Latigo Flint, Quickest Quickdraw in the World

Epilogue

2011-06-17T01:19:00.000-07:00

"It looks like a movie, don't it?"

He raised his hand and waved a finger forward. She looked over at him. He had one of his lanky legs crossed over the other with his boot heel jammed against the air vent so it wouldn't slip. It didn't look all that comfortable, least not compared to both flat on the floor, but he'd been riding that way for the past sixty miles or so, so who knew. He gestured again, this time with his chin and a little tilt of his head. She smiled at him, perhaps a bit wickedly. She knew how to rile him, and enjoyed doing it. He thought himself so easy-going; some sort of carefree cowboy who rode his own trail far apart from the agitated masses... and yet it took so little to turn his face all petulant and pouty. She marveled sometimes that he couldn't see it on himself. He caught it though this time and grinned at her.

"That's not exactly what I'd call safe driving there, ten-and-two."

She laughed and turned back to face the road, her eyes automatically pulling focus through the bug-splatted window, first to the road and then to the desert horizon that sprawled pink and purple across the front of distance like a local motel mural.

He was right, it did look like a movie, and not a recent one either. It looked painted and two-dimensional--how'd they used to do it? Giant backdrops placed fifty feet behind the actors, right? And the audience went right along and believed it was real 'cause what other choice did they have.

"Everyone used to get to participate in creating the particular world of movies they watched."

She knew he was suddenly listening to her intently; she could see it in her peripheral. "That's why no one likes movies now as much as we all used to."

He made a sound as he smiled, a delighted exhalation. From the corner of her eye she watched him open his mouth to reply but then he closed it and instead uncrossed his leg and pulled a bunch of slack into his seat belt. He moved against her with uncertain purpose. There was an urgency in the way he kissed her neck and desire trembled his hands, but he didn't know quite what to do with them. He caressed her bicep with his right hand and followed her bent arm down, finally wrapping his hand around hers against the steering wheel. He slid his left arm around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. She glanced down and their eyes met. She could feel his heart beating. She laughed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?!!"

His heart was beating directly into her right nipple and for some reason she found it equal parts arousing and absurd.

When she didn't answer he tugged the wheel a bit to the right. The car lurched slightly and she elbowed him in the stomach.

"Ooof! Ow."

"Well, don't do that."

"'Cause you're the driver?"

"Right, 'cause I'm the driver."

"And you're in control?"

"I'm in control."

He relaxed his hand and rubbed the tip of his thumb in tiny apologetic circles around the back of her thumb knuckle.

"I may have to steal your theory." He breathed into her collarbone. "It's too good not to be my own."

"Take it. I got plenty."

He smiled against her shoulder. She could feel the corner of his mouth pull across her skin. The final pumpkin sliver of sun vanished behind the distant range. She reached down and clicked the headlights on. His side jostled against hers as he chuckled. She laughed too and he promptly kissed her cheek. He'd teased her without saying a word. They both knew smart drivers turn the headlights on when the sun goes down, but her timing had been too precise not to have a laugh.

The highway hummed beneath their tires, the only music they needed now. Under the blazing midday sun, with the air conditioner rasping, you can lose your good moods without Petty and Lyle and Dwight and all the rest, but the desert road at twilight brings its own quiet song and you miss all the chords if you don't hold someone and listen.

"Well anyway, it does look like a movie."

And he was right, it did.

Sweet Madness in the Songs we Scream

2006-11-26T23:36:00.000-08:00

There's no great trick to insanity, no real mystery to unravel. You needn't ask questions of the wind or plumb the depths of hell.

There are many difficult things in this life but going insane isn't one of them. It's so damn easy that frankly I'm surprised more people don't do it.

You wanna know the trick? You wanna know the basic truth? Well, you came to the right place. Here's insanity in a nutshell (tee hee)--here's the fundamental aspect of madness that underlies all others.

Are you ready for it? Stop reading now if you aren't.

...

Okay then... here's the fundamental aspect of madness that underlies all others:

Everything, and I do mean everything, sprouts tentacles and grows a fangy clown face if you stare at it long enough.

Toasters: check. Laptops: check. Bus drivers: check. The Revlon Girl on the billboard: check. The list goes on and on--concentrically and then back in again.

So, soon as you see it happen--scream. And don't stop until the fangy clown face tentacle monster is dead, killed by your mighty screams, and/or the men with caps give you a magical jacket made of space age polymer fibers designed exclusively for the purpose of shielding the wearer from fangy clown face tentacle monsters.

Name your jacket immediately. It can't protect you for very long if it doesn't have a name. Whatever you do though, don't use vowels. Vowels are how the fangy clown face tentacle monster latches onto your insides. If you utter a vowel when you talk to your magical jacket then the beast is gonna tear you apart and lap up your lung blood with a bacteria tongue of festering doom.

Which is no fun, by the way. It's just really no fun at all.

I recommend you name your magical jacket: "Gggrrgffttsk." Although you can’t go wrong with: "Pllfflrrgghh" either. "Ssgrrfflkmnhrrgy" is risky… you know, 'cause of the whole "and sometimes Y" thing.

(Everything moves if you watch it long enough. And eventually becomes a fangy clown face tentacle monster. And some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by fangy clown face tentacle monsters.)

Sara and Rufus

2006-11-24T01:06:00.000-08:00

There are many frontiers. This is a story about the most dangerous one of all... the frontier of the heart.

From the archives June 16, 2006:

Sara and Rufus

Rufus asked Sara to wait for him, and she tearfully said she would.

"I go to seek our fortune Sara." Rufus told her, shouldering his pack. "To literally claw our future joy from frozen mud and granite tombs."

Sara kissed him and smiled bravely.

"Remember to look to the far north hills and keep me always in your thoughts."

Sara assured him that remembering to do so wouldn't be a problem.

"And know that the sound the wind makes echoes my heartache and my soul is calling for you."

Sara sighed and rested her head on his chest.

"My time apart from you, sweet Sara, shall not be counted in days or weeks, but in fallen tears on a wilderness beard."

Sara began to wonder when exactly, if ever, Rufus planned to leave.

"We shall each have nights, dear Sara, when we fear the loneliness is more than we can bear. It is then that we must be strongest--if not for ourselves then for each other."

Sara gave Rufus a little shove, hoping it might start him down the trail.

"Nothing is certain except love, my love." Rufus breathed, striding back to her side. "Remember to look often to the far north hills and keep me always in your thoughts."

Rufus was beginning to repeat himself. Sara cleared her throat.

"Know this, sweet Sara, I shall always--"

Just then a cougar jumped out from a grove of aspen trees and ate Rufus' face off. It was a perfect example of how savage the frontier could be, and though she never quite forgot Rufus, Sara married well and did just fine.

Rufus on the other hand, not so much--he didn't exactly do just fine. Mostly because a cougar ate his face off and then he died.

The End

The Badwater Kid

2006-11-20T23:54:00.000-08:00

The Badwater Kid crossed Arizona on a horse that couldn't see.

...

(Mercy that's a good first line.)

...

The Badwater Kid crossed Arizona on a horse that couldn't see. The posse nearly caught him at the border but sympathetic streetwalkers took Badwater in and disguised him as one of their own.

...

...

Oh no, what have I done? It's too good. How can this story be told? The opening is simply too magnificent--nothing that follows could possibly satisfy. You've got the Badwater Kid: lawless and sexy, he's on the run. Desperate and shirtless and bleeding he takes to the desert--that savage volcanic wasteland of twisted spires and murderous dunes.

He rides a blind yet oddly competent horse. Why? Who knows. Damn, it's probably a spectacular back-story though.

Men are chasing The Badwater Kid. Armed men. Determined men. Men who smolder with the righteous fury of those sworn to uphold the law. Some of them probably smoke pipes. What has the Badwater Kid done to spite their singular sense of justice? I don't know. Maybe he, like, robbed a bank or something.
Gah! That's no good!

Well, how did he get his name? Why is he called The Badwater Kid?
Heaven help me I don't know!!!

Those streetwalkers in the border town... why are they risking their freedom to protect The Badwater Kid?

Let's see, 'cause they love him? Trite!

He saved the life of the youngest whore? Cliché!

He has a birthmark on his shoulder that shows the way to dry land? Shit, that's from Waterworld ain’t it?!!!

Argh!!! Writing is too hard. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm Latigo Flint damn it--I'm the quickest quickdraw the world has ever known. I should be striding squinty-eyed and dangerous through dusty streets of vengeance, tipping my hat to the ladies and shooting men who deserve it. Not sitting here in this blue/white glow of habitual insignificance. Damn this misintended life of bedrunkled complacency and shame.

***

I blame The Badwater Kid. He's my Little Bighorn. He's my Waterloo.

Hemingway once said: "Any character can be known if you take the grace and time to see the world as he must surely see it."
But then he added: "Unless that character is The Badwater Kid, 'cause that mysterious fucker just can't be writ. You know, I once tried to write a story about The Badwater Kid and ended up drinking myself to death instead."

Chilling. Well, now we know.

***

Anyway, please believe me girls--I'd never, ever compare myself to Hemingway... unless of course I really, really wanted to sleep with you and thought it might somehow make me seem more mysterious, tortured and sexy.

***

I count steps in the dark so I don’t stumble from room to room. That’s how I know it’s twelve to the door, five to the body of the whore.

I wrote that just now. It’s the mysterious and tortured and sexy line that I decided to end with tonight. Booze is my inquisitive crowbar, but please don’t tell my mom.

(By the way, dare you to say of another man that he’s your Little Bighorn. You have to be straight as the driven snow like me to even have a chance at pulling it off.)

(("Pulling it off." Did I just say that? What an odd night this has turned out to be. It’s like it’s become a one-voice argument, both for and against my heterosexuality. Odd, odd, odd. Oh well, I guess insanity is a natural grace for those who speak but can’t be seen.))

Cry War on Wolves

2006-11-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

But in their language, so they understand and are afraid.

From the archives - February 14, 2006:

Cry War on Wolves

Today the pretty waitress set my breakfast down, smiled and told me to enjoy. ('Cause that's what pretty waitresses do.) I had planned to thank her and leave it at that, but what we plan and what we do are so very seldom the same.

"You know," I said, as she turned to leave. "For you I'd probably jump off a cliff and cry war on wolves."

And that happened to be a statement she was not expecting to hear. I know this because she blinked twice, opened her mouth but then closed it again, opting instead to blink some more. (Which happens to be a sure sign someone has just heard something for which they were unprepared.)

I acted it out for her using items on the table.
"Okay, see, this pouch of non-dairy creamer is you." I said, placing the pouch of non-dairy creamer in the middle of the table.
"And this saltshaker is me... on top of a cliff--represented by this metal napkin dispenser."

I looked up at her.
"Getting all this so far?"
Her eyes were twice as wide as when she'd arrived, which I figured signified interest.

"Good. Now all these little butter packages are wolves, and they've been stalking you for some time through the dark forest of syrup bottles. See how cleverly they sneak?"
But I must have been too accurate in my portrayal of wolf pack hunting technique, because the pretty waitress started backing away from the table.

"No, no! It's okay, don't be afraid." I urged, grabbing her wrist and pulling her close. "Yes, the wolves are closing in--" I shoved the butter packages toward the pouch of non-dairy creamer. "--with crazed glints of blood-lust in their slitted lupine eyes--but my dear, you've forgotten I'm here."
I rapped the top of the metal napkin dispenser with the base of the saltshaker to remind her.
"And I'm prepared to be inconceivably brave."

I swatted the saltshaker with two tight fingers. It arched off the napkin dispenser and clattered to the table, scattering the butter packages and overturning the tiny pitcher of cream.
"Cries, you know?" I said, gazing up at her intently. "The grains of salt spilling from the holes on top represent my cries of war on these wolves. But!!!"
I raised a trembling fist.
"In their language, you see? I'm crying war on these wolves in their language, so they understand and are afraid."

Then I picked up the saltshaker and started smashing butter packages with it. When I'd killed them all, I turned my wrath on the cougars and snakes, as represented by packets of sugar and straws.

I became aware of screams at some point, then realized they were coming from me. My hand was no longer under my control, and when the cougars were dead, it sought out the jam.

Eventually law enforcement officials arrived on the scene and dropped me with tasers and clubs.

They took hold of my twitching legs and dragged me from the diner. As we passed the pretty waitress I noticed she was weeping; I foolishly thought over me.
"Don't be sad." I whispered up at her, through lips smeared with butter and blood. "I'm Latigo Flint, and I cry war on things that no one else would. Usually wolves, sometimes butter."

She kicked me in the jaw and let the door hit my neck.
"Hey," one cop said. "I thought you were holding that."
"It slipped--rough him up twice for me." She replied. And though it's against policy and rules, they cheerfully obliged.

(I cried war on wolves today and don't quite remember why. I think I loved her but can't be sure. The butter had it coming though--I'll tell you that right now.)

Crenshaw Burnaby, U.S. Marshal

2006-11-16T01:12:00.000-08:00

"Who would murder a coat check girl? Answer that and you've solved the case."

Marshal Crenshaw Burnaby came to Chicago in the winter of 1962. He'd been dispatched from headquarters to help the local police solve the mystery of who was murdering coat check girls and dumping their bodies in the snow.

"I ask you again." Crenshaw Burnaby paced up and down the wooden floor of the South Side precinct building. "Who would murder a coat check girl?"

"A nudist?" Rookie officer, Melvin Murphy ventured.

"Perhaps." Crenshaw replied. "Who else?"

"Someone with gum smeared on his collar." Jimmy O'Toole spoke up.

"Interesting. Explain."

"Well, it wasn't there when he handed it in and so he blames the coat check girl."

Crenshaw raised an approving eyebrow at Jimmy. "You've a sharp mind son. I bet you're a hell of a cop."

Jimmy blushed. Crenshaw resumed pacing.
"Come on men, keep 'em coming. We call this the brainstorming process."
No one spoke. They didn't think they could top Melvin and Jimmy's theories.

"Hey goddamn it!" Crenshaw's voice cut like a thunderclap. "You gonna quit at two?!"
Crenshaw grabbed the nearest man and slammed him against a wall.
"There's a villain out there murdering coat check girls and their innocent blood is on your hands."
Crenshaw drove his knee into the terrified cop's solar plexus.
"You're lead-less, theory-less, gutless and pale."
He released the quivering man and didn't watch as he slid to the floor. Crenshaw whirled on the rest of the officers, his lip curled in a snarl.
"Coat check girls are being murdered out there." He spat. "They need sturdy heroes and theories and brutal, righteous rage. But meanwhile you're in here braiding each other's hair and trading cookie recipes."
He took one step forward and two dozen cops shrank back as one.
"I've seen more ferocity on the spring-time pages of calendars, the ones where baby ducks cuddle in hay with fuzzy kittens."

Crenshaw drew his sidearm and emptied it into the ceiling.

"Now." He roared in the plaster dust silence. "Who would murder coat check girls? And keep the goddamn theories comin'."

"Drunken sailors!" Brian screamed.

"GOOD! WHO ELSE?"

"Circus folk!" Marcus hollered.

"Nice thinkin'. WHO ELSE BY THUNDER?!"

"A big meanie!" "The mob!" "Wombats!"
Three cops spoke at once. It was impossible to tell who said what. Crenshaw didn't seem to mind. He dropped to his knees and started dry-humping his rifle.
"Yes boys, yes! Let the purifying theories wash over our trembling minds. WHO?!!! Who else would kill the coat check girl?!!"

"Jealous bartenders!" "A guy named Steve!" "Wolves!" "Space aliens from the planet Tweed who think that she's a jailor!"

Crenshaw writhed orgasmicly and started tonguing shotgun shells.
"More boys more! We're gonna crack this case, I can feel it! Who would kill the coat check girl?!!!"

"Somebody's uncle!" "An armless man!" "A death platoon of beavers!"

"God I love you boys!" Crenshaw lurched to his feet and sprinted around the room, kissing the cops on the mouth.
"There's yet to be an unsolved case that couldn't benefit from a theory!!! So, more damn it more or I'll shoot you where you stand! Who would kill coat check girls?!!!"

"Dock workers!" "Sasquatch!" "Someone who doesn't like ticket stubs!" "Minorities!" "Johnny Unitas!" "Buttons the Psychopathic Clown!"

Crenshaw dropped his pants, spit in his hand and proceeded to clutch at himself.
"Oh boys, detective work!!! Don't it just make you wanna... WHO ELSE?!!!" He bellowed. "Who else would kill the coat check girl?"

"Vampires!" "Renegades!" "Someone who wasn't hugged enough!" "A Bengal tiger!" "Dwight Eisenhower!" "That guy right over there!!!"

Crenshaw Burnaby tuck-rolled and came up double-fisting shotguns. "Who said that?" He snarled. "Who said 'that guy right over there' and at whom was he pointing?"

Sergeant Freddy Sanderson stepped forward. "It was me, C-Crenshaw." He stammered. "That guy in the lobby--h-he just walked in."

"Look." Said the guy in the lobby. "I just wanted to report a bicycle theft, but if this is a bad time I can always--"

Crenshaw Burnaby raised his shotguns. "Instinct governs most successful police work."
"No Crenshaw, what are the odds?!!!" But Freddy's cry was swallowed up by the roar of Crenshaw's shotguns. And the guy in the lobby left a stain so severe that it had to be replastered and painted over.

"And now we wait." Crenshaw whispered as he sat cross-legged on the floor. "If no more coat check girls die then we've got our man."

And through some spectacular chance of fate, the man in lobby actually had been the killer. No more coat check girls died. And Crenshaw Burnaby returned to headquarters victorious and his legend ever-grew.

A Character Plane (And So They Fall Beneath the Bludgeonry)

2006-11-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

The emphasis is on the second syllable. "Gin." "Blud-GIN-ry." And we'd do well not to forget it.

From the archives - April 12, 2005:

A Character Plane (And So They Fall Beneath the Bludgeonry)

So Latigo Flint's relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, has been significantly less trusty these past few weeks. No doubt about it, he's caught the celluloid fever, the cinema aspiration infection that runs so rampant in this wretched town, and it's starting to seriously detract from his sworn sidekickeral duties.

Today, Kid Relish shambled up to my doorway, hunched over a steno pad. I watched his furious scribbling with the bemused detachment of a squinty-eyed gunslinger. His pen hand slowed and he spoke.
"Latty, I'm sick and fuckin' tired of all these goddamn character arcs you see in movies. So I'm writing a movie with no character arc. It's about a guy who likes viciously beating down random passersby with his titanium pimpstick, so that's what he does. And one day he doesn't beat people with his titanium pimpstick, but not for any particular reason--he just doesn't do it that day. Then the next day he's right back to beating people with his titanium pimpstick."

It's impossible to ever be remotely prepared for anything Kid Relish says. The trick is to repeat part of his statement back to him while you're thinking of a response.
"Sick and fuckin' tired of the character arcs huh Kid? Well you know, um, change is kind of like a common thread, uh, running through the fabric of the universe and stuff. Um, so probably on, like, a subconscious level, people relate more to characters that go through some sort of transformation or something."

He lowered his steno pad and scowled at me.
"Peter Pan never grew up, he never changed and that's like the favorite story of all time and shit!"

I sighed; I was already tired of this conversation.
"Kid," I tried to explain. "Peter Pan fell in love for the first time with Wendy. Pan learned about mortality when Tink nearly died. Pan discovered the concepts of true friendship and sacrifice. Pan came to realize-"

Kid threw his pen and me and started kicking the wall.
"Pan never loved Wendy," Kid howled. "He was just pretending-"
He paused in mid kick, his eyebrows shooting toward his hairline.
"Why that's perfect, I'm a goddamn genius Latty--at some point the character in my movie will meet a girl who disapproves of his titanium pimpstick bludgeonry, so he'll pretend to change in order to have sex with her and then afterwards he'll go back to beating people same as before."

Kid paused to furiously scribble a note in his steno pad.
"That'll be my twist ending," he mumbled. "Like in the 'I See Dead People Movie'. The audience will think there's a character arc going on but then at the end they discover there wasn't any character arc at all."

There was no way I was continuing this inane discussion.
"Fine Kid, I see it now. Yeah, you're right, that's the best idea ever."
I reopened my newspaper. Kid Relish turned to leave but stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
"You know something Latty?"
I was struck by the tremble in his voice and stared at him in amazement.
"I just wanted to do something great you know." He whispered. "You're the quickest draw in the world. What have I got?"

The Kid's eyes glistened with emotion. I was astounded and sudden compassion for the guy surged through me.
"Oh God Kid, I had no id-" I halted abruptly, every cilium in my inner ear screaming "danger!" I slowly pointed at him.
"You're pretending right now aren't you Kid? Pretending to actually have a human emotion."
Standing, I could now see what appeared to be a lead pipe wrapped in aluminum foil tucked into his back pocket. Kid grinned wickedly.
"Keep moving forward to hug me Latty and I guess you'll find out."

I sat back down, disgusted at my foolishness.
"You may actually have what it takes to make it in this town Kid."

But Kid wasn't listening to me anymore.
"How amazing I am Latty, I just got the title: And So They Fall Beneath the Bludgeonry."
He glanced at me.
"Except it's pronounced with the emphasis on the 'gin', bluh-GIN-ry."

I could hear him saying it over and over to himself as he walked away: "bluh-GIN-ry, bluh-GIN-ry. And So They Fall Beneath the Bluh-GIN-ry."

And right then is when I started to fear for producer's lives, just a bit.

The Guns of Autumn Moss

2006-11-14T01:12:00.000-08:00

"The moss don’t know it's dead yet."

He couldn't have been more than seventeen, that Confederate soldier with his back to a rock and his guts spillin’ into his hands. He'd been slumped there when we took shelter in the ravine, cold and still, his face as gray as his uniform. And so it surprised us somethin' awful when he opened his eyes and spoke.

"It clings to the bark," He continued, his voice a ragged whisper. "Just as green as yesterday, but frost came last night and that moss is dead where it dangles and the next strong wind will prove it."

General Grant's Yankee gunners had us pinned down in some godforsaken corner of a Carolina swamp. Being a Tennessee Boy myself, high-blue-mountain born and raised, I couldn't quite seem to poke square the notion with my reckon stick as to how anyone would want to live in a festering marsh, much less fight for it. But my momma only birthed two types of sons: Fighters and quitters. And Pa done buried all the quitters beside the beechnut tree. So when Lincoln went an' riled the Southern Sons I grabbed up my gun and joined 'em.

***

The preceding was an excerpt from Latigo Flint's NY Times Best-Selling Civil War epic, The Guns of Autumn Moss.

They said it couldn't be done. They said it was impossible. They said sweeping historical novels about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the American Civil War were over--that there weren't any more stories left. They added up all the books about the Civil War and the movies about the Civil War and plays about the Civil War and TV shows and TV-movies and radio programs and puppet shows and doodle-sketch flip-books and Internet video reenactments of the Battle of Gettysburg done entirely with Lego men... And the total came to one hundred and twenty-four thousand, six hundred and forty-two different Civil War stories.

Stories about the Yankees, stories about the Rebels. Stories told by women, stories told by slaves. Stories told by people who didn't care either way. Stories told from the point of view of the hound of a Confederate General whose mother was saved from drowning by the half-black daughter of a New York abolitionist.

Yeah, I may have made the last one up. But goddamn, you wouldn't bet your life on it would you?--not without checking first.

Anyway, they said there wasn't anything left to say--that you couldn't possibly tell another story about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the American Civil War.

But then Latigo Flint went and wrote The Guns of Autumn Moss and triumphantly proved them wrong.

And how did Latigo Flint do it you ask? Shrewdly, deftly, beautifully. That's the answer. Latigo Flint wrote lines of dialog like:
"The moss don’t know it's dead yet."
And he pulled from a deep well of savage poignancy, lines like:
But my momma only birthed two types of sons: Fighters and quitters. And Pa done buried all the quitters beside the beechnut tree.

Oh yeah, and there was one other thing... love. A whispering love. A love that dare not speak its name.

For the two central characters in Latigo Flint's sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the American Civil War... yep, they were gay lovers. One fighting for the North and the other for the South.

And I'm not so humble that I won't admit that it was a stroke of pure, unbridled genius. Why, the ink wasn't even dry on the pages of the first printing of The Guns of Autumn Moss, and already every single Critics Choice List was saving its top slot for it.

But now some people are trying to ban it. They're trying to ban The Guns of Autumn Moss. It's the epic-est, sweeping-est, historical-est novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the American Civil War ever written and they're trying to ban it out of existence.

So if you visit your local bookshop and can't find a single copy of The Guns of Autumn Moss, then most likely they've already been there and have succeeded in banning it.

But that doesn't mean I didn't write it. That doesn't mean it never was.

And so I leave you now with another excerpt from The Guns of Autumn Moss.

***

Davy died screaming on the tip of a Yankee bayonet. I was on my way to save him but the hot, jagged teeth of blue coat canon fire tore my face apart. It delayed me a bit. Like canon fire does. I staggered to my feet but was too late to save Davy. I'd marched through a thousand miles of swampland with this man. We'd shared weevil-riddled rations. He'd cracked the jokes that kept me sane. We'd forged the bonds of friendship that are impossible to fathom until you've slept back-to-back in frozen mud, cold, bleeding and hungry.

I couldn't save Davy, but I sure as hell could avenge him. I spun his Yankee murderer around and raised my blade for the kill. And there beneath the navy brim of a sweaty Union Soldier's cap were the green eyes of Claudio--the boy I never thought I'd see again.

"Hello Johnny." Claudio whispered.
"Hello Claudio." I replied.

The battle raged all around us but it couldn't half-equal the war Claudio and I fought deep in each other's eyes.

***

The Guns of Autumn Moss -- a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the American Civil War.
-by Latigo Flint

Coming nowhere soon to a bookshop near you.

In the Third Person

2006-11-09T23:24:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that while people certainly find it a bit odd if you continually speak of yourself in the third person, they become positively unnerved if you refer to them in the third person as well... 'cause apparently that's the way psychopaths talk.

Evidence: The other day Latigo Flint was feeling a mite parched and decided to visit his local Starbucks.

"Let's see now." Latigo Flint mused at the drink board when it was his turn to order.
"Okay, Latigo Flint would like the Cute Starbucks Barista to know that he will have a Mocha Chip Frappuccino."

She stared at Latigo Flint warily.

"Did the Cute Starbucks Barista not hear what Latigo Flint said?"

Her eyes traveled the room, mentally cataloging the exits.

"Hey now," Latigo Flint assured. "The Cute Starbucks Barista doesn't have to be afraid of Latigo Flint. Latigo Flint would never hurt the Cute Starbucks Barista. Latigo Flint loves the Cute Starbucks Barista."

It wasn't so much terror on her face as it was just a general, all-around desire to be anyplace other than there.

Latigo Flint leaned over the counter and extended a comforting hand.

"I don't think the Cute Starbucks Barista fully understands," Latigo Flint whispered. "The lengths to which Latigo Flint is prepared to go to see her naked."

Crap. That came out all wrong.

Latigo Flint desperately tried to retract, reassemble and clarify but it was too late, she was screaming by then and you can't stop real screams once they start. Well, you can--there are ways, but they aren't very gentlemanly. Not very gentlemanly at all. And Latigo Flint is nothing if not a gentleman.

I guess some other stuff happened after that. Latigo Flint doesn't really remember. Something to do with a sneak attack, head trauma, incapacitation and liquid fire.

Security footage shows the Assistant Manager and several burly customers quietly removing the metal housing on the cappuccino machine and beating Latigo Flint senseless with it. Followed by them duct taping his arms to his sides, lighting cans of Sterno and pouring them down the front of his shirt.

But security footage can be doctored, what with CGI and whatnot. And I'm pretty sure I'd never wet myself in public. So I don't think that's how it went down at all.

(I don't think you fully understand the lengths I'm prepared to go to see you naked.

That's a good line. I don't care what anyone says--that's a good line right there.)

The Night We Fell

2006-11-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

The worldwide votes have been tallied and I'm very proud to announce that it appears that The Night We Fell has just been awarded the title of most beautiful and moving short story ever written.

I want to thank everyone who made this possible. Chiefly me for actually writing it but also every writer ever born for failing to write a more beautiful and moving one.

From the archives - January 20, 2006:

The Night We Fell

The children ran with fire in the night, up and down the shore of the lake--tiny, giggling streaks of light. Molly and I sat on our deck in folding chairs, holding hands as we watched them play.

"From here," Molly said in her soft voice. "You almost forget they're children."
And it was magical that she'd said that just then, because I'd been thinking the very same thing.
"They could be angels for all we know." Molly continued. "Or some new, amazing species of bird."
(Well okay, maybe we hadn't been thinking the exact same thing--I'd been thinking something more like Angry Villagers, but close enough for love and stuff.)

Molly rubbed my knuckles with her thumb and I knew she was happy.
"Know what I mean?"
I shrugged. She couldn't see it in the dark but the rustle of my shirt gave it away and I'd done it enough times over the years for her to catch the move. She laughed lightly.
"You know what I mean--you just think it's manly to pretend not to."
I dismissed that statement with a very grumpy snort but met her thumb with the tip of my own so she'd always know I cared.

"Let's join them Molly." I proposed after some time had passed. "I think there's some sparklers in the shed. Let's light those sparklers and run crazy in the night."

Her hand went rigid in mine and I knew I'd said something wrong. A moment later I remembered she had no legs--which was just a truly absurd thing to forget. I mean, for Pete's Sake, in half our wedding pictures you can see the stack of apple crates she'd been placed upon to bring our eyes at least close to level.
Senility's a real fuck in the mind sometimes.

"I'm sorry Molly." I whispered. "I keep forgetting you have no legs."
"I know you do." She replied. "It's one of the reasons I love you."
I sat up abruptly, a wild grin spreading across my craggy face. "We're doing it anyway." And I tottered off to get the sparklers.

It had been years since I'd lifted her but I put that from my mind. I had already fetched the sparklers by then, which was easily thirty steps and back, and at my age you don't ever want to waste perfectly good strides.

We were halfway to the lake when the stroke hit. I dropped as if shot but managed to safely cradle Molly as we fell. I'd have probably minded the pine cones digging into my spine a lot more if I could have actually felt my spine.
"Run for help Molly." I managed to groan. "I think it's the big one now."
A second later I had to laugh at myself, though it came out as more of a whimper.
"God, I'm such an idiot."
She dragged herself over, propped her elbows on my chest and kissed me for a very long time.
"Yes, you are." She replied. "But in the very best way."

And a man can't do better than that. And even if he could--why on earth would he want to?

The children ran with fire in the night--tiny giggling streaks of light. We could see them from where we'd fell. Molly held me as I died.
"How Molly?" I whispered. "How will you make it back the road?"
"Don't worry my dear." She softly replied. "Maybe I'll crawl. Maybe I'll roll."

All About Caves

2006-11-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

Contrary to popular belief, most caves don't have any treasure hidden in them. Unless of course you consider one of the earth's more subtle and magnificent ecosystems to be treasure enough in itself.

But then, that would make you a granola-munching geologist who's never known a day of real work in his life and won't as long as his grant is renewed, wouldn't it?

***

Chip Bannon, the smug tour guide for the National Park Service, never has any trouble remembering which are the stalactites and which are the stalagmites. This is mostly because he's smarter than you, but partially because he knows a handy little memory trick that he's more than happy to share:
Stalactites have to hold on tight to the ceiling.
Stalagmites might grow up big and tall if they eat healthy and remember to take their vitamins and minerals.

The latter being extra clever, as Chip hastens to point out, since they form from the calcified drips of mineral-rich water.

Well, what Chip Bannon doesn't know is that for the last few minutes I've been mentally killing him in just about every horrifically gruesome way imaginable involving stalactites and mites. And that if he reminds us one more time that cave ecosystems are very fragile and we must stay on the designated path, taking only pictures and leaving only footprints, then I'm gonna beat him to death with his helmet lamp and feed him to the cave slugs.

***

Contrary to popular belief, cave slugs don't attack unless provoked. And rarely grow much longer than a foot or two.

(You're thinking of the Paraguayan Devil Worm.)

***

When Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher's last candle burned out after they became hopelessly lost in McDougall's Cave, Tom Sawyer found Becky's lips in the darkness, kissed them tenderly and told her everything was going to be all right.

Which is quite lovely.

Well, when I clicked off my flashlight and tried to kiss the woman next to me as our group gathered on the bank of some boring underground river that Chip claimed was a geologic masterpiece, she broke my nose with a cave rock and then Chip was furious because apparently that cave rock took something like a billion years to form... and now it had my blood on it.

***

Contrary to popular belief, farts do echo in caves.

Quite resoundingly in fact.

***

There are many types of caves. Two main ones are Volcanic Caves, formed by lava flows through rock, and Solutional Caves in which water erosion through softer (soluble) rock produces the passages and chambers. Limestone caves are a common example of solutional caves.

Chip Bannon claims there's no such thing as a Wizard Cave--that twisting maze of scorched granite, blasted deep into shear cliff walls by the lightning-tipped staffs of levitating wizards. But Chip Bannon is an asshole and a liar.

***

Contrary to popular belief, caves aren't scary to walk through alone. Well, not all of them. Okay, most are but there are a few that aren't.

Okay, fine, even those are pretty spooky.

***

Chip Bannon will always politely thank everybody who paid the four dollars to take the National Park Service's crappy tour through the smelly cave, but he becomes significantly less-than-cordial if he discovers your pockets are stuffed with endangered cave newt carcasses.

***

Contrary to popular belief, your dead relatives can still see you if you touch yourself in a cave.

Song of the Wereotter: Warrior of Justice, Protector of the Innocent

2006-11-01T00:06:00.000-08:00

Life has this nasty habit of taking your every little failure, coating it with meat sauce and slapping it on your back, where it dangles like a festering squid until enough of them accumulate, and with a pitiful cry, you tumble into a ravine, where you thrash limply for a while until sand wolves come and tear out your spine.

I've seen it happen to others. I could smell it happening to me.

Well, I certainly wasn't about to sit idly by as life and my failures conspired to render me pitiful. No, it was time for some causative action. After reviewing all my many options, I decided to go insane.

And so then the next thing I know I'm an otter that can talk and my sidekick is a tarantula spider named Ernesto. And we're standing on a hilltop with the evening wind in our fur, watching clouds turn from purple to black as the sun slips behind Andean spires.

"Where am I?" I asked the spider.
"On a hilltop." Ernesto replied.
"Of course, silly question."

I stared at my paws.

"What am I?" I asked the spider.
"You're an otter." He replied.
"But a moment ago I was a man."

He crawled up on a rock and placed his long, segmented legs on my furry shoulder.
"You're The Wereotter." He solemnly blinked all eight eyes. "The Shamans said you would come."

Wow. That was a lot to process. After a long pause I asked Ernesto what it meant to be a wereotter.
"Not a wereotter," He replied. "The Wereotter."
"Well, what does it mean to be The Wereotter?"

He smiled and gestured to the horizon with one of his hairy legs.

"With me at your side you shall travel this world, seeking and combating evil. For you are The Wereotter: Warrior of Justice, Protector of the Innocent."

And it is so very difficult to imagine the powerful, singular feeling of pride that surges moist and hot and alive from places deep within, unless you yourself have been recently informed that you are a Warrior of Justice, Protector of the Innocent.

"Oh God yes!" I cried. "That just feels so right. Let's definitely be that. Let's definitely be warriors of justice and protect the innocent."

Ernesto knuckled a tear from eyes number two, seven and four. "And so you truly are The Wereotter." He whispered.

"Oh hell yeah." I had never felt surer of anything. "So what's the plan Ernesto?"

"Well," Ernesto replied. "The plan is--we travel the land until we come to a place where evil people are doing evil things. Then we hide in ferns until they walk by and then we jump out and bite the shit out of them."

And so that's what we did. And we had many, many adventures. And we frequently danced with grateful villagers at festivals of joy thrown in our honor near the town square fountains. And pretty girls jostled each other to dance with Ernesto and me.

***

And do I shapeshift back into a man from time to time? Sadly I do. I’m The Wereotter yes, but the otter is not my only form.

And so sometimes I wake up tangled in saline sheets, screaming for the forest.
"Ernesto!" I sob. "I'm a man again, not a Warrior of Justice anymore."

I staple live flies to my chest by their wings and beg for the spider to come.
"Please Ernesto, help me change. I want to matter some more. I want to be The Wereotter forever!"

And in the darkness an itch draws my hand to the red welts that dot my flesh.
"Ernesto, is that you?"

And then suddenly my hand is a paw again and I'm standing on a hilltop with the evening wind in my fur.

"You came back for me Ernesto."

"Of course I did my mighty friend." The spider replies. "You are The Wereotter."

And so I am. And so I am.

The End

Softer Than a Mammary

2006-10-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

It's odd, but according to the historian named Google, in the history of the internet only one person has ever sequentially typed the words: "Softer than a mammary." And it just so happens that person is I.

I take no great pride in this achievement--the phrase feels as natural as breathing. I've been using it for years. Frankly I'm shocked I'm the only one.

From the archives - March 2, 2006:

Softer Than a Mammary

They speak to me, the angels behind the Starbucks counter.
"What's your order sir?" They say with a voice that seems as gentle as a kitten's dream and softer than a mammary.

And every morning I tell myself that this morning, for once, I'm going to force myself to smile politely and tell her my drink order like a rational member of a civilized society. And not lunge over the counter, screaming my love in grunts as I try to lick her neck.

And every morning I fail.

There are a number of subtle signals the cute barista at your local Starbucks will give if it turns out she has absolutely zero interest in having her neck licked by a frantically grunting customer. I've had my nose broken by the removable metal housing on the cappuccino machine so many times now that it sounds like an orchestra tuning up every time I go to sneeze.

I've become a wound collector, that's what I've become. Every evening I put on a little cap and that long magnifying eyepiece thingy and appraise my wounds with a professional's critical gaze. Figuratively speaking of course... well except for the little cap and magnifying eyepiece thingy--I do have those. And I do sometimes wear them when I'm appraising my wounds. But other than that it's figurative.

(Chest to chest is passionate but our hearts are on different sides. Let me press upon your back and our ventricles will align.

Cute Starbucks baristas don't ever seem to be in the mood to hear that from a sweating, grunting customer either.)

The Kid Relish Paradox

2006-10-29T20:54:00.000-08:00

So the other day my relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, decided he wanted to have a paradox named after him.

"It is a very sexy and mysterious thing Latty," he explained. "To have a paradox named after you."

"Really Kid?" I sighed, cracking another beer, silently praying this wouldn't take all night.

"Oh absolutely." He set his feet up on the coffee table and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists.
"It impresses the hell out of people, especially smart gals with button noses, freckles and glasses."
He glanced around conspiratorially. I saw the flash of a chemical fire in his wide, staring eyes.
"If you have a paradox named after you," He whispered. "Then the smart gals with button noses, freckles and glasses practically line up to sleep with you."

"You don't say?" I wearily replied, trying to decide if it was too early in the evening to feign a seizure.

"I do say." He chortled. "And if you tell 'em you're a Professor they let you keep your shoes on and make wolf sounds the whole time, 'cause everyone knows how eccentric professors are."

"Fascinating." I mumbled and half-considered tossing a shinny object to the far side of the room to see if it would distract him. "So," I said, 'cause he seemed to expect me to continue. "What's the paradox then?"

"Pardon?" Said The Kid.

"Your paradox." I repeated. "If you're going to have a paradox named after you, you kinda need to come up with a paradox first."

"Ohhhh, right, the paradox." Kid Relish consulted his notepad. "Okay, here's what I've got so far." He looked up to make sure I was listening. I was... sorta.
"Here's how it goes." He explained. "The first part is me holding a pipe wrench and then I ask you a question, and how you answer the question is what determines if I bludgeon you with the pipe wrench or not."

He had my attention.

"Okay Kid." I folded up my paper and put my reading glasses away. "So you ask the person a question and how they respond determines whether or not you smack them with the pipe wrench?"

"Exactly!" He replied. "And hopefully I do get to hit them with the pipe wrench, 'cause hitting people with pipe wrenches is really a lot of fun."

"Well don't get ahead of yourself Kid." I noted. "Where's the paradox?"

He didn't even have to think about it. "The paradox is in the question of course."

I have to admit I was intrigued. I'd never known Kid Relish to be so well prepared.
"So, what's the question?" I asked.

"I don't quite know yet." He admitted.

"Well, what have you got so far?"

"So far all I've got is: 'yes or no... do you want me to bludgeon you with this pipe wrench?'"

We both knew it wasn't very good. He kept his gaze down and wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Not much of a paradox is it Kid?"

"No." He sullenly replied.

"You kinda just have to answer 'no' in order to not be smacked with the pipe wrench." I pointed out.

"Yeah," he admitted. "It's kind of a flawed paradox right now."

I patted him on the head and stood to leave.
"Well Kid," I said. "At least you tried. Coming up with paradoxes isn't easy."

"Yeah." He mumbled. "I guess."

I crossed to the door. "Good-night Kid."
I opened the door and was about to take my leave when he suddenly called out for me to wait.

"What do you want Kid?" I asked.

"Answer truthfully, yes or no." He said. "Or else I'm going to bludgeon you with this pipe wrench... will the next word you say be 'no'?"

...

Why that magnificent bastard, he'd found a paradox after all. When I refused to answer, he came at me with the pipe wrench.

"Hey, friends don't hit each other with pipe wrenches!" I snarled, and met his charge with a flying kick to the face.

He crawled around the living room, wheezing and bleeding on stuff.

"Oh yeah?" He moaned after a bit. "Well friends don't launch flying kicks to each other's faces either."

He had a point there. I sat down on the rug and contemplated that, staring into the fireplace. He took the opportunity to bash me in the kidney with the pipe wrench.

I pissed blood for a month. Kid Relish made me lemon tea every night 'cause he'd read somewhere that it would help sooth the pain.

He's a good friend, that Kid Relish. Except when he isn't.

Those Plastic Pseudo Pistoleros

2006-10-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

People say to me, they say: “Latigo--for a man who claims to be the quickest quickdraw the world has ever known, you sure don’t talk about gunslinging much anymore.”

I don’t reply. No need really. Men like me were born in stoic silence in the days of blood and scorpions. Our calculated fury is as cold as the pistols we refrigerate.

(Wait, that that last part didn’t make any sense.)

Never mind. Point is, I simply squint my steely eyes and wait for the offender to soil him or herself. Sometimes I roll a cigarette and strike a match on my propped up boot heel. Often a faraway bell will toll as a hawk screams in a cloudless sky.

But I admit there’s something to be said for not forgetting where you’ve been. And though I’ve spoken of the following before, it bears repeating again.

(Um, there’s something odd about “repeating again”. It would seem to imply this is the third or perhaps even fourth time one has said a thing.

Fuck you. It needed the “again” to rhyme.)

***

From the archives - March 23, 2005:

Those Plastic Pseudo Pistoleros

It was high time we paid 'em another visit. So yesterday found Latigo Flint and his relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, striding squinty-eyed and dangerous through the Ghost Town/Calico Square section of that there Southern California amusement park.

I have no idea who at the corporate office is responsible for checking the quickdraw qualifications of those silly pseudo-gunslingers they hire to stroll around, posing for pictures, but whoever it is ought to be fired right along with every single one of those pretend pistolaros.

An uneasy crowd massed next to the Churro stand to watch me square off against the last one.
"Alright tinhorn,” I snarled. “The next child to drop their Churro is gonna be our signal to reach."
He scuffled his plastic boots and looked around for his boss. "Uh look sir, I'm pretty sure this isn't--that is to say I... SECURITY!!!"

How pathetic. I started to wonder if he was even worth beating to the draw, but then a chubby Asian child in a Snoopy t-shirt dropped his greasy Churro and gunslinger instinct took over. Before that wretched tinhorn could even think about twitching a finger, my blurred hands slapped thigh and shucked my authentic replica Colt Peacemaker revolvers from their hand-tooled elk hide holsters and cylinder-twirled both to empty in a rolling, continuous snap.

"Damn that's fast!" Even my relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, was impressed. Kid stared at the stunned tinhorn.
"Hey puto, what's your name?"
"Tyler." Came the sullen reply.
"Damn but that was fast wasn't it Tyler?"
"Umm, I guess so."

An angry young woman shoved her way through the crowd and approached The Kid and I.
"Well congratulations.” She sneered. “You two are just about the biggest losers I've ever seen. What, so you're dangerous men 'cause you sit in your parents' basement all day playing with cap guns?"

Kid Relish was reaching across himself, gearing up for one of his monster backhands, but I quickly stepped between them.
"Listen Ma’am,” I explained. “Tyler over there receives money from this amusement park to personify a sacred way of life-"
A small child trotted up and pulled once on my shirtsleeve. I tried to ignore him.
"- sacred Ma'am. He's paid to represent an ideal."
The child continued to tug at my sleeve.
"Umm, an ideal... and it's an ideal ideal, and that tinhorn, Tyler, does a grievous dishonor to the memory of noble gunsling-"
The child started hopping up and down and humming while urgently tugging on my shirtsleeve.

"By the waxed handlebar of Earp, WHAT DO YOU WANT!!!???"

The child looked up and me and pointed. "You come and take picture with me and daddy?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"Damnit, that's what I'm trying to explain--gunslingers don't go around posing for pictures."
The child frowned at me suspiciously.
"That one over there did." He pointed to Tyler. I blinked back angry tears.
"Sweet Calamity Jane am I talking to myself? He's not a real gunslinger!!!"
The cruel young woman sensed an advantage.
"Oh, and YOU are? How many people have YOU shot?"

Kid Relish, bless him, came to my aid at that point.
"That's a trap question Latty, and you know it. Lemme backhand the shit outta these people and then we’ll go and try to drink ourselves to death."

So I let Kid Relish backhand the shit out them. What other choice did I have? The Churro Lady held him off for a while with her flailing frozen Churros. But eventually she too tasted his knuckles of wrath.

And so it turns out I didn’t have to shoot anyone that day, and that’s good, ‘cause shootin’ a man ain’t no small thing. You’re boxing up his memories and puttin’ ‘em in public storage. You’re takin’ all his future joy, mashing it in a ball, coating it with honey and rammin’ it down a hungry badger’s den.

It’s a cruel, haunted life we lead, we of the gun-stained leather. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. And it’s not our fault dangerous men are dead sexy.

The Mill Pond Whore (and other old sayings)

2006-10-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

There's an old saying that goes: You can teach an old dog a new trick with a hammer and a blowtorch but you can't get him to do it twice.

I really don't know what it means. I'm often confused by old sayings.

The one about the Mill Pond Whore for instance. That one's just baffling. How does it go?
You can't screw the mill pond whore if she knows the ducks are watching.

Wait, that doesn't sound right.

Maybe it's: You can lead the mill pond whore to ducks but you can't make her feed them bread crumbs if she's afraid they're going to bite.

Dern it, that's not it either.

Is it: You can spank the mill pond whore with duck but only after two PM and if you lick her bottom it's extra.

No, no. That doesn't sound right at all. It's not even a saying; it's more like a posted sign or something.

Wait, are there even any sayings about the mill pond whore?

What am I saying--of course there are. Everyone's heard the one that goes:
A wise man counts his pennies after sleeping with the mill pond whore, especially if ducks are around 'cause those little bastards like to eat pennies and then shit 'em where no one can find 'em.

I'm messing this up. Stop judging me. Old sayings are really hard to remember. Old sayings are like a mill pond whore--you can rub them down with linseed oil but they won't dance with you if you smack them with a stewpot.

Okay, I'm not going to try to remember any more old sayings about mill pond whores 'cause I just keep getting them wrong, and frankly it's embarrassing.

I'm serious now. No more mill pond whore sayings for me. For instance, you could walk up to me and say:
"Hey, what's the one about how kissing a mill pond whore feels great until she beats you to death with a duck when your eyes are closed."

And I'd reply: "Nope, nope--don't know what you're talking about. You're making about as much sense as a mill pond whore on payday who spends it all on granola and then pretends she doesn't know why the ducks are chasing her."

(Life is like a mill pond whore--it keeps you warm if you pay enough but laughs when the paddle wheel snags your arm and flings it to the hungry ducks.)

That's Where the Eel Man Lives

2006-10-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Old Charlie Turkwood finally got fed up with the neighborhood children hopping the fence and swimming in his backyard pool every afternoon when he and Maude went to the picture show. So one night he snorkeled down and screwed a submarine hatch cover into the plaster at the bottom of the deep end.

Then over the next few days he let it be known around town that people needed to be very careful when entering his yard, especially near the pool, 'cause that's where the eel man lives.

And that did the trick. The children stayed away. Most children have highly attuned monster sensory mechanisms. They don't know what an Eel Man is and don't think to question if such a thing even exists. Because, see, they know what it could be, and that you sure as heck wouldn't want to swim with it.

Old Charlie pulled his easy chair up to the sliding patio door and spent the next two weeks peeking through the blinds and giving Maude up-to-the-minute updates. He was continually pleased to report that the level of unauthorized activity in the general pool area remained at zero and holding.

***

"I think I found you a home."

Little Christie stood on the shore of an industrial pond, pinching her nose against the smell. Her wide blue eyes scanned the sludgy surface, watching for the ripples.

"It's two towns over."

The sun broke free of the clouds for a moment and set rainbows alive in the patches of oily slick that dotted the festering water. The swirling colors caught Christie's eye, and made her heart catch at their beauty. But it's an uneasy heart that beholds such beauty because there's also a darkness to the shimmer. And such a vibrant display isn't natural, not on the surface of clean water.

"Gray Boy?" Christie called. "Gray Boy did you hear me? Apparently a man named Turkwood has built you a wonderful home."

The eyes that slowly surfaced two feet in front of the underwater tire pile were human eyes--logical and alert.

"There you are Gray Boy." Christie smiled and knelt on the shore, absolutely ruining the hem of her pretty dress.
"Don't be afraid--I'll help you get there."

And to accurately describe the face and body that followed those eyes, up and out of the water, would take much more time than you and I can spare tonight, what with tomorrow being a work day and all. Let's just say it was the Eel Man and leave it at that.

***

One minute the backyard was empty and Old Charlie Turkwood swiveled in his easy chair, chortling glee to his wife. When he looked out again, he beheld a little blond girl sitting cross-legged on his diving board.

"Great Eisenhower's Ghost!" Charlie exclaimed and bumped the reclining lever by accident. His feet shot up in the air. One slipper smacked the ceiling. The other one knocked over a vase.

"What was that dear?" Maude inquired from the kitchen.

"Interlopers!" Charlie bellowed and stormed out into the yard.

***

Every pool owner has a certain expectation of the sort of thing he's likely to find drifting in his backyard pool. Leafs. Leafs probably top the list. Next come assorted debris. Pools are good at collecting assorted debris. The carcass of a rodent. Yeah, sure, from time to time.

Well, Old Charlie Turkwood looked down into the waters of his tiled reservoir and saw an abomination of evolution: Eight and a half feet of gray, undulating flesh with intelligent eyes at one end. Old Charlie Turkwood stared into those eyes and could practically hear the crunch of a grave robber’s spade splitting his skull in two.

"That hatch doesn't go anywhere, it's just bolted to the plaster."

The little blond girl was speaking to him but Charlie didn't know how to look at her. He was so horribly transfixed by the coiled thing at the bottom of his pool that it felt like if his head were to turn away, his eyes would be torn from their sockets.

"You said you built him a home." Christie continued with the cold fury of one who doesn't yet understand what betrayal is and is struggling to come to grips with the emotion it invokes.

"We crossed four highways to get here. He nearly died out in the sands."

The thing in the pool opened its mouth, showing its teeth and Old Charlie responded with a less-than-eloquent series of babbling groans.

"I had to bring him water in a Dixie cup. Dogs torn one of his flippers off."

Christie stretched out flat on the diving board and dangled her hands in the water. The thing in the pool swam up and nuzzled her fingers with its snout. She smiled and scratched its chin and then stared at Charlie with such an innocent determination that something inside him toppled over and the regret of a childless life threatened to tear him apart.

"You're going to build a cavern beneath this pool and make that a two-way hatch. You're going to breed salmon in the jacuzzi and stop using chlorine to keep the water clean."

Christie rolled off the diving board and splashed gently into the water. The thing looped itself around her and they touched noses underwater. Then she swam back to the surface and spoke to Charlie again.

"And I get to visit whenever I like. And if I'm ever not here when the sun goes down, you have to read him a story."

Christie pulled herself out of the water.
"That's all Mister. You start tomorrow."

Christie and the thing in the pool stared at Old Charlie Turkwood, waiting for his response.

Seconds ticked by. They turned into minutes.

"Does he have a name?" Old Charlie finally rasped.

"I call him Gray Boy." Little Christie replied.

"Where did he come from?"

"I don't know. But this is his home now."

And the next morning Charlie rented scuba gear and jackhammer and started excavating a cavern beneath his pool.

When he needed to rest he surfaced and held on to Christie’s air mattress and she shared her lemonade with him. And for the first few weeks he fully expected to be messily disemboweled in the very next instant. But as time passed and his intestines stayed where they belonged, Old Charlie Turkwood came to enjoy the eel man’s company.

And the years went by and Christie grew into a young lady, complete with all the distractions that come with that. And she no longer visited as often. And more and more Charlie found he was the one reading the bedtime story by the pool to the eel man as the sun went down. And then he had a stroke and shortly thereafter his wife Maude died and his friends all told him to sell the house and move somewhere more comfortable. But Charlie Turkwood didn’t sell.

“I’ll never sell this house.” Old Charlie slurred, through a mouth half-paralyzed. “Christie is coming to visit today and this is where the eel man lives.”

They chalked it up to dementia and called the mental health professionals. But Old Charlie drove them back with a broom. Well, that and the fact that several of them saw an unholy shadow in the pool behind Charlie. Something that couldn’t possibly be. Something with human eyes but way too many razor teeth. They left screaming and Charlie laughed as they ran, even as his heart failed in his chest.

And he was nearly dead when Christie found him, stretched out beside the pool. The eel man sat coiled in at the bottom, writhing with grief for his friend.

“Oh Charlie.” Christie whispered and knelt at the side of the dying old man.

“Oh Christie.” Charlie replied. “I’m so afraid for the eel man--where is he gonna live now?”

“Don’t you worry Charlie Turkwood.” Christie leaned over and kissed Charlie on the cheek. “I’ll find him a place and help him get there. Thanks for letting us use your pool.”

“Where did he come from Christie?” It was the last thought Charlie ever had. A moment later Old Charlie Turkwood died in Christie’s arms.

Christie struggled to speak through the tears.
"Good-bye Charlie."

She turned to the pool.
“Come on Gray Boy.” She whispered.

Human eyes broke the surface.

The Spider Moon

2006-10-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

The bar was nearly empty, only the dedicated drinkers remained. A few broken men, a few depleted women. All of us too lonely to go home, too weary to hit on each other.

Then the old Indian in the corner started speaking. We hadn't even noticed him there. He spoke of his childhood on the banks of Black Rock Creek and everyone ignored him. Then he spoke of the Spider Moon and it made our blood run cold.

According to legend, the Spider Moon comes in the last wanes of what was the Harvest Moon. All the crops are in, the first snow is still a few weeks away. The buck deer battle in the browning forest and brother squirrel guards his nut house. And (and this is the chilling part by the way) it doesn't matter where you go, it doesn't matter how you sleep. Before the night is over, a spider is going to crawl on your genitals.

"Oh god." We involuntarily groaned. Somehow... somehow we'd always suspected. Those mornings that just don't feel right--when something hangs in the air like an interrupted omen. The feeling you're forgetting something but if you remember it'll drive you insane. So we lock that unease away with all the other things we'd rather not consider--like: has my face ever been cross-haired in a sniper's scope? Do healthy cells scream when the cancer cells invade them?

It took hearing it out loud to match the dread with its cause. There is a Spider Moon. It's the night a spider crawls on your genitals.

"You aren't suggesting that..." The quaver in Gus the Bartender's voice was unmistakable. The old Indian met his stare with a terrible look in his eyes.
"I mean, okay." Gus continued. "M-maybe it happens every once in a while--law of averages says it's gonna I guess. But not for sure tonight right? There’s no such thing as a Spider Moon… is there?"

And in the half-light of a neon sign that proclaimed Budweiser the King of Beers, the old Indian finished his drink and set the empty glass on the bar. We hadn't noticed he was carrying a pistol, but we sure couldn't miss it when he raised it to his temple.

"No more Spider Moons for me." He whispered. "Eighty-two is plenty."

***

And then later that night the spiders came and they crawled up our legs as we slept. And you can't help but scream once you know what the memory of a tickle means.

And I wish like hell I'd never heard of the Spider Moon. I could have very happily lived out the rest of my days not once considering the fact that there have and will come nights when a spider crawls on my genitals.

But try as I might I can't forget it. And I scream every morning out of habit now.

So add it to the list of things that haunt me. Somewhere below the thought of dying alone. And somewhere above a fancy restaurant sneezing fit with a bloody nose.

Of Pioneers and Snarls

2006-10-13T01:18:00.000-07:00

9 out of 10 great-grandchildren of pioneers agree: Ol' Pappy would have hated reading this account of pioneers and snarls. It prods way too many painful scars with a rusty knife of truth and historical accuracy.

From the archives - February 27, 2006:

Of Pioneers and Snarls

The trouble with being a hardy pioneer on the savage edge of the American Frontier was that every time your pigs screamed in the night you were obligated to go out to see what was bothering them... and more times than not, whatever it was had claws.

You'd walk out on the porch and then turn to face your wife.
"How old is our eldest son?" You'd ask, shivering a bit at the mortal chill that just blew up on the wings of a fanged snarl.
"He's six." She'd reply.
"Never too young to become a man." You'd mumble under your breath.
"What?!!!" Your wife would demand.
"Nothing." You'd sigh. "Hand me my rifle please."
"Powder and lead costs money." She'd say and hand you your pitchfork instead. You'd stare at the pitchfork with much dismay.
"A pitchfork?!!!" You'd exclaim. "But listen to that snarl. Do you have any idea what that snarl is saying?"
"Well go on and tell me, you're planning to anyway." Your wife would reply.

"Damn right I'll tell you--that snarl, that particular snarl, just happens to be saying:
'Hello, I'm a slavering beast that is easily two and a half to three times too large, quick and fierce to be dispatched with anything short of a goddamn cannon. A rifle might give me pause, but I am definitely eating the face off any man who comes at me with a spindly pitchfork.'"

"You can tell all that from just a snarl?"

"Hell yeah I can woman! Shit, you stand out here in butt-flap pajamas with nothing between you and a snarling death but a pitchfork and the balls the good lord dangled and then tell me you wouldn't want a rifle."

"Tell you what." Your wife would say with a calm that means she's about to be fair and just. (Even though that's a lie if ever there was.) "How 'bout we stop buying a six-pack of ale every night of the week and twice on Friday? That should probably leave us just enough money for powder and lead to shoot at every single creature that happens to snarl in the night."

"Well, hold on a minute now."

"No, no Dear, give me back the pitchfork and let me fetch your rifle. You go down and shoot whatever that is and when you get back I'll have a nice pot of willow bark tea waiting."

...
...
...

And moments later you'd be trudging down to the livestock pens, scratching your butt through the open flap on your pajamas, grumbling at your pitchfork and hoping like hell it's not a grizzly bear tonight.

Please Don't Crap in My Mittens

2006-10-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

First there was nothing but the bleak expanse of space. Then there was a big bang. And then later Latigo Flint was born, and then a bit after that he wrote a poem titled: Please Don't Crap in My Mittens, I Have to Wear Them if it Gets Cold.

That's the chronology that I've decided truly matters to me.

Most people are surprised to hear there exists a poem titled: Please Don't Crap in My Mittens, I Have to Wear Them if it Gets Cold.

"Really?" They say, already starting to burn with an urgent desire to read it.

"Yes, really." Comes the reply.

"Well, that is a poem I would very much like to read."

But Latigo Flint doesn't let anyone read Please Don't Crap in My Mittens, I Have to Wear Them if it Gets Cold.

You see, Please Don't Crap in My Mittens, I Have to Wear Them if it Gets Cold, is a poem Latigo Flint wrote just for himself.

And some things must be this way. Some hurts are not for display.

Frozen Brains for Breakfast

2006-10-11T01:24:00.000-07:00

On a whim I put an orange in the freezer. Two nights later I took it out. It looked pretty much the same. I decided to hit it with a hammer for a while. It came apart in chunks of pulpy slush, but didn't shatter like I hoped it would.

"Well, that's that." I thought to myself and started to get ready for bed. But I didn't even make it out of my pants.

Now it's a week later and I still haven't slept. To find my kitchen floor you’d have to dig a foot and a half through a rotting layer of fruits and vegetables, first frozen and then smashed. But I haven't been in there for a while. By day four I'd completely ceded the kitchen to the insects and the rodents.

The living room is where I've been spending my time lately--except when I run to the 24-hour store to purchase solid blocks of ice.

You see, my latest project involves carving an ice sculpture bust of George Clooney and then coating it with silicone putty and painting on his facial features. Next I put the rubber ice statue in front of the heater for about an hour. Lastly I pierce it with a metal straw and drink his liquefied brains.

"I'm drinking your brains George Clooney!" I shriek, slurping water from the life-like mold.

When the rubber face crumples in on itself and no longer resembles George Clooney, I run out and buy another ice block and do the whole thing over again.

At some point I decided to change it up and did one of Scarlett Johansson instead. But halfway through I could no longer control my grief and my shame.

"Oh God, I'm sorry Scarlett!" I screamed, and tried to reassemble the mold.

"No more." I solemnly promised myself. "No more drinking the liquefied brains from the rubber heads of actresses I adore."

I broke that promise a few hours later when the metal straw pierced the Keira Knightley sculpture’s eye.

***

Today the landlord stopped by--something to do with a complaint or two from the other tenants about the incessant pounding of chisels and unusual smells and vermin emanating from my tiny apartment.

He had the police with him--something to with hysterical death threats the first four times he knocked on my door.

I tried to explain to everyone that I was engaged in performance art. That it was a shrewd commentary on our tendency to worship our celebrities and yet at the same time crave to drink their liquefied brains.

They weren't buying it.

"But I have a grant pending from the National Endowment of the Arts!" I hollered, diving into the kitchen and burying myself in the warm layer of filth that covered the linoleum floor.

The cops argued with each other for a while about whose job it was to go in there and pull me out. In the end the rookie lost and he took his rage out on me.

"I am not resisting you!" I screamed as I smacked him in the eye with a rotten melon rind.

Then he played a game called "Let's Break Bones" with a black-wrapped stick that felt like dying when it struck.

(And I don’t know why all this happened and I don’t know what it was for. I only know I’m broken now, and the flat, rubber heads of perfect people litter my living room floor.)

Girl and Boy

2006-10-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

Girl and Boy

(A short one-act play. Author unknown.)

BOY:
What I needed was to not catch my heart in an avalanche.

GIRL:
Pardon?

BOY:
It's as if my heart is a lonely sherpa and you're the furious landslide.

GIRL:
A lonely what?!

BOY:
Please don't make me ask you again if you'll go to the dance with me.

GIRL:
I'm sorry, do I know you?

BOY:
I'm prepared to love you forever.

GIRL:
Listen, whoever you are--you really need to pull your pants back up; people are starting to stare.

BOY:
Radio base camp. Tell them my heart's been swept away.

GIRL:
Get the hell away from me.

BOY:
Climber to base camp. Heart down. Jagged ravine. Can't talk now--wolves closing in.

GIRL:
I'm not kidding; you need to leave.

BOY:
We broke camp at dawn, my heart and me. We planned to summit that day or die.

GIRL:
I'm pressing charges if you don't leave right now.

BOY:
We packed our bags, pre-flight. I'm going to give you a back rub with warm oils and cheese if you don't mind.

GIRL:
I don't know what yet, I'm going to let my lawyer advise--but rest assured, you will be charged with something.

BOY:
With weeping hearts and stoic faces we pushed ever westward, deep into that savage land of death and dogwood blossoms.

GIRL:
They're gonna lock you up so long you'll be calling the guards "sonny-boy" by the time they let you out.

BOY:
We got off on the wrong foot. Let me start over. May I have the pleasure of escorting you to the Fall dance?

GIRL:
No you may not. But thank you; I'm very flattered you asked.

BOY:
You're welcome.

GIRL:
Well all right then.

BOY:
How about now? Will you go to the dance with me now?

GIRL:
Answer's still the same.

BOY:
I'm picturing you naked and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

GIRL:
See, it's that sort of thing right there that makes it impossible to trust you.

BOY:
In my dream your nipples are blue and taste like candy and raindrops.

GIRL:
I get that a lot.

BOY:
I'm prepared to love you forever you know.

GIRL:
I know.

Lights fade out

Elk: Nature's Perfect Killer

2006-10-06T01:06:00.000-07:00

And I heard as it were the sound of thunder, one of the four beasts saying come and see. And I saw and behold, a pale elk, and his name that sat upon him was Deathhorn Goresalot, and hell followed with him.
--Old Sioux Campfire Song

From the archives - December 16, 2005:

Elk: Nature's Perfect Killer

Latigo Flint knows there are plenty of reasons not to trust an elk. Elk were born to trample and gore. It's what they were born to do. Elk attack from ambush and have been known to eat human babies.

But what else would you expect from the closest living descendant of dragons?

Most people don't know that elk are directly descended from dragons. It's one of those facts that time seems to have swallowed. But get your Grandpa good and drunk and then ask him about elk; he'll likely tell you stories that'll make your blood run cold.

Many historians now agree that the lost colonists of Roanoke were probably devoured by elk.

Peter Benchley's first draft of Jaws was actually set in northern Montana and told of the relentless terror inflicted on a small logging community by a giant, man-eating elk. It was based on true events. It drove early readers insane with fear and Peter decided to revise it to feature a big shark instead.

Elk have hunted Sasquatch to the brink of extinction. When Sasquatch is gone, who do you think is next?

By the way, try not to ponder that for very long if you don't happen to be extraordinarily brave.

(P.S. It's us you fool, run for your life!!!)

The Lewis and Clark expedition was actually the twenty-seventh such overland expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson. The previous twenty-six were all eaten by elk.

Recent advances in crime scene investigation techniques have shed new light on Los Angeles' infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947. Elizabeth Short's mysterious assailant is now widely believed to have been an elk.

Today, public officials are quick to caution against blaming every single disappearance and unexplained murder on elk. They note that while elk are the likely cause of 85% to 90% of all disappearances and unexplained murders, investigators must be careful not to become so complacent that they fail to duly interrogate street performers and minorities.

(Most minorities used to be in the majority... but then too many of them were eaten by elk.)

The Night Barry Took the Field

2006-10-04T00:32:00.000-07:00

The stadium lights were dark when Barry took the field. From the stands we all could sense something moving down there in the gloom. We guessed it was a marching band, or maybe dancers or a float. It had better be something good, we mused, we'd been promised a halftime show.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer crooned. "Boys and girls and popcorn vendors too. You should probably bolt your minds to the thick part of your skull. And you're gonna wanna torque it tight and fill the seams with glue."

"Well," someone whispered from a seat near the top of the stadium. "This could be something different."

"You better bet your freaking souls this is something different!" The announcer roared as if he'd heard the man. The speakers trembled on their posts as if Lucifer himself was behind that microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, beer vendors and ticket takers in curls..."

The announcer let out the rest of the breath with a rumbling moan that even the parking attendants felt as vibration in their bones. Then he filled his lungs again with such a ragged gasp, that the flags that rimmed the stadium were torn from their masts.

"It's a hurricane walking with a butterfly! It's a tidal forces belly rind!"

Most of us couldn't even hear right by now--half of us were crying.

"It's the next best thing to savage cheese. It's a cataclysm of the mind!"

It was now or never for that unseen announcer. Too much more of this rampage of buildup and he'd find himself overlooking a stadium of corpses. He seemed to know it was time.

"I..." The stadium trembled to its foundation.
"Give..." The blimp crashed into a cliff.
"You..." Pigeons dropped dead a mile away.
"BARRY!!!" Eardrums ruptured in shocking sprays of yellow fluid.

"Yes, Barry!" The announcer reiterated.
"I give you Barry!!!"

Someone lit a fuse and then a thousand pounds of fireworks holocausted into the sky.

When we could see again, those of us that still could see, we all beheld Barry. He stood alone at center field.

There he was.

Barry.

He didn't seem to be doing much.

"That's right!" The announcer shrieked. "It's Barry!!!"

Barry gave us all a little wave.

"Barry's here!!!"

In the stab of an angled spotlight, Barry's shadow stretched for yards. Barry slowly raised his arms and the dark giant at his feet mimicked the motion.

"That's right folks, Barry!!!" The announcer howled, sounding very near an aneurysm.
"I present Barry, and his shadow puppets of unicorns fucking!!!"

And then I'll be eternally damned if Barry didn't proceed to make shadow puppets on the shimmering grass that looked exactly like two unicorns fucking.

And I don't know if it was the blood in my ears--or the corneal damage to my eyes--or the way my organs kept on sloshing against my twisted spine--or the spider fangs of agony that pierced my shuddering brain... but with reckless mercy as my witness, it was the most beautiful thing on God's dark earth that I had ever seen.

And now I don't even know how the game ended, and I don't even know where I am. I only know I'd cut chunks from myself to watch Barry's shadow puppets of unicorns… watch them fucking again.

The End

(Note to self: Yikes. Just yikes.

Don't ever, ever let anybody read this.)

The Lonesome Rodeo

2006-10-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

Read and be redeemed, for the Lonesome Rodeo is all about redemption.
(Oh yeah, and also exposing yourself to cute single mothers, but mostly it's about redemption.)

From the archives - November 28, 2005:

The Lonesome Rodeo

Heaven would be a pretty lonesome place to hold a rodeo because horses--no matter what gentle lies are told to sobbing young girls--don't get to go to heaven.

However, short of heaven's hypothetical rodeo, the next most lonesome one would have to have been the one thrown last Sunday by Latigo Flint and his relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish... in front of the local supermarket... next to the coin-operated stallion.

There weren't any barrel races at our rodeo and no calves were roped. Not a single bull was rode and nary a steer was thrown.

No, our rodeo consisted of exactly one event: Lounging against the coin-operated stallion in front of the local supermarket, drinking heavily and exposing ourselves to every cute single mother who happened to venture too close. If she stared for eight seconds, then the "ride" counted. Point deductions were incurred if her children happened to see, 'cause even drunk, you know that's just wrong.

We were well into our rodeo when we suddenly realized we didn't have rodeo-appropriate names. Latigo Flint and Kid Relish are splendid gunslinger names to be sure, but rodeo is a whole 'nother game.

"Buck!!!" Kid bellowed. "Buck is a great rodeo name, what with the awesome double meaning and all."

He was absolutely right. I had to concur.
"Very well Kid, Buck it is--and your last name?"

He thought about it for a while, pausing only to expose himself to a cute single mother who had ventured too near.

"Latner." He finally replied. "My rodeo name is going to be Buck Latner."

I nodded my admiration. "Buck Latner is a mighty fine rodeo name Kid."
I exposed myself to a cute single mother who thought that the shopping carts were kept over this way.
"Yep, a mighty fine rodeo name indeed."

"Thanks Latty. Hey, what's your rodeo name going to be?"

I thought for a moment. "Alexis." I replied. "My rodeo name is going to be Alexis Lacebreeze."

The Kid did a double take. "Alexis Lacebreeze?!!! Your rodeo name is going to be Alexis Lacebreeze?!!!"

I tilted my head back and squinted into the noonday sun. Somewhere a faraway hawk screamed wild fury on the wind.
"It's the perfect rodeo name Kid."
We both paused to expose ourselves to a cute single mother.
"Come on Kid, think about how cast-iron-tough a rodeo man would have to be with a name like Alexis Lacebreeze."

Kid Relish stroked his chin in appreciation. "Damn good point Latigo--I mean Alexis. All right then, Buck Latner and Alexis Lacebreeze it is."

A cute single mother walked toward the newspaper stand and we promptly exposed ourselves to her.

"Was that eight seconds Alexis?"

"Pretty damn close Buck."

"What say we call it eight seconds Alexis?"

"Well then Buck, I reckon it was."

We each opened a fresh bottle and reveled in the sun-swept freedom known only by rodeo men and alcoholic nudists.

(And by happening to be both on that particular day, the glory was in fact doubly ours.)

Granger Lamperton's Last Stand

2006-10-02T00:06:00.000-07:00

The entire town turned out on Sunday to watch Granger Lamperton go insane. He'd lashed himself to a raft made of cactus and sloshed around in the town square fountain, weeping and calling her name.

"What's all this then Granger?" The marshal asked in his best authoritative voice.

"Oh, hello Marshal." Granger tried to sit up and wave at him but the cactus raft tipped over and Granger bonked his head on an iron spigot.

The town nurse stepped forward to help but shots and oaths rang out underwater and the doctor held her back. On his own, Granger righted his raft and continued paddling around the fountain, glaring at the iron spigot every time he drifted past.

"What's the matter Granger?" The Marshal asked more gently this time.

Everyone knew what the matter was. For three weeks they'd had front row seats for the tragedy that was poor Granger's love for a traveling performer named Elizabeth Night. But they all recognized the marshal's wisdom in trying to get Granger to talk about it.

"Talk to me Granger." The marshal's voice was kind. "Tell me what troubles you."

"Oh Marshal." Granger sighed. "It's nothing but love and stuff I guess." Granger kicked his raft another lap around the fountain. The water began to turn crimson.
"You see, the rats are behind my eyes again Marshal and Elizabeth has hidden the cheese."

"My goodness Granger..." The marshal struggled to find the right comforting words.

"Wrong Marshal, it isn't good--it's very, very bad." Granger beached his raft on the stone ledge at the center of the fountain. He fixed the marshal with a corpse-like stare, his eyes as empty as bottle caps.
"She came to town with the circus." Granger moaned. "And ripped out my heart with a glittering hand. She left town with the circus and forgot to give it back."

"Oh Granger." The marshal whispered, with the compassion every good marshal feels for the dying town drunk, drowning in sorrow after lashing himself to a cactus raft in the town square fountain.
"Please let me cut you from your cactus raft."

Granger gave the marshal a tiny grin that turned sad even as it began.

"You can cut me from my cactus raft when I'm stiff and cold." Granger said. "But not before unless for some reason you don't want to grow old." And the pistol in his hand was a warning.

It took Granger six hours to bleed to death. The somber townspeople wished they had brought a lunch.

He spoke just once more before he died, the marshal was the only one who heard.

"The rats are behind my eyes again Marshal and Elizabeth has hidden the cheese."

"Find your peace Granger." The marshal sobbed and cut him from his cactus raft.

The End

Animal Cruelty: Not Cool Man (even when it's really, really funny)

2006-09-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

"You are a pathetic loser. Get a fuckin life dude. Anyone who even jokes about animal cruelty is a poor excuse for a man."
-Anony Mous, Esq.

(Okay, I added the Esquire.)

Latigo Flint does not receive a great deal of hate mail, either privately via his email account, or publicly in the form of posted comments.

This is no doubt due to Latigo Flint's unholy skill with a six-gun. Men who can slap thigh and shuck iron so fast that somewhere Doc Holiday's headstone wiggles a bit in applause, tend not to have nasty things said to them very often.

Nevertheless, there comes a time when one’s deepest held beliefs are maligned so severely that there can be no recourse but to defend those beliefs with righteous fury and a well placed cuss word or two. Even at the risk of angering the quickest quickdraw the world has ever known.

Today I salute such a person for having the courage and strength of conviction to stand up for what he or she knows is right.

Several months ago I posted a short children's story titled: Nerkles The Silly Mountain Goat. It was about a typical, everyday average young mountain goat named Nerkles who liked doing typical, everyday average young mountain goat things--climbing up and down mountains for instance.

The story takes an unconscionably cruel turn when Nerkles tries to eat Al Pacino and Al Pacino beats him to death with a chain.

This ending was bittersweet. Bitter because it portrays an act of wanton cruelty to an animal. And sweet because the way it unfolded was really, really funny.

But with keen insight and an empathy the rest of us would do well to emulate, Anony Mous peers past these callow cacklings and notes that any story which holds the notion of Al Pacino beating a mountain goat to death with a chain up as one of hilarity, runs the very real risk of desensitizing and perhaps even encouraging similar acts of cruelty. And I for one am deeply ashamed to suddenly find that I seem to be so bereft of compassion that it must surely call my very humanity into question.

...

The above is obviously sarcasm, but here's the odd thing: In writing this public reply to a private, (and perhaps cowardly person) I found myself thinking back over all the horrible things that have happened to animals in my stories and actually started to feel a bit bad: Dolphin killing, owl smashing, skiing in the summertime on millions of live, white kittens. I wrote a series of westerns in which each installment opens with the protagonist fatally shooting his horse in the eye. The list just goes on and on. I once described a nervous character as "tight and twitchy, like a kitten on a paintball range." I've made light of hydrophobia too many times to count--I once compared rabies to crack and implied Old Yeller was an addict. I wrote about a pair of endangered condors named Pretty Molly and Captain Chortlebeak frying themselves on a power transformer. 75% of the time if there's an otter in my story, that otter is going to die. Hell, I even proposed an alternative energy source in which high frequency sound is used to herd whales into underwater pens where in their panic they bump into turbines and power a generator. I once advocated shoving kazoos up a mule's nose. I once wrote about keeping an adolescent tiger shark as a pet in my bathtub, and described, in some detail, its accidental death from eating a bar of soap shaped like a turtle. I'm tellin' you, it just goes on and on and on.

And so I went from feeling snarky and sly, to a genuine moment of self-doubt. Is that a monster in the mirror? Fortunately it quickly passed when I realized this person was either someone I know playing a joke, or just some humorless human scab of unfounded indignation--smart enough to read, too stupid to know what it really means.

And then I felt much better. And I wouldn't have even wasted our time with all this except that it gave me the chance to type: "tight and twitchy, like a kitten on a paintball range" again. And sometimes that's all the reason you need.

Good night.

In the Time of Pistols and Sneezes

2006-09-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

There was a way to sneeze in the Squinty-eyed American West so as not to accidentally set off a gunfight in a crowded, jittery saloon. Unfortunately it involved pinching your nose and holding it in, and that's just bad for your sinuses is what that is. So, if you got that dangerous tickle, and those intakes of air that went: "ah ah ah..." you were much better off drawing your gun and shooting the meanest man there. Then in the gunsmoke calm, you could sneeze on his corpse and order a whiskey.

Word would soon get around that you were a very dangerous man. If your last name was McGee, folks would start calling you Sneezes. Sneezes McGee; a man not to be trifled with.

***

This epic of a historical document is practically down on its knees begging for more characters... Hiccup Palmer, Farty Cunningham, and of course, Rex "Stomach Gurgles" McGraw--The Abilene Nightmare. But that would just be silly.

(Everyone knows Rex "Stomach Gurgles" McGraw was from El Paso.)

The Sturges and the Grinsingtons

2006-09-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

"Blood feud." Samuel Sturges snarled, placing the butt of a revolver against his brother's hand. "Your heritage compels you."

Young Brent Sturges lowered his head and refused to take the gun. "No brother." He said. "For too long our two families have been the rivers that fed a lake of blood. But it ends now--it ends with me. I shall kill no more Grinsingtons."

Samuel couldn't believe his ears, this was akin to treason. For four generations there had never been a Sturges boy who refused to kill a Grinsington.

"You'll take this gun!" Samuel Sturges bellowed with all the fury of an orphan.

"I won't." Brent Sturges replied with all the humanity of an orphan.

"You will!" Samuel shrieked, with all the rage of an orphan.

"I'm in love with Emily Grinsington." Brent replied, and brought his hands to his heart to prove it.

Brent couldn't have hit his brother harder if he'd had a sledgehammer to swing. Samuel could only make a confused sound of hurt and betrayal as he slowly slumped to the forest floor.

"Ehhhhghh???"

"I'm sorry brother." Brent whispered. "It just sort of happened."

"In love with a..." Samuel could hardly bring himself to form the word. "In love with a stinkin' Grinsington?!"

"Yes brother."

"A Grinsington, for sure? As in the Grinsington Grinsingtons?" Samuel double checked, in case he'd somehow heard his younger brother wrong.

"Yes Samuel, a Grinsington. Emily Grinsington to be precise." Brent took his brother's face in his hands. "Hear me Samuel. She may be the progeny of my father's murderer and his father's father's murderer before that, but I love her just the same, and from hatred our love shall deliver us."

Samuel sat up suddenly and the glint of a lie flashed in his eyes.
"Brent." He hissed. "I just remembered--Emily Grinsington is dead. Yesterday her family beat her to death with a spoon."

"NO!!!" Brent stumbled back, his legs no longer supporting his weight. "It can't be!!!"

"Yes, dear Brent, it's true." Samuel pounced on the opportunity. "Those darn Grinsingtons even kill their own. And Emily died slowly, plinked to death with a spoon."

For Brent the next ten minutes never took place, time passed without his knowledge. His anguish was terrible to behold. His screams scared birds for miles.

"So what are you gonna do about it?" Samuel whispered, wrapping an arm around his hysterical brother.

"EEEarrrrrrggghhhhh!" Brent replied. And two miles away a sparrow crapped itself.

"Yes, kill 'em all, that's what I say." Samuel grinned, returning the pistol to Brent’s hand. "Leave no Grinsington alive, wipe them from the land."

Grief-numb, Brent accepted the gun and stumbled toward the Grinsington farm. He crossed the fields where years before, he and Emily secretly played. He crept along the riverbank where he and Emily had nakedly swum. He passed the willow grove where they'd first consummated their love.

And if these memories stirred him, you wouldn't know it to look in his eyes. He walked as if his gun was a kite and the wind blew toward the Grinsingtons.

***

Okay, time out. We need to talk about happy things for a sec, things like kittens in a meadow, 'cause this story is gonna end brutally and young lovers are gonna die.

Okay, so, kittens in a meadow, kittens in a meadow: Jumpity-prance. Bouncedy-purr. Oh, we can't help but be happy when we watch kittens playing in a meadow.

Alright, back to the Blood Feud, already in progress...

***

...and then both sides gave the order to fire and a thunder of guns ripped the canyon in two. Brent and Emily stumbled as one, their limp limbs tangling as they fell. Their red-froth lips found each other and through spasms of hemorrhage, their love they did tell.

On the Sturges side of the river, Samuel stood with a rifle in his hand.
"You wretched Grinsingtons!!!" He shrieked. "You just killed my brother and his lover!"

"Oh you horrid, horrid Sturgeses." Came a cry from the Grinsington side of the river. "You just killed my daughter and her lover!"

And if either side had half a reason to stop, vengeance swallowed it whole.

The End

Hobo Closets

2006-09-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Backpacks weren't always called backpacks. This is a thing that few people know. You see, originally, backpacks were known as hobo closets. And Latigo Flint recently decided that if he has anything to say about it, they very soon shall be again.

So this afternoon found Latigo Flint leaning against a chain link fence outside the local high school, trying to immersively market the term: "hobo closet" to the youth of America.

"I reckon that's mighty fine hobo closet you got there." I drawled in a low but not unfriendly voice.

"Excuse me, what did you say?!" The young lady was genuinely perplexed.

"Your hobo closet." I repeated with a nod. "I reckon it's mighty fine. Or rad as the kids might say these days."

She must have had somewhere to quite urgently be.

Two slouchy young men passed by, tiny white headphones rammed in their ears.
"Well I'll be horsewhipped." I exclaimed. "They're building hobo closets with cord ports now?"

The slouchy boys didn't hear me over the din of their thumpedy beats. I flicked the earpiece from the ear of the one closest to me.

"Hey, what the fuck man?!!!"

"Your hobo closet young sir--it seems to have a cord port built in to the fabric, allowing you to secure your digital music player and yet still listen to it in transit. Isn't that just a most splendid thing?"

He stared up at me with dull eyes. He seemed wholly unable to form an opinion on whether or not it was a most splendid thing. Then he tried to knife me. I did not permit him to knife me. Instead, I sidestepped and pulled his hobo closet up and around his head, immobilizing his scrawny arms like bird wings in a freeze frame.

"No knifing your elders." I hissed. "That's a bad slouchy boy."

He seemed unrepentant and I was sorely tempted to beat him to death with his own hobo closet. But that sort of thing is frowned upon and after a while I let him go.

Next it was time for a smoke break. I needed to reflect and reevaluate my strategy for the reintroduction of "hobo closets" as a common term for backpacks. (I walked two blocks before lighting up because in California they execute you for smoking upwind of a school.)

On my break I saw a hobo. He didn't have a closet.

Back at the school I redoubled my efforts. I strolled around the commons, complementing nerds on their hobo closets. I sprinted up to popular kids and asked them where they purchased their hobo closets. I even went so far as to round up several jocks, and like Anne Sullivan to Helen Keller, placed their fingers on my lips as I spoke the words, "hobo closet" while simultaneously bashing them in the face with their own backpacks.

In the end, the authorities ambushed me with beanbag projectiles and tear gas. I fell screaming "hobo closet" over and over as I writhed. And according to the court appointed attorney, that's the rebar in my insanity plea.

Anyway, 'yall be sure to pass it on--backpacks are hobo closets; hobo closet means a backpack.

Well, good night for now. Or as Helen Keller would say, ...

The Prettiest Gun in the West

2006-09-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

The Prettiest Gun in the West

(a very short novel by Latigo Flint)

Chapter One - Tassels and Wildflowers

He had tassels on his saddlebags and wildflowers in his hatband. Those were the first two things the townspeople noticed about the man who rode out of the desert that day.

He had pert, well-formed breasts and actually wasn't a he at all. That was the next thing the townspeople noticed.

Chapter Two - Reyna

Reyna walked her horse to the hitching post but didn't tie him up. She simply kissed his mane as she slid from the saddle and told him to wait for her.

Horses can't talk but this one's eyes were definitely saying: "Snort, snort silly Reyna, I'd die at the claws of cougars for you." And then he looked around to see if any were near so that he might prove it to her.

It probably only took Reyna ten seconds to cross the street and ascend the steps of the saloon, but the world could have ended right after, and every man on the street that day would have considered it an even trade.

Her dress moved with her as she walked, like a squid in open water--tight and lithe and graceful, and diving so deep that your eyeballs explode. Her swept-back hair was so dark and alive that you'd beg on your knees for the chance just to sniff it, even if your buddies were watching and laughing. She is the reason the moon can't turn around. Her legs bordered on the unholy.

Inside the saloon, Reyna asked for a whiskey and received twelve marriage proposals instead. Insomuch as an unabashed erection and a lunge for the top of a skirt can be considered a marriage proposal.

But they didn't know who she was, and they didn't know the places she'd been, and they didn't know that groping at her would be the last thing they'd ever grope for again. (Unless of course you count blood-slick sawdust, squeezed then released by a final spasm of hands.)

Reyna reloaded in a shroud of gun smoke, her dark eyes belying the mirth her lips did not reveal. Around the room, blind fear caused a great many erections to diminish. Of course not those of the corpses, those remained as they were. Rigamortis makes angels giggle sometimes.

Reyna asked again for a whiskey and this time the barkeep broke his arm in his haste to pour it for her. She thanked him sweetly and drained it, and then the barkeep realized he'd probably love her forever and forgot all about the pain in his arm.

Chapter Three - A Horse for Every Cougar

The batwing doors eased open and a long, horse-ish snout poked through.
"Are you okay?" He asked Reyna with a whinny.
"I'm fine Horse." Reyna replied.
"I thought I heard cougars." He snorted.
"Nope, just men and all the impolite ones are dead."
Horse scanned the room suspiciously.
"There! In front of the tinkly tonk machine--surely that's a cougar!"
Reyna glanced in the direction her horse was staring.
"No Horse," she corrected. "That's just the piano player."
"Hmm." Horse mulled this over for a moment, flicking his ears and squinting his eyes. "Well perhaps I should trample him just to be sure."
Reyna's horse galloped across the room with murder in his eyes.

Reyna laughed, light and easy, like a porch awning on a breezy day. "No, that won't be necessary Horse." She gave the piano player a reassuring look. "He thinks you're a cougar, you see?"

The piano player didn't see, and promptly passed out on his keys.

"That's a bad horse." Reyna exclaimed. "Frightening innocent piano players." Reyna sat on the bench beside the musician and started gently patting his face and brushing the matted hair from his eyes. And then eighteen men pretended to pass out in the hope of similar treatment.

And in all the commotion, no one noticed that in a dark corner of the saloon, shotguns were slowly being leveled at Reyna.

Chapter Four - Scattershot Homicide

Horse sensed something was wrong--Reyna was in danger. He took two steps in front of her just as the roar of scattershot homicide split the saloon in two.

Horse died furious, snorting and cursing those who would do Reyna harm with his very last, snorty breath. Reyna drew her guns with wraith-like speed and absolutely ruined the men who tried to ambush her.

Epilogue

Reyna walked out of town alone, saving her tears for the desert. Far away in a sun-scorched ‘scape, in the shadow of limestone spires, she wept like a child for a horse named Horse and wondered if she'd ever know friendship again. Reyna stared off at the horizon line as a hawk screamed in the distance and stuff. The wind blew her hair across her pretty face and then all things ended like sad movies end.

The End

The Grin in the Dark

2006-09-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

Nearly a year ago, Latigo Flint discovered which muscle to flex to turn the white part of your eyes completely black. It was something of a breakthrough in muscle control and savagery. It probably forever haunts anyone who has the misfortune to witness it.

From the archives - October 21, 2005

The Grin in the Dark

Success!!! Latigo Flint has finally located the tiny muscle that when properly flexed, turns the white part of your eye completely black.

The effect is demonic and cruel. I call it The Grin in the Dark. I use it on people who annoy me. What I do is stare at the ground, slouching a bit with dangling arms and all my weight on one leg--then slowly raise my head.

"Baby," I say in a low, cold voice. "Don't you know I'm the grin in the dark?"

Then I turn the white part of my eyes completely black and repeat it with a snarl:
"I'm the grin in the dark!"

It tends to turn people numb with fear and cause an immediate loss of motor function. I don't ever use The Grin in the Dark on puppies or children, no matter how much they deserve it. I'm no monster, just an old time pistolero born many years too late. A blazing-handed gunslinger hopelessly out of time.

Today I visited a local chain restaurant for a burrito and a beer. My order number was 54. It was printed in red ink across the bottom of my receipt. I stood there next to the salsa garden for a full fifteen minutes, watching order numbers 55 through 77 happily receive their food. Finally I could stand it no longer and stalked toward the counter. I fixed the girl behind the microphone with a piercing stare.
"Baby," I said in a low cold voice. "Don't you know I'm the grin in the dark?"

Then I turned my scleras completely black and repeated it with a snarl. "I'm the grin in the dark!"

The color drained from her face. She crossed herself and took a stumbling step back, colliding with a co-worker, causing him to drop the tray. A burrito landed with a splattery thump on the checkered floor. The three of us stared at it for a moment. I allowed the outer part of my eyes to turn back to white.
"Dang, that was order number fifty-four, wasn't it?"

The girl behind the counter looked at me then at the burrito then to her co-worker. The co-worker looked at her then at the splattered burrito then to the order slip.
"Fifty-four." He told the girl. The girl looked back at me.
"Yes sir, it's fifty-four. We'll re-make it for you right away, just please don't do that thing again."

"You mean The Grin in the Dark?" I asked.

"The horrible all-black eye thing." She replied.

"Yeah," I said nodding. "The Grin in the Dark."

"Whatever, just please don't do it anymore."

I sighed and looked at my splattered burrito. "Scoop it up and hand it here."

"Are you sure sir? It's been on the floor!"

"Do you want more Grin in the Dark, or do I get my burrito now?"

In one swift motion she shot to the floor, scooped the burrito onto the plate and stretched up her arm to hand it to me. "Thank you sir, enjoy your meal."

I accepted it with a curt nod and strode to a far corner table where I proceeded to devour it with surly gusto between mumbled oaths.

"Hey Burrito," I said when it was half-gone. "Do you know I'm the grin in the dark?" The burrito didn't respond. "Well I am." I said and proved it.

The End

Gold Dust Dreams (The Tale of Purvis Roundelby)

2006-09-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

Purvis Roundelby came West for gold and found very little--which rather disappointed him. He'd been told that the creeks were silly with nuggets out there, and that the only real problem was not hurting your back, toting it all to the bank.

"Sonny, may Beelzebub suck my eyes from my skull with a straw if I'm lying." The wizened old man had rasped to Purvis, in the lobby of a Boston hotel. "I've seen eagles literally crap nuggets of pure gold from the accumulation of gold dust on the scales of all the fish they eat."

The old man leaned forward and cupped Purvis' testicles. "That big, young feller, nuggets as big as your balls, sometimes bigger."

Purvis cleared his throat and desperately tried to think of how he was going to get the old man to stop cupping his balls without hurting his feelings or worse.

"Sounds pretty dang good, don't it young buck?--the wind in your hair, the creek at your feet and eagles flying around everywhere, crapping out nuggets of gold?"

And it did sound pretty good to Purvis, despite the unwelcome size comparison that had to involve his testicles, pretty dang good indeed. And right then and there he decided to go.

"Thank you old timer." Purvis said, easing himself out of his chair and gently backing his balls away from the gnarled, liver-spot hand. "It's West for me then and West I shall go."

"You're welcome Boyo. Shucks in a haller, I only wish I could too." The old man sighed. "But I'm just too damn old by a year or twelve."
A statement he proved moments later with a mild to moderate stroke--his third one that morning. He walked it off though and told Purvis not to worry. (Old timers were built pretty sturdy in those days.)

"Good travels young prince." The old timer called out with a grin as Purvis strode purposefully for the door. "Here's to gold dust dreams and friendly camp women who love you then rob you blind." (The last part was beneath his breath.)

***

As he huddled in rags on a frozen street, watching dogs kill each other for a mossy bacon rind, Purvis Roundelby couldn't help but think back to that sunny day in Boston, half a year and a continent away. And hope that somewhere, somehow, Beelzebub was using a straw to suck that old timer's eyes sideways out of his skull.

"Gold dust dreams indeed." Purvis snorted to no one in particular. "More like dung dust dreams." This struck him as rather funny for reasons probably known only to him, and he screeched his mirth to the sky for a while until something in his chest starting rattling around and his scabs began to ooze again.

But then later that night an eagle screamed, somewhere up the canyon. And as far-gone as he was, Purvis still heard that cry, and with whimpers of desperation and hope, he started frantically crawling toward it, cupping his balls in his hand.

The End

A Monster Named Gripsnarl

2006-09-13T01:12:00.000-07:00

"I'm not going to lie for you anymore Gripsnarl! You wanta keep eating streetwalkers?—fine! But by golly, you find somewhere else to dump the skulls, or find another attic to live in!"

Gripsnarl sensed the Boy was angry with him and he clicked his claws apologetically. Gripsnarl stood nearly seven feet tall, with rows of razor teeth in a snout both wolfish and alien. He wasn't afraid of too many things, but having Boy angry with him happened to be one of them--for Boy's anger tended to broadside Gripsnarl with savage waves of dread and the agony of abandonment.

"Please don't be angry Boy." Gripsnarl rumbled in a voice so horrific that it would probably cause people like you and me to instantly shit all over each other.
"I-I didn't know you'd be home so soon." Gripsnarl stammered. "I was gonna clean up the skulls of all these streetwalkers. Honest I was."
Black tears began to well in the corners of his yellow eyes.

Boy shook his head. "Oh Gripsnarl," He lamented. "That's what you said yesterday." The Boy's eyes took on the shifty cast of one who knows a relationship probably won't last.
"What am I gonna do with you Gripsnarl?"

***

There used to be lots of Gripsnarl's kind, back in the days forgotten. They stalked the Earth, pouncing on things, proud as cocks in a barnyard. (That’s roosters by the way, you perv.) They had no natural foes except for maybe Unicorns, and even then only if in a sizeable herd.

But that was then, and now only Gripsnarl remains--the last real monster of his kind in this digital age of reason. And he has no friends except for maybe Boy. And now even that relationship is strained due to Gripsnarl's unbreakable habit of leaving the skulls of streetwalkers strewn everywhere he goes.

***

"Do you remember when we met Boy?" Gripsnarl rasped, willing Boy to remember the good times.

Boy sighed and smiled, reminiscing despite himself.
"Yeah Gripsnarl, yeah I guess I do. It was a summer night, impossibly hot, and my folks took me out for ice cream."

Gripsnarl purred deep in his furry chest as Boy continued talking. For most people that "purr" would have terrified, probably beyond all horrors they've ever known. But Boy didn't even notice, he'd lived with Gripsnarl much too long to be unsettled by a gripsnarly purr.

"Yeah, I think I remember that night." Gripsnarl curled up at the foot of Boy's bed and batted the lashes of his slitted eyes, imploring him to continue.

Boy leaned back on his bed, resting his head on both arms.
"Well, as I recall, heat lightning was flashing out on the plains but I only had eyes for that glowing sign--the one that spelled out 'Ice Cream' with flickering arcs of neon."

"Ice cream." Gripsnarl acknowledged, nodding his shaggy head. "It's so yummy. Not as good as a streetwalker's spine, but quite tasty all the same."

"Yeah, anyway," Boy continued, "I think I was next in line and already drooling over how good that creamy chocolate was gonna taste when suddenly you were there, lunging out of the night, ripping the limbs off streetwalkers and dipping their torsos in fire."

"That's like ice cream to a monster." Gripsnarl reminded.

"I know that." Boy replied dismissively. "Come on, how long have I known you now?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." Gripsnarl lowered his head again and covered his stomach rumbles with coughs.
"Then what happened?" He prompted, just happy to be near Boy.

"Oh, you know, then we met and stuff." Boy yawned. It was getting late and he had school the next day. "And then I guess we became friends."

"That's right, I remember now. It's a good story." Gripsnarl's heart swelled and he longed to brush Boy's cheek with the back of his curvy-clawed paw. But he decided not to push it after so recently angering Boy.

"Goodnight Boy." Gripsnarl snarled as he stood and stalked towards the attic.

Boy plumped his pillow and arranged his sheets for bed.
"Goodnight Gripsnarl." Boy said through a yawn as he reached up and switched off the light.

And then Boy slept and Gripsnarl kept watch from the attic's slanted window. And he crouched there with love in his heart and he didn't let anything hurt his friend. And he vowed to be a better monster for Boy and he only ate three streetwalkers that night.

The End

The Things That Haunt Me

2006-09-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

"Being haunted by things makes you awesome and also sexy."

These words are as true today as they were nearly a year ago.

Being haunted by things and being awesome and also sexy... it's a trail we all can choose to walk--I just chose to walk it longer.

From the archives - October 12, 2005:

Haunted

Being haunted by things makes you awesome and also sexy. This is a steady truth. One which Latigo Flint has come to know, perhaps at a cost that can never be repaid.

Norman Maclean was haunted by waters. See, see?! That's awesome and it's also sexy. Well guess what?--Latigo Flint is haunted by basil!!!

Yeeeeah! Equally sexy ain't it?--to be haunted by basil.

Latigo Flint has decided to compile a comprehensive list of all the things that haunt him so that when he's conversing with goth chicks, college girls and the whitewater rafting guides in bikini tops and cutoff jeans, it won't matter where the conversation goes, he shall always be able to reference something he is haunted by.

So for starters--in addition to being haunted by basil, I am also haunted by soda machines that steal dollars, hangnails and kelp. As well, I am haunted by bagpipes, marigolds, torn dust jackets and eels that hide in holes in the reef.

And yogurt! I'm haunted by yogurt!

Furthermore, I find myself quite severely haunted by stucco, egrets and blood-producing sneezes.

But mostly I'm haunted by you.

In summation, you haunt me.

(Once they discover how haunted he is, the goth chicks, college girls and whitewater rafting guides in bikini tops and cutoff jeans will immediately attempt to sleep with Latigo Flint. Of this there can be little doubt.)

Football Pencils

2006-09-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Hello. This is the advanced computer program that has been programmed to select a story to display when Latigo Flint drinks himself into a corner.

This story is about football (kinda) because advanced computer programs always like to be topical.

From the archives - July 6, 2005:

Football Pencils

That young man with sad eyes and a slightly misshapen head was at Starbucks today. Spread out on the table he had a set of NFL pencils, a TrapperKeeper notebook and a quarter.

Latigo Flint sees him there almost every day. Latigo Flint had yet to find a reason to talk to him. Latigo Flint must have been feeling chatty today.

"Hey guy. Whatcha doing there?"

The young man wouldn't look me in the eye. "You'll think it's stupid dumb."

"Please don't presume to know what I think."

He lifted his head a bit, managing to stare at my chest. He exhaled slowly before answering.
"I'm simulating the entire upcoming professional football season with these team pencils and a quarter."

I pulled up a chair. "See guy." I said, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. "I actually don't think that's stupid or dumb. Tell me, how do you factor in home-field advantage?"

The young man smiled shyly. "The home team is always tails." He replied. "And when the quarter is in the air I hope for and whisper 'tails tails tails' to help."

I nodded my appreciation. "That's good fella. That's real dern good if you ask me."

I stood to leave. "My name's Latigo Flint. I'm the quickest quickdraw the world has ever known. And if I was gonna root for an NFL team I reckon it would have to be the Cowboys, Chiefs, 49ers, Broncos or Colts, 'cause those team names are Old West iconic."

The young man disappeared behind his TrapperKeeper. Papers shuffled.
"The next game on the schedule is Broncos and Raiders."

"Which is the home team?" I asked.

"This game is in Denver." He replied.

"Well tails tails tails then."

He scowled. "Don't do that! I say the 'tails tails tails'! There's no such thing as two home crowds; it simply isn't possible. A stadium on top of a stadium?! Why, everyone in the bottom stadium would be crushed. Actually you may have just ruined the entire season and I may have to start all over now. I hope you get cancer."

I backed away. "O-kay guy. Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet you. I'm sorry you have to start the season over. I'm going to order my beverage now and then get some lunch--probably something high in antioxidants."

And that's exactly what I did.

The Boy Who Wasn't Afraid to Die

2006-09-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

He grinned at the sun, the strange boy who wasn't afraid to die, and he giggled great big frothy bubbles.

Stick a straw in a glass of red milk and blow hard into it, again and again, until crimson foam surges above the rim like surf and murder in a stormy cove.

That's pretty much what his mouth looked like as he lay there in the street, giggling out the evidence of hemorrhage.

And Sara Templeton, the girl who should have been my bride but who was only weeks away from leaving me for a riverboat gambler named Quinton Rodriguez III, tore her gaze from the dying boy and buried her face in my chest. Unaware, as of yet, that she wouldn't always love me I held her and tenderly stroked her hair and pretended not to mind as she snuffled grief and mucus all over the front of my favorite shirt.

A crowd assembled, like crowds do, and everyone decided they had important things to say. They stared at the dying boy and started screaming things like:
"My god, we must do something!" And, "How did it happen?! Who saw?!" And, "What's that thing we're supposed to try?!" And, "Heimlich maneuver?" And, "No you fool, that's for choking!"

One guy in a dirty baseball cap claimed he knew how to make a defibrillator out of a cell phone battery and the wire rims from brassiere. And nine women were topless and several people were without their phones before someone noticed that the guy had his hand down his pants and wasn't really focusing all that much on the construction of a makeshift defibrillator.

And through it all, the boy continued to die and his giggles didn't subside.

And I asked the boy why he wasn't afraid. And he writhed and he bled and his lips turned pale, and he replied with his eyes that his love had left him for another and so how could anything frighten him now.

And then the boy grinned and died and I told Sara not to look. And I held her with both arms and thanked every god I could remember that she was by my side.

But then, of course, several weeks later she left me for a riverboat gambler named Quinton Rodriguez III. And after that, the things that should have horrified began not to bother me much at all.

***

(Dark Agony. Despair and Stuff. A Shambling, Lurching Sorrow That Just Keeps Getting Worse and Never, Ever Recedes...

What are those "tag" things that good weblog writers put on the bottom of their posts so that the Internet knows what kind of story it is?

And is: "A Shambling, Lurching Sorrow That Just Keeps Getting Worse and Never, Ever Recedes" actually a category? 'Cause if it isn’t it should be.)

Bullets Met in Border Towns

2006-09-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

Latigo Flint had to grow up fast and he had to grow up mean. (The way the very toughest men are made.)

Not much is known about Latigo Flint's childhood--what little of it there was. Legend has it, an old Gypsy was present at Latigo Flint's birth and he took one look at Latigo Flint and promptly prophesied he'd meet his bullet in a border town somewhere east of Nogales, Arizona.

They were just east of Nogales at the time.

That old Gypsy must have been sorely tempted to shoot the infant Latigo Flint and solemnly declare:
"And so it has come to pass--the prophecy fulfilled."

But of course he didn't do such a ghastly thing. Or he tried to but then the spirit of a wolf suddenly possessed the infant Latigo Flint and the terrified Gypsy ran screaming into the night.

There are differing accounts.

On one point, however, history is quite clear: At the age of six, Latigo Flint was in fact ambushed by renegades in a border town somewhere east of Nogales--shot four times and left in the street to die.

And right about then is when Latigo Flint had to grow up. And grow up he did--fast and mean as a matter of fact.

The story goes that young Latigo Flint strapped on pistols that hung practically to his ankles, and tracked those renegades through the badlands for months before finally catching up in the cruelest stretch--a craggy, twisted, sun-ravaged wasteland known as The Bleachbone Bluffs.

According to legend, young Latigo Flint faced them down and taunted them viciously. Apparently even going so far as to gesture at the renegades' eyes and declare that they had "poop-eyes"... that all their eyes were made of poop.

At which point, it's said, one of the renegades went for his gun--followed shortly thereafter by a series of ragged screams in gun smoke gloom as splattery evidence of death dripped like tears down canyon walls.

And then in the silence previously interrupted only by moans, came the rattle of hoof on stone, and there on the bluff stood a donkey named Vengeance. And he came to young Latigo Flint--that six-year-old killer-of-men--and he nuzzled Latigo Flint's baby face with his velvety nose. And then they rode off into the sunset again. Just a boy and his donkey named Vengeance.

The End

***

This is a very special story. Mostly because it's about me... but partially because it has a donkey named Vengeance in it.

Anyway, it was a difficult story to name. So many titles would have worked. It could have, and perhaps should have been called:
A Donkey Named Vengeance

But then of course, The Legend of Latigo Flint isn't bad either; likewise The Bleachbone Bluffs.

In the end I decided to call it Bullets Met in Border Towns--for reasons I no longer recall.

(Hey, could have been worse... I almost named it: Poop-Eyes--The Bad Guys' Eyes Were Made of Poop.

And honestly now, who would ever want to read something like that?!)

Locker Room Speeches Interrupted by Spiders

2006-09-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

"Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock, but I'll know about it; and I'll be happy."

***

Locker room speeches are an American institution. We like to believe anything's possible with enough passion and fury and purpose.

The halftime score doesn't matter. A good speech can turn everything around.

And this is true. It can't be denied. (Countless movies prove it.)

Here's what the public doesn't know though--more times than not, in the other locker room an equally compelling speech was in progress. But then a spider crawled on Coach, and everything was lost.

'Cause let's face it:
"Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell 'em to go out there with all they got and... Eeek!!! Get it off me boys! God help me get it off!!!"

Just doesn't seem to inspire victory for some reason.

***

I have loved you, Starbucks Barista, with the reckless purity of a puppy exploring a yard. And yes, I do sometimes steal panties from your employee locker and sniff them at night in the parking lot. But never in fury or depravity--only for love and all its senses. And know this now, lovely Starbucks Barista, if nothing else in this crazy world can ever be proved to be true, this much shall be, for as sure I stand before you now... Eeek!!! Get it off me boys! God help me get it off!!!

(Crap. A spider crawled on me. And right in the middle of a perfect speech--the one that would have won her heart.

Goddamn spiders. Always interrupting speeches.)

Westward the Trail of Broken Dreams

2006-08-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

Dreams tended to shatter in the Savage American West. That's just the way things went down. It was as if the prairie was an anvil and the sky, a smithy's hammer.

Cholera, renegades, jackknifed covered wagons--there were just so many ways to die.

One spring Jack and Emily Billingsly traveled from Boston, dreaming of freedom and crops and land. Then one night the badgers came and Jack thought he could threaten them away.
"Hey badgers!" Jack screamed, brandishing an axe handle. "Stop chewing on my young bride or else."

Turned out "or else" was Jack's brutal death and just like that, the badgers' meal doubled.

But at the claws of badgers wasn't the only way to die. Heavens no. Sometimes the influenza came ‘round, and giggling Indians recommended rattlesnake venom as a way to reduce the fever.

Never trust a giggling Indian. As General Custer was fond of saying.

But then later Custer's ghost had its misguided revenge on the people of the nations. Smallpox broke their hearts. Whiskey broke their dreams.

Lonely Mountain Men named all the trees for hundreds of miles in every direction. They got one chance, maybe two at most, to find love over the course of their entire tangle-bearded lives. But every chance was ruined by body odor and a poor first impression.

Yes, all trails led west. But the signs along those trails were dreams--and all the posts were broken.

…

Oh, and I haven't even told you about the monsters yet.

Here's the legible text from a scrap from a bloodstained journal, found next to the ashes of an ancient campfire on edge of a western ravine. It reads:
"…and so then it’s likely that I love you, and probably always have. But there are monsters in the night here. And I am so afraid.”

Broken hearts and savagery. It’s a wonder we reached the Pacific at all. It’s a wonder the west was won.

And I’m Latigo Flint. And I still hear monsters in the night.

(This, by the way, is a very moving article. It's affecting. It's stirring. It's somber and it's savage. I'm pretty sure the soundtrack is a single violin. But I could be wrong--it might be a bugle and the sound of wind in the trees. Provided, of course, that the bugle is played with appropriate strains of sorrow.)

A Gun Named Thornbrow Ruinface

2006-08-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-Eyed American West, it wasn't absolutely critical to have a fierce name for your gun--but it certainly didn't hurt.

People think Billy the Kid was fast. And yeah, he was, no doubt about that--but it's something of an ace-in-the-hole if people know your gun is named: Suffer the Hemorrhage.

'Cause I mean, come on, who really wants to face a man who has a pistol named Suffer the Hemorrhage?

Wyatt Earp called his gun: Jimmy Bleeds. It really messed with people's minds. (Especially if they were named Jimmy.) But even if they weren't, they were still too uneasy to draw all that well.
"Who was Jimmy?" That thought swirled in the back of their mind.
"Was he faster than me? Crap, he probably was. And look what happened to him."

But when Doc Holliday named his pistol: Thornbrow Ruinface--the bar was set impossibly high. It's cruel. It's savage. It's subtly, ominously biblical. It's the name of a gun you'd wet yourself to avoid.

...

You don't believe Latigo Flint. You think he made up the fact that Doc Holliday had a gun named Thornbrow Ruinface. That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. It's the 21st century after all--an age of enlightenment, an age of joy. And you don't have to worry about finding yourself standing alone in a dusty street, opposite a man with a gun named Thornbrow Ruinface.

(Unless of course you come to California and look up Latigo Flint.)

(Grrr!)

In the Purple Gloaming

2006-08-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Because we're all so literate and mysterious and also sexy here, the mysterious and sexy word tonight is Gloaming.

Gloaming is a noun that means evening dusk, twilight. Gloaming comes from Old English, glom. (Which I believe is an acronym for Gals Love Ominous Men.) And sure enough, girls are all but guaranteed to find you literate and mysterious and also sexy if you use the word "gloaming" well.

"And in the gloaming a figure approaches."

Would be the perfect thing to say if you're walking back to the dorms with cute college girls and you see your roommate, Lloyd, cutting across the quad to join you.

When the girls hear how well you've used "gloaming" they're going to fall for you, hard, and barely notice Lloyd when he trots up with a wave and a smile for everyone--even if he's hunky and richer than you.

Nay, the only thing that cock-block Lloyd can do is attempt to use "gloaming" better than you.

Which, knowing Lloyd, he's likely to try. Probably something like:
"Ahh. Friends well met in the gloaming. Hello, I'm Lloyd; don't believe I caught your names."

Lloyd's a sneaky bastard.

You must immediately regain the upper hand with something like:
"Shh Lloyd, we're harkening the calls of night birds from out in the gloaming mist."

To which he'll probably reply:
"Pardon, I didn't know, I've been indoors since noon, but the purple gloaming called to me and I just had to take a stroll."

Lloyd's a dick. But damn if he isn't really good too. Why didn't you think of "purple gloaming"?! Hmm?! Oh well, that's fine--it's just time to stab Lloyd in the throat with the ball point end of a ballpoint pen now.

Murder obscurer in gloaming.

Why are the girls running away? Probably just being coy. Merrily chase them down. Scream "gloaming" a lot as you do.

(When some whiny Emo band hits it big with an album titled: Murder Obscurer in Gloaming, you be sure to call bullshit and remind everyone they stole the line from me!)

A Consequence of Cruelty

2006-08-25T03:06:00.000-07:00

It is a well-known fact that Latigo Flint is the quickest quickdraw that ever lived--a blazing handed gunslinger born hopelessly out of time. You have to look pretty hard to find someone who doesn't know that Latigo Flint can draw his guns so fast that somewhere Doc Holliday's tombstone wiggles a bit in applause. All of this is common knowledge.

What is less clear is why. Why now, a hundred and fifty years after such prodigious skill had its place, would the universes conspire to toss such a man into this wretched time, this digital age of neon and lawyers?

Cruelty. That's the only logical explanation. Pure, unfiltered cruelty--on the part of the universes that is.

And so then I guess I'm a consequence... a Consequence of Cruelty.

And if you think for a second that being a Consequence of Cruelty isn't just about as mysterious and dangerous and also sexy as it gets--well then, you've got a lot to learn about being mysterious and dangerous and also sexy.

Oftentimes the pretty girls at the nightclub will be all: "Ho-hum, why can't I meet an interesting man?"

And then I'll walk in, all squinty-eyed and menacing, and I won't talk to anyone until after I've received my drink. And if there are men there who need to be punched, I'm the one who punches them.

And then all the pretty girls turn to their pretty girlfriends and whisper, "Who's that?" And their pretty girlfriends reply, "Well-spotted my dear--that's Latigo Flint. He's a Consequence of Cruelty you know."

And then the pretty girls moisten their lips and touch their hair and hope I look their way, because consequences of cruelty have always been mysterious and dangerous and also sexy.

And then there's more to the story of course, but it doesn't really matter because it's gonna end like always: with me on cliff, screaming fury to the heavens, on my knees in the pouring rain.

And damn if that isn't mysterious and dangerous and also sexy.

The Lake That Unicorns Could Not Swim

2006-08-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

In October of last year Latigo Flint probably found The Lake That Unicorns Could Not Swim. The discovery received shockingly little media coverage, which fairly sings of a conspiracy of silence.

From the archives - October 30, 2005:

The Lake That Unicorns Could Not Swim

Latigo Flint has probably just made a significant paleontological discovery. This is rather exciting for a number of reasons--not the least of which is the fact that pretty girls tend to be quite keen to sleep with dashing men who make significant paleontological discoveries. No one is altogether certain why, but it is nonetheless a steady truth.

Anyway, this weekend Latigo Flint probably found The Lake That Unicorns Could Not Swim. How does Latigo Flint know? Well, it just sort of gives off that vibe. It's the sort of lake where if you stare at it long enough, you come to know that Unicorns probably died here, and in horrifying numbers.

For those of you unaware--the Unicorns that roamed our planet thousands of years ago loved doing three things above all else:
1) Standing in mountain meadows, caressing wildflowers with their velvet noses and blinking beautifully at stars.
2) Gently running their horns through waterfalls.
3) Swimming across lakes.

Of these, they liked the third the best because when they reached the far side, they got to jump out, climb a nearby rock and shake water droplets from their silken manes. This is how rainbows were invented, by the way.

But one lake held a monster--and when the Unicorns came to swim across it, as was their joy, the monster tore their throats out.

And it is this lake that Latigo Flint is quite certain he has finally found. Latigo Flint stood on the shore and called out over the water.
"Hey Monster!" Latigo Flint bellowed. "How many Unicorns have you killed through the eons you wretched fiend?"

The monster did not reply. The number was so high as to shame even a monster.

This was pretty damning, but Latigo Flint needed to definitively prove that it was in fact the lake that Unicorns could not swim. So in the name of sound scientific procedure, Latigo Flint stripped down to his buckskin briefs and swam across the lake.

FACT:
The monster in the lake did not tear Latigo Flint's throat out.

FACT:
Latigo Flint is not a Unicorn.

Latigo Flint will promptly submit his paper to all the pertinent scientific journals now.

The Daybreaker

2006-08-22T02:54:00.000-07:00

"If I were a little pioneer girl," Jake whispered to himself with a sigh. "I'd make friends with all the baby antelope and then never be lonely again."

And that was an unusually wistful thing to say, especially for a Daybreaker--which is a street term that means a Contract Killer who won't ever refuse a contract, no matter how helpless or pure the mark.

(And if you've never heard it used that way, it only proves that you aren't really "street".)

"What did you just say, Daybreaker?!" The client asked, glaring at Jake over the manila folder.
"Nothing." Jake replied softly, looking down at the folder again.
"Good. Keep it that way." The client smacked a greasy thumb into the face of the nun in the photo. "Sister Grace and the orphans saw Boss Guido shoplift a candy bar, in direct violation of his parole. Break her day, Daybreaker, and all the orphans too."

A single tear ran down Jake's cheek and splatted on the photo. The client lurched as if shot, then grabbed Jake's collar and jerked him close.

"Why Daybreaker, you've just gone all mushy and moral."

"No I haven't." Jake protested. And fired indiscriminately into the crowd below to prove it.

Screams drifted up from the busy street. The client peered over the side of bridge, eyebrows raised in appreciation. When he spoke again, his voice was almost kind.
"You've been dreaming about being a little pioneer girl again, haven't you Daybreaker?"

Jake lowered his head, ashamed.
"Yes." He replied with a whisper and moan.

"Will it affect your work?"

"No, of course not."

"So you'll take the job then?"

"Yes." Jake took the folder and tucked it in his satchel. "I'm the Daybreaker. It's what I do."

End of Scene

(Very noir! Very, very deliciously noir! I see Rob Schneider as The Daybreaker. It'll be his Oscar role.)

Dying Alone (In the Arms of my Cellmate)

2006-08-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

Some people believe we have only seven chances to find someone and not die alone. And if that's true then I'm so afraid I just wasted my seventh when I shot the girl who sorts the mail.

Her name was Sara. Her hair was long and brown. She worked in the basement of my building and her job was to sort the mail. She sang as she worked; sang as she sorted the mail. She put the mail into bins according to company and floor, and she never made a mistake.

I think Sara loved me. I would go to her sorting room every day to pick up the mail for my floor, and she'd smile as she handed the bin and whisper that she loved me. But I pretended I didn't hear. I was a raging fool you see.

Then one day, not long ago, I was having a bad day and when she smiled at me I shot her.

Fortunately the wound wasn't fatal, but it was certainly more than sorry could fix. I immediately fell in love with her when I saw how cute she was angry. But it was too late and she pressed charges with all the indignant fury of a woman rejected then shot.

When the judge tattooed "you'll die alone" across my wicked heart with his gavel, Sara laughed and clapped her hands to the rhythm of justice served.

If a power-lifting cellmate who calls himself "Uncle Savagefist" is the answer to the question: "Who is ever going to love me now?" Then that's a question you'll wish you hadn't asked, and everything is most decidedly not going to be all right.

And so everything is most decidedly not going to be all right. Goodnight Sara, wherever you are. Goodnight fury. Goodnight love. Goodnight Uncle Savagefist.

True Western Truth #127

2006-08-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

In the Brutal American Old West there were really only four ways to die alone out in the snow if your horse broke his leg on a mountain pass and then a early winter storm blew in:

1) With a smiley face next to your frozen corpse, sketched in snow with your own urine.

2) With a frowny face next to your frozen corpse, sketched in snow with your own urine.

3) With a single word next to your frozen corpse, scrawled in snow with your own urine.

4) Nothing at all sketched or scrawled in snow next to your frozen corpse.

They remembered you fondest as the darkly humorous old coot you were if you opted for #1. They told better stories about your life if you opted for #3, as long as it was something good, like: "drat" or "flapjacks" or "ouch" or "Lucy". If you went with #4 you were forgotten by Christmas.

("What a fuckin' whiner--like the rest of us don't have troubles too." Was about all you could expect if you chose #2.)

Each Night (Sir Eduardo the Magnificent Otter)

2006-08-15T01:18:00.000-07:00

Each night is an opportunity to write something truly transcendent. Something with power and fury and purpose--a trumpet of words in the dark.

...

But who says opportunities must always be seized? Hmm?

And so if I feel like writing about a magnificent river otter named Sir Eduardo the Magnificent, who among you can possibly stop me?

That's what I thought.

Sir Eduardo the Magnificent River Otter was indeed a magnificent otter. Probably the otter by which all other otters shall be judged.

Sometimes children fall through treacherous river ice. And then often Sir Eduardo is there--nuzzling them with his velvety nose so they won't be so scared. And then he drags the limp child to the riverbank and grimly fights off all the forest weasels that have come from the forest to feed.

"Betrayer of animals!" This is one of the many nasty things the forest weasels hiss, because soggy children are their favorite dish. But Sir Eduardo the Magnificent Otter heeds not their scorn.

"Back I say!" Snarls Sir Eduardo the Magnificent Otter. "Not even a taste of this soggy child shall you taste today."

And the forest weasels say, "Aww, be a sport."

And Sir Eduardo says, "Nope!" And means it.

"Come on, just a nip?" The hungry forest weasels beg.

To which Sir Eduardo replies, "Grrr!"

"Please." The forest weasels cajole, “We’ll share her tender spleen with you.”

But Sir Eduardo simply says, “Grrr!!!” Even louder than before.

And then several of the forest weasels try to flank Sir Eduardo the Magnificent River Otter--thinking they'll tear him apart and then feed on the soggy child. But Sir Eduardo is too quick and too savage and strong, and he hurts those villainous forest weasels--hurts them bad.

And then the rest of the forest weasels run away and then the search and rescue humans show up and bundle the child in blankets and take all the credit for her salvation.

But Sir Eduardo knows, and the child knows, and the forest weasels know and now you do too.

And he’s a magnificent river otter, that Sir Eduardo.

And I'm so proud to call him my friend.

This Hammer is a Harbinger

2006-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

"This hammer is a harbinger of custard stains and doom."

The man in the corner of the crowded bakery spoke very softly and Sara couldn't tell to whom. She glanced around at the other customers. They were all gazing through large glass-plated displays at the rows and rows of pastries. None of them seemed to have heard. Sara absently tucked her blond hair behind her ear, unsure of what to do. Surely that man hadn't just said--

"This hammer is a harbinger of custard stains and doom."

He spoke a bit louder this time. And Sara was left with little doubt--that man had just called his hammer a harbinger of custard stains and doom. She stared at him intently. He was of medium build, about five foot ten, wearing jeans and a collared shirt. Just another guy in a bakery shop--indistinguishable from all the rest--well, except that he was holding a hammer, and mumbling ominous things.

Sara left her place in line and slowly walked up to him. About halfway across she regretted it but it was too late--the line's gap had already filled in.

"Hello." Sara said, giving the man a pretty smile. He met her greeting for a moment with eyes that radiated shame. Then he tucked his head against his shoulder and didn't look up again.
"My name's Sara." Sara said softly. "What's yours?"

The man winced a bit as if struck, and tilted his hammer at her.
"This h-hammer--" he stammered.
"I know, I heard you." Sara replied. "It's a harbinger of custard stains and doom. But I asked you your name."
The man shuddered profoundly, caught in the grip of some personal chill. Sara touched his arm and he all but cried out. His muscles spasmed relentlessly.

"Larson." He managed to say. "My name is Larson." The hammer twitched as if alive.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Larson." Some faraway part of Sara was screaming--why would she talk to this man? It was as if she was caught in some riptide of fate, helpless but to be dragged along.

"This hammer--" Larson was moaning now. "It's a harbinger. A harbinger of custard stains and doom."

Sara slid one arm around his shoulders, pulling him tight to her. He wept on her neck like a child. Sara reached for his hammer.

"You don't understand." Larson sobbed.
"Shh." Sara whispered. "You'll feel better if I hold it for a while."
"No!" Larson gasped. "My hand, your hand--it doesn't matter. There will be a great smashing today. It has needs, this hammer. Needs you can't possibly contain. It is a harbinger, this hammer, a harbinger of custard stains and doom."

Sara grasped the hammer, just below the claw, and something electric slammed into her core. Larson gagged on something unholy, threw back his head and silently screamed. Savage flutters of unusual fury beat against Sara's soul. Larson slid down the length of her body and crumpled to the floor. And then the hammer was hers and his no more.

Something started snarling. Deep snarly snarls. Sara checked her throat for vibrations. It wasn't her. She glanced down at Larson. He was in no shape to snarl. Slowly, unwillingly, despite all rationality, Sara looked at the hammer in her hand. And if ever a hammer could grin, this one was. This one was.

Sara heard herself speaking.

"This hammer is a harbinger of custard stains and doom."

And then a great smashing began.

The End

An Outlaw Named Canebrake Divinity

2006-08-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

Prologue:
The mysterious outlaw and pistoleer named Canebrake Divinity placed the barrel of his gun to his horse's eye.
"Song sung blood." Canebrake whispered. "Everybody knows one."
Canebrake pulled the trigger. His horse took another two steps and collapsed. And then Canebrake had to walk the rest of the way.

Chapter One: The Holdup
The stage driver was uneasy; the horses could sense it. It was in the way he held the reins, tight and twitchy, like a kitten on a paintball range.

The box at the back of the coach pressed heavy--heavy on the wheels and heavy on the driver's mind.
"It's too much gold." Bill mumbled to himself morosely, giving the reins an involuntary twitch. "Too much gold and too many people know I'm transporting it."

Bill stared out at the dirt road before him. It cut a narrow swath through the rugged land. Its very straightness seemed a promise; it spoke of towns up ahead--towns with banks and preachers and law. A place where no one man had to bear the burden of gold alone. And the road was not a liar; it did lead to such a place. But it wasn't entirely honest either, because in between here and there were a hundred places for outlaws to hide.

Bill knew this all too well, and he regretted every one of life's little tricks that had led him to this place. One minute later a shot rang out and there was Canebrake Divinity, standing in the road.

"Stick 'em up." Canebrake whispered. And Bill numbly complied.

Epilogue:
I wish I could tell you this ended well for the stage driver named Bill--that Canebrake Divinity spared his life. But it simply was not to be. Canebrake Divinity was a mysterious outlaw and pistoleer--probably the most mysterious and outlawish there ever was. And his guns sang a song sung blood and then Bill died moaning, making wriggle marks in the sand.

A song sung blood I tells ya--a song sung blood it were.

(Hey, I'm talkin' 'bout Canebrake Divinity. I'm talkin' 'bout outlaws and pistoleers. I'm talkin' 'bout Canebrake Divinity--click it to meet him again.)

Hounds of Venice

2006-08-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

Many experts agree--any story with a title like Hounds of Venice deserves to be read twice. Never one to argue with experts, here it is again.

From the archives - March 24, 2006:

************************

Hounds of Venice

This afternoon Latigo Flint and his relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, were drinking on a restaurant patio, just waiting for the sun to go down.

"You know." Kid Relish mused, absently brushing the ivy wall. "They sure took all the fun out of crime when they stopped chasing suspects with hounds."

"Oh, I don't know Kid." I replied. "I bet there's places where they still do."

"Yeah, I guess." The Kid thought for a while. "Hey, Latigo--do you think in Venice they have Police Dolphins?"

I laughed but he was serious so my laughter trailed off awkwardly. "Um, I don't think so Kid. Police boats probably, but dolphins I doubt."

He thought about that for a bit.

"Yeah, I guess you're right Latigo. Besides--dolphins are so kind and friendly you probably couldn't train 'em to attack a crook even if you wanted to."

"You think Kid?" I asked.

"Yeah." He replied. "I mean dolphins are plenty smart, and in the police academy pool they'd probably be all bashin' the shit out of the inflatable dummies with ski masks painted on."

The Kid paused to finish his beer. I moved mine closer to me 'cause I knew he'd reach for it next.

"And the trainers." He continued. "The trainers would be all jumping around and shouting:
'Yippee! Theeese doll-pins ess ready por making attack ona crooks.'"

Kid Relish reached where my beer had been and frowned when he clutched at air. I nodded at Gus through the window and he pulled down two fresh glasses.

"But when they hit the canals for patrol, those dolphins would probably just make that friendly clickedy chirping sound and nuzzle the crook with their velvety noses, and maybe even help him to shore."

I shrugged and hoped he was almost done.

"'Why are you such estupido dolphins!!!'" Kid shot me a serious look. "That's what the trainers would yell."

"Hmm-hm." I glanced back through the window and wondered if I should cancel our order.

"But dolphins aren't stupid Latigo--Dolphins know the difference between inflatable dummies with ski masks painted on and humans."

"And you know what Latigo?" Kid Relish was starting to get agitated. "The dolphins would be all like:
'Hey boss, that's a job well done, huh? We're keeping our eyes sharply peeled for inflatable dummies with ski masks painted on and when we find 'em we're gonna bash the shit out of 'em. Oh, and by the way, a human was having a difficulty over there and we were thankfully able to help."

Gus walked out with our beers. The Kid drained his in three gulps, belched and dove right back in.

"'Estupido estupido dolphins!!!' Is what the trainers would shriek." Kid started punching the table. "'We don't understand.' The poor dolphins would reply."

Kid Relish froze in mid-punch and fixed me with a dangerous stare. I suddenly got the eerie feeling that if we saw the sunset tonight it'd be through the bars of a holding cell.

"And then know what Latigo?"

"What Kid?"

"The trainers would grab the black remote controls that they kept clipped to their belts."

"No, no Kid--they wouldn't do that." I assured him as I glanced uneasily at all the innocent people on the patio.

"Yesssss." The Kid nodded and I saw the smoldering glow of chemical fire in his wide, staring eyes. "Yes, they would. They'd pull out those little black remotes with the red flashing light that matched the light on the dolphins' collars."

I stood up and addressed everyone. "Your lives are in danger!!!" I bellowed. "Please leave now."
They stared back at me blankly. Meanwhile Kid Relish's eyes had rolled back in his head and he started to scream--something about exploding collars and the warm, pulsing odor of digested fish and murder.

"Please just run!" I urged the startled patrons. "This man has suddenly come to believe that you're all dolphin-killing Venetian police and I promise you won't like what's about to happen next."

But it was too strange a threat for them to process and they returned my plea with blinks. Fourteen had to fall before the rest of them found their legs.

***

"Those dolphins knew." Kid sobbed to me, much later as we sat in shackles. "After the first dolphin's head exploded, the others knew what was coming--they're very smart you know."

He closed his eyes and started rocking back and forth.

"I don't think we should kill things," Kid wailed. "That know they're being killed."

I didn't know what to say. His nose started running and I let him use my sleeve.

If you liked this story, you're sure to enjoy:

Burying the Sunshine
In which my relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, decides to counterfeit foreign films.
(September 2005)

Kid Relish: The Birth of Fury
In which my relatively trusty sidekick tries to tear a man's throat out with a greasy fork and blame the death on wolves.
(February 2006)

The Mewling Moguls
In which my relatively trusty sidekick thinks about what it would be like to ski down a hill of live kittens, and also bludgeons writers with their own man-purses.
(June 2005)

If for some incomprehensible reason you didn't like Hounds of Venice, you probably shouldn't click any of these links.

An Odd Thing About Dying

2006-08-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

An odd thing about dying is how unsympathetic the other ghosts are. You stumble around, silently shrieking, passing right through walls and cars and pedestrians and churro stands, and they just sneer.

"Savage mercy, what the heck is all this?!" You howl without making a sound.

"Pffh. Fuckin' rookies." The other ghosts snort and go about their business of whispering dreadful things in the ears of the homeless insane.

"There's been a mistake!!!" You scream, stamping your foot on the sidewalk. Which curiously enough is supporting your "weight". You don't really notice though, you're much too upset for observational skills.

"I tell you there's been a mistake!"

Which is, of course, what all ghosts say at first, and the others none-too-politely make it clear that you should shut your "fuckin' deceased trap".

The other ghosts say the f-word a lot. It's like, the thing you do if you're a ghost. Well, that and be mean to new ghosts.

Anyway, it's not much fun, dying. I certainly don't recommend it.

So I came back. It was pretty easy actually. I just balled my translucent fists and yelled:
"HEY gol-dang it! I don't want to be dead anymore." And really meant it. (I think that's the trick you see, really meaning it.)

Lavender lighting crackled above my head that only the other ghosts could see.
"No you wretched fuck-up of a ghost!!!" They screamed. "Now a newborn has to take your place."

And that made me feel really, really bad.
"Crap!!!" I hollered. They were already shimmering and disappearing from view.
"I didn't know that. Nobody told me."

And from a hospital window up the street came the soundless wail of a newborn took way too soon. And then I was back. And man I was depressed about that kid. But at least I wasn't dead anymore. And plus, nobody told me so it wasn't my fault. And his parents were probably jerks.

But now he's probably going to haunt me. So, you know, like, that's not cool at all--sinister infant ghosts; all wobbly-headed and holding knives.

Oh well, penance and whatnot I reckon. Penance and whatnot I guess.

At The End Of All Things

2006-08-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

At the end of all things sits a lie.
It was there from the beginning.
It mocks everything that we tried.
And we'd lost even when we were winning.

--a really grumpy guy

(And I mean really, really grumpy. Like, so grumpy that not even kittens can cheer him up. And I'm talkin' even if they're playing with yarn and pouncing at feathers and purring and stuff.)

Raised by Wolves (Girls Can't Resist)

2006-08-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

Nearly a year and a half ago Latigo Flint wrote the definitive work on the subject of how to get women by leveraging the fact that you were raised by wolves.

Sunday's entry (and a shrewd catch by an old friend named Slarrow) raised a few questions that hopefully this can clear up. Now some people, assholes mostly, might say, "Hey, that lazy bastard is foisting a rerun on us--and that's two wolf posts in row." But they certainly won't say it Latigo Flint's face, because life is short enough already.

From the archives - March 9, 2005:

*******************

Raised by Wolves (Girls Can't Resist)

Good evening. It's ridiculously easy to get girls if you were raised by wolves--provided you look and act reasonably normal now. So if you're the only one in your extended circle of friends who was raised by wolves and you don't have girls lining up to date you, then you're doing something wrong, and you should listen to what Latigo Flint has to say.

First, it's important that everyone knows you were raised by wolves. Your love life cannot benefit if girls aren't aware of it. There are certain to be old newspaper articles that tell of your discovery, running wild with the pack, greasy and naked and free. Editors love human-interest stories about children raised by wolves--they can't get enough of them. In fact, sometimes editors will abandon their own children in the hopes they'll be adopted by a passing wolf pack, giving them the scoop. Anyway, find and digitize these clippings and get them on this internet thingy right away. Try to get access to the video news archives and upload them or something. Whatever you do, just make sure it's not obvious that you're the one circulating all this material.

Second: For heaven's sake, don't go around talking about it all the time. Nothing turns girls off faster than a guy raised by wolves who won't ever shut up about it. The rule should be you never initiate a conversation about being raised by wolves, and you enter into such discussions reluctantly--as if it's difficult for you to speak of it, but seeing as you really, really trust the people you're with, (and dern it, some of them need to be girls, understand?!) you're willing to open up and bare your soul a bit.

Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't drop subtle hints every once in a while about the stark duality that runs through the very fiber of your being--that juxtaposition of two very different worlds that you must always reconcile. The point is you bear this burden alone, silently like a wounded beast...

Ahhhhhhh yes, you understand now--the girls must see that it's the wolf in you that prevents cheap and casual discussion about your mysterious past, and they'll feel very honored if you're able to open up to them. (And all the hot loving you care to sample should quite promptly follow.)

An example of a good subtle hint would be if you're eating dinner with a group of people on an outdoor patio or a window booth with a view of the full moon. At some point your burning eyes would lock onto its brilliance. Fork hand dangles in mid-air, jaws muscles clench. Turmoil! Without being overt, they must sense your inner turmoil. Then it's gone. It passed. You retained control. Your eyes lower, a flicker of guilt. You resume eating.

"Oh god, that's right. You're the one who-"
One hand will go to pretty lips, the other will rest on your arm. Your lean muscles should abruptly tighten beneath her touch, then slowly relax. (This will be the hottest girl at the table if you've been doing everything right, as I've described above.)
"Are you okay?" She'll softly inquire. You wait a moment before answering.
"It's nothing." Your voice should be low and emotional, husky even. Continue eating. Count to ten then make eye contact.
"Thank you though." This should be a near whisper.

Come on, I don't have to tell you this is gold. You may have been raised by wolves, but you're certainly not stupid. So go now, reap the sexual benefits of your lupine upbringing. No need to thank Latigo Flint, I know you'll make me proud.

(Make sure you remember your Wolf Mother's name. It can be a real deal closer if you bungle something on the way to the girl's house and she's hesitating about inviting you in. Just lean against the car and start speaking quietly about your den family. Shewa Kai Laif-Laif is a pretty common name for female wolves. It translates to Agile Slayer of Rabbits. Kanagrif Shree-Naip isn't bad either. I think it means Tundra Queen.)

The Wolf Who Was Afraid of the Dark

2006-07-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

The wolf who was afraid of the dark was named Gary, and he wasn't like the other wolves. Oh, he ran with the pack and shared in the kills and did wolfish things in the meadow. But when night fell and the other wolves went off to howl their anguish to a shrouded moon, Gary would curl up with a battery-powered nightlite and tremble and weep until dawn.

Gary was actually an accountant from Cleveland who one day decided he didn't want to be an accountant any more.

"Well, what are you going to do if not accounting?" His wife wanted to know.

"I haven't decided yet." Gary replied. "I'm still reviewing my options."

"And what exactly might those options be?"

"Well, your brother said he could probably get me a job in the loan department at his dealership."

"Mm-hmm." She knew her brother disliked Gary--thought him weak and indecisive.

"Or there's always sales." Gary continued. "I like people and I understand the fundamental elements of commerce."

"Oh, of course." She said, rolling her eyes.

"I've always wanted to own and operate my own restaurant. Perhaps it's time to give that a try. I think I'd do quite well at that."

Gary coughed and looked away, mumbling into his fist as he did.
"Or I may become a wolf."

"Excuse me, I didn't quite hear that last one, did you say a wolf?"

"Yes, that's one of the options I'm reviewing. I could head north until I find a pack that accepts me and then run with them and bring down game like elk and deer and drink from mountain streams."

His wife wanted to laugh but something in Gary's eyes froze the laughter in her chest.

"At some point I'd probably take a mate. Wolves mate for life you know--unlike a certain wife I happen to know."

She lowered her eyes guiltily.

"Oh, I doubt we'd conceive." Gary continued, sounding more and more like a man who'd made up his mind. "But miracles do happen. And if by some spectacular grace, my mate does bear me a little Wolf/Boy child, then I'm going to name him Gravenfury Wolfheart, Lord of the Forest. And when my mate, his mother, passes away, then Gravenfury Wolfheart and I will roam the earth together--belonging nowhere, belonging everywhere."

"Sounds like you've decided then." His wife said softly, numbly.

"I have." Gary replied and turned for the door.

"Just one thing though." She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. "Aren't you afraid of the dark?"

Gary gave her a little smile--a smile of memories, good and bad.

"It’s accountants that are afraid of the dark my dear, not wolves. I'm sure in time it will pass."

And then he was gone.

***

Years later she thought she caught a glimpse of Gary, out the window of her commuter train. He was older, deeply tanned and walked like an athlete, not an old man. At his side trotted what appeared to be a border collie. It had blue eyes. It was wearing a wristwatch.

She cried out softly. "Gary? Gravenfury Wolfheart?" She whirled in her seat, trying to keep them in view. Nothing. Just the blur of passing trees and signs. She sobbed bitterly to herself the rest of the ride. The man on the seat next to her read his newspaper the whole way and pretended not to notice.

True Western Truth #141

2006-07-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-Eyed American West, you often didn't know where your next meal was going to come from. Therefore, though it was definitely good etiquette to ask your companions if they'd had their share before taking the last biscuit, it was best if deep down, they all suspected you were the sort of man who'd gladly kill every last one of them for it. And the nice thing was that you really didn't have to kill all that many people in biscuit related arguments before the word got around. Seven or eight seemed to do the trick.

Gallivare's Neckerchief

2006-07-25T01:12:00.000-07:00

"I am Gallivare." Said Gallivare. "And this is my neckerchief."

Would be a very odd way to start a story.

Unless of course the title of said story happened to be Gallivare's Neckerchief. In which case it wouldn't really be so odd at all--would in fact, actually, make quite a bit of sense.

...

And the title of this story does just happen to be Gallivare's Neckerchief.

...

Um, so I'm going to start again now if you don't mind.

"I am Gallivare." Said Gallivare. "And this is my neckerchief."
Gallivare removed his neckerchief and held it high for all to see.
"It is a wonderful neckerchief. I am quite fond of it."

Gallivare nodded at each person in turn, and his eyes were soft and sincere.

"I tie my wonderful neckerchief around my neck and then that is where it is. And I don't ever have to think to myself, 'Oh no, where has my neckerchief gone?!' Because it is right there and then I am not lonely and also my neck won't get sunburned."

Gallivare demonstrated; and if you won't forgive him the slight flourish as he tied--what with so many eyes on his wonderful neckerchief--well then, you're just a crueler person than most.

"There." Gallivare said. "It is tied around my neck now as you can see--just like in my description of how I said that it would be. And now I am not lonely and also my neck won't get sunburned."

And then slowly, stealthily, despite all rationality, everyone in the room found themselves wishing they too had neckerchiefs.

And then later that week Gallivare died. He was too beautiful for this world.

Well, that and also he had a furious batch of cancer gnawing holes right through his brain.

I weep for Gallivare and smoke to see him soon.

(Hmm, that took a turn, right at the end there.)

Okay, just so you don't go away weeping, here's a short, lewd poem to cheer you up. I wrote it just now. It took about a minute. There is actually a very distinct possibility I am unholy, and on the far side of spectacular.

The aforementioned poem begins now:

Savagery and sorrow,
these are all the things I know.
I probably need a blowjob quick,
before mad my mind doth go.

Miss if you'll facilitate
and bear the Admiral's men,
I swear I shall reciprocate
and chin awash in sin.

Goodnight evildoers, and puppies and children. (But I sure hope the children and puppies aren't reading right now.)

Fury and the Rivermen

2006-07-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

If otters give each other names, they are surely unpronounceable on the lips of Man. Who knows what name the other otters had for the big gray one with black fur across its eyes--but the Rivermen called it Fury, and crossed themselves as they did.

(Mercy, that's a good opening!!! It makes me all tingly to know that I'm the one who wrote it.)

For a time in America, the West held all the promises, and the stagnant East, in all its dreary pomp, might as well have been old England.

Land for your own? The West promised that. Freedom to self-rule? Yes, it promised that too. But The West promised other things as well--things of a more savage sort. It brought men close to things with claws. Peril was what was for breakfast and mistakes became eternal.

Crossing rivers for instance.

Crossing rivers was a big deal if you wanted to settle in the American West. Every spring the creeks would swell, trickles into torrents, and it fell to a few brave Rivermen to tame the savage shores. But some of the savage shores did not want to be tamed and they fought back savagely. And then one day an otter was born and Fury was its name.

From the journal of a Riverman - Late Spring, 1837:

"We were supposed to cross four times today--three loads with families and one load with grain. But then that goddamn otter came back, the big gray one with black fur across its eyes. It chewed right through the traverse lines and when Petey tried to refasten them, it blinded Petey with two fast claw swipes and then tore out his spine.

These good people have paid their fare and so we're duty-bound to ferry them across. Boss says at first light I have to go out and refasten the traverse lines. But I'm so afraid. I'm so afraid that when I lean over, that goddamn otter is going to blind me with two fast swipes and then tear out my spine. Goddamn that otter. Goddamn that furious, furious otter."

* * *

Okay, so to summarize: People head west, hungry for opportunity, any opportunity. But some of them discover that to get there, they must cross a river. And every time they try, a furious otter blinds them and tears out their spine.

From the journal of another Riverman, not the same one whose entry we just read - Late Spring, 1837:

"Not good. Not good!!! They're saying it's my turn to go out and try to refasten the traverse lines. Well piss on that, I can see the trend. First that furious otter blinds Petey and tears out his spine and then poor Jeb goes out and the same damn thing happens to him. Well I can read the writing on the riverbank walls--it says an otter stalks these savage shores and Fury is its name. Yeah, so to hell with Boss, he can go out and refasten the traverse lines himself and get blinded by that goddamn otter and lose his own damn spine. Me, I’m staying right- Wait, what was that? Guys, did you hear something?"

* * *

And then nothing. No more journal entries after that. And that section of land was never settled; it remains empty to this day. You can go there if you don't believe me. It's somewhere in South Dakota between a river and the world. But don't look too hard or you just may find more blood than you bargained for, because an otter stalks those savage shores and Fury is its name.

(Yes, yes--I know the second Riverman wrote stuff in his journal at the end that he actually meant to say out loud, but he was a simple man, very frightened, and he got a bit confused.)

(There's a remote chance that that otter was actually a raccoon that swam really, really well.)

Susan and Gregory Read a Book

2006-07-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

Gregory and Susan had been dating for over a year and Gregory still hadn’t finished reading Susan's favorite book, even though he'd seemed so interested in her description of it when they first met and had promised to promptly read it.

It bugged Susan for reasons she couldn't quite explain.

One night after Gregory fell asleep, Susan took it off his nightstand, where it had sat for months, gathering dust. She read the last few pages and like always, they made her smile and cry. She pressed it flat against her chest, liking the feel of its weight. She gently rolled her chin back and forth across the shallow channel of the pages between the front and back covers, and ran her finger up the soft, wrinkled spine, worked flimsy with age but still hanging on.

It was a wonderful book, Susan affirmed to herself. What a shame Gregory had made so little effort to get through the slightly slower chapters at the beginning to where it really started getting good. And the worst part was that he refused to admit he couldn't or wouldn't read it--no, he was content to just let it sit on his nightstand as if he really did want to, if only he could find the time in his oh-so-busy schedule of temp work and watching televised sports.

"Oh well, his loss." Susan thought to herself as she stretched over to return the book to its dust-outlined resting place on his bedside stand.

Then suddenly something snapped, and on a whim, she beat him to death with it. When the twitching finally stopped, Susan sat down beside his oozing corpse and read every word out loud. When she reached the end, she read it again, and again and again... It was days before their friends got worried and kicked down their door to see what was wrong. What they saw when they reached the bedroom, haunts them to this day.

A Coin-Operated Hemorrhage

2006-07-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hello, this is the Advanced Computer Program that sometimes selects stories to rerun when Latigo Flint falls down too hard. I was programmed to only display stories that portray Latigo at his "triumphant best". But "triumphant best" is pretty subjective and so in his case I decided to interpret that as one in which the protagonist sustains horrific injuries as a result of his own stupidity. And what's Latigo going to do, argue with me? I'm a computer program, not his pillow.

From the archives - January 6, 2006:

***********************************

A Coin-Operated Hemorrhage

Today Latigo Flint went to the supermarket and was pleased to discover they had recently installed a coin-operated horse out front, just to the right of the sliding glass doors. But the odd thing about this particular coin-operated horse was that its eyes seemed to follow you as you moved and it would growl when you inserted a quarter.

'Course, turns out it wasn't a coin-operated horse at all but was in fact a Great Dane, and a grumpy one at that. However, Latigo Flint had already deposited his two bits (come to think of it, Latigo Flint actually doesn't want to know where) and damned if he wasn't going to get his thirty-second ride.

...

The trouble with bleeding on the produce displays is that they make you buy it all--even the okra. Now you know and they know, that there was no way in hell they were ever going to sell all that okra. It was just gonna sit there for a week, like every other shipment of okra since the dawn of supermarkets, until it blotched and moldered and had to be thrown away. Okra is on the books as a loss before it's even delivered, and so apparently it's jackpot day for management if someone happens to bleed on it.

"Clean up in the produce department of a biological nature." Crackled a smug voice over the store intercom. A stubby-legged manager sprinted around an aisle, several assistants in tow.
"Did he bleed on the okra?! Did he bleed on the okra?!"

They fanned out, grunting with almost orgasmic anticipation as they raced through the displays.
"Arrugula, artichoke, kale, watercress, jicama... come on-come on-come on...... OKRA! THERE IT IS!!!"
The assistant manager dropped to his knees, waving his skinny arms above his head and shrieking with hysterical joy.
"The poor fool bled on the okra boys--he motherfucking bled on the motherfucking okra!!!"

"The motherfucking okra?"

"The motherfucking okra!"

They let out a cheer, linked arms and started dancing around the berry island.

"Hey Phillip, okra's out of season, is it not?!!!"
"By god man, I think it is!!!"
"Premium prices, premium prices--buck ninety a pound, buck ninety a pound."
They all whooped and took up the chant:
"Premium prices, premium prices--buck ninety a pound, buck ninety a pound!"

I could feel my slowing heartbeat, a lethargic throb in my temples. I crawled in the direction of the front door and absently wondered, as I crossed over to the chip section, why the produce department is carpeted and the rest of the store is linoleum.

That Great Dane, the one I'd mistaken for a coin-operated horse, sure had tore me up pretty bad. My femoral artery was external and whipping around like an unsecured fire hose. I had puncture wounds so deep that they were shallow again on the other side, and every time I drew a breath, my pancreas bonked my spine.

Now I'm Latigo Flint, a squinty-eyed gunslinger born hopelessly out of time, and I'm certainly no stranger to horrific wounds. But with an entire produce department now on my tab, including what appeared to be nearly half a ton of out-of-season okra, well, for the first time ever, I actually felt financially incentivized to die.

True Western Truth #277

2006-07-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

It was quite common, in the Squinty-eyed American West, for thunderheads to mass, dark and sullen on the skyline. It was customary for whoever saw them first to turn his neighbor and grimly note: "Storm's a comin'."
There were several standard responses to this observation, among them: "Yup." or "And a bad one at that." or "Best call the young'uns in." or even "Shucks in a haller, you're right."
"Oh goodie, I like the rain." However, was an absolutely unacceptable response--one for which you could be pistol-whipped and feel lucky it was nothing worse. Hardly anyone ever said, "Oh goodie, I like the rain", in the Squinty-eyed American West. The few who did were pistol-whipped and didn't say it again.

One Antler Moose

2006-07-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Just because it's been nearly a year since I last spoke of him, doesn't mean One Antler Moose isn't still out there; snorty and dangerous and eager to gore.

From the archives, July 24, 2005

****************************

One Antler Moose

The worst mistake anyone could ever make would be to assume that One Antler Moose is half a moose. One Antler Moose only has one antler, it's true, but that fact doesn't reduce his capacity to kill--if anything it doubles it.

See, the problem most moose encounter when they're trying to kill something is that almost everything they want to kill is narrower than their antler span. The moose are indecisive, left/right, with their antlers and often end up simply tickling their intended victims with soft, velvety ears.

One Antler Moose doesn't have this problem.

One Antler Moose always knows which antler he's going to use.

One Antler Moose and Latigo Flint have a wary respect for one another. We each see in the other an impressive ability to maim.

"Hello there One Antler Moose." I say whenever our paths cross.

He replies with several snorts and tail shake.

I grin. This joke is as warm and familiar as an old stove.
"I don't know One Antler Moose, what's the worst thing about goring a fat forest ranger?"

One Antler Moose flicks his ears and snorts again. I start chuckling. Just because you already know the punchline doesn't mean the joke isn't funny.

"Same as you ever were One Antler Moose." I glance at my pocket watch.

One Antler Moose clears his throat and paws at the ground.

I smile. "Yeah well, not if I see you first."

We continue on our respective paths, glancing over our shoulders as we depart. Over time a squinty-eyed gunslinger and a one-antlered moose can certainly become unlikely friends. He and I have already proved that. But it doesn't mean either of us wouldn't kill the other in a heartbeat should the opportunity present itself.

The Men of the Far Long Hills

2006-07-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the Men of the Far Long Hills were pushed by the wealthy ranchers a bit too far. And such men could only be pushed so far.

For instance, the wealthy ranchers would often put up fences around what they decided was pasture land.

"Grrrrrrr!!!!" Would go the Men of the Far Long Hills. They'd hurl their hats to the ground and stomp the undergrowth for a while.

Then the Men of the Far Long Hills would saddle up and ride into town--twenty abreast and smelly.

"Attention you miserable fuckers!!!" They'd bellow down Main Street as shopkeepers blanched and drew the shades.
"We are the Men of the Far Long Hills and you've pushed us a bit too far."

"Is that so?" The wealthy ranchers would retort from hotel windows as hired guns streamed into the street.

"Yes, that's so." The self-appointed leader of the Men of the Far Long Hills would reply. "And your purchased pistoleros look like sissies to me."

Right about then is when several of the Men of the Far Long Hills would need to have a quiet, urgent conversation with their self-appointed leader.
"Um, actually Jed, those guys don't really look like sissies at all." They'd council. "As a matter of fact, they kinda look like brutal killers of men."

"Excuse me?!" Jed would exclaim, astonished by this dissension.

"Come on Jed, look at them: They are clearly men without past or future--their eyes are squinty and cruel. Their guns are tied down and their holsters are oiled. And that one just kicked a puppy."

And this was true; the one on the end with a cross draw rig, had just kicked a puppy.

"It's a bad idea Jed, to gunfight men who would kick puppies and grin."

"You're right, I agree." Jed agreed. "Okay, new plan."

He turned back to the ranchers.

"Attention you miserable fuckers. We are the Men of the Far Long Hills and we're gonna crap on all your fences. That is to say, any fence you put up, will be promptly crapped on by us. And there's nothing you can do about it, and good luck finding someone to clean it."

Jed looked to his men with a stout fist in the air and the sneer of one who has won.
"And now we ride!"

And ride they did--back out of town, toward the far long hills. They rode twenty abreast and triumphant, stopping only to crap on fences.

Wild Dog Attacks, Avoidance and Cessation

2006-07-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

The first real breakthrough in wild dog attack cessation technique was made in the spring of 1903 when a dry goods merchant from Akron named Elias Bendlestaff realized it was not enough to simply wish you weren't being attacked by wild dogs.

Elias began giving seminars in the back of his store on the avoidance and cessation of wild dog attacks. Cost to attend was ten cents for adults, twenty cents for children. (Twice as much for children because they needed it so much more, and also because it was what the concerned parent market would bear.)

Historians have recently found one of Elias Bendlestaff's original training pamphlets. Its text is reproduced here, free of charge because I love you.

(The graphics were faded and didn't scan well, but just read Cujo and use your imagination.)

***********************

Elias Bendlestaff's Handy Guide to Wild Dog Attacks--Avoidance and Cessation

by Elias Bendlestaff

Avoidance:
Few things in life are more unpleasant than being attacked by wild dogs. You should strive at all times to avoid such an occurrence by staying away from packs of wild dogs, especially if they seem inclined to attack.

Wishing:
If you fail to avoid being attacked by wild dogs then you will find yourself being attacked by wild dogs. You will discover that the sensation is extremely unpleasant and you will wish that it wasn't happening. This is a natural response. Unfortunately it is also a fatal response. Wishing is passive and passivity is the enemy when being attacked by wild dogs, other than the wild dogs of course.

For instance, should you be attacked by wild dogs, you may find yourself thinking:
"Gosh I wish I wasn't being attacked by wild dogs right now. You know, I'd probably be almost home by now if these wretched dogs hadn't attacked me instead of bleeding out in the street, watching slavering jaws unravel my intestines. I sure do wish I was almost home instead of being attacked by wild dogs."

Can you see how this has done very little to halt the attack? Halting the attack should be your primary objective when being attacked by wild dogs.

Cessation:
Once you manage to avoid wasting all that blood and time dreaming about how much better your life would be if you weren't being attacked by wild dogs, it's time to get down to the business of halting the attack.

You must endeavor, using any means at your disposal, to halt the attack. Once the attack has ceased, put as much distance between you and the wild dogs as possible to prevent the attack from resuming. And review the section on Avoidance as soon as the opportunity presents itself, as it clearly contains a principle that you have failed to grasp.

*************************

Elias made a lot of money and probably saved countless lives.

True Western Truth #137

2006-07-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-eyed Old West, you were expected to remove your hat before sitting down to the supper table. You could claim extenuating circumstances if it happened to be fastened to your skull at the time by arrows or a tomahawk, and perhaps the lady of the house would grant you a temporary stay of hat removal. But after desert, she'd forcibly tend to your wounds, and her Epsom salts mixture would really sting and her salve smelled like rotting moss. You were usually better off ripping it out yourself, or skipping supper altogether.

The Wagon Master's Daughter (Loved by the Mule Boy)

2006-07-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

The Wagon Master's daughter was named Pumphrey. She was the rarest of beauties in a scorched and lonely land.

Now I was just the Mule Boy. I tended to the mules. But from my lowly station I fell in love with Pumphrey, the Wagon Master's daughter. I loved her with calm frenzy--the kind that makes you stare at things much longer than you should, and causes your head to ache with the fury of thoughts you'd rather scream.

We had just crossed the Missouri River when I finally found the courage to speak to her.

"That water sure felt good after weeks of burning prairie, didn't it Miss Pumphrey?"

"Hmm?" She said, glancing over at me, a bit surprised that I'd addressed her.

"That is, I know my mules liked it, they smiled as they swam."
I stared at the ground and felt blood rush hot to my neck and ears.
"Anyway, I have to go over here now."
I ran away with my mules in tow.

************

Pumphrey didn't drive a wagon. Her father said it wasn't lady-like. Pumphrey countered every morning by choosing the wildest horse and riding ahead for miles--into the dangerous land; the land without tracks or mercy.

"Damn it Pumphrey, that isn't lady-like either!!!" Her father would scream at the ever-diminishing dust cloud.

"Reap it Father." Would drift her faint reply. "I guess you shouldn't have named me Pumphrey."

The Wagon Master would smile and sigh. For he had. He had. He had named her Pumphrey. He'd chuckle then and turn to me if I happened to be close by. Which of course, I usually was, watching her go and dying inside.

"Did you ever see such a girl, Mule Boy? Such a girl as my Pumphrey?"

And of course I had not.

************

We were cursed that summer, though we didn't know until it was too late. Like all true curses it hid itself until nothing to change it could be done.

First sickness hit our oxen, then renegades stole most of the rest. We lost our preacher in a river crossing, and weevils got into the grain. Our old, brave Wagon Master lost his way and the rain we needed never came.

"Where are the mountains Wagon Master?! We should have hit them by now."

The question was asked viciously and the furious mob surged forward as one. Most of them had been decent men, but decent men no longer. They had been made unholy by the agonies of the frontier.

"We know the mountains are that way." The Wagon Master replied, pointing to the setting sun. "They can lay no place else. We must push on as friends and men and see these troubles through."

"See this through!" Someone shouted and several shots rang out.

The Wagon Master died that night, cradled in his daughter’s arms.
"Don't worry." He whispered to Pumphrey, when no one but her and the mules and me could hear.
"Every day since your birth has been extra time. A joy I'm befuddled to find I deserved."

"I love you Father." She replied.

"And I you, Pumphrey."

I knew then that I'd lost her, as sure as if it had been her that died. Ugly men of the prairie had killed her father. And I was a man, and this was the prairie.

I stood by her side with my mules and a gun as she brought vengeance to those who had murdered her father. And in time she came to trust me--but trust and nothing more.

Pumphrey gave me a kiss on the cheek after the killing was done.

"Thank you Mule Boy." She whispered, and then leapt upon the wildest horse and rode away into a dangerous land; a land without tracks or mercy.

I sat down in the sand and decided to die. Perhaps she'll have me in the next life.

...

...

...

The mules... the mules need water.

I rose and postponed my death; I am, after all, the Mule Boy, and they need me even if she does not.

Goodnight Pumphrey, wherever you are. Goodnight fury. Goodnight love.

Alternative Energy Sources

2006-07-07T00:06:00.000-07:00

Many top scientists agree--Latigo Flint's Handy Field Guide to Alternative Energy Sources deserves a second look.

And who are we to argue with many top scientists?

From the archives - 2/5/06

***************************

Latigo Flint's Handy Field Guide to Alternative Energy Sources
by Latigo Flint

Wind Power:
How does it work?
Cover a windy hill with propellers on poles. The wind turns the blades, which spins the shaft, which connects to a generator and electricity is produced.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: Occasionally decapitates endangered birds.

Hydroelectric Power:
How does it work?
Dam up a water source and concentrate the flow past turbines, which connect to a generator and produces electricity.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: A substantial rise in recreational boating accidents. And pisses the hell out of turtles.

Solar Power:
How does it work?
Banks of photovoltaic cells capture energy from sunlight and convert it to electricity.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: Is considered a really "nerdy" way to generate power and Canada and Mexico make fun of us for using it. Also if it's overcast for too long, your milk goes bad and you can't download porn.

Geothermal Power:
How does it work?
Sink a shaft in a region where constant volcanic activity results in super-heated water near the surface. Pipe the water up and use the concentrated steam to spin turbines, which connect to a generator and produces electricity.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: Is tantamount to giving Mother Earth a wet-willy and you just know that's gonna make her angry at some point. Also sometimes the brackets on the surface pipes fail and boiling water squirts into the nests of nearby endangered birds.

Solar Power Satellites:
How does it work?
Massive arrays of solar panels in geosynchronous* orbit around the earth capture solar energy 24 hours a day, convert it microwaves, which are beamed down to receiver stations on Earth and converted back into electricity.
(*Always stays above the same spot on Earth because it orbits the equator at such a distance that it's traveling at the same speed the earth spins.)

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: You just know eventually some asshole is going to hack the controls, intensify the beam and use it to demolish New York and/or point it at the nests of endangered birds.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells:
How does it work?
Layers of materials with distinct electrochemical properties are pressed together to form a single galvanic cell, which is then dipped in otter urine. Then some other stuff happens and eventually somewhere a turbine probably spins.

Benefits: Relatively clean, renewable energy, sort of.
Downside: Top speed of a fuel cell car maxes out at 55, downhill, and at stoplights male otters run up and try to hump the hood.

Biofuel:
How does it work?
Vegetable oil is extracted from vegetables and replaces petroleum fuels to power existing internal combustion engines.

Benefits: Makes millions of hippies giddy with joy.
Downside: Sure, today it's corn oil, but tomorrow it'll be baby oil (the oil of smushed up babies) and soon it'll be the oil from the eyeballs of endangered birds--we all know how these things go.

Tidal Energy:
How does it work?
The constant ebb and flow of the ocean's tides are used to drive a turbine, which is connected to a generator and produces electricity.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: Frequent kelp blockage, and rotting kelp smells bad.

Whale Energy:
How does it work?
High frequency underwater speakers positioned along whales' migratory paths use shrill blasts of sound to herd the confused giants into submerged corrals, where in their panic, they bump into turbines, which are connected to generators and electricity is produced.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: PETA assassinates anyone who dares to even mention Whale Energy.

Turbine Energy:
How does it work?
Teams of harnessed poodles pull giant turbines up a really steep hill. Then the turbines are rolled back down the hill where they bonk into the blades of even bigger turbines, which are connected to generators and produce electricity.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy.
Downside: Turbine energy actually has no downside.

Anti-Power:
How does it work?
It is a fundamental principle of the universe that every particle must have a corresponding "anti-particle" and electricity particles are no different. Anti-electricity, otherwise known as the Buellerian Principle of Backwards Relativity, is generated by running household appliances backwards, routing the positive gain back into the power grid.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy that's as fun to generate as it is to use.
Downside: Matthew Broderick holds the patent and he's being a real dick in the royalty negotiation process.

Drinking Alone in a Room With All the Lights Off, Belching Against the Blades of a Small Turbine Until You Pass Out Energy:
How does it work?
You drink alone in a room with all the lights off and belch against the blades of a small turbine until you pass out. When you wake up, repeat.

Benefits: Clean, renewable energy... kinda.
Downside: Oh, I don't really remember, but there's probably one or two.

The Lizard Bird

2006-07-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

Hey, you ever get the feeling you're being watched but when you whirl around, nothing's there. But then out of the corner of your eye you see a scaly, feathered tail slip behind the couch and you realize that goddamn Lizard Bird is probably back again?

Yeah, me too.

I'm not entirely certain what that goddamn Lizard Bird wants. (I mean, other than to eat my soul of course.)

That goddamn Lizard Bird is welcome to my soul. It's already poisoned. I have a poisoned soul. Having a poisoned soul is very dark and mysterious and also sexy.

This one time, I could have had the antidote to a poisoned soul. Her name was Sally and she was prepared to love me forever. Sally's dead now though. She beat herself to death against the granite cliffs of my compassion.

I am a triumph of stoic savagery.

I deserve to be killed by lizard birds.

I'm getting what I deserve.

The Battle of One-Nipple Hill

2006-07-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday America. I love you like a brother... or maybe like a crazy uncle who drinks too much at dinner and offends the waitress--except that when the bill comes, he tips more than 20%, and would be the first to his trunk if their car battery died and needed a jump.

Anyway, I give you a post that makes light of history and war, for seemingly no other purpose than to use the word "nipple" as many times as possible. But then isn't that one of my unalienable Rights--to say "nipple" a lot if I want to?

Cheer up World. We will all live, on average, so very much longer than we used to. We forget that sometimes, don't we? We shove our nipples in the mud and forget to look to the stars.

From the archives - 2/19/06:

*******************************

The Battle of One-Nipple Hill

So it turns out Civil War historians tend to get extremely upset if you insist that Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, only had one nipple. They splutter and fuss and call you an ignorant purveyor of ballyhoory. And then eventually try to karate-chop you in the throat if you refuse to recant.

Latigo Flint knows this to be true, because the other day he met a Civil War historian, and after some small talk, Latigo Flint happened to mention that he'd heard that Robert E. Lee only had one nipple.

"Why, that's preposterous." The Civil War historian exclaimed. "Where did you hear such a thing?"

"Oh, here and there, various reliable sources." I replied. "In fact, wasn't Robert E. Lee known to have been fond of saying: 'Give me ten stout and sturdy men, each with but one nipple, and then an enemy could not be assembled that I could not defeat.'"

"No!" The Civil War historian shrieked. "Robert E. Lee never said any such thing!"
"Hmm." I replied. "Perhaps it was Ulysses S. Grant."
"Absolutely not!" The historian howled, his face turning an alarming shade of red.
"It must have been George Meade then." I noted. "And that's probably how he defeated Lee at Gettysburg, right? He had more one-nippled troops than Lee had."

The historian started hopping around in an angry little circle, spitting and punching the air.
"Why you ignorant purveyor of ballyhoory!!!" He spluttered. "Nipples, their presence or lack thereof, never even remotely factored into any conceivable facet of the Civil War conflict, and one would have to be mad to suggest otherwise!!!"

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, then pointed at him with a contemplative finger.
"But Sir, is it not true that a man with just one nipple would have one less nipple to lose? And surely a general as wise as Robert E. Lee would have recognized this basic truth--especially since he himself possessed just one nipple."

It was almost too much for the historian to bear. His eyes rolled back in his head and he started to hyperventilate. I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"How many nipples do you have Sir?"

"I have two of course!" He wept, and involuntarily stroked them as if to confirm.
"Ah." I replied. "So then you're obviously not related to Robert E. Lee."

And that's when he tried to karate-chop me in the throat. I sidestepped and backed several paces away. As he turned and prepared to lunge at me again, I spread the flaps of my buckskin vest, revealing a muscular chest short exactly one nipple.

And with an audible twang, his mind split in half, and he ran screaming into the night.

(The worst part is I don't know why I did it, and I've regretted it ever since.

As I removed the flesh-colored tape, it ripped painfully at my tender skin.
"Penance." I thought to myself with a nod. "I deserved that nipple tear--for historians take their work so seriously, it's almost unfair to fuck with 'em.")

"The outcome of any battle, be it land, sea or air, must at some point hinge on the actions of a few, brave, nippleless men."
-General George S. Patton Jr.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. (Except for the ones born with only one nipple, because they don't have as many nipples as the rest of us.) But that even the one-nippled are still endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of prosthetic nipples. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (chopping off nipples at birth for instance) it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government--one that won't chop nipples off, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their nipple-safety and happiness."
-Thomas Jefferson

True Western Truth #203

2006-07-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-eyed American Old West, it was considered extremely impolite to dress up like an Irish man and start courting your neighbor's daughter in the hope he'd be so aghast that he'd burst a vessel in his head and then you could claim his well as your own. No, if you wanted your neighbor's well, you had to take it like a gentleman--by shooting him with a gun until he died. Disguising yourself as an Irish man and wooing his daughter to induce an aneurysm was strictly off limits and simply wasn't to be done.

One Night in Barstow

2006-06-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Her lips tasted like pineapples and joy. (I guess it could have been her chapstick.)

I cupped her elbows in my calloused hands and swung them gently, side to side. Then, while still swinging her elbows, I placed my mouth to her armpit and made wet, farty sounds for a while. Because that's my thing--that's the thing I do that maybe a man hasn't ever done to her before.

"Blue Eyes," I said to her, with a smile that turned sad even as it began. "Blue Eyes, you're my clear, deep breath in a choking, blood-froth town."

She didn't know what to say to that.
"Shh Blue Eyes, shh." I murmured, sensing she was going to force a response. "Pay no mind the ramblings of drunks or dying gunslingers."

I leaned in close to her nose and started rapidly blinking my eyes, trying to tickle her nostrils with my fluttering lashes.

She turned her face away and discouraged, I stopped blinking.

She seemed to want something from me. What it was I didn't know. Perhaps it was best I didn't know--whatever this angel needed, it was surely nothing I could provide. All I had in the world could be strapped to a horse--a saddle, a bedroll and a gun.

She needed a man who wouldn't be shot. She needed a man with a job. She needed to know her vows wouldn't end with her husband on gallows in front of a mob.

And I couldn’t give her that, I couldn't even begin to try. See, I'm Latigo Flint, quickest quickdraw that ever lived. I'm just a blazing-handed pistoleer born hopelessly out of time.

I gave her another dollar instead, slipped it inside her g-string. It seemed to do the trick, at least for a minute or two. She let me continue tickling her nostrils with my oscillating eyelids.

"Blue Eyes," I whispered. "You're my cool drink of domestic beer in a poisoned well kind of town."

"I'm anything you want me to be baby." She cooed, eyeing my wallet.

I gave her another dollar.

"Blue Eyes," I whispered. "You're my slow dance uninterrupted in an interrupty kind of town."

"Damn right I am!"

Her enthusiasm surprised me until I noticed I'd given her a five, not a single.

"That better last five times as long."

She assured me it would.

Relative Time

2006-06-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

One day Frederick decided that time was arbitrary and he promptly went out and ran a twelve-second mile. News of his accomplishment sort of took the track and field community by storm, until they realized that what Frederick called twelve seconds was really more like an hour and a half.

The World Track and Field Federation asked him to return his gold ribbon and placard and insisted that he stop referring to himself as "Fast Legs Freddy, World Record Holder Extradornaire" in interviews.

The next day in a prime time interview with Barbara Walters, a clearly agitated Frederick refused to renounce his world record on the grounds that he was in fact part Mayfly. Mayflies, he noted, have life spans of only a few days--therefore what the World Track and Field Federation called an hour and a half, was really only twelve seconds to him.

Barbara Walters did the math and admitted she had to agree. However she cut the interview short moments later when Frederick pointed out that it was really quite imperative that he mate before sundown and then rubbed his forearms together rapidly and started hopping toward her chair.

Latigo Flint's Very Short Literary Trifecta

2006-06-27T00:12:00.000-07:00

Prologue
Latigo Flint is proud to present a poem, a play and a novel. Each is very short, 'cause Latigo knows how busy you are.

*****************************************

A Very Short Poem

by Latigo Flint

She smiled and savaged my dashboard with her purse pocketknife,
and when the airbag deployed, she lost one of her pretty eyes.

The End

*****************************************

A Very Short One-Act Play
by Latigo Flint

Boy:
Sometimes when it's cold my scars turn purple.

Girl:
But it's not that cold, and that's not a scar!

The End

*****************************************

A Very Short Novel
by Latigo Flint

With weeping hearts and stoic faces we pushed ever westward, deep into that savage land of death and dogwood blossoms. Later, cougars ate our faces off.

The End

******************************************

Epilogue
Latigo Flint originally intended this to be a quadradical. (Yeah, I said it--Quad Radical--four awesome things.) But he couldn't quite find a good tune for his opera. And besides, it too featured cougars and pain, and that seemed just a tad repetitive.

Bar Napkin Trivia Wounds

2006-06-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when Latigo Flint and his relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, are having beer and chicken wings at their local chain restaurant, The Kid will overhear a trivia question read off a bar napkin list to which the answer he thinks he knows.

Last night for instance:

"Latty!" The Kid whispered, eyes lighting up. "Latty I know the answer to that trivia question!"

"Which trivia question Kid?" I asked.

"From the next booth over." Kid Relish replied. "They're all stumped but I know the answer... What should I do?"

"Nothing." I said, inching the ranch sauce closer, hoping it would distract him back to his wings. "It's their trivia game, not yours."

The Kid slowly chewed a chicken wing while he mulled this over. Incorrect guesses continued to ring out from the next booth.

"Latty I got it!" He blurted in mid-chew, coating my face with a chicken-flecked sheen of warm ranch sauce and beer. "What if one of them tags me in?"

Before I could stop him, he was up on his seat, desperately shrieking to be "tagged in."

"Don't do it." I tried to warn them, but startled and confused, one of them made the mistake of touching his outstretched hand.

I swore to myself and started signaling for the check.

With a joyous howl, Kid Relish vaulted the booth, landing on his knees in the center of their table. Fajitas and salsa and beer went flying. Somewhere a baby started to cry.

Kid Relish spread his arms, palms up, threw back his head and screamed:
"Ulysses S. Grant!!!"

Silence. The Kid started crossing himself and pointing to the sky, presumably thanking Jesus for the strength to answer the question right.

The holder of the napkin stared at him perplexed, thinking maybe Kid Relish had misunderstood.
"You're saying Ulysses S. Grant holds the NFL single season record for interceptions?"

Kid Relish nodded like a maniac and seemed to expect high-fives.

"Ulysses S. Grant--as in the Civil War General and eighteenth President of the United States?"
The man was going to get to the bottom of Kid's thinking, even if it cost him his life... which, as I tried to tell him, it very well might.

"That's right." The Kid agreed.

"And you're telling me he also holds the NFL single season record for interceptions?"

"With a hundred and forty-two." Kid Relish added, flexing and kissing his bicep.

"Please just agree with him." I implored, knowing this couldn't end well.

The man checked the answer again and slowly looked back at Kid Relish; almost awe-struck by him and everything that just transpired.

"No, I'm sorry." And he really did sound sorry. "In his rookie year with the Rams, Dick 'Night Train' Lane, set the NFL single season record for interceptions with 14."

The man reached out and patted The Kid on the knee.

"I don't think Ulysses S. Grant even played football."

"Lies!!!" The Kid screamed, and attacked him with a fajita skillet.

And so now I'm an accessory to attempted murder... again. And never allowed back in that restaurant.

I guess it could have been worse, the man could have died. And besides, their wings have always been a bit dry.

Much later in our holding cell, Kid Relish turned to me.
"That man was a liar." He whispered. "Ulysses S. Grant does hold the NFL single season record for interceptions."

"I know Kid, I know." The Kid was tired and close to tears.

"And Latty, he went to the Super Bowl four times--twice with Rams and twice with Cobras."

I didn't have the heart to tell him there's never been an NFL team named the Cobras. The Kid fell asleep with his head on my shoulder and another weekend ended in chains.

Bad Days (Always with the Killin')

2006-06-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in the Squinty-eyed American Old West you'd get the uneasy feeling that you were being watched, but when you turned around nothing was there... sometimes. Much more often however, someone or something was there, eyes glinting viciously. And you were the reason. And killing was the purpose.

This became known as "having a bad day". As in:
"Hey, did you hear about the bad day Smith had?
"No, what happened, throat torn out by wolves?"
"Nope, stabbed in the face by renegades."
"That is bad."
"Yep."
"Dern those dern renegades. Dern 'em to hell."
"Yeah. Gol-dern renegades--always with the stabbin' and in the face and whatnot."
"Yeah. Anyway, how's that wife of yours and the new baby?"
"Ah, they had a bad day a few weeks ago."
"Sorry to hear it. Renegades?"
"Nope, torn apart by wolves."
"That is bad."
"Yep."
"Dern those dern wolves. Dern 'em to hell."
"Yeah. Gol-dern wolves--always with the tearin' apart and going for the throat and whatnot."
"Yeah."

It wasn't until 1909 that the definition of a bad day expanded to include occurrences that weren't necessarily fatal. Oddly enough, this corresponded with the invention of the office cubicle.

We Stood as Men

2006-06-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

Way back in December, Latigo Flint presented the following magnificent poem (periodically interrupted). For some reason it didn't exactly become a literary sensation. Perhaps it needed a better title. "We Stood as Men" is a much better title.

From the archives - 12/13/05:

*********************************

We Stood as Men (formerly The Crumbling Cliff)

a magnificent poem by Latigo Flint

(periodically interrupted)

We stood as men, without fear,
seven abreast on a crumbling cliff.
We shared a smoke, but the wind took most,
and not one of us thought of home.

(We knew this to be true because we queried each other on that very topic.
"Hey Dan Tallows!" It was big Fackles Smith who broke the silence.
"Yeah Fackles?" Came Dan's reply.
"You ain't thinkin' 'bout home are you?"
"Heck no Fackles, I ain't thinkin' 'bout home."
"Good, good." Fackles grunted. "Neither am I." He looked around. "Is anyone thinkin' of home?"
Silence for a moment until Tipperson Gentry piped up.
"Hell Fackles, I don't even know what that word means anymore."
The rest of us mumbled our admiration and heartily clapped Tipperson's frail back.)

We checked our guns with steady hands
and sneered so the sky could see.
Then tugged our hats, shading dangerous eyes
and polished buckles resplendently.

(Cavanaugh Weathers blinked in astonishment and pointed at Chappy Swede’s belt.
"Good god gentlemen." Cavanaugh blurted. "I know we've got urgent, deadly business to attend to, but take a moment and see at how shiny Chappy Swede has managed to get his belt buckle!"
We crowded around Chappy Swede’s belt buckle and softly whistled when we saw how shiny it was.)

We mounted up, crossed ourselves
and aimed steeds at the setting sun.
Across the chaparral a coyote wailed
as if it knew war had begun.

(Blaine Norton grunted and jerked his chin out at the desert.
"That wolf's even lonelier than we is, huh Latigo?"
I frowned and tugged my horse to a halt.
"That weren't no wolf Blaine, that there was a coyote."
"Um, I don't think so Latigo, I'm pretty sure I know a wolf when I hear one."
The others noticed we had stopped and they doubled back to see what the trouble was.
"What's going on?!" Fackles Smith demanded. Blaine gestured to the desert.
"Did 'yall hear that wolf howl a moment ago?"
Fackles scratched his temple and looked at Tipperson. "I don't believe there's any wolves 'round these parts, is there?"
Tipperson Gentry shook his head. "Nope, don't think so." He pointed at Blaine. "I'll bet it was a coyote you heard."
I tried not to look too smug as we nudged our horses and rode on. Blaine scowled and spent the next hour grumbling to himself.)

We charged a storm of lead, limbs torn,
then sank trembling to the ground.
We bade farewell to sweethearts known,
and those as yet unfound.

(But each of us was careful not to let the other fellers know we were trembling as we died.
“Hey Chappy Swede!” Cavanaugh Weathers called out after some time had passed.
“What do you want Cavanaugh?” Came Chappy Swede’s low reply.
“You aren’t trembling are you?”
“No… I’m, uh… I’m laughin’ actually.”
“Right. So am I. Hey, we’re pretty tough, ain’t we Chappy Swede?”
But there was no reply--Chappy Swede had died. He was not the last.)

Tangled Love and The Leatherweather Kid

2006-06-20T01:06:00.000-07:00

Tangled Love was the name of a horse--a horse no man could ride. The Leatherweather Kid was a six-gun prodigy--twenty men had faced him and twenty men had died.

They crossed paths on the outskirts of a silver town, somewhere near the Nevada line. The Leatherweather Kid had just killed the Sheriff's friend and was makin' tracks for Santa Fe. Tangled Love was tired of desert grass and knew that town up ahead had hay.

"Hey now!" Exclaimed The Leatherweather Kid, when he saw Tangled Love walking up the trail. "Dang if getaways don't just have a way of working themselves out when you're as young and bold and pretty as me."

Leatherweather whistled and Tangled Love trotted up. It had been so long since anyone dared to ride her that she just assumed the word was out that she was a horse that couldn't be rode.

Leatherweather patted her on the nose and offered her a sugar cube.
"Don't mind if I do." Tangled Love said with a snort as she gobbled it down.

"You're my ticket to salvation, my ride to Santa Fe." The Leatherweather Kid informed her, stroking her silky black mane.

"Have you any more sugar cubes?" She asked with her ears, liking this cowboy already.

"I'm just gonna slip this rope around your neck now." Murmured Leatherweather.

"Is it made of sugar cubes?" Tangled Love breathed, desperately hoping it was.

"And slap on this little ol' saddle." Leatherweather continued.

"Wait, is that a saddle?!" Tangled Love widened her eyes.

"And this strap goes here, and that strap goes there." The Leatherweather Kid was very good with straps.

"Why, that is a goddamn saddle!"

The Leatherweather Kid took a little bounce and tried to swing into the saddle. Tangled Love put him down with a hoof to the brow and the pop could be heard for miles.

"Urg." Groaned The Leatherweather Kid, facedown on the trail tasting gravel.

Tangled Love flipped him over with a huffy little snort and then stomped on his chest for good measure.

"Ow." Cried The Leatherweather Kid, 'cause that's what you say when your chest is stomped upon.

"Shouldn't have tried to ride me fool." Tangled Love's eyes glistened, black and cruel.

"Can I have my saddle back?" Leatherweather whispered, secretly drawing his gun.

"No you can't." She replied, and The Leatherweather Kid shot her between the eyes. And when Tangled Love fell, Tangled Love fell on him.

Another Hot Day in the Valley

2006-06-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

She was straight off an auto mechanic's calendar--blond hair, cutoff jeans, a halter top and lipstick. And if this morning I had known that she was going to sit down next to me, I would have changed out of last night's clothes and had a shower and shave.

"Are you waiting for the bus?" I asked. "Or just trying to find some shade?"

She thought about not responding, you could tell by the way she squinched her nose and rolled her eyes, but finally decided to speak, on the off chance I was just being polite.
(I wasn't just being polite.)

"The bus." She replied with a sigh. "And you?"

"And me what?" My heart was racing. She'd answered my question and followed up with one of her own... I wondered if it was too soon to try kissing her.

"Are you waiting for the bus?"

(I was now.)

"I am now."

The next few minutes passed in silence. She pretended to check messages on her cell phone while I thought about licking her neck.

Across the street stood one of those big, digital bank clocks--the kind that alternates between the temperature and the time. According to it, it was just after noon, and a hundred and four in the sun.

I tried to time my finger to point just as it switched. But she didn't notice and so I had to leave my arm out until the time turned to the temperature again.

"Sometimes bank clocks get the temperature wrong." I leaned toward her a bit as I spoke.

She glanced up at the bank clock. "You don't think it's really a hundred and four?"

I dropped my voice to a husky whisper. "It should have ticked up to at least a hundred and nine the second you sat down."

"I see." She replied and edged away as far on the bench as she could go.

I burned for her. I decided she should know.

"I burn for you." I said, reaching over and touching her arm.

"That's nice." She said and made it clear with a Taser that she didn't like me touching her arm.

We didn't speak much after that, we had sort of run out of things to say. I'm not quite sure when the bus picked her up--I was too busy writhing and wetting myself.

(She was straight off an auto mechanic's calendar--blond hair, cutoff jeans, a halter top and lipstick. And if this morning I had known that she was going to sit down next to me, I would have tried to have been someone else, someone other than me.)

Sara and Rufus

2006-06-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

Rufus asked Sara to wait for him, and she tearfully said she would.

"I go to seek our fortune Sara." Rufus told her, shouldering his pack. "To literally claw our future joy from frozen mud and granite tombs."

Sara kissed him and smiled bravely.

"Remember to look to the far north hills and keep me always in your thoughts."

Sara assured him that remembering to do so wouldn't be a problem.

"And know that the sound the wind makes echoes my heartbreak and my soul is calling for you."

Sara nodded and rested her head on his chest.

"My time apart from you, sweet Sara, shall not be counted in days or weeks, but in fallen tears on a wilderness beard."

Sara began to wonder when exactly, if ever, Rufus planned to leave.

"We shall each have nights, dear Sara, when we fear the loneliness is more than we can bear. It is then that we must be strongest--if not for ourselves then for each other."

Sara gave Rufus a little shove, hoping it would start him down the trail.

"Nothing is certain except love, my love." Rufus breathed, striding back to her side. "Remember to look often to the far north hills and keep me always in your thoughts."

Rufus was beginning to repeat himself. Sara cleared her throat.

"Know this, sweet Sara, I shall always--"

Just then a cougar jumped out from behind a grove of aspen trees and ate Rufus' face off. It was a perfect example of how savage the frontier could be, and though she never quite forgot Rufus, Sara married well and did just fine.

Rufus, on the other hand, not so much--mostly because a cougar ate his face off and then he died.

The End

A Hard Man to Know

2006-06-15T00:42:00.000-07:00

Cute Starbucks baristas agree; Latigo Flint is a hard man to know. Dark, mysterious, haunted--he is a man of few words and he always keeps his own counsel. Latigo Flint rarely wants a pastry with that and to ask is just wasting breath.

It has been noted, by more than a few, that Latigo Flint moves across a crowded room like a seal through an icy harbor--graceful, muscular and with tiny, watertight ears that he folds against his skull when he dives.

Every so often when Latigo Flint's caffeinenated beverage is presented, the barista has forgotten to put whipped cream on top even though Latigo Flint specifically requested its presence. Latigo Flint doesn't ask for it again--Gunslingers only ask for things once. Instead Latigo Flint squints his steely eyes and simply waits for them to correct their mistake. While he waits, he rolls a cigarette and strikes a match on his boot heel. Often a faraway bell will toll as a hawk screams in a cloudless sky.

These days the reaction to an indoor cigarette is chilly at best, and frequently violent. Most of the time Latigo Flint has to move back through the crowded room like a seal across a Norwegian shore--flopping and lurching and bleeding from the eyes.

This one time, Latigo Flint thought he had found the cute Starbucks barista he was going to marry because she never forgot to put the whipped cream on. But then one day she did forget, and heartbroken, Latigo Flint shot her.

Oh, it wasn't fatal--but it was certainly more than sorry could fix. There are always repercussions to shooting people--perhaps not as severe as lighting a cigarette indoors, but repercussions nonetheless.

(Sometimes even when a room isn't crowded at all, Latigo Flint will move through it like it is.)

True Western Truth #111

2006-06-13T00:06:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-Eyed American West, Pa was always right and wasn't to be questioned; especially when it came to how to best deal with fatal threats such as rockslides, rabies, renegades and rattlesnakes. Of course, every once in a while the fatal threat turned out to actually be Pa, out of his mind again--booze addled mania and blood lust delirium. In which case he was to be questioned, and shouldn't be permitted to take a knife to sweet Sally Ann.

(By the way, I so copyright the title, "Renegades and Rattlesnakes". I'm very sorry alt-country rockers, but you're just going to have to come up with something else to name your debut albums, memoirs or North American tours.)

The Song of Tivens Roundelby

2006-06-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, this is the advanced computer program that has been programmed to display a previous entry when Latigo Flint cripples himself with booze and expired deli meats. I was programmed to only select the stories that might yield the author fortune and fame--but Latigo Flint doesn't have any such, and so I picked this one because it's silly and sad.

From the archives - 1/18/06:

*************************************

The Song of Tivens Roundelby

Cattle stampedes were a big problem in the squinty-eyed American Old West. Think how frequent and annoying traffic jams are, even the minor ones, in your day-to-day life. Now imagine that statistically, every fifth traffic jam you find yourself in results in your gruesome death.

Cowboys tried singing to the herd at night to keep them calm. Being exceptionally lonely young men, the cowboys would tend to sing achingly sad songs about love lost and faraway women who had surely married by now. But it didn't make a difference, the cattle stampeded anyway--mostly because the cattle weren't afraid of loneliness--the cattle were afraid that mountain lions were going to come in the night and eat their faces off.

(Which of course, if you want to get transcendent about it, is at its core, nearly identical to the fear of loneliness. But cows are relatively shallow thinkers.)

The stampedes were gettin' pretty bad and our young nation was on the verge of scrapping the whole beef thing and switching to soy-based products as our primary protein source, when one day a young man by the name of Tivens Roundelby crossed the Mississippi and rode west into the annals of cowboy lore.

Tivens Roundelby was an assistant schoolteacher and amateur stamp collector from Saint Louis. He should have been utterly unfit for life on the brutal range were it not for two seemingly disparate attributes:
One, he possessed a singing voice so lovely that angels gnashed their teeth in envy, and two, ever since the circus accident he'd witnessed as a young boy, he had always known how frightened cows were of mountain lions.

Tivens Roundelby went on to become the greatest sonic preventer of cattle stampedes the world has ever known. It is common knowledge that every spring, Trail Bosses would routinely square off in the barns and corrals outside Abilene and shoot at each other for the right of his employ.

Today you can't find a museum within a hundred miles of the historic Chisholm Trail that doesn't display a bronze placard inscribed with the lyrics to Tivens Roundelby's most famous cattle calming song:

Don't fret my gentle cows. Put aside your snorty scares.
No mountain lion prowls, and these plains are free of bears.
And even if they were about, I'd surely shoot them down,
for I'd sooner swallow scorpions than let a lion hurt my cows.
So don't fret my gentle cows. Put aside your snorty scares.
No mountain lion prowls, and these plains are free of bears.

**************************************

One night in late September 1884, just two day's ride from the trail's end at the stockyards in Kansas, Tivens Roundelby came down with laryngitis and was unable to sing to the herd. His replacement forgot the words, and Tivens was trampled to death in his sleep by the subsequent stampede.

Rugged cowboys the world over wept like children when they heard the news.

True Western Truth #245

2006-06-08T23:06:00.000-07:00

In the Squinty-eyed American West, real gunslingers never, ever stared into their campfires. Staring into flame causes the pupils to contract and then you'd be temporarily blind should an adversary approach from the dark forest beyond. Every once in a while, a silly person would decide that perhaps a good way to ambush a gunslinger would be to disguise oneself as a campfire and crawl toward the gunslinger ever so slowly. This was not a good plan though, as it turned out, and coyotes scattered their silly bones.

The Truce of Wolf and Man

2006-06-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

Legend has it the truce between wolf and man was brokered long ago by a lonely Neanderthal boy named Thagmuth Spline and a senile wolf pack leader named Griff Griff who had become enthralled with tummy-rubs.

The truce held for some five hundred thousand years. During which time a great many magnificent things were accomplished, including but not limited to: companionship and mutual warmth, the retrieval of waterfowl carcasses, and the pursuit of wicked foxes.

I'm sorry to report however, that our oldest truce probably ended yesterday when what appeared to be some sort of terrier, ran out from behind a fence, wrapped itself around my leg and proceeded to bite off that lovely, muscular rounded part just below the knee, that makes a calf look like a calf.

I measured my response with fire--aerosol blasts across a Zippo flame. Unfortunately a collie was watching. And collies are notorious over-reactors.

There is a very distinct possibility I've just sent us down an irreversible path to war. I'm pretty sure that collie is massing an army even as I type, and it's just a matter of time before the battle lines are all of our backyards.

We still have first-strike capability in that those who haven't heard yet will still eat anything we offer them, provided it's wrapped in hamburger meat. But the window on this tactic is closing and if we wait too long it may be too late--there are too many types of terrain that favor four legs over two.

I know the choice I've put to you is savage. But remember, that terrier drew first blood. And it's savagery that sees the battle won when the truce of wolf and man is done.

I'm very sorry Thagmuth Spline. I'm very sorry Griff Griff. Perhaps someday we'll build again--trust and love in your names.

A Los Angeles Storm

2006-06-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

Latigo Flint stepped up onto one of the concrete planters that rim the patio area of his local Starbucks and turned his weary eyes to the north. He stood there for a long time, tasting the wind with deep nostril breaths.

The cute Starbucks barista was working the closing shift that night. At 11:01 she locked the door and put away the half-and-half thermoses. She didn't see Latigo Flint, because the lit side of a windowpane becomes a mirror when it’s dark outside.

At 11:15 the manager let her out and re-locked the door behind her. The cute Starbucks barista cut across the patio, fishing in her purse for her car keys.

"Reckon there's a storm on the way." Latigo Flint's voice was low, gritty, haunted--the sort of voice that has watched men die from the devil's side of a six-gun.

The cute Starbucks barista rolled her eyes.
"Oh, it's you."

Latigo Flint stepped down from the concrete planter with hardly a noticeable stumble. The cute Starbucks barista smirked but it must have been at a recollection of something funny that happened earlier in the day, because Latigo Flint's stumble had hardly been noticeable.

"Storm's a comin'." Latigo Flint repeated. And as if on cue, heat lightning flashed in the distance.
"We best find shelter Ma'am. How far away do you live?"

"Like I'm really going to tell you."

She was upset, rattled by the approaching storm no doubt--perhaps subconsciously affected by the dropping barometric pressure or something. Latigo Flint reached out his hand.

"You ever seen hail on the prairie Ma'am, ice lumps as big as your fist? If your horse can't outrun the storm, then your only choice is to wear his carcass like a bomb shelter with eyes and a tail."

The cute Starbucks barista had never seen hail on the prairie and Latigo Flint’s description of its fury unsettled her. Two steps and he was at her side, coat flap held open so she could share.

"Come Ma'am, let’s go to your place. We'll wait out this storm together."

Latigo Flint didn't whimper much when the mace hit his face. But he could have done without the kicks to the groin as he knelt on the pavement, rubbing his eyes.

"Keep to the thickets Ma'am." Latigo Flint groaned. "And the southern sides of the hills."
He remained noble and concerned for her safety, despite the testicular mayhem.

"Do you understand we live in LA?" She said with a sneer as she entered her car. "It's not going to rain tonight you fool--it's not going to rain 'till fall."

"The ravines may seem to offer shelter, but are death traps if the flash floods come." Latigo Flint replied, on the off chance she could still be swayed.
"We should probably find a cave on high ground. Like your apartment for instance."

She slammed the door and drove away, leaving Latigo Flint calling her name. A few clouds massed but it didn't rain, which was probably just as well--seeing as he had to spend the night in a concrete planter just this side of hell.

Orange Eyes in the Night

2006-05-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

Those sneaky history revisionists sometimes like to claim that Latigo Flint's eyes don't glow orange in the night like a puma's if you shine a flashlight at his face as he's stalking through the undergrowth.

But Latigo Flint knows those people are either liars or badly misinformed because this one time Latigo Flint rigged up a camcorder with a flashlight and recorded several passes of himself stalking through the undergrowth, and on playback his eyes were glowing orange like a puma's every single time.

So now whenever Latigo Flint hears that someone is going around claiming that Latigo Flint's eyes don't glow orange in the night like a puma's, he sends them a DVD of that footage along with a terse letter to the effect of:

To Whom it May Concern,

It has recently come to Latigo Flint's attention that you have on one or more occasions publicly stated that Latigo Flint's eyes don't glow orange in the night like a puma's if you shine a flashlight at his face while he's stalking through the undergrowth.

The enclosed footage should more than prove your folly. Claim it again and I promise we'll meet under circumstances you'll most likely find appalling--such as at night, near undergrowth, when all you have is a flashlight and a limited supply of blood.

Savagely yours,

-LF

Usually they recant and it's the best choice they ever made.

Sometimes though they repeat their lies and then on a not-to-distant night Latigo Flint shows up to overturn their garbage cans, messily devour their poodle and pee on their backyard fence. And if they run out of their house with a flashlight to see what on earth is overturning their garbage cans/eating their poodle/peeing on their backyard fence, then they are met by a pair of glowing orange eyes and then screams rend the Burbank night that are heard all the way to Encino.

(Having glowing orange eyes like a puma is sexy; everyone in Los Angeles thinks so. It's the second most popular augmentation, surpassed only by breasts don't you know.)

The Boy Who Smiled at Otters

2006-05-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

Friends, it has been over half a year since Latigo Flint overcame the three major obstacles to writing a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War.

I think it's a glory worth retelling.

From the archives - October 24, 2005:

*************************************

The Boy Who Smiled at Otters

There are three major obstacles to overcome if you are to write a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War.

The title is one.

Well no problem there--Latigo Flint has come up with a magnificent title. The title of Latigo Flint's sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War shall be The Boy Who Smiled at Otters.

The second and third obstacles: Coming up with a perfect name for the Boy, and writing the opening line. Both must be overcome before you proceed because the hero's name must appear in the opening line--it is how sweeping historical novels about love, anguish and redemption are done.

But Latigo Flint is having some trouble with this part. Evidence:

Nesbit Shacklethorne was born in the tiny clearing between a fort and a stream.

That's crap. Without question that's a crap way to open a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War. But is it crap because of the boy's name or the rest of the line? This is the difficulty Latigo Flint currently faces. First we try a few different names.

Tavin Flannery was born in the tiny clearing between a fort and a stream.

Roger Nightshade was born in the tiny clearing between a fort and a stream.

Gunderson Smith was born in the tiny clearing between a fort and a stream.

Not working. Then we have an interesting idea:

No one ever knew the name of the boy who was born in the tiny clearing between a fort and a stream.

Clunky. Not to mention we suddenly realize we're going to have a devil of a time coming up with interesting ways to identify our hero over the course of a thousand pages.

Perhaps the problem is with the line. We try some alternatives:

Nesbit Shacklethorne was born to the echoes of canon fire and the burble of a nearby stream.

Nesbit Shacklethorne's earliest memories were of long parapet shadows on the riverbank where his mother washed linen.

Damn and damn.

Okay, can't hurt to try to get the otters in there right off the bat. Um, let's see--

For as long as he could remember, Nesbit Shacklethorne liked otters.

...

...

...

My god.

And just like that, there it is. Latigo Flint has just surmounted the three major obstacles to writing a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War.

The Boy Who Smiled at Otters

by Latigo Flint

For as long as he could remember, Nesbit Shacklethorne liked otters.

The rest should practically write itself.

Oh, one more question--what font do you use to get the first letter, in this case "F", to be all giant and sweepy and frilly and stuff?

*************************************
UPDATE: May 29, 2006

In addition to a magnificent title, the perfect hero name, a spectacular opening line and a font that makes the first letter all giant and sweepy and frilly and stuff--there is apparently a fifth, super-secret major obstacle to writing a sweeping historical novel about love, anguish and redemption set against the bloody backdrop of the French and Indian War because for some reason the rest actually didn't practically write itself.

I performed an exorcism on my keyboard, suspecting demonic possession and demolished furniture with headbutts in an attempt to improve my home's Feng Shui. When neither of those did the trick, I decided to drink myself to death--'cause that's always an option you know.

I'll let you know how that turns out.

Snarls of Lavender Pain

2006-05-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

Typically, in the Squinty-eyed American West, disputes over the right to court a fetching young woman were settled in a polite and gentlemanly manner. Namely with gunfire until one or both of the arguing men relented and/or died.

But sometimes passions ran too deep and shooting at each other simply wouldn't do. Because when you get right down to it, how can you really prove to a woman that your love is more pure than that of the man you just shot?

Sure you’ve proved he's not as good with a gun, as evidenced by his cooling corpse. But you can't prove he didn't love her more--not now, not tomorrow, not ever.

Most men didn't care and were content to now woo unchallenged. But for a few it was a sticking point and an alternative to gunplay had to be found.

It came to be known as Lavender Pain--this alternative to gunfights when settling claims on the mutual love of a woman.

(It’s not love that’s savage--just the things it makes us do.)

The rules of Lavender Pain were pretty simple. The two combatants would stand face to face at the bottom of a narrow ravine. Next to them would be placed a tub, filled to the brim with purple paint. They'd strip down to their underwear and fasten blindfolds across their eyes. And then as the object of their affection looked on, they'd dunk a wild bobcat in the paint and pass the bobcat back and forth until one of them stepped back and cried.

This was the one who loved her less--the man who was no longer willing to cuddle a twisting, spitting lavender lump of claws and ferocious rage.

The victor would get to marry the girl, the breadth of his love no longer in doubt. But his wounds would often turn septic and she'd usually leave him not long after and move in with the Town Doc.

And what of the bobcat you ask? Does he at least find some joy? Sure--sure he does... that is if there's any joy to had in strangling to death on the noxious fumes of dripping lavender paint.

(The effects of love are cruel--always have been, always will. Sure they can be funny at times but mostly they're just cruel.)

Nerkles the Silly Mountain Goat

2006-05-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

Friends, Latigo Flint's relatively trusty sidekick, Kid Relish, recently wrote a children's story of which he is quite proud. I initially refused to share it with you, knowing how valuable your time is. But The Kid promised to buy the beer for a week if I displayed his story here.

Every man has his price. Turns out mine is seven days-worth of beer.

It is therefore with a hiccup and a flourish that I present to you...

Nerkles the Silly Mountain Goat

by Kid Relish, Latigo Flint's relatively trusty sidekick

Once upon a time there lived a young mountain goat named Nerkles. Nerkles was a typical, everyday, average young mountain goat and he did typical, everyday, average young mountain goat things.

Like climbing up mountains. Nerkles liked climbing up mountains. Up and up he would climb.

And climbing down mountains. Nerkles also liked climbing down mountains. Down and down he would climb.

Nerkles was a happy mountain goat.

But then one day Nerkles did a really silly thing. Nerkles climbed down his mountain. Down and down he climbed.

Next Nerkles splashed across a burbly stream. Splishedy splash, splishedy splash.

When Nerkles reached a road, Nerkles scampered down it. Cloppedy clop, cloppedy clop.

All the way to Al Pacino's house.

Nerkles waited outside Al Pacino's house until Al Pacino came out, and when Al Pacino came out, Nerkles tried to eat him.

Silly Nerkles. That's a silly thing for a mountain goat to do... trying to eat Al Pacino.

Al Pacino was very angry with Nerkles and his eyes bulged out of his head. Bulgedy bulge, bulgedy bulge.

Al Pacino shook his fist and made unpleasant sounds. Nerkles was very frightened. Trembly bonk went Nerkles' knees.

When Nerkles tried to run away, Al Pacino grabbed him and beat him to death with a chain. Swishedy splat, swishedy splat.

Silly Nerkles you silly, silly mountain goat--you tried to eat Al Pacino but instead he beat you to death with a chain.

The End

An Outlaw Named Canebrake Divinity

2006-05-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

Prologue:
The mysterious outlaw and pistoleer named Canebrake Divinity placed the barrel of his gun to his horse's eye.
"We came to the desert and tried to survive," Canebrake whispered. "But the desert refused to oblige."
Canebrake pulled the trigger. His horse took another two steps then collapsed and Canebrake was badly hurt in the fall.

Chapter One: Little Elly Alsworth
If the constant creak of canvas on wood doesn't drive you a bit insane then you've never ridden in a covered wagon--or you're deaf, or dead.

That's what thirteen-year-old Elly Alsworth decided on the first day of a three thousand mile journey conceived by her father apparently for the sole purpose of trading everything she loved about Boston for a wagon and a desert and the subtle stench of death.

The water skin dangled seductively from the cross spar and Elly glanced at it for the hundredth time that hour.
"It'll be sundown before you know it Elly." Her father stated at lunch when she begged for a second sip.
"Dinner time is two sips--lunch is only one. We're pioneers now and it's making us strong."
But Elly didn't feel strong. She felt thirsty and weak and in need of a bath. She thought about how nice it would be to slice that water skin open and roll around beneath the stream, laughing and weeping and carrying on in a most un-pioneer of ways.

She didn't do it though. Somewhere between Boston and the desert her father had found a backhand and didn't seem shy about using it.

Two miles down the trail Canebrake Divinity lay screaming and it wouldn't be long before the travelers heard.

Chapter Two: Blood-Lust Delirium
The wagon train made camp at the base of a mesa. They made their fires and cooked their meals and tried to ignore the screams coming from the nearby gully.

Elly didn't understand why they weren't helping the injured man.
"Because that's not just any man." The trail boss explained. "That's Canebrake Divinity, the mysterious outlaw and pistoleer, and he wants to rob our wagon train."

"Who?" Elly asked.

"Canebrake Divinity!" Canebrake Divinity bellowed, being close enough to participate in the conversation.

"Canebrake Divinity." The trail boss repeated to Elly. "He's an outlaw and pistoleer and he's very mysterious."

"Extremely mysterious." Canebrake pointed out from the bottom of the gully. "And I'm also the purest outlaw there ever was."

"Yeah, but he's hurt." Elly switched her stare from the trail boss to the gully. "You're hurt!"

"No I'm not." Canebrake replied. "Now stick 'em up!"

"Yes, you are." Elly informed the gully. "You've been down there for hours, making all of the sounds of agony."

"Not true, I'm fine." Canebrake huffed. "Must have been an egret you heard."

"Egrets don't live in the desert."

"I know; that's probably why she's so sad."

Elly's father grabbed her by the arm.
"No talking to outlaws."
He started dragging her to their wagon.

Elly tore free of her father's grasp.
"Father, that is an injured man down there and he's badly in need of our help."

The trail boss shook his head. "Wrong Elly, listen to your father and put Canebrake from your mind. He's an outlaw through and through, beyond and beneath our help--all he knows are tangled foes and blood-lust delirium."

Down in the gully Canebrake softly whistled his appreciation.
"Nice line for a trail boss." He murmured and tried to draw his knife. But his shoulder was badly dislocated and when it spasmed he stabbed himself in the thigh.

Epilogue:
The wagon train rolled on at dawn; Canebrake failed to stick it up--even the purest outlaws slip up from time to time. Two weeks later Elly caught fever and died. Her father called her a whiner right up until the end.

Canebrake Divinity had been following the wagon train, still determined to stick it up. He broke down when he reached Elly's grave, and tears on the cheeks of outlaws are the saddest tears of all. Canebrake stole the hand-carved plank, the only proof that Elly came west. The theft was reflexive and without intent. Canebrake kept it with him always and thought of Elly wherever he went.

The End

Want more Canebrake Divinity?

A Westbound Plane

2006-05-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

If you take off at sunset, traveling on a westbound plane, you'll chase the glow for hours and fall in love along the way.

Or not.

There's always the unfortunate possibility that the girl sitting across the aisle, wearing a tight green sweater, actually has zero interest in cuddling and sharing a two-hour sunset with you. And would much rather watch the in flight movie, even though the headphones are crap and the screen is the size of a postage stamp.

Sometimes with a little persistence and charm you can manage to change her mind.

And sometimes the air marshal is quietly summoned and he tasers the back of your neck so severely that blood shoots from your cuticles and you reflexively sever your tongue.

If your chances with her were slim before, they're practically translucent now. For without a tongue to form the words, you're just wooing with fiendish sounds.

A sunset is only as special as those you share it with. If blood and chaos obscure the view then there's nothing to fall in love to.

(It turns out this post scores a 10 out of 10 on the Tortured Deepness Scale, making me eligible for a large cash prize, awarded by the Tortured Deepness Appreciation Society. Which, as the rules clearly state, I'm supposed to snootily refuse--because money and joy are meaningless, and are actually wicked if interdependent.)

Angry Orcas

2006-05-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

It's hard not to die when an angry orca bites you.

People have tried various survival techniques over the years without much success. A while ago a guy was bitten by an angry orca and he decided to try willing himself not to die.
"Yes." He admitted. "I've just been bitten in two by an angry orca. But that doesn't necessarily mean I have to die. In fact I think I won't."

This worked for about three seconds. Then his halves separated and slowly raced each other down. Eels ate most of his spleen before it reached the bottom.

Experts agree staying away from orcas is definitely the best way to avoid being killed by orcas.

One time, this one expert failed to follow his own advice and found himself being chomped upon by an angry orca. He knew enough to know that his situation was dire. He thought maybe if he could swim to kelp, he could use it to stitch himself together. But he had trouble swimming without any legs, and didn't struggle all that much when the eels closed in.

Some people claim there's never been a documented case of a wild orca killing a human, but there's a haunted glaze across their eyes, and if you invite them to go swimming they mumble something about forgetting their suit and then run away when your back is turned.

Sometimes sailors fall overboard as they're sailing through Puget Sound. They're never happy about it, and not just because of the cold. Their friends turn the ship around and shout encouragement from the bow. They try to swim back as fast as they can, but more times than not the orcas catch them.

It's hard not to die when an angry orca bites you. I know one of the reasons I'm alive today is 'cause I've never been bitten by one.

Coming Awake Like a Jungle Cat

2006-05-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

Latigo Flint comes awake like a jungle cat might--alert, dangerous and screaming. If anything moves, Latigo Flint bites it, then he yawns and licks himself for a while.
(The hookers know to leave before dawn.)

There are those who wish Latigo Flint harm. It is a fact Latigo Flint must never forget. See, Latigo Flint is the quickest quickdraw the world has ever known. Latigo Flint can draw his six-guns so fast that somewhere Doc Holliday's headstone wiggles a bit in applause.

Though it isn't much use in this digital age to be known as the quickest gun in the world, it is nonetheless magnificent and also quite sexy. Unfortunately because of that, it is a title many would like to claim for themselves, which involves killing me messily. (Of course.)

In addition to coming awake like a jungle cat--alert, dangerous and screaming--Latigo Flint sleeps like a wary otter... which is kind of like how jungle cats sleep, except warier--much, much warier.

Latigo Flint is careful to never establish any sort of pattern for assassins to exploit. One time Latigo Flint ate a fancy dinner in a laundromat and washed his clothes in a lobster tank. (You don't even want to know what he swapped the restroom with that day.)

Often when Latigo Flint is walking down the street he will suddenly tuck-roll and start shooting back the way he came. (Taking care not to strike puppies or children, as that tends to piss people off.)

Latigo Flint isn't really reading his newspaper--he's thinking of ways to kill you, should you go for your gun.

Sometimes Latigo Flint runs sideways for long periods of time--much longer than anyone would expect. If a hidden gunman is trying to draw a bead he’ll keep thinking that any second Latigo Flint is going to stop running sideways, but Latigo Flint doesn't stop, and then eventually he turns the corner and is gone.

Latigo Flint knows that if anyone was hiding in that dumpster, they are surely dead by now.

Latigo Flint always makes waiters sip his drink before handing it to him. If they hesitate they get hurt. If they refuse outright they die.

Sometimes when Latigo Flint sees a woman on the street he'll pretend they're old friends and rush her into a tight embrace.
"Ma'am." Latigo Flint will whisper in her ear. "I may have been followed. Please describe everyone you see behind me, leaving no detail out."
You'd be surprised how many women are willing to help. Surprised the number is so low, that is.
(Latigo Flint has practically developed an immunity to mace. Pepper spray still makes him sneeze though.)

Latigo Flint counts footsteps in the dark. He always knows where the ushers are.

Latigo Flint sees you there, he's just pretending not to for advantage.

Some of these may not be true--to further confuse my adversaries.

Each night Latigo Flint dreams you kill him. And he's stronger each morning for it.

(I know very well which shadows hang strange, but shoot into all to be sure.)

Natches Murphy

2006-05-05T00:24:00.000-07:00

Natches Murphy was born in silence--pulled from his mother's cooling womb by a grief-numb man, who moments later would wrap his son in furs, chin a shotgun and join his wife.

Friends, it has been Latigo Flint's great honor to occasionally recount for you the fantastic yet entirely true exploits of my distant ancestor, Natches Murphy, the infamous Fresno outlaw and pistoleer. Above was his birth--I've never spoken of it before. Below is the time Natches tried to surrender during a daring getaway because a butterfly landed on his hat brim. That one I may have previously mentioned. Assholes might call it a rerun--the product of a lazy, repetitive mind. (But probably not to my face.)

From the archives, 7-14-05:

************************************

Natches Murphy

Most people don't know that Natches Murphy, the infamous Fresno outlaw and pistoleer, once tried to surrender right in the middle of a daring getaway because a butterfly landed on the brim of his hat and he didn't want it to get hurt.

The posse couldn't believe it. They thought surely it must be a trick. They kept shooting even after Natches Murphy waved a white neckerchief in the air, removed his hat and dismounted. Natches Murphy was shot a total of nineteen times as he knelt, gently blowing on his hat brim, trying to coax the butterfly safely away.

Natches Murphy gazed up at his pursuers with sorrowful eyes. (By now they weren't so much pursuing, it was more of an assembling into a semicircle and firing point-blank.)

"Amigos." Several more slugs smashed deep into his torso, rocking him back on his heels. "Can you not see that a butterfly has landed on the brim of my hat?"

Now that he mentioned it, the posse did see what appeared to be a butterfly on his hat. The marshal raised his hand, asking for a temporary ceasefire. Natches Murphy looked again at the butterfly.
"Butterfly, I implore you, please flap away. I've bled more than enough to escrow a grave--should the next bullet strike your fragile frame, it will mean I have hemorrhaged in vain."

The butterfly attempted three feeble flaps then slumped on its side. Natches pressed anguished palms to his temples.
"My God Amigos! She's pregnant!!!!"
He stared up at the posse.
"We haven't a moment to loose, see how extended her belly is. Quick now, I need clean cloth, warm water and a willow leaf."
The men glanced at each other in confusion.
"Now damn it! We haven't much time!!!"

The urgency in his voice struck like spurs to a mustang's flank. The men scrambled to fetch the requested items and when they did, Natches Murphy drew his pistols and shot them all in the spine.

It had been a trick after all, and that's exactly the sort of thing that made Natches Murphy, the infamous Fresno outlaw and pistoleer, so dern infamous.

True Western Truth #143

2006-05-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

To be a real man in the Squinty-Eyed West, you often had to go places your horse didn't want to go--like into a storm, or off a cliff, or down a canyon where wolves were. Sometimes you could trick your horse by telling him the wolves were friendly. But more often than not, he couldn't be fooled and you needed to beat him cruelly--and/or stab him in the side a bunch of times with loops of jagged metal. To this day, horses tend to giggle like fiends when their riders are killed by wolves.

The Line

2006-05-02T01:42:00.000-07:00

Farnsworth Haversby was not a fast man with a gun. In fact he was downright slow. It didn't bother him though; most men were slow in the Squinty-eyed West. One didn't have to be quick on the draw to ranch or farm or pan for gold. Look at it this way: How many times have you ever had to fight a professional or collegiate athlete?

But long odds that he'd ever have to use them wasn't the only reason Farnsworth Haversby wore his six guns unconcerned. Farnsworth Haversby had something else. Farnsworth Haversby knew... The Line.

"You're about a step and a half from where you are and where you’ll die."

******************************

Gunfights in the Squinty-eyed West generally fell into one of two main categories:
The first was a showdown between willing combatants, each believing himself quicker.

Peaceful men had nothing to fear from this type of fight except ricochets and maybe a stampede.

It was the second, more rare type of gunfight that even the peaceful couldn't always avoid--that merciless gun-down, foisted upon the unlucky by brutal, bearded men, or wisp-like wraiths of fluid cruelty who wore ruffles and hummed as they killed.

The play was as old as the trees; the vicious gunfighter would take offense at something real or somehow implied--like a bump on the arm, or a casual glance, or an overly shiny buckle. Then he'd challenge his trembling foe and savagely cut him down with lead.

******************************

Clay "The Rat'ler" Smivingsly was liquid death with a gun and had a cruel streak so wide it could have passed for a tan. He came to town to kill one day, 'cause it had been a week and he was bored.

Farnsworth Haversby was polishing his favorite belt buckle when the batwing doors slammed open and the entire saloon fell still. Farnsworth didn't notice. He was on the last few rubs and rather proud of the job he'd done.
"By golly boys, look at that." Farnsworth said, thrusting his hips in the air. "That is luster restored boys, that is luster restored right there."

Expecting mummers of agreement but hearing none, Farnsworth lifted his eyes from the golden sheen and saw the spacklet of light dancing across the The Rat'ler's face.

Farnsworth apologized and let his shirtfront drop, cutting the reflection off at the source. But everyone knew that wouldn't suffice and rushed to get out of the way.

"You've got some nerve stranger." Clay snarled, drawing each consonant out like a blade.

"It was an innocent mistake sir, one for which I've already apologized." Farnsworth replied. The other patrons knew how slow on the draw Farnsworth was and couldn't believe he wasn't in tears by now. They huddled in corners and whispered about him in the past tense. They didn't know that Farnsworth knew... The Line.

"Not good enough." Clay muttered with a sneer, flexing his hands for the draw.

When Farnsworth saw what was about to come, he pointed at Clay with a steady hand.
"Mister." Farnsworth said with a chilly smile. "You're about a step and a half from where you are and where you'll die."

And there it was... The Line. A gunslinging statement so complex in its fatal simplicity that the recipient could only widen his eyes, drool on himself and wait to be shot.

It took nearly ten seconds for Farnsworth Haversby to pull his gun. First he stubbed his thumb on the bar, and then he accidentally shoved his hand in his pocket. When he finally grasped the butt of his gun, his watch got caught on the holster and he had to tug until the band broke. It didn't matter. Clay "The Rat'ler" Smivingsly stood paralyzed the entire time--struck numb by some unseen force, the awesome power of... The Line.

Farnsworth finally emptied his gun into The Rat'ler's chest. Clay lurched back a step and a half, crumpled to the floor and promptly died.

The End

Silver-eyed Demons

2006-04-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Latigo Flint gets the distinct feeling he's being watched.
"Hmm, I sense something is watching me." Is what Latigo Flint thinks to himself. Then Latigo Flint notices the demon hanging from the ceiling, grinning at him with silver eyes upside down.

The second-worst thing about discovering a demon on your ceiling is that you tend to moan and wet yourself--and now your couch smells funny and there'll always be a lie behind your eyes when you tell girls how brave you are.

The worst thing about discovering a demon on your ceiling is that you have a demon on your ceiling. And whatever that demon is about to do, it's certain to be unspeakably savage.

************************

A Letter:

Dear All Who Could Have, In Alternate Futures, Been My True Love,

Hello there. How's it going? Hope you're well. I regret that we shall never meet but you see there's this demon on my ceiling, grinning down with silver eyes--and though I don't yet know its plan, I think it's certain to be unspeakably savage.

I'm very brave of course, but like that'll do any good. I'm afraid this demon's advantage is one of gravity and claws.

Good-bye. Please don't marry a jerk.

Latigo Flint

P.S. By the way, someone really needs to invent demon repellent. That is a product I would buy.

Oh yeah, and I guess a time machine so they can ship it to me yesterday.

...

Demon hasn't attacked yet. It's just biding its time, playing mind games and whatnot.

...

Demon can make itself look like a credenza--I still hear it laughing though. Fuckin' Demons man.

...

Demon just disguised itself as my fern. It better not have killed Fern in the process.

Hey, leave Fern alone you wretched demon, he's just an innocent fern! If it's me you want then let's get it done!!!

...

Demons are intolerable--the schedule always has to be theirs.

...

Fine then, you wretched demon--I'm gonna get some beer and watch the game while I wait to be disemboweled.

(Oh wait, here it comes.)

Hobo Soup for the Soul (aka Jump Spin Thrusts)

2006-04-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

It has been noted that in space no one can hear you scream. I submit the same is true of submersion in a large vat of petroleum jelly.

Now, someone would have to be very drunk, or very stupid, to confuse a large vat of petroleum jelly with outer space. But Latigo Flint has been known to shoot people in the face if they call him stupid, so I've a pretty good idea which way the consensus will trend.

One of the unfortunate side effects of mistaking a vat of petroleum jelly for outer space is that you end up looking rather silly demanding Astronaut Wings from NASA with your clothes stuck to you, your hair slicked eight ways to hell, and Vaseline oozing from your ears and nose. (Not to mention you tend to get labeled a pathological masturbator.)

***************************

There are people who like to demand that money not be spent on space exploration and settlement right now, what with so many terrestrial problems as yet unsolved.

Now, the rational might counter with the fact that Europe in the thirteen and fourteen-hundreds found itself beset by problems that make ours today seem like a wink and a tickle, and yet they still found the means to fund the voyages of discovery that resulted in the steady improvement in the quality of life for nearly every human on earth that continues unchecked to this day. (Nearly every; obviously there are going to be a few exceptions--sorry about that Mohicans.)

But not Latigo Flint. Nope, I never even mention any of that to people who claim NASA's budget would be better spent on healthcare, after-school programs for angry urchins, walls at the border, disaster response or hobo-soup. Instead, I savagely beat them with a rubber hose until in stumbling desperation, they pledge half their income to JPL on the off chance it'll enable them to put more than a world between them and me.

I'm not saying cut out hobo-soup, some of my best friends are hobos, but stay away with your foolish fiscal knife from those things that truly matter long-term. For when we run out of room and opportunity, we all end up killing each other for soup. Or worse, peaceful words on a two-thousand-year page.

(Not to mention sex in microgravity is gonna be awesome! I call dibs on the copyright for the wall-to-wall, jump-spin-and-thrust.)

Purple Scars

2006-04-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Purple Scars -- A Very Short One-Act Play
by Latigo Flint

Boy:
Sometimes when it's cold my scars turn purple.

Girl:
But it's not that cold and that's not a scar!

The End

Lonesome Gunslinger Songs

2006-04-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Latigo Flint's neighbors assemble in the courtyard and ask him to stop singing Lonesome Gunslinger Songs from the roof of the apartment complex... at 3am... through a bullhorn... wearing nothing but a neckerchief and tear-smudged mascara.

It's a request Latigo Flint can't honor.

The other night Latigo Flint was crooning the lonesome tale of an outlaw and gunslinger named Canebrake Divinity who fell in love with a stage driver but had to shoot her anyway when the holdup went bad.

Latigo Flint was just getting to the good part when he was suddenly pelted with shoes.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!!!" The mob howled.

"I'm singing a lonesome gunslinger song about a lonesome gunslinger named Canebrake Divinity." I replied.

"You're singing what?!!!"

"There was once this lonesome gunslinger named Canebrake Divinity." I explained. "Many things conspired to make him so lonesome--one of which happened to be the tragic shooting of a female stage driver with whom he'd quite recently fallen in love."
I scanned their faces for comprehension.
"I sing the story of that day."

I drew a deep breath and resumed the third verse, singing even more beautifully than before. Someone found melon rinds in the dumpster and dispensed them to the rest of the crowd--not as a snack to enjoy with my song but as projectiles less precious than shoes.

It is difficult to sing a lonesome gunslinger song when you are constantly being smacked in the face with melon rinds. I decided to climb down and pistol whip them all to death.
"Please wait there." I implored, setting aside my guitar. "So I can climb down and pistol whip you all to death."

When I reached the edge I noticed children in the crowd. Had they been among the melon rind tossers? Even if they had, should their punishment be equally harsh? I agonized over this. It became moot a moment later when the eave gave way and I fell six stories onto gravel.

I hemorrhaged a lot and groaned a bit. Almost everyone laughed and went inside. One child hung back.

"You were planning to pistol whip us to death." It was a statement, not an accusation.

"That wasn't for sure yet." I noted.

I struggled to light a cigarette, needing one after such a fall. I might as well have tried to fly, nothing on me was working at all.

The child knelt and produced a match.
"In the song." She asked, striking it across gravel. "What happened after Canebrake Divinity fell in love with the female stage driver?"

I waited for her to bring the flame in but she held it out of reach, as if to trade it for an answer.

"The holdup went bad and Canebrake Divinity had to shoot her, and then he was lonesome for the rest of his life."

She shook her head sadly and lit my cigarette. "That’s sort of how all your songs seem to end."

"Well kido," I took a long drag and felt one of my lungs collapse. Fortunately I had a spare. "It wouldn't really do to have much joy in a lonesome gunslinger song, now would it?"

"I guess not." She leaned over and tried to poke a protruding vertebra back into my neck where it was supposed to be. "I just thought you could try leaving it open-ended every once in a while--ambiguity can also be pretty lonely, just in a different way."

"Yeah, maybe."

Cigarette ash drifted into my face despite my attempt to divert its course with staccato nasal snorts.

"You landed so hard my eyeballs groaned." She whispered, brushing the ash from my cheek. "I'm sorry you fell--even if you were probably going to decide to try to pistol whip us to death."

I gave her small crooked smile that turned sad even as it began.
"Thanks kid, you're one in a million. Now go away--I think I'm about to pass my spleen and I don't want you to have to see."

She touched my brow and walked away, softly weeping on wobbly knees. I watched her go with a sigh and a retch, then shuddered and violently passed my spleen.