that monster there...

        There were Stacy, Tracy, Lacey, Casey and Lola, in that order, from first to last. Lola because Lou, the father of the five girls, had prayed this was the last one, and as such, wanted to have a say in naming the closer. He loved the catchy tune on the radio, never realizing what it was about, or who the Lola in the song had been.         Stacy senior, Lou’s wife and mother of five girls, was too tired to argue. Lola it was.         It was Lola who started the trouble. Stacy, Tracey and Lacey had already been married to various local men for a number of years and Casey was dating Luke, a plumber from two towns over, when Lola introduced Grant to the family.         “Oh, he's a handsome one! You’re a handsome one!” Stacy senior passed the looks and the smirks like a card dealer passes bad hands around a card  table.         “Mom, stop it, your embarrassing him,” said Lola,...

        “It's not that I never liked him – I liked  him enough -  if it mattered anyhow, which it doesn't,” she hissed.         “I want him dead. I want it to hurt. I want him dead and then bring him back so you can kill him again, right away, right now…” The hit-man squinted. “That's twice the cash, even if I could… I'm no expert, but even if I could, it ain't right...” She smiled and the words sliced through clenched teeth, “You have no problem killing him once but..,” she said and shook her head.         Stupidity. Killers. Assholes. Dropouts – they make it look like something in the movies.  A hit man is a losers loser: Bad breath, bad manners, dirty, filthy, stupid third-grade dropouts. “Listen to me! Every week goes by I have to pay that schmuck to live, to breath, to exist in this world just to bust my ass and remind me of what a god damned fool I was in the very first god-...

Part 2         I braced myself for the attack. It was a ritual.        “King of the mountain! King of the mountain!”   I am the mountain. No one ever won that contest. The mountain tumbled every time.         They'd gotten as far as they could before I scooped them up and rolled them, elbows over giggles onto the soft, Persian  rug.         “Your getting slow, Lurch!” Squealed Simone.         “You're getting heavy!” I replied, honestly.         I was Lurch; from the Adams family. They found that unlikely association hilarious. Especially when I tried the voice.         After nuggies, a belch contest, and silly how-do-you-do, the girls composed themselves. I received a years worth of catch-up in a six-minute, stereophonic, high speed summary, which ended with four handed vote that my hairline had receded, and it was a sad state of...

     A  friend of mine tells me he's up to ‘here’ with his kids.      “They spent the morning filling the washing machine with bullfrogs from the pond.  Felt bad for them,  all that dirty pond water…”      We stood in his yard and looked first at the well manicured pond in the distance, and then back to the house where, from all appearances, there was peace and order and prosperity.      He chewed his bottom lip and winced. “After the first rinse…” he gurgled, looked away and managed to squeak out,  “I have ha hard time talking about it…”      “You have a washing machine?”      “I didn't know it either, until…” His eyes glazed up.      “Filled?” I made like measuring with my hands.      “Up,” he said, through fist full of knuckles.       I was going to ask another question – there were a few – but he shook his fist out of his ...

“Nardo, what am I looking at here?” “Couple, married. He's hogtied to a dining chair and dangling from the roof over here, on this side – and she, well, I don't think I have to explain it, Sir – but she's dangling from the roof off the other end of the rope on that side.” And she was. Tied and bound to a children's wooden hobbyhorse, calico, with hearts and something that looked like red bursts of flowers… she was mostly naked except for the charred remains of Bo-Peep Halloween costume. “It's her blood, sir. Oh wait, they're at it again.” “You son of a bitth!” She lisped over the second story aluminum gutter, getting her chin up over it, lifting herself, ass-skyward, with her neck and enough hatred to do such a thing. “He needed braces! You moaned about the braces – I got your God damned braces!” The second engine company arrived as the fire flared up around the tightly knit hedges surrounding most of the house. “Sir, The first engine company wa...