain. She wouldn’t cry like Denisov, the weakling; she’d show Waltzcrop he’d made the wrong decision. He grabbed her hand and pressed the white-hot cane against her palm. Held it there even when Leonora swooned, let out a sharp wail, and dropped to the ground a blubbering mess.

“You must pass these marks onward. When you find your sacrifice, you’ll know what to do. Bring them here. You will feel the pain of these markings until then. Let it drive you. As soon as you do what must be done, the scars will disappear. Do nothing and the pain will increase, a ghostly thing; pain can become the best motivator. Show Belloon your unmarked palm when you’ve joined the troupe completely, taken the final step.”

Kate wanted to kick Leonora while she was on the ground making a spectacle. She didn’t know where these dark thoughts came from. She could remember disliking Leonora but grudgingly respecting her as an actress as well. Now there was such hatred for her. It was the play. It was in her head, and the pain spiking in her hand continued to ache. She kept running through all the people she knew on the island, all the people who wouldn’t be missed if something dreadful befell them, and couldn’t think of anyone as another wave of pain jolted through her.

Waltzcrop disappeared down the path, turning and then gone, Frenalto and Camoustra following, wisps in the mist. Belloon helped Leonora up, and directed Kate to begin walking down to the parking area. He kicked dirt over the fire. His thoughts marveled at the night’s audition. Kate Denisov was his queen, everyone’s queen.

In the clearing, after all the players departed, the shadowed and hidden man walked out of the woods above. He now knew how much time he had to somehow become corporeal, physically present in this realm, this time, this world. The yellow butterfly flew away from the height, the rain unable to dampen its powdery wings.

*

In a week’s time, the players would gather for the final dress rehearsal.

*

And that’s a wrap for now . . . a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but that’s the stage, how colorful, clownish, and seductive the craft can turn.

Please come back for the next section as the story begins to race towards an explosive ending.

To read my second foray into this Fidalgo Island horror area of the world, please read The Volunteer, Part 1 by clicking HERE! These two tales are connected by demons!

[image error]If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

Lastly, for Apple/Mac IT, please contact the company I use: Convenient Integration.

The post A PLAY DEMONIC (The Queen’s Idle Fancy): #Horror Story Part 32 appeared first on Justin Bog.

Another new addition to the ongoing serial tale, A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy). I still love the dark meandering story of these doomed thespians on Fidalgo Island. The last we heard from the troop the two main divas vying for the plum role of Queen Stormag had begun their audition on the Winter Solstice. In a cliffside cave, of sorts, near midnight, Kate Denisov has only begun to recite her lines when Leonora turns the tables. Above them, a yellow butterfly is captured by something unknown, unseeable, and with a purpose all his own.

“We are all demonic!”—Queen Stormag

If you would like to read the beginning of this dark tale, please click HERE to read Part 1. To refresh your memory from the last installment, please click HERE to read Part 30! Please enjoy and know that I welcome any comments from you. Who do you hope wins the coveted role of The Queen?

ever,

Justin

*

“You deceitful creature, your wanton ways will be your undoing,” Leonora said, stage-whispering this venom, gathered strength from the pit below her sternum where the greatest of thespians had taught her how to center her being, calm her breathing, on any stage. “To me, my Aquivera handmaidens. Do my bidding and no one else’s, especially not this false slag, one so burnt by the fires of hell, corrupted by bitter flames.” A trace of fear furrowed Kate’s brow. Yes. Frenalto circled the actresses, stepping lightly, bouncing near the cliff’s edge as if infused with a jester’s spirit.

*

The observer above them captured the yellow butterfly and the color drained from its wings, powder flecking into the mist and vanishing. He could remain there without detection for eons, out of time, a step removed from the slipstream. This gift a blessing and a curse, he didn’t wish to test it so close to Waltzcrop. He wasn’t a ghost, death another want, if not his need. He’d also been called here, that caller unknown. It took all of his considerable power to keep the butterfly in his curled fingers, a cage, and he’d spent most of it just reaching the island and sealing the waters within his protective shield. Waltzcrop and any other with a tenth of his skill and cunning would know they were trapped here.

*

Earlier on this same December day, the man with filthy hands swinging by his sides, walked along Highway 20, head up, face covered by windswept dust and grime. In the gray drizzle the people passing in their cars barely registered his presence. They’re in such a hurry. Those who saw him, those in tune to intuition, noticed his steady pace, and one passenger remarked on the light rain jacket, thought him a fool for being out in such a freezing gale, his startlingly dirty face with a light beard stubble, and the driver said, “I didn’t see him.” The mundane could see him, but he vanished within the ether, flickering, gone, present, there, not there, and they shivered, mentally, and continued to concentrate on their driving—forgetting him the next split second. The disparate men and women who walked this road left I-5 at mile marker 230, still a few dozen miles south of the Canadian border. Most walkers, like poor Petey Pete before him, were let loose from the county jail where it sits close to the highway exchange. No room at the inn: Get Lost! Fix your problems yourselves or we’ll send you to the next level of incarceration. A promise un-kept most of the time, an idle threat. There’s no scared straight program for the addicted, no help or rehab units; they slept in quivering masses behind bars, on the floor until morning—the heroin, meth, and alcohol addicts picked up the night before for disrupting the peace, vandalism, acting strange, domestically violent, some for being unhinged in public spaces, dangerous to themselves and especially dangerous to the police force wrangling them to the ground and into the back of their police cars. There’s never enough room to keep most of them so they charge them, offer to clean them up (most refusing), and let them sleep it off, set them free in the morning. They made the crawling, perp-walk back to the island. Don’t you dare pick them up if you see them walking the roadside smiling grins filled with graying teeth, or you’ll become another statistic in the weekly’s police blotter. Most of them don’t hitchhike. They look like they’d split you in two for a buck, coming down from last night’s high, comfortably ravaged by substance abuse. They crawled back to their rent-is-due-last-week apartments, family bedrooms (where mom and dad took them in until the last straw is drawn—blood thicker than water), and their half-functioning cars turned into sleeping bags after licenses suspended.

The man whistled, happily, as he walked for no one but himself and the call he’d never fail to respond to, an ephemeral beacon striking to his core. He wasn’t let loose by any jailer. No jail could hold him. He wasn’t cold and it would take an arctic wind to do much more than discomfort him. He walked a long ways to get to this destination and nothing would stop his steady progress. A huge semi, working madly these days before Christmas, sprayed an arc of muddy filth and it soaked the man’s black work boots. The twin bridges came into view in the distance miles away, rising white and gray in the gloom, and the man smiled—he’d been here before, decades, centuries ago. If the drivers could see his malicious smile, they’d shiver and call their loved ones at the soonest opportunity to tell them what they believe evil is: it is there on his face—and they’d be wrong—his malicious smile was a good thing; it set him on the best path. The worst possible thing, plain as day, cross your heart, for all to see, rested lightly across the man’s features, there, underneath the filth, you can see the white of his eyes surrounding the dark, golden-tinged brown to black of his irises—vengeance. It is all about intentions at this point, how far the man would go, and what set him on his journey to begin with. You know psychotic when you see it, when it is finally revealed, and the good could fall from sanity as well as the bad over time.

No one stopped. The man walked, his boots becoming soaked. He felt nothing. There was a time he wore nothing, bits of wild animals, skins—a different age. The bridge would bear his weight and everything he carried with him. The man thought about the future and almost leapt into the air. He’d waited so long. By the time the bridge neared, the steady rain had washed most of the grime from his face. It is a dark morning with more darkness to come on this solstice. More people left the island, driving to the malls for returns, maybe catching the newest science fiction spectacle down in Seattle at the IMAX Pacific Science Theater if they were lucky enough to get their tickets online. No one else felt the need to leave the island.

The man muttered Jimmy Cracked Corn and I Don’t Care, emphasizing the last three words, repeating the old lyrics on his careful journey to the center of the bridge, a graceful arc, high white concrete pillars towering above Puget Sound. Driving over this tall bridge gave the most paranoid of us the feeling of loading energy on the first hill of a rickety rollercoaster until you reached the apex and started coasting down the other side of the bridge in a sped-up whoosh. The increased speed noticed by the inevitable police car await on the other side of the bridge, and they loved this speed trap too, easy pickings, easy money for the struggling city coffers—stop anyone now, more tickets, we need ‘em.

When windy you really felt pushed by the Pacific Northwest gusts on this bridge and you always wondered what would happen if the wind just picked you right up, car like a kid’s Matchbox car, and blasted you over and out and down into Puget Sound. And you’d think of your final scream smothering your last dismal thought. The wandering man reached the center of the bridge and silenced his whistled song, a shadow too dark to be seen now.

The man retrieved black stones out of both front pockets of his lightweight jacket. They weren’t even the size of golf balls, but almost, not round, flat. His hands were beyond wrinkled, a dried up desert of skin, and the black stones felt smooth, a deep volcanic black, and just as old. His fingernails looked sharp though, and anyone who really saw the man and had time to notice his hands would think the man had claws for fingernails. Children ran from chilled shadows after retrieving wayward playground balls, after seeing him, when he allowed this, for kicks, and sometimes the man set the children’s shadows after them, scaring them into their parents’ arms, braying in unreasonable hysterics, pursued by ethereal darkness, dissipating after a hard night of worry and fear and wondering if they need to take their clutching brood to a doctor. I don’t know, Doctor, he just won’t stop crying.

The man’s fingernails scored the surface of the eight black stones, and then pricked dark pits in each of them, the flat side ripe for skipping across water. The man took the first stone and gazed out at the Sound, the water churning in the early tide pull, the Northern Lights Casino waiting for the post-Christmas crowd to fill their machines in but a few more days (the man hesitated as he stared at the casino and tried to remember the tribe that used to be here on the land before the casino was built) and then he glanced at the oil refinery in front of him that rested across the water, part of the island, along a bend of curving water, a narrow cutting through the land forming Fidalgo Island. The man released the first black stone. It soared out and over the water, skipping, skipping on a path across the dark blue surface beside the rocky shoreline until bouncing out of sight. He took the next two stones and dropped them straight down into the water under the bridge, a bubble burped its way up, and then another, slowly, a minute later, followed—burp, burp—three more.

The next stone he hurled like a shot put and it sliced away in an arc around the island to the left. Another to the right, and these formed a divot in the surf that wouldn’t fill. You could see the trench of air across the water. Right there and moving quickly left to right, beginning a journey around the island where they’d meet half an hour later to form a barrier. The last three stones he returned to his inner jacket pocket. His satisfied smile would make a nice snapshot in a psychiatrist’s office. What do you see? A crimson slash across a pale face.

The water beneath the bridge bubbled and burped more and more, frothing. The man continued to walk along the bridge, his song a bit perkier, satisfied by thoughts of what lay ahead: who he was to meet and whom he was to meet again. They’re all locked in together, this man thought at the exact moment he spotted a yellow butterfly many yards ahead, the unmistakable ease of flight, the touchstone, powder dry thread-thin wings safe in the downpour, and he followed this winged creature, a dog to a squirrel.

*

In a week’s time, the players would gather for the final dress rehearsal.

*

To read my second foray into this Fidalgo Island horror area of the world, please read The Volunteer, Part 1 by clicking HERE! These two tales are connected by demons!

That’s it for this chapter. A mystery deepens. Who is this new player on the island. For every evil force, there is another in line to combat that drive, seeking balance in an unbalanced world. Best wishes on your own battlefield.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

Lastly, for Apple/Mac IT, please contact the company I use: Convenient Integration.

The post A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy): #Horror Story Part 31 appeared first on Justin Bog.

A return to Bog blog central today, Sunday, the end of July, when the climactic action in one of my favorite horror novels, The Ceremonies, takes place . . . certainly auspicious. Many wonderful, lucky moments occurred since my last post. Has it really been months? Wake Me Up won a second book award. This is the last since Wake Me Up was not entered for any further award consideration. Two for two is a kind reward for a novel that took over ten years to see print, with several twisty (twisted) stops and starts throughout the entire process.

Wake Me Up will be heading to Germany this October when the Foreword group takes it to the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the largest in the world.  I’m hoping someone there takes interest and wants to procure foreign rights to distribute the novel. Since one of the pivotal characters in Wake Me Up heralds from a growing coastal town in northern India, I imagine a future filled with color, depth, curiosity, and kindness.

Because of this new book award seal, a Silver INDIES Foreword Book Award in the LGBT category, for novels, fiction, the entire concept of the front cover had to be rearranged to make the already busy front cover accept the award emblem without changing the focus. Mad Hat Covers received the seal and then went to work. The cloud of words, themes, places the story reveals, had to be shrunk and moved into a line to the left of the boy’s image. The book award seal found a home on the bottom right corner. I like the book cover more now since the full image of the boy on a beach staring out into the ocean, faceless and filled with dreams, thoughts, as someone watches over him. If you’ve read Wake Me Up, you know who I’m speaking about, and it’s not only one family member observing this moment.

Here is the new book cover. This is its fourth change. Books come out with many different variant covers over time. I hope you like this one. Wake Me Up is available at Amazon in paperback and kindle eBook. If you purchase the paperback, the kindle version is free. The kindle version is now priced at $4.99, and the 412-page paperback is $16.95. There is also a new Reader’s Guide of 20 questions for Book Clubs tucked away at the end of the novel!

ever and onward to better reading . . .

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

Lastly, for Apple/Mac IT, please contact the company I use: Convenient Integration.

Now that’s a headline . . .

A year ago I nominated my first novel, Wake Me Up, a complex literary crime novel narrated by the victim of a brutal beating while he recuperates from his medically induced coma. Since then, a lot has happened, and I didn’t expect Wake Me Up to make the cut since its publisher called it quits, and each of my books became abandoned tomes, instantly.

Now? I move forward, a feather in the life of any book that becomes resurrected. If you haven’t discovered Wake Me Up, please give it a read. It’s a family drama, with secrets and lies that rise to the surface. The narration spirals, dips, and dives into curious places, and there’s a new Book Club Reader’s Guide of 20 questions added in the new paperback and kindle edition.

I was awarded a big blue ribbon for coming in First Place for the literary Somerset Book Award along with several other authors and their terrific books. I was quick enough to snap a photo of this ribbon at the Awards banquet that took place on April Fool’s Day. I will always cherish that experience, and wish for more blue ribbons, even replacement ribbons if these ever become lost or misplaced. That’s an inner joke! I’m not great at holding onto material possessions, meaningful ones somehow become lost with more frequency.

So, please give Wake Me Up a chance, and share the news with your friends and family who love good books. You can find the new edition of Wake Me Up at Amazon in both paperback and kindle. If you buy the paperback, the kindle version is free.

ever,

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

sandcastlesmallerphotoLastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

Enter if you dare, this curious dimension, The Bog Zone: Author Interview #3 with Andrea Murray

To read the first two curiouser and curiouser adventures in The Bog Zone, please click on these authors’ names and discover what makes these writers continue down the writer’s path. Eden Baylee and Eleanor Parker Sapia. (The artwork used to create The Bog Zone signs were painted by George Bogdanovitch.)

Andrea Murray agreed to sit in The Bog Zone‘s hot seat for a round of Q&A . . . welcome this brave and creative soul, and make note of Andrea Murray’s Vivid trilogy: Vivid, Vicious, and Vengeance, to read, and once you do, a rating or review would be most appreciated. Writers want to hear from their readers and fans.

Welcome, Andrea, and fasten your seatbelts . . . try to answer quickly, off the cuff, and edit later. First, please share with these discerning readers where you came from, and what you’ve been up to during your own writing life.

I graduated from Arkansas State University with a BSE in English and an MA in English from Arkansas State University. I’ve now been teaching English for twenty years and have taught journalism, freshmen composition, every level of junior high and high school English, and Pre-AP and AP literature. I was also a two-time teacher of the year. (Wait! That’s a terrific award to win, and twice. Andrea, I wish you so many more high points.) I live in Arkansas with Chris, my high school sweetheart and husband of twenty-two years; our two children, Olivia and Wyatt; and our rambunctious German Shepherd, Claus, in a possibly haunted house. (Claus, the photo to the right, looks like a great family companion. My own long coat German shepherd princess, Kipling, would like to be pawpaws!) I co-coach my daughter’s two-time state champion Odyssey of the Mind team when I’m not chauffeuring our son to Cub Scouts. In addition to my young adult paranormal romance series The Vivid Trilogy, I have written The Omni Duology, a young-adult dystopian duo.

~With stomach rumbling, I’d like to begin this interview, as always, with something that sustains all writers: great cooking, meals caught on the fly, and the kindness of terrific chefs across the globe. What was your last great meal? Make all who read this hungry. Share your creative energy when in the kitchen—if cooking isn’t your thing, please tell us a curious cooking disaster.

My family’s favorite meal that I cook is meatloaf. Yes, meatloaf. The butt of many a joke and considered unappealing by some. But my meatloaf is not that usual block of meat that kind of plunks onto the plate. My meatloaf is made with tomato sauce, green peppers, onion, and lots of ketchup on top. It’s juicy and has to be scooped out, not cut with a knife. We usually have homemade, skin-on mashed potatoes with sour cream, butter, cheese, and pieces of real bacon. To top the potatoes, I make brown gravy using beef bouillon, onion, salt, and pepper. We also have green beans cooked with Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and brown sugar.

Meatloaf can be the best comfort food in the world, and I love your variations. I ended up making a bacon-topped version with a potato casserole and silken gravy for a crowd on Christmas Eve. There were no complaints beyond the over-filled guests. Now, your next answer was filled with magical, mouth-watering cuisine that made me salivate. What is the one book you wish you wrote or made you pea green with envy?

The Harry Potter series gives me book envy. It is so well-written. The storyline is tight, and the way Rowling brings back characters or events from book one in book seven is phenomenal. Parents may get tired of all the HP hype, but the hype is deserved. Her mythological and classical references are impressive as well, not to mention the engaging nature of the characters. Who doesn’t love the ultimate underdog?

Who doesn’t indeed. I find the films as creatively designed as well, a rare thing, when both the books and the films are easily reread and ripe for repeat viewing. Now, to throw you a curve, what’s the craziest thing you’ve done for love?

This is a hard one. I typically don’t do “crazy,” whether for love or anything else. I’m kind of practical to the point of boring. My mother tells me I was born forty years old! Probably the craziest thing I have done for love would involve my children, a mother’s love. You know there’s something to that whole mother bear thing. You kind of lose your mind when someone mistreats your babies. Three years ago when my daughter was seven and my son was five, they were threatened by another child on the bus. This wasn’t the first time, but it was more severe than any of the other times. I had complained about this issue before, and though the child was punished, the problem persisted. So, the day after the event, I spoke with a different school district and removed my children from that school at the end of the year.

What song is stuck in your head?

This one is easy. My son is really into puns right now. He’s eight, so he’s just sort of figured out what a pun is, and now he’s totally hooked. He made up this dumb song about puns, and the chorus is “No pun intended,” over and over and over. He goes around asking if we want to hear his song, and even though we all say no, he still sings it. It’s annoyingly catchy.

I’m happy for you, and happy I’m at a distance. Puns, well planted, and at the right time, can be a marvel (see The Princess Bride), and speaking of literature, please tell reveal your favorite sentence in literature, and of your latest novel too!

This is one of my favorites: “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”

Anyone who’s read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton recognizes this line. I love it because it helps create that fantastic circle that is the novel. I read this book every year with my eighth graders, and when we reach the end and they realize that’s the first line of the novel as well as the last line, inevitably I hear a tiny gasp and I can practically see their “light bulbs” turn on. It’s a great moment to talk about writing and how it affects the reader.

This is the first line of my new manuscript: “How had I ever let it come to this?”

It’s a ghost story, and I’ve started the novel with a prologue.

I hear talk about prologues being unnecessary, and that Editors often request they be cut, that the information, whatever it is, be worked into the body of the novel. Fantasy writers use prologues quite often, and other genres. Does this weigh your decision to begin your next novel with a prologue? How do you fall on the use of prologues? I always say rules in writing are meant to be broken, and there are always exceptions.

I love prologues, and I inevitably work the info into the novel as well—written differently, of course. I love that little “preview” of something that will happen. I’ve used a prologue a number of times, and I’m sure I’ll continue to do so. When I watch a tv show, I absolutely insist on watching the preview of the next week’s show, you know those thirty second snippets at the very end of the program meant to wet your appetite into watching the next show. I call them “scenes from the next,” and it drives my husband nuts that I HAVE to see them. I think of prologues the same way; they are scenes from the next for novels, and I just can’t help myself!

I love the kismet chance similarities you and I share, Andrea — and I love horror fiction (and films), and have decided my next tales should be full-on in the horror field — Taking the risk to delve into a genre you’re not overwhelmingly familiar with is terrific. I can’t wait to read your story. Will you please tell The Bog Zone readers what your favorite scary horror book and film are? The one that actually makes you scared thinking about it, or perhaps one that was so scary you had to stop reading or watching as well.

I don’t actually have a favorite horror novel. Ironically enough, I don’t read a lot of horror fiction, but the scariest horror movie I’ve watched (and the list is LONG) is The Conjuring. I think I watched every horror movie on Netflix and my Amazon Prime this summer along with many, many hours of paranormal tv shows, and that movie–it stayed with me for days. Another really creepy movie is The Houses October Built. It was so freaky that when I watched it a second time, I was still scared.

I’m putting that fright flick on my to-watch list. The scariest horror films I’ve watched in recent years, in no particular order: The Witch, It Follows, Don’t Breathe, Baskin, and so many more. I can’t wait to watch A Cure For Wellness this year. The one scary movie that sticks with me throughout the years is Halloween, the original, Alien, and Phantasm, even though the last was kind of hokey; I love The Tall Man. I seem to be getting off track. Say something about scary books or films and I’m like a happy squirrel. Anyway, what is the last risk you took?

The last risk I took involves the novel on which I’m currently working. My typical genre is YA paranormal/dystopian romance. I love romances, historical, paranormal—you name it! That is what I read, and that is what I’ve written. My current work, however, is horror. Ria, my protagonist, was banging around in my head for a while before I finally decided I should tell her story. The thing is I don’t read horror fiction. I couldn’t tell you one thing about a good horror novel! But Ria was insistent, so I wrote a chapter. I’ve been really uncertain with this one, but I think it’s turning out okay. I’ve had some good feedback from beta readers, and I’m glad I took the risk.

If you were a literary character, who would you be? Why?

I’d be Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello. I love, love, love that play! He’s the best bad guy in all of literature, and I think it would be fun to be the bad guy. I mean, without the bad guy, there’s no need for the hero, right?

BRIEF WRITING PROMPT INTERLUDE CHALLENGE

Write two separate versions of the same event: A wedding reception where a guest of the groom chooses to propose at that very moment. First write it with an “I” narrating, the mother of the bride, and then re-write using the third-person point of view. Both will have different fictional shadows.

1

Perfection! It’s absolute perfection. The flowers are the perfect shade of pale pink and yellow. I’m so glad we went with those centerpieces. The chicken is perfectly prepared. And April! Oh, she looks so happy!

I was so worried that the ceremony would be too long with those two songs Richard’s mother insisted we include, but it was jus—who’s that? Who’s that man heading to the stage? He must be one of Richard’s friends because I don’t recognize him.

Is he requesting a song? What’s he doing motioning to the singer? Maybe he wants to give a toast. No, he isn’t carrying a glass. What’s he—I can’t—get your big head out of the way Mary!

Did they just give him a mic? No, no, no, no—this cannot be happening! Is he—he is! He’s on his knee. Get up you, idiot!

I can’t believe he just did that! Of all the nerve! Richard and his asinine friends! April could have done so much better. I told her father. But noooooo. He insisted we support her choice.

This is supposed to be April’s day. The $17, 297 we’ve spent should make it April’s day. All this work to create the perfect fairytale wedding for my baby girl, and Richard’s friend has the nerve to steal her spotlight! Her next husband better be a hell of a lot better!

2

April and Richard had had the perfect day. The ceremony had been a storybook event. Pale pink roses and yellow daylilies filled the reception area with fragrance. Crystal stemware glinted in the candlelight, and guests had just sat down to enjoy the expensive meal.

Thomas patted the pocket of his gray suit jacket for at least the fifth time since leaving his house. He’d been carrying the ring for three days now, trying to find the perfect time to surprise Karen. They had dated for a year, and he knew she was the one. He wanted her to have a story to tell their future children, a special, romantic story, like those movies she loved so much, but he wanted it to seem spontaneous, too, so she’d be genuinely surprised.

He’d told Richard weeks ago when they’d gone to the hockey game that he wanted to ask Karen, and it had been Richard who’d suggested he do it at the reception. Thomas wasn’t so sure that was the best idea, but Richard had slapped him on the back and laughed, telling him it’d be the perfect surprise, that Karen would never expect it at another couple’s wedding. Thomas hadn’t agreed, but now . . . well, he certainly hadn’t found a better moment. Maybe Richard was right when he said women wanted men to make a fool of themselves for love in front of a crowd.

Thomas glanced around the room at the hundred or so people sitting down to their meal of Chicken Marsala. This definitely qualified as a crowd. He wasn’t sure Karen would be impressed or mortified; he hoped the former. If she turned him down, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.

The band was playing softly while people ate and milled around, congratulating the couple and their parents. April’s mother laughed loudly, calling the attention temporarily to her. She’d been overly dramatic throughout the ceremony, crying profusely, and that dress! Thomas didn’t know much about fashion, but he was pretty certain that pink shouldn’t be so bright and that lace shouldn’t be stretched so tightly. He hoped Richard knew what he was doing marrying into this family.

Karen put her hand on his arm. Her smile was soft and made his chest ache. When she leaned over and kissed his cheek, he could see their future in his mind. Now was the time. She’d say yes. He was certain. He stood and walked toward the stage.

I do like your two writing passages above and look forward to reading more of your work. It’s kind of you to complete this task so well and I thank you for indulging The Bog Zone desires, and, on that note: What is your biggest indulgence?

My biggest indulgence is definitely jewelry. I’m completely addicted—always have been. I’m the proverbial magpie when it comes to anything shiny. If it sparkles, I want it, and the gaudier the better!

A yearning followup: What is your most precious piece of jewelry and what is the story behind it? Thinking along the same vein as that big necklace of Rose’s in the film Titanic and the story behind it!

My favorite piece of jewelry? Well, that’s like picking a favorite child! It’s actually one of my smallest pieces. When my husband and I went to Alaska two summers ago, I found a tiny cable bracelet that I really wanted but wasn’t going to buy. He bought it for me, and every time I look at it, I remember the fun we had on that trip, so that is probably my favorite. I never take it off.

And, finally, the last Question . . . are you ready? It’s been so much fun having you share a bit of your life, Andrea. I thank you . . . only a few more steps. Who is your fictional nemesis, a character you love to hate?

My fictional nemesis is Romeo. I can’t stand that guy! I’ve taught that play for many years. It’s a “have to” in ninth grade literature. I can’t stand that whiny baby! He’s all “woe is me” and “I can’t live without you” to Juliet when he just confessed his undying adoration to another girl just scenes before he sees Juliet! I have a hard time seeing the eternal lover that most people think he is. I’m afraid I’ve tainted a generation of freshmen against him.

And that’s all for now. I’m happy you made it to the end of the interview, both Andrea, and any reader out there. If you’re an author yourself and wish to, possibly, with time allowing, become the next author to enter The Bog Zone, please leave your thoughts about this interview in the comments and share your desire to take part within the comment. I’ll add you to the growing list!

Please find Andrea Murray throughout social media and her books at these links:

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/andreamurrayfanpage

Twitter @byandreamurray https://twitter.com/byandreamurray

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5418176.Andrea_Murray

Website:  https://byandreamurray.com/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Andrea-Murray/e/B006MKWRW6/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1485125488&sr=1-1

ever and onward,

Justin Bog

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

Lastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

Another year comes round again, a sluggish beast moving at the same speed for time millennium, a forgotten remembrance graspable when concentrated upon.

“Here! I think I’ve got it!” The witless author takes hold of the reins.

This secret so immaterial a great wall could be built in the blink of an eye, in the decades, the centuries compounding, shrunk into seconds, ticking away. Life.

A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy) began as just that: a fancy. Hubris and the challenge kept it moving along smoothly for the longest time. And then, like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria, “I have no memory of this . . . ”

The 29 chapters passed into shadow, wine splashing from broken stemware, thorn-rose spots blossoming, red into white, white into darkness. Here is the 30th section, following right where the characters travelled from the earlier chapter. Remember? The players are caught in a December Solstice downpour as they journey up Mt. Erie to play on blood-soaked grounds; these men and women shaken from their normal pre-holiday lives by forces unwelcome to their island home were called there by unknown compulsions. Where is the light? Where is that counterforce? If you’ve read the entire piece up to this point, light, and a power to combat this growing evil on the island, has not yet made an appearance . . . that is still to come. If you’ve read my companion story, The Volunteer, which takes place in the same timeline, but a few months further ahead in February, you’ll be happy to learn that the two tales are connected, that more than one being from the darker side of this great mystery has travelled to Fidalgo Island, and that the major players will meet as time again rushes forward. In fiction, this rushing of time may happen in a split second. First, read this chapter below . . . The secretive private audition will begin shortly, and no one will remain the same . . . thank you for having faith in this horror tale, and for encouraging more and more writing in the new year ahead. Enjoy, and please comment after the last send-off below. I cherish every opinion.

“We are all demonic!”—QUEEN STORMAG

If you wish to read A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy) from the very beginning, simply click HERE for Part 1, and if you’d like to just refresh your memory and read the last chapter, simply click HERE to begin reading Part 29 . . . it has been too long.

*

A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy)

by

Justin Bog

*

Above the clearing, to the left of the overhang, sheer stone, an island rock kept tight counsel with the pines and crumbled with age. Occasional lightning bolts sent shards, boulders sparkling into rivets, avalanching down to the forest floor. Behind one of these boulders, with a protected view of the natural stage below, a shadow moved into place and froze. This shadow blended with the dark night. It was called there. It didn’t know who did this calling, and in the sludge of thoughts settling in its mind, this became troublesome.

To the north, on the mainland closer to Bellingham, rock slides stopped I-5 highway traffic for hours, sometimes weeks, if the debris grew too cumbersome to blast, load up by truck, and discard. Not too often though, detours diverted traffic around lakes, other mountain passes, and life continued as normally as possible. When the weakening bridge fell years ago too close to the island, citizens grumbled but pulled together. The five month delay became a story to tell weary children learning how to drive, another tall tale to instill fear, cautiousness behind the wheel. Remember when the bridge collapsed into the Skagit River? That was something. No one was hurt even though three cars fell into the drink. Fear of heights, bridges, weakening infrastructure, grew, and therapists collected this data with wearying frowns, something else to medicate against. Fear.

This shadow above the rocky theater, what would become an audition stage soon enough, flickered in the darkness, a small yellow-winged thing drawn forth, unnatural in the December chill, approaching freezing, the raindrops a strange weapon to something so delicate in appearance. The butterfly rested beneath another rocky outcropping, as if two stone rooftops formed there long ago for just such eavesdropping. Dry powdery ache. What sent this cousin? The first butterfly made another appearance, freed from the box at the Belloon home four weeks past during the Thanksgiving celebration. It chose. Unknown is if this choice, like any other, would bear fruit or remain the most arbitrary of evils. A second yellow butterfly to match the first, or, as its tiny brain developed, charted a different path to safety (it knew). Somehow it realized the first traveled off the island when it still could, before the hex took place, before the counterforce approached, something that always happened, as perfect as a German train clock. For every action there is a separate response, an unwelcome action in the glen. The play had its players, and these moments, like bones scattered by a witch’s palm for divination, brought change if what was learned held. Forgetfulness also joined the stage dwellers. Frederick Waltzcrop waited there with Leonora to his right. He rested his hands on top of his silver-tipped cane. The clothes he wore, including his top hat, stayed dry. Leonora trembled in the chill. She’d dressed in black following whispered instructions. She listened. Her frizzy hair could be pulled back for the challenge ahead. She wore no makeup.

When Kate arrived, followed by Martin Belloon, Leonora’s features twitched, her upper lip rising in feral response. Kate returned her own feral response, fingers tightening into fists, one sharp nail puncturing through skin, forming a crescent of blood hidden in her palm. Camoustra whispered in Kate’s ear, stroked her index finger across Kate’s right arm as if steadying a back-arching cat. Frenalto whispered his own poisonous bon mots into Leonora’s ear. All eyes were on them.

Frederick Waltzcrop said, “Welcome, ladies, and gentleman. Martin, please stand over here next to me. You’ll be the judge.”

Martin Belloon’s entire being beamed with pride. He wished Carole could witness his triumph, as he always wished she were there to record his achievements. The subject distracted his narcissism in minute increments . . . glad-handing, schmoozing, rubbing elbows with the moneyed Anacortes charity-giving board members made him stiffen with exquisite pleasure, at times, and he’d take Carole to bed afterwards, teach her to appreciate his efforts more and more. In recent days (his memory slipping through the fog in his brain) he’d been utterly sadistic with Carole and a frown creased, an instant reflection, across his face. An echo deep within murmured: What am I doing here? Who are these people? They disappear and materialize right in front of me. And then: The play. Oh yes, I serve at The Queen’s pleasure. 

“Are you feeling up to the task?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to this, Mr. Waltzcrop!” Oh yes!

“Good. Do you have the section?” Belloon nodded. “Kate will open the auditions. Frenalto will read the other parts. Camoustra will keep Leonora company. Is that agreeable to everyone present? I hope and do so look forward to tonight’s entertainment.”

“I was here before her! That’s not fair. This is the part of a lifetime and I’d do anything for it. I don’t think this is fair at all.”

“Dear,” Frederick Waltzcrop said, mischief in his tone, a dark mirth bubbling there, “Would you kill for the role?”

“You know . . . I would.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“I’d do worse,” Kate interjected. “Much worse.”

“You two are perfectly capable of surprising me. I’ve cast this role before, too many times to mention, and your wild talent is off the charts. Still, there is a certain procedure, a ritual if you please, to tonight’s audition. Please come forward, Kate. Martin?”

Belloon handed Kate a few pages copied from the play. The audition would take place sheltered from the rain by the rock outcropping, keep the play dry. Kate glanced at the first line of dialogue and handed the pages back to Belloon.

“I know the play forwards and backwards. Maybe Leonora will need these.”

Leonora stepped close enough to strike Kate across her face with full melodramatic force, theatrical hubris. Frenalto touched her shoulder and she wilted back to her place closer to the edge of the clearing. The sky darkened, if that’s at all possible in the blackness. Some said this year’s solstice coincided with the darkest day of the year, possibly the darkest in over five hundred years, a lunar eclipse helping to blacken the night around them. Waltzcrop chuckled, but so low no one else heard him.

“I won’t need the pages either. Just tell me the scene. I memorized Queen Stormag’s lines the first time I read it. They’ve stayed in my head.” Leonora wanted to add the word somehow . . . since this had never happened to her in all the plays she’d taken a role in. As she aged, grew into maternal roles, drunken wives, Lady Macbeth characters, the ones she could chew the scenery to bits with, memorizing had lessened considerably. She’d never confess to such a weakness though, and she’d be damned if she’d confess it to Kate, her majesty, no matter how sarcastic she could make her delivery.

“Terrific! Ready whenever you are, Kate.” Waltzcrop moved a step back, relinquishing the small stage area, drawing Martin Belloon with him. They watched as Kate dropped her head to stare at her shoes, the pebble-strewn ground, rock, the hardness and the height, where eagles built nests in the trees and taught their young to fly above The Sound. Where she was, how terrible a place, never entered her mind. The play had taken her long ago, and she concentrated her energy there. She was The Queen. Stormag. Her Magnificence. Frenalto bowed to his queen. The light of three lanterns placed behind the players was sufficient to see every emotion on their faces . . . Kate began.

“We are all demonic!” Queen Stormag (Kate now) said this to her handmaidens, triplets, born on a distant Beltane evening to a farmer whose sheep grazed royal pastures for generations. Their mother died minutes after delivering her third daughter, never conscious enough to see how tiny they were, how red, like the gums of her grandmother after eating strawberries, sharing them with her, laughing on her wedding day, a string of wildflowers a woven crown atop her doomed head—her grandmother helping with the birth and cursing moments later. Two boys under the age of six and now three girls to feed with warmed goat’s milk, an unnatural beginning. The Queen caught sight of them only four years later and took possession of them by royal decree, paying for them like the best cattle. The grandmother forevermore mumbling something about garbage, insolence, and hardship, and annoying what few relations remained. She had to tow the line. She was her son-in-law’s property just the same, and he was the only one she allowed to order her about. She wouldn’t miss her granddaughters one second. She became the replacement mother in the house, still young for her age, and gave birth to a son not too long after that, making her son-in-law prouder and prouder. Hiding sins with ease.

“Yes,” Frenalto said, playing the part of one of the three Aguivera handmaidens, all three in this scene surrounded their queen in the far tower of the castle keep. They helped her dress in finery. They studied the dark subjects in the books she provided. They loved her.

“All of you as well. Purity. Use that most of all.” Kate felt the power enter her as she spoke this line. Waltzcrop watched with growing satisfaction. Belloon was trapped by a mesmerizing ecstacy so enrapturing he couldn’t take his eyes off his queen . . . yes, Kate is Queen Stormag, she’s the one. Leonora’s weakness was her fear, worn so obviously. He glanced, only for an instant, at poor poor Leonora, as the performance shriveled her last sense of self worth.

Kate continued: “Handmaidens . . .”

“Yes. One of binding defense.”

“Yes. The second of binding vision.”

“Yes. The third of binding deceit.”

Frenalto’s delivery for each of the three Aguivera handmaidens differed one from the other, distinct in the dank chamber, recalling each of their delicate vibratos with perfect mimicry. The light of the lanterns wavered.

All three of them said, at once (Frenalto capable of such trickery): “We do your bidding and no one else’s.”

“Take her now. There’s a traitor amongst us. Serpentine boldness. I’ve watched her every action, aware of her betrayal from the beginning of time.” Kate pointed at Leonora as the power of the play rushed through her. In a different time, an age of dragons, Queen Stormag pointed to a tapestry, the image of a knight in armor riding a white stallion centered on forest green, a hidden door behind it, and the Aguivera handmaidens, with righteous glee, ripped the tapestry to the castle floor. There, shaking now, the blacksmith’s daughter turned, tried to flee. They caught her and Queen Stormag pointed to the high tower window.

“Throw her out, my handmaidens. Tell the knight watchmen to cut off her head and place it on a spike outside bordering the drawbridge. There should be a few openings.” Defenestration, a fearsome and heartless command, made Queen Stormag (Kate!) shiver with calming joy. Frenalto turned towards Leonora, who backed up a step, closer to the cliff’s edge, where Petey Pete Pete’s headless body had fallen not too long ago.

*

In a week’s time, the players would gather for the final dress rehearsal.

*

Thank you for continuing on this journey with me. The writing will gather steam in the new year with two stories and more than a few novellas reaching an end point. I feel grateful at the end of 2017. 2016 shared a lot of surprising doom, death, and a contentious election season. Does the future look bright? I hope so. I wish you all a Happy New Year. Take care of your family and give to others without any expectations of kindness returned.

ever,

Justin

*

If you’d like to begin reading my second horror tale, linked to A Play Demonic by setting and characters, The Volunteer, please click HERE to begin reading Part One!

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

sandcastlesmallerphotoLastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

MEET THE COACH FROM HELL!

IN THIS CHAOTIC climate, a horror story is appropriate. The worst deeds of humans, turning monstrous, choosing dreadful paths to take . . . the road darkened yet compelling to those without a conscience, those who wish to get ahead without doing the work or those who simply lack empathy. Most of the scariest of monsters are usually human, born innocent babes, and then a transcendence occurs, a moment of shock, a chill in the air. Those who turn to darkness are found out eventually, and the horrors from the past haunt us to this day. One of the best books to read right now is Stephen King’s The Dead Zone. It captures the power of foresight and brings it to a terrifying place when a man with “the gift” sees  a possible apocalypse after touching a smiling, trumped-up candidate, who also just happens to be an animal abuser. The horror of real life is often mirrored in its fiction and films and theater and music. The Arts. Everyone take heed.

After a solid three weeks of recovery from minor surgery (the pain wasn’t minor) I’m halfway through the battle and looking forward to my next appointment with the future. Healing is key. I wrote a story based on a Ray Bradbury tale and this has been sent off to see if it’s up to snuff. Another tale, Homecoming, is in the writing stage. I’ve created my own family of misfits who live on the fringe of society, and who only wish to exist among us. In another nod to Bradbury, a writer who continues to inspire from beyond the grave, Homecoming will make a curious debut later in the year.

Here is the sixth installment of The Volunteer. I hope to bring about change on the fictionalized version of my home isle of Fidalgo Island. I write what I know. I write where I live, and the gothic season begins. Enjoy this chapter and please let me hear from you in the comments. I recently published the new edition of Wake Me Up, at Amazon, and it’s receiving some notice. If you or yours have ever faced bullying, this tale may help put a face to this horrible occurrence.

ever and onward,

*

If you want to read The Volunteer from the very beginning, please click HERE to read Part 1.

If you want to refresh your memory, please click HERE to read Part 5.

To begin reading my other horror story, A Play Demonic (The Queen’s Idle Fancy), please click HERE to read Part 1.

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The Volunteer — Part 6

by

Justin Bog

*

Melinda pulled her layered blonde hair into an athletic ponytail, no nonsense. Her hair, with natural gentle waves and nice subtle, lighter streaks throughout, shoulder-length, billowed up behind her as the wind quickened. Rain droplets started spattering the court, and I could see the shoulders of the team slump. Melinda’s time-consuming hair style was about to get drenched and I watched her face tighten.

Coach Martin spoke in a whisper to the new volunteer. That’s what I thought of him and resisted calling him anything but Boatman. I certainly wasn’t going to call him coach. Boatman spoke to us without raising his voice in the approaching storm, the wind and the rain now falling faster, soaking all of us instantly. From previous seasons I knew that when this happened the girls ran, squealing, for the indoor gym, if a practice was just starting, or into their cars and home if the coach said: See you tomorrow.

The girls stood there, hair, faces, clothing, dripping until Mr. Boatman ordered: “Head for the gym. Last one in runs back to the tennis courts for five more suicide drills. On my mark: One . . . Two . . . THREE . . . GO!”

Just like that, the team took off sprinting for their bags and racquet covers first, grabbing them in their haste before heading to the gym just down the hill about fifty yards away. I wanted to tell Coach Martin I wouldn’t be joining him inside for more calisthenics and conditioning. I was there to hit with the team, feed balls to them for any kind of drill, and with the new volunteer there wasn’t room for three adult minds, especially my spiking thoughts. I wanted to tell Coach this but he was off, sprinting with the girls who ran ahead, the ones who didn’t even pick up their belongings. No one wanted to be last.

That thought almost made me start to run too, keep up with the pack.

Believe me . . . you don’t want to be last . . .

The new volunteer stared at me debating this and he smirked again, lifting the corner of his thin lips. His spectacles were soaked and in the gloom I could only see darkness behind them. And then he was lightly jogging away, not a care in the world, coming up behind the last girl, Ardath, a heavier girl who was on the JV squad the previous year as a diligent workhorse freshman, a nice, determined girl who didn’t stand out as a talented tennis player but one who had a passion to learn, put the time in. She’d already come in last and it was obvious as I followed the new volunteer to the gymnasium that poor Ardath was about to face a penalty for being slow once again.

The new volunteer placed his hands on his hips as Ardath turned back in the downpour to complete her . . .

Punishment . . .

In the rain I couldn’t tell if she was crying as she passed me to run back to the abandoned courts and start her five suicide drills. Her face sagged and she couldn’t look me in the eye.

I studied the new coach standing out of the rain in the open doorway to the gym where the faster girls hooted, very satisfied with the way the practice was going. They sounded wild, like the girls I knew from the past few seasons, silly, loud, borderline obnoxious in a good way.

“Mr. Worthington . . . may I call you Coach Worthington? You are an adult authority figure for the team, after all.”

“Of course, I said, but Bennett also works fine for me since I’m only a volunteer.”

“Oh I think you’re much more than that. Volunteers are the lifeblood of any community, giving of their time so selflessly. May I ask you to do me a favor?”

I couldn’t think of the right response. I so wanted to say: absolutely not, but, I said, “Yes.”

“Will you please supervise Ardath to make sure she hits every line with her free hand. In the long run the conditioning is the best for her.” He moved casually out of the rain and right up to me again, leaning in, whispering into my ear. I could smell his breath and wrinkled up my face, lines appearing around my mouth with distaste and I barely controlled myself before I understood what he was saying: “She is one hefty chick and needs to lose that sedentary weight. And another thing, please have her gather up the belongings of the rest of the team who left things on the court and bring them inside. See you in a few.”

I sputtered away as he returned to the gym, shutting the door behind him. He hadn’t given me time to respond.

My clothing wouldn’t dry out for days and I thought this as I walked back to the courts to make sure Ardath did the punishment drills. She ran and touched every line. I recalled other first-day team practices and couldn’t remember a time when all the kids did anything without complaint, especially running, something tennis players whined about. Can’t we just hit tennis balls?

After Ardath finished she had just enough energy left to make it to the public trashcan next to the staircase to the upper playing field where she promptly threw up. I felt for Ardath. I pictured my own daughter, Elissa, running and then vomiting, in distress. And my anger continued to simmer within.

Oh, the new volunteer, Boatman, was good. I gave him that. He’d even made me complicit in his plan right off the bat, part of his new team of coaches. Let it go . . . pick your battles, don’t make waves, be a man, Benny. And this I heard in my mother’s voice, someone who unfailingly never, ever, made waves.

I walked up to Ardath.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m really bad, Mr. Worthington. Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve eaten anything right after school. Lesson learned.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

“I just want to fit in. I’ve been practicing so much. I know I’m a better tennis player than I was last year, and I’ve lost some weight already.”

“I think you look great.”

The girl stayed silent at my words. They sounded insincere and Ardath was wise to this. Stay honest with the teens, I thought, they see through every little white lie.

“You know what I mean. I’m trying to cheer you up.”

“I took lessons at the club up in Bellingham. I’m not going to be cut. I’m better than most of the people I played with last season.”

“Well I wish I could’ve seen you hit today, but the rain stopped that.”

“Like usual,” Ardath said, a bit more despondent. “I have to get back to the practice.”

“Lets pick up these bags left by a few of your teammates. There’s a sweatshirt over there under the bleachers.”

“That’s why I’m here. I should’ve just gone ahead. I didn’t want my computer to get soaked so I stashed it under my coat there and look what happened. I promise, one day soon, I’m going to be the best sprinter on the team. You wait and see Coach Worthington.” In the rain Ardath couldn’t even open her backpack to check her computer. Like most of the other kids she’d come right to practice from school.

“I believe you.” She spoke with such intensity. I’d forgotten what a good competitor Ardath was. At that moment I thought: She’ll be fine. She’s tough, and if I could predict the future that’s what I believed.

We gathered up the backpacks and racquet covers and headed for the gym. I saw Ardath wipe her mouth and stopped her, dug into my own racquet bag and took out a couple breath mints.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re great, Mr. W. This year is going to be tougher but I think it’ll make everyone stronger.” That was the understatement of the day.

“Well I wish I’d been informed about the new volunteer.”

“Coach Boatman.”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t have been. He came in during school hours last week. Coach Martin introduced him at the first tennis team meeting. That never happened before. Usually you just sign up on the bulletin board, get your physical if you don’t play another sport and appear the first day, today. That’s when the two of them told us there wasn’t enough money for JV and only the most serious tennis players should even bother showing up for the first try-out practice. He told us everything was going to change and he was right. He told us to expect to be penalized if we don’t do things the right way; it makes us stronger, and the weaker players won’t last. That’s all I’ve been thinking about and look where that thinking got me: last place.”

I didn’t respond in any way but Ardath gave me another piece of an ever-expanding puzzle. Coach Martin’s planning had been ongoing for quite awhile and he hadn’t thought to include me. At this point the question wasn’t why?—but why not?

*

Until next time . . .

ever,

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

sandcastlesmallerphotoLastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

Meet the coach from Hell . . .

This is the latest installment of my ongoing semiweekly horror tale, The Volunteer. I hope you are enjoying the introduction to this mystery-soaked coach, a new volunteer on the courts of a small island high school’s girls tennis team. It’s February, and practices have begun, conditioning exercises commence—the most devious kind. Stay tuned. If you wish to chime in with your thoughts, they mean a lot.

To read The Volunteer from the very beginning, please click HERE to find Part One!

To refresh your memory, please click HERE to read Part 4!

***

The Volunteer — Part 5

by

Justin Bog

***

The first instant caveman reaction I had: someone new was trying to horn into the place I’d been cultivating for the past three seasons. I only knew about the first day of practice because I kept in seasonal touch with Coach Martin through texts and emails. I understood why Coach Martin didn’t communicate well. It wasn’t strange. He had a young family of his own, taught his classes and graded tests and planned lessons. It’s the way he chose to handle his coaching duties. I thought I earned a place in his inner circle and he’d consult with me about the choices he made, the roster, what the kids needed to work on. I wondered if I’d become a third wheel, if there was enough coaching chores, the small tasks, for me to really help with. Even though I had only volunteered for the past three seasons, the team kept a losing record for the past seven seasons, but that was because our team remained filled with seasonal players, not club kids like most of the other regional schools teams. The Coach probably wanted to turn that around, brought in an expert, and the guy (it’s there in a flash) came off as so instantly no-nonsense I assumed he must be a heckuva tennis player in his own right.

From last year I watched the seasonal rise in ability of the top three singles players, Melinda, Phoebe, and Nancy, in that order. Melinda, driven with dreams of community college tennis, worked hard as the kind of standout tennis player any of the local high school teams would love to have on their teams. Now a senior, she made it to the semis of Districts last year, when only the top two moved forward to the State Championships. This year the top three would go and I hoped Melinda could keep improving. All three of the singles players looked fit running the drill, and singles players needed to be fit to last three sets running and covering the entire court. The top doubles players needed the conditioning because their reaction time and court coverage, more in tactics, strategy, became a key component along with a strong bond with their doubles partner. They needed the breath to keep approaching net, up and back, up and back, inhaling properly, exhaling when they made contact with the ball. Singles tended to be more left to right, a lateral game, right to left along the baseline, and points were usually decided by the person who failed to keep the ball deep. Any short ball in singles (and doubles) is a weaker shot and the better players are able to move in and hit a winner off that defensive return.

So, silence reigned on the court, deepened. The new volunteer stood there waiting. I don’t know for what purpose. The last five girls, the slowest girls, still had astonished expressions on their faces and I wondered if they’d show up the next day.

“You now have a contract,” said the new volunteer. Coach Boatman continued in his even, deep, monotone. “A contract to improve over the coming practice weeks. I am here to help you achieve your goals, and you will improve . . .”

Or else…

That was my immediate thought as Coach Boatman stepped back and allowed Coach Martin to begin his introduction to the team.

“Thank you all for coming. This is the beginning of a new and different tennis season. Coach Boatman and I will be putting you through the paces with a new program based on his motivational teachings. He’s a former top college standout and has spent most of his time since helping tennis players reach their true potential.”

I listened intently and felt kind of hurt that I hadn’t been consulted about this new shift in designing a change. Coach Martin hadn’t even been able to look me in the eye yet. What was I going to do? Hand tennis balls to the new volunteer like a toady sycophant?

I couldn’t take it anymore and interrupted with a question that had also been on my mind?

“Where’s the Junior Varsity?” Again, usually the first day of practice was for everyone, all the girls who wanted to go out for tennis gathered and the Varisty and JV coaches and I would watch them hit enough to divide them into two squads. The JV coach, Rick Somar, a retired Government teacher who had kept his coaching gig because he also loved tennis, wasn’t even present.

“With this year’s school budget cuts, we had to let the JV team go,” Coach Martin said. “There wasn’t enough money for separate school bus trips.” Almost as an afterthought he added: “Everyone, this is another volunteer, Coach Worthington. You’ll respect him as well.” (Did his tone add a bit of mockery there? I’m not making this up.) He ducked his head and then got back on track, “We’re lucky we kept a varsity squad.”

The new volunteer interrupted, “And you girls think that way. You are very lucky. Each and every single one of you isn’t safe yet. You have to show us today and the rest of these warm-up practice weeks that you deserve to be here. There’s only room for ten players and a couple in reserve for exhibition matches. That raises the number to fifteen, and there are twenty of you here.” He stared at the five girls who finished last during the opening sprint races. “That means five of you will be cut by the time our first team match against Sedro-Woolley arrives.”

He sounded sad, but I didn’t know why. There was a strict no-cut policy for sports teams in play. This year was starting strangely, too strangely for my liking. I could play well with others, other cock-of-the-walk men, who had to relive their glory days on the fields of their past by coaching kids again, never really talked locker room talk, but understood it was just men letting off steam away from the normalcy of life, a time to be ribald boys again.

“I am Coach Boatman and that’s how you address me. You will respect us,” and he pointed to Coach Martin but, again, forgot to then point in my direction. “This is the first time I will ask this question and I’ll ask it again tomorrow: If you want to leave the team now there is no shame. We understand. Your coach and I. Do you want to be on the Varsity Tennis Team? You’ve just gotten a taste of what this new season will be like, and this season you will improve your game.”

Or else . . .

Those two words kept repeating again in my mind and the gooseflesh along my arms under my heavy spring warm-ups wasn’t because of the February chill. The clouds raced above us heading to the North where the oil refinery, built on a spit of land bordering the Sound, chugged out in wide billows from the smokestacks.

I hadn’t been included in Coach Boatman’s We, and I wondered if Coach Martin had even mentioned me before now because it’s so obvious they had met up several times to plan their new regime. I’d always thought my college experience and the way I interacted with the kids was good enough for Coach Martin.

But your teams had lost . . . 

“Now,” barked Coach Boatman, I couldn’t help but continue to think of him as only The New Volunteer and he knew this too. “You girls need to appoint a Team Captain, someone we can communicate with, someone who will motivate each member on a peer level, someone who will sometimes have to confer with Coach Martin and I about team rules of play, meeting times, changes in transportation to away matches, uniform orders, school team photo sessions for yearbook, bureaucracy, and this needs to be someone we can trust. We’ll give you five minutes to choose. Hop to it.”

The girls stood and huddled together, but they couldn’t have been more subdued about it. Did they think this new guy was as strange as I did? Felicia rolled her eyes when I looked at her, my face an open book. The girls knew each other from the past seasons and the team captain was usually a senior girl, someone who had put in the time so it wasn’t surprising when only a minute later Melinda walked away and up to Coach Martin.

“I’m the new team captain.” She said this a bit defiantly, and I liked this hubris in the face of the new volunteer’s authoritarian tone. Melinda played first singles. She was the natural choice.

***

Until next time . . .

ever,

Justin

p.s. and check out my first literary crime novel, Wake Me Up, about a terrible crime in a small Montana town that shakes everyone up . . .

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

sandcastlesmallerphotoLastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

Here’s the next part of my ongoing horror story, The Volunteer, the one about a father and husband trying to do his best, as always. He’s a people pleaser, and this comes with its own frailties. Watch how he handles the introduction to the new volunteer tennis coach. Is he impressed? He’d never admit to that. Judge for yourself. Read and please comment below what your thoughts are as the tale moves forward. I can’t thank you enough for sticking with the The Volunteer.

To read The Volunteer from the very beginning, please click Part 1!

To refresh your memory from the last chapter, please click Part 3!

The Volunteer

by

Justin Bog

*

I headed over to the new guy. Obvious to me, I needed to introduce myself right away. From a distance he looked much older. He wore dark red sweats with a white striping down each side of the arms and sweatpant legs. When I approached he stuck out his right arm, his fingers long, curling inward. I noticed his clean-cut fingernails—I don’t know why—and his tan skin. I grasped his hand and we shook. His strength made me wince, a knuckle popped. He had what my father called a walnut-cracking grip, a real man’s swagger. I returned it, the macho swagger too (God, it’s like meeting an unknown outlaw in a bad Italian-made spaghetti Western for a duel—it was that tight from the beginning—I swear it was) and stared at him, afraid to be the first to break contact. (In hindsight, that’s the first time I was afraid of him. Right there on the tennis court surrounded by girls and the old coach. I admit that.) He must’ve been in his late fifties, still very fit with his fluid movement, the way he carried himself without the usual middle-age paunch. His hair was black and cut conservatively and I thought maybe his militant manner and strength came from a military background, an assumption I made that proved false, just one of many.

“I’m the new volunteer,” the man said, and he added a low chuckle. I remember that as the first time he laughed at me, as if he saw inside me even then, knew everything he ever wanted to know by just shaking hands with me. A preposterous thought, but look where it took me and then you decide. I smelled his breath, at least I thought it was his breath, as we shook hands a little more than a foot apart from each other. His teeth looked gray and I thought maybe he’d been a chain smoker. A pungent, raw smell came from the man’s mouth, a lowly rotten scent I couldn’t place. Believe me when I say I never wanted to get close enough to shake hands with the guy again. I’d tell Janelle about this turn of events and the guy’s halitosis soon enough. I’d never been sensitive to smells. Childhood allergies wrecked havoc on my sinuses along with an unfixable deviated septum. Janelle was overly sensitive to any sharp odor. I changed more diapers, wiped up the most vomit, kid and pet dog clean up master. Custer, our golden retriever, now age eight, once hung his head after being sprayed by a skunk wandering through our back yard and Janelle wouldn’t step outside for a week.

“I’m the old volunteer,” I replied. If he wasn’t going to tell me his name I’d be damned if I’d proffer mine.

My hackles cocked up. My intuition buzzed in too wacky a direction for me to verbalize at that moment, and I wouldn’t have even if I could. My smile became plastic. The man wore glasses, the kind I’d call spectacles, round, warping the view of his dark, dark brown eyes, magnifying them just slightly. I stared into them and the right side of his thin lips lifted as if he chose to smirk at me.

Coach Martin stopped sprinting the last suicide drill and joined us.

The new volunteer shouted out: “Don’t the rest of you stop. The last five of you to finish will do five more!” There were groans from the group of girls and their hair flew astray in the wind, which was picking up as usual so close to Puget Sound.

“I see you two met,” Coach Martin said with pep. I’d never known Coach Martin to be all that peppy a guy. He couldn’t look me in the eye though. I couldn’t get his attention from this point on, not really.

“Yes.” I refrained from asking anything else, my polite upbringing now in play. I imagined the new volunteer had approached Coach Martin, as I had years ago, and asked if he could help out. It wasn’t up to me. What was wrong with the new volunteer showing what he could do right off the bat to start to get the girls in shape. It was only three weeks to the first team match, and the girls needed ten practices before they could play. If they came up short, and there were many school and family activities that always blocked some of the kids from doing this, the biggest being the unfortunate timing of the annual drama department school musical, coupled with spring break looming ahead in two weeks, where some of the students extended the one-week spring break to two weeks, their parents wanting it to be the one big family vacation of the year, the kids who didn’t fulfill the ten practices couldn’t play against other schools until they did. Two years ago three of the top girls couldn’t get their ten practices in until a quarter of the season was already over; members from the JV squad stepped up. I didn’t see the usual amount of girls at the first practice. In years past all girls who wanted to play on the tennis team showed up that first day, the girls hit a bit before being divided into varsity and junior varsity. I counted only twenty girls at the practice and last year’s JV had at least 25 girls competing. I thought the school had a no-cut policy and everyone who wanted to play tennis played. This year was going to be very different, and that was my understatement of the season. Where were the other 20 girls?

Coach Martin and I always groused about the ten practices rule, how, inevitably, we’d miss some of the better players to the drama department and spring break. Seldom did the team notch its first win early in the season because of this—not enough court time, repetition, consistency. I recognized most of the girls from the past year and waved at some of them as they finished their last suicide—yes, an unfortunate name for the drill.

They didn’t wave back, just bent over, some with hands to their chest, or on their thighs, breathing hard. Not even Nancy and Felicia, two of the girls who I’d helped make breakthroughs in each of their games, Nancy with her forehand and Felicia, who finally—a lightbulb going off moment—reached up for her serve, an epiphany that made instructing the kids so worthwhile. Nancy gave me a shifty glance, quick, sly, and then looked at the ground. She was always an outgoing teen with a sunnier disposition, a team player.

“Callie, Ardath, Ellen, Martina, and Carmen, you five keep going,” the new volunteer commanded. And they did it. They didn’t even argue, groan, moan, act prissy, show any teenage-girl melodrama, and I wondered if these girls were the same teenagers from last year. There were only a couple new faces, the incoming freshman.

The girls who finished sprinting limped over to the three of us, their adult authority figures, instructors, leaders—that’s what I was thinking—and sank down like panthers, slinky, boneless, onto the court, sat spread out in a circle waiting for the last five penalized girls to finish.

I looked at Coach Martin, then back at the new volunteer and introduced myself officially: “I’m Bennett Worthington.” To my own ears I said this in a semi-snobby way and I told myself to stop, stop, what are you thinking now, Benny, which is what I was thinking right afterwards. I couldn’t stop my inner voice from speaking.

“This is Coach Nelson Boatman. He’s good enough to help us out this season.”

I just stood there, waiting for more information but it wasn’t forthcoming.

“Okay, do you mind?” Coach Boatman said this to both Coach Martin and I, but mostly to me, and I know that sounds paranoid.

Coach Martin nodded. The last five girls, with ragged breathing, plopped onto the ground at the outer edge of the other girls. Hardly any of them looked up. The place had a desperate pall, a cold, gray silence to match the February sky.

“Okay. Girls. Callie, Ardath, Ellen, Martina, and Carmen. Every time you five are the last five finishing from now on you’ll add an extra suicide sprint to today’s five. So, tomorrow, if you finish last you’ll complete six, and so on, until others are slower than you, and they’ll start at five. Don’t come in last anymore. Is that clear?” It wasn’t all that clear to me, but his intention was: to whip them into shape, something that hadn’t ever happened at the beginning of the last three years I’d helped out. The teenagers didn’t like to run. They were there to hit tennis balls and felt that running was boring. So many of the kids only ran halfheartedly, but what this Coach Boatman had made them do was remarkable, and part of me did relish this as a positive thing. How can a new conditioning paradigm be bad? The kids weren’t in shape. Right now they wouldn’t last one hard fought set let alone two or three.

*

Until next time . . . there’s so much more to come.

ever and onward,

Justin Bog

p.s. coming soon: the 2nd edition of Wake Me Up! A story about a high school under fire from a terrible bullying incident.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog and sign up for my newsletter (to the right). Follow me on Twitter @JustinBog and hit the Like button on my official Facebook Author Page: Justin Bog Author!

sandcastlesmallerphotoLastly, for Apple/Mac IT, WordPress wrangling and multimedia Publishing/Editing Services, please contact the company that I use: Convenient Integration. If you need a new Author Website, please contact Chris at Convenient Integration. He works with the best!

I haven’t shared an original short story in quite a long time. This one, The Night, is complete as it is at almost 2,500 words. It took six days to write, and is in honor of Ray Bradbury, an homage to his own short story titled The Night. This is my own updated take on a similar situation. I wanted to keep the 2nd-person point of view, and the set-up. A family of four with two sons (I added a dog) live their lives one darkening summer evening. The eldest son is late coming home after playing Ultimate Frisbee.

Ray Bradbury always inspires. His body of work is unparalleled. He wrote a short story each week, completing over 3,600 in a lifetime, some of them becoming his most famous work, reaching great heights. He was born in 1920 and died in 2012. If you’re a writer, read Ray Bradbury. His work is transformative. If you’re a reader, discover his tales of dark fantasy and science fiction and oddness. His slice of life stories always have subtext, a deeper meaning, if you look for it.

Just keep reading and writing. Please let me hear from you if the story strikes you.

To read my new bi-weekly original horror serial, The Volunteer, please click HERE to begin with Part 1!

THE NIGHT

By

Justin Bog

(after Ray Bradbury’s The Night)

You are a child of nine living on an island in the Pacific Northwest. The summer heat is a stranger here, and night chills the air this close to Puget Sound. Laughter from the internet, a video being shared, wafts upstairs, mother watching cooking show bloopers and disasters while speaking to her best friend, Yvonne, from Seattle’s nearby Mercer Island. She has a full glass of chardonnay, and isn’t even thinking of you or her other son.

There are two children in the home. Father is away visiting his uncle down on Camano Island, a tiny “boys night out” all on its own. His motorcycle is gone. It’s now full dark and your brother isn’t home yet and all the rules your parents list blink and fill up your thoughts. He’s only eleven, brainier than you’ll ever be, more sensitive, enlightened for his age, more thoughtful, and cunning in an admirable way.

Even so, you and your brother are seen as sweet children, praised by most adults, friends of the family, acquaintances, strangers who can’t keep opinions to themselves. They are observed in crowds, but no more than any other family.

It’s an end of summer night. The first day of school looms ahead, closer now, near the end of August. Mother wants to take you shopping for school supplies, un-scuffed jeans, a few shirts that you’ll stuff behind older clothes in your closet, the one your mother thought would double as a reading nook, painted in silver, white, black, with red knobs, to resemble the inside of a fantastical spaceship, adding a bench with painted-on seatbelts, gears to turn, universes to conquer.

At the slightest hint of a chime from a distance down the street, a playful tune entering the open window, you race down the stairs and ask your mother if you can have a chocolate pop.

“I finished all my peas. I can bring you a real fruit bar.”

“It’s all you think about—ice cream.” She says this as an aside under her breath. You’re too young to understand what passive or aggressive means. The jabs a parent makes will build up into a wall of bitter foundation if this was a fairy tale. You don’t think this. It’s there in your mother’s worry—what will happen, if . . .

“Please, mom. I promise to be quiet.”

“I wanted to wait until your brother came home.” What will happen if he’s lost? For good. “Where is he?”

After dinner, your brother joined two buddies of his halfway across town. These two pals are the ones who hang on his every word, tease you whenever no adults are around, mercilessly, and often jovially, including you in their games when they need a fourth, a spare. A summer Ultimate Frisbee league took over your brother’s Tuesday and Thursday evenings on the middle school’s open field above the six public tennis courts.

They’d play for hours if possible, and you aren’t worried by your brother’s late arrival. Yet. You get alone time with your mother, who is pacing the kitchen. You help her with the dishes, scolding the family dog, Finnegan, away from licking the leftover Shepherd’s Pie made with ground turkey, carrots, peas, and mashed yams on top instead of Yukon Golds. You hear your mom speak to her girlfriends about dieting habits, the best wines (your mother is an expert), and always, eventually, carbs. These remain a mystery, a negative in your mind. You love potatoes, but they’re bad, along with soda, and bread, and it’s a wonder ice cream is still an offered dessert.

Your mother gives in as the chimes of the ice cream truck turn the corner on K Ave, blossoming.

“Get me a fruit popsicle, Lime if he has any left, please, and two of whatever you decide. Your brother can eat his when he returns from frisbeeland.”

“He’s never been this late before.” You don’t know why you felt compelled to say this, twist some invisible knife. The look of wincing pain on your mother’s face turns her smooth features ugly.

“You don’t worry either. I’m not. Now scoot or you’ll miss him.” She hands you ten dollars.

You race out the back door, down the alleyway separating the in-town homes from one another, garage bays placed in the rear, out of sight, the front façade designed to capture the Puget Sound view, and up a slight rise to the corner of 7th and K right in time to make the ice cream truck stop. Another neighbor and his daughter approach from the other side of the street, money in hand, laughing carefree. She’s an only child, younger than you are. Her needs are met.

“Good evening, young Sir!” says the ice cream man.

“I’d like three. One lime fruit bar and two Fudge Bomb Bars.” You add please at the end and the ice cream man makes change with your ten-dollar bill before handing over three wrapped treats.

“Enjoy the sweetness now. And the night!”

You don’t say anything else, run straight back to your home, as if the night, darkening, colors and transforms everything into a scarier place. You don’t know the word ominous yet. You learn what it means when you overhear your mother using the word as you hand her the change and her lime popsicle. Your brother’s treat goes onto the freezer door shelf.

“I don’t know. He should be home by now. What did Richie say? He’s not back either? I hate to jump to ominous conclusions. That’s not like me. My intuition is stressing me out. That’s all. Call me when Richie returns. I’ll call Everett’s parents.” Your mother disconnects.

Standing behind the front corner window you see the lights across to Guemes Island, the ferry making a return crossing, an island neighboring Fidalgo Island. Close enough to your 6th St. location that you can see people bicycling on sunny days with a good pair of binoculars. You pretend these people are ants as you finish your chocolate dessert without making a mess.

Most of the living room is white, off-white, slipcovers in contemporary shades of sand, desert, muted bronzes, with artistic lighting features. It’s an old house, a cottage from the 1920s, with three small bedrooms up the stairs on the second floor, one with a front-facing balcony big enough to stand upon, but with a low railing that makes the deck a forbidden zone for you and your brother.

“We better go look for Miles. Parker, wash your hands and we’ll take Finn for a walk.”

You find yourself on a new adventure. In your mind, the world darkens and grows lush with jungle vegetation, the Madrona tree-bark peels and curls in front of you, reaching. Your mother’s voice is strained, and you do what she says. She bought you a treat, after all, and all the melted chocolate on your hands whirls down the powder room sink.

“Can I hold Finnegan’s leash?”

“Sure. Miles will love to see Finn.”

Hooking the leash to Finnegan’s collar is easy. The pet is six months old, a black, white, and tan, wiggly cattle dog mixed with some kind of smaller poodle, and you hold on tightly.

“I wish your dad was home.”

The two of you walk down the alleyway to the street, repeating your earlier steps to the ice cream truck. It’s full dark now, and you imagine the world shrinking, the jungle adventure fading away.

“Miles. Miles! We’re walking up K Avenue.” Your mother yells this out and you cringe. Miles isn’t lost. You feel this. But then a stray thought says: what if he is?

“Maybe they stopped in Causland Park on the way home,” you say, “We go there all the time with Finnegan and Dad.”

“But never alone and this late at night.” You can’t see the worry on your mother’s face.

If your father was home, he’d drive down the Avenues on his motorcycle, the one that looked like it came right out of the fifties, a black, chrome, and white dream of a machine. Even this makes you think of death, the concept so forbidding. You know what death is. Hamsters died and went off to the backyard to be buried in shoeboxes. A great Aunt died years ago, lived into her nineties, drank beer every single day. When Miles grows up, he says he’d like to do that too. Live to a hundred and drink beer every day. They didn’t know this Aunt well, never met cousins from that family branch, but your Aunt gave the news gravely one wintery morning when you were too young to grasp the concept of death. The first hamster pet followed the next year.

When they moved into the house they heard the story of one of the former owners, the family previous to the sellers, from a friend of a friend at a 4th of July barbecue. This pal had spent most of her childhood playing with the daughter in the same house as kids living in town over thirty years ago.

“Can you believe it? I love that house. You’re so lucky they accepted your offer. I know all about it!” This friend’s enthusiasm lit up the gathering as she remembered bright childhood moments, and then everyone knew.

Motorcycles. This became the signpost.

“He isn’t going to ride his motorcycle that much. He may even sell it.”

You listened.

“Well. The family moved in. There were three kids. An older girl in the smaller bedroom and twin boys in the larger upstairs room with bunkbeds. It was a different era. We played together all the time. I’m still friendly with Cherie. She lives in Baltimore. Married with her own set of twin girls. Not two years after moving into the house, their father died in a motorcycle crash. It was the saddest moment in town, and for a long time after that. Cherie’s mother worked at the refinery. They lived in the house until the kids graduated high school; she remarried and moved to Portland once the house became an empty nest. Cherie said she may return for the high school reunion. I can’t wait to tell her I know the people who live in her old house.”

Death.

By motorcycle. Two sons and a daughter. A family of five . . . and then four. Could four become three?

Fate can’t be that cruel. Lightning striking twice. Burning. You think about fate in the simplest of terms while Finnegan sniffs the edge of the sidewalk and your mother decides to turn left to cross Causland Park off her search list.

She calls out for Miles once more and then studies a text from Richie’s mother.

Kids not back yet. Worried!

Sent Bud out to the field but they aren’t there either.

Your mother replies: walking to Causland Park!

You cling to your mother, hand her Finnegan’s leash. You don’t want her to die. You don’t want anyone to die. Why are your thoughts so filled with doom? When father gets home, you don’t want to see his face fill with thunder and follow strict orders to go to your room—to heavily think about what happened that evening.

The park looms ahead in the darkness. The city replaced the public lights with bright LED bulbs but the moonless quality darkens the park’s interior. You hear the wind begin and the heat of the day lessens. It’s just a breeze, but your imagination quickly turns it into a maelstrom.

There are small towns across the country just like this one. Kind, gentle, neighbor-loving towns by day transformed into dark, scary, drug-busted monster-filled caricatures of themselves by night. You hear your mother talk all the time about drug users, how the police catch them at night, only at night, doing sketchy things closer to town when the bars close.

The night insects, crickets (Jiminy!), stop chirping. The birds are asleep in their nests. The park grows forbiddingly closer.

“Miles?”

This shout is weakening.

The entrance to the park becomes darker than everything else around it. Tense with foreboding. Oh, it’s so dark. You squeeze your mother’s hand tighter.

There’s only silence. The streets are empty. There are no cars moving, even in the distance of the downtown street. You imagine these other towns just like this one becoming ghost towns.

We’re so far away from everything. At this moment.

Mother bites her lip.

Finnegan is catching your fearful vibe and almost wraps around your legs with the leash and trips you to the sidewalk. It’s so dark.

The silence grows. You don’t want your mother to call out again. Now it’s the entire park that fills with an ominous tension. You think of the word ominous. Finnegan tilts his head towards the tree limbs sketching their own patterns in the layers of darkness. You know something is about to happen. You can feel this and you take a step backwards, pulling at your mother’s hand. She feels your fright.

She does call out then. Again. This time with a fearful note added to her adult, softening, mothering, worrisome lilt. There’s nothing wrong here. You think this.

From across the park: “Hey, Mom? Coming!”

It’s Miles.

“We’re here!”

The silence breaks and you hear sneakers padding, running across the sidewalk slicing through the park, approaching.

The dark retreats. After being faced with such an ill-mannered moment, it begins to gather strength once more from a weaker place. The nerve of some people. The stars begin to pop back into being. They were always there. Look what fear can do? The power.

The night insects begin to sing again as the three kids pile out of the park, laughing and going over the high points of their Frisbee game. Your brother Miles, Richie Bontiger, and Everett Carmichael, pushing their bikes, giggling.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Parks! Hey! Richie’s bike went flat!”

“Like his brain,” says Everett, the smallest of the three boys, the one with red hair as dark as fire in the night.

“Miles, you are going to get such a talking to,” declares your mother. “Richie. Everett. Your parents are waiting for you.” The three boys mumble goodbyes and separate. The fear is gone, vanquished in another moment. Your mother feels this. It will remain there in her head, her heart, forever.

As you walk back with your lost and found brother, you’re glad he’s alive. For a moment there . . . you thought—

In the distance and over the hillside towards the far marina you hear a foghorn. In the morning this fog will creep in and then dissipate in the dawning heat.

You go to bed earlier, when your mother tells you to without complaining, shivering, in the bedroom that used to house twin boys long ago, your brother a room away, drifting to sleep listening to the sound of the foghorn as well. You’re thinking of this great Aunt who died of pneumonia late in the evening, years and years ago, and beer, how awful it tastes. You can smell the Sound. It’s magic. You stop shivering.

Earlier, you hear footsteps on the walkway towards the back of the house when you return home. A man clears his throat and you know him, you’ve heard this before. It’s familiar.

Mother says, “That’s your dad.”

And so it is.

The End

*****

I hope you’ll share your thoughts on my own slice of life . . . these stories keep living beyond their end points, as most families do!

ever and onward,

Justin

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