Tag: Pet Prose

“Our mother had an interesting way of putting a spin on things for her children, even when most of us were grown.

For example, the night she had a big cookout for our stepfather’s birthday. We’d been outside swatting mosquitoes and drinking beer for the time it took the potatoes to bake. As the rolls came out of the oven and the sizzling steaks were removed from the grill, while my sisters brought out the salad, dressings, and other condiments, we heard Alvie–our stepfather–roar from the kitchen, ‘Did one of you girls get the butter? Where’s the butter?’

Everyone looked at their hands and the table. No butter.

‘We may be out,’ Mama called.

‘You can’t have baked potatoes without the damned butter! Do I have to do everything around here? And on my own birthday. Nobody eat a bite until I get back with the butter!’

As the sound of his motorcycle died in the distance, Mama said, ‘Of course we’ll start without him. Pass the A1 sauce, please.’

Five days later, Alvie still wasn’t back, with or without the butter. And the night Mama realized we weren’t randomly straggling into her house, but arriving with a family discussion about Alvie on our agenda, she sighed and rolled her eyes.

‘I guess it’s time I told you children the truth about your stepfather. I know he’d prefer that I didn’t, but you have to know. Alvie is a spy for the USA, and right now, he’s on a mission. Needless to say, this information remains in the family.’

None of us dared look at one another. Bad enough to have a stepfather who’d deserted our mother, but his parting gift had been to push her toward butter-free dementia.”

From Paxton’s novel All the Nuts of Walnut Street.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“So you know how everybody says what they’d do when they win the lottery? And people do win the lottery, but I don’t know if they buy a house for their mother or buy a hundred acres in the country and open an animal sanctuary or retire and spend the rest of their days on an island somewhere. If you read the news stories about lottery winners, they mostly seem to end up with a lot of people taking advantage of them and going broke in a year.

When I died and became a ghost, it was sort of like winning the lottery. No door would be closed to me. Lack of money would never impede me. I couldn’t be cheated, mistreated, or shot again (that’s how I died, but that’s a story for another time). So I boarded a flight to L.A. (no boarding pass required!), relaxed in first class, slipped into a limo at LAX, and had my pick of any suite at the Beverly Wilshire (you know, the Pretty Woman hotel).

I wasn’t sure how long this ghost gig would last or what came next. So far no one seemed to sense my presence. But if I was supposed to be creating chills and thrills as a specter, then I wanted a classy venue.”

Cord, writing a sequel to his first ghost story.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“For seventeen years, Miss Fincher worked in the same cubbyhole for the same employer. Each day she arrived on time and began work immediately. She usually ate at her desk, unless the weather was particularly moderate, then she’d take her sandwich or fruit outside to a bench in a small park across from the office building. She returned promptly on the hour and worked until five.

She rarely exchanged more than a brief nod or a perhaps a hello with her coworkers. No one really knew what she did. In fact, she entered information into spreadsheets all day. She wasn’t sure how the spreadsheets were used, but she didn’t care. She took her week’s vacation for the first few years, then two weeks, and had never missed a day of work due to sickness.

As the company adopted new trends–first everyone had offices, then cubicles, then wide open spaces where they worked around the same table–Miss Fincher’s cubbyhole remained untouched. She left her desk clear each night. She’d never put any personal items, including photos, on it. If anyone had bothered to open the desk drawers, they’d have found nothing but office supplies such as any one of them might have.

No one did go through her desk or even take much notice of her. So no one but Miss Fincher was surprised the day she came in to find a small Wonder Woman action figure standing next to the computer monitor on her desk.”

Dotty, starting a new short story.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“‘I was born under a bad sign,’ he said.

‘You’re a Scorpio? There was a ring around the moon?’

‘No. My mother gave birth to me in the back of a 1963 Rambler under a highway sign for Akron, Ohio.’

She wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him, but played along. ‘You don’t like Akron?’

‘I don’t know. The wind blew the sign down, into our front grill and headlights. We got towed to Cuyahoga Falls.’

‘Is that where you grew up?’

‘No, it’s how I got my middle name.’

‘Your middle name is Cuyahoga? That was a bad sign.’

An excerpt from Tank’s work in progress.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“One thing they all agreed on was they hated their supervisor, and every new employee was given a crash course about her at a safe distance from the building.

‘Chaos follows where she goes,’ Max said.

‘She’s just mean,’ Ronald said.

Birdy nodded and said, ‘She’s the kind of chick who’d have been screaming HANG HER at the Salem witch trials.’

‘Or CRUCIFY HIM!’ Max agreed. He looked confused and added, ‘But not at the Salem witch trials.’

‘Dang,’ Micky said. ‘I thought she was kind of hot.’

‘That’s part of her evil,’ the others replied in unison.”

Goldie, from her workplace comedy Berserk!

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“He knew he was lucky to land this interview. She was a legend, after all. She’d been making people laugh and cry, dance and sing, for more than seventy years.

Still, she was a shock, this tiny, frail woman with clawlike hands that embraced his briefly then let go. He tried not to search her face for evidence of that fresh-faced ingénue, or the celebrated Oscar winner, or even the feisty old lady with the fat laugh from twenty years before.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, ‘My dear, we can’t start this way. I have no illusions about what time has done to me. Inside, I’m still her. Still here. Getting old is hell on the body, but that isn’t what does us in. It’s the Before and Afters.’

He waited. She waited longer.

‘The before and—’

‘Afters, yes. Those moments that are so intense that we know even as they happen, I will never be happy this way again. Or perhaps, We will never be happy in quite the same way as we were before this.‘”

From Hester’s novel The Before and Afters, about an unlikely friendship.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“‘No, you’re not listening,’ he said. ‘Everything you see that’s good, it came from the Aliens. The mountains, the trees, the rivers —’

‘Jennifer Lawrence,’ his brother interrupted.

‘— and the bad stuff, that’s people. War, bombs, greed, pollution —’

‘Coldplay,’ his brother interjected.

‘You’re kind of a freakshow,’ their sister said. ‘Both of you.'”

Dixie, working hard on her new young adult novel.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“She was The Core. No one could remember when her reign began. There was no written or oral history to explain it. Had she inherited her position? Was there a coup? An appointment? An election?

When The Young Ones asked these questions of The Elders, they were quashed. She had always been The Core. She would always be The Core. It was meant.”

An excerpt from Archie’s dystopian work in progress.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“Religion confused and excited him. So did artichokes, the federal deficit, women, and suspension bridges.

It didn’t worry him much. Sooner or later, he’d figure things out. After all, he’d be only seventy-three on his next birthday.”

Davey, from his novel The Old Man Looks at Life.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.