Circling The Drain

The guy had to be dealing some kind of drug, not sure what, but he stood there under the awning of the small liquor store, just barely out of the steady rain that had started in the morning and continued all afternoon.

All day long numerous people had stopped by his little nesting place, and even a moderately trained eye could see that there was some kind of exchange being made. What fascinated Roger most was that people from all races, cultures, and walks of life came by to buy his wares, and he seemed almost like a chameleon, blending in to fit each new person who approached him, joking and laughing or being tough and ‘all business,’ it was almost like watching a master painter at work, each new person was a sale, a way to earn a living and possibly more, he was well trained in the game he had chose to play.

Most would not see the small trickles of fear with every instance where he had to act tough or hard as nails, most would not see the impatience and annoyance with each joke or round of small talk he made. That, of course, was due to the pain behind the whole show being played out on this sad little corner of an impoverished area of the city.

Roger could free him from this pain, but what then, could he face what always came next?

Standing up from where he was crouching behind a dumpster across the street from the dealer’s spot, Roger could feel tears welling up from inside him. It was always like this, this gift, this intelligence, it hurt.

Once on the other side of the street, Roger began to walk faster, he was starting to have doubts. Each time he did this he was right there with his most horrible demons as well as the other persons, most of the time the knowledge he imparted to them he felt impotent or incompetent to use. It was the mysterious irony of the whole thing, once he gave them the key to the door, he was liable to make his own prison more secure later on.

Roger was there now next to him, past the point where he could appear like he was just walking past, maybe even pass off that approach as a way to use the awning the dealer was under to dodge the relentless drops of rain. The dealer was sizing him up, getting ready to use his own ‘gift.’

“What’s good?” The dealer said in a dead tone, all the better to adjust his camouflage once he could hear my reply and know which mode to go into.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” Roger said, or thought he said, at any rate, once the process got to this point, it became surreal, like a psychedelic drug. You could be sure what you were seeing and hearing was based on true external stimuli, but you could never be sure of what you were actually seeing at all, a confounding experience.

Roger reached out and touched the dealer’s chest. His mind was filled with flowing images and sounds, mixing at merging at times, but then there were very clear pictures, ones that showed Roger what he was after. The dealer’s name was Michael but he went by ‘Rock,’ and his history passed in a slightly jumbled puzzle.

‘Spider Bites’ Fan Art

A reader and someone I chat with produced some artwork a while back for the short story Spider Bites and wanted me to share it with all of you, so here it is:

If you have not read the short story Spider Bites yet, please click here and don’t forget to tell me what you think.

 

Spider Bites

Basic story idea from this Writing Prompt, opinions, advice, and comments gratefully taken and desired. 

Henry balled up both his fists again, the tight olive green t-shirt straining at the mass of his upper arm as he started his swinging motion, the same kind of T-shirt he told Cynthia he used to wear during basic training.

Thwack, thwack, boom!

Cynthia felt the pain explode in her head as she fell onto the kitchen floor, her hands shielding her head as she went into a fetal position. Cynthia’s right hand felt around her temple and her fingers slid into something wet and slightly warm, like some soup left in a pot that had to be reheated before it could be served.

Her eyes were closed but Cynthia could hear Henry take a step closer in his steel toe work boots. There was a minute moment of perfect silence, a muttering of what might have been the word: ‘Bitch,’ and then the pain and the blood from her now throbbing head was quickly forgotten as a worse pain exploded in her stomach and all the air was forced out of her lungs.

It was as if one pain outranked the other and told it who was in charge when it came to the pain game.

All this over a spider.

Just Beneath The Skin

From out of the storm walked the souls, clinging to the masks sewn on at birth and learning their roles.

Drenched in tears from the Earth Mother, in their arms treasures wrapped in rags like no other.

Grouping not together but alone or in mismatched pairs, waiting for the roadside snake oil men to sell their wares.

Feet shuffled along on the road of mud that was once dust, heads down low from the rain lest their hearts rust.

The salesman waited with black smiles of glee, ‘We will trap them here, they will never be free.’

When the many souls asked the price of the poisoned vision in the salesmen’s bags, they lifted dirty crooked fingers and pointed at the treasures wrapped in the rags.

Of Roots & Fractals

Throwing this out there and it was inspired by this writing prompt on Reddit.

Bob admittedly felt strange as he awoke on that Sunday morning, staring at the blue sky from his bed in his tiny one bedroom apartment, the bright sunlight forcing his eyes and his mind under the covers to try and regroup.

It felt like he got no rest at all, even though he had gotten into the habit of sleeping as much as possible, because it was better to be blissfully asleep rather than think about how lonely and isolated he was every single day of his life.

His eyes burned and his body ached as if he had been on a bender and then proceeded to start a fight in which the odds must have plainly been against him. Bob had vague recollections of a strange dream, of hands reaching out and a voice that kept telling him he had one last chance.

The Man With the Straw Heart

There once was a man with a straw heart who loved the people around him more then he could fathom and certainly more then he wanted to most of the time.

He saw their attachment to the material world, saw how they cared more for personal gain and trinkets then the people around them and although it filled him with fire, fire enough to burn his straw heart for only a moment at a time, and then he forgave them.

The man watched as love and friendship were tossed aside on arbitrary conditions of survival no longer needed, saw them cling to damp perverted animal skins like the caveman clung to the torch to scare away the night and sighed.

For him his love of the world was a mystery; to him the world was cold as ice, no one wanted to know him, no one could get close to the toxic strands that fell from his straw heart, weeping like a wound.

In reality this was only his love of all around him pushing the infection out, cleansing it and protecting the gift he had, which was the gift ever boy receives but a ‘man’ soon forgets.

Rainy Days

This post is part of the Absolute Write’s March Blog Chain, which was given the prompt: Rainy Days. Please see the links below the body of this post for the other blogs that contributed to this month’s chain.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The dog refused to go potty.

This was a problem as it was pouring rain, windy and cold.

Alex pulled up the collar of his jacket against the wind and gave a little tug on the dog’s leash.

“Come on you dizzy dog, we have to go in, I’m freezing.”

But the Yellow lab sat down in the damp grass, staring up at his master with her ‘puppy dog’ eyes, then resumed  staring across the field towards the abandoned farmhouse and the highway beyond. Somewhere high above and off to the West, a low and ominous rumble of thunder rolled across the fields next to Alex’s house, pressing the matter.