February 2019
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a novel in progress.
As she stepped out, she decided the view was even more impressive once the day turned on its side. It was early evening, and they were at altitude, but the warm mountain air lingered. The smoke from the valley fires had begun to aggravate the sky.
“Sunset should be amazing tonight, with all that smoke in the air. Even looks like some clouds in the southwest, hope it’s not heavy.”
“I guess we could use the rain, in any dose.”
“Sure can get some nasty stuff out here this time of year.”
They continued to tell each other things about the weather that they both already knew, until they were seconded by rumbling in the distance.
“I guess those two are going to be in there a while?” Mann finally addressed what she had been thinking. “What evil lurks in the hearts of men,” he laughed.
“It’s the stuff that lurks in their other parts that concerns me,” Jessie replied.
… they cleared the ridge’s final incline, the walls of the world fell away, releasing them into full panoramic exposure. She was truly amazed. Obviously, Mann was loaded, wealthy, spackled with the stench of riches, (none of which she had any objection to) but she never expected this. He actually had good taste. His second (or third) home was not just some giant, Frank Lloyd Wright-scholarship-winner’s graduate thesis insult, super-glued on to the limits of the slope. It was a true architectural effort. Some cabin, the thing was four or five thousand square feet. But the slate and pine components accented the terrain, almost as if the structure had erupted from the rock itself in a seismic upheaval of building codes and rebar, or sprouted organically, like one of those massive burls stemming from a coastal redwood, distorting the bark, changing the tree’s form from within. And then she thought about her experiences and how her life had been distorted from within more than without and she wondered if that was how Bart felt too. And she knew, if she ever developed the confidence to think of herself as brilliant rather than merely street smart, then this would be where it started, because she was being brilliant and not just sensible.
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a short story involving a mountain cook.
