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| Boxes "Boxes" is available as a podcast at Boundoff.com Sunday morning, barely dawn and a month out of Raiford. The house around him was still; only the buzz of cicadas hummed through the open windows. Hector Lugo sipped on his café con leche, grateful for its frothy burn in his throat. He poured another cup and made himself go back up the stairs. His father’s room had waited for him for over two years. Two years since his Dad died, standing behind the counter in his little grocery store. Two years since Hector had beaten Dennis Fulton’s face into a bloody pulp just for being one of the gangbangers, never mind that Dennis hadn’t been directly involved in the robbery. Two years of hard time in the Florida penal system. Hector rested one hand on the doorknob. His father’s cadenced voice in his head, gentle, his Cuban accent still heavy. Not To Forget "Not to Forget" is available as a podcast (Episode 003) at WordKnot Audio, a site devoted to story telling in the literal sense. The site offers free-to-listen stories and links to author pages and blogs. Vasquez’s garage was located deep in the heart of Hispanic Tampa, bordered by Armenia Avenue on the west and Cypress Street to the south. Whites who came in were usually lost and on-edge; their eyes were a little too wide, their words a little too polite. This one was different though, he had more confidence. Russo saw him walk in but didn’t look up from his crossword puzzle. “Mr. Vasquez?” The tall, blond man stood in his shop, lanky in his suit pants, creased and sharp. Russo noticed the crisp tailored shirt and shiny tie; they looked expensive. “Si, hoy Vasquez. Que?” The Spanish didn’t put off the gringo. He replied in Spanish himself, though the syllables were a little stiff. “Estoy buscando a Marcos.” Looking for Marcos? A bill collector? Parole officer—maybe. This one was so clean-cut that Russo’s suspicions were pinged. Marcos had been working for him for nearly three months but he’d never had any visitors at the shop. He punched in, humped on cars all day, ate out back with the guys but--never really said much. Quiet. Quiet in a dark way, like a man who’d been through bad times. Russo recognized the signs: the hooded eyes hiding something, the squared off shoulders always tight. Russo had seen that in his own mirror, long ago. “Maybe he here, maybe he not. Depends.” Russo was protective of his crew, always had been. Sure, they got into trouble sometimes, did stupid things, usually involving alcohol, but they were good boys, all around. Plus, Marcos was older than the others so Russo didn’t think Marcos would do anything stupid … Still, this strange man was here. “Hey, Marcos.” Tyler reached out with one hand, then stopped and smoothed down his tie. “Be right there. Mr. V, okay to take a break?” Marcos waited for Russo’s reply. Not that it mattered, as if anyone could make bull-sized Marcos work when he didn’t want to. Still, it was a respectful gesture, a nod to the senior man. Copyright 2006. All Rights Available.
Excerpt from "Out of Joint " from 2007 Writers in Paradise Workshop
Copyright 2006. All Rights Available.
Excerpt from "The Tale of Trapper Tommy" from Florida Horror: Dark Tales of Horror from the Sunshine State, Carnifex Press, 2006.
Rudy finally bent over. He wasn’t the sharpest tooth in the trap but he sure was a good helper: didn’t mind getting up at two in the morning to catch animals, didn’t mind the back-breaking work that went with the job. Wrestling a roped gator into the back of the truck, mucking through crawlspace to net a possum, lassoing a deer in Mrs. Vogt’s backyard last spring. That doe bucked like a bronco, caught Rudy in the jaw with one hoof, popped out two of his teeth. He kept on her though, got her down and tied her legs, all the while Mrs. Vogt ooing and cooing from her porch. “Oh, don’t hurt the little deer! Oh!” We put a shirt over the doe’s head to calm her down, lay her gently in the truck bed while Mrs. Vogt wrote the check. That doe tasted good. We ate venison for two weeks after. Copyright 2006. Reprint rights available, please contact me.
Off Balance Michael’s chest looked smooth, bare, what she could see of it. She wished he had undone one more button. What was the harm in looking? “Cutting board?” Michael asked. “To your left, bottom shelf.” She loved knowing where everything was in her kitchen. The remodel two years earlier had been a struggle, she’d gone to bed at night in tears sometimes, after arguing with Stan or the construction supervisor. In the end she got her confetti-flecked countertop. It was white with a rainbow of color chips in it. She could pick any color at all to accessorize. The reds for her rooster collection; the turquoise for her silly tropical prints and seafoam flower vases; the greens to show off her mother’s majolica, that even Stan admitted he liked. She changed her kitchen décor every season, a process that took a day and a half. “Salad bowls?” Sara motioned with a spoon. “Grab the two big ones above the fridge. You can probably reach them without my stool.” Michael stretched up, his shirt snug against his broad back. Sara noticed his khakis were smooth; he wasn’t carrying a wallet in the back pocket. He was wide and sturdy, a man, where her son still had that near-boyish slenderness. Sara stirred the beans, adding some salt, and watching Michael’s hands at he stood at the kitchen island. His fingers were broad with clean, short nails. He worked at the tomatoes with a slicing motion, awkward, not the smooth move of a real cook. The vegetables gleamed on the counter. A creamy white onion. A dozen burgundy radishes, their roots curled like a newborn’s tuft of hair. Three glossy cucumbers, looking thick and obscene. Sara moved next to Michael. “Try this way.” She took the knife from him, just brushing his fingers. She held the knife still, moved the tomato beneath, slicing efficiently by rocking the blade. The tomato pulp oozed onto the cutting board. She breathed in before she gave the knife back, held the Michael-smell in her lungs as she stepped back to the stove. “Thanks,” he said. “How much of this do you want cut up?” “All of it. We’ll have seventeen for dinner.” “Seventeen!?” “David’s sisters are coming down from Chicago, with their families. That’s ten right there plus the four of us, Katie, Doug, and Jasmine. David’s friends. Did you meet Katie?” Perhaps if David wasn’t sweet on Katie, Michael might be. Something stretched in Sara, a feeling of wholesomeness, pleasant after her untoward curiosity about Michael. Matchmaking could be fun. “Yes. Seems like a good kid.” So much for matchmaking. “How old are you?” Sara asked. “Thirty-six.” Twenty years younger, twenty years of taut flesh and sun-warmed youth between them. Copyright 2005, all rights available. Lure of the Wolf “I think there’s a werewolf living in my azaleas,” Vivian Postlewaite said to her sister one Saturday morning in early April. “They’re not your azaleas, Viv. They belong to the college.” Angela replied. “Well, I fertilize them every summer; I prune them. I’m the one who takes care of them.” The sisters were pawing through a thrift store. Vivian held up a pale turquoise cardigan with an embroidered rose on the left side. The rose was delicately stitched with creamy silk at the center of its blossom, and graduated threads of wine, pink, and mauve for its petals. And so soft…. She resisted rubbing it against her cheek. Angela glanced at the sweater. “Ooooh, that’s dreadfully frumpy, it looks like something a librarian would wear.” “I am a librarian." “Well, you don’t have to dress like one. When I ask you to come with me to find clothes for the theater group, I don’t expect to buy clothes for yourself!” Angela said. She held out a bright red circle skirt. “Don’t werewolves migrate north in April? I remember the news doing the regular little spiel about them just around tax time. It’s illegal to harass them, they’re a protected species, blah, blah, blah.” “I always watch that coverage! The hundreds of them together, jogging up to the mountain path—” “You wouldn’t find it fascinating if you had children,” Angela snapped. “They’re just a bunch of mutants. Good riddance, I say.” “There hasn’t been a recorded werewolf attack on a human in over fifty years,” Vivian protested. “Recorded or not, they’re dangerous. I’m glad the president approved the funding for those programs, all of them. The Vampiric Studies Office, the Lycanthrope Commission. For God’s sake, it’s 2045! At least now, someone is keeping an eye on them. “When I think of the way you and I grew up, with them running around….” Angela sighed dramatically, like the former theater major that she was. “It’s a wonder we never ran into one of them back in the day.” “Maybe this one was separated from its pack,” Vivian said. “It’s left quite a lot of rabbit bones and fur. I filled up nearly half a trash bag yesterday—“ “Just call the Commission. They’ll send out a trapper and you’ll be done with it.” Angela held up a ghastly lime-green shirt the exact shade of baby diarrhea. “How about this one?” “It’s a little bright, don’t you think? “Oh, piffle; it’s colorful. I’m buying it.” Angela flounced to the payment scanner. Vivian fingered the turquoise sweater, then put it down regretfully. The cardigan looked so comfortable--maybe it was cashmere. An old-fashioned sweater for an old-fashioned girl. Its label was long gone; it was just a cast-off now, someone’s throwaway. Vivian sighed and left it behind. Copyright 2005. All rights available. Something in Their Eyes I know horse manure about the music business and rap stars and them kinda people so when I had the chance to throw Shane Lettig, the twenty-year-old multi-millionaire rapper right the hell out of my barn, it was kinda hard to resist. The day started out hustle-bustle. I’m usually the first one at the barn—I hardly sleep past five o’clock any more, after all them years inside, plus I got a trailer onsite that the Department of Corrections pretends ain’t really there because of liability issues. Dr. Ripley calls it a storage trailer on the paperwork; I do have horse pellets, meds, bridle parts and such in one bedroom. I’m just glad to have a place of my own that’s bigger than an eight by ten cell. That day, Miguel was already leading horses out to pasture when I strolled up just before six. “Hola, Mr. Hazelton.” Miguel said. Annie was on the other end of his purple lead rope. She was a gray, leggy in that sleek Thoroughbred way, even being twenty years old. Lots of mares get butt-sprung and round, especially if they’ve been bred, but old Annie was still slim with that curve up under her back legs showin’ her waist. When we did tours for the Girl Scouts or Kiwanis or whoever, Annie liked getting her mane and tail all done up and she flashed them ribbons around like a girl wearing bangle bracelets. “Where’d you get that fancy shirt?” I tugged at one of Miguel’s baggy sleeves—he was a skinny kid, weighed maybe a buck twenty, even after three runs at the buffet. He wore one of them golf-type shirts, with a floppy collar and the polo player on it, some peach shade. Girly-looking if you asked me. “I got it at the rehab center store. Didn’t even have to pay for it,” Miguel said. “They give us first dibs on donations if we help with the sorting and I found this.” He shrugged and blushed a little, keeping his eyes on Annie. “Well, it looks nice,” I managed to say. Poor kid. I wasn’t about to tell him that the women who was coming today, hanging onto the rap star with his famous face and big cars and loud music, those women weren’t gonna look twice at Miguel. Him with his GED part finished and his shared room at the halfway house and four years of hard time. “Thanks, Mr. Hazelton.” Annie butted her head into Miguel’s hip, bored with the conversation and wanting to get out to the field with her friends. “Meeting at seven o’clock, my office,” I said. “Yes, sir.” They clopped away, Annie’s hooves on the concrete walkway a steady beat of comfort. Nothing as soothing to my ears. Just after seven, the whole team crowded into my little office at the south end of Barn Three. Most of my boys were duded up in one way or another, even if it only meant they was wearing ironed jeans and clean shirts. Petey showed up in fancy cowboy boots, red, yellow and turquoise all swirly on the leather and bright silver toe taps. None of ‘em wore our brown uniform shirt, had that little DOC logo and a horse and our motto, “saving horses, building lives” on it. I know Dr. Ripley finagled them shirts for us somehow—not much budget– but man, those shirts are ugly. The only one who didn’t seem to care was Cory, the newest kid from Marion Correctional. He trained at the thoroughbred retirement center up to the prison in Ocala and been released to the DOC halfway house here in Tampa for less than a month. He was always quiet and was one of them kids who didn’t look you in the eye much. Cory was slow-moving; his left side wasn’t wired a hundred percent any more. He got beat bad in Raiford the first month he was in–gangbangers looking to pop his cherry– and it left him with a dragg-y leg and his left arm twisted in towards himself. Didn’t matter. He was here, doing his job, just like everybody else. Copyright, 2005. All rights available.
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