Desert Treasure

Diamonds were never her best friend. Too many complications attached, too much greed or bad karma or something floating around them. And you had to keep track of the damn things.

Which was why she was tramping around in sand dunes at dawn in her bare feet. Sandra still couldn’t believe that her asshole boyfriend, obviously high, had grabbed her purse and flung it out the window. Only he hadn’t. He’d pretended to, grinning like a ghoul. By the time he brought his hand back into the car with the purse, she had nearly rolled the Mercedes trying to stop it by stomping on the brakes. When he handed it to her she knew instantly that it was too light. Then she saw the rip in the bottom corner. “Get out get out get out!” She screamed. She started searching the floor of the car.

But they weren’t there. The jewels, worth more than her car, more than her mansion for god’s sake, had worn a hole in the purse and when he jerked it out the window they must have flown out onto the side of the road. Unless they had fallen out earlier. Sandra shuddered at the thought, then she wept.

But only a little. Then she backed up to ... where? Her best guess was maybe a couple hundred feet. Then she tore her flats off and ran to the gravel and sand that bordered the highway. Beyond, endless stretches of dunes and sage and stones. And pain.

Alpha List

A
All of my beads are plastic. Their colors are funny but faded and not very pretty, not like Celine's. Hers are the real thing. More than the real thing, they're ancient and from strange places and have qualities that make it hard for me to think of them as just beads. They're artifacts of older and different cultures. They speak of ancient peoples, ancient energies.

My beads reflect my history, my values, my likes and dislikes. They have soaked my being like many small tough sponges and now lay limp each to the other. Though they remind me of good times I've had, resonant of romances, they do not contain beauty. Not like Celine's.

B
“Be splendid”, she whispers in my ear. “Be daring. Be darling. Be that which you cannot find with your eyes”. Her voice in my mind, her touch on my skin.

Morning clouds rush like gray and silver racers in the sky, streaking my perceptions like water poured on watercolors above me, smearing all that I can see or hope to see until I doubt everything. All around me becomes old and ragged and fragile.

“Be splendid in your armor of gilded flesh. Stand fresh in the rain. Spill it to the ground and in and through you. Be washed clean once again.”

C
Celine steps into my room, just inside the door and fresh from her bath and in nothing but a towel. She smiles at me and flashes it open to show me her pyramid of fine brown hair. This makes a light go off in my head that blinds me and makes me want to turn away. She does this almost every time she bathes. It's not that I don't want to look. It's that I want to look too much.

“Celine! Don't do that!” I shout at her, spilling my beads, turning my back to her. “Go away!” I pick up a comic book but the colors all look too strong and garish and somehow hurtful so I throw that under the bed. Stomach aches, head hurts. I don't know what to do with myself.

D
Dust and dreedle, doodles of dread. Donuts define destiny. Dry and dessicated. Don't!

E
Eh? Enough?

F
Fail. Words do.

We Are Our Stories

Welcome. This blog is about writing, or perhaps more accurately, about what stories mean to me, and why I have dedicated myself to learning the art of telling them. Some posts will be essays, original or borrowed. Some will be short stories - generally very short. "Flash" fiction (1,000 words or less) or even shorter. I have written some longer stories. I probably won't post those here though, partly because doing so risks making them unacceptable to print publishers who are willing to pay for first publishing rights.

I hope you will find these posts entertaining, or informative or educational, or worth your time in some way. You, readers of stories and information about the craft of story telling, are why I write. Feel free to let me know how I'm doing.

Respect!