Author Archives: James Pyles

Inescapable

night market

Night Market (JuanChrist) by JuanChrist (flickr) Tags: fujifilm x100t market nightmarket cambodia bavet

Bavet police inspector Borey Seng stood in the market’s bathroom as coroners continued to examine the body of the 66-year-old Malaysian man, murdered by an object that gashed across his face and eyes.

“Who would gouge out an old man’s eyes, and what was he doing in Cambodia in the first place?”

“I might have that answer to that inspector.” Officer Channary Som’s face was as round as her name suggested.

“Continue,” he muttered.

“His name was Rayyan Megat. Records indicate he entered Cambodia at the Bavet-Moc Bai border last week, but get this. His fingerprints match those of a former CIA assassin known as bóng, “shadow,” in English.

“So?”

“So bóng was noted for gouging out the eyes of his victims.”

“There is no escape from karma.”

Seng’s and Som’s voices faded from the specter’s hearing as he ascended, his spirit set free from his forty-five-year-old quest for vengeance.

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google maps image/location as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today, the Pegman takes us to Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia. A quick search of Wikipedia revealed very little interesting information about this province, as did one for its largest city Bavet.

Then, a news item titled Malaysian killed in Bavet caught my attention. I preserved some of the details of the actual murder, but added fictionalized names and situations, including the 1973 assassination of some nameless victim of a CIA operative during the Vietnam War. In this case, karma or justice is blind.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Quoting: Way to a Happy Life

tribute lights

© Carla Bicomong

The only way to have a happy life is to keep your eyes focused on what you have and not on what you are lacking.

Sources: Chofetz Chaim; Kuntros Nefutzos Yisroel; Cited in Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s “Gateway to Happiness,” p.354

Rainbow’s Edge

rainbow

© April Pearson

A rainbow is nothing magical, just the result of light shining through a lot of drops of rain and being dispersed into a spectrum of light in the sky. Okay, I’ll buy that as far as it goes, but why is it in the shape or a bow?

Sometimes the bow forms a semi-circle with ends that touch different parts of the earth. What would happen if you came across one of those ends.

Yesterday, I did.

I was hiking on a trail in the deep interior of the Valley of Fire. The sky was overcast. I love November. It had been raining all day, but the storm was ahead of me now. That’s when I saw it; the edge.

The base was fuzzy, indistinct as it touched the ground, and there certainly no pot of gold there. It looked more than a trick of light, especially as it illuminated the shadows, cut off from the sun’s rays.

On the 4th day in November, Madelyn April Cross touched a rainbow and became all the colors of the universe. Then she knew what to do next.

I wrote this for the Sunday Photo Fiction challenge of November 4, 2018. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 185.

I can’t really tell you what made me write the story the way I did. I can tell you that the Valley of Fire is a real place that is roughly 60 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada. I hiked there many times in my youth.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Quoting: Don’t Spread the Insult

Some people become so upset when they are insulted, that they repeat the incident to others who would otherwise not know about it! By giving the matter additional attention, you are causing yourself additional embarrassment!

Sources: Rabainu Yonah to Mishle 12:16; Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s “Gateway to Happiness,” p.298

Interestingly enough, thanks to sharing, retweeting, and reblogging, insults get spread all the time, spreading outrage and indignation to epic proportions, even when the original event might have been relatively minor.

Family Day

veterans day parade 2018

© James Pyles

Yesterday, my son texted me at work and suggested spending Saturday together. He had a very specific agenda.

So this morning, I met him at his house, and we got the kids ready to head into downtown Boise so we could attend the annual Boise Veterans Day Parade (hence the image above). The parade has been held since before my family and I moved here 24 years ago. I can remember when my kids were in marching band in Junior High and High School, they’d perform in the parade each year.

We picked a corner near the start of the parade and met a lot of nice people, including a woman whose 13-year-old daughter was in it this year.

I took a ridiculous number of photos (and fortunately for you, I posted only one). The air was cool and crisp and if you were dressed properly, it was a great day to go to a parade.

Continue reading →

Quoting: Your Attitude Toward Insults

Some people mistakenly say, “He hurt my feelings,” or “He made me feel bad.” But in actuality, no one can hurt your feelings or make you feel bad — unless you allow their words to affect you. Your attitude toward an insult causes you pain, not the insult itself.

The emotional pain of an insult comes from what you add to it.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s “Gateway to Happiness,” p.294

These messages appear in a newsletter I receive daily from Aish.com, so I don’t choose the content. That said, the message above is exactly what I’ve been trying to communicate about people and their visceral reaction to the current political climate, and particularly the guy who is now sitting in the Oval Office. No one can “hurt your feelings” unless you let them. Yes, I know, we all let others take control of our emotions at times, including me, but it doesn’t mean we have to, and it never means we have to give our power over to others.

Going to Writing School

typing

Found at typinglounge.com – No image credit given

So I signed up for a writing class called The Art and Craft of Writing led by L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright. You can find out more about her books at Amazon.

The class will last throughout the month of November, I suppose to coincide with National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo” (though we won’t be writing a novel).

There’s a private, dedicated Facebook page for the class, as well as a discussion list where students can communicate with each other and Jagi.

We’ve been teamed up in small groups of writers who are attracted to similar genres (in my case, science fiction and fantasy). We receive an assignment each week, and after we respond to the assignment, we share it with our other group members. We make suggestions on each other’s work, edit our own work accordingly, and then turn it in to Jagi.

Oh, one of the group members doesn’t have Word, so we’re collaborating using Google Docs, which is an interesting experience, since it’s totally new to me.

I have no idea what happens after that, because we’re still in the middle of the first assignment.

Continue reading →

Quoting: Help As Only You Can

Every person has unique talents, skills, knowledge, and resources.

Utilize these to help others in ways that are uniquely yours. Learn from the kind deeds of other people, but don’t compare yourself with anyone else. Others will be able to do things that you can’t. And only you will be able to do certain things.

-from Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s book “Kindness.”

What Jara Bestows

dance

Image: Google Images Labelled for re-use.

They all came into The Obscene Khrelan’s Saloon to see Jara dance. It would have been more flattering if Khrelan’s wasn’t the only “watering hole” within a thousand kilometers of Julyen’s lone spaceport. Besides the incessant sandstorms and malevolent rock worms, the only thing Julyen had to offer was Cethuitium, an otherwise rare mineral that could be refined into a power source, with applications from rejuvenation treatments for wealthy Consortium lords to advanced jump drives.

Khrelen’s, was named for something that resembled an old Earth rhinoceros, but with a body twisted so it could pleasure itself with its own horn. The place was, as the expression goes, jumping every night of the week, crowded with drunken and horny miners and freighter pilots, and that’s where Jara came in.

No one knew or cared about the red and black strips as her lithe, supple body undulated nude in the dance cage. She was a marvel to behold and every patron all but wet themselves at the thought of possessing that astonishing body (and some even did), even for an hour.

Continue reading →

What the Storm Brings

stark desert

© Sue Vincent

Tom Allen lived in his Dad’s old cabin five miles west of New Mexico State Highway 107 along about twenty miles south of Magdalena. The retired astronomer stepped out behind his place and put his left hands on the branch of a dead tree. Figured he’d cut it down for firewood, though he had plenty already for the winter.

“Looks like we’ll be getting some rain from the west, ol’ girl.” He patted Sally’s head, and the golden retriever nuzzled her snout against the leg of his jeans.

He’d been born in a little town south of Albuquerque sixty-six years ago last Friday, so being dressed in his old Stetson, a plaid shirt, faded blue denim jeans and high leather boots seemed normal to him, but the old normal, since he’d spent most of his adult life in places like Pasadena’s JPL, Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, not to mention in the halls of academia. His colleagues at Stanford and MIT would never understand.

“Storm’s getting closer. We’d better head back in, especially before you see some rabbit you want to be chasing.”

Sally barked with ascent and then happily followed the old man back into the house.

Continue reading →