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America the Dead is now available at Barnes & Noble

Posted on April 9, 2024 by dello

January 24, 2024

When a catastrophic natural disaster looms on the near horizon, the government releases an airborne virus designed to make the human race tougher, better able to survive. It was developed for soldiers to make them better able to fight, go longer without food and water, and increase their strength.
In its virus host it bonds itself to our own cells and helps them to regenerate at an advanced rate, so that even if you die you can rise again. In non-combat field tests the soldiers become aware of this, they called the phenomenon Overclocking and looked at it in a positive light. How could you look negatively at being able to live forever? A quick shot of the antidote after the heart had begun to beat again and the virus seemed to slip into remission, leaving a healed body that would come out of the virus induced coma in a few days once again its own.
But the virus does something the governments didn’t consider, it never stops working, never truly becomes dormant. Even after the body has ceased any real life, the virus lives on, rebuilding it’s host in a new and potentially indestructible way. Days later, what was dead becomes alive once more.
In this book those closest to Project Bluechip begin to pick up the pieces of their world and get themselves to safety. They have heard rumors of a place in the South that might offer safety, but getting there may require a price that is far too high to pay…

FREE PREVIEW of Book One: Begins the End

EARTH’S SURVIVORS AMERICA THE DEAD: BEGINS THE END

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your bookseller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

This novel is Copyright © 2016 Wendell Sweet and his assignees. Dell Sweet and Geo Dell are publishing constructs owned by Wendell Sweet. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author’s permission.

Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHARACTER BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

Route 81 rest-stop

Watertown New York

April 20th

1:00 am

A black truck pulled into the rest stop and two men climbed out; walking toward the rest rooms that sat in from the road. Concrete bunker looking buildings that had been built back in the early seventies. They had been closed for several years now. In fact the Open soon sign was bolted to the front of the building; rust streaked the sign surface. It seemed like some sort of joke to Mike Bliss who used the rest stop as a place to do light duty drug deals. Nothing big, but still that depended on your idea of big. Certainly nothing over a few thousand dollars. That was his break off point. Any higher than that, he often joked, you would have to talk to someone in Columbia… Or maybe Mexico, he told himself now as he sat waiting in his Lexus, but it seemed that since Rich Dean had got himself dead the deals just seemed to be getting larger and larger. And who knew how much longer that might last. He watched the two men make a bee line for the old rest rooms.

“Idiots,” he muttered to himself. He pushed the button, waited for the window to come down, leaned out the window and yelled. “What are you, stupid? They’re closed.” He motioned with one hand. “You can’t read the fuckin’ sign or what?”

Both men stopped and looked from him to the sign.

“Yeah, closed. You can read right? Closed. That’s what it says. Been closed for years. Go on into Watertown; buy a fuckin’ burger or something. Only way you’re getting a bathroom at this time of the morning.” He had lowered his voice for the last as he pulled his head back into the car, and turned the heater up a notch. The electric motor whined as the window climbed in its track. He looked down at his wrist for the time, 1:02 A.M., where the fuck was this dude. He was late, granted a few minutes, but late was late.

A sharp rap on the glass startled him. He had been about to dig out his own supply, a little pick-me-up. He looked up to see the guys from the truck standing outside his window. “Oh… Fucking lovely,” he muttered. He pushed the button and the window lowered into the door, the motor whining loudly, the cold air blew in.

“And what can I do for you two gentlemen,” He asked in his best smart ass voice.

The one in back stepped forward into the light. Military type, Mike told himself. Older, maybe a noncom. A little gray at the edges of his buzz cut. With the military base so close there were soldiers everywhere, after all Watertown was a military town. It was why he was in the business he was in. It was also why he succeeded at it.

“Did you call me stupid,” The man asked in a polite tone.

“Who, me? No. I didn’t call you stupid, I asked, what are you, stupid? Different thing. The fuckin’ place is closed… Just doing my good deed for the day… Helping you, really, so you don’t waste no time,” Mike told him.

“Really?” The man asked.

Mike chuckled. “Yeah really, tough guy. Really. Now, I did my good deed, why don’t you get the fuck out of here ’cause you wore out your welcome.” He opened his coat slightly so they could see the chrome 9 mm that sat in its holster.

“Really,” the first guy repeated.

“Okay, who are you guys, frick and frack? A couple of fucking wannabees? Well I am the real deal, don’t make me stick this gun in your fuckin’ face,” Mike told them. He didn’t like being a dick, but sometimes you had to be.

“You know what my mother always said about guns?” The second guy asked.

“Well, since I don’t know your mama it’s hard to say,” Mike told him. He didn’t like the way these two were acting. They weren’t cops, he knew all the locals. If it had been someone he had to worry about he would have handled this completely differently. These guys were nobodies. At least nobodies to him, and that made them nobodies to Watertown. If he had to put a bullet in… His thoughts broke off abruptly as the barrel of what looked like a .45 was jammed into his nose. It came from nowhere. He sucked in a deep breath. He could taste blood in his mouth where the gun had smashed his upper lip against his teeth.

“She said don’t threaten to pull a gun, never. Just pull it.”

“Mama had a point,” Mike allowed. His voice was nasally due to the gun that was jammed hallway up to his brain. “Smart lady.”

“Very,” the man allowed. “Kind of a hard ass to grow up with, but she taught me well.” He looked down at Mike. “So listen, this is what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna drive out of here right the fuck now. And that’s going to stop me from pulling this trigger. Lucky day for you, I think. Like getting a Get Out Of Jail Free card, right.”

“This is my business spot… You don’t understand,” Mike told them. “I… I’m waiting for someone.”

“Not tonight, Michael.”

“Yeah, but you don’t.” He stopped. “How do you know my name?” he asked. There was more than a nasal quality to his voice, now there was real fear. Maybe they were Feds. Maybe.

“Yeah, we know you. And we know you use this spot as a place to do your business. And I’m saying we couldn’t care less, but right now you gotta go, and I’m not going to tell you the deal again. You can leave or stay, but you ain’t gonna like staying,” The guy told him.

“Listen… This is my town… If you guys are Feds you can’t do shit like this… This is my town. You guys are just…”

The guy pulled the trigger and Mike jumped. He fell to the right, across the front seat. Both men stepped away from the car, eyes scanning the lonely rest stop from end to end, but there was no one anywhere. The silence returned with a ringing in their ears from the blast as it had echoed back out of the closed car interior. The shooter worked his jaw for a moment, swallowing until his ears popped. He lifted his wrist to his mouth. “Guess you saw that,” he said quietly.

“Got a cleaner crew on the way up. You’ll pass them in the elevators. The boss is waiting on you guys.” The voice came through the implant in his inner ear. No one heard what was said except him.

He nodded for the cameras that were picking him up. “In case you didn’t hear it, someone is supposed to meet him here so your cleaner crew could have company.”

“Got that too… We’ll handle it.” He nodded once more, and then walked off toward the rest rooms as the other man followed.

Once in back of the unit they used a key in the old rusted handset. It only looked old and rusty, it was actually an interface for a state of the art digital system that would read his body chemistry, heat, and more. The key had dozens of micro pulse sensor implants that made sure the user was human, transmitted heartbeat, body chemistry, it could even tell male from female and match chemical profiles to known examples in its database. Above and to the sides of them several scanners mapped their bodies to those same known profiles. Bone composition, old fractures, density and more. All unique in every man or women. The shooter removed the key and slipped it into his pocket. A few seconds later a deep whining of machinery reached their ears, the door shuddered in its frame, and then slipped down into a pocket below the doorway.

A second later they stepped into the gutted restroom. Stainless steel doors took up most of the room; the elevator to the base below. They waited for the cleaner crew to come up, then took the elevator back down into the depths.

The Bluechip facility stretched for more than five miles underground. Most of that was not finished space, most of that was connector tunnels, and storage space bored from the rock. The facility itself was about three thousand feet under the city of Watertown in a section of old caves that had been enlarged, concrete lined and reinforced. The rest area was one of several entrances that led into the complex. An old farm on the other side of Watertown, an abandoned factory in the industrial park west of the city and a few other places, including direct connections from secure buildings on the nearby base.

John Pauls and Sammy Black had Alpha clearance. Both were ex-military, but most likely military clearance was no longer a real matter of concern this late in the game, Sammy thought as they made their way down the wide hallway. The word coming down from those in the know was that in the next twenty-four hours the human race would come very close to ceasing to exist at all. No confirmation from anyone official, but regular programming was off air, the news stations were tracking a meteor that may or may not hit the Earth. The best opinions said it didn’t matter if it hit or not, it would be a close enough pass that there would be massive damage. Maybe the human race would be facing extinction. The government was strangely silent on the subject. And that had made him worry even more. The pass was estimated to be right over the tip of South America. So maybe formalities like Alpha clearance weren’t all that important any longer. If only Mike Bliss had given that some thought before he had pissed him off.

The halls were silent, nearly empty. Gloss white panels eight feet high framed it. It had always reminded Black of a maze with its twists and turns. Here and there doors hung open. Empty now. Always closed any other time he had been down here. So it had come this far too, Black thought. He stopped at a door that looked like any other door and a split second later the door rose into the ceiling and Major Weston waved them in.

Alice, he had never learned her last name, sat at her desk, her eyes on them as they walked past her. One hand rested on the butt of a matte black .45 caliber pistol in a webbed shoulder holster that was far from Army issue, and Sammy had no doubt she would shoot them both before they could even react. Alice was etched into one of those name pins that the Army seemed to like so well, but oddly, just Alice, no last name, rank or anything else. She wore no uniform, just a black coverall. The kind with the elastic ankle and wrist cuffs. No insignia there either. He had noticed that months before. Her eyes remained flat and expressionless as they passed her desk.

“Alice,” Sammy said politely. She said nothing at all, but she never did.

“Sit down, boys,” Major Weston told them. He spoke around the cigar in his mouth: Dead, but they always were, and there was never the smell of tobacco in the office. They took the two chairs that fronted the desk.

The Major was looking over a large monitor on the opposite wall that showed the north American continent. This map showed small areas of red, including the northern section where they were. The rest of the map was covered with green. “Where we are, and where we need to be,“ he said as he pushed a button on his desk. The monitor went blank. He turned to face the two.

“So here is where we are. You know, as does most of the world, that we are expecting a near miss from DX2379R later on tonight.” He held their eyes.

John shrugged. “I’ve been doing a little job, must have missed that. It’s not gonna take us out is it?”

“Saw that on the news a few days back. Guess we dodged a bad one,” Sammy said.

“Right… Right,” Weston said quietly. “But that cover was nothing but bullshit.”

“It’s going to hit us?” John asked.

“Maybe… The fact is that we don’t know. One group says this, another group says that, but it doesn’t matter because it will probably kill us off anyway. Direct hit, near miss, it is going to tip over an already bad situation with the Yellowstone Caldera.” He raised his eyes, “Familiar with that?”

“Yellowstone Park?” Sammy said.

John nodded in agreement.

Weston laughed. “Put simply, yes. Yellowstone has always been an anomaly to us. Back in 1930 the Army did an exploratory survey of that area. What we came up with was that there was a section of the Rocky Mountains missing. Looked at from the top of Mount Washburn it was easy for the team to see that the largest crater of an extinct volcano known to exist lay before them.”

“I guess that’s about what I thought,” Sammy agreed.

“Yeah. We all think that. Except it is not true at all because the Yellowstone caldera is not extinct, it is active. Active and about to pop. There have been several warnings, but we took the recording stations off line quite some time ago, so there has been no mention of it in the news. Budget cuts,” he shrugged. “So everyone is focused on this meteor that may or may not hit us and instead this volcanic event is going to blow up and when that happens the rest won’t matter at all.” He clicked the button on his desk and the monitor came to life. “All the red areas are spots where the surface pressure has increased. There was, at one time, many active volcanoes on the north American continent.” He clicked a button and the map changed to a view of the European continent with many of the same red shaded areas.

“All over the Earth… Higher pressures. Up until a few days ago the brainiacs were still arguing over whether this could even happen.” He laughed. “It is happening and they are arguing over whether it can happen. Well, we had our little debates and then we realized that history shows clearly that this has happened before. Several times. Call it the Earth’s way of cleansing itself.”

“But it’s not an absolute, right?”Sammy asked.

“Don’t start sounding like the scientists.” He reached below his desk and came up with six small silver cartridges. Each had a red button mounted on the top with a protective cap over the button itself. He clicked a button on his desk, and a picture of destruction appeared on the screens. It was obviously an aerial shot, looking down at a chain of islands. Smoke hung over the chain, reaching as high as the plane itself. As the plane dropped lower, rivers of red appeared. “That picture is an hour old. That is… Was, the Hawaiian chain.”

Sammy twisted further to the side, staring at the monitor. “How can that be… I mean everyone would know about it.” He turned back to Weston.

Weston nodded. “And that would be true except the satellites are out because of the asteroid. Shut down to avoid damage. That is the official word.” He clicked the button on his desk and the monitor went dead once more. “I started this out saying that none of it matters and that is true. The Yellowstone caldera is going to erupt sometime in the next few days. Not a maybe, not an educated guess: If the satellites were up you would know that the park is closed. It has already started. We have had a few small quakes, but the big stuff is on the way. He rolled the cartridges across the desktop; Sammy and John caught them.

“Super volcanoes… Earthquakes that modern civilization has never seen… The last super eruption was responsible for killing off the human population some seventy-four thousand years ago. Reduced it to a few thousand. And that is not the biggest one we have evidence of.” He lifted his palms and spread them open, sighing as he did. “So it is a double whammy. If we survive the meteor the volcanoes get us, or the earthquakes because of them, or we’ll die from injuries. And I think those of us who die outright will be lucky. The rest of us will have a hard time of it… Staying alive with nothing… We will probably all starve to death.” He paused in the silence.

“Those cartridges are a compound developed right here in this complex for the armed forces. Project Super Soldier. SS for short. That kept people from looking too deep, they assumed it was something to do with the Nazi youth movement here and abroad. We let that misconception hold.” He waited a second for his words to sink in. “SS is designed to prolong life past the normal point of termination. It allows a soldier to survive longer without food and more importantly without water. Does something to the cells of the host, I don’t pretend to know what. What I do know is that the people above me made the decision to release this…” He picked up a mug of coffee from the desk and sipped deeply. His eyes were red road maps, Sammy noticed now. Like he hadn’t slept in a few days.

“So this is it for us. I guess you realize that you probably won’t get paid for this. No money is going to show up in your account. I will run it through before I pull the plug, but I truly believe the machinery will be dead by the time payday rolls around. So this is something I’m asking you to do.” He pointed to the cartridges that both men were looking over. Sammy held his as though it might bite him.

“Those babies are really all we have to hope with. Most people will die outright. They will never make it past the quakes, eruptions, and the resulting ash clouds and gases. Up here we should be okay as far as gases go, eruptions, but there are fault lines that crisscross this area. This whole facility is bored from limestone caverns. Probably won’t make it through the quakes, although it is a good eighty miles from the closest line,” he shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. My point is there should be a good chance for survivors here.”

“So we do what with these? Can they harm us?” John asked.

“Harm you, kill you? No, but you will be infected the minute you push that button. It will protect you the same as anyone else. There is enough in a single cartridge to infect about five hundred million people,” Weston said quietly.

“Whoa,” Sammy whistled. “Why infect… Why not inoculate? And why six cartridges… Three Billion people?”

“Minimum, three billion. That is before those infected pass it along themselves: After a while it won’t matter. As to the question of infected, this is a designer virus. You catch it just like the flu. We infected whole platoons by releasing it in the air over them. Eighty-Nine point seven percent infection rate, but that doesn’t really matter because it infects people close to you and those people will infect you… Sneezing, waste, sex, water, food, it gets into and on everything. And once it is in you, either orally or via bloodstream you will be infected. The human body has nothing to fight it, no reason to be alarmed or believe it’s anything more than a virus. And that same response will help to carry it to every area of the body as your own defenses manufacture white blood cells to fight it. So you may as well say a one hundred percent infection rate.” He paused and rubbed at his temples.

“Be glad they decided on this. They have some others that will kill everybody in the world in a matter of days.” Weston nodded at the raised eyebrows that greeted his remarks. “I don’t doubt that the merits of which way to go were hotly debated,” he finished gravely.

“The virus is designed to live within the host, but it can live outside of the host. It can stay alive in a dead body for days, even if the body is frozen. In fact that just freezes the virus too, once the body is thawed it will infect any living person that comes along. So those,” he pointed to the silver cartridges, “are overkill. Same stuff is being released across the globe. Great Briton… Germany… Australia… West coast just a few hours ago. Manhattan has already been done, all the East Coast in fact. I want the two of you to head out from here. One vial here, then one of you head west, the other south. Go for the bigger cities… Water supplies… Reservoirs… Release it in the air or water, it doesn’t matter. There are men heading out from the south, the west coast. The Air Force will be dispersing the same stuff via cargo planes tomorrow or the next day… As long as they can fly, if we can even make it that long, and that isn’t looking really good right now…” He rose from the desk. “I’ll see you out.” He turned to Alice. “Alice… Pack us up.” Alice nodded as Sammy and John got to their feet, but her hand remained on the butt of the pistol. Rubber grips, Sammy noticed as he passed her.

“Alice,” he said.

“Um hmm,” Alice murmured.

Sammy nearly stopped in his tracks, but managed to hide his surprise as he passed by into the hallway. The Major fished two sets of keys from his pocket. “Parked in the back lot. A couple of plain Jane Dodge four-bys. Drive ’em like you stole ’em. Leave ’em where you finish up. Hell, keep ’em if you want ’em. Nobody is going to care.”

The three stood in the hallway for a few seconds longer. Sammy’s eyes locked with the Major’s own, and he nodded. The major walked back into his office, and the door rose from its pocket behind him. Quiet, except the slight buzzing from the fluorescent lights.

John shrugged as his eyes met Sammy’s, waiting.

Sammy sighed. “You heard the man… West or south?”

“Flip for it?” John asked. His mouth seemed overly dry and he licked his lips nervously.

Sammy pulled a quarter from his pocket and flipped it into the air. “Call it, Johnny.”

“Tails,” John said just before the quarter hit the carpet.

Sammy bent forward. “Tails it is. You got it, Johnny.”

John looked down at the carpet. “West, I guess.” John said.

Sammy nodded, looked down once more at the quarter and then both men turned and walked away toward the elevator that would take them back to the surface.

Watertown Center New York

Shop and Save Convenience store:

Haley Mae

1:30 AM

“Last one,” Neil said.

Neil was a detective for the sheriffs’ department. It was closing in on 2:00 AM and he and his partner Don had just come back from six hours of sleep to get a jump on the day. Yesterday one of the checkout girls had disappeared between the Shop and Save, a small mini mart on the western outskirts of the city, and home. Earlier this morning she had turned up dead in a ditch just a quarter mile from the front door. The techs were still processing the scene, but it was looking personal. Stabbed to death, multiple wounds, no defense wounds, at least none that he or Don had been able to see, and fully clothed. Her purse had been found nearby, wallet and cash inside. No ID, but her store ID had still been clipped to her shirt. They would know more in a few days once the coroner did her magic. It all pointed to someone she knew, and they had no known boyfriend. The trailer park where she lived had turned up nothing, they had questioned some people at the convenience store, but some had been off shift, so here they were back at the store questioning the other employees.

They had commandeered the night manager’s office which was barely larger than a broom closet, but at least it was a place to sit with enough space left over to call in the workers and ask their questions. Free coffee via the same night manager, who had still not gone home, was taking a little of the six hours of sleep sting off, but to Neil free coffee in a convenience store was like a whore offering a free shot of penicillin to the first twenty five customers.

“Who’s next?” Don asked.

The last half hour they had been interviewing the people who worked the same shifts as Amber Kneeland.

“Haley Mae,” Neil said.

Don looked up and stopped writing in his little notebook. “How do you,” spell her name, he had meant to ask Neil, but she was right in front of him.

“EM. A. E,” she said with a smile.

“Vietnamese?” Don asked. She was obviously mixed race, African American and Asian, he questioned himself.

“Japanese,” she told him.

“Nice name,” Neil said, “Haley.”

Beautiful girl, Don thought. “Did you know Amber Kneeland? Sometimes works this shift?” he asked.

“Not really,” she answered. “I mean, I met her, but only in passing… I just started here myself.”

She really is beautiful, Don thought. “You wouldn’t know if she had a boyfriend… Other friends?” he asked.

Haley shook her head. “Sorry,” she said… “What has she done?”

“Nothing,” Neil supplied.

“She went missing last night,” Don said. “Turned up dead this morning.”

Haley shook her head. “Oh my God. That’s horrible. She was such a nice girl… Quiet.”

Neil nodded his head. “So maybe you did know her a little better than you thought?”

“I just started here a few weeks back, and like I said, I don’t really know her… But it might be a girlfriend not a boyfriend.”

Don looked at her. “You wouldn’t know who?”

“No. It’s just a rumor. Someone said it to me… I don’t even remember who… But I’ve never seen her with a guy, and I have seen her with other girls… Maybe also the way she looked at me a few times…”

“Go out with her?” Don asked.

“No… Never… I…”

“Don’t swing that way?” Don added.

Haley frowned slightly before she answered. “I work. I don’t swing any way. But if I did she wasn’t my type. She never asked me out, I never asked her out.”

“Didn’t mean to offend you,” Don said. He shrugged. “She’s dead.”

“She would probably do the same for you,” Neil said.

Haley nodded. “That really is all I know. I hope you find who did it though. She seemed like a nice girl,” Haley said.

“You don’t seem the type for this… Bagging groceries at 2:00 am,” Don said, changing the subject. “You aren’t local or I’d know you… This city really is small despite the base.”

Haley smiled. “Came here a year back with a boyfriend, Army. He left, forgot all about me, I guess. I had this idea of modeling… Tough to get a foot in a door though.”

“Wow, if he left you behind he must be a fucking idiot… Any good?” Neil asked.

Haley laughed.

“Excuse mister smooth there,” Don told her. Neil feigned a hurt look and Haley laughed again. “He meant, have you done anything? I know somebody… Might be interested.”

Haley arched her eyebrows. “I can model. I did a You Jeans ad back in Georgia a few years ago. I just need to prove it to the right person.”

“Escorting? Maybe dancing. It’s strictly escorting or dancing, no funny stuff. Dance clubs… Clothing modeling,” Neil said.

“Probably start out escorting… Dance a little… Then if he likes you he’ll put you into the modeling end of things. He owns a lot of shit… Several car dealerships across the state… Some of the biggest dance clubs, clothing outlets, those bargain places, but still, modeling is modeling, right? Not the big name stuff, but it is a foot in the door,” Don added.

“I can do that,” she said slowly.

Neil passed her a white business card with his own name scrawled across the back. “Tell him I sent you… That’s my name on the back.”

“Jimmy Vincioni,” Haley asked.

“Just V… Jimmy V, good guy,” Neil said.

Haley nodded and tucked the card into her front jean pocket. “I’ll call him… Thanks. Look…” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I’m pretty sure she had a girlfriend here… I just don’t know who,” Haley added quietly.

Don finished writing in his notebook, nodded once he met her eyes and then shook the hand she offered. She walked away.

“Beautiful,” Neil said.

“Absolutely,” Don agreed. “You ain’t getting none of that though.”

“Yeah? But if Jimmy V hires her? It’ll be the next best thing.”

Don shook his head, but smiled. His eyes rose and watched as Haley walked away. “Guess I’ll have to have a few drinks at the club if that happens.”

Neil chuckled low. “You and me both,” he agreed.

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Hire a multi-genre Ghostwriter

Posted on April 5, 2024 by dello

e-Books: ePub or Kindle Paperback or Hardcover

Hire a multi-genre Ghostwriter:

Talk to me when you need to.
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The Earth’s Survivors series. A series consisting of over a dozen books.

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I publish in over a dozen pen names. I have several pre-made genre templates, I can quickly supply genre manuscripts ready to go, polished, or in need of finish work so you can easily put your own mark on the finished story. Do you want to do a novel that you plot, layout, with a preset goal? I can do that too.

I offer formatting as well. Amazon Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover. D2D, Smashwords. I create covers for novels as well.

I write music Lyrics: Here are a few I have added music to and published through BMI: War at Home – a minor – Letter Home

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I write content for this Podcast: America the Dead and for these short stories.

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Fat Men

Posted on April 4, 2024 by dello

Posted by Dell 01-20-2024

Okay, today I wanted to talk about a very sensitive subject, fat. Being a fat guy myself I completely understand the problems that fat men face. So today I have some tips that I hope will help you as much as they have helped me. As usual I would like to handle what I have to say with sensitivity and empathy, but we all know I probably won’t. Just please don’t write and tell me I am mean to fat people, I am one, so the rule I am one so I can say whatever the hell I want to be is in effect.

First thing: The biggest problem we have is eating those extra things that we just shouldn’t eat. Passing by the toaster before bed when it is whispering things like “Real Butter” or “You can make toasted cheese like sandwiches in the toaster! No, really. Toast the bread, throw the cheese on it and then nuke it in the microwave.” or even “The wife hid the doughnuts behind the coffee maker!” Or maybe opening the refrigerator door to get that diet coke you waited all day for and seeing that there is a half of pizza left over from the pool party the kids had. And you can smell the sausage… The peperoni… And it is so hard to resist it. Well, there are alternatives. My first alternative I like to call To Hell with it.

To Hell with it is a novel approach to dieting. It assumes that no matter what you do you will get fat anyway so why not just say To Hell with it? I mean, after all, did you really think that cute chick that you see every morning at the Stop and Gas really digs you? Or would if you could lose three hundred pounds? No. Stop fooling yourself. She is probably barely holding on to that job as she spends her nights being a crack whore. Barely getting those cravings into check in time to make it to the store so she can sell your fat ass a box of doughnuts every morning. No. Give up the dream. She will never notice you and if she did, it would probably be one of those drying out stages where she realizes she hasn’t eaten in the last three weeks and starts to wonder if maybe you might not taste good with a little salt and a pinch of garlic powder.

So, now that you have set your sites a little lower, lets adjust our attitude and learn to live with the fat instead of fighting it all of the time. There are tons of very good-looking women that are, shall we say, not skinny? Yes. We’ll say that, because I don’t see where it would benefit us to have a bunch of fat women writing to us to complain about our insensitivity to their situation, when actually we are very sensitive to it. So, open your eyes, unless the lids are too fat, then you can use tape to keep them up. In any case, get them open and look around you. The world is full of opportunities for you just the way they are.

The second option is to actually buckle under and diet. I don’t like this option at all. This option leaves no other options and I find that completely unreasonable. I mean, how can there be no options? This isn’t Russia, is it? I’m not a man living in the mountains who has just come of age and was promised at birth to my cousin Edwina, am I? No. So, there must be options. And choosing between a sensible salad and a carrot stick … WHOO WHO! … Is not an option. Choosing between a lettuce sandwich and a Quarter Pound burger, now that’s an option. So really the option part comes before this, diet or no diet and we have already made that decision so to hell with spending time on this.

So, no diet it is and full steam ahead with no diet. After all fat is stored energy, that’s all it is. Do skinny people make good lovers? We’ll never know because they run out of energy too fast. No stores of fat to tap into! And, if the Zombie Apocalypse happens tomorrow? Skinny folks are screwed. They will already be half starved, low on energy, meanwhile us fat guys will be like, … “Hey, get the hell out of my way! It’s dinner time you $%%## A$%%$# What the $$%$## did you think you were doing trying to %$%$## eat me? … Zombies or skinny people we’ll just knock them all right out of the way. And truthfully, in the end? I think the zombies will be screwed too. When a fat man gets hungry, he’s hungry. If it’s between me and a zombie I’m winning. Simple as that. I will learn how to make me some Zombie Burgers with fries. So, we live with our fatness, and we adapt.

Say you went out on a date with a skinny woman, and she doesn’t want you the way you are? Her loss. Leaves all that much more for you to eat. Really. Order a second desert. Laugh loud at the movie. Eat all the popcorn. Who cares. Make jokes, though to put her at ease. A good one I like to use is, “You know if ass sold by the pound you’d be broke!” This will make her feel more at ease with her skinniness. She will realize that you see her for just what she is. Not a piece of meat. Not an object. Just a woman that does not belong in your world. And don’t be a dick. Offer to pay for both of you. After all, how much could she have eaten?

Another problem is clothing. For the fat man it isn’t all that easy to get dressed in the morning. Well, you’ll be glad to know I have solved that problem too. You actually have a few options. My option of first choice is the sweatpants option. Sweatpants are great. Stretchy band. Hey, they’re sweatpants so it does count toward a workout. And unlike the old days, manufacturers are aware that we wear these for everyday clothes, so they come in all sorts of styles now. Striped, piping down the legs. Matching tops, Hell even matching footwear! You can look damn smart in these clothes, attend a local luncheon, shop at your local Walmart. Do some Mall walking: What else do you need to do? And best of all, they are like an expensive hotel, big ball room.

But for those days where you do need a second option, I would like to recommend the stretchy jean. These are great. They look like jeans, but they will stretch right across that XXX ass like they were painted on. No really. I’ve seen them. They do look painted on.

And for those of you who are a little less adventurous? Coveralls. These things are great too. Just throw on a T-Shirt and a pair of boxers and then slip inside the coverall. They come in all sizes, so fit is not a problem. Feeling a little wild? Go commando! Who’ll know? Tug that zipper up and you’re finished. Set for the day. They have plenty of pockets. They give you the appearance of actually working, so no more heckling from your girlfriends’ parents … “Get a job you fat bastard!” And they come in an array of stylish fashions and fabric finishes. What I like about them is that they make a great throw cover for the couch to keep that pesky cat hair off it when I’m not wearing them…

Solving Common Problems: Bending over to tie your shoes in the morning.

Now this is a tough deal. The problem is that you have become so fat that you cannot bend over to tie your shoes with either crapping your pants or running out of breath and passing out. The problem is that there is simply too much fat crammed into a very small space, IE: your rib cage and your lap. So, when you try to bend over that fat just crushes up against your lungs and you can’t breathe. Or it presses right down on your lower intestines and, well, we know the deal there don’t we.

Fortunately, there is a solution for this that works every time without crapping your pants or passing out from loss of air and tumbling forward onto the floor where you are at the mercy of your pets, who could think that this is the end and eat you. Sure, laugh, but many fat people have been eaten by their trusted pets once they became incapacitated.

Okay. This is a three-part exercise designed to help you with this problem. I myself practice this method every morning and have had excellent results both with tying my shoes (Or slipping the shoe on if you have given up on laces as most of us have. For this demonstration we will use the lace method of putting on the shoes.)

Okay, first, firmly grasp your left thigh and push it over to the left, and then repeat this same exercise on the right side. What you should have now is your belly, unsupported by your lap, swinging free and threatening to crush your man parts. No worries. Arch your back and lean back as far as you can on your comfortable couch. This should allow you to reach the waist band of your trousers. Firmly grasp the button or clasp and wrench it free. This may be difficult to do as it may have retreated into the flab of your belly, but a bit of searching should turn it up. Now be aware that as you release this dam of flesh there may be some rolling and excessive movement. You will have to ride that out. When it has ceased movement, you will find that you now have a much greater range of forward movement, and you should be able to easily bend and tie your shoes with no further problems.

Caution: Upon completion do not attempt to refasten your trousers while in the sitting position. Now that you have tied your shoes, simply stand and then safely re-clasp the button or clasp on your trouser tops. At this time if you have a belt that you have removed, it would be safe to once again attach it. Always check to make sure you have not damaged your man parts at this time, and of course be careful that there are no small pets or children around that could be injured by the length of the belt swinging freely as you reinsert it through the loops of your trousers.

Hailing a Cab: Cab companies have phone numbers. They have them for a reason so that you can call them and ask them to come and get you wherever you are at. This is great, because if you try hailing a cab the driver will pretend, he or she didn’t see you, like that’s possible. And you will not be able to chase them because you are lucky you got up, got your trousers on and out to the street and still had breath left. You will never catch that cab and that cab driver will go have lunch with his friend and laugh about how the fat guy couldn’t catch him or her. Bastards! So, call. This way there is not a damn thing the cab driver can do. When they ask for their tip? Tell them to get an Allstate agent.

Okay. I hope that I have helped some of my fellow fat men in the world. I would just add that women are attracted to fat men. No really. I’m a writer, it’s my job to know these things. So don’t worry about whether women find you attractive or if it is only your dog/cat/hamster. I mean, does a dog hump the leg of someone they don’t like? No.

Okay. That is me for this week. I hope you are all doing well. I will be back next weekend…

The Earth’s Survivors books on #Apple. The end is here for most of the world. No government, police, military. The world is on its own with an army of dead out to find them,,, #Zombie #ApocalypticFiction #horror #Reader #booklover #BookWorm

https://books.apple.com/us/book-series/earths-survivors/id964949713

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Have a great week and I’ll be back next weekend…

Dell Sweet eBooks

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Notes from the Edge 04-03-2024

Posted on April 3, 2024 by dello

Notes from the Edge 04-03-2024

Dell Sweet

Dreamer’s Worlds

Dreamer’s Worlds: The Legend of Sparrow

I had come back to spend time with Laura. I could not tell her my real reasons. That I was afraid of leading the Dream Killer to her. #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRM98LP

Dreamer’s Worlds: The Dreamer’s Worlds

Laura and Joe live lonely lives, but they are dreamers. When they close their eyes they dream travel through space and time, to other worlds with little more than a thought… #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle

A free chapter read from the series…

DREAMER’S WORLDS: SPARROW SPIRIT

Published with CreateSpace

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your bookseller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

This novel is Copyright © 2010 – 2015 Wendell Sweet and his assignees. The Name Dell Sweet is a publishing name used by Wendell Sweet. The Name Geo Dell is a publishing name owned by Wendell Sweet. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author’s permission.

Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.

FOREWORD

My hope is that you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Dell wrote the seed to this book some time ago. As we sat down together and began to work out how to write the actual book it seemed like a few hundred serious things happened all at once. I had things going on in my life, Dell had things going on in his life. It seemed time to concentrate on the actual writing would be difficult with a few hundred miles between us, and little actual time to get together physically, but in the end it all worked out. And now it’s your time. Read. Enjoy. We will be back in the fall of 2015 with book two…

Geo Dell

DREAMER’S WORLDS: THE DREAMER’S WORLDS

“I had looked in that jerky way dreams have of showing you something. Pieces missing, frames skipped in the film, scenes out of order: Bits of information that seemed to mean nothing at the time. Things you only know and never see. Even explaining it doesn’t do it justice, but if you’ve ever dreamed you know what I mean.”

Joe Miller

“I will say this about buildings, walls, houses, cars, trees… They harbor evil. They can hate. Maybe not in the world most of us live in, but in the world I spend most of my time in the rules are different. They can hate you. They can love you. They can kill you. You should know that if you ever dream.”

Laura Kast

DREAMER’S WORLDS TWO

Sparrow Spirit

ONE

On The Path:

Day One.

Laura Kast and Bear

The morning sun came up bright. Bear and I were sitting before a fire we had built a few miles from the village. We were not meant to travel in the night, that had been made clear. A few miles from the village everything changed. We weren’t in the land of the dead, any more than we were in the underground, but this was not the normal world either.

Neither of us knew exactly where we were or where we would end up. What would happen after three hands of time. Fifteen days.

But we had heeded the warning, and so, although neither of us needed sleep, we stopped, built a fire and spent the night wondering about what might lie ahead.

Several times in the night something came close to us. Studied us. We could see the eyes reflected in the black.

Some of those creatures sounded like horses. Hooves beat the ground, but their eyes matched no horse I have ever seen.

Some made the ground shake as they walked. Just before morning one of them called out to us once more.

“Dreamer’s!” The voice had come from the blackness, after the sounds of labored breathing and vibration from the ground as the creature moved.

The silence spun out.

“Hear this!” The voice continued… “If I find you in the daylight, I will do all that I can to help you… I have prayed you well, and I will continue to pray you well, but if I come upon you traveling during the night I will kill you both.”

The voice alone made the ground tremble. When it finished, the sounds of labored breathing came back. And heavy footsteps moved away. We had no doubt that whatever it was, was meant as a straightforward warning to us. That, along with the warriors warning made us glad we had stopped for the night. If there were a doorway or doorways along this path, there was no telling what could cross over from other words. No telling at all.

Shortly after the sun rose, the second sun rose, and the heat began to build. We broke camp and began our walk on the well worn path that ran beside the river.

We looked but we found no footprints or unusually disturbed areas of earth. I began to put it from my mind as the morning wore on.

On The Path:

Joe Miller

Gary stood where I had left him. But it wasn’t really Gary. He was whatever I believed he was. My own guilt turned into a mirror.

His state had changed considerably since I had left. His face was sunken, split to yellow bone. Beetles and worms crawled busily over his moldy gray suit and through his hair. His eye sockets were deep black with chips of blood-red at the centers. His hands not much more than bones and crumbly skin. Fingers clicking and clacking together as he moved them.

“I’m going in,” I told him. My hand fell on the knob.

“I’ll look forward to your arrival here,” The thing that was not Gary said.

“You’ll wait a long time,” I said quietly. My eyes left his and I turned the knob. It turned easily beneath my hand, the door swung inward, and complete blackness greeted me. I took a breath, tried to slow my heart rate and stepped into the blackness.

At first the floor remained under my feet the absolute black before my eyes. But the floor shifted, tilted down, changed texture. I stopped and regained my balance and at the same time the blackness began to clear.

A path came from the darkness winding down a steep cliff face to the valley floor below. I took another step, and another, and the blackness retreated completely to be replaced by early morning sunlight that fell from the sky above. I turned my eyes up to those skies above the valley, where twin suns rode close to one another, lifting from the edge of the world, sailing into the skies. I looked back to the door but it had disappeared. Nothing remained of my old world. I turned my attention back to the path and the valley below.

A large village spread across the valley floor. Smoke rose from several fires. I wasn’t close enough to see what those places were. The people seemed no larger than half sized ants crawling across the valley floor. Even so, I felt that they knew I was there. Felt me. My presence. And they had been expecting me to come to them. I clutched my medicine bag where it hung on its leather cording around my neck. Sent a small prayer of thanks to the Creator and began to walk my path.

In The Stone.

Sparrow Spirit

Sparrow Spirits eyes opened. This world was as real as any she could remember. The physical world. The world she had traveled while she was dead, but she had never succumbed to its reality.

It was early morning. The sun in the sky seemed so real. The clouds that floated in the pale gray early morning sky, their bottoms tinged with pinks and oranges, seeming to promise rain. And rain may come, but it was not the thunders that would bring it, she knew. The clouds were no more real than anything else here.

Something had awakened her; she did not know what. As she wondered a sparrow song came to her, sending the greeting once more that had pulled her from her sleep.

She called the sparrow to her, and she materialized within the stone, her tiny feet wrapped around Sparrow Spirit’s small finger. The sparrows spirit looked and seemed as real as anything else in her prison. The sparrow sang its message as Sparrow Spirit listened.

Out Of Time

The Thief Of Souls

He strode briskly through the cool night air, his feet stepping on rocks, bricks, glass and nails alike. His feet were bare, but he paid no attention to where he put them. He stopped before a slight mound, just a few inches across and squatted next to it. One hand shot out and exploded the earth where it touched it. His hand reached down throwing the dirt that remained aside. He slowed, stopped, and then lifted out a few feathers and bits of bone, a fragile, yet intact bird skull. He placed the pieces all together on a clean handkerchief he had pulled from his breast pocket. He stood, brushed the dirt from his hands, folded the handkerchief carefully and then walked off across the lot the way he had come. A few seconds later his feet touched down on a street in the city of the dead.

His boot heels clock clocked as he walked, bouncing off the empty buildings, echoing along the vacant streets. Dogs and coyotes fought over a nearby body. But they fled as the scent of The Thief of Souls came to them. The fight suddenly not important all. He walked to the edge of the city, savoring the pall of death that hung over it. The smells. The silence except for the death machinery.

He stopped at a small clearing. A stone altar and bare earth. He walked to the altar, placed the handkerchief upon it and then carefully opened it, allowing the bones and bits of feathers to tumble out onto the cold, stone surface. He set the handkerchief aside leaving the bird bones exposed in the weak moonlight. He withdrew a shiny steel knife from a sheath inside his coat.

Long, over nine inches of smooth steel. Curved and honed to a razor-sharp cutting surface. The tip itself was honed to a needle like sharpness. He held one hand out, palm down, and drew the steel blade across it. A few drops of thick, black blood dripped down upon the remains.

The effects were immediate. The bones began to shift, curl, the feathers seemed to melt into black goo surrounding the bones as they twitched and moved.

Smoke began to rise in curls. The drops of blood slowed. The thief returned the knife to his sheath, took the handkerchief that he had discarded, wound it around his palm a few times to stop the flow of blood, stepped back and watched the blood serve its purpose.

A few minutes later the mess began to grow, covering the altar top. Time slipped by as it continued to grow. Finally, it ceased and Abignew lay stretched out on the table. The thief bent low, placed his mouth over the demons’ mouth and breathed life into him. Abignew came alive with a sharp cough and a cry of alarm. He settled down when the Thief laid his hand upon his chest, pushing him softly back to the stone altar top.

“You let them kill you… You are not usually that stupid,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Abignew told him.

He shook his head. “Don’t say sorry. Sorry is only a word. Go find them and this time, kill them. I don’t ever want to hear of them again.” The Thief removed his heavy hand and helped Abignew from the altar. Together they walked back into the City of Dead.

The Red Way:

Laura And Bear

The first dead passed us by before both suns had fully lifted above the rim of the world.

We had heard them long before we saw them. Crawling, stumbling, crashing around in a thick forest that crept up to the edge of the path in many places. In some places it fell back a few hundred yards, in others, limbs overhung the path as if reaching their wooden fingers for the river beyond. What the dead had been doing in the woods was beyond me.

Bear and I watched stunned as they began to pour from the woods, which were so thick that it seemed as though night still held dominion there and take up following the path.

Bear had no more explanation than I did for why they were in the woods. Like me he thought that they were here to finish following their own path. For all who died there was a journey of death to make. The final journey. And it made sense to both of us that they were on the same path as we were.

“This path is part of their journey,” Bear said. “We are in search of our entrance, and they are as well.” He seemed to think for a moment. “Somewhere along this path their journey may end, and they will find their way to the Ancestors, the Land of Dead, or the Underworld.” We walked in silence for a time.

The dead came heavy from the woods as the suns rose into the sky. They came as they had died, or as they had become after death. Some crawling. Missing limbs. Eyes. Some not much more than skeletons, collections of bones walking along to the accompaniment of the clacks and clatter from their bones.

Some seemed whole, some nearly so. A young woman walked past me and smiled shyly at me as she did. As she smiled, I thought she looked like the picture of life until she turned more fully to me, and I could see the opposite side of her face was a ruined mass of torn flesh. One bright eye stared back at me from the ruined mass.

“Could you help me?… I can’t… I can’t find my way.” She said. She moved on without waiting for an answer, drops of blood spattered to the ground as she walked.

Some were more terrifying than pathetic. They stumbled about headless, bumping into one another, and nearly bumping into us occasionally.

One came crawling along the ground. Her body was gone from the waist down. The flesh was stripped away from her face, rotted away or eaten by the birds who still harassed her as she crawled along. Landing on her and pecking away small strips of her flesh.

As I watched one landed on her head, dug in its claws and pecked one of her eyes out. Her hands, which had been working to pull her along, came up and grabbed at the bird as a scream came from her throat. One hand hit the bird and it fluttered up into the air.

A man stumbling along beside her snatched the bird from the air, crushed it in one fist and dropped it to the ground. The woman snatched up the bird in one hand. Her fingers were down to the bone from pulling her body along, the white tips poked from the flesh, streaked with blood, bits of flesh and dirt. The birds mouth opened weakly. The woman looked at it for a moment with her one remaining eye and then thrust her head forward and bit its head off. The sound of the head cracking and breaking in her jaws came to me as she threw the body away, dug her hands back into the ground and began once more to pull herself along as she continued to chew on the bird’s head.

Shortly after that we both began to focus farther off down the path so we wouldn’t have to look too closely. As the day wore on the woods seemed to empty and the path became crowded in places. No matter how fast we walked the dead moved faster, as they were always coming up behind us and passing us. Occasionally one would stop, look around, and then wander off the path to the river or the woods. I saw at least two dozen disappear into thin air as I watched.

By noon the predators showed up and the crowded path began to thin out.

My first reaction was to stop them. To chase them away. And I did the first few times, but that only told them to stay away from us.

Wolves, Bears, big cats attracted to the smell of so much death. They ran at them, but the dead had no real way to run away or to defend themselves. They dragged them off into the woods where the screaming continued long after it should have.

Bear and I agreed that they were not really animals of all, but demons, spirits come to steal the souls of the dead. The ones that came as themselves were the worst of all. They swooped from the blue sky. Black shadows against the white clouds and dual suns. Hideous faces, some as dead as those they preyed upon. Some came from the ground, and twice they crawled from the river itself: After that we stayed farther away from the river.

By the time the suns were straight up in the sky there were very few dead left. The predators were stalking those and taking them one by one. They stumbled along fearfully, watching all around them as they tried to run. Or they ran toward Bear and me, screaming for us to help them. Swerving away at the last minute as if they realized we were something different and could not help them.

As the suns lifted higher into the sky the dead became less, although we could still hear their cries from the deep woods as they were devoured. Bear and I walked on in silence.

The predators, whether demons or real, ran along with the dead at the tree line. Sometimes concealed, sometimes showing themselves. Sometimes scenting the dead, sometimes seeming to scent on Bear and me. But always just a short space away. We didn’t lack for company.

The river, black and oily in the darkness, was not much different in the daylight. An odor of death and rot came from its waters as they bumped over rocks and rapids on their way to wherever dead water went to.

The birds came in mass just before the first sun sank into the horizon. They picked at the bits and pieces of the dead that had fallen on the path. There were so many at times that Bear, and I had to push them aside in order to walk. Once the first sun set the birds took flight: The path was picked clean as it had been the night before when we had started out on it. Now we understood how it had gotten that way.

Just before the second sun set the Moon began to show herself. I didn’t know if this was a Grandmother Moon, but I sent a prayer to her just the same as she came up to keep the darkness away.

As the sun set the other noises came: The shadows built at the edges of the forest. The heavy footfalls came from deep within the trees. The ground shook, and I remembered the voice from the night before.

Occasionally, as the sun set, we heard the cry of one of the bigger predators as they became prey to whatever it was that ruled the night. Just before nightfall we stopped, gathered dead fall together to see us through the night, and made a small camp at a wide area of the path.

The Moon came up full and Bear and I sat before the fire, each lost in thought.

The Red Way:

Joe

The suns were sinking lower into the earth by the time I came down off the mountain and wandered into the village. I was tired, as if I had a physical body. My eyes were heavy lidded. My strength nearly gone. One moment I was alone the next I was flanked by warriors who had fallen in beside me. Ghosting from the trees and walking beside me, matching my stride. They were bare chested; war paint adorned their bodies. Red, black, and bone bead work was woven into their hair. I followed them into the village.

It was a large busy village. Small children ran here and there. Happy, carefree. Wolfdogs chased after them, protected them, watched out for them, including keeping an eye on me, the stranger, as I walked past them deeper into the village.

The wolf dogs reminded me of Bear and made me wonder where Laura was. Whether Bear was physically with her, or only in spirit, walking some other path himself.

A clearing opened up and I found myself before a large teepee at the center of the village.

The tepee was off by itself, it was also clear that it approximated the center of the village. The heart. But it was a place of importance. An ancient old man sat close to a fire, nearby a young woman held a rabbit up to the sky in one hand. In the other she held a forged steel blade. The blade glinted in the moonlight. She closed her eyes, praying the rabbit’s soul back to the creator, and then lowered her hands. A few short minutes later the rabbit was spitted over the fire across from the old man.

I studied her face as she spitted the rabbit. Tattoos of small blue-black squares on one cheek. Exquisitely made clothing. Leather tunic, leather dress. Moccasins with high built-in leggings. She was young, graceful, her eyes sparkled with amusement as she caught mine looking at her. I felt the need to apologize, but she was gone long before I could say anything. The old man beckoned me to sit. He had apparently been waiting on me. I felt like apologizing again. He spoke slowly.

“You could apologize your entire life. But your actions say those words for you. If you truly walk the Red Path, there is no need to apologize it is known that you feel remorse. And if you do not, you do not walk the Red Path at all.” He picked up an iron Tomahawk from the ground beside him. “We will eat shortly. For now, I ask that you honor the Creator with me,” he said as he packed the tomahawk’s pipe bowl full of tobacco.

I didn’t understand what he said on one level. I didn’t know the language. On another level I heard him perfectly and understood the things he didn’t say. That he had expected me. That I was welcome. That he knew I would honor the Creator.

He lit the bowl, puffed, blew smoke in the four directions, and then passed the pipe to me. I acknowledged the directions myself, smoked and then passed the tomahawk back to him. We repeated the passing of the pipe two more times without acknowledgment of the directions, and then he set the pipe down. He reached forward and turned the rabbit on its spit where it sizzled and browned, and then looked up to my eyes.

“You still live,” he said.

I nodded.

He nodded back. “It will be harder if you live. Hard to walk among the dead with a body to live for… You should let it go.” He finished.

I digested his words slowly. “Is it required?” I thought to add something else but couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Across from me a young woman arrived with a skin and poured liquid into small wooden bowls. The old man gave me a bowl.

“It is not,” he said. “But I thought you loved the woman. Wanted her to succeed.” He nodded for me to drink and then drank himself.

I took a deep drink. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I had become walking down off the mountain. Heavy, fermented, sweet, it burned my throat on the way down. My eyes teared up. He smiled at me. “I want her to succeed,” I answered honestly. “I had hoped to dream her to life.”

“You cannot dream another to life,” he said simply and sipped at his bowl.

“I meant,” I started.

“I know what you meant. But death. Life. These are not your choices. These are choices the Creator makes long before we are born into these worlds. We can only accept them… She has died… None return from the dead… The legend of Sparrow Spirit should tell you that.” He said, holding my eyes with his own.

I sipped and nodded my head. “I should die,” I asked at last?

“I cannot say… I can only say I’m surprised you have chosen to walk alive. It is difficult dead… Alive…” He shrugged and sat his bowl aside.

Two young women appeared with a platter of steamed vegetables, and taking the rabbit from the spit, prepared a platter of food for each of us. The platters, I noticed when I took mine, were shoulder bones from Elk or Moose. I lost myself in eating. Surprised at my appetite. The old man ate with me, both of us silent. The two young women moved off a short distance and talked quietly between themselves. One had spirals on one cheek, the other wore a leather outfit with handprints and spirals. The same nine square pattern was tattooed on her cheek. The opposite cheek the young woman with the spiral had chosen.

“It is her name… Power… All she can be,” the old man said. It explained everything and told me nothing. “You could die a good death and be more help to her. What will you do alive? How will you, a mortal, help her with the things of the dead?”

I met his eyes. I had no answer. “Is it required,” I asked again.

“Isn’t your purpose to win?” He countered.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

He nodded. “Then you must leave it to the creator. Death. Life. Is his gift to give to you. For now he has purposed you to travel in the land of the dead, yet live. If he decides you must die, you will die. If he allows you to live, he will use you in that state.” He picked up the bowl and sipped from it.

I picked up my own bowl, found it empty, and one of the young women rose and came to me with a skin and refilled my bowl. She went to the old man and filled his next. I sipped at my bowl and thought about what the old man had said. But it made sense. Perfect sense. I had wondered, and more than wondered, even asked the Creator to allow Laura to have her life back once more, against my own beliefs. My beliefs said the Creator has given us all that we need. There is no need to ask for anything, only to give thanks. Sometimes hard to understand. A hard path to walk. But it was part of the path I had always walked, and I knew I would always walk.

“You will walk,” he said. “Starting tonight, after the Moon is heavy in the sky. But you will not walk for lengths in the moonlight. If you do you will surely die, and your death will be for nothing. You’ll walk until you can no longer see the glow of the village. You will stop and make your camp. When the brothers rise, you will rise quickly with them and be underway. You will see things that are not a dream. Things that can kill you. And some things that will try to take you away from your walk. You must walk, when the brothers set you will rest through the darkness. However, tempted, do not venture into the darkness…” He sipped at his bowl. “Will you live? Will you help her? I cannot say.” He sipped again and then nodded. “If you die, Brother, die well.” His hands rose, motioning me up and I understood it was time to leave.

The village was not as busy as it had been when I walked into it. The Moon was rising. The light bled from the sky. Four warriors walked beside me.

I passed Elders gathered around fires. They watched as I passed. A baby suckled at his mother’s breast. His dark eyes following me as I passed.

We left the village at a run and a few minutes later I was on my own. I built a fire and it burned brightly to keep the night away. The voices came to me shortly after that. Thousands it seemed, calling to me from the trees that started only a few hundred feet from me. Screams. Voices calling for me to help them. As the Moon continued to rise the voices came less often. I sat and waited for the sunrise.

In The Fight:

Abignew;

Dream Killer

Dream Killer: Abignew traveled with the Dream Killer. The Dream Killer was not much different from he himself. A minor demon. An evil device was how he thought of himself. An evil device that the thief could use to meet his ends. Dream Killer may have had legends spoken about him, but he was no different than Abignew himself, despite that.

They traveled at the edges of the forest with the dead. The spirit animals, the dead following their path, the predators that preyed on the animal spirits, none of those bothered Abignew, and from what he could tell, they didn’t bother the Dream Killer either.

The traveled in the black, and the shadows within the black. Things screamed. Some human. Some not. Other things came close until they got their scent and then they fled in terror. The Moon rose into the sky.

Abignew found himself wishing they could simply move from one place to the next as they did in any other world. But the rules here were different. No one did anything other than walk the trail of the dead.

Near to morning they slowed. A fire glowed in the near distance. Abignew’s crooked face split into a smile. They were here… All of them? He asked himself.

He scented the air. No… One. He didn’t know which one this one was, and he didn’t care. He would kill them all, either by fair measures or foul. That didn’t matter. So, it mattered very little which one he killed first. They slowed to a walk at the edge of the deepest shadows that favored the edge of the forest.

The things that had been in those places moved and crashed off through the trees in fear. The scent of their prey came to him as he drew nearer, and he smiled as they walked. Seconds later he was staring through the trees at the fire light…

Check out the book links above for the series…

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Notes from the Edge – Dell Sweet

Posted on March 31, 2024 by dello

Posted by Dell 01/16/2024

It’s Tuesday already, where in hell did Monday go. It seems as though it arrived here way too fast, like I could have used a few extra days, maybe a nine-day week… Will whoever is in charge of that take care of it? Thanks…

This Week:

I talked to Geo Dell, and we will tackle the Dreamers series together. But, because I don’t want to take time away from the The Zombie Plagues series, he will take the lead with that. We hope to have the second book ready by March 1^st. He’s happy with it and I am too. It puts his foot in a door he wanted it to be in and it gives me some of my time back. He will be publishing some more short fiction soon. I’ve seen it and it’s good. Once you read it you will see how compatible our styles are and why I decided as I did for us to work closer together.
The Zombie Plagues is now available in Paperback. It will be available on Amazon within the next week some time. It is also available digitally at Smashwords One Two Three Four.
Dreamer’s Worlds book two is done. There should be no problem with the March 1st publishing date. That will be available in Paperback and Smashwords editions.
The Zombie Plagues main site was updated to reflect the changes involved in moving the content.
An Author site was added at Smashwords. Smashwords

This week I thought I would treat you to a little preview of a character you may not have met, if you have not purchased and read the first books. She doesn’t come on the scene until the second book, but she is a major character from there on. Meet Donita…

This Book Preview is Copyright Dell Sweet 2024 all rights are reserved. It may not be reproduced by any means except short references for review or critique.

Meet Donita

~ In the Dark ~

The cow turned her head towards the woods, nervous. Her large eyes reflecting silver glints from the moonlight.

The smell of death and corruption was nothing new, and that was the smell that came to her now. But there was something wrong with it. Something not right with this smell. Something different. Her calf nuzzled her and began to nurse. The smell of humans came to her along with smoke and mumbled snatches of conversation and she stopped thinking about the dead smell. Turned away from the woods and stared at the firelight across the fields.

~In the Trees~

The eyes watched her and the other cows from the cover of the trees. The hunger was terrible, all consuming, and it came in crashing waves. The impulse to feed seemed to be the only coherent thought she had. It was hard to think around, hard to think past.

A few weeks ago, she had been… Been? But it did no good, she could not force the memory to come. A name came, Donita… she had been Donita, she knew that, but that was all she knew. And a name was not everything she had been. She had been something else… Something more, but she could not get to whatever it was though. Something that did not wander through the woods. Something that was not driven by all-consuming passions that she could not understand.

She turned her eyes up at the moon. It pulled at her. Something in it spoke directly to something inside her. Something deep. Something she believed had always been there but there had never been a need to address because it lived under the surface. Out of her line of thought. Below her emotions… Now it didn’t. Now it ruled everything. It was all she could do not to rush from the trees and find the smell that tempted her and consume it. Eat it completely. Leave nothing at all. Oh, to do it… To do it…

Her eyes snapped back from the moon and a low whine escaped her throat. The calf, sated, had wandered away from her mother. Behind her the boy made a strangled noise in his throat. She turned, gnashed her teeth and growled. The thin, skeletal boy fell back, hungry but frightened. She could feel his fear. It fed her, tempted her to taste him, but he was no food for her. She knew that much. It was a sort of instinct… Drive… Something inside of her. The boy was not her food. The boy was not her sustenance. He was one of her own. Corrupted. And corrupted flesh could not feed and sustain itself on corrupted flesh. Fresh flesh was needed, live flesh. Fresh Human flesh, she corrected.

The boy trembled and grinned sickly, his one good eye rolling in his head. The other eye was a ruined mass of gray pulp sagging from the socket. A great flap of skin below that socket had curled and dried, hanging from the cheek. He felt at it now, carefully, with his shrunken fingers. She hissed at him, and his hands fell away. She turned her attention back to the wandering calf that was nosing ever closer to the edge of the trees.

She desired human flesh. She needed it, but it didn’t absolutely have to be that way. Two nights ago, it had been a rabbit, the night before that she and the boy had shared a rat. The night before that they had come upon the old woman. She thought about the old woman as the calf wandered ever closer to the line of trees. The old woman had been good…

~The old woman in the ditch~

They had come across the old woman at near morning. Near morning was the best she could do. Time was not a real concern to her anymore. She understood near morning because the sickness, the sickness that began to send the searing pain through her body, had started. The boy had already been whining low in his throat for an hour. In pain. It was like that whenever the night began to end. When the morning was on the way. Soon to be.

She remembered sunlight. Her old self had needed sunlight just as she now needed darkness. Absence of light. That had been Donita too, but a different Donita.

They had been crossing the rock filled ditch to get to an old house on the other side. The basement of the house was what she had in mind. Quiet, private, darkness. She had been scrambling down the steep, sandy side when the smell had slipped up her nose and froze her brain.

That is the way she thought of it. Frozen. Everything… Everything besides that smell of flesh was frozen out. The boys whining, the coming dawn, the constant hunger in her belly, the moon silvery and bright so far up in the night sky. Nothing got by that desire, urge, drive. It consumed her, and it had then. It had started with her brain and then had spread out into her body. Her legs had stopped moving and she had nearly tumbled all the way to the bottom of the rock-strewn ditch before she had caught herself, her head already twisted in the direction of the smell. Her ears pricked, her tongue lick licking at her peeled, dead lips.

She could smell the old woman. Knew that she was an old woman. It was in the smell. Somehow it was in the smell. And her flesh. And her fear… The boy had slammed into her then, still whining and nearly knocked her to the ground.

She had come up from that near fall in a crouch and the boy had slammed into her once more, so she had grabbed him to steady him. He had thought she meant to kill him and had pulled away but a second later he had caught the scent and they had both gone tearing down the ditch.

~The Old Woman~

The old woman had heard them coming. She had begun to whine herself, replacing the boys whining which had turned to a low growl. The panic built in her as she heard them coming. Her heart pounded, leapt, slammed against her ribs bringing pain with it. The pain rebounded and shot down into her broken leg. The leg that she had broken the day before trying to scramble down into this ditch to reach the house across what was left of the highway so she would have a safe place to stay. The pain slammed into her leg, and she cried aloud involuntarily. A split second later the female slammed into her.

She had been on her belly. The pain was less that way. When the female hit her, she drove her over onto her back. A second after that she was ripping at her flesh, biting, feeding and she could not fight her she was too strong, too…. Animal strong. And then the boy hit her hard, pouncing on her chest, driving the air from her lungs, and before she could even react, catch her breath back, he was biting at her throat.

She felt the pulse of blood as he bit into her jugular, and it sprayed across his face. She felt it go. Felt her consciousness drop by half. Her eyelids flutter, flutter, flutter and then close completely. And the biting was far away and then it was gone…

~The Feasting~

The boy had her throat, but Donita had been biting her way into her chest. She had felt her heart beating and she had been gnawing against her ribs when she felt it stop. They had both calmed then, loosening the grips they had had on her, and settling down to feed.

She glanced now at the calf that was less than three feet from them. It’s huge moon eyes staring curiously at them. The calf did not know death. Had not seen it, she thought. It knew it’s mother’s tit, the sweet grass of the spring field, the warmth of the sun and nothing else. It edged a little closer.

She had killed the old woman. She had had no use for her at all. They had eaten so much of her flesh that she was useless to them. Couldn’t sit up all the way, the boy had taken one arm off at the shoulder and carried it away like a prize.

Donita had eaten so much that she had vomited, but that had only forced her back to feeding until she was once again filled. She had looked around the ditch and spied the rock. The old woman had come back already, and she was trying to raise herself from the ground. Trying to raise herself and walk once more. She had picked the rock up from the ditch. A big rock, but she was powerful, and she had smashed the old woman’s skull in as she had tried to bite at her.

She turned again to the calf. The calf was not what she wanted, but the calf would have to do for now. She let her hand fall upon the boy’s thigh and they both sprang at the calf.

The calf did not have the time to react, it didn’t even bawl. One second it was standing the next it was on its side, Donita’s teeth clamped tightly across its throat. A second after that it was sliding across the dew wet grass and into the woods, one wild eye rolling and reflecting the silver of the waning moon.

Click to get book one right here in all digital formats…

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Notes from the Edge -03-30-2024

Posted on March 30, 2024 by dello

Notes from the Edge – 03-30-2024

Happy Saturday!

Fred: If you read by blogs, you know my cat Fred turned out not to be a Fred at all. About the time she discovered the neighborhood tomcat I should have known, but I thought they were just friends. You know, two toms. But, no, she’s about as pregnant as a cat can get, almost as wide as long. And, I said that last week and she just keeps getting bigger. It’s sort of like the little flat popcorn bag in the Microwave. Pop … pop .. pop .pop pop Pop POP! And I can’t believe how big she is. So, I placed her on Maternity leave. I expect a litter of Puppies. Yes Puppies, she’s certainly big enough and I’m not a cat person anyway. Which brings me to pets…

I have this constant Cat / Dog thing. I think of Cats as Female and Dogs as Males. I thought that was common. A no brainer. But I mentioned it the other day and somebody looked at me like I was crazy. So, I guess not everybody looks at it the same… Or that guy was weird, and he may have been. But, pets…

Dogs and Begging… Cats and Begging…

Dogs beg and rarely will they turn down what they have begged for. The dog could care less. I have seen a dog eat potato chips, cheese curd, pudding, green beans, toast and I once owned a Dog, Sammy, and she ate mice. Yes. Whole.

Cats? Yes, on the mouse, but the cat will only eat parts of the mouse and you will have to clean up the rest, or, like my Fred, they will bring the dead or alive mouse to you. Fred likes to bring them to me alive. I guess that’s Fred’s way of making sure I get my exercise chasing the damn mouse/squirrel/bird through the house. But the rest? No. A cat will not eat any of the rest of it. But that does not mean the cat won’t beg for it anyway. Mine does. And every time I give her some, and every time she turns her nose up and walks away.

Dogs appreciate snacks, Cats feel you owe them. If a cat had a lawyer? You would never speak to the cat. If a dog had a lawyer, he’d be having a conversation like this with the lawyer… “I don’t know, Bob. They’re pretty good people and if I sued them, they might not give me anymore peanut butter sandwich bites and I like peanut butter sandwich bites and I… I… Excuse me Bob, I’ll be right back…” Zoom, the dog is off and into the office where I just happen to be eating a peanut butter sandwich. And that only makes sense. Dogs are all about sniffing scents out of the air. They sniff everything, all of the time. Chairs, Fire Hydrants, Butts, Crotches, Car tires, everything they do is about smell. If you’re eating a peanut butter sandwich in the attic, balanced on the window ledge with the heat of the house rushing past you and carrying the smell away they would know about it… It would go something like this…

There you are, hanging out the window, eating your peanut butter sandwich. No dog. And then suddenly, far away, the phone rings. You think nothing of it but a few moments later the attic door bumps open and up the stairs trots your dog (Feel free to substitute Skippy or Lassie or Rover here), Bear. He trots up and does that sideways twisting his head thing that is so, well, dog like. “Hey,” he says, (If dogs could talk) “That was Brownie from two blocks over, you know, Mrs. Johnson’s dog. I pooped on her lawn last week and you went ballistic?” He just looks goofy while you nod. “Yeah, well Brownie says you’re up here hanging out the window eating peanut butter sandwiches…. Huh, I said to Brownie… What do you know about that.”

“I saved you a bite,” you say and toss him half the sandwich. And he eats it whole. No swallowing… No choking. No chewing. Jaws open. Jaws close (Except sometimes with Peanut Butter when it sticks to the roof of their mouth.) and the half sandwich is gone. I’d like to see a cat do that.

Instead, Fred sits there and begs with dignity. She doesn’t want to appear to be needy. Bear (My last dog who has passed) could care less about dignity. If you go around sniffing butts all day as a form of greeting, then dignity is a pretty large gray area. If you look at Fred she looks away like, “I thought I saw a mouse…” or “I’m only here because I love you…” Nevertheless, she begs, and she expects a payoff and it better not be peanut butter. I often try to present my side of it, “All I have is peanut butter, Fred. You’re wasting your time.” She looks like, “Well there’s a kitchen full of Bologna and Sliced Ham.” (Her favorite foods). And of course, I’m not going out there just to get her a damned piece of Bologna No. So, I go out to get a damn glass of juice, she follows, and then, somehow, she hypnotizes me and I’m opening the Ham package to get her some…

Cats and dogs. They don’t mix, most of the time anyway, and people who are cat people are not usually dog people and vice versa. I am a dog person and really, someone should break the news to Fred because Fred thinks I’m a cat person.

Someday… In a perfect world… I will once again possess a dog… And the world will be perfect… And we’ll stand on the porch at dusk and watch the sun go down… Geez… It’ll be great… Just me and my dog…

Of course I’ll have to start with a puppy… And It’ll probably poop all over the house… And knowing my luck it’ll make friends with a cat… A pregnant cat… A pregnant cat that I thought was a boy cat… and then the whole vicious cycle will start all over again…

My newest book is now available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback or Hardcover editions.

My Own Apocalypse

Ethen and his wife pick up bits and pieces of newscasts, but it makes no sense. Something, or somethings are prowling the streets at night… #Zombie #Apocalypse #ZombieApocalypse #ZombieFiction #Readers #Thriller #Drama #Horror https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ8R3Q9S.

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Guitar books from W. G. Sweet

Posted on March 27, 2024 by dello

Guitar Books

Custom hard body build Kindle Edition

Do you want to build your own hard body electric guitar? Well, so did I and so. I did. I used wood from some… #WoodWorking #CustomGuitarBuild #BuiidAGuitar #Luthier #Kindle

Build a custom acoustic Guitar Kindle Edition

Do you want to build your own acoustic guitar?

I decided to take some of the cast-off parts, put some work into them, manufacture a few parts myself and build a custom acoustic guitar… #WoodWorking #CustomGuitarBuild #BuildAGuitar #Luthier #Kindle

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Notes from the Edge 03-26-24

Posted on March 26, 2024 by dello

Notes from the Edge 03-26-24

Thought Bites

About This Blog

This is a medium to post book excerpts and my own thoughts.

You may download Open-Source software completely free of any license fees. Install it on as many PCs as you like. Use it for any purpose – private, educational, government and public administration, commercial…

Pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.

Anything I have listed here is software I use myself and have checked out for, in some cases, years. The links are to the official websites only. Once there follow the links to get what you need. There are no charges, no fees ever.

OpenOffice is a suite of tools that equals MS Office. I use it for writing, and I have written more than ten books with it.

· Writer a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.

· Calc a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyze, and present your data.

· Impress the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.

· Draw lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.

· Base lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and more.

· Math lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://www.openoffice.org/

Puppy Linux enables you to save money while doing more work, even allowing you to do magic by recovering data from destroyed PCs or by removing malware from Windows. Now that vista and XP are no longer supported this OS can replace them. It is supported fully, and all updates are free.

· CD Executable installs from within your old Vista or XP OS.

· Full OS

· No Charge for updates or more copies for other machines.

· Runs on older or newer systems. Even systems under 1 gig of ram.

· Includes a wide range of applications: wordprocessors, spreadsheets, internet browsers, games, image editors and many utilities. Extra software in the form of dotpets. There is a GUI Puppy Software Installer included.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://puppylinux.org/

Ubuntu is a popular Linux OS that can completely replace the Windows operating system on your machine. I use Ubuntu to do all of my computer related tasks. It is better, faster and more reliable than the Windows OS I once used.

· Bootable disk with installer. As easy as installing any other software. Just make your choices, answer the questions, that’s it. The installer does the rest.

· Software, Software and more software. Ubuntu comes with a built-in software installer, manager. Pick the software you want, and it will install it and set it up for you. OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity, Games, Browsers and much more.

· Updates are free. No charge for other machines. No licensing fees. Nothing at all. It is free and has long term support.

· Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and many other manufacturers now use Ubuntu.

· 32 bit, 64 bit, or both are available.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Gimp. Gimp is my graphics program of choice. I have paid the big bucks for other top name image/graphics programs, but I have not been as happy with those products as I have been with Gimp. I use it for all of my graphic/image needs. Book covers, Illustrations, in fact all the graphics on this site were made with Gimp.

· Photo Enhancement. Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Many filters are included. Retouching, Resizing, all the top features you would expect to find are here.

· File Formats. Gimp can read and save to all the top image formats.

· Airbrush, Bucket, Pen, Brush, many other applicators included and easily used for your image work.

· Blur, Soften, Clear backgrounds, Dozens of filters, Layers and much more. The only Image Processing software I use.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://www.gimp.org/

Run

A hardboiled #crime novel that follows Billy as he takes a walk to fight boredom and ends up in the middle of a crime. #Money #drugs #Violence #crime #Deadfolks and everything else you would want in a hardcore crime fiction novel… https://books2read.com/u/m2E061

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Notes from the Edge

Posted on March 25, 2024 by dello

Notes from the Edge

03-25-24

Here are some suggested short story collections I and other writers have written, Dell

Alabama Island Short Story Collection

A collection of 12 short stories, including the featured story, Alabama Island.

I heard the soft murmur of its engine running: Some guy and some girl, I thought. #ShortStories #Thrillers #Readers #BookLovers #Drama https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/809312

Borderline: Collected Short Stories

He thought for a second longer, staring into the dimness, trying to see better. Checked the street; nobody, and then made his way down the alleyway. He bent and looked in passenger window… #Singles #ShortStories #Readers https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/487747

The Curse of Norwood Middle School: Teenage Adventures of Kelsey (Teenage Adventures of Kelsey Book Series 4)

Kelsey, class president, wants to have a Valentine’s Day dance at the middle school. She takes it up with the school principal after the student council votes that the school should have one – but there is only one problem. Nobody is allowed in the school after dark. The school is cursed. Bad things happen. #YoungAdult #Amazon #ALNorton #ReadersofInstagram https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Norwood-Middle-School-Adventures-ebook/dp/B07MZHW7SH

TRUE: True Stories from a small Town #1 Five True Stories…

The Last Ride. It was a busy Friday night driving cab… #Cab #Taxi #DellSweet #TrueStories #NonFiction https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/276759

The Christmas Goo (Book Series 3) Kindle

Derik mocks Kelsey for having to go sit on Santa’s lap with her baby sisters and gets caught. As punishment, he has to now join them. Derik is not happy at all. He begins to make fun of Santa in any way he can not knowing the mall Santa can hear him. Is the mall Santa real or not? #ALNorton #ChristmasGoo #YoungAdult #Readerrs #BooksForKids

Connected: Short Hauls

Harrows Grocery Early Morning The old Chevy idled roughly at the curb across from Harrows market… #Crime #Thriller #Drama #Readers #ShortStories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/831048

Not So Sweet Sarah: Teenage Adventures of Kelsey (Teenage Adventures of Kelsey Book Series 2)

Kelsey has a birthday coming up! She has recently been spending her allowance on starting a porcelain doll collection. All she wants for her birthday is that perfect porcelain doll to add to her collection. Her mom Jenna seems to have found one at an old antique store. When she leaves with the doll, the owner of the store regrets selling it to her. https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Sweet-Sarah-Adventures-ebook/dp/B07J4KC1Y9

#ParaNormal #YoungAdult #ALNorton #Readers

Billy Jingo Collected Short Stories

Billy Jingo contains 22 short stories, from crime to Horror and the title story, Billy Jingo. I started to get back into the truck when he wagged his head and put one finger to his lips. #ShortStories #Readers #Booklovers #Bookworms #Crime #Thriller https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/452624

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Notes from the Edge 03-24-24

Posted on March 24, 2024 by dello

Notes from the Edge 03-24-24

I am hanging out watching a murder mystery series on YouTube with my wide (The small town with A BIG Missing Persons Problem….). It is pretty good and thought provoking. We get into these YouTube things sometimes or binging series on Netflix (Just killed Orange is the new Black which I had seen, and she had not seen).

And we have over seventy channels between the two of us that we follow. In the morning, I click to YouTube, and we watch what there is as we work. Today there was nothing, so we choose the crime special from among the possessions.

So, the storm is over? I hope? We’ll see but Ryan Hall Yall says more is on the way.

Cold here near the Canadian border, but it’s always cold here.

I thought I would leave a freer story that is so close to my real life that I published it as a true story with just a few names changed. I hope you enjoy reading it. I sometimes think back to growing up there and wax nostalgic, of course nothing is as it was. What it was was not even the way it really was. Yes, we had a lot of freedom, but that was because our mothers had to work, or fathers in some cases. Either was it left us being raised by one parent. In my case, and most of the kids I hung out with. That meant a drunken father beating our mothers, us, both, rarely ever there, and us needing to escape from that as much as we could.

So, yes, it sounds romantic, nostalgic, but that is how I chose to write it. I don’t want to dwell upon the times that weren’t that way…

TWO: THE DAM

It was summer, the trees full and green, the temperatures in the upper seventies. And you could smell the river from where it ran behind the paper mills and factories crowded around it, just beyond the public square, a dead smell, waste from the paper plants.

I think it was John who said something first. “Fuck it,” or something like that,” I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” Pete asked?

“Yeah… I think so,” John agreed. His eyes locked on Pete’s, but they didn’t stay. They slipped away and began to wander along the riverbed, the sharp rocks that littered the tops of the cliffs and the distance to the water. I didn’t like it.

Gary just nodded. Gary was the oldest, so we pretty much went along with the way he saw things.

“But it’s your dad,” I said at last. I felt stupid. Defensive. But it really felt to me like he really wasn’t seeing things clearly. I didn’t trust how calm he was, or how he kept looking at the riverbanks and then down to the water maybe eighty feet are so below.

“I should know,” John said. But his eyes didn’t meet mine at all.

“He should know,” Gary agreed and that was that.

“That’s cool. Let’s go down to the river,” Pete suggested, changing the subject.

“I’m not climbing down there,” I said. I looked down the sheer rock drop off to the water. John was still looking too, and his eyes were glistening, wet, his lips moved slightly as if he was talking to himself. If he was, I couldn’t hear. But then he spoke aloud.

“We could make it, I bet,” he said as though it was an afterthought to some other idea. I couldn’t quite see that idea, at least I told myself that later. But I felt some sort of way about it. As if it had feelings of its own attached to it.

“No, man,” Gary said. “Pete didn’t mean beginning here… Did you,” he asked?

“No… No, you know, out to Huntingtonville,” Pete said. He leaned forward on his bike, looked at john, followed his eyes down to the river and then back up. John looked at him.

“What!” John asked.

“Nothing, man,” Pete said. “We’ll ride out to Huntingtonville. To the dam. That’d be cool… Wouldn’t it?” You could see the flatness in John’s eyes. It made Pete nervous. He looked at Gary.

“Yeah,” Gary said. He looked at me.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’d be cool.” I spun one pedal on my stingray, scuffed the dirt with the toe of one Ked and then I looked at John again. His eyes were still too shiny, but he shifted on his banana seat, scuffed the ground with one of his own Keds and then said, “Yeah,” kind of under his breath. Again, like it was an afterthought to something else. He lifted his head from his close inspection of the ground, or the river, or the rocky banks, or something in some other world for all I knew, and it seemed more like the last to me, but he met all of our eyes with one sliding loop of his own eyes, and even managed to smile.

The bike ride out to Huntingtonville was about four miles. It was a beautiful day, and we lazed our way along, avoiding the streets, riding beside the railroad tracks that just happened to run out there. The railroad tracks bisected Watertown. They were like our own private road to anywhere we wanted to go. Summer, fall or winter. It didn’t matter. You could hear the trains coming from a long way off. More than enough time to get out of the way.

We had stripped our shirts off earlier in the morning when we had been crossing the only area of the tracks that we felt were dangerous, a long section of track that was suspended over the Black River on a rail trestle. My heart had beat fast as we had walked tie to tie trying not to look down at the rapids far below. Now we were four skinny, jeans clad boys with our shirts tied around our waists riding our bikes along the sides of those same railroad tracks where they ran through our neighborhood, occasionally bumping over the ties as we went. Gary managed to ride on one of the rails for about 100 feet. No one managed anything better.

Huntingtonville was a small river community just outside of Watertown. It was like the section of town that was so poor it could not simply be across the tracks or on the other side of the river, it had to be removed to the outskirts of the city itself. It was where the poorest of the poor lived, the least desirable races. The blacks. The Indians. Whatever else good, upstanding white Americans felt threatened or insulted by. It was where my father had come from, being both black and Indian.

I didn’t look like my father. I looked like my mother. My mother was Irish and English. About as white as white could be. I guess I was passing. But I was too poor, too much of a dumb kid to even know that back then in 1969.

John’s father was the reason we were all so worried. A few days before we had been playing baseball in the gravel lot of the lumber company across the street from where we lived. The railroad tracks ran behind that lumber company. John was just catching his breath after having hit a home run when his mother called him inside. We all heard later from our own mothers that John’s father had been hurt somehow. Something to do with his head. A stroke. I really didn’t know what a stroke was at that time or understand everything that it meant. I only knew it was bad. It was later in life that I understood how bad. All of us probably. But we did understand that John’s father had nearly died, and would never be his old self again, if he even managed to pull through.

It was a few days after that now. The first time the four of us had gotten back together. We all felt at loose ends. It simply had made no sense for the three of us to try to do much of anything without John. We had tried but all we could think about or talk about was John’s father. Would he be okay? Would they move? That worried me the most. His sister was about the most beautiful girl in the entire world to me. So not only would John move, so would she.

He came back to us today not saying a word about it. And we were worried.

When we reached the dam, the water was high. That could mean that either the dam had been running off the excess water or was about to be. You just had to look at the river and decide.

“We could go to the other side and back,” John suggested.

The dam was about 20 or 30 feet high. Looming over a rock-strewn riverbed that had very little water. It was deeper out towards the middle, probably, it looked like it was, but it was all dry river rock along the grassy banks. The top of the Dam stretched about 700 feet across the river.

“I don’t know,” Pete said. “The dam might be about to run. We could get stuck on the other side for a while.”

No one was concerned about a little wet feet if the dam did suddenly start running as we were crossing it. It didn’t run that fast. And it had caught us before. It was no big deal. Pete’s concern was getting stuck on the little island where the damn ended for an hour or so. Once, john, and I had been on that island and some kids, older kids, had decided to shoot at us with 22 caliber rifles. Scared us half to death. But that’s not the story I’m trying to tell you today. Maybe I’ll tell you that one some other time. Today I’m trying to tell you about John’s father. And how calm John seemed to be taking it.

John didn’t wait for anyone else to comment. He dumped his bike and started to climb up the side of the concrete abutment to reach the top of the dam and walk across to the island. There was nothing for us to do except fall in behind him. One by one we did.

It all went smoothly. The water began to top the dam, soaking our Keds with its yellow paper mill stink and scummy white foam, just about halfway across. But we all made it to the other side and the island with no trouble. Pete and I climbed down and walked away. To this day I have no idea what words passed between Gary and john, but the next thing I knew they were both climbing back up onto the top of the dam, where the water was flowing faster now. Faster than it had ever flowed when we had attempted to cross the dam. Pete nearly at the top of the concrete wall, Gary several feet behind him.

John didn’t hesitate. He hit the top, stepped into the yellow brown torrent of river water pouring over the falls and began to walk back out to the middle of the river. Gary yelled to him as Pete, and I climbed back up to the top of the dam.

I don’t think I was trying to be a hero, but the other thought, the thought he had pulled back from earlier, had just clicked in my head. John was thinking about dying. About killing himself. I could see it on the picture of his face that I held in my head from earlier. I didn’t yell to him, I just stepped into the yellow foam and water, found the top of the dam and began walking.

Behind me and Pete and Gary went ballistic. “Joe, what the fuck are you doing!”

I heard it, but I didn’t hear it. I kept moving. I was scared. Petrified. Water tugged at my feet. There was maybe 6 inches now pouring over the dam and more coming, it seemed a long way down to the river. Sharp, up-tilted slabs of rock seemed to be reaching out for me. Secretly hoping that I would fall and shatter my life upon them.

John stopped in the middle of the dam and turned, looking off toward the rock and the river below. I could see the water swirling fast around his ankles. Rising higher as it went. John looked over at me, but he said nothing.

“John,” I said when I got close enough. He finally spoke.

“No,” was all he said. But tears began to spill from his eyes. Leaking from his cheeks and falling into the foam scummed yellow-brown water that flowed ever faster over his feet.

“Don’t,” I screamed. I knew he meant to do it, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Don’t move,” Gary said from behind me. I nearly went over the falls. I hadn’t known he was that close. I looked up and he was right next to me, working his way around me on the slippery surface of the dam. I looked back and Pete was still on the opposite side of the dam. He had climbed up and now he stood on the flat top. Transfixed. Watching us through his thick glasses. Gary had followed John and me across.

I stood still and Gary stepped around me. I have no idea how he did. I’ve thought about it, believe me. There shouldn’t have been enough room, but that was what he did. He stepped right around me and then walked the remaining 20 feet or so to John and grabbed his arm.

“If you jump you kill me too,” Gary said. I heard him perfectly clear above the roar of the dam. He said it like it was nothing. Like it is everything. But mostly he said it like he meant it.

It seemed like they argued and struggled forever, but it was probably less than a minute, maybe two. The waters were rising fast and the whole thing would soon be decided for us. If we didn’t get off the dam quickly, we would be swept over by the force of the water.

They almost did go over. So did I. But the three of us got moving and headed back across to the land side where we had dropped our bikes. We climbed down from a dam and watched the water fill the river up. No one spoke.

Eventually john stopped crying. And the afterthought looks, as though there some words or thoughts he couldn’t say passed. The dying time had passed.

We waited almost two hours for the river to stop running and then Pete came across…

We only talked about it one other time that summer, and then we never talked about it again. That day was also a beautiful summer day. Sun high in the sky. We were sitting on our bikes watching the dam run.

“I can’t believe you were going to do it,” Pete said.

“I wasn’t,” John told him. “I only got scared when the water started flowing and froze on the dam… That’s all it was.”

Nobody spoke for a moment and then Gary said, “That’s how it was.”

“Yeah. That’s how it was,” I agreed…

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