Winter Shuffle

He looked at the movie poster in the window beside the unused ticket seller’s booth. It was from the 1945 film noir, Edgar Ulmer’s “Detour”, a good, creepy film as he remembered, starring Tom Neal and the deliciously-named Ann Savage.

Babalú Blessings

Gloria hesitated and simply stared at the enchanting woman; over seventy-years-old and dressed in white from the top of her head – wrapped with a veil-type material – to her ankles, where her long sheer dress ended. She wore a red sash around her hefty waist. Yellow beads hung from her neck, and various bracelets, also beaded, lined her wrists.

“Your first time.” the woman said as a matter of fact.

The Art of Obliteration – Novel Excerpt

At first I only knew the more recent events, you had tried to kill my great grandfather, and when your murderous urges failed, my great grandfather dying of old age, you turned your attention to my mother. You have been able to injure my mother in unfathomable ways, eaten away at her psyche, ravishing her body and shattering my parents’ marriage, but you have not succeeded in pulling her completely under; so far she had kept her head above water, even on the days her mouth is submerged and her nose takes in water. Later you would tell me how it all started, long ago in Ireland with a tragedy involving our two families, but even you admitted maybe it went back even farther than this, before you were born or before you evolved to have the facility to think, to feel, to remember.