CHARLES DARWIN’S VICTORIAN ROMANCE

Posted on June 5, 2017 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 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)

‘THE literary romance of the 19th century.’

How a trusty bird made the romance take flight.  In honor of National Pet Appreciation Week.

From the Fiction House Archives

~ ~ I watched her for so many consecutive Sunday mornings.  It was the mid 1830’s.  I think I was 11, maybe 12.  Just before daybreak, I’d rise; look out the porthole of the wharf-shack where I grew up.  By the banks of the Ohio, she’d be standing, arms outstretched.  Her long black hair, an ebony river all its own, flowed in the breeze.  Or maybe her hair was a flag, waving in the bird that flew up the Ohio and landed on her shoulder just as the sun started its rise.  Her frame was post-straight, like the sensuous figureheads on the ships bows that I imagined beckoning me to accompany them on adventures as they departed the docks.

I was entranced by this woman, not like a boy with his mother, aunt or sister; or a near teen with a female not more than ten years his senior.  She was mystical, magical.  Someone, I just knew who harbored secrets of emotions few others did.  I wanted to breathe in full the scent of those emotions; to caress, to hear their siren call, somehow even taste their culinary delight.  I knew, at that moment, she would lead me to the vast banquet that is pure, virginal joy.

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ Mariner so often ‘adaged’ me as we spun tales of our days, by night’s lantern light of the crate-wood wharf-shack – Home.  (Mariner was my father, friend, brother, teacher.  Every book I ever voyaged into was because of this man who couldn’t read a word.)

Today, I would venture to meet my living bow figurehead.

“Hello,” I shouted, but the word came out barely a whisper.  She turned as I approached.  She was unwinding a paper from around the bird’s leg.

She smiled.  “A letter from my soul mate.”

I wasn’t disappointed.  “How did the bird find it?”

“She’s a carrier pigeon.  She brought it.  All the way from a ship, thousands of miles away.  In a few days, she’ll return to my Charles with a reply.  Charles is such a keen man.  He’s trained them to do things one would think unimaginable.”  She put her finger to her mouth, giggled, and then put her finger to the pigeon’s beak.  “Shh!  Our romance is a secret from our papas.  For now.  But one day we’ll tell them.”

“Did his ship launch from Cincinnati?  What’s its name?  Maybe I know your Charles.”

“You’d not have met.  He left from England, on HMS Beagle.”

Maybe one day we’ll meet.”

“Perhaps.”

We sat on the rocky bank and talked for hours that Sunday.  And for countless hours on what seems now like hundreds to come.  My – banquets of Sundays.

“I’ve seen you tell your tales to the gathered dockworkers,” she said.  Their smiles are a joy to behold as they listen.  How many nickels and dimes do they fill your capper with?”

“Sometimes six, ten, once even a dozen bits.”

“You should write down your tales, and sell them.  Think of all the others who could wear such smiles also.  If you tell better than you write, there are scribes for hire.”

Thus did Harriet Beecher plant the seed in my thoughts.

Fiction House Publishing would be the thriving result. ~ ~

Read Blackjack’s story; and, how Harriet Beecher Stowe came to write, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in Tales of the Fiction House.  Published by the resurrected Fiction House Publishing.

(Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2017, 2013 Raji Singh

© 2012 by Raji Singh

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

PET TO HUMAN DEDICATION: WHY WE HAVE NATIONAL PET APPRECIATION WEEK

Posted on June 4, 2017 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 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)

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)

In honor of National Pet Appreciation week, June 5, 2017, a Fiction House reminder of those furry, feathery, leathery, or fishy special residents in our hearts…

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. 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.

*     *     *

‘CALL ME TURT

‘For that is what is written on my shell. I too am a foundling. A kind human took me in as a shelling. On new shores, I trumpet my anxious call, then wait, fearing there are no more of my kind to hear. I listen. No answer. With fin-claws, I scrape the sand. I sniff. No familial soothing dank pungency to assure me my own were here or still might be in existence? My blare resonates with my melancholy.’

SUMMER, 1966

Turt’s leathery head, the shape, the size of a football, bobs above the glassy Lindian Ocean surf. He notices that absent suddenly are the screams and strafing of gulls. ‘Flyers know things,’ Turt thinks, ‘something is amiss.’

Octopi carcass oils pucker Turt’s tongue as they skim past his beak-snout. Blue water fleetingly shines vermillion then dulls. Clear sky mirrors the change. Turt’s sea-senses, honed over the past century-and-a-half, warn of these signs no ‘two-legs’, humans, could recognize: ‘Young Master Typhoon is born, grows beyond the horizon. Snake-sly is he. In a blink, those white-capped fangs will grow deadly. He will devour all who are upon the sea.’

Ordinarily, Turt welcomes riding out a typhoon’s rambunctious nature and thrills at their slapdash spirit. Today he is wary. For Turt is on a mission. He shadows a ferry, the Bashri Raku, to protect three passengers, Dr. James Thaddeus Fiction IV, his wife, their four-year old James the Fifth.

They are taking a two-year Peace Corps leave of their free clinic in Cincinnati that treats the city’s growing number of Lindian immigrants. They hope to recruit a Lindian – a Dr. Singh – to practice in Cincinnati and help them better understand his people’s ways.

Turt has vowed the Fictions eventual safe return to their home half-a-world away.

The family knows Turt is near, though he seldom surfaces. Faithfully, he has followed, down the Ohio, Mississippi, through the Gulf, out to sea. He dines quite nicely on sumptuous scraps the cooks toss overboard, and delicacies that swim too close. Whenever some curious critter queries ‘Whither thou goest, Traveler?’ he explains, then adds, ‘In strange lands, best I follow quietly – lest I end up in two-leg soup served in mine own shell.’

A LOYAL HOUND IN ARMOR TO GENERATIONS

Most of his life, this giant of sometimes land, sometimes sea, has looked after the Fiction line. It started with helping protect the patriarch, the foundling James Thaddeus Fiction, the Carper, 140 years earlier, from all variety of nemesis – man, animal, nature.

At a picnic two years before now, Turt rescued impetuous James V (that’s me, Raji) after he stripped off britches and skimmed quietly into the Ohio. Turt slipped quickly from bank, coursing swiftly to the rescue. Submerging, rising, he emerged with the boy fish flopping atop his shell. He delivered James safely to shore, to frantically searching parents who had looked away for ‘just seconds.’

Why does Turt do this? Quite simply, pet-to-human dedication: He is a loyal hound-in-armor to generations. Only those animals with the freest of spirit, as Turt, choose this highest form of be-knighted pet-hood. Turt has seen all the Fictions’ frailties, foibles, faults, traits that turn humans from one another. Of all pets, only the most loyal fully sense these things, never understand them, always forgive, and make fidelity, as Turt does, paramount. Turt’s bond to the three on board has been fused, hardened, and forged through generations.

Humans would call it love.

Turt will not let even the most powerful Master Typhoon pull it asunder.

But the sky reddens, ripples patter the Bashri Raku’s stern – nudging, warning, ‘The Sea is MINE.’ Belligerence rapidly grows as Typhoon reaches adolescence. Now, waves batter. Wind slaps. ‘All in it, or upon it, belong to ME!’

 

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

My Pet Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of Turt and Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

 

 

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

PETS ON MEMORIAL DAY

Posted on May 21, 2017 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 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)

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)

In honor of National Pet Month, our Memorial Day Tribute to our other family members…

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. 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.

*        *        *

Being a foundling on Memorial Day is difficult. You want to memorialize past generations. How can you, if you don’t know your relatives? Pet lovers, like me, we can remember a Fido or Puss passed on.

But what if your beloved is a parrot? My Captain Polly may live well over 200 years.

Or your beloved pet is a Trumpeter? Turt is my Trumpeter’s name. He is a rare form of giant land-sea turtle that may live just as long.

“They may very well outlive you, Raji,” my wife reminds me.

Maybe they will parade by my headstone to honor me one last time.

I can just see it – Captain Polly rides on Turt’s huge shell. I smell the sweetly pungent sardine – my favorite food – Turt, in my honor tosses from his beak-snout onto the sod that sits six feet above my head.

I smell the warm, dry brimming-with-seed sunflower – my favorite snack – that Captain Polly drops from her talons alongside Turt’s offering. Then Captain Polly warbles a rhapsodic melody and Turt trumpets a coronet-like accompaniment.

Such is the life of a foundling for Memorial Day: Just imagination, dreams.

I love my pets. I know they love me.

For the next series of postings, I will be ruminating on pets of all sorts. I hope you’ll recognize some similarities to critters you know. And what more appropriate time than May, National Pet Month?

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

My Pet Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of Turt, Captain Polly, and Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2014 Raji Singh

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MOTHER’S DAY MAGIC

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

In honor of our mothers, from the archives of The Fiction House…

Shelva Fiction, One of My Three Mothers

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. A thousand minus one perish. 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.
*      *      *
MY THREE MOTHERS

She was well over 100 when I was still a little boy.
I am not even sure I met her, though I am told I did.
Yet my memories of her, my Russian immigrant great grandmother Shelva Fiction, they are vivid as the two mothers who raised me. My memories of Shelva come from letters and stories ‘Mother’ Shelva composes throughout her lifetime:

She tucks the writings away in obscure hiding places in the Fiction House.

Who can say why?

Securely they wait, until I discover them.

The find, purely by accident?

“No,” Tenille tells me, as we sit in front of the fireplace on a still brisk May evening – Mother’s Day. “Fate led you to them, Raji. In spirit, she was watching over you, leading you to them.”

Here now is how Shelva accomplished this mystical feat – on a magical Mother’s Day, of the previous year.

* * *

It’s late. Luny Mum is full. Dark clouds drifting by occasionally obscure her orb. Scarlet-hued rays streamed ominously from Poppy Sol before he retired for the evening. Tenille and our children are asleep upstairs. It is quiet. Other than a squeaky floorboard, or rattling water pipe, the grand rambling Fiction House is so peaceful this time of night. I am drawn to Shelva’s portrait gracing an alcove. I cannot say why, maybe I’m under a spell or in a trance.

Shelva’s a smooth-cheeked brunette, her neck thin and willowy. She’s stately as any Czarina. The flash of her blue eyes radiates against her glowing olive skin. Ageless, I cannot tell if she’s 25 or 45 when she posed Breathing, deeply, I think I smell borscht and caviar, her favorite repasts: Maybe she and the artist noshed midst the sitting, and now a tangy beet-earth scent and a wisp of the sea life permanently saturate the canvas.

I crank her old oak Victrola, and turn the volume low so I won’t wake anyone. The only ones aroused are the spirits of old Russia as the soft strains of balalaika music sift around me. Suddenly and for no reason the music spikes.

The noise – like a thousand Cossacks crowding me, doing a foot-clapping kazatsky dance.

Fortunately, the doors upstairs are closed. No one stirs.
Shelva’s portrait tilted slightly from the vibration.     The tilting, along with Luny Mum’s obscuring shadows make it look like Shelva’s mouth moves. It must be my imagination, but I hear her say, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time Raji. Catch me as I make the leap into your world.”

Her portrait begins to teeter-totter, as if somehow it is unbalanced. Then I hear a fanning-shuffling, like a deck of cards. She falls toward me. As I hold her upright, hundreds of envelopes spew from around the back of the frame. They cover the floor.

The very first one I open is a word map, giving directions to her hiding places. Squirreled into nooks, crammed into crannies, filed behind false-paneled walls, I find more envelopes, containing what I’d describe as “word-hoards”.

Furiously, curiously, deliriously I read her tales of the Fiction House. They give me clues – as to who I am, and the history of forebears I never knew; and knowledge of all the residents, saints to sinners, whose lives helped mold me –

The Fiction House residents: Blackjack Fiction, Laza Bones Thibidioux, The Mariner, Kunta Kiinder, Efraim Ephraim, Captain Polly, Turt, Cecily Cobra, Luny Mum, Poppy Sol and all the others I’ve never met.

I sit on the floor and weep, in joy. For the first time since the ferry accident, I truly feel I am James Thaddeus Fiction – the Fifth, besides being Raji Singh.

I feel re-born –

As James.

Thank you great gra’ma, Shelva. Happy Mother’s Day.

Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

To me, an orphan foundling who knew little of his past, or the people he came from, it is Happy Birth Day.

(Join me every Sunday night 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. Learn more about Shelva in Shelva Fiction, available at Amazon.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh

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

MAY DAY ON THE BAYOU IN POEM AND STORY

Posted on April 30, 2017 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 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)

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“Tis 1800, there ‘bouts, early morn.

From the Archives of the Fiction House.  Happy May Day!

“Today Thibidioux chil’ to be born.

Butterflies come and tell me so.

‘Come Mama Lucy – time to go.’”

110 year-old healer and midwife Mama Lucy chants these words as she walks sprightly along the bayou road leading to the Thibidioux cabin. Amulet necklaces of critter teeth and bones click together in time to her pace.

“13’s be wild

Bad tidins’ for comin’ child

Ups to me to potion free

The innocent born to be”

She cups hands behind her back and catches a floating 13-pointed leaf. For luck, she extends ritual by popping it in her mouth, swallowing.

“Should be gay – this First of May

But twelve plus one crayfish

Black pussy, at my door, lay.”

Mama Lucy’s words that come, seldom, yet sublime, often arrive in singsong rhyme. ‘Dems of the bayou forgive her this crime. They know the tragedy that fraught this

“My only beget,

Son,

He,

Alligator ‘et’.”

Shoeless, her worm-thin toes wriggle in the dirt. Dress looks a gunnysack containing rattly-bony frame. Never tall, with age she’s shrunk to the length of a yard-and-a-third stick, almost as thin. She’s pliable, like willow; no dry twigs of arthritis. Easily she carries a 40-pound carpetbag of potions, lotions and cures weighing half herself. Ghost-white hair sprouts sparsely from atop once onion-round head that is now withered, avocado shape. You can’t tell if she’s white or black because time has blended her skin to a neutral gray. Blind, eyes shriveled pits; she views with eagle vision the world through her senses.

From seemingly nowhere lightening crisscrosses the azure sky, occasionally igniting burbling swamp gas. The explosions are like popping firecrackers. They frizz thick moss swaying from trees. Mama Lucy sniffs,

“Rotten egg smell.

‘Yea, do foretell

Fomentin.’

Bad day be born

Today’s chil’

Lifelong forlorn.”

She plans to dose the mother with a tonic of foamed mushroom and boiled spleck to delay birth ‘til past midnight, when a new day would bring fresh charms.

Mama Lucy feels the air, suddenly dank.

“Hundred yards yonder

13 gators, dey bask.

Dey no hinder

My carin’-for task.”

She doesn’t veer: BLIND PERSISTENCE; BLINDING STUBBORNESS!

Rouge dust stirs at Mama’s feet as she meanders to, then among the lounging reptiles: All are tan-tinted 8 to 12 footers – biggest in the swamps. [1]

  Senses tell Mama Lucy that today they scheme as they lounge. She feels their fear and apprehension as they nervously swing open their snouts. Teeth brush her knees. They cry out at her intrusion.

Their instincts – to stave off riling-up two-legs, thus, preventing wholesale gator slaughter – dictates their bayou code:

GATOR BRETHREN EAT A TWO-LEG. THEN THEIR RELATIVE BE UNTOUCHABLE. SO, NONE MAY HARM MAMA!

This, be their ancient bayou ‘way’.

Mama Lucy plucks gently into balmy air and catches mosquito. She holds it, as New Orleans gentry hold teacup between thumb and forefinger.

“Skeeter, take mah blood.”

She lets it sting, then, bayou-lightening fast, moves her hand and places it near the biggest gator’s battle-cratered snout – that of King Creole. King Creole instinctively scissors open, shuts jaw. He snarfs insect cleanly, not touching human finger.

“I trick you, mah shaz a mio.

My blood floods into you, King Creole

So now hast you strode

Over your own precious code”

Again, this cunning ancient human who knows him well has duped him – the KING!

She, who took him in as foundlin’ gator, hardly bigger ‘n a human finger. He were dehydrated, floppin’ down-side up, hunnerd yards from the bayou. Doctored ‘im day n’ night; wet-nursed scratchy, wee-toothed beast right alongside own boy ‘til ‘e could ‘et solids: Let ‘em both sleep together; raised ‘im into a fine young specimen, she did, then set im free in the swamps so ‘e could live ‘mongst own kind.

N’ ‘ow ‘e repays ‘er? By, years later returnin’ and ‘etten her grown son, his own crib, then sandbox, then pirogue, brother.

Creole snaps, bellows. Slimy reptile saliva spatters Mama’s face. She wipes it into a bottle she snakes from pocket.

‘I trick double.

My mojo’s workin‘

Gainst your lurkin’

No’ting a better fixer,

Den gatah-spit elixir.’

–Poppy Sol reflects philosophically down at the alligator conclave. ‘As humans do what they gotta; so to, gators do, but not necessarily what they oughtta.’–

Gators stare warily at their king. Grumbling growls. Some wonder. Should they doubt his ability to deal with the bayou two-legs.

King regains composure. He brings the conclave to order by thumping gavel tail. He needs their full support in their long-planned, REVOLUTION against humans that begins today. He raises tail, proudly, and then dangles it, disgusted. Embedded into it is a squirrel that failed to hustle past with a nut.

Mama Lucy: No longer does she despise Creole for ‘etten her only offspring right in front of her 3/4’s century past. She began rhymin’ – that’s how she stays sane. It took Mama nearly half-a-century,

“…ta be a realizin’

Life way-too shoat

To be a grievin’

A pirogue

Cain’t no longer float.”

She pats Creole’s snout. Though blind, she believes she can see her son’s eyes in Creole’s eyes. Imagined though that might be, it’s the only vestige of his life she’d ever have. Because of that, never would she harm Creole, she long-ago vowed. [2]

“I know you be a plannin’ somethun’, King Creole,” says Mama Lucy. “I be keepin’ eye on you wif’ my soul.” She slides a bottle from her carpetbag and sprinkles sparkly contents over gators. She chants,

“Grinded an’ pulverized leather hide

‘a gators long gone-away.

Let descendents see yer evil fate,

If today, on humans

You darest to prey.”

Gators sneeze, quiver, and shiver, at feeling the dust-touch of ancestors. Some run.

Huey Long, ruthless politico, demagogue in the making – King Creole’s top Lieutenant and held back only by King Creole – stops them with a growl that sends treed birds flying. ‘Do not let the old witch bad-omen us and stop our revolution. If you do, I will hunt you down. Your fate will be worse than that of becoming your ancestors’ powder.’

Gators of the conclave crouch. They fear staying but fear even more, going.

Mama Lucy re-commences trek toward the Thibidioux place – just up the way. Gators mill, always with two on lookout for Thibidioux cousins, uncles who might pass by with glistening explosion sticks deadlier than any razor fang.

[1]Perilous tannicus: Nicknamed ‘Gatemouth Browns’, because these muddy-complexioned perils have snouts that thrash wildly as gates in a gale. The swinging produces a twangy bluesy melody. Perilous tannicus live five times longer than most gator breeds, and some bayou folk claim it’s because their baby-cry-like songs relieve tension, subdue worries.

[2] ~~Editor’s note:  You, too, can see Mama Lucy’s son’s haunting eyes.~~

(Read more of Mama Lucy, King Creole, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

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

EYES OF A LIFETIME: A BAYOU POEM

Posted on April 23, 2017 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 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)

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)

FROM THE FICTION HOUSE FILES: In honor of National Poetry Month

A Farewell to Lucius Abel.  That last day with him, his Mama relives every day.

*     *      *

All is dark. Just one thing she sees – her son’s eyes – perpetual eyes.  Mama sees them from his beginning to end.

“He has your eyes darlin’ Lucy. We’ll call him after you”, young husband, now, so-long deceased, tells her.

She holds newborn tight. “And after you Abel. We be so happy – dans notre paradis de jolie.”

Her man strokes her perspiring jet hair and she feels so proud –

A tiny fragile body has her life in him.

Then she sees Lucius Abel a boy; eyes gleaming excitement when he catches first catfish by hand…

…as groom, determined eyes set on beautiful bride and their new life…

…then as new fa, to a boy destined to be their only child – excited, nervous eyes…

…as his wife and teen-age son are pulled from him during the hurricane; cold,despairing eyes…

…as his eyes now go dim, as the gator pulls him under for the final time.

She sees the turquoise eyes again of the newborn she once so tightly held.

“Sleep tight mon chil’.”

(Read more of Mama, Lucius Abel, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

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

A-TAX ON SYNTAX: HAPPY TAX WEEKEND

Posted on April 16, 2017 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 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)

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)

We’re in the Ides of April, National Poetry Month.

Here’s a little celebratory prose and verse,

To lighten the burden of the tax day curse.

It’s the 1890s. Fiction House’s hired hand, Efraim Ephraim, lounges alone in his cavernous Man Cave’s hot springs-hot tub. His moonshine still bubbles, almost in cadence to the burbles of the mineralized water. He lifts a jar of freshly dispensed crystal-clear White Lightening to his nose and sniffs. It has the same earthy bouquet of the plant root ingredients. He proudly toasts himself.

“My Dear Efraim, your recipe is unmatched.” He sips, and reconnoiters. “Ahh! An alcohol for the ages.

Angels would sing and dance in unheard of delight,

If on my special recipe they could get tight.

He tells himself, “I should send that ditty to Nellie Bly’s newspaper. They’d print it. On second thought, better not. Gov’ment men’d come and smash my Angel makin’ happy apparatus.”

Efraim contents himself on his reading material, a dilapidated 100-year old copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack.

‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’

“How right, your Almanacky is, dear Benny.” Efraim toasts the long-passed statesman, as if they were not only compatriots in philosophy, but also in their choice of ‘stump juice’.

A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice (Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)
A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice
(Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)
Inspired by Franklin’s adage verse, Efraim draws himself another jar of ‘the lightnen’ of the Seraphim’, and commences composing.

Revenuers keep away from my still.

Don’t make me witness your bitter, nectar destroyin’ drill.

You say, ‘No tax from your moonshinen’ do we accrue,

So, into the dirt must we dump your brew’.

The Angels will weep, Oh you Gov-ment men,

So ‘steada usin’ your axes for destructin’,

Join me in toast and drinkin’, Mine Frien’.

* * *

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time congress meets.” Will Rogers

(Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2015 Raji Singh

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THE TALE OF AN EASTER LILY AND A DESERT RESURRECTION IN POETRY AND PROSE

Posted on April 9, 2017 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 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)

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)

It is a time for Easter, Passover, and various human (‘two-leg’) celebrations. Plant, bird, butterfly, and creature (the ‘four-legs’) celebrate, too. They call it Transformation: The Time of the Great Desert Pilgrimage.

For your two-leg reading pleasure, here is the magical, surreal poetry we at the Fiction House cherish.

LET ME TELL YOU THE TALE OF PRICK LILY THE SAGE

A ragin’, sagin’12 feet tall

Green

Cactus Queen

Prick Lily

Whose wisdoms come

Quite Willy Nilly

To partake of her

East Tehas Wit

Far away Critters

To her desert

Will flit

But not too close…

For fear of being

Pricked Silly

The towering Prick Lily mystically emanates to her butterfly sister, Calico. ‘Know what today is, Calico?

My heart flutters like Calico, A Foundling's Gentlest Friend (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

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

As magical as Lily’s communion, is Calico’s reply from off in the desert. ‘But of course, Lil. On this day, at this hour, for thousands of years, never interrupted.’

Lily emanates,‘Yes! The Great Desert Pilgrimage. Lead them to me.’

‘Indeed Lil I will.’

The gulf breeze tips Prick Lily’s forever-upright arms. Bastion trunk firmly anchors her. She doffs white, ten-gallon – Doves sail. Lily sings: ‘Ya hoo and rippity doo. It’ll be a rip-roarin’, rootin’-tootin day deep in the heart of Teharoo.’ Lily’s emanations spring forth from her prickers, thousands of tuning fork transmitters. Critters, plants and varmints of the territory, their sensations, preened from millenniums of nature’s honing, absorb her vibrations. Lavender petals, the shape of fine porcelain dishes, and, just as delicate, forever blossom on Lily. Their lacey antennae-like pistils are her sense-sound receivers.

Calico becomes – hundreds of butterflies – and her shifting colors bewitch all who see.

Luny Mum suddenly seems to glow above the desert, making a rare, full, daytime appearance. She gleams to a just-as-anxious Poppy Sol. ‘A parade, Poppy. Wouldn’t miss it.’ Her beam streaks the blue sky, touches, and holds Poppy’s warm ray tightly.

The hundreds of Calicos – they swoop down and light upon Lily – then become one Calico again. No one can ever be jaded to butterfly magic.

Creatures of the desert sand will witness a parade few humans can imagine. What a tale could be told.

Spider-webbings royally cloak Lily’s shoulders

Calico perks antennae. ‘Do you feel the vibration Lily?’

‘Indeedy do. ‘bout time. I ‘xpect you’ll be the one to lead em all in.’

Calico affirms with the flit of a wing, then flies off, to beyond the horizon. Lily beams to her subjects near and far. ‘As the heat Orb shines his brightness and the night Goddess honors us with a daytime audience, come all! Gather for the royal procession that will transform our desert – into – our Paradise kingdom.’

LILY’S ROYAL TALE

Creatures stream across the sand to Lily. Most are timid, like lizards and armadillos, but also copperheads, coyotes, Gila monsters. Prick Lily trusts all, fully. In turn, she is trusted infinitely. Creatures convey to Queen Lily their most private thoughts. Passing leaves, migrating birds, deliver news; plants, other cacti, relay messages. She collates, stores all; interprets and disperses desert sage.

Lily achieves near harmony among her subjects through her fanciful mix of cowgirl frivolity and Solomon edicts: ‘Coyote territory – north of me; wild hogs, south; all insects are fair game to salamander, and sal, for snakes; snakes for birds of prey – but only if those doing the preying rely first on the dying for their diet. ALL must gather for sunset vigil with others of their kind…’

Stray bulls might charge Lily to challenge her desert dominance – but only once. “Youch!”

If humans wagon by, they stop and look in awe of her majesty. For those lost in the desert, parched by torturous heat, she provides sustenance by easing the sharpness of lower prickers, allowing them to gouge trunk to suckle her liquid.

THE SKY PARADE COMMENCES

What all the critters spent the year anticipating BEGINS.   The sky becomes awash with colors, yellows, ambers, reds. Calico leads hundreds of thousands, maybe a million butterflies.

The parade’s spectators’ eyes widen. They are fanned by the cool flutters as the promenade surrounds Prick Lily. The critters feel they are swept up into it, swaying gaily, airborne within the hues. Any sorrows are deadened. Their world is beautiful, loving.

‘If only we can keep these feelings forever’; they think. No more pain, sadness. Just joy. They’re certain the world has chosen only them to savor its beauty.

Butterflies’ flutters thunder louder than any herd of horses. They barely see Lily because so many of the paraders encircle her. Lily yells, ‘Yahoo, rippity roo…’

Sweet music is this peacefulness. This all may last a minute, or five, or maybe an hour. Maybe a year, a century. Creatures cannot tell; so lost they are in their reverie.

Then, the music disappears.

A TALE OF RESURRECTION

Calico now is dying – a butterfly’s natural death. She lights upon Sister Lily’s cheek and flutters one last time.

Calico whispers, but all desert creatures hear her. ‘Do not feel sorrow for the dying. They live on in those for whom they cared. Grieve only that they no longer feel life’s glory.’ She drops onto Lily’s arm. Instantly, she shrivels to a larva, no bigger than a dot. She rolls, falls, and then catches on a flower near Prick Lily’s trunk.

Begins the magic of instantaneous re-chrysalis – the domain of Calico alone. Larva morphs to caterpillar, hatching, devouring flower. Chrysalis sack becomes big as a worm, absorbs sky’s colors, burns with them. The image of Calico shines over the desert; almost out-glowing Poppy Sol.

Prick Lily shouts out to the desert creatures surrounding her, ‘Look skyward, All. You’re seeing the glory of commencin’-on.’

Then, a re-born Calico appears.

Prick Lily weeps joyfully at the beauty she sees. Her falling flower petal tears brush the sand-bound creatures’ faces, replacing their ‘glums’ with smiles.

My heart flutters like Calico, A Foundling's Gentlest Friend (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

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

(Read more of sisters Calico and Prick Lily in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (additions)

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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: THE BUTTERFLIES

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

 April is National Poetry Month.  We at The Fiction House celebrate with a poem from Tales of the Fiction House. 

    *     *     *
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.

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)

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)

THE BUTTERFLIES

In royal raiment we come to you Carper, and you James.

Our flutters say, ‘We are here for you foundlings.

We light by – fly by you.

(Maybe, one day, you too.)

What can we do for you?

Quietly bring pleasure and peace.

Protect you, in this world of ugly, of beast,

That, the gentleness of our beauty may,

For a moment, help you subdue.

Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of the poetic beauty of Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

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

OSCAR AWARDS, BEST ACTOR, PART TWO: NORTH TO CINCINATTI AND FREEDOM

Posted on March 26, 2017 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 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)

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)

CONTINUED: The realistic ante-bellum Underground Railroad journey of Kunta Kinder to free slaves.

This week:  His surrealistic river rafting to freedom.

***

One may wonder: When Turt’s not rollin’ down a Kentucky hill, strollin’ a parade, helpin’-out a flounderin’ Carper and founderin’ James; or when he’s not out-’n-about gettin’ tattooed – just what, with his very long time on this earth, does he do? …to make just a small corner of his world, right…

COMES NOW A TALE OF ONE SUCH NIGHT

Turt tugs a-Hempis [a sentient rope]. One end is in Turt’s beak-snout, the other attaches to a wooden raft he pulls up the Ohio. Bobbing head is barely visible. ‘Less clench please,’ vibrates a-Hempis. Turt obliges. They’ve made this trip often since their Valhalla reunion.

Aboard is Kunta, dressed in dark colors– to be inconspicuous to trolling slave-catchers. Turt is a low-gear motor, freeing Kunta to check for sandbars with a 20-foot pole. Crowded beside Kunta is the family from the tobacco plantation. Mother cradles baby. Father grasps toddlers’ hands. Gaunt looks reflect the family’s turmoil, their hell-on-this-earth, of the past weeks:

Hell’s eternal hours –

‘Quick! Hide here’: Shivering in bogs to fool the overseer’s bloodhounds.

‘Hurry! Crawl here’: Crowding beneath stinking manure wagons.

‘Climb up; fast!’ Days spent hiding quietly in haylofts without food. Slightest stomach growl or barn-board ‘creak’ might be their giveaway.

‘Run! Run!’ At midnights they streak between safe houses, stopping only to sip crick water before reaching – ‘Praise on High’, Valhalla!

Kaneshawa tends their physical needs – hot baths in the safe room Kunta and Ezekiah doubled in size as they finished rebuilding the church and parsonage. She burns tattered, stinking apparel and alters second-hand ones donated by northern sympathizers. Rested, renewed, fed, the children play with little Kunta, Turt, and Sea Line.

Reverend Ezekiah – he tends adults’ spiritual needs: “HE came with you this far. HE shall beacon the rest of your way.” Adult Kunta enters through a hidden doorway and provides an earthly realm to their journey. “I – shall take you to Cincinnati. There, others will direct you.”

Before Cincinnati happens, their hazardous river journey must continue:

Luny Mum stays behind clouds so this raft part of their trek is inconspicuous. Kunta keeps rifle close. He knows the best routes to avoid slave-catchers; but, always, there is a risk of detection.

Turt’s amphibious senses tell him what Kunta cannot know:

Coming toward them in the darkness are three humans, in a float just smaller than the one Kunta captains. Turt sniffs: Same butcher-ous scent of the pirates; same acrid odor of the powder that makes their killing weapons explode.

There is no avoiding collision; so Turt quickly devises diversion. He releases air from shell pockets with a slow, reflexive, pumping action and takes in water. Still clenching a-Hempis, he submerges, dropping to the Ohio’s mucky floor. He anchors fin-claws into mire, uprooting a couple of giant sleeping catfish – nearly his size. ‘Sorry gents.’

a-Hempis tenses as Turt’s anchorage jolts raft to a stop.

Kunta uses the pole to block the passengers from tumbling into the water. ‘Something’s wrong.’ He grabs rifle, whispers, “Hold the children.” Parents pull them closer.

Suddenly: ‘THUD!’ A dinghy collides with them. Luny Mum peaks curiously above clouds. Kunta notes three gun-wielding men – a threadbare trio. They’re stooges for plantation owners. Kunta always has plans for encounters, but is caught-off-guard by the chance collision. Move, even slightly, he knows he’ll be shot. He positions his rifle inconspicuously along his leg and hopes the darkness keeps them from seeing it.

“Looks we hit a jackpot,” comes a drumble from one slave-catcher-stooge.

You wait for the moment your amphibious senses tell you the enemy float is right above you. You purge water from your shell pockets, hunker down, prepare to launch upward and ram the interlopers. ‘NOW!’ You push at riverbed: No go. Fin-claws lock into the mire. ‘Damn the mud!’ Looking like a two-leg doing push- ups – you pump, cannot dislodge. You’d finally found your old friend, Kunta. Might lose him just as fast.

Now, catfish: They’re dumb, but persistent. After being scooted from their place, they stay close, flopping behind seaweed. They emerge and with winks and nods agree they’ll help if you return their ‘spot’.

Mud swirls as they burrow beneath you. Fin-claws dislodge. You rocket. You twist; turn, unable to keep balance. It’s a bullet-straight ride. Heart pounds. You tuck-in neck and beak-snout, but let legs dangle because they act as quad-rudders, helping control direction. Your nerves tingle. You feel water pressure might ratchet-away your top shell and you’ll have to spend life water-bound. That notion vanishes when you strike something.

A brittle, splintering sound: Turt has slammed the dinghy’s hull. It ‘whooshes’ above water. The slave-catchers fly, erratically firing rifles. Bullets ‘puck’ into the Ohio. “Blasted Go…Da…Son-of-a …” Vulgar shouts are barely coherent as they get dunked. Water splashes raft, soaking Kunta and the family. The Boys, “WHEE”, in delight.

The men grasp their knives and swim toward the raft. Luny Mum comes from behind clouds. Seeing one of the men in her moonlight, Kunta points his rifle at him while the father, sons seizing his legs, grabs the pole and pokes at another to keep him away. “We’ll take you. Mark my word,” yells the one Kunta guards. The other slowly raises his knife above the water. Just as he readies to throw, Luny Mum glints against it so the father sees. He slaps it away.

“Ow, Goddamit,” the man squeals.

The third one had swum underwater, to behind the raft. Unseen, he boards. The baby, startled by his movement, whimpers. Turt hears. His protection instincts activate. He skims through the water. As the man readies to begin slashing their backs, Turt cranes neck and grabs his ankle, snapping it easily as a twig. He drags him, kicking, screaming, son-a-bitching – “some-un get the Goddam ‘ting off me.”

He’s on Turt’s surf now. Turt pulls him away, looses, and then lets a current do its work. It sweeps him downstream. Turt disposes the others similarly, seeming to wave mock ‘so-long chumps’ with fin-claw.

Boys cheer wildly. Mother shushes them. Her face mirrors a contentment she’s never before felt. She looks onward, believing she can almost reach-out, touch the freedom her children soon will know. They pass around a canteen. Kunta takes one of the boys on his shoulder and the father does the same for the brother.

“Look straight on, son.” Kunta points. “Soon you’ll see Cincinnati’s lights.” Kunta knows what their mother is thinking. He has seen it in so many others he’s transported. He whispers to her, “Soon you’ll touch freedom’s beacon.”

The boys grin when they first see the city’s glitter. Despite what they’ve experienced, they yet possess smiles of innocence, something long lost to parents.

You tighten beak-snout to a-Hempis. You pull, and the journey continues. How many more will you make? Which might be your last? You put those scary thoughts in your shell’s furthest recesses. You replace them with the good thoughts: Soon you’ll see Carper, Ol Tom, and Mariner. You can’t wait for the look on Mariner and Kunta’s faces when they see each other again.

* * *

The next day

THE MAKING OF THE LEGEND OF WHAT HAPPENED DOWN-RIVER

Poppy Sol watches as dockworkers seine two of the stooges to safety. Poppy listens, amused, to one of their accounting the fate of the third.

“All’ve sudden a Goliath catfish nabs Moe by the ‘u-don’t-wanna-knows. Bites herself off his prizest possession ‘afore she pull him under – fer what porpoise? He didn’t have the part left that coulda ‘satisfied her.”

‘That’s what the blimen’ blow-hard tales to those that save ‘ims,’ Poppy Sol tells Luny Mum.

Mum remembers seeing it all, and grins. ‘Twas but a mere submerged limb did the pulling on ‘ims.’

‘Must of drove the other stooge batty, Mum, watching his slave-catcher mate drown. Funny thing, as I blink from high-sky I see, those that done the savin’, they’re not buying the blowhard’s sale. Instead, they’re takin’ a shine to batty’s true blitherens’ – about how a giant shelled creature be passengerin’ humans. Maybe the ye ol blow-hard’s big fish made it sound possible?’ Poppy imitates blitherer. ‘The…the shelled one’s tail be hundred foot if it be an inch.’

Mum shimmers. ‘Twas a taut, extended a-Hempis what seemed a hundred foot tail. Harmless as can be.’

As the smuggling of humans to freedom continues in coming decades, the legend of the abolitionist-creature grows; making future slave-catchers wary of the beast; and pre-occupied, with what might appear from nowhere to attack them. Because of it, many-a-runaway gets away.

(You can read more of the legend of Kunta Kinder, his Underground Railroad ‘Conducting,’ and of the Abolitionist Movement in the novel, Tales of the Fiction House, by Raji Singh.

Join me every Sunday night 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.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

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