Tag Archives: family

The Z Word Origin Stories – Marie

Posted on April 29, 2011 | 2 comments

This is an origin story to one of the many characters in my first published novel, The Z Word, available here both in paperback and for the Kindle. Follow us on Facebook as well!

Marie happily ignored the doorbell as she played with her Nintendo DS. Her mom and dad called to her to answer it, but she pretended not to hear and then threw on her headphones so it would look like she couldn’t have possibly heard them over her game.

If she’d only kept them off, she would have heard the screaming.

After another half hour or so of taking care of her virtual dog, her stomach growled so she threw the game onto her bed and ran to the kitchen for a snack. She grabbed a banana and jar of peanut butter before she noticed the odd crunching sound coming from the foyer by the front door of her family ranch home.

As she stopped and listened to the odd sound curiosity got the better of her and she went into the living room for a quick investigation. She saw Grover, her dog, hiding under the couch, his little tail sticking out, and a muffled whimpering coming from the little guy. As she turned into the foyer, she dropped the banana to the marble floor.

“Mom?”

Her parents were both attacking the mailman, tearing at his flesh and apparently eating it. Her father had his severed arm and was biting a finger off when he noticed her. He froze for a moment, like a kid caught eating sweets right before dinner, and then growled.

“Dad? Mom?” They both turned on the ten-year-old and lunged for her, causing her to fall backward onto the floor. Her mom’s bloody hand grabbed onto her foot and yanked but Marie wiggled her foot out of the sock and tried to pull back. Her dad was too quick for her and gripped her ankle. As his teeth neared her flesh Grover jumped out from the couch to protect her and started barking. He bit her dad’s hand, forcing him to let Marie go. She jumped up and backed away toward her room as both of her parents grabbed Grover and started tearing him apart.

Marie screamed and ran to her bedroom as fast as she could, shutting and locking the door behind her. Her bed seemed the safest place, so she jumped into it and hid under the covers, waiting. After a few minutes of silence, scratching started at the door, followed by banging. She screamed again and realized she would have to come up with a better plan.

She ran to the window and saw her best friend and neighbor, Joey, walking into his home with his dad. She slammed her hands against the window, and Joey looked over for a second before his dad pulled him inside. Her screams went unnoticed as the neighbors’ front door slammed. She was on her own, and the hammering on the door intensified. She ran to her dresser and tried to push it in front of the door, but her small body couldn’t make it budge so she gave up and threw on a new sock and her sneakers. The banging continued at the door and she screamed at it. “Go away!” The other side was quiet for a second or two before it started again with renewed violence.

As Marie threw some things in her backpack a crack appeared in the door, which grew larger with each slam. Eventually her father could see her and started making a sound that made her blood run cold. She was out of time and ran to the window again, leaving the bag behind.

That’s when she saw Joey run out, a little blood splattered on his t-shirt. She watched him look at some nearby neighbors who clearly resembled her parents and he ran around his house to the deck between her window and his. He climbed under it and disappeared. She knew she had to go there as well. She turned and looked as the door splintered from its hinges. She yanked the window open, jumped out, and ran straight for the deck where her best friend was hiding. Maybe he would know what to do.

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The Z Word Origin Stories – Joey

Posted on April 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

The following story is a prequel to my first published novel, The Z Word. If you enjoy the prequel check out the other prequels available on my blog, like it on Facebook or order the book.

“C’mon kiddo, we’d better get back or your mother will kill us both,” Joey’s dad said to him from across the baseball field.

“Just a few more throws!” Joey yelled, and his dad just laughed and loosened his tie a bit.

“Fine, a few more,” he said. He’d really started to cherish the few minutes they played catch between the time he got home from the office and dinner. Five minutes later they were walking down the street toward home.

A man was walking behind them slowly and moaned. Joey turned and looked but his dad pulled his arm.

“What’s wrong with him dad?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s just get home.”

Joey peered over his shoulder at the man and saw the blood running down his chin and an odd look in his eyes as if he were far away.

Another tug forced Joey to look ahead of them and their house came up on the right. Joey ran ahead.

“Bet I can beat you!” His dad laughed and played along to the front door where Joey was standing bent over, panting.

“You beat me, you win.”

“What do I win?”

“You get to run right upstairs and wash your face and hands. You’re covered in dirt from the baseball field. If your mother sees you like this she’ll kill me.”

As his father opened the door Joey started to go in when he saw Marie across the yard waving from a window. She looked a bit upset, but a large hand grabbed him and pulled him into the front door.

“Let’s go! Get washed up! Honey, we’re home!”

As Joey ran up the stairs two at a time his father went into the kitchen to see what was for dinner. A quick sniff made Joey wonder if anything was being cooked in the house.

A change of clothes and a minute in the bathroom had Joey looking like new so he ran back down the stairs, jumping the last four and then looking back at them, impressed with himself. That’s when he heard a whimpering combined with a crunching sound.

“Mom? Dad?” he called as he ran around the bend into the kitchen and stopped with a squeak of his sneakers on the linoleum.

His dad was sitting on the floor as his mom seemed to be eating his neck.

“Mom?”

His dad suddenly opened his eyes and pointed at the door. “Joey! RUN!”

Joey noticed the blood dribbling down her chin and that same weird look in her eyes as that strange man on the street and knew something was wrong. She stood from his father, the man’s body limply falling to the ground, and started in Joey’s direction.

“Mom?” he whispered.

She growled and he turned and ran for the front door. Outside he noticed a few people wandering around and they all stopped as soon as he let the screen door slam behind him. They all had that same look, and Joey knew he was in trouble. He thought about places to hide, somewhere they would never find him, and his mind went back to the game of hide and seek he’d won, beating all of his cousins, even the older ones. He knew just where to go.

Come back tomorrow for the story of Marie, and who knows, maybe even a continuation of Joey’s story…where will he hide? Will Marie survive too? Find out tomorrow!

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Waiting

Posted on April 20, 2011 | 2 comments

She stood there, waiting, and she wasn’t even sure what for. One foot on the grill, one on the solid sidewalk, she watched people walk by. Not too many for that time of day. An oddity. She wondered where everyone was, where the few stragglers were going, what they were doing, what their futures held. An old cab drove by, an aged, antique model that she’d never seen in real life, only in the movies. The checkers on the side, bright yellow dimmed by time, the driver maybe even older than the car itself. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and for a second she felt as if she could see into his soul, his whole life of pain, torment, wars, soldiers, Nazis, pain, suffering, but also the love of a good woman, meeting her on leave, bringing her flowers, dates, love, family, children, grandchildren, one great-grandson and as quickly as he drove by and he broke eye contact the moment and the visions were gone. She tugged at the black sleeve of her cardigan and scraped the cement with her left boot tip, looked down into the grill and saw trash accumulated in the underground sewer. When she looked back up she was once again curiously alone on the street.

Photograph of Manon by the amazing Laura of Instant Flowers and Nonsense of the Truth. They are quite talented, please check out their work. They inspire me often.

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Barkley, Mister Hooper and the Farm

Posted on April 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

He’d left his giant pile of Legos and I’d gotten so used to the noise of him rooting through for specific pieces that the silence pulled my attention out of my book. He was looking out the window watching the rain.

“Guess no playground today, huh dad?”

“Probably not, kiddo. It’s raining pretty hard.”

He went back to the Legos and started sifting through again. I have to give him credit, he handles bad news well.

“Okay, how about we dip into the yard sale stuff?” He perked up instantly and ran to the closet where we keep the “new” toys I yard sale for him. I get so much that my wife and I decided to keep a storage closet of toys for when he deserves a reward or something. It keeps him from being overwhelmed by all of the toys at once and kind of makes it fun for everyone.

“Okay, we have some superheroes, this stack of books, some old wooden puzzles…”

“Wooden puzzles!” he exclaims. I pull down the stack and hand them to him. “Why are they wood? Wood’s so heavy.”

“That’s what some of the puzzles were like when I was a kid. As a matter of fact, I had this one as a kid!”

I found the Sesame Street puzzle and pull it from the pile. Instantly I remember playing with this one in the 70s with my dad and mom. He looks at it and looks up at me.

“You had this one? You watched Sesame Street? Did you love Elmo too?”

“There was no Elmo when I was a kid. But yes, I loved the show. I used to ask for aqua instead of water, that’s how much I watched it.”

I love how slow and deliberate he is with new toys. Any other kid would dump the pieces out, start the puzzle and then move on to another, leaving this one for me to clean up. But not him. He runs his hands across the shiny wood, feels the little knobs and then starts naming Muppets.

“Big Bird!”

“Yup.”

“Grover?”

I nod. Then he comes across the big, shaggy white, orange and brown dog.

“Who is this? I don’t know this dog!”

“That’s Barkley. I don’t know if he’s on the show anymore. I haven’t seen him. I’m surprised I remembered his name!”

He frowns and looks at me. “Where did he go?”

“Um…maybe he moved to a farm.”

“Were there others who moved to the farm?”

“Mister Hooper…kind of.”

He starts pulling the knobs and realizes there are more characters behind them. “Whoa! Oscar was behind Big Bird! Look there’s Big Bird’s nest!” I smile. I can’t believe I remember this puzzle so clearly. I must have been three or four when we had it. “There’s The Count! One! Ha ha ha…” I try not to laugh at his impression. It’s not very good. “Cookie Monster! He’s eating a cookie! I hope he ate his carrots first!” I find that a little disturbing, but only a bit.

He goes through each piece, looking at what’s behind it and then gently placing it back until he’s checked them all twice, then pushes it away.

“Want to do another? I have a Bert and Ernie one, Cabbage Patch Kids and Wuzzles.”

“What’s a Wuzzle?”

“I have no legitimate answer to that,” I say.

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The Z Word Origin Stories: Zachary

Posted on March 30, 2011 | 5 comments
This story is a prequel to my upcoming zombie collection The Z Word. Like it here on facebook.
Click the photograph to see WhiteStag’s Etsy account where this print and more are available!

Zachary Ward was sitting in his old bean bag chair reading the recent Walking Dead when it happened. A scream ripped through the open window of his bedroom and he barely looked up from the issue. But then, who would? The second scream was the one that forced him to carefully place it on the shag carpet in the basement bedroom he “rented” from his grandmother and walk up to the eye-leveled window.

It had started. He saw two of his neighbors chased down by another, who seemed a bit slower than usual, and a bit more…gray? The slower neighbor latched on to one of their jackets and pulled the woman in, biting her arm as her scream reverberated off the walls of neighboring homes. Blood splattered across Zach’s window as her eyes met his and she reached for him.

It was time.

He ran to the comic he’d thrown to the ground in frustration and held the cover up, looking from the image to the view outside. It was definitely time.

He turned to find his grandmother standing in his doorway, the light from the basement steps silhouetting her figure.

“Mom-mom, how many times have I told you to knock first! I don’t care if you have to do laundry!” he whined. She stood, waiting for something, and that was when he looked back at the comic he’d been reading and flipped to the fourth page. It showed a back lit silhouette of someone in a doorway, a similar scene. He carefully placed the comic onto his sofa bed and reached under, feeling for something.

“Mom-mom, I would answer me if I were you…”

She made a sound, guttural, coming from deep inside, and that’s when his hand hit what he was looking for – a baseball bat. She lunged at him just as he pulled it out, and he swung it at her side, knocking her away from him.

“Mom-mom?” He looked into her eyes, a milky white. He sighed and knew what it was he had to do.

“Sorry mom-mom. You’re no longer the person I knew. I love you.” She stood again, her flowery moo moo flowing behind her as she jumped at him and he swung the bat at her head. The crack sounded different from those of the star baseball player’s he bench-warmed for. After all, his bat had never connected with anything other than wind that whole season his dad forced him to play.

She dropped to the ground, blood oozing from a crack in her skull. Zach looked at her for a brief moment and then started gathering items around his room and throwing them into a backpack. He’d been reading about these things for years now. He’d seen all the movies, even the terrible ones. The books, the graphic novels, everything prepared him for this moment. And he knew what he had to do next. It was time to save the hottest girl in his old high school who just so happened to live across the street and also, however unlikely, never pulled the blinds when she was changing. Why else would a twenty-year-old live in his grandmother’s basement?

As he burst through the old front door of her home, the screams got to him and he winced and lost his nerve for a moment. At that point he pulled out the iPod his cousin had given him when the new one came out and threw the buds into his ears after pushing random. With the bat in his hand he entered the street filled with monsters and victims alike, trying to catch some food or survive, depending which side they were on. He stepped to the other curb and was ready to swing the bat when a song started. The first few notes made him stop as the lyrics “Well no one told me about her…the way she lied” and he laughed at the irony of this song of all songs being the first to play. As he ran across the street one of the zombies came after him and he swung, this time right at its head. It went down fast as two more turned to look at him. He ran around her brother’s van parked in the driveway and checked to see if he could make it to the front door. He took off for her house and got to the door to find it locked. He rang the doorbell and turned to find the two from earlier coming at him rather slowly.

“Just like Romero said,” Zach actually said to himself as he gripped the bat tighter before thinking better of it and swing the bag around from his back. He pulled out a half-filled bottle of rum and stuffed a rag in it as they got closer, dropping the iPod and letting it yank the buds out of his ears. A quick flick of the lighter and the cocktail was lit. He threw it at the oncoming creatures and watched them ignite and fall, bringing three more into view who were apparently following them.

“Shit.”

He turned and banged on the door, rang the doorbell again and started yelling. Finally he heard a voice.

“Who is it?”

“Lucy! It’s Zach! Let me in!”

“Who? I can’t. Something’s going on! I’m not opening the door!”

“If you don’t open it I WILL DIE!”

He waited, the closest undead thing within reach of his bat and he took it down with one swing. The click of the lock turning caught his attention and as she opened the door he fell inside onto her.

“Quick! Lock it!”

She sat on her ass looking at the monsters slowly approaching and began to shake so he jumped up and slammed it shut in their faces. He threw the latch and slid the chain into place, then offered her his hand.

“Are you okay?” She nodded and then wrinkled her nose at him.

“Oh, you’re that creepy guy from across the street. You live with that old lady.”

“Um…yeah. I was also in your homeroom.”

“Oh.”

She brushed herself off. “What do you want?”

“I was trying to save you.”

“Well, I’m fine. I’m locked in. Safe. You can go.”

“We need to barricade the door, block up the windows and do a quick survey of what you have in here. Got a lot of food? We’ll need it.”

Lucy just stood there staring.

“What?” he asked her.

“Why should I share with you?”

He pulled open the curtains to get a view of the street. “You want to be alone in all this? They’re zombies.”

“They’re what?”

“Zombies. Dead people come back to life. Eating people.”

“That’s stupid. They aren’t even eating the people’s brains. Zombies eat brains.”

“Where in the hell did you hear that? It’s a myth.”

“So are zombies.”

“Then what are those?” he yelled, pointing outside at the chaos.

She looked outside and her confidence wavered. “They can’t be z- they just can’t be.”

She rubbed her arm and looked at him as sweat began to form on her forehead. “Well, what do we do?”

“We do what they always do. Lock ourselves in. Hold down the fort. Hope others find us so we become stronger in numbers.”

The two of them went to work moving furniture and blocking the doors and windows with as much as they could find. A quick inventory found them plenty of food and he filled up the bathtub with water.

“Why do we do this?”

“If the water stops running you’ll thank me.”

“What if I need to take a shower?”

He rubbed his temples for a moment trying not to yell, but ended up losing his temper a bit anyway. He yelled “YOU DON’T TAKE A SHOWER IN THE MIDDLE OF A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!”

Her lower lip trembled and he instantly felt bad. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t mean it.”

She took a good look at him and collected herself. “I’m fine. I get it. We’re in trouble. I’ll be tough.” She looked out the bathroom window and gasped. “This is for real, isn’t it.”

“Sure is.”

She turned and looked at him, a small smile forming. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m actually glad you’re here.”

He smiled and felt his heart skip a beat. The hot girl from his high school days was happy he existed. That’s when they heard the thump. Zach ran down as fast as he could, Lucy close behind, to find the front door being rattled. He ran to it and pushed up against it, Lucy copying him. That’s when the window shattered.

“No! Lucy get back!” By the time she realized what was going on, a hand grabbed her nearby arm and pulled it through the window. Zach grabbed her waist and pulled her back in, and as she turned he saw the distinct marks on her arm. Bite marks. She looked at it and said “I’m fine!”

“You aren’t. When you get bit you become one.”

She looked at the cuts, wiped away some blood and passed out. He picked her up and put her on the couch.

“Shit.” He knew what he had to do. He ran to the front door and added a heavy armoire to their makeshift barricade and then went back to her. She didn’t wake up. “I’m sorry. I have to leave you. It’s too late for you.”

At that he grabbed the keys to her brother’s van off the counter, ran to the back door, turned to take a last look at the hottest girl in his grade, and left through the backyard.

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Goats Can Be Heroic, Too

Posted on March 29, 2011 | 3 comments

“This is the part of the zoo where you can feed the animals,” mom told us as we walked to the cage. “Only feed them these pellets. Dennis, are you listening?”

My older brother had that smile at just the edges of his mouth, the one that meant trouble. Mom put a hand on each of his shoulders in an attempt to grab his attention. “Did you hear me?” His fake smile appeared and she fell for it. Again.

I was the good one. My brother was always causing my parents trouble, and I hated seeing my mom cry over his ridiculous antics. He always came home with unexplained bruises and cuts, or being chased by older, faster kids. My mom automatically defended him against upset neighbors, teachers, and officers. So I always tried to keep my nose clean. It just seemed fair. She worked so hard around the house, and my dad was always on emergency calls, being the town doctor.

After doling out half of the little pellets she got out of the penny machine to feed animals, she sat down on a nearby bench. It wasn’t even two seconds before Dennis ran out of the pellets, which of course he was throwing at a duck that was more interested in dodging them than eating them, before he came and wrenched my wrist to steal mine. Luckily I knew him well enough to expect this and had pocketed a few as soon as my mom handed them out.

“Hey!” was all I said. I turned to my mother, who heard my cry and looked up, so I just smiled and waved. It just wasn’t worth getting her upset. I turned my attention back to Dennis, who was easy to spot in the crowd considering he was wearing the same red and white-striped shirt as me. I carefully followed behind (he’d caught me following him once and I could still feel phantom bruises from that lesson) and watched as he pelted a little lamb with the rest of the food before he came upon the goat.

He approached the fence where this huge billy goat stood almost eye to eye with Dennis (if memory serves it had a few inches on him, but you know how memories become distorted) and Dennis instantly reached his hand through the large spaces between the wire and yanked the creature’s beard, pulling it closer. I could see from my vantage point that the goat’s eyes widened. I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be pulling the animal’s fur. Dennis looked around for something to feed it but only discovered the lid to an aluminum can someone had thoughtlessly discarded from a packed lunch.

“Eat it!” Dennis said to the goat, who kept moving its mouth away from the garbage. “Come on! Goats eat trash, I know it. Eat the can!”

I’d watched Dennis bully people my whole life, including myself, and I couldn’t stand it. Even the boys bigger than him always took the worst of it in a fight. What chance did this goat have?

The goat opened its mouth to make a noise and Dennis’ quick reflexes had the lid in the poor creature’s mouth before a sound came out. The sides of the lid were sharp and may have cut the goat, I have no clue, but it made a screaming sound, lunged at Dennis’ hand and grabbed it between its teeth. Dennis screamed out “Mommy!” and of course she came running. I tried not to laugh when I realized my brother was crying, actually crying, and when my mom ran up and looked at his hand, she saw teeth marks.

“Oh Dennis, come on. Look at your hand! It didn’t even break the skin.”

He was sniffling and snot started running down his face. I never thought I’d see the day that anyone or anything would get the best of my older brother, the terror of our neighborhood.

“Billy,” my mother called to me. “We’re going to sit on the bench. Come find us when you’re ready to go.”

I nodded and reached into my pocket, pulling out the few pellets I’d saved from my brother. The goat backed away, but I used my best soothing voice and said “Come here, boy.” The goat approached and I reached my hand through the fence with the pellets in my hand and fed my new hero.

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Birdwatching on Bicycles in Bilborough

Posted on February 28, 2011 | 5 comments

“Let the first trip of the Birds and Bicycles Club begin!” announced Randolph Harrison Thursby to his companions. They all clapped lightly yet with enthusiasm as one of them took a photograph to capture the moment. Rand bowed and waved a hand as the small group of seven mounted their rides and stood, waiting for him to climb aboard his 1955 Regency De Luxe Tourist, his pride and joy.

“Binoculars at the ready?” asked Ruby Merriweather, his best friend since they were children, equaling over twenty years of friendship. Many of her boyfriends over the years were a bit jealous of their relationship; so jealous, in fact that she had yet to marry.

The other members of the group nodded or grumbled accordingly, eager to move on.

Rand jumped to the pedals and gave a slight push forward, the strap of his binoculars across his chest, the binoculars bumping into his back lightly as he pedaled.

Ruby placed a packed lunch and her binoculars into the small basket on the front of her B.S.A. Keep Fit bicycle, a gift from Rand when it was brand new only two years ago, the same as his bicycle.

She pedaled hard to catch up to Rand as they left the others behind by a few meters.

“So what did you make in the packed lunch?” Rand asked, nodding towards her basket, taking a break from scanning the nearby trees along the path searching for birds.

“Fish and chips,” she replied with a laugh.

He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Now I know that’s not true.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because you know I don’t like fish. That’s how I know.”

“Oh Randolph, you know me too well.”

The others fell behind a bit as one of them, an elderly gentleman named William Williamson pointed towards a grove of trees and stopped his bicycle. In the distance the group let their bikes drop as they all peered through binoculars, except for William who used his Brownie 127 to capture an image of the fowl.

Rand and Ruby failed to notice as they were ahead of the group. When Ruby turned and realized they were alone, she broached a subject long on her mind but had to build up her courage to ask.

“Rand,” she shook a little as she asked. “Why is it, do you think, that neither of us ever married?”

“Well, you’re too choosy, let’s face it. I set you up with that fellow Edward, he was perfect! But you found flaws.”

She sighed. “And what about you?”

He continued scanning the sky and pedaling. “Dunno. Haven’t found the right bird, I guess.”

“It doesn’t seem that you try very hard.”

“Maybe not,” he said as he braked. “Look!” After gently placing his bike on its side he twisted his body so that the binoculars swung around from his back to his front and caught them in one smooth motion, holding them to his eyes. His finger moved the focus dial as he aimed at the top of a nearby tree. “I think…I think it’s a rare one!”

Ruby propped her bicycle on the kickstand and pulled out her viewers. Aiming in the same general direction as Rand she moved them around a bit and finally spotted the bird. She gasped.

“It’s a Black Redstart! So rare!”

“I knew it! Just remember, I spotted it first. Everyone!” he called to the others before realising they were all gone. “Where did they go?”

“They fell behind ages ago. Williamson spotted something and they stopped.”

“Drat! They’re going to miss this Redstart. They don’t hang around long. Have you ever seen one?”

“I don’t even know anyone who has, to be honest,” she replied.

They both watched the creature in silence. It hopped from one branch to a lower one and froze as it spotted them. They both felt as if it were looking directly at them as they savored the moment.

“Wow, Phoenicurus ochruros. What a magnificent creature.”

He smiled and looked at Ruby. “Absolutely beautiful.”

She looked at him and smiled and he failed to notice her cheeks become the tiniest bit red.

“What do you say we head up that path and try that lunch you’ve made us?”

They both turned to look at the bird, its little orange belly still facing them as it watched them a moment longer, cocked its head and took off, flying out of sight.

*  *  *

The bicycles in the story:

Special thanks to Tracy of this blog for mailing me the photograph all the way from London, England that inspired the story.

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Ronald (A Story of Connections)

Posted on February 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ronald searched the jumbled shelves of the used book store. The owner told him the copy was here and even described the binding so he knew what he was looking for: off white with shiny red lettering. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot.

Ever since he met Liz he’d been infatuated with her. They spent so many hours discussing films, books, and everything else they both loved, and she’d recommended Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the other night over tea at her place. He couldn’t get over how optimistic she was, her fun, artistic apartment, and even her quiet son who’d spent the night playing with his Transformers.

“I found it!” the owner called from behind a bookcase somewhere in the back of the store. She hobbled out and handed him the paperback that he took with care as if it were a newborn. He couldn’t wait to read this.

He paid her in cash as he always did, and she asked him how classes were since she always confused him with one of her other customers, a college professor, and reminded her that he was a chef. She smiled and apologized, fixed her small, crooked glasses and gave him change.

He walked out and continued down the alley that led to the main street where he made a left at a clump of mainstream stores, including a bookstore big enough to be considered a warehouse. He always went to Barbara’s store first for books since he liked to support independently owned stores that were quickly disappearing.

He stopped to flip through the book as he noticed some of the pages had photographs, some drawings, and even a few pages with color. He almost bumped into someone and without looking up walked around them. “Excuse me,” he said. When the person didn’t respond he turned to look at them and realized it was Liz’s son and he had a small, green handled shovel.

He’d have to bring that up to her next time they hung out. But that wouldn’t be until he’d read this book at least twice and was ready to tell her how wonderful it was.

If you enjoyed this and want to know more about the other characters, click on the Stories of Connections category on the right.

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Bradley (A Story of Connections)

Posted on February 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Bradley stopped to peer into the weird store with all of the rats. He always stopped by here to watch them run by the windows in the huge maze of clear plastic pipes. One jumped at him, starling him into dropping his little shovel.

He picked it up and looked at the small clumps of dirt clinging to his mom’s garden tool. The green handle looked so new and his mom would certainly notice that it had been used. She was a neat freak, a word he overheard someone call her when they learned of her many cleaning rules imposed on him. He’d laughed at the term and called her that sometimes when she wasn’t around.

The same conversation was what led him here. He’d heard them talking about movies, then books, tuning out the conversation as best he could since it was interrupting his Transformers war.  He tuned back into what they were saying once he heard the term “father” uttered, which always grabbed him since he didn’t know his dad.

“And his father spends time with him by burying items in the park and then leaving clues so he can find them.”

“Wow, sounds interesting.”

“Yes, and he goes on a quest to find his father’s final clue by searching the whole city.”

Were they talking about Bradley’s father? He was furious at first with his mother. She had known about these hidden treasures all along and not told him, not let him start the search? Maybe, if he started digging in the park he would find one of these treasures and somehow finally meet his dad. All of his friends had dads. Not all of them had one living with them, but they still had them, and Bradley always wanted to know his missing parent. Maybe this was his chance.

But he’d been digging for days now and only found a few squirrel bones (which were cool, he had to admit) and a few creepy bums tried to talk to him. Plus he’d saved that little dog from the bigger one. But still no treasure.

Maybe he should ask his mom. But she’d kept it a secret from him for a reason. He was on his own.

As Bradley realized he was probably late, he turned and started walking home. A car drove by and he saw a girl he knew from school, but he ignored her. He had bigger things on his mind.

If you would like to know more about the people in these stories, click on the “Stories of Connections” categories and read about some of the other people he’s bumped into or connecting events. Bradley pops up in other stories here and there. Tomorrow, learn more about what Bradley’s mom was talking about in “Ronald”.

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Everything I Needed to Know I Learned From 80s Cartoons

Posted on February 18, 2011 | 5 comments

Dennis Finocchiaro is the author of a few novels and loves everything 80s.

 

“Everything I needed to learn about being a good person I learned from 80s cartoons.”

“Really,” she responded with obvious dubiousness, one eyebrow raised and a sly grin on her face.

“Sure. G.I. Joe taught me to resolve my arguments with peace. And not to talk to strangers. And any other number of lessons. They had public service announcements after each episode. I learned from Slimer and the Ninja Turtles, Mickey Mouse and everyone else to say no to drugs thanks to Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue. I learned to treat my family right and to be good to people in general thanks to the television shows I watched.”

“Smurfs?”

“Of course! They were the kindest most congenial beings ever created. I can’t even watch them now…they’re so pure. It makes me sick.”

She laughed. “Okay what about He-Man? What could you possibly learn from him?”

“Are you kidding? Orko always caused some sort of trouble that I learned from. Don’t eavesdrop, don’t meddle, etc. That show had lessons after it just like G.I. Joe.”

“Okay, what about your precious Transformers? What could you possibly learn from them?”

“Seriously? They taught me the importance of doing the right thing, being a good guy instead of a Decepticon. Come on. Optimus Prime showed wisdom in every choice he made. I learned what a great leader possesses.”

She shook her head. “You’re ridiculous. Bugs Bunny?”

“That wasn’t 1980s, although I did watch it.”

“So what did you learn?”

“Not to fuck with a road runner? I dunno. That technically was the 70s and doesn’t count. The 80s were all about purity. Learning lessons. Being a good person. If I didn’t know better, I would think Humanists were running children’s programming.”

“Snorks? Centurions? Biskits? Shirt Tales?”

“Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding. Snorks were practically an offshoot of Smurfs. Same comments apply. And the others? Trust me, every 80s cartoon was about teaching kids right from wrong.”

She looked at me across the table with pure seriousness.

“So you’re saying you don’t think kids need to go to church, so long as they watch 80s cartoons?”

“Exactly.

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