The day the funnel came in off shore, rain spattered the sidewalk along the beach. Earlier, my Hemingway's house visit along the fern laden hallways was interrupted by thunder growling warnings. Now a bolt blazing the purpled sky.

The day the funnel came in off shore, rain spattered the sidewalk along the beach. Earlier, my Hemingway's house visit along the fern laden hallways was interrupted by thunder growling warnings. Now a bolt blazing the purpled sky.The day the funnel came in off shore, rain spattered the sidewalk along the beach. Earlier, my Hemingway's house visit along the fern laden hallways was interrupted by thunder growling warnings. Now a bolt blazing the purpled sky.

The storm seemed a blessing for my financial problems. One flood and my mortgage bills would end.

Did I really want natural intervention?

I hurried on while the storm grew and threatened. Little time to reach the comparative safety of my home.

If life were only magic, with wind carrying me safely above clouds to a kiss by a stranger while a muscled man held the funnel away.

I entered my front door with wind scattering paperwork. I slammed the door with all my strength, rushing for my shower.

There I crouched down and sat crosslegged listening to the howls outside and surprisingly the gurgle of my stomach. How could I hunger, now? Wasn't death going to claim me? Could I bargain with the devil for a slice of cake or french dip sandwich?

I waited. There came silence.

When I looked out, wood boards were piled and pounded to kindling along the sidewalk next to my neighbors. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a drop of water fell.

I guess that meant I had to go to work. And thank you Mother Nature.

Later, Nurit tapped the door open, pulling her smoky shawl tight as she entered, knowing as she did so that this interview would be difficult. “Zerata?” she called gently.

Sniffles sounded in the living room.

Nurit squared her back.

A mound of crocheted blankets hid Zerata’s face.

Nurit placed her hand on the woman’s shuddering back. “Ama will spend tonight in the hospital wing. Tomorrow, she’ll be up and about with a bandaged foot. It will heal quickly. She’ll be fine.”

Zerata’s chubby face peeked out at Nurit from beneath her curly hennaed mop, her eyelids swollen and her pug nose tipped red. “I didn’t mean to cause her hurt,” she sobbed. “Madre de Dios. I would never—she’s my baby. I would never let anything hurt Ama. You believe me, don’t you?”

Nurit pulled Zerata to her chest, feeling a twang of sympathy. “Of course I do.” Zerata’s wail answered her. Nurit relaxed, rocking the woman back and forth. “Shush.” The seaweed garden pulsed with wave action. “Ama’s okay. Shush.”

Meditatively, Nurit counted species. Dark clusters of purple mussels. Burgundy sea urchins looking like the hair from a Raggedy Ann doll. The pale, almost see-through hands were green algae. Surf grass swirled and waved. A long-legged, pink brittle star dined on an oyster.

Zerata’s large hands snuck out of the afghan and patted the coffee table, searching. Nurit moved a handkerchief into them.

After numerous blowing, snot releasing sounds, Zerata met Nurit’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I was just so worried. Can I see her?”

Nurit shook her head. “Ama’s sleeping. Later. After the committee meets.”

With a deep sigh, the blanket shrugged off Zerata’s shoulders. “Would you like tea? I’ve got chocolate chip cookies I’ve saved. C’mon.” She limped toward the kitchen without a backward glance.

The tension in Nurit’s shoulders seeped away. She glanced at her Upad; almost an hour yet before Shabbat. She had time. She followed the sounds of clanging pots and chattering china.

Zerata set down a heaped plate of cookies, two large hand-painted mugs and a matching teapot.

Nurit raised her eyebrow. “How did Ama get matches?”

Her friend slumped into the chair opposite. “I’ll … I’ll show you. Have some cookies first.”

She wiped sweat from her face and chomped into a cookie.

Helping herself, Nurit waited. Twenty minutes until Shabbat.

After several cookies and a warm cup of ginseng tea, Zerata sighed. “In here,” she gestured.

They wandered through the kitchen and passed through the yellow gingerbread door to Zerata’s bedroom. Zerata shuffled over to a closet and opened the door.

A draft of smoke-scented air escaped into the bedroom. Within the closet, a mirror hung on a charred wall. Two candles in sconces guarded a statue of the Virgin Mary and a rosary. The box of matches lay in a mess of white foam. Nurit closed her eyes, understanding.

Zerata’s worried brown eyes pleaded with the leader. “Do I have to give up my God, too? Haven’t we lost enough?”

“No, Zerata, I understand. I pray, too. You may do what you please in your home. I know you’re Catholic.”

Zerata knelt. “They were so mad. Why? It was an accident.”

“They worried about Ama, and everyone. Fire can deplete the oxygen down here.” Nurit snapped her fingers. “And we’d smother.”

Zerata clutched her rosary to her heart. “Sometimes I’m so lonely. I don’t bother anyone with my worries; instead I come here, light the candles, say the rosary, or just talk to God. Sometimes I feel his hand on my shoulder. He takes my pain. How could I give up such a comfort?” She shook her head.

Nurit glanced at her Upad. Shabbat approached. She knelt beside Zerata and put her arm around her shoulders. “Well, I’m Jewish and it’s time for my prayers. Shall we?”

Eyes teary, Zerata nodded.

Fumbling the matches, Nurit’s stiff fingers lit the candles.

“What?” Zerata gasped. “I thought, I mean, with the fire …”

Nurit smiled. “For the Sabbath, we say a prayer welcoming the light into our lives. Your sconces didn’t start the fire, after all. Ama did.”

“Say it out loud,” Zerata begged. “It’s been so long since I attended mass or prayed with friends.”

Nurit squeezed Zerata’s hand and then arranged her shawl out of the way. “Me too.” She circled her hands over the flames, pulling light toward her, and then covered her eyes with her palms. “Blessed are You, Eternal One our God, Ruling Presence of the Universe, Who makes us holy with acts that connect us to our Source, and gives us this kindling of the Sabbath lights.” Gentleness settled on her soul.

Zerata smiled. “That sounds like our mass. Amen.”

“Amen. Even though we’re two old busybodies disinclined to change our ways,” she bumped her hip into Zerata’s, “it’s very nice to pray with you.”

title: Hot Flash

genre: Science Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Utopia/Dystopia

age range: 14-120

word count: 105,968

author name: Sherilyn Harper, pen name: Sheri Fresonke Harper

why a good fit for Trident: Sheri writes in mixed media in multiple genres including nonfiction, memoir, poetry, essays, with novels and short stories in Science Fiction that have a political and societal and also personal psychological emphasis. Most of the work she does contributes to the betterment of the world.

the hook: Grandmother aged women despair when a meteor crash destroys the world with climate change related disasters, what will they do when they find a girl baby?

Synopsis:

After the death of most life on Earth following the breakup of a methane ice comet in Earth’s atmosphere, Ama NOVELLO is raised to be the next Eve by eight retired women living in the Tethys and Oceanus underwater luxury condominium. Will the demands placed on Ama by these women force her to run away?

After the disaster when most governments fail, the Hope Treaty Satellite prevents nuclear retaliation and directs surviving military assets to establish emergency centers. Unaware of other survivors, the women at Tethys and Oceanus despair until they find Ama and decide they can learn the genetic engineering skills needed to restore the human race.

When Ama is fourteen years old her teachers make her the community’s historian and start lessons in evolutionary biology especially reproductive methods and how they were successful. Using the Onion—a device that records brainwaves—Ama learns how scientist Deeka, who has a mission to find her husband, has provided supplies for the community, owner Nurit, who has provided the strength of will to keep everyone together, and operations manager Matata, who keeps the retirement home operational, and her other aunts and mother survived. She is eager to have her own experiences but feels trapped because she really has no choice about getting pregnant by her fifteenth birthday and doesn’t feel ready.

Faced with the horror of the comet crash Ama witnesses through the Onion, she confronts her adoptive mother who continually nags her about babies and cuts her hair which leads her to nearly get shot. Matata makes her feel better discussing her lifelong spat with tough-talking Texan Helen. When fashion designer Aunt Chrystillia alters her hair, Ama decides to run away but Alzheimer-suffering Miako talks her into accepting her responsibility to the human race.

After facing the past decision-making about how she should be taught religion and culture and her Aunt Von’s death, Ama realizes she’s created her own weaknesses. When she witnesses the debate over choosing a father, Ama feels deprived of a voice in the decision and says so. As a gift to Matata who Ama realizes wanted to be her mother, she selects a sperm vial Deeka fetches from the St. Petersburg sperm bank and without telling anyone, uses it to get pregnant. Then faced with the floods that limit travel and supplies and stagnant water conditions that affect their food supply at home, she demands to go with her Aunt Deeka to locate a new home.

While Ama and Deeka are camping, Ama is stung by bees and accuses Deeka of deserting her. Then a category five hurricane blows in, flooding a sewage pond that will damage their fish farm. While Deeka fights to retrieve their boat, Ama works on the retention barrier and falls into a sinkhole. Deeka rescues her and Ama learns that Deeka’s love for her took a different form than the other women’s but was every bit as strong. Eventually, they take refuge in a warehouse with women held captive by Dr. Hagik Theurg. Dr. Theurg attacks Deeka again and she kills him in self-defense. Ama takes command and learns about her natural parents.

The nuclear submarine USS Powell arrives at T&O Retirement Villas with news of the category five hurricane about to strike. Matata and Lt. Spike Lemur, the Navy expert on energy systems, head out in Nurit’s mini-sub to shut down a producing oil well before the storm hits. Afterward, Matata has faced her fear of men and she and Spike are in love and engaged. Deeka learns her husband is alive, cloning animals in Norway.

At Ama’s quinceañera, Ama makes up with her mother telling her she’s pregnant and confessing she found the strength needed to take charge by counting the beads of a rosary, saying “Mama loves me, I can do it, Deeka loves me, I can do it.”

target audience: people who love women's fiction, science fiction and thrillers

bio: Sheri started work at Boeing in the factory, then pursued a degree in computing and became a systems analyst and computer architect in systems processes and computing. She later went to work at the Port of Seattle. While working, Sheri found the need to express herself, and turned to creative writing classes. She's worked as a freelance writer and photographer for the past 23 years.

platform: Sheri is on Facebook and Instagram, occasionally posts on Twitter, and is recently very active in promoting her photography to earn recognition in multimedia with work at Gurushots, Pixoto, Viewbug, 500px, Picfair, Youpic, Adobe, Shutterstock, Lifeframer, Flickr, Fine Arts America, and YouTube. She formerly wrote articles at Yahoo News and a variety of platforms. She's quite active on Quora. Sheri writes poems at Poetry Soup, Allpoetry, and at the Prose. Sheri's the owner and author of several blogs including CulturewCamy.com, EmbracingLiterature.com. She records her reading habits and tastes on GoodReads and on Amazon. She keeps her profile and CV on LinkedIn.

education: Sheri has a Bachelor of Science in Computing Science from Western Washington University, coursework toward an MBA in Informations Systems Management from City University, coursework through Boeing Education, certificates in poetry and Commercial Fiction from the University of Washington Extension, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and Poetry from Ashland University.

experience: Sheri worked for McDonald's from age 16-18, K-Mart for three months, Boeing from age 18-22, then from 25-41, and then for the Port of Seattle from 41-44. Since then she's worked a variety of freelance jobs while writing 8 books, a variety of poetry chapbooks, and multiple books in progress. She has skills in computing, with Microsoft products, Doodly, photo editing tools, blogging platforms, and web design. She reads prolifically in history, science, natural science, travel, mythology, archaeology etc. Sheri has one published chapbook titled Decalmaker about her work in the Boeing factory.

personality: Sheri's an INTJ or INTX, Taurus/Pisces, which means she doesn't mind personal contact but prefers it one-on-one and is happier as a hermit. She's told she can seem overwhelming because of her literary interests. She is upbeat, has a good sense of humor, doesn't mind puns, and tends to be sports-minded and outgoing as well as organized. But she is relationally organized which can confuse people. Her writing style is character-driven and creatively freestyle and heavily edited. She tends to draft scenes based on mood and combine them according to an emotional curve/conflict curve plot with most characters changing in some key way based on a changing matrix where she keeps track of everything.

likes/hobbies: Sheri enjoys theatre, opera, symphonies, a variety of music, ballet and she supports the arts in the local area and visits lots of museums during her travels. Sheri and her husband Robert travel extensively, often three times a year. Sheri works out at the gym, plays golf frequently, hikes, birds, swims, snorkels in order to keep fit. Sheri and her husband share an interest in economics and the stock market, politics, and the developing world. They tend to revolve around each other, require each other's permission for commitments, and take time for church and helping the community.

Sheri's 63 and grew up in Seattle, Washington but moved to the Melbourne, Florida area 14 years ago.

With you, the axle-rachet

I spin around,

my fingers twitching on cantaloupe,

pinching bloated cukes,

pinching your soft bulge--

pocket, without drinking whiskey,

risking trapped claw in your maw,

the crab’s catch.

Then your nose skittishly lowers,

just over cart’s edge, you zip

slish-slosh slippering

down the alleyways,

kamikaze toward fruit loops,

milk duds and cock-a-doodle crackers,

snaps, pops and chips.

My wonder boy.

My bread-and-butter man, five spice

for relish and soapsuds

for the ring-around-the-collar holler

price check from clerk. Crowd

never alters our balance,

never hush-mushes the laughter

never cancels the clatter

of my axle-rachet spin at stop and shop.

Afterward, all I know--

we got the goods.

Back then it was okay to tear

paper in half

while listening endlessly

to the drone

of story over and over.

Soon my pile of paper halves grew

unwieldy and soft

and I received a warning better not

let any of it drop

but the softness of it all defeated.

Paper only tears in half and half

so many times.

The paper became tissue but no one

better sneeze it to drift.

And still the drone produced more mess.

#poem #mess #paper #half #sfharper #sherifresonkeharper #poet

That night, when sunset cast deep shadows

there, under the lamplight I saw eyes

that met mine from a hazy shape, low.

So deep entwined did our souls become

our hearts beat in my ears and my spirit

soared, like a lost seagull missing the boat

sailing off toward the Northern pole pit.

I knew then, you had died someplace cold.

I will be forever old. Lost in time, deprived

no one to grow close to, no one to grow old

with children and house, only a moment

then you were gone.

*first line from Luthien's poem

#love #ghost #poem #sfharper #sheri fresonke harper, #rhyme #north #duluth #photograph

He’d followed me all week. Lardo in the truck, scratchy beard, one blind eye.

He didn’t worry me. He seemed kindly. The one eye twinkled. But you never know.

I’d spotted him Monday while drinking coffee, parked one line of cars from where I’d parked mine. Then crusing the grocery later that night. That set a red flag. With one eye, I hadn’t made a mistake. It was the same guy.

As the week progressed and the spotting continued, I had to ask myself was it time to move. Only a year in this riverside town, ducks riding the edges, mergansers bobbing, airplanes taking off and landing after spirals midair had allowed me to move with ease among the workaday drones, but here now, Lardo put the spotlight on me and it wasn't safe.

One time stopped at a light, him right behind watching me watch him on my rearview mirror, I tried to question him. All I got back from my signing was Lardo. I moved along determined to lose him on the freeway exchange, riding the loops to circle back but I guess he'd learned my routine.

So at dusk tonight I left for my cabin. It's not easy to follow someone and after a week I wanted down time.

The blue light of last light was upon the Sound when I pulled in, no one following.

I tucked my car behind so it wasn't visible in the street. All my electronics were off, resting safely in my offsite stowage places. Finders could try to break in but they wouldn't GPS me.

It's chilly I realized. Started a fire. Checked for new holes, birds like to pull out insulation so I got my patch out, a stucco like paste mashed in.

This got me through the tea pot scream from the stove, shaking me through to bones. Then I started the heebie-jeebies telling me I wasn't alone.

After I am dead, I hope that you who have received benefit from me will turn toward a more charitable life, passing on the gifts I have shared and using them to help others.

I don't ask you to choose my way of lifelife--teacher, artist, programmer, such choices don't matter to me. Be who you are. But be effective. Accomplish some amount of good.

Every gift deserves a gift in return but I won't be there to see it. Use it well, make money, explore, but when you're done, have something left to give to the next generation, and ask them, please, pass it on.

The models in mind cascade, fitting atop each other like Russian dolls, open one, you get another, close one, the smaller world inside disappears.

I'll skip above what we experience remote.

At the top, is the brilliant jewel like world, airplane lights, fireflies, solar blaze on wheat fields, splashing frogs who disappear, supported by the churning fires of smashing continents grinding down rock in swirls of pink sandstone and white calcite and painting it sulferous black pocky foam into fume.

Tear off the sod, dust devils blow and choke, tear off the trees, the heat rises until we dry up except for one last squiggle of sweat, tear off the water, we have sponge soup air we drink, but beneath, a glass

bowl surrounds a terrarium with a city of soaring glass, steel, hung with ivy, ferns and air plants, splashing we buy, we sell in extravagant

glowing lights holding death as a silver, pink, blue light. Beneath all

the happy brisk strides are the tubes of encrusted stool, smelling of earth and death and chow bacteria and the swirling juices of bodies

sprinkled red, dusty chemical, and flushing blue. Its a wart made of tinsel and paper dragon.

Tear of the dome, screw up your nose at onions topped by regurgitated beans, put your ear to the door, yank, splat goes the hand, whack goes the fist, or koochi coo goes the momma before she screams at the bite, so set it aside and hear the chant of angelic young

men, fussing at their hot robes, jabbing and poking and ah-ah-ahing,

and dum-dom, dooom and the slipping soft hands of a lover humming oh.

Tear off the mayor, the police, the junkie, the teacher, and suddenly all the additions and subtractions come down to a mirror like projection that says, me, I fart burp spew phew, and slop over skin with tongue, sponge and super perfume. Animals suck at my dead skin, chew in my gut, worm through my skull, all tearing apart what miraculously formed on its own. Toxicity, the steady refinement of me into the glue of you.

Mom made it,

cherry with sour bits

and all pink frosting

with an angel on top

my friends are all here

and there's red pop

and balloons,

I'm so lucky.

They're all singing

clapping for my birthday!

Then dad made mom slam the door

and she's crying. All my friends

are quiet. I slip off my seat, the girls

follow. I hold my finger cross my lips.

Shhh.

Now they're yelling.

I squeeze my eyes shut, cover ears

What did I do?

Why are they so mad?

Am I in trouble?

I hope they don't look under here.

Now there's silence. I peek out

climb back on my chair.

No one looks at each other.

Dad's gone outside. Whew-wee.

That was close. Mom tries to smile

"you want ice cream? I got bubble gum"

I freeze, shrug my shoulders. My friend

says yes, so we all nod. It doesn't taste

good any more.

I like it with perfect warmth, maybe sunny, maybe rainy but not so hot you are uncomfortable and not so cold your muscles freeze up.

I like water, rain works, or a river rustling, or waves crashing, or the trickle from a pool, or drip on a drum, water noise soothes the mind, relaxes the body, washes clear pain.

Butterflies float, drift down to honeysuckle, rise and fall like a balloon, from burning bush to beauty bush to milkweed. Because of course there are flowers, red hibiscus with their long stamens, pink camellia perfectly shaped, rose shapechangers from bud to petal fall,

drips of jasmine, cups of skyflower, stalks of sage in many colors. Flowers dangle, drape the brain, cover the body, adore the sky.

Visitors drop in to the seedbox, meow of catbird, twit twit of chipping cardinal who burst into song, the whisper of titmice,

the buzz-choo choo of the Carolina wren. We say hello, see sky,

find flower, find clouds, stars, moons, the dripping down sky.

A table is needed, perfect height so your feet fit on the floor without a cramp. A chair soft enough but not too soft, good back support. A pen that bleeds as you write, sliding over page with ease, turning off now and then. Blank page. Space wide enough to spread out. Room for a walkabout. Bathroom nearby.

Silence full of song. Oh yeah, my heartbeat. Ha ha.