Category Archives: Human Interest

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – VII

Four weeks later, Myrna’s question still pressed on her.

What now?

“What now indeed,” Taffeta thought, bristling at the notion that the only answer she could muster to the seemingly simple question was no answer at all.

What now indeed.

Life for Taffeta and Myrna went on as it always had, simple, rote and uneventful save for the fact that now they had a submachine gun to occupy some of their free time. And for as big a ripple as it put into their lives initially, even that quickly stitched into the fabric of their day to day, or week to week. For now, instead of parting ways after their Thursday lunches and heading home for an antacid and perhaps an afternoon nap, they drove out to their hill for some quality time with Cora.

After that, at home, Taffeta would wipe Cora down the way she learned from various Internet videos. She loaded the magazines to be ready for their next excursion, and she counted the rounds to…

She had yet to understand why she counted the rounds. It was a woeful exercise. Clarity came the instant she glanced at the once grand pyramid of boxes that shrank now week by week. Each count made it painfully obvious that they were running through rounds with little or nothing to show for it and each count filled her with a sense that once the last round popped away and slammed into the dirt, it would all be over…whatever “it” was supposed to be.

Then what?

Taffeta Spaulding was not one much for obsession. She didn’t have an addictive personality. She never took much to the drink. Smoking made her nauseous. If she took the occasional aspirin for a headache or pain it was only because her tried and true method of a lie down with a cold compress didn’t work first, but oh, that gun.

There was just something about that gun.

If someone had told her she would become so taken with it, she would have brushed it off as utter nonsense. And what was her brother thinking sending it to her in the first place. She was not a violent sort. What place did a gun have in her life, much less a .45 caliber M3A1 submachine gun?

Still, there was just something about that gun.

It was about a week ago that she started to keep it near by her virtually around the clock. She carried it from the counter to the table along with her morning cup of coffee. It sat on the edge of the coffee table in the evenings when Taffeta settled in for a read of the newspaper or some television.

She didn’t stare at it, or hold it, but she would peek at it periodically as a parent might of a young child one, to make sure it was still within eyesight, within reach and two, to make sure it wasn’t getting into any trouble.

These didn’t feel like conscious decisions one might make with purpose, but rather, the actions evolved as Cora’s allure and the mystery of her being, and being here, took deeper root.

The next Thursday Taffeta loaded the car as she had for the past several weeks with headgear, safety goggles, Phillies caps, a Thermos of coffee and bullets.

She found Myrna waiting out front when when she pulled into her friend’s driveway. The second the car stopped, Myrna pulled the door open and worked herself into the passenger seat.

“Is this a beautiful day or what?” Myrna said, closing the door and pulling the shoulder strap of the seat belt across her chest. “I’m glad you’re on time. I was hoping we could swing by Cowell’s to pick up my prescription and then the bank for lunch money.”

“I’m always on time, Myrna,” Taffeta said. “In all the years we’ve been going to lunch, when have I ever been late? For that matter, when have I been late for anything?”

“Don’t get indignant dear,” Myrna said, raising her eyebrows and exaggerating a look away as if surprised by Taffeta’s rebuff. “It’s not attractive.” She paused. “It’s just me and my peculiar way of starting a conversation.”

Taffeta silently backed out of the driveway as she had a hundred times and started off down Larchmont heading towards Cowell’s Pharmacy. Despite Myrna’s odd conversation starters, the car remained quiet. It didn’t really matter Taffeta thought. They had had this exact conversation before, maybe twice. They were certain to have it again.

In the pharmacy parking lot, Taffeta pulled into a spot fairly close to the door, because Myrna liked her walks to be brief and with purpose. She turned off the engine and at sat gazing at the door for a moment.

“Are you coming in?” Myrna asked pawing through her purse to triple check the presence of her wallet.

“I guess so,” Taffeta said.

“Don’t get so excited,” Myrna said. “You’ll bust a vessel.” Myrna looked over at Taffeta. “Are you ok?”

“I’m sorry,” Taffeta said quickly while turning her attention to pulling the car key. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. Just in a funk I guess.”

“I guess so. Look if you’d rather…”

“No,” Taffeta said, cutting her short. “I’m good.”

She grabbed her purse with solid grip and hefted it across her lap, then she worked the latch, swung the door open and stepped a foot out onto the pavement all in a fluid motion intent on stopping any additional conversation.

She pulled the strap up over her shoulder and together they walked to the store, stepped on the pad that opened the automatic door and moved into the cool antiseptic air of the drug store.

The next second, as they took their first step forward a clawing pressure flared onto Taffeta’s shoulder, pushing her sideways to the point where she mashed up against Myrna’s shoulder and stopped them dead in their tracks.

“What the,” Myrna said, trying to understand what was going on and moving against the force on her own shoulder that pushed her into Taffeta, nearly making her fall.

As their heads inched closer together, a rough and low voice pushed it’s way between them carried on a wave of air scented in smoke and alcohol.

“Good morning ladies. Welcome to Cowell’s. Let’s go shopping!”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – VI

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“Ha!” Taffeta said, finally. She held out the gun before her as if she just found gold and stared down at it, smiling. “It’s amazing. You need to try it.” She reached up and slapped the top lid closed securing the safety then turned and stepped back toward the car with a new confidence.

“What?” Myrna asked, letting what she thought she heard sink in. “Did I hear you right?” She pulled at her earmuff. “What did you say?”

Taffeta turned, slipping the ear protectors off her ears by pulling the band down so that they now hung at her neck. “Take those off,” she said. “You have to try this and I won’t take no for an answer!” She turned back to the car, her hands moving across the weapon as if she had used it for years. She slipped the old magazine out and slapped it down onto the beach towel, then scooped up the next magazine, snapped it into the gun and slapped it on the bottom to seal the deal.

By the time she turned away Myrna had caught up. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought I heard you say something about me shooting that thing.”

“You have to.”

“I won’t.”

“Yes, but you have to.”

“I won’t do it,” Myrna said, resetting her earmuffs firmly on her head in defiance.

They stood face to face, staring at each other through an amber universe. Taffeta smiled a half smile as her head bobbed up and down quickly, yet subtly. Her eyes were fixed on Myrna’s. Suddenly, she pushed Cora into Myrna’s chest and held it there until Myrna’s hands assured it would not fall to the ground. Her smile grew wider, “You just have to!”

Myrna swallowed hard as she held the warm metal close to her. Her head followed Taffeta as she brushed by, headed back to the spot where the bullet casings littered the ground. Slowly, Myrna turned to follow.

Taffeta stood waving at Myrna to hurry up until she was nearly back to the spot then, crossed her arms in front of her.

“Stand here,” she said, with no more discussion of can’t and won’t.

Myrna stepped where she was told. Taffeta unfolded her arms to physically place Myrna’s hands where they needed to go, “here” and “here”. She put her hands on Myrna’s shoulders and turned her so that she was square against the hill where Taffeta’s now mangled clump of weeds stood awaiting a potential second strike.

“I…,” Myrna tried on more time to protest, but Taffeta made two simple, silent moves. One finger shot up in front of her. Shhh. Then it swept around to point at the hill. Shoot.

Myrna sighed in defeat and raised the gun as Taffeta did earlier, but without the same sense of drive or commitment. She held the gun out in front of her while making a face that implied to anyone watching that she was doing something truly distasteful, like a child forced to take medicine, or a parent toting an infant with an offensive diaper.

She gave one more sideways glance at Taffeta who simply lifted the latch release on the safety, then turned away to the hill and pointed. Shoot.

At once, Myrna squeezed her eyes shut and she pulled on the trigger.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

Because she didn’t pull the gun in as hard as Taffeta did in expectation of the kick, each round caused the muzzle to rise forcing her to wrestle it back to where she thought it belong, all based on a feeling in the heat of the moment because with each shot, she squeezed her eyes tighter, clenched her hands tighter and forced a grimace to spread across her face.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

As she wrestled with the recoil, shooting blind, a sound began to emerge from low in her throat.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

With each shot, the growl grew louder, working its way to the surface until around shot twelve, where it burst free from her in a sort of primal scream.

“Oooooooooooh!”

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

“OOOOOOOOH!”

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

“OOOOOOOOOOH!”

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

“YEEEEAAAAH!” she growled.

The gun stopped shooting and jerking. Myrna’s arms dropped to her side. The gun slapped against her thigh. Her breathe came strong and hard and matched the heavy pounding in her chest. She looked up to the sky slowly raising her arms back up, the gun in one hand, a tight fist formed in the other.

“OOOOOH, YEEEEEAAAAAH!” she howled.

Laughing, Taffeta walked over and slapped her friend on the back!”

“YEAH, MAN!” Myrna said, with a wide smile shaking her head vigorously. “That’s the STUFF! WOO!”

Taffeta slipped her earmuffs back down to hang around her neck. “So…,” she said, unable to move the sly smile from her face. “I guess you wouldn’t want to do it again, huh?”

“Are you kidding?” Myrna said. “Let’s get this old girl loaded up!”

“Well, all right!” Taffeta said. “Maybe this time you’ll open your eyes…or aim or something.”

“Hey now, you’re lucky I shot it at all.”

“I’m lucky you didn’t shoot me!”

Myrna smirked. “There’s still time, lady. Plenty of time.”

After the charge of spraying a lonely, innocent hill of dirt with .45 mm slugs, Myrna’s attitude toward the gun changed dramatically. She helped load the empty magazines. She wiped the powder residue and oil from the body and barrel. Taffeta even caught her calling it Cora.

Between them, they drove nearly 500 rounds into that hill before plopping down on a blanket pulled near an old stump for some lunch in a gunpowder induced afterglow.

They found themselves much hungrier than they expected. The adrenaline rush, the pops of dirt and grass that exploded from the hillside as each slug slammed into it left gave them an indescribable charge.

“I just had no idea,” said Myrna, wiping a touch of mustard from the corner of her mouth. “No idea!”

“I expected, based on my research you know,” Taffeta said. “But all the reading and watching videos is nothing like the real thing.

“It takes a bit out of you,” Myrna said, “My hands are sore. So are my arms.”

Taffeta sighed, leaning back against the trunk of the tree that bathed them in a cool afternoon shade. Her gaze stuck to Cora. “I feel great,” she said.

Myrna’s gaze also fell to the black steel. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“Figured it out?”

“Why you have it,” Myrna said. “Why your brother sent it to you.”

“I…,” Taffeta paused, “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“Well, then,” Myrna said. “What now?”

Taffeta looked harder at the gun, her eyes squinting slightly.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – V

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For two ladies of a certain level of life experience with preceptively little to do, they couldn’t make arrangements for their first foray into the world of advanced weaponry training for about a week after their initial conversation.

Between doctor visits, a solid bout of rain and the regular schedule of a routine life, the opportunities for them to slip away somewhere to shoot the gun were few and far between. Still, neither of them let the time go to waste. Taffeta read the manual cover to cover three times to make sure she was familiar with the gun and how it worked. She made sure it was properly oiled. She loaded the four magazines with 30 rounds each. She watched the YouTube to learn more about the basics of how to shoot.

Leary of being seen walking around with such a thing, and the questions it might raise, she found an old duffle bag in the attic that Abel had for years, but never used. It had a comfortable, adjustable shoulder strap and plenty of room for Cora, the magazines, and extra rounds…just in case. She shook her head at the thought. In case what?? For extra protection, she covered everything with an old beach towel featuring a fading sun and a small group of palm trees sitting on a beach that dipped down into the ocean.

Myrna focused on other things like securing protective eye-wear, securing protective ear-wear and looking over bulletproof vests. She started putting together a bag of her own, but where Taffeta’s served the sole purpose of safely transporting the gun, Myrna’s leaned toward preparation for the apocalypse. She had bandages, gauze, bandage scissors and enough medical tape to field dress anything from a paper cut to an amputation, not that she knew how to do any of that. She added the tie to an old robe and a ruler in case she needed a tourniquet. She had the protective ear-ware and eye-ware. She had two Phillies ball caps, a small canteen, a flashlight, a large utility knife that featured things like pliers, tweezers, a saw and a fork. She didn’t know what to expect, so she packed for anything…everything.

The following Thursday had a good feel to it. Both of their calendars were clear and they figured avoiding the weekend improved their chances of doing their work in relative privacy.

Taffeta drove. After packing Cora’s bag, a small picnic lunch – along with her medication of course – and some bottles water, she took off for Myrna’s. Arriving early as planned, Taffeta ended up loading what now became Myrna’s several survival bags into the trunk and they moved out onto the highway.

Taffeta figured she’d head to the Taylor Mills area down in the Braxton Hills. Abel used to say there was good fishing there, but he never seemed to catch much beyond the good-sized sandwich he picked up at the counter deli in Chastings and a decent nap under a tree in the warm sun. The thought made her smile.

They drove for a good hour and a half, only stopping once for the restroom and to get some fresh coffee. Once they got into the hills, they started looking for one of the logging trails used by the mill workers back in the day when the area was mostly forest and ready for progress to share in its bounty.

Taffeta turned the car into a dirt and stone pull off marked by a tired old sign that simply read, Plank Road. The ladies looked at each other, shrugging in unison, Taffeta stepped on the gas and turned in.

Ten minutes later, after a few healthy bumps and lumps courtesy of the old road, they found a small clearing off to the side where a patch of grass lead up to a small hill next to a rolling stream. Perfect.

“This,” Myrna said, getting out of the car, stretching her back and breathing deep. “Is lovely!”

“Isn’t it?” Taffeta said.

“Just listen to that,” Myrna said. “Nothing but the cool breeze and the tripping water of the gentle stream. Hello nature!” she called into the air. “We’ve brought you some shock and awe, a genuine thunder stick to ripple your placid beauty!”

“Oh, hush,” said Taffeta, getting out of the car and moving to the back. “You’re really not making this very easy…or very fun.”

“I’m sorry, Taffy. Really, I think you’ve chosen a lovely place for us to begin our lives of crime. I mean, how many laws could we be breaking by firing an antique, unlicensed sub-machine gun while trespassing on God knows who’s property?” She paused. “Pretty, though it is.”

Taffeta opened the trunk and stopped. “You’re right you know,” she said.

“You mean about the shooting the unlicensed gun or trespassing?” said Myrna.

“About it being pretty. It’s really a lovely day!”

Myrna, deflated, slunk back to the car to help with the bags.

Taffeta moved around to the front of the car and set the duffle on top. Zipping it open she pulled out the beach towel and set it across the hood. She pulled out the gun and turned to Myrna as she stepped up behind. “Here,” she said. “Hold Cora a moment will you?”

Taffeta’s outstretched hand with the gun nearly hit Myrna in the chest causing her friend to recoil and drop her bag as if she was facing down a poisonous snake. “Yah,” she said, impulsively grabbing the cold metal weapon as if she had no choice. She grimaced, pushing the thing out in front of her to full arm’s length.

“You did not tell me that you named it.”

“Huh,” Taffeta said quickly before turning back to her duffle to remove the magazines and place them gently on the towel. “Oh…that. Yeah. I’m not sure I did that.”

“Are you telling me your brother named it and sealed up a card in the case with it?”

“No, I guess I named it, but I didn’t ‘name’ it. It just seemed to…have a name.”

Myrna swallowed. “Crazier and crazier,” she said. “Tell me honestly. You’re not planning on killing me all the way out here in the middle of nowhere right.”

Taffeta stopped her prep work and turned to her friend. “That…is ridiculous.” She reached over and took the gun from Myrna and proceeded to check it out. “We are here for one thing and one thing only. To learn how to shoot this thing.”

“Or die trying,” Myrna said in a whisper.

“I heard that.”

“Please, Lord, bless my friend Taffy here, for she is going through…something and as you are my witness, I am here to help and support.”

“Nice,” Taffeta said shaking her head at her friend. Shifting the gun in her hand she grabbed one of the magazines and stepped into the grass.

“So, please…,” Myrna said even softer. “Anything you can do to prevent us from blowing our faces off would be greatly appreciated.”

“I hear you!”

“Amen!”

Myrna moved to catch up with Taffeta who seemed to find a spot she felt good about.

“This is all going to be fine. Trust me.”

“Keep an eye on us down here Lord.”

“Hush,” Taffeta said. “Now, this part goes in here like this.” She snapped the magazine into the gun and popped it on the bottom like she saw them do on the videos to make sure it clicked in. “There. Easy as pie.”

“So, it’s loaded?”

“It’s loaded.”

“Greeeeeaaat,” Myrna said. “Let the fun begin.”

“As long as this cover is down the safety is on and you can’t shoot it,” Taffeta said, pulling on the trigger. “See?”

“Yeah, great,” said Myrna, “Can you take it easy there? Just in case it remembers it’s an antique and forgets what the safety is supposed to do?”

“I’ve done my research lady,” Taffeta said. “Cora here is really in exceptional condition.”

“We should have sold it.”

“Where would we sell it?” Taffeta asked. “How could we sell it without raising all sorts of questions and creating all sorts of problems?”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Myrna said. “This current plan of yours is so much more…low risk.”

Taffeta ignored her and began to move into a shooter’s stance, at least the way she imagined it.

“OK,” she said. “I’m going to aim for that cluster of weeds.”

“Greeeeeaaat,” Myrna said.

Taffeta reached up slowly to release the safety.

“WAIT!” Myrna said, turning quickly to head back to the car.

Taffeta’s heart jumped and her arms limply held the gun at her side.

Myrna came back dragging one of her bags behind her. “I must be losing my mind too!” she yelled. She stopped, pried open her bag and started pulling things out. “Here,” she said. “Put these on. No questions or I’m making my phone call.”

A moment later, they each stood in the clearing staring at each other. The large yellow tinted goggles and black earmuffs made them look made them look like bees ear things wearing baseball caps.

“We look ridiculous,” Taffeta said.

“Whaaat?” Myrna said pulling at her headgear.

“We look ridiculous!”

“Better to look ridiculous than to spend time in an emergency room.”

“What?” Taffeta said.

“Better to look…,” Myrna started, then waved it off. “Nothing.”

Taffeta turned back in to her stance than back toward Myrna. “Why the Phillies?”

“Whaaat?” Myrna said pulling again at her headgear.

“Why the Phillies?” Taffeta said even louder. “The hats!”

“They were on the clearance table at Chance. It was that or one that said ‘Eat My Dust,'” Myrna said. “I thought that was just terrible. Eat my dust. Who says that?”

Taffeta looked at Myrna through a field of amber, shrugged and moved back into her shooting stance. She reached over and opened the latch to release the safety. She set her grip on the weapon and slid her finger up over the trigger.

“So, it’s loaded then?” Myrna said peering over Taffeta’s shoulder and loud to make sure Taffeta heard her through her earmuffs. The break in Taffeta’s concentration caused her to jump nearly pulling the trigger and shooting nowhere near the direction she intended.

She pointed the gun barrel down. “Are you serious?!”

“What?” Myrna said again pulling at her headgear.

“You’re going to get us killed!”

“I just wanted to make sure!”

“Yes,” Taffeta said. “It’s loaded. The safety is off. It’s ready to go.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Myrna said. “By all means Bonnie Parker. Shoot your gun!”

Taffeta smirked hard and then turned back into her stance, taking an extra deep breath to calm herself and set her resolve. She leveled the gun at the target clump of weeds and inched he finger to the trigger.

“C’mon, Cora. Baby needs a new pair of shoes,” she whispered or said in her head, which seemed like an off thing to say, and squeezed.

The fact that the gun didn’t explode in her face was as much of a surprise to her as the actual kick of the recoil which forced her to bear down on her grip.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

The gun fired over and over again in steady succession.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Her eyes squinted through the yellow tinted lens as the targeted clump of weeds danced at the attack of lead slugs that bit into it one after the other.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

It all unfolded before her as she was a part of it and yet outside of it as an observer.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Cora grew warm in her hands as each bullet burst through the muzzle. Each shell ejected out through the top and rained down to the ground at her feet.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

She grit her teeth and squeezed on the trigger even harder.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Then…silence.

She stood firm in her stance with her hands gripping the metal tight and and the trigger pulled. The subtle smell of warm oil and smoke floated up to brush her nose. Her breath was strong and steady. Her heart beat strong and steady in her chest. She stood firm, staring at the once clump of weeds.

“Taffy?” Myrna said, softly. She reached out slowly and placed her hand on Taffeta’s shoulder. Her friend flinched ever so slightly under her touch. “Taffy? You all right?”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – IV

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“Myrna.”

Nothing.

“Myrna, honey,” Taffeta said, softly dabbing her friend’s forehead with a moistened towel.

Nothing.

“Myrrrrnaaa,” Taffeta said in a low soft voice, quietly singing out the name and hoping her friend would come to.

From the time the clattering sound crawled through the line and reached her ear, it took about fifteen minutes for Taffeta to hang up the phone and get over to Myrna’s house. As the noise registered in her head, the burn of genuine fear and concern filled her chest, for even if Myrna dropped to the ground simply and directly, any fall at their age could be dangerous. It could mean heart attacks, and broken bones, and long convalescences, and pain, and… She shook the thoughts away.

Once she pulled into Myrna’s driveway, she immediately went around to the back of the house. Even though she could get a glimpse of her friend lying there in the middle of her kitchen floor, she knocked quickly, to be polite. When Myrna didn’t move, Taffeta tipped up the edge of a small potted geranium, slid out the extra house key made her way in.

Dropping her purse and the key as she entered, she ran over to the body as fast as she could without tripping, falling or having a heart attack of her own. She wouldn’t mind, but Myrna would mind a great deal if someone came in and found two ladies of a certain age lying next to each other, or however they ended up dead, on her kitchen floor. Most undignified. Scandalous even.

The handset of the phone lay on the floor next to Myrna’s head screeching the high-pitched buzzing tone you get when you leave the line open too long after the person on the other side hangs up.

Taffeta reached over and pushed the button marked by the small red phone icon filling the room with silence. Then she moved closer to Myrna, her movements torn between eagerness and trepidation. She inched her ear close to her friend’s face in the hopes of hearing a breath. Myrna obliged by exhaling a soft, thin, raspy whistle of a breath. Taffeta sighed, swallowed hard and allowed herself to draw a deep calming breath for herself. Myrna was alive.

And just as Taffeta was about to look for a potential head injury, Myrna countered the exhale with a robust and snarling deep snore that seemed to rattle the floor. Myrna was asleep.

Taffeta got herself up, got over to the kitchen sink, moisten a good corner of the towel that sat on the counter and returned to her friend’s side all before the next snore cycle completed itself.

“Myrna?” she said again, nudging her shoulder a bit. “If you sleep on this floor anymore your back will punish you for weeks.”

Nothing. Setting the towel down on the table, Taffeta reached over and lightly tapped at her friend’s cheek.

“Myr…”

“FIRE!”

Taffeta jerked back uncontrollably at the speed at which Myrna’s eyes opened, wide with confusion. A lucky move, for at the same time, Myrna’s arms and legs shot straight out from their resting places and grew rigid, knocking Taffeta back further still. If she were close enough to take the full, direct blow Myrna might have knocked her across the kitchen and into the cabinets. She was not a large woman per se, but Myrna was sturdy and still had a lot of strength left for someone whose primary form of exercise seemed to be walking, worry and hefting the occasional bowl of chips to the couch when she watched her stories on TV.

Myrna’s eyes quickly darted back and forth as she tried to steady herself, tried to calm down, tried to recall where she was and tried to recall what the heck she might have been dreaming all at the same time.

“Oh my word,” she said. Catching sight of Taffeta rolling backwards, Myrna struggled around to her knees and reached out to catch her friend. Getting a hand on her jacket, she only succeeded in pulling at Taffeta in such a way that she spun away on the smooth linoleum causing her to now fall forward.

“Stop!” Taffeta yelled out at as kitchen whirled around her. “Stop! Stop moving!”

They both stilled themselves until the motion stopped and the two of them lay breathing heavily in a pile on the kitchen floor.

“Jesus, Taffy,” Myrna said now facing down. “You scared me to death!”

“Ha!,” Taffeta said in a puff while staring at the ceiling. “I thought you were dead already!”

“I guess I fainted.”

“I guess.”

They stayed prone on the floor taking the time to get their breathing and the heartbeats under control, taking personal inventories on whether either of them might have actually hurt themselves.

“Whew,” Myrna said. “We must look a sight!”

“We do,” Taffeta said in a small laugh. “Who knew you could move so fast? You almost knocked me into the next room.”

“I’m so sorry Taffy. I should have been more careful.”

“How could you? You didn’t even know where you were.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m fine. How are you?”

Myrna brought her hands up to the floor and raised her head. “I’m fine. I guess once I fainted, I must have just drifted into sleep.”

The two helped each other up and plopped down into chairs at the kitchen table.

“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” Myrna said. “The business of the gun and all seems to have settled into my head. It must be even worse for you. I don’t even have that horrible thing in my house.”

“Actually,” Taffeta said, rearranging the salt and pepper shakers on the table back up against the small napkin holder. “I slept great, like a log really. And you know, it’s not a horrible thing.”

“The gun?” Myrna asked. “The gun, your ‘sub-machine gun’ is not a horrible thing?”

“It’s a thing Myrna. It can be used in horrible ways, but all in all, the thing itself is just what it is. Like a car, or a kitchen knife or a hair dryer, it’s a thing that only does what we do with them.”

“A hair dryer?” Myrna asked. “How do you lump a hair dryer and a sub-machine gun in the same class?”

“People have done horrible things with hair dryers. What about that incident in Cardington where that woman killed her husband by throwing the hair dryer into the tub with him?”

“Oh my Lord, why would you think of that?”

“I’m just making the point,” Taffeta said.

“And I don’t think it was a hair dryer.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No,” Myrna said. “I think I remember it being a toaster.”

“A toaster?”

“Yup.”

“Hm,” Taffeta said. “How did he not see that coming?”

“What?”

“Who keeps a toaster in their bathroom?” Taffeta asked. “I think if I saw a toaster in the bathroom, I’d have to ask some questions.”

“Young people,” Myrna said shaking her head. “Who knows what they are into these days?”

“I guess,” Taffeta said. “Look, about the gun.” She decided the pepper looked better on the other side. “Now that you’re sitting, I meant it. I want to learn how to shoot it.”

“Ugh,” Myrna said, rolling her head back. “Why on earth do you want to do that? It can’t be safe. I mean, it looked like an antique!”

“I think it is.”

“Well, there you go! Another reason not to shoot the thing! Guns, especially old guns are not something people should mess around with.”

“Guns,” Taffeta said, “Especially guns of ‘a certain level of experience,’ can still have a lot of good use in them.”

Myrna trained her eyes on her friend. “What ‘good use’ can you possibly see for an antique sub-machine gun?”

Taffeta met her gaze for a moment, but turned back to her work with the condiments. “I don’t know. Nothing I guess. I just think, I mean…it’s a feeling.”

“A feeling.”

“Yeah, I mean, why do you think I got it?”

“It might be that your brother, God rest his soul, might have been… a little insane. No offense,” Myrna said. “I’m thinking that if you want to go around shooting that relic, and please don’t take this personally, because you know I love you and my only wish for you is health and happiness, but frankly, that seems a little insane to me. Sorry, but there, I said it.”

“I love you too,” Taffeta said reaching for Myrna’s hands across the table. “You know I do. I appreciate your honesty, really, I do, but I’m not insane. It’s just a feeling I have. I look at it and I know that it’s OK. And while I think it’s been through some stuff, I don’t think it was ever used to kill anyone.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Myrna said squeezing Taffeta’s hands hard enough to urge her message through them. “Because we are here, and because this is between us, I can tell you that the things you’re saying right now sound a little more crazy with every pass.”

“It’s a feeling, that’s all I can say.”

“A feeling.”

“Right,” Taffeta said. “I’m going to teach myself how to shoot that gun. I feel like I have to.”

“You have to?” Myrna asked.

“Yes, I feel like a have to.”

They sat in silence as the small table in Myrna’s kitchen with their arms stretched out toward each other and their hands clasped tight.

“Well then,” Myrna said, after a deep and dramatic breath while squeezing her friend’s hands with each word as if to underline her intent. “I cannot in all good conscience allow to do such a fool thing on your own. If you are going to go through this ridiculous exercise, you must must promise me that you will include me every step of the way. If you don’t, I will call the police, no…, the FBI and tell them that my friend has gone off her nut and is planning on shooting up the civic hall bingo center.”

Taffeta smiled. “You hate bingo.”

“I do,” Myrna said. “And frankly, I wouldn’t mind if you ran every one of the…how many bullets did you say you have?

“Two thousand.”

“And frankly, I wouldn’t mind if you ran every one of those 2,o0o bullets through the place – provided nobody gets hurt of course, but the FBI doesn’t need to know that. They just need to know about the crazy lady with the antique sub-machine gun who is out looking for trouble.”

Taffeta squeezed her friend’s hands and smiled. “That is just about the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“I can just imagine,” Myrna said. “You’re out there, God knows where, shooting your gun and something happens to to you. You’ll need me nearby just to call the ambulance.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, God forbid you shoot yourself,” Myrna said. “Or worse, somebody else!”

“I agree,” Taffeta said. “It will be better to have you along.”

“You could end up igniting some international incident. People will think you’ve gone and joined a gang!”

“Who would think that?”

“I don’t know,” Myrna said. “I didn’t think any of all this so far could have happened and now instead of calling the FBI or trying to talk you out of this foolishness right now, I’m talking myself into going crazy with you!”

“You’re a good friend.”

“I’m an idiot.”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – III

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Lester J. Munce was Taffeta’s only sibling and four years her senior. A standard issue American quality male, he found moderate success in all he did by capitalizing on a certain innate cleverness, the ability to both see and seize an opportunity and an infectious, affable personality. He played basketball in high school. He served his country in Viet Nam. He never went to college, but seemed adequately served by the education his life experiences gave him. He never married, but seemed adequately completed as a person through a series of long-term relationships that carried him through the bulk of his life.

He might have been what some would call wealthy due mostly, to his keen ability to sniff out a good business deal.

He might have been what some might call eccentric, for while he wasn’t one to flaunt his affluence, he did enjoy his hobbies. He fancied himself an explorer, a discoverer, a collector.

Once Taffeta settled into her life with Abel, the time she was able to spend with Lester became rare and fleeting. There never was an ounce of bad blood between them, they just focused on being who and where they were at that point in their lives. On those occasions when they could get together, the stories, laughter and hugs flowed like wine.

While she knew nothing of its existence, it was no surprise to Taffeta that he would have a “facility” filled with crates holding the many treasures he collected over the course of his travels. It was no surprise that in the event of his death, those treasures would be distributed to his family, friends and acquaintances according to his very specific directions.

What did surprise her was the fact that she received anything at all, for she recalled a conversation where his ultimate goal was to have his life complete a cycle in which there was nothing left to give. He came into this life with nothing. He planned to leave the same way. Still, in the absence of full control, a decent will was the next best thing.

The other thing that tossed her a bit was the items bestowed upon her.

The circus of events that surrounded the arrival of the crates seemed distant and unreal. What a morning.

Myrna, whether completely emotionally overwhelmed by the sight of what they found in the crates, or deciding to embrace the drama in the concept of being completely emotionally overwhelmed, excused herself from the obligation of lunch that day and decided that what she really needed at that point in her life was a good ‘lie down.” A Billingham version of catching a touch of the vapors.

All the better for Taffeta who spent the time getting back to getting regular by catching up on her pill schedule, getting something to eat and then taking the afternoon to further explore the “gift” that seemed to be consuming her sitting room.

She started with the gun.

Pulling it out of the crate, she noticed that while it had a bit of heft, it wasn’t heavy. Depending on the calibration of her bathroom scale, it came in at about nine pounds. Under the packing material she located the service manual and what the service manual then defined as four empty “magazines.”

According to the manual, what she had here was a .45-caliber M3A1 submachine gun. The Google told her it was commonly referred to as a “greaser,” not so much for what it did to whatever was in front of it, but rather, because apparently, it looked a bit like a mechanic’s grease gun. All the better for she found the concept of “greasing” somebody unsettling.

She learned that each bullet was called a “round” and that each magazine could hold thirty rounds. She learned that it could probably shoot about a hundred rounds a minute, a stupid statistic to her considering the thing only held thirty bullets at a time. And, depending on where you did your research, the gun could shoot effectively anywhere between 50 and 100 yards.

It seemed obvious enough where one’s hands were supposed to go and while she shifted it around to get a feel for it, she put extra effort into avoiding the trigger…just in case. It also came with what she saw as a lightly frayed, yet functional strap.

She moved all the gun pieces and parts from the crate until it was empty and placed them on a towel across her dining room table as if on display. She convinced herself it helped her better understand what she was dealing with to see it all before her.

Doing the same with the second crate, she moved boxes of bullets, noted as 230 grain .45 ACP rounds, from the sitting room to the dining room table. With the last box in place, she looked over the pyramid of ammo, some 2000 rounds in all by her calculation, that proved to be an effective visual backdrop for the gun. She resisted the strong urge to take a picture.

Standing there, staring at it all, she found it didn’t make any more sense why she had these things once they were out of the crates than it did when she first opened them. As she stood tracing her eyes back and forth across her new inheritance, she found herself side-stepping to the window. Without looking, she reached up and pulled the cord to draw the drapes. Not that she cared much, but what would the neighbors think?

Despite having what she equated to a small armory in her home, at least compared to what she was used to, she slept surprisingly well. Her eyes popped open refreshed and ready at 7:26 am just like always and everything felt so incredibly normal and routine that began to imagine that the whole adventure might have been just a dream.

She made her bed, kissed Abel’s pillow, washed, got dressed and moved to the kitchen for breakfast, totally unaware that the urge to confirm if the dream was real or not had quickened her process quite a bit. Walking toward the dining room, she paused. She drew in a slight breath flavored with a mild taste of apprehension she had not expected, then held it and peaked ever so slightly past the door jamb.

Still there.

Forgetting breakfast, she exhaled in a gush of relief and stepped quickly into the room and up to the table like a child on Christmas morning.

“Cora!”

She caught herself. She stopped quickly just short of the table. The tiny step backwards was for, “Balance,” she said, her soft words crushing the silence. Her eyes traced the form of the weapon and the small mountain of bullets. “Oh…you did not just go and name that gun Cora.”

But she did.

She reworked the back pedal into forward momentum and pressed up against the edge of the table.

“Or, did I?” she said. “Cora seems like a perfectly normal name for a submachine gun, much better than being a ‘greaser.'”

Her mind churned. “What else could you be? Rocko? Doniella? Crystal? Monique?” She poured through names like she was reading the phonebook. Nothing fit. Nothing needed to fit. She reached down and placed her hand on the cool steel.

“Cora,” she said.

The four empty ammunition magazines sat straight and still next to the gun as she brushed her fingers over them. It’s real, she thought. But…

Riiing!

Much like the doorbell, the phone rarely rang anymore. Taffeta was so singularly focused on the daydream that the intrusion nearly caused her to fall. Regularity and balance were key to an old…an “experienced person’s” survival as food and water.

Riiing!

She pulled away from the table and stepped into the kitchen to grab the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Taffy? It’s Myrna”

“Hi, yeah, I gathered.”

“First, let me apologize for leaving you in such a spot yesterday.”

“It’s OK. I…”

“It is not OK. I knew you were going to say that, but I won’t accept that. It was rude of me to leave you yesterday in such a spot and I can not even believe I didn’t call to chuck on you before now!”

“Myrna…”

“Now, I just will not accept forgiveness so easily.”

“It’s really all right.”

“It’s not and I apologize from the very bottom of my heart.”

Taffeta paused, partly to let the apology sink in, partly to help Myrna feel good and absolved and partly to take a moment to peek back into the dining room.

“Myrna?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Feel better?”

“Twelve percent,” Myrna said, “But that’s better than nothing.”

“All right then…”

“Do you still have that…thing?” Myrna asked, the tilt in her voice added a dollop of disgust to the word thing.

“Yes,” Taffeta said. “Yes, it’s still here. It’s all right here. I have one submachine gun and about 2000 bullets.”

“Two thousand bullets?!”

‘”Yup,” Taffeta said.

“A SUB-machine gun?”

“Yup.”

“Well…,” Myrna worked to process the words as fast as she could. “What do you plan to do with it? How do you plan to get rid of it?”

Taffeta thought. She really hadn’t gotten that far. She unpacked it, weighed it, set up a small shrine to it surrounded by boxes of bullets on her dining room table and was for some reason, very glad that it was all still right where she left it.

“I guess I have to keep it.”

“WHAT?”

Taffeta pulled the phone from her ear as the shrill screech of Myrna’s voice bore into her head.

“You cannot mean that!”

“Well, what can I do?” she said. “It’s from Lester. It’s the last thing he will ever give me. He chose this specifically for me.”

“To what end, Taffy? What kind of person, family or not, gives another person, family or not, a sub-machine gun and 2,000 bullets? I mean really!”

“He was my brother.”

Each sat on one end of a silent connection for what seemed like a long time.

“Again,” Myrna said finally. “I’m sorry. He was your brother and it is a gift. It’s not right for me to judge the quality of a gift shared between two people. You deserve so much more in a friend.”

“It’s fine, Myrna,” Taffeta said. “You’re a good friend. And you’re right. It’s a weird thing to give to someone, but…I don’t know…it seems like a good gift.”

“How could it be a good gift?”

“I don’t know. When I came down this morning, it all felt like a dream and when I saw Cora there, surrounded by the boxes of ammo, I just…”

Another helping of silence wedged itself between them.

“Wait,” Myrna broke in again. “Did you say Cora?”

“Did I?” Taffeta said, not certain whether she said it out loud or just thought it.

“You named that thing?”

Chlunk!

Taffeta jumped at the noise.

“Myrna?”

Silence.

“Myrna?”

The sounds of struggle reached through the receiver.

“Myrna!” Taffeta said pushing back on a wave of panic.

“Sorry… Sorry…,” Myrna said finally. “I’m all right. I dropped the phone!”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. I just…when you said you named your gun, what…Cora is it? I just lost my balance a little. I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

“Take it easy over there.”

“I got it. I’m sitting down now. I’m fine.’

“You scared me,” Taffeta said.

“I scared you? Ha!,” Myrna said still settling the phone into place.”You name your sub-machine gun Cora, and I scare you. That’s funny.”

“Are you sure you’re ok?”

“Fine. Yes. Right as rain.”

More silence rose up between the audible spurts of Myrna’s breath.

“Myrna?”

“Whew…, yes dear?”

“I’m going to teach myself how to shoot it.”

CHLUNK!

“Myrna?”

Nothing.

“Myrna?!”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – II

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“Holy Shit! It’s a gun!” Myrna shouted, dropping the page from Deffert, Smith and Deffert.

“Myrna Billingham!” Taffeta said, mostly joking, but sill a little shocked. “Such language!”

“Are you shitting me? Is that not a gun?” Myra said pointing down at the open crate.

“Looks like,” Taffeta said with a small grunt as she shifted from her knees to her butt.

“And you’re OK with that?”

“Well,” Taffeta said, leaning her nose closer to the inside of the crate, not brave enough yet to touch the thing. “I’m not really sure what we have here, or why we have it. So I’m not sure how OK I can be with it.”

Myrna quickly turned and stepped toward the door. “Maybe it’s not too late! We can catch the delivery man and have him take the dreadful thing away.”

As she grabbed that handle and swung the door wide to wave the Daily Parcel man down, she was met with an unexpected sight.

“JESUS!”

Myrna’s shriek sent a charge through Taffeta which inspired her to get to her feet as fast as she could manage. Her friend rolled away from the door, but did so along the wall so that she wouldn’t drop to the floor. Her eyes grew wide as plates, as Taffeta’s grandmother used to say. As one hand splayed out against the wall for support, the other clutched at her chest hoping against hope that her heart would not come bursting out through her ribs. Her heavy breath came and went so hard, her lower lip moved ever so slightly in and out with its raspy rhythm.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am!” said the voice from the other side of the door. The Daily Parcel man, who had not been gone five minutes leaned in a bit to make sure the woman was all right – his own heart beat heavy with the shock of the door swinging open just as he was about to push the door bell. “I didn’t mean to startled you.”

Taffeta reached the door with her hands up and waving. “Don’t worry about it young man,” she said. Again, hating hearing her mouth say those words. They made her sound like Katherine Hepburn. “She gets startled on a regular basis. It’s a thing with her…like exercise.”

Myrna stood fast against, that wall, but turned her head fast and squinted in protest at Taffeta’s words.

“How can I help you?” Taffeta said.

“I’m sorry Ma’am, but as I pulled away, my eye caught the list here and there is another crate. The one I brought a bit ago was one of two. And this here,” he said patting the large crate on the dolly next to him. “Is two of two. Can I bring it in.”

“Oh mercy, wait!” Myrna yelled out, rolling her eyes and her head in exaggerated exasperation. “We’re not decent!”

It was Taffeta’s turn to look back at her friend with wide eyes and a gaping mouth that whispered, “What?!”

Myrna pushed away from the wall and lunged, if one could call it an official lunge, toward the crate on the floor. She snapped up the foam and threw it across the open crate to hide the gun underneath. Then she righted herself smoothed her shirt by tugging at the bottom hem and set her glasses right on the front of her chest. She took a deep breath, plastered a smile on her face and as she took her a step toward the door, she let her finger pull the strands of hair that fell down in front of her face back over her ear as if she were making a stage entrance.

“Yes, pleeease,” she said with a cartoon like, exaggerated kindness that clearly implied there was nothing to see here, certainly not a gun of sorts. “Taffeta, step aside so the man can do his work.”

Taffeta cocked her head a bit as her eyes followed her friend. What’s with the southern accent Daisy Mae?

Daily Parcel grabbed the handles of the dolly, gave it a spin and a healthy tug up and over the threshold into the small front room. He set two of two next to one of two, grabbed the clipboard off the top of the crate and handed it to Taffeta to sign.

“That was a heavy one,” he said, noticing the first crate was open. “What did you get if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Jelly of the month club!” Myrna said stepping in front of the open crate. “Yes, premium jams and jellies from around the world.” She moved in a rather quick and fluid motion to first block his view of the open crate, then reach up to gently guide him toward the door with a soft and flowing touch to his shoulder. “Ladies of our… experience, have earned the right to enjoy some of the finer things and these jellies are just to die for.”

Taffeta caught her eyes at about mid roll.

Myrna continued to guide the man toward the door, taking the clipboard from Taffeta, handing it to him and shuffling him outside. “Goodbye now,” she said, nearly singing it as she started to wave. “Safe journey! Long life!” She continued to spew various well wishes and valedictions after the man as he moved down the walkway and she pulled back into the house to where she could shut the door. The second the door clicked, the flowery and sunny disposition melted into a rush of panic and fear as she pushed against the door, bolting locks and setting chains as if something were fighting to get in from the other side.

She spun around, leaned hard against the door with her arms outstretched and breathed a huge and dramatic sigh, “Whew! That was close.”

Taffeta stood motionless for a moment looking at her friend who was effectively holding the imaginary evil at bay.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Myrna said, still breathing heavy from the excitement.

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

Taffeta looked close a moment longer. “We’re not decent? What was that?”

“I panicked.”

“I’ll say. Who knows what story mister Daily Parcel is going to share when he gets home about the indecent, crazy old ladies who just got two giant crates of exotic jellies and jams from around the world.” She turned back to the crates.

Myrna pulled her self from the door, “It’ll be better than a story about two crazy old, er, two ladies with profound life experience who happen to be in the gun trade!”

“Gun trade?” Taffeta said, not fully committing to the argument. “I hardly believe one gun, which we didn’t even know existed 20 minutes ago, qualifies us as gun runners or criminals.”

“Maybe not,” Myrna said, “Unless create number two here is also full of guns!”

“True,” Taffeta said. “But I thought you wanted to catch that man to have him take the gun away. We could have been done with it by now.”

Myrna fiddled and adjusted the glasses on her chest that hung from a chain around her neck. “I panicked.”

Taffeta reached over and patted her friend’s shoulder, “I know sweetie. It’s ok.”

After a moment she stepped away, reached down for the crowbar and moved toward the second crate. Giving it the once over, she saw that it was a bit bigger than the first and she could tell heavier by the way Daily Parcel moved it. She sought a spot to stick the crowbar and pried up along the edges until she could pull the lid off.

Myrna peered over her friend’s shoulder as she pulled away the packing paper.

“Huh…,” Taffeta said.

“Mother Mary pray for us,” Myrna said behind her. “Bullets.”

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding

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Despite the fact that she stopped using an alarm clock several years ago, it was a rare event when Taffeta Spaulding slept beyond 7:26 am.

This morning, her eyes fluttered open into a beam of sun that made her squint and shift her head into a thin line of shade away from the intrusion into her slumber.

Pulling the sheets from their restrictive placement near her neck she raised her head to get a better look at the clock.

9:58

“Well,” she said to the room, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. “That’s a hell of a thing.” She couldn’t remember the last day the clock greeted her waking with anything but 7:26.

She pulled the covers further away, crawled out of bed and set about the rigors of her routine. It was later, of course. Quite a bit later than usual, so she had to keep moving if she was to stay on schedule. The doctor was very keen on reminding her ad nauseam about the importance of maintaining a healthy and regular schedule.

“Pfft,” she thought. The focus on regular everything seemed to be the only thing she was taking away from being older. Regular this, regular that…regular my ass.

She smiled a bit as she worked. “That too,” she said.

She walked around pulling and straightening the sheets and blankets as she made her bed, pausing for a moment to kiss the palm of her hand and place it on the pillow that lay undisturbed next to hers.

“Looks like one more day, Abel,” she said.

She approached the bathroom mirror with her usual aplomb. She gave up vanity years ago. Where the idea of slim waists and toned calves were the comparative factors in relation to where she stood among her peers, now, at seventy-four, it was who was still alive, who was still functioning independently and who still had all their marbles.

She ran her fingers through her still fairly thick mop of silver hair, pulled it back and secured the mess with a clip. She bathed, dressed and moved to the kitchen for more, more of the same.

In the kitchen, she muttered something of the time and it being so late, more out of the feeling of obligation than really being upset by it. “It’s closer to lunch than breakfast,” she said to no one, but probably Abel. If she made the adjustment to the notion that it was lunch, she would be back on schedule just like that, done and done, except of course for her pills.

Her friend Sylvia from Kettleton took no less than 30 pills during the course of a day, or so she remembers her saying. Taffeta herself was up to a modest 12. Spaced throughout the day, they averaged four per meal. On regular days, it’s never a problem. On special days like today her breakfast pills were already running into her lunch pills, not that it made any difference. No matter how many pills she took in, she felt pretty much the same day to day.

She gathered up her morning doses from the counter near the sink and put them down with a glass of water, then popped open the fridge to see what she might fix for lunch.

Bing, bong.

For as many years as she lived in the house, the doorbell ringing is more and more a rare and fleeting event. She raised her head out of the fridge like a deer that heard a twig snap in the forest. She looked slowly both ways and listened carefully.

Bing…bong.

The chime stirred the air of the quiet house with its confirmation. Taffeta closed the fridge and stepped quietly through the dining room and closer to the front door.

Doors were tricky at her age. She never liked answering them. It was either someone selling something or…actually, it always seemed to be someone selling something. Things she did not need. Unless it was a child with a parent selling cookies, she had little inspiration for front door encounters.

On the other hand, it wasn’t safe to let people on the other side of the door think nobody was home, at least, not with the recent rash of break-ins and such.

She neared the door with stealthy footsteps. Inching her face closer to the peephole, she imagined wiring her doorbell button to a recording of a very large and angry dog barking his fool head off. That would get them, she thought.

On the other side of the tiny telescope, in a fish-eyed distortion stood Myrna Billingham, weaving back and forth in her nervous way, in an effort so see, or at least sense what might be going on inside and if everything was alright. Taffeta unlocked the door, unhitched both chains, worked the latch and swung the door open.

“Thank God!” Myrna said, throwing her hands in the air as far as she dared while still being able to avoid hitting herself with her purse. “I thought you were dead!”

“Two rings, Myrna,” Taffeta said. “No answer on four rings is the key right?”

“Four rings, yes of course,” Myrna muttered as she pushed her sturdy and fairly solid five foot two inch frame past Taffeta to welcome herself inside. “But you know Taffy, if you’re going to be that slow in getting to the door, we might as well make it two…or three. A woman of my experience just can’t take that level of excitement.”

Taffeta considered Myrna, also 74, a friend for life even if she wasn’t a life long friend. They found each other socially several years ago, they helped each other through the passing of their husbands, and now, in whatever time comes to them, they work through the unspoken pledge of keeping an eye out for the other. Myrna was the only person, besides Billy Tendicore back in third grade who called her Taffy. She never spoke in terms of age. She found it more dignified to speak in terms of life experiences.

Taffeta followed Myrna back to the kitchen as she shed her coat, placed it on the hook in the hallway and set about getting to what she saw as her chair at the small table in the kitchen.

“Oh my God!” Myrna said, throwing her arms out to her side and stopping dead in her tracks. “You’re sick!”

“What?” Taffeta said nearly bumping into her from behind.

“No breakfast dishes in the rack,” she said pointing to the empty drying rack near the sink. She spun on her heal to face Taffeta. “Every Thursday when I come over you would be putting your breakfast things away before we go to lunch.” Myrna’s eyes darted over Taffeta searching for clues of illness or traces of despair.

“Is today Thursday?”

“Oh, Lord! You fell, didn’t you? You hit your head.” Myrna grabbed her friend’s head with hands on either side of her face and deepened her examination, what she lacked in a delicate touch, Taffeta was certain she made up for with bona fide caring.

“I’m not sick,” she said through scrunched cheeks. A vision shot through her memory of her mother doing something very similar when she was in school. Taffeta gently wrapped her hands around Myrna’s wrists and gave them a squeeze of reassurance. “I’m not sick. I just slept in a little today.”

Myrna gave one last look into Taffeta’s eyes before she released her grip and turned back toward her chair. “So you say. If you ask me something is wrong. You slept late, but you don’t do that. You say you missed breakfast, but you don’t do that. Apparently, you forgot it was Thursday. You don’t…”

“I don’t do that. I know,” Taffeta said. “Look, I didn’t forget about our lunch.” Although, she had. “I just…”

“Oh my God,” Myrna said slapping her hand against the table. “Did you remember to take your pills?”

“I remembered my pills. In fact, I was just getting my midday doses together when you rang the door.”

“Good thing I did too. We’ll get you back on track.” She shuffled in her chair adjusting her comfort. “You can’t take those on an empty stomach you know. “

“I know.”

“Where should we go to lunch then? You look pale. You pick.”

“I’m fine. You’re being silly. I look the same as I did yesterday and the day before,” Taffeta said patting her on the shoulder. “How about Carsoni’s?”

“With my heartburn? I knew it! You’re trying to kill me!”

Taffeta laughed, “It will take more than a spicy pepperoni roll to take you out my dear. What about…”

Bing, bong.

Again, the chime from the front door rang out and seemed to fade into the quiet that settled between the two ladies. They both turned their heads just enough so their eyes met. One eyebrow rose slightly over Myrna’s left eye to seemingly question why someone might be ringing her friend’s door when they were scheduled for lunch.

“Quit that,” Taffeta said, softly, almost whispering. “I don’t know who it is.”

Bing, Bong.

Thump, thump, thump.

A ring and a knock. They looked at each other closer, puzzled and now more curious. Myrna stood from her chair.

“Well, we should see who it is.”

“Yeah, OK.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“They seem very eager,” Myrna said, grabbing Taffeta’s hand. “Whomever it is.”

They journeyed quickly through the dining room and to the door. Myrna took point and poked her eye up to the peephole holding Taffeta back at arm’s length.

“It’s the Daily Parcel guy,” she said.

Taffeta gently guided Myrna out of the way and again worked the chains and the lock then solely opened the door.

Figuring nobody was home, the Daily Parcel man was two steps off the stoop by the time the door opened.

“Young man!” Taffeta shouted then shuddered. She hated saying that. “I’m home.”

The deliveryman caught himself and turned back. “Ah…” he said as he took three bouncing steps back up the steps.

“Great,” he said, reorienting his clipboard. “I have a delivery, for one Ms. Taffeta Spaulding. It says here it’s a crate.”

“A crate?”

“Yes, Ma’am. If you sign here, I’m happy to go get it.” He handed her he clipboard and jumped back down the steps toward the dark blue delivery van accented with bright yellow letters.

“I’m getting a crate,” she said to Myrna as she leaned her head back into the house a bit.

“A crate…nice, “ Myrna said.

In no time at all, the deliveryman had the crate on a small dolly and wheeled it up to the door.

“I’m not supposed to do this, but I’d be happy to move it just inside the door for you.”

“That would be wonderful, thank you.”

In another moment, the excitement of the delivery was over. The three-foot by two-foot by one-foot crate stood in the middle of Taffeta’s front room with Myrna and Taffeta eyeing it from either side.

“What on earth could it be?” Myrna asked.

“It’s a crate,” Taffeta said, forcing herself not to smile. “The man said so.”

“Ha, ha. Why don’t you get something to open it?”

“Ah,” she said, “Good idea.” She left the room and went down to the basement where Abel used to keep a modest array of hand tools. Grabbing a small crowbar from a hook on the pegboard she went back to the front room a woman on a mission.

“Who’s it from?”

Taffeta slowly knelt down and searched the outside of the box. “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s this envelope, packet thingy, but that probably only has the shipping invoice in it.” She thought a moment, “But, I guess it’s worth a shot.”

Picking at the glue sealed flap of the clear plastic envelope, she raised up enough of a chunk to get a good grip and tear the top open. She reached in and pulled out the contents flipping them over in her hands and unfolding them.

“Yup,” she said, “Here’s the invoice, and this…”

She unfolded the second page and turned it so that is sat right, “This one is a letter, here.” Taffeta passed the page to her friend.

Myrna pawed at the reader glasses that hung from the chain across her chest, brought them up to her face, slid them up onto her nose and squinted, working to see more clearly.

“Dear Ms. Spaulding,” she said. “’In an effort to bring resolution to the last portions of the estate of your brother, Lester J. Munce (Deceased), We are releasing this box and its contents to your care.’ I thought your brother died four years ago.”

“He did.”

“Hm,” Myrna said turning back to the page. “’Amongst your brother’s base belongings, was a key to a small offsite storage facility. In his particular unit, we discovered no less that twenty-three wooden crates of various sizes and weights. Per his instruction, the crates were not to be opened, but to be distributed equally amongst, and as quickly as possible, to the person(s) noted in the documentation. Your brother included the following message to all. Life is too short for the bull shit…’”

“Oh, my,” Myrna said, a bit taken aback.

“Er…,” Myrna looked back to the paper to find her place. “‘Life is too short for the bullshit. Take this, may it serve you well. There is no available information at this time. Once all the crates are delivered, we will consider our association with the Munce estate to be complete. Angela Deffert. Deffert, Smith and Deffert, blah, blah.”

With her knees complaining about their place on the floor, Taffeta stuck the crowbar into what looked like a soft spot and pushed down. The nails and brads which held the crate together for such a long time creaked and groaned in defiance as the worked themselves free. Still, they held until the last, giving the lid very little movement. Pulling the crowbar out she quickly stuck it back in what looked to be a new soft place and repeated the exercise until finally, the lid was free.

Setting the crowbar down at her side, she stuck her fingers under the lid and lifted through the last bit of the nails’ commitment then tilted the lid back to the floor. Reaching in, she grabbed the large piece of foam packing and lifted it up and away allowing her to see the contents clearly.

“Well,” she said. “That’s a hell of thing.”

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Kilt – Finale

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“I kind of lost it after that,” Paul said, slowly, softly running is fingers along the gauze that covered the stump of where his arm used to be. For all he knew his fist was still clicking away on that trigger in the belly of that thing. “I can’t tell you how I got away. I can’t tell you how I got to the hospital. You know what I know.”

“How do you feel?” Doctor Kernz said, setting his pen on his pad and lowering his pad to his lap.

“I feel…,” Kilt concentrated on the gauze and how the sensation of his touch felt against quiver of his new reality.

“Mister Kilt?”

Nothing.

Doctor Tarden Kernz breathed a deep sigh and slowly packed his things. Before he left, he patted Paul Kilt on the shoulder and moved out into the hallway. As he stepped down the hall, he clicked the speed dial on his phone and began making the arrangements to have his patient transferred to Starkton and finished by the time he reached the nurse’s station.

“Excuse me,” he said pulling up to the counter, “Nurse Pike, right?”

Amanda turned, “Yes?”

“Paul Kilt. We’ll be moving him to Starkton tomorrow.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“He told me what he believes happened.”

“Is he sticking with the big dog story?”

“I can’t discuss the specifics,” Kernz said signing his name at the bottom of Kilt’s chart.

“Will he be all right?”

Kernz looked at the nurse. “I believe he will. We may never know what really happened, at least until he decides to tell us. Our job is to make sure we get him headed in the right direction. At least to the point where he is no longer a danger to himself…or others.” He politely slid the file back to the nurse across the short expanse of the counter. “The long and the short of it is, we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s really up to him. He needs to find his truth and the courage to face it. Have a good evening.”

He gave her half a smile as he stepped away from the desk and walked to the elevator. What a day.

———————

Epilogue:

Tarden Kernz pulled his car to a stop at the end of the long driveway the led up to his house.

He lived on the farther edge of Cardington, probably as far as one could get before stepping into Blakewood County. He liked it that way. He liked to be close enough to his work in case of emergencies, but he treasured at least the perception of distance his set up allowed. The country road, the long driveway, the fair amount of trees that bordered the small lake, or large pond depending on how you look at it, all provided the illusion of serenity, solitude and distance.

He sat in the car for a moment, both reviewing and purging the day from his mind so that the evening belonged to him. The only work he brought home was the Kilt case, and that was just so he could make some additions to his notes before he had them transcribed for the official file.

He shut down the engine, popped open the car door, then scooped up the file and stepped a foot out onto the tarmac all in one movement. A moment later, he was out and heading for the front door. Without him looking, his fingers worked to single out the door key from the rest.

He grabbed a scent of freshness from the trees carried by the small breeze that moved past him, another item of note to further solidify why moving out here was such a great idea.

As he slid the key into the lock and the pins of the mechanism found their place, the crack of a branch rose up to his ears. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to hear such a noise. Not out here with the woods and all still, while he paused for the briefest moment, nothing felt as if it needed further exploration.

As he turned the key, a deep, low rumble reached out to him. Not so much a purr, it was bigger than that. It was more like..a growl?

His hand stopped on the key. His gaze, trained a second ago on the the lock and his hand slowly drifted up the side of the door and leveled off. If he were in front of a mirror, he’d be looking at himself now. His breath caught. His heartbeat seemed to slow as it moved from his chest to his ears.

He couldn’t place the next sound he heard behind him. There was no point of reference, but he imagined. It was close. It seemed…big.

His chest started to rise and fall with a heavy sense of urgency with each new breath.

The hand that held the key let go and dropped to his side.

The rumbling growl drifted closer.

Closing his eyes, he drew one deep breath to try and calm himself. He even tried to tell himself it was nothing and that he was being stupid, but the rest of his body resisted the notion of comfort.

He opened his eyes and slowly turned.

If Tarden Kernz had the luxury of telling his story of what happened next from a room set inside the safety of a hospital as Paul Kilt did, he could have said, that before the reality of his situation blew every circuit of his thinking mind, he could recall what looked like a dark, empty cave of blackness opening up before him. It came at him with a speed he couldn’t have imagined and the edge of the cave was lined with…teeth.

If…

Instead, there was no story to tell. The bits and pieces that were left of the doctor lay in a pool of drying blood. The folder filled with the notes and documents that detailed Paul Kilt’s experience, his horror, dropped to the ground with a flutter the instant the doctor ceased to be. A breeze kicked up working to move the pages away from the carnage. They blew and scattered across the driveway and into the trees to be lost forever.

Kilt – Part VI

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Kilt lurched as the head swung down toward him again, aggressively pecking at the hole in the windshield of his newly smashed tuck like a bird eagerly picks at a bit of seed.

He stumbled through the open doorway and rolled out into the rain. Head groggy and still working to normalize his breathing, his brain screamed, “Move!” Eager to comply, he inched forward from a crab walk to a crawl, then moved from his knees to the first few steps of a feeble run. The wind whipped rain tore into his eyes.

Just run, he thought. Don’t look back! Don’t even dare! Just run!

And as if his head was incapable of comprehending the messages form the brain urging him on, he turned ever so slightly, just to see.

It might have been the storm, the sound of the beating of the rain, the wind or the bursts of thunder, but in the time it took for him to get this far, far enough for his head to feel safe enough to chance an ill-advised glance backward, the animal-thing was on him.

With a grunt, the massive head swung at him at pretty much the same time his look back was complete. The nothing but rain image changed in a blink to that of a large, scaled, wall of head that hit him with the force of a truck knocking him easily from his wavering stance. Entirely off his feet, he flew backwards and down onto to the soaking wet ground.

He worked to tuck and roll himself to the point where he might be able to get back to his feet and felt as if here were making progress the wall hit him again.

Once more Kilt left the ground, tossed backwards away from, and yet still firmly entrenched in the creature’s sphere of control. Pain seared across his back as he came to an abrupt stop. He slid down and stumbled away from the trunk of the tree that cut his flight short, but fell in a way that his feet found purchase in the grass and was able to stand.

Gasping again for breath and squinting into the rain, he grasped the crow bar with both hands.

“Well?” he screamed into the rain. “Where are you? Let’s go!”

It was a good count of three before a large shadow filled his field his vision. The thing moved toward him….slowly. Kilt almost expected a heavy thud to quiver across the earth with each foot fall, but there was none. It moved with what he might describe as a certain sense of elegance.

Without taking his hands from the crowbar, he tried once again to wipe some of the rain away by digging his face into his bicep. The creature growled long and slow before taking in a raspy breath and letting loose with a deafening roar.

As the roar trailed off, the head shot down at him, jaws still open and in fact widening as it turned to capture him. Kilt swung the crow bar and missed entirely, tossed by the rain and his churning adrenaline. The head pulled back a bit, turned and then shot down on him again, chomping closed just shy of catching Kilt’s jacket. He swung the crow bar again back the other, but caught the target in stead with his hands and arm which the heavy skin deflected quite easily.

Once again, the creature pulled its head back and spread its jaws wide as it shot down at the small, wet man. The jaws slammed shut shy of his leg. Stand ing firm, Paul raised the crow bar over his head and brought it down with everything he had.

Everything shifted, like the moment you know when you hit a homer over a line drive, everything felt…in the moment. The curved, clawed end of the crow bar found its mark and pierced the tough hide sinking down to what Paul was convinced was the certain uneasy scrape of metal against bone.

The animal-thing lurched back with a scream in its throat, carrying Paul and the crowbar with it. On the second shake the creature made to free himself of the stinging pain in its snout, Kilt lost his grip on the crow bar and again flew backwards and down into the wet, grassy muck below.

The creature, unable to reach the weapon with its short arms, snarled and shook its head.

Kilt hit the ground hard…again, and rolled to a stop as the water beat down upon him. Has he lay on his stomach fighting for breath without sucking water into his lungs, he felt the lump.

The gun.

The creature swung its giant head back and forth as the screams told the tale of its pain, frustration and anger. It shot it’s jaws down to the ground again and again, blindly searching for the thing that cause this.

Paul pulled himself to his feet and reached his hand into his pocket. He pulled out the pistol and took aim…as well as he could.

As the anger grew as a distraction to the pain, a new fire burst into the creature’s dark eye. Squeezing its eyelids shut and jerked its head in recoil. A roar tore from its throat that turned into a ragged scream. Rage took control, issuing simple and base commands.

The first shot landed square in the middle of the creature’s eye. He was sure of it. It was all he could to stop himself from doing his end zone victory dance, but there was no time for that. The thing was hurt, he thought, but not hurt bad, not dead. He fired again…missed.

The little flash of light was nearly missed but it was enough. The creature spun and trained its remaining good eye on the spot where the light came from and lunged.

The animal-thing cut through the rain in his direction with a speed he could never describe if all the words were his. Kilt fired again. Missed again.

Another small flash of light confirmed everything. The creature leapt forward as it opened its mighty jaws.

A cave of darkness, darkness surrounded by long, razor-sharp teeth opened before him. His eyes grew wide, then wider still as the cave and the teeth disappeared and with it the sight of his arm and the gun. Thinly connected lines of tissue sent impulses to the hand as it squeezed the trigger again and again. Muffled shots reached out to him from inside the closed mouth and while the louder shots ended, the hand kept pumping the trigger instinctively.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Kilt – Part V

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“At least,” Paul said slowly and pausing to run over it all…yet again, “I think they were teeth.”

For the first time since starting his story, Kilt looked away from the thumb that had been rubbing across his fingers, now so vigorously that he could feel an element of heat from the tips.

“That’s the look I was waiting for,” he said, forcing Kernz to break the stare to look down at his notepad. “Not just teeth, of course. They weren’t just hanging there. They were attached you know.”

“To what?” Kernz asked.

Paul sat for a moment. “I don’t know. To be dead honest, I don’t know what I saw, because my mind can’t get around it.”

“Take your time. Let’s start with what you think you saw.”

Paul turned his attention back to his fingers, back and forth. He drew a half a breath and said, “Dinos….”

After the first part of the word came out soft and difficult to hear, the second half faded into a whisper. He coughed.

“Dinosaur,” he said louder and with a touch more of commitment. “I believe I saw a dinosaur.”

“Good work,” Kernz said, “Now we are making progress. What ki…”

“If you ask me what kind of dinosaur,” Kilt cut in, “I won’t be held responsible. I don’t know what kind of dinosaur! I’m not some kind of pale, paleon, paleo…whateverthehellitis! I can’t even say with one hundred percent certainty and conviction that it was a dinosaur. Maybe Starkton is where I belong! But you asked. You wanted to help! And this is the news. Whatever I saw, my brain registered it as a dinosaur. Apparently, I hit it with my truck as it was going wherever dinosaurs go here in Cardington when the skies and the earth decide to open up and take giant shit on us!”

“I understand Mr. Kilt,” the doctor said in a trained and calming voice. “Really, I do. Based on your injury, it is certainly more possible that something like a dinosaur could take your arm before something like a dog could. Please trust me. We will get to the bottom of this. Take a moment, then tell me what happened next.”

Paul tilted his head pulling in hard, but steady breaths, and staring down at his working fingers.

“I have a gun…in my glove compartment,” he started up again. “I keep a pretty good sized crowbar under my seat. My head was…pounding. I was gasping for air after having the wind knocked out of me and maybe half my senses. The mouth seemed huge, but all I could really see was the teeth. They looked long and sharp and dripped…dripped with what I can only imagine was a mix of rainwater and saliva.”

“Go on.”

“I tried to calm myself down. Tried to get my breath. The thing roared again. I’m not sure if I hurt it or it was just pissed at the rain, or that it was lost or…I don’t know, but as soon as I got a breath I found myself screaming right back at it. That was a mistake. I have to remember that. The yelling and screaming and roaring or whatever…that was all about it…whatever it was. If it heard me, when it heard me…when the roaring stopped…”

“Yes?”

“That’s when it turned it’s attention to me.”

——-

The moment the last bit of scream escaped him, the animal, the thing, tilted it’s head in a way that brought an enormous eye to bare.

“Oh, Shit.”

He certainly experienced moments of panic in his life, some that even moved his heart to his throat, but this…was new. A super-panic seized him as all life around him seemed to slow to a cinematic crawl. He lurched over the passenger seat and pawed at the glove compartment, but all movement seemed slow, and well below the expectancy set by the fire of urgency in his head. The compartment door popped open releasing a shower of useless things he kept in there for emergencies, hand sanitizer, an old map of historic Boston, well outdated mints and aspirin. Even in full panic mode, a voice in his head declared that if we all live after this, we are taking the time to re-evaluate our definition of emergency.

He heard the gun topple to the floor. The pushed away the bits and pieces that followed after it and jammed it into his coat pocket.

The giant head of the animal-thing swung quickly down towards him, the nose scraping along the edge of the roof where bits of what was left of the windshield hung on for dear life. A cloud of hot breath moved over him bringing with it the smell of rancid meat and deep earth. A heavy gag jumped into his throat causing his shoulders to heave as he worked to hold back whatever he had in him that was suddenly and vigorously looking for a way out. He reached his hand under the passenger seat feeling across the mat until his fingers landed on steel. They gripped tight around the crowbar as he pulled it out, making a mental note not to hook it on anything.

A low rumbling growl pulled itself from within the beast and into rain reaching Kilt’s ears and igniting a new fire of urgency. With a speed unimaginable for its size, the mouth poked into the hole left by the windshield. It had no room to do its work effectively, but the jaws, the teeth, snapped open and shut as it reached for what might be inside.

“No!” Kilt heard himself say, almost as if it came from outside of himself. “No!”

He flopped over onto his back and kicked out at the thing as a new wave of nausea poured into his stomach every time his boot found purchased on the leathery hide. It felt like kicking an old sofa, a hungry old sofa.

The head pulled back, but for only a moment to re-evaluate and adjust before bobbing down for another try.

With what room he had, Kilt swung the crowbar out in front of him connecting with one of the long bayonet-like teeth with a sickening crack. The connection was enough to force it back. A new and more inspired roar burst from the animal-thing above him. He shifted himself again as quickly as he could to work the door handle. After pushing with no success he shot his feet out again and again until the door swung open.

The next moment unraveled itself into existence with a slow and overly deliberate pace. An electrical charge of hope surge through the man as he saw the pathway to his escape before him, He heard each breath. Each heartbeat throbbed within him as he turned to look at the animal-thing. The thing looked back at him. Paul looked back at the open door.

Time to go.

Kilt – Part IV

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“Dammit.”

Kilt peered out into the darkness as the automatic doors opened wide to release him from the bountiful confines of Barner’s Groceries. The moment he stepped forward, the falling rain seemed to intensify, even more with the next step. He paused on third step, that one that would move him from the relative safety of the door’s overhang and into the brewing elements, as a gust of wind forced the rain at him, as if almost a warning.

“Shit.”

He turned his head back to the store just as the automatic doors closed behind him leaving him to stand alone in that moment of decision, back to the store or forward into…whatever this was.

As his brain began to weigh the pros and cons, the rest of his body was working toward the as yet to be realized decision. He shifted all three plastic bags into one hand, then grabbed the collar of his jacket with the other and pulled it over his head. Surely, he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt. One deep breath later, he lunged into the downpour and made a break for the truck.

The wind and rain intensified still, blowing him sideways a bit and drenching him to the bone no more than three steps deep into the parking lot. He could see nothing. He heard only rain. He tried to move instinctively to where he thought the truck was parked and hoped he was right.

Two steps later, his brain sent out a single message, “Keys,” and the hand that held whatever protection he got from the jacket released it and plunged into his pocket. He felt for the fob and pressed what he knew to be the unlock button, squinting through the sheeting water to see a flicker of light from the truck’s tail lights.

There.

A quick course adjustment, three steps and a splash later and he was clawing at the door handle to get inside.

Once he slammed the door shut, he sat for a moment listening to his breath mingle with the sheets of wind driven rain blasting his windshield. He tried to wipe some of the water from his face, but really just pushed it around. Everything was soaked. He could end up sitting here all day, he thought, but he didn’t want to. Whatever he was feeling earlier in the day manifested itself in his head which throbbed now. Better to get home.

He put the key in the ignition and turned the engine over. He loved this truck. The dashboard blower started in earnest, working to remove the building condensation from the inside of the glass while the wipers slapped water away as fast and efficiently as it could…which ended up being not very good. He put the truck in reverse and backed out of his spot slowly. So far so good.

——

From what he could tell the roads were fairly deserted. And why wouldn’t they be? What kind of idiot drives in something like this?

Even on a fairly bad day, the trip to the store takes about 12 minutes, max, but Kilt, ever diligent in his desire to doing something stupid as safely as possible was determined to take his time. The wind began to add small branches, leaves and bits of garbage to the mix of rain it hurled at him, but he pressed on.

As he neared the left onto Crestview, the rain seemed to hiccup just long enough for him clearly see the sign and notice that the street was clear of anything he could run into. The brief reprieve allowed him to stop squinting long enough to realize how hard he was working to see…anything, and, how much his head was pounding.

“Note to self,” he muttered. “Get food before stupid storm hits.”

Taking advantage of the minor pause, he spun the wheel to take the turn. The rain returned the second the car banked around the corner and his visibility once again disappeared.

Typical.

He straightened the wheel, then raised his foot gently to press on the gas. If he had the ability to record the moment and review it over an over again, his story would stay the same. As he pressed the pedal to urge the car ahead, a blood curdling…scream, for lack of a better word, coincided with his movement as if he created it.

The noise tore into his head and in one movement, he slammed his eyes shut, slammed both feet onto his brake pedal and gripped his steering wheel to prevent his head from banging into it. The lurched into a skid that was not likely to occur on a dry street, but there was so much water, every movement was amplified.

Despite what he confirmed just before making the turn, that the street was clear, the sliding truck came to an almost immediate and jolting stop, the force of which drove his chest into his steering wheel, cutting his breath. Mixed with the sound of water and debris washing over him, came the sounds of grinding metal, breaking glass and something else.

“What the…”

Another roar tore through the air, causing him to cover his ears with his hands. His body lurched as he fought for a new fresh breath.

Another car? A tree? His aching brain seemed to spin in his skull. What could he have hit? God, let it not be another person…a kid or something!

The new noise, a soft grating, came up from the newly accordioned hood of his truck. As he gasped holding his chest, he blinked at the new batch of water hitting his face through the newly demolished windshield. Whatever it was, it was alive, and it was huge.

One more deafening roar later, and as if by premonition, he looked out into the storm, lightning flashed and he saw them as clear as anything for the first time…teeth.

Kilt – Part III

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“Mister Kilt,” Dr. Kernz said with a certain level of matter of factness, “Paul, if I may. This is our third meeting. I can’t prove it of course, at least not yet, but it’s clear that you are not being one hundred percent forthcoming regarding the reality of your injury.”

Kilt looked down at it right hand and stared at the way he ran his thumb back and forth over his finger tips in a soft circular motion. If he had his other hand, he was sure he would have clasped all of his fingers together to accommodate his thumbs tapping each other gently in assured defiance, but his thumb tapping days were over for sure. And with that, some level of his confidence.

“As I explained in our first meeting, we need to figure out what exactly led to your injury. Your insistence that it was a dog, sounds, as we agreed, unlikely to impossible. I surely find it implausible. So if you expect to head back to your home upon your release, instead of a cozy room in the Starkton facility, I suggest we try to explore some new ground. It’s for your own good and the good of the community.” The doctor paused, “I’m here to help.”

Kilt jerked his head away from the oddly calming and near hypnotic thumb movement as if the doctor made a loud noise. His breath quickened as he caught the other man’s gaze.

“Help,” he said, nearly spitting out the p. “How will you help?”

“I…”

“You don’t believe my story. And if I tell you what I think really happened, at least how I remember it, I’m pretty sure you won’t believe that one either. So, it seems a stint in Starkton is probably inevitable. But since you’re so keen on ‘helping,’ I’ll give it to you, warts and all.”

The doctor silently leaned back in his chair, implying in part that he was happy enough to have reached this point. He waived his hand before him as a gesture to Kilt that he was welcome top proceed, please…go ahead.

Kilt swallowed hard, turning his gaze back to his thumb and fingers.

“It was a weird day to start with. I wasn’t feeling well and I’m never sick, but I was off enough to call off work for the day. The reports of a possible storm that evening started early as I recall, but I don’t think they had any idea what type of storm was heading our way.”

“What do you mean?,” Kernz broke in, “Type of storm.”

Paul nodded his head at the doctor as if to look, but kept his eyes trained on his thumb moving back and forth, back and forth. “Aren’t you from around here doctor? Couldn’t you feel it? This storm was going to be different. Different before it even got here. Most storms are stirred up by weather patterns controlled by Mother Nature to help her take care of her business. But this was no Mother Nature storm brewing. You could feel it in the air the closer it got. It wasn’t like electricity or anticipation. It was more like…dread.”

“Dread?”

“Yeah,” Paul said, not realizing how much harder his thumb was pressing against his fingertips. “Dread. Like Mother Nature stepped away for a moment and something else jumped in to steer the storm machine that day.”

“What kind of something?”

“Something…dark.”

“Go on.”

“The clouds…the storm system didn’t just roll in like most storms do. It crept in. It changed the air. It, it, didn’t cover the sun, it was more like it…absorbed the light causing the darkness to increase. And when it got here, it seemed to lock this town down as if it meant to stay a while. Even when the street lights went on, they seemed to have to fight to share enough light to hold back the darkness, at least until the power went out. Even my headlights had a hard time cutting into that blackness.”

“You weren’t home then?”

“No,” Paul said, watching his thumb move. “I was coming off some double shifts, so the cupboards were bare as they say. Even though I felt bad, I would have felt worse with no food in the house and I tend to think storms are better when accompanied by the welcomed comfort of a twelve pack. My plan was to skip to the grocery and get back before things got bad. I left my house just as the winds were picking up and damned if I couldn’t tell something was off the moment I stepped out of that house.”

“The dread?”

“Yeah…,” Kilt’s voice trailed off for a moment. “But not right away. Like I said the air felt…different. The moment I closed my front door, I don’t know if it was a smell or how thick the air seemed, but that first deep breath was nearly like a brick to the head. I had to steady myself for a moment before I moved to my truck.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing, really. I brushed off the feeling because I didn’t really have anything to connect it to. I just wrote it all down as maybe being sicker than I thought. I got to Barner’s. I got what I needed. I paid and started to leave. In the short time that passed between entering the store to when I stepped on that pad to open the exit door, the light was gone. The darkness had taken over and it was just starting to rain.”

An open letter to congressional Democrats

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Java typed with determination and focus, as she was prone to doing in these situations:

An open letter to congressional Democrats –

Dear congressional Democrats:

You don’t know me, but…Ouch! Need some salve for that burn?

Just kidding. My apologies for the snark so early in the note. I sometimes hold that until the end as sort of an exclamation point on the ideas I try to convey, but dang it all if you all didn’t just slap your own big exclamation point on your moment in the sun as the majority seat holders in the U.S. Senate.

I imagine you feel a little salty heading into work these days, what with the Republicans waving their index fingers around, screaming “We’re number one!” and basically telling you all to go suck it. It will make me proud to know that despite the tanning of your hides, you will proceed in your duties as elected officials with grace, professionalism and the knowledge that you are still good people who are there to do a job and to do it the best way you know how. Rise above it.

I would tell you to remember this moment and the feeling that comes with having been defeated, even in what they call a lackluster mid-term election. I would tell you to use this recent string of events as motivation to get back up on your proverbial political bicycles and make a truly inspired effort to regain what was lost so that you might continue to work on making the world a better place. I would tell you all those things…and more… if I thought for half a second that you might a) listen and b) actually remember. Sadly, my faith and my hope in both those areas are severely degraded, if not completely shattered. Shadoobee.

I’m guessing you don’t remember, because those who don’t remember their histories are bound to repeat them and guess what? You’ve been here before! That’s right! You have had it all, the control, the faith of the people, the momentum to proceed with a reasonable agenda and boom, you squandered it! Pissed it away, as my grandfather might say, through petty squabbles, lack of conviction, misguided alliances and dare I say, a fair bit of your own hubris. With all your power and promise, you accomplished nothing. And while you can say, “Well, the Republicans didn’t do anything either.” (which will make you sound small, petty and immature) you forgot that they are the masters of that game and it is an arena where you clearly cannot compete.

I think you need to take some time for reflection. Not a lot of time mind you. You could probably suss this all out over the few minutes it takes to drink a decent cup of coffee. But you need to consider what went wrong and how to fix it, for while you may be down right now – you are not out…provided you get your shit together. Here are a few things to ponder.

The people did not let you down – Quite the opposite, you let the people down and this is their way, misguided as it might appear right now, of telling you that you sucked it up.
Try taking more credit for the way things are going – You need to pay more attention to the real world and less of what’s going on over at Fox news. Things in America are better than they were when you retook control. Yes. There is a lot more to do, but housing is up, employment is up, the stock market is up (aside from a few days here and there where the market takes a dump – but hey, we all have our off days) gas prices are down. I’m not convinced that you really had anything to do with these trends, but it’s fair to say they happened on your watch and the mindless collective called the voting public appears to believe what they are told with little question (for evidence, please refer to Tuesday’s election results).
WTF – Middle East and other areas of global unrest – Look, this is a thorn in everyone’s paw. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. A case could be made that the for many on the other side of the world, creating and maintaining a constant state of turmoil, unrest and a slow simmer of self-destruction seems to be what they do best. I mean, after all this time, if they really wanted to work things out, they probably could. My guess is that there is more money in turmoil and distress than in peace, so until we can create a higher profit margin for peace, we are kind of stuck. The point here is, many have tried. Many. Have tried. For decades and decades to get things straight over there. At some point, the rest of the world is just enabling the conflicts. The Republicans were burned by it and you have been burned by it. I don’t have any answers on how to resolve it, but we need to decide how much longer we need to participate, what we are going to do where – do it and then get the hell out of there and focus on the good work that needs to be done here at home.
Reacquaint yourself with Dr. Seuss’s story of The Zax. – Seriously. Read it, or watch the cartoon, or have somebody read it to you and show you the pictures. I don’t care. There is a message for congress there.

I could go on and on, but I realize that you are only congressional representatives after all, and that your attention spans are short, your memories are thin and your intentions are about as deep as the next election. If you take that as fairly harsh criticism, then I’m OK with that. If you could muster up a moment of self-reflection I dare say that you will come to the conclusion that you deserve it.

My one parting notion to you would be that while you are down right now like the stock market in ’07, you are not out. The deck is shuffled and you still have some good cards to play. You will need to be smart over the next year or so, which will be hard, I know, but buckle down and get the work done. I’m fairly certain that you can count on the Republicans doing nothing, aside from setting their focus on the next election, but I’m pretty sure the potential for a bright future lies ahead if you do what you need to do. And if you, meaning both parties, could consider for at least a half a second what it is you are supposed to be doing in Washington instead of what you actually do (or more commonly, do not do), the put upon cogs and wheels of this country – the American people would be truly grateful.

Your friend – Java

An open letter to the new republican congress

1 Reply

Java typed with determination and focus, as she was prone to do in these situations:

An open letter to the new republican congress – Dear new republican congress:

Your don’t know me, but I wanted to be one of the first to congratulate you on your retaking of the U.S. Senate and retaining control of the House! Congratulations! And while this may sound sarcastic, I have to tip my hat to you, well done. Really, very well done.

On the surface, I would attribute this turn of events to a small miracle or raging luck. But when one digs deeper, it’s easy to visualize how this is really the one thing you, as a group, have wanted bad and have worked hard on to actually accomplish since the tables upended for you in 2006. If we disregard divine intervention and pure luck (I’m not willing to go as far to say some souls weren’t sold for this outcome) one could surmise that your good fortune comes at the hand of three primary factors.

1. Bottomless financial resources and a singular focus

2. Clever maneuvering and positioning

3. The mindless collective called the voting public

To be brief, let’s again be honest with each other. You spent billions to get here. And not just for this race exclusively. You’ve been spending money hand over fist to reclaim what you feel is rightfully yours since ’06. And if you weren’t making money in a vast suburban basement operation somewhere in middle America, you certainly have some very wealthy benefactors with cash to spare who want you back in the driver’s seat. (Be careful. Those favors and promises are going to come faster than a fist full of Christmas bills in February). Reports appear to indicate that you outspent virtually every opponent in every race. So, like any winning sports team who can afford the best players…wait, sorry. That one doesn’t work. Even with the money spent – you don’t really have the best players. Ok – so, point one – money.

When we look at clever maneuvering and positioning, your manipulation of voting districts and voting laws really are to be admired. And the voting public, whom I’ll get to in a minute, really don’t seem to mind, or actually realize what’s going on around them. Let’s consider that they are so busy working to survive these days, that rezoning districts and such is just too much to bother with. The up here for you is that you developed a plan, you put it into place and it appears to have worked to your advantage. Cheers!

On this last point, I want it known that there are many people in the mindless collective called the voting public that I call good friends and family. Good people who get up every day to do the best they can to eek out a living on this earth and try to have some fun while doing it despite getting punched in the face everyday, just for trying. They carry the wealthy on their backs and seem happy to do it, if and when they get a little piece of the good life to make it all worth while. That said, collectively, the voting public is not very bright – and that is polite. They have no long-term memory. They have no real short-term memory. They are easily distracted by the shiny object and miss the big picture entirely. They are easily swayed by whomever has the biggest sign. More often than not, they just can’t be bothered.

Take my district as an example. We keep electing the same dunderheads over and over, but if you look at their records in congress, they have not successfully introduced or passed one major piece of functional legislation during their entire tenure. They make no waves. They vote the party line. Nobody knows who they are or what they do. The only thing they are really good at is getting re-elected and going to parades and mall openings. Because there is nothing to say they are doing a bad job, or to be more descriptive, any job at all, they are just good guys doing the right thing.

I do not blame you for taking advantage. People should be smart enough and dedicated enough to make informed voting decisions…and actually vote instead of naming each cheek and voting for the one that itches more. So, the voting public absolutely gets what they deserve. As my grandfather use to say, ignorance is acceptance.

And this is not like the PTO. We can can’t count on a few dedicated people to be able to do the work of many for all. All to the point, you played it right. You swooped in during a lackluster mid-term election with your money and your big signs and your “don’t blame us, we haven’t done anything…really…nothing…in years,” script and got just enough of the right people to the voting place and here you are. Winners.

The big question now is, now what? Will you further deconstruct the middle class? Find a nice war to ramp up somewhere? Remove Obamacare from the face of the earth? Further reduce opportunities for women and the less fortunate? Your options are many, but I suspect your decisions are few…and have already been made. 1) Do nothing. Hey – who can criticize? It works. If you actually do nothing but spew rhetoric and get in the way of others, with patience, you get to win. But I suspect you have your eye on the bigger prize making 2) Take back the White House in 2016. Then you will control the planet and it will be so much easier for you to continue to do…nothing. But it won’t be your fault, or your problem. It’s what the people want right?

I wish you all the very best in the years to come. May all your wishes come true. And again, congratulations! Well played you crafty bastards. 🙂

Your Friend., Java

My Test Results

2 Replies

Hey All:

My name is Jasper Radnits. I have just completed every single inane online Facebook, Pinterest, Yahoo, social media, email, whatever you can come up with “fun quiz” known to mankind. Every. Single. One.

Of course, some yutz out there, with more free time on his or her hands than should be legally allowed is probably churning up a whole new batch of meaningless, less than clever, not even mildly interesting drivel for the masses to waste even more time doing…and sharing. All with the veiled objective of sharing something about themselves, as if knowing what sort of root vegetable you are tells anyone anything about you. It’s gross.

And why, do you ask, would I take every single test available if I am so set against them?

To get it over with. To put aside the nagging and preposterous notion that I lack a sense of fun and playfulness that those who call themselves my associates think I need to have. To illustrate the absolute and vast nothing that the exercise accomplishes even with the most well intentioned set of questions meant to help us open up to and identify with those whom we call our friends. As if we, who are determined to be the same root vegetable, have a stronger link or association than those who are not.

But, in the interest of being an active player in the morass of social media noise and distraction, I offer you my friends, colleagues, lurkers, stalkers, passers-by and so on, a brief look inside the me I am, as defined by this long and unnecessary series of test results.

If you want to know me, know me as:

Root vegetable – Beet
Prince – Aladdin
Princess – Pocahontas
Mountain – Nanga Parbat
Mold spore – Aspergillus
Cereal – Frosted Flakes
Radial tire – Uniroyal
Classic figure from literature – Tartuffe
Famous symphony – Edvard Grieg Work: Symphony in C-minor, EG 119 (1864)
Ice cream – Rhubarb
Pie – Pumpkin-olive
Hobbit character – The Old Took
Matrix character – Dozer
Piece of construction equipment – nail gun
Titanic passenger name – Mr. R. L. Beckwith
I am 11 percent “girly”
I would last 84 minutes in a horror movie
European city I should live in – London
Kind of candy – Dots
Tattoo I should get – Full back art of Dirty Harry saying, “Do you feel lucky? Punk?”
Spirit animal – Vole
Mythical creature – Jibakurei
Boy Band – N’Sync
Type of chocolate – Carob
Under the bed lint shape – Washington crossing the Delaware
Kind of pizza – lemon pepperoni
I am 8 percent “cowboy”
I am 24 percent old fashioned
My patronus – Chipmunk
Indiana Jones character – Sallah
I do not practice proper etiquette
President – Millard Fillmore
Comic book hero – The Thing
I am 2 percent 70’s
My dog is well trained
I am not a cougar
Comfort food – Ring Dings
Popular soda – Ginger Ale
Classic TV Character – Lurch
Type of car I should drive – Camero
Horror monster – Jason Vorhees
I am 84 percent classy
State I should live in – Idaho
Favorite color – Burnt Sienna
I do not give a shit
I am 4 percent witty
I am very likely to regret this weekend
I Love Lucy Character – Ethel
Flintstone’s character – Mr. Slate
Jetson’s character – Elroy
Lost in Space character – robot
I’m more rubber duck than rubber chicken
I am more Ernie than Bert
I should have been born in the 40’s
Type of cookie – macaroon
I am the sad emoji
I have 12 screws loose
I am addicted to bacon
My celebrity mentor is Puff Daddy
Flower – Dandilion
My life is 42 percent awesome
I am left brained
I am more Sith than Jedi
International sandwich – Chip Butty
My dream job – Subway train operator
Type of beer – lager
I am 21 percent lovable
I will have 8 kids
Pro quarterback I should date – Andrew Luck
I am addicted to coffee
Late Night Host – Craig Ferguson
Word that describes me – buoyant
My nickname should be – Clarence
Number of people secretly ion love with me – 106
I am 28 percent nerdy
Wine I should be drinking right now – Champagne
My worst quality – I’m noble
Who will play me in the movie of my life – Wayne Knight
Kind of sea creature – King Crab
Language I should learn – Sanscrit
I was note a problem child
I dream of having two right feet
I am 74 percent chill
I am 53 percent cute
My dog is very awesome
Vacation I should take – Nebraska
I hate Justin Bieber
I should not be a nudist
I am a country bumpkin
Classic rock band – Average White Band
The ancient civilization that suits me best – Aztec
I am 0 percent Kardashian
Who I was in a past life – Elsworth J. Kimitz
Seriously, why are you still reading this?

The JEFFWORKS – It's all in the mind

Thoughts, wit and wisdom … or not. Created by Jeff Meyers

Category Archives: Human Interest

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – VII

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The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – V

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The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – III

The Glorious Sunset of Taffeta Spaulding – II

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Kilt – Finale

Kilt – Part VI

Kilt – Part V

Kilt – Part IV

Kilt – Part III

An open letter to congressional Democrats

An open letter to the new republican congress

My Test Results

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