Copyright: tarasov / 123RF Stock Photo

Flash-Fiction: Toxic to Dogs

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Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_tarasov'>tarasov / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

“Hey, who brought the brownies?” Yvette leaned over the picnic table and breathed in the heady scent of chocolate and… something else. “Can I have one?”

Thea passed her a spatula, “Get one for me, too? I’m desperate for a sugar fix.”

“Sure thing.” The small brunette scooped out a brownie for each of them, served casually on folded-in-quarters paper towels. They had plates, but the towels would double as napkins, and they broke down faster. Biodegradeable, and all that.

“Dude, brownies!” the boys – Claude and Jason – reached for the confections but Yvette yelped and raced away clutching her napkin-wrapped treasure close to her chest.

“Get your own!” she shouted. “They’re on the picnic table!”

The afternoon wore on, and the five friends splashed in the cold waters of the creek and hiked in the nearby woods. At dusk, they gathered around the campfire for hamburgers and baked beans, and more brownies.

“Seriously,” Yvette asked, having her third one. “Where did these come from. The more I eat, the hungrier I get.”

Claude and Jason shared a look and some awkward laughter. “Actually…” the former began, pausing only to push his floppy black hair away from his face, “Greta brought them over this morning. Said she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to make it before moonrise.”

“Greta? Greta who mixes weed into green smoothies Greta?” Yvette had never really gotten along with her, and things had been worse since she and Jason had begun dating. Greta had wanted Jason badly. “I had no idea she could bake. Maybe she’s useful after all. Pass me another?”

“Should you be eating so many?” Claude  asked. “I thought you were allergic to chocolate.”

Jason slung his arm around Yvette’s shoulder and nuzzled her neck. Addressing Claude he said, “Dude, she’s a big girl. Let her be.” Into his girlfriend’s ear, he whispered. “Yvie, baby, Greta’s not so bad, really. She can’t compete with you, anyway. Loosen up.”

In the light of the rising moon, Yvette’s eyes glittered. “You want loose? I saw hoof-prints, the other side of the creek. Burgers are great and all, but… nothing beats fresh venison.”

“Careful, Yvie. You know we shouldn’t shift when we’re high.” Claude warned. Across the fire, the expression on Thea’s face implied silent agreement.

“I’m not high,” Yvette protested, giggling. “Just a little buzzed. Who’s with me? A quick swim in the creek to clear our heads, and then we hunt.” She was already kicking off her shoes and peeling off her shirt, reveling in the sensation of the crisp night air on her bare skin. She rolled her neck, and let her body morph into its natural form – thick fur, pointed ears, a bushy tail, and razor-sharp claws.

As one, the others followed suit, stripping and shifting, just like Yvette had.

The four werewolves dashed down the hill to the creek, where they splashed like puppies in a play pool. When they were wet enough, cold enough, and clear-headed enough, they rumbled up the bank on the far side, and took off into the woods.

Claude scented the first deer, and he, Jason, and Thea joined forces to take it down. As pack-leader, it was his job to know where everyone was, but the combination of marijuana, sugar, and fresh, hot, blood distracted him, and when Yvie changed directions, he lost her scent.

Alone, Yvie caught a different scent. The generic tang of Shifter resolved into  the more familiar Wolf and she went to investigate.

Greta  – at least it smelled like Greta – Yvette had never seen her true form, so she wasn’t entirely sure – stood on the edge of the creek, waiting, but there was another scent mingled with hers. Jason’s. Unmistakably, undeniably, Jason’s scent. Yvette could tell that the male note was from an article of clothing, and not the other’s fur, but it didn’t matter.  Her shifted brain identified Greta as a threat.

Still poised on the edge of the bank, Greta turned her head, having caught Yvie’s scent, in turn. She fixed her gaze on Yvette and growled, “Hey, puppy. Come to play?”

Yvette was many things, but a puppy wasn’t one of them. Fury and bloodlust coursed through her. Jealousy mixed with pot and chocolate and rage removed her inhibitions and fueled her attack with sugar-shocked strength. She leaped at the other female in a killing frenzy.

Claws ripped through fur and flesh. Yelps and screams filled moonlit night.

When the boys and Thea returned, bellies full of fresh game, they found little of Greta. A few stray bits of fur and flannel.

Yvie, on the other hand, had reverted to human form and was huddled in the brush, puking and shivering.

“Come on,” Claude urged. “We have to get her to a doctor.”

“Night doc at the clinic treats our kind,” Thea said. “I’ll get the car. You two help Yvie cover up and get moving.”

Thea drove while Claude called the clinic. The doc they knew would be waiting at the emergency room door.

Yvette rode the whole way with her head in Jason’s lap, his hand stroking her hair. Upon their arrival, the doctor whisked her away on a stretcher, while Jason, Thea and Claude were left to wait for their friend.

Hours later, the trio were allowed to join their friend in her room. She’d be staying overnight, the doc told them. For observation.

“Doc, I don’t get it,” Claude said. “We all had the brownies too. I know it’s bad to shift when you’re high but…”

“It wasn’t the pot… ” Yvie’s voice was weak, but they all turned toward her. “It was the chocolate. I should have stopped, Claude.” She hung her head so her friends couldn’t see her embarrassment. “My mother… she wasn’t pure Wolf. She was… she was half Husky.”

“So?” Jason asked the question.

“So when a hybrid shifter eats chocolate they go crazy and then they get crazy sick,” Claude explained.

Squeezing himself into his girlfriend’s hospital bed and wrapping himself around her protectively, Jason asked, “You’re a hybrid?” After Yvette nodded her confirmation, he continued. “I didn’t realize. You smell just like Wolf.”

“But I react like Dog, sometimes,” Yvie said quietly. “I ate Greta because I couldn’t stop myself, and then I got sick because of the guilt – she was a pack-mate even if she was a bitch.” Yvette used the word in the human way.

“So your chocolate allergy… it’s because… ?”

“Yep,” Yvette admitted ruefully. “It’s… it’s toxic to dogs.”

 

(This story was inspired by Thomas Jancis and Selena Taylor)
xrayed teeth

Egaeus’s Protege

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xrayed teeth

 

“You teach literature don’t you?” The question was casual, conversational.

Her answer was a terrified bobbing of her head, up and down. In her defense, the metal bracket holding her mouth open and her tongue out of the way prevented actual speech.

“You know the Poe story ‘Berenice?'”

Another uncontrolled nod. Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth and he used a clean, white handkerchief to dab it away, then grimaced when he noticed that the bubbles of saliva held traces of blood from the metal cutting into the corners of her mouth. Untidy, that.

“He did it wrong, the man in that story.” He kept the conversation going as he reached for his favorite pliers. Needle-nose, with a cushioned grip. “He waited until she was buried before he went after his prizes. Miraculous that she still had all of them intact, especially considering the general lack of medical care or balanced diets in that era.”

The brunette with the wide brown eyes twisted frantically in her chair, but the zip-ties didn’t have a millimeter of give in them. She was there to stay.

“Grave-digging is such filthy work. Mud and bugs and gore… much easier to choose a live subject.” He leaned over her, pushed stray hair away from her sweat-soaked brow with almost tender care. “This is going to be… extremely painful.”

The pliers closed around his selected target. Smiling as he worked he twisted, tugged… pulled… until his quarry came free, root and all.

“Your dentist must be very good, my dear,” he said to the woman whose screams couldn’t quite make it past her throat. He lowered his voice to a reverent whisper: “You have lovely bicuspids.”

He let the small, white object fall into a metal bowl.

He expected that she’d react to the sound, but his expectation was met with great silence.

She had fainted.

No matter, she would wake soon enough, and they’d begin again. Wash, rinse, repeat, until he had all thirty-two.

Old Egaeus would have been proud.

Image copyright: radub85 / 123RF Stock Photo
Victorian Woman on a Shingle Beach by Lee Avison

The Lady of La Paz

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Victorian Woman on a Shingle Beach by Lee AvisonThis is a true story… mostly.

Almost every year, during late spring or early summer, I visit my mother at her home in La Paz, BCS, Mexico.

Every so often, on these visits, I see something surprising.

One year, I even saw a ghost. I call her The Lady of La Paz.

The first time I saw the Lady was during the moon tide, when the water crept high up onto the beach, over the road, settling into pools of liquid silver.

An airplane was flying low over the bay, heading toward the airport – the last plane of the night – and as its angle of descent shifted, its lights caught the wisps of the clouds that were still shrouding the moon, protecting us from the full power of its glow.

Closer and closer the plane came, the bright front light changing the shapes of the shore, making creatures of the mangroves, and turning the shadows into living things.

And that’s when she made her first appearance.

Her face was hidden by a veil, but the shape of her hat was unmistakable, as were the lines of her turn-of-the-century dress. She held a parasol.

Her pace was steady, every step measured and sure, picking her way across the hard-packed sand, following the cone of light the airplane was casting ground-ward.

Just as she reached the point, the beam of light that held her began too thin, and her form to waver, as if she was dissipating on the faint breeze.

That’s when the clouds finally melted entirely away, and the Lady turned to stare out to sea.

She never looked my way. I never heard her voice.

Somehow, though, I knew – I knew – that she was waiting – searching – pining for her lost love.

I held my breath and watched, willing a man in a fedora to emerge from the waves and take her into his arms.

But of course he never came.

And when the moon left the sky to the sun, she faded into daylight.

When I told my parents about seeing the Lady, my mother mentioned that she’d seen her, too, on the nights of the full moon. My step-father, on the other hand insisted it was just a trick of the light, a happy merging of surf and fog and the lights from the plane.

I suppose I’ll never know for sure if the Lady of La Paz was real, or just a figment of my vivid imagination.

The part of me that lives in the world of computers and technology and social media knows that moonlit nights and moon tides can do funny things to our perceptions. The part of me that still, deep down, believes in the possibility of ghosts and soulmates wants there to still be magic in the world.

And who’s to say? Maybe the Lady was real at one point. In my head, she’s a pianist, a daughter of the family that owned the gold mine in El Triunfo, a student of Francisca Mendoza’s, and her lover is someone her parents would never approve of, a miner perhaps, or a seaman who helped to bring pianos to Baja Sur.

I keep telling myself that someday I’ll write their story, and then they will become real.

And until then?

If you’re walking on a certain stretch of beach in Baja Sur – the one with the view of El Mogote and the city lights in La Paz –  and you happen to find a full moon above you, and a moon tide lapping at your toes, keep careful watch as the last plane flies low over the water, en route to the airport.

You might see the Lady on her evening walk, holding her parasol just so, and waiting for her love.

 

 

monster under the bed

Flash-fic: The Rules

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monster under the bed

 

“Harry, remember, it’s only your first night. No one expects you to be perfect. Just go, growl, and get out.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Avoid the light… it won’t actually cause you to combust, but it can still hurt you. Remember what happened to Daniel? He was looking up at the closet ceiling when his assigned Child turned the light on. He was bulb-blind for days. Kept bumping into furniture… nearly got caught.”

“Avoid the light,” Harry repeated dutifully. “Got it, Mom.”

“And don’t forget about the Rules.”

“The rules?”

“Harry, we’ve been over this a fafillion times. If the Child is sipping water, they are Protected. If the Child has stuffed animals they are Protected…” His mother saw him roll his eye. “What?”

“The… stuffed animals… they aren’t Real animals, are they?”

“Of course not, Harry. They’re made of plush and foam and fluff.”

“Are you sure? Because Becky said – ”

“Harold M. Puddle, how many times have I told you that your sister makes up these stories just to bait you. The stuffed animals are not Real.”

“Then how can they Protect?”

“Because Children have Imaginations, Harry. And they Believe.”

“I thought Imagination was what we were made of.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“So if they can Believe we are under their beds or in their closets, and  Believe the stuffed animals are Real…” Harry had a scary thought. “Mom? What if they Believe that we aren’t Real?”

“Hush, youngster. You might as well wonder whether dragons really breathe fire. Some things simply Are.”

“Okay.” He straightened his posture and held out his claw-tipped paws. “Do I look fearsome enough?”

“Oh, very much so,” his mother assured. She pulled him close and gave him a slurpy kiss. “I’m so proud of you, Harry. You’re not even eight hundred yet, and you’ve been assigned your own Child. Just don’t forget about the Blankets.”

Harry knew about those, but his eye grew wider anyway. “Mom?”

“It’s the biggest Rule there is. A Child under Blanket Protection must never be touched. If your Child is under Blankets, what do you do?”

“Go, growl, get out,” Harry repeated the advice she’d given him a few minutes before. But he had a question, “What if… what if a Hand or a Foot isn’t Covered?”

“Well, some of the most experienced Monsters sometimes tickle a Child’s Foot or brush their fur against a Child’s Hand, but you shouldn’t try that on your first night. If the Child wakes up, and you get caught you’ll be sent back to remedial hunting. No one wants to spend their entire life chasing Cats and Dogs.”

Harry had met some of the remedial hunters. They ended up patchy and toothless. He definitely didn’t want that. “I promise not to try it… at least not tonight.”

“Good for you, Harry. Now remember, you’re scary, you’re stealthy, and you can make Children scream.”

“I’m scary,” he repeated. “I’m stealthy. And I can make Children scream.”  He took a deep breath. “Okay, Mom… here I go.”

He stepped onto the Ladder that would take him into the Attic and then into the Closet in the Child’s room, repeating it as he went. “Scary. Stealthy. Scream…”

As the Trap Door opened, Harry heard his mother’s voice, “I love you Harry.”

Harry grimaced happily.  I love you, too, Mom, he thought. Here I go.

 

Image copyright: innovatedcaptures / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Hello October

Hello October

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Hello October

 

The song says to “wake me up when September ends,” and it has, it has, and with the ticking of a clock and the changing of a calendar page, my second-favorite month of the year has arrived.

October, when even though the daily highs reach into the 80s, the evenings are cool enough for pajamas. October, when even the days in the early part of the month are pumpkin-scented and come with a background track of crunching leaves and whispering trees, and the shadows might – just might – be hiding something a little bit scary, a little bit otherworldly, a little bit dangerous.

I have no desire to live inside a horror movie or inhabit the pages of a horror novel, but I like to flirt with the macabre, so this month, I’ll be playing in the HorrorDailies sandbox. It’s a new-ish month-long project from the folks at Holidailies, but with a darker twist.

Expect a collection of Halloween memories and seasonal flash-fiction. If you have a concept or a topic you’d like me to play with, leave a comment here, or track me down on Facebook or Twitter. I’d love to hear from you.

Happy Hauntings.

 

Image copyright: katerinakorovina / 123RF Stock Photo
Insomnia

Creativity-Induced Insomnia

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I wasn’t going to do anything intense this month. I mean, yes, August is always the month when my creativity comes back like dandelions in a suburban lawn – profuse and persistent – but this morning (yeah, you read that right: morning) my muse, or at least the creative part of my brain is also downright persnickety.

 

I mean, it’s 6:43 in the morning and I’ve been up for more than an hour, which would be great if I actually WANTED to be awake, but I don’t. I want to be asleep, curled up with my husband, who, as I type this, is blissfully snoring away on his side of the bed.

It’s really kind of unfair.

Especially since I took half a dose of Benadryl at 1:43 this morning so I could breathe, an amount that typically renders me unconscious for the better part of a night and into the morning.

Tonight, though? It wired me.

Insomnia

So for three-and-a-half hours i tossed and turned and tried every trick I know in order to lull myself to sleep, except singing myself a lullaby, because everyone knows that if you’re the one singing you just wake up more.

Look, I know – I know – I shouldn’t be complaining about having so many projects firing up my brain right now, especially since I have friends who aren’t even getting postcards from their muses, let alone actual sparks or ideas or insights. And really, if I could give them just a couple of hours of this weird energy, I totally would.

Frankly, I could use the break.

Or at least, I could use a nap.

But instead of sleeping, I’m typing this in the dark (I like to write in bed.) And of course – of course – now that I’ve decided to be productive, sleepiness has come oozing back in, enticing me with its siren call.

“Melissa,” it says, “come back to bed. You know you want to.”

I refrain from pointing out that technically, I’m still in bed. Sleep doesn’t really care for the facts.

So I give up. I’m letting sleep have a second (third, fourth, twelfth) chance. I’m clicking “publish, and then I’m turning out the light (again) and nestling under the covers (again) to try and ignore the snores from Fuzzy that are adorable when I’m wide awake and infuriating when I’m trying not to be.

Insomnia.

My fickle muse’s new best friend.

eclipse

Sunday Brunch: August Nocturne

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eclipse

 

When All Things Girl still existed, I had a regular column called “Sunday Brunch.” Well, the core team of ATG launched a new ezine, Modern Creative Life, in March, and I’m writing “Sunday Brunch” over there once a month. Here’s an excerpt from this month’s post:

With the flip of a calendar page (or a swipe of finger on a smartphone) July is gone for another year, and it is August, my month. The first summer month when, even though the sun is still reluctant to set, the days are discernably shorter, and the nights incrementally longer.

I’ve always been attuned to the night. While some people are morning people, happy and chirpy at first light, the only time I typically see dawn is when I haven’t yet been to bed. I have never been afraid of darkness; rather I crave it.

I come by it naturally.

The night before I was born, there was a full moon and an eclipse. If that doesn’t lock you into a special relationship with nighttime, I don’t know what does. (Recently, I asked my mother if she remembered any of that, and she reminded me that she’d been a little preoccupied with being in labor.)

You can read the rest of the post at Modern Creative Life, and if you’re so inclined, consider submitting an essay, poem, or piece of short fiction to our next issue, which launches in September and has the theme of  Wisdom.

 

 

Image copyright: solerf / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Hands Holding a Mug of Tea or Coffee

Wind and Peppermint

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It’s just after midnight, and if the moon isn’t quite full it’s so close to it that it’s not worth it to quibble. From our bedroom, I text my husband in his upstairs office/man-cave. “I’m bored,” I type. “Wanna make out?”

“I’m all sniffly,” he texts back. “Sniffly and blechy. It wouldn’t be fun for you.”

“True,” I respond. After a beat, I rapid fire another message. “Want some peppermint tea? Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes.”

“Sure,” he says.

Hands Holding a Mug of Tea or CoffeeI leave our bedroom, escorted by a posse of pooches who all want to do their nighttime business. I pause to fill our electric kettle and turn it on, and then I open the sliding door that leads to the back yard.

As the dogs rush past me into the moonlight night, a gust of wind washes over me. It isn’t particularly hot in the house – we don’t have heat or a/c running – but that blast of fresh air is as cooling, as invigorating as the salt spray I used to feel when we played on the jetty at Sandy Hook, or stood at the end of the Ocean Grove pier. It only lacks that salty, coastal tang, to be the perfect breeze.

My husband comes into the kitchen just as the kettle finishes boiling. “Pour the water, would you?” I ask him, and I hear him doing just that.

Me? I’m still standing in the doorway, drinking in the wind, watching the trees get tossed back and forth, listening to the different pitches of the jingling dog-tags on the animals and the metal wind chimes hanging inside the house, and out.

I feel his warmth as he comes to stand behind me. “Enjoying the wind?”

“I love this weather,” I tell him, even though he knows I live for storms and blustery days. “It’s going to be 85 tomorrow. I’m not ready for summer.”

“Ugh, me either.”

We stand there a while, and then he brings the dogs inside and beds them down, and I carry our mugs to the table. “Bring the honey, please?” I request, “And a little dish for our teabags?”

The sliding door remains open, just far enough that the wind can flirt with us, but the dogs who aren’t in bed can’t wander back out. (Max doesn’t like to come inside at night.)

Fuzzy and sit at the kitchen table, sipping peppermint tea and letting the wind keep us company while we chat about nothing for a few minutes. Then he gets up. “I left a program running,” he says. He takes his half-finished mug of tea with him, but he kisses me before he leaves.

As for me, I stay at the kitchen table, surrounded by the soft sounds of the night, spinning stories on my laptop.

 

Image Copyright: dedivan1923 / 123RF Stock Photo

Dinner Music

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I wrote this after a trip back east in 2009, but if I posted it then, it got lost in an archive save, because I don’t have it anywhere. I found it when I was looking for a piece of flash-fiction to edit into something else, and decided to post it anyway.  Aunt Molly, mentioned in the piece, died in 2015 at the age of 105.

The comforting burbling of a percolating coffee pot is the bass note to a symphony played by silver, ceramic, and porcelain softly clinking against each other. It’s the kind of sound most people would never notice, but in an Italian family, the dining table isn’t just where food is spread, but where all the good conversation happens, and conversations like that don’t exist without coffee and pastry – cheesecake is preferred, but a crumb cake will do.

Last month, I spent eight days on the east coast, first at my aunt’s wedding, which occurred in a rambling old, cold summer house in Amagansett, NY, and then in and around a small fishing village in New Jersey, which was once mainly populated by summer folk as well, though now most of the homes are occupied year-round.

In both places, while there was singing to be heard, and various forms of recorded music as well, the melodies that mattered were those created as we sipped endless cups of coffee, nibbled on a broad array of desserts (including crumb cake), and chattered into the wee hours of the morning, picking up threads of conversations that had been dropped decades before, or simply starting new ones.

In an Italian-American family, all the good stuff happens after dinner, when the food has been cleared away, and dessert has largely dwindled to a few crumbs. As a child, I would have been sent to bed before any of the really dishy conversation, but I have fond memories of hunkering down on the red-carpeted steps of my grandmother’s house, hiding behind the tall hutch that was set against the staircase, listening to the mix of English spoken in a New Jersey Neopolitan accent and Italian uttered in short phrases and single words, that nevertheless managed to convey images of sunny hillsides, deep red wine, and round, ripe tomatoes.

I remember my grandfather’s voice, belting from the diaphragm as he told a story, or corrected someone else’s version of a tale, or merely laughed. I remember my grandmother referring to my older cousins, as well as my mother and her siblings, as scooch (pest) or scocciamento (pain in the ass – pr. scooch-a-mende), or merely referring to someone as a “miserable wretch.” I remember laughter, always laughter, even on the saddest days. The concept of laughter through tears might have been mentioned in the movie Steel Magnolias, but Italian-American women live it on a daily basis.

As I grew older, I was allowed to have a seat at the after-dinner table – to play my part in the “Coffee Klatsch Cantata,” as it were. I remember rousing games of Canasta and Scrabble, and I also remember hearing stories about relatives who often were only names to me, or faces in faded photographs.

Being back in New Jersey wasn’t just visiting, it was, in many senses, going home. My grandparents may no longer be on this Earth, but my great-aunt Molly is ninety-nine and a half years old, and still remembers every story, every relative, every connection. Sure, she can’t walk any more, but she still smells of Taboo perfume and rice pudding, is always impeccably dressed, and if she falls asleep in her easy chair listening to the Italian-language news on TV that’s okay, because if you put her at the kitchen table and hand her a cup of coffee, she’ll instantly be bright-eyed, alert, and ready to trade memory for memory until the last crumb of cake is gone, and the percolator has grown cold.

As much as the folk music and show tunes I still sing, this is the music I grew up with. The harmonies made not by strings and percussion, but by the rise and fall of voices in conversation while food is being shared around a kitchen table.

It’s not you; It’s me.

by

I’ve hesitated to write anything that feels like a Holidailies wrap-up, because I sort of fizzled out of participation this year. While I laud Richard and JeniPurr for keeping the project and the community going, I just didn’t feel very connected to it this year, which is a shame, because it’s the decade of Holidailies writings that morphed into my book.

I don’t blame anyone but myself. I’m just feeling really hermit-ish this winter. I didn’t decorate my Christmas tree until I absolutely had to, and if I weren’t having guests – beloved guests – on Sunday, I’d be itching to take everything down, even though it’s not yet Epiphany.

I wrote a short story for a fan community I belong to, which seems silly, but I use it as a playground to stretch myself – write in different voices, experiment with with different points of view, different structures. It’s a good way to learn and grow without having to spend tons of time world-building.

But none of that has to do with the new year.

2015 was a challenging year for me. It’s the first year in which I’ve had hardly any paid gigs, but it’s also the first year in which I really focused on writing, so I think, in the end, it was a good year.

I mean, I published a book.
And I bought a guitar.
And made several new friends.
And made my marriage even stronger.

So, if I’m having issues with a favorite holiday project being unsatisfying this year, it’s all on me.
And actually, I’m okay with that.

Here’s to a new year. May it be full of wonder and joy.
And just a few surprises, to keep us all on our toes.

Holidailies 2015