Category: Fiction

Posted in Fiction

Poverty or Plenty

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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It was important to Rita that she have a career. More important than anything. She married, but neither she nor her husband wanted children. She wanted her offspring to be the lives she touched as a professional woman. It was the late 1970s.

Rita decided on a career path. One that was going to be difficult because it was typically a man’s world. She didn’t buy that. If she studied hard, worked harder, she knew that she could do it. She could compete with men. She could certainly work with men. She was up for that challenge. Not only would this career path be fulfilling for her as a professional, but it would provide her with financial security. Financial security was important to Rita. She had never had much of that growing up.

Rita went to college, then to graduate school. She succeeded in obtaining the credentials she needed to pursue her desired career. She went after a job. She was highly sought after because she was a woman. It was now the early 1980s and companies were seeking diversity in their workforce.

Rita worked very hard, accomplishing as much as two men. Companies still discriminated back then. She was never paid as much as men doing comparable jobs. She stil worked hard. She was able to have a home, cars, clothes, travel, and all the things she thought she wanted. Best of all, she was able to buy them with money she had earned. She didn’t have to depend on any one else.

She didn’t regret her decision regarding not having children. She’d never been taught domestic skills growing up. Never been encouraged to be a mother. She wouldn’t have known how. Outside of her work, she developed many other interests and a plethora of friends. She had a lot of skills, both in her vocation and as avocations.

As Rita got older and started thinking about retirement, she realized that she didn’t really want to retire. After all, what would she do with no family? She had already traveled around a big part of the world, at least the part she wanted to see. She had known for some time that her home didn’t really give her pleasure. Rita had been taught to take pleasure in “things.” Beautiful, expensive things, but they were still just things. She had a house full of these beautiful and expensive things that meant nothing to her. They carried sad memories. Memories of loved ones who were long gone. She hated looking at these things. They simply signified the loss of the family she had loved.

Rita had “plenty.” But, plenty of what? Material things? Sadness?

Then Rita experienced a crisis in her life. A traumatic experience that made her question everything about her life. Her home reminded her of that crisis. She felt that she needed time away from it. She decided to take another trip, this time to a place she had always loved but where she had not visited in some time. A very different place from her home. Somewhere she felt she could recover from the traumatic event that had occurred in her life.

Something happened while Rita was on her trip to the place where she felt she could recover from her tragedy. Rita realized what she needed in her life and it was not the “plenty” she had at her home. It wasn’t the big house, the nice cars, the beautiful clothes, and all the largesse that goes with it. She realized those things were causing a poverty of her spirit. Putting her energy into taking care of such things was the wrong thing for Rita to do. Instead, she needed time to live simply, in a simple place, with like-minded people. After that revelation came to her, she didn’t care about her home again.

Rita realized she couldn’t live any longer with the poverty her spirit felt. She had to leave the people and places that made her feel inadequate and stressed. She had to leave the house where she had plenty, but where she really lived in poverty, and the house that stole her time. She had to run, as fast and hard as she could, toward the place and the people who made her feel young again, strong again, smart again. She had to do it quickly because she was in the last quarter, the last quarter of her life.

She would take with her the people from the “before” life who she loved and who loved her and who made her feel strong. She would leave all the others behind. She would embrace the new place, the magical place. She would make this last quarter of  her life the quarter of “plenty,” not poverty of spirit, and finally be happy.

Posted in Fiction

I Can See for Miles…..Farther!

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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My name is Liz and I told my story here last fall in a story called I Can See for Miles. I didn’t use my name then because I was so humiliated and embarrassed. I can use my name now. Yes, I let someone humiliate me. Hurt me terribly. Embarrass me. Shatter my heart. It’s six months later now and I can tell a little more of my story. Some of it is so personal I can’t tell it all, but I can talk more about what happened to me. Maybe it will help someone else.

To put it simply, I got involved in a relationship with the wrong man. I didn’t know he was the wrong man. I had known him for more years than I want to think about and we had been involved on some level a number of times before last fall. It wasn’t a traditional relationship. Quite the opposite. But, it was a relationship that was important to me and I had every reason to think it was also important to him, including both his words and his actions. He was the love of my life……..I thought.

The truth of the matter is that I made a terrible mistake and a terrifically bad decision to get involved with this man – ever. From the first time many years ago. Why? Because he is a sociopath. Sociopaths are dangerous people and I found that out – in spades. He has some other issues besides the fact that he is a sociopath, but that is the issue most relevant to what happened to me with him. Normal people don’t do what he did. Not only men can be sociopaths. Women can be too. In my case, it was a man. Let me tell you what makes a sociopath who he is and why he is dangerous.

1. Sociopaths are charming and smooth. Dating a sociopath can be wonderful. They sweep you off your feet. Believe me, I was swept totally off my feet.

2. They have no regard for societal rules or norms. But, they are good at faking it. They are big time risk-takers.

3. They are also good at faking relationships. In fact, I did not ever, over many years, have an actual relationship with this man. It was fake. It was all fake. Sociopaths cannot have real relationships because they have no empathy. Perhaps that’s the reason this man had been married more than five times. The relationship was real to me because he was able to make it feel real to me, but it was never real. There was something about our relationship that he needed, that he gained.

4. Sociopaths are control freaks but you often don’t realize it because they are so good at it. I certainly didn’t realize it. He chooses to date or marry you because you meet a need, not because he loves you or even likes you.

5.  Sociopaths will treat you like a queen, until they are finished with you. You may have a thousand wonderful times with a sociopath. I certainly did. But, they will eventually throw you away like yesterday’s garbage. You will feel like yesterday’s garbage. 

6. In relationships, sociopaths are self-serving. A relationship to them is a means to an end. They want something – money, power, sex, amusement, something you can give them. When you quit being able to give it to them, they are gone.

7. A sociopath has three phases to his relationship. First is the assessment of the victim. Will she meet his needs. Second is when he is in the relationship and getting what he needs. He will fake love and romance but he feels nothing. Third is the abandonment stage. He leaves the other person when he has gotten what he wants. He has a desire to hurt that person and goes about the business of doing that.

8. A sociopath is very good at determining his partner’s weaknesses and using them against her.

9. Can a sociopath love? In a word, no. They love themselves, power, and manipulation. They love in an unemotional, uncaring manner, but the partner does not know it. But, the true, complex emotion of love. Absolutely not.

10. Can you love a sociopath? On that, I am an expert and the answer is yes, absolutely. That’s because you aren’t loving the real person, but a persona. You are treated so well and so intensely, that you can love a sociopath very intensely.

I think what is so important to me about these ten points about sociopaths is that I did love this man who was a sociopath and wasted many, many years of my life loving him. The second thing is that I was hurt deeply when the relationship ended, before I figured out that I had been involved with a man who was a sociopath. Third and most important is that sociopaths have a desire to hurt their former partner and they very methodically go about doing it. That is what makes a sociopath dangerous.

So why is this post entitled, “I Can See for Miles….Farther?” I will never totally recover from the hurt from this relationship, but I have discovered a new relationship!  I have met a wonderful man who is good to me. I’m a different, eccentric kind of girl and our relationship isn’t traditional either, but it is good. In fact, it is very very good. I’m happy and fulfilled in this relationship. I never thought that would happen for me again.

 

 

 

Posted in Fiction

Rebecca’s Tragedy

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

When Rebecca was a teenager, a tragedy befell her. I’m only talking about the tragedy now because I’m telling her story in a book I’m writing and this chapter is necessary in order for you to understand her. It’s part of Rebecca’s backstory. Her tragedy is a nightmare that every parent fears and an event that would mark any teenage girl for life. It marked Rebecca and changed her and her life forever. I’m spending some time working on the backstory here on my blog. All of you writers and readers out there, I’d love your constructive criticism!

When Rebecca was a young teenager, her relationship with her mother was very dysfunctional. Her mom was a woman who was probably clinically depressed, though that was not a diagnosis typically made in the 1960s. She was very reclusive and laser-focused on Rebecca. She wanted Rebecca to study and make good grades. She didn’t want Rebecca to see her friends. Instead, Rebecca went to school and came home. She received constant warnings from her mom about what a bad influence her friends were on her, along with how she should not ever be around boys. When Rebecca was fifteen, her mother and dad had finally decided to let her go to selected places with her friends. She could never go anywhere like a school dance, but she could go to her friends’ houses, a drive-in restaurant, or a ballgame. Her dad would take her and come pick her up. Then something happened when sixteen was right around the corner.

Rebecca went to a basketball game with some of her girlfriends. SItting near them in the bleachers was a group of boys from the other high school in town. Rebecca didn’t know any of them. She didn’t even notice them. A boy from their group came over during the game and sat down beside Rebecca. They started to talk. She was very shy, but he drew her out and they laughed and talked a little during the game. At its end, he asked Rebecca out on a date. She told him she would have to ask her parents. He said he would call her and asked for her telephone number. Rebecca was thrilled. It was the first time she’d been asked out on a date.

As her dad drove her home that night, he told her that he had seen her talking to T.J. at the ballgame. She was scared to talk to her dad about it, but she knew she had to if she wanted to go out on a date with T.J. She told her dad T.J.’s name and a little about their conversation. A conversation between a shy, young girl and a boy who was a year older and more experienced. A boy who had already had a steady girlfriend. Her dad knew T.J.’s dad. After Rebecca asked if she could go out with T.J., her dad didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he gruffly told her she could. Rebecca threw her arms around his neck, even though he was driving. She didn’t see the tears in his eyes.

The tears in her dad’s eyes were not about that particular boy. Not then. They were because he knew he had to let Rebecca grow up. Had he known what would happen because of T.J. McNamara later, he would never have given his permission. He had no way to know.

Somehow, Rebecca’s dad convinced her mother that it was all right for Rebecca to go out with T.J. They never went out on school nights unless there was a ballgame. They dated throughout the end of Rebecca’s sophomore year in high school and through what would have been the first semester of her senior year in high school. Rebecca started college that semester. They became part of each other’s families. They were happy. T.J. had asked Rebecca to marry him.

Then, in the spring semester of Rebecca’s senior year, T.J. suddenly told her that he wanted to date other people. It was out of the blue. There was nothing she could do about it, and she and T.J. went their separate ways. Rebecca cried a million tears. One night, not very long after that, Rebecca went out with a group of kids in their car to the local drive-in restaurant. She didn’t even see T.J.’s car pull in, but before she knew it, T.J. jerked open the door of the car in which she was in and yanked her out of the car. Her friends started screaming for him to let her go, but he shoved her into his car and roared away. No one could possibly have caught him.

Rebecca doesn’t remember what words passed between them. As they pulled out of the restaurant’s parking lot, they turned toward the outskirts of the small town. The first thing Rebecca felt was T.J. hitting her in the face with his fist. He had never raised a hand to her during their years of dating. Things got fuzzy for Rebecca after that first blow. All she remembers is that he kept hitting her in the eye and face as he drove. She finally passed out. When she awoke, he was beating her in the abdomen, still driving the car, and she passed out again.

The next thing Rebecca remembered was being in T.J.’s car on the shoulder of the road leading to his parent’s house. He was talking to her even though she had been unconscious. He was asking her how they could cover up what he had done. She doesn’t remember answering. She was in a stupor. Not exactly unconscious, but not conscious either. He drove her to his parent’s farm which was a number of miles out of town. She remembers T.J.’s mother sitting down in shock when she saw them walk in and thinking she must look bad. The only other thing she remembers about that visit is T.J.’s parents telling him to take her home.

Rebecca doesn’t remember the drive home. All she remembers is waking up in a heap in her driveway and thinking that it was dark and she hurt and was alone. She supposed that T.J. just pushed her out of the car instead of face her parents. She was too weak to get up. She just laid there and cried for her dad. Somehow, her dad heard her or heard something and came to investigate. She remembers that he snatched her up, crying, and took her inside and laid her on the couch. She remembers thinking she’d ruin her mother’s couch with blood. He and her mother tried to get her to talk to them and tell them what happened. She doesn’t remember talking, but she must have mentioned T.J. Her dad put she and her mother in the car and drove them to the Emergency Room. Then he left, although Rebecca didn’t know until weeks later that he went to T.J.’s parent’s farm and tried to kill him with a 2’X4′ piece of lumber. His dad stopped him.

Rebecca was in the hospital for several days. Her eye was damaged with all the blood vessels broken. The bones in her eye socket were bruised and her jaw on the right side was cracked. The facial bruising was severe as was the bruising on her abdomen. She had broken ribs. Rebecca’s parents told her later that she didn’t speak to them or to the doctor’s the entire time she was in the hospital. She went home at the end of those few days, but she never went back to high school again. She did eventually continue on in college when she had healed. Physically. Rebecca didn’t ever emotionally heal. Not really.

Rebecca never talked to T.J. again. She never knew what caused him to do what he did. He was obviously an abuser. She didn’t even see him again for many years. When she did, there was no remorse on his face. Instead, there was a sneer. Many years later, physical damage from that terrible beating came back to haunt Rebecca.

The emotional and mental injuries were, by far, the worst. It was years before she went out on another date. She finished college quickly in that small town in eastern Tennessee. She did have many friends, but she didn’t see her high school friends. She left as quickly as she was finished with college and moved to the city. Except for coming back and visiting her parents, it was years before she ever spent time in her hometown again.

There was no doubt that Rebecca needed psychological counseling after the incident with T.J., but that kind of therapy was not widely available during the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, she buried that incident in her psyche and didn’t think about it for years at a time. Later in Rebecca’s life, she realized that it had shaped her relationships for all of her life. It was too late now.

Posted in Fiction

Censorship and the Bookstore on the Corner

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

The little bookstore used to be one of the gathering places in the small village. The front of the bookstore had the current bestsellers and also some books that were worthy but that had not caught the eye of the public. As you walked toward the back of the bookstore, the books got older and more were in paperback. All were carefully vetted by the owner, Pete Turner. All he wanted was high quality literature in his store.

This was before the federal government stepped in and started banning books. There were always sectors of society that banned books. Public schools. Libraries. They usually banned them because they contained sex, violence, profanity. Pete bought books for literary value. That was in the past. Before the federal government, beginning in 2017, sent out squads of soldiers to pull books off the shelf that were on their banned book lists.

It was hypocrisy. The Holy Bible was always on the banned book list. That was the only banned book the soldiers left intact on the shelves.

What the squads of soldiers didn’t know is that Pete kept shelves of banned books hidden in the basement of his bookstore. He had put book jackets on the banned books that were fake. The jackets from other books that were on the government’s approved list.

In 2017, the federal government decided to try to control the American people’s reading material. They were relentless. They went into libraries and schools and stripped the shelves of any book on the list and even some that weren’t. Bookstores were hit especially hard. They even pulled the Harry Potter series off the shelves. It had been on the banned book list off and on and so many children had enjoyed it. Harry Potter was the number one banned book between 2000-2009 according to the information Pete had. After they pulled the books off shelves, they piled them in the street and burned them.

People were afraid to gather in Pete’s bookstore now. His business had dropped by half. He owned his store fair and square. There was no mortgage on it. That was the only way he was staying in business at all. Many bookstores were going out of business.

The people who were in favor of the actions of the federal government with regard to banning books didn’t see the problem. Some thought it was a good thing that these books that talked about issues that made them uneasy and afraid were being burned in  the streets. The others, the ones who thought the federal government was overstepping, brought up the First Amendment and freedom of speech. They said that banning books and burning them in the streets was a violation of the First Amendment. Banning books and burning them in the street was the ultimate in censorship.

Just recently, Pete had learned through his distributors of books, that the federal government had ordered that production be stopped of the books on the banned book list by the book publishers. These publishers were high-profile. Pete had also learned through his contacts that smaller publishers had started producing these banned books under the radar. They were booklegging. Producing banned books illicitly. Otherwise, these wonderful books would be lost forever. Books like “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck; “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain; “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee; “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley; and many, many more. If these small publishers were discovered, there would be terrible consequences compliments of the federal government.

Pete’s bookstore had a supply of many of the banned books camouflaged in his basement. He was essentially running a library out of his basement and loaned them to people who wanted to read them. Pete, himself, would suffer consequences if he was discovered. Even though many people now avoided his bookstore, there was a core group of readers that still came in, had coffee and tea, and browsed. They were defiant of the federal government. Pete was so glad to see them. These people recognized censorship for what it was.

Pete had been able to obtain and keep some history books that detailed what had happened in the Fascist regime in Germany. If the soldiers found these books, they would take them and burn them, but Pete tried to keep them available for all his patrons to read. In 1933, Hitler’s regime burned 25,000 books supposedly to remove the Jewish influence from Nazi Germany. Books from scholars such as Freud and Einstein were among these books and some were irreplaceable. Censorship through book burning was a hallmark of the German Fascist regime. Pete wanted history books available for his patrons so they could read about this movement. He was afraid he would be found out. In Germany, booklegging became popular but was shut down.

Pete spent his days as proprietor of his bookstore trying to keep a low profile while encouraging the people of the village to frequent his bookstore. It was a fine line to walk. The squads of soldiers appeared at his door on a regular basis but they found fewer and fewer books to burn. All his banned books were camouflaged and hidden. Pete is noticing that more people in the village, people who are surprising to him, are coming in to have coffee and talk with him. They carefully ask to see his history books and occasionally, the banned books. This gives Pete hope, for his business and for his country.

Pete’s little bookstore in the village remains. The story has no ending yet. Pete and at least some of the people in the village have hope that the First Amendment of their Constitution will be respected in the future and censorship and the issue of banned books will become a thing of the past.

amwriting with The Writing Reader

Posted in Fiction

Gretta’s Dream

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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My name is Gretta. I don’t like to sleep. I dread going to sleep every night. You see, I have this dream. The same dream every night with minor variations. I remember my dream because it happens right before I wake up in the mornings. Each morning. Every morning. The dream isn’t bad. I should say it wasn’t bad in the past, but it was  a little disconcerting. Now, it’s bad. I still have the same dream even though, now, there is no reason I should have it. It makes me feel like I’ve been hypnotized.

Yes, I know this sounds confusing. I guess I should try to explain except I’m not sure I can. I think I probably was hypnotized, although that isn’t the right word. Brainwashed. That’s the right word. So I have this dream and it seems real. Sometimes for as much as ten or fifteen minutes after I wake up. I have dreams, just like everyone else, that I never remember afterwards. This dream is different.

I’m trying to delay telling you about the dream. I don’t like to talk about it. I’ve never told anyone about it except the other person who is in the dream, but he’s gone now. I think if I talk about it, maybe it will go away. Here goes.

Some background. There was a man in my life for awhile. That ended and it ended badly. Very badly for me compliments of him. But that’s another story. That man is in my dream. I had this dream while we were seeing each other and it has continued since. Probably because I was brainwashed.

It’s a simple dream. I dream that this man is lying beside me. We’re holding hands. His hand feels so real to me that I’m convinced he’s really there. It’s like living in an alternate reality. Then, I wake up. I still feel his hand grasping mine. I continue to lie there, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes, actually wondering why I feel his hand in mine. I know it isn’t real, but why does it feel so real even when I am wide awake.

I get out of bed. For a time afterward, it haunts me. Not so much the dream, but the feeling. Why do I keep having the dream and more importantly, why do I keep having the feeling of his hand grasping mine?

Do you see why I don’t like to sleep?

Any feelings associated with the dream have long since gone. They are dead, buried by the ashes of my relationship with the man in the dream. I don’t even like the feeling of his hand grasping mine any more. He showed himself to be a mentally ill psychopath. Even at that, it took some time for me to get over my own feelings for this man. Once I found out what he had done, it was a relatively quick process. Within a few months, I was over the relationship or as over a relationship as you can ever get when someone sets out to systematically gain your love and trust and then, on purpose, figures out and acts on a plan to crush you.

Why did he do this rather than just tell me the relationship wasn’t working for him? You’d have to ask him. I suspose because he is, indeed, a psychopath.

I’m left with this dream that wants to pass for reality. Every day, I tell myself it is not reality and will never be reality again because I will never allow that to happen. The dream does not go away. Can a situation, a relationship, damage your subconscious to the point where you can’t shake it from your subconscious?

I guess I need help with this. You don’t get over brainwashing easily. I would do just about anything if I could wake up just one morning without having had this damn dream. I would love to like to sleep again. Peacefully.

 

Posted in Fiction

The Good Detective

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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A sociopath was terrorizing his girlfriend. She wanted nothing to do with him. She didn’t think he wanted anything to do with her either. He just wanted to torment her. Why? Because she existed and because he felt she had led him astray. Never mind that he had been the one that had invited her to get together with him all those months ago.

Jax was a detective. He had been seeing Eliza since her divorce and her move away from her long time home. Also since the end of the relationship with the sociopath. She and Jax weren’t young anymore, but they had found happiness with each other. The only glitch was this man, this man who was the detritus of life. That’s all you could call him. He wasn’t really a man at all. Jax was determined to stop him from tormenting Eliza. He’d done enough to her. Far more than enough. The end of that relationship was harder than the divorce on Eliza.

There was only one problem. Jax knew how to stop the sociopath. In order to do it, he had to betray Eliza.

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Posted in Fiction

Incomplete

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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As she walked along Main Street of this funky little fishing village, turned artsy community, she knew that she would feel incomplete when she left it. It was just a small village, but she had visited it many times. Every time she was here, she was afraid it would be the last time. She felt like it should be the first. She felt she belonged here.

Have you ever found a place that felt like “your” place? A place where you felt perfectly at home. Like you could fit in perfectly. That’s how she felt in this village. Like she had finally found home. She didn’t know what made her feel this way. Maybe because the village was full of creative people. Eccentric people. People who had gotten tired of the ways of the outside world and had somehow found this village to escape whatever they had to escape. She liked everyone she had met here. Odd. She didn’t like many people these days. She liked the people here.

Here, in this village, she could smile again. It had been a long time since she had smiled. All her cares seemed to slip away here along with the bad memories. She didn’t think about or remember him anymore. The one who had hurt her so badly. She didn’t even think about the one she had left. It felt like a fresh start here in this small village.

She had to leave it at least one more time, even though leaving left her feeling so incomplete. She had to at least go back home and wrap up her affairs. Then, she could come back here and stay forever. She could study the ecosystem as they tried to re-establish the wetlands. She could write her novel and get this second novel placed with a publisher. She could live day-to-day and not put any value on the material stuff of life.

She had already rented a place to live here. Her new life before her was exciting. She thought he had ruined it. He had certainly tried. If she was honest, she would say that he had ruined parts of it. She wouldn’t ever feel anything again for a man. At least she could still feel for a place. This magical place.

Posted in Fiction

Old Time Rock and Roll

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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It was 1979. The good ole days of rock and roll. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, to be exact. If she had known how good they had really been, she would have paid more attention. Enjoyed them even more than she had and she had enjoyed them a lot. If she had known what was coming. Oh, if she had only known what was coming. She was lucky. She was just at the right age to take advantage of those days of rock and roll. Graduated from college a few years earlier. Out on her own with a good job. Living in a city, big enough but not too big.

In a way that she can only appreciate now, those days were innocent. The first innocent days of rock and roll. People enjoying each other. Awesome music. Drugs, yes, but it seemed not many of her friends had addiction problems. Social drug use. A little weed. Some cocaine, but no one had heard of crack yet. LSD but not among her friends. That’s about it.

Anne was reminiscing. Now it was 2017, early in the year. Winter. She was sitting in a nightclub in a city far away from that city she’d loved so much. That city from 1979 where she’d made good friends, heard that awesome music, gotten her education. She was still that same girl in her head. Her body was telling her that maybe it wasn’t quite the same any more. Her heart. Oh, her heart. It had been light and fun-loving in 1979. Now, it had been stepped on once too often. It wasn’t light anymore. It was still fun-loving but ever so much more cautious. She hated that. All the years in between, and the experiences, had done that to her. Her poor judgment during those years had done that.

But, here she was. Back in a nightclub. She’d always loved bars and nightclubs. She’d felt at home in them. Free. Free to be herself and she didn’t feel like that in very many places. Some of her friends would never believe that as they thought bars were terrible places. Other friends, they agreed with her, secretly or not so secretly. Even if they didn’t agree with her, they knew this about her and understood.

The band playing at the end of the long bar was a heavy metal band. She liked a few metal bands. Not this one. They were making noise and not music. Maybe the noise would drown out some of the thoughts in her head. A good band would have better accomplished that as she would have enjoyed it, but this bar was close to her hotel.

Anne thought of some of her old friends who she knew in 1979. So many of them were gone now. Some had fought in Vietnam and had died due to war-related ailments. She thought of Bobby. Some had kept right on partying through the years, never stopping to take care of themselves, and had died due to heart ailments. She thought of Jim. Some had settled down and married and had families and had stopped this foolishness. She smiled to herself as she thought about that. Some had mental illnesses and she thought, her heart breaking, about Paul. Some were like her. They had gone on and had been successful, either at home or with a career, but their hearts still belonged to 1979 and rock and roll.

Finally, the server approached her and seemed surprised when she ordered a shot of Dom Julio tequila with a glass of water. That pissed her off. She didn’t look that much like an old lady. She did look female, however, and the server went ahead to ask her if she wanted it chilled. That was a question they would only ask a girl. Anne snapped a quick, “Of course not,” at her and looked away.

Anne needed this bar and this shot of tequila tonight. She was at a writer’s conference to promote her new book. The conference was in New Orleans and Anne had almost told her publisher that she could not come to this city. She knew that he would put a great deal of pressure on her to come and there was no use fighting him about it. She had to come. It was an important conference if she wanted her book to be successful. It was her second novel. A writer’s second novel is important. It tells a publisher if the success of the first one was a fluke or the real deal. So, here she was in the city where she had spent so much time during her life. The city where the love of her life still lived.

She was staying at the conference hotel. The Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street. A hotel she and her love had stayed in more than once. She shook her head and about that time her tequila finally showed up. She shot it before the server could walk away and ordered another one. She had to get those thoughts out of her head as she had important business to attend to.

All the other conference participants were excited about touring New Orleans. There wasn’t nearly as much to see since Hurricane Katrina had almost wiped it out. Anne could tell a huge difference. Almost half the population was gone. She surely didn’t need or want to tour New Orleans. She could be the tour guide since she had been there so much. Touring it would just make her remember things she would rather not.

For the most part, the conference participants were younger. They barely remembered that epic hurricane, let alone realized what it had done to that city. She also knew that restaurants were still closing at a rapid rate as it continued to lose population. Even universities in the city were facing closure. A lot of what was left in the French Quarter  seemed to be the strange people, mimes, the voodoo shops, and such. She didn’t want to see this city that she loved dying a lingering death. She had decided to stick close to the conference hotel, participate in everything the conference had to offer, and pretend she was somewhere else. But, she had to sneak out, late at night, and take advantage of the bars and the music.

She was just thinking of going over to one of the good jazz bars she knew. She had heard that a big name in jazz was playing at Preservation Hall. Suddenly, a voice said, “Madame, may I join you?”

She looked up and to her right and a man was standing there smiling. He had jet black hair and sparkling blue eyes that also seemed to be smiling. At first glance, he was probably 15 years younger than her. She thought about it a second and knew she could always get up and leave. She shrugged her shoulders and motioned to the other chair at the table. Before he sat down, he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Jon Beaufort.”

She shook his hand and introduced herself, “I’m Anne Darrow.”

He sat and said, “That is a good Scots name.”

“I believe yours is French.”

Jon replied, “Yes, I’m French.”

“I would ask you what a classy lady like you is doing in a nightclub by herself, but it would sound like a line.”

“Yes, it would,” Anne said, “but I will answer you. I’m attending a conference at the hotel next door and I came over here in hopes they had a good band.”

“I, too, am attending the conference at the Royal Sonesta,” exclaimed Jon. “So you are also a writer.”

Anne and Jon sat and talked about the books they had written and promoted for  a short while. While Anne had written two psychological thrillers, Jon wrote political thrillers. There was a lot they could talk about and learn from each other. Suddenly, Jon looked at Anne and mentioned that the band was loud and not at all good. He said, “Anne, I may be out of line, but would you like to go somewhere quieter and have dinner with me? We could finish our conversation.”

Anne had to think for a moment. It was just dinner and he was a conference participant, so why not, she thought. Then, so many reasons why not flashed through her mind. She smiled and reached into her purse, taking out a business card. She scribbled her phone number on the back. She handed it to Jon.

Anne said, “Jon, you seem very nice. Maybe I would like to get to know you better. Let’s see each other tomorrow at our book signings. Then, after the conference, if you want to call me some time, please do.”

Jon smiled and asked if he could walk her back to the hotel. He said goodbye at the elevator. Anne had no idea if she would see him the next day or not. She realized she didn’t really care and went on up to her room. She didn’t know him well enough to care. If he wanted to get to know her, he would have to make some effort. Anne felt proud of herself. It was about time.

Prompt 1966: thewritingreader.com

amwriting with The Writing Reader

Posted in Fiction

Elusive

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Sleep was always elusive for her. Her battles were fought when she was awake. She lived the consequences during her sleep at night. She had fought too many battles. This last battle had marked her deeply. It wasn’t over yet. In fact, it had barely begun. She was divorcing her husband of many years. They had not gotten along in years. So many years, she was surprised he wasn’t relieved that she wanted a divorce. Then again, she’d always known he’d stayed for money. She had been right.

She finally had to have a break from the animosity between them so she had come to her favorite place for awhile. She had found tonight that the night terrors were especially bad so she was out walking. She could hear the palm trees shake in the wind and smell the ocean. She felt the crunch of the sand beneath her feet instead of the squish of the clay dirt back home. She had no fear walking at midnight on this island in the Gulf of Mexico. She would never have done this at home. She hoped the sound and smell of the surf would chase away the latest bout of night terrors where her husband played a starring role.

Wasn’t it time for her? No one knew how much time we had left. She didn’t want to spend her time with a man who made her miserable. Sure, she loved him but like her family, not like a mate. He didn’t even realize he was abusive. There was no one who had been in his life who had been a role model. She needed years of peace while she still had years to spend.

She knew she’d have no one when the divorce was over. Her family was mostly gone with only a few remaining by her side. Friends tended to vanish when you became that one single woman in their lives. They didn’t quite know what to do with you then. She’d witnessed that at Christmas this past year. She thought she would probably sell her house and move down here, where the sea oats bloom. Make a new start. So what if she were alone during her golden years? Did it really matter? She didn’t think so. Contentment perhaps mattered more than anything. It was time to depend on just herself.

As she was walking back to her short-term rental, she thought of another alternative. Making it work would be elusive. Perhaps it was the answer. When she wrote, she could write under a pen name. No one would know who she was. She would simply just….vanish.

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Posted in FFftPP, Fiction, Flash Fiction, romance

Lying in London

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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“Patrick!” Rebecca cried. “What a wonderful thing to do! Look at that beautiful tray of food.”

“It’s the least I could do for us tonight. You had a long day of shopping. I had a long day exploring London.”

Rebecca and Patrick were on their way back to the States after a month in Europe. It was the first time they had been there together. They explored France and then took the train to Switzerland where Patrick had business. They had just finished a day in London. They were staying a wonderful old hotel in Trafalgar Square.

Patrick was ready to have a break from Rebecca, but she didn’t know that. She thought he would miss her as she would him. She also didn’t know he was visiting another woman today in London while she was out shopping.

They drank the wine and ate the lovely Stilton cheese from the tray, saving some of each for later. Then they took a late night walk in the Square. London was beautiful by night. It was a night Rebecca would never forget.

She cried when they parted the next day. By the time Patrick boarded his plane, he had already forgotten her.

200 words

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