An unfulfilled promise

The heavy humid night felt like an unfulfilled promise as the wind slapped against the nape of Nate’s neck. The summer sun had been draining the color and the life from his crunchy lawn for weeks now, but he could not bring himself to water it. Even in the convection oven of July that seemed an unnecessary luxury while fires raged to the north and west.

He could not stop himself from looking up though. Watching the blanketed sky sweep by on the long gusts, that stirred up the cicadas and sent the trees into a chorus of pleas for rain, how much was smoke and how much was cloud. Nate hoped that the scales were tipping in favor of clouds. Not just because the almond trees that ran like stubble over the hilly 20 acres Quentin had purchased two years ago were looking worse by the day, but mostly.

The dryness had everyone on edge. First responders, farmers, and banks all their eyes on the cost and the loss. A bottom line that only seemed to be getting more dire.

So, Nate couldn’t help himself from sending out a wordless call for help as the wind died down and everything sagged under the weight of 98% humidity. If his desperation could have been given a voice it might have said “please do not make the hard working suffer needlessly”. Maybe it would have just asked “why”.

Either way it deserved a response.

Summer heat

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The rhythmic clicking of the ceiling fan was almost soothing.  A promise of the cool breeze that should have been.  However, even as the rickety metal blades struggled against the heavy humid air it refused to be stirred.

Sex on the beach

Her mouth was hanging open, she was sure, in a very obvious and embarrassing way.  Shyly she cast her eyes down and ever so subtly shook her head.  What was she playing at this wasn’t her…she, Lynn Serst, had never been brash enough to flirt.  She blushed and felt squeamish just watching her friends fawn over the crop of summertime fun boys at the beach which was why she had excused her self to the cabana.   

“I’m feeling a little off, maybe all this sun is giving me a slight headache, I’ll just go up and order some food,” she had told them, and it hadn’t been a complete lie.  Something down on the beach had definitely left her feeling ill she just couldn’t bring herself to tell her friends it was the noxious cloud of lies, desperation, and coconut oil wafting off of them.  So she had strolled happily taking long strides in the warm sand loving the sensation of her ponytail kissing her bare skin.  However, one step into the manufactured breeze beneath the shade of the cabana’s straw roof had stolen her easy and relaxed vibe. 

In its place was some sex soaked tension which caused her to pull back her shoulders and cock her hip.  On autopilot she ordered a drink and sat at a table for two with an unobstructed view of the ocean and waiter who had caught her attention.  Yes he was good looking, with great hair and a nice tan, but that wasn’t what had her panting between parted lips.  He was dancing.  Just a few steps and sways as he moved from table to table or carried drinks complete with little umbrellas, but the way he did it had kicked her core temperature so high it felt like her blood was at a simmer.  He shifted his weight and pivoted so quickly she didn’t have time to refocus her rapt attention and he caught her staring.

He smiled as he walked over to her table while she did her best to not react, and heaven help her, stop the flush in her checks from coloring her head to heals.  She took a large gulp of her drink to hide her hanging jaw, but sputtered as the burn of vodka slid down her throat, what the hell had she ordered.

“Sex on the beach,” he asked as he came level with her table.

“Excuse me,” was all she could manage well aware that she had lost the battle with her blush.

“Want another,” he asked pointing to her drink smile still in place though now noticeably wider.

She rested her head in her right hand and focused on the table top.  “No, um… better not,” she said finally looking up at him with a slight grimace.

“Oh,” he said confusion written across his face, “I got it.”

The second he left she let he head fall.  “Smooth Lynn,” she said to the table top, “just finish your drink and go before this gets any worse.”  She finished the drink in one go which left her paralyzed by a cold induced headache just behind her eyes. 

The sound of ceramic hitting Formica caused her to look up as he pushed a slice of chocolate cake toward her.  “What’s this,” she asked as he danced away.

“Better than sex on the beach,” he replied with a glint in his eye.

She unrolled the fork from its napkin to try a bite and laughed out loud, maybe she wasn’t as bad at this flirting thing as she thought.

All rights to owner.

Stories from when the woods still teemed with the unknown

All eyes turned to me expectant and doubtful in the firelight.  I had been unable to stop myself, but after being regaled for over an hour with the old standbys, including the man with the hook, who has my golden arm, etc, who could blame me.  I more than any of my, slightly drunken, peers knew the meaning of story telling especially in a group and circled round a fire.  So, I stopped the noisy prattle with a sentence, “I bet I know one you’ve never heard before,” and I did, lots of them.  However, as my grandmother was always want to remind me, “Each gathering has a story waiting to be told, Dianna, you cannot just pick one at random.  If your gifted enough, listen closely enough, the story picks you.”

In the collectively held breath of my captive audience I heard a flutter of wings and the sharp cackle of a crow as a small shadow darker than night rested in a nearby tree.

“So be it.

Many years ago when the woods still teemed with the unknown, and most decent folk feared the dark. A terrible disease ravaged the countryside. The superstitious blamed a small family, the Brenns, who had moved into town as the epidemic claimed its first life. For as time went on the small family survived while the rest of the town burned funeral pyers.

On the same day the Brenns announced the betrothal of their only daughter, Merla, the last child succumbed to disease in the town. Spurred on by fear and resentment the town people rose up and attacked all the merry makers at the family’s celebration. However, Merla was saved by hiding in the branches of the rowan tree in the woods off their property. In one day she had lost everything to the epidemic, her family and her beloved.

For fear of her life the girl hid in the branches till night fall, and then buried her family at the base of her tree. For 100 days and nights the Merla wept upon those graves, and all the while the towns people searched for the girl believing that once the family line was broken the curse of the disease would be lifted. However, while the girl was never sighted among the shadows in the branches all were haunted nightly by her keening.

As the sun set on the 100th day Merla opened her eyes to the sound of laughter. Weary of a trick she climbed lower to get a better look, and saw much to her surprise her family sitting as if for a picnic among a garden of bleeding heart and white chrysanthemum flowers. She quickly joined them, and the family spent the night laughing with no pain of loss to separate them. They were so engrossed in their reunion that the Brenns did not hear the towns folk creeping ever closer. The people were drawn forward to the point where the unearthly sounds of mourning had been replaced with joy, but fear held them from entering the woods till dawn was nearly upon them.

In time with the starting day both the people of the town and the sunlight pierced the shadows below the rowan tree simultaneously. In the light the Brenns family withered away like dew drying upon a meadow. Merla stood with tears streaming and decided she would never run again. With a single heart wrenching sob she threw her arms wide and dissolved into a mass of black wings. In the light of the new day the girl no longer hid among the branches rather 100 crows littered the tree and filled it with their cawing lament.

Something more than disease had taken hold of the town as the crows kept them from rest all day and the family picnic kept them from sleep all night, and so the town folk faded away.

None now live near The Blackbird Woods for it and its inhabitants remember when not so long ago decent folk turned dark.”

Dianna paused taking in the open mouths and confused glances. Her tale had not been scary in the most conventional sense of the word, but she supposed that at least a few of them were recalling, through their drunken fog, that Dianna Brenn was one of the people their mothers had warned them against.

~Reader Note~

Yeah, I have made it to 100 followers thank you for reading and commenting! I hope that I have given you something that at the very least was entertaining, and I hope you liked it enough to continue with me on this literary journey.

Happy reading
~Jess

Unexpected Impatients

It started like any other day a rapid fire series of events each more mundane than the last, but at last the day was hers thought Gretch.  She wandered through the house loving the cool breeze blowing in through the many open windows and the quiet.  God how she missed all the quiet.  Not the absolute silence that filled up awkward moments or rooms of testing students, but the quiet of a shady spot in the garden filled only with the sounds of nature.  That was what she truly missed when she gave herself the okay to think about it.
Gretch knew the move was necessary there was no use for her advanced degrees in the small town she called home, though it had been years since she officially resided there.  Flower beds filled with the aroma of potting soil, shade trees, and fountains were for vacations, if you could ever find the time or money to go on one that is, not for every day not in the city anyway.  Moving there had been an adventure, but city life turned out to be very different from the city life she had glimpsed on t.v. and movies.  The 30 story not so high-rise didn’t offer a view or a rooftop garden; so even though Gretch often felt the crushing weight of the looming metal buildings to be suffocating she stayed and walked the two miles to work each day so excited to enter the university grounds which were always manicured and lush.  However, when the opportunity presented itself to move to a sister university a half-days dive out of the city she jumped at the chance ignoring everyone’s warnings about the hit her career track would take.  To Gretch, however, it made perfect sense, no pay raise but a better title and a chance to flee the metal and concrete that haunted her every step.
The move out of the city was not as idyllic as she had bargained for either.  The non pay bump meant that she could not afford the gorgeous manor style houses that positively dripped with English ivy and box hedge gardens.  Instead Gretchen found herself the proud, but not so proud, owner of a tiny bungalow only 15 minutes by bike from campus whose previous owner had thought that a rock garden was the best fit for the postage stamp of a backyard, the six inches of grass between her front stoop and the sidewalk were barely worth notice or mention as it was possible to trim the space with household scissors in under ten minutes.  Still, determined to reinvent her tiny plot of land she spent all of her free time pulling the multi-hued stones from the back one 10 quart bucket at a time.  In a moment of sheer generous she had worked out a barter system with the family owned garden center a couple of blocks over in which each wagon load of buckets filled with stones would equate to a 20 dollar store credit.  Gretch was bouncy with glee as she walked her final wagon load to the store imagining what her $300 in store credit at Russell and Ivy’s could buy her in the way of a flower filled retreat when she stopped short.  It had taken her at least a month to pull out that last wagon full of rocks which it appeared was more than enough time for Russell and Ivy to go under if the Sorry We’re Closed sign and empty back lot were anything to judge by.  The walk home was long and though she tried to remain positive about how she would just have to do it $20 dollars at a time Gretch felt the loss of her imagined retreat rather deeply.  Resisting the urge to fling the last wagon load of rock all over her now stone free backyard she instead created a border around her patio where she had planned to plant her favorite annual petunias.
Gretchen tried to avoid making direct eye contact with her depressing backyard and as such over the next few weeks weeds replaced the rocks.  One sunny weekend when she could avoid it no longer Gretch walked into the backyard and waged war on the weeds as if they were choking out her nonexistent garden, but for some reason she did not dig up the small sprouts that had come up within the stone border for her petunias looking back at them with a sigh before she walked back into the house.
So, it was on that day like any other when she felt the breeze that Gretch was drawn to the window.  A small sound escaped her lips as she clutched the windowsill breathing hard, one teardrop fell off her cheek a prism of rainbows.  There in the flower bed one of the weed sprouts had turned out to be the bright pink bloom of an impatient.  Okay, okay she thought to herself it might take longer than I wanted, but one day that quiet is going to be mine and as she turned away she smiled.