Category: Guest Authors

Happy Trails by Jared

Happy Trails

Walking along the trail, motion catches my eye. I look up, but only in time to see the flash of a little ball of white fur at the end of a brown-gray blur darting into some underbrush. Constant companion to my footsteps is the sound of rustling leaf litter indicating unseen animals rushing away from my disruptive presence. There’s no counting the number of lizards that have interrupted their basking to dart under a rock or log for safety. I’m no threat to any of them, but there’s no surviving in the wild if you don’t consider everything a threat.

In case you’re curious:

– Turn off fans.
– Download sound file.
– Listen to it.
– Plug in microphone.
– Start Audacity.
– Record introduction.
– Drag over TEMPLATE.
– Edit template.
– Drag over sound file.
– Export to MP3
– Name the file.
– Add ID3 information.
– Drag finished file to P drive (server’s repository).
– Close Audacity.
– Unplug microphone.

– Log in to WordPress.
– Add new post
– Give it a title.
– Copy and paste story.
– Set category to author.
– Enter media URL.
– Verify it.
– Click Publish.

That looks like a lot of steps. But it isn’t.
Only takes me a few minutes.
So, it’s okay to send them in after I’ve posted the collection for the week.

Beans and Quarantine by Jared

Beans in Quarantine?

At the start of last year’s quarantine-that-wasn’t-a-quarantine stay-at-home orders, stores ran out of lots of products related to keeping ourselves safe from the virus: gloves, hand sanitizer, bleach, paper products, masks. Plenty of grocery items became scarce, too: pasta and sauce, canned vegetables, soups. I never knew how many people knew how to bake from scratch. Flour, sugar, and yeast seemed to disappear from the stores, as well. One grocery category that disappeared that amused me was beans. Both canned beans and dry beans. I don’t think people thought about a bean-heavy diet when they were home all the time.

Jared – River Song

My story for last week is entitled Never Cross River Song
€€€€€
He stopped running. He was so tired of running. He had lost track of how long he’d been running long ago. But he couldn’t stop now. Running was the only thing keeping him out of the hands of his would-be killer. And she had a personal temporal displacement system. So, he had to run, but also jump – system to system, timestream to timestream.

He almost escaped for good. He did a multi-step jump through a planet moments before its destruction. But he triggered a traceable signature on the other side, allowing her to avoid his trap and regain his trail.

How Does That Grab You by SusuandUs

“So let us not talk falsely now,
The hour is getting late”. Dylan

I love the feeling when I’m struck by truth.
Crumbs feed my soul. Bewitched by its spell I see all.
A flicker of fairy lights please –  never a floodlight.
A fulsome breeze ushered in by sheer white curtains.
Demanding your lives for centuries or lurking under the dew drop laden skirts of mushrooms..
So how would that grab you? Yes, YOU, my good witness. Brave eyes on wounds.
It IS getting late…. Truth’s undressing….its a swing bridge…the concrete has left..
And the rain came down.

Rick – Why is Mother Crying?

Creep Herder

There was always something about mama that Drew me in. Good looking … sure … But there was something else. Something about her seemed to flip a switch in creeps and pedophiles. It was that way since she was young …
It was the same for my little sister.

Mom would meet a man … a creep … and within a week or three, inevitably, they would try something inappropriate with Sissy and Mama would catch it on film …

It was pay up or go to jail!

Over 20 men dropped off envelopes of cash … REGULARLY!

Mama could sure pick em …
She could work em too!

Weekly Challenge – Rick

A Walk In The Wood

I found it on the map and had to explore it. 400 acres of land right beside the very worst part of DC. Car parked and gone in my pocket I went in.

The forest was amazing .. two streams, a pond, a 10′ waterfall, 200 year old oak trees …

… and a homeless camp.

All of a sudden I was standing in it … surprisingly … They seemed happy to see me!

We shook hands, introduced ourselves, they offered Brandy, we drank and talked … Swapped life stories.

Lives not So different at all!

There but for the grace of God go I.

Tura – Turtle and Boom

Turtle; boom
———
The tortieboom, or turtle tree, grows in the wettest, darkest tropical forests. Its fruits look like large oranges. When ripe, they split open, and a baby turtle emerges. It hurries down the tree seeking the safety of a warm puddle. Adult turtles give birth to egg-like seeds for new turtle trees.

In drier, sunnier climes, the tree flourishes, but economises its resources by omitting its turtle phase, bearing fruits that contain its own seeds. These are the orange trees that we all know.

This is why Buddhists and vegans are forbidden to eat oranges, for they are animals, not plants.

Serendipidy – Pick Two

Thanks to complications at my birth, I suffered from stunted growth.

The youngest of four siblings, it was clear that I was the runt of the litter, and my small stature was, no doubt, mirrored by my intelligence.

Mine was an unpleasant childhood: Brought up in an atmosphere of loathing and bitterness, yet – as they say – what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.

I grew very strong.

And the killing… took place at my hands. First my brothers and sister, followed by my parents.

I got away with it, of course, thanks to my ‘stunted mental growth’.

Confluence by Serendipidy

I watched the steady drip into the bath, mesmerised by the swirling patterns formed by the confluence of blood and water. As each thick droplet of blood became diluted and pale, it felt as if my own evil misdeed was being washed away, leaving no taint upon my character.

It’s these quiet, reflective moments that I savour the most, especially considering what happens next…

Because there’s nothing mesmerising, quiet or reflective about hacking somebody’s flesh from their bones, rendering them down with acid, then cleaning up the mess when it’s all over.

And that’s precisely why I savour this moment.

Death Notice by Aspen

The Death Notice

The newspaper boy stood shouting EXTRA!! EXTRA!! read all about it!!! The town streets were quiet, hidden under a dark blanket of clouds, but this was nothing unusual for a sleepy haunted place such as Nightmare. For the last 500 years, the town had been governed by a young man named Authur Crypt. The day came and Mr. Crypt met his demise but what happened? The notice of death was written in secret tongues translated read…Now I lay me down to sleep…I pray the Lord, my soul, to take…shall I die before I wake, I’ve been salted at the stake.