This is a pen & ink drawing I did of Kip from the story The Worth of a Woman..

NaNoWriMo Prep Time

Municipal Leader, Kelly Buffum, is hosting a NaNoWriMo kickoff party at Panera in Hadley, MA tomorrow evening, Monday, October 29th at 6:30PM. She'll have stickers. Look for the table sign.

I have committed to writing the third in the Romney and Ivy, Black King, White Queen series. I promised readers back in April who asked when that novel would be written that I would write it this year. I've been reviewing Black King Takes White Queen and Black Knight, White Rook to make sure there is continuity between these two novels and the new one to be written. The tentative title for this new novel is White Bishop Among the Pawns, but it's not written in stone yet.

I'll be doing some writing at Dunks on Route 202 (North Rad) at the intersection of County Road, Route 202, and East Mountain Road just over the line from Holyoke as you approach Hampton Ponds in Westfield (across from Fini's Farmstand that is closed for the season) on Sunday, November 4th from 9AM to 11AM. Please feel free to join us if you can.

Later in November I'll be doing some writing in Maine while taking a few days break from the hectic pace of my life. Then I'll be back for a church bazaar in Agawam (Congregational Church on Main Street) on November 17th where I'll be selling my 3 Christmas novellas and 4 Christmas story collections from 9AM-2PM before rushing back to Westfield for a 3-5 meeting of the WhipCity Wordsmiths. Then on November 24th I'll be at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, Westfield, MA selling BicycleCity Black Squirrels pen & ink art prints of black squirrels (quite abundant here in Westfield) and maybe a few other critters- a fox kit and a chipmunk or two. It depends on what I can get done in time. I'm also doing something with the draped funeral urns- maybe a book and art print combo deal...it's still rolling around in my head at the moment, but I have The Girl With the Ivy Tattoo set in a funeral home, and Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales, The Hanging Man and Other Stories, 13, Miss Peculiar's Ghost Stories, Volume 1, and who knows what else. I might also have a few copies of the new novel The Worth of a Woman in combo with Kip the fox kit pen & ink print. We'll see...depends on how much energy I have with writing the NaNo novel and these events and work...and life in general!

And finally...What You Do Can Come Back to Haunt You

What You Do Can Come Back to Haunt You by Susan Buffum, (2018)

They say that what you do comes back to haunt you.

It started with a parade of ants across the kitchen floor in the dead of winter. I’d never seen ants in the house, except in the late spring and early summer when they’d found their way inside looking for food.  There were never ants in the winter, only sluggish ladybugs and beetles that had found a way into the attic in the final warm days of fall and had made their way down through cracks and vent openings, lured by the warmth downstairs. But, ants? The sheer amount and variety of them was enough to make my flesh crawl.

I tried stepping on them, swatting them with rolled magazines, scooping them up on newspaper to throw back outside, but the crazy thing was, they didn’t die. They kept darting across the floors, crawling up the cabinets, meandering over the counters by the hundreds. I couldn’t even sweep them into the trash can.

And then I noticed the flies on the window. No, not just one window, but every single window in the house. I tried to swat them with a rolled up newspaper, but it seemed to have no effect on them. They flew all around the room, silent, no buzzing of wings. I frowned, puzzled and frustrated, not understanding what was going on.

I thought about calling Charlie, but he hated being bothered at work. I knew he had a big meeting with his boss today in regards to a promotion, so I certainly didn’t want to disturb him if that meeting was presently going on.  I would have to handle this crazy invasion of insects on my own.

And then something struck my cheek. I looked down at my shirt and saw a bee walking around near a button. I hate bees. Instinctively, I made a quick brushing gesture to urge it off of me, but my hand seemed to pass right through it. It flickered like an old film strip image then reappeared as if my hand had merely gone through the projected image. How weird, not to mention troubling, was that?

I looked around to see if maybe Charlie had set up some sort of video system that was projecting all these holographic insects throughout the house, but I didn’t see anything unusual. However, something near the fireplace caught my eye. I made my way over there, black dots flitting through the shafts of sunlight on silent wings all around me. Mosquitoes, a horsefly.

I made an involuntary sound of shock and disgust as I realized what it was writhing over the hearth and in front of the wood pile. Earthworms. Nothing is creepier to me than an earthworm. Nothing could be more horrifying to me than finding a writhing mass of worms in my living room! Or so I thought.

I backed away from the glistening mass of worms and yelped as a small brown rabbit hopped past the coffee table. Looking around, I spotted a number of squirrels, chipmunks, and even a possum—a few in the dining room, some running up and down the staircase, others casually strolling from room to room. “Get out of my house!” I shouted, feeling a rush of panic and adrenalin surge through me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was happening, what was going on this morning.

I fled upstairs past a squirrel that just sat on its haunches and stared at me. I think my foot went right through him, since he didn’t move to get out of my way. It reminded me of the squirrel I’d hit on Jameson Point Road. It had sat in the road just like that, staring me down. I’d been going a little too fast, hadn’t had time to react and had run it over.

I had run over a few chipmunks, a few other squirrels, and once, at dusk, a rabbit that had appeared out of nowhere. I hated it when I ran something over. It was physically wrenching to me to kill anything really, but sometimes it just happened. Squirrels darted into the road and then couldn’t seem to decide what to do, which way to go. By the time they formed a plan, it was too late. They were flattened on the pavement.

The worse thing I had ever killed on the road was…no. I was not going to think about that!

This was ridiculous. Ladybugs, beetles, flies, ants, worms…and now a butterfly sitting on the frame of the mirror in the bedroom.  A robin perched on the headboard of the bed. That reminded me of the time when a robin had flown across the street, not high enough to avoid a collision with the windshield of my car. I could still see its startled black eye staring at me through the glass speckled with its blood as the airstream had lifted it off the windshield wipers, sliding it up the windshield and then over the roof of the car.

My rational mind was struggling to come up with an explanation for what I was seeing, for what was happening in the house and rapidly failing at its task. There was no rational explanation for these insects and animals to be here like this. These could not be the ghosts of every bug and creature that I had ever stomped on, swatted, crushed with a magazine or newspaper, run over in the street accidentally. How could it be that? But I couldn’t think of any other explanation.

And then spiders began dropping from the ceiling. I fled the room in horror. As much as I was afraid of worms and bees and flies, spiders terrified me even more.

I ran down the hallway and into the den, flinging the door shut behind me…and there he was, the man in the royal blue track suit. I skidded to a halt just a few feet into the room. He was seated in the chair at the computer table. Slowly, he swiveled toward me, giving me a gruesome grin as he awkwardly pushed himself up and out of the chair, he in his muddy, blood-stained attire. I could see the impression of my car’s tires running diagonally across his upper body and his legs. “No,” I said.  His face was surprisingly undamaged, but there was something wrong with it. I had thrown my jacket over his head that night so as not to have to look at him as I’d dragged him into the woods at the side of the road, hauling him to the edge of the ravine, and then using my feet to shove him over the edge so that his body rolled down into the ferns and low-lying brush below. I’d snatched my jacket off his head just before his limp, heavy body had flopped over the edge. “No!” I cried as he silently shambled nearer.

Reaching behind me, I blindly searched for the door knob. A shiny black beetle scuttled from between his lips. He grinned again and more insects—beetles, ants, flies, and squirming, disgusting maggots tumbled from his mouth, falling to the floor. I managed to find the door knob, twist it, and pull the door open a few inches. I was in the way. I had to step toward this horrible apparition in order to get the door open wide enough to escape the room. His dead white hand, the bloodless flesh abraded down to bare bone in places, reached for me. I thought he’d be like everything else in the house that I’d seen, that his hand would pass right through me, but it didn’t. I actually felt the brush of his cold flesh against my hand. “Susan,” he said in a sibilant voice, a snakelike hissing of the consonants of my name. “Ssssusssan.”

I screamed, shaking his hand off. “Stay away from me! Get back!” I walked backwards out into the hallway.

“Ssussssan…why?”

Why? I had been seventeen-years old, driving home from a friend’s house. Her parents had gone away for the weekend. There had been a party, beer and boys. I had stayed far later than I’d said I would. I knew my parents were going to be furious and would ground me. I was trying to get home. I was dizzy from the beer, trying hard to steer a straight path and not cross the double lines. I’d come around a corner, taking it too wide, over correcting, and he’d been right there in front of me. All I’d see was the bright blue of his track suit before I’d been jolted by the thud of striking him, knocking him down, the sway and thump as the tires had rolled over him.

I’d slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, and there he’d been, lying in the road. I’d thrown up and nearly fallen over, feeling sick, suddenly sober and scared. It was dark, a car could have come along at any moment, although none had passed me yet. I hadn’t been able to look at him. I’d removed my jacket and thrown it over his head, then crouched down and wrapped it quickly around his head. He’d groaned a little. “I’ll just move you off the road,” I’d said.

I’d struggled and strained to lift his upper body. He was limp and heavy. I tugged and heaved, getting him into the woods. I was just going to leave him there, but then I thought that the police would find him, that they’d find evidence on him linking him to my Dad’s car. Adrenalin gave me the strength to haul him deeper into the woods, to the edge of the ravine I knew was there. Colter Brook ran through the ravine. I’d hike there a lot when I was younger, but now it was posted No Trespassing. Kids hung out at Starbucks or Panera now.

I’d dropped him at the edge of the ravine, tugged my jacket from around his head, then sat on the ground and used both feet to shove him over the edge, listening to the crashing of his body as it had rolled down the embankment and settled into the ferns and brush below.

I’d gotten home without further incident, thrown my jacket in the washer, woken my father, shaking and crying, telling him that I’d struck a deer on the road and damaged his car. I’d told him that the deer had leapt off into the woods, but I thought it would die of its injuries. He’d shaken his head, told me accidents happened with wildlife all the time, asked me if I was hurt, and then sent me to bed, telling me he’d call to report the accident to the insurance in the morning. He’d take care of it.

And now, as I backed further along the hallway, it all played again through my mind like a vivid film loop. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I cried, throwing my hands out to try to stop him, but he kept lurching toward me on his damaged legs. “Stay back!”

I’d reached the stairs and turned to run down them, but I felt a shove in the small of my back. I screamed as I went flying forward and then downward, crashing onto the stairs, thudding down them, landing in a broken heap at the foot of them. My thoughts were chaotic, stumbling in those final moments of my life, but I thought I heard a voice outside my head say, “What you do, it will come back and haunt you.”

Another Halloween Treat- here's Figaro's Eye

Figaro’s Eye by Susan Buffum, (2018)

The air is heavy with the raw odor of approaching winter, the sky slung like a charcoal-colored pall overhead, sway-bellied with cold rain struggling for release. The scowling faces of black clouds scuttle by, shape-shifting until dissipated by stronger gusts of wind at higher elevations.

It is no more than half past three on a raw November afternoon, the graveyard still but for the subtle chattering of oak leaves reluctant to part way with branches and twigs, and the occasional nattering scold of a squirrel disturbed by my presence as if fearful that I may be scouring the dry-headed grass in search of acorns. However, it isn’t acorns that I am contemplating, but rather death.

I pause to visually scan the area I have found myself in, realizing that this is the older section of the sprawling cemetery, one established in the 1830’s when many rural cemeteries were given the label arboretum. This was when a variety of trees were planted and allowed to grow along the cobbled lanes. This was when people came and picnicked in the cemetery as if it was a park. But dining amid the dead had always been a rather disturbing notion to me. Whenever someone mentions this I always envision ghouls gnawing decomposing forearms or ragged thigh bones, ribbon-like tendons wedged between their jagged teeth, dark blood dripping from their misshapen lips and jutting jaws.

Here, the ground rolls under foot where the wooden coffins buried long ago have succumbed to damp rot and borer beetles, where the occupants of those wooden boxes have become food for writhing earthworms. I imagine scraps of soiled material scattered amid clumps of dirt and ordinary, jumbled stones, the organic material heaped upon the coffins when they were interred long ago. I imagine earth-stained bones adorned in tattered finery, gaudy bits of paste jewelry, and perhaps something that had once shone brightly under the sun, something that had escaped the grave robber’s gruesome greed.

These whimsical and idle thoughts drift through my mind as I navigate the damp, clingy grass, the mounds and dips harboring their secrets from the likes of a rambling ponderer of arbitrary notions such as myself on a blustery, late, autumn afternoon. For instance, I am presently contemplating the recent death of my brother, Roger. Roger had been found dead in his bath only three weeks ago.

He and I, you may already have surmised, were quite close when we were children, but we’d had our share of disagreements, the usual childish squabbles over the odd toy, which of our parents loved us more, and the furtive snooping into one another’s diaries and journals, the spilling of secrets we’d thought had been safe from prying eyes. By adolescence we had drifted apart as we’d made friends from among our classmates. We’d outgrown the reliance we’d had upon one another for play and companionship that we’d had when we were children and had been kept indoors because Mother had always felt that the neighborhood children were too rough and vulgar for us to associate with.

Our childhood friends had been a giant, pink and white panda that Father had won for Mother at a carnival when they’d been courting. Pinky was its name. And there had been a black and white plush cat named Figaro, from the Disney animated movie Pinocchio. When I was eleven years old, Roger had pried off one of Figaro’s yellow, black and white felt eyes. He’d told me that Figaro had poked his eye out on a rose cane in the garden.

I’d cried for weeks over the lost eye until Aunty June had glued one of Uncle Henry’s black eye patches over the excelsior oozing wound and told me that Figaro was now a seafaring cat aboard Captain Hook’s pirate ship. I’d smiled wanly, sad that Gepetto had lost his cat, too, that it was no longer the same cat, but rather a snarly cat that bared its fangs at me when no one was looking.

Roger was buried in the newer section of the cemetery. The earth was still raw, the grass patchy and scraggly over his grave, like a livid scar. I had a scar, but it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. It was a seamed wound, unsteadily stitched across my throbbing heart. Figaro had scratched me there one night. Roger, when I’d told him, had scoffed at me and called me a brainless ninny, but the wound had bled continuously , spurting ruby blood with each pulse, every beat, threatening to empty my blood vessels until they were hollow blue tubes lying flat beneath my skin and laced through my muscles, wrapped like blue ribbons around my bloodless internal organs.

The Sandman had stitched the wound. At least that’s who I assumed he was, creeping into my room in the dead of night where my eyes ached from staring into the darkness trying to discern the deeper darkness heralding his arrival, him emerging like a dense black shadow from the corner closest to the closet, shuffling across the carpet, sprinkling me with sand as black as soot that stained my face and made my eyes burn as if smoldering embers had been deposited beneath my lids.

I think about Roger now lying in his gunmetal gray casket, in his bed of pearl-gray tufted satin, all dressed up in his Sunday best, as if he had been a churchgoing man. Only my brother could make a mockery of death like that. One of his eyes had not stayed glued completely shut. There had been a dull glint beneath the lashes of his left eye, his sinister eye, if you will allow me that nod toward the Latin we’d been made to learn in school. He was sinister. I was dexter.

Now he’s dead, and I am still alive, still free to ramble and roam above ground, to do a little dance upon the dirt atop his final resting place, if I so choose to do so, when no one is around to observe me, that is.

My ears, still keen, pick up a curious chuff of sound, like someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle—a dull , deep almost musical note. I raise my head and look all about for the source of the sound, and hear another. And then another. A series of somber notes vibrate along the air currents. Searching for the source, my eyes fall upon the pudding stone chapel near the newer section of the cemetery. This seems to be the source of the eerie, low notes drifting like a dirge to my ears.

I wander in that direction. I am about fifty or so yards from the door when the mournful music abruptly ceases and a strange stillness falls upon the cemetery. The rustling of the leaves halts. The scolding of the squirrels I have disturbed becomes a profound silence. My eyes rise briefly to the sky and even the clouds seem to have stopped their fretful meandering and merely hang above my head like dark curtains ready to be wrung down upon the completion of a play, after the final curtain call.

Something moving in my lower field of vision causes me to return my gaze to the chapel, to the door to be precise. It appears to be ajar. It was closed and locked when I walked past earlier this afternoon. I had wanted to peek inside at the stone floor, the sturdy pews, the simple altar before a central stained glass window depicting a white cross draped with lilies, the surrounding smaller stained glass windows each containing one tumbling full blown rose. The door had been firmly fastened against potential vandals.

I peer harder and see a dark form emerge. It appears to be a man in a dark suit, perhaps a funeral director preparing the chapel for a funeral tomorrow? Or a minister? Surely the cemetery caretaker wouldn’t be dressed so formally this late on a Sunday afternoon, with the sun already dipping behind the trees, the shadows stretching inky limbs toward me from all directions. It will be full dark soon.

Night is already bleeding across the face of the chapel and pooling at the feet of the dark figure that slowly begins to turn toward me as if sensing my presence, although I have grown as still as one of the chiseled marble statues, like the angel with the broken wing tip that marks the grave of the unfortunate Kate Turner who, back when I had been fourteen years old and a classmate of hers, had been thrown from the cliff onto the rocks below, whose broken body had been carried out to sea by the swirling surf to become food for the slippery fishes lurking beneath the dark water.

She had been the first of my peers to perish under suspicious circumstances, her murder and many others that followed, had been similar in nature to hers, all of them never solved. Roger had been seventeen-years old when Kate had died, seventeen and already full of cruelty and secrets.

My eyes are able to discern a purple handkerchief folded and tucked like an origami flower into the breast pocket of the charcoal-colored suit coat the man wears. I am familiar with it because I am the one who had tucked it there, a random, ridiculous gesture really. It was just that his pocket had seemed so flat and empty.

I gasp, my eyes rising to the face of the man. A sound flows up the back of my throat. I cannot swallow it back, therefore, it rushes out from between my cold lips. I hear my own name coming toward me in the still air, “Rose.” I know that voice only too well and shudder.

We stare at one another like opponents on a battlefield, the last two enemies left standing after a bitter, bloody, lengthy fight. I clench my fists and find my hands are empty, no weapons in my grasp. He raises his hand, his left hand for he is sinister, as I have already mentioned, and points his index finger at me as if pointing a gun at my heart. “Bang,” he says, the word flat, startlingly loud.

For a moment I consider doing likewise, shooting him with my finger and saying, “Gotcha, you’re dead!” like we used to do when we were young, ducking behind the furniture, popping up like jack-in-the-boxes to shoot at one another with our finger guns. Only there is a sharp ache in my breast. I risk tearing my eyes away from him to look down, frowning at what I see. A dark stain has blossomed on the front of my coat like an exotic, flower. It glistens in the dying light that bleeds now from behind the trees as the sun sinks lower toward the horizon. “What?” I murmur before my knees buckle. I drop to the cold grass, the brown tips crisp beneath the knees of my slacks. “What?”

My eyes search for him, but he is no longer on the path leading to the chapel door. I twist slightly as I fall onto my side. From the corner of my eye I see him standing above me, looking down at me through that one eye that was partially open when he was lying in his casket not so long ago. “Like Figaro,” he says.

My mind goes reeling back to childhood, to the eye he tore off the plush cat. Although the gathering dark seems to be slithering in closer all around us, I watch him reach into his breast pocket. He tosses something onto the grass close to my face. I shift my gaze, struggling to focus on what he’s thrown down upon the cold earth. It looks like a miniature fried egg with a charred stain at the center before my eyes discern its thin layers—white, yellow, and black. I know what it is now. It is a felt eye; Figaro’s eye.

He’s had it all along, the evil bastard!

For Halloween, Here's Little Things

Little Things by Susan Buffum, (2018)

It’s always the little things. That’s what they say. All those little things. They add up. They add up over a period of time, right? So they say.

Like, moving to a new town, for instance. Well, okay, that’s a big thing, moving. Leaving the familiar. Jumping into the unknown with both feet. Starting a new job. Another big thing. Learning your way around a new place. Big. Making new friends. Big thing. I get that. I’m a nervous person by nature. It’s my disposition to be nervous in unfamiliar places, doing unfamiliar things, being among unfamiliar people. I’m nervous about all that, but those are all big things. I get nervous about the big stuff. I don’t usually get nervous about little things.

At least, I didn’t used to get nervous about them. But I’m getting more and more nervous now. Nervouser. No, that’s not a real word, but it describes how I feel. Anxious. I feel anxious. Really anxious.

All right, so, little things. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s all those little things that start to add up and grate on your nerves. For instance, the lock on my apartment door. Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes it seems to stick. You know, you put your key in the lock and twist it and sometimes it turns nice and smooth, but at other times it’s like there’s some force, some physical force standing on the other side of the door counteracting your attempts to unlock the door. You try and you try, and the key should be, like, getting warmer and warmer between your fingers from all the exertion you’re putting into unlocking the door, but the funny thing is, and you’re probably not going to believe me here, but the key seems to get colder and colder. I mean it gets so cold it hurts my fingers so I have to pull them away and blow on them to warm them up, and then hold the key wrapped in a fold of my jacket…and then it’s like whatever force was there just stops, or steps back, so the lock turns easily and I practically fall into the entryway, stumbling like I’ve had a few too many at the corner bar. You know how you turn on the lights, swing the door shut and examine the lock to see if you can figure out what was preventing the key from turning all that time. You twist that little button-thing on the latch that slides the deadbolt in and out and there’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all. It twists just fine.

Little things.

Here’s another example, another thing. Sometimes I wake up at night and I smell gas. I don’t do much cooking. I get takeout or pick up premade stuff from the corner market and just reheat it in the microwave when I’m hungry. My appetite hasn’t been what it was when I first moved here. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I used to be pretty big, but now my clothes are falling off of me. So, anyway, I don’t cook. I maybe heat a pan of water once in a blue moon to make a mug of instant coffee or a cup of tea. I’m always careful with the burners. My grandmother nearly blew up our house when I was little, after she’d moved in with us. She had Alzheimer’s. We tried to keep her out of the kitchen, but sometimes we lost track of her, especially at night when she’d wander around. She turned the burner on and off, on and off a thousand times, because she liked the flames. She always had this thing about the blue ring of flames. One night, she left the gas on and the house filled up with that awful stink. She could have blown us all up in our sleep. I know I always turn the burner off. I’m kind of OCD about it, turning the burner on and off, leaning close and sniffing to make sure I don’t smell gas. So, explain to me how the gas gets turned on and the whole place reeks of it some mornings?

Is that a little thing? Finding the gas on when you know you didn’t turn it on? Or, is that a big thing, like a life threatening sort of thing? A big thing? Well, it’s just one burner. Little thing. Yeah, it’s a little thing.

And the soap, the bar of soap in the tub. I always find it on the bottom of the tub, not in the dish where I know I leave it when I finish my shower. So, if I’m leaving it in the dish, why am I finding it on the bottom of the tub right where I’m going to put my foot when I next step into the tub? How does it get out of the soap dish? It’s not like it has tiny little legs and crawls out of the dish like it’s trying to escape and it falls over the edge or whatever. It’s almost like someone is getting into my apartment and deliberately placing the bar of soap on the bottom of the tub so I’ll step on it, slip, fall, and break my neck. But no one can get in when the door is locked, right? I mean, it’s a deadbolt lock. And who would want me to fall and get hurt or killed? I hardly know anyone here. I’ve only lived here four, no, five months. Five months, one week and three days to be exact. I just verified that on the wall calendar. I only know a couple people in the office where I work. I’ve only met one neighbor, a nice old lady named Millie or Nellie, or something like that. She has a Pomeranian that yaps at me all the time. It tried to pee on my leg once and she scolded it, tugging its leash hard. I thought she was going to choke the poor thing, but its eyes, I guess, naturally bug out like that. It’s how it looks all the time, but I didn’t know that then. She and the dog have nothing to do with the soap. My co-workers don’t know where I live. Unless they Googled me, but why would anyone do that? I’m nobody of interest, but you never know. The world is full of snoops and voyeurs these days.

But, anyway, so it’s just another little thing.

At night I hear footsteps. It sounds like someone’s pacing around in the living room, back and forth along the hallway outside my door. I called the cops three separate times for this and every time there was no one in the apartment. Now, I just fold the pillow over my ear and try to ignore it. I complained to the landlord but he said the building must have weird acoustics, that the guy upstairs might be an insomniac who paces around his apartment over mine and I hear it in my apartment like he’s right outside the door and in my living room. Maybe I should get to know my neighbors so I can ask them if the same thing happens in their apartments, hearing stuff from upstairs like it’s happening in your own apartment.

Okay, and then there’s that mark on the floor. I don’t know what it is, but it looks sort of like an unshod horse’s hoof mark or maybe a cow’s. It could be a cow’s. Or maybe a deer’s? But how would a deer get into a third floor apartment? It’s on the floor just inside the balcony door. I’ve got a little balcony. It’s just big enough for a café table and two chairs, but I don’t have anything out there because I have asthma, so I don’t like to sit outside and breathe in exhaust fumes, cigar smoke from the guy next door, and those invisible fumes from the factories along the river and all the chemical smells and stuff. I don’t even open the door, but I notice the mark when I mop the floor. It looks like someone burnt the hoof print into the wood. Well, I don’t know if this is real wood or laminate or whatever, but the mark is black and sort of looks like a deer, or goat, or whatever, tiptoed in, kind of stepping on the front part of its hoof because the back part is less distinct. I can’t wash it off. I’ve even tried bleach, but it’s still there. Maybe I’ll get a throw rug or something to cover it. It just bothers me. I don’t know why it’s there or what could have caused it. It’s just another of those little things that have been getting under my skin.

An irritant. That’s what it is. It irritates me.

Little things. All these little things.

Oh, and did I mention yet the sensation of someone breathing down the back of my neck when I’m sitting in my chair reading at night? It’s not a draft. It’s not a stirring of air from a ceiling vent or whatever. It’s warm and humid like it would be if a real live person was standing behind the chair with their face close to the back of my head just breathing their hot breath down the back of my neck. But there’s never anyone there, of course. It’s just another little thing I can’t explain to anyone without that person looking at me as if I’m crazy.

I’m not crazy. This is all real stuff that’s happening to me. All these little things going on since I moved in. Oh, and the shadows! I see shadows from the corner of my eye, like there’s someone there and they move, but when I turn my head or jump up and go running into the kitchen or down the hallway there’s never anyone there. No one can get in. I’ve told myself that a million times. The doors are securely locked. The windows, even on the third floor, have bars, probably so kids and cats and small dogs, which are allowed here in the apartments, can’t fall out. I know there is no one here but me. Yet, all these little things keep happening so that I feel I might be going crazy, but I’m really not crazy because if I was, then someone would have noticed that by now and mentioned it to me, I would hope.

It all just makes me terribly anxious and nervous. I sleep with the lights on now. My electric bill is ridiculous. That’s why I can’t afford groceries. That’s why I’m losing weight. That’s why I’m so jumpy and skittish at work when people come up behind me, even if it’s just to drop off mail or ask me a question about an account of whatever. I practically jump out of my chair or spin around as if I’m under attack.

So, yes, I did have a letter opener clutched in my fist just the other day when Roger came up and tapped me on the shoulder, startling me. But in my defense, I had been opening my mail at the time. The letter opener had already been in my hand. I hadn’t grabbed it with the intention of stabbing him. It was just a reflexive action. He’d grabbed my wrist and said, “Whoa there! There’s no need to kill a fella for wanting to ask if you’d like a cup of coffee!” The letter opener had fallen onto my lap and then slipped off, clattering onto the tiled floor.

But, it had given me an idea. I keep a large knife under my pillow now. I feel more secure knowing it’s there when I try to sleep. It’s just another of those little things, feeling that I need to have a weapon close at hand because suddenly, I feel awfully shaky and vulnerable. I feel as if someone is watching me, messing with my stuff in the apartment, trying to lock me out of my own home at times, lurking just behind me, breathing down my neck, trying to drive me crazy. Trying to drive me out.

And now, it’s the balcony doorknob. It’s rattling again, as if someone is out there trying to get inside. I’ve heard it before. I keep the drapes drawn across the atrium door and full length windows. I’ve seen shadows out there before around twilight time. I thought it might be from the neighbors out on their balconies, but the elderly man next door is short and hunched over, the young woman on the other side of me tall and slender like an anorexic. This shadow had been tall, muscular, and wearing some sort of headdress, maybe? Sort of like Viking horns, only curved downward. I really only got a quick impression of it as I’d jumped up and ran screaming down the hallway to my bedroom, slamming the door, huddling in the closet among a jumble of shoes and sneakers until a persistent knocking on my door had drawn me out. My neighbor had called the police because I had been screaming. I’d been embarrassed and apologized, just saying I had been watching a scary movie on TV and had thought I’d seen something out on the balcony, but it must have just been a reflection of some sort. They had, or course, checked the balcony and found no signs of an intruder. One of them, upon coming back inside, had noticed the mark on the floor, had rubbed the toe of his black boot over it as if trying to erase it, a slight frown creasing his brow, but his partner had announced the place was secure, no signs of anyone having been out on the balcony. He’d double-checked the door to make sure it was locked, then drawn the drapes across the windows and door, told me I should get a small dog to keep me company. And then they’d left.

Tonight, it’s another of those little things that has me crouching in the bathtub, hidden by the shower curtain, the knife from beneath my pillow clutched in my fist, my heart hammering so loud it’s echoing in my ears and I can feel it in the back of my throat. Footsteps. I heard footsteps in the living room. Clop, clop, clop, like that. No one wears wooden shoes in this country. Boot heels? No, not quite like that either. Not high heels, stilettos, dress shoes, or any other kind of foot gear I can think of. It’s different. Like horse hooves clopping in a covered bridge, only not so many clops. Like it’s walking on its hind legs around the room. I can hear it shifting and moving things. And snorting. It’s snorting through its nose. It’s pretty loud. Worse than bad sinuses and allergies. I’ve had that condition all my life.

I’ve heard these footsteps before, but not like this. Not like it’s searching for something. Searching for something? Did I just think that? No, it’s searching for someone. It’s searching for me. I know it is. It’s all these little things. They’re suddenly adding up in my head. The lock resisting my efforts to open it, the soap in the bottom of the tub, the smell of gas from a burner turned on, the footsteps, the hoof print, the breath at the back of my neck, the shadow on the balcony…there’s something here that’s not natural. There’s something in this apartment that wants me to leave!

My hand is shaking. I grip the knife with both hands. The bathroom door knob rattles. The breath catches at the back of my throat. I hear a loud snort. It’s right outside the door! Whatever it is, it’s standing right outside the bathroom door trying to get in! A loud bang, a shoulder thrown against the flimsy wood of the door, makes the entire door shudder and creak. “No!” I cry. “No! Stop! I’ll leave! I’ll go! Stay out of here! Go away! Stay away from me! I’ll leave in the morning! I’ll just go!” A louder snort, a more forceful attempt to break the door down. I scream. I keep screaming. And now there’s hammering behind my head, from the other side of the common wall. My neighbor. I can hear him shouting at me, telling me to shut up! “Help!” I scream. “Call the police!”

“Shut up! Shut up you lunatic! Go back to bed already! People are trying to sleep!” He sounds angry.

The bathroom door cracks loudly. I cringe, drawing myself up into a tight ball at the faucet end of the tub. I shake like a leaf, literally. And I’m crying now, still screaming. A loud thud against the wall and more shouting from my elderly neighbor. He sounds furious now. I scream again as the bathroom door crashes open, a shower of shattered plaster raining to the tile floor, the clop of hooves on tile, the hot snort of air through a long nose, a low snarl.

I scramble up onto my feet, nearly falling through the shower curtain before gaining my footing, kicking the bar of soap to the far end of the tub, huddling against the tiled wall, staring, just staring at the large shadow on the other side of the curtain. I see its long arm reach for the edge of the curtain, my eyes watching the curtain rings that are rattling. I’m keening, “No…no…no…” in a weird, chanting manner, but as the rings sing along the rod as the curtain is abruptly shoved aside, I scream again as I lunge forward with the knife. A reflexive action. A self-preservation action.

Blood…so much blood. It’s forming a pool on the tiled floor where I’ve fallen. The knife I’ve pulled from my own thigh clatters from fingers that feel cold and numb, that are tingling. I’m trying to breathe, but each breath requires effort, like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. I hear a snort, a soft snarl. With what strength I have left, I twist my head, tilt it back. There is a shadow in the doorway, a tall dark shadow. I blink. Spots dance in my eyes, the shadow wavers then disappears. There’s nothing there. Nothing.

Little things. Little things, I think as the spots grow larger, blotting my vision like ink stains. Little things add up.

Too late. That thought floats like a whisper through my mind. The accountant in me should have added the sum total sooner. All those… little…things…

Getting My Spooky On

Ghost Stories LIVE! is happening on Saturday, October 27th, at 6PM at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, Westfield, MA. Something old, something new, and some real ghost stories as well.

I am the something new part of the program. I've been writing new ghost stories and reading them for about two years now. The ball started rolling last week with Little Things. Little Things grew to over 3000 words, which is a bit too lengthy a read for the event, so I set it aside for a future ghost stories anthology.

Last night, Figaro's Eye finger tapped across the keyboard, coming in at just below 2000 words with a creep factor of 7-8.

We're getting there! I still have ten days to write...we'll see which story hits the bullseye this year!

PumpkinFest 2018

This year for PumpkinFest I will be throwing my hat into not only the author ring again, but into the artist ring as well with the first offering of my pen & ink realistic black squirrel renderings, matted and ready for framing. The prints are 5x7 matted for 8x10 framing. I haven't set a price point yet but am thinking $10 would be fair for all the work I've put into drawing the originals, printing the art, cutting to size, attaching to the mat, applying the backing, packaging them with a business card and sealing with a custom sticker. I will ask $30 for the original pen and ink drawings, framed.

Among the black squirrels, which are abundant here in Westfield and rather iconic for this city, I have included about a half dozen pen and ink prints of Kip, the fox kit from my new book, The Worth of a Woman. Kip is a pivot point in the novel, but I'm not going to reveal plot points here.

I've been writing and drawing my entire life, concentrating more on writing in the past 18 years than art. I began drawing in pen and ink in 1974 after an art class at Westfield High during which we drew in pen and ink. It became a passion of mine. My dorm walls were covered in my pen and ink drawings in 1976 and 1977. Now I've taken up drawing again to relax. And I'm still writing.

PumpkinFest will feature 30 artists and three authors. Two authors are also artists. Rhonda Boulette whose beautiful Bear Paw Ridge books will be on offer also paints on household and garden items, repurposing them. She's wonderful, her art cheerful, warm, and mischievous at times.

Looking forward to Saturday and the debut of the BicycleCity Black Squirrels. I'll also have a number of books, some of them giveaways while they last, a black squirrel & pumpkin coloring page for kids, information on the WhipCity Wordsmiths and information on upcoming events at which I will be appearing. It's going to be a busy autumn season!

Reduced to Tears

     I admit it...I am an emotional person. I inherited an ease of crying from my father.
    What set me off tonight? Writing a little bit in a facebook post about my author friend, Melissa Volker's new book, How the Light Gets In. 
     I was fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to beta read this book for Melissa months in advance of its official launch date. I've beta read for her before, but this book hooked me deep and drew me in from the very first page. Having been a shy, socially awkward, anxious kid who was picked on in school the story resonated with me on multiple deep levels that I didn't think still existed, but they are still there, like dark pools waiting to be agitated by a probing finger.
    I loved how art is used in this book...as an escape. As a connection. As a message. Being an author and an artist, words and pictures have always captured my attention. Melissa's writing is akin to reading a photographic image. Her prose evokes images in the reader's mind, her words, carefully chosen and arranged on the page, create pictures that accompany the story.
    Trying to find the words to scatter rose petals across the cover of this book, to celebrate it's existence in the literary world, to tie balloons to praise and elevate it into its rightful place among literary classics such as The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, A Separate Peace, Flowers for Algernon, Lord of the Flies...all those novels I read in middle school and high school that still  reverberate in my mind...that is where How the Light Gets In belongs...it's a book that will endure.
     And that is what makes me cry...that someone I personally know has written such a book and still doubts her skill. Melissa! Seriously! Every one of your books that I have read- Delilah of Sunhats and Swans, Hidden, Anabelle Lost, Where We Go, A Life Undone, The Thirteenth Moon, Apocalypse Alice...each has been a beautiful stepping stone leading to this novel.
     And, I firmly believe that there's more yet to come, that despite this triumph, there will be others emerging from your pen.
      I cry because it is amazing to me to know such an exceptional writer, such a talented and gifted author.
      Bravo, Melissa! Bravo!

Remembering My Mom Tonight

Eighteen years ago tonight, my Mom passed away from multi-organ failure after a long struggle with diabetes. I didn't make it downtown in time to say goodbye. She was gone by the time I reached the house, having been directed to go to the ER and not finding her there. I was disappointed I wasn't there at the end, but I had seen her mid-morning the day before just before she was released from the hospital. I was sitting in the room when her longtime primary care doctor came into the room. It still amazes me that they shook hands and had a brief conversation in which he thanked her for being a wonderful patient and she thanked him for being a good doctor. They said goodbye to one another, he nodded to me and then left the room. Despite morphine induced paranoia and wild rantings and statements, she was lucid right then at that time. She knew I was there. She asked if everything was ready at home, the hospital bed had been delivered, her oxygen was there. I said I was going over to double check, that I'd be sure everything was in place. She then said, I just want to go home and have peace and quiet for 24-hours. No visitors. I kissed her goodbye, told her I'd see her after she was rested, and left. That was the last time I saw her alive.

What I remember most about my mother was her generosity, her perseverance. She loved her family, and she truly cared about all people. Life threw a lot of hardballs at her. Some she dodged, some glanced off her, but some struck her hard enough to knock her on her butt. The thing about her was, she never complained. She got herself back up onto her feet and she kept moving forward.

She lost her own mother when she was only 13 years old. Her father worked in a mill. She had a five year old brother to look after. She finished high school. She went to nursing school. She graduated from Cooley Dickinson School of Nursing and immediately went to work at CHD as a night nursing supervisor. A year later she was married to Dad. The next year my big sister was born. Four years later I was born. Just over a year later my brother came along.

What a lot of people don't know is that my mother suffered at least nine miscarriages. Nine babies-gone. I don't know if there was one before Lynnmarie was born. It's possible. Then there was the four year gap between Lynnmarie and me. I think there must have been a few between us. Siblings lost. My brother came along 14 months after me. By the time she lost the final two, I was old enough to be aware that something was going on. I think I was in kindergarten when she lost her last baby and had a hysterectomy, against the wishes of the Catholic priest who told her that her duty was to have babies. She threw him out of her room after telling him that her duty was to raise the three living children she had at home, they needed their mother. That was when she broke with the Catholic church and we said goodbye to Immaculate Conception.

She stayed home and raised us as she recovered from her multiple surgeries. She had a lot to deal with- Dad finding a decent job after layoffs. He landed at Hamilton Standard when I was little and stayed there for 30 years, retiring a few years after John and I had given them a granddaughter. There were health crises with my sister, my great-grandmother, my brother falling on a glass while running in the hallway and badly cutting his wrist, her gallbladder surgery, Dad's kidney stones...she waded through it with her head up and steered the little ship called Family through rough seas to calm shores.

She went back to work as an RN. She became one of Massachusetts first Nurse Practitioners. She saw her own patients and they loved her. She welcomed all our various friends into our home and made them an extended part of our family. In high school, Lynnmarie, Jeffrey and I often looked at one another wondering just who our friends were coming to visit- us or Mom. Our house was always full of family, friends, cats and kittens, and occasionally a dog. There were always cookies or brownies, sodas in the fridge, games of Parcheesi or Scrabble at the kitchen table, puzzles to build.

We did fun things like go hiking in the fall with a big Thermos of hot chocolate, dressing up as hippies in the early 70's, picking up my Uncle, Aunt and cousin who had also dressed up, then taking Dad's VW microbus up to Mom's father's house. He hated hippies, would squirt dishwashing detergent out the car window at hippie hitchhikers...but he laughed when we all showed up on Halloween to trick him good. He even tried on Mom's wig, Lynnmarie's love beads, and strummed a guitar for a photo we all cherish to this day. On the way home, driving through downtown Northampton, we hung out the windows in out hippie gear tossing full size Hershey bars to people on the sidewalks.

We summered at Hampton Beach in a stone cottage right across the street from North Beach. College roommates and their boyfriends, friends, family...the door was always opening and closing as people came and went...and the dining room table that could seat at east twenty if not more was always crowded, food plentiful (Mom was half Italian and didn't know how to cook small!) People slept everywhere and patiently took turns in the one bathroom in the cottage. Family cats Wiggy and Poohsie vacationed with us.

We never wanted for anything although we were not rich by any means. I got a '62 VW beetle for my 16th birthday. It didn't run, but I didn't care. I hand-painted it enamel Chinese red. Dad got it running. It was a standard I couldn't drive. I hopped it up the street a few times then Dad sold it to a co-worker and I used the money to buy a '73 Ford Pinto, baby blue. It got me to college and back, although it was prone to developing vapor lock abut a mile from home...back in the days before cellphones.

Mom made us all happy. She made us laugh. She liked to have fun. She tried to learn to juggle. She tried roller sating. She water skied when she was young. She wanted to be a helicopter pilot and had met a man where she worked who was going to teach her, but she developed diabetic retinopathy and then double vision so flying was out.

She cherished her one and only grandchild, Kelly. After saying we weren't going to have kids, we decided to give it a try...After getting over the shock of our waking her up on a Saturday morning to tell them they were going to be grandparents, she jumped right into being a Grandma with both feet..basically becoming a big influence in Kelly's life. She was confined to her chair for the last few years of Kelly's life, but devised numerous story-based games to play with her. They had an entire world called the Tweets (long before Twitter), Steven Sparrow, Tweet, Little Tweet...Mom told stories, drew pictures and world built for Kelly, stretching her imagination, opening up vistas in her mind. They played Pet Vet treating every plush animal in the house, Mom writing chart notes and prescriptions Kelly would take to the pharmacy for Grandpa to fill with M&M's and jelly beans.

Mom was in the hospital when Kelly's training wheels came off and she rode a two-wheeler for the first time. We took a picture, printed out an 8X10 that a nurse hung on the bulletin board at the foot of Mom's bed.

She enriched our lives. She let us live our own lives, make our own way in the world. If we made mistakes, we had to deal with them ourselves, but she was always there if we went to her for advice, guidance. She didn't tell us what to do. We had to find our own way out of predicaments, but she was always there for us in the background. None of us ever moved home. None of us ever borrowed substantial amounts of money. I'd borrow maybe two hundred dollars from time to time, but always paid her back. She kept an account book, but more importantly, I kept my own account book of what was owed and made sure I paid her back with interest.

Mom lived life large and as fully as her health allowed. She was full of love and joy. She was generous to everyone. I learned a lot from her and have carried those lessons with me throughout my life. They have been passed down to Kelly. I'm thankful to have had her for my Mom for 42 years. She left a huge hole in my life when she departed, but I've been filling that hole with new friends, new experiences, no ventures. The one thing I am from being my mother's daughter is not one to sit on the sidelines and wait for life to happen. I jump in with both feet and make life happen all around me. That's what fills me with happiness and satisfaction. That's what's led me to writing books and drawing squirrels. This is what's inside of me, my way of expressing it and sharing it.

Thanks, Mom, for letting me be me, for never clipping my wings, for letting me make mistakes and find my own way forward, but for always having my back. Thanks for giving me everything I needed to be happy. When I look in the mirror, I see me, but it reminds me of you.

Love you always, Mom. Eighteen years gone, but you'll never be forgotten because you are still so very much alive in my heart and in my memories.