Today's Word: AL QAIEDA


Poor Al. Nothing has been the same since those terrorists got popular.


-- david j.

Today's Word: Fixing


Jeb was fixing to fix the truck, but just then the water heater let loose with a sound like a hissing turtle that like to made every fainting goat in the yard kill over. Mama fixed some tea while we closed up the main valve, making sure to fix the wheel with a bungee cord so as to keep it locked in place. We was just fixing to bail out the basement when Cal came by, bragging on his new television with the flat screen and 3D sound. Jeb just fixed that old boy with a stare for a long moment, then we left for Cal's house in Cal's new pickup. Wrestling was on.


-- david j.

Today's Word: Mug


Turk didn't like my ugly mug, but what was that to me? If he wanted coffee then that was the best we could do.


-- david j.

Today's Word: Perorate


Seven clean-cut men -- seven suits of varying shades of black -- filled a small section of the auditorium chairs, listening to Peter Wesell pontificate on the matchless benefits of Wesell Global's univeral marketing strategy. At the end of forty minutes, one of the suited men raised his hand and stood when Wesell called on him.

"Your marketing success is fine, I'm sure, Mr. Wesell, but what does this have to do with a cadre of former CIA assassins like us?"

Wesell smiled, not an altogether pleasant expression when formed on his face, and said, "Why, my dear fellow, every good draftsman owns erasers."



-- david j.

Today's Word: Stress


AAAARRRRGGGGG!


-- david j.

Today's Word: Anathema

Sometime around midnight we saw the first of them. Anathema. Winged reptiles the color of wet sand their elongated snouts bejeweled with seven rows of serrated teeth. They swooped and dove toward our ship, several even striking the cockpit window with leathery wings. The sounds they mad were unearthly. They brayed warbling songs like the cough of an aged man losing a lung. Simpson guided the ship close to the canyon walls, our exterior lights picking out myriad crevices where the anathema made their homes. We might have caught sight of a broodling nusery, had the fool not moved too close to one of several dozen queens attached to the wall like an old-style jumbo jet suction-cupped upside down on the stone. The giant lifted its maw and bit through our nosecone. With its boulder-sized teeth still embedded in our now dead ship, the queen gave us a good shake and sent us tumbling toward the canyon floor.

That is where my memory grows hazy.


-- david j.

Today's Word: Roll

We rolled in on a green wave that sparkled at the edges where sunlight drizzled it with shine. The longboat bumped against the beach -- slid a bit on the sand making a gritty swooshing sound -- then came to a restive stop, seeming eager to be about its voyage; annoyed at this forray onto dry land. Men debarked, forced the bow higher onto the beach with stout ropes and stout arms, dragging it inches then feet, assuring the ocean wouldn't take hold of our ship and suck it into void. Savages appeared. First among the nearby green vines, then high up on the only hill, among the thick-plated trees there, seeming for all the world like monkeys, the way they took to the upper canopy. We burned them out of their havens, took their heads for trophies and some of us even ate of a few. Even their taste was savage.

-- david j.

Today's Word: Wizened


Old King Card gripped his sword with a wizened hand, lifting the blade above his head where it shook like dry leaves on a windy day.

"To me!" he cried, and started down the green hill at a gallop, only to topple from his horse and roll into the enemy's front line.

For a moment there was silence on the field, as men on both sides watched the golden lump of ornate armor lie still on the grass. Then a cheer rose, from both sides of the battleground. Card's Lord General, Faragain, rode forward, cast his sword before Castel, his heretofore mortal enemy, and said, "Thank God that man is dead. We surrender."


-- david j.

Today's Word: Puzzle

Don't eat puzzle glue. It gives you zits.

Today's Word: Content


We traveled towards the ocean across hot sand that spilled into our shoes like water. The wind was cool off the waves and it smelled of something dead. I posted an umbrella, one of the large kind that shades a spot large enough for a wooden lounge chair and two towels. Naddie read her book, some romance deal, while I reclined in the shadows, content to let the ocean rumble before us, and the wind pass us by.

Today's Word: Trust


Daddy held out his hand. "You don't have to trust me," he said. "I was never a father to you, Joey, so I know you probably don't trust me. But I'm here for a second go. I'm lucky, test pilots don't get many second chances."


To be continued

Today's Word: Pseudo


"I don't want you," I said. Was I growing shorter? Was this pseudo father growing larger? I looked at my hands, they were tiny. I was tiny. I was a boy.


To be continued

Today's Word: Amazed


"Whoever you are, you need to get the hell out of my yard before I call the sheriff." Again I was amazed at the sound of my voice -- so young, so like the eight-year-old I had been when daddy died.

"You got a bum deal, Joey. I'm back to fix that. I'm back to make up for some of the hurts."


To be continued

Today's Word: Reminiscing


Daddy was standing in the backyard. He wore his old jeans, the ones he donned for painting or mowing grass, and a scruffy football jersey I hadn't remembered till that moment -- a Dolphins jersey.

I was shaking, but I didn't run. I stepped out the screen door and moved closer. It was nighttime. Maybe this was some vagrant come to beg food, just some schmoe that caught me reminiscing and happened to match my dad's build. The man did not move, or disappear.

"Who are you?" I asked. My voice sounded young.

"I'm your daddy, Joe." His voice was right. It was keen and full of happiness -- it was light daddy.

"You're not my dad. My dad's dead."

Daddy smiled and held out his hands like a man saying, look here, do I look dead to you?

"I'm not dead, Joe. I'm just a little more. . . spread out."


To be continued

Today's Word: Barometric


Last week, while sitting in the kitchen beside the old kerosene heater, eating a bowl of cereal from mom's stash in the pantry, something caught my attention outside the window. It wasn't a sound, nor a light, but more a change in atmosphere, as if the barometric pressure had suddenly dropped or risen.


To be continued

Today's Word: Journal


I began this dateless journal a week ago today. That was the first day daddy came to me.

To be continued

Today's Word: Boneyard


Mother died seven weeks ago. We buried her in Alabama, not in the plot beside daddy -- the empty plot that bears his name and nothing else -- at the Washington military boneyard. I didn't think she would want that.


To be continued

Today's Word: Notoriety


I'm thirty years old. The world has mostly forgotten my father's name, as it does most people who die tragically. Killers -- human or natural -- gain notoriety, not victims.

Even I had mostly forgotten him, at least in all the ways an abused child might forget his abuser. But the good times are still with me. Is that so strange? To remember him only as a good man, a strong man, a pilot, fearless and sure? These are my only memories of the man, dim though they may be. I know that he was abusive, but those memories seem faded, dulled to gray in my mind. Mostly, I remember light daddy, the who left us for space.


To be continued

Today's Word: Legislation


We moved, but not back to Greensboro. Mom packed us off to live with Grandpa and Grandma Sacks in Alabama. From then on my childhood was quiet. I graduated high school and went on to study biochemistry at USC (you can't lick our cocks!). After a few years it was rare that someone would hear my name and ask if my father was that astronaut, you know, the one that attempted light speed before the government signed legislation banning further experiments. Most times I said yes, which led to further tedious questions. But sometimes I lied. No, we just share a name, I'm not related to him.

I wished it were true.

Today's Word: Distortions


Daddy won his slot during spring break. He took mom and me to Miami and Disney. He was happy daddy then -- light daddy, that's how I thought of him.
Light daddy took us on vacation. And it was light daddy that boarded the shuttle Adventure wearing his gallant orange pressure suit, bound for the Matyoshi space station. I imagine it was light daddy too, that departed Matyoshi aboard the Envoy, Earth's first and last attempt at faster than light travel. We received no live transmissions and any recordings were burned up in the wake of crashing time wave distortions. In fact, if the telemetry from Hubble III is too be believed, most of the nearby spacial debris and large portions of Pluto's atmosphere were sucked away by the subsequent black hole that lasted three milliseconds after the disaster. I doubt any man will ever know what really happened. Time distortions at the site make it impossible to investigate beyond long-range radiation and radar probes. Suffice it to say, daddy was gone.


To be continued