As promised, here is the 9th installment of Ember. If you haven’t already, please read: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

But first, a blurb:

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.

And now, the continuation of Ember…

(more…)

Only six entries this month. BOOOOOOO! But that’s okay, these ones are pretty frickin’ terrific. Winner to be announced when I return from vacation.

No shill voting. Seriously, I can see your IPs.

Rebyj

I let my thoughts drift as the home health nurse stood by my bed and took my vital signs. The slightly antiseptic odors in my home just didn’t belong. What happened to the normal scents of home? The god awful pot pourri and overpriced scented candles my wife of 22 years kept around the house always irritated me to no end , my teenage son’s stinky shoes and sweaty sports uniforms used to make the entire house reek, my daughters makeup and fingernail polish used to mix with brewing coffee and my wife’s questionable culinary experiments cooking this early in the morning.

My wife returns after walking the nurse out and fusses around with my clothing and bedclothes. I stop her and bring her hand to my face, a small sniff and I notice it too has that sick room antiseptic smell, usually this early she smelled all rumpled and slightly sweaty from bed as she wouldn’t take her shower till she got all of us off for the day.

I grumpily say to her ” Everything smells like cleansers and old man in here, I came home to die and you’ve turned home into a hospital room. And why is it so quiet? I’m not dead yet but I have to fart to hear something so that I can reassure myself of that!”

She looks at me in surprise, it’s the most I’ve spoken since I returned home to die a few days ago, I’m usually so weak that I just answer her questions in one word responses or simply nod.

She said, “Well! We wanted to make sure you were able to rest comfortably !”

She looked into my eyes and I saw her nod as I drifted off to sleep.

With a start I awoke, I lay there reassuring myself that I was still alive before opening my eyes and became aware of noise from the other part of the house, I opened my eyes and exerted the same effort to turn my head towards the door as I used to exert to move a refrigerator and took a moment to focus. What I saw made me feel better than a morphine shot. My kids were fighting over a video game in the living room, their school paraphernalia was spread everywhere, my wife was in shorts and one of my old t shirts frying what smelled like onions and feet and dancing to some 80’s song on the radio, every light in the house was on and candles flickered. My sons bellow of laughter filled the house, he is such a loud fellow that my wife turned to check on me to see if it had woke me and our eyes met.

“Dad’s awake! ” she yelled towards the kids.

The kids tossed their video controllers down and raced each other to the bedroom like they’d done as youngsters and they circled my bed chattering a mile a minute telling me about their day. Shortly we heard a loud intruding intermittent beep and the kids eyes got wide thinking it was some of the equipment I was hooked up to for a moment then both of them yelled ” Dinner’s ready!” realizing it was the familiar sound of the smoke detector set off because of their mom’s cooking.

I felt myself smile, how could I ever have thought these things were irritating? I was home.

(more…)

What my parents got me for Christmas…

It’s my First. Bike. Ever. My mom absolutely refused to get me a bike when I was a kid ’cause she thought I could hurt myself. She bought me comics and books, instead. And to think… I could have been a BMX fancy-bike-moves person instead of a starving writer…

Thanks, parents. You’re the best.

[image courtesy of Andi and Stien, my favorite pervs]

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Fantabulous Kwanzaa to all y’all readers of It’s Not Chick Porn. May your holidays be happy and bright and may you all have a wicked awesome new year. Postings will be sporadic for the rest of the month while I deal with the holiday stuff, but we’ll be back in full force come January, yo!

Oh, and don’t forget the contest. Deadline is December 26. We’ve got some great entries so far, but we’d like to see more!

I’d also like to take this opportunity to congratulate my blogging partner-in-crime, Shuzluva for successfully spawning a third time and bringing about a beautiful boy-child into this world. Love ya, babe, and happy hanukkah!

Merry, Happy, Safe, and Beautiful Holidays to you and yours, you beautiful bitches.

Thought I’d share some workplace wackiness with you guys. Will be in and out of the internets the next couple of days. Happy Holidays!

Supervisor: Hey!
Me (coming out of a daze): Oh, sorry. Sometimes I just kind of drift away. It’s like when my brain’s not in use, my screensaver comes on. You have to jog me a little to get me working again.
Supervisor (staring): You kids and and your damned technology metaphors. Get back to work!

Supervisor (to another employee): Hey, have you closed your register already?
Employee: Yeah, I made the deposit into Dee’s register.
Me: Yeah, [redacted] always deposits in me.
*crickets* Both staring.
Me: Aw, fuck, you know what I mean.
Supervisor: No, I really don’t.
Co-worker: Heeey… no cussing on the floor!