"Under the Dogwood Tree" #Fridayflash

Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com

It began with a family picnic on that cool November day. Gray shredded clouds lay feathered against the elusive blue of sky. Frosty eddies of air mingled with scents of cinnamon and apple pie, buttery mashed potatoes and sweet raspberry lemonade. A deep-broiled brisket, browned and tender with gravy awaited us as we picked our way through the old cemetery that occupied the corner of Pinecroft and Hillsbury. Warm summer had persisted through the weeks prior to the day and emboldened by a confident forecast, we’d settled on this day to gather and eat in the waning sunshine.

Ours was a strange custom, born of generations encouraged to remain close to those that had gone before us. Memorial parks were still parks after all, and with the headstones flat and nestled in among the freshly-cut turf, one could pretend this was only a place in which to rejoice in the bounties of life.

Lilly, with her little velvet coat and matching dusky rose ribbon in her gold-spun hair, walked with Theodore in his gentle navy blue frock to compliment his dark curls and shining leather uppers. My children. I’d brought them along with Anthony, my loving husband of more than twenty years. His urn sat silent and patient as I chattered to it as if he were lying in the grass beside me. I knew his bones were ash; he never wanted to lie rotting in the ground as his father before him. Still, dinner was had here in Hillcroft Memorial Park, a clever combination of names from the two intersecting streets, and Anthony came along, though he never had much to say.

I glanced up to watch Theodore and Lilly hop over gravestones and relate spooky stories to one another, their high voices carrying bits of their tales to me over the breeze. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate Anthony’s portion anyway. Today was special.

After the children returned to settle and eat, we cleaned our area and locked the basket in the car. Anthony came with us.

“Did you find it?” I asked Lilly, older by two years than her smaller brother.

She blinked and pointed in a direction and we detoured our path. Under the spread embrace of a dogwood tree, I spotted it. The children broke away to reach it before I did. A simple square, set in the ground, blades of grass drooping inward to it. I regarded the urn in my hand. A tear escaped to slide down my cheek.

Only now could I afford to lay him to rest not rotting. He was dust already. Memories of his laugh, his smile, his hand on my cheek raced through my mind. A year. Nothing more. An unstoppable sequence of days, carrying him away from us.

I knelt beside the hole and set the urn in place.

Next year’s picnic, we would eat under the dogwood tree.

"Resurrection" #Fridayflash

Photo credit: click from morguefile.com

The earth lay covered over with a blanket of fresh-fallen snow. Grave diggers cleared away a patch and broke ground. They worked well into the day, their sweat and breath steaming in the chilly air. When they’d finished, a doorway stood open, sunk into the ground. A haven for the dead. A subterranean bed. A regal casket was carried out by solemn pallbearers, silver watch chains winking in the gloom of black. Fingerprints marring the elegant brass handles were wiped clean with a white handkerchief, produced from an unknown pocket.

Mourners stood in quiet rows, swaying to hypnotic drone of the priest’s eulogy. He blessed the raw earth’s open wound.

I am the Resurrection and the Life.

The coffin sank into the earth on whispering pulleys.

I am the Resurrection and the Life.

Holy water rained down without a sound.

A sharp cry from one of the onlookers punched through the priest’s words. The woman fainted. Prayer continued, though no one was listening.

Light faded from the heavens. The ceremony had come to the final words.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

The fragile form within the luxurious box was sandwiched between heaven and hell, forever locked in earth’s embrace.

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust.

A star shot through the yawning sky. Gentle mists of dew shook from the upper branches of trees in the early morning breeze. Birds  stirred and flitted about overhead, busy already capturing fleeing insects. They chirruped like crickets themselves, obviously pleased with the day’s bounty.

It was a golden sunrise, like the exterior curve of a ripe apple from the fabled Herculean myth. Shrouds of woolen clouds framed the skies, idyllic and yet ignorant in their silent grandeur.

Day returned.

"The Light" - A Paranomal #Fridayflash

Photo credit: streetfishing from morguefile.com

Rain spattered over the cooling hood like blood, tinted carmine and blue alternately by rotating lights. Stein got out of the car. Ahead of him lay a dead woman marked pale and still by the patrol car’s headlights. He greeted the officer and together they gazed absently at the grisly scene before them.  Her dress, once a deep blue satin, was ripped and sullen. The impact had left her barefoot, as being struck by a speeding vehicle often would. The chance-shower paused, as if catching a breath.

“Around what time was she found?” Stein dipped his fingers into the inside pocket of his wool overcoat to fish out a cigarette. A stray breeze caught the Zippo’s flame, wrestling with the golden tongue before he cupped his hand over the determined tiny fire. The dead woman’s blonde hair was soaked in almost equal halves of blood and rain.

“Around midnight.” The officer’s badge read C. Johnson. His face may as well been carved in flint. He dragged his dark fingers up under his plastic-covered police cap through the wiry salt-and-pepper hairs, reseating it on his head afterwards. “The coroner estimates time of death to be about nine yesterday evening, but the cold could be fucking with her temperature.”

Stein grunted in assent, his eyes dazzled again and again by the camera flash as a photographer captured each fatal detail. The dead woman’s diamond wedding ring cast off a shine like a distant star.

“The driver never stopped. No signs of braking at all. Since the road is so far out, we’re figuring it took hours for the next motorist to drive by and see her lying there.”

Stein shrugged. “Or there were more, but you know people…they don’t like to get involved.”

Johnson snorted. “They would have had to drive around her then, with her right there in the middle of the road.”

Blood pooled around the dead woman’s head, sticky and diluted from the light shower. The cleaners were attempting to separate her body from the blacktop. Stein exhaled a plume of smoke and dropped the cigarette at his feet, fating the fading glow into final darkness on the damp pavement.

The crime scene dissipated like fog in the sun. He turned to the woman who stared with wide eyes, her fingers covering her mouth.  Her deep blue dress lay in solemn folds against her legs. She stepped forward on tentative bare feet.

“Do you remember anything?” Stein considered lighting another cigarette, then decided against it. He stood patient, awaiting the woman’s response. She’d stopped at the edge of where the blood stain had been moments before.

She shook her head. “Teddy and I were fighting—he said some words. We were on our way to my mother’s. He was saying awful things about her.” She turned to face Stein, her makeup smeared in black tracks over her pallid cheeks with tears.

“Go on…”

“I told him that if he hated her so much he shouldn’t have come. He told me he didn’t trust me driving alone. We argued.”

“And then what?”

“He…hit me. He was yelling terrible things. He stopped the car and told me to get out.”

“And did you?”

She nodded. “Yes. He drove off and left me there on the side of the road.” She tucked her bottom lip behind her teeth. “The next thing I knew, you were there. Waiting for me.”

“That’s what I do. Wait.” Stein put an arm around her shoulder, walking her back to his car. Long and low, people said about it when asked. Black, or the deadest shade of purple they’d ever saw. He opened the passenger door and she lowered herself into the ashen seat. Stein got in behind the wheel. Cool blue light washed over his features as the engine rumbled into life. “I’ll get you to where you need to go next.”

The woman instinctively reached for her seatbelt, but found there was none. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home.” He glanced at her huddled against the door with eyes the color of tombstones. “Your name is Allis Forn. You died in 1979. Do you know what today’s date is?”

“No…what is it?”

He told her and she broke into tears. Thirty-two years she’d waited.

They drove towards the light.

The Big Sleep, a #Fridayflash

So I did without a little sleep here and there. The extra hours were great for productivity—those hours after the wee one went to bed and before the sun came in to bid me do the Devil’s work at Big Name Corporation. Driving was the hardest part. Icy cold a/c spewing from the vents in December, shaking my head back and forth to rattle out the snooze spiderwebs. Acid metal in July. Windows all the way down as I yanked my aching, splintering bones through another bitch of a day.

I figured it out. How to not sleep. The best thing ever, because I could just keep working. Burning my candle at both ends ’til what I had left was a puddle of flaming wax searing the skin from my hands. It was a breakthrough.  Everyone left me be when they realized I’d discovered that magical secret. They were obviously jealous of me.

It wasn’t until the men from the bank came to collect the things from my house that I fully understood the permanence of what I’d done.

Photo credit: wintersixfour from morguefile.com

Goiter Ghost, a #Fridayflash

Morning Bob, how’s that woman coming along? You read her the Riot Act like I told you?

Yeap and she didn’t like it one bit. Took the kids and went to her mother’s.

She’s an ornery one, that Regina.

That woman wasn’t just the orneriest thing out there in the swamp. There was that ghost goiter, Sangerria.

--like a real ghost?

Yes like a real ghost, now shut up, you’re breakin’ the ambulance. 

Don’t you mean ambivalence?

Whatever. Me and Johnny grabbed our bibles and rifles and took on off out there in Jim’s old T so we could get a good look at the Devil.

You can’t see the Devil, Bob.

I know that but that goiter had to be the next best thing. Pale as a corpse with yellow eyes. It snapped and hissed at the both of us but we held fast. See, there was a screwdriver buried deep in its side. It was in a heap of pain and probably dying.

So what’d you do? Pull it out and make friends?

Hell no. We did what any self-respecting country boys would’ve done. We had him for dinner.



(Photo credit: gxman from morguefile.com)

Shade

Something about my life traded in a parade of egos and glittering trail of what could be disturbs me. A piece of the pie, tin star in my eyes, reaching for that next branch in the tree. Take time to assess the damage of being me, around me, inside me, and figure out if you come out on top.

Stop.

I'm closing the door, pulling up anchor and departing golden shores to give this black mist in the distance its due. Without a fucking clue I'll drive all night if it'll only lead me to where I was supposed to be. A little bit of me in encased in words and typography on my screen. A breath I made extends half way across my universe and darker things lurk in shade where it's just a little bit cooler.

A few degrees.

"Race" #Fridayflash

Brit slipped on his racing gloves, smoking a cigarette down to the filter, only to light another one. His knuckles strained against the English leather, fingers clamped tight atop the steering wheel.

“He's not going to show after all.” He smirked, relaxing slightly. Cockiness reared its pointed head and he took a nip from the silver flask in his inside jacket pocket. The blue 'Stang purred around him in approval. Nothing could beat his car. Underneath the hood he had a secret. A little switch under the dash. One flick and he was gone daddy gone.

Thunder rolled in off the highway. A deep rumble drifting up to the precipice. Ghastly blue reflected off the scraggly weeds clinging to life on the rocky edges.

“I'll be damned,” Brit growled and popped the handbrake.

The stranger rolled up next to him and tipped his hat. Lightning flashed overhead without the barest threat of rain. Brit shivered and gave a curt nod to his opponent.

Cindy went to stand between the two cars, short plaid skirt whipping in the breeze. Her fishnets were torn, exposing white flesh. She pulled a scarf from around her wrist and raked her blonde hair from one cheek to blow Brit a kiss. He heard the stranger's laugh.

The scarf went up. Then down.

Cindy was pelted with thousand of tiny bits of rock and dirt as the two muscle cars blew out of there, nose-and-nose, flank-to-flank. Tires scudded on the dirt, chrome flashing as both cars gained purchase at the same time. Brit had to admit, the old man was good. He dug the gearshift into fourth and the 'Stang screamed in response, ripping it up to fifth again once he'd gained on the stranger. The 'Stang chomped up the dirt, snarling as Brit pushed it to redline. He flipped on the radio and cranked up a metal song, riding the high that only this kind of race could provide.

The stranger cut him off at the curve, snapping back into first place. Brit cursed and slapped the wheel. The ass end of the 'Stang skidded in a half-arc before Brit commandeered it back into submission. The stranger had no brake lights.

They broke out of the turn clawing for lead, the stranger's ghoulish Dodge pissing blue flame, dwindling arcs of cerulean embers left to bounce to nothingness in the rearview. A cold bead of sweat rolled down in Brit's left eye and he brushed it away. He could see the shimmer of the violet haze as he pulled to the stranger's rear wheel on his side. The inside of the car was black as a sack of crows.

The straightaway loomed ahead and Brit flipped the switch, releasing the nitro into the engine. The 'Stang shrieked and rocketed forward. He laughed like a madman as he saw the black Dodge fall behind, until the headlights were two little dots in the mirror.

The nitrous gave out almost as quick as it'd kicked in and the 'Stang's speed fell. The finish was up ahead somewhere. Brit peered through the dirty windshield and didn't see the black Dodge fly up behind him.

Metal collided with a sick crunch, and Brit was thrown forward into the steering wheel. He downshifted and tried to shake his tail but the stranger might as well been painted there. Another impact, and Brit busted his lip on his own skull ring. He tried to brake, but they didn't respond. The 'Stang went faster.

They blew past the waiting victory committee and out towards the mesa's edge. The stranger showed no relent and kept his nose up Brit's tailpipe, smashing into it every now and then. Brit'd go left, the black Dodge would swerve left. Brit swung to the right and the stranger would smash into him until he went straight again. The end of the road showed in his headlights. Brit shit his pants as he drove through the barrier.

The fall took forever.