Short fiction thread

[Danik 2016]

Hi, all
On this forum there are a lot of people who write very well, yet never posted any fiction, either because they prefer to write poetry or because they simply never intended to write any literature at all.This trend is intended to work as a kind of short fiction lab, where anyone can post bits and pieces of stories and texts that are not necessarily finished and who would like the opinion of other Litnetters on the text.We could also include links about writing techniques which might help.
This thread is a sequel to the "Short story contest" thread:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?85141-Subject-short-story-competition/page5
Let´s see if and how it works!

[YesNo]

I'll try to have an updated version of my story ready this weekend. Or maybe write something new.

[Danik 2016]

Great, Yes/No. I am thinking of a story too, but didn´t have the time to write it down yet.

[YesNo]

The following chapters would be from Part 1: Georgette's World. They were two stories that originally appeared in a thread of 55 word stories which explains why they are thankfully so short.



Chapter N: Why Quantum Physicists Shouldn't Be Allowed to Take Their Work Home

Deep in his home laboratory, Dr. Roketscienski hesitated, "Should I push the button, prove that I'm right after all, and collapse the known universe?"

He heard the sweet sound of song birds, and then, "Get your butt up here and take out the garbage!"

He pushed the button.



Chapter N + 1: After the Experiment

Dr. Roketscienski figured something should have happened when he pressed the quantum eraser button. Why didn't the universal wave function collapse as he predicted? Why didn't the world end?

"What's going on down there?"

"Nothing, sugar."

"Are you trying to collapse the universe again?"

"No, sweetie."

[Danik 2016]

LOL!I had a good laugh! It would be a prose equivalent of the Biggus poems and Lymerick.
Georgette I suppose is "sugar",also known as "sweetie".:lol:

[YesNo]

Thanks, Danik. I had another character in mind called Martha, his wife, and Georgette was more of an onlooker with her own problems, but I may not get any further than Dr. Roketscienski does collapsing the universe. It is sort of like Biggus' poetry come to think of it.

There is still another day of the weekend. There's still time to write a real story.

[YesNo]

Here are three more previously posted chapters from my future airport novel.



Chapter M: At the Roqetscienski's Backyard Party

"What's Robert telling those kids, Martha?"

By the swing set, they could hear Robert's voice rise, "...and then there was a BIG BANG!"

"Oh. He's telling them his version of the creation of the universe."

When the kids settled, he leaned in toward them and whispered, "And God said, 'Oops.'"



Chapter M + 1: Another Way the Universe Might Have Started

Kathy's six-year-old Billy sat by her. She whispered, "What was that crazy Dr. Roqetscientski telling you by the swing set?"

Billy shook his head and giggled.

"You can tell me."

Billy refused.

"Whisper it in my ear."

Billy spoke into her ear, "He said God pooped out the universe."



Chapter M + 2: Still Another Way the Universe Might Have Started

"Robert Roqetscienski told your son that God pooped out the universe."

"No! Even Robert's not that stupid. Billy probably misunderstood."

"You need to talk to your son." Kathy told her husband.

"Hell, I don't know how it started."

Before bed, Billy's father reasoned, "It might have been only a fart."

[spikepipsqueak]

YesNo I constantly wish this forum had a "rep" function. I often want to laud someone's post but don't feel like interrupting the flow of a thread when I have nothing more substantial than agreement or praise to add.

For the above, I break that rule. Love the brevity. Love the whimsy. Hope you get to publication.

[YesNo]

Thanks, spikepipsqueak! These are three posts from another thread where the stories were limited to 50 words each. They seemed to fit together and so I re-posted them here as one. I'm glad you liked them.

[YesNo]

I am only inclined to tell this story, before I can no longer speak, because no one I have been rash enough to tell it to so far believes it. Right now, I’ll restrict myself to what is believable and that is simply that a puppy followed my neighbor pushing his way up the long path through the wild grass and tall red osiers that were not beaten down by my narrow, daily footsteps. He looked like a friendly dog although I cannot remember why I agreed to take him in.

His name was Fred. I let him sleep inside my cabin containing a hand pump for water, kerosene lamps for light and a wood stove on the edge of central Maine’s vast forest lands. On his first day Fred tore open the sealed food bag and stuffed himself with dog food until his stomach bloated. When he saw me refill his bowl he knew this was home. Eventually, Fred would earn the title of “bad dog”. I forgave him. I hope he forgave me. However, that gets into the unbelievable part that I’ve promised myself I must tell, but which I cannot tell, just yet, because I am trying to make it clear how cute Fred looked walking innocently through that tall grass.



WATER FLOWS DOWNHILL
FILLING STREAMS FROM MAPLE GROVES
AUTUMN LOSES WARMTH


The above is a "haibun": some prose and then an unrelated haiku at the end. The story is decades old and is true and this is just the first chapter. I am fantasizing that the full collection will be called "Chicken Story" and as you can guess there are also chickens involved.

[Danik 2016]

Only when I saw the last post, I noticed that you ressurected the thread. The stories are funny and irreverent. If you opened a thread called "Dr. Roqetscientski" or similar more people would be able to view them.
About that last story. I liked the beginning because it awakens the curiosity of the reader.
It also gives off that the cute dog has a strong will of his own in regard to his feeding. But as chicken are also involved in the story I feel that tragedy is impending.
I never saw I "haibun" before. Is it a new form of writing?

[YesNo]

Thanks, Danik! I heard about haibun only recently when reading poems on the dVerse site, but it is an old Japanese form going back to the late 17th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun

However, I prefer English common meter, such as "Mary had a little lamb", rather than haiku or the four line, five character Chinese Tang formal poetry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gushi_(poetry), because that is what I heard as a child, but I wrote that as a response to a writer's prompt on dVerse and the prompter required that it end with a haiku, and since I normally do what I am told to do, I wrote a haiku.

[Danik 2016]

Interesting development. The oriental letters are in themselves sugestive of poetry, they are beautiful and in themselves synteses of meaning.

You probably know this book already
http://www.pantherwebworks.com/i_ching/

Today one can create almost whatever combination of style and gender one wants. I suppose there are not many fixed rules any more.
I think there is some relation from the haiku to the story. For me it points out subtly that the story isn´t going to end well.

[YesNo]

I'm aware of the I Ching although I haven't studied it. The imagist approach to Chinese I suspect is a false start that began with Pound and Fenollosa: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ezra_pound_chinese.html

In the haibun, the haiku was supposed to be unrelated to the prose section, or so I understood, but I may have related them.

[Danik 2016]

I wasn´t aware of this interesting discussion. I will have to go further into it. Anyway I don´t know Chinese or any other oriental language. It just seems to me that the ideograms are a poetic approach to language.
I believe in unconscious choices. They often happen in writing. Your haicu points to the coming winter (winter is sometimes viewed as a stern season, a season of scarcity, restraint and losses. And the story is just beginning.) But, of course, I may be reading too much into the story.

[YesNo]

There are loses that occur. I think you are reading it as I would have expected you to giving the fact that I didn't say much about what was unbelievable. I plan to keep adding to the story including some fictional sections but hopefully getting to the unbelievable, but true, part at the end. The story has been on my mind for decades. The events happened when I was in my twenties.

The idea of "unconscious choices" is how I view choice in general. Our awareness isn't specifically for the purpose of making choices, but for the enjoyment and guidance of the choices we make by acting them out. It is a way to remove determinism (and chance) from the idea of choosing.

Regarding images in writing, I don't actually believe writing contains images. Pictures do, but not words. It contains ideas or meaning that we understand through sound not through sight. That would be where I disagree with Pound (and his source, Fenollosa). He seemed to think the ideograms were a purer form of writing when it was only more different than what he was used to. Chinese poetry is still about sound and meaning just like English or Portuguese.

[Danik 2016]

Well, yes I´m reading the haicu according to my expectations, which might or might not be confirmed. As there isn´t anything unbelivable in them I think there must be something different from what I am expecting. Anyway you are getting me more and more curious. I remembered now a text of Cortazar, where he says that a short story kind of took hold of him and he had to write it down to get rid of it.

For me there is a difference between conscious and unconscious choices. When you make an unconscious choice you don´t quite know why you made it. For example, you might have chosen another haicu for your story but you chose this one.

"Regarding images in writing, I don't actually believe writing contains images". I don´t quite follow you there.For me some kinds of literary texts like poems and poetical prose but also simple prose usually contain images and not only visual ones. For me the idiogram is a simple image. But I am going to see if the essay of Fenollosa is available in the internet. As I don´t know Chinese my possibility of discussing ideograms is very limited,

[YesNo]

I am aware that the idea of looking for "images" in texts, whether poetry or not, is what people expect to be experiencing when they read, but I only experience sounds and meaning. Even visually reading texts converts those images to sounds in my mind, at least, that is how I talk to myself or read.

I sort of agree about conscious and unconscious choices. Some of our choices we are more aware of and even make plans to perform. Those could be viewed as the "conscious" choices. Others such as taking the next step when we walk or writing the next sentence just happen. They are influenced by habitual behavior. I tend to give credit for unconscious choices to a more or less external "muse" although I take personal responsibility for them.

[YesNo]

I don’t know what Fred was looking at, but the Aurora Borealis shining over the path was holding my attention one evening as we sat on the porch of my cabin. I pointed Fred’s head in the direction of the lights. He didn’t seem interested. He was to get his own dog house, a fancy one, since I had spare lumber. He would also get the required chain to make sure he didn’t chase my neighbor’s sheep when he grew up. I would eventually learn that Fred had as much interest in those sheep as he did in the aurora, but my neighbor’s purebred puppy, Princess, still too young to breed, was on his mind.

How do I know she was on his mind? Well, I don’t, and I would like to think he was still too young to be thinking about her, but he wasn’t interested in the aurora. He wasn’t interested in those sheep and she was barking in the distance. Civilized people normally introduce their dogs while walking through some nice park, but with my neighbor worrying about his sheep and what Fred might do to Princess, we never introduced them. “You should have that dog neutered,” he once advised. He was right, but I package my mistakes in boxes of reason and wrap them with brightly colored righteousness expecting only joy. I thought to myself that I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me, but I did, eventually, build that dog house and chain Fred. Thinking back on that peaceful evening with the aurora dancing in the sky, I suspect Fred knew everything he needed to know about Princess and she was, at least for the moment, glad I wasn’t going to neuter him.



FLUFFY WHITE FROSTING
CLINGING WET TO LEAFLESS TREES
BERRIES STILL BRIGHT RED

[Danik 2016]

I am aware that the idea of looking for "images" in texts, whether poetry or not, is what people expect to be experiencing when they read, but I only experience sounds and meaning. Even visually reading texts converts those images to sounds in my mind, at least, that is how I talk to myself or read.

I sort of agree about conscious and unconscious choices. Some of our choices we are more aware of and even make plans to perform. Those could be viewed as the "conscious" choices. Others such as taking the next step when we walk or writing the next sentence just happen. They are influenced by habitual behavior. I tend to give credit for unconscious choices to a more or less external "muse" although I take personal responsibility for them.
Sorry, Yes/No, again I missed one post of this thread. As this happened before to me and you I´m thinking of changing the name of the thread, if that is still possible, to: "Fiction Laboratory" to distinguish it better from the "Short Story" thread. What do you think?

Maybe your own memory is more acustic than visual. And some poets use more images than others. I suppose also that your mind had a logical training because of your mathematical studies. I don´t know if that influences your approach to poetry.

[Danik 2016]

I don’t know what Fred was looking at, but the Aurora Borealis shining over the path was holding my attention one evening as we sat on the porch of my cabin. I pointed Fred’s head in the direction of the lights. He didn’t seem interested. He was to get his own dog house, a fancy one, since I had spare lumber. He would also get the required chain to make sure he didn’t chase my neighbor’s sheep when he grew up. I would eventually learn that Fred had as much interest in those sheep as he did in the aurora, but my neighbor’s purebred puppy, Princess, still too young to breed, was on his mind.

How do I know she was on his mind? Well, I don’t, and I would like to think he was still too young to be thinking about her, but he wasn’t interested in the aurora. He wasn’t interested in those sheep and she was barking in the distance. Civilized people normally introduce their dogs while walking through some nice park, but with my neighbor worrying about his sheep and what Fred might do to Princess, we never introduced them. “You should have that dog neutered,” he once advised. He was right, but I package my mistakes in boxes of reason and wrap them with brightly colored righteousness expecting only joy. I thought to myself that I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me, but I did, eventually, build that dog house and chain Fred. Thinking back on that peaceful evening with the aurora dancing in the sky, I suspect Fred knew everything he needed to know about Princess and she was, at least for the moment, glad I wasn’t going to neuter him.



FLUFFY WHITE FROSTING
CLINGING WET TO LEAFLESS TREES
BERRIES STILL BRIGHT RED

A cute humorous chapter with I/narrator looking at Aurora and Fred not. If he was inspired by a real dog, you must have liked this dog very much. He wasn´t such a small bred to need an own house and chain. Certainly not a lapdog.
Anyway: BERRIES STILL BRIGHT RED

[YesNo]

Fred was a mixed breed with some Doberman in him. He was too big for a lapdog. These stories about him are true, but they happened decades ago. I did like the dog.

[YesNo]

I waste resources taking precautions against what I fear and nothing happens. It is what I don’t anticipate that messes me up. For example, while walking Fred that half mile we usually take through the forest I stay within view of the path so I won’t get lost. I don’t think about the problems Fred has been having with those chickens whom I allow to range freely near the cabin and who torment him chained to his doghouse. So when I unchain Fred, out of kindness, because we are buddies and all, and I see him turn back up the path briefly looking at me with scorn, I realize that I’m an idiot.

By the time I get back, Fred’s anger resolved his chicken problem. He is gnawing on one of them when he sees me and begins part two of his plan for domination. He rushes into the cabin defending his castle growling and baring his teeth. At this point I guess I felt fear, but mainly it was anger which is what fear turns into when it doesn’t care any more. I kneel down bracing for his charge with the chain in one hand and the forefinger of my other hand touching the floor beside me, “Get your *** over here.”

Fred is smarter than most animals I’ve met including myself. He bowed his head and submissively accepted the chain.


FOLLOW FORREST TRAIL
TREES PREPARE FOR NEW SPRING GROWTH
WINTER DYING’S PAST

[Danik 2016]

I think this is the right thread for the story as it is a sequel to both the segments that are already there. That is the part of the story when everything happens.Maybe you would like to put it into the same format as both the other threads.

As for the content it was good that you regained the control of the dog. Maybe the problem at the time was that you wanted to be kind to the cchicken leaving them free, and kind to the dog.

[YesNo]

Thanks, Danik. I put in the haiku I originally had there to make the format the same, as you suggested. You're right about why everything went wrong. I was trying to be kind to both the chickens and the dog. That backfired.

[Steven Hunley]

THE Death's Head Moth


Robert Henry Forester sat at his antique oak desk writing and drinking. Both were what he did best. He’d always like writing. It had been his passion. Dipping his pen in India ink, swirling his Cognac for maximum effect, then measuring out the best words. Behind him, the tall dark shelves of his library were stuffed will all sorts of books by all sorts of authors, and on one special shelf, a glittering assortment of his best-sellers. They deserved to be apart from the rest.

Like him, they were special and precious. Special and precious and privileged. He finished an especially good line.

“This line is a superior line,” he thought. “Let’s celebrate.”

He reached into the drawer and took out a cigar. He cut it, lit it, and puffed, blowing a billowing cloud of smoke into the Cognac, took a sip and savored the taste. Re-reading the words, he savored the line.

“This line is so good,” he mused, “It will keep them reading the entire paragraph.”

He chuckled aloud, “Perhaps the entire page!”

The fire hissed and crackled and sputtered. Wind drove rain against the panes of the tall French windows. A fierce winter storm lashed the rocks of the hard Cornish coast just as the clock on the mantle struck twelve. Robert heard none of it, he was too busy writing.

He coughed a consumptive cough, and continued his chapter. Another book, another pound sterling. One more page, one more cigar, one more drink, and finally one more cough, and he was off to bed. Although he slept alone, this night he slept soundly without a care in the world. He’d traded his passion for glory long ago and suffered no regrets. He was aware the devil was his unfelt bedfellow, and it didn’t bother him one whit.

Forrester was good at attracting things, at getting their attention too. Good at getting what he wanted, scads of money, fame, social butterflies, the whole lot. Sometimes he didn’t know what to do with them.

One such example was Lady Bonacieux, daughter of the Duke and Dutchess. Tall, blond and fair, short-sighted, live-for-the-moment kind of girl. He’d attracted her one afternoon at a tea for bored socialites during a reading of his latest novel, Undercover of Darkness, the Adventures of Sin Cargo.
Soon after the reading, in a light-blue flower-patterned dress she spoke up and snared his eyes with her own.

“Oh, Mister Forester, I have poetic ambitions. I’ve written hundreds of poems.”

Eyes rather doe-like, soft spoken, young woman, well-mannered, good-looking.

His eyes moved from hers and fell quickly down her cleavage like Alice down the rabbit hole.

“You write too, do you? We have something in common.”

Sometimes course, sometimes plotting, the cad, the man, sensuous to a fault.

“We should go somewhere quiet,” he continued, “and discuss our styles.”

Her face, as fresh a spring day in its clearness, shot straight with beauty through and through. Her eyes spoke nothing but adoration.

“You’d be surprised, I agree. Although we seem different in our styles, we undoubtedly have something in common. I’m sure you can teach me something. Let’s meet next Tuesday at the Pony and Rider, shall we? Could you bring a manuscript to discuss?”

“Of course.”

“We can go somewhere quiet.”

“In the shade of the oaks if it’s warm and sunny,” he suggested.

“We can stay at the inn if it takes all night, or if it’s raining,” she countered.

Both knew it was November. Always rained like the Devil in November.

Warm fires, comfortable lodgings, two half-filled whiskey glasses on the dressing table. White fluffy Egyptian cotton pillows on a pillow-topped mattress. Lady Bonacieux’s hair streamed down over the pillow and onto the bed. Forester’s pupils dilated as he regarded the twin curves of her breasts. Sheets and blankets piled up in strategic positions. Wet spots scattered here and there. Lady Bonacieux wrapped herself in a sheet, took the white cotton curtains embroidered with pink and blue flowers, pulled them to the sides of the windows, and tied them back in a bow.

“Now we can just cuddle and watch the rain. We don’t have to say anything.”

‘That would be fine with me. I like to cuddle.” "What were we going to talk about anyway." he considered. "The weather ?"

He was relieved. In fact there was nothing to say. Forrester had run out of small talk some time ago, and whispering sweet nothings just wasn’t his style. After each of these encounters it was always the same. After satisfying their sexual appetites they would notice they had nothing in common. The girl’s thoughts would return to her young man, the one who worked as a gardener on her father’s estate, or the one in class that sat behind her and tried to dip her fair hair in the inkwell.


His nights were a terror. The deaths of Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme and Satine in Moulin Rouge were portrayed as romantic, even tragic events. Not to his way of thinking. There was no romance in night sweats and chills, and bloody coughing that never ceased. Blood-stained handkerchiefs littered his laundry and no matter how much he ate, gradual wasting away kept him in trim. In trim for the devil’s new red suit.

When the symptoms subsided he seemed almost normal. When the coughing started and he knew he was in for a spell. He changed his appointments and canceled still others. The state of his health was a well-kept secret. When Brehmer opened an in-patient hospital in Gorbersdorf, Forrester left England in secret to be surrounded by mountains with ragged horizons of fir trees and clean mountain air. He ate like a king and for a few months it worked.

Eventually he returned home and relapsed. M. tuberculosis came and went in his life at irregular intervals, leaving him hopeful at one stage and despondent at another. His health was a maelstrom. No telling how many debutantes with literary aspirations were infected with his poisonous breath.

His good days could be good. Seeing and sketching a new and rare species. Following up with the watercolors later like Aoki, or Tasuke, on fine Strathmore paper with the best Kolinsky sable brushes.

Then, on a potato flower, landed a moth. Forrester knew nothing of moths. It stood on the flower like a sentinel surveying his grounds. Looked like a tiny statue of a moth with a weathered patina, grey and black and white. Stood looking like a delivery boy with a package waiting for a tip.

Like lightning, Forrester made his way to the table and took up his tablet and pencil. Skilled movements here, touches of pencil there, lines of graphite and clay marked out the magnificent moth, complete with a notch on its antennae. On the lip of his glass of lemonade it modeled. The creature regarded Forrester like Michelangelo’s David. Like a small thing about to bring down something much larger in the same way the M. Tubercular bacillus regards a man. Then, somewhere between having his eyes on the moth and then on his paper, it was gone. He labeled it Luna. It was a hardly a hanging offence.

Forrester suddenly took chill and started to cough. An Armada of grey clouds whipped in from the south. Bent over, now stumbling, Robert Henry Forester made his way to the French windows and passed through, then collapsed in the arms of Planchet on the edge of the Persian carpet. For two days he was assigned to his bed.

Rain and storm started in earnest. The house grew cold and damp. Wind and water made such a racket the first knocks on the door could hardly be heard. The lightning cracked, startling Neville, who opened the door with a jerk.

A woman in a raincoat stood dripping.

“Come in Miss. You’ll catch your death.”

“Me? Not likely,” she answered matter-of-factly.

Stepping in, she placed her umbrella in the elephant’s foot.

“I’m Miriam Nightingale, come to see Mr. Forrester and have him sign my book.”

Her hair? Wet and wild at this moment, but tameable later. Her eyes? Brown and too sure of themselves for comfort. Her voice? Rest assured, it was sweeter than organic honey.

Forrester could hear them downstairs, but with the storm only barely, and misinterpreted the whole thing. He gets upset first and mad later, and begins to talk to himself.

“Probably that floozy from the inn coming for a midnight rendezvous with my man Planchet!”

Despite the fact he was still half-asleep and wholly under the influence of the bacillus he bounded from the bed and threw on his dressing gown and assaulted Planchet with the question,

“Where is the woman anyway?”

“In the study drying off by the fire, your lordship.”

“Damn you Planchet, you impudent and disrespectful servant! I am not, and will never be your lordship! I’ll take care of this!”

He flew to the stairway like a comet on fire.

On the top of the stairs he muttered, “Tart.”

Half-way down it turned to, “Trollope.”

At the bottom it had grown to, “Woman of Questionable Morals.”

Robert Henry Forrester opened the door to the study. A figure, now back-lit by the fire, turned to regard him, and looked rather angelic. Angel of what or whom he had no idea.

“I’m Miriam Nightingale,” it stated. “I’ve come all the way from San Francisco to have you sign my first edition. It looks as if…” she gestured to a pile of unopened letters on the desk, “you didn’t expect me.”

“My God, it’s you!” he stammered, and then noticing the puddle her shoes made on the floor, regained his aplomb immediately.

“Please, allow me to remove your wet things and sit here by the fire.”

During introductions and explanations his hand touched her shoulder while making a point. While laughing at his witty remark she touched his chest lightly with the tips of her fingers inscribing the shape of a heart by way of explanation. Things couldn’t have been more magnetic.

Then the bacillus decided to remind Forrester of his place in the scheme of things. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. Chaos entered the room. He collapsed again. Forrester is practiced at collapsing.
Within minutes he was back in his bed and Miriam found herself in a room facing her image in the dressing table mirror.

“He wasn’t ready. I don’t know why I thought he was ready!”

She tapped on the face of her watch with her fingernails. The hands were stuck fast. It was a technical mistake, a mechanical failure, an interruption of the cosmic wheel hanging on her delicate wrist by an alligator watch-band with a gold clasp. Her brows furrowed as she grew cross with herself.

“I hate return trips. But sometimes it can’t be helped.”

In his fevered state Forrester dreams of Dumas. In one of his lucid moments he decided to study Dumas for his style. The two men’s styles mated. Every writer is only a refection of what he reads, even if it’s through the glass darkly, so Forrester dreams of Twenty Years After.

‘The morning was beautiful, and in this early springtime the birds sang on the trees and the sunbeams shone through the misty glades, like curtains of golden gauze.
In other parts of the forest the light could scarcely penetrate through the foliage, and the stems of two old oak trees, the refuge of the squirrel, startled by the travelers, were in deep shadow.
There came up from all nature in the dawn of day a perfume of herbs, flowers and leaves, which delighted the heart. D'Artagnan, sick of the closeness of Paris, thought that when a man had three names of his different estates joined one to another, he ought to be very happy in such a paradise; then he shook his head, saying, "If I were Porthos and D'Artagnan came to make me such a proposition as I am going to make to him, I know what I should say to it.’
A. Dumas—Twenty Years After

When his fever finally broke, Forrester opened his eyes and went to the balcony. The scene wasn’t France, it was Cornwall, and in its own way just as pretty.

Meadow larks sang endless cantatas while a Kawarimono Koi glittered and jumped in the pond near the lotus pads. Grey thundering clouds from the day before were replaced overnight with white wooly cumulus silently racing over fields of endless azure. Red and white Herefordshire cattle grazed peacefully on green pastures marked by well-tended fences. There was only one thing wrong with the picture.

The woman was missing.

©StevenHunley2013

https://youtu.be/GwFySKGgG6M Hunting Girl Jethro Tull

[Danik 2016]

Thanks, Danik. I put in the haiku I originally had there to make the format the same, as you suggested. You're right about why everything went wrong. I was trying to be kind to both the chickens and the dog. That backfired.
The format is the same now, but I still feel that the change of the moment when you and Fred watch the aurora peacefully to the segment "Chicken Problem" is a bit too abrupt. Maybe you could bridge it a bit relating how the nuisance started (just a suggestion there are surely other ways to bridge it)

[Danik 2016]

THE Death's Head Moth


Robert Henry Forester sat at his antique oak desk writing and drinking. Both were what he did best. He’d always like writing. It had been his passion. Dipping his pen in India ink, swirling his Cognac for maximum effect, then measuring out the best words. Behind him, the tall dark shelves of his library were stuffed will all sorts of books by all sorts of authors, and on one special shelf, a glittering assortment of his best-sellers. They deserved to be apart from the rest.

Like him, they were special and precious. Special and precious and privileged. He finished an especially good line.

“This line is a superior line,” he thought. “Let’s celebrate.”

He reached into the drawer and took out a cigar. He cut it, lit it, and puffed, blowing a billowing cloud of smoke into the Cognac, took a sip and savored the taste. Re-reading the words, he savored the line.

“This line is so good,” he mused, “It will keep them reading the entire paragraph.”

He chuckled aloud, “Perhaps the entire page!”

The fire hissed and crackled and sputtered. Wind drove rain against the panes of the tall French windows. A fierce winter storm lashed the rocks of the hard Cornish coast just as the clock on the mantle struck twelve. Robert heard none of it, he was too busy writing.

He coughed a consumptive cough, and continued his chapter. Another book, another pound sterling. One more page, one more cigar, one more drink, and finally one more cough, and he was off to bed. Although he slept alone, this night he slept soundly without a care in the world. He’d traded his passion for glory long ago and suffered no regrets. He was aware the devil was his unfelt bedfellow, and it didn’t bother him one whit.

Forrester was good at attracting things, at getting their attention too. Good at getting what he wanted, scads of money, fame, social butterflies, the whole lot. Sometimes he didn’t know what to do with them.

One such example was Lady Bonacieux, daughter of the Duke and Dutchess. Tall, blond and fair, short-sighted, live-for-the-moment kind of girl. He’d attracted her one afternoon at a tea for bored socialites during a reading of his latest novel, Undercover of Darkness, the Adventures of Sin Cargo.
Soon after the reading, in a light-blue flower-patterned dress she spoke up and snared his eyes with her own.

“Oh, Mister Forester, I have poetic ambitions. I’ve written hundreds of poems.”

Eyes rather doe-like, soft spoken, young woman, well-mannered, good-looking.

His eyes moved from hers and fell quickly down her cleavage like Alice down the rabbit hole.

“You write too, do you? We have something in common.”

Sometimes course, sometimes plotting, the cad, the man, sensuous to a fault.

“We should go somewhere quiet,” he continued, “and discuss our styles.”

Her face, as fresh a spring day in its clearness, shot straight with beauty through and through. Her eyes spoke nothing but adoration.

“You’d be surprised, I agree. Although we seem different in our styles, we undoubtedly have something in common. I’m sure you can teach me something. Let’s meet next Tuesday at the Pony and Rider, shall we? Could you bring a manuscript to discuss?”

“Of course.”

“We can go somewhere quiet.”

“In the shade of the oaks if it’s warm and sunny,” he suggested.

“We can stay at the inn if it takes all night, or if it’s raining,” she countered.

Both knew it was November. Always rained like the Devil in November.

Warm fires, comfortable lodgings, two half-filled whiskey glasses on the dressing table. White fluffy Egyptian cotton pillows on a pillow-topped mattress. Lady Bonacieux’s hair streamed down over the pillow and onto the bed. Forester’s pupils dilated as he regarded the twin curves of her breasts. Sheets and blankets piled up in strategic positions. Wet spots scattered here and there. Lady Bonacieux wrapped herself in a sheet, took the white cotton curtains embroidered with pink and blue flowers, pulled them to the sides of the windows, and tied them back in a bow.

“Now we can just cuddle and watch the rain. We don’t have to say anything.”

‘That would be fine with me. I like to cuddle.” "What were we going to talk about anyway." he considered. "The weather ?"

He was relieved. In fact there was nothing to say. Forrester had run out of small talk some time ago, and whispering sweet nothings just wasn’t his style. After each of these encounters it was always the same. After satisfying their sexual appetites they would notice they had nothing in common. The girl’s thoughts would return to her young man, the one who worked as a gardener on her father’s estate, or the one in class that sat behind her and tried to dip her fair hair in the inkwell.


His nights were a terror. The deaths of Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme and Satine in Moulin Rouge were portrayed as romantic, even tragic events. Not to his way of thinking. There was no romance in night sweats and chills, and bloody coughing that never ceased. Blood-stained handkerchiefs littered his laundry and no matter how much he ate, gradual wasting away kept him in trim. In trim for the devil’s new red suit.

When the symptoms subsided he seemed almost normal. When the coughing started and he knew he was in for a spell. He changed his appointments and canceled still others. The state of his health was a well-kept secret. When Brehmer opened an in-patient hospital in Gorbersdorf, Forrester left England in secret to be surrounded by mountains with ragged horizons of fir trees and clean mountain air. He ate like a king and for a few months it worked.

Eventually he returned home and relapsed. M. tuberculosis came and went in his life at irregular intervals, leaving him hopeful at one stage and despondent at another. His health was a maelstrom. No telling how many debutantes with literary aspirations were infected with his poisonous breath.

His good days could be good. Seeing and sketching a new and rare species. Following up with the watercolors later like Aoki, or Tasuke, on fine Strathmore paper with the best Kolinsky sable brushes.

Then, on a potato flower, landed a moth. Forrester knew nothing of moths. It stood on the flower like a sentinel surveying his grounds. Looked like a tiny statue of a moth with a weathered patina, grey and black and white. Stood looking like a delivery boy with a package waiting for a tip.

Like lightning, Forrester made his way to the table and took up his tablet and pencil. Skilled movements here, touches of pencil there, lines of graphite and clay marked out the magnificent moth, complete with a notch on its antennae. On the lip of his glass of lemonade it modeled. The creature regarded Forrester like Michelangelo’s David. Like a small thing about to bring down something much larger in the same way the M. Tubercular bacillus regards a man. Then, somewhere between having his eyes on the moth and then on his paper, it was gone. He labeled it Luna. It was a hardly a hanging offence.

Forrester suddenly took chill and started to cough. An Armada of grey clouds whipped in from the south. Bent over, now stumbling, Robert Henry Forester made his way to the French windows and passed through, then collapsed in the arms of Planchet on the edge of the Persian carpet. For two days he was assigned to his bed.

Rain and storm started in earnest. The house grew cold and damp. Wind and water made such a racket the first knocks on the door could hardly be heard. The lightning cracked, startling Neville, who opened the door with a jerk.

A woman in a raincoat stood dripping.

“Come in Miss. You’ll catch your death.”

“Me? Not likely,” she answered matter-of-factly.

Stepping in, she placed her umbrella in the elephant’s foot.

“I’m Miriam Nightingale, come to see Mr. Forrester and have him sign my book.”

Her hair? Wet and wild at this moment, but tameable later. Her eyes? Brown and too sure of themselves for comfort. Her voice? Rest assured, it was sweeter than organic honey.

Forrester could hear them downstairs, but with the storm only barely, and misinterpreted the whole thing. He gets upset first and mad later, and begins to talk to himself.

“Probably that floozy from the inn coming for a midnight rendezvous with my man Planchet!”

Despite the fact he was still half-asleep and wholly under the influence of the bacillus he bounded from the bed and threw on his dressing gown and assaulted Planchet with the question,

“Where is the woman anyway?”

“In the study drying off by the fire, your lordship.”

“Damn you Planchet, you impudent and disrespectful servant! I am not, and will never be your lordship! I’ll take care of this!”

He flew to the stairway like a comet on fire.

On the top of the stairs he muttered, “Tart.”

Half-way down it turned to, “Trollope.”

At the bottom it had grown to, “Woman of Questionable Morals.”

Robert Henry Forrester opened the door to the study. A figure, now back-lit by the fire, turned to regard him, and looked rather angelic. Angel of what or whom he had no idea.

“I’m Miriam Nightingale,” it stated. “I’ve come all the way from San Francisco to have you sign my first edition. It looks as if…” she gestured to a pile of unopened letters on the desk, “you didn’t expect me.”

“My God, it’s you!” he stammered, and then noticing the puddle her shoes made on the floor, regained his aplomb immediately.

“Please, allow me to remove your wet things and sit here by the fire.”

During introductions and explanations his hand touched her shoulder while making a point. While laughing at his witty remark she touched his chest lightly with the tips of her fingers inscribing the shape of a heart by way of explanation. Things couldn’t have been more magnetic.

Then the bacillus decided to remind Forrester of his place in the scheme of things. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. Chaos entered the room. He collapsed again. Forrester is practiced at collapsing.
Within minutes he was back in his bed and Miriam found herself in a room facing her image in the dressing table mirror.

“He wasn’t ready. I don’t know why I thought he was ready!”

She tapped on the face of her watch with her fingernails. The hands were stuck fast. It was a technical mistake, a mechanical failure, an interruption of the cosmic wheel hanging on her delicate wrist by an alligator watch-band with a gold clasp. Her brows furrowed as she grew cross with herself.

“I hate return trips. But sometimes it can’t be helped.”

In his fevered state Forrester dreams of Dumas. In one of his lucid moments he decided to study Dumas for his style. The two men’s styles mated. Every writer is only a refection of what he reads, even if it’s through the glass darkly, so Forrester dreams of Twenty Years After.

‘The morning was beautiful, and in this early springtime the birds sang on the trees and the sunbeams shone through the misty glades, like curtains of golden gauze.
In other parts of the forest the light could scarcely penetrate through the foliage, and the stems of two old oak trees, the refuge of the squirrel, startled by the travelers, were in deep shadow.
There came up from all nature in the dawn of day a perfume of herbs, flowers and leaves, which delighted the heart. D'Artagnan, sick of the closeness of Paris, thought that when a man had three names of his different estates joined one to another, he ought to be very happy in such a paradise; then he shook his head, saying, "If I were Porthos and D'Artagnan came to make me such a proposition as I am going to make to him, I know what I should say to it.’
A. Dumas—Twenty Years After

When his fever finally broke, Forrester opened his eyes and went to the balcony. The scene wasn’t France, it was Cornwall, and in its own way just as pretty.

Meadow larks sang endless cantatas while a Kawarimono Koi glittered and jumped in the pond near the lotus pads. Grey thundering clouds from the day before were replaced overnight with white wooly cumulus silently racing over fields of endless azure. Red and white Herefordshire cattle grazed peacefully on green pastures marked by well-tended fences. There was only one thing wrong with the picture.

The woman was missing.

©StevenHunley2013

https://youtu.be/GwFySKGgG6M Hunting Girl Jethro Tull

Enjoyed reading this story very much, the dark humour, the parody, all the references some very sly ones( Undercover of Darkness, the Adventures of Sin Cargo, Thomas Mann)
I read most of your stories but I ceased to comment them, because I was under the impression that you didn´t read the comments.
Hope you are well!

[Steven Hunley]

I ALWAYS read the comments. The problem is, even with hundreds of reads, there's no comments. I have to tell you about another site called Scribophile. To post there you have to have "karma" points. To get 'em, you have to do critiques. When you get so many karma points you can post a story. It gets so many critiques. Of course, many of these people you don't know, so who cares what they think? Especially if they've got no skills, either as a reader or writer.

Some however, you befriend because you like their work. So when your stuff comes under the "spot light" they can critique it first.


All this is free, but over all, I prefer the format here. It's best for the written word but if you want words AND pictures you have to go to my blog. For some reason and for some time I haven't been able to add pictures here.

Of course, there are copyright issues. And why would anyone pay for something they can get free?

So many read and not many at all comment. At one time I posted stories on a now defunct site called Short Fiction UK. Found out later it was a site most aimed at the Erotica Set. Found out when I noticed many of my titles got read more than others. It was ones that could be mistaken for Erotica, (like Gentle Persuasion) LOL.

Last time I did a count, I had 50 or so stories and over 160,000 reads between them. Didn't mean poo poo. Once a person clicks on something, he or she may decide it's not their cup of tea and give it up early. It all counts as a read, whether or not anyone completely reads it or not. Number don't say poop. Comments are everything. Even negative comments can be instructive.

[YesNo]

The format is the same now, but I still feel that the change of the moment when you and Fred watch the aurora peacefully to the segment "Chicken Problem" is a bit too abrupt. Maybe you could bridge it a bit relating how the nuisance started (just a suggestion there are surely other ways to bridge it)

There are other haibun that I haven't added yet. This one sort of jumps ahead of the story. I write these haibun based on dVerse poets pub prompts. Each would have to stand alone. There are other events. How Fred became a father and how those chickens tormented Fred are each worth a haibun.

[YesNo]

I ALWAYS read the comments. The problem is, even with hundreds of reads, there's no comments. I have to tell you about another site called Scribophile. To post there you have to have "karma" points. To get 'em, you have to do critiques. When you get so many karma points you can post a story. It gets so many critiques. Of course, many of these people you don't know, so who cares what they think? Especially if they've got no skills, either as a reader or writer.

Some however, you befriend because you like their work. So when your stuff comes under the "spot light" they can critique it first.


All this is free, but over all, I prefer the format here. It's best for the written word but if you want words AND pictures you have to go to my blog. For some reason and for some time I haven't been able to add pictures here.

Of course, there are copyright issues. And why would anyone pay for something they can get free?

So many read and not many at all comment. At one time I posted stories on a now defunct site called Short Fiction UK. Found out later it was a site most aimed at the Erotica Set. Found out when I noticed many of my titles got read more than others. It was ones that could be mistaken for Erotica, (like Gentle Persuasion) LOL.

Last time I did a count, I had 50 or so stories and over 160,000 reads between them. Didn't mean poo poo. Once a person clicks on something, he or she may decide it's not their cup of tea and give it up early. It all counts as a read, whether or not anyone completely reads it or not. Number don't say poop. Comments are everything. Even negative comments can be instructive.

The like, comment and number of followers counts are useful for comparative purposes with other people producing the same content. It doesn't matter if they read it or not or really like it. I see my posts as being in an environment and these are ways to measure its effectiveness. It is like viewing the work as a "publisher" rather than an "author".

What I really like and want to have access to again quickly I post to a Google+ collection. I have different collections for photography, art, poetry, prose or just quotes. Some I will even put to my author facebook page or tweet. These are very selective, but if I read a page and I don't dislike it, I will click a "like" button if I want to encourage the author.

As I read your story about Forrester, it seems to me this took place in a dream caused by a fever. One sentence stood out for me: "After satisfying their sexual appetites they would notice they had nothing in common." I don't know why.

[Danik 2016]

I think that, besides, publicating these haibuns separately, now could be the time to put together the material you have to see how it might look as a complete story, where there are still holes,where bridges are needed, etc.
This story has cute parts too- Fred as a father- What became of the little dogs?
Just a question that occurs me: wasn´t there any other part of the terrain, where you could have put the chicken or the dog?

[YesNo]

You're right I should get off my butt and write that story. I keep delaying with these haibun.

I think the puppies may have been destroyed by my neighbor who owned the dog. His dog got off her chain and ran to Fred. I would have been in deep trouble if Fred got off his chain. I don't know what happened to them.

I could have isolated the chickens from the dog. There was plenty of place to do that. What was lacking was brains on my part to do it.

If everything worked out as I planned I would still be there in Maine to this day. By taking on the temporary care of Fred and then the permanent care of those chickens, I was settling down to that location as well in my mind. When that ended, I went back to school and left the wilderness behind.

[Danik 2016]

Don´t mind my nosiness Yes/No. The story is yours and you are going to complete it when you feel ready for it. It seems it covers a period of your life.

It was a situation that required much experience. And you got Fred to obey you and accept the chain. There might have been more mischief if we had broken completely free.

[YesNo]

I don't mind, Danik. I consider what I've posted in thread, as well as comments I posted on the animal thread you started, part of telling the story. It covers a period I remember as lasting about six months, perhaps longer.

[Danik 2016]

That´s ok then, Yes/No. :)

[YesNo]

Here's another story, prompted by a dVerse Poets Pub challenge to write a haibun about a song one listens to while driving.

-------------------------------------------------------

The first time I drove these fast, multi-lane interstate highways connecting Chicago and northern Indiana I was alone and I thought I was going to die or get my butt kicked since I wasn’t supposed to be on them. I was driving a cheap, used car I bought from a classmate without asking my father’s advice because I didn’t have a brain in my head. A week later, after the car and I survived I-94, it suddenly lost oil and brought me, safely, to its final stop on a country road.

When driving back to my childhood surroundings these memories take advantage of that to hold my attention.

My sister is still there with her family. There is also my former teacher. His children, who have children now, I remember as children whom I baby sat while their youngest sibling was being born. My parents are both there, side by side, but where they really are, and perhaps who they really are, I will find out in the not too distant future. One by one, they joined my brother whose misfortune with automobiles was worse than mine. I can still see my father opening the door for me as we gathered that day. How he cried!

I hear Omar Alfanno’s “Un Hombre de Verdad” playing from my phone over the car’s speakers. My heart tells my mind that enough is enough and they give me a chance to listen. I touch repeat.


APRIL’S EYES HAVE CLEARED
EARTH WAITS WARM AND PATIENTLY
BLOOMS SMILE EVERYWHERE

[Danik 2016]

I´m not sure, Yes/ No if this to be the first haibun of the whole story or if it is a wholy different story. Anyway it makes a good beginning.

[YesNo]

It's the whole story, but I am not sure it is actually a story.

[Danik 2016]

I ALWAYS read the comments. The problem is, even with hundreds of reads, there's no comments. I have to tell you about another site called Scribophile. To post there you have to have "karma" points. To get 'em, you have to do critiques. When you get so many karma points you can post a story. It gets so many critiques. Of course, many of these people you don't know, so who cares what they think? Especially if they've got no skills, either as a reader or writer.

Some however, you befriend because you like their work. So when your stuff comes under the "spot light" they can critique it first.


All this is free, but over all, I prefer the format here. It's best for the written word but if you want words AND pictures you have to go to my blog. For some reason and for some time I haven't been able to add pictures here.

Of course, there are copyright issues. And why would anyone pay for something they can get free?

So many read and not many at all comment. At one time I posted stories on a now defunct site called Short Fiction UK. Found out later it was a site most aimed at the Erotica Set. Found out when I noticed many of my titles got read more than others. It was ones that could be mistaken for Erotica, (like Gentle Persuasion) LOL.

Last time I did a count, I had 50 or so stories and over 160,000 reads between them. Didn't mean poo poo. Once a person clicks on something, he or she may decide it's not their cup of tea and give it up early. It all counts as a read, whether or not anyone completely reads it or not. Number don't say poop. Comments are everything. Even negative comments can be instructive.
I wrote an extensive answer to this but it got deleted.
I have read allmost all your stories and I like them, specially those that deal with US themes. I wondered if you had them, or a selection of them printed.
But I comment much less the stories in general today, than I used to because few people seem interested. One restricts oneself to those that seem to enjoy a feedback.

[Danik 2016]

Here's another story, prompted by a dVerse Poets Pub challenge to write a haibun about a song one listens to while driving.

-------------------------------------------------------

The first time I drove these fast, multi-lane interstate highways connecting Chicago and northern Indiana I was alone and I thought I was going to die or get my butt kicked since I wasn’t supposed to be on them. I was driving a cheap, used car I bought from a classmate without asking my father’s advice because I didn’t have a brain in my head. A week later, after the car and I survived I-94, it suddenly lost oil and brought me, safely, to its final stop on a country road.

When driving back to my childhood surroundings these memories take advantage of that to hold my attention.

My sister is still there with her family. There is also my former teacher. His children, who have children now, I remember as children whom I baby sat while their youngest sibling was being born. My parents are both there, side by side, but where they really are, and perhaps who they really are, I will find out in the not too distant future. One by one, they joined my brother whose misfortune with automobiles was worse than mine. I can still see my father opening the door for me as we gathered that day. How he cried!

I hear Omar Alfanno’s “Un Hombre de Verdad” playing from my phone over the car’s speakers. My heart tells my mind that enough is enough and they give me a chance to listen. I touch repeat.


APRIL’S EYES HAVE CLEARED
EARTH WAITS WARM AND PATIENTLY
BLOOMS SMILE EVERYWHERE

It is certainly a complete episode in itself. You use the free association method, the driving home scene suggesting others.

Just some comments (yesterday my eyes weren´t so helpful):
I didn´t quite understand this sentence:
"When driving back to my childhood surroundings these memories take advantage of that to hold my attention."
Advantage to what? To the episode of the car.
Then it is not so clear to me how you managed to get home after the oil leak. Did you have the car repaired?

[YesNo]

Thanks for pointing out the confusion. I am going to have to fix that somehow.

"These memories" refer to that car incident that happened decades ago. The "that" refers to the fact that I am now driving those same roads today. That old car was not worth repairing. It made its "final stop" long ago.

This is actually the second draft of that haibun. I wanted to emphasize that the memories are not something I am in control of. They come to me as if they are making a choice on their own to do so taking advantage of the fact that I am driving the same interstate highway I drove long ago in that old car. Or some one else is sending them.

[Danik 2016]

It´s just a matter of this one sentence. Maybe something like:When driving back to my childhood surroundings these memories come alive again.
What you call "They come to me as if they are making a choice on their own" I call free association. The writer usually doesn´t know were his/ her associations are leading. The results tend to be very interesting. In your text the overlapping of different memories with one common factor produce a more dense text.

[YesNo]

That does seem to be a simpler way to express the same idea, Danik. Thanks! I don't want the reader to stumble through any of it.

[Danik 2016]

Looking over my comment´s I saw that I comited a blunder. On account of my eyes, which forced me to be short, I only pointed out, what I didn´t understand and not what I liked about the text. It is a very delicate recollection, one notices your mind moving between present and past, while the car moves with yourself in it, another car now, not the one you drove the first time. This part is also very clear, the memories almost materialise.
There is no stumbling, only that short sentence lost me.
And you mustn´t forget that I´m not a native.

[YesNo]

You read English very well, Danik, and you are sensitive to subtleties many people miss. I didn't like that sentence either. It was too clumsy being a pivotal transition in the haibun. I plan to use this as a prose poem I would recite at an open mic, but it still needs some work.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for the praise, Yes/No. A prose poem is a good idea. I don´t know if LitNet has a device for spoken texts, but I suppose if not, there are other sites specialized in them.
Good work!

[Robert Alan]

Hey people!! I haven't been on this site in some time, but I think I'll start posting my little short, mostly un-edited stories on here. I am open to any criticism, good or nood (not, haha I'm so funny... right?) Hope everyone is having a lovely time! -Robert ;)

[Robert Alan]

Grandma's House

I crept quietly towards the house’s front door with Jess tagging along behind me. He was always clumsier then me, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear him trip over his untied shoelaces. His face was now covered with blood and his all-black outfit was now slowly turning into a dark wine. Clutching his nose, Jess was stretching to recover his phone that had dropped on the brick driveway, as if he couldn’t move his legs to do both tasks at the same time. “Do you think someone heard us” he nasally squeaked. “I’m not surprised that you had forgotten, but no one is home, but your screeching might wake the neighbors” I whispered while taking all air from my diaphragm, and now I seemed to be out of breath. We kept moving forward hoping to find exactly what was stolen from us. For a thief, this man lives in a pretty lovely house: long horseshoe brick driveway, contemporary framing, and a sparkling golden necklace, which didn’t belong to him.

That necklace had been in the family for as long as our parent, grandparents, and great-grandparents, could remember. Jess and I had always heard from Grandma that this necklace was “mystical and magical… a piece of jewelry that was more than ornament.” It held secrets to past and present, as well as a $100,000 value. But, as she told us, the price was never enough. A time when both of us brothers could have used the money, after father had passed, we tried to pawn it off to local pawn-er James “will buy anything, regardless of sex, race, or height” John, but, as we didn’t know, was a grand ole friend of little Dramy Roberts. Grandma then took the necklace from us, and told me “Timothy Rest Roberts, I expected this from your brother, but from you… I am disappointed.” She then continued to assure me she still loved me, but reminded me that this necklace was more than its face-value. Jess and I spent the rest her life taking care of her. When she past we both agreed that we’d never sell it. But Jess, of course, had somehow managed to get the necklace stolen… Monkeys, grapes, and a zoo keeper were all involved.

Reaching for the front door knob I had felt a hard-stiff stop in the handle. Damn… it’s locked. “Let me try” Jess protested. Trying my hardest not to raise my voice I whispered “What good will that do? Will your lucky lock-picking hands decipher the tumble on this lock?” He gave me a confused dog head tilt. I kept trying until I felt hands grabbed my shoulder and shove me aside. Jess took his left hand out and twisted the knob to the left… idiot, but how did it just open? “And that’s why they call me…” he’s cut off by his shoelaces, still untied, and marble flooring meets his face. It must have felt cold and cruel, as he let out a deafening “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”. “Shut up idiot” I interjected. Lights turned on and we were greeted by a familiar voice. “Grandma… we thought….. you died.”

[Danik 2016]

I liked your story very much. You seem to have experience as a writer. Good descriptions and the ability to keep the reader interested.Hoping for sequel.

[YesNo]

I wonder if that necklace keeps grandma alive?

[Steven Hunley]

Great story, short and well done. Just enough mystery to keep the attention.

[Steven Hunley]

The Road of Death

(El Camino de la Muerte)


When the DEA left Center 41 with the prisoners in back of the truck it was mańana en la mańana-still dark.

Their plan was to take them to a lock-up in the capital, La Paz, where unlike in Santa Cruz they figured the officials could not be bribed. It was a mistake. The only way there was by a single road named El Camino de la Muerte that wound its way up into the Eastern Cordillera, or Cordillera Oriental, of the Andes. It was called that simply because it was a treacherous single-lane tract, with many switch-backs, at times steep, and mucho buses of Indians fell over its edge into the canyons every year, as the altitude climbed from sea-level in the yungas, or flat lands, to over fourteen thousand feet near La Paz. The road had a reputation for danger. On this day it would keep its reputation… in spades.

As the agents pulled out of town the forest began to grow closer, surrounding the road with trees standing like tall silent sentinels. It was cool and still early. An hour later the dew still remained on the grass and leaves, and collected on the barrels of the AKs slung over the shoulders of the primos, or cousins, of the two brothers in back of the truck. Bolivia is named after Simon Bolivar, El Liberator, so the cousins called themselves liberators and secreted themselves in the forest on both sides of the road. Hugo in his wisdom had seen to that. Dude knew nothing about this. He was along for the ride, cuffed to the other two for crimes of his own. They jostled and bumped down the road in the bed of the truck along with canteens and extra gas stored in Jerry cans. On the truck rolled, deeper and deeper into the gaping mouth of the hungry forest. There would be no arrival at the capital and no turning back on this trip, but there would be a stop.

A jacaranda tree had fallen across the road. One agent stepped down to inspect.

“We’ll just use the winch and pull it aside,” he said to the other who remained in the cab.

“It’s OK,” the second one answered, “we’ve got all day.”

Then the first one went to the trunk of the tree to take a closer look.

When the agent saw the trunk he didn’t see a break or an uprooting. He saw a clean cut.

He noticed the forest gone quiet.

When he considered both the quiet and cut he knew he was dead.

A shot rang out of the trees proclaiming liberty. The AK barrels grew hot spitting fire and turned the dew to steam. The three prisoners regained their freedom and along with the gunmen gained the safety of the forest. Their laughter was soon muffled by the leaves and the creepers and lianas and the chatter of monkeys but after some time the clearing went silent except for the drip-drip-dripping of scarlet death as it stained the fallen leaves lying still on the forest floor.

A day later Dude packed up his stash and left town for good, his only souvenir of the incident the cuff marks on his wrists, and within a week they’d be history.

“Vaya con Dios,” Hugo said when they shook hands and parted. Before, when Dude heard the phrase it only meant goodbye. From Hugo it meant, “Go with God.”

When Dude stepped onto the aluminum stairs that led to the safety of the plane, he knocked the red mud of the Yapacani from his boot heels as easily as if he was stepping into his mother’s living room for a hot home-cooked meal served with love. Lloyd Aereo Boliviano looked just as comforting.

Dude copped a seat by the window and watched as the jet raced down the tarmac, then trees passed by in a blur, then white puffy clouds, and finally the Yapacani winding like a silver thread between gaps in the green canopy as the plane gained altitude to make it safely over the Andes. Dude grew reflective and thought,

‘The worst part of the trip wasn’t the heat or the insects or the language barrier or hoping you’d score from a Bolivian Goodfella instead of some greedy b*stard that might sell you out to the police. In fact, I can’t think what the worst part was.’

Dude was thinking in the wrong tense. The real danger was in the future, and so typical of Dude’s psyche it had not been considered.

The worst and most dangerous part was going to happen after he cleared customs in LAX and became famous overnight, a bag man with an endless parade of women and their numberless intrigues, unprepared to deal with his own greed and new-found arrogance, the eventual scandal that led to his inevitable bust, and watching helplessly as his life fell apart by default.

©Steven Hunley 2012


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCav21c2Fo All She Wants To Do Is Dance

[Danik 2016]

Good suspense! Got the feeling though that this is a sequel of another part, because one doesn´t know how Dude became prisoner. The jaguar story probably comes first of all.

[YesNo]

I didn't understand the last paragraph, in particular, this: "a bag man with an endless parade of women and their numberless intrigues". Otherwise it was an interesting story of an escape.

[Danik 2016]

I suppose SH will answer this question. For me it seems to be a foreshadowing of how the story continues.

[Robert Alan]

I'll more than likely start writing a second part, due to popular demand haha

[YesNo]

You should keep writing, Robert. Popular demand or not.

[Steven Hunley]

Before Dude was arrested, and on The Road of Death, we have this:


Ice Cream and Danger to Go

The next morning Dude went back to town and saw Hugo. They went to the plaza around noon to have ice cream at a popular shop. While they were eating, two men who dressed impeccably saw Hugo from across the room and came over. They looked so alike they had to be brothers, same shoes, same tailor. They shook hands with Hugo and Dude. Then they sat together and talked in hushed tones of business matters, then in boisterous voices and loud laughing, of women and gambling in the same breath. Later after they left, Hugo said, “That’s the two bothers I score from.”

“Really, they don’t seem like coke dealers.”

“Neither do you, my snow-blind friend.”

Dude looked down at himself.

“I see what you mean.”

They started to talk of psychedelics again, and Dude mentioned Yage, a substance Alan Ginsberg wrote about in The Yage Letters.

“They have it here, but here they call it ayahuasca.”

“I’ve always wondered about it, what’s it like?”

“Maybe I can arrange something,” Hugo said, “get back to me tomorrow.”

It seemed innocent enough, that ice-cream soda. But Dude’s nose was numb. He’d done a line before heading into town and couldn’t smell the evil in the air. It was there, drifting from the back room where it had been hiding behind a curtain.

Lenny and Phil liked ice-cream too.

They were sitting in the back room when Dude and Hugo walked in, watching the two brothers who they’d been trailing for weeks.

“Who’s that they’re talking with now?” sweated Phil.

“Looks like an American trying to score,” Lenny greased back.

“What an idiot.”

“From the frying pan right into the fire.”

The two nasty DEA agents returned to swilling their cheap beer. It was more than enough. Just by saying it they’d placed Dude on their “to get” list. Why? Guilt by association.

Poor Dude, wrong place, wrong time. I felt sorry for the fool.

They still needed to find out where he was staying. That gave him time to breathe.

then, The Hut On The Yapacani, then:

Return to Santa Cruz

When Dude got back to the hotel and was going up to his room and getting his key, he asked the concierge for an envelope and paper. He sat down in his room at the dresser and wrote a short note to Alex, giving him instructions on how to sprout the seeds. It was the only communication with the boy he’d had in weeks. The note was short, the letter was thin. All in all if you had to judge it from the outside, it wasn’t much. About the most valuable thing about it was the stamp.


Two days later Dude was getting into a cab at night to head into town. Canadian Steve told him there was a rumor going around that some agents from the DEA had busted one of the two brothers and was searching for the other. The cab had two passengers in it already but Dude was willing to share and took a seat in front next to the driver. As they pulled away from the hotel he felt cold steel pressed on the back of his neck between the top of his spine and his head.

A voice said, “You’re under arrest.”

He never even made it to dinner.

Later, as he sat in the damp cell in center 42 watching pairs of cockroaches slow-dancing across the floor, our Excitable Boy remembered the words of the immortal Warren Zevon.


“I’m hiding in Honduras
I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers guns and money
The sh*t has hit the fan.”

Yes, he wasn’t in Honduras and yes, he wasn’t being realistic. But then again, when have you ever known Dude to be realistic? Never. Not in this lifetime anyway.

Then, The Road of Death

[YesNo]

This part: "But then again, when have you ever known Dude to be realistic?" might be better shown than told.

When one talks of drug dealers or users we have stereotypes that come to mind. The story has to flesh out those stereotypes or contradict them in interesting ways, not ride them. The best drug story I remember is Breaking Bad. It took a long time to tell it, but it keeps coming to mind. A lot of bad drug stories are seen in movies where drug dealers and users (and terrorists and corrupt government workers) are set up as bad guys. These movies ride the stereotypes to paint the good guys as good, that is, justified in overcoming the bad guys.

[Danik 2016]

What happens to me is that the subject doesn´t appeal to me as well as the other ones you usually write about. Maybe because I live In South America and in a city where drugs consum is a very concret urban problem without any glam about it.
Recently the current major issued a main operation against the quarter where the drugs are openly sold.The addicted, who usually are homeless too and live in precaurious conditions near the drugs selling tents swarmed in despair around the place and settled in another place near by.

[Steven Hunley]

That's one of the problems with the internet. A decent author usually know the audience his story is intended for, or at least, has one in mind. Not here, and as far as I know, no way to tell. Since I write in all sorts! of genres, and all over the board, I found out early, you can't appeal to everyone. You could take their temperature if they would reply, I loved it! It stank! Whatever. But no one is willing to put the thermometer in their mouth in public. On the other hand, I'm not convinced I made it seem glamorous.

The last line in Road of Death isn't about glamour. Getting busted, and watching your world crumble by default( because you're under the influence) isn't glamorous and doing time isn't either.

But, as you say, it isn't your cup of tea. Maybe greener tea will do, something from the East. So, viola, here you have:

Palace of Precious Stones



He was up to his knees when he spotted it, ‬only the size of a pea. ‬But it was red. ‬Red. ‬He couldn’t believe his luck. ‬Reaching down he fished it ‬out and placed it in his mouth. ‬Now he could go ‬back and sun himself on a rock.

Withdrawing his feet from the stream he spread his toes wide and swished his feet back and forth forcing water between them to wash out the yellow mud. ‬He sunk back on a rock to relax. ‬His work for the day was done.

The rock felt smooth and warm on his back. ‬He popped open his cowboy shirt to catch the last rays of afternoon sunlight slanting between the leaves of a giant fig tree whose trunk was as ‬naked and pale as any woman’s. ‬He basked in the sunlight that escaped the grasp of her leaves with permission. ‬ Starry-bright reflections danced on the water as he watched a water strider thread its way between bubbles and eddies constantly changing their pathways. ‬A kingfisher darted just over the surface then away like a shot.

He considered the thing in his mouth. ‬He took it out and gave it a good look. ‬It was red, ‬not a hint of purple, ‬that was good. ‬It was ‬irregular, ‬less to cut, ‬that was bad. ‬The stone was big enough to pay for what he needed but not what he wanted.

“Damn, ‬it’s always this way with me. ‬The rubies here are never big enough.”

Michael was all about the money, ‬or so he thought. ‬ If you asked him,

“‬Mike, ‬what the hell is an American G.I. ‬doing in the highlands of Burma looking for rubies?”

He’d simply say, “‬This is where the money ran out.”

Complex men always come up with simple answers. ‬It wasn’t that Mike’s answers were lies exactly, ‬only than in his efforts to simplify them he’d stripped them naked ‬of the truth.

He watched the sun dip lower until the hills took on a bluish cast, ‬and the ones beyond a purple hue. ‬White puffs of cumulus turned grey against the setting sun tinging their edges silver and when it dipped even lower, ‬gold. ‬Mountain shadows lengthened and in the distance he heard a peahen crying for her mate, ‬insisting he return to their nest for the night. ‬It was only too obvious ‬she didn’t like sleeping alone. ‬With darkness the forest grew quiet and the sounds of the day animals were replaced by the noises ‬of crickets and creatures of the night. ‬The gentle murmur of the river never stopped and would not vary its tune until ‬the miracle of the ‬monsoon came. ‬ All Burma lie ‬hushed and ‬waiting. ‬Some things never change.

‬So Mike really wasn’t there because that’s where the money had run out. ‬He was there because the mountain forest had seduced him like a lovely woman and now he’d fallen in love with her exotic beauty, ‬her consistency, ‬and the rhythms of her life.

If only he knew it.

The next morning he was sitting on a stump drinking coffee and spitting out the grounds that he hadn’t quite strained out. Tired of trying to filter it with his teeth, he ‬gave up, ‬and poured the rest on a wandering stink beetle that didn’t seem to mind.

“‬Insects are tough,” ‬he reasoned, “‬but then again so am I.” ‬Then he walked off to work ‬down river.

He liked being his own boss and enjoyed working in the small streams that fed into the Mogok river in the Valley of the Rubies. ‬The door to the Mogok had cracked open in nineteen sixty-six and he squeezed in smartly just under the radar. ‬Now he had his own hut not far from a local tribe of Shans who’d been in the trade for years. ‬They ignored him, ‬all except for the children, ‬thinking him eccentric as hell.*‬He didn’t mind and agreed he probably was. ‬He was a loner ‬by trade, a loser by profession, ‬always hoping for a big strike... ‬never getting it. ‬That was his life.

He knew that just beyond the bend that Shan women were bathing and always, ‬or nearly always, ‬when he walked by on his way to find rubies, ‬made it a point to stay on his side of the river. ‬He knew enough to give temptation a wide birth and usually pretended to ignore them

But this time was different.

Sitting on a rock removed from the rest was a girl quite singular and alone. ‬She glanced up at him with uncurious eyes.

“Mingalaba,” ‬he called out in Burmese.

“Krishnagopal Kodoth," she answered in Shan. ‬By the way she pronounced it, ‬it sounded more like Bangkok Thai. ‬The girl had been around.

A sudden smile hovered on her lips and she let herself into the water without a sound. ‬Swimming away, ‬her hair trailed behind her like so many thin curves of black coal. ‬Their undulating design entranced him. ‬She disappeared among the rocks like a shadow from a passing cloud leaving him wonder if he’d ever really seen her at all. ‬It was like seeing a nymph or a creature of the forest that shouldn’t be seen. ‬He had a curious feeling he’d seen an apparition, ‬and it left him unsettled the rest of the day.

When he took off his cowboy shirt with the snaps they pulled lose of the rotten shirt leaving holes. “‬It’s the climate,” ‬he said, ‬looking at his rotting tennies “‬It rots everything.* ‬It’s time I went down river to see Nigel.

Three real men were going downriver in a small canoe with an outboard motor. He waved them ashore and passed cigarettes around.

“Going downriver?” ‬It was only too obvious they were as their canoe was full of skins. ‬They were hunters.

Ancient Enfield jungle carbines were stacked in the narrow wood prow. ‬Their vehicle had once been a single living thing… ‬a tree…now it was a dead and a good canoe. ‬Natives know how to recycle and had probably used it for years. ‬You see, ‬it rains rough in the tropics, ‬the trees try to be tough and learn how not to rot. ‬A tall man sitting in prow smiled with irregular teeth stained with betel nut and offered him a ride,

“‬As far as your cigarettes hold out.”

Michael pushed them off the mud.

The river that day was flat. ‬Yellow mud was on most of the banks, ‬darker around the rocks. ‬Lots of leaves and debris spotted the surface everywhere you looked. ‬Tall green reeds with golden corn-silk cattails trailed bubbles downstream patterned like silver shimmering scimitars slicing the cool blue water. ‬The outboard carved the river up behind, ‬spreading outward like a rabbit-ear TV antennae. ‬It was cooler over the water as the wind blew back over your face. ‬Six white herons searching for food to your right, ‬squadrons of green turtles sunning themselves on grey rocks on your left. ‬They felt just like he did…totally fine. ‬Nobody had to paddle.

By ‬Late afternoon they reached the trading post on a bend in the river near the outskirts of town. ‬The front of the post was on one end of the street but the back faced the river from the east. ‬Its back porch was a good place to view the sunset, ‬which is what Nigel usually did. ‬He was punctual and dreamy about it, ‬and his four pipe a day opium habit probably didn’t hurt.

The hunters tied up on the dock near the back and then walked around to the front. ‬Nigel came out to greet them. ‬He was tall, ‬grey at the temples but well built and had an imperial voice marred only by a cockney accent. ‬The accent was popular with the Burmese ladies thereabouts and everywhere else for that matter. ‬To the locals cockney equaled exotic.

He finished his business with the hunters straightaway, ‬then saw Michael standing in the doorway.

“‬Hello, ‬what’s this? ‬Something wicked this way comes?” ‬Despite what he said he beamed Michael a smile as big as the tropical sun, pretty damn big when you come to think of it.

“‬I’ve come to do business.”


“Come through to the back and we’ll watch the sunset. ‬The business can wait Old Boy, ‬but the sun has got plans of his own and can’t.”

“Sure enough, ‬let’s go.

‬He always got a thrill when Nigel called him old boy. ‬He was only thirty-two.

They walked through the rooms of the post to the back and noticed a sickly sweet smell.

“That’s why I met them outside,” ‬Nigel said, “‬the others. ‬They don’t need to get into this.”

“And you do?”

“It’s my habit it is, ‬that and watching the sunset”

They sat in rattan chairs and gazed at the ‬water so smooth, ‬so perfect, ‬so indescribably blue. ‬It’s hard to sort out who enjoyed it more, ‬straight Michael or opium-bent Nigel. ‬The sky and clouds reflected in the water and fishermen in small boats became mere silhouettes against the glare. ‬It was marvelous.

After some time they came inside and Michael lit the oil lamps while Nigel shuttered the teak shutters and secured the door, ‬pulling down its shade.

“‬What have you got for me Old Boy?”

“Three rubies,”

He tossed down a green velvet cloth snatched from the top of a butterfly case. ‬Nigel spread it out. ‬ Then the rubies.

“‬These two, ‬old boy, ‬are not good. ‬That’s not good, ‬not no good, ‬righto? ‬They’re ‬worth something. ‬But this one’‬s pigeon’s blood. ‬ It’s worth its weight it is.”

“Enough for a month of supplies?”

“More than enough for a month I’d say.”‬

That was it, ‬not even a handshake.

Two days in town was enough and he was on the river threading his way back. ‬It was sunny and warm and the banks on both sides were planted in bright showy palms that reached out over the water. ‬The land thereabouts was incredibly fertile. ‬In a quiet spot where the current slowed he saw a red deer drinking at water’s edge. ‬By that night he was home.

He didn’t search for the girl, ‬anymore than you or I would search for a figment of our ‬own ‬imagination. ‬But he did happen upon her again. ‬It was at the same place ‬near the pool. ‬She was sitting on a rock reading something he couldn’t quite see, propping it on her knees.

“‬Hello,” ‬he offered.She looked up and smiled, and the book or whatever it was, disappeared.

“‬Reading?”

“Well, ‬I ‬was bathing, ‬but now I’m through.”

It was unusual. ‬Most Shan women bathed together or in family groups, ‬laughing and joyous, ‬splashing about in the shallows. ‬He wondered what strangeness in her made her bathe away from the others.

“‬Most of the girls bathe down there,” ‬he said pointing, “‬not you?”

“Sometimes I just want to be alone, ‬that’s all” ‬She hesitated then said, “‬You’re the American I take it?”

“That’s right, ‬I’m Michael.”

“I’m HKaw-Seng.”

She got up to leave and wrung out her hair. ‬Her wet clothes clinging to her body revealed her delicate feminine form. ‬After she wandered away he saw she’d left a paperback book behind on the rock face-down. ‬He picked it up and looked at the cover. ‬It was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. ‬On the open page he read,

“Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”

“Hmm,” ‬was all he said and placed it in his cargo pocket and buttoned it shut for safe-keeping. ‬She was a Caution all right. ‬Shan girls reading Hesse. ‬What would they think of next?

Then it was back to work as usual. ‬He didn’t mind working the small streams, ‬it was cool there during the heat of the day, ‬and the Shans stayed closer to the river itself. ‬He always seemed to find small rubies, ‬but never enough. ‬He dreamed that one day he’d find a large one, ‬one large enough to allow him to return to the States in triumph, ‬buy a big house and a car and plenty of milk-fed big-breasted women. ‬Michael was about the money and the money was about the very American dream that had been stuck in his head for years.

It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten about the girl. ‬He hadn’t. ‬How could he when she appeared and reappeared in his consciousness like a will-o-the-wisp?‬ He awoke just after dawn, ‬and while sitting on his breakfast stump drinking his morning cup of Java, ‬saw a figure, ‬just a silhouette really, ‬outlined against the rising sun. ‬The figure walked with privilege, ‬even though there was laundry piled on its head. ‬It drew closer, ever closer, ‬like a sensuous moving contradiction.

‬It was her.

to be continued...

©Steven Hunley 2010

[YesNo]

You left me wondering at the end what would happen next which was good.

[Steven Hunley]

The apparition had taken human form once again. ‬It ‬was flesh and flesh has a voice so,

“Good morning Michael. Getting ready for work? Me too.”

She put down the laundry that was her work.

He was stunned that she remembered his name ‬and answered,

“I’m going to work the small stream down half a click. The stones I find have been getting small.”

It was most peculiar ‬as if they were continuing a conversation that had started years ago between good friends.

“And they’ll be small there too, if that’s where you look. Try way up in the eddies, where the gravel is about the size of your thumbnail. You might have better luck.”

“There’s some coffee left...if you drink coffee,” ‬he countered, ‬and put on his pack, “‬help yourself.”

“Good luck?‬”

“I won’t need it.”

He strode ‬away ‬his back to her, ‬but then he turned around to give her a glance ‬to see if she’d disappeared like some sort of phantasm.

The phantasm had his cup to her lips, ‬and was taking a sip of warm coffee into her sweet inviting mouth ‬She gazed down at the pile of laundry at her feet. ‬Then she went down on her knees and started to scrub. ‬For a ghost she had a remarkably pretty nose. ‬Maybe she was for real. ‬He’d forgotten to mention that he’d found her book now safely secured in his cargo pants ‬Watching a fantastically pretty phantasm doing laundry in a mountain stream made it completely slip his mind.

She was no phantasm or ghost ‬The proof of her was in his pocket.

An hour later he was at the small stream and found the spot where the current eddied around some smooth white rocks.. ‬The sand wasn’t sand here it was gravel. ‬He waded in and began to look. ‬A branch overhung here and there with purple-painted orchids. ‬Where the trees were taller,. ‬a flying fox jumped from one branch of teak to another, ‬avoiding a viper out for a meal. ‬Still he waded. ‬The stream was itself in the spilling. ‬The day drifted by like a barely heard song, ‬not quite recognized, ‬like music from another room.

Then he saw the red gleam below him. ‬There it was. ‬She’d been right. ‬This was the place to look. ‬He fished it out and examined it. ‬Not so good, ‬but larger than most, ‬almost the size of his fingernail. ‬The ends of his mouth curled upward. ‬How had she known?‬ And ‬when he returned home later that afternoon, ‬she was still there. ‬The day was an incredible day. ‬The night that followed would be the same…incredible. ‬Nature left nothing to chance.

“If you let me use your kitchen, I’ll make you something to eat.”

“She must be hungry,” he thought, “so why not?”

“There’s a can of baked beans on the shelf,” he directed, “help yourself.”

He sat down by the river to watch the setting sun and the silhouettes of a flock of birds passed by constantly changing the patterns of their formations. She brought him some coffee.

“Relax, this will take some time.” She leaned over and handed it to him. Her hair was down and brushed against his cheek. It was scented and as dark as a raven’s wing.

“Some time? For a can of beans? Maybe she doesn’t know how to cook.”

But sitting watching the fading rays of the sun was pleasant enough, so he’d wait.

Time slipped by unnoticed as it usually does.

She came out with his food on a plate.

“What’s this?”

“That’s river fish cooked in coconut milk, that’s rice obviously, and the green stuff is bokchoi.”

His mouth fell open, which is probably a good thing, as he was about to stuff it anyway. Miracle of miracles, wonder of wonders, the woman had cooked for the man.

“How’d you get the stove to work? It always gives me trouble. It smokes terribly.”

“I opened the flue, that helped.”

“And how is it you speak English so good?”

“So well. I learned how in school where else?”

When they finished it was still not quite dark. The shadows of the trees were long and shown all the way to their side of the river. Noting that the coast was clear a troop of squirrel monkeys came down for a drink in the cool of the evening. Seeing the monkeys made the girl feel like playing.

“How about dessert? I always save it for last.”

She reached into her bundle and pulled out a single plum.

“Here.”

‘There’s only one,” he remarked, “and two of us.”

“Then slice it in half.”

A unfolded his pocket knife and did just that. The skin was black and the flesh was dark red. It was plump and ripe. When he cut it crimson juice ran all over his fingers. He tried to hand it to her but she refused.

“I’m not getting that mess on me. Put it in my mouth for me.”

He did, but then he did something he’d never done before. His fingers were so close to her mouth that drops of it’s juice ran over her lips, staining them red. And before he knew it, he was touching her lips with his thumb, not being able to stop, not even hesitating, running it over her lips from corner to corner. When he pulled his hand away he realized what he’d just done and wanting to pass it off as just play he said,

“Where I come from the women wear lipstick. They put it on just like that.”

“And then they blot it don’t they? And when they kiss their men, it leaves a mark doesn’t it? I‘ve seen it in movies.

“Yes,” he said, thinking he’d got away with touching her, “ I believe it does.”

“Then here.”

She got up and grabbed her bundle of things. Then suddenly she stepped closer, placed a hand on his shoulder, and stretching up on her toes, gave him a kiss on his cheek. She ran off into the shadows and then faded from view, just like a proper phantasm should. He had two proofs of her now, the book in his pocket and the plum stain on his cheek. The whole thing seemed highly unusual. Highly unusual or terribly romantic, he couldn't decide which.

One sultry afternoon the three hunters came by with a bottle of Arak which they were willing to share. He hadn’t seen her for two weeks, was morose, and decided the best thing to do was get drunk. It was a mistake.

The three hunters turns out, were cousins, and besides the fact they made money together by combining their skills as hunters, didn’t care much for each other, and were upset over the conduct of their common wife. You could hardly blame her, she was torn between three lovers. Each blamed the others for faults the woman had and how she treated them with disrespect, how she showed her hand of hatred in so many ways. They bad mouthed women in general and were too drunk to care. That’s how they were when they drank. One had a gold ring with a ruby the size of a nickel, not pigeon’s blood but lots of mercury in it. Michael looked down at his finger and saw nothing. They were successful at what they did. He wasn’t.

It disturbed him so he drank along with the rest of them. The Arak was not deadening the pain of longing that lingered in his heart. Drinking made it no better. He felt useless and gave up. No one he’d ever know made him feel that way before. He went to bed after they left but couldn’t sleep. The crickets chirping didn’t help, neither did the sound of the wind between the branches above his hut.

She appeared from the darkness, her frame silhouetted at the door, for women with such figures deserve to be silhouetted, by the fire outside. It made a flickering light but hid her in shadow. He could see nothing of her face, and hear only her voice. There was nothing like it. He was startled. They talked nervously, back and forth, excited, talked of nothing, yet said so many empty meaningless words. Still nervous in anticipation, she finally asked what she really wanted to know and whispered,

”Michael, what is it you want?

He looked out into the darkness beyond the fire.

A fish jumped upriver, and when it fell back, left a ever widening circle of water radiating outward, growing bigger and bigger, the ends of it lost in oblivion. It made no difference.

Michael’s head was lost and hung up, still hung up on the money.

“I want to make the biggest score on the river for all to see! I wanna be big, real big!”

He extended his arms ultra-wide.

“Then I can return to the states with a BMW all shiny and new and live in a mansion in Beverly Hills right next door to the Beverly Hillbillies! I’m nobody’s fool! I’m civilized ! And I know what I want."

He was drunk. He was idiotic. Same thing.

She’d never seen him like this and thought at first he was ill. Then she smelled his breath and the bottle. The story it told her. She helped him to bed and tucked him right in. Then she went outside and sat on the porch step and tasted a tear that rolled down her cheek, holding onto the bannister for some kind of support. They’d started off remote and now they were there again. What a waste. Nothing could be done but wait and talk later when he felt like talking, when it was over. So she’d wait.

In the morning he knew from the feeling his head had that he’d been drunk. That’s how it felt. She was asleep on a chair on the porch. He fixed some coffee and tip-toed around like a fool intent on letting her asleep. Then he sat on the steps and watched her a while. She was light for a Burmese girl, and her cheeks were flushed in contrast. Her features were regular and fine, and had a certain symmetry. And there was more than that to her. Her hair, as she slept there in the morning light, was as blue-black as a raven’s wing, and fell over her shoulders in shiny-black cascades. Her Shan shawl lay in a pile on the porch like her, exquisite. It was gold leaf hammered out and cut into threads to work into the blue, purple, and crimson yarns in skilled design, a valuable beautiful thing laying on a splintered surface made of rough-hewn wood. It was her, lying hidden in the forest.

It suited her, she was more than a woman, she was some sort of feminine phenomena, sleeping on his porch. It shook his ideas of Greek beauty just to look at her. She shook his soul to its core. Having your soul soundly shook and a hangover at the same time was a hell of a way to start the day you have to admit.

But when she woke up it was no good. She tried to talk to him but he was distant, not sure of what he’d said the night before, becoming reticent, then not speaking, then not even looking into her eyes. He was embarrassed because of his behavior. He didn’t know how to face her. She seemed so perfect, he, so imperfect, a scoundrel, a drunkard. It was an exaggerated image he’d concocted of himself, exaggerated and foolish. He was good at being foolish. She gave up, and said she had other things to do, giving him time to recover and compose himself. She knew him better than he knew himself. Sometimes that’s just how things are, that a woman knows a man better than he knows himself. Women enjoy that privilege, that certain perspective, and it helps them deal with their men.

“I have to go back now, my father will be worried.”

She walked away, and grew smaller and smaller until she disappeared, leaving him standing there alone. He didn’t see her for some time, but during that period, found out more about her from the most unlikely of sources. On another trip down river when it happened. When he arrived at Nigel’s and walked up, the trader was stacking cages outside, moving them from the sun to shade.

He didn’t even say hello, he said,

“Give me a hand here Old Boy. These little guys can’t stay in the sun forever.”

They were cages of pigmy marmosettes. Marmosettes! Running around like crazy, ten to a cage.

“You’ll trade anything won’t you!”

“Anything that’s got a profit to it my darling boy! Get a grip will ya?”

“That’s Old Boy to you, here, give this one a shove!”

They stacked the three cages out of the sun round the back. Now they were sweating and needed a drink. Nigel offered,

“Have a Dewar’s?”

“Black label?”

“Thank you, yes!”

Ten minutes later they were relaxing inside as if nothing had happened. The drink revived them both and led to conversation. Nigel grew thoughtful and asked with concern,

“You don’t speak the lingo do you Old Boy? That must make it hard on you. It’s lonely up there, did you say about half a click past the rapids?”

“Yes, that’s where. And I was until just recently, lonely that is. Hardly spoke a word in a month.”

“Sticky wicket that.”

“Yes.”

They paused just a moment while each took a sip. The Dewars tasted like smoke.

Michael brightened, “But it’s been better lately, there’s a girl lives there, a wonderful beautiful girl...” and he broke off and drifted.

A peacock was heard outside. It’s call was plaintive and pleading.

“Pretty girl is she?”

“Yes.”

“Speaks English, does she?”

‘Now you’re beginning to sound like Yoda from Star Wars, but yes, she speaks it quite well.”

“Then that would be Precious.”

“No, I’ve got you this time Old Fossil, her name is HKaw Seng.”

“That’s Shan dialect, it means Palace of Precious Stones. I just call her Precious.”

Michael slammed down the glass.

“You know her?”

“Since she was a baby Old Boy. Her father is an old school ruby miner up north. She’s filled out nicely.”

“She told me she learned English at a school.”

“Not just “a” school Old Boy, at “the” school. It was at Cambridge, back home. That’s where she got her degree. In gemology I think. By George, that girl knows her stones alright!"

Michael was taken aback, astounded, ripped in two and pasted together.

“Then what is she doing, if you don’t mind me asking, back here living the hard life?”

“Her family is here. Her father anyway, her mother passed away before she left. I asked her the same thing.”

“My family is important to me,” she told me one day, “I’ve got my priorities straight that’s all.”

Michael said nothing. The sunset was approaching quickly as it does in the tropics, and Nigel intended not to miss it.

“Want a bowl? It’s on the house.”

“Thank you, no. But I’ll watch the sunset with you if you like.”

“I like.”

Michael sat on the veranda looking out over the river. He noticed the bulge in his pocket when he sat down. It made him uncomfortable so he took it out and opened it up and looked down.

“When someone is seeking it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.”

Michael couldn’t decide exactly between what he’d found or what he’d been seeking. Things seemed messed up. His mind was a jumble.

Nigel wandered out, found his chair, and faced it west. The two men watched the river. It ran by endlessly, its blues and golds and silvers reflected by a low sun hanging on a ragged green horizon. Clouds wandered over casting angled shadows on its surface. There was no end to it and no beginning. It was calm and moving at the same time, a cycle unto itself. After dark they walked inside having missed nothing, felt no regrets, then lit the oil lamps and later in the cool of the evening...slept.


to be continued...

[Steven Hunley]

duplicate post

[YesNo]

Nice continuation of the story of Michael and HKaw Seng. I was surprised he didn't know about opening the flue on the stove.

[YesNo]

I finished reading a collection of fantasy microfiction that I thought was pretty good. It is by Isabel Caves and called "Ephemeral". It is only 2,200 words long but contains 12 stories. It's free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/716567

I liked the way every sentence counted in each story.

[Danik 2016]

I liked it too. Most of your stories would give a good script, one can "see" the scenes for example the silhouetted woman would look fine on a screen. You also have a facility in creating dialogues and suspense.

Espectant of the sequel.

[Danik 2016]

I finished reading a collection of fantasy microfiction that I thought was pretty good. It is by Isabel Caves and called "Ephemeral". It is only 2,200 words long but contains 12 stories. It's free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/716567

I liked the way every sentence counted in each story.

Thanks, Yes/No. I had a look, but I´ll read more of it.

[YesNo]

If you find similar types of writing, I would be interested. I picked up "Favorite Folktales from around the World" edited by Jane Yolen today at the library. I am not sure what I'm looking for in all this. Perhaps just ideas on what to write myself.

[Danik 2016]

Found this link that might interest you (if you haven´t registered already) and other people. There are some stories too.

http://nanofiction.org

[YesNo]

That does look like an interesting site. I think I've heard of it before, but I did not explore it. Thanks, Danik. It looks like there are also audio versions: https://soundcloud.com/nanofiction Sometimes I need to hear something to understand it.

[YesNo]

I agree with your comments on Steven Hunley's story, Danik.

[Danik 2016]

That does look like an interesting site. I think I've heard of it before, but I did not explore it. Thanks, Danik. It looks like there are also audio versions: https://soundcloud.com/nanofiction Sometimes I need to hear something to understand it.
Maybe a stimulus to writing. I sometimes have ideas that seem good but that fall flat once put on paper, Practising with micro stories might be a good beginning.

[Steven Hunley]

Micro-stories or any really short forms are difficult for me. There are so many choices of what to develop, plot, character, suspense, etc. As you mentioned though, practicing with micro-stories may be a good stimulus for writing.

Here's the rest of my story:

Precious held the box in her hands. There wasn’t much in it. She’d had it for years. It was square and made of bamboo, and had a shell design in black on the top. The whole thing was lacquered.

In it were two of her baby teeth, a pair of silver earrings that had belonged to her mother, a broken chain from her rosary, nothing of value mind you, except the thing in the corner which took up most of the room. It was in a velvet bag that closed with a draw-string and smelled like perfume. She held it up to her nose when she took it out.

In the bag was a stone, a pigeon’s blood ruby her father gave her, her dowry in fact. It was heart-shaped and the size of her father’s thumb. Incalculable beyond value, that’s what it was.

“This,” he said, “you can only give to the man who will marry you. But be careful, any man will lie to get this stone, even a Shan.”

She held it up to the light, then her nose, then to the light again. Its fragrance was her mother’s perfume that she doused the bag with, still there after all these years. She knew what she wanted to do.

The next morning she went off to do laundry, even though truth be told there wasn’t much to be done. She placed it where white smooth stones created an eddy beneath the branches of a giant fig tree. She calculated all the angles and the position of the sun in an hour or so. There was no way he could miss it. She gave it a kiss, then carefully placed in on the bottom, so carefully in fact the tiny minnows that lived there weren’t even disturbed. Then she went to do laundry where she’d see him in person and up close for the last time.

He was happy to see her on his way to work the streams, and couldn’t believe his good fortune.

She looked up.

“Hello! How’s the hunting been going?” Her hair was down, glistening in the sunlight. It excited him no end to see her.

“It’s been better, with your advice.”

He was smiling and that was how she liked him. His smile had melted her heart long ago. She was his for the asking.

“Good enough for your car and for you to go home?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

“When you work the river you have to look for stones in places where the gravel is the same size as the stones that you want. Similar size stones always end up in the same place. They arrange themselves so to speak. It’s a natural process.”

“So that’s it!”

“Yes, if I were you, I’d search over there, under the fig tree, by the eddy, you may have some luck.”

She saw that his cargo pocket was flat. Siddhartha wasn’t there.

“Did I leave a book on a rock the other day, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse?”

“Why yes, I found it. I’ve been reading it. It’s pretty tough going at times.”

“Life, Michael, is pretty tough going at times too. Do you have it?”

“Not on me, it’s back at the house.”

“Could you get it?”

“Of course, it’s yours isn’t it? I’ll be right back.”

He turned and left. It only took him a few minutes before he was back but she was gone. He couldn’t figure it. He was prepared to walk to his usual place but decided to give her location a try instead. It was closer, and if it didn’t work out he could always move on. Maybe she’d be there waiting.

He found the giant fig, and the rocks and the eddy, but no Precious. Maybe she’d show up later. To show her he’d followed her advice he waded in. There was nothing for the first few moments just gravel and sand. The sun glistened off the surface making it hard to see. Suddenly he stopped. A spitting cobra had come to the water’s edge to drink and stopped to considered him. He froze. One bite was instant death, one spit... blindness. What a choice. He waited, glued to the spot. Even though he was knee-deep in water he sweat. Rivers of perspiration running down his face collected on his chin and fell into the pool at his knees.

The cobra turned back into the bush and was gone.

“****,” he whispered to himself, “I’m getting out of here."

He avoided the place the snake returned to and took several steps to the side. That’s when he saw the red gleam at his feet. It was indistinct at first, then a cloud shadow passed and revealed it’s splendor. He reached down, grasped it and pulled his hand from the water.

The size of it, the shape of it, both made him gasp. It was incredible. It’s redness! It’s sheen! Right there in his hand. The incredible thing was his. He’d found his ticket home, the car, the house, all of it. He felt giddy and laughed aloud. His first thought was to tell her. He would tell her, of course!

He looked at both banks and saw no one. The bush was thick, the trees all tangled on both sides. What he didn’t see was her almond eyes watching him. She was there, but remained hidden, not wanting a good-bye scene, not wanting to cry. She saw that he had it, and that was enough. The act she’d performed became bitter-sweet in its perfection, sweet because now he had his dream and bitter when she tasted the tear drop that ran down her cheek and onto her delicate finger. She would never be the same and she knew it.

Michael walked back and a small raindrop fell on his cheek. Before he’d walked fifteen steps a torrent erupted. Only three more and he was soaked to the skin. The monsoon hit with savage fury.

He ran to his his hut with the corrugated iron roof. What a clatter it made. It was as if nature had been saving it up for months before letting go like a lover who’d been separated from a lover and they’d finally met. The clouds and the rain were mating with the earth at last. And it was wet, terribly wet. Clouds burst open and moaned, were loud about it, warning everyone within hundreds of miles to keep away. They asked no quarter. It was a marvelously dangerous thing to behold. That was always the way of it. Men who knew what was good for them took cover.

There would be no trip down river for months.

He stripped off his clothes and made a fire in the stove, the first time it had been used since she cooked for him. Thinking of her started him pacing. He couldn’t rest. Back and forth back and forth. Her book was on the table face down. Just touching it gave no comfort so he started to read.

“How well you can kiss Kamala!” Siddhartha stammered.

“Yes, I kiss well, and therefore I am not lacking in clothes,shoes, bracelets,or any other beautiful things.”

He remembered her kiss on his cheek. Precious could have had everything but chose to have her family instead. He remembered when Nigel said her words,

“My family is important to me. I’ve got my priorities straight.That’s all.”

Money wasn’t important to her. To a courtesan like Kamala it was. What did that mean to him? Would she consider the riches the stone would bring and leave with him? Could he ask her? What would she say if he asked her? The rain continued to beat. The wind tore through the fragile leaves of the banana tree and left it in tatters. His head was beginning to feel the same way, torn up.

Instead of celebrating he just sighed. How important was money if she wasn’t in his life? How empty would it seem? It was useless. Endless rain poured down with a vengeance on his iron roof. Dark clouds thundered warnings. Night stole in like a leopard stalking a deer, but the rain? Not the rain. It never gave up.

He looked outside at the river. Whatever he did he would have to do it quick. His river of escape was rising fast. Within a few hours would be impassible and deadly near the rapids. One way or another a decision had to be made.

XXX

The monsoon was relentless in Burma that year and made river travel between the Shan village and the town almost impossible. Over land was no better, swampy and filled with fever, snakes and insects. Not until after the monsoon would things change.

Months later something new was on the river. A large flat-bottomed steamer appeared chugging its way upriver in the center of the deep channel. Now the sun shown, now the land was drying itself off. The dripping had stopped.

Cargo crowded its deck as did farmers and their families, traders and trappers. Hunters of all sorts were there too. One stood apart on the prow near the rail, searching the shores both left and right. Blond, handsome, his hair shown in the sunlight gleaming gold. His boots were new and laced up. His hat was a slouch hat, worn Indiana Jones style, or in that fashion. He looked at home yet not at home. He couldn’t be figured.

Inside were gamblers, three at the corner table playing poker. One was a Chinaman, the other a Malay, the third had a Cockney accent. He might have been English. The chips were piled on the table, but carelessly like so much spilled rice. They were drinking of course. The Chinese his Shaojiu, the Malay his Tuak and the English his Dewar’s black label.

On the deck was stacked cargo, all sorts, so much the steamer sunk low in the water. There was lumber, stacks of lumber,and corrugated iron for roofing.

“Enough to build a temple,” said one deck hand.

“Or a palace,” said another.

There were pens with pigs in them and crates full of chickens too. Two goats, one male one female, were tethered to a beam. The deck was a Burmese circus.

The rapids were passed with no problem. Blond man in slouched hat stood in the prow and watched the shore where a poor farmer in a shredded coolie hat tended his water buffaloes, drinking the cool water. It was hot and hats were essential, no matter their style or condition. The sun played no favorites.

Inside the gamblers continued to gamble. Even out of the sun it was hot. Men wiped the sweat from their faces. It was hard to say what was worse, the heat or the tension. By this time the table was stacked high with chips, so many they’d run out. Then the Malay in order to raise the stakes placed a large gold nugget on the pile. A crowd formed around them like fleas on a dog. The Chinese studied his cards then reached in his pocket. Feeling sure of himself he said,

“OK tough guy, I see that and raise you this.”

He pulled out a packet of rubies and tossed it on top.

The English looked at his cards and studied their faces with care, not his cards mind you, the other men’s mugs were his only concern. He took his time.

The steamer continued up the river, chug chugging against the current. Black smoke poured from her smoke stacks, leaving dark twin trails in the still air. The man in the prow was restless and started to pace, searching the shoreline for something or someone familiar. It was maddening to watch him.

Inside the Brit was ready to make his play. He took out his money and counted it.

“I don’t have enough cash to cover the bet.”

The Malay and Chinese were relieved and relaxed at once.

He took a sip of his Dewar’s.

“But I’ve got this.”

They heard a clunk on the table, and suddenly laying before them, was the largest ruby they’d ever seen, and shaped just like a heart! It would only be fair to mention that he knew what it was worth. He’d appraised it years ago when the girl’s father first found it and recognized it when Michael placed it on the green velvet cloth. Who wouldn’t?

“And this,” he continued, and laid down his cards. It was a royal flush.

The game ended in a SNAP. Just like that.

After he cashed in his chips and collected the rest the Brit took a stroll on the deck and met the young man on the prow and smiled,

“Thank you for teaching me poker Old Boy.”

“Don’t mention it. It was something to do while we were stranded.”

“Oh, and here.”

He placed the red stone in his hand.

“Thanks for the loan.”

The Brit lounged back in a deck chair while the young man continued to look. A speck, just a speck,now drew his attention. A single form was near the shore, on a rock with some clothes nearby in a heap. It could have been anyone. His hand went up to provide shade to his narrowing eyes. Could it be?

“Tell the pilot to get closer to shore Nigel.”

“How’s that Old Boy?”

“Tell the pilot to get closer to shore!”

Nigel flew out of the chair and sprang to the wheelhouse. Michael untied his boots, took off his hat and unsnapped his new cowboy shirt. They just couldn’t get there soon enough for him. Suddenly the whistle sounded. Nigel pulled on the rope. The figure on shore looked up. The boat turned toward shore quickly but not quick enough. He dived headlong over the side.

From the wheelhouse Nigel had an excellent view. The girl on the shoreline took off her hat and her hair fell down over her shoulders. She waded out just up to her knees. Michael’s feet touched bottom and he reached her without effort, stood up, water dripping from his hair and his nose and his arms. She was shocked and confused.

“I thought...”

“Don’t think.”

“That you’d left and...”

“Never. And leave you behind? Never.”

He pressed her lips tight with his finger tips and said,

“I was wrong. I was foolish. I was mistaken. I...”

She would not allow him to grovel. She would have none of it. She pressed his lips shut in the same way. Then she smiled that incredible smile.

He fumbled in his pocket then,
“Here,” he presented her with the stone, “it’s yours.”

They embraced and then kissed. The kiss had everything in it they needed to say, and everything they ever wanted to know. Tender and pure, lasting an eternity or just for a second, it just didn’t matter.

The wandering was over, he was home,and he’d found what he’d been looking for all along, his Palace of Precious Stones.


©Steven Hunley 2010

[Danik 2016]

A nice end for a story with gem stones and romance.
Just one question: How come that the more or less experienced gem hunter Michael dindn´t notice that the gem was already lapidated?
And this must be a lonely place, else the girl would lose her stone to the first gem hunter coming along.

[Steven Hunley]

It wasn't cut and polished, just a natural stone shaped like a heart.