I’m putting up a chain-link fence to keep mosquitoes out of my yard while wearing a face-mask to keep myself safe from viruses.

You know it’s the truth when Facebook blocks it, Twitter deletes it, and YouTube bans it.

Where does a story come from? Went to the store. Bought a bag of dog food. Came home. Saw a picture of a friend’s new tiny puppy ‘Poco Diablo,’ a supposedly messy little terror…and Voilà! 

“I didn’t take you literally, when you said, ‘it takes a village.’ I thought you meant everyone pitching in to help out.”

“They did pitch in and they were all a big help.”

“But the entire village?”

“Yes, feeding my hell-hound puppy ain’t easy.”

“Neither is explaining what happened to a whole village.”

“Don’t worry, that’s what legends and myths are for.”

Only he knew what he had done. Marcus released the deadly virus into the environment accidentally.

He spent the next three-years working on a way to rectify his mistake. Nothing Marcus found had any effect on the continuing pandemic he’d caused.

Finally, he began to think beyond ‘flattening the curve.’ Instead, Marcus started working on a radical theory, that if successful, would not only flatten it, but end it altogether.

During the seventh-month of the fourth year, Marcus climbed into his invention, knowing what must be done and vanished.

The capsule vibrated violently and the multitude of lights, with their random bursts of colors, were disorientating for him, but the thing worked. Marcus arrived safely, destroying the capsule where it had landed, before proceeding to his laboratory.

Four-years earlier, Marcus confronted himself and as planned, shot and killed himself. He didn’t feel a thing as he blinked out of existence, smoking pistol still in hand, and all the while thinking, “Whaddya know, Einstein was right.”

We must hang together or hang separately…as long as we remain six-feet apart.

Some days seem longer than others, especially the nights. This, for me, comes after I’ve laid down and cannot fall asleep.

Sometimes I get back up and knock about until the insomnia passes. Other times I lay in bed, tossing and turning.

Neither are comfortable at the time, because of the lack of rest for my brain. It is during these times that my mind feels like it is on fire.

Much of my ‘knocking about’ time is spent at the keyboard, researching, writing, or editing.

During the day, my wife has kept me busy with around-the-house projects. Painting two walls, one in the dining/kitchen area and another in the front/living room, along with swapping out old light fixtures with new and re-framing the exterior windows of our home.

None of this falls directly in line with writing, however, I’m certain it’ll become a part of my story telling in some way or shape. In fact many of my stories are based on something that happened or at least happened and I created ‘much ado’ over it in the form of a written tale.

Call it fiction if you will, which is fine, but I like to think of my craft coming from the basis of experience, including all the so-called ‘horror’ writing I do. Dogs staring at a spot in the corner, a late night ice-cream truck driving up and down the street, the multitude of cats that like to mate outside our living room window after we go to bed.

It’s all there. These are things that I do believe others have in common with me and I simply re-work them in the monsters and shadows that the mind sometimes wishes we would ignore.

Anyway, how are you spending your ‘self-isolation?’ I’m writing and wishing you were, too.

She knew that her husband, though still very young of heart, was physically incapable of maintaining the family ranch. So she did much of the work herself as he watched from their kitchen window.

Neighbors came to help during branding season and again come birthing time. And she let him offer up advice and as much as he wanted, because she could see that his masculine spirit often ebbed into the place that looked like an invalid to him.

“Get some cold water in case that calf don’t breath right away,” or “Find someone to restring that fence on the back stretch to the east,” and “Move those forty to the lower quarter today,” he briskly call out to her, lovely his ‘El Segundo,’ turned the ranches ‘Numero Uno.’

Her favorite was “You’re such a hardworking beauty,” of course, a comment he reserved only for her. How in the last years of her life, she wished she could hear his voice say those words once again.

He passed on during their 43rd year of marriage and is buried under the large oak tree beyond the barn. She lived another 15-years mourning her husband and now lays peacefully beside him.

People still recall how she loved him even after death did they part.

We were standing on the sidewalk, casually observing social distancing rules, and talking as we waited for the Number 17 bus to the south of town. Though I’d never seen her before, the subject of collecting came up between us and I told the raven-haired beauty with red lips, that I did a lot of collecting.

I immediately rolled off a list of items for her, “Books, comics, old pictures, baseball cards…”

“I only collect hearts,” she smiled, as she cut me off, “And put them in jars.”

Too quickly I joined in her enthusiasm as I told her, “I like to collect the two-hearts from decks of playing cards. I have at least a thousand of them, including one that dates back to the American Civil War.”

Still smiling, she stated, “I’d love to see them.”

Again, a little too quickly, I suggested, “Would now be a good time?”

“Perfect,” she responded putting her arm through mine, as our bus pulled to the curb.

The following morning, when I didn’t show up for work, the police found my body, minus my heart, on my living room floor and a drying puddle of picante sauce by my side, but no jar.

Amazing how law enforcement officers are so willing to enforce wearing masks while in public, but won’t enforce pulling up one’s pants while in public.

And lastly…one can always count on current events to drum up some fresh mental hell…

This apocalypse came with varying names: COVID-19, Corona Virus, the China flu, the Wuhan flu, the Bat flu. Whatever it had been called, there were very few people left to apply any given label.

Everywhere Tom looked, there were dead bodies, some desiccated, some fully-rotted, others still fresh. There was no running water, no electricity, no fresh food and packs of dogs ran in the streets, not yet starving but very weary of their environment.

He decided to leave for the wilderness, when he saw the female stumble out of the alleyway and drop to the asphalt. With an abundance of caution and a face-mask tied tightly over his mouth and nose, Tom approached her gaunt, bony form.

Tom immediately saw the small black beads, with white lettering, much like the ovoids that hospitals used to adorn newborns with at birth. Survivors wore similar bracelets and necklaces, those being of white with black lettering, this being the state’s proof that the wearer had never contracted the virus.

This woman in this empty street, nothing more than a teenager really, lay dying on the ground at his feet. Overwhelmed by a sense to help, he bent over her, feeling for a pulse and listening for her breathing.

To late Tom felt her heated breath as she hoarsely whispered, “Finally…”