Parts

[Bmichael]

This thread is for those parts of tales we’ve written –  inspired  beginnings (or middles and endings)  and flashes of brilliance that came out of nowhere – only to  mysteriously disappear as quickly as they came-  leaving us stranded at our keyboards.

Good writing, but orphaned without a “rest of the story”.

Check your files…show off some of that stuff. Who knows? Maybe now is the right time to complete it.

[Kristina Lunde]

Dee would want you all to have another go at this...

 

Diablo stood on the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande thinking it didn't matter now, the horse dying. For the first time in six days no line of dust raised by the Federales followed him. Damn Porfirio Diaz! "Some day, hah, Diablo would...."

Beside the ear of his horse he had cut off two days before, and sucked on even now, Diablo had eaten his last flesh six days before. Texas could wait.

He bounded back to his fallen horse. His claws twitched. As he ripped a foreleg and shoulder away he saw the riders appear across the river. His mouth watered.

The three mounted men stopped beneath a live oak and gazed toward Diablo. Flies buzzed. A horse blew. Another stamped its impatience.

"We gonna hang this one, Sheriff?"

"Yeah. Upside down over a fire. I'm hungry. You boys ever had roast Mexican? Mighty good."

"I reckon I could eat a leg."

"Too stringy. I prefer rare white meat," the other deputy said. "Brains and eggs wouldn't be bad though."

Today, down along the Rio Grande, they still talk about the old buffalo hunter finding a live oak tree standing at the mouth of a canyon with three fresh skeletons hanging from a low limb, the bones striped clean. Deep claw marks can still be seen in the huge live oak today, as if long ago something had marked its territory. The canyon is still known as Three Skeleton Canyon.

　

My name is Diablo. At least that’s what they call me now. But, names can be misleading.

I was born to a loving mother, and I thought for a while, a loving father. I thought life was a perfect state until I was introduced to death at age five.

After that introduction, in which I watched my father beat my mother to death with his fists, I felt life was a pointless existence. We come with nothing, take nothing when we leave. But that truth wasn’t good enough. Somehow I had to make sense of it all.

You may ask why a loving father, a man who loved both my mother and I deeply, would suddenly turn on someone he loved and kill them. The simple truth is my mother, for some reason, forgot to shut the window to my bedroom before dark one night. Just after dark, a strange bat, one the color of chalk and with red eyes, flew in the window and bit me. Lying with my back to the window, I wasn’t yet asleep and screamed immediately. My father yelling out my name in a loud voice almost broke down the door getting into my room. When he did enter, he ripped the bat from my bare shoulder. The strange bat bit him before he finally crushed it with his bare hands. A week later , the night of the first full moon over Mexico City since my mother’s passing, my father hanged himself.

That night my skin prickled from head to toe. I thought it was from the sight of seeing my father with a noose around his neck and swinging from a beam in the stable. Or because I realized I was all alone in the world.

I wandered the streets, sleeping where I could, getting food where I could find it. Sometimes I fought half-wild dogs for scraps of meat thrown in the streets or behind the cantinas. Oddly, my strength as well as the nails on my hands and feet begin to grow.

I became stronger than someone three times my age. By the time I was ten years of age I had the strength of two grown men, strength that increased beyond that over time. I no longer had to fight dogs for the meat scraps. I merely flung them into the opposite building along the street.

After one such incident a crowd formed and several people pointed at me. "Diablo, Diablo, that one," an old gnarly woman sang out as she pointed at me. I grabbed the meat scraps and ran down the alley.

I knew no Diablo, or what the word meant. I had no schooling and rarely mixed among the peoples. But a sense of right and wrong surfaced within me that same day.

As I walked down the alley that day with the intention of getting out of the city and away from people, sudden a young woman was flung from a doorway and into the dusty street. I watched as a laughing man holding a glass in his hand

stepped through the doorway. When the woman tried to rise, he struck her , a hard slap to her cheek. Four or five men spilled out of the doorway, all laughing at the woman. The man who had struck her poured the contents of his glass over her head and then begin to urinate on her.

Anger I had never known rose up inside me as my mind reeled back to my father beating my mother. I was sixty yards away from the man and woman but by now I could cover that in two leaps. On my second bound I landed atop the man standing over the woman, a snarling growl coming from my throat.

My claws, not yet fully developed, slashed at his face and body. A man tried to pull me off the man. I threw him down the street like a rag doll as I continued slash. Someone yelled, "Get a gun!"

I scooped up the young woman and carried her down the alley, then hit a side alley. Behind me I heard men yelling, but no one followed me. But I heard the word "Diablo" again.

The man I had slashed for mistreating the woman was a son of the governor. The governor set the Federales on me. I knew I could not fight so many bullets, even with my strength. So, I fled.

It was ok. I had saved the girl and the man who had mistreated here would remember it the rest of his days, especially when he saw his face in a mirror. No woman would ever look at him again.

Now, I looked North, toward a new country and maybe a new life. If I could find someone to cure me.

It wasn’t the first senorita he had helped. But it was the worst enemy he had made.

 
  

[Bmichael]

Thanks for that, K!

[Westerly_2]

Thanks for bringing Dee back here, K. we've missed him, and you.

[Bmichael]

Billy Jarboe turned hard to the left, flinging Josie up against the door of the old pick-up truck. As the rear end fishtailed onto the gravel road, Billy spun the wheel, brought it under control and stomped the accelerator to the floor. When the tires finally gripped the loose gravel the Ford lurched - spewing rocks and a pillar of dust in its wake.

Bouncing in her seat as the truck raced over the uneven road, Josie grabbed the armrest with both hands, pushed her feet up against the dashboard, and held tight.

Half a mile later, the road changed from gravel to dirt as Billy slowed down just enough to follow a scarcely visible trail uphill.

At the top, he drove into a thick, overgrown boxwood grove and stopped.

Below, the gravel dust trail was still visible as it snaked from the highway before disappearing into the trees at the foot of the hill.

From the truck bed, Billy unrolled an old blanket, shook loose a machete and began hacking at some dense underbrush.

“Pick it up – throw it in the truck,” he called back.

Josie didn’t move.

“Hey Josie! What the hell you doin’? C’mon!”

Josie leaned out the window and stared at Billy. “Me? What’re you talkin’ ‘bout, Billy! What the hell are YOU doin’? What the hell are WE doin’ up here – you scared the crap outta me drivin’ all crazy like that!”

“Itellyainaminute, but right now, we got to get this truck covered up, right quick!”

“Why?”

“Itellyainaminute, Josie…c’mon”.

“Aww, Jeez!” she complained, opening the door.

“Just grab up all these cuttins ‘an cover the truck… we got to hurry…”.

“Hurry? Why we got to hurry?”

“Illtellyainaminute”.

Grumbling, Josie started picking up the cuttings and tossed them towards the truck.

“Oww, damn it Billy! Yer cutting brambles!” as she sucked the blood ball off her thumb.

************

An hour later, they were back on the highway- walking towards Coreyville.

“Truck comin’…stay put…I’ll thumb it down…”

The truck honked and roared by, dragging a blast of hot air and dust that stung if you didn’t turn your back.

“It don’t look right if you was thumbin’ for me – they won’t stop. Think it’s a trick.”

“He didn’t stop, anyway.”

They continued walking down the highway, Billy holding his left hand – thumb extended - high in the air.

 “Awright Billy, what’re we doin’?

“I got a plan.”

“A plan, you say? Huh, let’s see now… we’re in the middle of nowhere, buried a truck in some brambles, and now we’re walkin’, I bet at least five miles to the next town…an might have to run part of the way on ‘count of them storm clouds buildin’ up over to the west and it’s at least a hunnerd degrees…say, you mind tellin’ me just what kind of plan you got – and  it better have a bafroom in it ‘cause I’m gonna be needin’ one pretty damn quick, ya hear me, Billy?”

They didn’t hear the State Trooper cut his engine  and silently coast down the shoulder behind them – red light flashing, until about ten feet away when he “whirred” his siren.

Billy spun around. 

“Itellyainaminute.”

[Westerly_2]

Well,at least Billy and Josie got a ride into town. Was that part of the plan?

[Bmichael]

What plan?

[Westerly_2]

Itellyouinaminute

[Bmichael]

The story goes that one summer day while returning home from the pier, Mckie was stopped outside Danny’s Bar by a young street bully named Bambi. Bambi was a big kid with a baby face - loud and aggressive, trying  for a rep as a tough guy ... and on that afternoon was looking for some entertainment for himself and his drunken friends.

Turning from his buddies, he noticed McKie approaching their corner with his slow, lumbering gait and figured him for an easy target. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, he blocked McKie’s path.

Smiling, Bambi said “What are you doin’, Irish? You don’t belong here, you know. You’d best turn around now, and go back where you came from, hear me?”

Mckie looked up at Bambi, and then at his three friends who had stopped their grab-assing and were now grinning in anticipation of Bambi’s next move.

McKie said nothing and took a side step, attempting to walk around the younger man, but Bambi blocked him again.

Inside the bar word spread quickly, as people rushed out and a crowd formed - encircling Bambi and McKie on the sidewalk while leering faces pressed closely against the windows.

Bolstered by this audience, Bambi played to the crowd...“Irish! Are you deaf, man? I said turn around and get out of here...now!” Narrowing his eyes, he glared at McKie and growled menacingly...” I won‘t say it again.”

There was no response from McKie as he stared at the ground, listening to the catcalls and jeers from Bambi’s friends.

Bambi reached out and put his hands on McKie’s shoulders as if to turn him around and send him off like a child in the other direction, when Angus suddenly lashed out with a blow to Bambi’s midsection. That punch, resulting in a loud crunch of breaking bone and tearing cartilage, bent Bambi forward clutching his side and gasping for breath. The beginning of a howl was quickly silenced as Mckie threw another powerful blow - this time by his right hand that landed squarely on Bambi’s mouth - sending him sprawling backwards to the sidewalk, drenched in a spatter of blood and a shower of his own front teeth.

 He did not get up.

McKie turned and looked at Bambi’s friends, their smiles now gone, as they regarded him in stunned silence. All knew it was over as McKie stooped to pick up his cap and continue on his way.

That story followed McKie back to the docks in various forms - most of them over-embellished and untrue, but nonetheless remained firmly attached to the man over the years.

[Westerly_2]

A satisfying end to an ugly situation - You have mastered the action scene, Bman.

[Bmichael]

As Comor sat down, a sudden movement preceded a slight breeze – Jaron had taken position behind him.

Annoyed, there was nothing he could do.  

Jaron and the others were assigned to protect and defend him – at any cost.

Already, Na’a had detected a threat…and eliminated it.

They were directed by Aero – a  Pathon witch – by signs and gestures. Tied into a thick, single strand, her waist length silver hair was weighted at the end by a poisoned spiked metal ball –the only visible of many weapons.

Aero’s  powers, evident  at an early age, were concealed  by her village in fear  – until  eventually discovered and taken forcefully from her family - eyes removed, and her head bound with the traditional wrappings of a witch.

On the eve of her twelfth passing, training and transformation complete, dark shrouded figures awakened the young Aero and delivered her to the temple. Stripped of her clothing, she crouched in the center courtyard, senses straining.

Above, an old quivering voice moaned softly, uttering strange words in broken cadence stopping occasionally in anticipation of the low monotone response of other voices.

Nearby, a low growl accompanied by impatient, padded footsteps and the scraping of metal against metal drew her attention.

 One would come first, followed by more.

 Before her, two thuds in the dirt – a sword and a pointed metal ball fell at her feet.

Aero chose the ball.

[Westerly_2]

I'm glad I reread this. I saw "python witch," and registered that image. Whew! Interesting!

[Bmichael]

I like that better...I'm stealing it...Thanks!