Jock and Myrtle

Jock and Myrtle

by Headley Hauser

Jock the Scotch Pine was pretty clever considering he was a barely animate being with his legs stuck in 20 feet of mud. He wasn’t content to take the sun when it offered and water when it flowed. Jock, though planted by others for their own sap-shedding purpose, had learned to live his life as he chose. He hadn’t always been kind – well, he’d never been kind, but he was his own tree, with no one to tell him what to do.

Jock had lots of space to stretch out in what was once a Christmas tree grove. He had all that space because the rest of his class of seedlings got chopped off in early adolescence to spend a couple weeks sitting in water festooned with tinsel and electric lights.

“Feeble-rooted morons,” scoffed Jock in a highland accent. Jock was not a fan of Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day or any other holiday when human celebration required the holocaust of great swaths of herbivorous life. Why his grove mates gave their lives for such a tradition was beyond him.

Arbor Day wasn't bad in concept, but the trees planted never made up for those lost in other holidays, and most humans didn’t even know what day in June it fell.

“What a crock o’ haggis,” said Jock. “This is the thanks we get for all our oxygen.”

Jock survived because he was clever, and one of the ways he was clever was that, untypical of Scotch pine, Jock could move his limbs up and down. When the barbarian in the green and red stocking cap came by with his ax, Jock dropped the branches on one side and raised them on the other.

“That’s odd,” mumbled the barbarian. “I thought this tree was shaping up nicely last week.”

Jock shook snow from his upper branches, landing a glop of slush neatly down the neck of the barbarian’s sweater.

“Poop!” said the barbarian.

Jock rustled – as chuckling was beneath the dignity of intelligent tree-kind.

But all that was years ago. Jock was now too big to be a Christmas tree, and he was all alone on a cool spring day, wondering if there was more to life that sucking water through his roots, and exhaust fumes and cow flatulence through his needles. Jock didn’t want to admit that for all his independence, he was lonely

That’s when he met Myrtle, who despite her name was not a plant. Myrtle was a cardinal, and she was looking for a place to make her nest.

“This one looks nice,” said Myrtle, unaware that Jock understood bird speech. “It stands all alone. I wonder why the bird feeder people didn’t chop it down.”

This didn't go over well with Jock, and so when Myrtle laid grass in one of Jock’s boughs, he shook it out as she flew away for more.

“This is odd,” said Myrtle. “There’s no wind, and I’m certain I put the grass in right. It’s not as if this if my first nest.” Myrtle studied Jock for other birds, or even squirrels the might have knocked the grass from the bough. There was nothing to see. Jock stood alone in a field of stumps.

“The cardinal rule of deduction,” said Myrtle, “is that when you eliminate the probable, you must consider the improbable. Tree, are you shaking off my nest?”

This impressed Jock who had never heard of the cardinal rule of deduction, or anything else intelligent from a bird beyond, “tweet,” and “got any worms?”

“Aye, it’s me,” said Jock in a heavily brogued bird-speak.

“A clever tree!” chirped Myrtle. “I do get so tired of trees that just groan when the wind takes them.”

“Ya seem a bit clever yerself, wee bird,” said Jock.

And so Jock let Myrtle stay in his bough, though he couldn’t help needling her from time to time.

Here's a short tune featuring one of my favorite Scottish animated characters

Psychic Roach Part Six

If you’re just joining us, you’re here for the sixth and last segment of the entirely free short story – Psychic Roach. In parts one through five, the…

Better yet, here are the links One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.

Psychic Roach Part Six

by Headley Hauser

Finally the TV and other people sounds stopped. Just to be sure, Only Roach waited in the shoebox until he saw patterns of sunlight illumine the carpet by the box’s edge.

Cautiously he made his way down the stairs and returned to the familiar sights and smells of the kitchen.

Three humans were in the kitchen, the adult female, the infant male, and the female child. The adult female was attempting to manipulate food into the infant. The female child noticed Only Roach and shouted, “Bug!” The adult was too concerned with the infant to notice.

The infant was a symphony of brown. Having the good sense of the human young, he hadn’t sent his excrement cascading down a toilet, but wore it within easy access in his diaper.

Still, it wasn’t his diaper that drew Only Roach’s attention. The baby was eating some soft brown goo that looked a lot like excrement but smelled much sweeter… pudding. The mother was spooning the pudding into the infant’s mouth. Each spoonful was enough to bathe in! This was opportunity that couldn’t be ignored! He had to take a chance. He had to try to send a wish to the infant.

“Throw the pudding!” The words fizzled across his antennae. “Throw the pudding!”

The baby became noticeably more restless. His legs pounded the high chair as his arms flailed. Even the mother seemed distracted. Could he be reaching her as well?

Splat! A puddle of pudding appeared a few steps from where Only Roach stood. More pudding fell to his left and right. The infant giggled as the woman sighed.

Only Roach ran through one of the smaller puddles, dipping his thorax into the goo as deeply as he dared. He wasn’t stupid, like a fly. He knew better than to get stuck.

Again the female child spotted Only Roach and this time got up from her chair and approached Only Roach in an unsteady hurried gate.

Quickly Only Roach ran beneath the refrigerator.

“Mommy, buggy unda here!”

“Move away, honey, Mommy’s going to move the refrigerator.”

Only Roach was cornered. If he ran, the humans would spot him, and he was much slower now, weighed down with pudding. “Don’t look under the refrigerator, don’t look under the refrigerator.” Somehow he knew that wishing wasn’t going to work this time.

What else could he do? Could he make the mother see an enemy like he had done with the spider? What beast could possibly be big enough to threaten a human? He might be able to distract the child, but what good would that do? It was the woman who was the real threat, and there was something immovable about the way she was thinking.

Above him the refrigerator rocked. There was only the mother, the child, and the infant. They had no enemies; he had no allies. Or did he? With the same intensity he had used with the adult male earlier, he wished to the infant. “You’re very bored, you’re very sleepy, you’re very cranky… that’s it! You’re very cranky! You’re very cranky!

The infant erupted into the squeals of the most beautiful music Only Roach had ever heard. Suddenly the woman’s mind wasn’t so immovable. “You should check the baby, you should check the baby!” Only Roach felt the mother’s resolve crumble and then fall away. The refrigerator stopped rocking.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Is your world coming apart? Ewww! I see what’s wrong. Let’s go upstairs and change that right now.”

As the mother carried the infant up the stairs, Only Roach peaked out from under the refrigerator. Staring down on him was the child… Cassie.

“Hello, Cassie,” Only Roach wished at her.

“’Lo Buggy,” the child replied. If she thought it was strange to be talking to a roach, she didn’t show it.

“You almost got me squished.”

“No, I want to play.” The girl looked sorry.

Only Roach studied the girl in front of him. She was enormous, but she was tender and little inside. It surprised him that he liked the little girl, just as he liked her little brother. Even the adults were better than most of the roaches he’d met – if you get past them trying to kill you all the time. It was as if a space had opened inside Only Roach allowing Cassie and her family to move in.

“Hey, Cassie,” Only Roach wished, “can you find me some cookie crumbs to go with this pudding?”

Will there be more Psychic Roach adventures? I’ll tell you when Only Roach tells me – assuming Cassie doesn’t step on him as she fetches his cookies.

And now – another amazingly unrelated video.

Come back on Monday to see what happens next on Just Plain Stupid. I know I’m anxious to find out.

Psychic Roach Part Three

Astounding as it may seem, not everyone finds a German cockroach to be the best choice as an iconic hero.

Luckily, there’s a baby in Part Three to up the cuteness factor. If you haven’t read Part One,or Part Two, I’ll summarize. A roach finds himself the lone survivor of his colony – all others victim to a box they entered but did not leave. What saved the lone roach was a premonition, or psychic emanation regarding the box. As he travels through the house, he receives repeated emanations telling him the names of things he sees and other information no roach has reason to know.

Enough summary!

Psychic Roach Part Three

by Headley Hauser

He scurried across the carpet and into the room to the left of the stairs.

The room had a large padded platform jutting out from the wall on the right, a… bed. A smaller, firmer platform, a… table, with a… chair stood to the left. There was also a… dresser in the far corner and several boxes scattered about the floor. To the far left of the doorway was a… closet, and though there was something intriguing about the closet, the room as a whole smelled dry and uninteresting. A spider hung from a web behind the door. The spider eyed him hungrily, but the web was high up and easy to avoid.

Moving back to the hall, he felt disappointed. He hoped the rest of the house had more to offer. There was light from under the door at the end of the hall. Since light meant danger, he crawled under the door at the near end.

This was more like it! Right by the door stood a…

diaper pail, and if he didn’t have so much to explore, he would have crawled inside for the rest of the night!

There was a small bed across the room. It was higher than the last bed and had rails on each side. The infant human’s chest was rising and falling as he slept. 

Such an aromatic creature! Urine and mucus were the predominant scents, but he could also smell perspiration and even some excrement. There were also unnatural scents, which were less pleasant. There was a painful, piercing smell from a box of wet clothes and a dry, mind-numbing fragrance from a bottle of powder that had somehow spilled all over the infant and much of the bed clothing. 

He hoped the powder didn’t harm the little human. He didn’t know why he should care, but there was something appealing about the way the creature slept so peacefully. Should he crawl up and remove the powder? He could work all night and not get it all. There were other places to explore.

“I wish you well, human infant,” he sent across his antennae toward the baby. The baby’s lips twitched and he let out a sigh as Only Roach left the room.

To spare those less roach-inclined, (and to spare me the bother of finding non-disgusting roach footage,) I’ll start posting unrelated videos that I enjoy.

So far, it’s been a lovely jaunt for our psychic roach, but ware the peril that awaits him. Check this blog again on Thursday.

If you dare…

Things that are Creepy Part 4: Walter Bego

Who’s Walter Bego, some might ask. Others might answer (bless you) that he’s Slimy Beach’s best friend in Trouble in Taos. He’s also the managing director of Go Figure Reads – you know the company that hasn’t released THREE of my books that are finished. As to which Walter Bego is named after which; it’s hard to say. They look like they both were born before 1850.

By the way, the picture above is not an actual likeness of Mr. Bego – just the closest I could find on Google.

So Walter hands me this story. He wants to be a writer.

Betty Gattis

by Walter Bego

Betty Gattis pushed the point of her notebook’s spiral binding into my thumb, drawing blood.

“That hurt?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Thought so,” she said. Then the bell rang.

I left my books on the cafeteria table and went round the corner to the boys’ room. Eddie Franklin made to dump his cigarette in the urinal until he saw who I was. If I had been a teacher, he might as well have taken a drag. He would have been caught either way. I ran water on my thumb and wondered if I should rub the gritty powdered soap into it. The soap dispenser was caked with brown crusty soap stalactites. I decided against it.

“What you do to your hand?” asked Eddie.

“Betty Gattis,” I said.

“You too?”

I didn’t answer. I had less than three minutes to get to algebra, and my books were probably getting kicked all over the cafeteria by now. I pulled a paper towel and wrapped it around my thumb.

“See ya,” said Eddie as I left.

I only ever saw Betty in study hall, and only if I went to the talking study in the cafeteria instead of the quiet study in the library. Mom wasn’t thrilled that I didn’t get my homework done at school anymore, but like usual, as long as I didn’t say anything, she gave up on it after a while.

The first time I got the nerve to sit next to Betty she ignored me. A senior was telling her about his car – a ’70 mustang that he bought with mostly his own money. Betty didn’t seem too impressed, but she listened for a while. The senior went on about his “beauty,” and Betty stood up like she was headed to the bathroom. The senior kept talking, as Betty stood behind him. Then she bent down and grabbed the back legs to the senior’s chair. She stood, pulling the back of the chair with her, and sent the senior sprawling head first into the table.

“What the…” said the senior from the floor, stopping before uttering the word that would earn him certain detention.

“Mister Ward,” said Coach Fox, looking up from his training equipment catalog, “is there a problem?”

The senior, who must have been named Ward, ‘cause Coach Fox was pretty good with names, sat there on the floor for a second until it was obvious that Betty wasn’t going to put his chair back down for him.

“I just fell, Coach,” said the senior, getting up to chorus of giggles across the cafeteria.

“Alright,” said Coach, going back at his catalog.

Betty, back in her seat with no senior to torture shifted her attention to me. Her eyes were just normal brown, but something about them made me warm all over.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” she said.

I shrugged.

She nodded her head.

From then on, that was my seat – there next to Betty in F period study hall, and no power in heaven or the Archendale School Board could drag me from it.

So – is anybody wondering why Walter Bego creeps me out? What is it about dysfunctional couples that fascinate us?

And the obligatory You Tube video

Walter, seeing that people are actually looking at this blog, has decided to start a second blog for the more favored writers of Go Figure Reads: Stanley McFarland, Will Wright, or any hack he can find to work for nothing. He wants to name it Kitchen Drawer, Junk Drawer, Granny’s Drawers, some name like that. I guess that’s a coming soon event.

Let’s just hope there isn’t much of him on it.