Tales of the Fiction House

ST. PATRICK’S DAY TALE– RRROSE HEATHER, A DAUGHTER OF OL’ IRE-LAND

Posted on March 15, 2023 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

As the March towards Spring progresses, we hope you enjoy this yarn, just one of the 1,001 Tales residing for all eternity in the Fiction House.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

St. Patrick was a fine story-teller. He passed on his gift to all who loved him. In his honor, we share with you the tale of a sweet colleen loved by all at the Fiction House

* * *

(James is a four-year-old foundling. His ill fate causes him to loose his memory. Turt is a long-lived sort of giant turtle, ferrying James to safety in the Lindian woods. )

NOW COMES THE TALE OF JAMES’ FIRST MUSE

1966 – The Lindian Woods

James has the grandest view as he rides atop Turt: His butterflies play beneath the woodland’s vine canopy; treed monkeys screech, pointing at, scrutinizing the foreign flutterers; harmless blue-gold ground snakes retreat to behind bushes when Turt’s trip-hammer fin-claws ‘CLOMP’ close.

It is at this moment James looks to one side and sees – HER.

She wasn’t there moments before. So different then anyone he’s ever seen: Feather-laden hat, shoes that button at sides, and slender, not quite petite – so curvy in a rose-printed ankle-length dress. To keep within confines, continuously she boosts sleek bosom. Gleaming in the sunlight and separated by an emerald-jeweled shamrock brooch, those mounds seem, to the four year old, to encompass all of her.

But, ‘aah, her face.’ Hypnotizing.

“You are so pretty.”

‘So all the gents say, lad. I’ll not blush at the compliment. No innocent colleen, I.’

“What’s your name?”

‘I be Rrrose Heather, Jamie.’ Her R’s roll. Saucy brogue sways in cadence with swiveling hips as alongside travelers she tags. ‘Comes I from old Cincinnat’, via old Ire-land. Your and my bedrooms be adjacent one another, though separated by over a century.Remember blarney tales of me? No? How about of me’ friends Mariner, Carper?’ James’ face is blank.

Under The Kissing Tree:
Where First I met Rrrose Heather
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh)

(Carper is James’ great-great-grandfa, a foundling 140 years earlier. Blackjack Fiction would one day build his publishing house on the site of Rrrose Heather’s burned bordello. Many years later, Dr. Fiction would add onto it for his clinic. )

‘Well we’ll keep company, handsome, and I’ll tell ya’. So one day ya’ be all-rememberin’.’

She stretches, tiptoe, for hanging moss. James’ eyes widen. She shields bosom. ‘Ooh, Lad! They almost leaped out: Can’t be lettin’ ya’ be glimspen’, now can I.’ She rubs James’ mosquito-bit legs with the moss. Cool, soothing. ‘Seen me Mariner use somethin’ like this for healin’. Works, suren’ it does.’

It is similar to the same green substance James has seen in vials in his father’s medical valise.

A feeling of joy suddenly brims within Turt. Because, out-of-nowhere he thinks of lovely, ageless, Rrrose Heather: Hasn’t seen her in a century. He breathes deep. Her floral scent swells his senses. Though he cannot see her, he is remembering, mesmerized by her sweeping black hair, the forever purplish-pink flower of cheeks from whence came name, Rrrose of the Heather.

Her face is lineless at 18 years or 80, eyes, weepy, smiling all at once. They glow, so blue, emblazoned with curiosity, knowledge, with an impassioned desire to fully partake of life’s pleasurable mysteries – which, she has.

Turt, he feels her presence, as if she was beside him, painting a heather-garlanded rose onto his shell as she had done so long ago. Though faded, its kiss, unlike so many of the other paintings on him, miraculously has withstood the ravages of sun, sea, and time. He saved her life, or had she, his? Neither really knew which. (But that’s adventure for another day.)

Turt hears James talk to her. He trumpets low. Will she hear my greeting?

Turt imagines she pets his head. Her touch is soft, warm.

James feels her fingers combing through his hair. He’s reminded of his…

‘Your mother, Jamie, nay could she be here. She sent me.’

“I don’t remember her, Rrrose Heather.” Gentle hands cup his cheeks.

‘Poor chil’. Course not. But see her in me. Though we be different – traveled such different paths – deep within, we are alike as twin shamrocks of a meadow. We both be women of the flesh business. Hers was in helping heal it, and me, in bringing it pleasure. Most-importantly, though, oh how we loved, fully. She; you and your fa. Me; Carper and the Mariner. And of course Turt…’ She strokes the flower on his shell.

Turt sighs. Thinking of Rrrose lightens his burdens.

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

‘…and I loves’ ya’, Jamie; and young Master Jamie will come to love his Rrrose. I’ll be here when ya’ need me. Just as my sister Calico is.’ She opens palm. There’s Calico. The pretty butterfly flies to and nestles in his hair.

James yawns; so tired – so much to feel.

‘Sleepy chil’. Lie down. I’ll tell a grand tale where you’ll experience what’s rosy, and what’s not; and be learnin’ from the lessons.’ She strokes his forehead. He feels the soothing motion of being tucked-in by Rrrose Heather as a blanket of butterflies flutter barely above him. ‘Once upon a time…way down in the Leezianna swamps, lived the dreaded Thibidioux, Jamie…’

‘Who is this Jamie?’ he wonders.

Next Time: You’ll meet Calico!

(Feel welcome to visit Rrrose Heather’s bodacious bordello in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged Cincinnatti, Fiction House Publishing, Foundlings, humor, Ireland, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, Lindian Woods, Muse, new short stories, Raji Singh, Rrrose Heather, short stories, St. Patrick, St. Patrick's Day, The Kissing Tree, Turt | Leave a comment

BEST ACTOR AWARD

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Yes. It is that time again to identify those who will go down in film history. Yet, many individuals have taken on such thespian roles they changed the history that could have been. Let us celebrate those invisible heroes with an old post from our archives…

Esteemed resident of the historic Fiction House, Kunta Kinder, is world renowned for his artwork – painting, carving, sculpture. His dangerous pre-Civil War work as an African-American Abolitionist ‘Conductor’ in the slave states demonstrates his acting prowess. Here now, as recounted in the novel, Tales of the Fiction House, one of thespian Kunta’s greatest roles.

* * *

THE TALE OF ONE EARLY UNDERGROUND RAILROAD SPUR LINE

(Editor’s Note: Slaves often traveled alone to do ‘marster’s bidding.’)

Bay is harnessed to a buckboard. She is ‘slow-as-Moses.’ Reined by Kunta’s rope, a-Hempis, she moseys the dirt road toward a western Kentucky plantation.

‘Aleka will be there,’ Kunta thinks, with each new plantation he approaches. ‘She’ll recognize me, but say nothing.’ (Aleka is Kunta’s sister.)

Poppy Sol’s yawning rise sparks, pinkish-red, against hundreds of acres of tobacco plants, then smolders the dew from the leaves. Kunta breathes deeply, holding in his lungs the stinging, sweet wonder of nature’s humidor.

He feels so free in his voluntary servitude. Duty-bound to brothers and sisters in real chains, his soul soars.

Before now – delivering runaways to safe houses north of the Ohio for the old Reverend – he rode Bay straight and proud.

Now, gathering slaves for the new Reverend in the south, he slouches on splintery seat, subservient.

Looking at the white-pillared mansion in the horizon, he pretends not to see the rifle-wielding, Overseer, approaching on foot. Kunta’s an actor playing a part. He begins singing in a contrived, almost-yelping Halleluiah timbre!

“Pharoah’s daughter on de bank, little Moses in de reeds. She fishes him out wid a…”

“Whoa boy! Where you think yer headin’?” Overseer grabs a-Hempis at the Bay’s snout and loops the rope around his fist. He aims the gun at Kunta’s pretend-flinch face. Kunta knows Overseer’s thinking, ‘No killin’ ‘nother man’s property lest there’s might good reason.’ The six-foot tall white man is clean-shaven, pristinely kempt. Creased pants and pressed vest contrast Kunta’s ‘slave costuming – threadbare jacket, tattered chapeau, patched pants and boots.

(The Constant and mortal danger of riding the rails of the Underground Railroad engrain in Kunta a perpetual sense of courage-caution.)

On Kunta’s lap is a bible. Into its leather cover, he’s scroll-worked ‘Moses-aleadin’-’is-people’. The image of his village women’s braids snake through it and point to a northerly ‘promised lan’-a-milk-n’-honey’. He inscribes it into all of Reverend Ezekiah’s bibles that he delivers to slaves. Quickly glanced, it is a picture, pleasing. Examined, it is a guidepost to freedom.

(At this point in the latter half of the 1820s, few, if any whites knew of the secret codes and cryptic maps woven in quilts, painted on barns, carved into trees, that runaways and their abettors utilized to successfully navigate to a free state, territory, or Canada.)

“You ‘def, boy. I wanta’ know where yer headin’?”

“Ah is Reverend Ezeki’ Bellows shepherd-boy. I’s on his mission,” Kunta says with absurd argot and pretend-cower. He sees his ‘fools’ crescent smile in Overseer’s spit-shine boots.

(“Boots for kicken’ a relcalictrant neg’ or negress who don’t pick their share,” the overseer loves telling newly-bought arrivals.)

Kunta raises a bible and thumps it with his knuckles. “Ah’s deliverin’ the good word for the good Reverend, suh. For the Reverend’s dark flock.” He motions, eyes diverted, to an open-lidded crate of bibles behind his seat. If he came across Aleka, or maybe a runaway, he could slip them into the crate’s false bottom and smuggle them to Valhalla.

Kunta clenches jaw, concealing momentary grit of the degradation he again feels – of enslavement to the cook aboard the slave ship. He hates the overseer he knows nothing of yet knows everything of, hates him as much as he hated the Cook.

“Hey, boy. It’d save me a heap a hasslin’ before breakfast if I just blow yer brains out now.”

a-Hempis doesn’t want to test the overseer’s brag – (The mystical rope, a-Hempis, is a reincarnation of a 15^th century mystic cleric, Thomas a-Kempis) – what a-Hempis does now will give Kunta a chance to defend himself if Overseer is intent on firing. He tightens around Overseer’s hand as Bay tenses snout. “Ow! Son-of-a-bitch.” Overseer pulls away, lowers gun and shakes reddening fingers.

Bay becomes jittery. She kicks-up dust. ‘Can’t let anything happen to Kunta. He must be there when I foal to see my pony galloping beside me for the first time. Must see my pony when little Kunta makes him or her, his horse.’

(Bay and a-Hempis have varying plans for different scenarios. If Kunta’s ever set for-a-whippen’, a-Hempis would convince the leathery bullwhip to soften its slashing – by promising some of a-Hempis sought-after scent. If Kunta’s hung by his own rope, and, on his own horse, a-Hempis would slip from tree limb, then Bay would gallop through memorized bramble pathways she has traveled through that no hound, man, nor other equines, could figure out and follow. Each situation so different – they would observe Kunta’s lead; follow it.)

“Ahm sure mistress-’a-house wouldn’t want the spreading of our Savior’s savin’-Word be slowed.” Kunta allows a mere tinge of slyness to stain his words. No matter how little the man thinks of him, he won’t want black blood splattered all over mistresses ‘Word.’

Overseer rubs hand. “Gimme your papers.” He examines documents that include intricately scrolled documents Kunta has created to show that body, if not soul, belongs, without-question, to Reverend Ezekiah Bellows. Kunta has, well hidden, equally-meticulously forged documents signed by Reverend, that show he and Little Kunta are free humans.

Overseer drops the papers onto Kunta’s lap and opens crate. “Pretty fancy bible covers for folks born for picken’. None of ‘em read – least better not be able, or I’ll see to it they never do again.”

“Well suh, when Mistress not a readin’ to ‘em, to help calm ‘em for you…they can meditate on the cover – calms ‘em even more for you when they’re in the field…”

“I got whippings to do that, boy.” He pats the bullwhip that rings around his belt.

“Got lots a’ deliveries for the Reverend today, suh!”

“Sounds like whip-lip you’re deliverin’.” He quickly decides against any action because his hand aches. He looks at his pocket watch, gift from his Kentuck pappy; ‘overseer ‘afore me – and his, ‘afore him – taught me all ‘ah needa’ to know about treatin’ negs’.’ “They’re due to crops. Swing a wide berth from the house, head straight to the quarters and don’t snail about.”

Outside the shanties, shadowed gray by the white mansion, your heart, ready to burst free from your chest to fly to be with Aleka, coldly sinks. Nowhere is she among the dozens of ragged spirits, who are blank-eyed from the day-by-day tobacco sameness. None read, but all smooth their hands over your cover design.

‘Follow its path,’ you want to shout to them. ‘You will discover routes to escape your Egypt – you’ll find sympathetic Moses’ ready to help.’ You begin to preach-hint, as you stand amongst your people. “Close your eyes and meditate on the, PATH. You’ll be delivered to the Promised Land.”

You become a mandatory silent when you see the plantation owner in his creamy suit and string tie, approach followed by Overseer and the field guards. “Let me see that,” Owner says.

You shan’t look into his face to decipher what he’s thinking when he examines the cover. You realize he’s interested only in leafing through the pages for contraband. Overseer and guards do the same with other bibles. Overseer drops the book at your feet.

“Yes siree,” Owner says to the air as if you don’t exist, “delivered to a promised land, of tobaccy. All right everybody. To the fields.”

For emphasis, only a few feet from a dozen men and women, he cracks his whip. It ‘snaps’, stinging the ground.

Overseer: “Your heard your Massah. To …”

‘Does anyone here see hope?’ you want to shout as they shuffle away. You pick up the bible. As you think, ‘they are too beaten to see,’ a burly-chest man and petite wife, with two clingy sons under age 4 and a baby, stop briefly. The only difference between him and the others: His eyes are afire – with desire to find the Path. When no one is looking, he puts his hand to your shoulder. No words. But his expression says, “Thanks brother. Somehow, we will see you, and soon.”

‘Yes! There’s always hope. Aleka! Your brother’s coming for you: Have hope.”

(Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged Abolition, alternate history, American History, archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, imagination, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, new short stories, Raji Singh, slavery, Underground Railroad | Leave a comment

VALENTINE, COME WITH ME TO THE KISSING TREE

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Raji Singh

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Do you remember a place, a person, a time when you first felt the sweetness of love? The bright gasp of life that whispers, “Remember this moment. It is special.” Days, years, decades later, the memory calls us back. And the surprise of a first love? We like to be reminded of that joy every year at Fiction House Publishing.

Please enjoy our Valentine’s Day memory from The Seasons of My Giving Back by Mark Rogers.

cover the seasons of my giving back

* * *

Who would ever think? A broken furnace boiler leading to my first real kiss.

Oh, there’d been plenty on the cheek – by Mother, all the Aunties, by my imaginary muse, Luny Mum, and yech phew! Fickle Marr-grr-ett from school. Often came tickly pecks from Captain Polly. From Turt, slurpy beak-snout nuzzles. I’d feel butterfly wing flutters caress me when I walked through the Woods.

But none of them was anything like what was to come – and on a day so appropriate, Valentine’s Day!

(Had my joys of giving back to others, made me appreciate the giving backs to me?)

* * *

No matter, that it is the coldest day in all of Cincinnati history, I stay warm because I burn with ecstasy as I run home from Mrs. Florsheim’s fourth grade classroom.

Before I can herald the ice-shattering headline news – “NO SCHOOL, MOTHER; FOR AT LEAST A-WEEK-AND-A-HALF! UNTIL THE NEW BOILER ARRIVES” – Mother greets me, even more excited than I, from atop the stairs.

“The principal called, Raji. This means we will be able to accompany your Fa on his trip. So hurry. Come and pack your clothes.”

Within an hour, we are on the plane to New York to connect to a Lindia flight.

“You’ll get to see Reena,” Mother whispers so she won’t disturb other passengers; or maybe she wants to share a private moment. Perhaps she doesn’t want to embarrass me in public. “Valentine Day is big in Lindia as in America, Raji. I knew you might not have time to get Reena a card.”

She hands me a red envelope. “You can give Reena your heart.”

My Heart Flutters like Calico, A Foundling’s Gentlest Friend
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

I mostly turn red, as the envelope. But inside my smile fills me completely. ‘Reena!’ I haven’t seen her since last summer.

I sleep most all the way over the ocean. I dream of Reena, working alongside as volunteers helping feed the poor, and then later playing together – jacks, cards, exploring the Lindian Woods.

When I drowsily awaken, I look out the window. ‘Reena!’ Her semi-cupid smile and sweet chocolate hair sway gently in dreamy cloud drifts.

Our plane lands in Lindia City. Fa goes to consult on a free clinic he and other doctors are establishing. Mother and I visit the smooth-face Aunties and gray-bearded Uncles.

After so many cheeky kisses, both bristly and soft, Mother brings out a costume the Aunties have made for me. The scents of their exotic perfumes, absorbed by the yellow silk cloth as they sewed it, lingers as I put it on. A scarlet-teethed betel nut chewing Uncle whiskers my face with black paint and marks my bare arms with orange blotches.

I am to be a young tiger, alongside dozens of other similar young human cats, at a benefit for the clinic. Another of my Uncles, Uncle Balu, a real life Tigerman, will be the entertainer.

~ ~ editor note: The art of the Tigermen is ancient, its Lindian origins unknown. The performer in tiger costume and regalia dances lithely as the big cat, and sings-growls hauntingly of its plight. Tigerman troubadours traveled cities and villages entertaining just as circus, movie, and tv do today. In the 21^st century, Tigerwomen have joined in this resurging cultural phenomenon. You can see a demonstration and learn more of the art of the Tigerperson in Raji Singh’s novel Tales of the Fiction House. ~ ~

The curtain falls on our performance. The tiger kids gather around Uncle Balu, adulation, as if he were a rock star.

I feel a paw on my shoulder. I turn. ‘Reena!’

She’s a face painted young tigress in golden slacks. She was a dancer too. I just hadn’t seen her in the masquerading tiger troupe.

Uncle Balu motions with his claw, ‘Go with Reena, Raji. We’ll see each other often while she’s in school.’

Welcome to the Lindian Woods
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh

Reena and I walk into the bright sunlight, paw in claw. I had thought that when we first saw each other we would screech and howl like wild cats, and pounce into the Lindian Woods. Instead, we walk slowly and our words, especially mine, come like timid purrs and near-silent meows.

“Purr! Its been so long since I’ve seen you, Raji.”

“Meow.”

Reena takes a paper lace heart from her small purse. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Raji.”

“Meow!” I reach into my pocket.

Oh no! I left the card on my suitcase when I changed for the show. If only there was some tiger-magic that could make it bound through the window and fly to me.

Before I attempt to stammer, “I…I have a card for you too Reena,” I hear a voice saying, “Aark! Ark! I know what you’re thinking. I’m on it.” It’s Captain Polly. She’s in a tree, camouflaged by colorful leaves. I should have expected her to be spending a tropical few weeks here, while it’s 20 below in Cincinnati.

Inconspicuously, she swoops away.

Reena looks around. “Did you hear someone calling for someone named, Mark?”

“Meow!” A cat that swallowed the canary, I. “I don’t think I heard anything, Reena.”

We walk through the woods, our purrs, our meows slowly becoming human words.

“Will you be coming to Lindia this summer?”

“Definitely, and for the whole summer. We’ll work alongside each other, again.”

Behind the golden face paint, Reena’s smile becomes sun-bright. I’m emboldened. I twist my neck so our faces are inches apart. Reena closes her eyes. I wet my lips and I ready to…

A trumpeting blare coming from the close-by river startles us. We pull away from each other.

Of course, I should know by now. When Captain Polly is, nearby, Turt probably is too.

‘Darn it!’ I suddenly realize. Turt’s blast was intentional – my shell fellow’s good-natured ploy of scaring, enabling me to take Reena into my protective embrace.

I hear,“Aark! Aark!” once again.

Reena once again hears “Mark”, and walks around the woods looking for someone by that name.

Captain Polly carries the red envelope in one talon. Swift as a falcon she swoops down, lights on my shoulder, and slips it down the back of my shirt. She whispers so Reena cannot hear, “Take her on a romantic cruise.”

I’m confused.

“Upon Turt, silly boy.”

I know my facial expression asks, “Where?”

“Turt knows,” Captain Polly says, and flies, disappearing among tree leaves before Reena returns.

I open my mouth, no words, not even a timid meow or purr, come forth.

“Raji. Are you okay?”

Suddenly Captain Polly’s voice becomes deep, and it’s as if she’s talking for me as Cyrano de Bergerac talked for the stupefied Christian to Roxanne. “Mi Lady, your card.”

I remove it from my shirt. With jittery fingers, I take it from the envelope and give it to her.

“Oh Raji. It is beautiful.”

“Take my hand. Come sailing with me,” Polly-Cyrano requests.

We walk to the river and board Turt’s carriage of a shell. We sit close to one another and hold hands tight. As an excuse, we say, “So neither of us might topple into the water.”

Turt sets sail, always looking straight ahead to allow us to be alone. Neither of us talks as we drift; free of all school and playground worries. Our winged Cyrano keeps her big beak out of our privacy by flying parallel to us, an unseen chaperone hidden in the woodland.

The warm breeze pushes through the round curls of Reena’s hair. I feel I’m drowning deliciously in the jasmine perfume of her shampoo. I put my head to hers.

She doesn’t pull away.

I know we both are feeling the pulse of each other’s temples beating as one. Even when a curious alligator swims up to investigate the goings-on on his or her river, and Turt opens his razor-sharp beak-snout to ‘HISS’ him or her away, we do not separate.

Are we oblivious, or are we blissfully in lo…No, I’m sure I’m too young for that.

After 20 minutes, Turt ports riverside. Gently I hold Reena’s hand and we disembark.

Captain Polly-Cyrano de Bird-gerac re-emerges from her quiet. “Come Mi-lady. Walk with me.”

Turt motions with his beak-snout the path we should take. Slowly he trails us.

I’m dying to speak for myself. Just when I start to, Captain Polly shows herself and squawks,

“Aark! Beware, Raji, Reena, Turt.

”Behind you!”

When danger arises, Turt can step sideways on his fin-claws fast as a spinning top. The entirety of his sharp-edged shell frame becomes a deadly cudgel if need be. As Reena and I turn, Turt is already facing a 600-pound tiger that has leaped from the underbrush, and is within one bound of us.

The beast’s scream-roar vibrates the trees in the Lindian Woods. Small creatures shriek and scatter.

The Lindian River and those of fin within it tremble.

Reena pulls my arm. “Let’s run, Raji.”

“Aark! Stay where you are,” squawks Captain Polly. “He’s jealous, Reena, Raji. Braak! You make prettier tigers than he will ever be. Turt and I will cure him of his rage.”

Captain Polly flies, talons bared toward the top of the tiger’s head. She gouges, again, again, grounding him, mid-pounce, as he leaps toward us.

That’s when Turt rams the tiger’s stomach with his shell. His automobile-equal weight winds the beast, and he flops lamely to the twiggy floor. Turt’s been traversing the Lindian Woods for well over a hundred years. He’s an old pro at handling its tigers. He clamps his fin-claw atop the breathless tiger to imprison him.

Turt winks and motions with his beak-snout proudly raised high, as if to say,

‘You three proceed. I’ll have no trouble making sure this one doesn’t follow. If he even tries anything, well, I pity him. I loyally await your return.’

“Follow me,” beckons Captain Polly.

Reena and I hold hands, tightly.

In a few minutes, we arrive at something so majestic, so overpowering, so like I’ve never before seen, that my eyes water. A lump forms in my throat and I am speechless. Towering above us is two Lindian Fan Trees. By their height, and the sturdiness of their entwined roots that grow together as bastion legs just above the ground, I know they’re well over 100 years old. Their lean trunks grow at a slight angle upward, and then veer inward 15 feet in the air, merge, as two mouths meeting, before continuing their separate paths skyward.

“The…the…” Reena can hardly speak either. “I’ve heard stories of it. But I never really thought it existed. It is so grand.”

“Aark! The Kissing Tree,” squawks Captain Polly. “Kiss her you, fool.”

I take Reena in my arms and our mouths meet.

Come With Me to the Kissing Tree (Image ©2014 Raji Singh)

Walk With Me to the Kissing Tree
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh)

(Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Children's stories, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy | Tagged a boy's first kiss, alternate history, Calico, Captain Polly, culture, fiction, Fiction House Publishing, first kiss, folk cures, Foundlings, humor, imagination, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, Lindian Woods, Luny Mum, Mark Rogers, Raji Singh, short stories, summer love, Tales of the Fiction House, The Seasons of My Giving Back, Turt, whims | Leave a comment

IMAGINE…DREAMING AS A KING, INSPIRING AS A GANDHI, UNITING AS A MANDELA (or simply – using laughter to lighten another’s load)

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

In celebration of Dr. King Day, we remember the heroes in our lives who give us a vision of what the future could be. Thank you, Dr. King.

This post was the foundation of the novel, The Seasons of My Giving Back. It reminds us of the power of caring for one another.

* * *

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my parents. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

* * *

At least twice a year – from kindergarten to high school – Lindia bound with my parents. Away from comfortable home quarters at the Fiction House Medical Clinic in Cincinnati, we’d fly, to some impoverished hospital half-a-world away.

Side by side, they ‘cared for’; with me fetching blankets, ferrying bandages, filling water bottles.

“You are learning of one of life’s greatest and yet simplest gifts,” Mother would tell me after a long day. “Giving!”

Fa, ever the believer that, “there are good lessons to learn in every situation, son,” would add, as if he were prescribing a long-known miracle drug. “Every unselfish act, Raji, helps you avoid, septem peccata mortalia, those seven deadly sins that tempt all humans: Lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, wrath.”

I enjoyed helping the sick by assisting my parents, but a nurse or doctor I’d never be. Soon, they sensed this.

“Many are the ways for you to help people, Raji,” they agreed. “You will find one if you use that vivid imagination of yours. In the meantime, we have just the right thing for you while we are at Hospital.”

As any other ten-year-old – Adventure – that is what I yearned: I’d just read Robinson Crusoe.

So, as we traveled, to where this mystery assignment would commence, I was allowing my imagination free play, as a way to wile away the early morning hours. Never ending are the tales a tyke can create while riding alone in the back seat of his parent’s sedan.

I smiled broadly and said to myself. “My parents will sense my desire. They’ll let me ‘give’, by allowing me to work on a cobra-milking farm – where the venom is transformed into healing medicines. I’ll become the Number One Squeezer in all Lindia.”

I hear a deep ‘Hah! Hah!’

Did Fa hear my thoughts; or sense my thoughts? No he and Mother are chit chattering about illnesses.

Poppy Sol, bouncing brightly along the treetops of the Lindian Woods, looks through my window. He’s nearly out of breath from trying to keep up with our vehicle’s pace, but still he’s able to sputter. ‘Hah, lad. Kidding ye must be. Never would your Fa, let alone your Ma allow you to become a Squeezer.’

My aspiration of adventurous altruism skids to a dead stop.

But one of Poppy Sol’s stray rays allows a flickering rebirth of hope. ‘Holt on a minute now, me young bloke. Just perhaps, I may have a gra-a-a-nd way to bring about a change of mind in them. Let’s say we…’

I am so excited, but I cannot understand the rest, so, to the glass I put my ear, to, better hear. Sol can be a mighty prankster – at least in my tyke imagining. But I’m just sure this is no pranking.

Luny Mum’s beam enters, right through the window glass on the other side of the vehicle. She taps my shoulder. ‘Don’t you be believin’ a word that fabricatin’ ol Sol be tellin’, Raji.’

Loving Mum, she’s readying to bid adieu to the day, but still she takes time for me.

‘Raji, as your earth mum says, “use your imaginin’.” Dream like a King, mi lad. And Think. Of how might you inspire? How might you unite?’

Hmm! I wonder. How? Then a flash of brilliance comes. ‘I know what I’ll do Luny Mum.’ Poppy Sol glares through the window at me, anxiously awaiting my decision. This time I know he won’t guffaw. My great idea burns in my thoughts hot and bright as Sol. I sniff. I think I smell my brain afire. Burning brain: It smells rubbery. I never took time to notice the acrid scent of smoldering synapses in the hospital, if ever there was an occasion to notice such a thing. I look around: No smoke billowing from my ears. Look up: My cowlick isn’t a red flame lick.

‘THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!’

The sedan hit a pothole, causing a flat tire. That’s what I smell. Fa retreats to repair it. Mother keeps him company. As we sit, a line of chauffeured silver and gold Rolls Royce and Bentley pass us. I blink. No, I’m not imagining this. I see it – with my own eyes. I just hope not all those well-dressed passengers had my grand idea at the same time I did. And now they’ll beat me to the punch; or in their case, the champagne.

Luny Mum interrupts my thoughts. ‘Tell us your plan, young ‘un.’

‘I’ll become a tiger trainer. We’ll take the big cats to the hospitals to entertain the sick.’

‘Whaat ho, lad?’ Queries Poppy Sol.

I look out; think I see laugh lines creasing Sol’s glow.

‘Hah! Hah! The patients are there to be cured. Not get eaten. Don’t be daft, lad. They wouldn’t let your creatures past the front doors. Hah! Hah!’

‘Sol’s right, Raji. You must think of other ways to help.’

But I thought it was such a good idea.

My parents get back in and we’re off. Curious, I ask. “What are all those fancy cars doing so far from Lindia City? On such a desolate road?”

Mother turns, squinting to see me midst Sol’s glow of curiosity. He also wants to find out why. Mother’s soft face is aglow with compassion as she explains. “Often these days, Raji, such royal caravans may be seen. They too make pilgrimage, for a sole purpose – to give food to poor people.”

“HA! HA!” This time the laugh isn’t from Poppy Sol, but Fa. He looks briefly from the road ahead to address Mother. “You know well as I Indira, why they journey.”

“But at least they do, Ben. That is enough for me.”

Fa begins carrying on a ‘prescription’ conversation with me, glancing at me in the rear view mirror almost as much as he does at the road. “As Goddess Nardesha proclaims, Raji. It is easier for an elephant to traverse safely through an active beehive than for gentry to enter the glorious hereafter.”

Mother laughs. Luny Mum joins her. I wish the two could meet. I know they’d enjoy the others company. Maybe one day they will. Mother says, “Goddess Nardesha has an irascible sense of humor that your Fa likes, Raji. And she is right. To appease Nardesha: That, I believe is why the royal caravans have come into existence…

“Watch the road, Ben.”

As their front seat chit chattering focuses on elephants, beehives, and gentry, Luny Mum’s gentle beam strokes my shoulder. ‘Other ideas lad, other ideas. You’ll not want to become one of Nardesha’s pachyderms.’

‘I know just the thing, Luny Mum. To the sea, I could sail. Train otters to catch fish for me. Then I’ll bring the nets-full, to the poor.’

‘Never,’ glares Sol. ‘Fish! Where’s the ADVENTURE? Besides, those you mayest ‘elp be land bound. In your journey, the floppers would half-bake in me heat. Would do more hurt than ‘elp.’

‘You’ll have to imagine another way to help the earthbound,’ Mum glows.

“Ben, watch the roa…” ‘SCREECH!’ Fa swerves to avoid creating road kill of a mangy mongoose.

I’m pushed against the door. The jolt frees the answer that must have been in my thoughts all along, but trapped. ‘I know Poppy Sol. I know Luny Mum. I shall give back, by helping. This solution will be unbeatable.’

The celestial glares and glows show that Sol and Mum are interested in this latest proposal.

In unison. ‘Go on lad. We await your decision.’

I am so excited I talk so fast I hardly stop for breaths. ‘Poison tip dart artisan for tribesman to use in their blowguns. To defend their forests from foreign tree rustlers who ravage the land for selfish profit motives. Those, elephants, care not a whit about the people, animals, and plants they displace and destroy.’

Sol glistens. ‘Blimey, lad. Poison tips. An excellent idea to rid the undesirables.’

Mum’s stern reaction. ‘Nonsense you two. Never ‘ave I heard anything so ridiculous.’

‘No, no, Mum. Fa has medicines that deaden but do not kill. The rustlers are unconscious, just long enough for the tribesman to inform authorities to come and jail them.’

I see I’ve convinced Sol, but Mum, she still needs work.

“Watch the road, Ben.” ‘SCREECH! THUMP!’ Fa slides into the back Rolls of the royal caravan. To protect from injury Mother braces her hands against the dashboard, and Fa holds tight to the steering wheel. I am tossed, over and into the front seat, landing, jostling safely onto Mother’s lap.

‘Youch! That’s gotta hurt lad.’

“Not really, Sol,” I say aloud.

“What say, Raji?” Mother asks, gently stroking my cheek.

“Oh, just imagining,” I say.

Luny Mum strokes my other cheek. ‘It is time I take my leave, lad. Glad everyone is safe.’ With no fanfare, Mum fades, disappearing into the blue.

We get out of the car just in time to see the train-like chain reaction of Rolls and Bentleys slowly bumping, one at a time, undamaged into the car preceding it. Their natty sarong and dhoti-attired owners are too occupied to notice, or care. They’re quite conspicuously appeasing Nardesha by directing their tuxedoed butlers to distribute, from porcelain tureens, sweet smelling delicacies, to the unending lines of raggedy passers-by. Some of these poor stop to taste, but only for a moment. Most continue the ongoing movement forward, as if some holy destination lays ahead, some nirvana worth passing up the caravan’s mere morsels.

As Mother, Fa, I, and, Poppy Sol follow, I notice dozens of youth, around my age. They load unfortunate road kill onto carts, then they also move forward.

I squint upward. Anxious in my curiosity I query Sol. ‘From your position, you can see what is ahead. Where is everyone going? Is the reason they’re not stopping to eat the gentry’s food, does that have something to do with it?’

‘HA! HA!’ is Sol’s reply. ‘Raji, I can see quite clearly from here the job your folks have arranged for you.’

‘Tell me. I am so anxious to know. What it is? Tiger tamer? Cobra Squeeze? Poison tipper? Otter fisher?’

‘You’ll not like it, young bloke.’

‘You’re wrong Sol. Any helpin’ kind of daring-do adventurin’, ‘ll do me fine.’

‘Well then, brace yourself, lad. Your ‘elpin’ ‘ll be…

‘On the road kill gang. Surely that’ll ‘elps ya from becomin’, a elephant.’

It’s a good thing our whole conversation took place in my imagination: Because my mental shout of ultimate disappointment would have deafened all within a mile.

What possible good for humankind could the road kill gang provide, I ask myself?

And, just where, oh where – are all the poor, bound?

(Join me every at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Leave a comment

YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, RAJI — A LINDIAN CHRISTMAS LESSON

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Raji Singh

I hope you’ll enjoy this Christmas tale from Fiction House Publishing’s book, The Seasons of My Giving Back, by Mark Rogers. Happy Holidays!

* * *

Chapter 6

YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, RAJI – A LINDIAN CHRISTMAS LESSON

Just like the bespectacled Ralphie in the movie A Christmas Story, as a youngster I yearned for a Red Ryder BB gun. Growing up in Cincinnati’s Lindian community – not big meat eaters or hunters – no one truly listened when I said I wanted this.

I dreamed of making grand safaris into the magical, mysterious Woods not far from home. Many long hours I’d spend in congratulating myself, ‘You will be giving back to your beloved Cincinnati by helping keep it safe.’

“With my Red Ryder…” quite often I excitedly boasted to a kindly, yet unsympathetic old Uncle or Auntie. “…I could fortress in the wilds and protect the city from errant tigers.”

They’d reply, all the while laughing gently at their own impromptu humor. “Pshaw! Precious Raji. 50,000 Bengals fill the football stadium every other week. You could never keep enough BB’s in stock.”

Then these wizened elders, the tiny bells on their sarongs jingling, the beads on their shirts beating as they jiggled from the laughter, would add something like, “Cobra and Mongoose from our homeland have yet to find a way to traverse the oceans. So we need no protection from them. What then remains, Dear Boy, for you to save us from – the furry little rabbits and squirrels? They are not so vicious.”

Then, just as Ralphie’s teacher, his mother, and even Santa replied to Ralphie, the Uncles and Aunties guffawed to me, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

But Ralphie’s fa, ‘the old man’, had a Red Ryder when he small. He surprised Ralphie with the pump-style air rifle on Christmas.

An equally understanding – at least, seemingly, at the time, old Uncle came forward for me on my Christmas. He always dressed nattily, in starched, pressed cotton pants, and a vest over a dhoti shirt white as his wavy hair. Every glance, every eye flicker, and every movement of his lean body professed to the world his philosophy of life: ‘To stand on ceremony is the duty of all.’ (He must have come from generations of British Colonial influence.)

The BB gun –

He presented it to me as ceremoniously as if he had been a Royal Brigade officer back in Lindia, and he was pinning a medal of valor on my jacket.

I remember vividly to this day standing as if frozen briefly in time, a new recruit in front of Colonel Uncle. The lofty emotions I felt – They are indelibly imprinted in my thoughts: That day…That day…

The Red Ryder isn’t shiny and new like Ralphie’s. The wood stock is worn and faded. Nicks, gouges, and dents tattoo the tarnished barrel. But I feel just as lucky as Ralphie.

I run my fingers over the cold steel and splintered wood. All my childhood senses absorb the ardor of battle my Red Ryder must have encountered over the decades. I smell the decaying rot of defeated cobras saturating the stock. I can almost taste the dank of the fur of a charging tiger, “brought down by just a single BB”, I imagine someone bragging over ale at a bistro.

As if it were a seashell, I put my ear to the barrel hole. Instead of ocean, I hear the calamitous trumpeting of a herd of elephants scared away from an isolate village’s garden, and back into the jungle. I stroke the splintered teeth marks of a vicious mongoose that tore wildly into the weapon before being subdued.

After a ceremonious pat on the shoulder from crater-faced old Uncle and the even more ceremonious statement, “Now go forth young Gamesman” –

Into the Woods, I foray, to take my place among the tribe of humankind known as, Intrepid Hunter.

Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found (Image ©2014 Raji Singh — Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh

I dribble a handful of copper BBs into the holding chamber. I pump the cocking handle. I take aim skyward, at Poppy Sol. He glares, reprimanding me with a stinging ray.

So I move my point, toward a gluttonous cloud. ‘I’ll pop that belly.’

I feel like Papa Hemingway readying to bag his first Rhino. My hands sweat as I pull the trigger.

The loudest cannon fire BANG!

That is what I expect.

A…phht! is what I get.

The BB arcs like a rainbow, for not more than 20 feet. I see where it goes…toward the pond…toward the rubbery lily pad where the Frog Brothers, Frer and Brer, rrriibiit on about the daily news of the Woods.

Plink.

The BB lands between them, breaking their conversation, and then it bounces off, plunking into the water. Their sudden stares and immediate deep CRROOAAKS indicate they mock me.

‘There’s that Raji kid again. The one who almost shot his eye out with the slingshot, last week,’ says Frer.

‘A nuisance he can sometimes be,’ replies Brer, sticking his tongue out at me and simultaneously nabbing a fly.

In unison, they croak loudly, ‘You’ll shoot your eyes out, kid!’

Again and again my shame heightens among the Woods inhabitants as the velocity of the BBs lessen with each shot.

(Seems the relic Red Ryder can’t hold the charge of hand pumped air for more than a few seconds. But I wouldn’t discover that cold fact until later in life.)

Another shot strays into the water, splashing between a circle of ten napping otters, who hold hands as otters outta whilst sleeping, to keep from floating away from each other. Seemingly, one at a time their eyes open and they berate me for disturbing their slumber. ‘You’ll shoot your…’ I get a feeling they’re readying to turn together on their sides, like a wheel, and roll over the water to chase me from their Woods.

I quickly scamper to a meadow where birds are singing joyously. I shoot the Red Ryder skyward.

POP!

The singing abruptly ends and the birds scatter. Out of nowhere, the Woods Sky Patroller, Hawk, barrels in from out of nowhere, grabs the BB mid air, flies, just feet over my head, and flings it down hitting me on the head.

“Ouch.”

That is the fastest one of the projectiles flew that day, or would ever again fly from that dilapidated Red Ryder.

‘Never do that again,’ I know is Hawk’s plaintiff cry. Hawk eyes me viciously and then missiles out of sight.

Sigh! I guess I may now know just why we Lindians are no hunters. Likely, we’d starve.

O.K., I will shoot at trees. Not one barks at me as I take aim. So I fire. Relic Red Ryder suddenly takes on a life of its own – but unfortunately, it is in the form of a death gasp. SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

The BB spits weakly from the barrel, barely going two feet before it drops.

I hear a screech. In animal parlance, I believe it means – “Hey, whattaya think yer doin!”

I look down, just as the BB bounces off the head of a rabbit, then ricochets as the little fella jerks its head. The BB flies five feet horizontally, and nearly takes out the eye of a squirrel.

The rabbit’s screech, the squirrel’s angry, loud ‘CHHIIRRP!’ tells me, “Run, Raji!! Like your life depends on it.”

As angry as the critters sounded, I am sure my life really did. (Harmless creatures, as Uncles and Aunties claimed; Hhrmph!)

The squirrel and rabbit give chase. They’re on my heels, snapping, grr-ing, for hundreds of yards, until I am well clear of the Lindian Woods and onto a city street.

I near my Lindian neighborhood, out of breath, and I see my ceremonious old Uncle. He is sitting cross-legged, on a small rug under a Lindian Fan Tree. It is as if he has been waiting, patiently, for me. “And how went the hunt, young Raji?”

Wait, is that what some would call a ‘knowing smile’ that slightly crescents his face.

I return the gun as ceremoniously as it was given to me. I summon enough breath to say, “Take it Uncle. Never bring it back. No matter how careful, it’s only a matter of time, before, I shoot my eye out.”

Thank you, Uncle, for giving back to me, of course not only my eye before I might lose it, but also the simple importance of respecting our feathered flyer, slick swimmer, and furry four-leg friends.

(The Fiction House is your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Children's stories, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged A Christmas Story movie, BB gun gift, Christmas gifts, Christmas story, culture, gentle humor, humor, hunting story, imagination, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, Jean Shepherd, Lindian Woods, new short stories, nostalgia, Raji Singh, Ralphie, Red Rider, Red Rider BB gun, short story, Tales of the Fiction House, whimsy | Leave a comment

THANKSGIVING AT THE HOME OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S NE’ER DO WELL BROTHER (a delicious holiday repast)

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Happy Thanksgiving!

Who knew we’d celebrate together by eating a bird once proposed as the symbol of America? A myth? But a delightful one! However, it is no myth that even joyful gatherings can have their edges. Let’s see how old Benjamin handled his?

* * *

For those of you who might suffer trepidation because of familial strife, we hope you remember the bonds that you all share. And if that isn’t a comfort…remember you are not alone in your struggles. Join us as Fiction House looks back, way back, to what our admired early American leader endured on a very early Thanksgiving…

* * *

The Ancient Mariner, the scruffy sea salt who raised my great-great grandfather, told this curious holiday story. It’s been handed down for almost 250 years. Enjoy!

* * *

“To the GOOD life!” Benjamin Franklin toasts. A dozen of Franklin’s relatives, and a spiffed up Mariner, all “clunk” tankards. They gather in the Philadelphia home of Franklin’s half-brother Franklin Ulster. The men, all finely dressed in vests and jackets: The women, in best subtle gray long dresses.

Ulster’s already woozy having sneaked many-a-nip to help cope with Benjamin’s incessant boasts.

They give thanks, sit, pass the food, and eat steamy sweet potato, tart cranberry compote – all the usual, with all the sweet scents of banquet, but turkey. No one would dare offer up Ben Franklin’s noble favorite creature, which he backs as the new nation’s symbol.

“BETTER than any ale you’ve had, eh Ulster.”

The host limply nods. On that, he must agree.

Franklin proudly thumps his chest and sniffs. “A woodsy scent this batch has. I must say, this is the BEST stump juice yet that Mariner and I have had the privilege of brewing. Fitting nectar for the heroes of the Colonies who lie at rest in their Elysian Fields. A place you shall need not worry of ever residing, being battle shy midst our Revolution.”

Ulster starts to defend his weapons merchant status, but his wife kicks his ankle under the table. Brother-in-law Benjamin just might be convinced to float a loan to keep the creditors from the door. The home, though not a hovel, is faked; garish below the surface. Plaster of paris Louis XIV statues stand in for the real marble. Sturdy walnut furniture is replaced with rickety pine lookalikes.

“Concerning our stump juice, as with all things in life, as I always say, Ben Franklin says, ‘Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest. Until the good is better and the better best.’ That’s what I always say,” Benjamin Franklin says.

“Oh you do,” Franklin Ulster challenges. Ulster had pre-dinner fumed for an hour as the honored guest told of his Paris diplomatic exploits that help borne a new nation. Now he’s caught brother braggart in a lie. He maliciously spits out, “We both know those words you quote were written on the sign at Goode and Betty Bests Bakery when we we urchins.”

Benjamin squints down on Ulster through his bifocals, and calmly honeys a bun.

“And just who do you think sold them that adage. Moi! Mr. Ulster. And for a pretty penny. That coin built up through the decades made me the wealthy man I am today, Sir. As I always say, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’”

Franklin Ulster grits his teeth, but Benjamin Franklin is just beginning his pillorying.

“I am truly sorry your Shoppes and various ventures failed. If only you’d listened to my sage brotherly advice instead of wagering at cockfights. You could very well be in the financial position I reside. So, there! F.U.”

Some of the younger ladies at the table attempt to hide their eyes with their handkerchiefs. Some matrons titter at the bawdy inference. Elder statesman, Uncle Benjamin smiles pleasantly at each of them.

Ulster abruptly rises and his brass cock belt buckle upends his plate, sending his Thanksgiving fare down the front of his pants. “Damn you, Ben. My name is Franklin Ulster. I demand the courtesy of being addressed as such in my own home. Not being treated as some bastard kin.”

“My full apologies Franklin Ulster. In amends, let me personally serve you the escargot I’ve made for our repast.” Benjamin Franklin nods to Mariner and Mariner kindly returns the courtesy. “The Mariner taught me his special recipe when we first met in Paris. It was the talk of all the French society. The grand chefs of the city paid my friend quite handsomely for his recipe.” Franklin goes to a rickety sideboard, and gets a clean dinner plate.

Franklin Ulster impetuously grabs it. “Snails we eat to appease the grand Doctor Franklin.”

Benjamin Franklin responds, “You’d not offer eagle to those who want it for our national symbol.”

Ulster spits out the crawly foreign fare after the first bite and throws the full plate against the wall. It smashes into a dozen shards. “I’m off to slaughter a turkey.”

Before he gets to the door, the normally talkative Mariner, who has been quite quiet throughout the afternoon, shouts, “I’ve ‘ad enough of yer performin’, mate. Show yer respectins’ for the honored Doc Franklin, F.U.” The wiry, but sturdy seaman quickly intercepts Ulster, and in seconds, from the long sea line he always has in his pocket, keel hauls him, and hangs him from a ceiling post beam. There he dangles until a leisurely meal is complete.

~ ~ editor note: (Keel haul – to tie line to each arm and hang from the bow of the ship.)

The accounts that various Franklins relate in memoirs and letters in the archives of Fiction House Publishing tend to back the overall story. The reader must take into consideration, the Mariner, known for his proclivity for tale telling, and this is his telling, after all – he may have embellished his part in the holiday affair.

You may read A Thousand And One more of Mariner’s tellings in Tales of the Fiction House. ~ ~

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,

Raji

(Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged alternate history, Benjamin Franklin, family meals, Happy Thanksgiving, holiday with family, holidays, humor, imagination, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, Raji Singh, Tales of the Fiction House, Thanksgiving, tradition, whimsy | Leave a comment

A HALLOWEEN SPOOKER: THE DISPUTIN’ RASPUTINS OF THE HIGH SEAS (AND THEIR WALK-OFFS)

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Creepy stories abound this time of year! But have you ever been frightened of …toes? We hope you enjoy this tale unearthed from the tombs of the Fiction House, a Halloween re-treat.

* * *

The High Seas players:

The Pirates- a scurvy lot

Their Capt’n- a lice-ridden fiend

Captain Polly – Capt’n’s enslaved parrot

Turt- a good-natured land sea creature – almost a garnishment for the pirates’ meal

The Captives: Buzzard, Mariner, R-r-rose Heather, Kunta- enslaved by the pirates.

The Walk-offs- The lopped off part of the foot, from the tip of the toe to ‘on back just a tad’.

(Buzzard is telling tall tales. They mask the captives’ clandestine mutiny)

* * *

Buzzard strokes the mast then pulls away with a dramatic flourish. “Slick-as-a-badger, gents, Kunta slid down the mast, unseen by all but me. Before I could get here to stop him, he tangled his feet ‘round the throat of your unsuspecting mate. Wrung his neck.”

Buzzard invents as he tells. By playing-into audience’s endless superstitions brought on by the fog and grog-life of the sea, he manipulates them into believers.

“Kunta’s the cunning deceiver that sliced out the Moroccan’s tongue. Fed it to his ravenous Turt, who ingests our languages – to use against humans in the future,’ I’ll wager. [1] That beak-snouted demon is heartless. So Kunta cuts out the heart of the Algerian for him to devour while it beat.”

([1] Morrocan’s now a mute, driven mad by the cutting – so he can’t relay what really happened; that Mariner’s the slicer-dicer.)

‘A vile, contemptuous evil pervades the ship,’ thinks Captain Polly. From her perch, she watches the sallow-faced crew. Their attention never leaves Buzzard who is wending about the deck. Parrot knows she must do something to save herself from the stealthy young badger-human Kunta and his shelled beast that her Buzzard warns of: But, what? With leg chained. ‘Only hope,’ she thinks, is this dream-lover bird, Buzzard – but, ‘oh how to woo a human?’

“Kunta stalks,” Buzzard rails. “LOPPING more walk-offs for his necklace; PLOPPING his victims overboard. Some of the walk-offs are quick, devious. They escape. BEWARE! These walk-offs gone-feral hate humans. They lie in wait to destroy us.”

“What the Buzzard says gotta be true,” a pirate belly-aches to the others. It’s after lunch. They sit on crates near the railing – so they can vomit. The Rasputin-of-the-word – Buzzard, his sly comrade Rasputin-of-the-poison, Mariner, has upped the dosage – just a smidgeon – so that the savvy-to-the-tricks-of-the-sea, dregs, don’t notice. They think only, ‘the waves are having their way with gullets.’ They tremble continuously, and sweat so much that their raggedy limp clothes seem starched from saturating then drying so often.

(The poisons keep Capt’n stupor-fied. The pentad of mutineers know he may prove an asset if alive. One of them always guards him in his quarters turned prison.)

Crew’s superstitions beckon irrationality. In their poison-induced hallucinations walk-offs come to life; stalk. They begin believing they sail on what is becoming a ghost ship that may be overtaken anytime by the walk-offs. As Buzzard spins his tale, the dregs mutter vows in a dozen languages, about skirting the mast after dark and keeping near the rail to avoid Kunta.

“That’ll never do,” Buzzard counters. “Kunta and his shelled vampire straddle the ship’s sides, leaping on the unsuspecting.” Dregs look warily over the rail, wishing for land. It’s a thousand miles off.

The usually mawkish-squawkish Captain Polly is quiet. ‘The monster walk-offs will see I am no dreg. I will reason with them. Teach them the humans’ many languages. (Captain Polly knows at least a dozen.) Oh so valuable I can be.’ None of Captain Polly’s self-assurances quells her horror of, while still alive, being plucked, de-beaked and de-clawed by Kunta and Turt.

When not stalking the deck with his flapping, Buzzard’s usually arguing in the galley with Mariner about the tactics of their tightly schemed mutiny. But they agree, fully, with the results.

“How’d it get to this?” the crew whispers to each other. “Turt’s curse, for ravaging his island for the shell and meat of his relatives?” Others think hexing, by a tribal witch in retaliation for stealing Kunta.

Ominous signs of the walk-offs – stinking dried blood trails staining the deck – swell superstitions. A once-tranquil voyage of plunder and pleasure is now, nightmare. “Why’s our Capt’n keepin’ to quarters? Even at his sickliest, he’s stayed the deck wielding his whip. Why’s he issuein’ orders through Buzzard?”

Buzzard, in this short time, seems to have been elevated to acting Captain. Many pirates are loyal to him – ‘only way to survive’ – as they struggle to man-the-ship to get close to land.

THE TALE OF MAMA L’S SECRET SLICKENS

Mariner, allowed enough chain to come up for daylight, listens to Buzzard’s tales from the galley doorway. Captain Polly watches Mariner wipe fish blood from cleaver onto his neck-to-knee apron. In futility, she gnaws her chain, wary of the time he might want her for a ‘fixin’. From the first meal, he cooked – it smelled sweet as any Amazonian jungle cuisine –

– pirates shoveled it in. When they spooned some into Captain Polly’s bucket, she sniffed, recognizing ingredients humans cannot. (plants from Leezian’ bayou; recipes, come courtesy of Mama Lucy.) Flying over the ‘Big Easy’ Captain Polly had seen their effect on critters. They went battier than during a Gone Luna. So now, Captain Polly is subsisting on the array of bugs flying close to her perch. ‘Oh,’ growls Captain Polly’s stomach, ‘but to fly free of this ship.’

Mariner found the slickens – kegs of North Africa’s plants, almost cousins to poisonous Leezian’ claw-root and twig-lick – during his first day in the galley. “One dasha’ claw banish evil spirits.” Creviced old Mama Lucy had ‘scienced-up’ Mariner in her cabin’s kitchen-lab. “Cure most ills. Two dasha’ twig cures yer patient of inflictin’ devils. Three-’a-each, ‘n the devil escape; slitheren’ inta another ta inhabitate.”

Mariner always uses two-and-a-half, insuring deferred insanity. He can’t give three to finish the job – crew’s needed to get ship to shore. If it appears madness may arrive before land, he lessens the dose. For Buzzard, Rrrose Heather, her ladies and himself he prepares simpler fare. For Capt’n, who killed most of Mariner’s dear friends from the commandeered ship, Mariner prepares meals with another cousin-berry – the dung-flower.

“Gaarente-ad’,” Mama’ll testify. “Tuz cause most-vile hallucinatin’, yea inde-ad’.”

Mariner looks from Buzzard, who is finishing a tale, and glances at Captain Polly. She imagines he’s saying, “Ready to join yer Capt’n, Captain?” She gnaws shackle even more desperately.

TALE OF A SAIL

“Hoist starboard keel. Set jig-rigging north, northwest.” Buzzard mangles the orders of the ‘silent-Captain’, Mariner, rendering them illogical. Doesn’t matter; bedraggled crew sails by rote. No doubt, Rasputin-Buzzard steers the emotions of fear; Rasputin-Mariner helms the mayhem triggering it.

TALE OF HOW THE WALK-OFFS ‘REALLY’ CAME ABOARD

Late at night: Cleaver descends. “WHAP!” A piercing scream, ‘THUMPS’, of running. Scream stops with watery “PLOP”! Someone yells: “MAN OVERBOARD.” In the shadows, Mariner wipes cleaver clean and oysters-out slimy walk-off from the tip of leather shoe.

All the crew now wears shoes. ‘Does ‘em little good,’ Mariner grins.

From her manacled spot near the helm, Captain Polly quivers midst a new revelation: ‘New Cookie’s got a key. He can come for me anytime.’

Mariner eases back to the galley and re-shackles himself. He stows walk-offs in the Capt’n’ humidor. In a few days, as just another small way to nudge Capt’n closer to insanity, he’ll have Rrrose deliver it to Capt’n’ new quarters – a six by six dungeon-like room, rancid from 50 years of storing smoked mackerel.

Capt’n sleeps constantly, awakens only to his own screams caused by hallucinogenic dreams of sea creatures devouring him alive – more of the effects from Mariner and Mama’s ‘slickens’.

THE TALE OF A ‘GOOD’ LIFE FOR SOME

Buzzard, Rrrose Heather, and the ladies they now occupy Capt’n’ plush quarters.

“You’ll live with the bloody walk-offs throughout hell’s eternity,” Rrrose Heather, veiled as fortune tellers Capt’n always visited when in ports, soothsays to him – her personal revenge for what he’s done to she and her ladies. She leaves the humidor with him in his dungeon.

THE TALE OF A ‘WORSE’ LIFE FOR OTHERS

Midst hot-cold sweats, Capt’n removes lid and reaches for a cigar. The slimy walk-offs feel like jellyfish, their stench, worse than the rancid mackerel. He pushes humidor. Contents spill. His eyes widen as hallucinations spiral into a parade of the moldy gray-green walk-offs tip-toeing to come choke him. Too paralyzed to move, he screams, continuously, curdling-ly.

Reverberations echo through ship and shake the mast. Crew looks up at the sails, expecting to see Kunta and his monster, their arms, fin-claws stretched in victory sign to show that they now control the ship.

Buzzard swoops from the ship’s wheel. What to expect? He is sure he’ll find Capt’n, dead.

Captain Polly hops on the wheel to steady the ship as Capt’n has trained her for times when an automatic parrot is necessary. Though she loathes Capt’n, she feels pangs of sorrow. That lasts just seconds. She sings in an ecstatic combination of a half-dozen languages. “Blow the man down, mate. Blow the man down. You gave us time, we blew the man down.”

The crew doesn’t share her joy. If Capt’n is dead, hope for survival is with Buzzard.

‘Who will be at his mercy?’ Many silently vow ‘to become his slave if he protects them from Kunta and Turt.’ Captain Polly’s had enough of being a chained slave. She has another idea.

Buzzard returns to the wheel, relieved that Rrrose’s act of revenge hasn’t killed Capt’n. Captain Polly hops to his shoulder, brushes plumage sensually against his neck, gently nibbles ear, coos, “Lover bird. Loverbird. I’ll be true to you.”

(Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged archeo-apologist, Captain Polly, culture, Fiction House Publishing, Halloween story, humor, mutiny, nostalgia, pirate story, Raji Singh, short stories, Tales of the Fiction House, whimsy, Whimsy alternate history | Leave a comment

GOBLINS IN YOUR DESK DRAWER

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Raji Singh

(Previously posted on Pen in Hand)

By Raji Singh

Calico in a frantic flight from the goblins (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

October Horrors Await! Some fear ghosts, skeletons, even neighborhood elves with hungry eyes and empty trick-or-treat bags. But writers…that is altogether different. Here’s an old favorite from dusty Fiction House files. Happy Hallooooooooween!

* * *

Writers beware. Word and sentence gobbling goblins may live in your desk drawer.

Writers, be prepared: You with manuscripts years, or maybe decades old are most at risk! They don’t seem to attack recent works. You may find your old masterpieces decimated, as much so as if you wrote them on oak blocks and ravenous termites discovered them.

The goblins perform quite thorough jobs of editing. Your book, short story, screenplay may be as unrecognizable, as if studio hacks were charged with re-writes via committee.

I discovered this fact, when deciding to dust off and review my ‘TRUE MASTERPIECE’ of a few years back. Multiple agents and editors didn’t recognize the genius story line, character developments, plot twists, and overall grandeur of the work at the time I queried them. So I’d put it aside.

‘Strange,’ I thought removing my paper copy from its dusty wrapping to re-familiarize myself. ‘What’s this? This word wasn’t misspelled way back when. Hey, this sentence doesn’t make any sense.’

What’s up? I knew exactly what I meant to say, and I said it, when I wrote this.

Something’s wrong! Page after page I, first peruse, and then intently study. Words are missing, participles dangling, adjectives inconsistently jangling, images incoherently tangling.

What’s this? Even my main character changing his name, eye color, even sex, and then chameleon-like becoming who he was in time for the BIG denouement.

There is only one explanation: Those hobbling, gobbling goblins of time. My masterpiece – reduced to gnarled waste paper: All because those tiny-vision agents and editors couldn’t see the grand scale of my work. If not for them, my work would be on bookshelves throughout the literate world, there for Humankind to learn from, and, help bring peace and harmony to all. Published and safely ensconced and shining on bookshelves, my masterwork would have been safe from the dusty desk drawer goblins of time.

C’ est la vie.

I’ll go through the book again. And again. The world is waiting.

Maybe, a good lesson to other writers? Put your writing aside for a few weeks, not more than a few months, if even that, but most certainly, not a few years. A SHORT interval of time will give you a fresh, clear perspective on it.

Never, ever put it aside for years, or you too may start believing in goblins.

I bid adieu wishing you happy writing, and as importantly, happy meticulous rewriting.

(Enjoy Raji Singh’s whimsical slice of life tales and vignettes at Tales of the Fiction House.com You can buy his novel, Tales of the Fiction House- a completely different story- at Amazon)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged editing, old manuscripts, Raji Singh, revising writing, rewriting, rewriting old manuscripts, Tales of the Fiction House, writing humor | Leave a comment

LABOR’S DAY SMILE

Posted on September 5, 2022 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh (editor, Fiction House Publishing)

Happy Labor Day! In honor of the laborers, we offer our thanks and a favorite post from the Fiction House Archives.

* * *

“…he died at age 52,” reports the network anchor, breaking the news of the death of….“A successful business person, he was known to proudly brag of working 16 hours a day, usually 6 to 7 days a week. Doctors report he died of sudden…

“Associates say, ‘He worked himself to death’. It’s reported his personal net worth exceeds one billion dollars.”

“Jack died doing what he loved most,” says his widow as her face comes on the screen briefly. “Making money.”

***

“I believe she was smiling just a little, when she said that, don’t you, Raji?” Tenille says playfully, as she comes from the kitchen and turns off the TV. “’He worked himself to death.’ They never say, ‘He took-it-easy’d himself to death,’ hmm Raji.”

I smile. “I knew him.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Not well. But enough to know he never took a break from the money chase. He was always pestering me, trying to buy one of my businesses. Just so he could turn around and sell it. I overheard a conversation at a restaurant between him and his wife. She kept telling him, ‘Slow down, Jack.’ He was on the phone through their entire meal. He obviously didn’t hear her.”

Tenille sits beside me on the couch, brushes her fingers across my cheek, and kisses my mouth. “I’m glad you’re not like that anymore, Raji.”

“Well, I was never quite like Jack. Still, you and the children changed me.”

My Sweet Ancestor, Shelva Fiction

Tenille’s josh, “They never say, ‘He took-it-easy’d himself to death,” is something I agree with wholeheartedly. It’s a sentiment I’m certain most, maybe all my ancestors here at the Fiction House practiced.

“Fortunately, it does not appear, mine sweet druzhyna husbant Raji, you will be featured in a news story like that anytime soon, eh?” Tenille is mimicking, kindly, my Russian immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction. Tenille knew her very well. (I wish I had known G – Gra’ma Shelva. I didn’t, growing up so far away from her.)

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Shelva was always involved, fully, with life every moment of her over 100 years. Her thousands of stories, many of which we’ve been publishing at Fiction House, certainly prove it.

Tenille imitates in a loving way the odd little Muscovite sayings Shelva incorporated into her ‘Amerika talk’.

“I learn English; Russian steppes by steppes. The consonants of North and South Amerika, they are an ocean away from the consonants of Asia and Europe. That distance – it is good. Because, then there is no worry about the Czar’s Cossack butchers disemvoweling you.”

This is what Shelva’s ‘husbant’, her sweet druzhyna, said when George Bernard Shaw published Pygmalion. “My Fair Lady, Shelva. It wasn’t long before she was speaking English as well as Professor Higgins, and writing like Shaw in never-ending journals.”

Shelva and Jack: I wonder if they had anything at all in common. Jack made money, and at age 52 that money made his widow smile, slightly. Shelva at over double that age was still traveling, still helping raise children, still helping fellow Muscovites to freedom, still writing of past, present and yet to come experiences that thousands would come to read. So many ‘stills’ for Shelva. She was always smiling.

I don’t think, of all the times I saw Jack, I ever saw him smile.

(Join me at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Read more about Shelva and meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story. It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged alternate history, archeo-apologist, culture, Efraim Ephraim, Happy Labor Day, humor, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, Labor Day, new short stories, nostalgia, Raji Singh, Shelva Fiction, short stories, short story, Tales of the Fiction House, working too hard | Leave a comment

A BACK TO SCHOOL TALE: THE LEGEND OF THE SCARLET TOUNGED, BLUE MOUTH DEMONS

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Raji Singh

To our adult and teacher friends, we hope that this coming school year is a bright one for you and for our children. As you face those young ones, many have fears they are afraid to express. As you comfort them and transform them into excited learners, we thank you. To gift you with a smile, please accept this whimsical excerpt from The Seasons of My Giving Back.

* * *

School’s JUST starting for some and forever out for many. Here’s a school daze reminiscing that nearly scared the “be-jeezers” out of me, and made me truly experience how much more satisfying the giving back is than the taking.

* * *

From the sidewalk, you believe you hear terror in the voices of the Aru brothers. When you peek through their bookshop door, propped to allow in the morning breeze, you think you see fright on their faces.

Moher often tells you, “Never eavesdrop, Raji. It is impolite.”

You wish you had heeded her admonition. Nightmares, sweat drenching sleepless nights, and a discombobulated first month of school result from what you overhear. The street traffic is noisy. So you make out just pieces of the conversation.

“…They may well overrun all Cincinnati, those, those…”

Ari Aru finishes his brother, Sari’s sentence. “…Those scarlet tongued, blue mouths…”

Though it is still warm September, Ari and Sari’s next words freeze you, as if you’re a January snowman.

“…4th grade boys…”

“…turning them into…”

“…so hideous, so scary…”

You clench your school lunch sack and remind yourself, ‘You are a 4th grader, Raji.’

“Hi Raji,” Ari shouts, thawing me.

“Hello, Mr. Aru.”

“Come in Raji. The book your father ordered arrived. We’ll wrap it up for you to give him.”

Even though you’ve known these bearded and ancient Lindian neighborhood Uncles as long as you can remember, suddenly it seems you don’t know them. You hesitate entering their shop. The always-there baggy, blue-black puffs beneath their eyes, seeming gentle smiles, suddenly appear sinister.

“Do not just stand there, Raji.” Ari takes you by one shoulder.

Sari seizes the other.

These friendly bookish confines you’ve been in hundreds of times, becomes a trapping lair.

The brothers lead you to the counter. The business has an out of place scent, burning saffron. Strange chants, in a Lindian dialect you do not understand, emanate from tinny speakers in a back room.

Ari and Sari dress in white cotton dhoti shirts and multi-color silk pants. They keep, oddly, to the old world Lindian ways. They chew teeth reddening betel nut, yet worship Goddess Nardesha who forbade the addictive habit. They speak perfect English, yet stock only Lindian language books and newspapers. These things, that for you had been ‘just the way the brothers are’, now are ominous.

You begin believing – If you were a stranger passing through our neighborhood…those red teeth, and blue-black under-eyes…you’d keep right on going, lickety-split.

“What grade are you in this year, Raj?”

You stammer. “Four…fourth.”

“Hmm!” Ari looks to Sari and back to me. “Well you be very careful, Raji. Because boys your age…”

You don’t hear the rest of what he says, because you grab the package, and run out. You’re just sure you hear Ari say to Sari, “I just hope our Raji doesn’t become one of those scarlet tongued, blue mouths.”

Don’t know what one is: A zombie, giant lizard, horrific monster. Don’t want to find out.

* * *

Throughout September, you avoid walking by the bookshop. With time and distance, you start realizing your distrust of the Aru brothers is unwarranted. What you should fear is the scarlet tongued, blue mouths of whom they speak.

You look twice into alleys you must cross. You never know if a scarlet tongued, blue mouth may lie in wait, or what they may do to you. You shutter your mind to the possibilities.

~ ~ You may very well enquire, Dear Reader. “Why aren’t you asking an adult about the scarlet tongued, blue mouths?” ~ ~

It is because of another conversation you overhear. Sari Aru is on a street corner talking to a parent of a classmate. “So it got your son. I am sorry to hear that. But he will survive. Embarrassment will be his only illness. That is fortunate.”

Then Sari says. “If only they’d stop talking about it, then they would all be safe from the scarlet tongued, blue mouths.”

That convinces you. Your lips are sealed.

The next day you look close at the talked about boy. There it is, hardly noticeable, a slight tinge of blue to his lips. When he speaks, you see a slightly scarlet tongue.

You look at the mouths of other classmates. You lean too close to a girl’s face.

“What are you doing, Creep?” Margaret cries and backs away. “Are you spying on me? Mom wants you to report if I wear makeup. Doesn’t she?” She quickly wipes off bluish lipstick. “I hate you Raji Singh!”

Margaret runs from the room. You sink low in your seat as everyone looks at you – glaring, smiling, as if you two were a 4th grade ‘item’ and it was revealed at that moment.

Maybe confronting a scarlet tongued, blue mouth would have been easier than dealing with Marr-grr-ett.

* * *

That afternoon on the playground, ‘The Mystery’ solves itself.

Boys line up to climb the ladder to the slides. Mop-haired Joshua, a sly trickster, secretively shares one of his gimmicks. He takes a plastic pen from his pocket. He says, “The Aru brothers carry these at their store. If the pens go bad, they may look at you funny, but they’ll give you a new one. When you’re almost out of ink, just suck on the air hole, like this.”

The boys watch curiously. The ink rises slowly. Something strange happens. Maybe it is high readings in barometric pressure that day. Maybe Joshua is showing off and applies too much suck effort? The blue ink suddenly spurts from its tube – like red mercury from a thermometer in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Joshua spits, phhts, and phews as the ink coats his lips and seeps onto his tongue. His mouth turns blue, and his tongue scarlet. He runs wildly around the playground, spitting, phht-ing and phew-ing as he wipes crazily at his face.

* * *

The question you will always have for Ari and Sari, but will always be afraid to ask, “Did you know I was listening to you that September morning when I was in 4th grade? And, was it for my own good?”

“It was a giving back to me, simple lesson in honesty, wasn’t it? Thank you Ari, Sari.”

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Children's stories, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged 4th grade boys, culture, fun, humor, imagination, James Thaddeus 'Blackjack' Fiction, new short stories, Raji Singh, school stories, short stories, start of school year, Tales of the Fiction House, whimsy | Leave a comment

Tales of the Fiction House

ST. PATRICK’S DAY TALE– RRROSE HEATHER, A DAUGHTER OF OL’ IRE-LAND

BEST ACTOR AWARD

VALENTINE, COME WITH ME TO THE KISSING TREE

IMAGINE…DREAMING AS A KING, INSPIRING AS A GANDHI, UNITING AS A MANDELA (or simply – using laughter to lighten another’s load)

YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, RAJI — A LINDIAN CHRISTMAS LESSON

THANKSGIVING AT THE HOME OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S NE’ER DO WELL BROTHER (a delicious holiday repast)

A HALLOWEEN SPOOKER: THE DISPUTIN’ RASPUTINS OF THE HIGH SEAS (AND THEIR WALK-OFFS)

GOBLINS IN YOUR DESK DRAWER

LABOR’S DAY SMILE

A BACK TO SCHOOL TALE: THE LEGEND OF THE SCARLET TOUNGED, BLUE MOUTH DEMONS

UNEARTHING THE FICTION HOUSE

Follow Blog via Email

Raji Singh

The Novel: Tales of the Fiction House by Raji Singh

Shelva Fiction by Mark Rogers

The Seasons of My Giving Back, By Mark Rogers

Captain Polly’s Lore of the Lindian Woods

Seeds of Vengeance, by Mark Rogers

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archives

Administration

Recent Posts

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

UNEARTHING THE FICTION HOUSE

Follow Blog via Email

Raji Singh

The Novel: Tales of the Fiction House by Raji Singh

Shelva Fiction by Mark Rogers

The Seasons of My Giving Back, By Mark Rogers

Captain Polly’s Lore of the Lindian Woods

Seeds of Vengeance, by Mark Rogers

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Archives

Administration