Raccoon Rescue Team!

Honestly, my wife should be granted an Honorary Raccoon merit badge. As a child, she and her family rescued a raccoon that was stuck inside a tree.

Our next foray into raccoon rescue sadly had a grim outcome. A pregnant raccoon had fallen down our chimney. Now our chimney hasn't been functional in years, so basically it's just a hole in the middle of our house. For days, we couldn't figure out where the sudden influx of flies and horrible odor was coming from. Then we finally pulled the blocking board from the chimney and voila! Hello hotel!

When the animal guy came over to remove the remains (possibly the least romantic job in the world), even he was retching and gagging through his mask.

He said, "If I were you, I'd get that chimney capped." 

When we found out how much it would cost, we scoffed, said, "What're the chances another raccoon could fall down our chimney?" and went on our way.

Flash forward to the present. While our two nephews were visiting, we heard squealing sounds and finally tracked it down to the chimney. With horror, I said, "Not again."

The 3,000 pound piano had to be moved as it sat in front of the boarded up chimney (thank gawd rain had delayed the nephews' departure). Then our youngest nephew slipped his phone behind the board and took a picture.

"It's a raccoon," he said. "A little one. I'm not touching that thing."

The three of them concocted a plan. My wife found a big cardboard box and had it positioned over the board while our older nephew was to slide up the board leaving no choice but for the raccoon to leap into the box. And me? Hey, someone had to video the historic event (from a distance, natch).

"Now!"

The board slid up. The raccoon did nothing. The board slid back into place.

The raccoon rescue brain trust reconvened. "I think with these oven mitts, I can grab him and put him in the box," said my wife.

I took a few more cautionary steps backward.

On all fours, my wife scrambled after the raccoon, while it avoided her at all costs.

Finally, "Got him! He's in the box! He's in the box!"

I opened the back door to let my wife, the box, and the raccoon out.

In the yard, my wife put the box down on it's side with the top open.

"Be free, little one," I yelled with necessary dramatic flair. "Go on! Off you go!...Um...c'mon, get out of the damn box..."

Yet Rocky wouldn't leave the box (I had taken to calling him "Rocky.") My wife shook the box, then tilted it. Nothing. Rocky was clawing onto the box for dear life.

After a while, it was decided to leave the box open and let him come out on his own. Except he wouldn't.

Night fell. Still in the box.

"Honey," I said (talking to my wife and not Rocky), "we've got to do something. The dogs probably need to pee."

So my wife moved Rocky and his box to the side of the house where our fence would keep the dogs from getting him.

In the morning...success! Rocky had finally left us (and his box) in the middle of the night, moving on to forge his own path in the big world. They grow up so fast...sniff...

Alright, while I have critters on my mind, there's a whole menagerie of creepy-crawly critters to be found in my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. I'm talking Bigfoot, giant bugs, and other various forms of varmints and monsters. Gotta catch 'em all! HERE!

Fun With Eye Surgery!

I swan (and you all KNOW how much I hate swanning), once you hit a certain age, it all goes careening quickly downhill from there. Take my latest checkup with my optometrist...please!

"Stuart, your cataracts have grown," said the doctor.

"Um...does this mean surgery?"

"I'm afraid it does."

Of COURSE it did. So off to an ophthalmologist I went, my wife riding shotgun. When the nurse tested my left eye, apparently I couldn't even read a six-inch tall single black letter. Which prompted my wife to laugh (tough crowd, tough crowd).

So Dr. Doogie Howser (I have shoes older than him) came in and told me he was going to hack off my cataracts.

"Wait...what? Wait!"

"I'll go in there and slice your cataract off and replace the cloudy filter on your eye with a new filter."

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE," I said.

The day of the procedure I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything. Already it had started out miserably.

When I got to the surgical center, there were over a dozen people (all appearing disgruntled) in the tiny waiting room. Once they called me back, all sorts of fresh hell broke loose.

They handed me paper after paper (with the tiniest print ever; ironic, yes?) that I couldn't read and told me to sign them. Then the nurse put me through a barrage of questions. ("Name, date of birth, favorite boy band, etc."). Once they found a bed for me, they took me into a massive room with about twenty beds, with a variety of people laying on them, looking like some kind of war-time hospital room. There were moans and groans and snores. I very much wanted to get outta there.

A different nurse came in and went through all of the same damn questions again ("Stuart West, April 1961, Back Street Boys, etc.") and they began to put eye drops on me.

"To help numb your eye," said the nurse.

"Ahhh...please give me a lot of it," I said.

Then I noticed this old, shaky, bald, hunched over man wobbling around, clearly in worse shape than I was. I wondered why they let this clearly out-of-it patient roam freely through the room until he stopped by my bed and picked up a chart.

"Hi, Steve, I'm--"

"Stuart," I corrected even though he had no interest in getting my name right.

"I'm Mark, the anesthesia nurse."

Pause. Blink. Ponder. He waited for my response. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Really?"

"Now this chart says you're...160 pounds and 5'6" tall..."

"Yeah, no. That's a mistake," I said. "A big mistake."

The wrinkles on Mark's head crinkled like ripples in a pond. "Hmmm. Now...which eye is being operated on?"

"My left one," I said.

"You left your eye where?"

"No. My left eye. Left!"

"You left your eye where?" Mark repeated before finally cracking a smile.

"Ohhhhhhhkay, I see what you did there, Mark. Eye humor." I so wanted to tell him that his joke wasn't funny nor did it even make sense, but I was kinda at everyone's mercy.

"Are you feeling pretty relaxed after the medicine we gave you?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I haven't had any medicine!"

"Hmmm." With that Mark waddled off to the guy next to me where he continued to harass the patient with his tired, same ol' schtick.

Soon they began to roll me into the surgical room, aka "The Polar Experience." Cold doesn't even begin to describe it.

"How're you doing, Stuart?" asked an unseen nurse.

"Kinda nervous. Um, could I get some medicine to relax me? Maybe? Please?"

The nurse laughed. Then strapped my head down to the point where I couldn't move. "Dr. Howser works under a microscope, so don't move a muscle," she directed.

Dr. Howser whizzed in (at least I assume it was him) and said, "Okay, we're going to start now. You won't feel a thing."

"Promise?"

The operation began. A series of bright lights blinded me (well...blinded me even more than I was) while a nurse kept squirting stuff into my eye. Soon I could see and feel something working around the perimeter of my eye. Cutting into it!

"Alright, we're halfway through. I cut out the cataract," said Dr. Howser.

"Great," I said, tied down and at a loss for words.

"We're in the home-stretch now." Soon enough it was done. They unwrapped me and put a plastic "shield" over the eye. 

"Wow," I said. "I can already tell that I can see better." I wasn't really sure if that was true or not, but I couldn't think of what else to say.

"Well..." said Dr. Howser. "That was a huge cataract."

They wheeled me back into the war room, where I immediately hopped out of bed, ready to get the hell out of there before they started hacking at my eye again.

The following week was recovery. And I had to wear the horrible eye shield every night while I slept. But I had got through it. Until in two more weeks when Dr. Howser will slice open my other eye.

AIEEEEEEEEE!

Speaking of things that make me scream, I have to make a blatant plug for my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. It's full of horror, humor, and twists. But I'm especially proud of the final novella, "The Underdwellers." I believe it's the the scariest and most intense thing I've written. But don't take my word for it! Lay down some bucks and find out for yourself right here!

War On the Catholics

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, my family made the move to a new neighborhood, mere blocks away and across a major traffic-way from our old residence. I never could figure out the reason for the move, but years later I figured out it was to replace our two story with a ranch to better accommodate my wheelchair-bound dad.

But the reason--at the time--for the move became even more puzzling when my parents kept grousing and grumbling about "all those Catholics in the neighborhood." Another thing I didn't quite understand. I mean, what did they expect with a Catholic grade school and high school right behind us?

But as young witless children do, we blindly followed in our parents' big, couldn't-ever-be-wrong footsteps.

Now the Catholic kids in the 'hood didn't accept my younger brother and I either. They'd taunt us and bully us and call us names. And as the school was just one block behind us, they used our fenced-in yard as a short-cut going to and fro school. This drove my parents batty. Me, I was just afraid they'd do something to our senior dog in the backyard. But Rocky never came to any harm from those nasty Catholic kids, even though my parents were still up and arms about their trespassing.

After we'd had some time to adjust to the new "normal," my brother and I decided to fight back. In Winter, we'd throw snowballs at the passing Catholics, hoping to knock some Protestant sense into their heads.  Battles were waged in the 'hood, but the battle was never won or determined. Yes, just like all "holy wars." (It didn't help that one time, someone "farmed" our front yard with their car, leaving several grass worn tire tracks; undoubtedly Catholics were the culprits.)

I was beginning to think my parents didn't like anyone in the neighborhood. The old man and woman next door were very nice, I thought, and told my dad so.

He replied, "Yes, he's nice. But he's Catholic!"

As I started to grow older, I began to question this silly blind hatred. Finally, I asked Dad, "Why do you not like Catholics?"

"Because they worship Mary," he exclaimed loudly, like I was an idiot for not knowing that. "Mercy!" (My parents' favorite exclamation back in the day.)

This didn't jive well with my limited understanding of religion. Having been brought up in various protestant churches (kicking and screaming on Sundays, I might add, hoping--nearly praying--that my parents would oversleep, because it was a colossal and boring drag), it was always my understanding that Jesus' teachings ruled over everything.

And didn't he teach love and acceptance for everyone?  I mean, Catholics believed in Jesus and God, too, right? It made no sense to my (snowball-addled) young, forming mind.

The war continued for years, finally dying out to maturity (or rather other pursuits that took precedence over fighting neighborhood kids, such as girls, cars, and beer). An unlikely peace pact was made between us and the Catholics and while I don't ever recall any true "friendships" being forged, acquaintances were made and waves even shared at times. Yet the older generation kept firm in their grumbling, blinders-on, nonsensical dislike for anyone who didn't buy into their one TRUE religious belief. It was beyond silly.

Years later, after I'd divorced my first wife (who was Catholic, natch; you can just imagine how that went over with my parents), I took it upon myself to educate myself on Catholicism. After all, when we were married in the Catholic Church, I had signed an agreement vowing that I'd raise my daughter as Catholic.

It was very uncomfortable in the Catechumenal class, but the kindly nun who ran it was very welcoming and accommodating to me. And it was extremely eye-opening.

Once the "controversy" surrounding Mary came up, I sat forward, intent on finally understanding the big HooHah.

Apparently, my parents weren't the only ones who griped about the Catholics' "worship" of Mary. Kindly Sister Old Lady patiently explained that many Protestants had this negative view. "We don't worship Mary," she explained. "We hold her in high reverence. She was the mother of Jesus, after all. We think that's kinda a big deal."

After considering asking Kindly Sister Old Lady to phone my parents and explain this to them, I jettisoned the idea. They'd never learn.

But if all combatting participants would just wise up and listen to their more open-minded younger generations (I'm looking at you, too, Republicans and Democrats), I hope I see in my lifetime a move forward as a more united planet. It shouldn't matter what our beliefs (or non-beliefs) are or even if you accept the Bible's interpretation of Jesus; it's the lesson imbued that we should all strive for: acceptance, tolerance and kindness. Kumbaya and all that stuff!

Whew. Off my soapbox...

But while we're on the topic of "wars," there's an entirely different kind of war going on in Kansas one fateful Halloween night; a bitter old woman has declared war on three trick-or-treaters from Hell! It all leads to....murderrrrrr. This is just one of the darkly comical tales of horror in my short story collection Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Check it out here!

The Roof of a Dog's Mouth

When I was a kid, our family would go "dog shopping (we never considered getting a rescue dog; I'm not sure if it was a "thing" back then or if my parents stubbornly refused to do so, because it was "low class," but we never did)." So we'd go into strangers' houses and look at their litter of puppies, always cocker spaniels.

First thing my dad did was wrestle a dog, wrangle its jaws wide open, and look at the color of the dog's roof of its mouth. Of course, the dogs never liked that one bit and the puppy vendors were always mortified.

My dad explained, "I heard that if the roof of a dog's mouth is black, it's a really smart dog. That guy there is our dog!"

Not sure how scientifically sound Dad's theory was, I came to doubt it based on the not very bright behavior of some of our dogs.

So I turned to my research assistant, Ms. Google, for corroboration. To which she gladly obliged...

Theresa, a cat vet of 19 years (and why exactly is she being quoted about a dog question?), says "the color on the roof of the mouth is just pigment. It has no meaning at all. It doesn't determine intelligence or breed, yet people in the past thought the more dark in the mouth, the better the breed, but this is just an old wives tale."

Okay, fair enough. But I started wondering just how in hell such a myth got started in the first place. Did a bunch of bored farmers' wives gather around the kitchen with their dogs to try to outdo one another?

"Say, Myrtle, look at the roof of my dog's mouth! It's black!"

"I swan, it sure is, Esther, but what in the world does it mean?"

"Why, Myrtle! EVERYONE knows that it's a sign that you gotcher self a smart dog!"

"Hmmph...I guess ol' Keester here ain't so smart after all. Lookee at the pink on the upside of his mouth."

(Later Myrtle and Esther were mauled--Siegfried and Roy style--by their dogs for wrenching their mouths open.)

While the origin of this ridiculous myth is "lost to the ages," a lot of people online have heard of it, especially hunters and old-time farmers. Of course, things could be worse: an Asian myth is that some dog breeds have blue tongues to ward off evil spirits.

Speaking of goofy myths and evil spirits, you'll find a slew of them in my horror story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. And unlike the old wives tale about a dog's mouth, I swear to you that every tale in my tome is TRUE. Find out how true right here!

"I've Been Smiling For Four Hours"

Recently, my wife came back from working at a Covid vaccination clinic. 

As soon as she came in the door, she said quietly, "I've been smiling for four hours. I need to be alone."

Yow! Holy ghost of Marlene Dietrich!

But I definitely empathized with her, for I too, suffer from a terrible malady: smilitess.

What is smilitess, I feel you wondering. It's the disease of not being able to smile on cue. (Okay, I made it up, but it doesn't make it any less real.)

Ever since childhood, I've never been able to produce a smile on command. It's no wonder in my year book photos, I always looked pained and constipated. Part of it was my unwillingness to show my teeth. I'm not really sure why, but I remember being self-conscious about them.

Matters were only made worse when the photographer attempted humor.

"Okay, say 'cheese.'"

Nothing.

"Well, let's forget the cheese...say 'grillled cheese sammitch!'"

Again, not funny. But I could tell we were going to be there all day if I didn't attempt to crack a smile. 

Later, my parents said, "Mercy! You call that a smile? You look like you're about to cry! Open your mouth!"

This problem has plagued me all my life. The only time I feel an unforced smile is when someone makes me laugh, no easy task.

Several years ago, I worked a booth at a horror convention in Washington pimping my books. By the end of the first day, I felt a TMJ headache forming in my jaw from the constrictions of fake smiling for every potential customer. Hardly worth the effort. I looked like the Joker. Or worse, one of the victims in last year's horror film, Smile.

Picture time is always a drag for me. I hated it as a kid (mainly because I couldn't wait to get out of my lime green leisure suit on Sundays, but there was also the smiling thing.). And I still dread on holidays, whenever someone whips out their phones and starts directing us like we're on the set of Heaven's Gate or whatever.

So beware. The next time someone says to me, "smile for the camera," I think I'm in my full right as a tax-payer to protect myself and smash the phone.

Speaking of smashing things, you'll find a heartwarming tale of bigfoot eviscerating campers and destroying a camp in my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Don't worry...it's a love story! That's just one of the many macabre delights awaiting you in the book. So with Halloween approaching, get it here!

If Only I Had a Third Eyelid

Last week there was a huge food mishap in our house. No, for once it wasn't my doing. Our senior dog happened to be lollygagging around our largest dog while she was eating. Things didn't go well. She attacked the elderly pup (shades of when a white trash drunk young woman tried to beat me up in a Holiday Inn!). By the time I broke it up, the damage had been done.

Mr. Loomis had a chest wound, but worse, his eye was nearly completely red.  Being a responsible adult and pet owner, I did the only mature, responsible thing that was needed: I panicked.

I'd never seen a dog's eye wound like that before. I called our doggy thousand dollar ophthalmologist (yes, Virginia, there IS such a thing), but she was booked solid. I called our regular vet, but they were full up as well.

Then I did the next responsible thing and called my out-of-town wife. "Oh my God, dear, there's blood everywhere! Literally gushing from his eye!"

Silence. Then, "Okay, how bad is it, really?"

"Um, his eye's mostly red."

"He needs to be seen," she said.

So, I knew what I had to do. A dreaded trip to the million dollar doggy E.R. (again, Virginia, duh, they exist. What rock have you been hiding under?), where patience and Big Bills are rarely rewarded.

The assistant who checked me in said, "Wait...what's your wife's name?"

I told her.

"I KNOW Mr. Loomis," she shouted exuberantly. "I used to work at your thousand dollar doggy ophthalmologist. Mr. Loomis was our patient!"

It's a small doggy world, it turns out. Too bad the doggy bills aren't so small.

Anyway, she led me back to the room and I had hoped that her goodwill with Mr. Loomis would speed things up a bit. But Mr. Loomis and I waited. And waited. And waited. Waited until my phone died. Then I left.

The next morning I was able to see the thousand dollar doggy ophthalmologist. 

She said, "The good news is it looks like his third eyelid is doing its job."

"Wait...what?" I looked carefully into Mr. Loomis' blood-filled eye. "Is...is...my dog a...mutant? I've never even HEARD of a third eyelid!"

The doctor rolled her (presumably double-lidded) eyes and said, "We humans are the oddball. We're the only mammals that don't have a third eyelid."

Whoa! Freaky!

So I nodded and pretended I wasn't nearly as dumb as I actually am. But when we got home, I looked up the third eyelid via my assistant, Ms. Google.

"The third eyelid is located in the inner corner of the eye and sweeps across the eye in a horizontal direction when the eyeball retracts during a blink. This protects the eye, distributes tears, and helps maintain vision."

Where was I when this was being taught in school? (Oh, yeah, probably skipping class and smoking weed and hanging out in the parking lot. I can admit this now since both of my parents have passed away.)

But it got me thinking. So...do dogs actually have SIX eyelids? When don't they refer to them as the third and sixth eyelid?

And why can't humans have the third eyelid? It'd probably help with my perpetually weeping eyes. It could be, like, my superpower.

"There's no need to fear!" I'd shout triumphantly with chest out and hands on hips. "My special third eyelid will take out the evildoer!"

"Oh, thank you, Third Eyelid Man," an adoring, hot blonde bystander would say.

Speaking of nice dreams, well...I don't really write about "nice" dreams. Only bad dreams. Like in my horror-filled, dark humor-laced short story collection Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. (Yes, Virginia, I know it's a terrible tie-in, but I needed some kinda segue to pimp my books. Now shut your pie-hole! Kids today!)

The Mathematical Division of Household Blame

My wife and I have different duties at home which are pretty evenly split. However, this isn't the case when it comes to blame. For you see, I generally get about 90% of the blame for when there are food mishaps.

Why, I remember it like it was yesterday... (Cue the fuzzy blurred out swirly image for a flashback.) Wait a minute...it was yesterday!

"Your Chinese food leaked juice all over the refrigerator," hollered my wife from the kitchen.

"But...it was for your benefit," I explained.

Silence. Crickets. Even more crickets.

Finally, "How in the hell was that for my benefit."

I finally got off the loveseat to go plead my case in the same room with her. "When you went to bed, you forgot to put your leftover Chinese food in the refrigerator. So I had to move mine to make way for yours. Apparently, when I moved mine (to make way for yours, I'd like to reiterate), it of necessity became canted, thus dribbling out the juice. For your benefit."

"Oh, no," she said, "you're not putting that on me!"

"But it was for your benefit," I said, standing my ground. "So you should be the one to clean it."

"That's ridiculous. Okay...what if I was making cookies for you and I had a terrible flour accident. Would you clean it up?"

"No," I said. 

"'No?' Why? It's the same thing!"

"Because you would eat the cookies, too. Your baking would benefit us both." I mean, this is clear, clean logic, right? Just follow the logic. Perfect sense.

Then she hit me with, "Okay, fine. What if I was making you coconut cookies and flour exploded everywhere?" Aha, I thought. Now she's using the same, strong logic right back at me, for she has an aversion toward coconut and won't touch it.

"That's different," I said. "Coconut cookies would be to my benefit, therefore rendering me the responsible party to clean up the flour explosion."

"Yeah, right. Like you'd clean it up."

I said, "I would! Go make coconut cookies and throw flour everywhere and watch me clean it!" Gotcha, I thought. I didn't think her hatred for coconut would even allow her to bake such cookies.

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," she said.

Well, even though I laid out a flawless, logical defense in "Kitchen Court," I still lost the case and ended up cleaning the spilled Chinese sauce. (At least the sauce that I saw without moving items, which resulted in yet another Kitchen Court later.)

I went back to the love-seat, while she was still banging away in the kitchen. Soon enough, she's in the refrigerator and hollering about all the food that's gone to waste.

"Do you hear me?" she shouted. "You've got to quit letting food go to waste!"

"How is this my fault? You eat the food, too."

"Okay, I'd say it's about 85% your fault and 15% mine. We share the burden of responsibility."

"Wait a minute, hold on a second! That's not sharing. That's still blaming me for the majority! Where'd you come up with that over-inflated equation? Trump's accountants?"

I need a specialized slide rule or something to dole out arbitrary percentages of blame to my wife the next time we enter Kitchen Court. Best to be prepared.

Speaking of horror stories, you'll find a lot of 'em in my collection of creepy tales, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Check it out!

Mr. Fix-It Has Gone Missing!

A feeling of dread fell over me like a purple bruise-colored storm cloud. Again, I checked that I had the right hours on Mr. Fix-It's shop. Yep, 10:00 A.M. The neon sign in the window declared "Open" in bright, cheery, yellow letters. Yet it didn't match my mood as I pulled on the door handle again, just making sure I hadn't lost that much muscle mass due to aging. Or maybe latent OCD. Either way, it remained locked.

I rattled the door, thinking that possibly Mr. Fix-It--another victim of inescapable aging--had pulled a morning siesta, dozing off behind his desk while watching day-time, screaming TV. My hands cupped, I peered into the store-wide window. Nothing. Not even a shining ray of hope beaming from beneath the bathroom door.

Huh.

I went to my car, thought I'd wait it out. In the car, my mind rattled like a maraca tossed around by a bratty toddler. 

What could've possibly happened to Mr. Fix-It? It reminds me of that true crime mini-series I watched where nobody knew the housewife had been brutally slaughtered behind her locked doors. Mr. Fix-It's gotta be raking in the cash for all of those high-dollar repairs. A victim of robbery. Better call Five-O.

But before I did that, I called the store number and watched carefully as I sat parked mere feet from the front window. Looking--no, hoping--for movement inside.

Instead, I got a cold, metallic, recorded voice. A voice that sent ice slaloming down my ski-slope of a back. A voice from beyond the grave. "Hello, you've reached Mr. Fix-It. I'm sorry we're unable to help you right now because we're with another customer. Please leave your name and number and we'll get back to you shortly. Have a nice day."

I held the phone glued to my ear as the line went dead. As dead as Mr. Fix-It, no doubt. Slowly, the phone dropped to my side. Could I be misreading the happenstances? I squinted, looking inside again. Maybe Mr. Fix-It was helping a secret customer in the back room, a celebrity perhaps who wanted to keep a low profile, not wanting to let Joe Public know that he had a vacuum cleaner on the blink. 

But...but...there ARE no celebrities in Kansas City. Yet...the recording steadfastly insisted that Mr. Fix-It was with another customer.

So, I waited. I picked up my phone, dialed in 911. My finger hovered over the button, close to detonating. 

But what would I be detonating?

Wait, just wait, wait a gol-darned minute! What if Five-O suspects me? After all, my fingerprints are all over the door handle, my DNA smeared onto the plate-glass window. Maybe Mr. Fix-It had even installed a security camera, capturing footage of me, madly yanking at the door. No, better to keep it cool. That's right. Play it cool, reallllll cool, the way I roll.

So I rolled out of there, taking back roads all the way home, my gaze glued onto the rearview mirror, looking for Johnny Five-O's red and blue cherries to be twirling a psychedelic light-show of guilt, guilt, GUILT.

The following week I had many restless nights, unable to sleep. Wondering if I did the right thing. 

What if I'd left Mr. Fix-It, laying in a pool of his own blood, gasping for breath, holding onto dear, sweet life, scrawling my name in his own blood and implicating me, thus sending me down the river, where I'd end up in the Big House, wearing caked-on deep-blue mascara while holding onto a big thug's belt-loop?

What other options did I have? Friday night as I lay in bed, sweating, expecting the worst, and knowing that the even worse worst was just around the corner, I made up my mind. A decision that would undoubtedly change my life forever.

After my sixth night of sleeplessness, I decided to return to the scene of the crime.

With great trepidation, I drove to my destiny, fearing I'd see yellow tape in front of Mr. Fix-It's store, designating it a crime scene. I pulled in front of the store, parked and turned off the ignition. No crime tape, but the cops had probably already been there and were looking for me by now, APB's posted city-wide. The neon light in the door still proclaimed "Open," but that didn't signify anything. I wondered if Mr. Fix-It still lay rotting in the back room, starting to stink by now, flies buzzing around his corpse and starting to lay eggs in his ears.

Then...suddenly...the door swept open. Broom in hand, Mr. Fix-It stepped out!

Near tears of relief, I jumped out of the car and ran to Mr. Fix-It, my voice trembling as much as my hands.

"Mr. Fix-It," I screamed, "I've been so worried! I was...I came here last Saturday at 10:20 and you weren't here!" My arms wanted to wrap around Mr. Fix-It's neck and pull him into a long, loving embrace, but my mind--somehow, wisely--forbade the move.

Mr. Fix-It took a step back and said, "Oh. On Saturdays, we sleep in a little bit and don't get here until 10:30."

My mouth dropped. A blood red veil shaded over my line of vision. I stumbled back a step, felt my hands shaking again, this time not out of a sense of great loss and morbid fear, but out of an uncontrollable, inevitable, building rage.

"What?" The only word I could mutter.

"Saturdays we like to take it easy and grab an extra half hour of shuteye before we get here, " he said, smiling a very dumb, caught with his hand-in- the-cookie-jar grin.

"But...but...your door...your website...says you open on Saturdays at 10."

"Oh, well." Still grinning like a mischievous school-boy who'd been held back for fifty years, he shrugged.

"God dammit," I raged, "maybe you should fix your stupid website! Or how about you fix your DAMN ALARM CLOCK, MR. EFFING FIX-IT!"

Another shrug was his way of apologizing. "What can I say?"

So I took out a gun and shot him. Hey, it's Kansas.

(The story you've just read is true. Sort of. Kind of. Maybe if you're really drunk and half-out of your mind, it's true. Whatever, it's true enough.)

Speaking of huge-ass lies, most of my books are filled with characters spouting them. That's where the mystery usually comes from. I mean, come on, how many murderers tell the truth right up front? Check out my Amazon page to get started! 

Frankenfish!

Well, here we are again hot on the tail-end of my warning of the dangers of humans dressing as animals. I saw that as the new threat to humanity. But it looks like humanity's downfall won't be due to apes, robots OR humans in animal costumes (maybe the downfall will come at the hands of the MAGA movement, but I'm really tired of talking about those guys). Nope...it looks like there's a new scary predator in town, ladies and gents. I give you...FRANKENFISH. (Cue lighting flashes and thunder crashes).

Take a look at this guy. Cuddly, yeah? Apparently scientists are freaking out over this predator and the US government recommends killing them upon sight. Yow! Pretty harsh for a little fish, wouldn't you say? But the Frankenfish, aka the northern snakehead, are invasive, spread quickly and kill off ecosystems. An equal opportunity predator, the Frankenfish is color blind and enjoys destroying White Perch and Black Crappie (and with a name like "Crappie," I gotta side with Frankenfish on that one).

What makes the Frankenfish really freaky is that they can go for days without water. They breathe air through a suprabranchial chamber which allows them to go to the top of their habitat, cough, expel their old air and suck in a ton of new air, thus enabling them to wiggle across land in search of new water sources. They can wiggle for days! A whole lotta wigglin' goin' on! In Arkansas, apparently the slower stragglers corpses can be found alongside the road.

The stuff of nightmares.

Furthermore, these cute lil' guys have been known to lunge and bite at people who get too close to their eggs. And I thought piranha were scary enough.

Okay, so how do you kill a Frankenfish? Thank God the US government is at the top of their game and explaining just how that can occur. First, you can put them on ice. Um, how exactly is that supposed to work? The government isn't very forthcoming. (It's kinda like when someone tells you their plan on how to get rich is "I'll start with a million dollars.") If the Frankenfish is busy lunging and biting at me, I'm not going to take care to put him on ice.

You can also cut off its head (again this calls for alarming proximity), gut it (ditto), or even eat it. I don't know about you guys, but I'm kinda not okay with eating something that could eat me.

And the government's last final, ominous warning? "Whatever you do, don't throw it onto land to suffocate it." Because the guy will just wiggle away to procreate and wreak havoc on another unsuspecting ecosystem. (Again with the lightning flash and thunder crash.)

One final terrifying thought on the Frankenfish: some guy who used to have one in his aquarium said it could recognize people. How did THIS guy ever sleep? With his Frankenfish watching him at night, plotting and just waiting for the right time to wiggle out of the tank and lunge at his "master" with his sharp teeth going for the jugular...

It's aliiiiiiiiiive!

While on the topic of alarmingly grotesque monsters and abominations, you'll find lots of 'em in my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. We've got giant spiders and bugs, angry sentient murderous space plants, underground cannibalistic hellspawn, and a lovesick and lovably violent Bigfoot! All this and more fun awaits you RIGHT HERE!

Hey, kids! Have you tried delicious mealworms? YUM!

In keeping with my rather dangerous (and at times unsavory), impulsive habit of eating before thinking, I picked up a chow mein noodle off the kitchen counter, ready to pop it into my mouth for a quick and easy snack. For once, however, my inner censor didn't malfunction and imprinted doubt in my mind.

"Hold on a second there, buster," it said (strangely in a 40's Bowery Boys Bronx accent),  "remember the other day when you picked up a chocolate chip off the counter?"

"Oh, yeah," I said out loud, chow mein noodle held firmly between my thumb and forefinger, while the dogs looked on questioningly, particularly since they couldn't see who I was talking to. "It turned out it wasn't a chocolate chip at all!"

"And," my inner censor pestered, "what happened next, wise guy?"

"Um...I discovered too late it was a dog food kernel. Yuck!"

"Well, well...don't you think that means maybe you oughta reconsoider that noodle?"

I stared at the crisp noodle. Sooo enticing. Sooo begging for me to eat it. Then I said, "hey, why would my wife be using chow mein noodles in a recipe? We typically never eat fried foods."

So close, yet so far, I lowered the crisp, delicious nugget from my mouth. My gaze wandered the kitchen.  

Messy countertops? Check. Container of dozens of dog pills, treats, doo-dads, gizmos? Check. Cans that neither my wife or I wanted to run down to the basement yet? Check. Bag of mealworms? Che--

Mealworms?

Hold on a minute... Mealworms? What the hell are mealworms?

I picked up the bag and had a look. Turned it over and over. A new kinda healthy cereal? No, it didn't have that kinda Kapow packaging. A healthy taste treat? Maybe, but why put the word "worm" into the title unless...unless...

Unless...

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" 

Quickly--and quite dramatically--I hurled the offending mealworm toward the wall, hoping for a theatrical impact. Instead it just sort of fluttered to the floor, where to my horror, one of our dogs ate it.

When my wife got home, she had some 'splaining to do.

"What do you think they are?" she said. "Duh."

Well, that didn't really explain what they were, so I ventured online. (Now, some of you may be wondering why I didn't know what a "mealworm" was. It's quite simple: A} In my youth, I must've missed mealworm day at school; and B} I find worms to be of the most grotesque creatures on earth, hence why I don't go fishing and doubly-hence why I'm not all over the internet discovering the joys of wormdom. To quote my wife: "Duh.") But...being the intrepid reporter that I am--the things I do for you guys--I dug up what I could on "mealworms." (Yes, pun intended!)

Mealworms are the larval form of the yellow mealworm beatle, Tenebrio molitor, a species of darkling beetle. Which by no means makes them any less gross. Get this: the males emit a specific type of sexual pheromone. However, since there is so much inbreeding, the pheromone is diminished in the inbreeding hillbilly worms, and the females seek out the "outbred" ones. Good choice, ladies.

And hey! Mealworms are just adored by scientists and biologists because they're so honking big. Which in my book just makes them even squickier.

Here's where it gets really bad: people have been eating mealworms for centuries since they're purportedly high in protein. Some Asian countries sell them as street food. Why, you can even order up an insect burger with a high mealworm content! Yum. They can be processed into food products such as flour, which means that we've more than likely eaten mealworms in our lifetime. Finally, the European Union has approved them for human consumption. Thanks, guys!

"Wait," I said to my wife, "we're not gonna eat these, right? RIGHT?"

"Don't be stupid, dear," she said. "They're for the birds."

"Oooooooooooohhhhhhh," I replied. "But, then...why are they all over the kitchen?"

And from that point on, everywhere I looked, I found bags of mealworms. It rained mealworms. Like some sort of crazed Salvador Dali fever dream, I saw bags of mealworms on the kitchen counter, on top of the refrigerator, in the pantry. When I opened a cabinet, a bag fell down at my feet. Seeking solace in the garage, I found an industrial sized bag of mealworms. I had a nightmare where mealworms were re-hydrating and coming after me for revenge after I slurped down a massive bowl of them.

I think the European Union is trying to tell me something. Feeling kinda peckish now.

While I'm ranting about squirmy, gross creatures, you might find quite a few in my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Why, off the top of my head, I can think of giant spiders, a couple of Bigfoot ("Bigfeet?" "Bigfoots?"), sentient yet malevolent plants from elsewhere, monstrous trick 'r treaters, underground mutated murderous monsters, and more creatures, ghosts, and spooks than you shake a jack-o-lantern at. Ask for it by name, read it at night, and check under the bed. That's Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley by Whammo!

Arachna-whatia, now?

Last night, my daughter called me very late. 

"Dad," she said, "I need you to come down here and take care of a problem."

"Wait...what? What's wrong?" Panic started rising, the natural state of a parent no matter the age of your child.

"There's...there's...a giant spider in the bathroom! I need you to come down here and kill it!"

Well. I'd do anything for my daughter. But she lives nearly an hour away and it was late. And honestly, I just didn't get it.

"Come on, I'm not going to do that. It's not that bad. Just go in there, flash the light on your phone around...it'll hide." Proud of myself in that Dadly sorta Dad way, believing I laid down supreme wisdom, I only made matters worse.

"Dad! It's as big as a Volkswagen!" 

"Hmm. Okay...how about taking your dogs in there. They'll scout it out and eat it." Believing my logic to be impeccable (her dogs will eat anything, including Volkswagens. If you guys ever need your car junked, she'll hire her dogs out.), I thought it a done deal and was one foot in bed.

"Dad! I can't go in there!"

By this time, I was beyond frustrated. Here's the deal: during her formative years, my daughter wasn't afraid of spiders. Oh sure, she wasn't fond of them, not ready to make them her friends, but it just seemed like ordinary minor freaking out. But later, she latched onto my wife's crippling fear of spiders. My wife's arachnophobia is major--legendary even--her ear-piercing screams of terror shattering windows throughout our neighborhood like Ella Fitzgerald on steroids. Once, she even jumped out of a moving car when she spotted a spider inside. And she was driving. My wife taught my daughter many wonderful, empowering things while raising her, but arachnophobia probably falls into the negative column.

Always the man, always frustrated, always clueless, I did what any frustrated, clueless man would do when faced with overwhelming adversity: I tried to fix it. Quickly and easily. In a very one and done manly way.

"Okay," I said, "what exactly are you afraid of? Sure, spiders are creepy and maybe a little gross, but they won't kill you." (Of course I didn't mention the dreaded brown recluse spider, but I was sleepy. And a man.).

"I don't...I don't...I don't like spiders crawling on me."

"But," I exclaimed, using a very authoritative voice, "that's what spiders do. They're just doing their job."

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

My manly (and tired and ultimately, stupid) Mr. Fix-It approach failed miserably.

I can't even remember how this crisis ended, but I was beyond sleepy, absolutely unwilling to travel an hour to kill a spider. 

But as is my wont, it got me thinking about fears, irrational or not.

Of course, phobias aren't logical. The very definition of "phobia" makes allowances for the fear to be unrealistic. There are no reasons for a phobia (unless you're the "Final Girl" in an 80's horror movie  who witnessed a man dressed in a Santa suit slaughter your family, then you have a reason for hating on the man in red). But if you're not the Final Girl, just deal with it.

I told my wife my suspicions that my daughter adopted her crippling phobia of spiders. She poo-pooed it, her being a scientist and all. But I'm taking a page out of Maganomics and saying "Bah! What do scientists with their big woke logic and facts and truth know?"

Take my pal, George, for example. In college (because we had nothing better to do, I suppose, and were actually kinda dicks to our friends, don't ask me why), I thought it'd be funny to start the rumor that my friend was afraid of clowns. Well, it either became a self-actualizing truth through the power of persuasion (and dickdom) or I had accidentally struck pay-dirt on a true phobia of his. To this day, I believe he's still bothered by clowns.

Another odd thing regarding phobias is that they can change over time. Growing up, I had no problem with heights, rode every roller-coaster, scaled the highest heights, ain't no mountain high enough. Now, I'm absolutely petrified of heights. When my daughter and I went to a "haunted (that didn't bug me a bit, kinda hoping for some paranormal whatsis)" Florida lighthouse, I froze on the upper parapet, clinging to the wall while others laughed at me. Weird.

So it was easy for me, sitting an hour away from my daughter, to tell her to just get over the Big Bad Spider in the bathroom. It made perfectly manly-man sense to this guy. (But if someone tells me that I'm going to go sky-diving, I hope I'm wearing Depends on that occasion.)

While I'm rattling on about scary things, I would steer you toward my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Not everything in it is scary, mind you, you also have to deal with my dark sense of juvenile humor in several of the tales. But one of the best compliments I've ever received was regarding the closing novella, The Underdwellers. A horror author who I admire told me that "it's the scariest thing I've ever written." And you know why? Because it deals with my OTHER phobia: going underground, deep into the earth where terrifying things await you.

AIEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Pie-Tin Nap Trick

I'm a big believer in the power of naps. Well, hang on... Maybe not so much when I was a kid. I remember going to bed at like 6:00 while I heard my friends outside playing and the sun still hung bright in the sky. Parents have the dumbest rules some times.

But I digress. In college, I couldn't even begin my daily studies until I'd napped, usually put to sleep by some God-awful, boring text book.  Of course, that may've been due to the previous night's late partying, but that's a story for another time.

Awesome author Ray Bradbury was a big proponent of napping, claiming it helped to boost his creativity. President Ronald Reagan loved naps. In fact, I think he might've mastered how to nap with his eyes open. Sometimes he fell asleep amongst his cabinet members and always wanted to "sleep on it" before making any decisions. Props to the Prez for mastering the art of napping anywhere and in front of anyone.

But naps are funny. I've found that increments of 45 minutes work best for me. Anything longer or shorter just makes me feel groggier. Bradbury claimed that short naps of five to 15 minutes were the best.

My wife's great grandfather came up with his own style of super-naps. And it's either an act of genius or insanity, I haven't yet quite decided.

He'd take a pie tin, place it on the floor next to the bed or couch and hold a metal spoon over it, his fist hovering above the pie tin. He'd fall asleep, still gripping the spoon, and when he'd zonk out, he'd release the spoon into the tin.

Yow! I don't know about you guys, but that's a sound I'd hate to wake up to, the sudden clatter jolting me awake. Or thrusting me into a heart attack. And it seems like great Grandpa may've just fallen asleep for a few seconds. Is that a long enough nap to re-kick-start your day?

Yet...and yet...there's a certain bit of undeniable certainty about great Grandpa's method of madness. You can be assured that you fall asleep. And you certainly don't over-sleep. It's a fool-proof plan tucked all cozy like into the nappy edges of ingenuity.

Unless your spoon misses the pie tin. But, hey, cheaper than an alarm clock!

As I said, naps are funny. It's been proven that naps are an effective combatant to corporate stress. Which might explain why I STILL dream about having a bed in my office at my last job. But consequently, I've never known a company that would applaud such on-the-job activities. 

"Smithers, where's Jones, dammit?"

"Ah, he's taking his daily constitutional, sir."

"What? I thought he moved his bowels at ten this morning!"

"No sir, that was his daily bowel constitutional. He's taking his early afternoon napping constitutional."

"Hah! Good man, that Jones! Make sure he gets a raise! And tell him to only work four days a week from now on!"

A relatively recent study at the Kyorin University School of Medicine and the University of Tokushima School of Medicine found that a 3 1/2-hour nap in the middle of a worker's shift would help reduce fatigue more than four pots of black coffee. Okay, I'm all for napping, but a 3 1/2 hour nap? That's more Z's than I log in any given night! 

And yet, when I was forced into naps as a kid and into kindergarten, I couldn't ever do it. Go figure.

Cats have got one thing right, I gotta say. These cool cats sleep 12 to 16 hours a day. Dayum! That's more like a daily coma! So cats' waking hours probably seem like the unusual part of their lives for them, the opposite for humans. Which is odd that short naps are called "cat naps." 

Another term for a short nap is the ol' "power nap." Which seems kinda like an oxymoron to me. I would think that the one Japanese worker's 3 1/2 nap should be considered a power nap moreso than a ten to twenty minute one, right? There's POWER in higher numbers!

Recovery naps just don't work, at least for me. This is when you try to make up in the daytime what you lost the previous night in sleep. Yeah, right. Tell it to my prostate.

Then we have what is called a "proactive nap." These are defined as getting a nap in before you expect to lose sleep during the forthcoming night. This seems kinda counterproductive to me, an endless rabbit hole of chasing sleep that you just *know* ain't gonna happen. I'd rather go down the bottomless Netflix rabbit hole.

Here's a good one: the "coffee nap." The definition is you drink a cup of coffee right before a nap. Huh. I also know a guy who's selling bridges in Brooklyn if anyone's interested after their coffee nap.

Finally, we have the "appetitive nap," thusly named because, well, these people enjoy napping. But I kinda think anyone who naps is doing so because they like napping. Did we really need a specially named nap for this?

The one nap the "nap experts (who are these people? Where do I sign up?)" failed to identify is what I call the "food coma nap." I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a highly effective napping experience. It started at Thanksgiving and has worked its way into my daily regimen. First...eat more than your stomach can allow. Second...pass out! It's that simple.

No matter your choice of nap styles, get to napping! Do it right now! Go nap! Nap like the wind!

I've always found that short stories are a good way to lull yourself into a nap, not too long and not too short, and hey! By coinkydink, I just happen to have written a short story collection. That's my book Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley: guaranteed to put you sleep! Pleasant dreams...