Suggestion: Create a villain...

(written stream of conciousness with no edits. please excuse grammar and typo's. based on a suggestion from the "audience")

Park benches are not the most comfortable of sitting places. To my dissapointment, young children do not run around my recliner at home so I must sacrifice my comfort for opportunity. You cannot kill a child if you cannot catch a child and you cannot catch a child if there are no children.

My eye has been on one particular child for weeks now. His pale blue eyes seem to be larger than his head and his chubby cheeks and fine blonde hair strike sharp against the backdrop of char grey trees and autumn leaves. He always wears the same tiny plaid jacket and he is easy to pick out of any crowd of tots... His mother dresses him in suspenders which he hates and he methodically removes his jacket every day, lowers the elastic straps to a dangling position before returning the jacket to his shoulders.

It is facinating to watch someone that you know you must kill... The longer you watch them... the longer you let them live... the more temptation to revel in that power of life and death exists...

He stands under the money bars and stares up. His face in a frown as he watches another child who is stronger, taller, more agile glide across the bars hand after hand in an almost effortless fashion. The face the boy makes as he glides for a moment juxtaposes itself against the displeased look of the small blonde boy. The moment frozen in time might make for a priceless piece of art, but of course no Gallery can truly hold something as pure as this moment. No picture could ever grasp the true essence of what was about to happen... of what I am about to do...

From my pocket I pull a set of photographs. I unstrap the rubber band that holds them together and flip through them... searching for the right inspiration to do what I needed to do...

The first picture helps me in no way... it is a picture of a pile of dust beside a plastic table table tent the cops use to show scale... it reads #4 and the pile shows itself to be about 6 inches high... It is too far removed from human form to cause any reaction in me at all...

The second picture does its job nicely... a group of small bodies lying in a heap... their eyes bulging out of their sockets and their twisted bodies bent in directions that bones do not go without breaking... I stare at this picture. I try to focus on the pain and anguish they felt just before they died... just before their lives were ripped from their vessels and left like a pile of rag dolls on the hardwood floor.

Quickly I flip through the series of the other 30 pictures... some piles of dust, some mangled masses... but I have already found my motivation and the rest is just involuntary movement of an absent mind...

As much as I want to jump from the bench and grab his tiny neck to squeeze with all of my might I must wait... I must be sure...

I let my emotions run wild while keeping my body in perfect stillness... I watch and wait... In the open like this I will only get one shot... I must be sure...

The young child has not moved from his position under the monkey bars... He still stands, still looks displeased as two taller children, different than their predesessor crawl across the top of the bars and then dangle their feet while trying to maintain balance... The blond boy squints in the sunlight but maintains his gaze on the happy boys on the bars...

As much as I hate to cut things too close... to test moments too far before acting, I must be sure he is the one... and that is when it happens... I can feel it... crawling across the ground and hanging low in the air I can feel the evil seeping outward... soupy acidic evil pressure pushes further until I can feel it in full... and I gain confirmation... I was right... I had finally found him... this was the boy...

I stood and moved quickly toward him and even as I moved I knew I might already be too late... I didn't think him capable of this in the open with so many people around but then it is hard to know the limitations of the most hideous horrible villain you ever knew who is also a 6 year old child...

From his tiny jacket pocket he pulled a stone... one of those perfect round skipping stones you find at the waters edge. To anyone else it would represent fun... joy... carefree days with a friend or your father skipping stones... but to him it was all he needed to destroy a life...

I was now in a sprint toward the boy hoping against hope that I would reach him before the stone left his hand and both of those boys were dead before they even fell from the monkey bars... His tiny arm cocked back... it would happen before I reached him... and so I shouted "Juuuuussttttiiiinnnnnnn!!!!"

He turned. His arm lowered. He stared at me as I ran. I saw his eyes clear now... Those are the eyes of the boy who had murdered 70 children... some he left in piles and some he burned in his father's kiln and then returned to their homes... There was my nemesis...

His face turned to slight shock... then to an almost knowing smile and his arm raised again... the stone had a new target.

(to be continued)

~Jim

Suggestion: Ooohh... Write a mystery!

(This entry was written stream of consciousness with no editing and was based on a suggestion from the "audience.")

It was midnight when I finally sat down at my desk in the corner where I would normally sit to knock out a few pages before sleep. The kids were tucked away and Marlo was reading in her sewing chair downstairs, quite content and in no need of my attention. With "Dunderblocks" recently completed I found myself back to brainstorming a new work.

For years the plots came easy to me and I had journals filled to the brim with ideas for my next novel with the promise of the well never running dry. It was usually just a matter of picking something promising from the tattered pages and fleshing it out over a week's worth of evenings. Now I found myself at the end of my notes... the ideas of my youth gone and no sign of the next around the bend... I cradled my head in my hands and for the first time in over 2 years I cried. Who would I be if I were not a writer? A father certainly... and a husband... a leader in our church and a mentor to an afterschool program... But what would I be for me?

"If this is not the end" I prayed quietly through my tears "then God, if it is your will, please open another door."

Several minutes of silence followed and then the sound of my study door creaking announced a tiny visitor. "Not now please Micah." I said as kindly as I could... "Daddy is crying and praying right now."

"I can't sleep" he said in a voice too cute to ignore. "Can I cry and pray too?" I tried to breathe and smile and then I wiped my face and motioned him over to sit on my lap. He crawled into place and looked up at me... his eyes squinched in what I could only assume was an attempt to cry with me. "What are we crying and praying about?"

"Daddy is scared Micah. He doesn't know what to write next and he is scared what that might mean." From the birth of my first son I swore that I would never be closed off to my children... I would always be honest and open with anything that I thought they could handle.

He bowed his head, squinched his eyes and we sat again in the silence that only this room could provide. Suddenly and with great energy and bright eyes he grabbed my shirt as if our faces were not close enough already... "OOh!" he said.

Seeing my startled response he calmed down as he was always instructed when he got hyper and he aimed and fired the thought again but with more control this time. "Ooh, write a mystery!"

I stared at him and felt a grin grow through my cheeks. "It doesn't work like that Micah. But thank you so much for helping me think."

"I think..." he persisted "That you should write a mystery. And it should be about someone who helps people find peace." And with that he hopped off my lap, turned, nodded firmly as if had just given me some tough love, and headed off toward his room. "Love you Daddy! 'night!"

"Goodnight Micah!" I laughed a little. It is hard not to when everything they say and do is that cute. I turned back to the desk and saw where my wife had laid out two fresh packs of post it notes and a sharpie marker for me. She knew my process as well as she knew my soul.

I unwrapped the first pack of post-it's and tucked the sharpie behind my ear... I did this out of habit... Out of impulse... Muscle memory doing its work... I uncapped the sharpie and on the first page I wrote "new." Pulled it free from the stack and stuck it on the wall. I stared at the pad... nothing else came... out of fear I wrote "Novel" and placed it next to its brother... I felt the tears starting to well up again... the uncertainty growing... and from a place of insecurity I wrote "mystery" on the next note... tore it free... "Help" then "Peace" then "Micah" and then I couldn't stop... "Boy" then "Detective" then "Christian" then "murder" and on and on...

I was up till 6am that morning... I couldn't stop myself... I used every post-it we had in the house and two sharpies went dry in the process...

And there it was. On my wall was another great novel begging to be worked into the page.

I made my way out of my study and heard the stirrings of life in the house... preparing for work and school... and I went to Micah's door and met him on his way to our hall bathroom... I picked him up, gave him a giant hug that I hoped said "thank you" and sent him off to wash the sleep out of his eye.

At my favorite spot on the front lawn I thanked God for being so swift in his work. Some might say it isn't possible that Micah's idea was from God. But I know that nothing is outside his reach. Nothing is too big for him. Miracles are like breathing to him, so why would an idea from a boy's lips just moments after I requested it be impossible?

I smiled and laughed and headed for bed and some much needed sleep.

~Jim

Suggestion: Flotation Devices

(This entry was written stream of consciousness with no editing and was based on a suggestion from the "audience.")

When I was a kid if you wanted to ride in the boat or even get in the lake you had to have a life preserver. The moment I turned 12 years old it became my new responsibility to get these flotation devices for myself and the younger children... I was proud to have grown into this new responsibility and walked with great enthusiasm to the storage shed at the top of the hill to gather 6 belts and share them with the masses. What I did not know yet was what utter horror would face me on the other side of the shed door. As I swung the aluminum hinged portal open, pulled the light and stepped through the threshold my face was met with the largest hornets nest I have ever seen. I don't know if you've ever gotten a good look right at a hornet emerging from a giant nest, but it shook me to my very bones.

I screamed... it was a girlie scream and it was long and it was loud and it lasted all the way down the hill and to the lake and into the water for safety...

The children who had been waiting for their vests ran after me, all with their own little screams and all heading toward the same water... as I surfaced from the water and saw their short little legs running down the hill and the hornets hovering above I was met with a very life and death based problem... Those kids were all about to jump into the water without vests on which was my new responsibility... but if they didn't jump in they were probably going to get stung (at least one of them flailing about like that was going to get stung... you just know it) and so, I did what anyone in my situation would do... I spread my body out and tried to collect as many tiny people as possible on my arms and legs. This did 2 things... It got them into the water but not enough to submerge themselves to evade the hornets and it showed me that holding 5 little children with your arms and legs will very effectively sink you to the bottom of the water and they will panic and they will not let you up for air.

And so... Nobody got stung. Nobody drowned. Nobody got in trouble.

My Grandfather grabbed a can of wd40 or something of the like and without fear or trepidation, he killed all dem hornets dead where they nested...

~Jim