Fox Tails

It’s not easy being a fox.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it’s not easy to be any sort of animal (and you would be right), but believe me when I tell you that it is particularly hard to be a fox. 

Ever since that dapper English dandy made a name for himself by snacking on poor, innocent virgins, it has been hard for me and mine to get one up in this world. Sloppy work on his part is what it was. You never let your intended know where you live before the wedding night—never mind how special old Fox thought dear Mary was, it simply isn’t something a responsible fox does—unless, of course, he wants to get chopped to a thousand pieces by Mary’s friends and family.

The trick is not to draw attention to yourself--that's where most of us go wrong. We make these great romantic gestures, each more elaborate than the next, and it's easy to get carried away by our excitement and anticipation. And if we do that, and it's all boots and cudgels and sharp metal objects splicing you into a thousand pieces. It's not a pretty picture, and I don't envy old Fox one bit—though I have to say it's his own fault: a bloody trail to your front door doesn't exactly herald good tithing or a blissful marriage.

Of course, we can’t be held entirely responsible for our naughty ways: they’re bred into us. We foxes see a pretty girl and cannot help but to become enthralled by her, to be consumed by our need to have her, possess her (and I dare say eat her). Really, it’s their own faults for being so charming, so easy to smile and laugh, for having dimples and pert little breasts and lovely supple legs...

Luckily, we tods have learned from the mistakes of those like Mr. Fox; we have become more clever and cleaner in this modern world. We set our alarms to ward off our uninvited girlfriends. The changes that come with said modern world also do their part to make our lives a little safer. Since even the earliest years of my kithood—oh, somewhere around the turn of last century, I expect—the modern world has slowly begun to push away the notion of fairies and goblins and foxes who talk, and I dare say that this is a marvelous thing, for the less that people remember their bedtime stories, the easier it becomes to be what I am: that is a fox. After all, it might be true that we foxes do have a keen fondness for the succulent flesh of young ladies, but in a world like this, our modern era, a phrase like that can have so many meanings.

But I can understand…I can understand why those that were found out were discovered in the process of attaining their lady loves. Knowing your meal inside and out is a singular feeling one can easily become addicted to. We all have our weaknesses, our Marys.

My own Mary is sitting beside me: the jean skirt that she wears show more of her strong thighs than it hides, the light of the street lights emphasize the gentle curve of her calves; her dainty bare feet which rest on the dashboard are pretty things with red polished toes; the black halter top that she wears cup her breast in a way that I’m pretty sure is an invitation; that’s not even touching on her long brown curls, or the sharp, sweet scent that blows my way as she rolls her window down for a breath of fresh air after our shared cigarette. It’s definitely not counting her throaty laugh, her sweet voice as she sings along to a song on the radio or the sweet come-hither look she’s been giving me the past hour and a half as we drive from club to club to show each other off. But, like the original, she too has a tendency to pry and skulk about to satisfy her curiosity, and I must be very careful not to end my trial of blood at the wrong door.

And this is where it gets difficult: she wants to come home with me. She’s been asking for weeks—a month, actually—and I am running out of excuses. My roommate (which I do not have), my parents (who are now long dead), my dog (don’t even ask…)

Et cetera

Et cetera

Et cetera

And with each excuse I can feel her slipping from my grasp and you cannot possibly understand how much the thought of losing her kills me. 

I thought about giving in once or twice, but like every Mary, she has friends and family that would see me chopped up and fed to dogs; it’s better to lose a meal than your head.

She must also be contemplating my unwillingness to take her home with me, for her face goes grave for several long moments despite the fact that she likes the song that’s playing. I glance at her from the corner of my eye as my car rolls to a stop at the three way intersection that turns into her street.

“You should come inside with me,” she suggests as she retracts her legs and fishes about in front of her seat for her strappy heels. “We could make some popcorn, watch a movie: you know I just got a new batch of DVDs from the video store the other day. I betcha there’s something you’ll like.”

Her green eyes brighten as she regards me.  Be bold, they say.

But a voice in my own head whispers the reply: but not too bold.

I don’t say anything as I cross the intersection and follow the road around the bend. Her expression deflates. I don’t see it, but I hear it in the way that she shifts uncomfortably—disappointedly—in her seat as I ease along the road.

“Sure,” I find myself saying as the car turns into her driveway. “Sure, I would like that.” And I smile at her as I put the car into park. After all, her house is not my house.

She brightens again, and in that moment I am breathless. Nothing is more beautiful than her smile, the flush of her cheeks, the way she scrunches her shoulders before she rewards my agreement with a kiss on my own scruffy cheek.

I chuckle as she fumbles with the handle of the car door and eventually pulls herself from her seat to a semi-standing position in her driveway.

“C’mon then!” she chirrups, peeking from beneath the top of the car before disappearing behind the slammed door.

I detangle myself from my seatbelt as she skips up to the red wooden door. Her house is almost as cute as she is. It’s small with white walls and windows with flowerboxes: oddly suiting, I think.

She is flipping through her key ring as I approach, and she exclaims a tiny “a-ha!” and produces the correct key for the lock. As she fits the key into place, a breeze ruffles her hair and carries her scent to me. My mouth waters in anticipation and I move to brush her hair away so I can kiss a bare shoulder

Be bold be bold, her scent urges.

And again, the now incredibly sulky voice from my own mind answers: But not too bold.

I lower my hand as she turns to look at me, and I smile instead of kissing her. She smiles back as she disappears into the house.

“Come on in,” she calls from the darkness, “let me change and I’ll pop us some popcorn.”

I step into what appears to be a front entry. A light waxes in some other room of the house—not enough to illuminate the hall, but enough that I catch a glimpse of her shadow on the wall.

Licking my lips, I start toward the light. So eager am I in my pursuit that my foot catches on a loose corner of the rug and—much to my chagrin—I take a tumble to the floor.

To ease my embarrassment, I turn, my every design focused upon kicking the rug back into its proper place, only to find that it was not the rug which I had tripped over.

My stomach knots as I pick up the half chewed forearm of a man.  “It is not so,” I hear myself whisper as my Mary slips from shadow to shadow, her white teeth and green eyes flashing viciously.

“Nor was it so…” I drop the hand, scramble up to my knees before she has be by the neck, her grip surprisingly strong, her long nails biting into my skin as she brings down a knife “And God forbid it should ever be so!”

And there I see it! Peaking from beneath her skirt, the tuft of a fox’s tail, and I, like a fool, could only shout.

Heart Throb

            The day I gave my heart away was a rainy one—the sort where the wind makes the rain fall sideways, and the drops are small and needle-like on your bare skin because it’s too cold for its own good. I was running late, on top of the rain, and since bad things come in threes, I shouldn’t have been surprised that this was the day that my car’s engine quit on me in the middle of a busy intersection.

            Luck got me safely to the side of the road, or it did if you believe in luck. I suppose that a scientist could chalk it up to a lack of friction on wet roads, and momentum. An object in motion will stay in motion, etc. etc. I hate science, personally. I’m a firm believer in luck and chance. Fate.

            Probably how I got into this mess in the first place.

            Dumbfounded, I sat in the carcass of my car and watched the rain fall in a fine, sharp mist against the windshield. I looked at the "check engine" light, the fuel gauge, then at the oil and the temperature. Everything looked okay to me. It looked the same as it ever did, anyway. 

            Looking at the dash was about the extent of my experience with cars. I’d never opened a hood in my life.

            When my brain finally broke through the bog, I tried my hand at percussive maintenance—because beating the dashboard with one’s fist is just as good as opening the hood when you have no idea what you’re doing.

            “Stupid—stupid—stupid—stupid!” I said the word until it meant nothing, and then I let my head fall against the headrest of my seat and heaved an almighty sigh.

            I turned on my hazard lights. I used my cellphone to call in to work, and then I called a tow truck.

            “It’ll pro’ly be about an hour, you know. With the weather an’ all.”

            Yes, of course it would.

            I stared at the dashboard again, thought about taking a nap, decided against it, turned on the radio, decided against that, reached for my phone and decided that I didn’t want to waste the battery.  All of that took five minutes.

            The pattern may have repeated a dozen times if a pair of headlights didn’t appear in my rear-view, come precariously close to my car and then stop. I watched through the rain as the door opened, as a black umbrella appeared, and a figure made its way to my car.

            I was already rolling my window down when the figure approached me.

            “Looks like you’re in a bit of trouble.”

            “Ah, yeah a bit,” I found myself quickly descending from anger into the low realm of embarrassment. Talk about a perfect specimen of the golden ratio. Green eyes, dark hair, high cheek bones—a face delicately crafted with symmetry in mind. I felt my heart throb. Oi.

            “The whole thing just sort of up and died on me,” I admitted.  “I’m waiting for the tow truck.”

            “Ha! You’ll be here a while. D’you know what’s wrong with it?”

            I shook my head. “I hate cars.”

            That’s when the smile happened. “Well I can look for you, but it might cost ya.”

            It was a stupid thing to do, in retrospect, but with that smile in my face, it was hard to think. I undid the brass buttons of my coat and pulled it open, pulled down the collar of my shirt. It was easier to pull my heart out than I thought it would be, and less painful.

            Gripping it firmly—it was heavy for being so small, dense, I guess would be the word—stuck my hand through the window, and winced when the rain began to wash away the blood. I could feel the raindrops hit it, stinging, but I did not shy away as I held my heart out on offer. “Will this do?”

            Long fingers brushed over my heart, a palm pressed against it, muffling its beat. “Yeah, all right.” And then it was gone from my hand, in the pocket of someone else’s coat. Someone whose name I didn’t even know.

            I popped my hood and watched the figure disappear to look at my engine. A few minutes passed, and then: “Try it now.”

            Like magic, my car came alive.

            “Should do you, at least to get home, or to a proper mechanic.”

            “Thanks,” I ran my hand through my hair and rubbed my empty chest. It was starting to ache now. I almost said, “Can I have your number?” but the words died on my lips. I smiled, but it was a thin, weak smile.

            “Sure thing. Just be careful. No drag racing or anything.”

            “Haha…yeah, no.”

            I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I let my heart be carried away in someone else’s coat pocket.

            I don’t know what happened to it after it left my sight, but I still feel it, occasionally, when it’s jarred suddenly, or if it gets squished between things, wherever it happens to be. I don’t think about it, much, except for on days when the wind makes the rain fall sideways, or when I see two people who made it passed a smile, and I wonder what I might have missed.

Harold Knightly and the Dragon

Harold Knightly and the Dragon

1

            The day that Harold Knightly slew a dragon and became a Very Important Person was the day that all of the sixth grade class at Portly Middle had gathered into little clusters of threes and fours and whispered anxiously amongst themselves. It was also the day that Ms. Gardener had gone to “Teacher Training” (as she called it) and had promised to be back sometime after second period, but before lunch. 

Ms. Gardener was the sweetest teacher in the sixth grade hall. She never yelled, never told a fib (not even those little ones that adults tell because they think that you’re too little to know the real answer to something), and she always came back exactly when she said she would whenever she went to Teacher Training. So when second period arrived and left again without so much as a whisper of Ms. Gardener having returned, Harold Knightly knew that something terrible must have happened to her.

Hoisting his yellow backpack over one shoulder, Harold slipped into one of the small clusters of his classmates and listened to their whispers:

“Ms. Gardener’s sub is just awful. She keeps the room real hot, and closed all the windows and turned on all the lights,” Sara Michelle explained dourly, “and she wrote all the instructions on the board in a funny sort of writing that we can’t even read, and she won’t read it to us.”

“Yeah, and she took my Darth Vader Lego man,” Justin Marksfield drew his upper lip into a sneer and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not even mine. It’s my little brother’s.” 

Murmurs of disapproval fluttered from one side of the cluster to the other. Others joined the group and contributed their own woes.

“—took my flower pen because she said we could only write in pencil…”

“—and my phone because it fell outta my pocket…”

“Now I have to get my parents to pick me up after school!”

And so forth.

Harold Knightly wasn’t the sort to wing his opinion out into the open, but he found himself saying, “She sounds like a dragon,” in a matter of fact sort of way.

Maybe it was because he didn’t speak very often, or maybe it was because it was the meanest thing that anyone had said about the substitute teacher to date, but the angry murmurs paused and everyone looked at Harold with intrigue.

Harold was not used to receiving attention from his peers, and his belly shrank, and his heart felt small, as the other boys and girls regarded him curiously.

Sara Michelle asked, “What do you mean?”

Harold Knightly shrugged his shoulders, feeling tight on the inside. “Well she makes the classroom all hot, and steals things, and writes in Secret Letters on the board,” it was easier to keep going now that he’d started, “I bet she doesn’t even get up from the desk. She probably guards all the stuff she stole. And,” he paused, feeling much braver now that they were really listening, “she probably hid Ms. Gardener so she could stay forever.” He made the words sound as ominous as he could manage.

One might suspect, and one might be right, that a group of eleven year old boys and girls would be too old to take on the notion of a substitute teacher being a dragon; but eleven year olds are notorious for attempting to be more grown up than they really are, and calling a woman a dragon was just vicious enough, and just harmless enough, and just fantastical enough, that the notion took them like wild fire.

“She has to be killed,” Justin Marksfield said immediately. “Or, you know, at least gotten rid of.”

A fierce purposefulness spread throughout the group, but before they could make any solid decisions on how to proceed, Mr. Gaffer, the Walrus Man, trundled across the hall and waved his hands at the group, shooing them to their next classes.

2

            Harold Knightly was not what you would consider particularly heroic. He was small for his age, quiet, and according to the school’s guidance counselor, as socially awkward as it was possible to be without some sort of mental disability to pinpoint as the cause.  Still, the day that the children agreed that the substitute teacher was a dragon, he had resolved to look passed his shortcomings and to do whatever needed doing in order to get Ms. Gardener back.

So had, from the sound of it, several other boys between the time that Harold had made his declaration, and the end of forth period. Justin Marksfield had earned himself a detention for trying to steal back all of the things that the dragon had hoarded throughout the day; Mark Hamilton had likewise gotten into trouble when he stood up and declared her dragonic state with all of the class as witness.

            Both Mark and Justin were big boys—tall and broad, the kind that would probably make the football team when they tried out next year just on those merits alone—so Harold wasn’t sure why he felt he stood a chance at ridding the school of a dragon when neither of his more adept classmates had been able to. Perhaps it was because he’d done a lot of reading about dragons; he was something of an expert among his peers, which explained why he knew she was a dragon without having seen her himself. But as he strode into the classroom at the beginning of fifth period, his resolve had solidified into an iron ball in the pit of his stomach.

            Either that, or he was about to throw up.

            The wave of heat that hit him as he entered portable twelve carried with it the stench of children fresh from P.E., victims, each of them, to the dragon that refused to let them breathe clean air. He staggered into the classroom, his yellow backpack slung over one arm, eyes searching for the beast.

            She sat exactly where he anticipated, a mass of purples and blues covering fleshy arms and thick shoulders. Her arms were draped across Ms. Gardener’s desk, curled protectively around an assortment of things she had collected throughout the day—there was the Lego Vader, and the flower pen, a paper fortuneteller coloured with crayon, and a set of keys to a bike chain.

Among the treasures Harold noticed there sat Ms. Gardener’s green candy jar, which she always left out for students who did exceptional work on the days that she was gone.

            “That’s where she’s keeping Ms. Gardener,” Sara Michelle whispered to Harold as she hurried out of the room, clutching her backpack. “I heard her shouting for help during silent reading.”

            Harold narrowed his eyes as he regarded the dragon. She, meanwhile, guarded her treasures and leered at the students as they took their seats.

            “Where’s Ms. Gardener?” complained Lily Mae as she adjusted the bedazzled hairband that tamed her orange frizz. “Ms. Gardener said she would be back by our class so we could continue our reading projects.”

            The dragon shifted, adjusting the jar with her talons, and droned a response.

Harold wasn’t listening. His thoughts were on how to get her away from her hoard so that he could steal back his classmates’ treasures, free Ms. Gardener from the jar.

            An arm draped in blue swung away from the treasures and pointed at the whiteboard where a strange script was scrawled in red. Secret Letters. Ancient Letters. Harold Knightly recognized them immediately as the secret script that adults sometimes wrote in when they didn’t want kids to know what they were writing.

            “Excuse me, Miss? Excuse me, but we en’t learned that sort of writing.” Kevin Miller’s blond eyebrows drew together concernedly. “How’re we ‘posta read that if we can’t read it?”

            “You,” the dragon’s voice was raspy with high points and low points all in that single syllable, “are all in sixth grade, and you should be able to read that. If your teacher’s been teaching you anything worth knowing, that is.”

            There was a murmur of discontent among the rest of the class.

            It was one thing to take their things, to make the classroom yucky, smelly and hot, and to write in Ancient Letters, but no one had said anything about insulting Ms. Gardener’s teaching.

            “Ms. Gardener is a wonderful teacher,” Harold Knightly surprised himself by saying loudly.

            This was not the way he imagined that the battle would commence. He would have much rather sneaked behind the dragon’s back and stole its stuff then taken her on face-to-face. Now that her attention was on him, he realized that she was much more intimidating than he’d been lead to believe.

            Suddenly, the room seemed a lot smaller and a lot darker, despite the bright lights. Suddenly, the dragon seemed a lot bigger and a lot more vicious. Suddenly, her teeth seemed big, her eyes seemed yellowy and smallish, and her purple and blue drapey clothing seemed like demon’s wings. Suddenly, Harold realized that if he threw up now, he’d probably die.

            So Harold Knightly did the bravest thing that he’d ever done in his entire life. He stood up, hoisting his yellow backpack so that it was between him and the dragon, and brandished his voice like a sword, “Ms. Gardener is the nicest most wonderful teacher we ever had! You let her come back right now, or I’ll have ta do something…” he searched for something intimidating sounding—something truly knightly. “It’ll be a REALLY impressive something!”

            The dragon raised herself from atop her hoard, slowly, wings spreading, yellow eyes gleaming and teeth gnashing with poisonous intent. “Young man,” she rasped—was that flame that flickered around her tongue? “You sit down, or I’ll give you a detention!”

            The dragon’s victims looked from the beast to the knight. Harold felt his heart swell with bravery he never knew he possessed, and he widened his stance, bracing his yellow shield against the flame that was sure to engulf him. “Make me!”        

            Her movements were heavy, lumbering, exactly what one would expect from a dragon stuck on the ground. As long as they were in the confines of the cave where she couldn’t spread her purpley wings, as long as his yellow shield held up against her hot breath, he would stand a fighting chance.

            She crossed the room, pushing through chairs and children, and loomed over Harold, leering and glaring all at once. Claws reached for his shield, and Harold wished that he had remembered his sword.

            “Sssit….down…” she hissed, pulling the backpack from his grip and pointing.

            Harold’s bravery was failing, but he knew that sitting would only lead to defeat—and worse, embarrassment—so instead, he dived under his desk.

Satisfaction bloomed when his hands gripped a large Crayola marker. He pulled off the cap and waved it at the opening of the desk. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll colour on you!”

 He heard the dragon make a sound—an angry, fierce sound. He could only see her from the knees down, but he imagined that any moment she’d start breathing fire.

            The rest of the class cheered and began to chant his name.

            His bravery renewed, Harold clambered from under the desk and took a fighting stance, marker uncapped and at the ready.

            The dragon had dropped his shield on the floor at her feet and stepped over it, advancing purposefully, arms extended, claws reaching, wings flaring as she moved.

            Harold held fast to his marker and braced himself for the worst.

            The phone rang.

            Harold stopped.

Another ring.

The other students stopped.

            On the third ring, the dragon stopped as well, and returned to the depths of the cave, sifted through her treasures, and picked up the phone. “Yes?”

            Pause. The person on the other end was talking.

            “I see.” She glared menacingly at Harold, a look of triumph in her eyes. “Thank you.”

            Then she replaced the phone, and walked to the other side of the room. She opened the door, and stepped outside.

            The class gave a mighty cheer and rushed for Harold. Girls squealed and made exclamations of how brave he was, the boys patted him on the back and said things like “That was the coolest thing I ever saw!”

            And for the first time in Harold Knightly’s life, Harold felt like he’d done something important and worth doing.

            But his task was only half over. Grimly, he crossed the room, walking toward the desk where the hoard lay unguarded. He took up the green jar with both hands, and reverently pried the lid away.

             The door opened. Ms. Gardener entered the classroom looking tired, but happy.

            “My goodness it’s stuffy in here,” she noted with a wave of her hand. “Someone open the window before we all roast. Go ahead and take out your books if you haven’t already. We’ll finish reading our story”

            Ms. Gardener meandered to her desk, frowned at the pile of bric-a-brack, and looked up at her students for some sort of explanation. They kept their secrets, instead opening the windows as she had asked, and scuffling through their belongings to take out their books.

            Unbothered, Ms. Gardener took her own book from the desk—a crisp red hardback with gold letters. “We were on page two hundred and sixty-four, at the top of the second paragraph. Harold, why don’t you read for us.”

            Harold opened his book, feeling much braver than he ever felt before. He cleared his throat and read.

The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers

The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers

            The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers was legendary among the students of Portly Middle. It was said that the power of his gaze could stop a substitute mid-tirade and put him in a trance, and that the sound of his voice had the power to make the hardiest of subs tremble.

            No one had ever seen the The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers up close. He had long since graduated from Portly, and it was assumed that he was now using his skills on those subs that frequented high schools.

            Bobbie Miller the Eighth Grader claimed that The Boy was her older brother, but most people stopped believing her when she said that her brother had graduated high school the year before she’d started at Portly.

            To be fair, no one remembered how old The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers actually was. No one knew what his real name was, and no one could point him out in any of the yearbooks in the library. Most of the students at Portly had come to the conclusion that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers was a title that had to be earned, rather than having been attached to any one particular student, and subsequently, many students decided that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers had never actually existed.

            But the legend of his gaze and his voice continued to guide the students of Portly, like King Arthur guides the rest of us, by reminding them that there might have been a champion of such notoriety. It was the sort of thing that gave people hope and inspired them to stand up for themselves, and once in a great while, a boy or girl might feel particularly inspired to become the next Boy.

            On such a day, Thomas Hisselpenny stood up in the center aisle of his classroom, small hands balled into fists, and glared his most menacing glare at the wispy man who wore red paper Substitute Badge on the pocket of his button up shirt.

Mr. M was one of the frequent faces that the students saw. He was generally good natured, if a little soft spoken, and easy to run over, if you knew how to do it. Thomas figured that if there was one substitute that he could tame, it would be Mr. M. 

            Thomas’s gaze was somewhat impeded by the fringe of blond hair that hung in his eyes, but it was steady. “We don’t have to do anything you tell us,” he said boldly as he could manage.

            Thomas might have managed to sound impressive if one of his front teeth wasn’t missing, or if he wasn’t half the size of most of the other students in the sixth grade. But as it stood, his words were kind of whistley, and his voice was high and meek.

            A tug on Thomas’s sweater forced him to pull his gaze away from the substitute. The hand that tugged belonged to Harold Knightly, the closest thing to The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers that this generation of Portly Middle had seen. Harold had slayed a sub who had really been a dragon, and freed one of the most favoured teachers of the school from a cookie jar. But Harold Knightly the Dragon Slayer lacked the sort of… finesse… that The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers had been known for.

            He motioned for Thomas to sit down, a look of concern in his glass-magnified eyes.

            But Thomas would not sit down. If Harold was going to slay dragons, then he was going to be a Substitute Tamer.

            Mr. M, unfortunately, was not impressed by Thomas’s gaze or his whistley voice. He crossed his arms over his chest and returned that gaze with one of his own. It was not masked by his hair, which was combed back, and it had years of experienced gazing to hold it fast in place. When he spoke, his voice was as quiet as it ever was, calm, and unassuming. But somehow it was different. Somehow, his voice rode thunder.

He asked Thomas, “What exactly are you trying to do?” And Thomas suddenly felt queasy.

“Uh…” Thomas forced himself to swallow, and sank back into his chair. “I was just…nothing. Sorry, sir…Sorry.”

            He sank further, doing his best to disappear, to meld into the chair, or sink into the floor under his desk, and never be seen again.

            “He was trying to be The Boy Who Tamed Substitute Teachers,” Lily Mae explained, her prim little voice decorated in matter-of-fact. “He’s jealous because Harold is a Dragon Slayer, and he wants to be a hero, too.”

            “That’s preposterous,” Mr. M with the air of those who are well-informed, “Dragons don’t exist.”

Why I am not currently engaging in "Real Writing"

By rights, I probably shouldn't spend all day scribbling things on a word document to post on a blog. It seems like a dangerous habit to get in to, which is probably why I always talked myself out of blogging to begin with.

I've been meaning to start up writing Dreamwalker's Path, again. After writing 20,000 words in a week, finishing it should be pretty easy, but I've got other ideas floating in my brain pan--mostly short stories. I have the sneaking suspicion that certain people who are waiting for me to finish Dreamwalker would suggest that I should focus on doing some "real" writing (whatever that is), but I'm kind of enjoying not doing that at the moment. I've decided I'm going to be the writer's equivalent of a hobo, at least for a while (and minus the strange smells).

On the business side of things, I have to contact Amazon and ask them how they want their submissions formatted. I'm going to see if I can get some submission guidelines from 47North, Amazon's Scifi/urban fantacy/etc. publisher. I may try them before I self-publish.

The Strawberry Fields

The Strawberry Fields

Death did not make friends easily. It came partly from being extremely shy, and partly from the fact that he was never allowed out without his keepers.

Death had many keepers and they guarded Death jealously.

But sometimes Death slipped his leash, and he was able to move about the world the way that he had done when the world had been young. February was his favourite time to run. He could slip away quietly while his keepers complained of the cold weather as they were wont to do, and join the strawberry children in the fields.

In the strawberry fields, Death could hide under a big straw hat and in a pair of dirty overalls. He could fill his belly with sun-warmed fruit, and laugh with the children who had skipped school to help with the harvest. He could sing old songs that he had learned over the years, songs about being a child, songs about being a man, songs about drinking, and merry-making, and living life. He knew a lot of songs, and he taught them to the children of the strawberry fields, and from them, learned new songs.

Death did not like things that were sad. He didn’t like songs about war, or talk of lost loved ones—all of whom he’d met, once and only once. When Death was his own man, he did his best not to be reminded of how fickle and short human life could be. He strove, instead, to smile, to enjoy the way his muscles stretched beneath his skin as he worked, the way they cramped.

In the sun, in a field of green and red, amidst laughter and smiles and full tummies, and songs about how wonderful it was to be alive, who would think to look for Death?

They would find him before long—in March, perhaps, or April—in the produce section of a grocery store, wondering which of the strawberries he had picked.

The Perfectionist

The Perfectionist

            It comes, I suppose

            I expect

            Silence is bitter.

            I cannot speak.

            I am too busy creating crafting waiting for the perfect sentence.