Auld Lang Syne

I had a landmark high school reunion this summer and have been looking at the pictures posted by my former classmates on Facebook. I did not attend, but thanks to the wonders of social networking, I was able to catch up with everyone. It was wonderful to get back in touch with people I cared about back then and see how their lives have been.

But every time I read an update from the guys organizing the event, the germ of this story took firmer root. I finally succumbed and wrote it. Just in time to squeeze it into Just Another Day in Paradise.

I hope you enjoy it. (And in case you're wondering, I did go to the prom--with an interesting boy who became an interesting man.)

AULD LANG SYNE

I got a few jealous looks when I signed in. It’s possible some of the women working the registration desk remembered me but I doubted it. Back in high school I’d had lank brown hair, bad skin and had carried an extra 30 pounds. I’d spent my four miserable years at Woodrow Wilson High School dreaming of better times to come. And they had. I looked good for my age.

I spotted Alicia Cooper almost at once. Alicia Womack, that is. Everyone had expected her to marry Tommy Womack and she had. They’d been king and queen at our senior prom.

I hadn’t gone to the prom. I wasn’t asked. I’d spent that night sobbing in my room while my poor mother tried desperately to distract me with homemade vanilla milkshakes and offers of shopping trips. I was inconsolable. But I drank two of the milkshakes. I did things like that in those days.

I never really thought I’d come to a reunion but as the years slipped by, the notion of making an appearance at my 50th began to seem attractive. I’d long ago lost touch with everybody, but the reunion committee had set up a group on Facebook, so I was able to get all the information I needed. I sent in my reservation, made my travel plans, and bought a new dress.

A cocktail party at the Sheraton was just the first of many activities planned over the weekend. The banquet room was decorated with huge black and white photographs blown up from our senior yearbook pictures. There were black borders around the edges of those who’d died. The only one I remembered was a girl who’d been in a car crash two days before graduation; hit by a drunk driver on his way back from a lost weekend in Myrtle Beach.
I drifted around the ballroom, staying at the edge of the knots of couples and just observed. A few people glanced my way and smiled, inviting me to join their conversation but I kept moving.

I saw Anne Todd and her husband talking to Harvey and Henrietta Martorelli. I’d liked Anne. She’d been nice to me in a way that didn’t feel like charity. She’d aged gracefully and the way she and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder told me that she was loved. I was glad. As for Harvey and Henrietta? They looked more like siblings than spouses; both had evolved into sexless, blocky creatures with the same graying skin and thinning hair. Henrietta had been in my honors history and English classes. She’d been an earnest grade-grubber. Her brothers had all gone to Yale and she had the GPA and SAT scores to qualify but back then, Yale didn’t accept women, so she’d settled for Bryn Mawr instead.

Finn Johnson had come with a woman half his age. His hair had turned white but it was full and he wore it longish, much as he had back in high school when he was our resident bad-ass, sneaking cigarettes in the rest room and taking shop and auto mechanics instead of calculus and biology. Nobody thought he’d amount to much, not even me. He had joined the Marines a week after graduation and five years later was part of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the first American combat soldiers sent to Vietnam.

Finn came home with a case of PTSD, an addiction to heroin and a 600-page manuscript in his duffel. That book, Chrome-Plated Dream, was the best-selling book of 1970, beating Jonathan Livingston Seagull by approximately 10 million copies.

Finn knew how to make an entrance and by the time he reached the bar, a little buzz had gone around the room. Tommy Womack was looking at him with the feral gaze of an alpha male who’s just sensed a challenge. The women were looking at him too, perhaps thinking about lost opportunities, perhaps wondering if Finn needed the little blue pills the way their husbands did.

I caught Alicia looking too. Back in high school, she could have had him. She could have had anyone she wanted with her pale skin and her auburn hair. She had the figure of a beauty queen when the rest of us were still stuffing our bras with Kleenex. In fact, she had been a beauty queen, snagging the title of Miss Talbot County when she was 16 and reigning over the Talbot County Fair that fall.

Alicia had not aged well. Her hair was now the color of white zinfandel, a pink candy floss that only ever really looked good on Lucille Ball. That porcelain skin was ravaged with deep ruts like a dirt road after a hard rain. Her boobs had sagged and her decision to wear something low cut had been a mistake. Despite the deep décolletage, the dress was matronly and designed to hide her thick waist and heavy bottom. She wasn’t truly fat but it wasn’t going to be long before she would need more than Spanx to fit into a size 16. Keeping the weight down after menopause is a bitch. But then, so was Alicia.

I saw her eyeing the platters of hors d’oeuvres being circulated, saw her decide against tasting even one as she looked over at Tommy holding court with Rob Dennehy and Nelson Brandt and Tad Grainger, his former teammates on the Woodrow Wilson Bulldogs. They were all glancing at Finn’s arm candy and trying not to drool. I’d always thought of the school’s football players as the Woodrow Wilson Woodies, and it didn’t surprise me that they were all still horndogs.

Tommy looked good. He’d gone bald, but with style, shaving his head like Yul Brynner and embracing the inevitable. His suit was tailored, not off the rack, and his shoes looked handmade. Tommy Womack had done well for himself. He’d taken over his father-in-law’s business and turned it into a multi-state franchise. That he was still married to Alicia told me that either he was very discreet about his affairs or Alicia had an iron-clad pre-nup. He wasn’t even glancing in her direction as she stood alone, smiling stiffly, looking around vaguely for someone to come up and talk to her.

Bird-like Cindy Renfrew-Cheung patted her arm fondly as she passed by on her way to refresh her drink and Alicia recoiled slightly. She and Cindy had never run with the same crowd in high school and Alicia probably didn’t even know her name.

Cindy had been a free spirit, a good-time girl who had to drop out for a year when she got pregnant. During that year, she taught herself Fortran and COBOL. By the time Fortran 66 was released, she’d created ALLI; a programming language meant for kids that she’d named after her daughter, Allison. Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the inventor of COBOL, was Alli’s godmother.

Cindy was now on her third husband, a Hong Kong businessman 23 years her junior. I’d overheard her telling someone that Gordon Cheung was in Singapore on business and that she’d brought her daughter along as her “date.” It wasn’t hard to spot Alli Renfrew; she was a 40-ish version of her mother and just as lively. All the waiters were flirting with her, even the gay ones.

Alicia’s eyes followed Cindy as she trotted across the room in three-inch heels as if she were still a teenager, her turquoise Vera Wang a bright spot among all the little (and not so little) black dresses. Alicia’s own shoes were sensible low heels, made more for comfort than style.

I saw Alicia head for the bathroom and followed, pushing open the door soundlessly. The overhead lighting was harsh, falling on Alicia’s dyed hair like a spotlight; revealing a patch of naked pink skin on the top of her head.

“Hello Alicia,” I said as I came up behind her. She spun around, startled. She hadn’t heard me come in as she rummaged in her bag for her lipstick. It was a deep burgundy red that was all wrong with the hair.

“Hello,” she answered. Seeing no reason to engage in any further conversation, she turned back to the mirror to fix her lipstick. And then she gasped.

Because of course, I no longer cast a reflection; hadn’t since I was 23 years old and turned into a vampire.

“Who are you?” she managed to stammer and I gave her points for that. Most people usually say “What are you?”

I smiled, showing my fangs, which terrified her. “Suzy Wisnicki,” I said. “Remember me?”

She looked at me, at my golden hair and my clear skin and my slender body and saw no trace of the mousy fat girl she’d tormented so long ago. She didn’t recognize me but she remembered my name. The memory made her go pale. Alicia had been a mean girl before the term was ever coined. She’d reveled in her beauty and the power of her popularity. She had hurt people just for fun.

I could see all her emotions flickering across her face and not one of them was shame.

“But you’re young,” she finally managed to say and that made me smile wider.
“Yes,” I said. And then I bit her. Her blood tasted of nicotine and diet pills and diabetes. It tasted nasty, so I rinsed my mouth out at the sink before leaving her on the floor.

I paid a maid to post an “out of order” sign on the door. She was only too happy to help after I looked deeply into her eyes. Later, she would remember nothing.

No one saw me leave the hotel except the valet who delivered my car. I tipped him well. I was feeling good.

Alicia would rise in a couple of hours. Immortal like me.

But unlike me, she would live the rest of her very long life in the shell of a wrinkled old woman. Vampirism is a youth culture. I gave her six months before she walked into the light.

Almond Joy Cake

I'd never heard of "Almond Joy Cake" until I read Shane Mullins' story "Leftovers" in Dark Valentine today. So I googled it. And let's just say there's a baking experience in my future. Check out the recipe here. Marshmallows are involved, which is not exactly a traditional Almond Joy ingredient but I'm willing to work with it. I suspect that this is one lethal confection but you'll die happy.

And even more fiction!

My story "House of Half a Hundred Cats" originally appeared at A Twist of Noir, but it's now up at Hazard Cat. Check it out. It's kind of a companion piece to "In the Kingdom of the Cat."

More Free Fiction at Dark Valentine

There's a Fall Fiction Frenzy going on over at Dark Valentine. Check out today's story by Shane Mullins with an illustration by Laura Neubert. Another good reason to stop by? Yesterday's story, "Introductions Are In Order" by Cormac Brown and my own story "In the Red Room."

Taste a Free Sample!

This is my favorite story from Just Another Day in Paradise, but because it's the last story, it isn't among the free samples offered.

"In the Kingdom of the Cat"

Otto loved the Lady.

He had met the Lady when he was nine weeks old and not much more than a scrap of fur stretched over soft bones. She had seen him cowering under a car while some mean boys threw rocks at him, trying to hit him and getting very close. The Lady had jumped out of her car to yell at them. The boys had jeered at her at first, but they ran away when she kept coming toward them.

She’d gotten down on her hands and knees—shredding her stockings—and coaxed Otto out of his hiding place with the tuna-fish sandwich she had in a paper lunch bag in her car. (The Lady was thrifty and brown-bagged it most days.)

Otto had been hungry enough to eat the sandwich, but when she reached out to pull him from under the car, he’d scratched her in his panic, drawing blood in parallel lines down her plump forearm, ruining her new blouse. (She’d bought it at Lane Bryant on sale just the week before.)

The Lady had stopped at a payphone and called in sick, telling her supervisor she thought she had the flu. Then she’d taken Otto to the Vet. Terrified of the smells of sick and dying animals at the Vet, Otto had scratched the Lady again and then he’d pissed on her and the table and then on the Vet himself. He expected her to leave him then but she hadn’t. Instead she’d stroked his head and cooed soft words to calm him while the Vet went about his business. There were shots and tests and finally a snipping but in the end, Otto went home with the Lady and had been with her ever since.

The Lady had named him Otto von Orange Cat but mostly she called him “my good boy” and “my handsome boy” and “my sweet boy.” He loved it when she called him “my sweet boy” because then she would nuzzle him and kiss the spot between his ears where his striped fur formed an M.

When the Lady retired, Otto was thrilled. He followed her from room to room like a faded orange shadow and made certain that no spiders or other bugs dared enter her domain. In return, she bought him cat dancers and laser pointers and little leather mousies that he would eviscerate and leave all over the house for her to step on with her bare feet. (They felt uncomfortably real.)

There was only one room in the house he shunned—the magic room where the Lady made it rain on her command. Otto remembered rain and how cold and wet it was, so he never went in that room, but would lie across the threshold on a thick, fluffy bathmat to protect her.

As the Lady got older, she began to take a lot of naps. Her hands were still gentle when they petted him but Otto could tell her hands hurt her. She moved slowly and once he nearly tripped her when she got out of bed in the night. She stepped on his tail more than once but he never complained.

One night, she’d been more tired than usual and she’d gone to bed early. He had climbed up to the bed to be near her, using the little stool she had bought for him to make the climbing easier. He settled at her feet, as was his custom, and was still awake when the shadowy figure came into the room.

Although the shape was large and unfamiliar to him, Otto sensed the figure meant no harm. In fact, Otto could feel a sense of calm and love radiating from the shadow as it moved toward the Lady’s bed. He watched as the shadow looked down on the Lady and then bent and kissed her gently.

Otto meowed plaintively and the figure turned toward him. With a finger as light as a feather, he stroked Otto’s head in the very same place where the Lady always kissed him. Otto smelled a scent that was like fresh-baked salmon and then it was dark.


A concerned neighbor called 911 when she realized the Lady hadn’t collected her mail. A call from the police dispatched a team from the county morgue. It was their second call of the morning and the senior partner, a middle-aged woman going through a nasty divorce, had a throbbing headache. The sight of the old lady curled up in bed with the dead cat at her feet broke her heart. “What do you want to do about the cat?” her partner asked her.

“What cat?” she replied as she tucked Otto into the foot of the plastic body bag. She knew about loneliness and she knew about love and without making much of a fuss about it, she wrapped the Lady and Otto together and took them out of their home and slid them into the back of the ambulance.

The neighbor told the police that the Lady had a nephew back east and they located him and gave him the news of her passing. He was interested in knowing if there was any money coming to him and when he found out the answer was “no,” he suggested that the county go ahead and cremate his aunt and do whatever they wanted with her ashes.

The Lady had enough in her bank accounts to cover the cost of a county cremation, so in due time, she was removed from a shelf at the morgue and put into a cardboard coffin that looked for all the world like a banker’s box.

The man who oversaw the cremation saw Otto in the body bag and quietly slipped him into the box with the Lady, breaking all kinds of regulations and not really giving a damn. In the end, when the bodies were reduced to ash and broken bits of bone, it really wasn’t possible to tell where the Lady left off and Otto began.

That night the man in charge of the cremation went home to the apartment he shared with his silly little dog and took her for a very long walk. Then he fed her chicken tenders off his plate and let her get up on the couch to cuddle with him as he channel surfed. They fell asleep together sometime after the end of So You Think You Can Dance.


The scruffy gray kitten was three months old and had been at the pound since he was born to a pregnant cat that had been dumped by her owners because of sudden-onset allergies. His whole family had been red-tagged, but he didn’t know that because cats, although not color blind like dogs, have trouble seeing red.

One of his siblings, a long-haired calico, had been adopted when they were all younger, but it was kitten season and the pound was overflowing with cute babies and they were the ones that caught the eye of visitors—not scruffy, runty gray ones. The gray kitten hadn’t even looked up when a family walked in just before closing time.

“Look at that precious little sweetheart,” the mother said, pointing to a frisky, long-haired tuxedo cat who had come to the front of her cage to investigate the visitors. “Isn’t she darling?”

“Hmmm,” said her husband, who wasn’t really a cat person and thought the black and white kitten looked exactly like every other black and white kitten they’d looked at that day. And they’d looked at a lot of kittens. Their little girl had been asking for a kitten since she was old enough to spell C-A-T and they’d decided to get her one for her fifth birthday. And they had to find it today. Because her birthday was tomorrow and five year olds are not known for their ability to delay gratification.

He’d tried to beg off the cat-hunting expedition but his wife had insisted he come along—to make it a family experience. She was getting tired too, though, and privately hoped they could just grab one of the little fur-balls and get it over with.

“Look honey,” the mother said again, pointing to the black and white kitten. “Would you like to hold her?” The pound attendant hovered expectantly.
Ignoring the adults, the little girl walked over to the cage where the gray kitten was sitting and opened it. The attendant was about to protest when the little girl reached in and picked the kitten up.

“Otto,” she said happily as her parents exchanged puzzled glances over her head.

“Otto,” she said again as she cuddled him. Then she kissed the top of his head on the place between his ears.

And Otto remembered his name then and recognized his Lady even though she was small and brown instead of pink and large. He rubbed his cheek against her face to mark her as his own and then he started to purr.

Otto fell asleep in the Lady’s lap on the car ride home and did not wake up until she carried him up the stairs and into their house.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

This is the picture. Just Another Day in Paradise is a collection of 28 of my stories, some published, some not. The epub version will be available this week; with the print version available before Halloween.

Christopher Grant was kind enough to give me a blurb and the blurb was enough to make me blush, so thanks to him. I also owe a huge debt to my publisher and epublishing mentor, G. Wells Taylor. If you haven't checked out his novel Bent Steeple, you must. Thanks also to my editor, Joy Sillesen who is also my colleague at Dark Valentine Magazine.

The cover photograph was taken by Keith Cullom, a former firefighter whose photos of fires are available at fire-image.com. I first saw the picture in a news story and it haunted me.

I'm baaack. Did you miss me?

The last month has been a blur of fiction and food and precious little else. As you may know, the Fall Fiction Frenzy (31 stories in 31 days) is going on at Dark Valentine. Coming up we have stories by Brian Trent, Cormac Brown, Christine Pope, and Barbara Emrys, among others. Stories already posted include my own "Animal Lover," and "In the Red Room," John Donald Carlucci's "I Love You to Pieces," A. H. Sargeant's "Lost in Transit" and many many more.

I've also been finalizing the order of stories in my upcoming fiction collection "Just Another Day in Paradise." Due out this month.

As for food, I've been getting up close and personal with it all month. In September I worked with Word of Mouth Catering on a film shoot. (Birds of a Feather. You can see a trailer for the original short film here.) It was 113 one of the days we shot. No AC because of sound. Good times. Actually, I had a blast but it was pretty labor intensive.

This weekend I worked on an emergency gig involving 250 wedding guests and a caterer who simply ... decided he wasn't feeling it and bailed out. The day before the wedding. Let's just say I never want to bake another pita chip in my life but a good time was had by all. The biggest hit, chicken salad on the aforementioned pita chips. Couldn't be simpler:

2 large cans chicken (or three of the smaller cans)

Shred the chicken with a fork.

Add lemon-pepper to taste. (I like a lot of it.)

Add only enough mayonnaise to make everything bind together. (This is important. I normally loathe mayonnaise, but in this recipe, it's not intrusive at all.)

Eat with crackers or chips. Also good with plain pita bread. Enjoy.

Except for the one person who said, "This tuna fish tastes funny," the guests snarfed it.