Once upon a time when i wrote with plots in mind...

"George, is that you? George? Are you finally home?" The harsh, craggy voice grated down from the second story of the old house, bouncing off the wallpapered walls and scraping along the scarred walnut banister.

"Yes, Grandmother, it's me." George jumped a little as the blunt thumping of a cane sounded on the hollow wood floor above his head. Thump, swish. Thump, swish. Thump, swish. Both the thumping and the swishing were muffled momentarily as his grandmother crossed the green Chinese wool rug on her bedroom floor, only to resume, closer and louder, on the other side.

His grandmother's bent frame stopped at the top of the stairs, and one gnarled hand wrapped around the old rail. "It sure took you long enough. Did you get my pain pills? How long were you gone, anyway? It seemed like a day, if an hour. I've been in agony. Every minute crawling by. Tic-tock. Tic-tock. " This she accentuated with heavy taps of her cane. George jumped like a marionette with every beat.

"That old clock kept reminding me how long I was sitting there, suffering, waiting for you. And I bet you stopped and got yourself a soda, didn't you George? Not only did you keep an old woman agonizing, but you used the change to buy yourself a soda from the fountain, didn't you."

As George's grandmother worked herself into a fit, her wrinkled face contorted gruesomely. Spittle flew from her dry lips as her voice pitched into a screech and she flapped her unladen arm wildly like a wounded bird. A crow.

He couldn't look at her. He never could. He also did his best to tune out her tirades. They were always directed at him because of something he did, or didn't do, or should have done. He was never good. Or right. And she never wasted an opportunity to tell him so.

Thump, swish. Oh, dear. She was coming down the stairs. He had hoped she would take her pills and, not wanting to struggle down the steep steps, return to her room for a nap. Nap time was peaceful. So was night time. Any time Grandmother retired to her own room was time George wasn't being harassed. Conversely, if Grandmother was awake, George was miserable. He had a feeling it was about to be one of those times. The Hellish ones.

"George, give me my pills. Confound it, boy! Are you gonna make me struggle all the way down these cursed stairs with my aching hip?" Thump, swish. Thump, swish.

His gaze on the mauve flowers and green vines of the gaudy wallpaper, George monitored his grandmother out of the corner of his eye. Keeping his head level so he didn't get berated for poor posture on top of everything else, he mounted the stairs, stopped an arms length away from the livid old woman, and passed the white pharmacy bag into her reaching, clawed hand. She snatched it with a violent rustle of paper.

George looked toward his toes. Well, where his toes were hiding under the awning of his protruding stomach. The buttons of his short sleeved, pastel striped shirt strained in their holes. His tan pants had slipped down to a point of low resistance as well, in spite of his belt. The shirt and pants were crisply starched, however. In fact, George was a very tidy man. His dark brown hair was kept trimmed. Neat and short in the front and tidy but feathered against his collar in back. He was usually cleanly shaved, but had decided to grow a beard. His whiskers were prominent, though a bit ragged, and were the only thing about George that looked even slightly unkempt.

"Caw! Caw!"

The relentless and painful prodding of his grandmother's cane against the taught white shirt he had been studying brought his head up. Still, he didn't make the mistake of looking directly at the old witch.

"What did you say, Grandmother?" In contrast to his grandmother's shrill squawk, George's voice was a mellow tenor that seemed to melt into the air, bestowing a mumbled effect on his words.

"For Heaven's sake, boy, quit mumbling. And if you hadn't been daydreaming you would have heard me ask for my change. Money don't grow on trees, and I still need to go into Mabel's and get my hair set for Easter mass." She stretched her hand out and wrapped her talons around the paper bills George had gingerly placed in her palm.

The old woman balanced against the banister as she groped at a pair of bifocals swinging from her neck on a black cord. With the ungainly movements brought about by severe arthritis, she manipulated the spectacles onto her beak-like nose and counted her change.

Here it comes, George thought, bracing himself for the explosion.

"How much did I give you?"

"Forty, Grandmother."

Her head snapped up and she shook her money filled palm at her grandson. "So you did buy yourself a soda! I knew it. No consideration for anyone but yourself. And yourself is fat and doesn't need sugar treats from the ice cream stand. Fat, and worthless!"

Swinging around precariously, she turned to climb back to her room, but the cane caught between the poles of the railing and she started to tumble over backwards. Moving without thinking, George grabbed his grandmother's small body around the waist, and bracing her with his own husky framework, he righted her back on the step.

"You just keep your hands off of me! Do you hear me? Unless I ask you to touch me, you keep your filthy paws away from me. And me only in my housecoat. The impropriety!" Thump, swish. Thump, swish.

Standing with his arms limply at his sides, George watched his Grandmother recede into the shadows of the upper floor hallway. Thump, swish. Thump, swish.

The sharp slam! of the bedroom door marks the first moments of George's new life. He walks to the piano and pulls from behind it three large duffle bags. Unzipping the smallest, he retrieves an envelope which he places on the kitchen counter by the tea canister. Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, he dials Yellow Cab and only has to wait ten minutes for a ride. The cabby helps load his bags and both men enter the cab, the driver in front, George in the back.

"Where to?"

"Raleigh-Durham International Airport." For the first time that he can remember, a smile creeps onto George's lips. He wonders what his grandmother would say if she knew all that "soda money" bought his one way ticket to freedom. And the smile broadens into a grin.

"Caw! Caw!"

it's not just about responsibility

someone hit a dog.
i have run into animals before, but it is usually an unavoidable collision with something small like a frog or a bird, and by the time it is over, so are they. then there is nothing to do except move the carcass out of the road.
which i do.
because i believe it is disrespectful to let the body of something -- as important to this life as i am-- remain in the road to be mutilated by the next fifty cars.

someone hit a dog and left him in the road to die.
i have never done this. i will never do this. i will do all that i can, and if i can do nothing else, i will see that it doesn't suffer.
i will stay there until the end.
because to do anything less is to lose a bit of my humanity.

someone hit a dog and left him in the road to die. but he lived.
so when i came upon him, i did what i do. and it wasn't easy. trying to persuade an injured animal that i am not there to harm it further takes time.
but i did.
until he bit me and i gave up.

someone hit a dog and left him in the road to die. but he lived, and i couldn't stop thinking about it.
so i took a flashlight with me and marched around the neighborhood at two in the morning. i eventually found him huddled in a driveway. and when i checked his tags, i found that he had gone home to die.
i knocked on the door.

this time, it was that simple. and today when the girls and i were out we walked past the house.
and i got a thank you.
for saving a life.

Haiku

Pussy Willow

Grey Autumn winds blow.
Silent silver paws pouncing,
naked brown limbs dance.

Visuals

I have been playing with flash fiction, and this needed something when in that form. So i chiseled and chipped until i ended up with the longest line down the middle of my page. Seriously, stack the stanzas one on top of each other and it is overwhelming. i liked the idea of a paragraph, but i wanted more shape...

Click away, and as always, please let me know what you think.

through with the looking glass....

it is broken, dear one.

too many times has it slipped from
thoughtless hands
to land,
injured
and twisted,
at unforgiving feet.
and
too many times have you looked into
that shattered glass
to view
the fragmented image,
its shards piercing your soul.

it is broken, dear one.

yet still you hold it to your face,
and the grotesque
projection
glinting across
its fractured surface
seems to fit, somehow.
so
you wear that mask of light,
a bent and torn
mirage
to hide your pain
and your slivered heart.

but it is broken, dear one.

so come near and look instead
into my unblemished eyes
and see the reflection
of what you are
to me.