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The Magic Mice: Escape

November 4, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

“Aric, go check the attic window, see if you can see anything from there.”
Aric sighed loudly, but jumped off the trunk, landing on all fours (“Cool!). He jogged over to the corner where the attic window looked over the front street. He clambered up the rough wood to the sill and peered out. “Nothing. Man, this window is really dirty!”
“Stay there and keep watch. Twerp. I just sent you the photo. Send this stuff there. Then we grab the magic wands and leave our phones here.” Gran sat and started texting on his phone.
Deke was glad they weren’t watching him, because he wasn’t sure what he was doing. He stuck his hands into his deep pockets, closed his eyes. There wasn’t really a noise so much, as a sudden lack of something. Deke was knocked onto his behind, and his eyes opened. The furniture was gone and dust was setting all around them where everything had been. Even the sewing form was gone!
“Whoa!” Aric was looking inward. “That was cool, Deke!”
Gran even looked impressed. “Huh. You are an odd one, Twerp. The magic wands?”
Deke looked up where the four wands were hanging still. How had he not moved them when he’d commanded everything magic to go? Maybe Derp – er, Ella – was right. Maybe they were no more than props for a long ago play. Still… They were all staring at the wands, so he closed his eyes and waited for them to shrink and fall to the floor.
Gran snatched them all up as soon as they hit the floor. “Come on guys. Leave your cell phones here. When they realize they can track us, they’ll come here first.”
“Right.” Aric jumped down and jogged over to the knot hole. He peered downward. “Somehow, down sounds scarier.”
“You take the rear,” Gran growled, pushing him aside before lowering himself down the hole.
“I can take the rear,” Deke said, when he saw his friend’s face drop.
It was a good thing he took the rear, Deke discovered. Once he lowered himself over the lip of the knot hole, he realized he had no strength to hang on. He held as long as he could before squeaking down, “I’m dropping! Heeeeelllp!”
He landed with a thud on top of Aric, who squeaked in surprise. “S-s-sorry. I just feel weak all over.”
“Yeah, wish you had better aim. Hang on, I’ll help us get down. Gran! Wait up! Deke is sick.”
Aric had Deke piggy back on him as they squeezed down the electric wire conduit. When it got too narrow, Deke had to stand on Aric’s shoulders, but he found he could hold some of his own weight by grasping the wire, too. It seemed like it too twice as long to do down the wire as it took to go up.
Gran was waiting in the dark for them. He came over and inspected Deke’s eyes. “You look OK. What happened?”
“I think it’s the magic. I just feel all drained.” Deke sat down. He just wanted to curl up and sleep, right here, in the dust, with the spiders and silverfish. Never move again…
“Not yet. You gotta power through. After we get out of this house. C’mon. Gran helped him up. “No mouse left behind.”
“Goonies!” Aric shouted, soliciting a baleful stare from Gran.
“Grow up.”

Ella heard them first. Her ears picked up the distant sound of their shuffling. Dish was snoring softly, his head resting on her shoulder. Billie was scurrying about, looking for a way out of the crawl space. Ella shook Dish gently.
“Time to wake up.”
“Is it dark yet?”
Billie scampered back. “I think I found a way out. Are they coming yet?”
“I can hear them.” Ella stood and stretched. It was strange how she felt like herself, but looked like a mouse, and then she was wearing her own clothes. How had Twerp managed to do that? There was no logical explanation, other than sorcery, or magic, but how was it even possible? There were laws to the universe, and bending those laws…
Gran entered first. He was followed by Aric, with Twerp leaning heavily on his shoulder. Gran held up his right paw, “He used a lot of magic today. He’s drained, but okay. You find a way out of here?”
Billie nodded up and down while Ella hurried over to help her little brother with his dorky friend. Twerp looked up and smiled. “Hey, Derp.”
“Love you, too, Twerp.” She frowned at him. “Is he, like, drunk?”
“Nah, I’m just tired and honest. You hate me and I hate you. We’re even.” Twerp raised a fist. “”Fist bump?”
“Whatever.” Ella gave him a fist bump. “What did you do?”
“Later,” Aric said, nodding toward Gran. “He goes first.”
Gran nodded. Ella noted that he looked sort of like Splinter, from Teenage Ninja Turtles. Odd.
“Okay, guys. Plan here: get out of the crawl space. We get about a hundred yards from here and we can decide what to do. Right now, we got to ditch our cell phones. They have GPS and can be tracked. They probably already have figured out we’re still here in the house. We left ours in the attic. Billie says she found a way out.”
“Possible.” Billie didn’t sound so certain. “We’re mice, it may work. I don’t know.”
“Well, lead on,” Twerp said. “I need a place to crash, and this is looking really awesome right now.”
“Follow me.” Billie hopped off toward the street side of the house. “It’s like a screen vent thingie. We just have to pull the screen back to get out.”

Half an hour later, they had pulled back a fine-mesh screen that was set in behind a rectangle of cinder blocks. There was just enough room for each of them to squeeze through. Deke was more than half-asleep, so someone got in front of him and Aric pushed from the back, and they dragged him through. Aric picked up his glasses and white ball cap. Gran brought up the rear.
They were in a window well. Bricks and moss and centipedes and roly-poly bugs. Ella Stood on her very tippie toes. UGH. Aric scaled the bricks to the grass above and declared the way “clear”. The problem was getting Deke up there, as he was now snoring soundly. Gran tried hauling him up over one shoulder, but it took two pairs of paws to scale the wall, and Twerp was in the way. Aric scrambled off to find string or something from the yard.
Dish pulled himself out of the window well. “Guys,” he called back down, “There’s a white van parking across the street. I think we need to get a move on.”
Billie rolled her eyes. “How can we, with Twerp like this?”
Gran sat down and exhaled heavily. “If only I knew how he conducted his magic. What he said. Like, ‘Lift Twerp to grass level now.’” Gram was rubbing the side of one of the hand-carved magic wands.
Twerp suddenly jerked upward, and then levitated to the grass level, before moving over the grass and settling down.
Grans mouth fell open. How?”
Dish shouted from above, “EXTERMINATORS! Guys, they’re rodent exterminators, and we need to get off the property now!”
Billie, Ela, and Gran scrambled up the side of the mossy brick. Once on top, they lifted up Twerp’s snoring person and they made their way through unmowed grass toward the cat hole in the back fence. Aric jogged across the back yard to join them, bringing up the rear. He was carrying an old bamboo skewer from last summer’s barbecue. Somewhere, they could hear crows cawing in the trees, and an owl hooting. A dog howled down the street. Men’s boot steps echoed across the street.
Through the fence, they were in the back yard belonging to the Gutierrez family. A friendly pitbull patrolled the yard on the far side, bridle and white, tail wagging as it moved along the leafy hedge. The mice kept as close to the base of the fence as they could, trying not to make any noise that would attract the dog. Six year old Juana Gutierrez sat on the back step, singing “This little light of mine”. She glanced at the fence, and then over at the scary Peabody house.
There were strange men inside the Peabody house. Men who killed rodents and ants and things. There were mice working their way along the fence, and she could see they were dressed in clothes. She looked over at the dog.
“El Ganador! Come. Inside.” The dog happily trotted over to her and she grasped his collar. Looking out at the mice, she whispered, “Vaya con Dios, Ella. Te amo.”
Ella glanced over her shoulder as her favorite six year old disappeared into the house. “Gracias, Juana. I’ll let you have that extra ice cream next time I baby-sit you!”
They mad it to the alley way. A white van was parked directly behind the Peabody residence. The windows were tinted, but the engine was running, and it didn’t take much to surmise what it was doing there. Gran turned left and kept to the high grass, weeds, and garbage. Everyone followed. Aric brought up the rear with his barbecue skewer. He hunched under the fence for a while, studying the van. When he finally made his move forward, he kept his skewer low. He came up short behind the rest at the edge of Mrs. Swainson’s yard.
Mrs. Swainson had a dozen cats. The alley was relatively bare. Bob Freeman’s yard was across the alley, unmown, unkempt, and abutting the first open field they might be able to take to freedom. The sun was beginning to set, but it was still light out.
Now what?

6820 words

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The Magic Mice: The Attic

November 3, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

The Attic.
Gran led the way. Deacon was in the middle, and Aric brought up the back. They creeped along caves that followed the feed of electrical and cable wires, always moving upward. Deke had wanted to follow the plumbing, but Aric said that ended on the third floor. Only the electrical went to the attic. Deke kept a wary eye on the cords they often straddled. He felt a lot like they were walking blindly in a subway tunnel, and one of those wires would be hot, and they’d all be fried. Any second now.
“Ouch!” Gran stopped and looked back. “Step on my tail again, and you’re dead meat, Twerp.”
Great. Now he had to watch out for the tail, too. Deke glance to his right and looked into the eight eyes of a large house spider. It retreated quickly, but not before hissing at him.
“W-was that Shelob?” Aric whispered from the back.
“No.” Deke concentrated on looking straight forward. Did mice eat spiders? Maybe they were the threat, not the spiders. He couldn’t remember anything from science class about mouse diets. He remembered plenty from fantasy novels he’d read as a kid, and it seemed like mice ate things like dandelions, acorns, and puddings.
“Shit.” Gran stopped suddenly. “Mouse trap.”
The other two crawled up behind him and peered over his shoulder. It looked like a tube set on top of the wires, with a piece of aromatic cheese at the end of it. Deke’s nose twitched and his stomach growled.
“Oh. My dad and I set these. There’s a rubber band thing that shoots when the mouse takes the bait. It goes over the mouse’s head and, like, strangles it instantly.”
“Nice, Aric. How do we get around it?” Gran looked back, and Deke thought he was looking into the face of Splinter, the anti-hero of Teenage Mutant Turtles. Gran even drew out his “s”.
“I suppose we throw something up in there until we set off the trigger?”
“Oh, brilliant. And when we set off the trigger and the little rubber band flies out harmlessly, how do we get through this?”
“Uh.”
“There was a junction back there by Shelob. We could go back and take the junction and hope this is the only such trap Aric set.”
“Shelob?” Splinter – er, Gran, stared down his long nose at Deke. “No, don’t tell me, Twerp. Just lead the way. Aric, you take up the rear.”
“What? Why?”
There was much grumbling as the mice changed positions, mostly from Aric as he squashed himself up along the walls of the tunnel. “You’d think I put that trap down here just to catch us!” he complained.
Deke took the lead happily. He felt like he should have been given it in the first place, because he was the one who had thought of escaping as mice and hiding in the crawl space. It wasn’t hard to find the spider again: it had moved forward of its web after they passed, and it hissed again, as it made a hasty retreat.
The junction was to the left, and Deke turned to follow it. It went vertical shortly after they were into the tunnel, with only a single electrical wire running up the middle of it. A very old electrical cord, way out of code. Deke paused as he looked upward. “This is not up to code,” he muttered. “We could be electrocuted. Fried, even.”
“It’s an old house,” Aric called from behind him.
“If the house hasn’t burned down yet, I’d say we’re fairly safe. Climb. Now.”
Deke swallowed hard. Do or die, right? All that? He wrapped his paws around the rubber-coated wire and began to pull himself upward, using his feet to walk along the wall. He heard, and felt, the others follow. They passed through dusty old spider webs. A silverfish scurried upward ahead of them. The tunnel they were in got wider, until there was no place to place his feet as he climbed, but a hole in a floor above beckoned.
“Gotta freestyle it here, guys,” Deke called over his shoulder. He didn’t feel the confidence. He breathed out before taking in a deep breath and grasping the electrical cord with all the strength his paws possessed. Left over right. Right over left.
He reached the small hole where the cord went through what he thought was the floor boards. One paw grasped the upper surface, and then the other, and he hoisted himself half way up into the space between attic floor and third floor ceiling.
He sank in defeat on the attic sub-flooring. “Really?”
Gran surfaced next and crawled further into the space, keeping his head down. Finally, Aric hefted himself through the hole. He looked upward where he expected the cord to go. “It follows the ceiling?” He sounded as disappointed as Deke felt.
“Explore,” Gran’s mellow voice floated back toward them. “The cord probably goes up the wall somewhere, but there may be a way into the attic from here without acrobatics.”
The friends looked at each other. If Aric could have shrugged, he would have. Instead, he slapped Deke on the shoulder. “We stay together.”
Deke felt weird, crawling with his paws on the floor and the toes of his sandals behind him, but it was all the space allowed for. Mouse sized, he reminded himself a dozen times. Mouse sized.
They heard Gran shout. “I found it! A knot hole. Follow my voice!”
Deke didn’t understand how his body knew where to go, but his ears had swiveled, and he’d turned toward the voice and scurried – yes, scurried, like a mouse – in the exact direct the voice had come from. He was soon underneath a perfect knothole in the pine flooring of the attic. He could hear Gran scurrying around above.
“Coming, Aric?”
“Right behind you.”
Up they went.

The attic was much brighter than the spaces they had been confined in. A single small window to the west let in the early afternoon light. It wasn’t direct sunlight, but it was a lot more light than they’d been used to for the past few hours. The stood, side by side, looking around what seemed to be a huge cavernous room. The attic.
There was a human form for sewing in one corner, and a child’s rocking chair. Five trunks. A number of plastic boxes marked in large lettering: XMAS or EASTER. A stack of cardboard boxes were marked HALLOWEEN. Near the dusty window stood an old easel with a dust-covered painting on it. An old mirror was propped against the slanted ceiling near the body form. The wand collection was in a glass covered box on top of one of the trunks. Latched.
“Now what?” mused Gran.
“We shrink what we need so we can carry it?”
“How are we going to carry it back down those tunnels?”
“We shrink it so we can carry it,” Deke repeated.
“What do we know we need?” asked Aric. He was atop one of the trucks, “I don’t even know what is in these trunks. Hallowe’en costumes? Photo albums? Family diaries?”
“Magic wands. We need those.” Gran was studying the latch on the display case. “Probably don’t need anything else.”
“The mirror, I would think,” Deke replied.
Gran reared back. “We can’t carry everything, Twerp. Concentrate. Can we hide the things we may need later? Do you have that super power, too?”
Deke felt four eyes on him. “Well… Um. I could try. I never tried to hide something before…”
“Except us,” Aric replied.
“Well, yeah, but I did shrink myself into a mouse once, so I was pretty sure I could do that.”
“Pretty sure?” Gran stared hard at him. “You mean, you didn’t know if you could make us all mice?”
“Well, that was easy, I was sure. But getting us all into the crawl space… I didn’t have an exact destination, so, no. I had to just hope there was a crawl space and the magic would know…” Deke felt his voice trail off.
“But you could, like, send the mirror and trunks to the crawl space, right>“ Aric looked hopeful.
“I might squash anyone down there. I can’t place it all exact-like.”
Gran scratched his chin. Deke was certain he was irritated and would take it out on him, but when he spoke, he seemed to have a plac. “How familiar are you with Dish’s family’s cabin?”
“Um, not at all. I didn’t even know they went camping.”
“If I send you a photo on my cell phone, can you send the items there?”
Aric and Deke looked at each other, then checked their pockets. Sure enough, they had their cell phones with them, and the phones had service. “We might want to ditch these,” Deke said. “They have GPS in them.”
“Crap.”

Word Count: 5172 out of 50,000

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The Magic Mice – 2

November 2, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

“GUYS!” Twerp didn’t shout, but his loud whisper broke them all from their frozen state like a snowball shatters frozen glass. Everyone turned to look at him.
He turned red. “I HAVE AN IDEA.”
“Make it quick,” hissed Dish, his pale eyes piercing the nervous kid’s face.
“Okay.. We become mice hiding in the crawlspace.”
“Whoa, dude!” Aric scrunched his face in disgust.
“No. Not even.” Billie just shut it down.
Downstairs, whoever had been ringing the doorbell now raised a megaphone and commanded, “OPEN THE DOOR. WE HAVE OBSERVED YOU ARE NOT IN SCHOOL> IF YOU DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR IN FIVE SECONDS< WE WILL BREAK IT IN.”
Ella hugged herself. This just wasn’t real. Nothing was right.
“No, listen, I can change us all, and -”
“NO!” Gran, Dish, and Billie hissed.
“Maybe we can escape through the window,” Gran said, as his fingers worked around the screen.
There was a crash of glass and wood in the foyer. “We’re in!” Someone shouted.

The world went dark. Ella felt herself falling backward into space. Her chest was compressed and tight; she tried to gasp, but it was like those nightmares when you think you’re awake, but you’re not, and you can’t scream. She flailed her arms, felt nothing. Dust filled her nostrils. Was this what it was like when they threw teargas canisters into a crowd? Or was it a smoke bomb?
She came to in the dark. She was on her hands and feet, and it was chilly in the room. A dripping sound came from behind her. Her hear was beating wildly and loudly, and she could hear heavy panting – breathing – around her. Someone sneezed. Overhead, there were thumps and scrapes as someone walked around. So she was in a dungeon of some sort, down below. She heard a muffled, “Clear!” followed by another one, as the steps moved further away.
“Holy crap!” Aric’s voice squeaked like a girl before his voice cracked and went deeper. “Deke!”
Billie said a most un-lady like word. Her breath tickled Ella’s ear. “Do I have paws?”
Ella blinked. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark. “Where are we?” she asked, trying to make out shapes in the dim lighting/ A cell? Prison? Dungeon? Had she been hit in the head during the raid?
“By the surroundings, I would guess we are in the crawlspace of your house, El.” Gran’s mellow voice was to her right. “And, Bill, I believe we all have paws. And large ears.”
Ella raised her hand to the side of her head. She felt short, soft hair, then her her favorite earrings, She moved her hand up the edge of her ear. “EEK!” Her scream came out more like a squeak.
She looked to her right and squeaked again: she was looking into the beady eyes of a very large mouse that was sitting on its haunches, staring at her. It was wearing Gran’s red knit beanie cap, and was dressed in his baggy clothes, right down to his ratty converse. Ella covered her mouth and whirled to look at Billie on her left.
A smaller mouse was standing beside her, running its paws up the side of its head. Feeling the dangly earrings hanging there. This mouse was wearing Billie’s favorite black Kurt Cobain tee, a grey hoodie, and black leggings with little grey skulls all over them. It looks at her and said, in Billie’s voice, “El…?”
“Bill…?” Ella replied.
Someone groaned. “What happened?” It was Dish’s voice. “Did we get flash-banged back there? What is this place?”
Gran let out a heavy breath. “I think Twerp has some explaining to do.”
Beady eyes searched the darkness. Twerp, also known as Deke, or Deacon (his real name) was sitting on a empty thread spool, swinging his legs. Er, paws. Ella knew it was Twerp, because he had on his white ball cap, the red shirt, and baggy shorts he’d been in when he followed Aric into the house. His wire-rimmed glasses perched awkwardly atop his nose. He was wearing – of course, because he was Twerp – sandals. He looked smug.
“I had to act, dogs. They were already in the house, and if we’d tried to go out that window…” he shrugged. “No time, you know? And I knew I could change all of us into mice, it was just putting us somewhere safe that I was a little fuzzy on. But that worked out, didn’t it? Because they don’t know we’re here.”
“What now, Genius?” Gran stepped forward, leaning in a threatening manner.
“Mice?” The sound of dry leaves or paper sounded as Dish struggled to find his feet. “We’ve been turned into mice? And where are we, again?”
“Yes.”
“In the crawlspace under El’s house.”
“But I have my clothes on… And paws. I have paws!”
Everyone groaned. Aric spoke first, “Dude, you sound like Ella, now.” He switched to a falsetto, “’How can I be a mouse? That’s not a scientific probability.’”
“I didn’t say that,” Ella snapped.
“But you thought it,” Aric snapped back.
“Genius,” mumbled Dish. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Deke. So you can change us back when we’re safe and away from here?”

The footsteps above were coming back down the stairs. Someone – either Billie or Gran – hissed a “Be quiet!” and everyone stilled. When the footsteps were overhead, they all looked up. Dust motes fell from above every time someone stepped.
“Mrs. Hazelton was certain the kids were here when she called.” The voice was nasally.
“Well, they aren’t. We’ve looked everywhere. The open window was a ruse, I’m sure, but we’ll have someone patrol the area to search for them.” Sounded like Mr. Thompson, the truant officer.
“Garage is closed up, all the bicycles accounted for. There’s an SUV in there, locked tight.” Third voice.
“No place for them to go. Hal’s checking the attic now. The boss is gonna be pissed.” Mr. Thompson.
“Oh, come on, it’s not our fault we barked up the wrong tree. Mrs. Hazelton just wasn’t a reliable witness. You know she drinks all day.” Nasally voice.
“Ok, but I still want an unmarked patrolling the neighborhood for the next 48 hours. Let’s call the other teams and see what they’ve come up with.”
“No kids in the attic.” This was a deep voice, coming from further up.
“What’s in the attic, Hal?”
“Usual magic paraphernalia. Trunks, costumes, assortment of wands. Christmas ornaments and a fake tree, an old mirror, lots of dust.”
“We’ll have to have someone come in and clean it out, then. Soon. I’ll radio the boss.” Thompson again.
“Let’s get out of here.” The dust continued to fall as more footsteps moved overhead, then the front door slammed.

Slowly, everyone exhaled. “We need to get to the attic,” Gran said.
“They aren’t real magic wands,” Ella said. “They were props for a play my dad was in when he was a teenager. He made them himself, so he’s really proud of them.”
“El, you do realize that coming from you, that doesn’t convince any one of us in this space?”
“What? Why? I just told you the truth.”
Aric stood up. “Right, then. Three of us go up and get the wands. But they’re gonna be people sized. So who’s got a good spell to make ‘em mouse-sized?”
“How do we get into the attic?” Dish asked. He was now standing and Ella could make out the flop of black hair between his ears. His eyes looked old for a mouse, and his paw was shaky. “Why couldn’t I just be a bat?”
It was decided, after a short debate, that Twerp, Aric, and Gran would go to the attic. Dish wasn’t feeling well and Billie wanted him to stay. No one even asked Ella if she’d like to go. Aric was certain they could find a path way through the house’s old ductwork, and surely there’d be a hole in the wall or floor of the attic when they got there. It was an old house, after all. Twerp had already proven he could do a shrinking spell – of sorts. Gran was the natural leader, the oldest, and the most stable.
Billie set about moving things to make the place somewhat homier. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be here, but I don’t want to feel like I’m living like a mouse, too.”

Dish slumped next to Ella. “So, I was going to tell you about why I was having a rough time. Well, me and Gran. Then Billie had the newspaper, and insisted you read that first. And Aric came, which screwed everything up.”
“No, Aric didn’t screw it up. Those men who broke into the house did.” Ella patted her friend’s paw. “Twerp was actually kind of a genius, you know. Not like Gran said, but a real genius. Mice. In the crawl space.” She gave a nervous laugh.
“No, Aric didn’t screw it up.” Dish sat still, looking old. “He even shrunk my glasses.”
“And his.” Ella giggled. “How did he do that? Every detail. This is a pretty vivid dream.”
“I wish.“ Dish sighed, then, “Bill, just come sit down with us. You’re making me nervous.”
“So, why were you and Gran having a rough morning?”
“Oh, the raids, you know. I was sleeping over at Gran’s. My dad was in a fit and I didn’t want to go home. You know how it is? Sometime, really early in the morning, there were these flashing lights out in the street. Woke me up, so I woke Gran up. They were raiding my house. So, me and Gran, we sneaked down the stairs and out his back door, and crawled under the fence to the Cooper’s yard. We watched it all come down from behind the garbage cans. They pushed my old man out, all handcuffed like a criminal. Shoved him into the squad car the way you’d stuff a cat into a cat carrier.”
Billie came over and sat down, placing a protective paw on Dish’s knee.
“Wow, Ella said. “Horrid.”
“It got worse. They turned their spots on Gran’s house. Whole bunch of them – all these dudes in white suits, with the police, came running over and surrounded the whole house. We were right there, other side of the fence. They banged on the door, and Gran’s mum answered. Threw her down on the grass and handcuffed her right there. She was yelling that they had no right and where were their search warrants and they were yelling at her to shut up and waving papers around, saying this was the edict, here was her search warrant, and then Toby came around the corner and…” he choked back a sob.
Ella waited while Dish collected himself, her paw squeezing his.
“They shot Toby,” he whispered. “Just a cat.” Dish began to cry softly. “My cat, not even Gran’s.” Dish leaned into Ella. “They shot my cat.”

Tomorrow: trip to the attic.

total word count: 3,691

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NaNoWriMo – Night #1

November 1, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

Preface: I am starting this novel tonight, but since the idea was sparked by a writing exercise, I am including that bit as well. This could be a very long post as I’d like to get in 1700 words. I’ll post the word count total at the bottom every night. I will title the ensuing posts “The Magic Mice”, although I am not certain that will be the title of this “novel”. Feel free to leave constructive criticisms in the comments. I may not make immediate changes (in order to get to my 50,000 words), but I *will* consider every suggestion, grammar correction, and editorial comment.

Here goes (italic is from the original post):

She was a fool for it, of course. Magic was in everything she touched. Not believing in it was a rebellion on her part. She just didn’t want to be different, or set apart, from anyone at school. She could hide her parents, downplay magic, even disbelieve in it – her friends accepted her. Better: they didn’t believe in magic. Photoshop, yes. Magic: no.

Anything could be digitally reproduced. Anything could be digitally created. There was no god, no spiritual side of things, and certainly no magic. Everything had a logical explanation.

Except that there was Aric, her brother, two years younger, horizontal to the earth and three feet up from the floor, levitating. He was playing a video game and levitating. She walked by and pushed hard on his shoulder, sending him crashing to the hardwoods.

“Hey!!”

Ella ignored him. She opened the fridge, pulled out a carton of milk and poured it over a bowl of Lucky Charms. Weren’t her parents just quaint? She sat down and scooped a spoonful of wheaty health and sugary death. Crunch.

Aric appeared in the doorway. “That was rude, Ella.”

She shrugged. “It’s not normal to levitate.”

“Magic.” Aric sighed and retreated from the room, too old to be bothered with his sister’s odd logic.

She saw her friends coming up the long walkway and grabbed her bags, clicked on the security code, and uttered a dire warning: “Leaving now, Derp. better come with as I’m arming the alarm. School time, Boyfriend!”

Aric appeared at her right hand as she opened the door and smiled. “It’s still magic, dork.” He ran past her friends and down to the bus stop. Ella rolled her eyes before locking the house.

“Hey.” she said, smiling up at Dish, Gran, and Billie. “Bus stop or did someone drive a car?” She winked at Billie, who had just passed her driver’s ed test.

“Actually, Ella, none of the above. We really need to talk about your denial. You can’t keep this up.” Dish was the tall, lean, dark-eyed one. His face was usually pallid and his eyes looked sunken most of the time.

Gran had a more athletic presence: wiry, compact, and a member of the school’s track team. Tonight, he had an unshaven look about his face, and his eyes shifted from left to right. Billie held his hand in a death grip. “Look, Ella, we really need to just come in and crash. It’s full moon, you know. Gran and Dish are having a hard time right now. Can we just hang in your room upstairs?”

Ella blinked a couple of times, and then looked down toward the bus stop where Aric was waiting. “Sure, why not?” She locked the door behind her friends as the yellow bus stopped to pick up the junior high kids and Aric stepped inside.

“So – what is up. Exactly.”

“Ella, Sweetheart, we need to quit denying the pull of the full moon.” Gran wrapped his strong arm around her shoulder. “And you can’t fool your little brother. He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“What??!!” Ella whirled before her bedroom door. Had everyone gone insane? They all looked at her with such utter innocence. Billie spoke first.

“I get that you deny magic, Ella, but you are denying the basic truth of yourself. And of your brother. And of your best friends. We haven’t said anything because it didn’t affect us until now. Now they are threatening to put practitioners in jail. Read the news. Your parents have been arrested.” Billie shoved a newspaper under Ella’s nose at the same time as the downstairs doorbell rang.

Everyone jumped, including Ella. Billie raised her hand. “I’ll check it out. It’s probably Aric.”

“Why would he ring the doorbell when he has a key?” Ella started toward the door. Billie stopped her.

“The paper. read it.”

Ella didn’t. She scanned the headlines, which were improbable and inflammatory.

MAGIC PRACTITIONERS HELD IN QUARANTINE

Use of Magic Deemed Illegal by State Governor

“What hogwash,” she muttered. Downstairs she heard Billie open the front door, and the excited jabbering of Aric. Billie was trying to keep their voices down, so Ella couldn’t hear what was being said, but she did hear the door lock click again and then the slap of tennis shoes as they ran up the stairs.A moment later, Billie and Aric rushed into the room, breathing hard. Oh, and Twerp. Great, Ella thought. Twerp.

Aric looked pale. “Did you hear the news, El? Mom, Dad, Deke’s parents…” Deke, or Deacon, was Twerp’s real name, a name Ella never used inside her head.

“You mean this?” She held the paper up.”

“Well… I didn’t see a newspaper, but it was on the bus radio.” Aric looked at Twerp, then at Gran, Dish, Billie and Ella. “El, it’s real. There was a squad car in front of the Hexton’s house and they were leading old Miss Sophy in handcuffs. That’s when Deke and I beat it off the school bus.”

Several thoughts collided in Ella’s mind at the same time. “Miss Sophy? Handcuffs? You got off the school bus? How? Noone tried to stop you?”

“Well, the bus driver did yell at us when we pushed open the back emergency door…”

“We ran through back yards…”

“I left my backpack on the bus with my keys…”

“Saw you guys go into the house to skip school when the bus stopped…”

“Yes, Miss Sophy! Can you believe it!?”

Billie raised her hands for quiet. She was the smallest of all of them, yet when she commanded a room, everyone listened. Her voice and presence were why she nailed nearly all of the starring roles in Drama. “HUSH. Everyone just SIT DOWN. Ella, you need to read the newspaper. Aric, Twerp – breathe in, breathe out. Gran, would you mind watching out the window? You should be able to see the street quite well from here.”

She waited while everyone did as they were told, except Ella, who couldn’t make the letters form into words, much less sentences, now. Snippets jumped out at her, but they were jumbled and confusing. Governor declared… magicians…wizards… witches… magic… illegal… arrested Dr. Pheonix Peabody… warrants for all… holding facilities… safety of our state… religious rights… protection

Dish was sitting on the edge of the bed, his soft voice speaking. Ella looked up and realized her eyes were full of tears. What was happening?

“So, in summary, we have to find a safe place and create a plan of action to rescue our families and friends. We’ll consider all ideas on the table, but before we start, Gran and I were up all night and we think we may have a plan.”

“I’m so confused,” Ella whimpered. “How is magic illegal? It’s … just… sleight – sli – hand. Science…”

Aric reached over and put his arm around her. “It’s OK, Dork. We’ll get them out.”

Billie leaned over and patted Ella’s knee. “You never pay attention, El. Always got your nose in a book or working the back code of a web program. We know. But you have to get a grip. We are ALL wizards and witches in this room. We possess magic, and it isn’t smoke and mirrors. You haven’t figured out your gift, but you will.”

Gran just shook his head. “El, just sit tight and listen to our plan. It’ll start making sense if you just cooperate. Dish’s parents have a cabin up off of Helmet Road. We just need to get there without attracting any attention to ourselves. It’s got food and water, a generator and gas.”

“It shouldn’t be that hard to get there,” Dish said. “It’s thirteen miles off of the highway. We can all walk that in a day.”

“We figure we can walk the seven miles out to the junction today, hunker down for the night at Crazy Sully’s, and then walk out to the cabin tomorrow morning.”

“Why walk?” Aric asked. “Can’t we just drive or something?” Everyone looked at Billie.

“Guys, my dad is – er, was – a police officer. I’m afraid to drive because they’ll run our plates or recognize me, and – besides – we’re supposed to be in school… We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Like a bunch of kids skipping school and walking down the side of the highway won’t attract attention?” Aric made a face and rolled his eyes. “I hate walking.”

“And we’ll get hungry,” Twerp added, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. “What if it gets cold or rains?”

Billie rubbed her temple. “I can drive. We’d need Mrs. Parker’s son’s van. It should be parked in the alley today because he worked last night. We could leave it at Crazy Sully’s so they find it and return it to him, so he won’t be too sore at us.”

“Forensics. Science.” Ella looked around the room. “Fingerprints, guys. You can’t just take a car and park it and hope noone knows who took it. They’d have our footprints. Dogs could follow our scent. Shoot, they could track us from here, if we tried to walk our of town – unless it rains. But we can’t steal a car.”

“Well, what other ideas do you people have?” Dish glowered. His mop of dark hair fell across his forehead, making him look almost sinister. You want we should just hole up here and hope the truancy officer doesn’t come around – or the officers who arrested Miss Sophy don’t make it down this street sometime today? We can’t go to any of our houses if our parents have been arrested. There’s no practical way out of this, except to get to the cabin. Unless one of you knows how to make a carpet fly and we can stay off of anyone’s radar.” Dish had a way with sarcasm.

Gran was staring out the window again, his profile unreadable. Ella thought he was frowning, a look that marred his perfect profile. He was flexing his fists.

“I have an idea,” Twerp began.

Aric interrupted him. “What about bicycles? Couldn’t we all ride our bikes out Clausen Way, and then take the cut-off to Coventry? Isn’t there, like, a BMX track or something out there we could get lost on. Who’s going to see us?”

“That might actually work,” Billie nodded. “But we’d have to all get our bikes, which would mean risking going back home. AND we’d have to get to Clausen Way without being detected.”

“Well, Deke’s house backs almost up to Clausen Way, and he and I go out there all the time. Most of the time, noone even sees us going, unless his mom is watching. And we have four bikes here.”

“Guys, I have a better…” Twerp began again. This time, Gran interrupted with a low growl like a grizzly bear protecting its food cache.

Everyone looked at him. He was hunched and leaning back from the window. “They’re coming. Long white van, guys in white jackets. Two police cars.”

Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

1,847 words

 

 

 

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NaNoWriMo 2017

October 30, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

National Novel Writing Month begins on the first of November. I have made a commitment to write my 50,000 words publicly, here on this blog. I am going to work off of this premise: Exercise #17. It will be a YA novel, and I hope it isn’t too dumb. I created an outline (loosely) of the story.

I do not like criticism, but I need you to be critical and offer grammatical suggestions (no, I don’t want you to edit it) and plot ideas as I go. Let me know what you like and don’t like. I’ll try to post my writings every night, or at least five to six times a week.

Want to be my writing pal on NaNoWriMo? My user name is jacidawn. You don’t have to join to critique my novel as I write this year: I am committing to making it public (EEP!).

I’ll start all of my November entries with NNWN so you will know it is an installment on my novel. Be harsh. Be real. Be honest. Be kind. I promise to listen (but I may not take all advice offered).

This will be FUN. For whom, I’m not certain, but I will try to take it as fun. I started this, after all. 🙂

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Thank You, Harvey Fans

October 25, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

041

This is my favorite photo of him: pure English Setter, clean and brushed. He was hard to keep clean and brushed: all the angora-bunny-sort fur and the long feathers in his tail and between his toes! he was a big boy, too, nearly twice the size of the average English Setter standard. He was at the top end of the standard in both height and weight (well, OK, he was overweight. He was a pig. He was a lazy pig).

He lived a wonderful life in the 8 years and four months that he lived with us, but we’re fairly certain his first year (or so) was not so carefree. I’ve read up on some English Setter rescues, and our experience with Harvey would indicate that he was like so many of them: isolated as a pup, not socialized properly, alone for many hours at a time, possibly kept on a rope or in a small kennel, and very little training. He was probably field bred, but he wasn’t the smartest light on the Christmas tree.

Harvey had a nose unlike any other. He could out-hunt Murphy with his nose, but since we never bothered to train Harvey to hunt, that remains up to debate. Hunting was Murphy’s job. Companion was Harvey’s job. He was the best companion.

He became sick sometime at the end of the last year. I noticed it in January, after I returned home from vacation: cough-cough-cough-haaack! X-rays showed fluid on the lungs, a normal heart, and nothing else. Blood tests pointed to a thyroid issue, but that could have been due to his hacking cough. We ran through three rounds of different antibiotics, with no improvement.

I made the cold-hearted decision to withhold any more research into his illness and to let him live out his days as best as he could, and as happily as he could. It was a financial decision as much as a practical one: how much money do you pour into a dog? I won’t judge someone who pours a lot of money into their dog(s) and I hope you won’t judge me from pulling back. We didn’t even know what was causing him to cough, we only knew what was not: heartworm, heart disease, thyroid disease, something stuck in his throat. Further tests would have been invasive and added to his dread of the vet.

Choosing to not pour money into him paid off when we had to put Murphy down, and we had the money to invite a vet into our back yard to do it. It was far more expensive than our vet, but Murphy died where he lived and loved: under the sun, in the arms of his master.

Harvey slowly declined. He had good days, mostly, but soon he couldn’t manage a mile walk or even a half mile walk. We cut down to walking around the block. He was huffing and puffing by the time we came home. He reminded me of when I have an asthma attack, but I sensed this was deeper than asthma. I feared cancer. His belly began to distend.

I almost put him down in August, but he rebounded. Then Murphy died. Harvey lived. How is that fair? Harvey eased my husband through the early stages of his grief: he was there to talk to, even if he was mostly deaf. He had cataracts, but he could see motions and shapes.

I said that he wasn’t smart. that isn’t entirely true. Harvey learned new tricks. He learned how to “speak” for treats and how to use it to manipulate the treat jar. he loved puzzles, such as when I’d put a treat under one of three paper cups and he’d have to guess – and flip the cup over to retrieve the treat. I could set a biscuit on his nose and he learned to flip it off (but not catch it). He loved sign language. I didn’t have to speak to him. but could just point, and he knew what I wanted or where to go.

He developed seborrhea (a dandruff like condition that mimics hot spots). No matter how often I bathed him (not often, as you can imagine with a 90# dog that hated water), he continued to develop scaly spots and lose flakes of skin.

His last month was the hardest: I blocked him from the stairs to my studio because I caught him collapsing on them and I had to help him down. He no longer had Murphy to pester him. We got a new bed, and while he could figure out how to climb onto it (it’s taller than the old bed), getting off was a chore. I banned him from the bed.

His last week was up and down. One day, he’d eat nothing, not move, not go outside until I came home from work and hauled him out there. The next day, he was fine. Another day, down. Up when I came home and took him out, sat with him on the hardwoods in the hall, and hugged. Harvey loved to hug.

He had a congenital spinal column disorder, where his spine narrowed over his hips and pinched his spinal column. It appears like hip dysplasia, but isn’t. I discovered it when he was around 5 years old, and we treated it with anti-inflammatory drugs and pain meds. Usually, he recovered quickly. Sunday, when he refused to get out of bed and I helped him up, he couldn’t keep his back legs under him. His back was out, plain and simple. I helped him out to pee and poop. He quit eating unless it was under his nose.

I dosed him heavily with pain killers. I made the decision, and made the phone calls to cover myself at work.

Harvey knew. He balked at getting into the car, but that was because of the pain it caused him. He entered the vet’s waiting room like the gentleman he always was, never threatening any of the other waiting dogs. He refused to relax and lay down, but, instead, hid his face in my armpit, hyperventilating. I sat on the floor with him. A poodle puppy tried to make friends with him, but he barely gave it a glance as it sniffed around his feet. He hugged me, over and over and over again.

Dogs hug by rubbing their heads against you and butting you. Harvey’s tail occasionally wagged as we sat there, him with his head against me and me petting him. He smelled like the seborrhea.

He weighed 86#. We were led to an examine room, and Harvey collapsed. He’d been standing for far too long, and he was just done. He was no longer hyperventilating. He allowed me to pull him over to me, and lay his head on my lap. He knew. He didn’t look up at the vet when she came into the room, but simply snuggled closer as she gave him a sedative. He relaxed into dreams with a hearty snore.

One of the things that stands out to me is that the vet commented on how distended Harvey’s belly was. He’d been sick since January. I suspected cancer of the lungs. I never followed up on x-rays, because – what’s the point? Chemo? Radiation? Money out the door, and the dog is uncomfortable throughout the process? The part of my mind that makes practical decisions kicked in. No. No tests, no invasive procedures, nothing that would ruin his last days on earth.

He passed peacefully. I believe he passed knowing what was happening. I believe he made the choice. I think a broken heart played into his decision: who could have had a better brother-from-another-mother than Harvey had in Murphy (or visa-versa)? He was nine-ish. He’d had a really good life with us. He was loved. He loved.

I threw out the dog beds the same day. I’m still crying when I look at his picture on the Internet. I haven’t taken down his Facebook page. Don is collecting photos of Murphy. We are both grieving. It means a lot to look on Facebook and see all the comments, likes, and more. I can’t begin to check the little “like” box next to them all for fear I will miss one. But I have read every single one. I appreciate every single one. Some of you don’t even like dogs. Thank you.

Harvey taught me how to trust dogs. Murphy taught me how to love dogs. It’s been a rough summer’s end.

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I Did It!!

October 24, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

I kind of fell off the Accountability Chart this weekend, but I got back on tonight and actually figured out how to add products to my “shop” on my website. Woot! I think I have four items up, and that’s a fraction of what needs to be put up, but with a little copy and paste and a lot of patience, I will have my online shop open by the first of November.

I’ll be honest with you: this whole process has been a bit of a headache, mostly because I was starting with an already existing website, and most instructions assume you are doing this from the beginning. They obviously don’t know me. I’m a jump in and do it sort of person, and then I figure out how to problem solve later. Yes, it causes a lot of headaches, but it’s how those of us who are kinesthetic/visual learners learn. I’m not good at following verbal instructions, but give me a screen shot manual, or let me get in and play with things, and I learn.

So I had this existing website and theme which I had to take down, basically, and start up with a new theme that is compatible with the online shopping program I uploaded to my site. The shopping program is only compatible with select Word Press themes, most of which I don’t like. I uploaded their basic site, but when I went in tonight to work on things, I saw how poorly that was going to integrate with what I am selling (my own artwork). UGH. So I had to go search for and upload a new theme that was compatible with my image. There goes half an hour!

Uploading my inventory was a challenge, too: I don’t have excel or a csv program on my computer (hey, in my defense, I didn’t know I would ever need it). Manually entering the product is the only option, and – at first – that seemed daunting. But I did a test, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I learned quickly to ignore the SEO alerts. I can deal with those down the road as I expand my website. I managed to upload about four items to my shop and I think I have it down now. I think I will prefer to manually enter my inventory – for now.

I didn’t get everything done within the 31 day challenge I was on, but my shop/website will be ready by November 1, in time for seasonal shopping. I also have my Etsy shop open. I am retaining rights to the images so I can prepare giclée images and add them to my website.I’m pretty proud of what I have gotten done. I’m not as technologically handicapped as I thought I was.

Dang.  I feel capable tonight. Never doubt yourself. You CAN do this!!

 

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Last Writing Exercise – Antiques

October 21, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

I have no “prompt” for tonight; I am merely going to recount my day. I am going to take a few days off from the nightly post (wait for NaNoWriMo, when I will type out my 50,000 words here on my blog, open to your real-time review, beginning November 1st!).

Today was a wonderfully typical Autumn (Winter or Spring) day here in the Pacific Northwest: it rained. Non-stop. They’re predicting 3″ by the end of this particular trough of storms passes through, which – while it isn’t entirely normal, is not, by any means, not normal. This is the weather where people from out of state carry umbrellas; Oregonians (and Washingtonians) merely put up their hoods or don hats, and slosh out into it.

I wore my dressy blue rain boots over my jeans. Rain boots are fun nowadays, not those simple black (and practical) boots you buy at the local feed store, rain boots are something you buy off the shoe shelves of the local Target, WalMart, K-Mart, Fred Meyer, or whatever. They come in arrays of designs and colors. You can still get ducky yellow, but paisley blue is more my style, and that is what I have.

My girlfriends picked me up around 10:30 and we took the backroads to the Old Aurora Colony, more commonly referred to as simply, Aurora, Oregon. There was a quilt show in the Aurora Museum. The girls are into quilting; I barely uncover my sewing machine to repair things. My great aunts and most of my cousins on the Scots’ side of the family have all quilted (or still quilt). It is a sewing gene that skipped me (I have made a couple of quilts, but they were simple things, and I never felt the desire to get artsy with fabric in that way).

I like to look at quilts. I like to pick out the hand-quilted vs. the machine-quilted. I love the patterns. The textures. I may not sew much, but fabric still lures me in. There were a lot of nice quilts, and a handful of them were hand-quilted with exacting precision.

There was also an herb garden and store where I got lost in the heavenly aromas of lavender and sage. My friends walked off on me at this point, less interested in the herbs and plants than I am, but I lingered long enough to inhale deep breaths and to rub an aromatic salve into my hands. I may look into joining the Willamette Herb Society.

I have lived in this area since 1983, and I stopped in and walked around Aurora a handful of times. I’m sure I’ve been to the museum at some point, but it may have been in the 30-years ago range. I’d forgotten about the long barn with horse implements and grist stones. Of course, it may not have been open like it is now when I was last in the museum.

The last building was the original log cabin, full of people’s discarded sewing notions, quilting squares, knick-knacks, and vintage patterns still in the original envelopes. A waft of nostalgia blew over me here: my mother could sketch like the artists who designed those 1950’s and 1960’s pattern envelopes. The 1970’s patterns reminded me of my mother. The sewing, in general, reminded me of mom, and of her oldest sister, who just passed last week at the age of 89. I felt their presence with me as I scanned old buttons, binding tape, and sequin pins. I could see them: Mary Lou and Phyllis.

I know where to donate all my sewing notions that I will probably never use, but which I could not leave in the house in Ely when Mom died.

We left the museum and made our way across Highway 99E to a hole-in-the-wall diner my friends knew about. Mom & Pop kind of deli, only 4 or 5 tables, and a ton of paintings of varying degrees of age from floor to ceiling. The best corn chowder I have ever had. Personal service. Christa’s Café and Antiques.

The rain never let up, and we sloshed back out into it. The debate: to wander around to all of Aurora’s many antique shops, or duck into the Main Street Mercantile? We opted for the latter, and it turned out to be a three-story antique mall, not a “mercantile” at all. How did I never know this was there? I thought I’d been to all the antique stores in Aurora as recently as 2015, and – yet – here was this hidden treasure of an antique mall so jam-packed with other people’s junk that you couldn’t turn around?

My feet were cramping by the time we decided our eyes were getting bleary and all the vintage and antique items were beginning to blur into one. The smells that overwhelmed me when I first entered – old spices, dust, old books, age – were now all blended into one scent, and I needed the rain to wash it away from me, along with the wish to spend money I don’t need to spend (because, dammit, I found the perfect buffet/hutch for my house and it was marked down to $315).

And there was this.

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I don’t know what the hell that is, but I want it. I don’t care how ratty it is, how faded the little marble eyes are, or that the antlers are broke: I want this. The earless grizzmoo or Moogrizz or whatever bizarre cryptid this is (maybe it’s a Bigfoot? I’ve never seen one. Have you?), I need this in my life.

Sadly, I didn’t think there was room in my friend’s car for it, and I wasn’t sure where I would hang it in my house that a dog wouldn’t be able to reach it to chew on its nose (even Harvey, with his cataracts, would be able to locate this and find it – um, interesting). No one visits us anyway, so I wouldn’t be losing any Good Housekeeping points that I haven’t lost already. I’d freaking have THIS.

But I left it behind.

We hydro-planed north to Canby, where we stopped and had coffee to round out our day together. Then my friends dropped me off.

Don and I rounded out the evening with dinner at Feckin’ . We ran into friends and enjoyed our favorites with them. Came home and topped the evening with a Jackie Chan movie that is more “China meets Bollywood” than anything else: Kung Fu Yoga. I highly recommend it (if you are a Jackie Chan fan, which I am).

Now I am heading to bed. I’ll post before I start NaNoWriMo (my user name is jacidawn,  so if you want, we can pal up and write our novels together). And I promise to open my closed little self off by posting my daily writings right here, on this blog. (Go to the NaNoWriMo link to read more).

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Exercise #30 – Favorite Singer

October 21, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

I was first introduced to Emmylou Harris in 1974. My first college roommate had an eclectic taste in music and introduced me to artists who never made the Kasey Kasem Top 100, and who never got air time on our small town AM radio station, and who were never featured artists on the Columbia Records Album of the Month rip-off:

Lou Reed. Leonard Cohen. Emmylou Harris.

Who had even heard of Emmylou in those days? An obscure balladeer, the protegé of Gram Parsons (formerly of the Byrds), and certainly no Top Ten hit songstress. Her voice haunted me. Her ballads, some written by herself, but many penned by Leonard Cohen, Guy Clark (who, again?), and too many to mention. Today, she’s well-known. Then, she was obscure.

I fell in love. I met Guy Clark through her (not IRL – she introduced me to his songwriting). She covered Leonard Cohen. She wrote her own music. She partnered with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton. She’s sung harmony with more male vocalists than I can think to name. Her voice always whispers over theirs. John Prine. Willie Nelson. Don Williams. Dan Fogelberg.

There are other female vocalists that I am in love with, but most of them I came to know because of my love for Emmylou.

I saw Emmylou in concert at Blue Mountain Communtiy College (now Eastern Oregon Community College). She was touring with the original Hot Band. There were probably 30 people at the concert. It was the one and only time I did cocaine. She did not disappoint.

I can’t explain my draw to her: she’s a balladeer. I love ballads. They tell stories. She has a Voice that is unique. I have no musical Voice, but I have an ear for good music. She’s ageless. That silver hair? I’d kill for it. She’s popular now, in certain circles, but in so many circles if I mention her name, I am met with blank stares: “Who?”

That makes her proprietary: she’s MY heroine. You don’t know who Emmylou is? You must be a musical idiot. (Probably not, just interested in a different genre of music than I am, so don’t take it personal. Don’t take it personal if I don’t know who the newest & greatest pop music star is or the present reigning hip-hop king & queen are). (On a side note: do you know who Odetta was? No? OMG. You MUST research Odetta. That’s all.)

My love for Emmylou opened my ears to several genres of music: neo bluegrass, bluegrass, neo folk, 1970’s folk, early folk, early R&B, early Blues, and the most prevalent in our society now: Americana. Indie music. Even if you hate “Country” music, you can surf Americana and find relevant music.

Here’s a little Emmylou from the time period when I saw her live.

 https://youtu.be/3T2xVYRAvyU

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Writing Exercise #29 – Haunted House

October 19, 2017 by Jaci Dawn

We moved into the house when I was 7. It may have been 1964, but I was still in the Third Grade, and I wouldn’t be 8 until the late fall. I remember a little about the house buying process: our parents wanted a large home, with plenty of rooms, and a shop. They looked a house after house, when this one fell into their laps: a rambling old ranch, hand-built by the previous owner, still lived in by his widow. $13,000.00 is what I believe they paid, or some figure near that amount.

The house was built entirely of poured concrete. The man who built it didn’t use forms, so the walls were often wider at the bottom than at the top, and the stairs were uneven heights. The plumbing was a nightmare as he jury-rigged everything under the house. It featured an attached barbershop (the man who built the house had been a barber), a work shop behind the barbershop, a hallway between the shops and the residence, an unfinished basement, an attic, and a roomy living space in the ranch style. The yard was huge and sported several old fruit trees, several flower beds, a side lawn, a large strawberry patch, a gravel area for extra cars, and a rusty old swingset with a tire swing. The drive was large enough to accommodate customers and family cars. There were arborvitae and Oregon grape planted along the concrete porch with tiers (unevenly poured). Chain-link fence. The lot took up a full third of a block one direction and half a block the other: we were bordered by the alley, two streets, and one neighbor behind us.

The place was a wonder. We moved in and were gifted with everything the widow, Vera Williams, didn’t wish to take with her, such as a collection of 1950’s and 1960’s rock and roll 45 RPMs (vinyl records with hits like Tequila by The Champs and Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day that my sister and I danced to for hours). There were spices spanning the past two decades in her cupboards with exotic names like curry, cardamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, oregano, rosemary, thyme, allspice…

I recall my mother tossing all the spices out. My sister and I grabbed the tins and made mud pies to our hearts’ content: lovely wafting herbal and spicy scents that mixed in the mud. I suspect my life-long affinity to herbs and spices was sparked in those hours, but before then I was only vaguely aware of cinnamon, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

We found evidence on egg shells in the garden. “Compost”, my mother suggested, but we eyed it with suspicion: surely the widow Williams had been a witch, and the egg shells some part of a spell?

There was a dog’s skull we unearthed when we tilled the abandoned strawberry patch. What evil spell had been cast when burying the dog’s head in the garden, we wondered.

The fruit trees were a wonder, and my father forbade us to climb them, claiming we’d damage the bark. But those wide, twisting, strong branches were no match for his “no” and our agility. When the peaches fell and began to rot, we started a war of peaches with the neighbor kids – until we were all grounded for weeks.

My parents decided on a soft peach color to paint the house, and had the local hardware store mix up several gallons of the paint. They applied it, and it dried. Brilliant pink. Grotesque pink. Glaring PINK. I grew up in the Big Pink House.

Night would fall, and we’d snuggle into our beds, hugging each other. Night times were a test. The house was dark. Bedroom doors closed. Footsteps would pace the hallway. The attic would creak. Too frightened to get out of bed to scramble to the bathroom in the dark, I wet the bed. Again.

My sister screamed in her sleep. A lion was in the shadows on the wall, and the lion was trying to kill her.

Our father put in a wall and built a bedroom for our brother. One night, when the footsteps began wandering, the family dog shot into his bedroom, jumped on the bed, and shivered there, growling, but unwilling to go out into the hall to investigate.

The attic window broke out. Dad fixed it. The attic window broke out. Dad fixed it. The attic window…

There was probably nothing wrong with the basement, but my brother hid in the shadows and leaped out at me as I worked in the hallway, ironing clothes. My heart stopped. I cried. (To this day, if you do that to me, I will kill you. I promise.)

Dad remodeled the barber shop into a guest room. Sometimes we would beg our way into spending the night there, but only when we wanted to be scared witless in the night. Things moved. Doors opened and shut. You could hear footsteps on the concrete in the hall between structures. The walls breathed.

I was in my fifties when I had my last dream of the house. I stood across the street, staring it down. Every nightmare began and ended here. I stepped forward and began to march slowly around it: one, two, three… seven times. Each time, declaring it would never haunt me again. The Shop. The house. The two back doors. The hall between living spaces. The basement. The attic. The two front doors.

The poltergeist that lived within those walls. The one that moved things, hid things, smashed things, slammed doors, and paced the floors. I banished that from my subconscious.

I sleep easier now, but I am still haunted by basements and attics.

 

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