Category: Uncategorized

M is for Mirage…

(Author’s Note: Sara Myers is a character from a novel I copyrighted twenty years ago, called The Shaman’s Mirror.  I am considering revising it.  Let me know if you are intrigued.)

Sara Myers never did anything like this. For fifty-six years, she had been a “good girl”, seemingly put on this Earth to do what was expected of her. Now, her children were grown. Her divorce finalized a few weeks under a year ago, and her new man had proposed. She was not ready to accept it. The Sonoran Desert surrounded her as she drove toward her best friend and a chance for a little late-in-life adventure. It was a rash decision, so unlike her. This trip punctuated the possibility that she was not firing on all cylinders.

The desert flowed past as she sped south toward Tucson on Interstate-10, a monotonous stretch of nothingness as far as she could see. Her mind dredged up memories of her latest dreams. She had always been psychic, but this last round of dreaming had upset her enough to follow Patrice’s advice to leave her life behind her, at least for a little while.

The specters from the dream would not leave her alone. What did they want? The cave was new. The dead weight of a man lying on top of her was a new twist as well, but the man himself was not. Three times, he had visited her slumber, standing before her naked and glistening, trembling in want with need no less than hers. As he approached her, awe and wonder lit his face. She wanted him, and reached out for him each time, but as she did, he disappeared; replaced by an awful, bony, and weathered old man dressed in shabby deerskins and feathers. Claws and teeth hung from cords around his neck. His hair, most likely bug infested, was long and matted. He seemed to be a mixture of races, representatives of which kaleidoscoped across his features. Interrupting luscious dreams of carnal bliss, he had approached her every time she dreamed of her beautiful lover, waking her at some god-forsaken hour. It was always the same. At the end of the dream, he shook a horrid, rattling staff in her face and croaked, “Now is the time.”

The time for what? She had no business dreaming about beautiful, younger men, that’s what time it was. It was better to keep her mind focused on Carl, and his proposal. She sighed.

Behind her, the sun sank into the Sonoran, the hills behind Tucson shimmered in the heat. She rubbed her sweaty hand on shirt but her clothes were damp with sweat. She was shaky. She took a deep breath and grabbed the wheel so tightly that she drove like an old woman barely in control of her car. Good grief, she needed a rest. A sign to the right said Denny’s – one mile. At the next exit, she pulled off the freeway.

There were only two cars parked in front of the restaurant and none in the lot on the east side where it was shady. She headed for it, turning into a small patch of cool, cast by the building.

He came from nowhere – bam – in front of her car as she pulled into it. She slammed on the brakes as he slapped her fender with both hands.

“Oh no,” she cried.

“Hey,” he yelled. “What the hell?” He slapped the hood of her car again. He flipped his middle finger at her, and then stormed away.

She was tired and shaky, but not so shaky that she would miss seeing a pedestrian in front of her car. She must have blinked or blacked out because for one second, he was there in front of her scowling, and the next he was gone. Panicked, she looked all around. The door of the restaurant was too far for him to have reached it without her seeing him go in. He wasn’t stomping toward one of the other two cars in front of Denny’s.

Maybe he fainted.

She opened the door and jumped out. The Arizona heat rammed her like a blast from a rocket. He wasn’t on the ground. He wasn’t anywhere. She needed to find him to give him contact information.

She honestly had not seen a single soul in the lot when she pulled in. She must be more exhausted than she realized. Sinking heavily back into the seat of her Sentra to grab her purse, she singed her arm on the doorframe. All decorum lost, she licked the burn on her arm and blew across the pain. The landscape around her car was crowding her, hot and sharp, just like her dream. The area was junky and spoke of decay. She couldn’t take a deep breath. Good grief. What had she done?

She grabbed her purse, rolled the windows down, and then decided this was not the side of town to leave windows open. She knew her car would be a bread oven when she got back into it, but she didn’t want to take any chances. People were obviously lurking about.

There was something familiar about the man she’d almost hit. He was tall, and had to bend down to slap her car. His jacket was soft and worn, and matched the soft cinnamon of his hair. His hair struck her as particularly beautiful, but her mind had not registered much else. It happened so fast. He was in front of her one second and gone the next. She lurched to the shelter of the restaurant looking for the man she had hit.

A waiter approached her. “Are you looking for your people,” he asked. He had a friendly smile.

“No,” she replied, then she added, “Yes. Well…he’s not mine, but I almost hit a man out there, and I want to be sure he is okay.” She looked at every seat in the restaurant. He wasn’t in any of them. “He’s about six feet tall, cinnamon colored hair, rumpled, you know?” She pulled at the hair on the top of her head. “I think he was carrying a briefcase.”

“Oh, that sounds like The Professor. No, he hasn’t come in today. Actually, you’re the first new customer we’ve had in here for about,” he looked at his watch, “thirty-six minutes.”

“Thirty-six minutes?” she said, dumbly.

“Here,” he nudged her toward a seat at the counter. “Cool off. People see all kinds of mirages and phantoms in this heat.”

“But he slapped my car. I heard it. I, I…I felt it.”

“Like I said, all kinds of mirages and phantoms. Hey, if there’s no one on the ground out there, you’re good to go. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” He handed her a menu and poured her a glass of water. “I’ll be right back.”

She sat down. When he returned, she ordered her usual hamburger and fries, then changed her mind and switched to a cool chicken salad and iced tea. She shivered under the air-conditioning. It was more than just air that chilled her. She was tired, and stressed from driving, and she was seriously wondering if she’d made the right decision. Dear God, she had almost hit a man. She could turn around and take the highway back to her safety net. A voice interrupted that thought, an old voice she’d heard too many times; the old man from her dreams croaked, “Now is the time. The desert…where truth cannot shelter itself…” She could actually hear the horrid staff rattling.

Cripes. Turning around was something she absolutely could not do.

The waiter set a doily right in front of her, followed by a full cup of hot water with a slice of lemon floating in it. “You’re dehydrated. Drink up. It’ll help the shakes,” he said.  Then he winked, “It will scare away those phantoms. I’ll bring iced tea with your food.”

She took a sip. Her body was grateful, if not for the water, then for the heat of it. She took another, and then another.

The waiter smiled at her when he walked by.

She kept looking over her shoulder to watch for the cinnamon haired man, but he was definitely gone. She took another sip of the soothing hot lemon water and watched the waiter as he cradled her salad on one arm and brought her iced tea in the other. She would eat, get in her car, and drive to Patrice’s house and forget about this. He was just a phantom, a mirage dredged up by her heat-addled brain.

Somehow, somewhere deep inside, she knew he was more than that. She hoped their first encounter would be better than this one.

K is for Kink…

(A character sketch from Reluctant Witness – a work in process – occasionally, a witness doesn’t come forward because to do so could result in his or her arrest.)

Monday Ricks. The first syllable stretched, like the word yawn, ‘mawn’-day. What did that say about his parents, that they gave their only child a name that made a person sound as if they were bored out of their minds when they said it?

Thinking about it made his head hollow. He yawned. His large, stained teeth protruded from his mouth as his lips peeled back, and a string of spit connected an upper incisor with its lower mate. His whiskers were rough against his beefy hand as he contemplated whether to shave, or not. Maybe the shock effect would be greater if he was scruffy. Monday didn’t have many kinks, but the kink he contemplated was a doozy.

The kink was born out of a lonely childhood. He was a quiet, chubby boy that looked at the ground when he walked. As a teenager, while the other young men paraded the school with frantic, on fire energy, he watched from the shadows and wondered when his flame would ignite. Teachers called him phlegmatic and dull. He had a mind, a good one, he just didn’t use it much, except to daydream that he was someone else, someone with fire in his heart, fire that drew girls like moths to a flame. Girls. Was there anything else to think about at that age? From the moment he woke until the moment he slept, and even then, his mind was filled with girls, girls, and more girls.

However, the reality of his life was solitary, a solitary male hungry for attention but too awkward and brutish to attract it. Beetle-browed and heavy boned, kids cast epithets at him like “Cave man,” “Neanderthal,” “Loser,” and “Gorilla.” What girl in her right mind would want him around? None of them. That was the living truth. High school passed with none of the glory, none of the conquests, none of the fun. As he aged, he became more brutish, more beetle-browed, more solitary, and more obsessed.

College wasn’t better. He shuffled to his accounting classes, head down, defeated and no more social than he’d ever been. His classes droned on until his junior year when he found a listing about human sexuality in the psychology department. If he couldn’t enjoy firsthand experience, he could at least learn about it, so he signed up.

The professor was a kinky sort of dude, with long hair that he kept brushing back. On the first day of class, he wore tight leather pants, and a sleeveless shirt with a faux sheepskin jacket. Monday was fascinated, and took copious notes about kinks and sexual deviations. The class ended quickly, though an hour and a half had passed. As students hustled out of the room, the prof called him back. The class, listed as advanced credit, had pre-requisites he had not completed.

“I can’t let you into this class unless you pass an entrance exam. Come to my office at 3pm today and you can do that. That is, if you want to continue this.”

“Uh, Yessir, I will be there.” As he left, he wondered if the prof was aware that the only thing Monday saw with his lowered eyes, was the man’s male package outlined by the leather pants he wore. It was humiliating, but, also, he couldn’t help feel an edge of excitement.

He walked out of the classroom and the door shut behind him. He could still see that package in his mind’s eye. He felt shocked and unsteady, but it was a heady feeling, a revelation about the power of a man, a part of himself he had never paid attention to before that day.

The next year, he took gym class, an unfortunate requirement. It was an hour and a half of tortuous overexertion. Showering afterward was mandatory. His beetled brows and lowered head hid the fact that he delighted in peeping at all the nude bodies, but it was paramount that no one saw him undressed. That was not a problem if he could get a private shower stall. His luck lasted most of the semester.  Until Thursday, May 11, a day forever etched in his head. Monday was a slow runner. He was the last person to finish the assigned walk-run assignment, a half-mile, four laps around the track. All of the private stalls were occupied. He sat on the bench surreptitiously watching naked men, waiting his turn for privacy.

Coach Summons, the gym instructor, strode into the locker room and announced, “Fifteen minutes, people. Then this place is locked.” He looked at Monday. “Ricks, what are you waiting for? Hit the shower.”

It was lucky for Monday that his eyes didn’t register every emotion that flitted across his mind. Everyone would have seen abject terror reflected there. He shuffled to the darkest corner he could find and slipped out of his clothes. He padded as quickly as he could to the nearest vacant shower head in the communal shower stall. He lathered quickly, and rinsed quicker. Then he wrapped a towel around his private bits and slunk back to his corner.

He heard a soft, feminine “Oh” behind him, but when he turned to see why a girl was in the locker room his towel fell away exposing his flaccid manhood. He curled over his display and looked up.

She stood stiffly, as if tased. Her shocked eyes were wide with fright. Her round ‘oh’ twisted in dismay and repulsion. She uttered a growl of distress, turned, and ran out of the locker room.

Monday was mortified, but his man parts had a different idea. He stiffened quickly, which made it awkward to dress as fast as he wanted to. When he pulled himself together, he hurried home.

After dinner, while he replayed the episode in his head he drew her picture. It was his way of coming to terms with the humiliation. Happy with the outcome, he put her shocked likeness on the wall across from the only chair at the small table in his minuscule kitchen. Just looking at it brought a titillated rush of excitement, so much so in fact, he had to run to the bathroom to take care of his urge. If he were to pinpoint a reason for his major kink, he would probably pinpoint that exact moment.

He didn’t know of course, but the drawing became his first trophy.

Her picture would remain on the wall as the first of so many shocked and repulsed viewers who unwittingly gave him a satisfying release after two and a half decades of ripping open his heavy coat to flash them.

(I want to thank the lovely beta readers from The Women Writers of the Well and their terrific questions. Gentle souls, I appreciate you so much.)

H is for Home…

Possible scene for Broken, a work in progress

All he wanted was some toast. Was that too much to ask? Tom Dubanowski clung to the hospital issued walker as he shuffled across the impossible expanse of Jack’s apartment. His gut twisted. He shook, a quaking leaf helpless in the storm of pain coursing through him. It was a stupid metaphor, but it was all he had to work with.

In the small kitchen, a loaf of Canyon Bakehouse was in easy reach next to the refrigerator. Thank the gods. When he plunged the bread into the toaster, another eddy of pain gripped his side. The walker shook under his grip. He scooted it away from him and grabbed the counter. Every damn move he made, every breath he took, hell, every thought he had, knifed his innards.

“Get it together,” he whispered.

Jack could not find him like this. There would be no reasoning with him, no way of convincing him that he was okay on his own. He wanted to be in his own apartment, miserable with himself, engaged in his own private, pity party.

“Come on,” he said to the pathetic husk he had become. He bent over the sturdy counter until his weight rested upon it. The granite was cool against his swollen cheek; the darkness in the kitchen shrouded him. He could do this. He had to. He could not take his pain medication on an empty stomach.

The front door closed with a gentle snick.

Shit. Jack.

The toast popped with a snap.

Startled, he grabbed his belly. With both arms around the pain, he calculated what it would take to push away from the counter, unfortunately not quick enough to follow through with an actual plan.

“Tomi?” said Jack, stepping softly into the kitchen.

Dammit. Tom’s broken whininess was on full display for Jack to see. One traitorous tear, a beacon of distress, leaked from his unpatched eye, ran over the bridge of his nose, and dripped onto the counter. He sniffed. “Take me home, Jack. I want to go to go home.” A sniveling little baby was what he was.

Jack pressed a warm hand against Tom’s back. “Tomi, Tomi, Tomi,” he said. His voice was soft and comforting.

It threatened Tom’s resolve. “Please, Jack.”

“Uh, huh,” he said, agreeably.

Jack reached into a cupboard above Tom’s head to grab a bowl. When he reached for the toast, he shifted his hands upon Tom’s back. The solid pressure between his shoulder blades became his focus, an anchor against the tide of pain that rolled over him. It took him to a place of calm, a place he could not find on his own. Dammit.

The crisped bread scraped against the basket inside the toaster as Jack pulled the slices from it. He broke them into large pieces and dumped them into the bowl.

He was closer now. The warmth of his body seeped into the back of Tom’s legs and backside.

“You think being on your own is a good idea?” said Jack. His breath caressed Tom’s ear as he wrapped his arms around Tom.

“I don’t want you to see me like this,” said Tom.

“I see. You can watch my blubbering breakdown into insanity, but I can’t take care of you.”

One of Jack’s shoes tickled Tom’s bare right foot.

“You ready?” Jack said into the back of his head.

“I can’t,” he whimpered.

“Yes you can. There’s a chair right behind me.”

“I can’t do this, Jack.”

This. This was relinquishing autonomy. This was molly coddling. This pathetic, mewling kitten act was not him.  

Jack pulled him away from the counter.

Before he could process the wave of pain that flooded him, he was sitting in one of Jack’s comfortable dinette chairs. Jack crouched in front of him, holding his hands against his quaking knees.

“Okay. Here’s what is going to happen next. I’m making hot milk toast with honey. You will eat it. We will get those medications into you. Then I am wrapping you into that bed over there.”

Tom looked across the living room of Jack’s apartment through the open door toward Jack’s bed. He didn’t want to be in Jack’s bed broken and needy. He wanted…he wanted something…he wanted what he didn’t have the energy to accomplish right now. Tom shook his head. “I want my own bed, Jack.”

“What you want and what you’re going to get are two different things now, aren’t they, Tom?” He squeezed Tom’s fingers.

Unable to speak, Tom sniffed and raised his eyes, meeting Jack’s gaze. Determination glittered in a deep, shimmering well of love. Could Jack see how scared he was? Could he see how grateful he was? Could Jack see how much love he felt for him in this moment?

Jack winked. As he rose to warm some milk, he kissed Tom’s cheek, lingering, so his next words ghosted reassurance across his lips. “You’ll get through this, Fly. No worries.”

Tom sighed. Maybe it was his neediness. Maybe the pain dissolved his reticence. Maybe his heart was whispering, “Everything you require is here, right now.”

Why was he trying to run from it?

Jack was his port in this storm.

Jack was his home.

D is for Desperate

To say that Jackson Tyler was a happy child would be a lie. He wasn’t sullen, he didn’t have a temper, and his pretty, little face didn’t own a scowl, but happy? No. He was thoughtful, and found intimate, personal delight about the world in general, but he didn’t often share that because anxiety was a central part of his being. The world, for Jackson, was titanic: he heard everything, he saw everything, he felt everything, and some tastes and smells were so overwhelming that he had an absolute aversion to them. His favorite place to get away from it was the pantry of canned goods off the kitchen. It was dark, it was quiet and canned goods didn’t smell.

This made life difficult for Martha, his stepmother, who was the only mother he’d ever known. Her greatest joy was feeding her family; she loved being a wife, creating a beautiful home with flowers, candles and potpourris on beautifully set tables, with beautifully prepared foods. But, she didn’t have family often because her husband, Harrison, Hank to his friends, was a foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, so he was travelling most of the time, and when he was home he was hustling for the next story.

So, Jackson was her company, but he wasn’t satisfactory, because he didn’t talk much, and he only liked grilled cheese sandwiches with canned pears, at least at this particular moment in his short, five-year history. Eating for him was particularly troublesome if he was involved in an internal drama of imaginings that sometimes came true and sometimes did not, or if some imaginary irritant was bothering him, then, he didn’t eat at all.

One lovely sunny day, after spending the morning in a frantic state of five-ness, Jackson was winding down, minding his own business, sitting on the floor in the dark pantry. Martha, in her haste to get lunch on the table tripped over one of his outstretched legs and fell. Unfortunately, she skinned and bruised her right knee and tweaked her wrist. It took a moment for her to right herself. When she did, she saw him sitting there, teary-eyed and sniveling, balled into a shell, because it was his leg that tripped her.

She lost it. She yanked him off the floor, shoved him out the back door into the light of the day, into the titanic, swirling world, and said, “Why do you have to be so difficult? You cannot come back into this house until I serve lunch.” Then she locked the door.

He threw himself at it, slapped it with his tiny fragile hands, and cried, “Mom, mom, let me in, let me in.”

 An eternity passed with no results for his efforts – and then, a bird, pounding its head against a pole at the base of the yard, caught his attention.

Tear stained and shaky, he slowly climbed down the steps and walked toward the telephone pole where it was performing this strange and wondrous behavior. When he got to the base of it, he leaned his hands against it and looked up at the little bird. For one heartbeat, the bird’s head was a blur while it pounded its beak into the wood, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Jackson suddenly knew the world as the bird did, one gigantic, frantic, hunt for food. Hunger was a monster, consuming every one of Jackson’s senses. Together, Jackson and the bird could think of only one thing, “Find an insect, eat.”

In all his five years, he’d never felt so murderous, had never thought of needing food so desperately.

The bird tapped again, and the world blacked out for an instant, and then Jack heard them, he actually heard the insects crawling, chewing, and scratching inside the wooden pole. He cocked an ear when the bird cocked an ear, and listened. His meal was close. The world blackened for an instant as he pounded, trying to reach them. He listened again. There was an insect right under the surface. Crazed with hunger he rapped again.

When he and the bird grabbed an insect, then two, then three, four; Jackson swooned with relief. He awoke when he heard his mother’s voice, “Jacksie. You okay Baby? Mommy’s sorry she lost her temper.”

“I’m okay. I was a bird, Mom. He was hungry. He eats insects.”

“That’s nice, dear. It’s time to come in. I made grilled cheese sandwiches with sliced pears on the side.”

“Okay.” As Jackson followed his stepmother, he felt heavy with sorrow, though somehow, he knew it wasn’t his. How could it be? He was a bird, he’d already eaten lunch. Life couldn’t be better.

He looked at his stepmother, and saw the heavy, woolen shroud of sadness that she wore. He took her hand and smiled. “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’m okay.”

“I know, Jacksie. Mommy’s okay too.”

He wasn’t so sure about that.

C is for Cowboy…

At seventeen, Tomio Dubanowski was a ‘cool’ guy, and everybody knew that the cool guys rode bulls. What was eight seconds? Nothing. Any fool could hang on that long.

He gathered his savings, forged his parents’ signatures, and sent in an entry fee.

One evening, a week later, around the family dinner table, his sister, Kimi said, “Tell them.”

“Tell us what, Son?” said Josef, his father.

“I sent in my entry for CHSRA.  I plan to join the circuit. Bull riding.”

Josef choked on a sip of wine. His mother set down her fork and folded her hands. Kimi excused herself from the table and began clearing plates.

Josef cleared his throat. “I don’t remember signing any forms for that?”

Tomio looked to his sister. She shrugged and grabbed the platter of roast beef.

“Uh. You must have, I sent it in.”

“Tomio,” said his mother. When she used that tone, the world was going to crash around his ears. “Please excuse yourself and go to your room.”

He lay on his bed in his darkened room, wondering if he could get a refund. He dreaded what his parents were calculating as punishment for forging their signatures. There was a knock on his door, but before he could answer, his father walked in.

Tomio sat up.

Josef sat in the chair at his desk and sighed. “Obviously, your mother and I are appalled about the signatures. You stepped way beyond the line.” He folded his hands together in his lap.

Tomio appreciated his restraint.

“What a knucklehead. Sittin’ on a horse pushing cattle is not the same as bull riding. Roping steers doesn’t make you a bull expert, or even strong enough to handle leading one in a kiddie ring. What the hell were you thinking?”

“All the cool guys are doing it.”

“All the idiots, Son, not the cool guys.”

“You want me to be a cowboy, well here it is, cowboys ride bulls.”

“Aaugh. Cowboys work herd. Idiots ride bulls.” Josef shook his head. “What’s done is done. I called around; there are no refunds. You either forfeit or you ride.”

“I want to ride.”

“Your mother and I expected that.” He hung his head. “There’s only one thing for it, I guess.” He looked Tomio squarely in the eye. “We had better get prepared. I don’t plan to lose my only son to some son-of-a-bitch bull.”

For the next three weeks, Tom spent every afternoon after school working with his father, learning the tricks of the ride. The owner of the ranch where his father worked had a mechanical bull and Josef got permission to use it. The first week, Tom flew off within the first couple of seconds.  By the second week, he could ride a full ten seconds at the middle setting if he used both hands. By the end of the third week, he could hold his form at the highest setting for a full ten seconds.

It was time to try a real animal. The ranch had two young bulls that were not ready for breeding. Tom thought they were magnificent, but he knew that riding the bulls at the ranch would not be the same as mounting a seasoned rodeo bull. Rodeo bulls knew tricks, tricks that could kill a man. He was tough, he knew that, but he wasn’t stupid. Bulls were tougher.

The night before his first competition, Tom’s dad said, “Come.” In the garage, he grabbed a box from the top shelve above his workbench. Inside it was a very beat up, old hockey helmet with an attached face guard.

“What’s that?” said Tomio.

“It’s my old helmet. You can wear it tomorrow.”

“Cowboys don’t wear hockey masks.”

“They do if they’re smart,” said his father.

“Dad, I can’t be seen wearing that thing. It’s not cool.”

“Do you want to be cool, or do you want to survive?”

“Both.”

“Then you’ll wear it.”

Tomio turned away.

“No, Son.” Josef grabbed him. “You wear it, or you don’t ride.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Try me.” His dad’s eyes were fierce. Tom had no doubt that he could take him out with one swipe of his big hand and should his father decide to use another tactic, it would be hard to sit a bull if his butt was burning, Reluctantly, he took it.

“Good. I’m looking forward to watching you handle that bull, tomorrow, Knucklehead.”

A rattling water truck circled the arena, wetting the turf. The crowd roared when the rodeo clown danced around the truck, especially when the driver shoed him away with an overly large cowboy hat as if swatting an annoying mosquito.

Tom looked down on the bull in the chute. Old Faithful. He was fierce, a lucky draw for any rider that wanted to rack up high points. Tom just wanted to survive. “Well, here we go,” he said, as the bull reared and banged against the wall of the chute.

A horn blasted, signaling the exit of the water truck. The announcer’s voice boomed through the PA system, “Tom Dubanowski, Number Thirty-five on Old Faithful.” The crowd groaned.

Tom gazed toward the top stands, where his family sat.

His father jumped up in alarm.

It was the cowboy hat. What his father couldn’t see, was that he wore the hockey helmet under the borrowed hat. If his father missed it, the cool crowd would, too. 

Old Faithful snorted and bolted in the chute.

The sights of the event, and the roar of the crowd vanished as Tom’s focus narrowed. It was just him and the bull. Out of the silence he heard, “You ready, son?”

Tom sighed. He climbed onto Old Faithful’s back and felt the muscles of the giant beast bunch under him. Eight seconds, that’s all the time they needed to spend together. Just eight.

The voice from the silence said, “Get off the ground as soon as you can. Faithful comes around, every time, to stomp the rider, but he’ll help you get a high score if you can stay the distance.”

“Stay the distance,” Tom whispered. The bull bunched in anticipation. Tom tightened his hand on the bull rope. He prayed to the gods that he had enough rosin on his glove.  

He heard the countdown, “Three, two, one.”

The chute swung open. Old Faithful reared and leaped forward. Tom’s legs flew up and his body flew back, but he held on. Faithful bucked twice, gaining ground in the arena and then started a quick, tight, twirling motion. The cowboy hat flew off. Tom didn’t have time to worry about his image.

Faithful changed directions and kicked out with his hind legs, then twirled some more. The motion caused Tom’s teeth to tear through his tongue, but he held on.

Three more twists and Faithful bucked again. Then he leaped into the air and Tom prepared for the worst. He sunfished, a bizarre leap with a belly roll, all four legs twisting to the right. Tom’s elbow and shoulder wrenched with the motion, but he kept his fingers locked tight on the rope, held his right hand high. He worked hard to keep his legs forward. If they slipped back, he was a goner. He would fly over Faithful’s head and be crushed at the end of this maneuver. His legs stayed up. Faithful hit the ground with the force of a meteor hitting Earth, and Tom’s teeth clashed together. Pain flared up the sides of his head.

 Faithful wasn’t done. He bucked to the left, made a quick right turn and bucked hard. He sunfished once more, and Tom thought “Please buzz me out.”

A clown ran toward them, motioning “Get off, get off now.”

Tom let go, and flew to the left, crashing into the ground on his wrenched arm.

He dimly remembered, “Comes around, every time…stomps the rider.”

He scrambled to his knees, got his feet under him, and ran for the nearest fence. His left arm was useless, but he grabbed the top rail with his right and hauled himself over it. He fell again on the other side, this time twisting his left wrist underneath his body. All he could think of was, “Thank the gods I am right handed.”

That night, in the emergency room, while he and his mother waited for the X-rays, he said, “Do you think I’ll get a cast?”

“Oh, Tomio.”

“I hope so. That would be cool.”

“You don’t need cool. You have this.” She poked his head.

His father walked in and said, “That was some ridin’. Didn’t appreciate the scare with the hat, but guess you had somethin’ to prove.”

“Just wanted to be cool, Dad.”

“Well, thanks for wearing the gear.”

The doctor stepped into the cubicle. “You, young man, have no broken bones.”

“Aw, dang it,” said Tom.

“What you do have is a severely sprained wrist and elbow. Your shoulder could use some rest, too.”

“Do I get a cast?” said Tom.

“No,” said the doctor.

“But I want a cast.”

“Tomio,” said his mother. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“How about if we wrap it and put it into a sling? All the cool guys wear slings.” He winked at Tomio’s parents. “I’ll set up physical therapy for next week.”

Tom sat quietly as the doctor wrapped his arm, and set it into a sling. Then he said, “Sorry I didn’t win, Dad.”

“Who says you didn’t win,” said his father. He winked at his mother.

“I popped off before the buzzer,” said Tom.

“Are you kidding me? You rode two seconds after the buzzer, high score of the day.”

What?” said Tom.

His father pulled a buckle from behind his back. It was huge, glittering with silver and gold. A bull and rider flew above the CHSRA emblem. Tom’s hand shook as he held it. He had never considered winning. He just wanted to be cool.

His father said, “Is this summer from now on?”

Tom shook his head. “No way. I am never doing that again. But I am cool, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you’re a real cowboy,” said his father.

  1. California High School Rodeo Association; California’s division of the National High School Rodeo Association. In 2004, a few brave riders started to use hockey helmets and face guards in the bull riding event. Now, most youth associations require them. That was not the case when Tom was riding. http://www.chsra.com/

B is for Battle

(Author’s Note: I first wrote this story in 1968. There was no Jack, just ‘the man’. He was not a police officer, just a Good Samaritan. The accident was a multiple car pile-up on 280 South, San Francisco, not the Marina District. Like Jack, he suffered tremendous guilt about his inability to save the woman in the car ahead of him when looters took advantage of the situation. I probably saw the accident on the news, and then my imagination took over. I tried to write this into the novel, but it works so much better as a backstory. Thank you in advance for reading it. Comments appreciated.)

If you were to ask Jack about his battle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, he would probably shrug his shoulders, smile, and then walk away. Maybe, before he did so, he would offer, “Have a nice day,” depending on his mood, and what was bugging him, both externally and internally. After spending a lifetime deciphering premonitions or inadvertently reading the minds of others, he is tired.

In the beginning, he didn’t feel anxiety, just wonder. Now, the constant stimulus rips holes in his sanity. The first crisis happened on April 10, 2001, three days before Good Friday. He was twenty-five, cocky, a rookie for San Francisco PD, and eager to impress his superiors. It was his first Easter season as a married man, and his first child was on the way. It seemed especially poignant that year to celebrate. He was half-awake, half dreaming, when his Nokia screamed from the kitchen.

“Jack, what time is it?” said Meghan, starting to look like she’d swallowed a basketball.

“A little after 4:00 am.”

“Can’t you tell them to leave you alone at this hour?”

“Naw. I need to take this. I think there has been a car accident.”

“You can’t know that,” she grumbled.

“I know. Sorry.” He leaned over her and kissed her.

She quickly pecked back, then rolled over and cuddled into her pillow.

By 4:30 am, Jack was on his way to San Francisco’s Marina District not to check out a car accident, but to check out a complaint about altered manifests at Pier 64. It wasn’t something that needed to be checked at this hour. He understood it was a call for the rookie, but he was glad to be out on a fog-free morning before rush hour trapped him behind a snake of cars.

He exited King Street onto Third and as he did so, he glanced in his rearview. An eighteen-wheeler barreled toward him. The two trailers fishtailed across lanes on either side. Jack lightly touched the brake, hoping the driver behind him would take the hint and slow down.

He didn’t.  

As the driver lost control, Jack saw the front of the truck point east while the first trailer skidded forward, jackknifing the cab. The second swung toward him. Jack revved his cruiser, but just at that moment, a small car pulled in front of him, and he had to brake for it. The trailer kept sliding toward him, a groaning avalanche in slow motion. It shoved his cruiser into the small car. Jack saw the woman in the little car reach behind her at the same time that she tried to steer away from the inevitable nightmare crashing into her from behind.

Sandwiched between them, Jack watched in frozen horror as the chassis of the trailer subsumed the rear of his vehicle. The front of his car humped the vehicle in front of him, trapping the three of them in a bizarre ménage a’ trois of vehicles. He chuckled at the inevitability of death, and then the world went black.

He couldn’t have been out for more than a couple of minutes. Consciousness came haltingly, flashing vignettes of sound separated by the roar of silence: the inside of his head buzzed as if he stood next to a very active beehive, the blare of a car horn sounded muffled as if under water, a baby screamed in the distance. The vehicles groaned as they settled after the collision. The air was acrid with the stench of burnt rubber and oil. The sky was very blue. It hurt to look at it.

He tried unrolling his window. It worked.

“Hey,” he yelled. The woman was slumped in the front seat of the car under his. Her hand hung out of the window and blood dripped from her fingers. She wasn’t moving.

“Oh, god, no. No,” he said as he tried to shove open his door. It wouldn’t budge. In the distance, he thought he heard sirens, but the wheels on the big rig were still rotating, so maybe he heard them squealing. He looked around for the truck driver, but there was no sign of movement in or around his overturned cabin.

He wiggled out of the window. It hurt to breathe and he was dizzy but he had to get to the woman in the car under his. He was sure she had a baby.

As he dropped to the pavement, a wave of nausea hit him at the same time that a volley of bullets hit his car. Had he still been in it, he would be dead. He crawled to the car in front of him, but another volley of bullets flew around him. One of them grazed his head and he felt a flame of pain before the world blacked out again.

The next time he woke, he squinted against the brilliant white glare of lights in a room. An annoying beeping noise pummeled the air to his left. The top of his right hand stung as if a giant grasshopper had clamped its chomps into it. He stared. A bandage held a tube in place.  

“Welcome back,” said a deep voice.

“Where?”

“Mission Bay.”

“The lady and the baby,” said Jack as he struggled to get up.

“Hey, hey,” said his partner. “Your wife is on the way. We don’t want you mangled any more than you already are before she gets here.”

“God,” said Jack, as he sank into the pillow. “Did the mother in the car – ?”

“No. She took a bullet.”

“Oh, god,” said Jack. She needed him and he couldn’t get to her.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” said his partner.

“The baby?”

“Social Services until we can locate family. He’ll be fine.”

“Shooters?”

“Didn’t get them all rounded up. Bunch of thugs taking advantage of the situation. The truck was full of computer parts.”

Jack whispered, “Shit.”

“Yeah. The law of the jungle.”

A month later, Jack was still fighting to get out of that car. Every night he woke his poor wife and ruined his own sleep. PTSD was the diagnosis.

Six months later, the nightmares had settled into sporadic stress-induced seizures of anxiety. Visions of death and mayhem hit him like the bullet that grazed his head. He battled them by counting to nine, washing his hands, or tapping a pencil until he drove other people nuts, especially his wife who saw him at his lowest. At least twice a week, she found blood on the sheets under his pillow where he’d cradled his hands, after biting his fingernails to the quick.

On those mornings he’d ask, over and over again, “Are you going to leave me, Meg, are you going to leave me?” until she screamed at him to shut-up.  

By the next year around Easter, the shrink, hired by the precinct to work with him, declared he was suffering with OCD. He had always been open to psychic information, but now the errant thoughts distracted him. His job performance was suffering; his marriage was suffering. Trapped in a constant battle, he was the only one that could fight it. OCD was a demon, driven by its own sick need to exist. There could only be one victor between them. OCD could win and Jack would live a life of torment in Hell, or he could fight with all he was worth.  

Fight or give in.

There was really only one choice. With a son gracing his life, he would battle until he was victor.

Writing is an act of giving.

We are not alone. There are more realms of life than we see, more ways of knowing than our five senses interpret and experiences more unimaginable than we ever dreamed. AV Singer creates characters that experience paranormal events, alien encounters, past-life regression, and utter silliness. Yet each is someone you or I would like to know, someone that faces life with courage, humor and compassion. You don’t have to live through the things they have lived through, because AV has done that for you in every story.img032