When you find yourself all dressed up to do your laundry, you’ve obviously put it off for too long.  My laundry room requires a key that I lost a couple of months ago. I’ve searched in all the obvious and not so obvious places for that very important laundry key.  It is stamped with the “Do Not Duplicate” law; I call it law because all of the local locksmiths treat it as such.

I have to hope that someone is doing laundry when I carry my dirty clothes there.  More…

Lieutenant Hankins, husband of the gorgeous Lisa and loving father of two adorable kids, knew secrets, lots of them, all representing in one way or another a grave danger to national security if ever divulged, revealed, or otherwise leaked to the press or, God forbid, WikiLeaks. He knew the location of targets, nuclear and conventional; he knew where the submarines were, and what their status was; he knew means and…

Elizabeth could still hear the family's voices as she climbed the stairs and opened the door off the library, Ronnie's pitch becoming higher as he extolled the virtues of single-color flowers and Delly's as she insisted that barbecue and paper plates were just fine for the family dinner before the service.  It was hard not to snicker at the picture she had just left: an expensively understated kitchen, a flamboyant queen, and resentful white trash.  The absence of the once-charmed and now…

I tried not to allow milk to slosh out of the metallic tumbler as I climbed the ladder to the tree house one-handed, no small feat for one who tended to trip over her sandals and was always picked last for kickball.  I watched Bill's feet and put mine in exactly the same place; after all, he was the expert climber, and it was his treehouse.  And it was Tuesday.

I had known Bill since....well, for as long as I could remember.  At the very grown-up age of nine, he had been one…

The hulk of a rusted automobile sat on its axles under a dead tree. John sat in the driver’s seat on a sunny afternoon. He was eating a moldy peanut butter sandwich and washing it down with warm milk from a carton some kid had thrown away on his way home from school the day before. He was leering at the girls playing tennis on the school's courts across the street.

He wasn’t supposed to be within 1000 feet of the place. 

A police cruiser with its lights flashing stopped in the…

Did you really think that you could

Escape this life unscathed?

No dreams lost, hopes forsaken,

Loves betrayed?

Nothing is perfect, except this:

Nothing, perfect Nothing,

Glimpsed by only the…

"Hello belle," I heard the voice before I saw him.  He was standing casually at the corner of the warehouse, smiling just slightly.  And even though I knew to be guarded, I was struck again by his presence, and it surprised me.  

He wasn't all that intimidating or even overly handsome, objectively speaking.  About six feet tall, lean build, not muscular, his brown/gray hair cut very close and slightly receding.  His ever-present sunglasses were perched on his somewhat sharp…

Did you really think that catapulting squirrels off your second-floor deck would be harmless? Now look at you, a mumbling idiot in a room with rubber walls and floors. You’re naked. Do you see anything in your room that would serve as a noose? Anything to hang from? What were you thinking, luring squirrels into your colander and bungee cord device and flinging them bodily into the void of your backyard? Didn’t you stop to…

Stood face to face in front of the towering ruins of this deserted, bastard French-style, not-quite-English chateau, as the sun reached its  zenith and the shadows disappeared almost to naught, both became, for each other, for the briefest of moments, as they once upon a time had been.    

Then each took time to recognise the extent to which the other had now become adult.   Saw that the bright, sharp edges of their once-innocent selves, each so familiar to the other, had been scribbled…

During the War Between the States, Thomas pressed cannonballs over his head to strengthen his throwing arm. He swung iron bars to improve his batting swing. He figured by the time the war was over, if he didn’t get killed in the process, he’d be ready for a season of baseball back home with the boys, the boys that were left alive and had all their fingers and toes intact, that is.…

I was helpless. My legs were tied with old phone cord to frigid steel rails. The 1970s robins egg blue plastic chair was shaped like a punch bowel ladle and cut into the sides of my arms. Its been years since I saw a chair so horribly suited for sitting in. The discomfort didn't matter much, I would be dead within the hour.

On the outside of the old lean-to, the boys where talking softly amongst themselves. They had to hike back up the hill to find a signal, leaving me blessedly alone…

I am helpless so much of the time now. Her breaths slow to the point that I think each time I lay my hands on her, this is the time she’ll be gone. I pet her once sleek side, now jagged with her old bones prominent speaking sweet nothings till at last she inhales and rolls her eyes forward. My hound dog that would eat anything, truly anything – nearly killing herself several times in the process, most recently just 2 weeks ago, now has very little appetite. I roust her as gently as I can and…

I was helpless as I raised my head to the third floor of the hotel, desperately, hopelessly  trying to transmit my strength to you standing on the ledge outside.   In a dream I had heard your cries, had been impelled to come to the street in front of this place and although I know it’s been years … but there you were, although I only just recognised you with your clothes on.



Monday, On location: On the outside

Tuesday, Take it away: I was…

Still not rested, although I’m getting to the point that I don’t quite remember the last time I awoke completely rested, I stumble my way into the wheel house to take a peak outside while pulling my hair back into a taming ponytail. My ears register that the Captain is talking on the radio. The double click of the transmit button catches my attention but I don’t look, not yet. The world is at rights. Gray sky above dark blue gray waters capped nicely in white.  That done, I use one hand to…

The plastic chair, a relic from a less imaginitive epoch in human development, was going to survive long after the nails in the shed had rusted and the planks had collapsed. Entropy was about the change the structure of the place into something less recognizable. The…

Last night, I was shouting in a dream I had.  I did not awakened to my own shouts, as sometimes happens, but my daughter told me.  She told me what I had shouted.  And then she asked why.

"Why did you shout, 'Shut Up!  Let me finish!'?"

How could I have told her that there were a thousand reasons, from the unfinished thoughts in my childhood, to the desperate pleas for a blessing in my early adulthood, to the ignored and interrupted emotions of middle age?  How…

Her being here could not be coincidence.   He could not believe that, despite the fact that he’d told no-one where he’d intended going.   Had only decided himself yesterday, a spur of the moment idea, out of nowhere, knowing that he had seven days to fill ...   

Ah, but ...

And he thought back to yesterday morning, not when he had finally awoken, but earlier, when it had still been dark, the roads around him silent.   What had disturbed him then?   None of the usual things, he knew…

Holidays didn’t really suit him.   He didn’t mind taking time off, not really, and sometimes he thought of a place he’d like to go, somewhere he’d heard of, in a song or a book or something, sometimes even a travel supplement in the paper.   On those occasions when the impulse had lasted long enough he’d even booked himself onto a plane, into a place to stay.   Once, when the cost represented too large a proportion of his earnings to simply let go, he’d actually gone.   The other times he’d…