I labeled and folded my paperclipped hope
into a 9 x 12 brown envelope.
I waited the requisite 4-6 weeks,
marking my calendar, brushing my teeth,

stopping at stop signs, waving at walkers,
smiling for pictures by internet stalkers.
In my mailbox today I found a rejection.

Visual aid courtesy of and CC by hans.gerwitz

So I stopped rhyming. But that doesn't mean I get to be mean or crass or hateful. Nor should I be. That's ridiculous. They didn't have a spot for my story. For whatever reason. I prefer to think it's because of a conflict in the timing of thematic issues, but maybe they didn't like my writing.

It happens.

Is that overly philosophic? Whatever.

I'll let the Goat cool off for a while and polish a different stone. There's crystalized carbon in my load of lore. Just gotta keep mining it.

These past two weeks, I've taken part in a fair amount of car travel. There was the trip to Dillard's so Em and I could get attacked by salesladies two weekends ago.

Then middle of last week, I drove twenty minutes away to get the output shaft speed sensor for my car so it won't lock itself into third. Achieving forward motion in third gear from a full and complete stop is hard. I don't suggest trying to turn into oncoming traffic.

This past weekend, my S.I.L. was coaching a championship softball game, so we went down to support and cheer her on.

Yes, we traveled while full-term pregnant. Yes, we checked with the doctor. But here's what I wanted to say.

The post-attack trip resulted in a new ending for the creepy dream story. The car part run brought me some clarity on how to move the story from point B to point C without abandoning too much imagery. The softball trip (and game) gave me the time and freedom and, somehow, inspiration to connect the dots in a solid first draft.

The story has nothing at all in relationship with softball. Or car parts. Or salesladies. There's a tangential connection with driving in the sense that the story starts with driving. And I suppose there's a connection in that whole "on a journey" sense.

I guess driving gives my subconscious a chance to play with connections and possibilities. It removes any sense of obligation to be working in the yard or on the house. I also just really enjoy being on the road and playing some tunes, heading somewhere definite, finding ways and navigating. It works for me.

So, I have a first draft of some 1600 words for the "spiked iron chalice" deal. And Em says I need more story. Eep.

If you are thinking of going shopping for baby clothes in Dillards in the Northpark Mall in Jackson, Mississippi, I would advise against it.

Unless of course you enjoy being asked every 25 seconds if you need help, if you're finding what you need, if you know what you are looking for, if you need any help at all, if you know that you're headed into the toddler section, if you wouldn't like to look at the silver-plated moss covered three handled family grudunza, if you are sure you want to look longingly toward the exit door, ad nauseam(!).

And it wasn't just one middle-aged saleslady. There were two, one on the boy side, one on the girl side. They would have been glaring over our heads, but I was too tall so they settled for casting virtual daggers sidearm around Em and I. All we wanted to do was browse. I said "just looking" 14 times.

How did we escape? Some other poor sap wandered in and the scent of fresh blood in the water distracted the shark-maids long enough for us to make a mad dash up the escalator and purchase our single onesie in the shoe department.

Moral? When obviously pregnant, avoid shopping in commission-based stores that feature baby stuff. You are a walking target. If you must, bring a decoy. Preferably one that can be abandoned.

So, you may have noticed that my blog postings have been more sporadic of late. Not that I ever had a schedule, *cough* Loren *cough*, but I tried to post twice or more per week. This past week I posted THREE times. Before that it was something like once every . . . week and a half?

I also missed about 29 Wednesday prompts on flashy. OK, maybe not that many but a lot. Enough that I couldn't see a FB post from Heather without feeling guilty. So, with the impending arrival of the dauphin, I am regretfully withdrawing my prompt duties over at Flashy Fiction. ;_;

BUT! Emily Griffin, of a heart on a wire fame has avariciously graciously stepped up to the plate. I'm super excited to see what luscious, tempting prompts she'll offer up.

Don't cry for me, Argentina. And give a warm welcome to Emily on May 26 when she assumes the Wednesday seat.

I cannot shake the queen/actor/ghost drinking from the chalice/grail/weapon as she's being watched by the knowing warlock/fiend/friend. Don't recognize the description? That's the piece of my dream that won't fade. Specifically the

indelible image of a hooded man's twisted, snarling face staring at me while a woman in evening dress drank something dark and viscous from a spiked iron chalice, her fingers and palms pierced by the vicious points. Then the hooded man winked at me as the woman fainted, presumably poisoned.

I've started shaping that image into a story and I want you to write something too.

Of course, you don't have to write anything, anything at all, not even a comment, but I really want to see the different places that this image can go. I'll post mine up on June 4. That's 3 weeks.

Any interest in spinning yarns? Let me know.

At 4 am this morning, I was awakened by a dream. The specifics quickly faded, but the retreating tide left behind an overwhelming malaise and the indelible image of a hooded man's twisted, snarling face staring at me while a woman in evening dress drank something dark and viscous from a spiked iron chalice, her fingers and palms pierced by the vicious points. Then the hooded man winked at me as the woman fainted, presumably poisoned.

On waking, I was hyper-alert and hyper-suspicious of every noise from the settling house. Lying in bed only increased my suspicion that something was happening in another part of the house. So I got up and did a round, checking the doors, the windows, leaving the bathroom lights on.

Scout's honor, I watched a House Hunters International and went to be early. No idea where the dream came from. I stayed up for an hour eating ice cream and watching kittens car stuff on youtube before I was able to get back into bed without being freaked out.

This doesn't have a thing in the world to do with writing. Sorry. Well, kind of. I wrote down what I could remember of the dream because the spiked chalice caught my interest. Capturing the particulars helped me remove the dream from the forefront of my mind.

Maybe I can use it to generate a story. If it doesn't keep me up at night.

Remember the liquid food coloring?
It came in the red box, just four colors
redbluegreenyellow. Plink and plop, then mix
to make orange or teal or magenta.
It was impossible to make maroon,
only a brownish purple. Well, maybe
you could, but I never did.

Squared-off translucent plastic barrels topped
with towering cones like David the Gnome.
Twist the hat and squeeze but gently, gently.
One
      Two
          Three
              Icing brighter green than your
apple Jolly Ranchers.

Once Mom let us add the dye to our milk.
I dripped a drop of every color twice
and stirred like mad. Brownish-purple-poo milk.
You placed a drop in the center and pulled
a tendril
      clockwise
        with a toothpick,
ever-widening, until the whole whorl
was blue and white and swirling.

Traced with love of this stupid gorgeous world.
Tonight I drank milk with a swirl of blue
just for you.

Please find attached one short-short of some 700 words, a quiet tale with vestigial attachments to the Cheuckahoba corpus. In the narrative, you are sure to encounter adventure, love, betrayal, macrodontal rodentia, war, Caribbean islands, heirloom furniture. (I thought this was a quiet tale.)Stay tuned for "Almandine"! NEXT on B.'s blog.

--

Before the Oak Hill fire, before the flood, before the first house was ever built on the bluffs to be collapsed by erosion, a horse called Almandine arrived in Standing Water township by boat, shipped from Jamaica as a wedding present for Ms. Tabitha Jones from her father Ernest.

His was a big name in the trans-Atlantic shipping industry and his daughter would sit the finest horse in the country even if the only people who saw her were yokel enough to want to pull a plow with her. And he would gladly pay all the expenses to ship the horse across the Gulf, up the Mobile and traipsing down the Cheuckahoba tributary to that puny county seat where her husband set up his fool shop if it meant Tabitha would receive an ounce of the attention that she deserved. Damn her foolish heart for ever leaving Charlotte and marrying a Mississippi mercantile salesman. Ernest E. Jones loved her as his own and would welcome her back when she grew tired of the Southern tradesman.

Those were the words that accompanied Almandine through the salt soaked heat and constant breezes of the Gulf. That was the letter which sat in the brass-bound chest stamped “T. JONES, SADDLE,” a chest which sank in dust and rust at the top of the house on Broad Street for 90 years.

Then I, the curious one, plied the encrusted edges with WD-40 and a pocketknife in the early waking hours of Saturday at the Great-Grands house. Inside, I found abandoned a brittle-shelled wasp nest and a mouse nest carved into the remains of a English saddle.

With my flashlight, I discovered the letter, wedged tight in the side seam of the trunk, corners missing from the toothy rodents. I yanked it free and banged down the stairs, waving my mouse-droppinged treasure across the biscuits and coffee. "I found it in the trunk! I found it in the trunk!"

My mother lifted the flap and extracted a single holey sheet covered in tortuous tiny script. The family gathered around and peered at the page lain across the now contaminated table.

Great-uncle Houston began to wheeze and chuckle. "Alman-dine. Oh, that's rich. When she grew tired of the Southern tradesman. Hoo boy." He laughed so hard he began to cough and couldn't breathe until he sat down in the living room. By then we all were waiting to hear.

"Now I only heard this once or twice, but I remember the important bits. Mother told me how her mother, the Tabitha in the letter, moved to Standing Water from Charlotte in the Carolinas. The man she fell in love with was just a poor salesman from Mississippi traveling the South in those years after the War.

"Her father, this Ernest E. Jones, didn't take to George Hughes one bit. Thought he was after stealing Tabitha for her money. So Mr. Jones cut Tabitha off financially when she made her intentions know to have and to hold the Hughes family name.

"This is where that horse enters the business. When the newly-weds arrived in Standing Water after honeymooning in Atlanta, there was a horse tied up in the backyard and a trunk on the porch. George and Tabitha asked around, but the horse didn't belong to anyone in town and had been delivered with the trunk with Tabitha's name on it. Now, George was just hanging up his shingle on a general store and, with no family money from Charlotte, they didn't have any resources to feed or care for the horse. So the horse was sold to a farmer with an eye for horseflesh for a goodly amount of cash and the money funneled into the store.

"The store that established this family in town was built on seed money from that horse. The mysterious horse that the neighbor children heard the handlers call 'Almond Eyes.' That's the story my mother told." Great-uncle Houston paused with a twinkle in his eye and breathed another chuckle.

"But now we know the punch line. Almond Eyes was really Almandine, a gift from hoity-toity Mr. Jones sent to break up the marriage and bring Tabitha back to Charlotte. It didn't work out for him though, did it?"