THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS_HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER BLOGFEST

This is my entry for Justin W. Parente's HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER blogfest :

http://jwparente.blogspot.com/2010/09/birthday-wishes-and-more.html


(I twisted the phrase : Hook, Line, and Sinker to mean

the beginning, middle, and end of a novel or story.

It's the rebellious Texican in me.

I didn't want to punish my readers with a 1000 words. That's the Boy Scout in me.

The teacher in me wanted to paint a lesson in brushstrokes of prose :

The beginning must entice.

The middle must sustain interest, while foreshadowing the end.

And the ending must strike an evocative chord in the heart and mind of the reader.

The following excerpts are from a short story detailing the adventures of the last Lakota shaman, Wolf Howl, in the very near future.} :


SHORT STORY : THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

BEGINNING --

When she was thunder in the distance, I awoke. When her laughter was lightning above me, I knew fear. When both front tires to the bus blew, I saw her face in the night.

The Turquoise Woman was angry at the White Man.

Again.

Luckily, I was not a White Man. Or not so lucky.

I was on the bus.

***
MIDDLE --

I led the little girl, Abby, past the moaning passengers yet alive. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. Some begged me to help. I ignored them.

Abby whispered, "Aren't you gonna help them?"

"I am not a priest or a psychiatrist."

"That's supposed to tell me something, right?"

"The color of their thoughts is death."

She paled. "You can read thoughts?"

"I am not a Peeping Tom. I limit myself to observing the colors of thoughts not their substance."

She looked at me. "What colors are your GrandMother's thoughts?"

"The colors of her thoughts are the Northern Lights."

"Well, whoop-de-doo for her. What about mine?"

I mussed her hair sadly. "They could use some scrubbing."

"Says you."

We passed the soldier on leave. I sighed. He had survived Iraq, only to die on a "safe" bus ride. There was a life lesson there if I cared to look deep enough.

I didn't.
***
ENDING --

I reached out and tenderly stroked the dead girl's still warm cheek. From the cliff of our birth we keep falling, falling.

Abby had hit bottom sooner than most. It was a world of sorrows because we made it so.

I tried to see some echo of the innocence that had once been hers. I couldn't find it, only a hard hollowness to the eyes I slowly closed.

Perhaps that innocence had died with her grandfather.

Perhaps it had been choked bit by bit by her Mossad trainers, her handlers. Had they fed her on lies until her heart had starved to death?

I fought another sigh. She had died from their last lie : that the Turquoise Woman was a projection of my will.

I shook my head sadly. I never killed the young, while they comprised the majority of GrandMother's victims. To say that she and I held different views of life was an understatement.

GrandMother, The Turquoise Woman, sounded puzzled. "You knew that she was one of the Mossad team all along?"

I nodded. "The color of her thoughts was always death. Always."

From the heart of the dark woods, Bu, the Owl, cried in the voice of the recent dead.
***