A Tale of a Writer

Oscar the boogieman awoke his version was bleary with sleep, he reached up with his fists, rubbed his eyes, making him look more like a grotesque child than a monster that struck fear into those children who were foolish enough not to use a nightlight as was rumored. Boogiemen just liked to do things at night rather than during the day like most folks.
The facts were that Boogiemen resembled a child in many ways. He loved to play games with the other boogiemen; hop scotch and guessing games were his favorite.
But Oscar’s favorite of favorite things to do was listening to stories of the other Boogiemen; even better than that though was telling his own stories. His dream was to become a published author. When the other Boogies heard this they told him that he was crazy. They said only human’s publish their stories, but Oscar didn’t care.
Oscar had been sneaking onto the computer that belonged to the father of the little boy whose bed Oscar slept under during the day. He found a magazine request on-line that wanted short fantasy stories, they were asking for something “new” and “fresh.” Oscar thought that a story about a friendly boogieman would be “new” he wasn’t too sure what they meant by “fresh” though. He decided to give it a try anyway.
He quickly started typing out his favorite boogie story; the one that the other Boogies agreed was the best.
It took Oscar more that forty minutes before he had the story just right. He sent the website an email with the story attached just the way the wanted they wanted it. Now all Oscar had to do was wait.
Unable to keep his secrete to himself, he ran out to tell his friends about it.
He found them all playing in the baseball park.
Once the other boogies heard what he had done, they did a very mean thing: They laughed at him. They said there was no way anybody would like such a story, that he had wasted his time.
Oscar left the baseball park, he felt very sad indeed. He went under his bed early and didn’t come out for the rest of the night.
When the sunset and the moon rose the next night, Oscar didn’t rush downstairs to check and see if the magazine liked his story. He couldn’t stop thinking about what his friends had said the night before.
Oscar trudged down the stairs with heavy feet. Sitting at the laptop, he opened his email and his heart gave a leap. He had a message, it was about his story.
With trembling fingers, Oscar scrolled down to read it.
It said they liked his story and they would like to see more. They were going to publish his story in their next magazine.
Oscar smiled to widely. He was going to be published. Oscar was an author.

Real Rock

I'm not the average teenaged music listener in that I don't listen to rap, hip hop, or pop. I listen to real music. (Real music spans from orchestral, to country, to rock and roll.) There is a very good reason why my generation isn’t listening to newer rock music. It’s because radio stations suck! Their selections are very poor and even the new stations play old rock music. This makes no sense. If new rock stations want to break out one or two oldies when a band member dies, that’s fine; but these “new rock” stations regularly playing oldies that sucked when they came out, and guess what…they still suck. All of the air and movie time in the world is not going to make “American Woman” into a good song, but they still play it.
So, my generation listens to all this stuff that doesn’t even involve someone picking up an instrument and playing a tune, and humming to it. My generation chooses this because it’s more readily available, just like tickets to the Rolling Stones. While they accustom their ears to this trash someone calls music, there are real musicians out there, picking up instruments and singing using their real voices.
Real new rock is out there, you just have to wade through a lot of crap to get there.

A Suicide Turned Murder A Short Story

He’d made his decision. He’d had enough. He’s going to kill himself.
He drove down to the bridge outside of town. Parking on the side of the road just before the bridge, he began to cross the bridge on foot.
It was a warm summer night, and as he walked, his pace did not slow. He didn’t experience that last minute of doubt that people on TV shows always depict. He just did it.
Reaching the point where he knew the river was the deepest he hoisted up onto the bridge railing, and without checking to make sure no one was looking, he jumped. Just before his body met the water, he thought he heard a shout.
The fall wasn’t nearly far enough to kill him, as he knew it wouldn’t be.
Swimming down to the bottom of the river was easy thanks to his soaked clothes, although, kicking his feet was difficult with his water logged shoes.
He held his breath as he swam down. Finding the edge of a huge rock with his hands, he began to release his supply of air as he wedged his torso beneath the rock so that he wouldn’t float upward. Satisfied he was secure; he allowed the rest of his air to leave him.
He had taken his first gulp of water when he felt himself slip lose from the rock and start to float slowly upward. He let himself drift and just concentrated on letting more water into himself.
That’s when he felt the hands grab on to him and pull him swiftly up through the water. Disoriented from oxygen deprivation, he didn’t struggle….at some point he passed out.
When he awoke, someone was trying to perform CPR on him. He tried to push away as he gave way to a coughing fit.
Whoever it was started talking to him, but all the words ran together. All he could make out of his so called savior through the darkness was a vague figure, and the voice was quit deep.
He rolled over to cough up the water more easily, as he did so, he pulled away some more.
Grabbing him and pulling him back, the stranger demanded to know what he was thinking.
He didn’t reply. Instead, his hands scrambled to find something, anything to get himself out of this.
That’s when he found the root. Seizing it, he sat up suddenly and plunged it into the stranger.
The root slipped right into the stranger’s body. Collapsing across his legs, the stranger lay still and the suicide pushed him off in disgust.
Some people have all the luck.

My Dog: The Actor

My doggie has a cold. I know it’s so sad. But I think he’s hamming it up just a bit. While I was hanging up the clothes Merlin was looking more depressed than I had ever seen him. He didn’t even bother to say hello to me.
Once I was done with my chore I ran inside to put some shoes on so that I could get to where he was without getting my socks dirty. When I came back outside, and he saw that I was laundry-less and my shoes were on, he got up and hurried over with big toothy doggie grin. I wanted to be mad, but I was out there anyway...So I sat down, he hopped in my lap, and I gave him some pets. Well, okay, a few pets. Okay, okay a lot. Alright, my hands went black I petted him so long now leave me alone!