DOES DEATH WEEP AT CHRISTMAS?_Friday's Romantic Challenge

Here is my entry for FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

{I NEED A CHANGE} :
http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html
{This is my spectral Christmas In August tale,

spotlighting Samuel McCord, the man with the blood of Death in his veins.

DayStar, his Moriarity if you would,

is the being from outside Time itself who has the peculiar delusion that he is Lucifer.

Samuel is the narrator.}
It was Christmas Eve. A lonely church bell was tolling midnight in the silvery distance. Meilori's was dark.

I sent everyone away. No one but me to die when my Christmas guest arrived.

DayStar had announced his coming earlier that evening with a gift at the front door :

A dead baby in a manger with the word "Midnight" written in blood on its tiny forehead.

The ceiling speakers murmured the recording of Meilori playing the "Moonlight Sonata." She left me with only haunting memories and this one lone recording the night she walked out of my life.

The lights died. The music stopped. I straightened in my chair. My last showdown. It came to every Ranger. Time to face it with courage.

"Hello, DayStar," I smiled.

A tarnished gold voice sneered in the darkness, "Hello, Samuel. Ready to die?"

"I died seven years ago."

"Ah, yes, when your beloved Meilori stormed out of your life. Wasn't she the one who professed, though she were dead, still she would be at your side at the end?"

I watched him shrouded in shadows, just barely making him out. He looked this way and that.

"The end has come and look : no Meilori."

"You're wrong."

I tapped my chest and head. "She's right here and here."

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting.

Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night.

The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other.

But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse.

And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for."

His smile flashed like a knife from out of the shadows. "You still die alone."

A boy's happy laugh sounded from just outside Meilori's.

Strolling easy through the saloon doors like the wild gypsy he was, Victor Standish laughed as if at the funniest joke in the world. "Wrong! Boy, would you be lousy on JEOPARDY."

"Victor," I snapped. "You promised you'd leave."

He flashed me that scamp's smile of his. "And I left. I never said anything about not coming back."

Alice Wentworth solidified beside him, and he stiffened, "You promised to let me come alone."

Her neon-blue eyes sparkled with the burning love that only the young can have.

"And so I let you come alone. But there is nowhere you will go, Victor, that I will not follow. Not even to meet the devil himself."

DayStar laughed as if all his dreams had come true. "Oh, Samuel, you get to see the young lovers die first."

Victor shook his head, picking up the now living, giggling baby from the manger.

"Sorry to disappoint you, your Hind-Ass. But Mother promised me she'd pass over this place tonight."

His face went as hard as his past life. "You know like she did way back when in Ancient Egypt."

His gypsy's face lit with a grin.

"When your Mother is the Angel of Death, well, let's just say her Christmas presents can literally take your breath away ... or not."

Alice hugged him. I wanted to. Instead I just winked in approval.

And that is how DayStar had his second-worst Christmas Eve.
***

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

THIS JUST IN!THE LAST SHAMAN is

#73 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Native American

Sometimes it feels as if there isn't any hope, doesn't it?

Wendy Tyler Ryan once had an intriguing post http://waitingforpublication.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-dont-think-they-know.html

Donna Hole had another one some time back (and no, not just because she mentioned me ... well, maybe a little.)
http://donnahole.blogspot.com/2010/11/nano-day-2-browsing-blog-roll.html

It does seem as if the publishing industry doesn't have any room for readers or writers interested in what the over-thirty dream, yearn, or struggle for.

Take Edward the sparkly 200 year old vampire. What does he see in a shallow, angst-filled, self-absorbed teenager? Isn't he really just a young looking pedophile?

Maxwell Perkins, editor of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, would have tossed Stephanie Meyers' work in the reject pile with a disgusted sigh.

But it is a different market : a youth-oriented, visual, me-generation market.

Everyone get up, look up at the night with its fading moon, and say it : CRAP!

All right, now that we have it out of our systems, what can we do?

There are several approaches :

1.) We use both a young protagonist and a mature mentor. Think AUNTIE MAME, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, the first STAR WARS. I chose this route with my THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH.

2.) Focus on an older protagonist with a youngster needing protection. Think THE ROAD, the new movie THE WARRIOR'S WAY, LONE WOLF AND CUB, and the Tom Hanks' movie, THE ROAD TO PERDITION.

3.) Use an intelligent adult for your protagonist and place him/her in a situation that chills the blood or staggers the imagination.

As in these two set-ups :

A) Your MC goes into a confessional, only to hear the priest babble about becoming Other, then the priest shoots himself.

Your MC throws the door of the confessional open only to see the priest is half-circuitry, melded into the very metal of the small room. One by one, all those your MC knows become Other in some strange way or other.

B) You wake up one morning, go to work, only to find your co-workers have faded like a photo left out too long in the sun. Day by day they fade more and more until they are all black and white, leaving you in a world full of color.

Worse, they become more and more dead-faced and robot-like until you catch them whispering ominously behind your back in a strange buzzing not unlike worker bees.


There is hope, fellow strugglers. THE LORD OF THE RINGS caught the hearts and minds of high schoolers and college-aged with hobbits, old wizards, dwarfs, elves, and a long-lived human named Aragon.

How can you bring hope to your novel?

Make the magic real. Even if your protagonist is older, keep a child-like sense of wonder and curiosity to his/her world.

And now, a little practical nuts-n-bolts advice that was sparked by Donna's post :

If you find yourself feeling hopeless with the words dammed up inside your wheel-spinning mind, it is probably caused by one of five things :

1) Overwork -
Stop writing for a few days. When you're ready to start singing tales into the night once more, you will know when the keyboard stops being forboding and starts to become a delightful toy again.

2) Boredom -
Put your novel down no matter how close you are to the finish line. Start that new idea that has been buzzing around in the back of your mind. Trust me. If your novel has begun to bore you, it will certainly bore the agent to whom you submit.

3) Self-Doubt -
Starting something new will work here as well. The joy of the new idea will spark your love of writing which led you into this profession in the first place. Then, read the first few new pages and see if you can find echoes of your old work in them.

After a few days of your new project, go back to where you were in your old novel. Read the five pages prior to your stop-point. Then, write on the novel again. It will be reborn. Trust me.

4) Financial Worries -
Tough one. No easy remedy here. You must solve them or lighten them somehow.

If it means stopping the writing to take a second job, then that is what you must do. Family comes first. Dreams second. Those months spent apart from your keyboard will sow your unconscious mind with new ideas.

5) Emotional Problems -
If charged relationships are shortcircuiting your muse, you must find a safe, neutral way to sit down with your loved one and talk through what is eating away at you.

It will clear the air between the two of you or bring a much-needed lance to a painful boil. Have a rear-exit stragedy already in place just in case things should go south. No relationship or person is or can be perfect. Look at areas where you can grow.

In the end, the only person you can change is yourself. Sometimes retreat is better than painful staying in an unhealthy situation or relationship.

There is hope ... for your writing ... for your life -- if only you do not give up on yourself and your own worth.
***


***

ALEX CAVANAUGH GETS A VISIT ... from me!

ALEX CAVANAUGH:
http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/

is getting company at 5 A.M. Friday ... ME.

I talk a bit how music plays a part in my END OF DAYS and

how it really plays a part in all of my writing.

Alex was gracious enough to be a good host and patiently listen.

Visit Alex yourselves so my presence won't cause a slump in his comments!

This is another Friday Challenge too:
THE PERFECT EX from END OF DAYS ...

{A continuation from the last challenge}

Alice Wentworth and the shade of Victor Standish have been grudgingly allowed one last dance before the warriors of High Fae Queen, Oyggia, sweep down upon them.

Sinend turned to her liege. “What harm could granting them a last dance do, Your Majesty?”

Her winter frost eyes grew contemplative. “None. And there actually may be profit for me in it.”

Victor snorted, “Well, we’ll dance anyway.”

“How, Victor?” I husked. “We cannot touch and there is no music.”

He winked. “No music? With me in your head, au contraire.”

A melodic, bitter-sweet waltz sang in my head with the sighing of violins, and I knew it was echoed in Victor’s as well.

“And touching?” I asked. “What shall we do about that?”

He smiled as sad as the tune in our heads.

“What we’ve done since we first met, Alice. We mirror one another, moving in sync one with the other, heart to heart, movement for movement.”

He held out his hand. I placed my hand above his misty one. We began to dance slowly and gracefully. Hot tears blinded me and hid his face from me. And yet, they did not, for I had his eyes ever before me, whether awake or asleep.

Our last dance was much like our whole love affair. We were so close, yet so far apart. Mirroring each other in step and heart, but forever separated by our very natures. Still, we moved as one, fluid and sweeping. The melancholy tune tugged at me soul-deep.

We danced in sweeping steps that took us all along the circle of hilt-clenching warriors. Victor ignored them. He studied me as if trying to memorize each gesture I made, every word I spoke. We whirled and twirled in a dance of love unlike the one of death Skeggjold and I had taken but moments before.

I drew in a breath I did not need as I swung in circles in our last waltz.

“Are you dead? Are you a ghost? Oh, I must know, Victor, what are you?”

“In love with you, Alice. Leave it at that.”

“No, I simply cannot die without knowing.”

His wavering form kept dancing but his face grew grim.

“You will weep bitter tears at the price of knowing, Alice. Do you still want me to tell you?”

“Yes! I will not die without knowing just how you come to be dancing with me, to have helped me these past days though all say you are dead.”

He and I danced as one, our feet seemingly floating above the still smoldering grass. He brushed my lips with his.

They tingled upon mine. There were tears of farewell in his eyes.

“I can see where you would have to know before you died.”

He closed his dark eyes for the briefest of moments, opened them, and then looked so sad into mine. “Remember those painful adjustments Magda gave you?”

I nodded, “Yes, when she mysteriously said they had made me into what I needed to be. But to be what, Victor?’

He sighed, “To be able to see the me that was within you.”

I almost sobbed, “I do not understand.”

He smiled as if the act hurt him. “Remember when to fight Abigail Adams, you became mist within me?”

“Yes, and I took on a part of your memories, your skills ….”

Victor interrupted, “ … took on a part of me, Alice. I’m the part of Victor you took with you that day. I stayed with you all this time.”

Oyggia cried out, “Yes! I can kill a soul echo!”

Victor spun from me in the flow of the music. I saw his intent. He was standing far from me so he alone would be hit by the queen’s savage energy blast.

His eyes. Oh, God, his eyes.

He was not afraid, not a bit. He knew Oyggia would do this. And yet, he told me anyway … because I asked him to.

Victor was calmly looking at me with all the love in his spectral heart. I was blown to the ground by Oyggia’s attack. The world became one enormous explosion.

When I opened my eyes, Victor was gone. Not even a flicker of a wavering image.
He was gone not just from in front of me.

I – I could no longer feel any trace of Victor within me. None at all. My heart felt cold stone. My chest, my soul was empty, alone.

Victor, my love, was truly dead. Dead.

I heard an animal wailing in pain. I went stiff with a sick realization. That was no animal. It was me.

Me.

Oyggia crowed in triumph as I wailed on my knees.

She sang the words, “We come to it at last. The End has come!”

I rose slowly to my feet.

“Oyggia, do you have the steel to fight someone who is looking you in the face?”

(Yes, Hell is about to be unleashed ... just not in the way anyone expects.}

THE WORLDS OF ROLAND YEOMANS

THE WORLDS OF ROLAND YEOMANS :

http://donnahole.blogspot.com/2011/12/worlds-of-roland-yoemans.html

DONNA HOLE has written a staggering, humbling, in-depth look at my linked worlds with their multiple heroes, many villains,

with one supernatural Hannibal Lector in the shadows, pulling strings and haunted by his own inner turmoil.

I cannot imagine the time, effort, and craft it took her to do this post. Just for the wonder of reading her own prose, go there.

I early on decided to gamble with my novels, to try something truly unique :

to set my heroes in a common World War that spans centuries and continents.

WORLD WAR II was not won by a single hero but by many valiant warriors, sacrificing much for the greater good. No one campaign won that war but several epic, sweeping ones.

IN LIKE MANNER :

My novels have multiple heroes, each driven by inner demons, overcoming them to defend those who cannot defend themselves -- for no one was there to defend them in the painful past.

Fallen, the last fae. Blake Adamson, clone of The Nazarene. Hibbs, the bear with two shadows.

Samuel McCord, undead Texas Ranger. Father Renfield, the vampire priest.

Victor Standish, son of the Angel of Death. Alice Wentworth, the Victorian ghoul.

They each fight separate battles against DayStar and his puppets.

Slowly, I am bringing them all together to fight in one last blazing climax with all reality in the balance ...

I have been building up to it as Marvel has been building up to next year's THE AVENGERS movie.

Come.

Join the good fight ... where "impossible" only gives birth to legends ...

where in the end, each of us must face the Darkness

alone

in that last great battle which waits for each soul.

***

A DOMINATRIX WET DREAM

"A DOMINATRIX WET DREAM"

is one term Donna Hole uses to describe my novel, LOVE LIKE DEATH.

The entire review of my novel and our email interview is scheduled

to appear in the Tuesday edition of her blog :

http://donnahole.blogspot.com/

Or you can see for yourself :

http://www.amazon.com/LOVE-LIKE-DEATH-ebook/dp/B00560LYHC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1311658166&sr=1-1

Check out Donna's review/interview. You won't be bored. I certainly wasn't. Have a great new week, everyone! Roland

HIBBS : A is for APPLAUSE!! THE LUCKY WINNERS ARE ...

Hibbs, the cub with no clue and all dancing feet, here!

Mr. Roland let me pick the names for the four autographed books.

Ah, my paws might've mangled up the entries a bit. But we could still make out the names :

MARGO BENSON wins the autographed Laurrel K. Hamiltion



HEATHER McCORKLE wins the DEAN KOONTZ autographed copy of ODD THOMAS



DONNA HOLE wins the NEIL GAIMAN authographed HANGING OUT WITH THE DREAM KING



and T. D. McFROST wins the JIM BUTCHER autographed WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE graphic novel



Mr. Roland says I win ...

an autographed copy of

THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS?

That is so NOT funny, Mr. Roland. Not even on April's Fool's Day!!

All you winners, email Mr. Roland your address so that he can mail you those autographed books! ***

HIBBS : ON THE ROAD AGAIN_TO DONNA HOLE'S BLOG

Hibbs, the cub with no clue, here!

I'm all rested and raring to go ... this time to California!

To Donna Hole's blog :

http://donnahole.blogspot.com/

I heard Roland practicing his answers. Boy, they sure interested me.

Come with me. I am one determined cub. Paws don't fail me now.
***

Ever wonder why your great book isn't bought? The aliens are here :

MARDI GRAS, FRIENDSHIP, AND MY BLOG TOUR

Happy Mardi Gras Eve

Mardi Gras is a fantastic series of celebrations.

I want to celebrate ... friendship.

Michael de Gesu of IN TIME. He has been with me from the beginning of my ePublication of THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS.

He has been the cornerstone of the blog tour for it. As has Denise (L'Aussie). WordsCrafter. N.A. Williams. Donna Hole.

D'Artagnan had only three musketeers to accompany him into legend. I have five. I doff my plumed hat to you all.

My blog tour will be fun, mysterious, and legendary. There are books autographed by Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, and Jim Butcher to win. There are maidens to save, monsters to slay, and Gypsy to feed.

Oh, sorry that last was just for me. For you, here is the initial schedule :

1. Michael @ In Time ... March 8th ... The man behind the prose. Part One


2. Michael @ In Time ... March 9th ... The man behind the prose. Part Two


3. Words Crafter @ Rainy Day Wanderer March 10th ... My personal reactions to the publication of THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS


4. Words Crafter @ Rainy Day Wanderer March 11th ... Her personal take on the publication of THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS


5. Denise @ L'Aussie March 12th ... Part I. of the genesis of my writing style


6. Denise @ L'Aussie March 13th ... Part II. The influences which shaped the style of my writing in THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS.


7. NR Williams March 16th ... Myth and world myth melding in THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS


8. Me here doing a Hibbs and St. Patrick's Day post March 17th


9. NR Williams March 18th ... Part II. How the Dreaming runs through THE BEAR WITH 2 SHADOWS.

10. Donna Hole March 21st The spiritual Native American message and reflections in THE BEAR WITH 2 SHADOWS.

11. There will be more blog hosts to join in and become fellow musketeers, storming the Bastille of the Publication World.

Oh, I mentioned Mardi Gras didn't I?

We in Louisiana think we know about Mardi Gras. But it has been around for thousands of years. Certain historians think that ancient fertility rituals performed by some tribes were the roots of Mardi Gras. These rituals welcomed spring's arrival.

Parts of the customs from the old festivals are also found in Lupercalia, a Roman circus-like festival taking place annually in mid-February. The Catholic Church wanted to shift people's attention from pagan festivals so they instituted the festival of Carnival, derived from the Latin word carnelevamen { farewell to flesh.} Or Hello to Lent so to speak.

Mardi Gras came to North America in 1699 when the French-Canadian Pierre le Monye, Sieur de Iberville was exploring the Mississippi River. He and his men camped on a bend of the river sixty miles south of New Orleans on March 3.

Pierre knew that Mardi Gras was being celebrated back in France so he decided to name that spot Pointe du Mardi Gras. And the rest is infamy, ah, I mean history

***

In honor of my blog tour for THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS, here is the legendary Lakota artist, John Two Eagle, with Tarja and Nightwish :

WHO READS ANYMORE?

Don't forget to vote for my entry in Tessa's OUTSIDE THE BOX blogfest :

http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

Are we the last?

Have writers become an endangered species?

I was reading this morning that the point-and-shoot camera you now own is probably the last you will ever buy.

The smart phone has replaced it. Sure, there are advantages to the point-and-shoot :

including features like image stabilization and larger lenses and sensors.

That does not matter to consumers like Emily Peterson, a 28-year-old graphic designer who lives in Brooklyn and who bought an iPhone 4 in July. “One day I just thought,

‘Wow, I never have my camera with me, when I used to carry it around all the time,’ ” she said. “It’s just one less thing for me to remember, one less thing to carry.”

Newspapers are scrambling to survive. Who reads them anymore? USA TODAY with its many pictures and its snippets of articles is the most successful one out there.

The music store. Every mall used to have one. Now, they are disappearing.

Why bother buying whole CD's when you can download the individual singles you enjoy from Amazon?

Bookstores are facing extinction as well. The ebook is slowly taking over. But worse, why pay full price for a hardback when you can order for much less from Amazon with free shipping?

And who reads for pleasure anymore?

We do, of course. But we are the dinosaurs, watching these strange critters called mammals scurrying around our feet.

Donna Hole wrote me that only one of her four children reads for pleasure. The others never did. Never.

I was a high school teacher for a time, and even then the school library was for assignments only. Very few students ever checked out a book for a fun read.

The kids graduating today seldom, if ever, read for pleasure. They go to movies. They play video games. The guys watch the sports of their choice.

We have become a visual society.

And the children of this generation will have even less desire to read. We learn what we see.

No wonder publishers are downsizing.

Why do you think Nathan Bransford is no longer an agent?

Are we pounding on the door to a castle that is crumbling behind the walls holding us back? Will reading for fun be here in twenty years?

Will libraries become quaint memories like the slide rule? Will books become ghosts like dusty 8-tracks?

Are we hurrying to buy a ticket on the Titanic?

What do you guys out there think? Have we become voices in the wilderness? Have we become like the tigers now in the wild : the last generation of our kind?
***

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

Sometimes it feels as if there isn't any hope, doesn't it?

Wendy Tyler Ryan had an intriguing post http://waitingforpublication.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-dont-think-they-know.html

And Donna Hole has another one (and no, not just because she mentioned me ... well, maybe a little.)
http://donnahole.blogspot.com/2010/11/nano-day-2-browsing-blog-roll.html

It does seem as if the publishing industry doesn't have any room for readers or writers interested in what the over-thirty dream, yearn, or struggle for.

Take Edward the sparkly 200 year old vampire. What does he see in a shallow, angst-filled, self-absorbed teenager? Isn't he really just a young looking pedophile?

Maxwell Perkins, editor of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, would have tossed Stephanie Meyers' work in the reject pile with a disgusted sigh.

But it is a different market : a youth-oriented, visual, me-generation market.

Everyone get up, look up at the night with its fading moon, and say it : CRAP!

All right, now that we have it out of our systems, what can we do?

There are several approaches :

1.) We use both a young protagonist and a mature mentor. Think AUNTIE MAME, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, the first STAR WARS. I'm choosing this route with my THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH.

2.) Focus on an older protagonist with a youngster needing protection. Think THE ROAD, the new movie THE WARRIOR'S WAY, LONE WOLF AND CUB, and the Tom Hanks' movie, THE ROAD TO PERDITION.

3.) Use an intelligent adult for your protagonist and place him/her in a situation that chills the blood or staggers the imagination.

As in these two set-ups :

A) Your MC goes into a confessional, only to hear the priest babble about becoming Other, then the priest shoots himself.

Your MC throws the door of the confessional open only to see the priest is half-circuitry, melded into the very metal of the small room. One by one, all those your MC knows become Other in some strange way or other.

B) You wake up one morning, go to work, only to find your co-workers have faded like a photo left out too long in the sun. Day by day they fade more and more until they are all black and white, leaving you in a world full of color.

Worse, they become more and more dead-faced and robot-like until you catch them whispering ominously behind your back in a strange buzzing not unlike worker bees.


There is hope, fellow strugglers. THE LORD OF THE RINGS caught the hearts and minds of high schoolers and college-aged with hobbits, old wizards, dwarfs, elves, and a long-lived human named Aragon.

How can you bring hope to your novel?

Make the magic real. Even if your protagonist is older, keep a child-like sense of wonder and curiosity to his/her world.

And now, a little practical nuts-n-bolts advice that was sparked by Donna's post :

If you find yourself feeling hopeless with the words dammed up inside your wheel-spinning mind, it is probably caused by one of five things :

1) Overwork -
Stop writing for a few days. When you're ready to start singing tales into the night once more, you will know when the keyboard stops being forboding and starts to become a delightful toy again.

2) Boredom -
Put your novel down no matter how close you are to the finish line. Start that new idea that has been buzzing around in the back of your mind. Trust me. If your novel has begun to bore you, it will certainly bore the agent to whom you submit.

3) Self-Doubt -
Starting something new will work here as well. The joy of the new idea will spark your love of writing which led you into this profession in the first place. Then, read the first few new pages and see if you can find echoes of your old work in them.

After a few days of your new project, go back to where you were in your old novel. Read the five pages prior to your stop-point. Then, write on the novel again. It will be reborn. Trust me.

4) Financial Worries -
Tough one. No easy remedy here. You must solve them or lighten them somehow.

If it means stopping the writing to take a second job, then that is what you must do. Family comes first. Dreams second. Those months spent apart from your keyboard will sow your unconscious mind with new ideas.

5) Emotional Problems -
If charged relationships are shortcircuiting your muse, you must find a safe, neutral way to sit down with your loved one and talk through what is eating away at you.

It will clear the air between the two of you or bring a much-needed lance to a painful boil. Have a rear-exit stragedy already in place just in case things should go south. No relationship or person is or can be perfect. Look at areas where you can grow.

In the end, the only person you can change is yourself. Sometimes retreat is better than painful staying in an unhealthy situation or relationship.

There is hope ... for your writing ... for your life -- if only you do not give up on yourself and your own worth.
***


***

SAM IN A FLASH/THE DREAMER'S PUNISHMENT

Donna Hole in her Wednesday post on her blog : http://donnahole.blogspot.com/ had a prompt for flash fiction for her guests :


The prompt: Your character has been invited to a party. When you arrive, the house appears empty... What happens next? Do you go away? Do you look in a window? Maybe you turn the knob and the door mysteriously opens! What then?


I've never done flash fiction. I love words too much -- and building up tension and atmosphere. But Donna is a friend, and Samuel McCord is a sucker for any request from a lady -- so I wrote one for her blog.


I have my doubts about it. I think you have to know Sam's history and world for it to work. But fortunately, most of you know that. So here's my first flash fiction. But first a relevant quote from Oscar Wilde for Tessa :



“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”


Samuel McCord :

The house is dark, its empty windows more like vacant eyes than dirty glass. They give the building the look of some huge, discarded skull of a lost god. I don't like this.

Lt. Trifle (yes, that's her name, and the main reason she got a black belt in Karate) called me out here in the middle of nowhere.


Nowhere being on the outskirts of Metairie -- which is on the outskirts of New Orleans -- which, itself, is on the outskirts of Hell if you listen to some preachers.

She said I was needed out here and then hung up. Or got the phone snatched out of her hand. I came as soon as I could.

Was I in time? Time. I could stop it for awhile -- if I was willing to pay the price.

I was. It hurt like hell. I deserved worse. Ask a thousand widows what Captain Samuel McCord deserved, and they'd tell you the same thing.

The time-snared air felt like heavy invisible water pressing in against me. I endured. It's what I do.


I made my way to the back of the house. I tried to cat-foot in out of instinct. Reality trumped instinct. The weight of frozen time made each step feel as if I were lifting the weight of the world.

Cat-footing was out. Lumbering like a dinosaur with arthritis was all I could manage.

I smiled like the wolf I felt. Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time. And time was mine. For as long as I could endure the pain.

The house of shadows was deserted. No furniture. Lots of needles. Lots of spoons. Discarded rubber tubing.

A crack house.

I made it to the front room. It wasn't empty.

A young punk had Trifle dead to rights. Mostly dead if I didn't act fast. How he got the drop on her was obvious. She was cradling a shivering, feverish girl. Trifle's heart had blind-sided her.

I released time. The addict yelped in surprise. He jerked his gun towards me. I smiled and spoke low.

"How young can you die of old age?"

"What the fuck?"

Sad last words. I answered my own question. I sped up time all around him. He squealed, squirmed, shouted, then wheezed into raspy coughing. He aged into an old man in seconds.

As he fell, he crumbled into dust right in front of Trifle. The moon caressed the hot sunset of her hair as she looked down in horror. The mound of dust started to disappear in the faint breath of the stale breeze. She turned hollow eyes to me.

"You're a monster."

What had Oliver Goldsmith written? It came to me : Silence gives consent.

I left without saying a word.

********************************
Here are some photos of Sam's and Meilori's last visit to Paris together :