Saluting Don Quixote

That feeling is always waiting just under the skin and can’t be let out, omnipresent beneath layers of dermis. The one that says, ‘Time’s wasting away. Get out, get out now. Quick, before it’s too late!’ It’s a scream caught forever just in the throat, unable to travel the small yet insurmountable distance to the tongue.

And anyplace would do, really. Any small place, as long as it was yours. Freedom is the right to choose, but also the right to settle for whatever you want, for something more or less than present circumstances. To make those decisions that you know are mistakes before they’re even begun, and to still regret them later.

Dreams take the form of faces and places long past, confusing and meshing events together because at least that’s when you weren’t stagnating, when you were doing something, even if it was something hated and detested and scorned. It’s not that the youth don’t realize they’re young; it’s that they fail to understand that growing up is a process, and not just sitting in the same place, never moving forward. By its very definition, growing up means dealing with changes, even those that are so painful they bleed open wounds for the rest of your life.

Far better to bleed dry than to wither away, slowly rotting like an abandoned piece of attic refuse.

Unexpected Break

Well, I knew I would be absent during the beginning of this month, what with season 3 of Sherlock airing, but I wasn't anticipating my computer dying on me. So, I will try to update sometime this week and we'll see how it goes from there. I do expect not to post much for the foreseeable future, since it always bothers me to write on someone else's computer.

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Dear Riding Crop:

You are the best lover. You sting when I want you to, the sharp pain tingling along my nerves. Your handle is sturdy. Every time I grasp you, it is with full confidence. The leather grip that surrounds you is softened and molded to perfection. And oh, those flaps of pure power, ones that can brush softly and tickle the senses, driving one mad with desire. Riding Crop, you are exquisite. You fulfill all fantasies.

And yet, you remain artificial. Oh, Riding Crop, we cannot talk through all hours of the night. We cannot share the same coffee cup, or a love of chocolate. There are no gifts exchanged, no arms to shelter me from nightmares. There is no promise of forever. You are an invention, and you cannot tell me that you love me. And, Riding Crop, you cannot give me your heart.

Good-bye, Riding Crop, for you are not what I need, even if you are the focus of every woman’s fantasy.

After I Wouldn't Pray at Thanksgiving Dinner

You would think Jesus himself had just popped up
Out of the table dressed in drag, it was so damn silent.
My aunt just sat there and clutched feebly at her chest,
And gasped like she had been shot and was now bleeding 

Through a wide, gaping maw of a hole laid bare in her chest,
While everyone else stared, blank eyes uncomprehending.

I tried to keep my head up level and to fight the urge to 

sink straight down into Hell, while my uncle looked down 

In sorrow at the homemade macaroni in particular.

I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t expect 

To ever get the chance to stuff his stomach with food now.

Then my cousin turned towards me to introduce her new 

Husband, now looking quite pale, as a Minister for their 

Lutheran church. And after all this, I couldn’t help it. 

My arms came up to cradle my head, and I then let out a snort 

That turned quickly into  helpless giggles of torture, the atheist 

Now offered up as a sacrifice to all, right next to the roasted turkey.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Prompt: In a horror-movie type setting, nature fights back (and I'm not talking about the M. Night Shyamalan movie "The Happening"). You are stuck in the middle of a forest at night. How do you get out of this predicament and back into civilization?

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The sky is a clear, deep blue. You’d think that would be enough to perk someone up but it’s kind of hard to be chipper when you want to murder the person walking in front of you.

We’ve been walking for hours and it’s freezing. I mean, ‘Please let the damn woods catch on fire so that it’s just a little warmer before I burn to death painfully, thanks’ freezing. Even walking isn’t helping to raise our body heat much. You’d think, for only being late September, that it wouldn’t be quite so cold in the mountains yet. Well, unfortunately, it is.

And why am I traipsing through the damn woods as it gets closer to sundown, freezing my ass and other vital body parts off, swearing under my breath and glaring daggers at the back of the moron in front of me? It has something to do with said moron speeding down a back country road (No, I wasn’t going the speed limit myself. No one does on these roads. But there’s a difference between speeding and trying to commit suicide via vehicular collision. Shut up.) and clipping the edge of my car, sending mine into a tree and his into a ditch.

We’re both okay, though my neck hurts like a son of a bitch, and we’re miles from any sign of civilization such as a house. Now I, since I actually grew up about half an hour from here, wanted to walk the twenty miles along the road to where I knew it would eventually travel near someone’s house. I don’t like that particular neighbor (And yes, we use the term rather loosely where I grew up. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to use the damn word at all.), but I’m not above calling on someone when I’m stranded in the woods with the wind blowing so fiercely my nose has gone numb hours ago.

I say hours, as I’m sure you noticed, because the moron here, who claims to have been hiking in these woods every week for the past six months, wanted to take a shortcut. And when I told him to ‘Have fun, see you later, and I’ll send out a search party eventually,’ he replied that he wouldn’t give me his insurance info unless I followed him. Apparently, he was worried about me being picked up by some axe murderer. Trying to ignore the sexist nature of this remark, I asked him why the hell he wasn’t more worried about the axe murderer who would dare to piss me off even further than I already was. Having no real good comeback to this (And when do they ever, really?), he nonetheless insisted that there was a hunting cabin not all that far from us and whose phone we could use.

Yeah, that went well. At first, I didn’t really notice, being more interested in my sore neck and the cold wind getting stronger by the minute, that the idiot had no idea what he was doing. We were following a light path, and so I figured that it would slowly deepen and lead us to the cabin. I am not to be blamed for the idiocy here. And it wasn’t even half an hour later before I caught on. Of course, this could have something to do with the fact that the path we were on came out into a small clearing and then vanished.

Not all that uncommon out here, or in any woods that I’ve been in. Still, it did not endear me to my fellow traveler, especially not after he pulled out his cell (No, there’s no reception out here. What, you want me to laugh in your face?), brought up some kind of compass, and confidently began walking again, once more leading me to think that he knew what the hell he was doing. We found another path, kept on it, and then started climbing more uphill than down. Yay.

I figure it was about another hour going up and down some hills before we came out high enough to see clearly all around us. Yep, nothing. Nothing but woods, woods, some squirrels, a woodpecker somewhere nearby by the sounds, and oh yes, some more woods. This would be about the time that I, quite calmly as I was slowly starting to freeze, asked him where in the hell he thought this mysterious cabin was.

So, we’re lost, and any sense of direction that I might have been able to salvage in that initial half hour of our hike is irretrievably lost. I have no idea where in the hell we are, and unlike some people, I’m not asinine enough to keep that little nugget of information all to myself. Still, it was barely three in the afternoon when we started and so I gazed around for any stretch of woods that looked like there was a man-made line down the side of a mountain or such.

No, of course I didn’t find anything like that. What I did find was moss growing on the side of some trees which I concluded meant that direction was north. I then started us on a southwestern path, knowing that people who are right-handed unconsciously walk to the right, even when they think they’re going in a straight line, and so hoping that purposely walking in the opposite direction would eventually get us back to a semblance of where we were. That, and the direction of the road we should have used was also that way.

Still, it’s been a long day and now it might turn into a long night if we don’t find somewhere before the sun goes down, and the moron is now walking in front of me with his stupid compass thing (And also as a shield against the wind. A shitty shield, but better than what he’s getting.), trying to get us out of the mess he got us into in the first place.

And I’m trying not to show it, really, but there are all kinds of wild animals in these woods that I don’t particularly want to run into. Sure, there’s ones like the squirrels and rabbits and snakes, and other cuties, but I know for a fact that these woods also house bears, mountain lions, and coyotes, to name a few. I swear to god, if we stumble across any of those, I’m tripping the moron and running away while whatever it is takes the easy kill. Every big outcropping of rock has me eyeing it nervously, hoping to see nothing moving in their dark mouths. Especially a mountain lion. I’d really rather a bear walk by than one of them. Bears are quite friendly unless startled. Mountain lions, like all cats, like to play, and I’m not really interested in being a ‘toy du jour.’

It’s not until an owl hoots loudly somewhere nearby (and the moron jumps so badly he nearly drops his cell) that I know we’re not getting anywhere before dark. Fucking perfect. The sun’s already mostly down, and it’ll be true dark within the hour. All I have on is a light jacket, which I’m cursing myself for, and walking downhill in the dark, in the woods, is something I’m not doing. I don’t really think adding a broken leg to my list of injuries will help me right now. Giving up, I start looking around for some kind of shelter. The sun going down is going to make it at least twenty degrees colder, and I start debating the merits of trying to light a fire without matches.

It’s just as the light is going completely, and I still haven’t seen anything decent that I’m a hundred percent sure isn’t already occupied, that the moron gives a crow of triumph and runs ahead slightly. For a minute, I think that he might have actually found the damn road or something. No, of course not. What he’s jogging to is a little cave that he apparently thinks is too small for a predator to hide in. And I’ll admit, from the outside it doesn’t look like much, but I know plenty of small animals that can get nasty when cornered and have no desire to poke my head in a cave that might house a possum, or a bobcat, or-

Okay, about twenty minutes of running later, in which I am now in front because I refuse to stand downwind of that, I think we’re back on track. Yes, you guessed it, the idiot managed to scare a skunk. Now, it should be said that skunks are cute and don’t actually smell unless they feel threatened. Poking your head into their den causes them to feel threatened. And now, even though I’m upwind and my cheeks are scraped raw from the force, I can still smell the stench that is ten feet behind me.

I’d feel more sympathetic if it wasn’t completely dark. And, you know, if I was the type of person to feel sympathy for morons, which I’m not. No, I’m more inclined to feel sympathy for those of us unlucky enough to be forced into dealing with the messes morons leave in their wake. We stop for a few minutes to catch our breaths. I’m trying to figure out what to do while stamping my feet and keeping a considerable distance between us.

It takes me a few minutes to realize that, yes, it is fucking freezing now and we seriously have to worry about hypothermia, but also that there’s a significant portion of the moon in the sky. Not full, but more than halfway there, and with such a clear sky it’s actually getting brighter out again by the second.

Pleased that something’s going right for a change, I set off again, ignoring the babbling of the moron behind me who’s talking about night predators and hidden tree roots and any number of things. What? Does he want to freeze? Is he having fun out here? ‘Cause frankly, I have just about had my fill of hiking for, oh, the next ten years or so. Thankfully, after about five minutes, his voice trails off into mutterings, and I’m able to listen some more for any sounds of moving water or traffic (Haha, yeah, I know.).

Our steps crunch and twigs snap, insects are chirping eerily, birds are calling shrilly, and it only needs a coyote to howl in the distance to complete the Hollywood horror film set. Even though we can see fairly well we’re still walking cautiously when it comes time to go downhill, and it’s a good thing too ‘cause I actually trip on one of those stupid tree roots and almost tumble down what I can only guess is a good fifty feet of land and trees, and wouldn’t that have been fun?

My hands have been in my pockets the whole time, but they’re still aching down to the bone, the wind not letting up at all, which is another worry as I know it likely indicates a storm front coming in during the night. If we have to walk through freezing rain as well I’m seriously not sure we can make it without huddling up together. Normally, if my life is on the line I can be persuaded to do so, moron or not, but another thing most people don’t realize is how badly skunk spray smells.

They pass a carcass on the side of the road and they think that it smells bad. Please. Spray that comes from a live skunk has a smell more effective than mace. It can burn your eyes right out of their sockets, and even in the open like this, you will involuntarily throw up if you are near someone or something for more than a few seconds that’s been sprayed. Yes, the moron had thrown up. Luckily, my shout when I’d seen the distinctive black and white fur had been enough to get him to turn his head before the spray had hit his face and so had probably saved his eyesight.

So, yes, skunks have the ultimate natural defense in all of nature. Starving predators don’t dare mess around with them. Only something really stupid, like a dog or a person, stands there instead of quickly fleeing in the opposite direction.

Cuddling’s out, even if I could have forced myself to cuddle with such a moron, which only leaves slowly freezing to death until neither of us can move any further and then they’ll find his body weeks later. Not mine, ‘cause it’ll get eaten, but his won’t be touched until the smell goes away. Hence, weeks. At least I don’t have to worry about being eaten anymore until after I’ve died. No animal is going to come near him, and therefore me, anymore.

And it’s probably about an hour later, when I’m seriously thinking about just climbing a tree and hoping for the best, that something electric kicks on. The sound is rumbling and high, and it makes me jump from the sudden noise. ‘What the-?’ I think, trying to place it. Though the panicked shrieking behind me momentarily cuts off my thoughts.

“Oh my god, it’s a chainsaw, and we’re going to stumble across a cabin that’s going to be filled with cannibals and they’re going to slowly chop us up and eat us and we’re going to die!”

I blink, completely nonplussed, and listen to him hyperventilate for another minute or two. I’m tempted to slap him, or punch him, or just hit him repeatedly, but that would entail getting closer. And besides, I finally figure out the sound and almost let out a crow of victory. Instead, I give the moron a scathing look and turn back around, heading as fast as I can toward the sound of the generator in the distance, no longer caring if I trip over any more tree roots and certainly not caring if the moron actually follows me or not. Nope, I’m done for today. Besides, out here where I’m from? Where there’s a generator, there’s liquor, and I feel that I’ve more than earned my own bottle or two.

Stop! Life is Now

They run, they walk,
Heads down to the ground,
Invisible chains dragging.

Some hurry, others are late,

But none of them ever stop
To look around, to pause.

Worried, all of them are.

Everything is in front of their faces

And not one of them stares it down.

First Post

Finally created my own blog to post my original fiction and random musings. To start, here's a poem:

Yuletide Cheer 

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I need a drink.

What I have discovered this year:

            Toasted marshmallows are sublime.
            Peppermint passable only in cocoa.
            Snow a pale imitation of years past,
            Much like the tree and presents.
            Yet, all I can ponder is this,
            Ten years since your funeral.

Spike the eggnog, please.