Tag Archives: MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie

Kiesha’s Grand Adventure

airship

From the 1986 animated film “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”.

Grandpa’s rathole, or what he called his “lab,” was full of devices in a state of desuetude. But the journal that arrived by messenger just five days after the old man’s body had been delivered to the crematorium told Kiesha an entirely different story.

The stench she had anticipated wasn’t so bad as she steered her way through the haphazard arrangements of arcane machinery. They were all in a state of becoming, but only one had been completed and was ready for use.

Her Dad told her never to visit here, and that the old man was involved in debauchery, his insipid character being capable of nothing else. A month ago, she would have listened.

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Sacrifice

spider-man

The cover art for Spider-Man issue 33 (1963)

“You’re going to be fine. Just hang in there. We’ve got heavy equipment coming. We’ll have the two of you out of there in an hour.”

“What?”

Ben Howard was on his knees. How did he get here? Wait. The earthquake. The little girl was going to be killed. Somehow he managed to push her in a hollow space as tons of concrete and steel rained down around them. What was that about heavy equipment?

“Can you hear me?”

Ben opened his eyes, not realizing they’d been closed. There was an opening in the rubble just in front of him. A firefighter. That’s who was talking to him.

The girl! He looked down. She was unconscious but breathing, thank God. Oh no.

“She’s not going to make it. Damn it! I didn’t push her all the way clear. An artery got nicked. She’ll bleed out. You’ve got to do something.”

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The Girl Who Liked Pteranodons

turu

Title card for the 1964 episode of Jonny Quest, “Turu the Terrible”

“Grandpa, I want to color.” The almost three-year-old girl showed the new box of crayons to the old man.

“But I thought you said you wanted to go to the park after dinner.”

Her blue eyes brightened. “I go to the park.” She dropped the box on the floor and went hunting for her shoes.

“Hey, wait a minute, Danni. Can you put the crayons away?”

She stopped in mid-stride, anticipating her liberty, wheeled around and ran back. “Oh yeah.”

They left by the side door, and she spent several minutes examining the air conditioner before being escorted by her Grandpa out the gate and to the sidewalk.

As the luminous ball of gas lighting the world slid slowly toward the western horizon, he watched her play on slides, climb ladders, and try to imitate a much older girl who was hanging upside down from the bars. Danni didn’t get very far, but she had a lot of fun introducing Regan to her Grandpa.

That night, after the child had brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas, the old man and the little girl shared one of his fondest memories from childhood on DVD; a couple of episodes of Jonny Quest. She really liked the show with the Pteranodon.

I wrote this for the Saturday Mix writing challenge at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. The idea is to take five words and use their synonyms in the body of a story. The original words are:

  1. paint
  2. release
  3. fan
  4. light
  5. clothes

I’ve bolded the synonyms I used in my tale to make them easier to spot.

I thought about the angst I expressed yesterday over what has been perceived as bigotry and prejudice against politically and socially conservative writers by the mainstream science fiction and fantasy industry, and after a lot of thought, and then writing another piece fo flash fiction this morning called The Unknown Children, I realized the world had much bigger problems for me to be concerned about.

The story above is a compressed version of how I spent yesterday afternoon and evening with my granddaughter. Yes, she really likes the old 1964 animated TV series Jonny Quest, which I watched when I was young, and especially one called Turu the Terrible.

If anyone wants to judge me, fairly or otherwise, they can judge me by what I write and by my humanity and compassion, and if I’m still not good enough, then I’d say they have a much bigger problem than I’ll ever have.

Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled

first kiss

Found at vintage.storymirror.com

With apologizes to Harlan Ellison.

Jeremy was her first real boyfriend. They’d been holding hands while walking to the bus stop after school for a month. Elisa knew her Mom and Dad wouldn’t let her date until she was 16, but that was almost a year away.

What would it be like to kiss him? She’d dreamed about her first kiss ever since she was little. Would he be the man she would marry? Would they have lots of kids and live happily ever after?

They took different buses to get home after school and her’s came first.

“See you tomorrow, Jeremy.”

“Bye, Elisa.”

She could tell he wanted to kiss her good-bye, but not with all these people watching. It would be embarrassing. Besides, when they kissed for the first time, she wanted it to be something special.

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Whatever Happened to Eva?

lover

Lover and the wild @ deviantart

Eva had lost count of how many men she’d slept with, but then this was never about keeping score. She rarely encountered Asmodius, her own seducer, the master incubus who launched her on this sad and lonely path of revenge, since she had fallen so deep into her own abyss, she required little encouragement to continue the descent.

She didn’t travel alone, however. There were a trail of formerly virtuous, noble, and even holy men left in her wake, spiraling down into Hell with her. She never felt sorry for them, no matter how piteously they pleaded with her, how they would lose everything, their wives, their children, their careers. It didn’t matter.

The seductress wasn’t responsible for them falling into her trap, only for setting herself out as the bait. She was the temptation, but the sins were on them.

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The Downfall of Eva

succubus

Depiction of a succubus – found at Ask Mystic Investigations

The Sensualization of Eva was said to be from a Hellish source, her virtue up until that time being considered above reproach. But he was charming to the extreme, if insincere, resulting in that faraway look in her eyes, she being unable to resist his allure.

She had come to the convent a charity case, and Sister Margaretta quipped that the poor child seemed all jangled up by abandonment, poverty, and living on the streets. Eva stayed and took her vows, though a debilitating flip in her personality and intentions had recently resulted in her breaking every one.

Finally, she erupted in a sinful and scandalous rage and walked out, a radical among the obedient, the monastic, and the celebate.

In the months and years to come, Eva would be accused of being a succubus, luring proud and virtuous men to their downfall, but she was only a woman, albeit one trained by Asmodius, the archetypal incubus. But was it truly him, disguised as a Priest, who caused the downfall of Eva within the confines of the convent? Or was it being sold by her mother into slavery at three, murdering her abusive master and “husband” as he slept at five, and then living for the next six years on the streets, surviving as a prostitute and thief? Sometimes, your past never truly leaves you, it only waits.

I wrote this for Wordle #192 hosted at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. The idea is to use at least 10 of the 12 words below (which can include variations) in a poem, short story, or other creative work. I used all 12:

  1. Flip
  2. Insincere
  3. Erupt
  4. Sensualization ((n.) to render sensual)
  5. Hellish
  6. Faraway
  7. Resist
  8. Radical
  9. Jangled Up- Generally refers to the state of being both upset and confused, but can be used for either one of them alone
  10. Charity Case
  11. Debilitating
  12. Archetype

Yes, my tale is dark. That’s just the direction the words took me.

Eva’s story continues in Whatever Happened to Eva?

Behind the Eternity Door

collage

Found at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

There was only one way for Adriene McKnight to follow Douglas Adams’s advice and that was to step out of the timestream. She’d never done it completely, of course, because then she’d lose all recognizable references and never get back, but she could exit the local stream far enough to let her see several others connected to her own.

Opa’s study. He had everything packed up to leave for England. It’s 1934 and the Nazis have made Hamburg an administrative Gau. He wasn’t her Opa then, only a young physician of 23, unmarried, and unwilling to become a pawn of the fascists.

The bust of Oma. She was so beautiful. Opa commissioned it as a wedding gift, only one of twelve female busts made by the famous Erik Van Aar. The sculptor died a year later making the bust worth a fortune. Opa wouldn’t sell it, even when he needed money to go to America in 1940.

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Strange History’s Prelude

seatac

A Delta flight comes in for a landing at Sea-Tac Airport which had record passenger growth in June. (Ellen M Banner/The Seattle Times)

The day Leon Spencer made bail, he followed the instructions of the lawyer who posted it for him and stopped off at his post office box. Sure enough, there was a cashier’s check for more money than he made in a year as a Marine Gunnery Sergeant. Those days were long gone and so, he thought, was his career until he read the email from Carson Everett. There wasn’t much that fazed him anymore, not after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, but he could still be impressed.

“Fuckin’ eh.” The six-foot tall, African-American Marine turned merc, turned “security consultant,” stared at the check in his hand and the note that came with it, which repeated Everett’s instructions to take the first flight to Seatac.

He visited his crappy apartment for the last time to pack a few things, noticing the bales of useless papers, magazines, and other junk he’d be happy to part with. Leon took everything that still had worth to him (which wasn’t much), and beat it out to O’Hare, happy to give Chicago the middle finger.

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From Jazz to Tango

crashing airliner

The dance lessons were not working. First of all, he hated to dance. Of all the things he was good at, dancing wasn’t one of them, in spite of the fact that he was at least adequate at several sports.

Secondly, she hadn’t noticed him. Hardly surprising since he was one of the worst students in their jazz dance class. He only joined so he could observe her without arousing suspicion, but he needed to get closer, and that meant interacting with her.

Their instructor Raoul could be bought, which was how Edison managed to land a spot in an already full class to begin with. Each student was supposed to choose a partner next week and he needed to be hers. A little more flirting with teacher and a stronger hint that he might be interested in some “personal tutelage” after hours would probably do the trick (he’d have to convince the little French tight ass that he was “bi”).

“Kathy, right?”

They were sitting on a mat facing each other, legs open, soles of their feet touching as they stretched.

“With a ‘C’, yes. Can’t you stretch more than this? You’re not really flexible.”

Oh, terrific. She’s snobby and critical. He’d hoped she’d be the type to take pity on one of the less accomplished dancers and offer a few pointers.

“I know. I need to work on it. Name’s Edison.”

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An Unrequited Life

depression

The dance lessons were not working. He’d let Jeremy and Terri talk him into taking jazz dance and it worked out exactly like the yoga lessons, the tennis lessons, and the single, miserable trip to the ice skating rink. Conrad remembered sitting on the ice, nursing his bruises, when a little girl no more than five effortlessly zipped up to him and said, “It’s okay. I fell a lot when I was first learning, too.”

He never went back, and he would never go back into that dance studio again.

“Face it, Conrad. If it’s athletic or physical, you suck at it.”

“Hey, give it a chance.” Jeremy was trying to be encouraging. He had met Jer and his girlfriend Terri in English Lit and the three became fast friends, but they were so much different from Conrad.

“Sorry. I’m going home. See you tomorrow.” Before they could object, he opened the door of his VW Bug, slid in the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

It was a beige ’72 Beetle, and he was so much like it. Simple, easy to maintain, and non-descript.

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