West Coast Review

I open my eyes, and put my hand up to shield the bright sunshine. Fuck, what did I do last night? Each time I blink the drum in my head gets louder.

My surroundings were unrecognizable. In the distance I hear rushing water. Walking toward it, and trying to remember where I heard it before.

An opening in the trees is in sight. I come to the edge of a river back, looking over a waterfall. The mist feels good in the blazing sun.

A campsite with a tent is set up on the other side of the river. A bridge is a little ways up river, and I head toward it.  When I reach the campsite, a man and woman are sitting at a fold out picnic table. I look closely, and the man is me. But who the hell is the girl?

I watch the couple disappear into…

The night air was thick and warm. Too warm for the last day of October. The moon wasn’t quite full, and the smoke from the mill gave it a spooky look. The kids were having fun though. First time they didn’t have to wear anything heavy under their costumes.

“Trick-or-treat,” Suzy said, before reaching the porch.

She had on the best one Paul had seen tonight. Her face was green, and she wore a pointed hat. Suzy was a miniature wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz. Even the broom matched

Suzy’s eyes glazed over as he put a chocolate bar in her plastic jack-o-lantern. A chill crawled up Paul’s back

Suzy nodded her head, and two short flying monkey’s appeared from behind her. Each had their own broom. One hit Paul over the head with the handle while the other poked him in the stomach. Nothing came out when…

Trick or Treat

Little Paulie held his bag open and Mrs. Johnson dropped a handful of candy into it.

“There you go, Paulie. Tell your folks I said hello.” Mrs. Johnson smiled down at him, emitting warmth through her wrinkles and stained teeth.

“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson, I will.” Paulie returned her smile through his mask and turned to head down the sidewalk.

As the door behind him closed, he noticed an adult in a zombie costume coming towards him. Paulie paused in wonderment at how easily the man seemed to portray his chosen character.

“Nice costume, mister. You really got it down.”

As we lean into the last weekend of October, some of you who are familiar with MotD may be saying, “But wait. Did I miss Take-Your-Dragon-to-Work Day?”

No you didn’t! This year, tomorrow, October 27, is TYDtWD. So tonight, give your Dragon a good scrub, burnish her scales, and remind her of proper workplace etiquette, for tomorrow she will be walking the halls of education, commerce, politics, you name it. It’s time for Dragons to represent in the work-a-day world.

But more on that tomorrow.

Today is still about telling Dragon tales. Or, more specifically, talking Dragon books.

The time for gifting is fast approaching and so I offer a few Draco-centric suggestions for the Dragon lover on your Yule/Channukah/Kwanzaa/et al. lists, beginning for a not-so-humblebrag of my own. As the Dragons keep reminding me, being a WAFDE VIP does have its privileges, so here goes.

The Dragon Keeper’s Handbook

“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating” – Carl von Clausewitz

They missed a good marketing opportunity…

Uncertainty is unpopular.  It’s why we invented cool stuff like probability and statistics.  I mean, if you’re going to be an expert in something, it sucks when your predictions turn out wrong, and it’s nice to have sufficiently complex mathematical concepts to conclusively demonstrate that nobody’s perfect.  Folks tend to stop donating to oracles that are consistently off target.  The oracles probably don’t care as they are high as a kite, but even a prophet has to make a profit, be it fiduciary or celestial.  When you are a noted intellectual giant in a field of inquiry, repeated failures to show your smarts tend to make all those college loans seem like a frivolous expense.

Now, if Socrates said nothing else, we’d probably still know…

Quote about John Gardner: “The late John Gardner once said that there are only two plots in all of literature. You go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Since women, for many years, were denied the journey, they were left with only one plot in their lives — to await the stranger. Indeed, there is essentially no picaresque tradition among women novelists. While the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a change of tendency, women’s literature from Austen to Woolf is by and large a literature about waiting, usually for love.” ― Mary Morris, The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Travellers

***

“All order, I’ve come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.” ― John Gardner, Grendel

“Stars, spattered out through lifeless night from…

I’m a Vampire who enjoys stories getting Vampires right.

“Preacher” is one of them. If you’re not familiar with this AMC show — spoiler! — Cassidy’s a Vampire but not the main character. While we’re shown he’s capable of blood-raging violence, most of the time he just wants to be left alone with his substance abuse. He’s a predator who avoids killing because of both the complications it brings — bodies don’t hide themselves — as a well as personal code of who deserves his wrath.

Every Vampire I’ve met has their own variation of this unwritten code with no two alike. None are more complicated than that of a sire and their progeny, and in the case of Cassidy — another surprise spoiler! — turning his actual son, Denis. Cassidy is over a century old, so it isn’t clear if he fathered Denis before being turned, only that he…