Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Hope has no expiration date

There is reason to hope, to stand straight.



It was sunlight and wine to a weary heart as the current administration moves ever more confidently , comprehensively to destroy Liberty.

The curse from Frank Herbert is true anon, with bitterness.

"May you live in interesting times."

(h/t to http://theshitpiler.blogspot.com/)

Friday, March 15, 2013

The Uncalloused Heart



It Begins

Surely keen the blades of your mind abide as you turn
to the furnace again kindled as if with youths' furious light;
there is raiment now to craft, glittering and
joyfully alive!

Clothe yourself with unquenchable radiance
hands easy and heart light with tomorrows' promise;
know always confident feet that trod a path
sure to your soul binding, always!

Greatly does graciousness wend you forward
seeker, with dear hearts beating in adieu
without regret joined as you face the new sun;
the way behind warmed with love and pleasures,
the way ahead forever calling.

Myriad unknowns cast no stain or shadow over
a brow smooth with sensual curiosity anon,
no wraith pursuing for ill-gotten gains;
your quest for tomorrows’ bounty measures naught
to the scales of presumptuous peers
who languor bleary-eyed in alcoves of repose.

Not for you the comforts and ease of times'
demise; for your heart will always answer
to the waking cry of the peregrine instead of the farm's strutting a-doodle-doo!

Feed on wild hearts and harts,
quenching your mouth in undiscovered springs welling
the worthy repast to a new hero-in-training!

( Untitled entry, Rova’s Journal, page 94l)





“You’ve heard me speak of it many times when we gather to discuss our future, when we share the work in the forge, when we work with the horses, when we discuss the ways of the world.  Ours is a life of insight, of knowing for a certainty that there is more to the experience of being human than meets the eye.

“Few know of the events that taught me that truth, and it is a place I have not willingly gone since before many of you were born.  I choose to speak of those times now because my enemies are all dead, and their inheritors are your responsibility.

“Can you see me as the woman I once was, now?  I have bared my very soul in the belief that you must know, so that some of you can connect and set yourselves to the trials I faced. 

“Could you endure and not go mad?

“I pray none of you must ever step through the same gates of chaos and learn the truth.”


***

Chapter One


A day at the gym

We drove to the city, me curious as hell about just what Monica had in mind.  Was she out to kick my ass all across the ring, after wiping me out in some friendly competition with free weights?  Did she have some agenda; did she actually know something?

We started the drive friendly enough, chatting about the weather, the fire season coming early both last year and this; laughing about my near fixation with lingerie, our shopping in Charity - and as I started to listen to her beyond the words themselves I could feel her actually looking forward to going to something of a personal space of her own: Rose wasn’t able to cope with the stresses of commuting to the City to work out with Monica.

I would be entering something more on the lines of Monica’s personal space.  My curiosity got more intense as the near-sixty miles rolled by in the tough old Jeep.  While we talked, I had a chance to look around inside the car: twin fire extinguishers, light bar and siren controls, charger adapter holders for her pac set EMS radio and high-intensity spotlight, what I recognized as a shotgun rack in the ceiling; her medic’s bag; a heavy-looking Swiss Army rucksack and a lumpy duffle-bag behind the seat.

The interior of the Jeep was immaculately maintained.  The fourteen year-old leather upholstery was spotless, waxed and still pliant, soft; in fact, over all, the whole vehicle looked like it had been meticulously, professionally detailed, something I hadn’t taken the time to notice since getting picked up at the airport!

She caught me looking and mid-sentence, talking about a recent hilarious transport of a completely stoned and drunken tourist, she grinned and said, “Rose has this thing about keeping my ride as close to showroom condition as she can get away with!  She says, ‘Somebody has to keep you looking like a professional!’”

We both got a chuckle over that; and I could imagine the slave almost sneaking out to the garage to lavish attention lovingly on the old Jeep when Monica was asleep!

Glancing over at me, knowingly, she got a sober look to her.

“I promised to tell you about how we met - something I just didn’t, and never will feel comfortable talking about to someone; especially over the phone.  Now’s as good a time as any:

“Seventeen years ago this coming June I was driving through the Capitol Hill area late at night, heading out to the freeway after a late dinner after an all day in-service training seminar for a new computer system we were going to be using at the escrow service I worked for back then.  I was facing a long, almost five hour drive back to Leadville.  I was twenty-five.

“At a stoplight a block or two from Colfax I saw a leg sticking out from an alley by a dumpster.  ‘Someone drunk, laying in the mud on a rainy night,’ I thought, ‘hooker, runaway - whatever - it’s not my problem!’  I was - still am, too - pretty jaded about City people.

“The light changed, and as I drove past the alley I got a glimpse of somebody beaten up really bad.  Really bad.  Naked.  No traffic, so I just pulled over, grabbed my Dad’s old Army .45 out of the glove box, stuffed it under my blazer and investigated.

“It was a girl.

“The rain was washing the blood away - but her face was pulped: smashed mouth, what looked like a broken eye ridge under the smashed plum where her left eye should be; badly broken nose and jaw; deep bruises on her neck, all over her arms.  The left side of her head looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it - and I couldn’t see the other side - but I got cold all the way through, the more I looked.

“Her right wrist was twisted and bent at an impossible angle.  She was bleeding from her ass and her pussy - really bad.  The blood was pulsing out of her, washing away into the gutter in the rain.

“And there were more, almost black bruises on her thighs and ankles.

“Gang rape.  She looked like she was she was dying right in front of me.  This hard, cold rage hit me.  All I could think for a minute was wanting to see somebody in the shadows of that alley.  I probably would’ve shot them without a thought.

“What I did then makes no sense to me now, but I did it.  I jumped in my Toronado, grabbed the blanket off the back seat, got that girl wrapped in it and somehow got her lying down in the car.  I grabbed the first aid case out of the trunk, did what little I knew to try and stop the bleeding and I hit the road, heading home!

“I know I broke every traffic law ever on the books, that drive.  I made Leadville General Hospital in under three hours.  Every now and then, the girl would whisper a line or two of what sounded like verse, something like Spenserian prose!  It made the drive almost surreal.  At least I was able to know she was still alive. . .

When I got in sight of the place, I called my family Doctor, also the main Doc for the hospital on my CB, and told him I was coming in - less than a minute out - with a girl I’d found badly beaten.  I didn’t say I’d found her in the City. 

“Not just then, either.  Not ever.

“Dr. Ambruzzio was running into the ER when I carried the girl in.  She was alive, but her breathing was bubbling, and she looked grotesque, being out of the rain for the drive up.  The blanket was soaked in blood.  She was as pale as someone just dead

“Ambruzzio didn’t stop to talk to me.  He screamed for a cart, and to get the OR ready for a critical patient.  The girl vanished in seconds through the double doors, people running like they’d been electrocuted.

“I went back to my car and parked it in the lot, and went to the doors to the ER and had a smoke.  I still wanted somebody to kill; somebody had to pay for what they’d done to that girl.  I remember thinking it would almost be better if she died, because with that mashed head she’d probably be a vegetable if she lived; and if she died, at least it would be out of the City.

“Maybe her soul would be more at peace up here. . .   I still remember thinking that, soaked to the skin, like it was yesterday.

“I went in, and I guess the look on my face was ugly, scary, cold.  Rose McTeague was behind the Reception window - she’d been a substitute English teacher back when I was in High School.  She looked me up and down, nodded, and motioned for me to come over to her.  I figured I had paperwork to fill out.

“She looked around and wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me, smiled like nothing in the world was wrong and shoo’d me out the door.  I read the note on my way out.  It said, ‘You look like you just murdered somebody.  Get that gun out of your jeans, go home and change clothes.  You’re covered in blood and soaked.  I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.’

“I remember tearing the note up in little pieces and dropping it as I got in and drove home, just a couple miles.  I had a little place, half of an old house converted to a duplex.  The other apartment was vacant.  I walked in the bathroom and looked in mirror on the bathroom door.

“My nice wool blazer was ruined.  My white blouse was covered in big splotches of blood.  My jeans had a knee ripped out, bloody and muddy.  My good boots were a write-off.

“My face.  I had black circles under blood-shot eyes.  I was white as a ghost.  I tried to take a deep breath as I started to strip, starting the shower.  My Dad’s .45 fell out of my jeans when I took them off.  It was a mess.

“I remember showering mechanically, seeing that alley in my mind the whole time.  I threw my clothes away, along with the wet bullets from the .45, replacing them after I gave the pistol a quick field cleaning.  I got a pot of coffee started, looking at the clock on the stove.  Ten till two.

“I got dressed, filled a thermos with coffee and went back to the hospital.

“Mrs. McTeague was on the phone when I walked in.  She just nodded and handed me a clip-chart.  What it said turned me inside-out.  I threw up in the bathroom till I had dry heaves.

“She was listed as a ‘Jane Doe,’ and the more I read, the more I hoped she’d die:  ‘Wood splinters and glass fragments in vagina and uterus; severe rectal lacerations; cranial bleeding, crushed left optic orbit; compound fracture right wrist; five broken ribs left, two broken ribs with pulmonary punctures right lung.  Compound broken mandible, bi-lateral.  Swallowed teeth from broken mouth.  Crushed nose, sinuses.  Severe extended anemia.’

“Somebody wanted her to die alone in unimaginable horror and pain, naked and dropped in that alley.

“I went through two packs of cigarettes and all the coffee I could find.  I just waited.  Sometime around eight in the morning Mrs. McTeague got off the phone and walked over to me, going outside with me.  The rain had stopped.  I think it was beautiful out - but all I kept seeing was that alley; the dark, the rain; that leg on the pavement under the streetlight.

‘I need a cigarette.’

‘You don’t smoke, do you?’

‘I don’t care.  Give me one, and give me a minute, okay?’

“I just looked at her, lit one, handed it to her and waited.  She took a hard drag, held it, and clamped her jaw till the muscles in her face knotted.  Her hands were shaking, but her voice was steady.  She had just had her eighty-second birthday a month earlier.

‘Your girl is going to live.  How, nobody knows.  She needed six units of blood during surgery.’

“She smoked the rest of that cigarette before going on.

‘Ambruzzio will be out to talk to you in a little while.  He sounds like he wants to find out who could do this to another human being - no matter what the justification - and if he does, I think he’s just going to kill them.’

‘Not if I find them first, Rose,’ I said.

“All she could do is look at me.  She said that Ambruzzio wanted ‘Jane’ on a private chart - he was taking her as a personal patient of his.

‘I take it you don’t know anything about her?’

‘I saw her in an alley when I drove by - and all I could think was to get her here.  What about her brain - is she going to just be a veg?’

‘It’ll be a couple months before anybody knows for sure.’

“We walked back in.  She went back to get her coat, heading home.  Her hands were still shaking a little as she got in her car.  I remember hoping she’d make it home safe. . .

“Ambruzzio was coming through the double doors then.  He waved me to follow him and we went to his office.  The door shut, he opened a cabinet and poured two stiff vodkas from the little bar.  I got one.  He just looked at me and said, trying to sound back-to-normal and failing, ‘Doctor’s orders.’

“He talked about the surgery like I was one of the doctors there.  I didn’t understand a lot of it, but he needed to talk it out badly.  He’d refilled both glasses before he was done.  We both chain-smoked.

“He said he was going to get ‘Jane’ to his ranch when she could be moved, thinking that it might be the best place to see if she could recover from the head-injury.  She’d be coming back to the hospital regularly for months, to follow-up on healing from the rest of the violence done her.  He thought home cooking - real food and lots of it; fresh air and peace-and-quiet and exercise when she was up to it was her only hope.

‘She could go insane if she were to be back in the City where all this happened, just ending up a patient in a ward where no one cared.’

“I said very slowly, ‘I never said anything about the City . . .’

“He snorted, stood up and gave me a bear-hug.  He was a big, tall man in his late 60's then.

‘I delivered you, kid.  I know, perfectly, just how you think.  Your folks and I have gone to the same church for over fifty years.  They talk about you quite a lot - especially your Dad.  My guess?  Your ‘Jane’ may surprise all of us and recover pretty well in time.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Sure - and then I’m going home and all I want to do is get really drunk for the rest of the day.’

“I remember he grabbed me by the shoulder and got me in scrubs and took me to the Recovery Room, chasing the duty nurse out for her break.  I saw ‘Jane.’  She was breathing through a tube, her jaw wired shut.  Her head was shaved and in bandages, arm in a cast; and when Ambruzzio lifted the thin blanket, I saw a tube running out of her chest and another from between her legs.  She was on an IV in her good arm; and she was covered in ugly-looking purple-black bruises almost everywhere there weren’t bandages.

“Ambruzzio walked away, over to the duty nurses’ station.  He was crying, silently.  I remember feeling empty - just empty.  I leaned over to the girl’s ear and whispered, ‘You’re safe.  You’re going to be okay.  You’re going to have to be very strong to be able to get all better.  No one’s going to hurt you any more ever again.  Never again.  I promise.’  I found myself on the floor, Ambruzzio holding me.  I was bawling.  He walked me out, back to his office.

‘I’m writing you a medical leave for a week, Monica,’ he said.  ‘You need to get over this and get back to your life.  If you have any problems, call me anytime.  No arguing - not with me.  Now go home and stay there for at least the next two days.  Work on your car, if you have to do something to keep busy - nothing more than that till you come see me again.’

“I rebuilt the dual carbs in that week.  He made me take a second week off to go hiking, because I still couldn’t sleep worth a damn.  He let me see ‘Jane’ at the end of that second week.  She was still sedated all the time, to give her brain a chance to heal.  Her lungs were damaged, more than just from the puncture from her broken ribs - they were bruised, but like everything else, she was healing, doing okay.  I went back to work.

“I made myself forget about her; hunting, working my ass off every chance I got.  I never told anybody about ‘Jane.’  Nobody at the hospital did, either.  It was like everyone somehow knew that the girl, if she recovered, needed a chance at a new life.  Mrs. McTeague died, from just getting old.  She was buried beside her husband who had died nine years earlier - and I inherited their cabin outside of Bear Paw.  They didn’t have any kids.

“I quit working for the escrow company and got my EMT certification.  I moved into the cabin, fixed the place up, and found a job in the City, working Rescue evenings and weekends.  I guess ‘Jane’ was the reason I got into being a medic. . .”

She looked at me.  We were through the canyon, going past the overlook of the City on the plain below.

“So when did you meet - how long after?”

Monica laughed.  “That is the most unlikely, impossible coincidence of all.”

“Six years later, early November.  I had a business lunch with a client at an upscale restaurant in the City.  He was important, so I’d gotten dressed up a little; nice jacket, good blouse - the works - and he doesn’t show.  I decide to eat anyway, and put it on my expense account.  I’m sitting at a quiet table away from the window against the wall - when in walks this heartbreaking, gorgeous woman about my age. 

“I think I stopped breathing.  I hadn’t been on even a date in years.  All I wanted to do was walk over to her and figure out how to get her to like me!  She was dressed in this beautiful pastel blue outfit, something maybe Stevie Nicks would have fought her for; blonde hair past her shoulders - not a face anybody would think of as particularly beautiful - she was just quietly happy.  She got a window table.  She was alone.

“I was staring.  I didn’t know this woman from Eve!  I went back to eating - not tasting a thing, paid my bill and headed to the door - and when I let myself look, she wasn’t there!

“I didn’t know what to do; I think I was relieved.  I hit the door, walked out, heading for my car.

“She was standing on the other side, smoking, looking out at the day, wearing this thigh-length leather jacket.  She turned, smiled at me, and said, ‘Hi!  I don’t have a damn thing left to do today - and you were staring at me hard enough to get yourself arrested. . . You want to go have a cup of coffee?  My name’s Rose.’

“Emerald-green eyes shot with shards of china blue.  Here teeth were pearly-white, and just uneven enough to make her look real.  She says she looked in my eyes, fell in, and has yet to come out!  I looked in her eyes and I wanted to take her home, then and there.  I wanted to keep her all to myself.  I felt like I was losing my mind - and what hearing her voice for the first time did to me . . .

“She says I just paused a second grinned and said, ‘Sure!  Where’s your car?’ 

“Rose had taken a cab, like always.  She chatted about being a dressmaker, and I think I tried to make small talk about my job while we went to LoDo to a favorite coffee bar of mine.  I had a new interior in the Toronado by then, and it had a recent paint job.  Rose loved my car, thought I had been a little cute and a little weird for staring at her in the restaurant - and she’d decided the best way to make sure I wasn’t some psycho was to have coffee with me!

“I asked her what if I was some psycho; here she was alone in my car, right?

“She reached in her pocket and brought out this derringer, cocking it in one smooth motion, looked at me sweetly and said, ‘If you are, you’re dead.’  That gorgeous woman was packing a double-barrel cannon disguised as a derringer!  She blinked at me as innocent as could be and asked me, ‘So, have you decided?  Are you safe for me to be with?’

“I looked at her holding that pocket cannon at my waist, looked in those eyes, and all I could choke out was, ‘Don’t you think you should decide for yourself?’

“She put the gun away easing the hammer down, smiled and laughed and said, ‘Sounds like a plan to me!’  She stretched back and relaxed, not saying a word the rest of the way.

“We drank coffee and talked till they almost had to throw us out when the place closed.  I’d never talked so much before; or enjoyed talking to a complete stranger so much in my life!  The only thing I kept noticing was that she never mentioned anything about her life more than a year in the past - she was an expert at turning the conversation.

“And she was a heart-breaking flirt!  Innocent, completely guileless and unselfconscious she flirted with the waitress; she flirted with any woman who caught her attention in the pauses and breaks in the conversation!  She’d give me a running commentary under her breath, teasing with looks, resting her chin on one hand while softly sucking the tip of her little finger!

“And the whole time she was completely attentive.  It was like a performance in the softest eroticism imaginable, all for my benefit!

“It was going on three in the morning and I had a busy schedule for the rest of the week.  We got back to my car, and I asked her when could we meet again. . .

“Rose hugged me on tiptoe, and said, ‘You mean you don’t want me?  Aren’t you going to take me home?  It’s only an hour or so from here - that’s what you said, right?’

“We stopped by her apartment - making me wait in the car for the couple minutes before she flew down the stairs with this little tapestry duffle bag slung over one shoulder.  The bag landing on the back seat, she leaned in the door and said seriously; ‘You know, you should never get in the car of anyone you don’t know; right?’

‘Right.  Absolutely.’

‘So what’s your name, anyway - you still haven’t told me, you know?’

“The world stopped - no; the entire universe paused.  In the moonlight, that woman shone; reached all the way into my heart - and I knew I was going to say something that would change everything:

‘Rose; my name is Monica.’

“She slid in, closed the door and I hit the locks.  ‘Take me home with you, Monica,’ she said.

‘I want to go home.’

“I drove the speed limit all the way.  We slept together that night, but all we did was cuddle, falling asleep in each other’s arms.  I called in sick later that morning, faking the flu, asking for at least a week off - and I did the same thing with Rescue.  I unplugged the phone and turned my radio off.

“She cooked for me, waited on me hand-and-foot that week.  I’d never eaten so well in my entire life.  I tried to ask her about her past, wanting to know everything about this angel - and I ran into a brick wall.  It wasn’t that she refused, she’d just turn the conversation and look at me and I wouldn’t press the subject.

“We drove back to the City four days later and cleaned out her apartment.  It only took a couple hours for her to pack.  She had amazingly few possessions beyond a couple trunks of clothes and her sewing machine and some books, a small box of cd’s.  She just left everything else."



© Copyright 2010, Trisha Marie Neimi
All rights reserved.
No part of this may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction.


___________________________________

This is the character development for an archival bible on a decades-long project.  I thought it apt to share.  

Thursday, February 7, 2013



It's kept a smile on my face all morning, so why not share it?

I'm a traditionalist in politics and patriotism, but this just rocks!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Snapdragons



Snapdragons



In the spring of the fourth year of her post-graduate studies at the University of Arizona, on a dazzling, chill Sunday morning, Judy Clements sat staring out the second story window at the dusty, sun-bleached urban sprawl, sipping a double mocha.  The studio apartment, small to her eyes when she’d first moved in three years earlier, was now closer to being a warren as the walls were filled with sagging shelves of books and reference papers, and the tiny kitchenette’s formica table was crowded with her notebook computer.  Her bed was still unmade, the peach and green thin spread rumpled, the empty pillows looking tired.

Framed prints of lovely climes, gifts from cyber friends tried to brighten up the warren’s stark white walls: the Maine coast in fall, a ranch outside of Boise in December; the old villa outside of Milan on a June morning, and a fishing camp just outside of the Hoh River valley in Washington State.  Completing the clockwise review, she sipped the thick brew, running the fingers of her free hand through her cropped blond hair, glancing down at the form letter from the clinic that had changed everything the day before, the day when she’d only focused on the demands and schedules left to fulfill to see her achieve her PhD in Political Science.

Hepatitis C.  The reality of it made her hands shake.  She’d broken her leg last year, on her first vacation since graduating from high school; an adventure to bicycle through Baja that had seen her only remembering the blare of an air horn on the road from Oaxaca, waking up in a tiny clinic with her leg in a cast.  The left femur had been snapped by the bus’s bumper as she was thrown clear.  By the time she was taken to the hospital, she’d needed two units of blood.

In black onionskin shorts and a worn tee, she stood, her running shoes only needing the laces tightened.  The welt of the scar ran about eight inches along her thigh, and she rubbed it absently, reaching for her hydration pack and her keys, checking her watch.

Six o’clock.  Time to go, time to clear her mind, time to stop thinking!  The growing weariness and chronic joint pain had finally convinced her to submit to the doctors, and the pronouncement of the cause made her even more determined to fight for her health; but the walls were feeling like they were closing in . . .

She ran ten miles, her self-imposed goal once a week, the intense run that purges the spirit, in contrast to the easy three-mile distance she maintained Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, working out in the gym and swimming for two hours Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Focused only on breathing, only on the purity of the run, she was back in an hour and a half.  Showered, the bed made and a breakfast of a strip steak finished, she looked at her computer.  Something about the jade world of the Hoh rain forest tugged at her mind and wouldn’t let go.  She admitted she knew perfectly well why!

In twenty minutes, she’d made reservations to stay at Delores’ fishing camp, the girl delighted to finally get to meet her.  A plane ticket would break the bank, so it would be time to get the saddlebags of her motorcycle packed, and hit the road!  The German touring bike was her one luxury, her icon to sanity and freedom!

As the miles flew by, counties becoming states, and hours seeing the lengthening day become night that broke to a new day, she thought about Delores, Delores with her fiery eyes and mane of black hair, Delores with the voice that came to mind whenever she showered.  They’d been the best of friends over the internet for two years; the younger girl coming from old family money, choosing to keep the fishing camp left her by her parents while pursuing her degree in biology.  They’d talked on the phone at least twice a month, a constraint of a student’s budget, and the pressures of endless scholastic responsibilities.

Hitting Olympia Monday morning, Judy stopped and got a hotel room, to eat, shower, sleep, and then go running to stretch and get acclimated.  The sweet air was a delight, and dreams of the raven-haired friend filled her with need.

She stopped in Queets Tuesday morning and called Delores from a pay phone after fueling her bike, a little embarrassed to have slept almost eighteen hours the previous night.

“Hey girl, are you ready for me?”

“Judy!  C’mon in!  I can’t wait to meet you!”

 “I’ll be there in a flash!”  She grinned, hearing the girl’s voice. 

Rolling slowly west after turning off at mile marker 202, the landscape evolved into a dream-like sea of green, of moss on the maples, a thick carpet that softened the purr of her motorcycle.  The air was rich and velvety-soft, moist and sweet to her desert lungs, caressing her skin, soothing.

Water, and the sign of water was everywhere.  Coming up to a brightly painted sign that announced the fishing camp, she turned onto a raked, immaculate gravel drive that spread out into a small, empty parking area in front of a large log ranch house with a shake roof green with moss.  She parked, and dismounted.  Leaving her helmet and gloves on the cooling bike, her senses swam in the ceaseless whisper of the rain forest.  The smell of the sea was close, as was the chuckle of a small stream.  Stretching, and unzipping her riding jacket she walked to the left and found a trail, impulsively following it.

Past sighing trees and carefully making her way down a gentle, boulder-strewn slope, she spied the raven-haired girl coming to her feet by the banks of the creek.  To her left she could just see the ocean, and a driftwood-laden beach.  Delores was wearing olive-green cargo shorts and a faded blue denim shirt, the long sleeves rolled up.  Rinsing her hands in the running water she looked directly into Judy’s eyes, laughter bubbling from her lips as they curved into a smile.

In six steps, the younger, taller girl was across the stream and in her arms, her hands slipping inside the warm leather jacket, her mouth finding, kissing happily.

“Whoa, Hon!   Let me look at you, will you?”

Delores’ cool hands weren’t inhibited at all. . .  She leaned back and caught Judy’s eyes again, complying for the moment.

“Two years, one month, eleven days and nineteen hours – that’s a long time to wait to finally say ‘hello’ to your face!”  She cocked her head, her creamy, flawless skin catching the filtering light and shadows of the morning.  She licked her lips and swallowed, nodding, seeing the shadows of pain behind her friend’s eyes.

Taking Judy’s hands, she led her to the bank of the creek, pointing into the gently flowing water.  “Look at my latest project!”

There in the creek, against clean sand were some dozen small – somethings.  They reminded the blonde of nothing but living flowers, snapdragons even, but these were individual mollusks!  Porcelain, feathery-shelled, with vivid hues of purple and green, they seemed to be drawn to her presence, moving across the sand closer.

“I’ve been experimenting with conch species, looking for a fresh-water adaptation that will fill a similar niche in this ecosystem!  Aren’t they beautiful?”

Judy looked into the girl’s eyes, startled.  “You’re releasing a genetically-manipulated species into the wild on your own initiative?  That’s insane!”

The girl’s eyes seemed to grow a little wider, gentler, completely untroubled.

“Why don’t you see if they’ll come to your hand?  They won’t hurt you – I play with them all the time.  Go ahead.  Trust me.”  Her voice was soft, resistless.

Judy sat on the rocks by the creek and looked into the water.  The flower-conchs, the snapdragons were close, so pretty, so delicate. . .  She reached in and laid her hand flat on the sand, close-by.  Immediately two of the mollusks moved into contact; a soft foot muscle emerging from each to help them climb onto her palm.  She couldn’t feel their presence, couldn’t help but watch the lovely colors as the cold water rippled over them.

She noticed the delicate shells were changing from porcelain to a deep rose, and more of the mollusks were crowding, as the now-darkened ones fell off and were immediately replaced by others.  Delores’ hands were deftly undressing her, finishing with her boots, even her socks; and she eased the entranced woman completely into the water, kissing her over and over, breathing into her mouth, licking, biting, sucking. . .

Judy awoke the following morning in an enormous bed, built of pine logs, almost buried in soft, snowy cotton sheets.  Unselfconscious and uncaring that she was nude, she found her feet and made her morning toilet, indulging in a long, hot shower.  Returning, she looked gratefully into the jade light of the growing day, her hands lusciously stroking herself, luxuriating in the glow of health, the creamy, smooth warmth and strength her skin seemed to barely contain.

Climbing into bed, she found Delores already there, reaching out with open arms and parted lips for her lover, her perfect teeth gleaming in the whispering, quiet morning.

As sharp fangs sank into the blonde’s mammary artery, the raven-haired girl sighed in ecstasy, thinking, “Finally!  Success!  After an Age filled with pollution and disease, we have a way for all of us to enjoy clean food!”

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Friday, December 21, 2012

Larry Correia wrote a commentary on Gun Control


    The fantasy of gun control has been raised again by hypocrites dancing in the blood of the disarmed who were shot, many of whom died recently in America.  Hypocrites because these same people who are releasing previously prepared Gun Control legislation (Diane Feinstein) and the MSM made not a peep about the deaths directly resulting from Operation Fast and Furious ( Sipsey Street Irregulars for those who have been otherwise distracted), or plea that only the Police and the Military should have guns ( David Codrea's "Only Ones" ).

Mr. Correia and I have crossed paths on gun forums for several years and I've been delighted to see his star rise and brighten as an author through perseverance and simply, honestly good books.  He sat down and organized his thoughts into a straightforward, impromptu essay that is quite thorough.  I concur with his perceptions and recommendations completely, and hope folks can calm down and read through it a couple of times and be the better for it, even to become involved in the simplest solution that mitigates, if not effectively ends active shooter incidents that maim and kill the defenseless in Gun Free Zones. 

An opinion on gun control

And those who demand government control, more bureaucracy, punitive legislation directed at the millions of sincere, law-abiding gun owners, rest easy: The first Amendment to the Constitution is intact, though the Fourth is on life support and with the NDAA and PATRIOT ACT (in all its iterations) maiming the Fifth I find I embrace libertarian principles more every day.