30 Days of Flash Fiction: Day 2 "Un Tranquilo Día en la Playa"

"Mad Dogs" Jack Vettriano

"Un Tranqilo Día en la Playa"

It was fun being out on the beach, Rose thought. Even Charlotte wasn't being too much of a bother. If Patrick didn't mind her joining them, Rose saw no reason to be looking for trouble with her eccentric sister.

They started by looking for shells, but hadn't much luck on that front. Patrick had found a hermit crab shell, but the crab still calling it home hadn't been to keen on going into his pocket. Other than their crustacean friend, it was a never ending supply of broken oyster shells and sand dollars.

It was at this point that Charlotte became restless. She heaved a sigh and took languishing steps. Rose held her tongue until Charlotte started twirling her umbrella into the air.

"Are we boring you, Charlotte?" Rose asked lazily.

Charlotte narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Not like it takes much, and why must you always call me that? Everyone but you seems to get that I prefer to be called Charlie," she whined. "I don't see you going by Rosalyn."

"There are plenty of times where she is adamant about being called Rosalyn," Patrick corrected, staring off at some seagulls.

Rose's jaw dropped, and Charlotte's brow furrowed with puzzlement.

"Patrick!" Rose exclaimed, smacking him across the chest. It was then that Charlotte realized the meaning behind Patrick's words.

"Oh I don't need to know about my sister's..." Charlotte waved her hand through the air as if swatting away an unpleasant pest. "I'm sure it's boring anyway."

Rose scoffed. "I assure you, Charlie, our love life is anything but boring," she retorted arrogantly.

"Okay," Charlotte shouted. "I don't need to know." Rose sported a smug look at Charlotte's retreat. A few moments passed before anyone broke the silence.

"You're right," Charlotte said. "I am bored. I think I'll go for a swim."

"But none of us brought our suits," Rose stated.

"I've got knickers and camisole on. It's not like I'm naked," Charlotte said, eyes rolling.

Rose stood, arms crossed, as her sister, sans the dress she had been wearing, bolted towards the warm water. Patrick wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his chin on her shoulder.

"What?" Rose asked testily.

"I'll give it thirty seconds before you're in that water, too," he replied smiling. Rose glared from the corner of her eye, but her attention was quickly diverted to Charlotte's laughs.

Rose huffed and started taking off her dress. Patrick could only laugh.

"Oh, shut up, will you?" Rose said annoyed. She looked him up and down, eyebrow quirked, before taking off toward the water.

Patrick rolled his eyes and began shedding his shirt. "There is no such thing a quiet day at the beach when the Landy sisters are involved," he said to himself.

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Friday Fictioneers: The Blight Cometh

Photo courtesy Madison Woods

"The Blight Cometh"

"Is it moving?"

Bill's voice pulled Steve out of his thoughts. The fungal, oozing thing most definitely looked like it had moved. Or had it, thought Steve. He eyed it warily, not getting too close. 

"Did you hear me?" Bill asked. "Is it moving?"

Steve continued staring as he replied, "No. It's not moving." He hurriedly grabbed his camera and started snapping photos.

"If it isn't moving, then what is it doing?" Impatience laced Bill's question.

Steve lowered the camera from his face, and slowly turned towards his brother. "It's growing," he replied quietly.

Bill could only stand dumbstruck as Steve continued taking pictures.

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30 Days of Flash Fiction

Since I started doing Madison Woods' Friday Fictioneers a few months ago (not as consistently as I'd like), I've been wanting to do a big flash fiction project to push myself to write more often.

And now I'm finally going to do it.

The initial plan was to do the entire month of August, but I got caught up in other, more pressing matters, and I didn't have to time to get to it. Luckily for me, August has 31 days, thus "30 Days of Flash Fiction."

I'm just going to write whatever comes to mind. If I have a prompt for the piece, I'll be sure to post it.

If anyone wants to join in, feel free to post their links in the comments section. Use whatever you want inspire you. No subjects are off limits, but if it is explicit, a warning would be thoughtful.

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30 Days of Flash Fiction: Day 1 "Price"

This is an excerpt from a work in progress...

The heat was starting to become oppressive, but the land didn't care. There was no shade or water in sight. The mules were becoming weary and slowed. All of this happening, but we still plowed ahead. We had to get to California. Had to get to the gold.

"James," one my fellow travelers called out. Jacob was his name. A younger man, near my age, traveling from Georgia. Rumor was his father was the Governor. Why he had decided to go West, let alone travel through Texas and Mexico, was something I had never understood.

"Do you need something, Jacob?" I asked, my irritated brogue rearing its ugly head.

"Is the heat causing you to wilt, my friend?" Jacob was also an educated man, which confused me more. He wasn't like myself or the others, poor immigrants or laborers, some even criminals, looking to find their riches in the mountains.

He dressed well, or at least better than the rest in our group, and was always reading a book when we stopped to camp or rest. And he always seemed to be of the cheerful sort, but if you caught him in a moment when he thought himself alone with his thoughts, you could see a deeper pain that seemed to at his insides.

I looked at him for a moment before answering. "Aye," I replied. "Ireland is nothing like this."

"Do you miss it?" he asked.

"No," I stated. "There was nothing for me there. I was nothing there. Famine and the English killing people everyday, and I was the bottom of the heap." We rode quietly for a moment, just the sound of the horses and mules echoing in the desert. "But America is a new start. A new life," I said. "A man can be anything here. There's no fancy families living of their name to keep me down. I can be as important as I want."

Jacob nodded along, listening. "That's why I'm going to California," I exclaimed, pointing towards the west. "To find my riches, go back to Texas, and get the respect I didn't have in Ireland."

I looked back at Jacob. He was pensive, rubbing his hand across his beard. "That life," he said finally. "All that money and respect you so desperately crave? It comes with a great price."

"I'd pay any price not to have my life in Ireland," I replied adamantly.

"Your resolve is greater than mine then," he said, a distant look on his face.

I mulled over that remark. "Why are you going to California," I asked eventually.

I don't know if it was him measuring his response or if he just hadn't truly thought about it, but Jacob took his time answering. "I'm not going to California," he finally let out. "I'm running away from Georgia."

"Why?" I asked, confused.

"Because, James, sometimes the price is too high to pay." With that, Jacob urged his horse into a trot. He rode on ahead of me, leaving me to ponder his words, and, as he put it, wilt in the heat.

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Friday Fictioneers: Last Cigarette

Amanda Gray "Outside Pecos"

Last Cigarette

I could feel the chipping stucco on my back, still hot from the pounding desert sun. So this was how it was all going to end, I thought. At least I was going out with a bang. Or six bangs, really.

I was warned that this was the likely outcome when I started doing business with Pancho. Too late for regrets now, I supposed. The crunch of soldier started moving away from me.

“Don't I get a last request,” I queried.

“Like what,” the leader asked, his accent worsening the sick thrill in his voice.

“Cigarette,” I replied.

The leader hastily shoved the cigarette in my mouth, lighting it. I took a long, glorious drag, savoring the spicy tobacco taste.

I heard the cocking of six guns. I never heard the shots.

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Friday Fictioneers: Out of Body

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. They were humans. Boys. There was absolutely no way this was happening.

“Dude! What are we going to do?” Steve looked over at Billy. He couldn't tell his brother was 13. Or that he himself was 15. He still couldn't believe this was happening.

“Steve! What are we going to do?!” Billy was growing frantic. Steve couldn't blame him. If there was a time for frantic panicking, it was now.

“I don't know, Billy.”

“What do you mean you don't know? This is your fault!” This was true, Steve thought. It really was his fault.

Billy puffed, “I should have never let you take me to that Voodoo priestess.”

“Look on the bright side, Billy. At least we're at McDonald's.”

The Federal Reserve Is Killing The Economy

I was watching Good Morning America this morning (blame the wife, I can't stand it), and I noticed they were discussing how the Dow Jones Industrial was nearing 13,000 again while the NASDAQ was closing in on 3,000.

It got me pondering on the current discussion about where the inflation rates currently sit on the CPI (sitting at 2.3% right now). Many of the mainstream economists (Krugman, Baker, Wiesenthal, etc) have touted the line that because of this ~2% inflation rate, inflation isn't happening.

This is true in a sense.

What they fail to realize is for all intents and purposes, the economy should be in a deflationary period but isn't because of the massive amount of monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve.

Since the recession started in 2007, the Federal Reserve has printed $2.7 trillion dollar in two round of quantitative easing (buying US Treasury bonds). On top of that, it has kept the Fed rate (the basis for all interest rates) at  historic 0.5%. These are the same policies which led to the housing & credit bubble in the first place.

And it will have disastrous results in the future.

Because all this money is being pushed into the markets, the economy is incapable of removing the enormous amount of bad money (debt) it has in its system. Almost every aspect of the market is inflated from the deflationary lows they need to be at a sustainable rate. The Fed rate needs to be elevated much higher to discourage the massive debt leveraging the Wall Street banks participated in from 2001 - 2007.

This is why so many among the Austrian School warn about inflation, even though we are currently in a stagnant period. If the economy recovers, the monetary expansion is going to rear its ugly head and create a staggering amount of inflation, which will be nothing but destructive for the average citizen, wiping out any savings in cash and destroying wealth.

The mainstream economists and government policy makers are going to be the end of the middle class if we do not wake up and start protecting our wealth.

This article was originally published 2/21/12.

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Mad Men "Tea Leaves"

Peggy is given new responsibility; Don and Harry indulge a client.

Ozzie Loves Fidel

"I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that son of a bitch is still there." - Ozzie Guillen

Friday Fictioneers: Pot of Gold

Pot of Gold

“Look! A rainbow!”

Steve stopped dribbling the ball to see where is his little brother was pointing. The rainbow stretched across the sky, curving down to settle in a thicket of trees at the back of the field.

“Let's see if there's a pot of gold at the end of it,” his brother said excitedly.

Steve rolled his eyes, “Billy, there ain't gold at the end of a rainbow.” Billy really could be a gullible kid sometimes.

“I'm looking anyway. And if there is, I ain't sharing it with you,” Billy hollered while sprinting across the field.

Steve dashed after him. “Not if I find it first,” he yelled. If anyone was going to find that gold, it was going to be him. He was the older brother, after all.