Ralph Robert Moore's Blog: Welcome to Me, page 2
January 8, 2015
Cockroaches Scream at Ghosts
Using his thumbs, MacDonald broke more Saltines into his bowl of soup. “So how do we know when we’re near?”
“There’ll be signs. Birds, mostly. Their nests. Once we get deep enough inside, and I get a sense of getting near to her ghost, I’ll break out my secret weapon.”
“Does that have anything to do with the cardboard box on that mule there that has all those tiny scrabbling noises inside?”
“Matter of fact.”
“And what’s making all those scrabbling sounds?”
“Cockroaches.”
MacDonald stopped chewing on a Saltine. Started chewing again. “Serious?”
“Cockroaches scream when a ghost is near.”
“Say that again?”
“It’s not a very loud scream, but when you put thousands of them together in a confined space like I have, their collective scream is deafening. We may have to use hand signals at that point to communicate.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
“There’ll be signs. Birds, mostly. Their nests. Once we get deep enough inside, and I get a sense of getting near to her ghost, I’ll break out my secret weapon.”
“Does that have anything to do with the cardboard box on that mule there that has all those tiny scrabbling noises inside?”
“Matter of fact.”
“And what’s making all those scrabbling sounds?”
“Cockroaches.”
MacDonald stopped chewing on a Saltine. Started chewing again. “Serious?”
“Cockroaches scream when a ghost is near.”
“Say that again?”
“It’s not a very loud scream, but when you put thousands of them together in a confined space like I have, their collective scream is deafening. We may have to use hand signals at that point to communicate.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
January 1, 2015
But They Never Do
Back in late 1990, while we were still living in an apartment, in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas, we went one Saturday to a no-kill pet shelter, Operation Kindness, and picked out two kittens.
Mary and I are cat people. Both our childhoods were filled with upright tails and deep purrings.
Once we got together, in 1979, we started traveling quite a bit, and so didn't have cats, because it wouldn't be fair to them. But now that we had settled down, in Texas, one day I said to Mary, "Why don't we get some cats?"
We picked out two from the shelter, a female for Mary, a male for me. We didn't know what sex they were when we chose them. It just worked out that way.
The cat I chose, who we named Nei, was sickly almost from the time we brought him home to our apartment. We spent most of that first month cradling his small body in our arms, smearing a peanut butter-type food paste we got from the vet up onto the roof of his mouth, which he would automatically lick off, swallowing it, the only way he could get nutrients (he wouldn't eat from a bowl). It seems like every time we held Nei, trying to get him to live, the Chris Isaac song, Wicked World, would be playing on the radio, a song which still, over a decade later, brings back memories of Mary and me taking turns, on the edge of our bed, in our quiet apartment, on quiet afternoons, trying to get Nei to live.
He died, about a month after we brought him home. He just wasted away. No amount of love, no amount of vet visits, no amount of that paste, no amount of prayers or tears could save him.
The other cat we brought home, Elf, Mary's cat, was, by contrast, an incredible ball of energy. She bounced off the walls.
When we left for work each morning, we'd shut her in the apartment's bathroom, with a bowl of food and a bowl of water, so she didn't tear everything apart in our absence. Each evening, arriving home, we'd open the bathroom door and she'd come surfing out, maniacal, atop a bouncing roll of shredded toilet paper.
In the mid-nineties, she was diagnosed with feline leukemia. Most cats die within a year or two of the diagnosis, but she survived until late 2000, dying precisely ten years, to the day, we first brought her home.
Back when we first had her, in late 1990, after Nei's death, we realized she really needed a companion, someone to play with. So we went out to the different pet stores, and finally decided on a small black kitten. I forget how much we paid for him. He's the only cat we've ever bought, rather than gotten from a shelter, or taken in from our back door.
We called him Rudo.
We got the name from a role-playing Sega video game we used to play about that time, called Phantasy Star. In the game, Rudo was the name of a stalwart companion who helped all the others, who was absolutely dependable and even-keeled.
When we brought him home, Elf went wild, scampering dervishly around the apartment, pushing her back paws off the center of our kitchen cabinets, landing next to poor Rudo, swatting him across the face, flying off to the ceiling to spring back with the next attack. We grabbed her at one point, small as she was, holding her up in our hands to look at her face. Her eyes were vibrating like ping pong balls.
Eventually, Elf came to tolerate Rudo's presence in our apartment, though she always seemed disdainful of him, the little black kitten.
When Elf went into heat, sliding her body forward across the carpet towards Rudo, who was sitting quietly a yard or so away, he eventually agreed to service her, but he was an absolute disaster at it. Time after time, he'd mount Elf's unhinged hips, jerking his back legs forward, then dropping off to look under her tail again, Okay, it's about an inch below her tail, mounting her again, back legs jerking forward, but once again missing the incredibly moist mark.
Eventually, Elf gave up on him. Eventually, we got them both fixed.
When he was a kitten, Rudo had a Frankenstein appearance, black paws, gray and black striped legs, black back, gray tail, but as he got older, all that stitched-look coalesced into a beautiful, uniform, long black fur. And he turned into a huge cat, about three times Elf's size. Mary used to call him fat. I objected, calling him rangy, I don't know why that word occurred to me then, but Mary's teased me about it ever since.
The last few years, Rudo has started showing signs of old age. He had hip surgery last Summer, and has had elevated levels in his kidneys which we've had treated.
This past weekend, he started deteriorating rapidly. I petted him at one point Sunday morning, was surprised how much of his bones I could feel under the long black fur.
We brought him to the vet. After some blood work, the vet came back into the examination cubicle, solemn, and told us the levels in Rudo's kidneys were literally off the charts (he had higher levels of potassium, etc. than his equipment could register. His levels were more than ten times the safe levels).
Rudo was, in fact, in the end stages of kidney failure. What we drink and what we eat nourishes our bodies, but also turns, eventually, toxic, to where it must be eliminated. Rudo's kidneys could no longer pass the toxins in his body through his urine (which is what kidney failure means). Instead, those toxins were staying in his body, building up in his system, slowly poisoning him to death.
The vet estimated Rudo had only a few more weeks of life left, before the poisons killed him. But they would be weeks of absolute misery. In fact, that morning, as we prepared to bring him in to the vet, he started crying out in pain.
We asked the vet to shoot him full of fluids, temporarily easing his discomfort, so we could bring him home to spend one last evening with him, before returning with him to the vet the next morning.
When I think of Rudo, here's what I think of:
When he was little, when we were still in our apartment, I'd split a can of wet cat food between two black coffee saucers, one for Elf, one for Rudo, both of them excitedly circling my shoes, We're being fed! We're being fed! As I lowered the saucers with the strong-smelling food, little Rudo would raise his front paws up, slamming his saucer down onto the kitchen floor, so he could immediately start eating. We always figured he wanted to eat as much as he could, as fast as he could, to get bigger than Elf so she'd stop bullying him.
Elf was everywhere in our apartment, but sometimes we'd lose track of Rudo. But then we'd sense someone was watching us, look around, and there he'd be, tiny, black, quiet, staring up at us from the floor. That brought about the first of our many nicknames for him, The Little Alien (because of how big his green eyes were).
He was very shy, so we'd rarely see him, he'd just sit off in a corner by himself while we oohed and aahed over Elf's spine-bending gymnastics, but each morning, when I'd wake up, there'd be the little black alien on my bedside table, small head bent into my water glass, quietly lapping up the cold water.
While still in the apartment, both of them prowling the pale mustard kitchen counter, we turned on the water one day in the kitchen sink, to see what they'd do. Elf held back, wide-eyed but suddenly timid, while Rudo descended, front paws first, into the aluminum sink basin, licking his little tongue sideways at the rapidly-falling silver drops. So he was courageous, after all, in a way Elf wasn't. This was confirmed, later, when we brought home a huge, carpet-covered cat tree for them. We had assumed Elf would immediately skip upwards to the top, but in fact she hung back. It was Rudo who made his way up, platform by platform, meticulously sniffing the carpet pile.
When we moved into our home, we were curious how they would go about exploring the house, and in fact discussed it quite a bit between ourselves. Rudo immediately trotted out of the master bathroom where we opened their cage, through the master bedroom, the kitchen, to the white-carpeted living room, where he climbed onto the red brick hearth, draping his black front paws over its edge, looking back at us, looking quite regal. Later, he and we went upstairs, Rudo in the lead, seeming quite brave, but then stopping at the bend in the stairs to shoot a look over his shoulder, making sure we were right behind him.
Once we were in our home, Rudo adjusted rapidly. He generally kept to himself. He was not a cat you would go up to and start petting, and in fact if you did, he would usually get himself up and walk a few feet away, settling back down again. But when he did want to be petted, he'd let you know. Usually, this would be in the kitchen, where he'd follow us around like a little black dog. Each time we'd stop, at the stove to stir, or at the sink to fill a measuring cup, he'd sit next to our leg, resting the side of his face against our calf, quietly looking up at us. His face, in profile, looked just like King Kong.
We also called him Mr. Half-Off and Half-On, because he loved to lie with half his body on carpet, half his body on vinyl flooring.
Everyone who visited us loved Rudo. He was the star, of all our cats, to outsiders (Elf remained the true star, to us). We also called him The Greeter, because unlike our other cats, he'd march fearlessly up to each new guest, craning his long-furred neck back to look up at them with his green eyes. He was a philosopher, as cats can sometimes be, but rarely are. He'd sit by himself on the white carpet for hours, black front legs elegantly crossed, just looking up at the ceiling, thinking.
We also, eventually, called him The Old Man, because in recent years he would rise up from the carpet, or settle himself down, gingerly, and would walk more carefully. We called him that as a joke, because we thought he would live forever, just get more and more fussy.
After we brought him home from the vet Monday evening, pumped up on injections, he was more alert and ambulatory than he had been in a while. Rather than just hold him against us the whole evening, we let him do the things he liked most to do, just lying on the carpet here for a while, then lying upstairs for a bit, then lying on the kitchen floor, his favorite spot, waiting for the next meal to be served (he used to lie stretched out across the kitchen floor on his back, reaching over his head with a long-furred black paw for the nearest bowl of dry food, pulling it close, then scooping some dry food out overhand, dropping it into his mouth like peanuts).
Did he know he was going to die the next morning? I don't know. At one point, while we were upstairs Monday night, listlessly finding things to do, wanting the next day to come and be over with, Mary at one moment when we were talking pointed to Rudo, asleep on his side at the top of the stairs. He looked peaceful.
"I wish he would wake up and be all better," she said.
But they never do.
When I wake up in the morning, Rudo is usually sleeping beside my face, on the left edge of the bed, but this time, Tuesday morning, he wasn't. I found him upstairs, just sitting on the top step, looking around. I actually hoped I would find him dead, so his end would be natural.
Mary and I got dressed, then did something we had done only once before, years and years ago, with him. I picked Rudo up in my arms, we opened the back door, and we walked with him through our garden, something he had previously only seen through the glass of the breakfast nook windows.
He was enthralled. Emaciated body in my arms, his big, black head swung this way and that, experiencing the sensation of breezes on his body, black nose sniffing the air, green eyes watching birds flap overhead. I lowered him at one point so he could smell the first iris in bloom in our garden, a yellow iris.
We wanted him to have that experience, and also, we wanted to signal to him that something was very different.
After we were back inside, back door shut and locked, I called the vet to confirm our decision. Could we come in now? We could.
We were ushered right into the main consultation room, bigger than the examination rooms.
There was a long wait while a male nurse took Rudo out to have him fitted with a needle head in the vein of his back leg, then another wait for the doctor to finish up with his patient. There were magazines to read in the room, but we didn't. We talked to Rudo some, petted his head, knowing these would be the last pettings, looked at each other red-eyed.
The vet finally showed up, the male nurse behind him, holding the syringe.
As the nurse had, the doctor explained that as soon as the plunger in the syringe reached the bottom, Rudo would be dead, but that there might be limb jerkings, even cries. That had happened with Elf, so we were prepared. I had told the nurse earlier that I wanted to hold Rudo in my arms as they injected him. He said we could do whatever we wanted, as long as they had access to the needle head in his back leg, but cautioned that Rudo's bladder might "express" at the moment of death. That was fine with me, but as it happened, by the time they were ready for the injection, Rudo looked so comfortable on the metal table, I decided to leave him there. Mary put her hand on his side. I put a last kiss on his forehead. "I'm sorry," I said to him. I got down on my haunches, staring into his beautiful green eyes, Rudo into my eyes, as the plunger descended.
He looked right into my eyes the whole brief moment, then suddenly, peacefully, he was looking instead at something I've never seen, and his head lolled.
The vet put a stethoscope against his fur, checking at different spots on his motionless chest. He took the ends out of his ears. "He had to be very close to death to go that quickly."
We drove home with Rudo wrapped in a white towel, the towel folded away from his noble head.
It was windy outside. Using pick axe and shovel, we dug his grave, under a spreading pear tree. I had to snap off some of the lower branches to get clearance for the ax swings.
When the hole was wide and deep enough, we got the cardboard box from the garage, with Rudo in it.
When we took Rudo out for his walk, we carried him past a bed where nothing was blooming. But now, Mary noticed there was a stand of perennial tulips in full red and yellow bloom. We cut one, put it in the box with him. We added the yellow iris he had sniffed a couple of hours earlier. And we opened a new jar of mayonnaise, placing the cellophane collar of the jar in the box, because he used to get so excited, batting the collars across the kitchen floor when he was younger.
Mary and I are cat people. Both our childhoods were filled with upright tails and deep purrings.
Once we got together, in 1979, we started traveling quite a bit, and so didn't have cats, because it wouldn't be fair to them. But now that we had settled down, in Texas, one day I said to Mary, "Why don't we get some cats?"
We picked out two from the shelter, a female for Mary, a male for me. We didn't know what sex they were when we chose them. It just worked out that way.
The cat I chose, who we named Nei, was sickly almost from the time we brought him home to our apartment. We spent most of that first month cradling his small body in our arms, smearing a peanut butter-type food paste we got from the vet up onto the roof of his mouth, which he would automatically lick off, swallowing it, the only way he could get nutrients (he wouldn't eat from a bowl). It seems like every time we held Nei, trying to get him to live, the Chris Isaac song, Wicked World, would be playing on the radio, a song which still, over a decade later, brings back memories of Mary and me taking turns, on the edge of our bed, in our quiet apartment, on quiet afternoons, trying to get Nei to live.
He died, about a month after we brought him home. He just wasted away. No amount of love, no amount of vet visits, no amount of that paste, no amount of prayers or tears could save him.
The other cat we brought home, Elf, Mary's cat, was, by contrast, an incredible ball of energy. She bounced off the walls.
When we left for work each morning, we'd shut her in the apartment's bathroom, with a bowl of food and a bowl of water, so she didn't tear everything apart in our absence. Each evening, arriving home, we'd open the bathroom door and she'd come surfing out, maniacal, atop a bouncing roll of shredded toilet paper.
In the mid-nineties, she was diagnosed with feline leukemia. Most cats die within a year or two of the diagnosis, but she survived until late 2000, dying precisely ten years, to the day, we first brought her home.
Back when we first had her, in late 1990, after Nei's death, we realized she really needed a companion, someone to play with. So we went out to the different pet stores, and finally decided on a small black kitten. I forget how much we paid for him. He's the only cat we've ever bought, rather than gotten from a shelter, or taken in from our back door.
We called him Rudo.
We got the name from a role-playing Sega video game we used to play about that time, called Phantasy Star. In the game, Rudo was the name of a stalwart companion who helped all the others, who was absolutely dependable and even-keeled.
When we brought him home, Elf went wild, scampering dervishly around the apartment, pushing her back paws off the center of our kitchen cabinets, landing next to poor Rudo, swatting him across the face, flying off to the ceiling to spring back with the next attack. We grabbed her at one point, small as she was, holding her up in our hands to look at her face. Her eyes were vibrating like ping pong balls.
Eventually, Elf came to tolerate Rudo's presence in our apartment, though she always seemed disdainful of him, the little black kitten.
When Elf went into heat, sliding her body forward across the carpet towards Rudo, who was sitting quietly a yard or so away, he eventually agreed to service her, but he was an absolute disaster at it. Time after time, he'd mount Elf's unhinged hips, jerking his back legs forward, then dropping off to look under her tail again, Okay, it's about an inch below her tail, mounting her again, back legs jerking forward, but once again missing the incredibly moist mark.
Eventually, Elf gave up on him. Eventually, we got them both fixed.
When he was a kitten, Rudo had a Frankenstein appearance, black paws, gray and black striped legs, black back, gray tail, but as he got older, all that stitched-look coalesced into a beautiful, uniform, long black fur. And he turned into a huge cat, about three times Elf's size. Mary used to call him fat. I objected, calling him rangy, I don't know why that word occurred to me then, but Mary's teased me about it ever since.
The last few years, Rudo has started showing signs of old age. He had hip surgery last Summer, and has had elevated levels in his kidneys which we've had treated.
This past weekend, he started deteriorating rapidly. I petted him at one point Sunday morning, was surprised how much of his bones I could feel under the long black fur.
We brought him to the vet. After some blood work, the vet came back into the examination cubicle, solemn, and told us the levels in Rudo's kidneys were literally off the charts (he had higher levels of potassium, etc. than his equipment could register. His levels were more than ten times the safe levels).
Rudo was, in fact, in the end stages of kidney failure. What we drink and what we eat nourishes our bodies, but also turns, eventually, toxic, to where it must be eliminated. Rudo's kidneys could no longer pass the toxins in his body through his urine (which is what kidney failure means). Instead, those toxins were staying in his body, building up in his system, slowly poisoning him to death.
The vet estimated Rudo had only a few more weeks of life left, before the poisons killed him. But they would be weeks of absolute misery. In fact, that morning, as we prepared to bring him in to the vet, he started crying out in pain.
We asked the vet to shoot him full of fluids, temporarily easing his discomfort, so we could bring him home to spend one last evening with him, before returning with him to the vet the next morning.
When I think of Rudo, here's what I think of:
When he was little, when we were still in our apartment, I'd split a can of wet cat food between two black coffee saucers, one for Elf, one for Rudo, both of them excitedly circling my shoes, We're being fed! We're being fed! As I lowered the saucers with the strong-smelling food, little Rudo would raise his front paws up, slamming his saucer down onto the kitchen floor, so he could immediately start eating. We always figured he wanted to eat as much as he could, as fast as he could, to get bigger than Elf so she'd stop bullying him.
Elf was everywhere in our apartment, but sometimes we'd lose track of Rudo. But then we'd sense someone was watching us, look around, and there he'd be, tiny, black, quiet, staring up at us from the floor. That brought about the first of our many nicknames for him, The Little Alien (because of how big his green eyes were).
He was very shy, so we'd rarely see him, he'd just sit off in a corner by himself while we oohed and aahed over Elf's spine-bending gymnastics, but each morning, when I'd wake up, there'd be the little black alien on my bedside table, small head bent into my water glass, quietly lapping up the cold water.
While still in the apartment, both of them prowling the pale mustard kitchen counter, we turned on the water one day in the kitchen sink, to see what they'd do. Elf held back, wide-eyed but suddenly timid, while Rudo descended, front paws first, into the aluminum sink basin, licking his little tongue sideways at the rapidly-falling silver drops. So he was courageous, after all, in a way Elf wasn't. This was confirmed, later, when we brought home a huge, carpet-covered cat tree for them. We had assumed Elf would immediately skip upwards to the top, but in fact she hung back. It was Rudo who made his way up, platform by platform, meticulously sniffing the carpet pile.
When we moved into our home, we were curious how they would go about exploring the house, and in fact discussed it quite a bit between ourselves. Rudo immediately trotted out of the master bathroom where we opened their cage, through the master bedroom, the kitchen, to the white-carpeted living room, where he climbed onto the red brick hearth, draping his black front paws over its edge, looking back at us, looking quite regal. Later, he and we went upstairs, Rudo in the lead, seeming quite brave, but then stopping at the bend in the stairs to shoot a look over his shoulder, making sure we were right behind him.
Once we were in our home, Rudo adjusted rapidly. He generally kept to himself. He was not a cat you would go up to and start petting, and in fact if you did, he would usually get himself up and walk a few feet away, settling back down again. But when he did want to be petted, he'd let you know. Usually, this would be in the kitchen, where he'd follow us around like a little black dog. Each time we'd stop, at the stove to stir, or at the sink to fill a measuring cup, he'd sit next to our leg, resting the side of his face against our calf, quietly looking up at us. His face, in profile, looked just like King Kong.
We also called him Mr. Half-Off and Half-On, because he loved to lie with half his body on carpet, half his body on vinyl flooring.
Everyone who visited us loved Rudo. He was the star, of all our cats, to outsiders (Elf remained the true star, to us). We also called him The Greeter, because unlike our other cats, he'd march fearlessly up to each new guest, craning his long-furred neck back to look up at them with his green eyes. He was a philosopher, as cats can sometimes be, but rarely are. He'd sit by himself on the white carpet for hours, black front legs elegantly crossed, just looking up at the ceiling, thinking.
We also, eventually, called him The Old Man, because in recent years he would rise up from the carpet, or settle himself down, gingerly, and would walk more carefully. We called him that as a joke, because we thought he would live forever, just get more and more fussy.
After we brought him home from the vet Monday evening, pumped up on injections, he was more alert and ambulatory than he had been in a while. Rather than just hold him against us the whole evening, we let him do the things he liked most to do, just lying on the carpet here for a while, then lying upstairs for a bit, then lying on the kitchen floor, his favorite spot, waiting for the next meal to be served (he used to lie stretched out across the kitchen floor on his back, reaching over his head with a long-furred black paw for the nearest bowl of dry food, pulling it close, then scooping some dry food out overhand, dropping it into his mouth like peanuts).
Did he know he was going to die the next morning? I don't know. At one point, while we were upstairs Monday night, listlessly finding things to do, wanting the next day to come and be over with, Mary at one moment when we were talking pointed to Rudo, asleep on his side at the top of the stairs. He looked peaceful.
"I wish he would wake up and be all better," she said.
But they never do.
When I wake up in the morning, Rudo is usually sleeping beside my face, on the left edge of the bed, but this time, Tuesday morning, he wasn't. I found him upstairs, just sitting on the top step, looking around. I actually hoped I would find him dead, so his end would be natural.
Mary and I got dressed, then did something we had done only once before, years and years ago, with him. I picked Rudo up in my arms, we opened the back door, and we walked with him through our garden, something he had previously only seen through the glass of the breakfast nook windows.
He was enthralled. Emaciated body in my arms, his big, black head swung this way and that, experiencing the sensation of breezes on his body, black nose sniffing the air, green eyes watching birds flap overhead. I lowered him at one point so he could smell the first iris in bloom in our garden, a yellow iris.
We wanted him to have that experience, and also, we wanted to signal to him that something was very different.
After we were back inside, back door shut and locked, I called the vet to confirm our decision. Could we come in now? We could.
We were ushered right into the main consultation room, bigger than the examination rooms.
There was a long wait while a male nurse took Rudo out to have him fitted with a needle head in the vein of his back leg, then another wait for the doctor to finish up with his patient. There were magazines to read in the room, but we didn't. We talked to Rudo some, petted his head, knowing these would be the last pettings, looked at each other red-eyed.
The vet finally showed up, the male nurse behind him, holding the syringe.
As the nurse had, the doctor explained that as soon as the plunger in the syringe reached the bottom, Rudo would be dead, but that there might be limb jerkings, even cries. That had happened with Elf, so we were prepared. I had told the nurse earlier that I wanted to hold Rudo in my arms as they injected him. He said we could do whatever we wanted, as long as they had access to the needle head in his back leg, but cautioned that Rudo's bladder might "express" at the moment of death. That was fine with me, but as it happened, by the time they were ready for the injection, Rudo looked so comfortable on the metal table, I decided to leave him there. Mary put her hand on his side. I put a last kiss on his forehead. "I'm sorry," I said to him. I got down on my haunches, staring into his beautiful green eyes, Rudo into my eyes, as the plunger descended.
He looked right into my eyes the whole brief moment, then suddenly, peacefully, he was looking instead at something I've never seen, and his head lolled.
The vet put a stethoscope against his fur, checking at different spots on his motionless chest. He took the ends out of his ears. "He had to be very close to death to go that quickly."
We drove home with Rudo wrapped in a white towel, the towel folded away from his noble head.
It was windy outside. Using pick axe and shovel, we dug his grave, under a spreading pear tree. I had to snap off some of the lower branches to get clearance for the ax swings.
When the hole was wide and deep enough, we got the cardboard box from the garage, with Rudo in it.
When we took Rudo out for his walk, we carried him past a bed where nothing was blooming. But now, Mary noticed there was a stand of perennial tulips in full red and yellow bloom. We cut one, put it in the box with him. We added the yellow iris he had sniffed a couple of hours earlier. And we opened a new jar of mayonnaise, placing the cellophane collar of the jar in the box, because he used to get so excited, batting the collars across the kitchen floor when he was younger.
December 23, 2014
Burrito
“There’s a freedom to this, a joy, driving the highways of a faraway state late at night, headlights in your rearview, headlights growing towards you, as if you were journeying deep into outer space, silhouettes of mountains just below the black sky, nothing in that midnight but your hands, the curve of the steering wheel, the length of illuminated road in front of you. That cowboy spirit of stopping at a brightly-lit gas station at one o’clock in the morning, with all the other night travelers, no one ever talking to each other from their isolated pumps. Going inside the station to pay for your gas, country music from a radio by the cash register, songs talking to you and you alone, watching a colorfully-wrapped burrito slowly revolve within the humming microwave.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
December 12, 2014
Let Me Breathe Tomorrow (or something like that)
This will be the opening paragraph to the story. I haven't decided what to use yet, but it'll definitely be something quirky, that draws you in, like, Hey, what the fuck is this guy talking about? Let's see, let me think. Grandma woke up choking from the dime that had appeared in her mouth. I don’t know. Tommy couldn't visit the penguins that Tuesday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth. Bingo! But in addition to being quirky, it'll also be sensitive, like my title. You'll read the title and think, Wow, this is a sensitive guy talking. His title is so evocative! Maybe like, Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow. I like that! So right away you're thinking, Who is this "her" bitch?
So we have:
Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow (title)
First sentence: Tommy couldn’t visit the penguins that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth.
Okay. Don’t get stalled now. What’s the second sentence?
I probably don’t want to explain why Grandma has a dime in her mouth, because that would make it too mundane. Keep it poetic.
It was the smallest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, she’d find paper money sticking to her dentures. I don’t know. Paper money inside her mouth, sticking to her dentures. Paper in her mouth, like dentures celebrating our most famous American presidents. Celebrating in green and white, our most famous dead American presidents. Does ‘paper money’ sound kind of odd? Paper currency? I’m going to fix a drink.
Tommy couldn’t visit the penguins that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth. It was the smallest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, she’d find five or ten dollars bills in her mouth, wrapped around her tongue. A five or ten dollar bill, doing what? A five or ten dollar bill, stuck to the roof of her mouth. She’d carefully. She’d lift her tongue, carefully sliding the bill forward and down, so she could pull it out between her dentures. I like that touch. The tongue lifting, the sliding across the red ceiling of her mouth , the dentures. Pulling money out of her mouth like it was a long hair.
God knows she could use the money. Sometimes she’d question why money would always appear in her mouth when she woke. At first she wondered why, each morning, there would be money in her mouth, but because it happened each morning. But because it kept happening, with no ill effect. But because it kept happening each morning, and the money was so helpful, it wasn’t long before she simply accepted that her life had changed. Her life had changed for the better. Finally. Probably don’t need ‘finally.’
Okay, wait a minute. If Grandma keeps waking up with money in her mouth, why can’t she take Tommy to see the penguins?
Fuck!
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth.
Arggh!
How would a fucking dime make a difference?
Knocking at the front door to the apartment. Now I have to stop typing until I hear the shoes go away. Do they have an ear against the door?
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a ten dollar bill in her mouth. Twenty dollar bill.
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a hundred dollar bill in her mouth.
It was the largest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, a dime or a quarter would be resting against a back molar, like a loose tooth. But never before any paper currency.
She lifted her tongue, carefully sliding the bill forward and down, so she could pull it out between her dentures, see what it was.
A hundred dollars!
God knows she could use the money. At first she wondered why, each morning, there would be money in her mouth, but because it kept happening when she woke, and the money was so helpful, it wasn’t long before she simply accepted that her life had changed for the better. And who really wants to question why their life has suddenly changed for the better?
“The power of Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow is in how it magically evokes. Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow powerfully evokes a world in which the magical appearance of money transforms lives both old and young in a scathing criticism of modern political economics, where massive gray corporations try to prevent us from seeing the black and white of contemporary wealth distribution, as symbolized by the innocent duo-toned penguins frolicking at a zoo. I wept.”
The phone is buzzing. Ignoring it.
Okay, time to bring in Tommy.
“Tommy?” His grandma finished wiping her warm spit off the hundred dollar bill she had pulled out of her mouth. “Do you still want to see the penguins?”
Tommy stood erect in his thrift store clothes. “Well, yeah! But I thought we couldn’t afford it, Grandma!”
The old woman showed him the hundred dollar bill in her wrinkled fingers. “And we got enough money left over to have a decent lunch at the zoo’s restaurant afterwards!”
Tommy’s young eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “Does that mean I can get French fries?”
The old lady chuckled. She had had a hard life. Never knew her father. Had to work in quality control at a zipper factory at the age of twelve. Got carpal tunnel disease in her right hand. Sold into white slavery at the age of fourteen. A chance to see the world, but at a terrible price.
“Better believe it, boy!”
The shoes came back, louder with each approaching step. A series of knocks against the front door.
Silence, stillness inside the apartment.
A paper slipped under the door. Like they do in movies.
So we have:
Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow (title)
First sentence: Tommy couldn’t visit the penguins that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth.
Okay. Don’t get stalled now. What’s the second sentence?
I probably don’t want to explain why Grandma has a dime in her mouth, because that would make it too mundane. Keep it poetic.
It was the smallest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, she’d find paper money sticking to her dentures. I don’t know. Paper money inside her mouth, sticking to her dentures. Paper in her mouth, like dentures celebrating our most famous American presidents. Celebrating in green and white, our most famous dead American presidents. Does ‘paper money’ sound kind of odd? Paper currency? I’m going to fix a drink.
Tommy couldn’t visit the penguins that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth. It was the smallest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, she’d find five or ten dollars bills in her mouth, wrapped around her tongue. A five or ten dollar bill, doing what? A five or ten dollar bill, stuck to the roof of her mouth. She’d carefully. She’d lift her tongue, carefully sliding the bill forward and down, so she could pull it out between her dentures. I like that touch. The tongue lifting, the sliding across the red ceiling of her mouth , the dentures. Pulling money out of her mouth like it was a long hair.
God knows she could use the money. Sometimes she’d question why money would always appear in her mouth when she woke. At first she wondered why, each morning, there would be money in her mouth, but because it happened each morning. But because it kept happening, with no ill effect. But because it kept happening each morning, and the money was so helpful, it wasn’t long before she simply accepted that her life had changed. Her life had changed for the better. Finally. Probably don’t need ‘finally.’
Okay, wait a minute. If Grandma keeps waking up with money in her mouth, why can’t she take Tommy to see the penguins?
Fuck!
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a dime in her mouth.
Arggh!
How would a fucking dime make a difference?
Knocking at the front door to the apartment. Now I have to stop typing until I hear the shoes go away. Do they have an ear against the door?
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a ten dollar bill in her mouth. Twenty dollar bill.
Tommy was able to visit the penguins after all that Thursday, because Grandma woke up with a hundred dollar bill in her mouth.
It was the largest amount of money ever to appear in Grandma’s mouth. Usually, in the morning, a dime or a quarter would be resting against a back molar, like a loose tooth. But never before any paper currency.
She lifted her tongue, carefully sliding the bill forward and down, so she could pull it out between her dentures, see what it was.
A hundred dollars!
God knows she could use the money. At first she wondered why, each morning, there would be money in her mouth, but because it kept happening when she woke, and the money was so helpful, it wasn’t long before she simply accepted that her life had changed for the better. And who really wants to question why their life has suddenly changed for the better?
“The power of Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow is in how it magically evokes. Let Me Breathe Her Tomorrow powerfully evokes a world in which the magical appearance of money transforms lives both old and young in a scathing criticism of modern political economics, where massive gray corporations try to prevent us from seeing the black and white of contemporary wealth distribution, as symbolized by the innocent duo-toned penguins frolicking at a zoo. I wept.”
The phone is buzzing. Ignoring it.
Okay, time to bring in Tommy.
“Tommy?” His grandma finished wiping her warm spit off the hundred dollar bill she had pulled out of her mouth. “Do you still want to see the penguins?”
Tommy stood erect in his thrift store clothes. “Well, yeah! But I thought we couldn’t afford it, Grandma!”
The old woman showed him the hundred dollar bill in her wrinkled fingers. “And we got enough money left over to have a decent lunch at the zoo’s restaurant afterwards!”
Tommy’s young eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “Does that mean I can get French fries?”
The old lady chuckled. She had had a hard life. Never knew her father. Had to work in quality control at a zipper factory at the age of twelve. Got carpal tunnel disease in her right hand. Sold into white slavery at the age of fourteen. A chance to see the world, but at a terrible price.
“Better believe it, boy!”
The shoes came back, louder with each approaching step. A series of knocks against the front door.
Silence, stillness inside the apartment.
A paper slipped under the door. Like they do in movies.
December 9, 2014
Ghosters: New Excerpt From My Latest Book
“What about your father?”
Mel took another gulp of his drink. “My father. How much time do you have?”
Patrick gave a polite smile. “All night.”
“He was very demanding.”
“Of you.”
“Of everyone. Let me correct that. Everyone in our family. Within our home? He was a tyrant. His eyes were always angry. He used to cut his own hair, in the bathroom mirror, and it always turned out crappy, some locks longer than others. I was just a little kid. My sister was even smaller. He’d get into these murderous rages. Throwing chicken legs against the windows, punching the doors off our kitchen cabinets. The dogs would run out of the room.” Mel twisted his head to one side, imitating, pain in his eyes. “Supper isn’t ready yet? Get off that God damn phone before I knock it out of your hand.”
He raised his face, eyes glistening. “But outside our home? Men used to mock him. To his face. I went with him to work once, when I was still a kid. The men he worked with? Coming up to him, knowing he wasn’t going to do anything, calling him ‘Shorty’. ‘Hey, guys, look. Shorty brought Little Shorty to the office with him today.’ And my dad would say nothing. He would be fucking meek. This meek little, I don’t want any confrontations, shit-eating smile on his face as he tried to get away from his tormenters. This short, cowardly, pathetic little man. And they would laugh in his face. The taller men would follow behind him and me, cracking more jokes. Even younger, shorter men would join in, and my dad would just take it. I couldn’t believe it. He was this angry giant at home, but here at work, he was a fucking midget. And you know what I did during that visit? I started laughing along with the men. I started calling him Shorty myself, in front of him, in front of all the men gathered around with their Styrofoam coffee cups. At one point, and it was extremely, incredibly gratifying for me, I even knocked my father’s coffee cup out of his hand. Me, eight years old. And all the men my dad worked with fucking roared!”
Mel dumped the rest of his drink down his throat, angrily biting through the ice. Got up to make another.
“But he went to work every day?”
At the living room bar, Mel turned around as he poured in the whiskey, no longer using a shot measure. “Of course he did. What’s your fucking point, Patrick?”
“If his working environment was that hostile, why didn’t he just get another job?”
“He couldn’t!” Mel shook in some Angostora bitters. Took a long sip. Stayed at the bar, swaying, ready to make another drink after this one was gone. “This was a position he had worked himself up into over twenty years. If he left, he’d have to start at the bottom again, for minimum wage. He didn’t finish grade school! He dropped out after seventh grade. Do you have any fucking idea how embarrassing it was for me to have friends over, and to hear him mispronounce so many words?”
“So he stayed at the job, with all its humiliations, in order to keep a roof over his family’s head, provide food for the table.”
“Shut the fuck up! He wasn’t some…” Mel wiped the spittle off his lips. “He wasn’t a hero. He was a God damn weakling! Do not! Try to portray my dad as sympathetic. I vowed. I fucking vowed I would never, ever let anyone take advantage of me like what happened to my father.” He raised his voice, terrified. “If someone tries to take advantage of me, I split their fucking head open.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
I’ve been providing these excerpts from Ghosters to give you a sense of the book, in the hopes you might want to buy a copy. I honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. Poignant, frightening. A novel in ten stories. 95,000 words.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
Mel took another gulp of his drink. “My father. How much time do you have?”
Patrick gave a polite smile. “All night.”
“He was very demanding.”
“Of you.”
“Of everyone. Let me correct that. Everyone in our family. Within our home? He was a tyrant. His eyes were always angry. He used to cut his own hair, in the bathroom mirror, and it always turned out crappy, some locks longer than others. I was just a little kid. My sister was even smaller. He’d get into these murderous rages. Throwing chicken legs against the windows, punching the doors off our kitchen cabinets. The dogs would run out of the room.” Mel twisted his head to one side, imitating, pain in his eyes. “Supper isn’t ready yet? Get off that God damn phone before I knock it out of your hand.”
He raised his face, eyes glistening. “But outside our home? Men used to mock him. To his face. I went with him to work once, when I was still a kid. The men he worked with? Coming up to him, knowing he wasn’t going to do anything, calling him ‘Shorty’. ‘Hey, guys, look. Shorty brought Little Shorty to the office with him today.’ And my dad would say nothing. He would be fucking meek. This meek little, I don’t want any confrontations, shit-eating smile on his face as he tried to get away from his tormenters. This short, cowardly, pathetic little man. And they would laugh in his face. The taller men would follow behind him and me, cracking more jokes. Even younger, shorter men would join in, and my dad would just take it. I couldn’t believe it. He was this angry giant at home, but here at work, he was a fucking midget. And you know what I did during that visit? I started laughing along with the men. I started calling him Shorty myself, in front of him, in front of all the men gathered around with their Styrofoam coffee cups. At one point, and it was extremely, incredibly gratifying for me, I even knocked my father’s coffee cup out of his hand. Me, eight years old. And all the men my dad worked with fucking roared!”
Mel dumped the rest of his drink down his throat, angrily biting through the ice. Got up to make another.
“But he went to work every day?”
At the living room bar, Mel turned around as he poured in the whiskey, no longer using a shot measure. “Of course he did. What’s your fucking point, Patrick?”
“If his working environment was that hostile, why didn’t he just get another job?”
“He couldn’t!” Mel shook in some Angostora bitters. Took a long sip. Stayed at the bar, swaying, ready to make another drink after this one was gone. “This was a position he had worked himself up into over twenty years. If he left, he’d have to start at the bottom again, for minimum wage. He didn’t finish grade school! He dropped out after seventh grade. Do you have any fucking idea how embarrassing it was for me to have friends over, and to hear him mispronounce so many words?”
“So he stayed at the job, with all its humiliations, in order to keep a roof over his family’s head, provide food for the table.”
“Shut the fuck up! He wasn’t some…” Mel wiped the spittle off his lips. “He wasn’t a hero. He was a God damn weakling! Do not! Try to portray my dad as sympathetic. I vowed. I fucking vowed I would never, ever let anyone take advantage of me like what happened to my father.” He raised his voice, terrified. “If someone tries to take advantage of me, I split their fucking head open.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
I’ve been providing these excerpts from Ghosters to give you a sense of the book, in the hopes you might want to buy a copy. I honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. Poignant, frightening. A novel in ten stories. 95,000 words.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
November 27, 2014
Another excerpt from my latest book, Ghosters
The next day, they pushed deeper into the houses, trying to get through twenty by lunch. The mules, used by now to the routine, cooperated.
They stopped in the ruins of a ballroom, half its tall ceiling lying on the marble floor. The far exit to the ballroom was blocked by criss-crossing tree limbs.
They ate tuna fish sandwiches while sitting on the floor, Tilda unscrewing the blue top off a jar of mayonnaise, a small, sample-size jar, since they’d have to throw it out once it was opened.
After eating, she got one of the chainsaws going, little puffs of gray exhaust rising from the rear like smoke signals. Walking over with its loud vibration hanging from her right hand, she placed the spinning chain against the nearest tree branch blocking the exit to the ballroom. Let the weight of the chainsaw carry the rapid teeth down into the wood, sawdust spraying up, whine of the chainsaw rising as the teeth spun down through the limb.
Stepping back, she let the severed limb fall. The asymmetry of its branches caused it to shift on the marble floor, as if it were still alive.
Looking over her shoulder at MacDonald, she shouted above the noise of the chainsaw. “If you could move each limb to the side so I don’t trip over it and have a very painful accident, I’d be much obliged.”
Working together, they cut a passageway through the mess of limbs in an hour.
Tilda opened her mouth to say something. Instead, dropped the chainsaw on the floor, letting it spin around, still alive. Pulled her side arm. Aimed and shot in front of her.
Ran through the passage, poked her head in a nearby bathroom, reared her head back, fired into the bathroom five more times.
MacDonald crept through the carved-out tunnel, past the thick white cuts of tree branches, a rifle from the mule pack in his hands. His face was flushed.
Tilda had her revolver flipped open, thumbing fresh bullets into the cylinder. “It’s dead.”
MacDonald peered into the Art Deco bathroom. The alligator had collapsed with its spine against the tiles of the rear wall, exposing its pearl underside. Long jade tail in the bathtub, one front claw in the bathroom sink, scrabbling gray streaks in the white porcelain. Its triangular head rested against the medicine cabinet’s circles of shattered mirror.
Blood leaking from six small holes.
Tilda dipped down her right hand until she had the rhythm right, then hoisted up the spinning chainsaw. “You know how good alligator tail is. I could saw off the best part of the tail, wrap it in that shower curtain, and we’d have fresh meat tonight. You game?”
MacDonald gave an amused shrug. “Okay. Sure.”
Tilda stepped into the bathroom with her chainsaw, poking its round tip at the alligator’s scaly stomach, just to be sure. Positioned the buzz of the saw above the thickest part of the tail, watery pink blood spraying up onto the geometry of the shower stall’s white tiles, the plastic curtain’s cartoons of smiling goldfish.
They built a fire that night in the middle of a downstairs bedroom.
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
They stopped in the ruins of a ballroom, half its tall ceiling lying on the marble floor. The far exit to the ballroom was blocked by criss-crossing tree limbs.
They ate tuna fish sandwiches while sitting on the floor, Tilda unscrewing the blue top off a jar of mayonnaise, a small, sample-size jar, since they’d have to throw it out once it was opened.
After eating, she got one of the chainsaws going, little puffs of gray exhaust rising from the rear like smoke signals. Walking over with its loud vibration hanging from her right hand, she placed the spinning chain against the nearest tree branch blocking the exit to the ballroom. Let the weight of the chainsaw carry the rapid teeth down into the wood, sawdust spraying up, whine of the chainsaw rising as the teeth spun down through the limb.
Stepping back, she let the severed limb fall. The asymmetry of its branches caused it to shift on the marble floor, as if it were still alive.
Looking over her shoulder at MacDonald, she shouted above the noise of the chainsaw. “If you could move each limb to the side so I don’t trip over it and have a very painful accident, I’d be much obliged.”
Working together, they cut a passageway through the mess of limbs in an hour.
Tilda opened her mouth to say something. Instead, dropped the chainsaw on the floor, letting it spin around, still alive. Pulled her side arm. Aimed and shot in front of her.
Ran through the passage, poked her head in a nearby bathroom, reared her head back, fired into the bathroom five more times.
MacDonald crept through the carved-out tunnel, past the thick white cuts of tree branches, a rifle from the mule pack in his hands. His face was flushed.
Tilda had her revolver flipped open, thumbing fresh bullets into the cylinder. “It’s dead.”
MacDonald peered into the Art Deco bathroom. The alligator had collapsed with its spine against the tiles of the rear wall, exposing its pearl underside. Long jade tail in the bathtub, one front claw in the bathroom sink, scrabbling gray streaks in the white porcelain. Its triangular head rested against the medicine cabinet’s circles of shattered mirror.
Blood leaking from six small holes.
Tilda dipped down her right hand until she had the rhythm right, then hoisted up the spinning chainsaw. “You know how good alligator tail is. I could saw off the best part of the tail, wrap it in that shower curtain, and we’d have fresh meat tonight. You game?”
MacDonald gave an amused shrug. “Okay. Sure.”
Tilda stepped into the bathroom with her chainsaw, poking its round tip at the alligator’s scaly stomach, just to be sure. Positioned the buzz of the saw above the thickest part of the tail, watery pink blood spraying up onto the geometry of the shower stall’s white tiles, the plastic curtain’s cartoons of smiling goldfish.
They built a fire that night in the middle of a downstairs bedroom.
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
November 19, 2014
New Excerpt from Ghosters
Here’s another excerpt from my newly-published novel in ten stories, Ghosters:
Mia’s home was a sprawling pink brick house, circular driveway out front.
Inside, the double front doors opened onto a three-story foyer with marble floor tiling, different doorways disappearing into rear rooms, a dark walnut staircase winding in a curve up to the second floor.
It was supposed to look impressive, but it looked cold and empty.
Thorpe, back hunched, lead them into an elevator at the rear of the foyer. Clay watched as Thorpe slid the elevator’s black wrought-iron door across, the riveted compression expanding into diamond shapes. Thorpe forcefully tapped his middle finger against the 2 button. Probably having to forcefully hit the button because of arthritis. As the elevator shuddered, then rose, Clay caught Thorpe watching him out of the corner of his eye. This was a father impressed with his daughter’s material success.
“I’ve made arrangements for you to sleep in the room next to Mia.”
Clay took a chance, putting his hand on Thorpe’s shoulder. The man didn’t flinch, or pull away. That was good. “Thanks.”
When the elevator adjusted its level to the second floor, Clay didn’t help as Thorpe fumbled with unlatching the black wrought iron door, because he knew that would be taking power away from the father.
Thorpe, hunched over, led Clay down the red-carpeted hall to the white room at the end, pink and purple sunset in the windows.
A private duty nurse in a white cap stood up from the side of the bed, closing a crossword magazine. “No change.”
Thorpe stood by Mia’s pillow, hands hanging by his sides. “There’s my little girl.”
Clay stepped beside Thorpe.
Looked down.
Blonde hair, tall forehead, closed eyes, long nose, still lips.
Some women don’t become truly beautiful until they’re in their forties. Mia was one of those women.
White hospital gown, pink stripes. Like most patients, she showed more skin than she probably would have if she weren’t in a hospital bed. Her small hands were raised up around her white pillow in a sleeper’s position, exposing the pale undersides of her arms, all the way up to the hollows of her armpits.
“What I’d like to do is put my hand on her throat, and see what I can read.”
“Candice, you don’t have to stay for this.”
“Canady.”
Thorpe ducked his head impatiently, acknowledging the name correction. “You don’t have to stay.”
The nurse already had her crossword magazine in her hand. She walked out of the bedroom. She didn’t seem to have a lot of affection for Thorpe.
Thorpe stood back, facing his bed-bound daughter, glancing at Clay. “Do what you have to do. God help you if this is some kind of con.”
“I need a glass of cold water, for afterwards.”
Thorpe went into his daughter’s bathroom, came out, handed a glass of water to Clay.
After Clay placed the glass of cold water on Mia’s bed stand, he took off his shoes. Got in bed with Thorpe’s daughter, on top of the sheets, bending his knees so he didn’t disturb her body. He placed his right fingers on her throat, lightly. “Most people assume the soul resides in the chest, but the soul is actually in the throat.”
Thorpe said nothing. What could he say?
“Because she’s in a coma, I have to lightly squeeze her throat. I’m not strangling her. I’m just trying to get in.”
Thorpe looked skeptical. “I trust Jack Emory’s word, but boy oh boy, you’d better be careful.”
Clay placed his thumb on one side of Mia’s throat, four fingers on the other side.
The skin of her throat was warm. The warmth of the skin, her exposed armpits, the helplessness of her, aroused him.
His thumb and four fingers squeezed her throat.
He was looking down into a toilet. Red blood. He squeezed a little harder. She walked backwards, got into bed. He let up on his squeeze. She threw the sheet off her body, thinking about coffee. Looked down, saw the blood and tissue between her legs.
His face twisted. Sobbing, she ran to the bathroom.
Sat down on the toilet.
The blood and tissue dropped out of her, splashing up onto the undersides of her thighs.
“Was she pregnant recently?”
The question caught Thorpe by surprise. “Not that I know.”
--When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
Mia’s home was a sprawling pink brick house, circular driveway out front.
Inside, the double front doors opened onto a three-story foyer with marble floor tiling, different doorways disappearing into rear rooms, a dark walnut staircase winding in a curve up to the second floor.
It was supposed to look impressive, but it looked cold and empty.
Thorpe, back hunched, lead them into an elevator at the rear of the foyer. Clay watched as Thorpe slid the elevator’s black wrought-iron door across, the riveted compression expanding into diamond shapes. Thorpe forcefully tapped his middle finger against the 2 button. Probably having to forcefully hit the button because of arthritis. As the elevator shuddered, then rose, Clay caught Thorpe watching him out of the corner of his eye. This was a father impressed with his daughter’s material success.
“I’ve made arrangements for you to sleep in the room next to Mia.”
Clay took a chance, putting his hand on Thorpe’s shoulder. The man didn’t flinch, or pull away. That was good. “Thanks.”
When the elevator adjusted its level to the second floor, Clay didn’t help as Thorpe fumbled with unlatching the black wrought iron door, because he knew that would be taking power away from the father.
Thorpe, hunched over, led Clay down the red-carpeted hall to the white room at the end, pink and purple sunset in the windows.
A private duty nurse in a white cap stood up from the side of the bed, closing a crossword magazine. “No change.”
Thorpe stood by Mia’s pillow, hands hanging by his sides. “There’s my little girl.”
Clay stepped beside Thorpe.
Looked down.
Blonde hair, tall forehead, closed eyes, long nose, still lips.
Some women don’t become truly beautiful until they’re in their forties. Mia was one of those women.
White hospital gown, pink stripes. Like most patients, she showed more skin than she probably would have if she weren’t in a hospital bed. Her small hands were raised up around her white pillow in a sleeper’s position, exposing the pale undersides of her arms, all the way up to the hollows of her armpits.
“What I’d like to do is put my hand on her throat, and see what I can read.”
“Candice, you don’t have to stay for this.”
“Canady.”
Thorpe ducked his head impatiently, acknowledging the name correction. “You don’t have to stay.”
The nurse already had her crossword magazine in her hand. She walked out of the bedroom. She didn’t seem to have a lot of affection for Thorpe.
Thorpe stood back, facing his bed-bound daughter, glancing at Clay. “Do what you have to do. God help you if this is some kind of con.”
“I need a glass of cold water, for afterwards.”
Thorpe went into his daughter’s bathroom, came out, handed a glass of water to Clay.
After Clay placed the glass of cold water on Mia’s bed stand, he took off his shoes. Got in bed with Thorpe’s daughter, on top of the sheets, bending his knees so he didn’t disturb her body. He placed his right fingers on her throat, lightly. “Most people assume the soul resides in the chest, but the soul is actually in the throat.”
Thorpe said nothing. What could he say?
“Because she’s in a coma, I have to lightly squeeze her throat. I’m not strangling her. I’m just trying to get in.”
Thorpe looked skeptical. “I trust Jack Emory’s word, but boy oh boy, you’d better be careful.”
Clay placed his thumb on one side of Mia’s throat, four fingers on the other side.
The skin of her throat was warm. The warmth of the skin, her exposed armpits, the helplessness of her, aroused him.
His thumb and four fingers squeezed her throat.
He was looking down into a toilet. Red blood. He squeezed a little harder. She walked backwards, got into bed. He let up on his squeeze. She threw the sheet off her body, thinking about coffee. Looked down, saw the blood and tissue between her legs.
His face twisted. Sobbing, she ran to the bathroom.
Sat down on the toilet.
The blood and tissue dropped out of her, splashing up onto the undersides of her thighs.
“Was she pregnant recently?”
The question caught Thorpe by surprise. “Not that I know.”
--When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
November 18, 2014
Excerpt from Ghosters, my latest book
Patrick said nothing for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Life is a comedy. Not a drama. That’s what God intended. Everything that happened to you in life, that you see as so tragic—You just have to see the humor in each situation. Which you clearly can’t.”
Naughton’s face twisted. “So when an innocent child dies from leukemia at age twelve, that’s supposed to be funny?”
“Exactly.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US:
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
Naughton’s face twisted. “So when an innocent child dies from leukemia at age twelve, that’s supposed to be funny?”
“Exactly.”
--from Ghosters, my latest book.
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Available in Kindle and trade paperback editions.
In the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosters-Ralp...
In the US:
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosters-Ralph-...
