Cadence S. Olivarez
About Cadence S. Olivarez
Cadence Skye Olivarez has Texas roots dating back six generations. She currently resides in Corpus Christi with her three year old son, Everett, who would legally change his name to Batman should she allow it. She spends most of her time amid the palm trees of TAMUCC while she works full time, studies Creative and Professional Writing, and serves as the Associate Editor of Nonfiction for The Windward Review. She was recently a recipient of a HAAS Writing Award for her work completed in Fall 2018 and is a perpetual student of life. She is an avid lover of Mother Nature, yoga, coffee, and kindness.
Peaches
There are no obscurities when it comes to grief.
It is simply a part of you.
It’s the pit of a stone fruit, lying in the center of your perfect peach.
It’s the light leaking out from a break in a cloud,
causing shadows to dance on your brightest moments.
It’s the aging of your hands,
worn and weary,
with the creases growing more evident as the years pass,
reaching for that peach – that tender, ripe peach – wishing
they could share it with you over a bowl of Blue Bell.
It’s their soft leather chair,
mahogany, and impressed with the memory of their seat,
remaining empty on Christmas Day.
It’s celebrating their would-be birthdays on a cedar plank deck
built inches above the Gulf,
with no one there to blow out the candles,
besides the brackish bay breeze.
It’s finding old photos
and wanting to share them with the world,
because then – maybe – it would stand as a testament
of their life’s meaning.
Maybe.
But it will never suffice for feeling their laughter
fill an entire room,
or picking Fredericksburg peaches
together
on the side of the road,
or having them walk you down the aisle,
all dressed in white,
on your wedding day.
No, there are no obscurities
when it comes to grief;
it is simply a part of you.
my twenty-seventh lap
as my twenty-seventh lap around the great star comes to a close, i am humbled by the beauty earth holds, gentle and cosmic in the palm of my hands; by the fragility of existence in this form, fleeting and weightless; by the binding force of love that resides within each of us, waiting to be awoken; and within all the dreams sung by the hum that my bleeding heart beats i welcome peace and stillness, yet remain open and willing for my soul to be stirred, never shying or shielding from the rain but allowing it to wash over my bones, and flesh, and eyes to pour out the hundreds of paths i chose not to walk, and breathe into the one i plucked, the fruit of what is. this path i’ll water and wander for all of my years to come, for i’ve only just begun the story that has yet to be spun.
Mesquite Tree
Mesquite Tree
Heal me beneath the moon and the sea.
May the crashing waves devour my fears
and wrap me in a cocoon of the unknown,
spun like a dreidel of silk and sound
as harmonies of locusts lull this loud dream.
Blood orange moon, mother moon, longest of the century,
gleam unto my bare breasts that have changed shape
in aging and nourishing of my sweet babe;
see me for not the hundreds of versions there are that exist of me within each stranger,
but for who I am. Who I am.
A wandress shifting shadows,
morphing under the wings of sky,
soles of my feet calloused from kissing the red Texas dirt,
pulling the earth toward me as if it were an Afghan in the dead of winter’s night.
An Afghan knitted by the hands of my great grandmother who lived through The Great Depression,
starved through poverty, hunger knowing no race.
She praised her God on a day when she had animal fat to cook in her beans,
trekked across dry desert, cactus country, shielding her cooing infant from the blistering sun,
all to give me this life. This life.
With only the fire cracking and smoldering mesquite branches to warm my bones.
I sharply inhale this vision, and exhale the realization of permanence:
because of her, and the bloodline coming before me,
because of these ancestors who fought for this life,
healing under this moon,
because of them, I am eternal.
Baby Bloomer
Baby Bloomer
Once a speck of stardust, then a sprouting seed,
blooming from the verdant, velvet covered leaves.
Your size a Meyer Lemon, canary and so sweet,
your skin the perfect hue, heart a steady beat.
Gentle in this iris, curled up serenely,
your rosy cheeks and chin, drawn down to your knees.
The beauty of becoming: budding, bittersweet,
eclipsing space and time, when our eyes finally meet.
Petals lending warmth, awaiting your first breath,
an act that will transcend, even my own death.
Charles Etheridge
About Charles Etheridge
A self-proclaimed desert rat, Chuck Etheridge was raised in El Paso, Texas. A US Navy veteran, he has worked as an actor, a convenience store clerk, a Rent-a-Poet, and a catalog copy writer before finding respectable employment as an English teacher, first at McMurry University and, later, at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. His poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in a variety of reviews and anthologized in a number of books, and he has written two plays that have been produced. Look for his upcoming novel CHAGFORD REVISITED. See his website.
THE USS NORTON SOUND
Thirty-three thousand tons of steel,
She slogged through the gray seas,
Like an arthritic aunt,
Determined to cross the street without help,
Graceless but reliable.
When Uncle Sam invited her to the dance,
The dance called World War II,
She was not his favorite niece,
He told her to dress,
So she could take care of sea planes.
She stumped gracelessly across the Pacific,
To Japan,
Where out-of-ammo pilots aimed planes
At her thick hull.
She wasn’t pretty,
But she was tough,
Shrugging off attacks,
Giving better than she took.
She sank sixteen enemy ships,
Put thirty more out of action,
Shooting enemy aircraft out of the sky
While performing more than 400 rescue missions.
Like sailors, Ships get medals—
She was awarded two,
And the admiral made her
His flagship.
All she wanted to do
Was make her Uncle Sam proud.
But was obsolete before she got home from the dance.
But her Uncle Sam was a thrifty fellow,
Figured she’d gotten all gussied up
Why not invite her to a different ball?
“It’s an honor,”
He whispered in her ear,
“You’ll be a test platform.
We’ll put new weapons systems on you,
To see if they work.
You’ll be the first to try everything.”
She didn’t quite trust,
The lascivious, tempting sound
Of Uncle’s voice,
Gamely, though, she agreed.
Her sailors kneeled worshipfully on her decks,
Holystoning each teak plank,
Polishing her brass,
Painting her deck,
And she hoped that,
Just once, she would be
The belle of the ball,
When they ripped wood off her fantail she cried,
Blushing when they bared her bare steel bottom
For all the world to see.
She howled when they cut a huge hole
On her fantail
Plunging a missile magazine into her depths,
Leaving a launcher sticking up out of her bottom.
It was embarrassing.
None of her ship friends even knew what it was.
The first missile
Made her decks burn like no ships’ decks
Had been burned before.
She hadn’t been built to take this kind of abuse,
But the same hull and decks
That shrugged off Japanese zeros
Took it,
Because she wanted to make her Uncle Sam proud.
But, quietly,
She cried at the burns,
On her beautiful teak decks.
Her Uncle had other concerns, though,
The Soviets were putting things up in the sky,
Out in space,
And the Navy had to track them,
So he added three more decks
To her already top heavy frame,
Looking like a short, heavy woman
Forced to teeter about on six inch heels.
Decades came and went,
But she was always game,
They cut out launchers,
Added others launchers,
More radar.
One day,
Uncle Sam called her up,
She could hear tears of joy
In his voice.
“The Cold War is won!”
He breathed excitedly,
“We command the seas.”
Then, an embarrassed cough,
“Um, and we don’t need you anymore.”
She wanted to plead,
Promise to be useful,
But he had already hung up.
She was the oldest line ship in commission,
For more than forty years,
She’d taken everything they’d thrown at her,
Dive bombers, enemy ships,
Missile platforms, radar—
And now they were done.
All that is left of her now,
Is a plaque and a ship’s bell.
The steel melted down now for other things—
Maybe a girder on an overpass,
The steel in a building,
Maybe a playground Jungle Jim,
Or maybe the razor blade you shaved with yesterday.
Her eternal reward
For forty-five years
Of faithful service
To her Uncle Sam.
You Feed Them
I’ve always been taught, that if somebody is hungry, you feed them. It’s a basic act of human decency. Forget the politics. Forget trying to analyze the situation that made them hungry. Forget blame. If someone is hungry and you have the ability, you help. It goes doubly if there are children in need.
This past weekend, my wife, Diana and I went with a couple of people to do some relief work at one of the camps in Matamoros, Mexico where asylum seekers are waiting for the chance to enter the US legally. Along with our priest, Father Jonathan, and a friend named Donna, we took a car full of gifts donated by our church—air mattresses, cook pots, and a couple of hundred pounds of food. We were also armed with a generous cash donation from the parishioners to buy needed materials once there.
Our first stop after leaving Corpus was the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, about a 2 ½ hour drive...
My Choice of Hells
The Gods of the North warn
Hell is a hot place.
Do bad, and you will burn,
Smelling brimstone in a fiery pit
Forever.
South Texas sun blazes like an angry god,
Sweat runs rivers down my back,
My pale skin burns, red, so I must hide from the Sun,
Shield myself from the wrath of Thor
With sun hats, and sunblock,
While he burns my plants,
Evaporates lakes and rivers,
And slays even the toad
Crossing the parking lot,
Who dies, then swells up,
A grotesque balloon blistering on asphalt
This is summer.
Gods of the South snicker at the North,
Bask in the heat of Thor’s wrath,
And warn,
Do bad and you will freeze,
In a dark cold place,
Forgotten.
Old Sol, the Sun, has grown weak
Forgetting Chicago in January.
I must work outside,
Stand in waist high snow,
Try to use a metal wrench
When it’s twenty below zero.
The wind shoots down from the North,
Knifing my heart through the long underwear,
And heavy jacket. My hands, numb, can’t work
With gloves on,
But can’t work when they are frozen.
This is winter,
Quetzalcoatl’s anger is everywhere,
Inescapable.
My southern bones fear Aztecs
More than Vikings,
Can always take clothes off,
But can’t put on enough to keep warm.
If I have to choose hell, I’d rather be Aztec than Viking,
Would rather burn than freeze.
Copyright Charlesa Etheridge
Chelsea Brotherton
About Chelsea Brotherton
Chelsea Brotherton studied English writing at Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi. She won the 1st place undergraduate creative writing 2019 Haas English Writing Awards for a small collection of poetry. A Houston native, she is and enthusiastic Corpus Christi transplant.
PRAYER TO MY EX-FATHER
Here’s to you, and trying to forget
My father, who art in nowhere.
Your face, barely seen, burns in memory,
Damned be your name.
My father who art in nowhere,
Would you know your children’s faces?
Damned be their names.
Yours was mine, but erased from me.
Do you know your children’s faces?
Have they been hidden from your kingdom?
You were mine, and erased yourself-
May your hell be as it is in my earth.
I try to hide you as I forge my kingdom,
But daily your ghost creeps back to me.
May your hell be as it is in my nightmares,
Your ghouls the faces of your forgotten children.
Your ghost creeps back to me,
And I cannot forgive your trespasses.
The faces of your forgotten children,
I imagine them happy in your absence.
I cannot forgive your trespasses, oh father.
Abandonment is an ever-weeping wound.
I imagine myself happy in your absence,
And in moments of temptation, I let myself.
Abandonment is an ever-creeping wound,
Climbing spine and occasionally finding brain.
In moments of temptation I let myself
Be delivered from your evil.
Here’s to you, and trying to forget
Your face, barely seen, burns in memory.
I Relapsed Today
I relapsed today
into my old ways.
It’s been five months
since I left this pit-
I was conditioned to ignore
His words, convinced of their emptiness-
Leaving me just as empty.
I would be more
To make up for him. I was sure
If I could make the right meal
Or speak gently enough
Or wear something sexier
That he would be happy
Enough to treat me like it.
I’m not sure what made me walk away,
But I’ve spent five months trying
To figure out what I’m worth
In my independence, my singularity.
I have been failing, pining
After sweet words and squeezed thighs.
But today it happened, a shame
I thought I had forgotten.
Like when I brought Peter home from the shelter,
The way he auto-cowered at the mere flinch
Of a finger- he still does this sometimes,
A reflex.
And today your words burrowed
Through my ears, banging around pinball
Style, knocking my stomach over,
Punching holes in my brain.
“Another bitch that cares
about nothing but herself”
“Fuckin cunt”
“I hate all you whores”
And my reply?
I was my dog, cowering in a corner.
“I’m sorry”
And I am sorry
For you, but it’s not my damn job.
Mostly, I’m sorry for myself.
And I’m writing this down
As a reminder, that the next time a man calls
Me a cunt on a second date
(or a 400th)
To say “I’m sorry”
But to follow it with
“But you can fuck right off.”
Christian Garduno
About Christian Garduno
Christian Garduno edited the writing compilation "Evolver" and his own solo poetry collection "Face," while a History undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. His work can also be read in Abstract Magazine, Corpus Christi Writers 2019, and Riza Press, where his poem, "The Return", was a Finalist in their 2019 Multimedia Poetry and Art Contest. He currently lives and writes along the South Texas coast with his wonderful wife Nahemie, young son Dylan, and his pet bear-cub Theodore Bexar.
A few years ago, his mother sent Theodore, his childhood teddy bear, back to him. “I handed him down to my nephew and niece and he went back to my mom for almost two decades. Now that he is back, he has, in a darling way, become part of my family again, with my son now enjoying his company. He goes on every road trip we take as family- and has become a sort of mascot, and in essence, a part of the family.”
Ground Swells
Counting every wave on the Ganges
every tomb is another womb
and every time you're checking out
another soul is perfectly checking in-
it's just the rooms we rent...
On Medium.com
Christian writes regularly on Medium.com Here's a sample:
you’re a buzz in the hours well before noon
when we’re swimming around in your room
you turn off the lights
we scale the heights...
read more at https://medium.com/@letsfly2000
Lone Star Lover
Find me some buds before too long in the afternoon,
anywhere you are can make a mighty fine saloon,
when the beach is your backyard,
you don’t have to look very hard,
so give me a flash, let’s make a splash,
Gulf of Mexico’s always got plenty of room
read the rest in Corpus Christi Writers 2019
CoffFeeE Cat
About Coffee Cat
Coffee Cat has lived in Corpus Christi all her life and graduated from Texas A & M University as a first generation college student with a Bachelor's degree in English. She currently works as a technical writer. Her novel DON'T DIE is available on Amazon. Summary: Anastasia Adira has read, watched, and heard countless stories with the same trope: do anything for love or save the princess. Two formulas that never seem to get old. As much as he enjoys a good romance, he never thought he’d be a part of one. Galaxia knows love as a word he can’t spell or recognize on the page. All it is, is something his clients say to him after a night of business and nothing more. When the two meet, the real story begins. BUY ON AMAZON
Alive
Tell me what it's like to be alive and not just survive.
Tell me what it’s like to know you’ll always have food at home
And have a home
To call home
Tell me what it’s like to be content.
Tell me what it’s like to drive down a little street
And pull up into a driveway.
Tell me what it’s like to have the keys to a house,
How does it sound when the door unlocks?
Tell me what does it smell like?
Does it smell like the cigarettes and gunpowder from the
Apartments above and below?
Or does it smell like citrus?
Tell me what it’s like to have a yard and a garden.
Tell me what it’s like to have a barbecue in the backyard
That lasts late into the night.
Tell me what it’s like to have a home.
Tell me what it’s like to be alive and not just survive.
And I’ll tell you what it’s like to survive and not be alive.
Poison me with the hope that one day I too can be alive.
At Fault
When I was a Kid I told myself
I’d never live past 25
Diagnosed with Demons
The prescription was church
I folded the pages of Bibles
Into the shape of pills
Desperate to quell the monster
In my head because
If the bandages from the
Priest’s mouth don’t
Heal your broken mind
It’s your fault
For rejecting the lord
When I was a Kid
I told myself I’d never live past 25
My self-inflicted
Stigmata nothing more than a
Symptom of my failure
I didn’t want to be stitched up
By prayers
But held together by human arms
When I was a Kid I told myself
I’d never live past 25
My blood boiled from
A baptism based on
Biblical Blasphemy of giving my
Life to the lord
What’s the point of being alive if
Your life isn’t yours anyway?
When I was a Kid I told myself
I’d never live past 25
But the other day
I woke up two years past my
Expiration date
Two Degrees and
Not a dime
Not fully alive
But not dead either
Cory Staryk
About Cory Staryk
During the day, C.J. Staryk is a marine biogeochemist at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. By night or the wee hours of the morning, he frantically claws at his keyboard to compose short stories, poetry and novels. From his lair, C.J. also manages a website for his photography and stories: https://hauntingachingwonder.wordpress.com.
The Haunting, Aching Echo
Here's a sample of Cory's work:
During the winter, I head back home to see the family. I also visit the place that would always give me a sense of calm from the outside world and the theater of lunatics in my head. It is a county park wrapped around the local reservoir.
See more at
About Cory's Writing
I read a Norman Mailer article that played with the idea that God was fully aware of our Doom. That he had made mortal creatures that will still die and be gone. It was a beautiful idea to me and it affected me.
I'm also obsessed that we just don't understand the vastness of space. Exploration of space is both bleak and absolutely amazing. I want to capture those two sentiments in the future science fiction work I write. Also, there is this idea in ecology that the destination of all species is extinction and I'm curious about how we would want to go out. I was trying to play with those ideas.
There is this old proverb, which I think is Buddhist, that says: before enlightenment, a shepherd wakes and tends to his flock; after enlightenment, a shepherd wakes and tends to his flock. That is how I came up with the resolution. Originally, I wanted to shut the station down and everyone would die to send the message, but it just didn't seem logical and really cruel. Could be really emotional, but ultimately a terrible ending.
Excerpt from Echoes
Flint flipped through the monitors’ outside views of the station and the gas giant they orbited. Turbulent cloud bands and a wide, vertical icy ring were the only sights. He once imagined the galaxy’s stars full of civilizations waiting for discovery, but most were empty and others were tombs.
Muted laughter drew Flint to the third monitor. A party played on that screen. Ten years ago. A woman with deep blue eyes smiled into the camera. Her shoulders draped with her long, brown curls framing her olive skin. She lifted her hands, revealing a brownie with a single lit candle. She mouthed “happy birthday” and laughed.
Sarah.
“We still felt alone out here then, but we were happier,” Flint muttered.
He caught a familiar scent: strawberry and cucumber, the aroma of the shampoo Sarah used. Flint swiveled in his chair and stared down a simulacrum of a short man with wide-rimmed glasses approaching.
“You’re trying to help again, Prometheus,” Flint said, fighting tears in his eyes. “It’s not working.”
The aroma vanished, replaced with the cold smell of dust and metal.
“I apologize. The captain assumed it would be a good idea. She is worried about you since it is the tenth anniversary of—”
The anger welled up inside him, but Prometheus was just following orders. He was a relic found adrift; an artificial, alien intelligence trapped in a probe; his creators extinct. There was no reason to be mad at him. “The captain wants me to be obedient, not comforted. Don’t worry, I’m not a danger to you.”
He turned back to his console so that Prometheus wouldn’t see the tears.
A blue light flashed.
Shit, it was the big blue light!
After decades of eavesdropping on alien signals, someone was sending them a message!
Prometheus gripped Flint’s shoulder, then turned to shout into the PA. “All officers report to the command center. We have a Code Blue.”
The monitor flashed with data and figures.
Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop. Flint thought. Let us find you.
The screen shimmered and flickered. The map turned red.
Flint whistled. “The source is outside of our galaxy. How is that possible?”
Cynthia Breeding
About Cynthia Breeding
Cynthia Breeding often wonders if she was born in the wrong century. She has a love/hate relationship with technology and has an avid interest in medieval history. Most of her books are historical romances with a bit of paranormal thrown in now and then. She also loves sailing and horseback riding. Cynthia is a well-established romance writer with 49 novels and novellas available.
Gunslinger
(Novel Excerpt)
By the devil’s own horns, he hadn’t expected Abigail Clayton to be so beautiful. The information he’d gotten on Sayer’s new bride hadn’t said much. Luke Cameron narrowed his gaze at the woman who’d just stepped off the train. She wore no bonnet and the sun made her golden hair glow like a halo, brightening her eyes to the deep blue of the Pacific. She had the face of an angel, softly rounded with a pert nose. Not that Luke had any experience with angels. Gunslingers rarely did. But…he studied her face again. Her mouth was definitely not angelic. The full lips, right now gathered in a pout, begged to be kissed. He pushed the thought away. He was here to see who would come for her now that Sayer was dead...
Buy Gunslinger on Amazon
Catch a Dream
21st century history teacher Elizabeth O’Malley wakes up in a Texas barn in 1849 wearing only a black silk negligee. When she’s discovered by Texas Ranger Miguel de Basque, he thinks she’s a prostitute from a Fort Worth brothel…perhaps suffering from amnesia,
given her wild tales of where she’s from.
Excerpt: Catch A Dream
Elizabeth O’Malley was falling, gliding through mists, hurdling downward, the air getting darker until all was pitch. She reached for something to grab onto, but met only swirling vapors as she spiraled on. A speck of light dawned ahead, silhouetting the shape of a flame-haired woman dressed in white leather. The vision became engulfed in a web of blue and green strands as Elizabeth rushed forward. She put her hands out to brace herself and swept right through the mesh, landing with a solid thump onto a floor, bumping her head in the process.
“Ouch!” Rubbing her forehead, she slowly opened her eyes. She was lying face down in a pile of fresh hay. Her nose twitched. The smell of horses filled her senses. A stable? She must be dreaming, but this felt so real.
Behind her, a horse gently nickered and stamped a hoof. Elizabeth rolled over and sat up in front of a box stall. The dappled gray who looked at her had large intelligent eyes set in a broad forehead and well-placed small ears, cocked forward as he leaned over the half-door to nuzzle her.
Trembling, she stood and stroked his muzzle. The horse felt real, but she often dreamed of horses, or at least she had until sexy men began appearing in her night visions, and she always dreamed in vivid color.
She looked down. She was still wearing the Victoria’s Secret black bra and thong with the chiffon wrap her traitorous fiancé would never see. She certainly did not need to relive finding Edward in bed with a Barbie look-alike. Not that she should have been surprised, she grimly reminded herself. Edward was drop-dead gorgeous and had enough Bad Boy attributes to make him alluring to any female. Better she had found out about his promiscuousness now than later.
Elizabeth fingered the leather strap on her wrist from which a Native American wood-carved fetish dangled. Her history students had given it to her yesterday, before the start of the Chirstmas holidays, along with a beautiful dream-catcher. The kids loved to tease her about her passion for the Old West, but they’d gotten caught up in the era after she’d brought in vintage John Wayne films and Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns. The fetish probably wasn’t the right accessory for her black lace, but she had not wanted to take it off. Just as she started to close the chifforn wrap, not that it covered much, she heard a sound. She whirled around and gasped.
A half-naked Indian teenager stood not two feet away, close enough for her to see a slight bead of sweat on his upper lip. It was uncanny how authentic this dream felt—probably the result of seeing too many of those western films. He wore a breechclout and leather leggings. Colored beads hung around his neck and his bare chest. A hawk feather was braided into his long hair and he had the blackest eyes she had ever seen. He looked like a hungry wolf stalking its prey. Instinctively, she took a step backward.
The Indian took a silent step forward. “I could have counted coup, you know,” he said. “Touched you without your knowing I was here. But I wanted you to know.”
Elizabeth drew another shaky breath and tried to cover herself more fully. Why in the world would she be nearly nude in her own dream? The Indian’s glance traveled from her face to her breasts and a small smile played on his mouth. A hard mouth, thin-lipped and straight-lined. She took another step backward and bumped against the wall of the stall. Trapped. The wall felt real, too. Some dream.
He came closer and reached over to touch her copper hair. “Fire Woman. You must have much magic. Your eyes are the color of our forests—a blessing from the Earth Mother.” He touched the diamond solitaire at her throat with a finger. “A shining star from the heavens. Yes, you have much magic.”
Elizabeth held herself still, hardly breathing. This would be a really, really good time to wake up. “I don’t have magic. Where am I? Who are you?”
Drawing himself up, he said proudly. “I am called Swift Hawk. My father is a Comanche chief.” He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. “To my people, a woman with flaming hair has much power. Many even fear her.”
She smiled weakly. Good Lord, a Comanche? She had conjured someone from the fiercest of all the Plains Indians to dream of? The finest light cavalry in North America, some said, and the most dangerous fighters. They loved to fight and feared nothing. Well, except maybe a woman with red hair. Feeling ridiculous to be so deep into the dream, she raised her chin.
“Take your hand off me if you don’t want to feel my wrath.”
Swift Hawk laughed and his hand dropped to her shoulder. “I said many fear you, Fire Woman. I do not. I am the son of a chief. I will claim you as my woman and have much honor and power among my father’s people.” He grasped her head in his hands and leaned forward to kiss her. She pushed against him, hard.
“Don’t you want to know where I came from?” she asked, trying to stall him.
He looked surprised. “The Great Spirits sent you. I do not question them.” He glanced down at her breasts again. “I like what they’ve clothed you in, too.” His hand slid down to stroke a breast.
She needed to something to stop this—closing her eyes, she screeched at the top of her lungs.
Suddenly, he was yanked away. Elizabeth felt cool air surrounding her. Slowly, she opened her eyes and then quickly closed them again. She could not have seen what she thought she had. Clearly, her mind was bent on fantasies tonight.
Tentatively, she peered out from behind her tousled hair. The man—her rescuer, she assumed, for the Indian boy was gone—was breathtakingly handsome. Far too good-looking to be real and very much like the delectable man she’d encountered in her sleep a couple of nights ago. She might still be dreaming, but this was much, much better. The stranger’s blackish hair curled just above the collar of the open neck of his shirt and a part of it fell across his forehead, giving him a roguish appearance. She almost reached out to brush it back for him. His eyes were warm brown and deep-set above high cheekbones and a straight nose. He had the most sensuous mouth she had ever seen. Definitely kissable. Well, of course he would. She was dreaming! He was tall, well over six feet with broad shoulders. With the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, she could see tan, well-muscled forearms. Her gaze traveled to his tight fitting jeans and she tried to ignore the bulge lodged there. She focused on his well-developed thighs. Big mistake—better to look down. The boots were hand-tooled. Cowboy boots. Real ones. She really had to stop reading romance novels about the Wild West. Cowboys and Indians. Her students would get a real laugh!
“Who are you and how did you get into my barn?” His voice was deep and resonant and held a note of authority. A man would think twice about crossing him, she thought and almost giggled. She certainly had conjured up her perfect cowboy. And all man. She couldn’t resist extending her dream-fantasy just a little longer…
“Elizabeth O’Malley,” she said and gave her dream man her best smile, the one her best friend, Brooke, said made her look alluring. “And you are one hot fantasy.”
The man blinked and let his gaze travel slowly over her body and back to her face. A corner of his mouth twitched. “Happy to oblige. My name’s Miguel.”
Elizabeth became uncomfortably aware of how much of her body was exposed. She drew her wrap closer which caused her fantasy to grin. It was a lopsided grin, giving him a definite Bad Boy look. Obviously, her dream-mind hadn’t quite learned its lesson about Bad Boys. But it was only a dream—
“How did you get into my barn?” he asked again. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.” His glance lingered on her breasts. “Are you a working girl?"
Working girl? Did he mean prostitute? This dream was taking an ironic direction given the fact at twenty-four she was the oldest virgin she knew. Her fantasy man sounded dangerously real. She could almost feel the heat radiating from him. She crossed her arms over her breasts. “I’m a teacher.”
buy Catch a Dream on Amazon
Excerpt from Bedroom Blarney
Excerpt from Bedroom Blarney
Chapter One
“Vodka martini, extra dry. Two olives.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Coming right up.”
As the bartender moved away to get her drink, Eve O’Connor closed her wet umbrella and plopped it alongside her satchel on the empty barstool next to her and pinched the bridge of her nose to relieve tension. TGIF had never sounded so good. Her art classes had been crap today. Not one high school kid had taken notes on value and hue in color and they certainly had not cared about line and space in composition.
Given the array of video games on smart phones and tablets, it was getting harder to get her students interested—let alone keep them interested—in something as mundane as classical art. Little wonder newbie teachers lasted less than two years in many cases. She had even contemplated changing careers herself, but Joe, her worthless ex-husband, had gambled away her savings before she’d caught him and she was still paying off the cost of the divorce. Besides, she had almost ten years invested in Deer Hill High School.
“Why so glum?” a male voice asked behind her. “It is Friday, after all.”
copyright Cynthia Breeding
read more of this story in Corpus Christi Writers 2018: An Anthology.
Cynthia Giery
About Cynthia Giery
Most mornings Cytnthia Giery goes out at sunrise to walk with her dog, Sophia
Sunrise Walks
Another gray morning, spent walking under the harbor bridge. I have a weird fascination with the angles of this structure... and found something new to me... the balloons painted on one of the support structures.
I almost skipped going over the bridge, but the fog lifted for a bit. It was so gray and misty, but still a nice walk. Then the fog rolled in again
A cold Saturday morning at Bob Hall Pier - love the blues and oranges. Sophia cutely convinced several walkers to pet her, so it’s a perfect day if you’re a dog.
Took a quick walk at the Corpus Christi Marina and caught a pretty bird right at sunrise. And ... there is just something about the wispy fronds on a palm that make a cool silhouette
Driving home from our morning beach walk - where it was QUITE chilly - BB sized hail. Neato. I guess it’s winter. Took pics of the piles in my backyard. The cat was not impressed and the dog has had enough of the cold for this morning.
Morning walk around the CC Marina — and I just loved this tree. Then we went to the old Oso Pier that has been falling to pieces. Sophia was very interested in SOMETHING under the bridge, but I have no idea what it was.
It was gorgeous at the beach this morning — very little wind — so I was really enjoying the walk. Sophia ran into a big, lab/Golden friend to play with and they were romping like crazy in this cooler weather. HOWEVER, they got a little wilder than they should. Sophia rolled over and then somehow came up wrong. She was limping so our walk ended about half way. Got her into the car, home, fed and now she’s resting. Pretty sure she just twisted wrong but with her back injuries I gotta be extra cautious. Sigh.
Addition: she limped out to the backyard to lay in the sun and finish her chew from yesterday.
Good morning from Bob Hall Pier. There was an odd bank of clouds surrounding the area but it was still a nice, chilly walk. I found 4 complete sand dollars and told a mom with kids where I’d put them. The kids were THRILLED when they “found” the sand dollars. It makes me happy
Merry Christmas from Bob Hall Pier —- it was chilly but oh so pretty
It was FREAKING chilly this morning. The north wind was blowing so hard and the humidity made the chill waaaaay more than I planned for. However, Sophia LOVED the weather. Except when the wind blew her over TWICE while attempting to poo. I laughed because I am a horrid dog mom
Yesterday at Whitecap Beach - it was beautiful. Possibly because I hadn’t been there in so long, but it’s still very pretty. Yes, I get there waaay too early, but the dawg pack has to play. Sophia chased, jumped, rolled and swam with her pack. Life is good
The weather has been incredibly beautiful this week, so, naturally, my favorite place is at the beach. Such a shame to HAVE to walk in this beauty. Sigh ...
David Carpenter
About David Carpenter
My name is David Carpenter: Writer of stories, adopter of cats, player of games. Graduate of the United States Coast Guard Academy with a second degree from the university formerly known as Corpus Christi State. After a stint in the Coast Guard I became a computer programmer, a choice that I enjoyed but would not recommend for normal people. I live in Corpus Christi, Texas and write urban fantasy with a touch of humor.
Unfinished Business A Second Visit from The Squirrel
coming soon
The Epiphany
"Monica and Jerry are assholes."
It had been two weeks, and I was still muttering about my feud at work when I climbed up the tree with a chainsaw. They were the ones who had screwed up, but I was the one who ended up on the hook for it. It had taken me over twenty hours to clean up their mess. Twenty unpaid, uncredited, working-while-everyone-else-goes-home hours. A whole weekend, shot to hell. The anger welled up, making it made it hard to focus.
And lack of focus was something that a man in my position could not afford.
Because I was eight feet off the ground, gingerly climbing an extension ladder propped against the big oak tree in my front yard. I'm afraid of heights, so for me, the top of a ladder is not a good place to be. But a windstorm had damaged one of the branches, and I didn't feel like paying two hundred bucks for a tree service.
I was perched precariously with one foot on the second-to-last rung, clutching my chain saw and reaching a shaky hand for what I hoped was a sturdy branch, when I looked up to see a squirrel sitting six inches in front of my face.
I froze in shock, standing perfectly still while a battle raged between my fear of heights and my instinct to jump.
Fear of heights won.
"Whoa! Just take it easy, there, fella,” the squirrel said. “I'm here to help.”
An eerie, almost lethargic sense of calm settled over me. “Huh. A squirrel that talks.”
“Hey, I’m not just any squirrel, kid. I'm an extra-special, once-in-a-lifetime magical squirrel."
I squinted at it. It had been thirty or forty years since anyone called me 'kid'. "Magical, huh?"
"That's right. And today's your lucky day, because I'm here to do you a favor."
"Uh-huh." I stepped down to a more secure position and rubbed my forehead with my free hand. I had never had a hallucination before. I wondered if my insurance would cover a psychotic episode. Probably not. Maybe I could claim it was the result of migraines. It was October, that lovely time of year when my head hurts non-stop every time a cold front blows through. I could blame it on the migraines, and maybe get an MRI.
Yeah, I should definitely get an MRI.
"Hey, fat boy! Look at me! Yeah, I'm talking to you, pal."
I shifted my feet on the rungs. The talking rodent was right, I needed to lose some weight. I hadn't been on the ladder five minutes and my feet were already starting to ache. I looked up at the splintered branch. Is it okay to use an electric chainsaw when you're hallucinating?
The squirrel snapped its fingers. "Hey! You're not going to fall off the ladder, are you? Nah, I would know it if you were."
"And how would you know that?"
Wait, it had fingers? I squinted at it again, trying to get a look at its paws. I don't wear glasses, but I probably should, it was a strain to focus on something so close. Why was my hallucination out of focus?
"Never mind, you wouldn't understand. Look, let's cut to the chase. You know that feud you're having at work? The one with Monica and Jerry? You need to let that shit go, man."
"Are you kidding me? After what they did? No way."
"Way. You need to let it go. And get yourself some glasses, you're walking around squinting at the world, not seeing jack." It held up a paw. "How many fingers am I holding up?" It chittered out a laugh. "Just kidding. But seriously, get your ass to an optometrist. And do the right thing, make nice with Monica and Jerry."
"Oh, right. And why should I take advice from a talking squirrel? You don't even exist."
"I'm your totem animal, dimwit, the sacred guardian of your clan and its soul-steering spiritual guide. This feud is eating you up, making you into an even bigger asshole than usual. You're taking it out on everyone around you, including your wife. Honestly, I don't know how she puts up with you."
"Of course you don't. Because you— " I poked a finger in his face " are just— a figment— of my imagination." I found myself swaying on the ladder, and immediately made a panicked grab for the tree.
"I've been trying to go easy on you, pal, but I can see that ‘easy’ isn't going to work."
It cocked its head and glared at me with its flinty black eyes, causing a chill to run up my spine. All the nasty remarks and mean-spirited gestures I had inflicted on the world over the previous two weeks flashed through my mind, an odious Parade of Awfulness that lasted less than a second but left me feeling nauseous and more than a little ashamed.
Monica and Jerry had made a mistake. And I had been a complete asshole about it. To everyone. For two whole weeks.
"Aw, crap."
"About time the light came on. You get it now, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then my work here is done. You know, I like you, kid. You're adorably clueless, but never in a boring way. More of a weird and awkward kind of thing."
"Um, thanks?"
"It's all good. But I wouldn't turn down some pecans, if you happen to come across some."
And with a flick of its tail it was gone, leaving me with wobbly legs and a lot to think about.
The next day I buried the hatchet with Monica and Jerry, basically by owning up to my bad behavior and asking for their forgiveness, which they willingly gave. They made a big deal of it, actually. Told me how grateful they were for all the extra work I had done. And they made a point of saying that in front of everybody, including the boss. I still blush a little whenever I think about it.
Everything's cool at work now, people don’t look the other way when they see me coming.
I went to a cut-rate optometrist and got a pair of glasses. Bifocals. I never wear them, but they're on the shelf by the TV if I ever need them. I'm still fat and I still get migraines, but the MRI came up clean, and the insurance company paid for it.
The doctor said my 'vision' was probably the result of stress and sleep deprivation. He wrote me a prescription that I didn't bother to fill.
I know what I saw.
What I did do was buy a big bag of unshelled pecans and put them in a bucket underneath the oak tree.
You know, for the squirrels.
Devorah Fox
About Devorah Fox
“What if?” Those two words all too easily send Devorah Fox spinning into flights of fancy. She is the author of the best-selling The Bewildering Adventures of King Bewilliam literary fantasy series. This includes The Lost King, awarded the All Authors Certificate of Excellence 2016 and The Redoubt, voted #35 of 50 Self-Published Books Worth Reading 2016. She also wrote the mystery minis, Murder by the Book, a Top Book of 2017, One Bad Apple, and the Fantasy/Sci Fi Mini Lady Blackwing, a Top Ten Short Story in the 2017 Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll. She co-authored the contemporary thriller, Naked Came the Sharks with Jed Donellie and contributed to several SciFi/Fantasy anthologies. Her thriller, Detour, finished in the Top Ten Thrillers in the 2016 Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll. The Zen Detective, a mystery, was voted #34 of 50 Best Indie Books of 2017 and was named a finalist for the Golden Book Award Contest 2017. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast with rescued tabby cats ... and a dragon named Inky. Visit the “Dee-Scoveries” blog at http://devorahfox.com.
See her on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/devorahfox. The proceeds from the anthology The Magical Book of Wands benefit The American Library Association
An Excerpt from An Ill Wind
Chapter One
I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my chambray shirt. A light tee shirt would be more comfortable in the sweltering heat and suffocating humidity of a South Texas summer day but the heavier shirt's tight weave made a better barrier against the ferocious mosquitos. It had taken days for the ground to absorb all the standing water from Hurricane Harvey. The pests hatched in droves. Floodwaters flushed rattlesnakes and fire ants from their homes just as Category-4 force winds and twelve feet of storm surge had driven us Port Aransas residents from ours.
Parched, I grabbed my water bottle. As I sipped, I spotted a figure approaching from the end of the street. My pulse quickened. Few who lived in my Beachside subdivision had returned from evacuation. In the motel to which I fled for two weeks, I learned about looters and squatters who descended on our small city to take advantage of empty and unsecured homes. Did this person have bad intent? Should I confront him? Lock myself in the house and call the police?
He drew closer. Through the dust and haze I recognized the figure. I sighed with relief and greeted him. “Hi, Elmore.” Sweat dampened his tee shirt Dirt clung to his boots and jeans. White hair poked out from the stained sweatband of his sun-bleached Dallas Cowboys ball cap.
An excerpt from Murder by the Book
She unlocked the door to the business office, housed in an old, wood-framed cabin separate from the main resort building. The inn’s owner felt that there was no point in wasting expensive showy real estate on mere staff so no highly polished wood floors, no roaring fireplaces, or sparkling crystal chandeliers for them. Instead, Candy's storm boots squeaked on a worn linoleum floor. A balky fluorescent light sputtered overhead and the steam radiator clanked and wheezed.
That wasn't right. The lights should be off, the heat turned down. Normally Candy was the first one in. She turned everything on. Someone else must have gotten here first. Certainly, it wasn't any other member of the staff. No one but she ever came in early, ever spent a single minute more than necessary here.
The door to her boss's office was ajar. Sleink himself in early? Incredible, Candy thought.
“Good morning, Sir,” Candy called. No response, but that didn't surprise her. It was appropriate for her to greet him but he wouldn't lower himself to return the gesture.
Candy sat at her old desk in the reception area, pulled off her boots, and slipped her heels on. She stuffed her gloves into the pocket of her winter coat and hung it on the back of her chair. There was coffee in the pot by the door. Noticing the lack of aroma, she touched the pot and found it cold. Leftover from last night, she decided. Heaven forbid Sleink should make a fresh pot. After all, that was her job, along with handling the phone, typing, and filing, if that all didn't get in the way of her primary duties, like fetching ink from Greenfield.
“I'm going to get some water for coffee,” Candy called. She took the pot down the hall to the ladies room. As she rinsed it out in the sink, she made a face at herself in the mirror. “You gutless wonder, Candy Wadsen,” she scolded herself. “If you had any spine at all you'd tell Sleink to make his own coffee. Shouldn't be beyond his talents.”
The face in the mirror frowned back at her with anger in its brown eyes. Oh, but it might interfere with his precious work was the retort. Or to be more precise, his precious hobbies. Sleink was a collector. First it was pocket knives. Next it was scissors. Then it was letter openers. Lately, he was into fountain pens. Just yesterday he had almost giggled with something approaching glee when a new catalog had arrived with the office mail.
“Hold my calls,” he had told Candy then retreated into his office to revel in glossy photos of deluxe writing instruments.
“Coffee's on, Mr. Sleink. Can I get you a cup?” Candy poked her head into his office. “Mr. Sleink?”
He was slumped face down on his elegant mahogany desk.
An excerpt from The Lost King
FROM Book One in The Bewildering Adventures of King Bewilliam
“Moo."
Moo? King Bewilliam frowned. What was a cow doing in the throne room?
"Moo."
King Bewilliam no sooner had set his gaze on the Bell Castle’s richly-veined marble floors, the opulent woven tapestries, the straight lines of courtiers resplendent in their gold-braided uniforms than it all vanished.
His heart jolted and he felt a pervasive icy chill.
“Moo.”
I’m asleep, the King thought. I’m dreaming. I need to wake up. He opened one eye. He had been dreaming but what vanished was not the cow but the throne room. Instead, the sight that greeted him was another eye: big, brown, and deep.
King Bewilliam opened his other eye and found himself face-to-face with a large Guernsey regarding him with mild curiosity.
"Moo, moo," said the cow although to the king it sounded distinctly like “Who, you?” which, it seemed to him, was an excellent question given the circumstances. Was he not King Bewilliam, ruler of the Chalklands, master of Bell Castle? So what was he doing here staring down a cow? He shook his head to clear the fog of slumber...
copyright Devorah Fox
Read the rest of this chapter in Corpus Christi Writers 2018: An Anthology
Dylan Lopez
About Dylan Lopez
Dylan Lopez is a student at TAMUCC majoring in English. He was a student of both Joseph Wilson and Tom Murphy as well as Glenn Blalock. He won the Robb Jackson Poetry Contest in his senior year of high school. A graduate of Richard King High School, he spent his senior year juggling dual credit classes with Del Mar College and competing in Academic Decathlon; he would go on to become a regional champion and a state competitor of 2017-2018. In high school, his interests in poetry were sparked by then-Creative Writing instructor Joseph Wilson, who featured Dylan in his final edition of the high school literary magazine, Open All Night. His writing incorporates an upbringing centered around parochial schools and religious teachings, while also tackling the theme of love from a young adult’s perspective. He hopes to move forward with his education in the hopes of going to law school and continuing to practice his writing over the coming years.
An Afterword for Love
Guest Room
I am the one caught answering,
lost in the evening of Being—
that hears your flat strikes
against the patient timber door
where you ask, with feigned modesty
to stay in the empty guest room.
The latest tenant of a shut-in heart
soaked in scarlet jets, flush with
patchwork-shades of disregard—
a reckless tempest raving, beneath
the bent cries and tilted howls resounding,
grating against my love-scratched corridors...
Crossing the Harbor Bridge
Against the foreign hour’s demands
I am here with you; a transient tied,
Truant of time.
A steward to the innumerable imagined, the generations
yet embarked.
Just as you feel the searing touch of the sun emblazed, so I felt.
Just as any of you have known the shimmering coastal reveries, so I have
known
The melodies sung symphonic—with buoyant delight.
Just as you reach your hands into the shallow pools pondering their fortunes, I reached yet
was pinched.
Just as you look on the treasure-laden leviathans come to harbor, their harlequin crates
enshrined, I looked.
I too journeyed across the former bridge,
That long-iron lattice, now overtaken—
Its wind-battered braces hurled into the bay,
Replaced by silk-thread suspensions, stained
with the sparkling brilliancies of ocean pearls.
II
These and all else were bliss to me, as they are to you,
staring across the violet horizon into teal-hued waters
from the bayside balconies.
I loved it well, the city and her motley crowds
We greeted each other with cool tenderness,
a soft-swaying love, caressed by the gentle tide.
III
There is nothing between us then,
No love undone by the separation of grey years
Whatever time plots, it cannot prevail over us
I too lived here, in the shadow of the washed harbor.
I too drove across the shore of Corpus, baptized in the waters around it.
I too prayed in the mission house, christened by the crystalline skyline.
I too felt the abrupt changes, the widening gyre of my age—
In my solitary hold, among the lush seagrass and wild oxeyes
I came into being, breaking through the surface threshold
I came to know myself, reclaimed from the savage storms
I found myself on the vestal shore, delivered by the gulf sands,
ever-merciful.
University Discovery
I familiarly recall the nauseating journey from King
High school to the unfamiliar Island University,
With its own ecosystem, staring out into the sea.
Beside me on the unsound bus was a pretty German
Girl who, by the end of the relieving trip, would
Become something more to me than a mere seat partner...
Jim McCutchon
About Jim McCutchon
Dr. Jim McCutchon practiced medicine in Corpus Christi for many years before retiring to pursue other interests, one of which is writing. He is currently working on a novel about life on a 19th century plantation in Louisiana. As an exercise while studying the writing craft at a workshop in Santa Barbara California, he was challenged by the moderator to write a short story containing a very specific ending, and to do it in ten minutes. That story is EMERGENCY, which was included in Corpus Christi Writers 2018. For 2019 he decided to do something a little different.
Zombie Revenge
May 3, 2017
While taking a tour through Pass Christian on my way home from a trip to Biloxi, I stopped at Live Oak Cemetery to see if the gravestone had been placed on my aunt Rebecca’s grave and to just look around. Live Oak is a special cemetery to me. There are so many of my ancestors buried there, and the quiet, the giant moss-covered oaks and the battered headstones all come together to give me a special feeling of being connected to my past. It’s a feeling that I get in no other place and in no other way. Modern cemeteries have what they call Perpetual Care. It’s a prepaid way for the cemetery to take the responsibility for maintenance. Live Oak was established before that idea took hold, and the families are responsible. In my case, there is no family close by, and I think, from the looks of the place, that is not uncommon. Iron fences around family plots are rusted and broken. Marble headstones, softer than the modern granite, are covered with mildew leaving the inscriptions difficult to read. Many headstones tilt to one side, and some are broken. In places, Hurricane Katrina removed headstones, and no one has replaced them.
I drove onto the shell road that has grass growing between the tire tracks and parked alongside the collection of family graves that is just inside the place where the pillars that marked the entrance used to be before Katrina swept them away. Here was the grave of my great, great-grandfather. The family was rich then, and he has a suitable marble monument. Near it is a smaller marble monument for my great grandfather. Near that is a small granite headstone for my grandfather. It is a poignant reminder that, as the family fortune diminished, so did the stone markers. I wasn’t sad, just pensive. I’m probably better off for not having inherited wealth. But I’ve gone down a rabbit trail. It has nothing to do with zombies and revenge.
In the same enclosure were two graves that lay flat with concrete perimeter walls about six inches high and a concrete slab for a lid. At the head of each was a marble headstone about 3 feet high. For some reason, both of these tombs had marble crosses leaning on the headstones, obscuring the inscriptions. They were identical. The vertical beam was about 4 feet long. The transverse beam was about 3 feet long. In thickness, they measured 4 by 4 inches. I was curious. By leaning over, I could see that the first name of the person buried in the tomb to my left was Frederick. I couldn’t see the rest. My guess was that I was standing atop my great uncle Fred at whose house I stayed in and played in as a young child. I remember the house and Uncle Fred very well although he died when I was only five. Another rabbit trail. Stick to the story!
I moved to the twin tomb, thinking it must contain the remains of my great uncle Jimmy. That made sense. They were brothers. They should lie together. Since I am called Frederick James, I was especially eager to see if Old Uncle Jimmy was in there, but that chunk of marble was too heavy to lift. No problem. It should be easy to tilt it up just a tad and peek. Leaning forward, I did just that. It must have disturbed the occupant. Suddenly, as though someone had shoved it, the cross lurched forward, struck me in the lower right leg and propelled me onto my right shoulder alongside the grave. Memories of a previous fall on that shoulder immediately came to mind. And I didn’t like the prospects of another operation. Jimmy Dinn is a nice guy and a good orthopedist, but shoulder surgery hurts.
Then, I thought about my immediate problem. The cross was lying on my right lower leg and foot. I was trapped. The zombie in that tomb had taken revenge on the fool who dared to disturb him. Now, the deserted cemetery was not a blessing. There was no one around to help. Lying down on your side and reaching to your foot does not provide a mechanical advantage for lifting a heavy object. Just the opposite. I couldn’t budge the cross with my left hand. My cell phone was in a pocket that I couldn’t get to, and I considered the possibility that I would die there and join the zombie that had shoved the cross on top of me. The idea gave me the adrenaline surge I needed to rise halfway up, use both hands with a right shoulder crying out in pain and lift the cross one inch. All I needed. I was free. Was my leg broken? No. Incredible luck. I stood, looked around and decided to get out of there. So there. Uncle Jimmy or whoever you are in that tomb. You zombie.
Holding my right wrist with my left hand to stabilize my sore shoulder, I went to my car, opened the door with my left hand, got in and slowly drove off. I was miles away when I realized that I hadn’t taken any pictures. Too late, but I was pleased to be free, and I knew that I could drive with just my left hand. I’ve had experience. When I was in my teens, I sometimes had a date on a cold Saturday night. In those days, cars didn’t have air-conditioning or heat. We also didn’t have center consoles in the front seat. If my date was cold (not in the metaphorical sense), she would sit close to me to keep warm, and it was rude not to help by putting my right arm around her. We didn’t have power steering either.
I drove 3 hours to Baton Rouge on Saturday, stayed overnight with my step-kids and drove 8 hours home to Corpus Christi on Sunday. I was very tired on Monday, but not too tired to go see Jimmy Dinn. X-rays showed no broken bones, and Jimmy prescribed toradol for pain and for its anti-inflammatory action. I had refused offers of pain medicine, but doctor’s orders trumped my stubbornness. I took my first toradol Monday at bedtime. Amazing. I slept well and woke refreshed and almost pain free. Thanks Jimmy.
The story gets better now. Today, I called Live Oak Cemetery and spoke with the administrator. He checked the records and found that someone named Harriet is buried in Uncle Jimmy’s tomb. Well, I guess it isn’t Uncle Jimmy’s tomb after all. Or is it? Are they together? Did I disturb some after life romance? We will never know, and the zombie or zombies will rest undisturbed, at least by me.
read more like this in Corpus Christi Writers 2020
A Strange Dream
A funny thing happened to me last night. Not funny in the sense of humorous but in the sense of unusual, very unusual. I had just turned off my bedside reading light, turned on my right side as I often do and closed my eyes when the light went back on. That’s strange, I thought. Lights shouldn’t turn back on by themselves...
read the rest in Corpus Christi Writers 2019.
Emergency
He was sitting at his desk after lunch, talking with three associates. An important business meeting. He had left strict instructions—no calls, no interruptions of any kind—but there it was, the blinking red light on his phone demanding attention. He tried to ignore it, but it flashed with such insistency he finally had to respond.
It was his secretary. The principal from Jenna’s school had just called, and he needed to get there right away.
Not again! Please God, not again . . . the blinking light, the tone of voice; it was too familiar. He turned pale. Dreading what he might hear, he didn’t ask for details. A year ago his wife Darlene had been on her way to that same school to pick Jenna up for a ninth grade soccer game. A truck blasted through a red light and T-boned her. Within moments firemen were working furiously with the Jaws-of-Life to get her broken body out of the car, but it was no use. She was lifeless as a china doll. The flashing red light and his secretary’s tone were the same then as now…
He replaced the receiver, muttered a quick excuse to his three colleagues, and quickly walked out of his office. As he hurried by his secretary’s desk, she gave him the same fearful and sympathetic look she had that time a year ago.
He took the same elevator down as he did then. The same ad for the same cafeteria was pasted on the same elevator walls; the same picture of the same food was still there.
A sob caught in his throat. He suppressed it.
The elevator . . . so damn slow—couldn’t they at least change the picture?
He got in his Beamer in the garage, but his mind was already at the school. The car seemed to drive itself, turning left at the drugstore on the corner of Walnut and right at the gas station, four blocks down to the school, with no conscious input from him.
He had been taking Jenna to school over that same route for a year. Ever since the accident. Picking her up too, though not for soccer practice. Jenna had quit soccer. Quit everything—writing for the school paper, acting in the plays, cheerleading, even talking on the phone with her friends. Mostly she stayed in her room with the shades drawn and the door closed. And she didn’t listen to music anymore. She used to be his sunshine girl, smiling only when she wasn’t laughing.
But not anymore.
Oh God…
Darlene’s face had been smashed. He had chosen a closed coffin. Jenna wanted him to open it so she could say good-bye to her mother, her best friend. He didn’t want to do it, but he did. A mistake. Jenna hadn’t been the same since.
She and Darlene had done everything together; shopped for brightly colored clothes, walked in the rain, danced to teeny bop tunes in the kitchen while cooking, baking or washing dishes. Everything was fun for them.
No more. Jenna didn’t laugh any more. Her stylish preteen clothes hung unworn in the closet. She now chose brown, sometimes black. She rarely talked. It had been a year. He had waited for her to heal, but she only got worse. Now this.
He pulled into the parking lot at school and forced himself out of the car. A security guard offered to take him to the principal’s office. Judging by the look on his face, the guard already knew what had happened.
Fearful and hesitant, he approached the principal’s waiting rom. His chest was so tight he could hardly breathe. As he stood before the receptionist, he saw she too was apprehensive, as though sitting on tragic news she was not free to divulge.
She told him he was expected, that he should just knock and go in. He hesitated in front of the heavy door for a short moment. What horrible news was waiting for him behind this solid core door with imitation brass doorknob?
He took a deep breath, gingerly knocked, and opened the door.
He stopped, unable to release the doorknob for fear of collapsing. The walls and floor appeared gray, but he was dimly aware they might only seem that way because his vision was fading. The principal’s desk was gray too, cold institutional steel, and there were no chairs for visitors.
A tinge of anger began replacing the despair. The anger grew as he realized he would be made to stand like an ordinary suppliant while his eminence fed him the details of this latest tragedy.
He tightened his hold on the knob.
The principal got up, came around the desk and adjusted his ridiculous tweed jacket with the leather patches at the elbow. Who did he think he was, an Oxford Don? A little man with a squeaky voice, he was saying something like . . . terrible thing . . . never had this happen before in my school . . . so much mess to clean up after her . . . can’t have classes this afternoon . . . the students are out of control . . . no atmosphere for academic pursuits . . . was such a nice girl . . . a tragedy . . . and it’s all her fault.
He was really angry now. All the little man cared about was his damn school and his spotless record. Solid core or not, he just might tear the doorknob out and plant it in the principal’s skull.
By now the principal was pointing a trembling finger at something in the corner of the room hidden by the opened door. He was saying, “She started a food fight in the cafeteria.”
He looked behind the door. There was Jenna, standing erect with her head held high and her arms folded on her chest. She had the light in her eyes that he loved but hadn’t seen since Darlene’s death, and she was grinning with defiance and delight. It had taken a year, but in the end, the spirit of his sunshine girl had burst back into life, and neither school authority nor the principal’s anger could suppress it.
“Jenna!” he exclaimed, “Thank God! I thought . . .”
The principal continued his petulant sputtering, but neither father nor daughter paid the least attention. He stooped to embrace the girl. “never mind what I thought . . . oh Honey, I’m so proud of you!”
READ MORE GREAT WORK by local writers in CORPUS CHRISTI WRITERS 2020.
Skoot Larson
About Skoot Larson
Skoot is one of Corpus Christi's most prolific writers. He is a native Los Angelino, a musician, music critic and a Viet Nam veteran. He has also worked as a disc jockey, actor, speech therapist, stand-up comedian, behavioral counselor and streetcar conductor. His previous works include the Lars Lindstrom Zen-Jazz Mystery series, a black-humor novel about health care in America entitled “Apollo Issue,” and a political humor novel, “The Palestine Solution,” the King Irv fantasy series, and The Dave Holman Texas Detective mysteries. Skoot lives with his two cats, Miles and Dexter, in Rockport, Texas.
The Three Little 21st Century Pigs is from his book SKOOT'S FABLES
Beautiful Zelda: A California Fable
So I was watching television; the eleven o’clock news. I was about to switch it off, when they started a segment about a spate of recent burglaries in my area of Riverside County. “These particular thieves are pretty clever,” the pretty raven-haired talking head was saying. “They spend a few days watching houses for a pattern of lights going off and on.
“If it seems that the pattern is too routine, they take a closer look. So those elaborate timer systems on your lights won’t work on guys like these! Stay tuned for more.”
I’d already turned up the sound, and was anxious for more information, but the news report cut to a series of “adult themed” commercials. I’ve always thought these rude and nasty adverts had no place on the little box, but I was hanging on my seat, waiting for more about the recent home invasion robberies.
And suddenly, a dark-haired, bearded man with a loud obnoxious voice was telling me about “Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, the most life-like and anatomically correct inflatable partner money could buy. Available at adult bookstores, video rental and lingerie shops everywhere!”
Beautiful Zelda, I thought. She certainly did look real on my 21-inch screen. Was she realistic enough to fool a couple of criminal types gazing in my front window? She’d have to be pretty good, as my favorite recliner, the one facing the TVs flickering light, was less than three feet from my living room window’s glass.
I spent a restless night. I live in a gated senior community, but my neighbors are always talking about strangers in cars following close behind residents to sneak through the automated barrier and enter our complex in search of plunder. My well tended home could be as good a target as any other, on those many weekends that I visit my kids in San Diego or Santa Barbara.
By the dawn’s early light, I’d made up my mind. When I traveled, Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, or someone like her would be firmly ensconced in my favorite chair, eyes fixed on my flickering viewing screen. Ah, but how was she to get to my chair? We have no sex shops in our little city. The closest such thing is about eight miles away in the town of Lake Elsinore.
And even then, who was I likely to see going into or coming from such a unique establishment so close to home? Rumor had it that one of our church deacons frequented such haunts – just keeping track of the sinners he claimed – And someone from our church would never understand why I needed the company of Beautiful Zelda SX-5000. “To protect your house?” they’d say. “Come on, man, your lies are as sinful as your wicked thoughts.”
And that’s why I drove the freeway system all the way out to Garden Grove in Orange County, the next county over, before I stopped to look for someone selling dirty books and videos. Little Saigon seemed a safe neighborhood, where I wouldn’t be recognized by any of my fellow seniors from The Colony where I lived.
I stepped through a black painted door, into a twilight world lit only by small spotlights that shined on DVD cases and glossy magazine covers. In the center of all this, before a high sort of judges dais, sat a glass display case occupied by an inflatable plastic doll in a short blond wig, looking very much like one of Rod Stewart’s ex-wives.
“Ah, how much is… uh… one of these ladies?” I inquired, to which the unshaven man in the greasy hair and filthy black tee-shirt launched into a sales pitch for Beautiful Zelda SX-5000. I felt all those secretive rat-like customers around the room casting disdainful eyes as the man explained how each “anatomically correct” part functioned, and just what Beautiful Zelda could do to satisfy my every need. I wanted to explain that I just needed a human-like presence to protect my property, but each time I opened my mouth to interrupt, the sweat-ponged salesman just talked louder. When he finally arrived at the price, I nearly collapsed. I stuttered. I stammered. “How much?” I exclaimed to the chortles of a handful of punters back among the magazine racks.
“It’s alright, Buddy,” said Mr. Grease and Sweat. “I think I got a deal for you.” He came down from his high perch, a ring of keys in his hand, and proceeded to open the cabinet before me.
“This is Beautiful Zelda SX-2000,” he told me as he unfolded the blond-wigged doll from the glassed-in space. “She doesn’t have the turbo-power suck or some of the other features of the latest model, but she looks just as good.
“We don’t much call for old technology around here, so I can let her go for less than half the price of the SX-5000 model. And she’s already inflated and ready to go. Just sit her in your passenger seat and y’r off. You’re not on a motorcycle, are you?”
I hadn’t given much thought to rush hour traffic, as I haven’t driven into the city to work in a few years, but News Radio was quick to remind me that the Santa Ana Canyon, going toward my home, was slowed to crawl as Zelda and I climbed the Garden Grove Freeway ramp. Well, thought I, with Beautiful Zelda SX-2000 in my passenger seat, I could probably get away with sneaking into the carpool lane. Who’s to know the difference?
As I turned to watch the fuming drivers on my right in the regular lanes inching forward while I sped past, I couldn’t help but notice that the wind from my sunroof was jostling my plastic passenger in her seat. Beautiful Zelda would rise and fall as the breeze took her. I wished that I’d thought to do up her seat belt, but it was too late now, we were moving too fast. Maybe other drivers would just think my passenger was very excited about something. I sped on.
My attention was suddenly diverted by a squeal of brakes, a few sharp horn toots, and loud, rude shouts. I turned, and beside me, Beautiful Zelda’s buoyant backside had risen and was pointing out through the sunroof. Her flimsy cotton nighty was rising over her head, caught up behind her life-like plastic arms. Thank God at least she still had a bright red thong covering her…
That silver Lexus behind me. Is that a Colony resident sticker on the driver-side windshield? And am I correctly lip-reading the old dear neighbor of mine telling her silver-haired companion, “I think we’ve just been mooned?”
And again I’m distracted. Just as I make the transition onto the 55 freeway, the Lexus drops back, replaced by a set of red and blue flashing lights. I pull onto the narrow shoulder dreading the scene to follow. What can I say? Would they believe the truth? Am I about to be registered as some kind of sex offender?
The state trooper takes my license and registration with a serious face and walks back to his cruiser while Beautiful Zelda’s very real looking bottom rests on my car roof. In my mirror, I see that he’s on his radio. Seeking reinforcements? Calling the state mental hospital? What?
Then he’s grinning ear-to-ear as he replaces his mic on the dash of his car. Moments later, another state police car pulls in just in front of me and a Highway Patrol motorcycle parks near my rear fender. The three officers are faced away, but I can feel their loud guffaws as the first man on the scene points at Beautiful Zelda’s backside still lifted partially through the open roof of my vehicle.
The officer who pulled me over approaches my window once more. With a ridged John Wayne face that looks as if it could erupt into laughter at any second, he tells me I’m being cited for improper use of the high-occupancy-vehicle lane, violation of code such-and-such, punishable by a fine of not less than five-hundred dollars as his buddies come up behind him. It’s then that I recognize the motorcycle cop. He’s not a deacon, but he is a regular in out large Wildomar congregation, and his eyes are telling me that he knows all of my secret sins.
I interrupt the officer at my window. “I’m guilty,” I holler, “uh, guilty as sin,” which draws a chuckle from my bike riding fellow Christian. “Just give me the ticket and let me out of here. I’ll gladly pay the fine. I’ll pay double!”
I look up to see the third highway patrolman edging his way toward my window. “You realize that your little sex toy friend will have to be confiscated as evidence, don’t you?” He giggles. His two buddies back him with solemn nods as he rips Beautiful Zelda SX-2000 through my car’s skyward opening.
I watch in my rear-view as the laughing officers put the cuffs on Beautiful Zelda while she floats before the cruiser’s open back door. With an exaggerated pelvic thrust, cop number three sends Beautiful Zelda flying into the caged rear seat.
Had the circumstances been different, I might have gotten a kick watching two state policemen bent over in a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter while their partner rolled helplessly in the grassy center median snorting and choking on his bemusement.
Later that night, I was watching the eleven o’clock news. When the ad came on for Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, I threw an empty whiskey bottle through the small screen of my old television, which exploded in smoke and flame, showering a fine cloud of glass particles all over my living room rug.
The Three Little 21st Century Pigs
Once upon a harvest moon, there were three little pigs; A very conservative Fox News kinda pig, a moderate, middle-class type conformist pig, and a wigged-out, very vouty cool and free-thinking pig.
The first little pig was too lazy to build a house of his own. He bitched that the government wasn’t setting him up for an inexpensive place to crash and finally bought a clapped-out old single-wide mobile home in the woods, landscaped with worn rotting tires and discarded, rusting appliances.
The conformist second little pig bought a three-bedroom, two bath pad in a Levitt Town tract where all the houses looked so much alike he had to count the doors every night coming home to make sure he was walking into the right crib.
The very vouty third little pig built himself a mad pad on the beach out of baritone sax reeds and palm fronds with a hip little bar and multiple hammocks swingin’ free!
As the little pigs were settling into their Texas coastal life, a big bad wolf hitch hikin’ down with the snowbirds from Minnesota stopped off feelin’ hungry and unfulfilled. Unfamiliar with the territory, the big bad wolf cut east from the highway and started makin’ tracks through the dark circuitous oaken woods. After a long bit of a trapes, the wolf found himself in a ghetto-looking clearing filled with rusting junk, rotting tires and a big aluminum box covered with Kudzu vines, Texas flags and No Trespassing signs. The wolf approached cautiously, mounted the three rotting wood steps and applied his hairy knuckles to the rusting screen door.
“Who goes there?” thundered the frightened but macho pig. “Don’t you know you’re standin’ on private property? You’d better not be a Jehovah’s Witless or something, or I’ll blow you away!”
“It’s cool,” shouted the wolf. “I’m just here to check your meters.”
When the up-tight pig opened the door, the big bad wolf gave him a wide, saliva-dripping grin. “You look like a tasty pork morsel,” the canine creature told him. “I think I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your joint down… Then I’ll have me a sort of Cajon pork sandwich with extra jalapeños!”
The red-neck pig called for his kids to fetch him his shotgun, but the over-zealous pig kids came out too fast, tripping and letting loose with a blast that sent their daddy to that big pig sty in the sky.
Not wanting to be on the scene when the gendarmerie arrived, the big bad wolf legged it east toward the coast. After a long trot through the forest, the big bad wolf came on a tract of poorly constructed houses. Hoping to blend in with the low budget surroundings, the wolf strolled down the main drag, selecting a non-descript pad with a cheap Korean car in the drive and walking up to the door with a wolfish grin. He sounded the bell and hung back until a nervous little pig opened the door.
“I always try to be politically correct,” said the pig that answered the door. “But your presence here could be bringin’ down the property values. What do you want, and make it quick, before my neighbors see you here and think I’m a bleeding heart liberal or something!”
“I’ll come right to the point,” the wolf told him. “I’m starvin’, Marvin and I need a little roast pork. So I’m gonna huff and puff and blow your square little house down, and then I’ll make a three course meal of you and your piggy kin!”
The second little pig came on like a Kung-Fu master, layin’ all the moves he learned in self-defense class on the unsuspecting wolf. The wolf blew the pig’s house down, but not before the very square pig landed a shot in his wedding tackle and sent him off in great pain.
Limping east across the wet flood plain, the big bad wolf soon arrived at the beach, where he saw a smart little Tiki Hut near the water’s edge. Approaching cautiously, the big bad wolf circled the structure, sniffing the air for wolf traps. His olfactory senses were quickly filled with the scent of illegal weed and Patchouli oil. Hesitantly, the wolf raised his knuckles and laid a crisp paradiddle on the thin reed door.
A little pig in shades and a black beret answered his call. “Welcome my brother,” the porcine cat greeted him. “Glad you could fall on by!”
“Porque, Porky,” the wolf responded, “Ain’t you afraid of me?”
“Like, should I be?” the hip little pig questioned. “We’re all God’s children in this veil of tears.”
“But,” responded the wolf, “I intend to huff and puff and to blow your house down!”
“Crazy!” cried the cool pig. “Like I got an old tenor sax in here somewhere…”
“What about a reed?” queried the wolf without thinking.
“Are you kidding?” said the pig. “The whole house is made of reeds. Just pull one out and trim it down!”
“But I’m here to eat you up!” shouted the pig.
“Oh man,” said the pig with a serious face, “Don’t you know how bad pork is for you? It’s a genuine life shortener! Clog your arteries and give you those triggie-whatsis worms… Man, like this pork isn’t even organic!”
“I can dig that,” said the wolf, “But like I’m two days short of three squares!”
“No worries,” answered the pig, “we’ll send out for a pizza while we jam!”
“Too much!” said the big bad wolf. “Can we get extra anchovies?”
“If you can huff and puff like Prez,” the cool little pig told him, “You can have anything you want on it… Except pork…”
“Oh man,” the wolf told him. “Bacon was never really my thing anyway. Do you know Cool Blues in E-flat?”
Beautiful Zelda, a California Fable
So I was watching television; the eleven o’clock news. I was about to switch it off, when they started a segment about a spate of recent burglaries in my area of Riverside County. “These particular thieves are pretty clever,” the pretty raven-haired talking head was saying. “They spend a few days watching houses for a pattern of lights going off and on.
“If it seems that the pattern is too routine, they take a closer look. So those elaborate timer systems on your lights won’t work on guys like these! Stay tuned for more.”
I’d already turned up the sound, and was anxious for more information, but the news report cut to a series of “adult themed” commercials. I’ve always thought these rude and nasty adverts had no place on the little box, but I was hanging on my seat, waiting for more about the recent home invasion robberies.
And suddenly, a dark-haired, bearded man with a loud obnoxious voice was telling me about “Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, the most life-like and anatomically correct inflatable partner money could buy. Available at adult bookstores, video rental and lingerie shops everywhere!”
Beautiful Zelda, I thought. She certainly did look real on my 21-inch screen. Was she realistic enough to fool a couple of criminal types gazing in my front window? She’d have to be pretty good, as my favorite recliner, the one facing the TVs flickering light, was less than three feet from my living room window’s glass.
I spent a restless night. I live in a gated senior community, but my neighbors are always talking about strangers in cars following close behind residents to sneak through the automated barrier and enter our complex in search of plunder. My well tended home could be as good a target as any other, on those many weekends that I visit my kids in San Diego or Santa Barbara.
By the dawn’s early light, I’d made up my mind. When I traveled, Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, or someone like her would be firmly ensconced in my favorite chair, eyes fixed on my flickering viewing screen. Ah, but how was she to get to my chair? We have no sex shops in our little city. The closest such thing is about eight miles away in the town of Lake Elsinore.
And even then, who was I likely to see going into or coming from such a unique establishment so close to home? Rumor had it that one of our church deacons frequented such haunts – just keeping track of the sinners he claimed – And someone from our church would never understand why I needed the company of Beautiful Zelda SX-5000. “To protect your house?” they’d say. “Come on, man, your lies are as sinful as your wicked thoughts.”
And that’s why I drove the freeway system all the way out to Garden Grove in Orange County, the next county over, before I stopped to look for someone selling dirty books and videos. Little Saigon seemed a safe neighborhood, where I wouldn’t be recognized by any of my fellow seniors from The Colony where I lived.
I stepped through a black painted door, into a twilight world lit only by small spotlights that shined on DVD cases and glossy magazine covers. In the center of all this, before a high sort of judges dais, sat a glass display case occupied by an inflatable plastic doll in a short blond wig, looking very much like one of Rod Stewart’s ex-wives.
“Ah, how much is… uh… one of these ladies?” I inquired, to which the unshaven man in the greasy hair and filthy black tee-shirt launched into a sales pitch for Beautiful Zelda SX-5000. I felt all those secretive rat-like customers around the room casting disdainful eyes as the man explained how each “anatomically correct” part functioned, and just what Beautiful Zelda could do to satisfy my every need. I wanted to explain that I just needed a human-like presence to protect my property, but each time I opened my mouth to interrupt, the sweat-ponged salesman just talked louder. When he finally arrived at the price, I nearly collapsed. I stuttered. I stammered. “How much?” I exclaimed to the chortles of a handful of punters back among the magazine racks.
“It’s alright, Buddy,” said Mr. Grease and Sweat. “I think I got a deal for you.” He came down from his high perch, a ring of keys in his hand, and proceeded to open the cabinet before me.
“This is Beautiful Zelda SX-2000,” he told me as he unfolded the blond-wigged doll from the glassed-in space. “She doesn’t have the turbo-power suck or some of the other features of the latest model, but she looks just as good.
“We don’t much call for old technology around here, so I can let her go for less than half the price of the SX-5000 model. And she’s already inflated and ready to go. Just sit her in your passenger seat and y’r off. You’re not on a motorcycle, are you?”
I hadn’t given much thought to rush hour traffic, as I haven’t driven into the city to work in a few years, but News Radio was quick to remind me that the Santa Ana Canyon, going toward my home, was slowed to crawl as Zelda and I climbed the Garden Grove Freeway ramp. Well, thought I, with Beautiful Zelda SX-2000 in my passenger seat, I could probably get away with sneaking into the carpool lane. Who’s to know the difference?
As I turned to watch the fuming drivers on my right in the regular lanes inching forward while I sped past, I couldn’t help but notice that the wind from my sunroof was jostling my plastic passenger in her seat. Beautiful Zelda would rise and fall as the breeze took her. I wished that I’d thought to do up her seat belt, but it was too late now, we were moving too fast. Maybe other drivers would just think my passenger was very excited about something. I sped on.
My attention was suddenly diverted by a squeal of brakes, a few sharp horn toots, and loud, rude shouts. I turned, and beside me, Beautiful Zelda’s buoyant backside had risen and was pointing out through the sunroof. Her flimsy cotton nighty was rising over her head, caught up behind her life-like plastic arms. Thank God at least she still had a bright red thong covering her…
That silver Lexus behind me. Is that a Colony resident sticker on the driver-side windshield? And am I correctly lip-reading the old dear neighbor of mine telling her silver-haired companion, “I think we’ve just been mooned?”
And again I’m distracted. Just as I make the transition onto the 55 freeway, the Lexus drops back, replaced by a set of red and blue flashing lights. I pull onto the narrow shoulder dreading the scene to follow. What can I say? Would they believe the truth? Am I about to be registered as some kind of sex offender?
The state trooper takes my license and registration with a serious face and walks back to his cruiser while Beautiful Zelda’s very real looking bottom rests on my car roof. In my mirror, I see that he’s on his radio. Seeking reinforcements? Calling the state mental hospital? What?
Then he’s grinning ear-to-ear as he replaces his mic on the dash of his car. Moments later, another state police car pulls in just in front of me and a Highway Patrol motorcycle parks near my rear fender. The three officers are faced away, but I can feel their loud guffaws as the first man on the scene points at Beautiful Zelda’s backside still lifted partially through the open roof of my vehicle.
The officer who pulled me over approaches my window once more. With a ridged John Wayne face that looks as if it could erupt into laughter at any second, he tells me I’m being cited for improper use of the high-occupancy-vehicle lane, violation of code such-and-such, punishable by a fine of not less than five-hundred dollars as his buddies come up behind him. It’s then that I recognize the motorcycle cop. He’s not a deacon, but he is a regular in out large Wildomar congregation, and his eyes are telling me that he knows all of my secret sins.
I interrupt the officer at my window. “I’m guilty,” I holler, “uh, guilty as sin,” which draws a chuckle from my bike riding fellow Christian. “Just give me the ticket and let me out of here. I’ll gladly pay the fine. I’ll pay double!”
I look up to see the third highway patrolman edging his way toward my window. “You realize that your little sex toy friend will have to be confiscated as evidence, don’t you?” He giggles. His two buddies back him with solemn nods as he rips Beautiful Zelda SX-2000 through my car’s skyward opening.
I watch in my rear-view as the laughing officers put the cuffs on Beautiful Zelda while she floats before the cruiser’s open back door. With an exaggerated pelvic thrust, cop number three sends Beautiful Zelda flying into the caged rear seat.
Had the circumstances been different, I might have gotten a kick watching two state policemen bent over in a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter while their partner rolled helplessly in the grassy center median snorting and choking on his bemusement.
Later that night, I was watching the eleven o’clock news. When the ad came on for Beautiful Zelda SX-5000, I threw an empty whiskey bottle through the small screen of my old television, which exploded in smoke and flame, showering a fine cloud of glass particles all over my living room rug.