A California Online Magazine with Local Focus and Global Appeal
Seven weeks as an actual Cary Valley National Park ranger and Birdie McLaren was still excited to be wearing the time-honored “green and gray” uniform, although today she wore firefighter clothing, protective yellow and green Nomex. She adjusted her tiny frame atop the all-terrain vehicle, pulling a load of boxed food and bottled water up an old Army-built access trail.
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Charlotte usually experienced a transition at dawn. She had lost count of how many of these she had undergone, but then, since her murder, not much made sense. There was a familiar feeling when this smoky life force came over her. Charlotte often thought it must be how a butterfly feels when it comes out of a cocoon. There was no casing though for her to break through only heaviness that weighted her down making it difficult to move about as she once again became active.
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“You’re late.”
“Yes, Dad, there was an accident on Highway 95 or I would have been here a while ago.”
“You should plan better instead of leaving me looking like I don’t know what time you’re coming. How hard can that be?”
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“When day turns to night, the world will be turned upside down.” The crone’s throaty cackle penetrated Joseph Haydn’s consciousness as he walked through St. Michael’s square to his quarters in the Michaelerhaus.
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Sally Peale flattened herself in the back corner of Maureen Mitchell’s bedroom closet, hiding behind the longest evening gown.
“This makes no sense, Sally,” Maureen’s nephew, Brian, shouted from somewhere near at hand. “I know you’re upstairs. You can’t escape.”
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Yeah, I know I’m beautiful. At least I was until about a year ago, when the cancer reached my face. I don’t take any credit for my beauty. I was created this way. I didn’t have any choice or input. I don’t really pay it any mind; I just accept it, like we all accept that we have two eyes, two ears, one nose, and one mouth.
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When it comes to jumping into the ocean, two things always hold me back: my fear of sharks and how I look in a wet bathing suit. Pete must have plied me with a lot of drinks last night for me to stand shivering, waiting to plunge into the Gulf of Mexico at high noon on Valentine’s Day.
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Once upon a time…
There was a pudgy sheriff shivering in the cold as he looked out over a frozen lake. He pulled his black wool cap further down on his head and was thinking that he should have been home in bed. It was, after all, three o’clock in the morning—the morning of Valentine’s Day.
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“Is…is he dead?”
“I don’t know. He’s not moving. And look at the color of his face.”
“Maybe we should take the duct tape off his mouth, see if he’s breathing.”
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Detective Macy paced beside my aunt’s bedside. “Did you see your assailant? His face…Anything?”
“No.” Aunt Grace shakily wiped several tears from her pale wrinkled cheeks. “I was asleep. It wasn’t until I felt my pillow being pressed over my face that I knew someone else was in the room.”
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My first dead body and it’s not. I mean it’s not him. I am so screwed.
I can’t believe I ditched school for this. But when the substitute history teacher died, and I had never seen a dead guy, I thought I could get to the funeral home and back before anybody noticed.
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The man standing in the middle of the sidewalk blocking other pedestrians would have been handsome had his dark face not been contorted by rage as he screamed at the young boy. The man’s well-trimmed beard with its scattering of grey, his black hair curling around the edges of his lavishly jeweled turban, his beautifully tailored clothing told of his aristocratic lineage.
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