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Archive for the ‘Flash Fiction Fridays’ Category

ebookcoverI can’t seem to manage blogging with any amount of consistency these days. WordPress told me today that I had 5 days to renew my site or they were giving me the boot. I’m a little disturbed that in renewing, I can’t get that ad off unless I pay, when I was the one who volunteered to have the ads here in the first place. Why did I do it? ‘Cause everybody else was doing it. Well, maybe not you but somebody was, so I figured I should too. Now, I don’t want it anymore and can’t get rid of it without paying. Like a bad marriage.

But I won’t whine any longer. Today, I’m sharing a story from my beloved book of tales, Sock It to Me, Baby. I must also share the review George gave the book on Amazon. I never solicited her to do this but I thought you’d like to know, and I’d like you to know, what’s being said about me and my work (wink, wink):

Ms. Fomby explores the complexity of human interactions in well-drawn sketches  of her contemporary “Cannery Row” characters. The characters are presented without sentimentality and with their flaws and foibles intact. The portraits are often harsh, and always humorous. There are the down-on-their-luck folks and the self-indulgent swindlers, the lazy, the addicted, the hypocritical and the self-important. The sketches are boisterous, outrageous, funny and familiar. Ms.Fomby writes with a natural style that draws the reader in. She adopts the dialect of her characters throughout lending credibility to their voices. “Sock It To Me, Baby” is entertaining, hilarious, bawdy and entirely readable. A solid
first book.

I never properly thanked George for her well-written review. With her being the smart woman she is, I believe every word she said. (Wink, wink). Thank you much, George. You’re most appreciated, as well as the readers who visit this blog. Now, let me spin a little tale for you, folks…

Some Souls to Keep

What he felt and wanted to say to his dying mother was caught in his throat. She lay, closer to dust than life, and the most he could do was stand above her looking, the memories of faceless men coming and leaving her bedroom from way back. One even peeped in his door and stepped a foot in ‘til he heard her drunken voice calling about bringing some weed back from ‘round the block.

There were no mix of emotions. He felt nothing at all. Not even bitterness welled up. His sister walked in, filled with enough for them both.

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Even after three days, Freedah didn’t feel like washing her ass. She’d been dumped like a bag of shit while Henry planned marriage to some other woman. In two days coming, the wedding would take place at her own church home, where folk talked shit secretly and faked pity in her face.

“That no good bastard,” one woman told her. “The Lord ain’t blessing him in the long run.”

Freedah didn’t care about no blessings or the Lord. Her heart and pride were broken. She counted the days ‘til wedding time, crying in between, with a .45 under her pillow.

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“Portrait of Harmony” Acrylic on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

Lynette met Glynn by an unfortunate happenstance. In the produce section of Safeway, she was bending over to pick up a tomato that fell to the floor which caused her pants to rip clean down the middle seam. Damn rip was so loud, it seemed to call Glynn by name. He spun around, his country ass, talking about “Huh” and saw a slit of Lynette’s bloomers. Glynn knew she was special when she let out a squeak of surprise, talking about “Excuse me” on account that she thought she’d broke wind, then marched right on to the counter to pay for her goods.

Glynn followed her, leaving his shit in the cart for folk to put away. He was real good about doing that. He knew his ass wasn’t there to buy grocery no how. He was shopping for him a woman to lay in his lonely bed at nights to rub against.

“Hello, there.” He had a big ole country smile spread over his face. Had a nice set of teeth that stopped Lynette dead in her tracks. He’d followed her out to her car in a mad rush, damn near tripping over his own feet to get to her.

“Hello to you.” She said it like some loose woman, though she wasn’t. Just had been so long since any man had paid her any mind. Women folk could be real silly like that.

“I think you left this in the store.” Glynn handed Lynette a clear bag of tomatoes he hadn’t bothered paying for, he was in such a rush to keep his eye on them cotton drawers that caught his eye.

“Oh, thank you but I didn’t…” She thought better of running her mouth in a way that usually ran men folk off. This one here must’ve been checking me out, she thought, and all of a sudden felt a slight breeze hitting the crack of her ass. She giggled. “Thank you kindly.”

Glynn handed over the bag with his number in big writing, in case she had poor eyesight. Shit, he didn’t give a damn if she couldn’t hear too well either, he wanted him a woman.

Lynette batted her lashes when she saw the number crumpled in the bag. Something told her in that instant, he was the one. For sure, she knew he was when something flew to her backside and wedged itself into her ass and stung the shit out of her where she’d split her pants. She got to jumping around, looking real uncute and ended up falling into Glynn’s strong arms before they both hit the ground, laughing. They were so wrapped into each other, they just laid on their backsides on the pavement, as if a blanket was spread underneath them on a patch of grass at the city park.

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“Deliverance” Watercolor on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

She Said I Do

Couldn’t love him through the pain of hating himself and continue packing flesh-colored powder around the black and blues of what used to be a beautiful face. Laura stuffed  grocery bags and rushed to the boys’ bedroom, where dry splatters of blood stained their walls from last week. Then, headlights came beaming through the window.

Her Last Thoughts

Never planned to lay dying at forty. Projects waited for her to complete them. She wondered if Clara, her only friend, had washed the dinner plates in the sink from days before. While the monster ate at her last breast, she imagined her last drink of wine, the glass rim stained with signature maroon lipstick.

The Choice

They paraded outside with signs, bantering with a sense of rage that she was vile for cutting the cord to life inside her. Noma wept inside and out, thinking of the baby that her step-father planted inside to swell up her thoughts, while her mother sat with folded arms and anger etched across her face.

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"Walking the Block" Watercolor/Ink on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

All he wanted was to get the mail out the box down the little driveway. Stars were twinkling bright and shit. Of what could be seen. The crickets chirping reminded him of peaceful, country nights back home as a boy. Shit, how long ago was that? Forty some-odd years?

Soon as he stuck his hand in the damn box, something hard beat down on his head. He found himself fighting for his life. And he wasn’t doing a good job of it either. Shit, had he known an unexpected ass-kicking was coming, he’d have kept it in the house. Damn!

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"Portrait of Harmony" Acrylic on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

Despite the bitter ending of her third marriage, she cared. Yet, so full up to her neck with anger over this last year with Richard, the fart that pushed out of her ass sounded like a slamming door.

Richard finished off his meal of oats and juice she’d prepared, grabbed the fly swatter and rushed his ass to the living room. So ready, he was, to take his bitching to the streets for spectators’ pleasure.

“Goddamn! You, shitter woman!”

Her deaf ear toward him and immune to her own rottenness, she turned with a smile. “Did you take your vitamins?”

© 2012 Totsymae

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"Mr Goodfoot" Acrylic on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

His fingers, like icky putty to the touch. She didn’t want him touching and nibbling her neck. Why they ended up in the bedroom for him to prove he was no good at fucking, again, she couldn’t rightly fathom. She felt like a dumb ass while her head banged and knocked whatever sense she had left against the headboard.

She looked him over. Sweat beads lining his forehead. Him feeling good and shit. Suddenly, came the ugly face, ’cause he was no looker anyhow. Then, he collapsed and fixed his mouth to ask, “So Babe, when you riding the pony?”

(c) 2012 Totsymae

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"Arms of Comfort" Acrylic on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

All she wanted was to love him. Hold his little body in the nest of her arms. Bathe herself in the warmth of his brown eyes that danced as they smiled into hers. From the moment he began pushing into the world, she knew he loved her. The brevity of labor, near painless, that in Cora’s mind translated to saying, “I love you, Mama.” Those were her thoughts when he lay wrapped on her swollen bosom.

If only she could pinpoint his last thoughts as he lay in the cold earth now. Never was good at holding on to love.

(c) 2012 Totsymae

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“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’

Charles M. Schulz

"The Block" Watercolor/Ink on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

He was a dumb ass kinda stupid. Went and stole that woman’s car soon after the double glass doors closed behind to get her evening meal in the grocery deli. Low down times stupid! Fiddled and faddled the wires and backed the ole Beamer from the space she’d parked it. Drove it clear outta the lot.

I stood behind the desk when he handed over the paperwork, trying to register the damn thing in his name! Next thing I know, the po-po comes busting in like we’re making a drug and cash exchange, yelling “Freeze! Put your goddamn hands up!”

(c) 2012 Totsymae

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“Music can speak louder than words, and I will use my music to speak out on behalf of children everywhere.”

Judy Collins

"Tulips in Green Vase" Acrylic on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

The child, local news reported, was playing in her very own backyard. It was fenced and locked. Her mama, cooking sweet bread and sticking her head out to smile often. Being that it was a quiet and upstanding nook of town, that child should’ve played ’til the contentment of her heart, so the folk who lived there implied to the mic shoved in their faces, with knuckle-scratching confusion.

“This kinda thing…downright baffling,” one town folk whimpered, grappling with his sadness. “Should’ve never happened here.”

Mrs. Waller umphed umphed at the boxed screen. “Then, where the hell should it have happened?”

(c) 2012 Totsymae

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“The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between the great and insignificant is energy.”

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

Watercolor on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

She hated herself. To prove it was to study Edith grind a task south with perfected vexation or bite chunks of happy from folk. No thought to anchoring herself like a rotten tooth in their mouths.

A woman of ill-gotten means nearing fifty, it looked, Edith entertained her own wretchedness through her life’s course, which nature, unknown to her, would shorten in five days coming. Folk brawled inside themselves and turned their backs on sight of her to duck the onslaught of flinging shit.

The gray stone spoke her life and death: Lying in Heavenly Turmoil, gifted by adoring backbiters.

(c) 2012 Totsymae

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"Musical Abstractions" Watercolor/Ink on paper. Copyright 2012 Totsymae

“Marriage is not about age; it’s about finding the right person.”

Sophia Bush

Leroy’s eyes rolled in the direction of the couch from his chair, honing in on her. His wife, squatted over gathering shit of no importance. He studied her ass that had lost its form, imagining it underneath the terry robe. The very thing he’d fallen in love with, lost. To childbirth, so the story went. ‘Stead of soft pones in the palms of his rough labored hands nowadays, a beefy ass took its place. No tenderness there or in her eyes that turned on him when “Don’t even think I’m spreading tonight,” played like a honeyed melody in his ears.

(c)2012 Totsymae

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