Category: random

Her mother drowned in the lake while saving her. For that, the six-year-old suffered both verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her father.

Daily, he shouted and cursed her, calling her a witch. In the evening, while drinking, he beat her with his hairbrush.

By the time she was ten, Sally believed that she deserved the beatings because she was a witch. Soon she began to dabble in the black arts, trying to learn any spell that might keep her from being harmed any further.

Time and time again, she tried one curse or another. Nothing seemed to stop her father from abusing her.

One morning, as Sally lit the candles she’d place on the points of the upside-down star, hidden beneath her bedroom rug, she hit on an idea. She could reuse the melted wax to create a doll of her father.

Throughout the day, she collected, heated, and molded the wax into the shape of a man. Then she found his hairbrush and pulled as many hairs from it as she could.

That evening she cut and sewed scraps of his old clothing into pants and a shirt. Once dressed and with hair in place, Sally knew she had the perfect doll for the next step in her plan.

The following day her father, hungover from the previous night, came down the hall to see her curled on the couch in front of the fireplace, holding the newly created doll. At the sight of this, he grabbed the figurine and dashed it into the flames.

She laughed wildly at his screams of pain, and his body both burned and began to melt.

“And you did it to yourself,” Sally smiled as the blaze became an inferno.

Without spilling names, I had two incidents involving the spirit world and one involving the Holy Spirit. I’ll discuss them in order of occurrence.

While seated in a Virginia City, Nev., bar, I saw a man in what I believed to be a black trench coat on the far side of the saloon. The next thing I know, this man was next to me, leaning his face into mine as if he were trying to intimidate me.

When I looked towards him, he was not there, and then I knew he was a spirit and not corporale. I also realized that it was malevolent.

Three times this entity rushed me. I could feel it press me as if it wanted to fight.

All three times, I told it to leave me alone in the “Name of Jesus Christ.”

Since I would not be intimidated, it scratched the right side of my neck.

The second incident happened at the same saloon a few minutes after my initial run-in with this thing. While talking to one of the bar owners, his tumbler glass moved half an inch across the bar without being touched.

“Did you see?” he asked.

“I sure did,” I answered as I examined the glass to see if it had moisture beneath it.

It was completely dry where the glass sat. Further, it had moved towards the open doorway, the only draft available.

About 10 minutes later, the same thing happened. Only this time, the glass moved farther, and it spun in a counter-clockwise direction.

We decided it was time to find something else to do; he had a bar to run. I needed photos and quotes about the Hot August Night automobile event filling C Street.

Later, after the sun had dipped behind Mt. Davidson, I was seated on an outdoor bench chatting with friends, including a couple I had never met before. He did not talk very much, but she had plenty to say.

“I don’t know why, but I’m supposed to tell you this,” she started, “but don’t quit.”

Stunned, I looked at her and asked, “Quit what?”

“Don’t quit writing,” she returned.

Confession time — due to frustrations throughout July, I had thought of resigning from the paper and permanently archiving my blog. But after what she said to me, I have since reconsidered.

Standing at my office window, I could do little but watch as the situation moved from bad to worse. By the time I grabbed my first-out bag and made it to the scene in front of my house, it was nearly over.

He had fallen on his back when I rushed from the room. By the time I made the front door, the woman was facedown in the road.

Their little dog was happily running in circles. The big dog was running after the little dog.

All this began when the Rottweiler slipped his collar and leash. He had run back to the couple with the small dog to say ‘hello’ to the dog.

His size belies his gentle nature, and the couple mistook his running towards them as aggression. I know this dog, his name is Rosco and he’s a sweetheart.

The man stepped in front of Rosco and got knocked down for his trouble. The woman then tried to stave off the ‘attacking dog,’ and tripped over her own dog’s leash, falling.

She was bleeding heavily from a finger on her left hand. Stitches needed.

Neither she nor her husband wanted to take the time for me to bandage her up. Instead, they hustled off down the road.

So I went over to help the woman get the collar back on Rosco. She was shaking and crying, mumbling about getting rid of the dog.

“I’ll take him,” I said as she hurried away without a word.

That was two days ago. This morning I saw Rosco’s human again sans the dog, and I had to ask what had become of him.

“Oh, he’s at home,” she smiled. “I was jus’ angry and embarrassed when I said that. I didn’t mean it.”

“Good,” I said.

“And thank you for helping and offering to rehome Rosco,” the woman added. “You’re a good neighbor.”

I spent my morning trying to help my wife understand why people do not live up to the promises.

She worked for a married couple for thirty years, managing their business. Back then, she could ask for help with minor home improvement projects and get all the help she needed as one of the business owners was also a contractor by trade.

That was then.

Now, though he promised to come by the house once again, he has failed to show or even call.

My wife cannot understand this. I had to explain the truth to her, “You’re no longer of use to them, so they have written you off.”

I have a lot of experience at being written off.

During this past week, as we lived through heavy bouts of thick wildfire smoke in Northern Nevada, I watched people wearing masks choke on the odor. Their masking-up did them no good, physically.

Logic suggests that if they could smell the smoke, they were breathing in and choking on particulates. Now, the average size of a wildfire smoke particulate is about 0.3 microns.

Meanwhile, the larger Coronaviruses are around 0.2 microns, while most are less than 0.05 microns, smaller than the smoke particulate. So, it would appear that wearing a face mask is useless against both smoke particulates and the COVID-19 virus.

Science…

It has been very hard to sit and write today. My mind is elsewhere, unfortunately.

So I am falling back on an old process I used back in the day, writing whatever comes to mind in five minutes. And I don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation.

I won’t be going that long.

Anyway, I find myself unhappy as we’re returning to wearing masks every place we go. My brain screams, “Fuck that!” while my mouth drones, “Yes, dear.”

Yeah, my wife and I don’t see eye-to-eye on the subject because she has to wear one anyway as she works for the school district. It’s best to go along to get along some days.

Along with the whole face diaper thing, I am struggling with work. Mistakes on my part have me down in the shitter, and I’m angry with myself because of it.

Plus, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. And while I don’t mind my own company, I wonder why there are so few people I can associate with, either professionally or personally.

I know — boo-hoo and cry me a frigging river.

That’s enough. At least I got something written for a post which ain’t saying much.

Independence weekend began with a plume of smoke. A wildfire that the forest service called the Beckwourth Complex.

Soon the Tamarack and the Dixie Fires followed. Each new blaze brought even more smoke into the valley.

Eventually, the haze grew so thick that he could no longer see the homes across the street. Not even his dog was willing to stay outside for any length of time, save to care for its business.

Soon a couple of days grew into a week and then nearly an entire month. The metallic hum began in that final week.

Day and night, it came and went until it never stopped. It was replaced periodically by a crying or a low guttural growl.

Unable to identify the sound, he ventured out onto his front porch to listen. He took a cup of hot coffee and his dog with him.

Together they quietly listened to the hum become a cry, become a growl. Then a new sound issued from somewhere deep within the smoke: a grinding.

The dog stepped back and settled near the front door waiting for its human to open it so they could go indoors. But that never happened.

Instead, the man stepped off the porch and into the black-brown hazy, ignoring the warning whine coming from the dog. Quickly he was enveloped by the stuff and could no longer be seen.

Panicked, the dog barked, howled, and scratched at the door until the man’s wife opened it. The dog darted inside and ran under the dining table for safety.

That was three days ago, and the dog still sits at the door whimpering for the man it will never see again.

My Cousin Elmo says, “My high school was so poor that they taught sex education and drivers-ed in the same car.”

She pulled into the parking spot and sent me inside the store to buy some condoms. I could not believe my luck on this full-moon night.

I looked back at her to make sure she was real.

As I passed through the doorway, I felt a sudden wave of nausea overcome me. Perhaps I was much more excited than I thought.

Quickly, I walked beyond the register, looking up at the signs above each aisle. I recall being a bit surprised by how big the store was.

It looked so tiny from the outside. The more I walked towards the back of the building, the farther it seems to be.

Was it my imagination, or was the building growing larger?

I turned to look back at the doorway.

I couldn’t see it anymore.

A sense of panic rushed through me as I stood still, trying to think what I should do now.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

Frightened, I began jogging towards where the doors should have been. I could not see them, nor could I find the register.

Lost, I turned to my right along an aisle that ran lengthwise of the building. Then I saw it, a door with an adhesive sign across it, reading: “Door armed.”

As I reached out to push it open, a hand grabbed onto my right forearm. I struggled to pull myself free and open the door.

I pushed on the handle with my left hand, and the door swung open.

An alarm blared overhead as I ripped myself from whatever had a hold of me.

Beyond the door frame was darkness, and yet I still stepped out into it. The door slammed behind me, and I discovered I had entered an endless parking lot made of gray asphalt and white stripes.

Sex that night was out of the question. It would take me longer to understand how effed I was in the long run.

Children were born, grew up, and moved away. When they returned to visit, they often exclaimed how the old man had not seemed to age since their long-ago childhoods.

One morning, some early risers, out for a walk, discovered him lying in his front yard. Soon the police arrived, and we watched as they carried him away in a black body bag.

Since he had no wife or known family, it fell to me, as the head of the community’s neighborhood watch, to begin the work of securing his home until the proper authorities could being their work of clearing out the house.

The following day, I decided to take a look in the backyard. I had no idea what I might find.

To my surprise, I discovered a beautiful garden. Well-tended and filled with both flowers and vegetables of all sorts.

I wandered along the narrow rows and marveled at the man’s skill.

It was near the back of the plot where I saw a set of strange green eldritch pods. Each one was larger than the next, with the biggest being the size of a grown man.

I touched it.

The pod jerked as if alive, and I took a couple of steps back from it. Then it disengaged from the stalk it grew from and began twisting, turning, and crawling like a worm.

“What in the…” I started to cry.

But before I could finish my sentence, the thing stopped and turned towards me. I stepped back even further as the greenish pod squirmed in my direction.

Suddenly it began to split open at a seam that I had not seen before, but I did not stay around to see what spilled from the thing. I raced from the yard and to my house across the street.

The following morning I looked out of my living room window only to see the old man, seemingly younger than ever, working in his yard.