The Kiss WEP 992 words FCA by Dixie Jarchow

The storm scoured him with shards of ice and his eyes were frozen shut or were they frozen open? He clung to the side of Mt. Everest like a gnat on an uncaring grey elephant and wondered what his sister Jen was doing. Did she realize he was stuck in the Death Zone, the area above 8000 meters where your body began to eat itself, your brain swelled and your lungs filled with fluids? Her response would be sarcastic and scathing like the winds that held him tight against the ice. 

He was going to make it. His energy was still good. His stamina had been compared to the legendary Sherpa climbers who  were born on the mountain.  Some study said their thicker skin and thinner blood allowed them to thrive in the oxygen depleted air. They were alpine gods and so was he. 

Sherpas believed that climbers who died on the mountain must be brought down or their spirits would linger near their bodies forever. Since it was so freakin dangerous to drag a frozen body down the treacherous mountain, most climbers agreed to have their body dropped in any nearby crevasse rather than put rescuers in peril. 

Ken laughed when the expedition discussed it and said he and his twin, Jen had matching burial plots in Wisconsin. He was coming down the mountain. His body shook so hard, he banged against the ice. Shivering was good. He still had time. 

If you didn’t summit by two pm on Mt. Everest, you turned around and started planning for next year. Otherwise, climbers  risked descending in complete darkness and brutal cold. A summit after 2pm was a death sentence for most. But he wasn’t most climbers. 

He and another experienced climber, Rolf, left the group and continued up. It was a selfish decision to go on once his team turned back but climbing was a selfish endeavor as his twin Jen often pointed out. He was fast, though, freaky fast. He would make it.

Rolf stopped after a couple of hours. He couldn’t keep up.  Like many who died on Everest, he just sat down and gave up. After a few tries to rouse him, Ken continued around him on the narrow trail. It wasn’t callous, it was what you did on the big mountain. Trying to save people just got everyone killed.

Ken hadn’t counted on the freak storm. At first, the weather was perfect and the winds manageable, but it was a ruse. The storm hit like a hammer and when he tried to crest the Hilary Step, he got blown backwards. It was a miracle and a tribute to his strength that he wasn’t blown off the ridge. As the winds approached hurricane strength, he was pinned to the ice just below the summit.

He relaxed against the sheer rock face. At a 70 degree inclination, it was the only thing he could do as the storm whipped around him.  The tingling pain in his legs and feet had come and gone hours ago or was it days?

A few people had survived a night on the big mountain. He shoved his frozen hands deeper into the ice. He would make it. If anyone could, it was him. The storm went on into eternity.

****

At base camp, his twin, Jen checked her gear again. She was bringing not one, not two but three Sherpas. They would do all the work, but she wanted to go as far as possible with them. They would continue on if she turned back, and bring Ken’s body down. 

She’d begun training when Ken did and she was in the best shape of her life. “You should join us on the expedition,” Ken joked but Jen saw no point in conquering a rock, as she called it.

When his group came down without him, she knew, in the mysterious way of those who shared a womb, that he was dead. They advised her to wait, people had walked out of a storm before. Miracles could happen.

What did they know? They weren’t twins. She was going to get him. The night before they left, she dreamt she was frozen in the ice. She woke drenched in cold sweat with hands and feet numb, determined to find him.

****

She climbed easily and the Sherpas joked she might join their ranks. Between grief and muscle pain, she struggled with self doubt and wondered if they should go on without her. The Khumba Iceflow cooperated and she was blessed with perfect weather. 

They found him where he’d tried to last out the storm. He was trapped; arms frozen into the ice as if he were part of the mountain. The Sherpas sighed. They would have to chip out his corpse. 

The head sherpa asked respectfully if she wanted to go on to the summit with one of them while they used their pickaxes to free him. By the time she got back, they would have the body packaged and ready to go down. She considered but the sound of the chipping ice forced tears out of her eyes so she motioned for the guide to lead the way. 

Technically, once past the Hillary Step, the climbing is simple. Their climb had been blessed easy by Mt. Everest’s standards. She stayed a moment at the summit, admiring the view and wondering if Ken had been on his way up or down when the storm hit. 

When she returned to the Sherpas, her brother’s corpse was ready, rolled in heavy plastic and trussed like a roast. His head was still exposed and she leaned over and whispered, “I get it, Ken, I get why you do this.” She kissed his forehead, the skin cold and unyielding.

****

He felt the spark of dawn over the peaks as the storm retreated. Warmth touched his forehead like a kiss and his spirit soared into the thin clouds over the glorious mountain range.

The New Year and You

January 2021

What a year, right? What was your biggest challenge this year? I got an autoimmune disease. Incurable but manageable with a terrifying regime of drugs. We lost two dogs and gained a puppy. I lost my job and got a really bad haircut. How about you?

Are you doing any goals? Here are mine:

1. Write a blog post each month
2. Finish Cat’s Paw novel this year and publish
3. Eat healthier, whatever that entails
4. Continue to write to my peeps every day to keep connected
5. Pay off our last debt: the car, except for the mortgage.
6. Declutter the rest of the house to have a calm space

So here are some suggestions:

1. About your health
2. About your debt
3. About your writing
4. About your relationships

Let me know what you’re thinking. If you need accountability in writing, I would do that. It’s easier to bug someone else than get some words down. 

Post yours in the Reply if you want some accountability. Hide and hunker down if only you know your goals.

TweetDelete review

I recently used the free version of TweetDelete. I tweet a lot of liberal trash talk, mostly as a lurker but I retweet with a vengeance!

I have five traditionally published books and my editor requires that I tweet as part of my writer’s platform. It never bothered me to have my sweet romance tweets mixing with my reformed Republican dogma.

But now I was entering a contest where I tweet a pitch in a specified time period hoping to catch an agent’s eye. Chances were good, they might look through my tweets to see what kind of mess they might be getting into by giving my pitch a heart.

Well, let me tell you, my tweet history looks like my politics are to the left of the Black Panthers. So, I turned to TweetDelete.The free version was easy except remembering my password for Twitter. It will delete your last 3200 tweets for the month or less, in my case. Here are some of the reasons to use it from the website:

• To prevent a new employer seeing something regrettable that you said on Twitter a couple of years ago.
• To remove references to an old partner after starting a new relationship.
• To repurpose an existing Twitter account (e.g. for business use instead of personal) and remove everything in it.

The premium service is $14.95 per month and allows for more selective deleting as well as archiving your tweets. The free version will allow setting up an automatic delete function.

The free service worked well for me! Now, my twitter history looks like an author who reads other authors and I created a separate account for my left leanings. Author Twitter account: Dixie Jarchow@DixieJarchow

Choices

1000 words. By Dixie Jo Jarchow FCA

A single hair on the Witch’s arm stood straight up, an alert that someone was coming. A heavy sigh escaped the mage who put down a book. The gigantic feline lying near the fireplace, raised its tufted ears.

“She passed the house but still has to navigate the garden and brave the salt barrier. She may not make it at all,” the Witch reassured the cat. Its fur was dark and mottled with hints of gold and red that undulated like moving shadows as the cat stretched. 

Another hair sang. The Witch announced, “She’s at the door. Bugger.” The Witch stood up and donned a great purple robe that hung in the corner. The robe was overlain with shooting stars in silver that floated across the rich purple expanse of fabric. The Witch threw open the door and glared. 

Thunder shook the ground and lightning flashed although no clouds marred the moonlit sky. The Witch towered over the shaking girl. Her dress was plain and mended, but clean and clearly the best she owned.  A beauty, her pale hair hung loose and glimmered in the moonlight, her eyes like clear sapphires. 

“You may as well have saved your time. I don’t do love spells. Between you and me, they never satisfy forever after. Nor killing spells. Hordes of ghosts trailing me to complain? No thank you.”

The young girl took a deep breath, “My father died unexpectedly.”

“I don’t bring back the dead,” the Witch snapped, then the mage’s eyes widened. “You killed him.”

“An accident.” The girl shrugged her delicate shoulders. “Last week, he dragged the youngest of my sisters out to the barn. We’ve all had a turn, but she’s so young. I hit him before I knew what I was doing.”

“Seventeen times?” Asked the Witch.

“Well, I couldn’t have him getting up after the first few hits, could I?” The rosebud lips smiled.

“You seem very capable. What do you want from me?” the Witch quirked up one thin eyebrow over deep-set red eyes.

“My sisters and I have made the farm a pleasant home. I want to continue living there without having to marry ourselves off like cattle to the highest bidder.”

“You don’t need a witch, you need a plow horse.” The Witch snorted.

“I need that too, but to the point: The new Duke says only men can hold property.” 

“So finagle some dumb, strong brute to marry you,” the Witch said.

“I’ve had enough of what men can provide to last me a lifetime. Children? They mostly die young. Women bleed to death all the time giving birth to the fragile things.  My father’s ruined the marriage bed for me. I just want my farm.” Her wistfulness strummed a rusted string in the Witches’ heart.

She waited a beat, “I guess you’re in the same cart, aren’t you? The Duke’s paper means you can’t own property either.”

The Witch’s glittering red eyes narrowed and silver sparks flew from the billowing robes.

“I mean, are you a man?” The girl’s melodious voice cracked. She stepped back.

The Witch frowned. The sparks fizzled and the robe seemed to deflate. “It was very long ago that it mattered to me or anyone else.”

“If you can’t prove you’re a man, you can’t own property. Here’s the proclamation.”

“I’d like to see them try to take what is mine,” muttered the Witch, taking the document to read it. 

“The Duke has an army. Can you withstand one?”

The Witch eyes focused inward, “Such a thing has never been tested. Remind me how many men an army is.”

“A hundred or more, with horses.”

“Horses! I dislike horses. They’re such know-it-alls,” the Witch sighed. The gigantic feline wound around the Witch’s legs, peering at the girl with slitted orange eyes. A rumble echoed in its deep chest.

“I know, horses are uncouth, slobbering brutes.” The Witch stroked the cat’s head.  “My purpose does not include wasting energy on petty regional conflicts. Neither do I want to mount a defense of my existence.”

“You could kill the Duke,” offered the girl.

“A splendid idea, at first glance, but killing spells have a queer way of coming back at the sender.” The Witch paced. “Why would he come for me? It is known that life flourishes where I am. Rare herbs grow. Crops benefit from my stewardship and even the weather is kinder within my sphere of influence. Still, when has reason entered into man’s decisions?” The Witch whirled and the girl followed. The inside of the small space reeked of subtle magics and burnt herbs. 

A huge fireplace dominated the space. Across from it stood a comfortable chair, table and a woven brown bin with three walking sticks.

“You choose,” the Witch smiled. “This started out, after all, as your problem.” The Witch gestured for the girl to select.

The girl reached without hesitation for the closest stick. It glowed red hot and she yanked her hand back. The next stick burned silver blue like the hottest part of a flame. She bypassed it. The third stick was the tallest and cast a long shadow in the firelight. She touched it and cerulean mist sparkled in the air around her. 

The girl became taller, shoulders broadened, muscles grew, hair sprouted in places and things, well, rearranged themselves.  Her beautiful eyes remained, unchanged except for the horror they held.  And then the handsome man faded, transported back to the farm in a shimmer of mist, the eyes the last vestige visible. The Witch replaced the walking stick in the bin.

“Ack” the feline scoffed. 

“No, I don’t feel guilty about letting her believe she chose. Humans feel good when they can make choices. I don’t think the Duke will trouble us, but he can be next, if need be.” The Witch smiled. “Oh, all right,” She conjured a plow horse and sent it to the farm. “Happy?”

“Imagine gender being the defining thing of one’s existence! Bah!”

Urban Horror FCA 999 words

A murky haze hung in the air around the decrepit house, as if squeezed out by the houses in the tightly packed space around it.   To its right, a breath of space, a smudge of green where the floating miasma concentrated. A short, ancient forged metal fence that guaranteed tetanus snugged inside a higher gray chain link that felt more at home in the struggling neighborhood.

“We’re home, kiddos,” their mother danced up the cracked gray pavers that led to the gothic revival wreck in her high topped Keds and worn jeans, not just retro but vintage.

Arun’s eyes darted to find something good, anything. A tired, graceless rectangle painted a faded, hideous green presented as their new home. Dark shutters, at awkward angles hung on the façade.  Four dingy white pillars struggled to support the roof overhang. They formed a dizzying series of parallelograms across the slanted porch. A turret hung off the one side of the second story, as if clinging desperately to hold onto the worthless structure. Just another single family row house streaming a segment from the heart of the city like legs of a diseased spider. 

“Pile of whack,” Cantor pronounced over the screamo music banging out of her ear buds. A terminally angry 13, nothing was good in her life, reflected her brother Arun, a more mature 16. She wore only black which accented her painful thinness and her dark brown eyes were rimmed in black, smudging down her cheeks and reddening her eyes by the end of the day so she looked more in need of a hug than a cause. 

“Turret is mine,” she claimed, looking up at the house. Arun would rather a view over the smoky plot of empty land than the neighbor’s windows. “Unless mother takes it,” she amended. 

They settled into their house, Cantor in the lopsided turret, Arun across the hall overlooking what turned out to be an unkempt graveyard and their mother in a more spacious room in the back of the second floor with an attached bathroom.

Cantor attempted to shut her door but the door frame didn’t coincide with the door. She jammed it as close as possible to shut. Arun left his door open and moved the desk to the window so he could stare out the window at the graveyard.  He left his lights off to improve visibility. 

The glowing tip of a cigarette resolved in the haze inside the fence; a darker form within the misty shadows, large and bulky in ragged clothes. 

How dangerous would it be to talk to the man? He was inside the double fence of the cemetery and Arun would be on the outside.  He bet he could outrun some old smoker, for he felt the man was old, perhaps ancient. He walked soft footed down the stairs but heard Cantor’s door wrench open anyway.

“What’s the dilly, doofus?”

“There’s some crusty goombah out in the cemetery next door. Thought I’d surveil.”

“God, you need a keeper.” She shadowed him till they were noses to the fence. 

“Hello,” Arun whispered. He felt Cantor tighten next to him.

“Hello,” it said, sucking the cigarette until it glowed white. 

Another thing formed beside it, more polished, less foul. It bore a resemblance to their father who deserted them when they were just toddlers. Arun barely remembered him but Cantor, three years younger, claimed vivid memories. Her breath sucked in. 

“So you’re the cool kids in the house,” the dad-like thing said. He was dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt. Looked about 30, mature but not old yet. 

“Where have you been?” spat Cantor, forcing her face into the damp fence.

“Here, where I’ve always been. You’ll be gone before the month is out, they always are,” he said sadly. 

“If you’re here, I’m staying,” Cantor said. 

“Okay but first we’ve got to ditch the golem,” He jerked a thumb at the dark form in the ragged clothes, smoking. 

“How?” she demanded.

“Simple, prick your finger and you can change places with him. Be with me all the time. Good times, trust me.”  The edges of his silhouette vibrated. 

The thing made Arum recoil. Cantor whipped out a safety pin out and stabbed her finger. The blood was dark but vibrant, like a living organism with a fluttering heartbeat. Arun squeezed his hand over her finger. “No.”

He slid out his pocketknife and sliced his arm at mid elbow. A bright wash of blood sluiced down his arm. He and Cantor had never been close. But something was terrifyingly wrong about this creature. He might lose himself but he would protect Cantor. They never saw eye to eye, had never bonded as siblings but he could save her and he would.

The frayed, dusty figure laughed a deep hacking laugh that dissolved into a cough.

“I still have some grace left.” He reached out a gray hand and wrapped it around Arun’s wound. Arun hung onto Cantor’s finger and they looked like an old playground game of Red Rover. Enormous wings pushed through the thing’s tattered clothing and where before he looked weak, he expanded with unbounded power. 

Arun felt a searing glow in his arm claw its way up to his elbow. He felt wonder and his skin blistering. His flesh pulled back from the thing’s hand but regenerated pink and new underneath.

The dad-like thing hissed and slid back into the cooler shadows of the cemetery. His lovely smooth face crinkled and cracked and his frame fractalled into writhing snakes of ash. Cantor gasped and tried to flee but Arun squeezed onto her hand tighter as his new flesh solidified. 

“It was too easy anyway,” the winged creature said to the snake things. “Kids, these days are too needy.” 

“Thank you,” gasped Arun, “but why? You’re a frickin’ angel.  You could have been free.”

“I’d be reassigned. And there are worse gigs in all of heaven and earth. Trust me.”

Antique vase 537 words FCA

Fine dust rose from the wooden box as Daryl opened it. He unwrapped the shreds of heavy cloth from around the object. It was a tall, slender vase, packed well, much better than the usual junk he and his step brother, Mark bought sight unseen from storage compartments.

Buying the storage containers became the only tangential link between the two who were on different trajectories through life.

Money from the units floated enough to barely manage Mark’s heroin habit. Daryl scraped the money together for rent on the exhausted bungalow he shared with their mother and bought her meds with the extra cash. It was hit or miss but it maintained the thin trail of blood between them.

“A couple of moth-eaten kimonas.  Junk,” Mark swore, rifling through the box.

“Could we have them cleaned? Some people like to display them like on the wall. God, they stink.” He watched Mark shake out the heavy, patterned silk. They had been beautiful once

“Maybe, who knows.  We can try. What have you got?”

“Porcelain, old but it’s got a crack.”

“Can’t catch a break,” Mark breathed out. He raked his knuckles across his eyes.”I won’t have enough money from this to make my week.”

“Looks like I’ll be selling some plasma this week,” Daryl said. Did it make him happy that Mark couldn’t get his fix this week? Daryl tried to bridge the chasm between them but his empathy stopped short. There were treatment options.

“I can’t even do that. Who saves a vase with a crack in it?” He turned the fine thing over in his hands. Daryl saw a tear drip from his cheek.

“The crack is supposed to be filled with gold or something precious,” Daryl told him, taking the vase. “To heal a rift between two people, diametrically joined.”

“Stop your crap,” Mark scratched at one thin dry arm. “You don’t know what it is like. I don’t want to be this way.”

“Yeah, bad life choices. Let’s go see what we can get for this junk at that resale place next to the treatment facility.” Daryl rewrapped the vase while Mark scooped up the musty kimonas.

“You know I love you anyway, right?” Daryl slung an arm around his brother, pulling the gap between them closed.

“Man, that’s gotta be tough. All the things I’ve done. I stole from you guys, got involved with mugging someone. Just crappy stuff you and mom don’t deserve.” Mark shook his head and pulled closer to his brother, closing the last breath of space between them.

Mark stopped in front of the resale store and piled the kimonas on Daryl’s arm. “Here you take them. I’m going this way,” Mark pointed to the treatment center. “Maybe this time it will take. Use the money for mom.”

Daryl watched as Mark disappeared behind the glass door. He brought the vase and the kimonas to the resale guy.

“Wow this is really rare, the crack on this vase is filled with ruby or something.” The proprietor said, “This should go to auction at one of the big houses. I got a guy I can call,” he rushed off to find the number.

Daryl wiped a tear from his eye.

WEP 1000 words FCA. Footprints

When the first ones crawled out of the bog, they looked more like miniature lizards than dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. No one was sure what was the catalyst that pushed all the microbes together and gave them life but they were cute and made you laugh with their antics, like colorful chickens.

Conservative media made a big deal out of finding a new species. Climate change was for losers. Meanwhile, here in Wisconsin the water table was rising and the crops were tending more towards rice than corn. We take what God gives us around these parts and we’re grateful.

So we kept right on pumping hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and then evolution did a fast break and the next new thing to leave its birdlike footprints in the muck was not so cute. They had wings, leathery and shiny like something out of a night terror that makes you pee your sheets. And teeth. Sweet Mother of God, rows of vicious, flesh ripping teeth. Where the small ones were adorable goofs, the big ones were sleek with an air of menace.

The bigger ones hunted down the little guys with terrifying pack mentality. Strewn guts covered the roads, blood soaking into the wet soil. The smell of rot clung to the ground, carrying a thick cloud of putrification everywhere. We started wearing little white masks, like they do in Japan.

They didn’t seem to much notice humans, at first but as the smaller dinosaurs learned to duck and cover whenever a shadow touched them, people began to find their dogs and cats missing. As the flyers ran out of easy prey, their black shiny eyes started looking at us. Really looking.

Everyone found a reason to stay inside around that time and hoped the military would get off its big old behind and save us. And they tried. You had to give ‘em that. But once they realized we were trying to kill them they decided to kill us right back. And they were better at it than we were by a long ways. They slaughtered the army of conventional warfare like it was choir practice. Soon, our military was battered and scattered like wheat chaff on the wind.

Just when things looked like we ought to be kissing our collective sweet hinnies goodbye, we got the word through the church calling tree. The Colonel wanted everyone in a pew on Sunday. There’s only one service here and you better be there or they go right on saving souls without you.

The Colonel grew up here, out in eastern Wisconsin, shooting and trapping and generally honing his sites on anything to kill the boredom.

On that bright sunny Sunday, the First Lutheran Church of God was packed with people in urgent need of saving. Even the Jewish guys who had an art store in town came. For the homily, the Colonel and the pastor stood up. After a moment the pastor sat as the Colonel stared him down and took the pulpit.

He looked out over us and he waited. Fans stopped waving, babies stopped fussing, until there was a hole of silence we waited for him to fill.

“These abominations have to be stopped. They threaten to take over our world, make it their own. I’ve word that a new, larger species has been discovered. Or maybe it’s better to say they’ve discovered us and are spreading rapidly. My sources say this emerging threat will be here in two weeks at the most. Now, I don’t know about you, neighbor, but I’ve never fancied being part of someone else’s food chain. No one’s taking my land from me and I’m not much on running, neither.“ There was scattered laughter at the very thought.

“What’s left of our troops is in retreat as we speak. Our military doesn’t train soldiers to shoot, it trains them to pull the trigger and hopes for the best. Most soldiers not only can’t hit the broadside of a cow at ten paces but are too petrified in actual combat to even pull the trigger.

“These creatures can be taken out by a headshot. A direct hit on something the size of a baseball.” He let that sink in for a spell.

“I spent my youth here in plinking squirrels at 25 yards or tapping a rabbit on the run. I know many of you share my enthusiasm. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that some of the best shots in Wisconsin are right here in these pews.” People’s heads bobbed because it was true.

“Now I personally think it was a mistake when our country asked us to turn in our guns when they passed the No Death on Our Streets law, couple of years ago. I also know that like me, you’ve all got one good gun you’ve designated as a family heirloom to keep at home for protection. Well, I for one, hope you kept plenty of ammo for that firearm.

“I’m saying now’s the time to clean that gun. We survived the Holy Trump Wars and by God, we’ll survive these things.” He slammed both hands on the sides of the pulpit and leaned in toward us and no one even breathed.

“Maybe we can’t defeat them. Maybe there’re too many of them and too few of us, but we’ll damn sure show the world how to make those things think twice before they set a claw in Wisconsin.

“We take care of our own problems. Why? Because that’s what we do. And I say, we take care of this mess before it gets any worse.”

And he walked out down the center aisle. And people rose and followed just like the ushers had dismissed them, row by row. And I marched right out with them and I’ll be there tomorrow, by God I will, shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors and kin. So, if you find this, you’ll know either how it started or how it ended.

WEP Horrible Harvest. 999 words FCA by Dixie Jo Jarchow

Timothy scratched at the deep, loose soil of Nyulos with the toe of his dusty boot. The pale blue soil floated for a moment in the light gravity and then settled down into a perfectly flat profile.  The blue gray soil stretched as far as he could see, punctuated by short, waving copses of darker shimmery grass, like whiskers that he’d missed shaving.

The horizon of the planet stretched unfeatured and round like rising dough in front of his tired eyes. The company told them there were other farms on the planet, hundreds of them if the promo stuff was right, but he’d never seen evidence of another homestead. 

When he thought about Kate, he smiled. She was prickly and easily aggravated but when he saw the play of the starlight in her auburn hair, something in his chest squeezed tight. She kept her hair short to avoid the mites that nested in longer locks, but he loved running his rough hands through the brownish red stubble, her dark eyebrows a punctuation to her intent, heart shaped face.

Shimmering blue gazelle-like creatures ran the surface of the planet in vast herds that merged and unmerged kaleidescopically. Huge clouds of dust heralded their arrival, hanging suspended for a moment and then smoothing out after they passed.

The gazelles lived for a season, as far as Timothy could tell,  never ate anything and died emaciated. They ran, driven, their entire short existence.  When they couldn’t run anymore, they collapsed and died. The dead hulls dried in the arid land and then disappeared into the homogenous soil without leaving any residue.

The round blue sands pulled them in. They were there, then they weren’t.

He remembered Kate’s exultation when she’d finally trapped one. It had a little bit of meat on it, so it must have been young. She butchered it with abandon, the shimmering hide dissolving into the pebbly soil as she skinned it. She seared the meat on a small cooking stove. The juices flowing clear in the fire. She even tried it first, popping a sizzling bit into her mouth and moaning with the joy of it.

The children, raised on food bars, tore into the heavily seasoned stringy meat. There was enough for a mouthful for each of them. And for the first time, Timothy felt there might be a way to succeed on this strange blue planet.

The hot meat melted in his mouth with an odd metallic aftertaste. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had meat, probably some rat back in the Wisco-Illini province that he’d snared  and cooked in secret. Most of the animals on earth died out in the ever-rising heat. Just some rodents and other small mammals kept their populations up but anything bigger died out. 

The writing on the wall said colonization was the only way for mankind to survive. And so they sent people out with enough supplies to last a couple of years, to habitable planets that seemed like they should support life.  The idea was, if they sent enough people, mankind would get lucky and survive. It was a one way ticket to Paradise or Perdition. 

An hour after eating, the entire family was violently, viciously ill. They’d throw up over and over, settling into dry heaves after the pale meat erupted, undigested. 

The children’s tight stomachs visibly spasming for hours, until finally bringing up blood and hunks of pink intestines.

His son, Brae, a mature eleven year old had wiped the blood off his mouth and said, “It was worth it,” smiling at his horrified mother.  His younger daughter Jen, eight, rocked back and forth with her stuffed doll, tears running down her face, silently, a streak of bright red trailing her cheek when the spasms stopped.

They’d died in the early morning hours. His Kate lasting till midday murmuring over and over again how sorry she was. He could almost feel their soft cheeks against his stubble, their bright, clear eyes staring up at him in terror and resignation.

A solitary hot tear pushed through the fine blue dust on his face. His empty stomach twisted into a knot and he hunkered over with the agony of it, a residue of the tainted meat he’d eaten. He wished it had killed him too. Maybe he’d just start walking and see if he would make it to any of the other settlements.

He picked up some of the perfectly round soil of the planet and let it slip through his cracked, dry fingers. He’d done everything he could, everything they asked of him. Why didn’t his crops grow? Other things grew; the grasses, the gazelles. There had to be some reason to it. The company threw people on habitable planets and hoped for the best. There just hadn’t been time to do more.

Guidance from the company had been sparse to non-existent. They encouraged him to be self sufficient and use his resources to be successful and self sufficient. The crops were engineered to seek water from the soil. Light was abundant and the nutrients were present. Plants should grow, he just couldn’t force them to no matter what he tried. And now, what was the point?

He walked, tired and dusty through the soft soil. It seemed to move to accommodate his boots and then flow back in to fill the voids.

A feeling of wellbeing grew as he walked, finally arriving at the graves of his wife and children. He gasped. Pale blue shoots broke through the surface of the soil over where their bodies lay. The plants seemed to grow before his eyes, stretching towards the sun, waving in the soft breeze.

He fell to his knees and wept. The planet tugged urgently at his knees and the tops of his shoes. Timothy sobbed and lay down between his wife and children’s burial sites. He closed his eyes against the harsh sun.

The planet pulled him under the soft blue sand gently and inexorably.

WEP contest 1000 words

Times Remembered

My parents were not to be trifled with.  Father’s family was old world Italian. He was the first generation born here and only spoke English, although he understood Italian just fine when grandma was yelling at him. He worked hard as a plumber every day in other people’s dirt and grime and drank one Strohs beer each night. I was embarrassed that he got undressed on the porch at the end of the day, leaving his soiled clothes for my mother. 

We watched Perry Mason and the Black Hawks most evenings. He wasn’t like the other fathers who were thin and wore suits. He boxed when he was younger  and won Golden Gloves. His pinky would have worn a size 13 ring, if he had worn such things. He was huge and strong like the centerbeam of our house.

Mother managed the house and some rental properties. Dinner was on the table at half past five every single night and there was always meat, a vegetable, and white Wonder bread. God help you if you were late. No one ever tested those dangerous waters. 

She was fiercely protective of her four daughters although she didn’t like children. She was part Cherokee and lost family on the Trail of Tears and you really didn’t want to cross her. When a counselor at school missed a deadline so I wasn’t eligible for the Rhodes Scholar, she about tore the place down. When my sister’s mother in law to be called her a nigger because of her dark, native american skin, my mother wrote a blistering letter to their pastor.

Communication wasn’t big in our house. He and mother spoke with looks that seemed to slide away from us like bacon grease on a hot day. You could never tell what they were saying exactly but you knew thoughts had passed.

Our family had a falling out with the Catholic church before I was born even though my grandmothers’ parish priest was to become Pope John Paul the second.  Whatever the Catholic church did, it must have been bad and my parents weren’t putting up with it. We became occasional Methodists.

I was bred to be independent and I fought to get a job even though mother told me school was my job.  I was tired of having one pair of stiff blue jeans at the beginning of each school year for a wardrobe. I felt poor and I hated wearing the clothes she made. She was a gifted seamstress. She made mine and each of my sister’s wedding dresses and she would make suits that looked like they were bought. I didn’t appreciate her skill till I got older and she was gone.

 As kids, we ran feral during the day until dinner. One day when I was twelve, I ran home crying and shaking. My mother, turned away from the potatoes and said, “What?”

“Some guy was playing with us.”

The wooden spoon moved to more of a clubbing position. “What do you mean, ‘playing’?” This was before Mr. Stranger Danger.

“I was with Jean at the playground and some older guy came. He was smoking and throwing lit cigarettes down the slide at us.  I ran but Jean thought it was funny and stayed to smoke with him.”

Jean was a sophisticated 14. She was everything I wanted to be: tall with long blond hair, colt like legs with an attractive overbite that made her seem like she was smiling all the time.

My mother resumed stirring. Late that night, the police came and we found out Jean didn’t make it home. I was interviewed barely awake, sitting between my Mother and Father and I remember waves of anger cycling off my parents.

Jean was returned home after three days but I wasn’t allowed to see her. The family moved away and I never saw her again or found out what happened.

A few weeks after they left, something woke me up in the dark hours before dawn. Someone was rummaging in our garage. I crept to my window and peeked out. 

My father’s huge silhouette came out and looked around as if sniffing the air. The hum of neighborhood air conditioners buzzed through the night and people turned the porch light out when they went to bed back then. He came out with a loaded wheelbarrow. In the shadow from the scant moonlight I could see it was heavy.

He wheeled it out to the vacant property he owned next door. He’d always meant to build a house on it but the village blocked him because the church adjacent wanted it. He dumped whatever it was into a deep hole he’d dug earlier in the day with his backhoe. He hand shovelled the volume of dirt back in and planted a peach tree he’d purchased, on top. I would never eat the fruit from that tree.

He came back, took off his work clothes outside like usual and sat down at the kitchen table in his underwear. My mother greeted him with a beer and they talked so quietly I couldn’t hear. At the time, I remember being amazed he was up past 9 pm on a work night.

When he died, I claimed the red wheelbarrow. It was more rusted than red and the handles gave me splinters, but I’m kind of a tool gal and I figured it would be safe with me. And, it turns out, useful.

I have a beautiful granddaughter who loves gymnastics. None of the parents care too much when the coach hugs and pets the girls, but I feel the streak of violence from my Italian and Cherokee heritage vibrate like the low string on a guitar. The instincts that made me run when I was 12 are still intact. 

I’m old now and not as strong as my father, but I can still manage to slide my new peach tree into the shallow hole. Mother and Father would be so proud.

A Refuge for Rosanna!

Recently, I got the opportunity to interview regency author Susan Karsten who has a new book out, A Refuge for Rosanna. It was a great read and I highly recommend it. Here’s the interview.

I became a writer of Regency fiction long after I became an avid reader of Regency romance fiction.  I love the genre because of its usually gentle and intelligent nature. The language, social mores, historical events, and fashions are also aspects that appeal to me.

When I am working on a book, writing time is constrained or shaped by my other responsibilities, so I have to be flexible. I am not one to stay up until all hours just to squeeze in word count.  Ideally, however, I like to write in the mornings, after getting a few household matters taken care of (like putting a load of laundry in the machine). The place I write is at a desk in my home’s formal living room.

The many Regency novels I have read certainly give me a lot of inspiration due to the fact that when I sit down to write my own Regency romance fiction, the words flow. I guess you could say I am steeped in the genre.  I have used snippets of real life romances to add details to the love stories of my characters

The third book in the Honors Point Series, An Escape for Ellie,  is waiting in the wings. Since there’s such a lot of time from completing a book to the day it’s published and out in the world, I have explored some other genres with my writing in the meantime.

I do not have a regular day job, but I have worked several part time and temporary jobs since my children have launched.

I started writing about 8 or 9 years ago and my friends have been super excited about it. The readers among them are fascinated by the whole process of writing a book, and they ask a lot of good questions.  Some of my friends make jokes about me becoming rich and famous, and I just try to bring them down to earth. That tells me that they have a high opinion of writers and writing, even though the reality is much more work and rejection, mixed in with small successes.

According to one of my recent reader reviews, you might not be able to put it down!  But overall, my readers like historical romance and historical fiction. Reading one of my Regency romances is like stepping into the past, and having a whole story world come alive on the pages. You’ll be rooting for the hero and heroine to make it to love’s altar. You’ll cringe when the badmen appear to be about to win. You’ll swoon with the intensity of leashed passion. Basically, you’ll read my books because you love a good story

Readers might get a chuckle to know that my son had to correct my fight scenes. “Mom, nobleman would never hit from behind or punch someone in the stomach, they’d only go for the face and head!” I had to be instructed also that the hero in my first book was crying too much (he was recovering from a beating and out of his head, but I took out the tears).

As you read my novels, you’ll notice that some of my characters are people of Christian faith, but don’t worry, the stories are fun, and full of life and good humor.

Biography

Susan Karsten lives in a small Wisconsin town, is the wife of a real estate broker, mother of three (two married, one engaged), and grandmother of three. Her hobbies include fitness, quilting, and reading.

Her interest in writing developed while in college where she earned a BS degree in Home Economics (Apparel Design & Manufacturing), with a minor in Speech.

With child-rearing days at an end, Susan now invests time in fiction writing. With four contracted Regency historical romances, a humorous chapter book, and a cozy mystery complete, she is working on an Amish Romance with a twist.

Social media: https://www.facebook.com/puresparklingromance