Clark Hays's Blog - Posts Tagged "grizzly"
Love, and Other Glorious Misfortunes
Tucker, from the pages of The Cowboy and The Vampire Thriller Series, writes a guest blog (with a little help from Clark and Kathleen)
A cowboy talks about falling hat-over-boot-heels for a vampire.
One time I saw a grizzly bear get hit by lightning.
I was way up in the mountains doing a little scouting ahead of hunting season and I happened to see this big old grizzly ambling through a grove of aspen across the canyon. I was watching him through my spotting scope while this summer storm rolled in with big old dark, threatening clouds. As if sensing impending danger, the bear sat down on his haunches and was sniffing the air when a bolt of lightning sizzled down and hit the tree right next to him. It gave him quite a jolt and sent him tumbling ass over tea kettle. Of course, being a bear he didn’t know what the hell had happened and roared up ready to fight — all singed and smoking and pissed off — only there wasn’t anything to fight.
It was something to see, from a safe distance of course, and I was having quite a laugh at his expense, but I noticed he calmed down quick. The lightning had split that tree and knocked down a bee hive about the size of a football right to his feet. There was a whole, honey-sweetened bonanza of lightly toasted larvae — that’s what bears really like and not, as some folks suspect, the honey — and soon enough he’d forgot all about the fireworks and the pain and the confusion and was just snuffling happily through a gourmet lunch.
I learned something from that old bear — even when life hits you hard, look for the bright side of things.
Let me tell you about Elizabeth Vaughan. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen, and that’s counting on the television. She’s also the stubbornest, hard-headedest and just downright most irritating human being. Correction: she’s not human any more, but she was when we first met. We got hit by a bolt of lightning, figuratively speaking, that knocked both our hearts right off their feet.
It didn’t not start off auspiciously. I’ve always had my suspicions that beautiful people think they are a little better than the rest of us — I supposed that could be misplaced jealousy — and I’ve also always been a little distrustful of city folks in general. So when a beautiful city girl with a dictionary-sized vocabulary showed up in LonePine, I kept my distance. It didn’t last long. I blame Rex, that fool dog of mine. He liked her right off, but he’s always been a push over. He still likes her, even though she’s a vampire.
Did I mention that part? Let me tell you what it’s like loving a vampire. First off, you can’t ever have any more fights, ever. Vampires are a lot stronger than us and she’s come close to accidentally breaking my hand just squeezing it affectionately. I can’t imagine what would happen if she got really worked up about something.
Another thing is, they die every morning. Like full on, stiff-corpse dead. Talk about a mood killer when you want to snuggle up and spend the morning in bed with your lady and she’s cold and got the rigor mortis. Lizzie gets to go jetting metaphysically off to some energy field thing — The Meta. She’s tried to explain it; it’s where folks go when they almost die — into the tunnel of light, see grandma, and then come back. Apparently, vampires go there every day. She comes back all rested and rejuvenated, but I’m just getting tireder because stay up all night with her and then can’t fall asleep once the sun comes up.
Also, the vampire world is full of back-stabbing, power-hungry psychopaths. And those are the good ones. The undead are forever scheming and trying to take over the world or kill each other or whatnot. Lizzie has this special power that they want, so it’s even worse for us. Plus there’s whole Hatfields versus McCoys thing between the royal vampires and Reptiles. Two different species, one giant pain in the neck for humans.
Speaking of that, she needs blood to live, and plenty of it. The best kind of blood, the most nourishing, is the blood of evil humans and it’s the best when they bleed out and die in the process. It’s like organic, free range beef to them. There are only 439 people in LonePine, well, 438 now, and even though a fair percentage of them are bad apples, the law tends to notice when folks turn up missing in a small town. I don’t mind sharing a little of my blood from time to time — I’m not ashamed to admit it feels pretty good — but now I’m tired and anemic.
Multiply all of that stuff by her being pregnant, with hormones racing through veins and just idling there during the daylight hours when she’s dead, and an international council of vampires hanging out in LonePine, and you can imagine what my life has become.
Sometimes I feel a lot like that old bear, hit by a bolt of lightning out of the blue — vampire wars and mystical prophecies and a periodically dead girlfriend— and looking around stupidly and wondering what the hell is going on and roaring a lot. But love is a glorious roasted bee hive and there’s no question that my life is the better for having Lizzie in it. I had almost forgot what it was like to feel alive; funny that it took a beautiful undead vampire to remind me.
Note: This is a post we helped Tucker write for the ExLibris blog. Check out Blood and Whiskey for more of his exploits with Lizzie.
A cowboy talks about falling hat-over-boot-heels for a vampire.
One time I saw a grizzly bear get hit by lightning.
I was way up in the mountains doing a little scouting ahead of hunting season and I happened to see this big old grizzly ambling through a grove of aspen across the canyon. I was watching him through my spotting scope while this summer storm rolled in with big old dark, threatening clouds. As if sensing impending danger, the bear sat down on his haunches and was sniffing the air when a bolt of lightning sizzled down and hit the tree right next to him. It gave him quite a jolt and sent him tumbling ass over tea kettle. Of course, being a bear he didn’t know what the hell had happened and roared up ready to fight — all singed and smoking and pissed off — only there wasn’t anything to fight.
It was something to see, from a safe distance of course, and I was having quite a laugh at his expense, but I noticed he calmed down quick. The lightning had split that tree and knocked down a bee hive about the size of a football right to his feet. There was a whole, honey-sweetened bonanza of lightly toasted larvae — that’s what bears really like and not, as some folks suspect, the honey — and soon enough he’d forgot all about the fireworks and the pain and the confusion and was just snuffling happily through a gourmet lunch.
I learned something from that old bear — even when life hits you hard, look for the bright side of things.
Let me tell you about Elizabeth Vaughan. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen, and that’s counting on the television. She’s also the stubbornest, hard-headedest and just downright most irritating human being. Correction: she’s not human any more, but she was when we first met. We got hit by a bolt of lightning, figuratively speaking, that knocked both our hearts right off their feet.
It didn’t not start off auspiciously. I’ve always had my suspicions that beautiful people think they are a little better than the rest of us — I supposed that could be misplaced jealousy — and I’ve also always been a little distrustful of city folks in general. So when a beautiful city girl with a dictionary-sized vocabulary showed up in LonePine, I kept my distance. It didn’t last long. I blame Rex, that fool dog of mine. He liked her right off, but he’s always been a push over. He still likes her, even though she’s a vampire.
Did I mention that part? Let me tell you what it’s like loving a vampire. First off, you can’t ever have any more fights, ever. Vampires are a lot stronger than us and she’s come close to accidentally breaking my hand just squeezing it affectionately. I can’t imagine what would happen if she got really worked up about something.
Another thing is, they die every morning. Like full on, stiff-corpse dead. Talk about a mood killer when you want to snuggle up and spend the morning in bed with your lady and she’s cold and got the rigor mortis. Lizzie gets to go jetting metaphysically off to some energy field thing — The Meta. She’s tried to explain it; it’s where folks go when they almost die — into the tunnel of light, see grandma, and then come back. Apparently, vampires go there every day. She comes back all rested and rejuvenated, but I’m just getting tireder because stay up all night with her and then can’t fall asleep once the sun comes up.
Also, the vampire world is full of back-stabbing, power-hungry psychopaths. And those are the good ones. The undead are forever scheming and trying to take over the world or kill each other or whatnot. Lizzie has this special power that they want, so it’s even worse for us. Plus there’s whole Hatfields versus McCoys thing between the royal vampires and Reptiles. Two different species, one giant pain in the neck for humans.
Speaking of that, she needs blood to live, and plenty of it. The best kind of blood, the most nourishing, is the blood of evil humans and it’s the best when they bleed out and die in the process. It’s like organic, free range beef to them. There are only 439 people in LonePine, well, 438 now, and even though a fair percentage of them are bad apples, the law tends to notice when folks turn up missing in a small town. I don’t mind sharing a little of my blood from time to time — I’m not ashamed to admit it feels pretty good — but now I’m tired and anemic.
Multiply all of that stuff by her being pregnant, with hormones racing through veins and just idling there during the daylight hours when she’s dead, and an international council of vampires hanging out in LonePine, and you can imagine what my life has become.
Sometimes I feel a lot like that old bear, hit by a bolt of lightning out of the blue — vampire wars and mystical prophecies and a periodically dead girlfriend— and looking around stupidly and wondering what the hell is going on and roaring a lot. But love is a glorious roasted bee hive and there’s no question that my life is the better for having Lizzie in it. I had almost forgot what it was like to feel alive; funny that it took a beautiful undead vampire to remind me.
Note: This is a post we helped Tucker write for the ExLibris blog. Check out Blood and Whiskey for more of his exploits with Lizzie.
