“Hey, the program for recording sound is on the fritz,” Tom told Chief-slacker.

“Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Slacker said, hanging up the phone.

Half-an-hour later Slacker arrived and went immediately to work to fix the problem. It took him two-hours and several reboots of the computer to finally get the system to work.

Without waiting to see if the system would remain in operation, Slacker left the radio station saying, “I’m taking my wife and kids to the state fair. Give me a call if you need me.”

Less than 20 minutes after Slacker left, Tom sat at the desk in the newsroom editing sound for the morning news show. Before he could complete a single project involving the recording of two wraparounds and two features, the system went belly-up again.

Once again he dialed Slackers number. Tom explained that the same problem as before was happening.

“Well,” Slacker said, “Keep rebooting the computer. I’m at the fair with my family. Call me if you still can’t get it to work.”

An hour later, the program that recorded and played back audio still would not work. So Tom called Slacker again and told him it was still down.

“Yeah, well I’m still a the fair, Jus’ keep trying,” Slacker said, hanging up on Tom before he could protest.

Reboot after reboot and the program failed to work. At midnight came the shift change.

“What do you mean you don’t have any sound,” the oncoming jock shouted, “You should have had the Engineer down here working on it.”

“I did,” Tom told him, “And he left after it began working and has refused to come back because he’s at the fair with his kids.”

“This is bullshit,” he shouted at Tom, “Then you should have called Mr. Bully and have him deal with it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Tom responded, “And get my ass chewed for disturbing him for something like this.”

“You’re an asshole, Tom. Plain and simple,” he growled.

“No,” Tom shot back as he headed out of the office door, “We work for assholes who don’t do their jobs and we don’t get paid enough to deal with their shit and ours too!”

The following morning Tom got a call at home from Bully, “I understand you didn’t call the Engineer to have the sound problem fixed?”

“Yes, I did,” Tom answered, “But he only came down the one time and then gave me the excuse that he was at the fair with his kids and wife.”

“That’s not what he says,” Bully stated.

“Check his cellphone and you’ll find he’s lying to you,” Tom said.

“Anyway, you left your relief with extra work because there was no sound available,” he continued.

“No,” Tom returned, “Chief-slacker did.”

“I’m gonna have to sort this out,” Bully offered, “Look of an email from me.”

That was the last Tom heard of the situation. However he refused to trust Chief-slacker ever again, something he already knew to do when it came to anything Bully said or did.

while i could not sleep
i counted all your freckles
my moon sleeps brightly

There was something odd about the lone Elk as it moved through the dense scrub. Jackson watch it through field glasses for a time, but could not put a finger on its strangeness.

Then aiming his glass southward, he located his hunting companion and friend, Richie near the base of a hillock. The man’s orange vest stood out against the stark brownness of the high desert landscape.

Richie was stalking the same Elk which continued to graze until the hunter drew within 30 yards. He raised his 30-30, aiming to bring the animal down, then with a quick and panicked jerk, dropped the rifle.

“What in the…” Jackson exclaimed with a loud gasp.

Jackson watched as Richie hastily retreated, crawling till he was certain the Elk was unable to be see him, before standing and running. It would be days before searchers found Richie, hiding in a narrow cave, mumbling about ‘how human the eyes of the Elk seemed’ as it looked back at him.

Richie was institutionalized, so Jackson said nothing about how he’d witnessed the Elk stand on two hind legs and walk as if human. Nor did Jackson utter a word about the pair of human eye’s that stared menacingly at him from the face of an Elk.

He saw the deputy’s hard stare as he drove by him in the opposite direction. The quick draw performer knew that the man behind the badge would be turning his unit around and pulling him over.

It had happened before and it cost Dave nearly $600 the last time. He checked his rear view mirror and saw the blinking of the red and blue lights as they drew closer.

Dave pulled off the main road and down the long dirt drive towards his home. In short order, the cop car sped onto the unpaved road and pulled up at an angle behind the now-stopped pickup truck.

“Keep your hands where I can see’um,” came the deputy’s demand over the vehicle’s loudspeaker.

Once the deputy was out of his car and with his hands still on the steering wheel, Dave asked, “What’s this all about?”

“You were driving distracted,” came the answer, “gonna have to write you up for it. Now get out of the truck and do it slowly, keeping your hands in sight.”

“I need to reach for the door handle to open it, okay?”

“Do it – but do it very carefully – no fast movements Mr. Quick Draw McGaw.”

Dave complied. He also realized that pulling off the main drag on on the road leading to his home, had placed him in danger since he still had his Colt 44 strapped to his hip.

“So you’re heeled, I see.” the deputy said.

“Jus’ heading home from a small performance I gave for the children in the hospital this morning.”

“Duster Dave Barnham, Mr. Do-Gooder, too, huh?”

Dave did not reply as the officer slowly approached. The deputy looked Dave up and down as he pulled out his night-stick and smashed the left tail light of the truck.

“Tail light’s outta order too,” he grinned, “Now back up.”

Dave stepped backwards, beyond the hood of his truck. He grimaced as the deputy broke the drivers side mirror off the vehicles.

Having had enough of the officer’s actions, Dave asked, “Do you feel better and can I go now?”

“No,” he answered as he pulled his ticket book out from behind his backside, having tucked it in his belt as he left the car. He began to write.

“So how fast are you with that gun, Dave – or should I call ya ‘Duster Dave?”

“Dave’s fine. Fast enough to entertain the kids, I guess.”

“Faster than me?”

“Nope. Not faster than you.”

“Really? I don’t believe you believe that for a minute.”

Dave said nothing.

“I think we oughta find out for ourselves,” the deputy stated.

A sick feeling overcame Dave as he watched the deputy square off, right hand slightly open and hovering jus’ above the butt of his pistol. Dave raised his hands, palms open towards the deputy, in a gesture of surrender.

“Afraid?”

“Yes – very afraid.”

“Ha! Duster Dave fastest man alive with a gun this side of Dodge City. You’re nothing but an effin’ coward. Wish I had that on my dash cam.”

“Wanna reenacted it so you can brag all about it and quit riding my ass every time you see me?”

The deputy smiled, “Yeah, I want that on video – show it to my grand-kids – show’um how big a chicken-shit their hero is.”

“I thought you were their hero?” Dave asked be before thinking.

The deputy drew his service weapon and held it on Dave as he made his way back to his cruiser, reached in and switched on his vehicle’s camera. He also pushed the button to the camera he wore on his bullet resistant vest.

After ordering Dave to pick up his shooter, and once the deputy was certain he had the man in the right spot for his camera, he holstered his own weapon and began taunting the showman again. This time though, Dave was prepared and knowing the deputy was not as on-guard as he had been, Dave drew his Colt.

The surprised deputy didn’t even have time enough to touch the butt of his gun. Instead, he found himself facing the polished business end of Duster Dave’s blue steel and ivory handled revolver.

“Now, remove that thing from your holster using jus’ your pointer finger and thumb, and toss it over here in front of me,” Dave calmly demanded.

The deputy, though slow to comply, did as instructed. Dave could see tears glistening around the lower rims of his eyes.

“Don’t kill me,” the deputy said, his voice shaking.

“Turn around and using your handcuffs, cuff your writs together – and make them tight.”

The deputy did as instructed. Dave double checked the cuff, clamping them even tighter.

Next, he returned to his truck and retrieved his cellphone and dialing 9-1-1, “I need the state troopers, pronto. No, not the county, the state.”

Fifteen minutes later, three units came speeding up the roadway, kicking up dust and gravel. The troopers exited their vehicles and immediately placed Dave in cuffs and ushered him to the back of one of the patrol cars.

“So he dared you to draw on him, huh?” the older of the four troops asked, adding, with a slight tone of hostility in his voice, “That’s very hard to believe.”

“All you gotta do is check his dash-cam,” Dave offered, “And the one on his person.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

It took only a few minutes for the troopers to review the dash-cam footage, before Dave heard, “Sorry, Mr. Barnham, this should have never happened.”

After he was uncuffed, Dave quietly watched as the deputy was placed in the back of the same patrol car that he had jus’ been in. He also watched as other deputies came to the scene to witness one of their own being driven off.

“You’re free to go,” the sheriff offered, before asking, “If he’d of threw down on you after you had him dead-to-rights, would you have shot him?”

Dave toed the dust, “Nope, he’d of killed me for sure, ‘cause my gun’s loaded with blanks. It was all show-biz and bluff on my part.”

“Damn!” the sheriff exclaimed, “Remind me to never play poker with you.”

“Truth is, I don’t know how to play poker, never learned” Dave smiled as he climbed into the cab of his truck, “Anyway, have a good and safe rest of the day, Sheriff.”

It was only as he reached for key in the ignition did Dave see how badly his hand was trembling.

Two days’ ride east of Beowawe, where the ground turns from sagebrush to bone-white caliche, Brady came upon a massacre. The sun hung high, pale and pitiless, drawing long shadows from the dead where they lay sprawled across the rocky earth.

The acrid reek of burnt gunpowder tangled with the copper stink of drying blood, thick enough to taste with every breath. He dismounted, boots crunching through shell casings and shattered canteens.

Most of the corpses wore rough wool coats and dust-crusted hats, miners, prospectors maybe, judging by the gear scattered about. Their rifles lay near at hand, some still half-cocked, others splintered in two.

Whatever had struck them had done so with impossible precision. There were no wounded, only dead.

Brady crouched beside one of the bodies, a man no older than thirty, eyes gone glassy and mouth frozen in a scream that must have lasted until the very end. Powder burns rimmed the hole through his chest, but his expression spoke of something far worse than bullets.

The corpses were cold. Whatever had done this had left hours ago, maybe more.

Still, the air trembled with a residue, something electric and wrong that made the hairs on Brady’s arms rise. He moved through the camp methodically, gathering what might keep him alive, ammunition, a few unspoiled tins, rifles less rusted than the rest.

When he straightened, the world felt too still, as even the flies had gone quiet. That’s when he saw it.

At the far end of the killing ground, the hardpan had been disturbed, an ugly scar of freshly turned earth, jagged and raw, half-filled with debris. It might’ve been a dugout, but it looked wrong, like something had clawed its way up from below rather than dug from above.

The sand, torn by frantic bootprints, and several bodies lay nearby, their faces twisted toward the hole as though they’d been watching when death came. Brady approached slowly, revolver in hand, though he doubted bullets would matter.

The air around the dugout was cooler somehow, a breath exhaled from the bowels of the world. Brady crouched and peered into the shadowed maw.

From within came the faint sound of singing. He froze.

It was a woman’s voice, soft, perfect, unearthly, floating up from the darkness as if borne on smoke. The melody was simple, a rising and falling lullaby sung in flawless English.

For a heartbeat, it was beautiful, achingly so. Then the words sank in.

They weren’t words. Not really.

They sounded like words, shaped from the bones of the language but hollow, stretched, and warped, like syllables that brushed against the edges of meaning without ever touching it. Yet Brady’s mind filled the gaps.

He understood, though he wished he didn’t. Brady stumbled back a step, boot scraping stone as the singing paused.

The silence that followed pressed against him like a tide. Beneath it, the ground seemed to hum, a low, patient, almost curious sound. Then, softly, the singing began again, closer now, as if the unseen singer had drawn near the surface.

Brady’s throat went dry. He knew that voice.

Not the tone, but the feeling of it, the same impossible sweetness that had haunted him once before. He’d heard it years back, deep in the Toiyabe range, when a mining crew vanished and he alone returned.

He had never spoken of it, never told how the tunnels had filled with light that pulsed like breath, how that same voice had sung from nowhere and everywhere until the world seemed to twist around it. He’d sworn then that he’d never go near such a sound again.

And yet, here it was, hundreds of miles away, beneath a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. Brady backed away, slow and careful, revolver still drawn.

The singing never faltered, though it changed pitch, sliding higher, as if amused. The dugout seemed to widen in Brady’s vision, shadows stretching outward like fingers of oil across sand.

He turned and mounted his horse, urging it west without a glance behind.

The air grew hotter with each mile, the wind kicking up dust that burned his eyes. But even as Beowawe’s distant hills rose on the horizon, he could still hear it, the faintest trace of that voice, threaded through the wind like a whisper meant only for him.

By nightfall, he’d reached a dry creek bed and made camp, though sleep would not come. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the dugout, that churned earth, that impossible shadow humming beneath the desert.

And beneath all of it, he felt the truth pressing against the edges of his thoughts. And the men he’d found had answered, miners, prospectors, wanderers like him, all lured by the same melody until they dug deep enough to let it taste the light again.

Brady fed his fire higher, but the darkness beyond the circle of flame only thickened. Somewhere, carried on the dry Nevada wind, he swore he could still hear it, soft, patient, endless.

The song that had been waiting for him ever since that first day in the mines. He sat very still, listening, until the fire burned down to embers.

Then, just before dawn, the wind shifted. And from far to the east, faint and familiar, the voice rose once more, calling his name in perfect English.

Aubrey Thornton walked ahead of her girlfriends, who had stopped along the trail to take a selfie. She had forgotten her cellphone in the car, so she didn’t participate in the ritual.

Ahead, she saw the shimmering rays of the day’s sun and heat vibrating from the asphalt of the newly opened footpath encompassing Lake Tahoe. She thought nothing of it, not even when she felt a mild jolt of static electricity course through her entire body.

The shock, though slight, left her disoriented and dizzy. She had a sudden metallic taste in her mouth and the bright sunlight somehow seemed even brighter, at least for a few seconds.

She leaned against a nearby granite boulder, thinking she may be over-exerting herself in the higher altitude. Aubrey could hear her friends laughing and cutting up as they made the curve in the trail and came into site.

“You okay,” Lisa asked, “You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine, jus’ pushed myself a little too hard,” Aubrey said.

“Maybe we ought to go get something to eat,” Andrea suggested.

“Good idea,” Lisa said.

As they walked back to their car, Aubrey battled to shake off the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that she felt somehow different or perhaps her friends were different. By the time lunch was finished, the odd sensation had disappeared from her adjusting mind.

---

“She was right here,” Lisa cried to the sheriff deputy, “And then she was gone.”

An investigator was speaking with Andrea, who was also upset, separately. He, too, was trying to piece together the two women’s odd story.

“She walked up around that boulder there,” Andrea pointed, “Lisa and me had stopped to take a couple of pictures, and by the time we walked to where we are now, Aubrey vanished.

Five days later, the massive search was called off as a sudden and late season snowstorm moved in over the lake, dropping three to 4 inches of snow. Aubrey Thornton remains a missing person to this day.

---

As she lay in bed that night, following her long day at Tahoe, Aubrey began to reflect. Recalling and drifting in-and-out of sleep, she realized that her friend, Andrea’s blouse had changed; the cats had become dogs.

This realization made her sit up as she felt a cold sweat cover her body.

As she did, her surroundings evaporated and she found herself prone, on a metal table, unable to move. She could sense more than see the several small gray-greenish beings crowded around her.

Aubrey Thornton screamed; but no sound came.

Sensing her presence, he turned and offered to buy her a drink, saying ‘Belly up,’ while holding his hand out towards the space at the bar next to him. Without warning, the woman dropped on her back, lifted her shirt, exposing her belly.

Embarrassed, the man exclaimed.“Get up off the floor!”

By then everyone was laughing and poking fun at the woman as she returned to her feet, though she didn’t seem to mind.

“What in the hell was that all about?” the man asked, as he begrudgingly handed her a Guinness.

“Had a boyfriend – a master, actually – who used to treat me like his dog.”

After a lengthy draw from his beer, he asked, “So, are you house broken?”

If I can write a story using less than 280 characters, you can too. It’s great way to practice cutting extra words from your work.

Go to Twitter and type in #vss365 and give it a shot. Here’s an example of my most recent attempt:

#vss365 #WritingCommunity #HorrorCommunity

Tom knelt, looking over the ledge at the shallow pool of water some 20 feet below. Without warning, his backpack shifted and he toppled forward and over.

“Holy shit! You okay?” his friend cried.

“Nothin’ injured but my fuckin’ #pride!”

It’s both challenging and rewarding and don’t forget to join me on Twitter.

It was her first call as a newly hired dispatcher, “Nine-one-one, fire, police or ambulance?”

There was pause.

“I’d like to order a pizza,” a trembling woman’s voice responded.

“Ma’am, I think you called the wrong number.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You called 9-1-1.”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, there was a hard thudding sound, and a faint cry, before a male voice barked, “Hey, asshole, what’s taking so long?”

She froze momentarily.

“Hello?” he said roughly, “You know what, I’m hanging…”

“Pick up or delivery, and what would you like on it?” she finally asked.

“Delivery. Your large three-topping special.”

“Great,” she smiled, “Address?”

A slow start today, as I woke a little bit stiff and sore.

My son, daughter-in-law and I went to Lake Tahoe to sight see, take pictures and hike.

Using as few words as possible, I wanted to show you a couple of highlights.  The above photograph was taken from State Route 28.

A few minutes later, and in spite of my son’s warning, “If you fall, get hurt or stuck, I might not be able to help you,” I made it down the 250-foot embankment, above, to take the next photo.

It was a wonderful day and I’m already looking forward to our next adventure.