Minda Webber's Blog, page 5

Why you never cater a dinner for Dr. Seuss

1.  The Grinch will steal the roast beast  and if he doesn’t, Max will

2.  The crystal glasses might get smashed when Horton starts hearing voices and goes on a rampage

3.  You must NOT serve fish…..why, you may ask?  One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish….it would be so Hannibal Lector

4.  Don’t invite Sam I am, unless you want to be known for serving a lot of green things

DIgging Up Mr. Posey – book at Amazon.com

While Dana was wondering about her old neighbors, Remy was worrying about their new neighbors.  Seated on a large limb in a tree on the border of Dana’s property and her great aunts’ property, Remy watched with eagle eyes the comings and goings of Orson and Joan Weldon.  Six feet off the ground, the trunk split into three branches, two that shot up nearly vertical and one that shot out horizontally.  It made the perfect seat.  He could spread one leg out on the horizontal branch and lean back against one of the vertical branches with his arm around the third branch.  Last year when he had been fascinated with all things pirate, he had pretended this spot was the crow’s nest of a black galleon ship.  Now, he was using it for his stakeout lair.  He knew what he had seen last night.  And what he saw, he knew was very bad.  There had been a body in the wheelbarrow.  Remy didn’t think his aunt believed him completely.  She was trying to, because he could tell by the way she listened and had gone out to search.  His father would have said it was all in his imagination and told him to go back to sleep.  But it wasn’t in his imagination and he was going to prove it. 

Remy frowned.  It was just like that movie he had watched where Martians had come down and gave everybody plants, and those plants became people who looked human, but weren’t.  The people they resembled died.  He figured that aliens were taking over Twilight Circle and that the body in the wheelbarrow was probably what was left of the old human body.  Yep, the Weldons were mostly likely pod people by now.  And it was up to him to protect his Aunt Dana from any harm.  And maybe his two old great aunts too. 

His only regret was that he hadn’t brought his telescope along.  He didn’t want to break it and it was too hard to climb up the tree holding it, but he wished he had it.  With all the oak leaves and distance between him and the Weldon’s house, he couldn’t get a good look into their windows.  He would just have to be content with observing them when they were outside.  Remy had seen Mr. Weldon earlier, carrying big bags of something from his car to the garage.  He had craned his neck to get a better glimpse and had felt like an ostrich that he saw once at the zoo in Melville.  Maybe the bags carried plant food for the Martian pod plants, he surmised.  The Weldons or pod people were probably trying to hatch more of their fellow Martians.  He bet the house was full of evil pod plants.

            “Ruff!  Ruff!”

            Remy jumped, startled, and nearly fell out of his secret hiding perch.  His heart pounding against his chest, the boy glanced down to see that blasted Hickey mutt below.  Scout had his paws up on the tree trunk and was barking up at Remy.

            “Shhhh!  Scout, go away!” 

            The dog was about thirty-five pounds and was a mix of various long haired breeds.  He looked much like a miniature sheep dog with white fur that was rarely white as Scout was always digging or rolling in something.

            “Ruff!  Ruff!” was Scout’s reply to Remy.

            “I mean it!  Get, Scout!  You’ll give me away.”  No sooner were the words spoken then Remy heard a husky voice from below.

            “Well, what have you got here, old boy?” Mac inquired, petting the mutt.  He looked straight up to see Remy.  “Looks like you treed a nine-year-old,” Mac teased, keeping his other hand behind his back.

            Furrowing his brow in protest, Remy retorted, “He didn’t tree me.  I was here first!”  Dang dog!  Remy thought.  Now he had been discovered.  He liked being up there with no one knowing it.  It gave him a feeling of power and a feeling of being safe.  He rarely felt that way anymore.

            Mac stared up with a smile.  The corners of the boy’s mouth were turned down at the edges and Remy sat up straight with certain rigidity, as if defending his space.  The boy didn’t like him yet, Mac could tell.  “Where’s your Aunt Dana?” Mac asked, glancing toward the house.

Pride and Prejudice and the Daughters Grimm ( from book on Amazon)

One by one and one and all, they stood enthralled, or titillated, or scandalously appalled. Yes, to a one they stood inside the magnificent Gold Room, staring at a most magnificent sight—and that sight wasn’t the golden harp or any golden eggs.  No, the particular golden goose cooked here was Baron Schortz. 

            Miss Rae Grimm was standing on an ottoman, her skirt over her head, and Baron Schortz’s head was half under that skirt, his hand coming out of her pantaloons.  Yes, the baron’s goose was royally cooked—as voiced by Prince Von Hanzen’s bout of pithy cursing.

            Greta, stunned, glanced from her sister and the baron to the handsome prince, still so shocked by the compromising situation that she took only a mild interest in the curse words she’d never heard before.

            Prince Gelb frowned, shaking his head in regret.  Rae would have made him a fine wife.  Alas, fate was against him—as well as Baron Schortz.

            Rae stared wide-eyed at the group before her, feeling more humiliated than she ever had.  This couldn’t be happening.  But it was.

            Swinging back around to face the music, and whatever else awaited him, Baron Schortz forced himself not to shudder.  Everyone was staring at a piece of lacy drawer in his hand, still attached to his cufflink, and his own pants were somewhat tented in front.

            “You cocksure son of a…”  Baroness Snowe trailed off, her chubby finger pointing, denouncing him as a lecherous bounder he wasn’t.    

            “Cockroach,” he tried to explain, but his mouth was dry and he felt a disaster of momentous proportions overtaking him. What a cockamamie mess.  He was cocked up for sure.

            “Ha!” the baroness snapped scornfully.  Secretly, she was delighted.  Her vain niece would marry the baron, and their social standings would be equal. Rae would soon be out of her hair.  And the marriage would be high enough—especially since Baron Schortz had blue Norwegian blood—to cause her sister, the Baroness Grimm, to see red.  Oh, happy days were here again.  Never was she more relieved that she had followed her instincts, gathering her companions and hurrying here.  She’d hoped that luck would be with her and she would catch the baron in a compromising position; but never had she thought she would find them in such a compromising position.  As compromising positions went, this one was deliciously wicked.

From chapter two Dating Dracula Jr.

“He’s gonna be real hungry,” Hart Hyde said, his voice sounded tense.  Hart didn’t particularly like blood sports or contact sports, which were really about the same in my opinion.  As big as he is and living in Texas, he should have been playing football. But hey, Hart didn’t like the necessary roughness.  Texans loved football.  Instead Hart played baseball.  Left field.  Vampire staking was way out of his comfort zone.  “Really hungry.”

“Yeah,” I sighed and hesitated.  I could feel the container of Holy water in my hand; it felt cold in its glass container.  You have to use glass because metal contaminates the water.  The movies get it so wrong.

My best friend raised her stake high and leaned over, but hesitated again.  Debbs didn’t want to stick him either.  She was tons more shallow about looks then I was.  After all, she was dating Seth and he really did have to ask and tell his Mummy everything, even secrets. That’s how come he got grounded on the toilet paper bit.

“Hart, if he gets past us.” I began, as Debbs stake started on its downward strike as this howl of pure demented delight cried out in the darkness beyond us.

Startled, she stopped the down thrust of the stake and turned; stake in hand.  Quickly, Debbs started towards the ladder we had placed in the open grave with us.  I followed on her heels as the sounds of scrambling reached us.  And then the really dreaded and dreadful sound of long nails clasping and clicking like hundreds of rats crawling across the dirt and dried grass of the cemetery.

The noises were gaining in strength.   Then the low guttural groans begin to fill the air with their harrowing menace.  Combine the scrambling rat-like sounds and the groans and you’ve got one thing.

One thing only making those creepy sounds.

One deadly thing.

I shuddered.  I took a breath and tried to swallow.  My mouth suddenly felt like I had a blow dryer jammed inside set on extra high voltage.  I just couldn’t stand the thought of being eaten alive.  It’s why I wouldn’t go beyond two feet in the ocean when my family took vacations to the Gulf Coast in Corpus Christi, Texas.  One black-eyed, teeth-gleaming thing…

Sharks.  Great Whites were the ultimate terror for me and the worst of the shark species as far as I was concerned.    And even though I loved the ocean, I would only go out in the greenish-brown waters up to my knees.  No shark was going to have me for dinner, lunch or a late afternoon snack.

As I scurried up the ladder, a harsh howling sound came from a stand of oak trees hidden deep in the black velvet folds of the night, interrupting my morbid thoughts of torn flesh and bright red blood.  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  We had a fresh vampire about to rise, and to add insult to injury, we had something nasty.

Something deadly.

Something foul coming at us from the shadows of the cemetery.

Ghouls!

“Vampires and ghouls!  Oh my!” Debbs exclaimed.

My best friend, a Van Helsing, was doing the Wizard of Oz and I was terrified.  I hated ghouls. From the sound of them more than a few were scurrying to feast on our flesh!

I wanted to howl in misery.  Even though I’m a Frankenstein, and quite used to things that go bump in the night, and even though I’m not afraid of no ghosts, I am absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, terrified of ghouls.  Ghouls are the reason I carry a special gun that shoots bullets that burst into fire on impact.  As much as I hate ghouls, I’m pretty sure that ghouls feel the same way about me and I know they absolutely hate fire.

I glanced at Debbs, my eyes white with terror as more of the blood-curling howling filled the night.

If we didn’t move fast, we were toast, or to be more realistic, red meat!

 

Part of chapter two in Dating Dracula Jr.

Hart Hyde, of the Jekyll and Hyde dynasty, wiped away the last of the dirt on the coffin as Jason and I began to raise the lid.  Debbs Van Helsing, held the  large hand-held flashlight we brought along for extra.  She held it up high so that it shone brightly down on the corpse in front of us.

            Debbs almost swallowed her gum.  “Would you look at that?  It’s wacked.”

            I was looking.  The corpse was laid out on a red satin-lined coffin, which by the way is really lame.  Nobody uses red satin for coffins anymore.   It’s like what European royalty used to use if you were one of the undead.  But it wasn’t the tacky red satin I was looking at, but the corpse.  He had dark blonde hair that was kind of wavy and pulled back probably in a long pony tail.   He had high cheekbones, sculpted lips and was the best looking corpse I’d ever seen. And I hate to brag, but I’d seen a lot. 

         “His skin color isn’t right.”  Debbs said suspiciously, her blue-green eyes narrowing.  She meant that his color should be paler and his features not so lifelike.  He was also about ten years younger than my grave informant had told me and that wasn’t good.

        “He’s fresh,” I replied warily, carefully looking over the body.   He was all that and more.  And dead.  What a shame to die in your early twenties.  Especially, when the corpse was that good- looking.    “And he’s young.”

          Debbs heard the catch in my voice, the uneasiness, because she reached in her pocket and pulled out a Da Vinci stake.  It was, of course, not the original Da Vinci Stake.  That was in a museum in San Antonio donated by Debbs’ family.  Debbs’ Da Vinci stake was thirteen inches long and razor sharp at the tip.  It was painted a bright sunny yellow.  Debbs happened to like colored stakes as opposed to the natural grain woods.

         “He’s got blue eyes,” Hart said.  Again stating the obvious, which meant something wicked, not wicked good but wicked bad, only Hart hadn’t quite realized yet or he’d have leaned back some. 

        The deep blue eyes blinked shut.

        Our zombie corpse wasn’t just any corpse! Being a Frankenstein, I’m used to corpses and vampires and yes, even zombies.  But a fresh vampire, or baby vamp, if you want to get cute, is so bad news that it could rip our your neck faster than you could say “Stake….stake…duck.”

        I realized it the moment I spotted those striking blue eyes. 

        He was a vampire!  Just my luck! 

        Glancing over at me, Debbs lifted up her stake.  We were prepared for trouble like Boy Scouts. I unstopped the Holy water with one hand, a flask I always carried with me, along with a small five-inch stake and my special-made gun.  I hesitated on the Holy water bit and shook my head at Debbs.

      I hated to see her stake him or me burn him with the Holy water, he was that fine looking.  But a fresh vamp can really put on the moves and the bite on you when they first start rising.  It takes about six months for them to get a pretty good handle on their bloodlust.  I looked at Debbs. 

        She looked at me.  I could tell she was thinking the same thing, he’s too fine to kill.  But rough-and-tough vampire exterminator that she was, she was more prepared to do the dirty deed.

        The vampire opened his eyes and blinked again.

         His very fine chest took a breath. 

          I heard Hart catch his.  “He’s a vampire.”  Hart had finally caught on. 

          And this particular vampire was getting ready to wake up and take one or two of us out for dinner and I don’t mean dining at TGIF restaurant.

Part of chapter one in Dating Dracula Jr.

Hart Hyde, of the Jekyll and Hyde dynasty, wiped away the last of the dirt on the coffin as Jason and I began to raise the lid.  Debbs Van Helsing, held the  large hand-held flashlight we brought along for extra.  She held it up high so that it shone brightly down on the corpse in front of us.

            Debbs almost swallowed her gum.  “Would you look at that?  It’s wacked.”

            I was looking.  The corpse was laid out on a red satin-lined coffin, which by the way is really lame.  Nobody uses red satin for coffins anymore.   It’s like what European royalty used to use if you were one of the undead.  But it wasn’t the tacky red satin I was looking at, but the corpse.  He had dark blonde hair that was kind of wavy and pulled back probably in a long pony tail.   He had high cheekbones, sculpted lips and was the best looking corpse I’d ever seen. And I hate to brag, but I’d seen a lot. 

         “His skin color isn’t right.”  Debbs said suspiciously, her blue-green eyes narrowing.  She meant that his color should be paler and his features not so lifelike.  He was also about ten years younger than my grave informant had told me and that wasn’t good.

        “He’s fresh,” I replied warily, carefully looking over the body.   He was all that and more.  And dead.  What a shame to die in your early twenties.  Especially, when the corpse was that good- looking.    “And he’s young.”

          Debbs heard the catch in my voice, the uneasiness, because she reached in her pocket and pulled out a Da Vinci stake.  It was, of course, not the original Da Vinci Stake.  That was in a museum in San Antonio donated by Debbs’ family.  Debbs’ Da Vinci stake was thirteen inches long and razor sharp at the tip.  It was painted a bright sunny yellow.  Debbs happened to like colored stakes as opposed to the natural grain woods.

         “He’s got blue eyes,” Hart said.  Again stating the obvious, which meant something wicked, not wicked good but wicked bad, only Hart hadn’t quite realized yet or he’d have leaned back some. 

        The deep blue eyes blinked shut.

        Our zombie corpse wasn’t just any corpse! Being a Frankenstein, I’m used to corpses and vampires and yes, even zombies.  But a fresh vampire, or baby vamp, if you want to get cute, is so bad news that it could rip our your neck faster than you could say “Stake….stake…duck.”

        I realized it the moment I spotted those striking blue eyes. 

        He was a vampire!  Just my luck! 

        Glancing over at me, Debbs lifted up her stake.  We were prepared for trouble like Boy Scouts. I unstopped the Holy water with one hand, a flask I always carried with me, along with a small five-inch stake and my special-made gun.  I hesitated on the Holy water bit and shook my head at Debbs.

      I hated to see her stake him or me burn him with the Holy water, he was that fine looking.  But a fresh vamp can really put on the moves and the bite on you when they first start rising.  It takes about six months for them to get a pretty good handle on their bloodlust.  I looked at Debbs. 

        She looked at me.  I could tell she was thinking the same thing, he’s too fine to kill.  But rough-and-tough vampire exterminator that she was, she was more prepared to do the dirty deed.

        The vampire opened his eyes and blinked again.

         His very fine chest took a breath. 

          I heard Hart catch his.  “He’s a vampire.”  Hart had finally caught on. 

          And this particular vampire was getting ready to wake up and take one or two of us out for dinner and I don’t mean dining at TGIF restaurant.

Top three Paranormal picks

1.  A rolling vampire gathers no stakes

2.  Early to bed, and early to rise can get a vampire sun fried

3.  Vampire reunions are scary…..fangs for the memories

My other Gallic Cat

I got him from a shelter when he was four months old. He’s never known an unkind hand. I used to walk him on the beaches in Oregon. Boy, did I get some stares from people walking their dogs. He’s loving and let’s me carry him anywhere.

My Gallic Cat

This was the cat that was so abused I got from the shelter. She was terrified of humans. After five years, she is the sweetest thing and very loving. It’s amazing to me that people can hurt animals.

The Dolphin

Dolphin riding the Waves