Meg Sefton's Blog, page 10

Thwart

People of the South Wind by Thomas Long, a Public Domain photo, flickr

He awoke to water pouring through their one-bedroom home. His wife, Jacqueline, was still asleep. Thinking of her life insurance payout with the oncoming hurricane, he made it through a window and to his car. At the church shelter that night, he died of a heart attack.

Sight

Public domain, flickr

A retired pastor shelters with his adult daughter, a “lost soul,” from the oncoming hurricane. As winds rage, he tells her she has brought this about by her liberal beliefs. Before they both die, he sees her laughing: She is not a demon anymore but his own little Beatriz.

Souls

Tank in Action, State Library of New South Wales, Taken circa 1917, flickr

In the former independent country, citizens lay in mass graves. Surviving conscripted soldiers of the oppressors said that on All Hallows’, the risen souls of these dead walked the bombed-out streets, leveling their army, flipping tanks, and snuffing out soldiers as if they were so many candles on a cake.

Nail

Stubborn by Omar Eduardo, flickr

A rusty nail lay upon Drana Fersby’s cream-colored velveteen sofa. She had escaped the flooding from the hurricane and the debris that came with it, thinking God had surely shown favor. That night, she dreamt she had to stab her attacker in the eye with it. She awoke, aghast.

Alberto

Ele era tão pequeno by Juliana Muncinelli, flickr

Alone, Dahlia Candella confronted the roaring of Hurricane Ian, remembering a former church friend who had told her cancer had been punishment for her divorce. She wanted to walk out into it and shake her fist, but she held Alberto, her little Westie, until he stopped trembling.

Hello, Inktober. 1st story: Breath

Coney Island Winter Beach by Michael Tapp, flicker

It wasn’t the most unbelievable thing that her mattress became a raft, floating her out to sea during the hurricane. It was the wind calling her name, in the hoarse final breath of her father.

Notes: October— a time to celebrate and practice writing bite-size! Every day in observing Inktober, I write a 50-word fiction with a scary/spooky spin. I believe Inktober may have started as a drawing challenge and I have found great visual prompts from artists on sites such as DeviantArt. Sometimes I don’t use word prompts. Today’s is something that occurred to me, then I found this great image on flickr.

Have a great Sunday.—Margaret

PS I like writing in a small spiral notebook like this so I can visualize, as I go, the size of the story. This is a Mead Cambridge 6×4, 70 sheet. I prefer to notebooks that are not too precious. This is a quality workhorse in that it aids being held in the hand w/its sturdy cardboard back. I can also easily tuck it into a purse. Tools are important. Not absolutely critical of course but anything I can do to help myself, I’ll do it.

Story acceptance

Photo by mk. s on Unsplash

A story I shared here briefly has been accepted by a journal. I will publish a link when it’s up! I hope you are having a good Monday. Sincerely—Margaret

Instructions for the Ascent: A Guide

I wish I could claim this photo as my own, but it is a beautiful shot of the lake at Cantebury Retreat Center, a gorgeous property owned by an Episcopal Dioses of Central Florida. I was confirmed as an Episcopalian in a church on these grounds soon after I was diagnosed with cancer. I will never forget these people and this beautiful place, a site which inspired this piece. The photo is by jeannetteyvonne, flicker

Shuffle through the silent wood to worship, past loblollies and scrub oak hung with flowering vines, your sick feet, affected by the chemo, the nerve endings numb, barely registering your footfalls. The glittering lake beckons beyond the Bishop’s Walk and the Church of the Incarnation where someone sits at a piano, someone mixes water with wine, someone is blinded by the sun streaming through a window as they think about what they would like for dinner.

Step high over roots, concern yourself not with the sand slipping between your toes, breaking down your best sandals. Enjoy the sand and how it falls out of your shoe in a playful way because you cannot walk because of your numb feet and it is as if you are doing this on purpose, like when you were young and flopped your legs in front of you, flinging sand on your brother, on your sister, and you had more time then, all the time in the world.

It doesn’t matter you are late. You have nothing to contribute. There will always be voices in worship somewhere. There will always be worship. Not even the forest needs you though it will take you. There will always be bodies who, once animate, return to earth and you, no longer a child, see how it begins as you fall out of time beginning with the feet that can no longer run, the flesh that is no longer thought of or desired by those in time, and you, having once participated in a chorus, live on an edge without recognizable features or breath, where eternity has caught up with you and you had thought yourself not ready and yet here you are, venturing on your own.

Those you thought should join you cannot follow through the divide, they cannot pass. You have tried to carry them but the overwhelming nature of their fears has led you to focus instead on the little white dog who waits for you on the edge of town, the new ferns that must be watered, the meals you will make with the ingredients you just bought at the market, the son who will be home from his father’s next week.

In the twilight worship hour, you must go alone through the loblollies and scrub oak hung with vine, the sparkling lake in the distance until you reach the lip of it all, where the worshippers’ voices coalesce and become strongest, like a ring of sound around the world. And yet, you only see the glittering eye of the abyss in the distance and it is not in the depths of the earth but suspended and it is not dark but filled with light and fills the skies from the waters it takes from earth, and one day you will be taken up from the earth, and one day you will return again as rain.

Published in Ginosko Literary Journal #16

Hello: What is Your Tune?

Taylor Jones with his Crumrine buckle at the Labor Day rodeo in Okeechobee, September 4, 1995. Bjorn Lusth Collection, Flickr

Hello on this Labor Day, 2022! I hope you’ve had some time off to do the things you enjoy. Or if not, will have a few hours or a day or two in the coming week. Refreshment is critical.

I’ve taken the weekend to think about the things that motivate me as a writer. I’ve been trying to go the perhaps more accepted and expected route of composing “privately” before trying to get published. But I find that a false way of being in the world, at least for me. I’m all about sharing and feeling a sense of connection with others.

Of course, I do compose privately, but often it is a long time coming to match my work with someone who wants to see it in their publication. And once you put your work out there, there are some journals that don’t want you to share it with other journals while they are considering your work. Sometimes those considering work can hold onto it for weeks or months. I’ve heard of cases of years. Sometimes they hold onto your work for so long, only to reject it. Journals: Do you know some of us are, you know, a bit long in the tooth?

Anyway, I tried the “writer is in a bubble” for a few months now and found it not to my liking. People are not as connected as they once were, and I need that sense of connection with the outside world. Often, writing and blogging have given me that sense. Reading the work of other writers also lets me see that many of us have more in common than things that distinguish us.

What I had decided a few years ago was that I was the boss of my work. I could put it wherever and try to publish it if I wanted to, but I would use my sharing time constructively, as a time to measure what works, what lands or what falls. Then I got burned by a journal that I think takes the played notion of publishing. They were just about to publish a piece of mine but I had to sign a contract my story hadn’t appeared elsewhere.

For a non-paying market, I find that out of touch and ludicrous.

Once more, I’ve decided to come full circle and be the boss for my own mental health. While modern life is fracturing, isolating, I’m not going to play into that by revering old notions of “The Writer,” bowing down to outdated norms and expectations. Many markets, especially non-paying markets, get that. If life changes for me, my tune may change, but for now, this feels like a good tune to whistle while I work.

I wish you all a peaceful Labor Day and time with friends, family, pets, or just your lonesome, but knowing we are all connected and yet unique in our own ways.

Sincerely— Margaret

p.s. I found this today and wanted to share.

Stone Sex

Internet Archive Book Images, from page 55 of “Coast watch” (1979), flickr

Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about the coupling of tombstones. First of all, their copulations are deafening — how they grunt and sigh! — and secondly, the sparks spewing from the friction — blue, green, yellow, and purple sparks — ignite fires in the dry season. (And when the fires erupt, corpses awaken and are enraged. They must be put down by truckloads of cool, damp earth.)  But the biggest problem with stone sex is this: A cemetery of newly formed stones.  And no one has managed to escape the certain pairing between death and a stone.

One time, a stone cutter, ambitious that his town should live, fashioned the tombstones into paving stones, stones for the fireplace, the threshold, the garden, thinking he could circumvent their original purpose. When he disappeared they only found a pile of stones beside the cemetery where he had been working.

What was convenient about the situation, however, was that the stone pile was a nice place for the townspeople to eat their sandwiches, so they stopped asking questions and began hanging out. Also, what was good about it was that the smooth stones made nice little ledges for their beer. So when a man did not return home at night, other women would relay this information to his frustrated wife: “Oh, he’s still on the stone pile.”

One night a man materialized across the cemetery where they were sitting and drinking.

“Are you a ghost?” said Jacob. He had begun driving them crazy with this idea of diverting the creek so it ran next to the graves. They could sink a barrel of ale into its cool body, he said. It would be woman for them and they could be like the man, filling her vessel, and together, they could make cool beer. He was always wild with his crazy metaphors and his stupid ideas. His horny talk was probably inspired by the horny stones they had subdued for the season by anchoring them to the ground with chains.

“I’m not a ghost,” said the man.

“Are you a newcomer?”

“ This implies I’m staying.”

“Are you God?”

“Would God do this?” and he reached into one of their sacks, grabbed a beer, popped off the cap, and guzzled it down.

“I don’t know,” Phillip said. He was the town tombstone engraver and he was a philosopher of sorts. Engraving the dash between the dates of birth and death made him shaky. What did the dash represent? It was all so ordinary. Were they all so alike? It made him depressed. “Jesus ate even after he rose from the grave.”

“Stop being morbid,” Jacob said. His wife Tatiana said the same thing. In fact, he sometimes wondered if they slept together. They said many of the same things, in exactly the same way. It made him angry, then it made him depressed and he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t even prove anything definitively.

“Well I can assure you I’m not God. Excuse me, this is underfoot,” and he picked up a long-handled scythe they had not noticed before. Apparently it had been on the ground. He leaned it against a tree. “I hate it when stuff like this could bean you in the head any moment if you step on it wrong.”

A scythe, what a cliché, thought Phillip who expected more from the grim reaper. Did even religious clichés have to come true? Were there no surprises?

“I’ve had sex with your wives. They’re all very good. You are lucky men.”

Was this guy nuts? Phillip thought. They would kill him, all together, with their hands around his throat. There were about twenty five of them. But he wasn’t a cliché in this: He was pretty buff for the grim reaper.

“While you guys have been yucking it up on the pile, which by the way, is the grave of a dead man, I’ve been enjoying life. Your women are very lonely and very receptive. I’ve learned how to knit, how to dandle your children on my knee. They gave me tea and gossip and practically talked me into their beds. I love this town. I love this place. I think I’ll stay.”

“We’ve got to get rid of him,” said Jacob when the man had wandered off into the misty fields with his scythe. “Our women were fine before he got here. We’re screwed.”

“We must have interfered with the balance of things,” said Phillip. “Maybe that’s why we’re being cursed with this maggot.”

And so that’s they released the stones so they could couple. At night, when they wanted to drink, they cooled them down with water from the creek and it was quiet and peaceful again and the men got drunk and the women went back to their creative, secret occupations which involved, among other things, ruling the world.

First appeared in the following: Danse Macabre and The Strange Edge.