Tag: #amwriting

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 Flash Fiction

Dolly

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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“Caroline, you have disobeyed me,” her mother said, slurring her words, as she stepped toward her daughter. “Give me that doll you have behind your back.”

Caroline sobbed. Her favorite aunt gave her Dolly. Her aunt that was so nice to her. She would not give it to her mother.

“No,” she shouted. “I didn’t disobey.”

Her mother staggered toward her and grabbed Dolly from behind her back. She was drinking and she dropped Dolly on the hard floor. When Caroline looked, Dolly’s stuffing was all over the floor.

“You killed her,” she screamed at her mother. “My only doll.”

Posted in Flash Fiction

Guitar Man

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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She was only sixteen. Oh, all right. She wasn’t quite sixteen. Just fifteen and a half. She liked the way that boy looked when he played his guitar. He worked on her granddaddy’s farm. Just a field hand, working in the kitchen garden and in the corn. Sometimes working in the dairy with the milking machines. Her granddaddy said he’d make something of himself some day. All she knew was how much she liked to watch him play that guitar.

Jake would use his breaks from work to practice guitar playing. He was already good but she overheard him say he wanted to be better. That he wanted to be famous. She would hide and listen to his guitar playing. That boy could play that guitar and make her feel things she’d never felt before.

Then he was gone. They said he went to Nashville to find a band that needed someone like him. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t quite sixteen. She hopped on a bus with a suitcase and a few dollars, determined to find the boy. She thought she was in love. She went to find that guitar-playing boy that made her feel things she couldn’t forget.

Posted in Non-fiction

The Case for Political Correctness

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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In the spirit of speaking out, I believe in political correctness. There. I said it. Do you know why I believe in political correctness? Because I call it, for the most part, manners and being polite to other people. Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe my mother taught me well. I always thought that being respectful about someone else’s politics or religion was the polite thing to do. In fact, as I grew up, I didn’t know the political affiliations of most of my classmates or neighbors. Sometimes, I knew their religion only because I knew who I went to Sunday School with and who I didn’t. No one really talked about it.

Over the last five years or so, political correctness has been a hot topic. The consensus among the public seems to be, at least during the last Presidential election, that political correctness was not a good thing. Who am I to say? But, I think the lack of it has caused chaos in our society. Lack of political correctness pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Why not just go vote or go to the church of your choice without making a big deal about it? Keep your business to yourself?

Dropping political correctness from the vernacular and from our behavior has had an effect on our society and, I say, a detrimental effect. As I run around out in the world these days, I feel like people are studying one another, trying to figure out these very personal things about each other. I further feel like that if you don’t pass muster, if you aren’t the correct political or religious persuasion according to their standards, then they aren’t interested in your friendship. Meet the galvanizing of America! Meet the red people and the blue people! Can this possibly be a good thing? I don’t think so.

I have many friends who have different political and religious beliefs than I do. We have lots that we talk about that is not associated with politics or religion. Don’t you? Are those two topics suddenly the only two that Americans can speak intelligently about? What happened to music, literature, relationships, and everything else that is going on in our world?

I refuse to surround myself with people who think just like I do. How boring would the world be if we all thought alike. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone pushing their beliefs down my throat. That brings us back where we started. To manners. And political correctness.

Does this mean that we can’t discuss these hot button issues? Of course not! We need to discuss them, particularly when we are electing the government of our country. We need to discuss them in the proper forums. If the government tries to ram its beliefs down our collective throat, then the people of the U.S. are going to rise up and protest as we should in order to protect our rights as a nation. The government needs to remember that not all the people support their particular point of view and the government is representative of all the people, not just half of them.

 

Posted in Flash Fiction

My Face

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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“My face looks sort of cracked,” the little boy said as he looked at his reflection in the water puddle. When he looked up, if anyone had been looking at him, they would have known why. His face was screwed up because he had been crying.

The little boy looked back in the puddle of water. He said to his reflection, “Where is my mom? She said she would be here a long time ago to pick me up.” His reflection didn’t answer him.

He looked up, but he was afraid to go toward the street. He looked back down at the water puddle at his reflection.

“My school is closed. I don’t know what to do. I can’t call her.” He saw his face screw up again. He started sobbing.

Suddenly, he heard his mother’s voice as she comes running toward him. Her car had trouble.

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 Flash Fiction

Wising Up

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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“I thought your parents were coming tonight?” James said.

“They are. They said they would meet us here at the restaurant at 6,” replied Barbara.

“I’m only waiting five more minutes,” James stated angrily.

Barbara sighed. James could be so angry sometimes. She didn’t understand it. She had hoped tonight would be special. James was standing beside her tapping his foot, arms crossed. She thought he might ask her to marry him after dinner.

“Barb, you’re so spoiled when you’re with your family. I’d rather have dinner just with you,” James said.

Barbara just looked at him. She knew he didn’t like her family but he’d never said anything like that.

“You wouldn’t be that spoiled if you were living with me.”

Barbara started walking away and ran into her parents.

“Dad, take me home. With you,” Barbara said to her dad.

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 Blog Series

#11: Adventures in RV Travel – January 22, 2017

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

How to Prepare Your RV for a Storm

Here in South Florida, we have a poor weather forecast for today, Jan 22, and tomorrow, Jan 23. We have a severe thunderstorm advisory with a high wind (50 mph) advisory. We also have a tornado watch…..and it’s early yet. We’re sitting here in our beautiful park in a RV! So how do you prepare your RV and yourself for a storm so you sustain as little damage as possible? Here is my checklist:

  1.  First and foremost, roll up your awning and secure it. You don’t want it torn off your RV!
  2. Stow away anything loose around your RV such as chairs, tables, rugs, and mats. Obviously, this also means candles, glasses, and everything outside.
  3. If you have a satellite dish, either secure it somehow or do what we do and take it down. Most importantly, protect the eyes of the satellite.
  4. Close the RV roof vents if they do not have covers.
  5. If you’re like me and you eat out a lot, get in some groceries. You might need to eat in for a day or two.
  6. Charge up all your electronics. Get them charged early so if the power goes off, you’re prepared.
  7. Make sure the wheels of the RV are secured and the RV can’t roll.
  8. If you use propane for heat or to run some of your appliances, make sure it is filled.
  9. Be sure you know where the bathhouses are if you are in a RV park. If there is a tornado, you will need to get into one.
  10. Be sure your car is gassed up in case you need to evacuate.

I hope this helps you. I will be back later today with another “Adventures” post, assuming I still have Internet! If you don’t hear from me, hang on. That only means the Internet is down here due to the storms.

 

Posted in Blog Series

#10: Adventures in RV Travel – January 20, 2017

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Hello, everyone! The picture above is of beautiful Matlacha Bay. Matlacha is the little island between Pine Island and the mainland of Florida. I took this picture off the Matlacha Drawbridge. Yes, Matlacha still has a drawbridge and ships really do come through the Matlacha Pass. You’re looking at one side of the pass and the Matlacha Bay. People are always fishing off this bridge and another bridge in Matlacha, known as the “fishingest bridge in the world.” Isn’t the bay beautiful? I spent some time “sitting on the dock of the bay” today. Hmmm…..sounds like a song. 🙂

I love to look at the ocean, gaze at the water, and look at the horizon. I took time to do that today. It soothes my soul.

The weather here today was wonderful. The temperature was pushing 80 degrees, calm wind, low humidity. The first thing I did this morning was to take my dog, Betsy, on a long walk. Almost everyone who owns a RV in these RV parks seems to have a dog! Dogs of all breeds, mixed breeds, and just dogs of all shapes, ages, and sizes. Betsy enjoys her walks immensely and I love walking her. It’s the best exercise I’ve gotten in a while. Not only is it cold where I live, it’s mountainous. It’s hard for me to walk and hard on Betsy. Love being in Florida! This island is flat and sandy. Great for walking and biking.

Another reason for my determination to walk Betsy is that she is just a bit chubby right now. Her vet prescribed three short walks per day. We’re doing that. I ride my bikes and take long walks on my own and, if it is early in the morning, I will take Betsy on a long walk before it gets hot.

One of my friends in Pine Island RV Park is an artist. She comes to Pine Island for six months every year. While she’s here, she makes crafts out of local materials like coconuts. I have several of her creations and I love them. I put them on my patio in the summer at home and, of course, on the patio of the RV. You will see a picture of the wonderful pink flamingo that Susie makes at the end of this blog post. 🙂 She makes other South Florida-related creatures as well. I met Susie, and her husband, Kelly, the first year we came to Pine Island. Kelly, unfortunately, is no longer with us. Susie keeps right on coming to Pine Island because of all her friends here. This year, I got one of the alligators she made. I will share him with you sometime! I also have a wood stork and a bee.

This may sound crazy, but I love to go to the grocery in Florida in the winter! Why? The grocery stores where I live just don’t compare, especially in the winter. I suppose it isn’t a fair comparison. After all, Florida is one of our bread baskets. I went to the big Publix Supermarket today that is about 10 miles from our park. Oh my goodness! I had forgotten about their produce. I wanted to buy every fresh vegetable in the store. We stayed in for dinner tonight. My husband grilled something for himself. I had crab and a huge salad made from those wonderful fresh vegetables. I was in heaven! The tomatoes here are to die for at this time of year!

Today was the day for my husband to work on the TV. We had cable TV in our RV but my husband, a TV buff, wanted satellite TV. Years ago, he bought a dish for the bus. So he spent most of the day trying to set up the satellite for the RV only to find out that he needs something from the satellite company to do it. It’s on its way to him at the park.

The days are starting to fly by here. By the time all this was finished today, the day was over and dark had fallen!

Tomorrow will be exciting. We’re going to go to the Everglades! This is a trip we take every time we come to South Florida. I’ll blog about the Everglades tomorrow night! More from “Adventures” then!

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