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Prompt

Everett Ricocheted: A Holiday Tragedy

November 29, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo 4 Comments

Thank you for visiting my public writing journal, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it. I have a special holiday story for you today! I had the idea for this prompt a few days ago, but I have been so busy with other writing projects, I didn’t have a chance to sit down and start writing it until this morning. I did most of the planning and plotting yesterday, then started writing this morning at 4am.

As usual, I try my best to keep errors to a minimum for your enjoyment, but since everything on this site is meant to be completed in a timely manner, and are primarily for practice; some mistakes may appear.

I’ve had a wonderful time crafting this exercise for you, but I guess it’s time to get back to the family. I hope you enjoy the read; I write for you!


Everett Ricocheted

tukeytatts

After winning ‘Best New Artist’ at the 2013 National Tattoo Expo, Everett Ortega moved his family to Forking Trails, a full year sooner than his accountant recommended for a young business, but he refused to live another week in that apartment, and the new accolade was keeping the books full for weeks in advance. He claimed the rush had to do with getting settled before the holidays, with Maggie getting used to the new house before all that excitement. By the time November rolled around that year, all of the employees from the tattoo shop had a letter from the boss inviting them to Thanksgiving at his new house. The place was big all right, bigger than any place he had ever lived in. It reminded him of some kind of fortress. He installed a black iron gate over the front door, and spiked bars in crooked angles on all the first floor windows. The lawn seemed comparatively unkempt to his neighbors; the single maple that stood in one corner of the front yard hung his arms, dead; a long, telling gouge running up his trunk, nearly bifurcating him, leaving him gray and rotting where he stood. Inside, the house was bright, warm, and filled with fumes composed of turkey, ham, and other festive delights. The guests gathered around the drinks and refreshments in the kitchen, thanking him for his employment, congratulating his recent success, and complimenting him on his ideal choice of house and community.

At around eight in the evening dinner was served and everyone sat, awkwardly stirring their food and looking to their host for direction. When it was clear that her husband was not going to say anything, Everett’s wife spoke for her husband saying, “We don’t have any traditions yet. But, in my family, we would go around the table and say a quick word about what we were thankful for. I am thankful for my husband, and all the success that the talent God has given him has brought our family. Now that the world is starting to recognize what we all have for so long, hopefully all our lives will change for the better.” There was a small round of applause, then the guests cheerfully began—first was Antony and his family; then the Frenchman, Beau, who does portraits; Wendall the piercer; and Twitch the shop apprentice—and so on. They were all thankful for Everett.

“All right boss,” Antony said, patting Everett’s shoulder and grinning up the guests, “what don’t you have to be thankful for, big guy? Come on now, don’t keep us waiting, Elizabeth wont forgive you letting the turkey get cold.”

Elizabeth shook her head and laughed, waving the comment by. But Everett did not smile. Under his tangled black beard he gently gnawed on the fat of his lower lip, marking each one of the guests with eyes peeking out from under heavy brows. After a moment he widened his eyes and took a sharp breath like the single scrape of a metal pot brush, turned his face up, and put on a watery smile. “Having you all here…” He straightened in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “Having you all here in my new home… I’m thankful that I had… I have people somewhere who care.”

“Well!” said Everett’s wife, “how underwhelming! What kind of thanks is that? That’s all you have to say? After all the wonderful things all your friends had to say about you?”

“Friends?” Everett asked himself.

A unanimous murmur circuited the table.

Everett’s wife pursed her lips, folded her napkin and took a large gulp of wine. “Can I talk to you for a minute Everett?” She asked.

Everett shifted in his seat. “You’re taking it wrong,” he said. “Just forget it. I am thankful,” he backhanded the air, “for all of you. It’s just taken more time to settle in than I thought. The neighbors here; the neighbors are just different.”

“You’re in Orange County bro,” said Antony, “what do you expect?”

“What does that even mean?” asked Everett. “I haven’t even seen half these people and they already hate me. I took the dog out this morning. The family coming down the sidewalk; they crossed the street; wouldn’t look me in the face. Our neighbors haven’t come to welcome us—not one! I don’t know…”

Everett’s wife had enough. She threw her arm over the back of her chair and laughed from her gut. “You have got to be joking! So now—now!—you’re upset because the community is too quiet? Because people give us too much privacy?”

Wendall swigged his beer. “I don’t think you need to worry about privacy, mate. Iron gates, triple pad locks, metal mesh screens on the windows. I’m sure the neighbors get the hint.”

“It’s my home,” said Everett, “I have the right to protect it don’t I? If they’d let me, I’d have done it at the apartment.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t LA either, big guy,” Antony said. “Besides, Elizabeth tells me you got a cop living next door?”

Elizabeth nodded furiously with a mouthful of wine. “That’s right, Murfa’s husband, a few doors down; Robert something? Robert McKinley I’m pretty sure—anyway, the realtor told us he’s been here since the community was built. You can’t get safer than having a cop right next door.”

Twitch shook his head, not looking away from his plate, “Seems to me like anywhere’s safer than where their murderin’ folk outside your door.”

Everett struck the table with his fist and the tableware clattered. “That’s enough about it. Elizabeth doesn’t like talking about that.”

A frown seized Elizabeth. “I don’t mind it at all Sam, it’s in the past now. It’s only you that mind it still.”

He eyed Twitch with the loathing rage that he could not lay on his wife, “Fine. Fine then, I mind it. It’s enough about it anyway.” The table fell silent, and everyone knew it was time to eat.

After the guests had eaten their fills and stayed their duties, Everett took a hot shower and timidly went into the bedroom, letting the cool breeze from the open window dry the steaming water off his back, and slipped open the top dresser drawer where he kept his bed clothes and large .45 caliber pistol he purchased along with the new house. He was aware, without looking, of Elizabeth’s gaze. He felt her brain trying to work him out. He felt the exhaustion of this exercise more and more in the new house. He wondered for how long he could feel her touching him. She lay reposed on their bed, hidden behind deep masquera-sockets. Somewhere in the night, seeming to be perched just outside Everett’s window and far away at the same time, the great horned owl questioned the dark: Whoo? Whoo?

“Did you take your medicine?” asked Elizabeth.

Whoo?

Everett started. “What was that?” his hand was wrapped round the gun. He whirled on Elizabeth. “Did someone cry for help?” His chest popped and collapsed like one of Maggie’s mechanical toys. In the dim light Elizabeth made out the silver spine of the 1911; her husband’s eyes were white and wild; and she was frightened.

“No. No Everett. It’s only that damn owl—sweet-heart? did you take your medicine?”

The gun rattled playfully in his hands as he tried to smile. “Yes.”

“We’re safe here, Everett. You don’t have to worry anymore. This isn’t Dos Lagos. This is one of the safest communities in Southern California. What happened at the apartments; that’s not normal; even for a rathole. I’ve never heard of something like that happening to somebody before it happened to us; you definitely don’t have to worry about it happening here.” She held out a hand.  Everett took a step towards her. Her eyes flicked to the gun at his side. Everett stopped. He wriggled where he stood. His mind wanted to accept his wife’s words, but screams of terror and images of himself and his wife, motionless in the comfort of their beds; affirmation after affirmation built into his head to never let himself forget that day, to never let it happen that way again flooded his head.

Whoo? Whoo?

Everett rolled onto bed near his wife, closing the pistol in the side table drawer, and drawing his thick tattooed forearm over his eyes.

“Do you ever think what would have happened if we would have done something that night?,” he asked. “I mean, anything—opened the door, banged on the door, called the cops, shouted—anything for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes. I used to. When I didn’t want to; when I wasn’t trying to think about it; when I was just cleaning up the apartment, or doing school-time with Maggie. But it didn’t stop me from doing those things. And it didn’t stop me from moving on, from getting past it. I don’t think about it anymore. I can’t ever forget about it completely, but I don’t run through what I could have done to save her anymore. I have my own daughter to worry about. The man who hurt that girl is locked up. And we moved far away from there.”

“I couldn’t forget it.”

“I said, I didn’t. I just don’t want to bring old evil into our new lives.”

Whoo? Whoo?

“What’s so new about it? This house? Our neighbors? All these damn communities are the same; unbalanced and dangerous systems of animals. You can make close bonds based on trust, but these people—God—these people didn’t give us a chance. They didn’t half look at my beard and tatts before they rejected me. How are we supposed to be a part of this place if they won’t have us, and don’t want us? And what about us? We’re not any different. I’m the same, you’re the same.”

“People are never the same, Everett.”

Whoo—aah!

Everett twisted out of bed and landed, crouched like a cat, beside the side-table, already retrieving his weapon. “Did you hear that? You heard that! Ha! You heard it, I know you did!… Shh—There it is again—listen…” Sam put his ear to the open window. Silence…

Then a haunting voice leaped through the window, chased through the hollow night air by a man’s baritone shouts. “No!” it cried. “Stay away from me!”

Everett and Elizabeth gaped at each other. It was impossible. He had changed everything, moved to a safe residential area, they were part of a home owner’s association for Christ’s sake—could it be happening all over again? Here? In Forking Trails? Everett paced the room with the gun pressed to his temple. He groaned and growled at the images of the body of the young woman in the torn red dress, sunken into the cement stairwell at the apartments, a terrified, hopeful expression stained her face, her eyes locked on his apartment door, her lifeless body limp and beaten and pathetic.

“Everett!” said his wife. “Everett, are you listening to me? Please come sit. Come sit down. It’s probably just kids again. They’re always out at the pool, or haunting the park; don’t worry.” But Everett continue to pace, looking at Elizabeth with wide, confused eyes, like he didn’t know her at all. “Everett, if it’s bothering you, we can call the police, but they’re probably not going to be able to do anything about it. It could be anything.”

“I can’t believe you. Someone could need our help.”

“You don’t know that Sam. And it’s none of our business anyway. You said yourself tonight that these people have made it their M.O. to avoid us, so for right now, for Thanksgiving night at least, my husband can do me a favor, and avoid them too, all right? Trust me, it’s probably some kids playing.”

“That didn’t sound like kids playing.”

Elizabeth shrugged and drew up a corner of her lip. “Maybe it didn’t. It doesn’t matter to us Everett. Please, keep your voice down, Maggie’s sleeping. Just come to bed.”

“Get the fuck back here!” came the man’s voice from outside. It was close; maybe two streets North? The woman’s reply was frantic and breathless; “No, help, don’t touch me, help!”

That’s when Everett heard it; two gun shots sounded in succession; crack-cak! Then the woman’s shrill shriek and an inaudible command from the man. This was the girl from the apartments all over again. He had tried to leave it behind, but it followed him here. He looked to his wife. She sat up in bed, silently picking at her nails, no urgency in her body, she hadn’t even reach for her phone. “I’m going out there,” he said. “I’m not going to let this happen again. Not here. Not to these people.”

Elizabeth still worked at her hangnail. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll call the cops, all right? I’ll call the cops, and tell them what you thought we heard—”

“Thought!—“

“And maybe they’ll send someone, but Everett, if you think I’m letting my husband walk out into the night with a loaded gun, especially with what you’re going through right now, to face some unknown armed psychos, you’re dead wrong.”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you learn anything from Dos Lagos? Didn’t you lose anything? Wasn’t anything burnt into your head that day? Jesus, Elizabeth, I mean, Jesus; someone needs us.”

“You’re right. I need you. Your daughter needs you. Your employees need you. The people who look up to you as an artist need you. The people who’s tattoos you haven’t finished need you. You’re the one that tells me that it’s more than just ink and skin; that it’s personal culture, and personal journeys. These are all the someone’s that need you. These people, this community, your so called ‘neighbors’ who treat you like Frankenstein’s monster—are they worth more than all of us?”

Everett howled and beat his chest. He tore at his hair and wept onto the cold steel of the gun, running black grease onto his hands and over the thin golden band on his finger. When he could breathe, he pointed a black finger at his wife and said, “If they are not worth protecting, then no one is worth protecting. And If I am made of mortal stuff, then I will die. And when I die I will sink low in the ground with that poor girl’s life on my back—how much more can I bear before I sink through the earth when I die? and dissolve into full darkness? I already tried to run from the bad. I ran and ran. I ran like a hunted hog. I penned myself in this house. But the bad is in the people. Now the hungry dogs bark at my window again, but this time I’m not going to lie in bed with you and listen while they tear us apart. This time I’ll face the cowardly pack.” Everett checked the clip in the pistol, then smacked it home and yanked the slide. Elizabeth moaned like an ungreased wheel, Everett stole from the bedroom, and she was frantically searching for her cell phone.

Outside, the midnight air was clear and cool. Through the vapor-clouds, the stars and crescent moon spangled the night sky, who copied herself in the pool of rainwater cuddling in the dip of the driveway. Everett’s boot destroyed her visage as he stomped through the clouds and stars, into the street and towards the root of the commotion. The street lamps were lit for only the South half of the street, leaving the Northern section under only moonlight. Everett sweated as he made his way down the sidewalk, the heavy pistol in his overcoat pocket, having to grip it fiercely to keep his hand from shaking his whole body. The rose garden across from his house was cheerfully lit and a few residents were strolling the paths with their dogs.

“Help me!” the voice came. “Joshua, stop! Stop, help! Help!”

Everett picked his pace up to a jog. The people in the garden were unwilling to hear, but he knew that; he could not waste a precious second trying to convert them to his cause. He heard the argument grow louder as he drew nearer and nearer to the fray. When he was three streets North of his house, standing in the dark street with no more voices, struggling to hear anything over his panicked breathing and distant sirens, he heard the third gunshot go off so close; Crack! that he needn’t have heard it at all; it’s muzzle flare lit up a parked car at the end of the cul du sac, a block from where he stood. Everett focused in on the man; a lanky teen in a large grey sweater and wild red hair was stumbling around the middle of the street with a young girl gripped by the wrist, being hauled around like a sack of garbage at his heels while he twirled a small revolver round his head and slurred profanities in intervals. He was a boy. Just a boy. Sam’s whole arm convulsed as he pried at the gun in his pocket. When he held it loose, he had to grip it with both hands to steady it. He watched the gun in the boy’s hand, watched its muzzle trail from the girl’s head, to his own, to the sky, from window to window; and in each one he couldn’t help but see Maggie’s tiny body caked in blood. The sirens blared louder in his head, but Everett only heard the boy now, only heard his voice, his movements, his breathing. Everett blinked the stinging from his eyes and bared his teeth.

“Drop the fucking gun and move away now!” He demanded. He said it with such force that the tremors in his vocal folds were simply blown over.

The instant the boy heard Everett, another shot rang out in the air. The bullet ricocheted off a roof top and the revolver seemed to fly from the boy’s hand. Everett crouched and fought a million times to not pull the trigger. He saw the gun pointed to the sky when the shot went off, and now inert on the asphalt. The boy stared dumbly at Everett, mouth agape. He still held the girl in his grip and she struggled weakly against it. She was obviously exhausted, but when she saw Everett, she became revived and tore away from the boy’s grip. She raced, bloody-legged, into the residential shadows. Everett tried to call out to her, but she only glanced back at him with pale-faced terror as she disappeared into the dark. The sirens were becoming immutable and the adrenaline surging through his body made it hard to think. He put his bead on the boy and started walking towards him.

“Drop the gun!” But the boy had already dropped it… “Drop the gun! Now!” Everett crept closer to the boy. He saw his pale pimpled face contorted in terror and a dark patch of pee dribbling down the leg of his pants. Everett sniffed in the hot fear and it enraged him. For a second his finger tensed around the trigger.

“Yo, please,” said the boy, “I don’t want to die. Please. Just shoot him already! This dude’s fucking crazy; everyone knows he’s crazy; please! he’s gonna kill me!”

Then Everett looked at the boy’s eyes and he realized they were not looking at him. He realized it was not him ordering the boy to drop his gun. The red and blue flashes of light that filled the street flashed memories in his mind. The police lights that plagued his nightmares of the horrible days that followed that night two years ago at Dos Lagos when that poor girl was raped and murdered outside his door. He suddenly felt sick. Like a man with a hangover on the first beer of the night, ready to do it all again. He felt wrong, out of sorts, and misplaced. He suddenly felt the need to reach out and grab the boy, to wrap his arms around him, to talk to him. He wanted to hug his wife too, and Maggie—little Maggie—he wanted to hold her most of all. He wanted to communicate something to them then, something of such importance that he couldn’t find words to shape it, or emotion to hold it in. He needed to tell them. He needed them to know the truth. He did it. He brought it to Forking Trails. It was him all along. But how could he tell this boy? This community? He needed to explain.

Everett Ortega turned to face the officer and held up his left hand to explain. But, before he could say a word, the officer leaped back, shouting for him to drop the gun. Everett held up both hands in defense, the pistol still locked in his anxious grip. The officer didn’t think. He shot Everett three times, once through his upraised hands, leaving him to bleed out on the streets of Forking Trails. Even as Elizabeth came bellowing out of the back of the police cruiser, shouting for Robert McKinley’s to stop, the officer kept his gun trained on Everett’s hunched back, ordering her to stay back, that the man could still be dangerous. And as Everett’s dimming eye’s watched the wild-haired boy slipped into the darkness after the mysterious girl, he felt a strange buoyancy, as if his aching body were floating up, into the silverly night. Then, all was silence.


photo credit: Shannon K via photopin cc

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Filed Under: Adult, Holiday, Literary fiction, Prompt, Story sketch, Young Adult

At the Old Ball Game

September 13, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo 2 Comments

Old Kramer Lindorf struck the mound with his cleated toe — two outs, one batter up. The Baltimore Tigers were closing in on their first victory of the season and it was all thanks to Kramer’s seasoned pitch; twisting over the plate at speeds over 100mph. The only thing he needed to do was keep the batter on the plate; when who else should stride to it but young Smithy Smithers; fresh from his trade out of New York, cocky as hell, hat turned back, and black chew steaming in his cheek.

Old Kramer didn’t look upset to see Smithy. He didn’t seem interested, but we could tell. He must have been angry — we were all so angry with Smithy’s smug swagger. All the true fans felt shame at Smithy’s impudence after what Old Kramer had done for him.

In 1985, Old Kramer broke Smithy into the game, introduced him to the manager of the Minnesota Rocketeers, then of course to New York. But the first chance Smithy got he turned on Kramer, and let him get traded in his place over an offense with debated perpetrators. Kramer, to this day, publicly claims that Smithy gave false testimony against him, placing him with people and at places that he was not. This was their first face-off in three years. Before game time, Kramer tried to clear the air with Smithy, but was skillfully ducked.

Smithy leaned over the plate, unwilling to look Old Kramer in the eye. He waggled the bat round his ear. Kramer stared Smithy straight in the face. Smithy wore a greasy grin, mouth full of tar. He spat into the dust, stirred bat and rear-end in mocking rhythm, and gave Old Kramer not even the courtesy of looking him in the eye as he met him. No doubt, Smithy expected a meatball; Kramer gave him a cannonball.

Old Kramer offered his own subtler grin then curled the ball tight in his fist. He twisted his hat, his face lowered, he drew up his knee, wound back his shoulder and launched a backdoor slider over the field straight into Smithy’s fa— smack! Smithy lurched back and grabbed his face. His hands shook. They turned red with blood. Yet, Smithy calmly walked to a place by the batter’s box, leaned over his knees as if to catch his breath, and stood quite still.

After a shocked silence, the crowd swelled with cheers and overflowed with jeers. I watch the huge Smithy leaning over the bloody dust swamp he created by the batter’s box, and I replay the impact in my mind — whack! How is he still standing after taking Old Kramer’s famous 100mph pitch to the nose?

On the way home, I thought it couldn’t have been Old Kramer’s famous pitch. No one could survive that. No. But the best answer I could figure is that Kramer was reprimanding Smithy; a slow pitch to show things still weren’t right. And I thought that Smithy’s impotent reaction was something like an apology. I thought about the crowd roaring, their teammates rushing afield, auxiliary quarrels breaking out, medical units dispatching; and that these men alone; Kramer and Smithy, were smiling. And I’ll be damned if Smithy wasn’t laughing through that gruesome new maw of his. But I guess he had even more reason to be grateful to Old Kramer for that; and perhaps some new incentive to show it too.

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Filed Under: Adult, Literary fiction, Prompt, Scene sketch, Story sketch, Young Adult

To Save a Mother and a Village Part II

August 28, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

This is Part II. For Part I, click here.


The young girl walked for many miles in the young hours of the first night, with only the dim glow of a jaundiced moon to light her way. An inconstant gale stirred the low plants of the plain, projecting suspicious shadows in the corner of the young girl’s eyes. In her mind she filled in the darkness around her with an imagined wilderness, tearing monsters, with only a fragile shroud of darkness between her life and the beasts that longed to rip it from her.

The night seemed to stretch on for days and days. Foreign whoops and growls pressed the young girl faster through the night. She held her hands out in front of her now. Her fingers dumbly curling and uncurling in the tangle of darkness around her. She walked faster. “I have traveled so far,” she thought, “I must be nearing the ends of the earth, and might soon crash into the great dirt wall that surrounds us all.”

She stumbled over uneven ground, able to keep her feet despite her speed, until a low-growing fungus swallowed up her bare foot, and twisted the young girl face down in the dust. She scrambled to reclaim her feet, scraping up the contents of her food bag that scattered into the grass. She secured all she could in her arms and tried to stand, then spilled them all over again, when — a screech blows through the young girl’s head — an owl swooping low overhead — and she is so startled, she allows herself to scream for the first time since leaving the black foothills; a short, aggressive expression that she silenced immediately. She gained her feet again, then dashed onward through the yellow night, uncertain if the night would ever reach its end . . .

. . . The first night did in fact end and, as the morning of the first day opened up, the young girl’s trembling skin began to calm. She cried out for the second time, this time in relief, as the sunlight chased away the false creatures of the dark. Minutes later, as the sun rose higher, the young girl became aware of another welcome sight; first the foot, now the slopes, and now, almost hidden in thin clouds, the peak of the High Mountain itself, where Hazarchereh; Goddess with Many Faces; hid away. Where the answer to her family’s salvation awaited.

The young girl sat on her heels and surveyed the land, watching from what little cover the low grass provided. Almost straight in front of her, skewed right, she spotted the shimmer of rising smoke, then just below it the tiny hut itself. Green smoke drifted up through an opening in the center of the roof. “He is our people,” the young girl muttered. “He builds as we build . . . But I have never seen such strange colored smoke — what’s this? Movement at the door?”

The hut’s flap whipped back from the wrinkled arm that punched from within. Soon after the arm was followed by the rest of a crooked old man; he was baked black, without a scrap of dress on him. The young girl saw the man’s skin was deeply scarred — too intricately patterned to make out at this distance — markings that, if she knew the strange man, she might have asked to read. This is not her village though, and she did not know this man. She waited, breathing softly as sleep, and remained very, very still.

The old man blocked the sunlight from his eyes and looked out to the plain in the young girl’s direction. “He couldn’t have seen me, could he?” She saw then that the man did wear something. Around his neck; half-hidden beneath his tangled gray beard, a small leather pouch hung on a cord. It was spotted with red splotches like dried blood. Upon seeing this, she gasped. She had heard of such pouches worn by Spirit Men. The old man ran a few meters here, stopped to call out for the hidden persons to show themselves; ran a few meters there, then stopped again. All the time, he made sure to secure the gruesome pouch fast against his chest.

The young girl’s heart pounded, but now it was the loudest noise she made. She sat very still and quiet, covering her mouth and trying to work out what to do. Eventually, the old man gave up his search, then disappeared in his hut. From inside came the sound of metal clanging against metal followed by a low, gutty blast and a gush of blue and red smoke from the roof. The man reappeared. In one hand he held a long spear fixed with a copper head; in the other hand he wielded a strange curved blade. The young girl did not recognize these terrible weapons, but the sight of their malignant design sent her trembling so violently that the grass around her cracked, she tried to recover and fell onto her bottom in the dirt. She looked up quickly, hoping the old man had not seen. When she looked, she saw the old man’s yellow eyes, looking directly into her’s.

For a moment the old man and the young girl stared at each other. The old man shouted something at her, gesturing with the spear, but the wind swept the words away before it reached her. It was most likely a formal challenge. Maybe if she did not answer him. Maybe if she ignored him, he would just . . . leave her alone.

The old man held his hands to his mouth and called out in a way the young girl understood, “Turn back at once!” he said. “You must not go near the mountain! Turn back at once, or face certain death!”

The young girl did not budge. The old man started towards her with his weapons raised. The young girl’s mind went numb with fear. She gripped the knife that hung at her elbow, then stopped. “No,” she said, “don’t be stupid. Your family doesn’t need a stupid girl. But what then?” The old man advanced at a slow march. Could she make it into the slopes before the man could catch her? Her arms were still heavy with food and water jars; could she afford to leave anything behind? She did not think so. Then what? The young girl tried to force herself to find another way, but the man picked up his pace now, and the time for deciding was over.

The young girl bolted. She ran like a fox with a tail of fire, toward the mountain at a long, evasive angle around from the old man. The old man threw vicious shouts and curses at her as she passed, held up his spear, threatening to release it on her, but she did not stop. She could not fight this stranger and she could not return home without the answer. But she could sprint like a gale wind in a storm when she needed to, and now, more than ever before, the young girl needed her swiftness to escape the old man. And she might have done so, were the old man just an old man.


This is the second part of the story sketch ‘To Save a Mother and a Village’. I wrote this sketch today and yesterday. I hope you enjoy. If you are still interested in hearing the rest of the story, please let me know on my site or on Facebook so I can judge how to spend my practice sessions. Thank you for reading; I write for you!

Cheers,

Caleb

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Filed Under: Adult, Magical Realism, Middle Grade, Prompt, Scene sketch, Story sketch, Young Adult

California Dreaming

August 12, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo 2 Comments

I stare into an evening sun; a pebble-sized hole in the reddening horizon.

The world stretches towards this sun, as if painted on the inside of an enormous straw; I, standing at one end, the sun the other. All the world curls around us. A boardwalk, wooden fencing, a hill covered in coastal shrubs, all rush to the shore ahead, where curious figures dance and sing and fill my nose with smells both wonderful and complex.

“Hello?” I whisper. No answer. I speak again. Louder, so that the figures on the shore might hear. Then a surge of sea-wind snatches them from my lips and feeds them to the chomping waves. The figures on the shore frolic on, so delighted with their circumstance, they do not stop to rest. I won’t speak anymore.

The sand’s virginal surface shows not a step, not a track, not a man-made mark; it is wholly untouched.

To my right, a range of brittle shrubs shudder under the sea-breeze. To my left, a huge expanse of golden dunes rise up to the clouds; between myself, the beach, the sea, and the sun, the clouds cast a frigid shadow. An ejaculation of laughter. A roar of applause. I plainly see fire on sticks, now being tossed twelve feet high in a rapid spin that catches and turns and tosses it high again, without ever stopping the spin. Two figures now, bound through the air and pass each other mid-flight with a flip and land back into the shadows. Music—high tempo, primitive, urges me on. I walk toward the shore.

To my consternation, the world—changes? The sky—shifts? No—it turns. It turns all around me like a cement mixer, but the earth and the sea and the sun, and I—we all stand still . . . I feel sick. I think I will be sick. I stop . . . the turning stops. I rest my hands on my knees and breathe deep. Somewhere out at sea, a ship blows its fog horn, sounding it for several seconds at a time. I grip my chest. The horn rattles my heart. The horn comes again! I think my bones might shake loose!

On the shadowy shore, curious figures wave and point at me. They want me to meet them. I can’t stop. I must reach the shore.

I take another step, now another, now another. The world begins to turn again. It mixes up my feet, crossing them left, now right, now tossing me down to the sand. This is a sign to stop. But I must meet the figures. They want me to come. They are waiting for me. If I can only reach the shore, I will truly be happy. The ship’s horn sounds again, “tuuuuurn baaaaack . . . tuuuuuuurn baaaaack . . .” it moans. The words that were not words echo in my head. But I can’t turn back. There is only onward . . .

I drag myself through the silky sand.


I wrote this scene sketch today. I hope you enjoyed it!

Cheers,
Caleb

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Filed Under: Adult, Image, Middle Grade, Photo, Prompt, Scene sketch, Young Adult

Two Lovers in a Field

July 27, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

The afternoon sun has the cowboy squinting his eyes. A woman stands next to him, twisting her hips and smiling into his leather face. Both recline against a gray wooden cow fence. A warm breath lifts from the heat-soaked dirt and grass. The cowboy breathes in the prairie. His scent is rude and distinct; hard-labor and brine; a spicy, musky cologne from his button-down; he scowls. It disfigures the woman’s subtle bouquet—her’s is too delicate. He sniffs it up and lets it play on his tongue. He repeatedly taps his heel against a fence post, trying to guess what happens next. He had never made such fuss over a woman, even a fine one like Estrella. Why start now?

“What are you thinking?” asks Estrella. She dips her ear forward to see the man’s face. She squints an eye in the sun and smiles at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

The man looks to his boots then rearranges his hands and heels against the fence. He wishes they were not standing so close. He can’t move away now; she’ll think on it—the cowboy stops fidgeting. His cheeks and eyes wrinkle into his smile. “I’m just thinking,” he says, “that grainin’ won’t be so tough this year.” Christ his back aches in this position, but he is committed. “Not with you and Tommy here.” Estrella turns from the man and inspects her cuticles. “I mean,” he continues, “Tommy’s all right with his hands, but the crew ain’t never been so—together; and laughing. Not before Tommy and you—”

Estrella kicks a toe-full of dust, laughing. “Don’t. Please. Don’t say his name. It’s so nice here now.” She gazes over her shoulder into the horizon, nothing but flat land; hard land. The two sit looking each their own direction for a minute, then, since the man has said nothing, she says, “What are we doing out here?”

The cowboy tips his hat up and surveys the fields; heads of cattle, an ancient tool shed, a little tan house on a hill with red clay roofing. “I don’t know,” the man says. “We’re just talking’s all; taking a rest—”

The woman protrudes her chin and scoffs, shaking her head. “Darn you Fernando,” she mutters. She leans forward and covers her eyes. She laughs softly into her palms.

The cowboy presses his large hand to her back and starts to pat. His calloused palm catches on the shirt’s soft fabric and the feeling brings memories of little toes on cotton blankets and the man feels a tremor in his gut. “Aw, I knew what you meant,” he says. “I just didn’t know what to say is all. I’m not good talking about these things. What do I say?”

The woman frowns at the man, but it fades quickly. “Tell me the truth,” she says. “Tell me what to do, just tell me how, and I will, but not if you don’t want to, not if you don’t—if you don’t want me.”

“Goodness . . .” says the man. “You talk like it’s my choice. If it was my choice, my way, we wouldn’t be on this silly errand. I wouldn’t have to sneak you away for a few moments of looking into your eyes without feeling your—your husband breathing behind me. I don’t blame the bastard either, but I don’t play games when I don’t know the rules.”

“Is that what this is? A game? Fernando, this is serious. What are we going to do?”

“We aren’t going to do anything. We’re going to head back to the farm. If your husband’s there—well, you have two choices,” counting on thumb and forefinger, “you can tell him how you think you feel, how you’ve been telling me, and telling me you think you have for me, or you don’t say a thing; we keep on working like it never happened, and I don’t lose the best hand I’ve had in years.”

“You would do that? Pretend we didn’t—”

“As far as God and I’m concerned we did something.” He grips her hand and turns it so the tiny stone blinks. “Ha. But I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.”

“You wouldn’t have loved me because of him?”

“That’s right, I wouldn’t have loved you. I wouldn’t have let myself love you. Think I’m the kind of man who watches out for other men’s wives? Sneaking around the shadows?”

“Well, are you? that kind of man?”

Fernando sighs; a long release. Then he steps away from the fence, swinging out his arms and arching his back. “I don’t know. But we’ll find out back at the house won’t we?” He holds out his hand. They both walk along the crooked fence toward the shack on the hill.

After a long time, the woman asks, “Do you love me?”

The words enter the cowboy’s head and beat around until all his other thoughts and feelings tumble out his ear. He watches the posts coming; going. Nearly reaching the farmhouse now; Fernando sees a green pickup kicking up dust out front; he hears its horn sounding loud and long, then quick, quick, quick, then loud and long again. He looks down to Estrella’s brown neck, at her slender collarbone, her swaying gait—“Hell,” he says, “I just might.”

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Filed Under: Adult, Literary fiction, Prompt, Scene sketch, Young Adult Tagged With: cowboy

The Boy Who Found a Feather

July 9, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Years ago, before PlayStations and Xboxes, iPhones, Android’s, tablets and streaming TV, when a young boy would play with no more than warm stones or thrown-out processed food cans, this young boy, our young boy, the young American of our story here, found a feather.

He said, “Ah-hah! here I have a token of the angels,” then he turned his baseball cap and stuck the feather in the plastic snap-strap in the middle of his forehead. He began to march around in a tight circle, imitating trumpet with the side of his lips, swinging out Taps in quick tempo. What an impressive sight he was! He felt so proud of himself, he did not notice a second young boy come up the street then ask in a frog’s voice,

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

The first boy halted and turned his cap, bill facing the intruder. He said, “Which part? I was doing more than one impressive thing.”

The second boy stirred the air with his forefinger and said, “The circle dance with the arms swinging.” The second boy was the larger male, but the first, pure cunning.

The first boy said, “I leant it myself,” stuck his chin out and mimed his routine to prove it wasn’t just by accident he was so good at it, and that he was at the intimacy of paraphrase with it. Then his smile stiffened to a glower; he pointed at the second boy, “And, I made it up.”

The boys stayed facing each other as the sun sent salty bombs to their eyes. Neither boy dared to blink. Finally, the second boy said, “Can you teach me?”

The first boy puffed up his chest and turned his gaze to the side. “That is serious talk. Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the first boy, “I just want to be able to do something like that.”

“Well if you don’t know, I’m not teaching you anything.”

“Well if you are a little more Pacific about the question—”

“It’s simple! Why do you want to know how to do my soldier routine?”

“It’s a soldier routine?”

The first boy stomped the ground. “No,” he said, “I’ve said too much. How do I know your not a spy?”

The second boy said, “Do I look like a spy?”

The first boy considered what he knew about spies. He knew they were sneaky, but that did him no good, because he didn’t know what sneaky looked like; he knew that they were bad, but he can’t decide if the second boy is bad until he determines whether he is or is not, a spy; Oh! he knew that spies were other people from far off countries that stole things. He asked the boy, “Where are you from?”

“I live on Belmont,” said the second boy.

“Belmont . . . That’s a whole two streets down.” Spy. “Sure, I’ll show you. There’s just one thing you have to do first.”

The second boy smiled and said, “What’s that?”

“You have to catch me!” he shouted, did a quarter spin, looked east, looked west, then skidded off at a run.

The second boy watched the first go then signed, chewed the corner of his lip, and lowered his head. But what’s this? He stooped to pick something up from the ground: a large white and black stripped feather. Maybe it was dropped by a juvenile eagle or adventuring sea bird. He twisted it between his thumb and forefinger, watching the wind strum the barbs. Maybe he would be all right after all.

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Filed Under: Middle Grade, Prompt, Scene sketch, Young Adult Tagged With: fiction, Prompt, scene sketch

Let Them Eat Deer

July 6, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

It’s been three days running in the hot sun. My supplies were set for a five-day journey, but I passed the fifth day a fortnight ago . . . I can’t fail my people.

The beast is quick— bounding and arching from left to right like my son’s plastic ball on cobbled roads. To be quick, isn’t it conventional to be slight? lightly built; to give the laws of physics some credit? Even the first people understood that. But God did not care when he made it. See the abomination that can be near two heads taller than me at its rear, but has outran the craftiest man in Town 3. When God made the thing he did it in one mind: drive Dryrock to insanity; may he die to dust! Give him, this! Turbo Deer! to torment this poor father with weeks separated from his family, to cut his feet on ancient cement and melted tar . . . But for all my whining to God about the animal’s advantage, there came no answer—such is the quickness of the beast.

So I, a weary, sun-baked man, with no more than a republic cap, sole-less high-tops, and heavy-spear, must chase the doe. All because, after days and days of quiet tracking, I panicked: I threw the spear in fear and merely tore its hind. To be honest, the spear handles differently than practice poles and demands lurching hurls to fly it five feet—but excuses will mean nothing if I return with no food to feed the kidlets and old-folk. And here we are. The blood trail is fading. Clean water is a pleasant thought. And here I rest, baking my brains in the middle of some dilapidated Orange County main street. I see a few plastic hides on either side of the street, most likely old security posts, along the tops of some store fronts that still stood. I roll the wrinkled spear shaft in my fists as a warm breeze blows an earthy rot to my nostrils and I know she’s here—

I crouch low at the sound of cement crumbling ahead; I start muttering the parts of a stupid hunter’s luck song my uncle taught me to guarantee kills: Hey, hey, ho, ho, this here strike’s the killing blow. Or was that something I dreamed? It was equally childi—

The beast! She stands just farther than I dare toss the spear. She bobs her head. Her speckled tongue flops around a sagging jaw. Her shoulder and thigh muscles flicker and pulse under her tan coat. She is bigger than I thought. That is why my spear failed before. She drops her head completely in a bow and now I see black wetness dripping from her ears. She jerks her head in affirmation and my kneecaps flutter. I turn the pole in my hands, carefully, until the weight feels even. Giant black scrub-flies bite and buzz around her swollen belly and she huffs. “Yeah,” I say, nodding my head and leaning forward, “I’m tired of running too.”


I wrote this sketch to experiment with some techniques of voice and style. I hope you enjoyed it; Thank you for reading!

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Filed Under: Adult, Middle Grade, POV, Prompt, Story sketch, Young Adult

The Beast, The Boy, and The Red Shoes

June 17, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo 1 Comment

Prompt: Write a scene in which a boy asks for new shoes.


Old Red Shoes

The Red Shoes

His mother’s home was always kept clean and warm and bright; but those days were many months gone. . .

Tonight, the house was all shadows and sawdust and the sugary stink of moonshine. The boy peeked out from behind the molded door jamb and eyed his father wearily before entering the kitchen; he held a pair of red shoes with canvas tops which were torn and patched and so covered in the winter mud that they couldn’t truly be called red any longer; and said in a small, questioning voice, as if each word could tear down the plaster walls around him, “Father? Sir?”

The man sat on a metal stool screwed into the tile floor, leaning over the laminated countertop, and cradled his face in his hands.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“It’s Tomas, sir,” said the boy.

“Who’s that?”

“Your son . . . sir.”

The man lifted his wet face and glowered at his son through quavering red eyes. “Yes,” he said. “One of my son—” He choked on the word and stopped up his sobs with a long drink from an unmarked bottle of liquor then brought it down with a crack. The boy recoiled and held the shoes close to his chest. “Don’t,” said the man. “Don’t do that.” He beckoned the boy with a lazy hand gesture and pat of his knee. “Come.”

Tomas’s hair was silky black, four inches long around the top, closely clipped above the ears and neck. His hands were small, even for a boy of nine, and he twisted the shoes like he was squeezing lime juice for his father’s drink as he stepped forward.

“What do you got there, eh?” asked the man.

“Nothing,” Tomas said, “My shoes is all.” He displayed them for his father. The man shakily leaned in so his nose almost touched the brown laces.

“I see them,” he said. “God they smell. What are you putting them in my face for?”

Tomas pulled the shoes close again and took a step back. He had come this far—farther than he believed his heart could take him—and unless he planned to avoid his friends all winter break, or lose a few toes doing it, he had to finish what he came to do. He took a long draw of breath, then said, “Father, they’re falling apart and I can’t walk outside with them anymore and they can’t hold on to the slippery sidewalks and I feel the wind blow through the holes and when I come home I have to crunch the ice from my socks and—” he blew out the air and tried to continue, but his father pinched his brow together, squeezed his eyes shut, and shook the whole mess from his ears.

“Sh-shush’ it,” he said. “Shush it up. I don’t see nothing wrong with those shoes. We’re not going to spend twenty dollars on new shoes. Do you pay rent?”

“I’m nine,” said Tomas, flaring his nostrils.

The man took another swig from the bottle. Two streams of stinking syrup dripped down his jowls that he didn’t bother to wipe away. “You’re telling me we don’t have one damn pair of shoes you can wear? Not one?”

“No,” said Tomas. “Well, there are . . . Nevermind.”

“What?” asked the man. “Dang it son, you tell me!”

“There are some shoes, newer shoes, Benny’s shoes.”

The man floated back in his stool with the look of a man who has just awaken from a deep sleep. He lifted the bottle to his lips then lowered it again. With a terrible sob and a bestial cry, he hurled the bottle over his son’s head and it shattered against the white moulding where Tomas had entered the room. Tomas began to cry.

“Don’t,” said his father. “Don’t you even think about touching your brother’s things. You hear me? Do you?”

Tomas turned and ran weeping from the room, bounded up the stairs, and slammed his bedroom door. Father or no, toes or no, friends or no; he knew it was his last night in that house.

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Filed Under: Adult, Literary fiction, Literary fiction, Prompt, Scene sketch Tagged With: fiction, Prompt, realism, sketch

A Game of Flap-Dragon

May 20, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Hard soles clop along the sidewalk stirring up gasoline vapor and sweet oak. A pair of once-black leather bootees with no laces, their vamps deeply worn, shuffle along the cement. A pewter mug, tied through its handle by silk thread, rolls and flops against the holed sides of a gray wool coat with each sway of the hips; its contents shake like a lazy maraca.

Six steps up from the sidewalk, a group of three young men recline at different levels. The highest of the men pushes his palm into his eye socket and rocks his head; he groans. “Will you two shut up about the damn bet, it’s payday now, we’ll settle it tonight.”

The percussion of the walking man slows with his gait; then resumes tempo a moment later.

The men on the lower steps curse and the bigger of the two cracks the other on the knee with a plump fist. “Screw that! Not waiting until tonight; I already beat this punk, I’m not spending any more on drinking games.”

This time the shoes stop. One brings up its toe, taps the cement twice, then returns to grind debris into the ground. The shoes turn about. The small man wears a greenish hunting cap, whose earflaps peel up and button on top, revealing the most outlandishly large sideburns the Newberry Townhome residents had ever seen. The rest of his face is bare and smeared with dirt; a pair of thick ovoid glasses teeter on his crooked nose; behind them: yellow eyes. He pulls back his cracked lips to offer the young men a yellow smile. “You boys say something about ‘debt’?”

The men, no younger than twenty five, but comparatively infantile to this ancient apparition, hesitate. But after checking with each other’s expressions, the man on the top step tosses his chin at the old man. “What’re you lookin’ at bro?” The other two laugh.

“I’m sorry I thought I heard someone talk about paying ‘debts’?”

“What the hell? You spying on us? weirdo, get out of here!”

The old man takes two gentle steps to reach the base of the stairs. He caresses his chin with a knob-knuckled hand, adorned with three crudely made rings and sooty fingernails that jut irregularly, and three heavy rings that could have been gold. “Oh, I’m afraid you have it wrong, boys. You see, I’m somewhat of a game man myself, and a bit more of an authority on settling debts. And it sounds like you fellows are in need of…impartial council?” Another yellow smile.

The men check ranks again. The large man stands and chews on the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, alright, I just want to make this clown see that he’s beat this time.” He begins with the name of the game, ‘flap-dragon’, in which the players must peck flaming raisins from a cup of brandy and hold as many in their open mouths as they can before having to extinguish the fire. The other two interrupt with explanations and corrections as he speaks.

As they explain, the old man dips his fingertips into the cup at his belt and draws them out, fingers powdered red, then rests the hand in his lower back, thumb hooked through the belt. He creeps a foot up the first cement step. “Yes, fine, fine, that’s all fine my boys, I don’t think we’ll have a problem here. No sirs, I believe we’ll end this before noon—but! there are just a few ground rules we need to go over before we do…” Now he did not smile.

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Filed Under: Adult, Magical Realism, Prompt, Scene sketch, Uncategorized Tagged With: fiction, Magical Realism, Prompt, short story, story sketch, writing exercise

As you escape on highway 92…

April 21, 2013 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

I wanted to play a little bit with POV this morning. Enjoy.


A dark brown universe becomes an atoll in a sea of candy cane stripes. You are jogging. Each step bobbles your jaw and claps your teeth together. There is blue and screams behind you. No clouds. No moon.

You jog on.

Your red flannel shirt is twisted and untucked. Your left sleeve is torn away from the elbow down. Your arms flop about your hips, dripping with red mud. Your wheezing sounds tight and far off. You try to lick your lips, but they stick; you knead them with your palm until the skin at the wrist fades to white and you pull your lips apart with a smack.

You jog on.

The same dark filth smears your face and forces us to see them; they are the brightest eyes we’ve seen in Faith County since the accident. They might be the last ones as well. Whether you know this or not—escaping down highway 92—you will soon find that the outskirts of town hold terrors deeper and more disabling than the sudden slaughter of your known world.

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Filed Under: Adult, POV, Prompt

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Caleb Jacobo

Welcome! My name is Caleb Jacobo and this is my public writing journal. Read More…

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