Writing Exercise #3

“I jammed it in so hard, it got stuck in the bone,” Alan said, admiring the gleam of crimson blood on the otherwise unassuming kitchen knife. “Do you know how hard it is to pull a knife out of bone?”

“Not yet,” Sasha growled. “But I will if you don’t shut the fuck up and help me clean up your mess of a dead body!”

Alan sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve and dropped the knife, which fell to the wood floor with a clatter. “I had to do it, Sasha.”

“Of course, Alan.” Sasha’s sarcasm wasn’t lost in her strained voice as she tugged at the dead man’s legs. “What did this one do? Look at you funny?”

“Well,” Alan paused as he lifted the dead man’s arms and helped Sasha move the limp body toward the back door of their bar, which closed less than hour ago. “Kind of. I mean, he looked like he recognized us. What if he called the cops?”

Sasha dropped her end of the body and sighed loudly. “Alan, you forget who I am. I have ways of solving such problems without having to draw blood. Why can you not understand this?”

“Oh sure,” Alan dropped his end of the body, letting the dead man’s head hit the floor with a careless thunk. It was okay. He wouldn’t need it anytime soon. “You cast some spell to make him forget. Where’s the fun in that? I like to solve my compromising situations the old fashioned way.” Alan flexed his fingers to reiterate his point.

“Alan,” Sasha pushed her fiery red hair from her pale, freckled face, “The only thing those fingers are good for is playing with your own dingy. Now shut up and grab the lime.”

Writing Exercise #2

"I just had the weirdest dream about you."

"It wasn't that Mexican goat sucker thing again, was it?" Andrew asked, giving a sideways grin.

"Andrew, that was an X-Files episode." Eliza gave him a playful shove that almost landed him in the shrubbery lining the suburban sidewalk.

Andrew veered back on course, his arm brushing Eliza's. "I know, but it sounded like a good response to your statement."

Eliza shook her head. "Do you want to hear my dream about you or not?"

"Go ahead," he smiled and hiked his backpack higher on his shoulder.

"So, we're in my bedroom having sex-"

"Whoa," Andrew came to an abrupt halt, Eliza taking two steps before she realized he had stopped. "Eliza, I never knew you had these feelings about me."

"It's a dream," Eliza said, hands on her hips. "We're both adults here."

"Well, legally we still have a year before we're adults, so I'm going to say no and continue with the snide remarks about a sex dream that has revealed your true feelings for me."

"Ew," Eliza's perfect nose scrunched in distaste. "No offense, but I've known you since we were three. Our parents used to make us take baths together."

"All the more reason," Andrew lifted an eyebrow. "You've seen me naked. Maybe you've been repressing these feelings all these years."

"Okay," Eliza lifted her chin. "Say I subscribe to that theory. It only makes the rest of the dream that much more interesting."

Andrew gave a smug smile. "Fine. Lay it on me."

"So, we're having sex, right?"

Andrew nodded.

"And just before things reach a climax, " Eliza grinned. "I pull out a samurai sword and lop your head off!"

"Twist!" Andrew cried.

He stared open mouthed as Eliza doubled over with laughter.

"Well," he finally said. "At least you didn't go for the pecker."

Writing Exercise #1

Periodically, you'll see some random paragraph or short story. Do not be alarmed. I have not fallen off my rocker. I'm merely engaging in a little impromptu writing. Example:

"Promise me that you'll take care of my kids."

A sound like the crack of a whip caused the patrons of the quiet, local watering hole to look in their direction. Buddy rubbed his cheek, reddened from the slap.

"Knock it off," Helen snapped. "You're drunk, not dead. And come to think of it, you don't even have any kids, Buddy."

"I know," Buddy pouted, curling weathered fingers around the half empty mug. "But if I could do it all over again, I'd be sure to have a kid."

Helen pinched a Virginia Slim between her wrinkled lips, which were slathered in reddish-orange lipstick. "I think it's better this way," she said. "Your unborn children thanks a piece of shit like you for not fucking up their lives, too."

"Hey," Buddy protested meekly, his bushy gray eyebrows pulling together over faded blue eyes that were the color of old and worn denim.

A sigh of guilt, accompanied by curling blue smoke escaped Helen's lips. "Sorry, Buddy. That's not true. You'd be as good a father as any."

"Thank you," Buddy said indignantly and took another sip of lukewarm beer.

"I mean, even Michael Jackson managed to spawn," Helen shrugged. "At least you'd have the sense not to name your poor child something ridiculous like 'Blanket.'"

"Though come to think of it," Buddy interjected, clearly no longer listen to Helen's sarcastic musings, his voice filled with defeat. "I'm not that great of a human being. I mean, once, thirty years ago, I sat behind a woman in a snow storm and watched her struggle for forty five minutes to get her car unstuck without offering any help."

Helen lips twisted with disgust. "You really are a piece of shit."

The Big Bad

It was a typical summer Saturday morning for five year old me. I sat in front of the old television watching Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits, eating a bowl of Cheerios. My dad was either at work or sleeping and my mom was out in the front yard, lounging on the vinyl folding chair in the sunshine. She wore one of those strapless, short shorts terry cloth jumpers. Pink, I think.

Anyway, here I am eating my cereal, enjoying Bugs Bunny making Elmer Fudd look like a fool, when my mom suddenly bursts through the side door, a rickety screen that slaps shut without regard for what fingers might be in the way.

“We have to hide!” she announces.

I didn’t protest as she scooped me up, turned off the television, and tucked us in a corner of the room where we couldn’t be seen from either the front of the back door. I guess most kids would feel kind of panicky at this point, but I just calmly continued eating my cereal, scraping the stray Cheerios clinging to the side of the bowl noisily with my spoon.

“Sssh!” My mom gripped my hand to hold me still. “We have to be quiet.”

“Why?” I asked.

Then there was a pounding at the side door, the rickety screen door rattling on its hinges.

“Shit!” my mom whispered. “I forgot to close the door. They know we’re home!”

“Who?” I whispered back, but she didn’t answer me.

There was another round of insistent pounding.

“Who is it?” I whispered, starting to get a little worried. Whoever was at our door was persistent. And my mom was scared enough of them to have us hiding in our own house.

At this point my mom starts shaking with quiet laughter. Now I’m just confused. “Mom, who is it?”

My mom clapped a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter as another round of pounding reverberates through the house. After a few seconds of following silence, we hear the shuffle of feet telling us whoever was at the door had given up.

“Mom, why are we hiding?” I asked, no longer whispering. “Who was that?”

She looks at me, her eyes moist with tears of laughter, and says, “Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

Bio of Boo

I was born on a dark, stormy September night in a manger surrounded by dairy cows in central Wisconsin to a virgin mother. Okay, I lied. Except for the virgin mother part. No, really. Let me tell the story.

I actually was born in central Wisconsin, though not in the manger, but rather a town called Marshfield. Marshfield has little to offer its inhabitants. Just a prestigious hospital that fills half the city and enough bars to outnumber the doctors two to one.

My mother gave birth to me eleven days after her own eighteenth birthday. Until she married the man I call dad when I was four years old, I had no father. I never found it strange that all my baby pictures are with my mom, my grandmother, and my aunt and uncles, but never a dad. The earliest picture I have with a dad is when I was three and a half years old. My mom, me, and soon-to-be-dad in front of my soon-to-be-dad's Oldsmobile. I don't know what year the car was, but it had a pretty metallic blue finish that sparkled in sunlight and white, leather interior. And when I was five years old, I used to climb in and out of the car like The Dukes of Hazzard when my dad wasn't looking.

There's advantages and disadvantages to having young parents. Advantages include the fact that my parents were always fashion and music relevant. I grew up to the likes of The Cars, Rush, and The Police. Good music that has never left my musical repertoire. When I was ten years old, my mom took me to a New Kids on the Block concert and, as a promise to me to look "cool" she let pick her outfit and do her hair. I chose an oversized button down shirt, leggings, and a side pony-tail. Bless her, she wore it proudly.

But there are disadvantages. Young parents sometimes forget their children are sensitive to outside stimuli. My mom said when I was three years old, I used to watch Days of Our Lives with her every afternoon. Apparently there was some element of the plot that involved somebody being kidnapped and tortured. My mom said I started crying and having nightmares, effectively ending our Days afternoons. And when I was five, my mom and dad rented a movie for the family to watch. "It's a scary movie," she said with a smile. I like scary. I mean I loved the skeleton dance cartoon they played on Disney every Halloween. "It's about aliens!" she added.

It wasn't just about aliens. It was THE movie about aliens. The single most terrifying movie ever made about aliens. And it was called ALIEN. Suffice it to say, when the baby alien burst from the guy's chest at the dinner table, I ran screaming from the room. I didn't acquire the courage to watch that movie until my husband convinced me to watch it with him while we were dating...twenty years later.

But I digress. We were talking about virgin mothers.

When I was eleven years old, in the fifth grade, we went through sex education. I learned all sorts of interesting things. And thanks to one of my classmates that was bold enough to ask the question (after several tries, I might add), knew exactly where the penis went into the vagina. I was afraid. 

I learned all about the miracle of life. How a baby is conceived, requiring a sperm and an egg, how it grows in the uterus, and instead of coming out of the butt, comes out of said vagina that penis enters. I was now terrified.

Through these new lessons, though, I failed to make an important connection. The man I called dad didn't arrive until I was three years old. There has never been any other "dad" around. But yet my mother gave birth...

I have the mother that has never been afraid to talk about sex. So, during my sex ed classes, my mom would ask me what I was learning and what I thought about the things I was learning. Horribly embarrassed, I rarely answered her with anything more than a "yes," "no," or "weird." I think it was one of these conversations, had over a game of Scrabble, when my mom asked, "Do you know how you were born?"

"You got pregnant and I was born." I didn't add the "Duh!" I was thinking.

"Yes, but do you know how I got pregnant?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. It just happened."

How my mother did not bust a gut laughing, I will never know. Me, a bright child whose first word was elephant, who entered the advanced speed reading class in fourth grade, and just learned that a woman's egg and a man's sperm must be present to produce a baby, actually thought she was the product of an immaculate conception.

It's at this point I should add my parents were part of a fundamentalist Christian church, so I was well aware of the story of the Virgin Mary and the miracle of becoming pregnant without a husband.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes I'm a little slow.

"Actually, I had to be with a man to have a baby." Mom says.

My little light bulb flickered.

"Your dad is not your biological father." She finished.

"Really?" I asked and stared at the Scrabble board. "Weird."

Okay, I wasn't exactly born of a virgin mother, but for all intents and purposes, I say I was an immaculate conception.  So, when does everybody start throwing rose petals at my feet and giving me money? Hold the crucifixion, though. That's not really necessary.