00:10, Near the Docks

“When will you stop…” Detective Wu muttered, rubbing his aching hip as he limped onto the staircase.

“Not far from retirement at this rate.”

A splash. Someone tossed a bottle into the water.

“Stop right there!”

His hands were steadier than his legs, so drawing his gun and switching his eye implant to night vision mode was almost instinctive.

“Come out! I won’t fire a warning shot.”

Out of the shadows emerged a pair of raised hands, followed by a bloated man stepping into the dim light. A worn-out jumpsuit and a bag slung over his shoulder—Wu instantly recognized him. One of those washed-up divers who used to hunt for precious metals in the river. Now, with robots taking over, all he did was fish corpses out of the rancid water they still dared to call a river.

Wu sighed, lowering his weapon. People like this man worked for loose cash and had all the time in the world, meaning this was going to take forever.

“Knew I’d miss Tarlenn’s show tonight,” he muttered.

The bum slipped into an old wetsuit, grumbling under his breath, and plunged into the water to search for the body. Wu had a gut feeling—he’d find something down there. It always happened this way before trouble. Like an ice auger twisting his insides. And tonight? Tonight was no exception.

A few hours earlier, Wu’s informant had called, gasping, to report “something” dumped into the murky waters of Gray River. Wu had been about to settle down with his console and a stiff drink. But that damn intuition forced him into his pants and out the door. Sure, he’d tried calling his boss, but the lazy bastard never picked up on a Saturday night. So, no official divers were coming. Wu had to do things the old-fashioned way—find some lowlife under the bridge and pay out of his own pocket.

“Why do I even bother?”

It was a question Wu had been asking himself for 30 years until it faded into mere rhetoric. Deep down, beneath layers of cynicism and the filth he’d waded through in this job, an answer still flickered: I can’t do it any other way. But Wu had forgotten that answer long ago.

The diver hacked up a cough, donned his oxygen tank, and submerged. The surface trash shifted like a stripper’s chest when someone tosses a hundred bucks her way. Ah, thanks, sugar.

The man was underwater for fifteen minutes. Wu smoked, relishing the quiet. His mind wandered to what they might find—a middle-aged man? An old geezer? A woman? A child? Please, not a child. Gray River’s victims were usually the dregs of the cyber-city—drifters, homeless witnesses to the wrong crime. Sometimes prostitutes.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an approaching car. An expensive retro model purred to a stop nearby, sleek as a tiger stalking prey.

“What the hell is this?”

Wu was about to approach and question the driver when the diver resurfaced, dragging a limp body with him.

Wu threw off his coat and helped pull the cold, slick corpse onto the pier. The first attempt failed, the body slipping back into the water, landing on the diver’s head. On the second try, Wu managed to haul it out, feeling something creak painfully in his back.

“Great. Now my spine needs a replacement too. This case is costing me dearly.”

A car door slammed. Someone stepped out. But Wu wasn’t ready to deal with that yet.

Catching his breath, Wu examined the lifeless form. A young woman, barely in her twenties. No visible wounds, no marks on her neck or wrists.

The diver clambered onto the dock, immediately demanding his payment. Wu handed him a couple of credits—plastic, old-fashioned ones. The man scowled, expecting more, but Wu ignored him, focusing on the victim.

The girl was stunningly beautiful. Her skin, not yet entirely blue, gave her an ethereal, mermaid-like aura. Long hair—a rarity in this city. Smooth, flawless skin. A slim figure. She wore a simple white tunic, no underwear. No belongings nearby.

Wu opened one pale eyelid, checking for an ID implant. Nothing. What the hell? Who is she?

The icy knot in his stomach twisted tighter. Something wasn’t right. Turning her over, Wu searched for implants. His fingers danced across her back, shoulders, collarbones, hips, feet—nothing. No modifications. She was completely natural. Impossible.

For a fleeting moment, Wu doubted she was even dead. She radiated life, not the artificial kind, but something real. He felt an old, buried sensation—compassion. Gratitude for witnessing such beauty, even if only in death. It was a gift he didn’t deserve but accepted nonetheless.

Wu reached for his comm device to call for backup, but the air suddenly grew still. He noticed the diver backing away, eyes wide with panic.

“Don’t even think about it,” Wu mouthed. But fear had already taken hold. The man bolted toward the bridge. A couple of gunshots cut him down before he got far, leaving a second corpse on the pier.

A shadow loomed behind Wu. He turned slowly, facing a figure with a blurred face—an expensive camo program, the kind only politicians or gangsters could afford.

“Easy,” Wu said, his voice steady. “I’m with the police. Name’s Wu. Let’s talk this out.”

The stranger shook his head, gesturing for Wu to step away from the body. Wu complied. The figure approached the maiden.

Wu caught the diver’s movement out of the corner of his eye—a desperate crawl away. “Don’t,” Wu whispered. But instinct won over reason, and the man made a break for it. Another shot rang out, leaving him crumpled on the dock.

The figure pressed a gun to Wu’s temple.

“Turn around.”

“Alright, alright. No need to get heated.”

The figure cocked the weapon. Wu closed his eyes, memories flashing—his cramped apartment, his dog, Tarlenn’s show. But the trigger didn’t pull.

Instead, the retro car roared to life, vanishing into the neon fog. Wu turned. The maiden was gone. Only the diver’s body remained. A strange trade, though not surprising. You don’t abandon treasures, but someone like that diver? He belonged here.

Wu lit another cigarette, pulling his coat tight against the damp night air.

“Hell of a day.”

A short story about how a relationship can change in a flash...

And there was a place for him at the bedside, where the picture frame sat and the Zippo lighter leaned on the desk lamp’s post. She was busy cleaning the top of the table, leaving the small knick-knacky things on the bed—the dust particles transferred from the lamp’s cover and metal coating onto the clean comforter and pillow casings. All he noticed was that she had moved his brown slippers to her side of the bed, rather than the usual spot next to his dresser where he left them every day and night. It had been a long day and he wasn't going to use their few minutes together as an excuse to start a meaningless argument. To be fair, that had not stopped his feeble mind before. So the slippers had moved, and she was squeezing the spray bottle onto the wooden slat that made the top of the nightstand. It had been her idea to pick it up after a late lunch one March somehow ended up on the wrong side of town; and the houses were rough-looking. There was a collection of wooden furniture planted against the mailbox of a smaller looking house—it was, though, one of the larger houses on the block. There were cinder blocks stacked messily around the mailbox’s rotting wood beam. Evidently, it had been the victim (on several occasions) to a few swift innings of “mailbox baseball.” Next to the pile of furniture was a cardboard sign, withered from a few rainy afternoons, then the sun evaporating the water back out of it. FREE was spray-painted on the sign in bright neon purple. Before we traded in the four-seater for a two-seater, there was still room in my car for something besides two people and the occasional plastic bag of leftovers from an inexpensive restaurant. She had kicked her feet down from the dashboard and slapped at the window lightly—there was a shallow ticking sound that her ring made on the glass. Sometimes, she would switch the wedding ring from her left hand to her right when she was thinking about something enough to forget; he thinks it’s her envisioning her life if she had married that wad of paper from Terre Haute that she went steady with for a while. He meant to bring up the ring habit from time to time, but regardless of it being on his mind for long periods of time, He’d always forget to say something.

“Hey…hey!” she yelped, tapping and pointing at the mound of wood furniture. He was purposefully going slow because the roads were bad and he wasn't sure what kind of kids were raised around those parts. Whether it be the type that throws broken nails and rock clippings under their neighbor’s tires or the type that have parents that let their kids get hit by a long Cadillac. Always the babies that wander off down the stairs, grabbing onto the railing like their mothers did out of habit, and graciously work their way down to the concrete footpath. Their onesie’s grippy feet were grinded slowly as the baby shuffled its feet. A minute walking, a minute leaning forward to crawl and rest, and then back up to work again. Fortunately enough, the baby’s hands were made of the same stuff that Jell-O came from—at least that was what the baby’s older brother thought. And he told his friends such on the school playground when they inquisitively asked about the new kid brother responsibilities. Naturally, the metal gate was propped open from earlier in the day when the father had come home, half asleep, half drunk, and stumbled up the stairs, forgetting to latch the gate shut. Ironically, the baby had more stability from less than a year of walking than the father did from an unstable, disgusting forty-three years. The baby would make a cooing sound like that of a raccoon scratching a tree’s post for something to fall from it. And worse yet, the car would stop a few feet after impact so the baby would be pushed into the clear sky, making contact with the ground seconds later. And the onesie was no longer one piece of clothing.

So he reluctantly flashed his hazard lights a few yards away from the cinder blocked mailbox. Getting out of their four-seater, she was ecstatic placing her flattened wedges against the road’s rough patches. She could tell a car had been parked on that side of the road for a while because a few spots were sunken in and blackened from the skid marks. It was a miracle weeds hadn’t latched themselves onto the tires through the asphalt. Along with the battered nightstand, there was what appeared to be the top and bottom half of a china cabinet, a chair and its severed legs, pieces of an extendable dining room table, and a few wooden slats that had screws in their sides, so he assumed they were bedroom shelves. The pile looked more like a scrap heap for firewood rather than a petty charity giveaway. He wasn’t impressed and tried to visibly show it with his hands in his pockets, sticking out his thumbs like the orange flags in cones when you’re trying to find a parking space at a football game. The collar on his furry brown jacket was pointed forward, with the smoothness of the inner circumference hugging his neck hair. He swayed his head from one side to the other while his neck slowly popped in and out of place; it was one of those hollow cracks that breaks the tension inside, but can easily make someone’s head turn around to make sure your head has all of its wires still attached. However, she was uninterested with her husband’s bodily functions at the moment. Forgetting his manners of opening her door, and also because she practically shoved the door’s latch open, he traipsed behind her while she galloped to the mound, stopping as her shadow provided an overcasted shade to the wood pile. The pile was as dilapidated as the house looked from the end of the street. It was a one story house that was longer than it was wide. A window each flanking the glass screen door and a smaller, rectangular window tucked close to the rain gutter pipe: a bathroom window with the uncleaned frosted glass filtering the sunbeams hitting the ceramic tile. She leaned forward, almost with her knees scraping the concrete curb, and examined the pile: she went back and forth to the nightstand because [a] it was seemingly the only piece of furniture that was completely intact and [b] it was the only cleaner looking piece. There used to be rubber feet on the bottom to keep it from sliding too much and there were also drawers missing because the metal tracks were still drilled in the sides. The husband and the wife glanced a bit for the drawers but were greeted with no luck; and the wife was upset, but she put it past her and began to pick up the nightstand on her own. She felt that the back of the nightstand was held together with a microscopically thin slice of plywood, while the two pieces on the sides were thicker than any of the pieces of wood there. It was definitely handmade, with some chips on the top and sides.

“It needs a home, Chris,” the wife said to her husband. She looked at him as if he would miraculously just say no and walk back to the car. What he really wanted to say is that he didn’t want a trashy piece of termite-infested wood in his new house, much less her keeping those Neanderthalic ideas of taking old things and making them old things taking up new spaces. She talked about it like it was a lost puppy smothered in caked mud and didn’t have a tail anymore. It was lighter than she thought, but she still wanted to pick it up without either stepping on the wood, nor the grass. The grass was yellowed: there was a sprinkler next to the spigot on the side of the house, but from the naked eye, it was rusted closed. The sprinkler was over a foot long, but all of the rubber-ended holes were faced down in the ground and smushed closed, preventing any water from coming out. It was a new sprinkler from the hardware store, but all it knew was the dry dirt of a shady side of town and the cold reticence of the house’s shadow. Chris could also see long streaks in the grass from where a lawn mower had begun to cut the grass, but stopped in the middle, leaving it to grow unevenly. He pictured the entire lawn like a body covered in ingrown hairs: the cells just bubbling at the surface, putting pressure on the hair to just sprout out of the follicles.

“Don’t you think we ought to come back with some towels or something?” Chris said, “I mean who knows where and for how long this junk has been sitting here? And I don’t want dirt in my car, Grace.”

Out of all of his reasoning he attempted to do, all his wife, Grace, heard was him complaining about his car…all about his car, his car, his car.

“And that’s different from the containers of old drink cups and McDonald’s wrappers, how?”

A diabolic shot in the dark, and Chris was flattened and called out by his own wife. He thought it was a bit unfair, but he wasn’t going to argue with logic. She motioned him over, claiming that it really wasn’t that dirty, just dusty from the pollen in the grass. She smacked the back of it lightly to get a feel of the amount of pressure it could handle. He actually walked in the grass, around the dining room table pieces, and helped his wife take the nightstand to the car. It felt inhumane to just take it and leave, but the sign said for him to feel otherwise. Briefly stuck in a piece of wood, Chris unhooked his foot that was too close to the pile and managed to lift the drawerless nightstand to the right side of the car, hazards still flashing. The rigid corners of the nightstand slid, with inches to spare, in the car. They tipped it over on its left side, careful to not let it rock back and forth when they turned corners. As a safety precaution, and because Grace was a month pregnant, she got into the habit of buckling the seatbelts when something was in the back. Chris remarked on her doing that with the bags of groceries, talking to them like they had spit out their pacifiers and she had to clean the cat hair off of them. She buckled the passenger side and middle seat belts inward and secured the nightstand tightly. Chris managed to grab Grace’s hand as she began to make her way back over the pile for a possible round of seconds. He casually guided her to her door and closed it for her, remembering his taught manners at the opportune moment, drifting further away from a bad sense of disposition.

And there was Chris, acknowledging that his slippers were in the wrong place, and his wife cleaning the top of the nightstand promptly before they went to bed. He moved the slippers back, brushed his teeth, and exited the bathroom while his wife put the knick-knacky things back on. She kissed the picture frame, hoping her husband wasn’t looking, and placed it under the lamp’s light—it was a picture of their son, John. He was a baby in that picture: a curious, mindless baby that liked to walk more than crawl when he wanted to. The reflection made her grimace, noticing how blue his eyes had been early on. Once the lights were off, she was there, cradling her warmth in the fetal position, wanting to reach out and hold the picture to her heart until one day she would be in that picture with him. Chris was there to wrap his arm around her waist, feeling her heated pulse beating…beating…beating through her thin clothes. And as the people who were like clouds without rain gave away that free wood on that day with the clear sky, they were there to watch. A half dozen figures were watching in the dark while she rocked herself to sleep, making her body numb and her head spin like a colorful mobile above John’s crib. It played the music, whistling through the stillness of the house, breathing that dry, wooden air from the nightstand. The nightstand breathed right along with them, feeling and seeing things. And John was there with it, keeping an eye on his parents for a while…until things passed over. But how could he truly watch them when they were the ones that were twice dead. They would have been more careful had John given them a second chance to be.

(February 2024)

Walking opposite the moon

our hopes inside its fleshy pockets,

spotlighting teeth and the whites of eyes, wide and vacuumed.

All while the city below dissolves in its particles overnight…

Composting the garbage dumb Govindas.

Dumping its shadow into the sewers we created out of shaving cream, pet fish and semen.

I’m standing outside my outline

drying my heart out in the pages of a spineless book.

Wringing chicken blood from kitchen rags with arms cut deep in seasoned salt.

As rats bathe in the shadow of the Redwoods- anticipating angelhood.

I am spitting broken teeth like stars onto the soil,

planting love into the dead grass, I am meat fooled into repose.

Flies in the kitchen of heat and stink…I am your substance…

Walk along my curves and corners ingesting crumbs and morsels that fall misgiven on my clothes. Bloating, the puddles of nervous ants drowned in the quiet of oak tree worship.

And it’s all a familiar comfort, an easy dream, teaching me the dark of its corners…

like this hole in my sock.

And I think I’ve been here before focusing on the cardboard box of whatever punched out winking its flaps at me…

Knocking on some memory in an eternal midnight page.

Flicking away a spent cigarette looking for the sun to come on stage again tomorrow.

Illuminate my dimming thoughts, my beads of sweat and knuckle scars.

An ecstasy hangs in the mind, tricking darkness upon my dream wall.

There's a fire settling on my shoulder blades, cracking under the weight of the white sky.

And there hasn't been a city yet where we haven't met.

We're on this bloodless highway sprawling like tentacles of thoughts forming out your mouth

every word is a delicacy,

even here in the desert…

Where an ocean labored to fashion life out of its sand

eaten up by the sun upon the take of a first breath.

And I'm left trying to turn this heat into a single sun ray, tuck it deep inside my eye for later…

Holding onto petals of flowers I've murdered to press inside a book…

So later we can know this again like we did today.

And there I stood silent

in a vast empty field

with the East wind

flowing steady

against my brow

And there I

swallowed memories

of past horizons

every emotion

illuminated by the sky

in teal blues

emerald greens

And there I heard

your voice

echoing gently

on the skin

of the black sea

whispering

eternity

to the lost

believer within

On the 49th day of my bardo I'll climb into an ugly womb to be expelled with all the sticky things, my histories flushed down the drain. And I'll enter this world again just as I have at least 913 times before dressed in waxy skin belonging to the wind.

This is the door I'll choose: orange like the angry sunset protests over times neglectful motions- chased behind tall buildings of a city gone betray me.

I'm painfully enlightened by its cracks, my fingers trace in spiraled patterns spelling out my old discarded names.

I'll enter the doorway knowing to forget the sea and leave its mystery for someone else to worship.

I will never claim to be a saint mostly because it's a bitch trying to conceal my very conspicuous devil horns beneath my low-key halo. However, there is one moral wrong that I just cannot see my sinful nature enthusiastically wallowing in, and that is infidelity. Now, because of my extensively documented addiction to reading stupid shit on the internet, I have come across a lot of stories about people engaging in infidelity. The surprising thing is that in many of these stories the cheater suggests that they, and sometimes even the person they cheated on are better off for the experience. Far be it for me to suggest that I am an expert on human nature, but this seems to be either delusional thinking on the part of the cheater or there has been a drastic shift in what qualifies as douche bag behavior.

One cheating story commonly featured involves a brother/sister hooking up with their siblings spouse. A person might expect this kind of betrayal would result in heartbreak followed by the cheated on spouse finding the rabid wolverine equivalent of divorce lawyers. However, if the stories are to be believed, the end result is that somehow all parties involved realize that the infidelity made everyone's lives' better. Maybe the cheating parties finally have a partner that shares the same interest in anal penetration with power tools. Conversely, the spouse that got cheated on, now free from their coupling, can now go off to realize their dream of becoming a full time underwater basket weaver.

I also read a story where a terminally ill spouse asks their current partner for permission to bang their ex because, "While she loves me more than anything, her ex used to fuck her until she, the next door neighbors, the astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, and her future ancestors, all walked funny for a week." Okay, maybe I paraphrased a little, but how exactly did the terminally ill, yet still horny spouse bring up this carnal desire? Somehow, "Hey, honey, you're the love of my life, but you can only make me wet, where my ex can create a veritable vaginal Victoria Falls between my legs" seems a bit cruel

Now, I can hope that these stories are fake, but even imagining such betrayal is so all kinds of fucked up that not even the writers who queef out those Lifetime Movies of the Week would stoop that low. So, am I wrong in thinking that infidelity is still a horrible thing to do to someone you supposedly love and have committed yourself to? Or is infidelity just another way for people to drift apart, get separate places, argue over who gets the cum fruit when, and eventually settle into passive-aggressive and snarky comment filled coparenting ?

I have to wonder if these stories aren't ways for the cheater to somehow justify bumping uglies with an unfamiliar ugly instead of the ugly they are committed to. After all, adults can't pretend that infidelity is a harmless accident. Dropping a dish is a harmless accident. Inserting throbbing naked tab A into equally naked, wet, quivering slot B is in no way shape or form an accident. Also, contrary to just about every fucking Country Western song ever written, being under the influence of alcohol isn't a good excuse for cheating either. Being under the influence of alcohol is only a valid excuse for getting impregnated by one of my relatives. It in no way can be used to, "Oops, my bad" away doing the tube steak boogie in a strange Wonder Bread bun when you have a loving Oroweat bun at home.

I can't help but think that there just isn't an excuse to cheat. If you have feelings for someone who's not your significant other, it could be argued that maybe you should be honest and get out of your current relationship because your feelings aren't as strong as you thought. Sure, it will hurt, especially when your significant other righteously kicks you in the baby maker after you've told them, but cheating would hurt worse and that kind of hurt can lead to a lot worse than getting kicked in the fuzzy-bumblies. (Please see the previous reference to rabid-wolverine divorce lawyers in paragraph II, for an example of what's worse than having your no-no place receiving a firm and justified boot-leather bopping). No matter what, your significant other deserves an honest break. Besides think of any children involved. Do you really want to cheat on the co-pollinator of your cum fruit? Think about it. Cheat on the other parent, your kids find out, and twenty years down the road your children are placing you in Dr. Kevorkian's Home for the Elderly because you couldn't keep your Tab A or Slot B at home where it belongs.

So, maybe I'm an idealist when it comes to relationships. Maybe, cheating has become just another of life's event we should all just assume we'll experience. I hope not because life is hard enough without being cheated on and then having to get tested for gonorrhea. Personally, I hope those who're so insensitive and focused on getting their yippee parts tickled that hurting someone who loves and trusts them isn't a big deal have a prison bitch experience with karma. The end result is that karma viciously renovates the cheater's corn-hole in such a way that a youth soccer league could use their rectum as a regulation sized goal net.

It was just my backyard, but it had been so transformed with flowers and white runners and people in fancy dresses and suits that I hardly recognized it. It felt almost like another world.

I stood in front of a crowd of people that was all big eyes and smiles. I wore a big, poofy white dress that was so tight around my middle I could barely breathe, and the tool skirt felt like sandpaper against my legs. I felt trapped inside it, stuck so tight that I might never be able to get it off.

A man stood next to me, his smile so big it seemed to cover his whole face. He was big, much bigger than me. He wore a cape and held a sword in one hand like a prince, and he pulled me in close with the other.

A priest appeared before us and chanted in a language I didn’t recognize.

Then, I felt cold metal clamp tightly onto my wrist. I stared down at the cuff that linked me to the man before me. “It’s time for the vows. Repeat after me,” the priest said. “With this ring, I promise to be yours and yours alone, for the rest of time.”

No. No! NO! I try to scream, but my voice won’t work. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. The man leans down over me, his hot breath on my face. I can’t step back. I can’t push him away. I can’t do anything. I’m trapped; I’m—

I sit up with a gasp as my mom’s hands shake me awake.

“Sweetie, wake up! It’s just a dream. You’re okay. It was just a dream.”

I let her wrap me in her arms, and I cling to her as I gasp and cry.

“That must have been one scary dream,” she says as she rubs my back. “Want to talk about it?”

“T-they . . . they were gonna make me marry him,” I stutter.

“Who?”

“The prince!”

I can feel my mom’s body shake with laughter. “That was your nightmare?” She shakes her head as she lays me back down. “Most kids get nightmares about monsters. My kid gets nightmares about Prince Charming.”

I encourage my kids to have hobbies. That’s not quite true. When my kids choose to have hobbies, I try not to actively stand in their way. I don’t want them to claim someday that they could have been the next Rembrandt if only their cheap father hadn’t refused to buy them paint. I’m as encouraging as I have to be to avoid being their scapegoat, but I have a price cap. If one of my girls claims they could have been the next Michelangelo if only I had boughten them a chisel and marble, they’re out of luck. If you think restaurant prices are out of control these days, you should see the markup on importing two tons of Italian stone. Recently, I provided modest financial support for my children to pursue three different activities I’ve never tried out myself. (The fourth kid just wants to watch her tablet, which is fine with me. I already pay for Netflix.) I don’t know that any of these new pastimes will lead to lifelong fulfillment or lucrative careers, but they keep my squad entertained for now. Also, supporting them helps me not feel like a dream-stifling monster. My goal everyday is to not be quite the worst parent in the history of the world. It’s a harder threshold to clear than you might think.

The most unexpected request came from my thirteen-year-old, Betsy. One day, she suddenly announced that she wanted to play the violin. Prior to that moment, she had never expressed any interest in the instrument. She didn’t need any band implements. She inherited her mother’s talent for singing. She’s in the most elite eighth grade choir group and was selected to join the exclusive high school song and dance troupe next fall. I thought her own finely tuned vocal cords would be all the musical stimulation she’d need. I was wrong. After Betsy’s request, I checked how much violins cost. I thought they were going to be super expensive. I’ve read articles about a multi-million dollar Stradivarius being stolen or forgotten on a train. That would be one heck of a discovery when somebody empties out the lost and found. I figured the regular kind of violin used by kids must still be expensive. When my eleven-year-old, Mae, decided to play the saxophone, the school tried to charge us $1,500 for her instrument. Off-name-brand versions were still five hundred dollars on Amazon. I went above and beyond in my quest to be the stingiest parent ever and managed to secure a used one for seventy-five dollars on Facebook Marketplace. Mae has been playing it happily ever since. At her current grade and skill level, the instruments aren’t what are holding kids back. A truck could run over every shiny thing in the brass section and the middle school band would sound about the same. When Mae levels up to the point that she’s too good for her bargain basement instrument, I will, of course, buy her a better one. I might even up my price limit to eighty dollars.

I didn’t think I’d be that lucky with a violin. Then I actually checked the prices. “Good” brand new violins were two hundred bucks, and cheap new ones were listed for fifty. For the first time ever, I was shocked in a good way. These weren’t wooden instruments handcrafted by European masters. They’re plasticky composites stamped out of a big machine somewhere, most likely a country without regulations or labor laws. But based on the reviews, they were good enough for an eighth grader teaching themselves how to play from YouTube tutorials. You really just need a box to hold four strings. Anything beyond that is showing off. I ordered Betsy a violin on the spot. I’m not paying for formal lessons. This will be something for her to pick at when she finds gaps in her already overbooked schedule. Maybe this summer she’ll learn to play some basic songs, or perhaps she’ll never touch it again. Either way I’m not out much money. For a modest fee, I get credit for allowing her to pursue her musical dreams, however far she wants to take them. If she doesn’t become a concert violinist, that’s on her. I’m sure many of the soloists in the New York Philharmonic use fifty dollar instruments.

Mae was the next kid who wanted to try something new. I wrote a few weeks ago about how she decided to try out for the tennis team, which isn’t a sport I have any experience with. I figured there was no harm in letting her make the attempt. In the worst case scenario, it would be a valuable learning experience for how to deal with failure and rejection. I got mine the hard way by writing hundreds of thousands of words no one read. Getting the same lesson in two afternoons of hitting a ball over (or not over) a net seemed much more efficient. Well, Mae wasn’t in the mood for learning. She made the team. It helped that there were twenty-four spots and only nineteen girls tried out. She also seems to have a natural aptitude for the sport. That wasn’t how I expected things to turn out. I was thinking of sports like basketball, baseball, and soccer, where kids are on traveling teams from the time they can walk. I see parents spend so much money to turn their kids into scholarship athletes, but apparently tennis isn’t one of those sports around here. It’s a bit too fancy for our rural-ish suburb, so not many kids do it. Mae could also probably make the team for lacrosse or polo, as long as the school provided the horse.

My wife’s boss was a Division One tennis player in college. He tells stories about how he spent all his free time in middle and high school going to private lessons and high-pressure matches around the state. It paid for his degree but made him hate the sport. Now, he never plays. Lola asked him what racket we should buy for Mae. He recommended a few options in the two-hundred dollar range. Lola didn’t get that message to me until I was already on the way back from Walmart with a fifteen-dollar racket Mae picked out herself. She loves it. She’s been playing with it everyday for a few weeks, and so far it’s held up just fine. As with her seventy-five dollar saxophone, at her current skill level, the equipment is not the limiting factor. When she becomes better, we’ll reevaluate. We’ll never get to the point where I’m taking her to private lessons every night. She’s welcome to learn everything the part time coach at school has to offer. Beyond that, she’s on her own. There’s always YouTube.

My nine-year-old, Lucy, is pursuing the least disruptive hobby of the bunch. It’s not loud, and I don’t have to drive her anywhere on a daily basis. She’s really, really into gardening. I’ve talked about it before, but her green thumb has gone into overdrive ever since it became warm enough for her to plant things outside. Gardening is much funner when the ground isn’t frozen solid. Who knew? Even before spring officially began, Lucy was ready. She planted seeds in starter trays indoors to give them a jump on the season. When we went to Missouri for vacation, she left detailed instructions for the guy checking on our pets to make sure he watered her burgeoning garden. She also took pictures of the backs of all the seed packets she hadn’t been able to plant yet. That way she could scroll through her phone’s gallery and continue reading about them during our trip. When she’s home, she flips through those same packets every morning like she’s reviewing Pokémon cards. She might be a little obsessed. I fully approve. It’s a cheap hobby (at this stage), and it has the potential to make the outside of my house look amazing. I’m all for encouraging the one thing my kids do that isn’t actively destructive.

This weekend, I gave her an even bigger hit of her drug of choice: I took her to a gardening show. She was in heaven. We received a free bush just for walking in the front doors and then bought several packages of seeds for native flowers. We rounded out our haul with a garden trowel and some bulbs for some kind of giant flowering bush thing. I’m not the gardener in the family, so don’t ask me to get too technical. Some of these seeds come with more rules than my board games. The bulbs have to be dug up before it gets cold, whereas the black-eyed Susan seeds have to be put in the fridge for thirty days to simulate going through the winter. These plants are pickier than my kids. They also have more follow-through. If a child doesn’t get something, they might threaten to hold their breath until they pass out, but they can’t actually do it. Seeds can definitely die on purpose if you don’t cave in to their nitpicky demands. It’s the ultimate temper tantrum. I suspect Lucy will be doing exactly what the seeds want, no matter how much work it is for her. And she’ll love every second of it.

After the garden show, we went to a big box hardware store to finish out Lucy’s supply list. She picked out the biggest planter they had in stock to start her own private garden. Instead of a driveway, we have a large parking slab behind our house. It’s a barren eyesore. I would love it if Lucy spruced it up with an eclectic mix of potted flowers. She’s welcome to plant among the landscaping of the front yard as well, but it’s harder there since she has to work around the existing flora. The concrete out back is a blank canvas. Of all the kids trying new things this month, I think Lucy is the one who’s likely to stick with her hobby for the rest of her life. I know many people who garden as adults but very few who play the musical instruments or sports they tested out in middle school. If she one day has a house surrounded by beautiful gardens, I’m going to take a little bit of the credit because I literally helped her get started with my credit card.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James

(Song for the Chapter: GOD Will Work It Out)

• • • • • • •

"En garde. Prêtes. Allez."

Violet launched forward, her heart racing. She willed her beating heart to be calm. She focused on her movements as she advanced. This was a game of strategy. Her mind needed to be focused.

Dear GOD, please help me, she prayed quietly within. She tried to also focus on the beings that always radiated light.

She held her sword and tried to defend against her opponent's attacks to corner her. This was her last match in the championship.

But, something felt different—not wrong, just different.

She glanced around at where they always positioned themselves during her matches—the angels. They only stood there quietly. She had seen that stance before.

But, when?

In the heat of the game, she could not recall.

Violet spun around in a circle. There were hostile spirits around, but no, there was no attack—

"En garde." the referee called out.

Okay, Violet. She pulled her helmet back on.

One more point to win.

They were at a tie—she and her opponent. After a moment of trying to get back to the mid-point, she finally saw her advantage, launched forward at tough speed, and reaching out beyond her limits, she struck. The light went on. It had been a simultaneous attack.

Violet's heart beat rapidly as she waited for the announcement. Her heart beat even faster.

Who would get the point? Did I fail?

The referee stretched his right arm out extensively, then the left, and finally, the right palm up, to finally announce her victory as a point was added to her name.

"Attaque. Touche. Point."

She screamed as the crowd also erupted in raucous applause.

"Attention, please," the referee announced trying to still the cheering crowd. "Attention. Salut."

She went to her starting point and taking off her helmet, she saluted, then she went forth to greet her opponent.

She couldn't believe it. Another gold medal. She looked for her brother, Prince Tal, amongst those who were trying to get close to her.

He beamed brightly and went forth to meet her, not realising he had walked through the midst of the Heavenly Guardians. And, as she approached him, she felt the agonising pain in her shoulder.

Agh! She screamed in agony.

"Violet?!" Her brother called out.

As her vision blurred from the intensity of the pain, she remembered. The Heavenly beings always took that stance whenever they had to give way for something to occur—for THE FATHER'S GLORY.

———————-

"I would advise that she takes a period to have some rest. The simultaneous touch has deeply affected her shoulder," the doctor said his warm grey eyes soft with sympathy. "I think she should give fencing a break for now till she heals completely."

"No! Tal, tell them. I have to train for the next season," Violet interjected, her voice trembling with fear as she lay on the hospital bed."I'm only seventeen and have to..." her voice quaked and she broke into sobs.

"Doctor," Tal turned to him, "thank you very much. We will see to that."

The doctor nodded understandably and left the room.

Tal slowly advanced to his sister and sat by her, placing an arm around her uninjured shoulder.

"Hey," he said in his soothing and loving voice. It had always calmed her. But at that moment, she felt bereft of the joy and comfort it often gave her.

He had been the only one she had since their parents had died.

He gently touched her cheek and turned her face to himself. Gently using his fingers, he wiped her tears away.

"It's going to be okay. This is just temporary. I know it means a lot to you. But remember, GOD works everything out for our good even if we realise it or not. So, Vee, take a break as you have been told."

He pulled her into his arms in an embrace as he had often done since she was a kid, patting her back. And he softly hummed her favourite song before voicing it out, "GOD will work it out."

Other angelic voices joined in chorus and her attention was drawn to them. In her desperation, she had forgotten they were present.

That brought her comfort, even in that trying moment when she felt depressed and that all hope was lost and the world was collapsing around her.

One of the angels named Abdiel, smiled at her. The smile so familiar, which reflected that of her Loving LORD. It reminded her of many times since her childhood when all had seemed murky and dark.

Her LORD JESUS had been her ever-present Companion. She remembered when she had received her first vision of HIM.

After the death of her parents, she had been in a haze. Everything had felt overwhelming, and she had wondered if she would ever see her parents again—and she encountered HIM.

Her mind snapped back to the present; to the song they sang. They were right. Though she was in pain and felt shattered, The LORD was going to work it all out. She willed her aching heart to resign to her fate, though it seemed slow in obeying the order.

She felt her body relax as they continued to sing the song.

"Okay," she finally said, emotion filling her voice. She wiped off the rest of her tears. "Alright, I will do that. Things are going to be fine, right?"

She pulled away from his embrace and looked up at him, desperately seeking his affirmation. He smiled and nodded in his gentle manner and drew her closer again.

"And my little Vee," he went on to say, his voice thickening and expression turning grave, "I know this is not the right moment, but there is something we must discuss."

———————————

Violet felt discombobulated, the dark evening matched her feelings as she stood at the front entrance to the Villa of the Ferraris with her brother—and her suitcase.

Well, they were not exactly alone. The angels were around, swords drawn out.

Her palms felt sweaty around the handle of the suitcase, her mind and heart feeling unsettled about the future. They would soon be ushered in.

Violet couldn't believe how things had turned out. She recalled the conversation she had had with her brother after her injury.

~

"Things are going awry in terms of security," he tried to tell her as calmly as he could despite the gravity of the situation.

Because he knew it was going to be a big blow to his sister with the ordeal she was going through.

She had pulled away once more to stare him in the face, alarm and concern etched deeply on her already saddened countenance.

"Do you remember me telling you about Vladimir?" She nodded in response.

"Yes?" She replied, her tone rising slightly in question and a confused frown on her face.

"The Mafia leader they finally arrested, right? What about him?" She turned to fully look at him.

Though he tried to make his voice sound soft, she could sense the weightiness in his tone about what he was going to tell her.

Tal sighed and ran his hand through his blonde, beautiful hair. He often did that when he was going to say something he did not relish revealing.

"He has escaped, Vee. And we can't seem to find him. Our intel tells us he is targeting the King Makers. And it won't be safe for us to live together anymore. You are likely one of his targets."

"That's no problem. GOD is with me. And, you've taught me all about self-defence. All will be fine." She tried to sound cheerful, despite the deep concern engraved on her brother's face.

"It's more complex than that, Vee. So, for the sake of your safety, we have to live apart for a moment."

"What?" She was exasperated. She needed her brother more than ever before. Especially, in her present predicament.

"Being with you is the best option! We have been through a lot together and..." her voice wobbled again, the feeling of depression weighing heavily on her chest.

She remembered all they had gone through, the loss of their parents being the greatest of all.

"Vee, listen to me," he finally said to her sternly.

She knew that tone. It was a tone of finality. Her heart raced knowing she could not defy what he was going to say.

~

So, as she stood before the mansion of the Ferraris, Violet knew she had no other option.

She had to stay there for at least a year, or so her brother had said.

She had to stay in the home of the coldest member of the King Makers, Prince Vincenzo Klaus Ferrari, aka, the Ice Prince, aka the Rudest Prince, and his mother and siblings—none of whom she had ever met.

And, the swords drawn by the angels confirmed what else she saw—there would be forces of darkness at work.

Being there was going to be a battle.

——————————

Hola, wonderful family! It's been a long while. I hope you are all well. By GOD'S Grace, the second book is finally here!

It is now in the form of a series; with Princess Undercover being #1. I had initially wanted to take this "Spiritual" stance with the first.

Please, please, please, let me know your thoughts on it. This book covers areas and fields unbeknownst to me