Bad Story…

Okay, here it is. I may do separate posts, or just add to the end of it, according to my whim and my whimsy. Or I may just get sick of it and let it die.
This is raw, unedited writing. I (kinda) spellcheck as I write, but this is pure, unadulterated first draft. I may or may not tinker with it. I may or may not let you see it. I will print it out in its current form, and every so often, and send it to myself as a certified letter, and leave it unopened until such a time I get rich in court from some potential future thieving dumb-ass.

Have fun, and:

Do Not Read This…

I mean it. You have been warned…

She rocked there, in her chair, in the sunlight, the poor cooling thing held against her chest.

Rocking. Cooling. Her eyes empty.

The chair creaks, and groans, as if it, too, cannot bear this burden…

At some point, she realizes that instinct has taken over, and that she has opened her robe, and set it to suck, there, once warm, now cool against her breast. Which aches, full of milk. The nipple, bereft, yet eager, but little blue lips just refuse to take it, and the tiny moist sound they make as she tries, pulls her mind out of that special reverie mothers go into when they feed their young, and…

She begins to scream…

DO NOT READ THIS!!! (pt 2)

Her left heel drummed on the hardwood floor, for a bit. Then her right, for a bit more. Then both heels. Then her body bowed, pushing her up into a near perfect arch, then her buttocks, clad only in a nightie, smacked back down to the floor. She lay still, for a while.

Motes danced in the sunlight for a bit, and all was quiet. For a bit. And then her fingernails began to castanet on the floor, then her hands clawed, peeling up curls of wax, and then she awoke, and sat up, a whoop of air leaving her lungs…

Not to be replaced.

She was hungry. In another life, she might have described herself as being ‘a bit peckish’, because she was too much of a gentlewoman to ever have said she was starving, but she was…

Starving.

Her avid eyes scanned the room, and settled on a bundle, wrapped in a fuzzy blue blanket, seemingly dropped there…abandoned. She flipped to her hands and knees in a trice, and scuttled across the floor, turned her head like a dog, snapped down, and began to…

____________

Pastor Hammis opened the door to his mini-van, and crunched his left loafer down into the white gravel of his driveway. After a pause, the right loafer joined it, and he stood up, outside of his vehicle.
Behind him he vaguely registered the side door sliding open, and more crunches as his other three children joined him there, in the afternoon sunlight.

The service had gone well, and things had proceeded swimmingly, until the after-service potluck began, and then the situation had become, as his Dear Old Dad, the previous Rector, would have observed, and labeled as ‘problematic’.

He reached back into the van, between the two front seats, and brought out the heavy aluminum pitcher, that had held smoothies not just an hour ago, and then been covered with blood and hair, for a bit, and then, because Little Sarah screamed and seemed to want to roll up into a ball when she looked at it, he had taken the box of Handi-Wipes from under the seat and wiped it down.
Still, it couldn’t cover up the round dents, here and there, on the outside of the casing. He sighed. Turned to the kids. “You coming?”

Todd looked a little pale, and he and Sarah sat down in the edge of the open cargo space. Millicent set her jaw, and stepped up beside him, and fished out her new house key, which she had only just newly been entrusted with at the beginning of this school year. She was a big girl, now. And brave.

Sam Hammis, Pastor of his flock, Priest of his home, sighed, looked toward the front door of his quiet house, and stepped forward…
_________________________

Don’t Read…Well, You Know The Drill…

…and glass sprayed outwards from the upstairs bedroom. The ‘Baby’s Room’, as they had all come to call it.

Pastor Sam’s wife came flying out and down, like a special effects shot gone terribly awry, but the snap of her forearms breaking, and the crunch of her kneecaps and forehead as they met the gravel was all too real.

As Mommy’s face raised up, her forehead embedded with chunks of white gravel, her lower face festooned with what looked like blackberry jam, and maybe small bits of pulled pork, Millicent hitched out a small cry, and dropped down to the drive, to sit for a while.
Behind Sam, he heard thumping as the other two sought refuge deeper in the van.

Pastor Sam brought the pitcher up, almost languidly and looked at his reflection in it. He noted that he had ‘missed a spot’. Had they been doing the dishes together, he could just hear his beloved wife chiding him. Gently. Sweetness was her hallmark.
He saw that in the spot he had missed, was a bit of dark matter, and some hairs. He nearly succumbed to hysteria when he asked himself the obvious question: “Which one of these is from the skull of my Dad?”

He noted that there were a couple of blond hairs there, amongst the silver, and a few short brown ones, and his reverie nearly killed him…

A stony scuttery sound brought him out of his fugue, and he saw his beautiful, loving wife crab-crawling across the white gravel towards him, mere feet away, her wrists flopping, like a rag doll’s, her legs akimbo and dragging, her eyes blazing, and her jaws snapping at his daughter, seated there, with a terrible purpose, and…

He brought the pitcher, up and over, and down, and smashed the base of it hard, onto the point where the nine bones of the skull of the woman who’s virginity he had taken…been given, on the night of their marriage when they were both nineteen years of age…

She cracked like a three-minute egg, and dropped as if all her strings had been cut, and her most secret sauce leaked out all over Millicent’s buckle shoes, and began to spread up her pale blue socks, threatening to go all the way to the frilly lace anklets.

His wife’s fingers clawed in the white gravel, weakly, and mercifully, briefly, then stopped, and he dropped to his knees, and as he began to vomit helplessly on the one true love of his life’s body, he could only hear his daughter choking back screams, and no sound at all from the van.

They all well knew, by now, that they were not alone…

Don’t Read This…

Pastor Sam looked down at the pitcher in his hand. Look Ma, more hair. Blood.

He looked up to Heaven, and saw nothing there. How much can one man take…

His gaze swirled back into the yard, and beyond, and whatever instinct that had kept him…them, alive up to now, targeted his vision on a man, just over there, standing in the shadows of a line of Cypress trees that his grandfather had planted along the drive long before he was born, into this terrible day.

He saw the man light a cigarette, the flash of the match, and then a hot finger dug into his chest and pulled him, staggering forward, then the color washed out of his world, and all became black and white, and…

His wife’s eyes were still open, though clouded. Nobody’s home…

Her hand was relaxed, now, the ring, signifying their love, and commitment, glinted in the afternoon sun, and he pushed his hand across, through the marinara that had spilt, and tried to take her hand in his, and…
…his head jumped up off of the gravel as the high-powered round, point blank and from just a few feet away shattered his brain and turned off all the lights in a spray of white powdered gravel and blood pudding…

A trail of smoke that was not cigarette smoke curled up from the fat cylinder screwed on to the front of the man’s big automatic, a man who did not, in fact, smoke cigarettes. And he was taking it all in. A girl whom he did not know at all, her legs spattered up to mid calf with a dead woman’s (her mother’s?) ocher, her eyes rolling like a calf, as well, he…

…took quick aim and phutted a round between her eyes and she arced back and crunched into the gravel, and vibrated for a bit, but she wouldn’t ‘come back’. And they tended to, when touched by the fluids of ‘the contaminated’, as he had come to think of them. He put the muzzle of the weapon to his own temple, and heard the fine hairs there sizzle and curl. After he was dead, no burn would form, he was confident of that, and…

…a choked cry from the mini-van made his hand target the open cargo door, and…

He strode forward, Death Incarnate, and did a proper search, and…

Two children. Covered in stains. Some from earlier. Some fresh. The eyes of the boy begging him. For. Something. The girl’s he couldn’t see, because her face was buried in the boys neck, and chewing like she just hadn’t been raised with any manners at all.

He took two steps back, and his gun spoke for him, twice. Gas sloshed in the tank for a bit, and then stilled, and the man absently dropped out the magazine into his hand, slid in a full one, dropped the slide forward with the press of a lever, and…

On A Winter’s Day…

I repost this every few months or so. It was one of the first things I wrote in this blog:

A female friend of mine asked for my help in getting an abortion back in the 70’s. I forget how far along she was, but she was at least a few months along. It wasn’t my baby, so I didn’t care and said sure. She paid my gas and bought beer, and we went to the clinic and she asked me to come in with her. The staff assumed I was the father, so there was no problem with me going in.

They gloved me up and gave her a big old shot of Pitocin, and left me alone with her. Some time passed, and she began looking for all the world like she was having a baby. The nurse came in once and told me to encourage her to push, and went back out to help other girls kill their babies.

After one particularly huge pushing event, I heard a squishy, popping sound, and I looked under her drape and there was a puppy…no, wait, it was a little dark haired baby…for some reason I picked it up in my hands. It filled my cupped hands, its tennis ball sized head covered with dark brown hair, its little legs going back along my wrists. Through the gloves, I could feel it’s warmth…its heartbeat…it moved a little as it died, probably because no one came to clear its lungs.

The girl just stared up at the ceiling, breathing hard…tears running down her cheeks into her ears. Touched for some reason, I held it until the nurse came and took it from me and put it in a pan and took it away. She came back in a couple of minutes and helped me dress the girl. She looked at us with a strange light in her eyes and said “it was a girl”… I think she was upset.

The girl sobbed softly, and we didn’t talk on the trip back.

One Riot, One Ranger…

I doubt you hear that said anymore, unless someone is reminiscing. With the politically correct, neutered, pussy cops the police academies seem to be churning out these days, I bet even the Texas Rangers get diversity training, now.

There was a time though, that when a Ranger rode into town, he put his star on the outside of his coat, with all the dust buffed off, as a warning to you.

It meant that you stopped all of whatever dumb shit you were doing, or he’d kill you to make it stop. And if you were Mexican, he’d likely kill you anyway for being Mexican In Public, so you’d best skedaddle as fast as you could back over the border. Better make a run for that damn border.

Rangers travelled singly, and in packs, and they kept the peace in a very huge amount of territory, and there are ghost towns now where somebody was both stupid and lucky enough to kill one.

There were never really more than a hundred and fifty of them, and there hasn’t been what I would call an ‘OG’ (Original Gangsta) Ranger since 1936, when they all resigned or were fired when a corrupt woman was elected Governor of Texas and she put all her cronies in.

I used to know one of the OG Rangers, and he was an impressive man.

A little old banty rooster of a man, wizened from decades in the sun, top of his Stetson just barely to my chin, that old buzzard terrified the shit out of me, and I was a 20 year old bad-ass (or so I thought).

My girlfriend at the time, the redhead of the ‘beer mugs and blackout story’ fame, did side work for old folks in town, cleaning and cooking for them, and this proud old man was one of her clients. She worked more and harder than anyone I have ever known, and she took to taking pharmaceutical speed to give her the pep she needed, and I sold her much of it. Eventually, she would go on to become a burned out, wasted fat hulk, ridden by lice, and not even remembering me.

That old Ranger would have doubtless kilt me had he known. As it was, my long hair and beard made him crazy, and she had to protect me from him as it was, by threatening to quit him, and he adored her, so I was mostly safe.

The first time I ever saw the old ranger, he was launching into this breakfast place I was in and slapping an example of our local consabulary in the back of his head and taking his gun.

The deputy sheriff had been sitting with his back to the front door, his cowboy hat tipped back on his head, making time with the waitress there, at the seat by the cash register. When struck, his hat flew off, his coffee flew, and he lurched around to see a wild eyed old man in a Stetson and a black suit with a string tie, and his own gun pointed right between his eyes.

I was some impressed, and surprised that the deputy hadn’t pissed himself, though there was a stain. Probably coffee.

The old Ranger was shaking with rage, and chewed this guys ass out up one side to the other about being fuck-all dumb enough to sit with his back to the door like that, and it was something to behold. I thought the deputy was gonna cry.

Finally, out of gas, the old man handed the gun back, butt first, and stalked off to sit in the corner, his back against two walls, to have his repast. The cop collected himself and left.

I learned more about the old Ranger in the ensuing weeks, as my girlfriend drug me along. The first words he ever said to me were “There was a time that I would have killed you, and everybody who looks like you!” as he shook a bony finger in my face. The look in those old, cold blue eyes showed me that, why yes, my death is just swimming inside…right..there…
I considered knifing him on the spot, and maybe he saw that, too, and he cackled as if that cheered him up some.

A few minutes later, after my girlfriend had cooled his jets, he was proudly showing off to me a brand new in the box Universal .30 caliber M-1 Carbine. He saw that I knew how to handle guns, and showed me some more, and warmed to me…some.

In time, I learned what he meant, and he meant it exactly, about killing me. He was a lonely old man, and I was truly interested in him, and I enjoyed watching my girlfriends lady-parts as she bustled around his spartan studio apartment. He did, too.

He ended up showing me pictures he had, sepia, brownish things, the kind you know where they are standing there because the photographer told them to not move, and there was just a big flash of chemicals and a fwump!

Pictures of young men, hanging dead from trees by a rope, their eyes agoggle, sometimes some tongue lolling, a recently startled horse off to one side, guileless in its participation with the death of its most recent rider…

Piles of dead Mexicans, spattered with blood, festooned with cartridge belts, shot all to shit and gone…

White men, laid out on boards, or in boxes, or in the backs of wagons…

And always, surounded by grinning, or serious, or blank-faced hard men, them festooned with the finest firearms of their day. Their horses looking like they had just recently been bought from Arabian princes, or feudal knights. I don’t much like horses, but these were the Hummers of horseflesh, thick, muscular beasts, War Horses, who would not flinch when your rifle sent a man to hell.

And this old mans eyes, shining like the chrome hubcaps of Death’s hearse out at me from so many of those photos, looking out at me…me looking like the twin of so many of his strange fruit, arranged in trees and dangling above these men of violence.

And yes, Men of Honor.

For that’s what they were…Knights of the Old Republic, principled killers, tasked with keeping a fledgling, growing society safe from the predators who were swarming.
Predators who looked like me.

Young men, run out of the cities in the north by hard-fisted Irish policemen, coming out to the wild frontier, to rape and kill and take without giving back…meeting proud Sons of Texas, who would kill them on the spot for wearing the wrong clothes, or facial hair configuration, because they had learned…knew now…what someone who looked like that meant.

I cut my hair into the style of the day, and trimmed my beard down considerable, and he relaxed around me. I had learned the art of ‘fitting in’. Do not make someone’s trigger finger itch.

This story just kind of unfolded, here. Wrote itself. It started when I asked myself the whimsical question:

“What would my Old Ranger have done today had he been there in New Orleans and heard a cop shrug and say ‘Nothing we can do…there’s not enough of us, and I don’t want to start a riot’…”

What, indeed…

.

Death By Dough…

The kitchen is the most dangerous room in the house. At least in my house.

I was so focused on my tongue wound, I forgot to tell you about the Attack Of The Killer Biscuits that happened not ten minutes previous to my encounter with the Yoghurt Cup From Hell.

Nat and I wanted some pie, and she wanted some juice first, so I poured her some juice sans sippy lid…I’m kind of a rebel that way, living on the edge like that just makes me feel, somehow more alive, you know?

Sorry ladies, I’m spoken for. You’ll have to find yourselves another Bad Boy.

So anyway, Nat is standing there, goggling cross-eyed into the juice cup clutched in both little fat hands, a cup which I have deliberately overfilled, as I am training her fine motor skills, and I reopen the fridge, and reach down to a lower shelf for the Key Lime pie, and find out, quite abruptly that, why yes, the wife indeed has set a death-trap for me.

I had asked her to buy me a tube of cheapo biscuit dough so I could try out this quick and dirty Sopapilla recipe I have found, and in revenge, she bought them for me. And placed them in the fridge, in a most threatening and misfortunate disposition, whereupon the tube slid out along with the pie, hit the floor, and exploded loudly and forcefully, nearly causing an unfortunate ‘underwear incident’.

I mean, that fucker exploded! The tube, still with a four biscuit throw weight warhead in it, shot at my face, and I managed to flicker my head out of the way but a few biscuits whapped into my chest, and when all was said and done, the kitchen was well and truly festooned with gobbets of biscuit dough.

As a tribute to my training, Nat was standing there, her eyes squinched shut, and not moving a muscle. Nor spilling a drop. She peeped one eye open, noted that nobody was obviously dead or bleeding, and resumed sipping her juice, while I picked biscuitry off of her, then me, then the floor, the walls, the front of the stove, and so on.

Johnny hollered from the stairwell “Bust…my…bumpers! What da heck wuth dat!”

“I just shot Nattie!” I shouted back.

“Don’t you thyoot my thithter!!” he cried out with some alarum. Nat rolled her eyes, and said “Oh shut up, John, Daddy didn’t shoot me…” Note that she did not say ‘wouldn’t shoot me’. That’s my girl. Too much trust isn’t healthy in a relationship. Keep em guessing, is what I always say.

Anyway, I collected all of the little flappy used-condom looking things, blew the dirt and fuzz off them as best I could, slapped them onto a cookie sheet, and baked them. Nat was suspicious, so I had her go over them with Johnny’s magnifying glass until she was satisfied.

With butter and honey, they were quite good.

One Sunny Day, In A Field…

This very day, as a matter of fact. It is not very often that October twenty-first falls on a Friday, and when it does, I am blessed with a long day of memories of another Friday, long and long ago, where my entire life changed rather abruptly.

This is the part where you turn back. As I take the lantern from it’s hook, and trim the wick, and light it, and swing open a thick door, covered in cobwebs, and you see the stairs there before us, winding down into darkness…

I look back over my shoulder at you, and one of my eyebrows, over a cold blue eye, as the shadows flicker, raises, asking you silently, are you sure you care to follow?

You sure?

Well, then…watch your step…

My first memory of the day is lying there, on my back, looking up at the clearest, bluest sky I have ever seen, it marred only slightly by a rising column of black smoke.

Well, how in the heck did I end up here? I ask myself. Weeds tickle my ears, but I am too encumbered by lassitude to bother moving. I hear the crackle of fire, and my leg hurts with a dull ache, and I hear sirens wailing off in the distance, and I think I’ll just lay here and rest for a bit.

This day actually began about two months ago, on my first day of classes at my first University. That was a good day, and in my Sociology class, I met the woman who would become the greatest love of my life.

I was surprised she even talked to me, a woman, well a girl, really, but one of such beauty and sophistication that it was like an abrupt altitude change just to see her. And she wanted to partner on our first assigned project with me! I was surprised, pleased, and flattered all at once.

She drug me off to the library, and we worked and laughed and played and touched, a little, the tentative first touches that signal interest. The arm, close to yours, the slight touch of the side of her perfect breast as she leaned over me to point out something in a book. The hand on the leg, briefly, the playful punch on the shoulder. The lightest of taps, but electrifying.

We became fast friends, very quickly. We made up reasons to be in each others presence. We lurked outside each others classes, and acted surprised when we bumped into each other.

Within a few days, we were holding hands everywhere we went, and kissing, and she would walk beside me, holding my arm, and we’d gaze into each others eyes, and walk into things.

She lived in the dorms, I lived a town away. When we had to be parted, we dominated our respective telephones. Cell phones were still a dream, so we hogged the phone at our respective dwellings and whiled away the hours, getting to know each other.

She sang opera. She was a music major, on a scholarship. She had a place waiting for her back east, singing in a big opera, some group whose name you’d probably recognize if I could remember it. She sang like an angel, and sang everywhere we went. She sang to me, love songs. I still can’t listen to Roberta Flack sing ‘First Time Ever’, and ‘Killing Me Softly’ well, kills me.

We loved and touched and petted, heavy, and neither of us were virgins, but we never made love, because we decided in the first week or so that we were going to get married as soon as we could, and we wanted to save it. I still don’t know if I regret that, or not.

She had a heart condition, newly developed, that frightened me considerable. I caught her several times when she’d just drop. Then her eyes would flutter, life would return to her, and she’d smile and kiss the worries from my face. She had a doctor’s appointment on Monday, the 24th of October, to start looking into what caused it. In the meantime, we tried to avoid anything that would startle her or overexcite her, and if we danced, we danced close.

I woke up once, in the ambulance, and cried out her name. The attendants looked squirmy, uncomfortable. They ended up sedating me because, even tied to a board, my neck in a brace, and in really interesting pain, I fought them so I could get out and go be with her.

She had a roommate, a pretty little thing, as vivacious and outgoing as you’d ever want. She loved me, too, and was always teasing us about stealing me. We three spent a lot of time together, and I’m sure I received many envious glances in the college beer joints we frequented at the edge of campus, but I wouldn’t know, because I was caught in the eyes of my beloved.

This Friday, this fateful Friday, I was to take them both to the roommate’s hometown, where My Love had agreed some weeks before to stay the weekend with her roommate at her parent’s home. We were to leave after the last class of the day, and after we finished packing my car with the baggage two females require to survive two days in a comfortable home.

My car was a red ’64 Chevy Impala SS, with a 327 V8 High Performance engine. It had barely 10,000 miles on it, and from a standing start in the middle of the street, I could floor it and throw the wheel in a hard turn and spin the car aiming back the way it had come in a whirl of tire smoke and engine roar. It’s dual exhaust pipes would alternately burble, growl, or roar, depending on the demands I put on it, and I loved that car nearly as much as my woman.

It was the most comfortable, responsive car I have ever owned, and I’ll never own another like it. Roomy, clean, comfortable, two could lay, intertwined and cooing silliness into each others ears, on either back seat or front. When she was with me, I drove fairly sedately, but when alone, I was a terror. I drove like a madman. No more, though, no more…

Oh, get to it, man! This is what you came here for, right? Still here? Enjoying tasty little sips of my agony, are we?

Well, here you go…

The roommate wanted to stop by ‘our’ bar before we left school. She wanted to get a snootfull before we left, because she was a party party girl, dontcha know. We had thrown all of their crap into my car, most in the trunk, but the roommate wanted her little portable TV in the back seat with her, along with her stereo. It was the TV that would break her neck.

We stopped by the bar, and My Love wasn’t drinking, because we were already worried about her heart, and I nursed a glass of beer because I was handling precious cargo, and roomie guzzled for a bit until she was satiated and decided it was time to go. We went to stand up, and My Love slumped against me, and I held her until she came back, and I begged her to let me take her to the hospital. She said no, she’d be fine until Monday, and therefore chose another route.

We got into my car, and Hi Ho Silver, away we sped.

The roads were nearly deserted. A college town can empty out like magic on the weekend. We ate the road up, My Love there beside me, snug up against me, her warm hand on my thigh. She eschewed the seatbelt, that she might be closer to me, and her pretty legs were crossed at the ankles, resting there on the transmission hump, and all was right with the world. We were both realizing the coming agony of being separated for an entire weekend, and being incommunicado due to long distance charges. There was a sort of loving melancholia as my car ate up the distance much quicker than I would have liked. The roomie sat behind us, and left us alone for a change, knowing this would be our last time together for a while.

I know that I gave my car a name, but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was. But I’m sure that it was a female name. She had never let me down, and every part of her was perfect, and she died in agony and flame.

We finally got out of the more citified areas, and off the freeway, and into the rural countryside. Is that redundant? I don’t care, because the roomie was guiding me through some real hillbilly stickville. Except it wasn’t. Most of the homes spoke of money, little wild, country estates. I was desperate to remember all of the twists and turns, so that I could find my way back out of here, and then back in again to pick them up again.

The roomie told me that we were nearly there, and we were passing down a small street that was unusual in that it had houses on each side, several of them, a little country neighborhood. Suddenly, dogs rushed up all around the car, laughing and jumping and barking and just saying hello, and My Love became anxious and worriful that I would strike one, even though I was moving at a crawl, and I was becoming some anxious, too, that one of the little bastards was going to scratch my car, and My Love slumped against me, and her crossed ankles rolled off the transmission hump, her insensate, and knocked my right foot off of the gas pedal and under the brake pedal and I turned to push her legs away and rolled the stop sign I probably wouldn’t have seen anyway, it being covered with overhanging brush as it was, and I rolled out into the intersection and some good old boy in a pickem-up truck with his wife, going an estimated 120 miles an hour, T-boned me and sent my car 200 feet and My Love flew out behind me, out the window and was decapitated immediately and the roomie flew out and landed somewhere and I, safely in my lap and shoulder belt, sat slumped, unconscious in a burning car that was shattered beyond recognition.

The radiologist was trying to take x-rays of me, and I was slipping in and out from drugs and trauma, and he was having a tough time. I was shivering, probably shock, and he asked me to please hold still, and I tried, I really did. Then he said he had to take a picture of my left knee, and would I please turn it a little, and I tried, and pain shot through me like a bolt, and gave me the strength to push up on my elbows and look to see, and my leg was a nightmare of ripped meat, and glistening white bone. Hey look! I can see my kneecap from here!

I slumped back down and prayed for darkness.

There’s more, oh there’s more, but I’ve wallowed enough, I think. If you could distill the pain and anguish and loss of that time into a tincture, a bottle of it the size of a perfume sample would be enough to kill a grown man.

Moments of time still flicker, though, flapping by like the tape left at the end of a Movietone News Reel, little pictures that jump up onto the screen as they flip flip flip past the light.

Her favorite color was yellow. The funeral, closed casket of course, was redolent with the smell of literally thousands of yellow roses. The mourners stared at me, wondering who this scarred, broken man was, sobbing out his life in the wheelchair in the back of the church. Then the whispers, then more stares.

She seemed to have hundreds of family and friends. I had never met any. We had only had time for school, and for each other, and hadn’t gotten to the family stage.

It was a bit awkward.

My grief gave me cachet, though. Greater than any of theirs, even her parents, it was my passport, my badge. No one could face it and doubt that here, here sits someone who loved her more than any of you ever thought you could. More than even you, you who saw her first baby steps, heard her sing for the first time in church.

And, I had a witness. The roomie lived. Though she had no more memory of the crash than I, she had full memory of our love and commitment to each other, my dead love and I. She had shared in the gushy girl talk roommates do when the beau has left and his beloved dishes and they giggle and say filthy girl things and talk goofy romantic talk.

The roomie had heard My Love’s end of many long phone conversations, as she labored to study and ignore it.

She eventually came out of her coma in a few months. Wore one of those Halo neck/head brace thingies for awhile. Last time I saw her, one hand twisted up a bit, and she walked with a not severe but noticeable lurch. We cried together. She asked me, begged me not to kill myself.

Flip flip flip flip…images…

Me, gun in my mouth, smelling the oil, and the cartridges. Then, no, that’s not right, no one should have to see someone they love up in the front of the church in a closed casket. I stared at her death-box until they took it away. Then I went and mourned as they lowered her into the ground. I wanted to be in there with her so badly…

So I took the gun out of my mouth and pressed the muzzle against my broken heart, and ratcheted back the hammer. I was six ounces away from going to be with My Love, and I couldn’t wait. Joy mixed with anguish is a bitter ambrosia, indeed.

Something, her voice, maybe, said no, I don’t want to see you go like this. I can’t watch it. Can’t bear it, my love…live. Live for me.

And a warm hand closed over mine and helped me lower the hammer gently and I slid the pistol back into it’s holster.

I lived.

And died, every year again, on the 21st. For a long time. And then I looked into the eyes of my first newborn son, and thought I might see a bit of someone I knew once in there. And then another newborn, and another.

The Lord, He give. The Lord, He take away.

He gave me six beautiful, wonderful children, and now, I am married to the Greatest Love of my life. My first great love understands, I am sure. Heaven’s choir has it’s finest Mezzo Soprano, and my wife sings like an angel, too.

On earth, as it is in Heaven.

One thing before we go, here. I’ll just tack it here on the end, because I don’t know where else to put it. It is an anomaly, but it needs to be told, so I guess here is as good a place as any.

I have mentioned my wound. It was grievous beyond description, but clean. A precise knife cut in the shape of the number 7, paralleling and crossing over the top of my knee. It was the only real wound on my body. I was otherwise relatively unscathed, just a few bruises and scratches.

As I healed, I obsessed with the idea of seeing my car. The intersection. My memory stopped at My Love, slumped at my side, and to this day, I have not one recollection of the impact, nor anything subsequent, except for what I have related here.
I assumed something sharp in the car had gouged me, and that I had somehow crawled out on my own and passed out in the field. But I wanted to see.

My parents drove me to the wrecking yard where my car had been taken. I tottered out on my cane, wincing with every step, having just gotten out of the hospital the day before.

The keys still hung in the ignition. I looked around inside, and could find nothing that looked like it could have or had, indeed, cut me. There was no blood visible in or on the car, and I went over it carefully. Then, startled, I noted that my seatbelts had been cut, sliced clean through, as if by razor or scalpel. Hmmmm, that’s odd, I thought.

I scavenged a few things from the car…her family, their families had already gotten the suitcases and anything that wasn’t broken. I got our notebooks and shared projects book, and her notebook, with doodles in it, our names in hearts and such, that tore me open yet again; yet I still treasure them on a certain day in October, then lock them away.

Then, to the scene of the crime. My Dad had apparently been there, already, because he knew the way. I couldn’t have gotten there myself if you’d have held a gun to my head. Nothing was familiar. It was as if I had never been there before, and maybe this was all a dream.

And then the laughing dogs surrounded our car, and my blood went cold.

We were here.

As we slowly approached the intersection, I almost didn’t recognize it. All four corners had been mowed down close, cleared way back of weeds and brush, and four shiny new stop signs glowered in four different directions. Nice, big ones, and no bullet holes, neither.

This place was a shrine.

I asked my Dad to park, and I got out and hobbled to the sign I may or may not have been able to stop at. Have you ever had an opportunity to stand literally at the crossroads of your life? Where things changed in an instant? It was eerie.

I placed my palm against that sign, and then turned away and hobbled to my right, down the road, towards the impact crater, for that is indeed what it was. Every step hurt, and I relished the pain, the only penance I could perform. Also, I wanted to get in shape as soon as possible, so I could get back into our class, and finish it. Weird, huh.

I hopped across the ditch and hobbled several yards across the rutted field to where dried pools of fire retardant and my own, black blood spattered in and around a deep gouge in the earth.

Lost in my reverie, a voice startled me.

“Howdy…” and I jumped, and turned. “Sorry to scare ya, there, but I was talking to your Daddy over there, and he told me you was the fella that was in this here accident.”

I said that yes I was, and I noted that a small group of neighbors had formed around my parents car, and they were all smiling and talking.

To make a long story short, and because I am tired and at the end of this, just let me tell you what he said.

He told me that everybody heard the crash, and came running down the hill to see, and as they were running up to the car, taking it all in, and people running back to call 911, and it must have been chaos, and they notice a stranger, through the smoke, reaching into my car and lifting me out like a child, and laying me down on the ground and kneeling beside me as they all rushed up and milled around and then they noticed he was gone. They didn’t see how he got there, or how he left, and they never saw him before nor saw him again.

“Din’t even stick around long enough for us to say boo or thank ya or howdy do…” he told me, and then nodded wisely and said “Musta had warrants…cops was comin down the road by then…”

Yes. Musta had warrants. Or maybe be somebody who knew that, if left unscathed, I would have surely killed myself from the agony and the anguish and the terrible guilt of it all. That I needed my mark.

My penance.

Okay, I’m done.

Okay, We’ll Try This…

Wendy says Firefly suggested I put my ‘Best Of’s’ over here, so as to not clutter up my regular blog. Why not? We shall see…

This Blog Is Closed…

…for now, anyway. The babe at Chromed Curses fixed me up, and I’m running again. I will be back here at The Original Home Of BaneRants, with (maybe) light posting here in future. I might use this place as a mirror. Depends on how much effort I have to exert.

There’s a lot of things I like about this blog here, but the other is home, and I have it set up just the way I like it. I’ll keep the other new Blogger blog up as a spare, in case I neck-fuck the original again. Damn, I’m gonna miss this blogs categories thingy. Whatevah. I will keep an eye on the comments, here, and if anyone acts like a turd, I will moderate the comments, so behave.

Anyway, LL (Loopy Libertarian) is my new hero, and she earned her link, both here and there, with clusters. I can’t believe all the people I had try, and she does it in like ten minutes. Fucking genius.

Too bad she’s such a bitch…

Weird…

The wife and I were watching Boston Legal last night, and Tom Selleck was on. Now, I am not envious of too many men on earth, but I have always wished I looked like him. Even old, now, he is a friggen stud.

I paused the show, and told the wife this, that even now, I wished I looked like him.

She snorted and said “On his best day, he’s not as good looking as you…”

Not true, but it made me feel good. I said that, and she got pissed, and told me to shut up.

Women…

Read This, And Tell Me Again…

…how sacred the Arabs hold their mosques.

Product Placement…

I have been testing this product since receiving it as a gift on Valentine’s Day. The Gillette Fusion Power 5-blade razor.

First impressions, for a man, is YEE-HA! when you see it. Looks like a space battle-cruiser. Impressive. Gnarly. Substantial. Slap in the battery, turn it on, and your wife’s ears will prick up from across the room.

The let-down comes during the actual shave. Long story short, with caveates, is that the three-blade power razor gives a better shave. BUT! The single blade ‘trimmer’ feature on the back is to die for. I wish I could buy a powered single blade razor. It is perfect for around moustache and sideburns, and for clean-up of those areas on your face that are always left with stubble unless you just grind and grind into it, i.e., the sides of my throat under my chin.

With the three blade razor, I can shave dry if I want, though it decreases blade life. With the five blades, I am really glad that the wife bought the shaving cream that is supposedly designed for the Gillette Fusion. You place those buzzing blades onto your stubble, and you KNOW you are getting a shave. It growls like a lawnmower in tall grass. You must rinse more often, because it fills with whiskers quickly.

It pulls at them, too. I never yet have felt pain with the 3-blader, yet the 5-blader hurts me occasionally. Makes me bleed sometimes, and the 3-blader never has.

All that having been said, in fifteen years of marriage, the wife has never remarked on my shave, until now. She says she notices the difference, and likes it. A lot. The razor stays.

I used to be a shower shaver, and I have a mirror in there. Now, I shave and trim (gosh, I love that single blade trimmer!) at the sink, and keep the 3-blader in the shower to bat clean-up on any spots I missed.

All in all, I think it was worth the money, so far. That will depend on how long the blades last. They are expensive for both powered razors, but I use a 3-blader for up to two months, and I shave every day except Sunday.

Honestly, though, if I knew then what I know now, I would buy a powered single blade razor (if they made such a thing, which I doubt) and stick with the 3-blader.

I will stick with powered razors until they quit making batteries. They just don’t make you bleed. All my shaving life, before power, the sink looked like I’d sacrificed a chicken in it when I was done. Now, the worst I get, is maybe one oozing pore, where a hair got pulled out.

In summation: The Gillette Fusion has the single edge ‘trimmer. It works perfectly, especially up under the nose. You can sculpt facial hair, and I would own this even if I had a beard. It gives a lovely razor cut.

It has a LOW BATTERY INDICATOR LIGHT! Is that the coolest, or what?! It also has an automatic shut-off feature (after six minutes) in case is gets turned on by accident. MORE COOLNESS!

It looks like a friggin Ferrari, and will flat cut the piss out of your whiskers.

Two thumbs and a wagging weiner up!

Vote With Your Feet…

Well, right now, I’ve got hardly any voters at all. My traffic has died, but I know who my friends are!

So, here’s your chance. I have three blogs, as of this week, all parallel universe versions of BaneRants. Out of courtesy, I have been posting the brain-cramps that fall into my head on all three sites, for the most part.

I like WordPress, I really do. It has nice aspects. I am still not satisfied with it, and it bewilders me as yet, but I like it.

I am terribly fond of my old blogger blog. Though it vexes me, as it is a poor, broken thing. My archives went to shit, and I blame WordPress, for shitty transfer code. Yet, it is broken, and has been for some time. Still, it has my ads, and my tip jars, and the bloggy things that make me smile. WordPress’s sitemeter app is Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition, and even if I could figure out some way to display it (guess what: I can’t) I wouldn’t, because it is illogical and stupid, and doesn’t synch with any time in any known universe.

My new Blogger blog is shiny. And new. And everything works. I would have done it before I went to WordPress if I had been thinking clearly, which, obviously, I was not. It looks more Baneish than the WordPress blog, though it is austere, and looks kinda high school.

One of my dear, dear friends and patrons made me a .jpg of my old blog flames that appears to be perfect in every way, yet I lack the skill to insert it.

So…I think I have answered my own question.

Fuck you, I do what I want. I will continue to take the extra minute and a half to post at all three, and count up the comments on all three in a few weeks, and make my decision then.

Back to square one…

 

The Goddess Speaks!

Go, and worship!

She presents an opposing view to mine, and yet my needle begins to waver, due to her words. She makes several convincing points, and may just be the sobering slap to the face I needed.

We shall see…

With The Force Of A Million Tons Of TNT…

…it fell, and sounded like a bomb had gone off downstairs. I actually armed myself, because I thought Jihad had come to my house.

We were all upstairs, thank God, when the ceiling light globe, no doubt loosened by all of Johnny’s dancing upstairs over the years, crashed down to the laundry room floor with the force of a million tons of TNT!. The wife is currently doing what all wives should do: clean it up.

What? Well how do you, or anybody else know what a million tons of TNT! sound like going off? You cannot safely extrapolate from one pound, and then multiply. There are factors we don’t even know about yet in a conventional explosion of that size, and yet men in white coats will go on TV and intone their high-toned rubbish as if it were gospel.

Probably with the same face on the village barber had when he told you that the only way he could cure your child’s asthma was to bleed them.

That’s why I get a chuckle when some wide-eyed acolyte of Science As Religion assures me that his facts are correct because, well, they’re infallible, and unchangeable. At least until the next directive with the new facts is put out.

And have you ever heard two high level mathematicians aguing over their own arcane magicks? Two learned men, each convinced the other is an idiot for believing in the solution they came up with? And a fatwah from an Evolutionist is something to be feared. They will come to your house with torches.

Oh well, Christians can get goofy, too. I am so sick of Donald Wildmon ruining good television for me I could just puke. Put him and Fred Phelps and all of their followers into a large vacuum container, suck out all of their air, and the world would be a better, saner place. ‘The Book of Daniel’ was one darn good, cute, funny show, and I always got a laugh, and it made me think.

And speaking of sucking, now I have to buy a light cover. And that sucks. See?

I know I make this look easy, but don’t try this at home, folks. You could pull something.

The Poo Containers, They Plot…

I hear them there, there in their big brown bag, whispering and giggling. They know they intimidate me, and they can smell fear.

Yes, I have been even more procrastinary than usual, and have put off collecting my Secret Sauce, and yes, I could die from such behavior, but quite frankly I do not care. In fact I believe I’d rather.

Oh, to be sure, I’ll have a good look at my poo, before sending it on it’s way to the Poo Men. Okay, I might poke at it a bit, to uncover some interesting looking treasure, but actually handle it on purpose? Egads. 

Aha! My Mom is a nurse! And she’s both seen my bum and handled my poo before. Of course, it has been awhile.

I am vexed. We have finally found something the wife won’t do for me. Well, that, and let me push in her little hemorrhoid I gave her by virtue of too much, shall we say, enthusiasm on my part. It’s not that she holds it against me, it is more that she refuses to, no matter how I beg. When Gargantua attempts to slip near there, she tenses up, and her hand begins to slide towards the 5 cell Mag-Lite she keeps by her bed.

He and I slink off, bereft, yet she will make no butts about it.

Pity me.

Once again, I did not win the lottery, so I am unable to hire someone to handle my poo for me. Instead a bunch of meat-slinging yahoos and Viet Cong get it.

There goes my investment portifolio…

 

FEMALE POEM

I want a man who’s handsome, smart and strong
One who loves to listen long.
One who thinks before he speaks
One who’ll call, not wait for weeks.
I want him to be gainfully employed,
When I spend his cash, be not annoyed.
Pulls out my chair and opens my door,
massages my back and begs to do more.
Oh! For a man who makes love to my mind
And knows what to answer to “how big is my behind?”
I want this man to love me to no end,
And always be my very best friend.

MALE POEM

I want a deaf-mute nymphomaniac
with huge boobs who owns a liquor store and a bass boat.
I know this doesn’t rhyme and I don’t give a shit.

 

via reader ‘The Bastard’.

 

I Can Be Wrong…

I have made a complete 180 on this UAE ports deal. This and this convinced me. Read them and tell me what you think.

I now fully support the sale, with reservations.

Update:

But wait, there’s more. Good stuff.

CRAP!!!

I give up. This is something you’d hire a negroe for. Or me.

I am still not finished with February, and I’ve been at it nearly eight hours. My sinews ring with pain.

I think I write too much. Perhaps if I delete all but one post a week? Keep my favorite? Repair it, and move on?

DAMMIT! I see people, when I am in top form, and I mean LOTS of people, mining my archives for MONTHS of my nattering! I shan’t be able to wipe my own ass at this rate, from the Carpal Tunnel.

Crappitty crap crappitty crap crap. I shall doubtless piddle down my leg, tonight, for being unable to control Gargantua with my weakened, suffering digitii.

Oh, why did I write so much? This is just stupid.

I am highly pisstivitated.

 

Pity Me!

I am just barely through repairing the month of February on my original Blogger blog. My shoulders burn, my eyes water, and my fingers ache.

Yet I will not be bested by this foul demon! Mordor beckons, and the Ring weighs me down, so.

Hold me, Sam, just hold me…

 

Test Link…

…to see if my new Blogspot blog posts look like chopped liver when I link to them here.

You know, I’ve had like seven experts look at my original template, and shake their heads and walk away? Sorry, Phin, to not give you your shot. I only just found your email in the pile a couple of days ago.

Speaking of chopped liver, the wife conned me into trying some Stagg Chili tonight that was made from black beans and baby brains chicken. Now, black beans look like deer shit to me, and I have never had a good experience with them.

Tonight, they were perfect on the chili dogs. Just enough heat to make you say ‘whoa’, and a perfect blend of seasonings. The wife raved over them pre-meal, because she’d sampled them at Costco, so I went for it. Stagg products rock, but this one rocks extra hard.

 

I Could Make And Market A DVD…

…of all of the pics I have ever posted here, ya think? I just checked, and the file is HUGE! Many pics I have just collected on my own, and never posted. Probably at least 50% more than the oldest old-timer here has seen. At least.

Cartoons, titties, dead ragheads, goofy stuff.

Hmmmmm…

Be Careful What You Wish For…

Apparently, racism has become legal.

Collins said, “The symbolism is that Detroit is a black city and that we’re unable to govern ourselves. So we need an overseer, the state legislature, or what have you, to step in and tell us what we must do and how to do it.”

She said she will not sign off on an operating agreement until it protects Detroit’s interests and the state should not try to force them with a funding deadline.

“That is a racist attitude. I resent it very much. I’m trying not to let it color my judgments, but we’re not a plantation, blacks aren’t owned by white folks anymore,” said Collins.

Well, where’s my ‘white city’? I want one. I will so miss a decent barbecue, though. And high-toned brown honeys sashaying around. That gangsta booshit? Not so much.

Since we honkies are the majority, we get to pick which cities we want. Sorry, blacks, you can have Detroit.

We’ll let you know, until then, go steal a moving truck, and get to packin…

 

Premature Articulation…

I may have spoke too soon. I think maybe my nice shiny new (and free!) McAfee Privacy Suite is blocking the write window of WordPress from opening. I have to turn off all privacy options to blog, now.

Is this worth the aggravation, I ask you? I’m the kind of guy who when a pet gets sick, goes and gets the gun. Why people spend money on their pets, unless it is to save a valuable breeder, is beyond me. Sure, I get sad whenever Ladyfish dies, but geez louise, my ex boss has sunk over $10k into his German Shepherd for hip replacement surgery, among other things. I’d have sunk a bullet into it, long ago.

I even told my parents they better watch it. Anything Medicaire can’t handle, they’re walking out on the ice.

So you can imagine my joy over my sick blogger blog, and at having to click off my privacy to post, and then type in my password each time.

Never make a lazy sociopath reevaluate whether you are worth the effort to pull back into the boat.

Another Day, Another Blog…

I better take advantage of this while WordPress is up again. The ‘Write Post’ function has dropped in and out all day. How I suffer for my art!

I started another Blogger blog at http://banerants2.blogspot.com. It works flawlessly. Note to self! Back-up template into Word before fucking with it!

Sorry for being so boring today. The free ice cream has been pretty bland, huh?

Shit, try having blogger remove the formatting from every post you’ve ever written over more than three years and see what kind of day you’ll have.

/whining

 

When It Snows…

…it can fall so quietly, that you don’t know you are screwed until you look out the window, or try to open your front door.

That’s how I look at the state of the world today. The snow has fallen, and it is too late to dig out.

My End Times believing Christian family and friends all seem to think that there is going to be some big signs in the heavens, and clear warnings. I always tell them that it is happening, right now, in bits and pieces, slowly and surely, right before our unseeing eyes.

You go to bed in a free land, and wake up and are no longer in control of your home or your children or what you can do to your own body, or where you can go. Nearly everything you can do can get you fined and/or imprisoned if you do it in a way The State doesn’t appreciate. And The State is made up of people, people who make damn good money and great benefits doing what they do, and they will walk over your bodies and those of your children to hang onto them.

Every rule or regulation they make is ultimately enforced at the barrel of a gun, and breaking even the slightest infraction comes with the very real possibility of your death or imprisonment.

Think it’s not? Ever see a guy get ass raped in jail because he got picked up on a warrant for parking tickets? I have. AIDS: Anally Injected Death Sentence. Game over. For parking tickets.

Yes, we’re getting snowed in, and the temptation is to just go to sleep there, in it, and let the warmth and lassitude overcome you. It really is easier that way, you know.

Give up…

Still Think You’re Free?

Think again. 

Let the tough talk begin, about how you’d have given all those cops what for.

 

Shittles!

The new ca-ca-candy snack for coprophiles! Little brown chunks of bountiful, bootyful goodness, and they’re halel, so you can serve them to your Muslim sheethead friends!

So, what’s the first thing that popped into your head when you woke up this morning? Or should I say ‘pooped into’…

 

Pic Test…

 And I couldn’t do it with a sweeter girl…

 

 

When Clothing…

…meant something.

Damn you, Wal Mart and China! Oh, and Sears! For devaluing our sartorial currency!

 

No Wonder…

…you can’t trust the weather report.

I’d always wondered why…

 

Hey, Spike Lee…

Your movies suck.