Tailcoat despised the old judge. In fact, he despised all judges. He would rather have sawed the old man’s throat open with a dull knife than listen to a minute of his sass; but financially, he was not in a position to act on his impulse. A simple-looking stagecoach robbery north of Natchez Trace had failed to come off as planned. A resilient posse had appeared out of nowhere and had hung on tenaciously in pursuit, chasing them nearly fifty miles and wounding three of his men in the process. All three of the men died, leaving Tailcoat, Beezle, and a gaunt renegade named Jerry Ankle to flog their tired horses to safety in Arkansas. Not a cent had been earned in the process, and the future for random robbery did not look bright.
Though Tailcoat had boldly sent Beezle off to the hardware

[end of page]

store down in Little Rock, he had come back empty-handed, having spent all of his two dollars at the saloon instead; a mistake that Tailcoat had only once made before. This had been Beezle’s second chance, and like at everything else in life, he failed miserably.  There they were, in the middle of the Ozarks, penniless, low on supplies, and lost, with an angry posse on their tail that Beezle had unknowingly led right back to their camp.
Both Jerry Ankle and Beezle had been killed in the siege, but not before more than half the posse had been dispatched; sly Tailcoat had lobbed a bundle of T.N.T. at them as they approached up the south face of the mountain, transforming its granite face into a prairie of blood. The four that remained hunted down Tailcoat and his men with efficiency and ferocity they had never seen before, for this was their land and Tailcoat and his men were outsiders.
“Tailcoat, whatever your last name might be, you have been charged with robbery and the murders of seventeen men. I hereby sentence you to be hanged by the neck at noon until you be dead, dead, dead” the judge proclaimed as he slammed his oak gavel down on his desk.
“Your honor, you can kiss my lily white ass, ass, ass!” Tailcoat exclaimed. Shackles in the 1800’s were primitive at best, allowing Tailcoat full access to the keypad embedded in his left forearm. He pressed Home and then Enter and the display shown

July 23, 2168

through his skin. Beneath it flashed

Confirm?

He again pressed Enter and

Confirm?

changed from red to green and began to flash.
A brilliant white light enveloped him and before sheriff Brackett could bring the butt of his Colt down on the back of Tailcoat’s head, he disappeared.
The sheriff’s gun swung violently down, breaking through the back support of the chair Tailcoat had been sitting in, flipped it over and discharged, sending a .45 slug straight past the first two rows of spectators and through the left eye of one Sarah Peterson, wife of The Honorable Judge Andrew Peterson.

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i use my welder
to fuse metals together
so i can make things

Originally posted 2008-06-23 21:01:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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If I remember correctly, this one was the result of a brain freeze in the middle of a math test in high school.

Originally posted 2008-06-10 06:30:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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when you picked on me
i could feel the rage growing
making me hate you

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what you let out
can be the way
people will see you

the day you shout
is the day
people will fear you

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Originally posted 2008-06-26 05:35:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Condemned
Bryer County 1/22/10
To be demolished 2/30/10

A twelve-year-old boy approached from their right on a red Schwinn; she rolled down her window. “Hey, little boy.”
Curious, he replied “yes?”
“Do you know what happened here?”
“What? The haunted house?”
“Haunted … “ she asked herself, confused “yeah, that one. Why do you say haunted?”
“That’s where the boogeyman lives.”
“The boogey …”
“Yeah. Mister Riley used to live there. He went crazy years ago, when I was little, and let his house fall apart. All the grown-ups around here didn’t like him.”
“Mister Riley … John Riley?”
“Yes ma’am, that’s him.”
“Brown hair, kinda looked like Sylvester Stallone?”
“Who?”
“Rambo … Rocky …”
“Rocky! Yeah! That’s who he looked like!”
A lump formed in her throat so large she had to force herself to speak again. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“He went crazy last year and killed Tommy Carter next door. Tommy kept kicking his soccer ball in Mister Riley’s back yard. The police found lots of animals buried in his back yard.”
“Pets?”
“Dunno. But they found hundreds.”
Dazed, she stared at him, not knowing what to say.
“Ma’am, you okay?”
Snapping herself out of it, she replied “yeah, I’m fine. Thank you.”
They boy kicked the pedal and crept away. “Holy shit.”
The man in the driver’s seat looked at her, placing his hand on her knee, and asked “What’s the matter?”
“John Riley …”
“Yeah?”
“… is my uncle.”
“Your uncle? I thought you said your family sold this house when you were a teenager?”
“They said they did – but …”
“But what?”
“… Uncle John died when I was nine.”

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The Shadow Catchers – Thomas Lakeman

New:

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Martha Tinney

1923 – 2007

Old bitch, ain’t ya?

“Evenin’, Joe!”

The unexpected salutation startled him. He quickly turned on his knees to see Tony, the night watchman, waving at him from outside the rusty iron fence that surrounded the old cemetery. The nervous gravedigger smiled at the guard and raised a hand in a friendly hello. For the better part of ten years Joe had worked at Lawndale, and each and every day he greeted Joe in the same manner; and each and every time he did, it surprised him. Joe always replied just the same. Old Tony smiled and went on his way, whistling a tune from his childhood that no one in the modern age would even know.

Joe the Gravedigger turned back to the headstone

Martha Tinney

Martha. Oh, Martha.

He envisioned another, extremely beautiful Martha he knew in his youth. Close friends through grammar school and junior high, she never acknowledged his desires to make their relationship more than it was. Sure, she let him touch her naughty parts now and then, but nothing more. The gravedigger laid down on the freshly covered grave, face down, imagining he was laying on top of his long lost love.

I always loved ya.

Recalling the night in ‘53 when she let him finger her in dad’s new Chevy, he began slowly grinding his pelvis into the cold grass.

Martha.

Picking up the tempo, he looked again at the headstone, only this time to see

Martha Jones

staring back at him.

Martha Jones. His love from another age. The love he never got to really love. Old Martha Tinney would have to suffice.

When he reached orgasm, he locked eyes on the headstone and whispered “Take that you old whore. How did you like that?”

The ground rocked beneath him. His body stiffened, not knowing whether what he just felt was real or a figment of his imagination. Puzzled, he looked to his left, then his right. A heavy thud emitted from within the grave. Man’s primal fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and he found himself on his knees, ready to jump up and get the hell out of there. But before he could make legs jettison him away, the third and mightiest of the tremors shot off like a cannon, causing the ground to swell below him and then cave in slightly. Martha Tinney’s headstone fell backward and the gravedigger’s legs were ripped from below him. He landed face down on the grave, frozen in terror.

A hand burst violently forth from the earth and clenched his neck.

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