“You want my body?” she asked. “God, yes!” he said. “Good. I want yours.” She drew her gun and fired. “At the bottom of a lake.”
Tag Archives: death
haiku 258
veterinarian’s –
she leaves
with a box and tears
Quotable 123
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.
– E. B. White
Fiction: ‘If You Really Want One’
“Isn’t this damn line ever going to move?”
“No, Erik, it isn’t,” Lee said. “This is hell, and we’ll be standing here for all eternity. Just to annoy you.”
“I believe it,” Erik said.
“Erik,” Bobby said, “I know we dragged you here against your will, but try to have just the tiniest bit of fun, huh?”
“Yeah, try not to make us wish we were dead, too,” Arthur pleaded.
“I’m told that the dead have very few problems.”
His friends sighed; Erik the Grim had spoken.
Through the tightly packed mass of people thronging the state fair, Erik brightened suddenly as he spotted an old man holding a fresh caramel apple by its stick.
Quotable 108
When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
– David McCullough
haiku 199
earworm –
digging a grave
for my brown-eyed girl
Fiction: The Last Reunion of the Capper Gang
As the day wore on and the chloroform wore off, Silas Capper regained consciousness. He wanted to rub the bump on his head but found he couldn’t move his hands. He shook his head to clear it and felt something around his neck that brought him fully awake.
He opened his eyes and looked down to see three former associates standing near the horse he sat atop. This forced a great bellow of laughter from Silas.
“Well, now! Haven’t the three of you gone to some kind of trouble for this reunion. I’d been thinking just last month that it’d been too long since I’d seen any of you. And now, here we are, with me on my horse, hands tied behind my back, the guest of honor at a necktie party. You sure gone and arranged quite a meeting, I’ll say!”
Capper’s former associates – Juan, Luther, and Beak – stared up at him silently.
Fiction: Paying the Price
Lon heard a knock on his door. That was cause for concern; he had no friends, and the Girl Scouts and Jehovah’s Witnesses had better sense than to visit his neighborhood.
Still, it was a knock; someone had manners enough for that rather than to knock down the door – or make a new one. So maybe this wouldn’t end fatally.
He threw back three deadbolts and opened the door. Sonia was there, and Jerzy loomed behind her. He stepped back to let them into his little house. Jerzy closed the door.
Fiction: The Hope Chest
“You have hope chests at this sale, is that correct?” Eloise asked.
“Oh, yes,” the auctioneer’s assistant said. “Right over there. We’ll probably get to them in about twenty minutes.”
“Thank you.” Eloise walked in the direction the man had pointed. She gave each chest only a quick once-over; the one she hoped to find was distinctive.
Eloise tried to tamp down the constant flare of anger she felt toward her late sister’s daughter and that rogue she was married to. After Marnie’s death, Junie – doubtless prodded by Fred – sold her mother’s hope chest at a yard sale. Fred had conned the buyer into thinking the chest was a valuable antique that the family ever so hated to let go, but you knew how it was.
Antique it may have been, but its value was primarily sentimental.
haiku 180
in the street
small wide-eyed cat
sees nothing