Monthly Archives: November 2011

11.15.11

Not my best, but here you go.

Salva Vida

 

My heart has never hurt as much as it did at that moment. What did he mean we weren’t on the same page? I had listened to him cry about his life and how hard it was with having graduated from school and being unable to find a job.

I never thought my heart could ever hurt as much as it had when that boy had told me that we “weren’t on the same page” and yadda yadda yadda. But he had.

And for some reason, he was now standing, all 6 foot 4 inch tall, dark brown hair and twinkling green eyes, in the bar/hostel where I was living and bar keeping at the moment on the Honduran island. My job allowed for me to live there for relatively cheap between writing assignments with little to no bills and all the Salva Vida I could chug and not get intentionally drunk. Being a Central America correspondent certainly had its perks.

Plus all the Australians that were studying the reefs were definitely a plus.

But back to the problem at hand at that moment-what the hell was Mark Alexander Webber doing in my bar?

Well, I should have known that he couldn’t keep his head buried in the tombs on the Guatemalan border long enough for me to finish planning my escape to Espanola or Peru or Mexico. I was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, and I was working on French and Italian. I just needed to get off the island and out of the country and away from him!

I doubted he would have recognized me at the moment, with my dark hair unusually light from putting lemon juice in it, skin almost as dark as a pecan hull, and the string bikini and sarong that kept me just decent. I had done a complete 360 since leaving him over a year and a half ago, losing over fifty pounds and learning to love sunbathing and tanning oil.

Mark shuffled over to the bar, heaved himself onto the barstool, and allowed his backpack to tumble to the ground-the very image of the weary traveler. He shook his head, allowing the rather long hair perched upon it to fall back into a naturally messy state.

He looked absolutely divine despite the fact he broke my heart so long ago. I was serving margaritas to two women on the other end of the bar when he raised his finger to get my attention. I nodded to show that I had seen him and would be with him momentarily. I got the two, who also happened to be the island gossips, a couple glasses of water before sauntering over to him.

“Un cerveza, por favor,” he rasped out.

“Nada problema, señor,” I replied in Australian accented Spanish and with a grin. I could feel his eyes following my movements as I dug in the dishwasher for a mug, then to the tap to draft him a Salva Vida. I don’t think he quite recognized me, but his eyes studied my face as he downed his beer.

My plan was to not allow him to make the full connection. But of course, my coworker and dear friend, Ry, had no intention to allow that. He was sopping wet and had obviously just come off the reef.

“Elle! Babe!” he started off. I could see Mark’s eyes widen as he began to study me some more. “Nice to see you stirring already. Figured last night would have wiped you out!”

Ry smacked a loud kiss on my cheek before grabbing bottled water out of the cooler. “Ha! Those smarmy Americanos couldn’t take the fact that we are the beer pong champs. I finally kicked them out at four this morning. They’re staying at Trud’s. I saw the way you were eyeing up that red head. Karaoke night’s tonight,” I suggested.

Ry just laughed and ducked out the service entrance to go take a siesta before the evening’s festivities. I turned back to the customers, only to see the money lying on the bar from the birdies and Mark the only occupant. Were the little birdies up to something?

I popped off the top to a beer. Scarily enough, I had no clue.

The only thing I knew for sure was the Mark’s eyes were glued to my body as I put the money in the register and dropped the change into the tips bucket.

“I’m Mark,” he said, sticking his hand out for me to shake. I wanted to break every bone in his hand but repressed the urge and instead smiled grimly.

“Elle.” I left it at that. He didn’t need to be in my business. Again. He had known my entire life at one point, but now my priorities had changed thanks to the circumstances.

I idly scratched at the birthmark on my shoulder that had a phantom itch. I couldn’t help that it started itching at just that moment, and the fact that Mark had kept his eyes on me just betrayed who I was.

“Danielle?” he breathed, staring at the birthmark before moving his gaze to hold my own.

Thank God Ry came back in at the moment.

“Ry, I have a headache. Take the bar for a little while, please,” I spat before I dashed upstairs to my room to hide from the monster.

 

 

It took forty-five minutes for the banging on my door to begin.

I rolled over in my hammock and stared reproachfully at the shaking entryway.

“Go away!” I hollered when the knocking paused.

“It’s just me!” Ry yelled back.

“Uh. Come in, I suppose.”

Thank God that Ry was gay. I was lying in the hammock with very few clothes on in an attempt to cool off. I didn’t feel like stirring.

“Who is the hunkalicious man candy downstairs you’re running from?” were the first words out of his mouth as he settled on one of the floor pillows I used as seating in there.

“This very confusing guy with too much baggage for anybody’s good. Believe me. Oh, and he’s as straight as an arrow, in case you were wondering.”

“Nothing to worry about, honey. The sexual tension between you two is enough to clear out the bar so he can have his wicked way with you.”

“You make it sound so…torrid. Besides, I’m over him. Long, long, long time ago. Now, do you mind? I have to get ready for our fun night you conned me into.”

“Don’t sound so…scandalized. It’s just poker and getting as drunk as skunks and picking up some men!”

“Yeah. Sure. An hour and I’ll be ready.”

“Good deal, sister,” he said as he unfolded himself from the floor. He flashed me another Cheshire cat grin before swooping out of my room.

I just lied in my hammock for a while longer debating whether or not to actually go to a poker tournament on the other end of the island. It was tempting not to go and instead hop the last ferry over to La Ceiba and stay with my friend instead of waiting until going over the next day for Mass.

Eh. I felt the need to knock back a few shots and show these people how to play some poker. I didn’t know much about the game, but I had one hell of a poker face.  Stupid Americanos think that they are the best at poker. I might have once been

So, a few hours later found me at another little bar on the other end of the island. The party featured some cousins of the bar owner as the guests of honor. None of them were very cute and it seemed the ugliest of the ugly cousins had deemed little ole me worthy of his attentions and had to show it. He would accidentally trip into me, grabbing me around the waist and feeling the need to say I’m sorry by grabbing my butt.

Gross.

A girl can only put up with that for so long so a little after one in the morning I finished cleaning their pockets out and downed the last of a twelve pack. I nodded to Ry that I was leaving and stumbled out of the bar and down the road towards home.

I was praising God that I didn’t have to lead any dive trips the next day and could head to the mainland in the morning to get a gash from some glass I stepped on checked out. Other than that gash, I was feeling pretty darn peachy and had completely forgotten my woes.

That is, until I got to my room to see Mark lounging on the floor by my door, asleep.

I didn’t invite him there. How the hell did he find out which room was mine? And better yet, why was he there? I had made it very clear that I did not want to see him.

I decided for the quickest way to wake him up and get him away from me. I reached over him, unlocked my door, and pushed it open. He fell backwards into my room, his head making a satisfying thud against the floor as a wakeup call.

“Wha-? Danielle! Did you just- Is that blood you’re trac-? What happened to your foot?” he spun off.

“You are getting out of my room. And yes, I am tracking blood from a glass shard. Now GET OUT!” I quietly yelled and kicked at him.

“Hey now! No need! That hurts! Can we please just talk for a minute?”

I pondered that for a moment. I guess I could be charitable and I wanted another beer. “You can have a minute…but I want a beer. Come on, we’re going downstairs,” I said as I limped away from my bedroom.

The bar was eerily dark at this time of night. Moonlight filtered through the windows, making the dark corners seem all the more sinister. I ignored them and the ghosts that hid there to reach into the cooler and draw out a couple Salva Vida, popping the tops with practice only earned from many hours behind that bar. I slid one bottle across to Mark and then hopped to sit on top of the bar.

“One minute. Go.”

“I love you. I know you can’t accept that now, but it’s true. I…”

He stopped speaking and just looked at me from across the top of our beers. He had the saddest look in his eyes, but I knew whatever he felt would never compare to the heartbreak and despair that I had had felt.

“Your minute is ticking by,” I said and took a drink.

“I felt lost without you. Every day, weekend, week off I’d go to a different city-the places I knew you love. The museums, the markets, the squares. Copan, Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula.  I perused the ruins in Guatemala and checked the cities in northern Mexico, thinking you were there covering the drug wars. But as soon as I stepped foot in those cities, I could tell you hadn’t been there for a while. You are home. I’ve never felt better than I did when I found you-then and now.”

“Well, that’s good and all. But I don’t feel the same,” I said as I unfolded myself from my seat. I threw my beer bottle in a trashcan before I turned back around. “It took me months-MONTHS-to get over what you had done to my heart! You used me, for lack of a better term. You called me fat and a bitch and selfish and vain.

“I don’t even know what happened that set you off. All I know is that one minute we’re cuddled up in bed, and the next you explode. I was so scared! Why else would I leave?

“I don’t need ignorant assholes in my life. I have work; I have my friends; I have my life. I don’t need you or any other man to make me happy.”

I stepped away from the bar and limped to the stairs to go to bed. Mark just stared at me, stunned that I had laid him out like that. But he deserved it.

“Well,” he said as he moved towards me, “it’s obvious you have had quite a bit to drink. I’m rather tired as it is. We’ll finish this in the morning. Good night.”

He moved past me and upstairs to the room he was staying in.

I was not drunk. I had too much need to fight and run and just get the heck away from him. I sat in my hammock and pondered my choices. I could stay here and put up with his crap. I could get approved to leave the country thanks to lots of vacation time; I could go home to Dallas and visit my family for a while. Or I could take the early ferry to La Ceiba and hide out in the hostels and at the Church until Ry could text me that Mark had left.

While I hadn’t seen my family in almost a year, I knew a plane ticket would cut into my savings for when I moved back to Tegucigalpa. If I had to listen to his crap for one more second, I would punch him in the face.

So it was decided. I packed my necessities in a backpack and rolled up my hammock to strap to the bottom of the pack. I locked my door behind me as I set out to the dock to await the ferry’s cast off.

That morning, halfway to the mainland, I looked across the sea towards my island home. I couldn’t get over the fact that Mark had run me off. For a moment, I indulged in thoughts of nights wrapped in Mark’s embrace and being awakened to long, slow, air sucking kisses. They quickly morphed into me strangling him for thinking I would ever love him again. But then I snapped out of it.

I was an independent and it would always be my job and goal to run. That was my salva vida.

11.14.11

I am SO SO SO sorry for not posting this weekend. Filming for my final project was insane. I am totally wiped out. Today, I leave you with this:

Life

I came.

I had the feeling that something was up. I read people pretty well and he had weird vibes rolling off of him for the past two and a half weeks. I had just gotten done with my new job for the evening. I loved guns and working at the shop was so rewarding. It didn’t hurt that I got to play with the toys and practice my sharpshooting.

But he was supposed to be in the city at a business meeting. Instead, his Explorer was parked in its assigned spot. His visitor’s spot was filled by a baby blue Bug with a fake flower bouquet attached to the dash. I whipped my Jetta into the spot next to it and dashed up the stairs.

I saw.

I could hear them before I even opened the door to his apartment. Whoever the hell she was was loud – but not as loud as me. But dammit, we were engaged. I arrived just in time for the big finish and slipped through the door under the cover of the sound of a cow giving birth. And there they were, lying on the carpet by the couch, her curled into his side and trying to regain her composure.

I conquered.

I didn’t even have to think about it. My hand pulled the gun out of my purse automatically. I was pissed. My first shot hit him where the sun don’t shine. The rest was split between the two. I waited for the police to arrive by sitting at the kitchen island, sipping some chardonnay and cleaning my gun.

I still lost.

So here I sit, telling you this. Tomorrow Ill get a needle in my arm. Okay by me. Die young while still pretty, right? I don’t feel any remorse. He was a jackass and she was a heifer. I just wonder how long he had actually been a lying snake.

I rolled the dice. Snake eyes in this case was a win and a lose. But that’s okay. There’s always the next life, right?

11.11.11

Poison

It is funny to think I have always known it would come to this. The glass feels heavy in my shaking hand. The wine is cool, I can tell.
The sun is setting – huge, orange and pink and red. I’m going to bed right after this drink.
It is so sweet but bites more than usual. They are after me. This is probably my last relaxation.

11.10.11

 

Mistakes Made

“Hey lady! Can you throw it back?”

She looked down at the tennis ball that she had nearly broken her ankle on. It rolled lazily upon the fallen leaves before stopping.

It reminded her of days bygone that had her in a similar position as the youngster who had hollered.

She bent down, grabbed the ball, and chucked it back. Then she hurried down the sidewalk, thanking God that it was only a couple blocks further until she would reach her house, chuck off her shoes, and drink herself into oblivion for mistakes made.

11.9.11

Not going to lie – this story is a little disturbing. Rated PG-13 due to mentions of rape, murder and suicide and for the use of some cursing.

Therapy

Week 1

Dr. Marielle Sanchez looked over her extremely yellow clipboard at her current patient, Joanna Fritz, aged 17. Joanna sat doodling on a sketchpad, and always covered it up whenever she moved near. Of all her patients, Joanna was definitely the most unusual. She was the only one to silently sketch the whole hour. Not a sneeze, not a cough, not a whimper. Might as well try the questions again, she thought, and pulled the ink pen out of her ponytail. “How are you today, Joanna?”

She just shrugged her shoulders. It was unusual and a little scary for anyone not to say anything. It was Joanna’s sixth session, one a week, and she had never heard a word. But the shrug was progress, so she let it be. “Have you read any good books lately?”

Nothing. It was so very unnerving.

“What’s the matter? School, boys, home?” On home, Joanna’s eyes quickly flickered upward, but flew back to settle on her drawing. “What are you drawing?”

The notepad swiveled so Marielle could see what appeared to be a broken laptop. Words jumbled and thick, poured out of the cracks in the screen, while keys littered the page around it.

“My parents broke it.”

“Excuse me?” Marielle could have sworn she heard Joanna speak.

“My parents broke the computer.” No, her ears weren’t deceiving her. “They’re mad because one of my stories sold- one of the semi-gory ones. That’s allAmericawants right now, with the war and all. My parents called the story trash. They want me to be the perfect young lady. But I’m not. There’s no way I ever could be.”

She fell quiet again for a long ten minutes. “I never please them. It’s always do this, be this. Don’t do that or be that. They want me to be a lawyer. I want to write. I want to travel for a living. Of course they couldn’t understand. They’re one of the older generations.”

“Am I one of the older generations, Joanna?”

“No. You understand people. You encourage them and help them. Besides, you can’t be a day over 35.” Joanna smiled then remained silent for the rest of the session.

After the session was over, Marielle sent Joanna out to the waiting room and had Lis, her secretary, send Mr. Fritz in.

“Mr. Fritz, Joanna said today that you and Mrs. Fritz broke her laptop because one of her stories sold. Is this true?”

“Dr. Sanchez, Joanna is a pathological liar. She rarely tells the truth. She broke it in rage because her mother grounded her.”

“I don’t think she needs this therapy. She’s very smart for her age, and understands the world quite well for a girl who has lived predominantly in a small rural community.”

Mr. Fritz took his glasses off and stared at her for several long moments. “She understands, but it does no good if she doesn’t stop it with her fiction.”

Marielle just nodded and sent the bewildered Fritz out. She didn’t know whom to believe, or what exactly Mr. Fritz understood about his daughter.

Week 2

“Joanna, are you alright?” There was a large bruise on the side of the girl’s pale face, and she seemed thinner than ever before. Marielle doubted she would normally have noticed the halfway faded bruise but for the fact it was trying to hide so hard.

“I’m fine, Doctor. Why do you ask?” Joanna’s eyes were wide with amazement, as though she didn’t know the bruise existed. Maybe the gloomy day’s light shining through the window, along with the dim interior, was playing tricks with her.

She rose to go to the light switch on the wall behind Joanna. Once again, the sketchbook was snapped face down so she couldn’t see the current sketch. Joanna hunched as if scared, and didn’t straighten until the doctor was at her desk. She’s scared of something…but what?

That afternoon, Mrs. Fritz picked up her daughter. She sent a warning look at Joanna as the she demurely crept past the doorway. She smiled at Dr. Sanchez, and was gone.

It wasn’t until five minutes later that she realized the sketchpad was lying on the chair Joanna usually occupied. She picked it up, and read READ ME…HELP. She was more positive than ever that something wasn’t right at the Fritz house.

+++++++++++++++++

“John, come look at this,” Marielle shouted to her husband later that evening. She had been pouring over the sketches for a mere fifteen minutes, but was amazed by the sheer details in them. No other teen artist she knew would use such a dark pencil technique and use what little color portrayed as Joanna’s drawings displayed.

“What?” he asked as he leaned over her shoulder. “Is that what I think it is?”

A fired handgun was the last drawing, and the smoke and discharge was made of words. It was boldly titled The Worst Day in A While, as though bad things always happened. It was unusual how life-like it seemed. How sinister and true.

“I knew she was troubled, but not this troubled. I have to call her parents.”

“I’d hold that thought. See those words there? ‘They beat me again for telling the truth about the laptop. They’re such lying hypocrites. Sometimes I wonder if I could become the next Dictatress and kill all the stupid people.’”

“It’s her parents doing this to her. I need to call child services.”

“No, you have to wait and gather more evidence. I’ve tried to call them off the bat at the clinic, and they need all the evidence they can get to have a good case. It’s some damn policy of theirs.”

“I hate when I can’t do anything.”

“I know how you feel,” John murmured as he comforted her with a hug. “Let’s eat supper. It’ll make you feel better.”

That night, Marielle was hit with her first bout of insomnia for over two years. She tossed and turned for over an hour, and finally forced herself to take a sleeping pill. It ended up making her worse for wear, as nightmares of man-eating laptops and dysfunctional guns haunted her night.

As the week went by, Marielle couldn’t help but to wonder about Joanna’s welfare. While publicly her parents seemed like pillars of the community, nothing was known about their private life. In fact, she was so curious she began to drive home the long way around town, just to drive past their house.

One day, she actually saw Joanna. She was lounging on the front porch, furiously typing on her new laptop. Her younger brother was playing marbles with two other young boys, but she saw him glance towards the house with eyes full of fear. What is going on in there? she wondered.

Week 3

“Joanna Fritz is fifteen minutes late,” Lis yelled from the waiting area. “Do you want me to mark the appointment cancelled, Dr. Sanchez?”

“Give her ten minutes, please. That way we can be sure there wasn’t car trouble. Remember Samuel Johnson?” Marielle sighed. She was hoping to have a long talk over the sketches and try to get her some help. It wasn’t going to be possible if Mr. and Mrs. Fritz cancelled the counseling.

Five minutes later, Marielle looked up when she heard the front office door whisper shut. No one was there, that she could tell. “Lis?” No answer came, so she assumed her secretary stepped out to buy a soda down the hall. She frequently did this on long, appointment-less afternoons. But then, there was the ominous loud thud of something heavy falling on the durable gray carpeting.

Then Joanna appeared in the doorway. “Hello, Dr. Sanchez. How are you?”

“Joanna! I’m so glad you made it. I thought for a minute your parents had hurt you or….”

“They won’t hurt me again.” In a lightening swift movement, the gun came up.

“What’s the matter Joanna?” Marielle asked. This was definitely new ground; none of her other patients had ever shown violent tendencies. “Joanna? Talk to me. Please.”

“They always shower him with gifts… Play Station, Yu-Gi-Oh, and the likes. They encourage his musical abilities. He can play a mean guitar, but that’s all he’s good for. He’s horrible at schoolwork, acts up. I caught him smoking behind the garage the other day. Of course they didn’t believe me. I took the fall, just like always. I’m just Joanna, the whipping girl. And how father hurts me,” she spat vehemently, as if any poison she’d conjure would just kill them more.

“What did he do?” Marielle asked in half wonder. She might be able to fix her mind, somehow. But now, she was getting scared.

“Incest.” The word was whispered, such as the confession of one of the Deadly Seven. “How I hate them.”

An hour and a half later, Dr. Amelia Hurst, one of Marielle’s colleagues, opened the waiting room door to discuss a case. “Lissa?” she called for the secretary as the phone began to ring. She stepped around behind the desk, and saw the woman with her slit throat, blood in a grotesque pattern where it had seeped into the floor.

“AHHHHH!!!” she managed to scream before collapsing into a dead faint.

The police found the Joanna’s parents shot, laying in their bed, and her little brother strangled with a blue plastic jump rope. On the wall above Joanna’s bed was painted “I hope you’re happy now. May you rot in Hell.”

Her laptop’s screen was flashing when one investigator finally thought to look at it. Black skulls danced lazily across a pink field, as though beckoning the investigators to mess with it. “Yo, someone come bag this!” he yelled, then went on to the next room. The woman bagging evidence didn’t know not to unplug it, but look through it first. She bagged, tagged, and placed it aside.

A week later, John Abrahms, the lead computer geek at the police lab, opened a large file off the computer. He read the first few lines, then printed the rest off to peruse on his own.

Confessions.

Joanna Fritz

I am going away for forever today, whether or not I find the courage to give my two cents to my parents. I shall start, and perhaps not care what happens. However, I can’t leave or do whatever it is I will do today without leaving some sort of stamp about my existence. This is a mini memoir, sil vous plait. I have a need to get everything out, and so help me God if I die, I want them in jail for all they’ve done.

  1. 1.      They have half starved and dehydrated me to death.

For several years, ever since I was ten, if I did something wrong, then they’d lock me in my room for days, not allowing me to come out but for using the bathroom. Often this was during the summer, and it gets very hot in my room, and with the air conditioning turned off, one can pass out. When I was thirteen, I was rushed to the hospital when I almost died from heat poisoning. They should have just let me die.

 

  1. 2.      They have beat me severely for grades….A- even received a beating if this isn’t cruel punishment, I don’t know what is. I tried to get help from the counselor at school, and from my pastor, to no avail. They believed the lies my parents fed them….over active imagination and that I was unusually clumsy.

 

This list could continue on, but I choose to let it rest in peace. May the good Lord punish them in eternal inferno, killing not only their heavenly body but their ever living souls. May their punishment befit their crimes.

 

Abrahms took the document to a psychologist to look over. The doc simply said that it was a shame that no one helped her. The case was closed; the girl and her parents were dead. There was nothing to be done. The session was over.

11.8.11

Um, this story will prolly appeal to the women reading my blog more than any men… But yeah. 

Drugs

The movie isn’t holding your attention. Not to say that it isn’t good – you are constantly laughing when you do pay attention. But when you’re cuddled up next to a man who was not only good-looking but smelled really good, had his arms around you, and kept drawing circles up and down you arm and on you knee, it’s hard to focus.

All you want is for him to kiss you.

You aren’t an aggressive person most the time. At least, not when it came to relationships. In public – work, playing tennis, shopping – you are a tell-it-as-it-is-and-in-charge bitch. But a series of bad relationships have led you to being a bit more timid when it came to dating.

And you like your men aggressive.

This man has it in him to lord over you. You just know it. You can tell it from that first kiss he landed on you before taking off at the end of date number two. You had wanted more and still want more. So much more.

You head is tucked under his chin and you almost collide hard as his hand slides up your leg and around behind you, nestling you even closer to his side. You are practically in his lap and only one though is running through your mind: Was he finally going to properly kiss you?

It is quick. You literally miss it because of the need to blink. His lips are on yours in two gentle sweet kisses before he runs his tongue across your lip and into your mouth as you try to get some air. Even though it has yet to be any heavy-duty kissing, you are overwhelmed.

Your back hits the seat of the couch as he presses on top of you. You can taste him – left over mint from the gum he spat out before dinner, chocolate from ice cream dessert, and something else that is all him. His five o’clock shadow scratches you as his hands trace your body…

There are drugs other than alcohol, cigarettes, and the illegal sort. Everyone can find one, no problem.

Maybe this is what the beginning of an addiction tastes like.

 

11.7.11

Here is today’s story, dedicated to Emily G. This is the only story so far that doesn’t have a cliffhanger. (This is dedicated to her because she mentioned the lack of the endings. hahahaha)

Bang

Growing up, I knew I would probably never find love or actually want to get married. Every marriage I had seen was loveless. My parents fought-both physically and verbally – about 97 percent of the time. I know not how many times I took pushed a button waited for the flash to document my mother’s bruises and bumps, not that she ever did anything about it.

I think she was too scared of him to do anything about it.

I did not want to be stuck in the same trap I saw of everyone around. The boy I dated in high school attempted to be all 1950s since he graduated my sophomore year. He had money and would spoil me, which was fun, but at the same I didn’t need the clothes and frilly dresses he would buy me. Those clothes just hung in the closet like corpses on a gallows.

He sped off in his Mercedes to be a realtor, had enough brains to receive his diploma after two straight years of study, and sped back to home in order to propose at my graduation party. He pulled me in his arms and whispered that I didn’t need to worry about continuing my education because he wanted the picket fence for us. The sharp clap of my palm to his face froze everyone in place.

I jerked the ring off and threw it at him. As it bounced into the glass of beer he gripped, I ran and didn’t ever look back.

I went to university up north. I lived with the same girl for all four years. She studied film and I ran half crazy covering the most entertaining and outrageous stories for the campus news channel. I had no time for the boys that ran on testosterone and thought they could conquer me. By junior year I was known as the ice queen. But I was too job obsessed to care about them.

When Sara, my roommate, got engaged to some guy she met at a coffee shop three months before-and had barely spent a moment apart from during waking hours aside from classes-I had to laugh. She was the opposite of me. She was meek and petite and absolute prep. I was loud and curvaceous and dressed hipster whenever I wasn’t working.

She was the Queen of Hearts to my Ice Queen. And when she, the person I considered my best friend, didn’t even ask me to have any part of the wedding, I said good riddance.

She got married on the first Saturday in June. I was on the border covering the shooting on Border Patrol by a drug cartel, and said I simply couldn’t get away.

I didn’t try.

 

University up north turned to me moving to the desert for my first job. It never got cold to me, with the coldest usually hovering right about 50 degrees, despite what the natives would say as they donned down lined jackets and thick gloves. It was wonderful for doing outdoor shots for the station I worked for.

But I soon got snapped up to a bigger market-Chicago. I kept busy, and cold-both in temperature and heart. There were suitors chasing me there as they had thus far. I simply wasn’t interested. I was climbing the ladder quickly. Six and a half years in Chicago led me to New York.

New York didn’t allow for dating. They sent me around the country non-stop. As much as I loved it, sometimes I wanted a slow down, to be able to meet the one person that would make me want to slow down permanently. The Ice Queen returned and in greater strength.

By the time I turned 40 (marked by dinner and drinks in SoHo with my best friend, Effie), I realized there was no way I could change my lot. I asked my bosses to send me to the war zones and natural disaster sites, using language programs to learn as many languages as I could. I was almost fluent in four languages besides English in two years.

Life became a suicide mission. If I wasn’t going to die loved, I wanted to go out with a bang.

Just before my 43rd birthday, my father suffered what I was told could only be classified as a “fit of insanity.” I thought things between my parents had gotten a little better. Dad had suffered a stroke a few years before and didn’t have nearly as much strength, although that didn’t stop him from his emotional and verbal abuse.

But Mom said it was bearable and thus wouldn’t dare breathe of getting a divorce.

She should have. I tried and tried to talk her around. But my father’s insanity just kept her in submission.

It was just after 3 a.m. I had just fallen asleep in my hotel room in Sydney. I was covering a worker’s strike that had turned violent when a visiting diplomat had been hit by a brick a protester had slung. I was still having trouble sleeping despite being there a week and was debating slurping down some NyQuil when my company cell phone started going off.

It was my boss saying the police I tried to get hold of me at home, then at work. The evidence was all there-one through the heart and one to the head.

The gun was still in his hand.

I doped up on NyQuil as soon as I got on the plane. Too bad it didn’t stop the dreams, the happy ones of me and Mom without that sonofagun.

Before New York. Before Chicago. Before Phoenix. Before school.

I was 43 and alone. I had Effie as my friend. No siblings, no aunts or uncles or cousins or grandparents. No lovers. I had a huge following on Twitter and Facebook, based on the foundation of all the people I used to know in college, but that was it. I didn’t like feelings. They made me feel uncomfortable.

I was alone. I saw no point in socializing; there was nothing for me left here. I requested again to go to the war zones and the conflict spots. I wanted to be on the front lines, getting the scoop, getting the shots and shot and burned and showing the human condition as not seen by the yuppies in the McMansions or the old royalty of the South in the Antebellum homes.

I said I wanted to go out with a bang. It was unprecedented, but the drug wars had exploded as illegal weapons crossed the border one way as drugs were run the other. And they weren’t particularly fond of American reporters who they felt were on their territory up to no good.

The first shot grazed my shoulder thanks to a need to shift from a blast of winds. The second hit home.

Thank God for the five second delays required for reporting “live” out of the war zone. The public didn’t need to see my brains splattered on the lens.

11.6.11

Today’s story. Enjoy.

A Little More

I thought that maybe he was pissed that my phone was going off the entire first half hour of the movie, trying to keep track of the football score.

Sorry I’m not sorry.

“They won,” I whispered as the conflict of the movie became apparent. He chuckled, as he would do several time through the movie, and settled his arm on the armrest a fraction closer to me.

The slow progression was going to drive me insane.

**

It takes very nearly half the movie. I don’t even remember the scene because everything was erased with the electrocution. The shock – it was strange.

He just wrapped his hand around mine to start in an awkward was that was almost endearing. He thumb traced circles over my hand until he adjusted his grasp so our fingers were entwined.

I had to work to keep focused on the rest of the movie. Every nerve in my hand was rapid-firing the same reminders of how good it felt just to even hold his hand. It was also a sad reminder of how long it had been since I had felt comfortable enough with a guy to let him do so.

There also came another realization – it took to the second date for him to hold my hand. How long until he’d kiss me?

As he put his arm around me and steered me out of the theater, I could only hope that it wouldn’t be the next date.

**

I was very good at multitasking. So good, in fact, that I could carry on a conversation, ponder on something, and watch him driving us back to where my car was left. But thank goodness we just talked about the movie.

My sister had called this grown-up dating, whatever that meant. I guessed that compared to her go to a frat party and meet a guy approach, she meant going on dates, taking it slow, and enjoying the ride. It was weird to think about what dating was the last time I went on a date or “dated” in high school and how superficial it was. Especially while in high school. Back then it was all about making out and groping and just wasn’t what I was interested in.

I guess I was always mature for my age. That goes to prove it and I couldn’t be happier with that.

**

“My car’s the black one,” I said as he turned into the restaurant’s parking lot where my car had been left. There was a white truck parked the next row over but since it was after midnight on a Tuesday, the area was deserted.

He pulled into the spot right next to his car. “Thanks for tonight,” I said. “I had a blast.”

“I’m glad. I was afraid you’d be bored.”

“It takes a lot to bore me most of the time.”

“I’ll be filing that fact away.”

I laughed at that. He was such a nerd sometimes and that emphasized it.

“I better get headed home.”

“Yeah. Work in the morning for us both.”

“Technically it is the morning.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t thrilled about that. In fact, I had kind of forgotten about the forty minute drive home. Spending time with a funny, genuine, sweet and good-looking guy kind of does that to a girl. I’d rather stay up all night talking to him than sleeping but that drive was awaiting me and then there was that troublesome thing called work.

Ugh.

“I wish I had a Time Turner.” My eyes widened as I realized what I said. I have no filter sometimes and when the filter was off, the closet nerd came out.

It took him a good minute to stop laughing. God bless movie geeks. He wrapped me in a hug as normal breathing was regained. I could drown in the scent of whatever cologne he wore. Just as long as he kept on hugging me.

But dammit! Another hug? It wasn’t preschool. It was a second date! I couldn’t help but think that this was almost tortoise pace.

But slow and steady won the race, right? Yet I couldn’t help but wish he’d go a little faster.

Damn Southern Gentleman. Maybe I was too much of a Yankee for him. He moved away from the hug as I mentally swore I was investing in a voodoo doll in revenge

Then his lips were on mine. Just a simple touch of lips to lips. Once. Twice. Thrice.

I stared at him wide-eyed as I took a deep breath.

“Good night.”

“Let me know when you get back so I know I don’t need to rescue you from car trouble,” he said.

He flashed a roguish grin at me and I climbed out of the car. Did he not realize that I was going to spend the first part of my drive back as a little puddle of hormones?

He was going to have to go a little bit faster. He needed to be a little more Rhett and less like Charles.

As I started my car, I had to laugh. I guess the South was growing on me. I never would have used a comparison like that if I was up North.

When was I going to see him next?

11.5.11

This is today’s short story. It’s set during the late 1940s. There’s some lingo used here, so here’s some study guides: here and here.

This story is for Taylor in honor of her 18th birthday! Woot!

Running

I had always been running from something. When I was sixteen I ran away from home. When I was not quite eighteen I ran from my job as a waitress when the owner of the place tried to force himself on me.

I kept right on running straight to the city. It was like The War ending all over again. Sure, I nearly drowned in the life a couple times but once they figured out I had a set of pipes to go with my gams, the joint owners were all over me like un-rationed butter on bread. Of course some were just doll dizzy but they were easy to pick through. Which is how I ended up at the Parisian Room, crooning most nights unless we had a big time headliner in. But that wasn’t often.

Johnnie-boy and I came to an agreement. I lived in the apartment above the joint and sang in exchange of rent and free drinks. A girl couldn’t get a better arrangement than that. It left me with days working part time at the clothing store Johnnie-boy’s wife, Irene, worked at. She and I got close. Lunched together, that sort of thing.

I had no intention of running. I was happy where I was. Even the drugstore cowboys were gents. I was happy and everything was swell.

One night I was outside clearing my head with a cig and a martini between sets. This was the night I got the bug to run again. There were a couple men quietly arguing down the alley from me. There was a bang and flash of light. One of them shoved me into the wall and dashed into the street.

That was the second time in two weeks that had happened right outside the club. I was getting tired of it. I was pretty sure that Johnnie-boy was mixed up in some no good but had no proof. I didn’t want to end up in cahoots or as the fall guy. I was keeping my mouth shut. It was for my own good and Irene’s.

Then the coppers came.

They did their thing in the alley and then this one came up to me. He was a detective – Detective Jamison. He gave me the eye. All those men from Central are active duty, I swear. I’m sure he was wondering what color my garter belt was. Ugh.

“What happened?” he asked as he lit another cigarette for me.

“Not real sure. I was minding my own trying to give my pipes a break. Boom, flash, a man shoved by me and was gone. It was too dark to see anything.”

“You sure about that?”

“As sure as the sky’s blue.”

“I take it you work at this establishment?”

“Course.”

“What’s your name?”

“Edith. Edith Stewart.”

“Well, if we have any more questions…”

“You’ll be in touch. I know how it goes.”

He really gave me the stink eye then. The police poking into my background is just what I needed. Swell.

 

 

The next evening I walked into my apartment after my shift at the store. The place had been tossed and a gun was half poking from under the couch. I was not going to be the fall guy. I threw everything necessary and some of my performing dresses into the trunk of my car. My money went half into a cigar box with my jewelry, a fourth in my purse and a fourth on my person. I had gassed the car this afternoon. One less thing to worry on.

I stopped at a filling station two hours out of the city to alter the registration details for the car. I guess it was time to drop the falsie. As I drove west, Edith was left behind. It was going to be strange running as Lois Howard again.