 Thoughts of an Assassin He watched from his secret spot above the street, his telescope adjusted for maximum clarity. The time on the tower clock showed 5:25 PM and the sun was getting lower in the western sky. Soon, on the lower horizon, the lucid orange colors would come, would dazzle the ‘romantics’ in the crowd of life’s living lovers ...
He grinned at his thoughts: Where else would the sun be at this time of night but in the western sky? Remarkable how we people speak and think so often in grandiose terms, adding the delicate modifier words to an important moment we’re describing, to a person we’re praising, to an object of devotion. Hah! Am I just now succumbing to the art of poetry? Ah, the mind can bewitch and tease us in so many ways ... Laura taught me that. Dear, beautiful, Laura, you introduced me to so much in life. We went to those romantic places you made so vivid for me in your telling. You were alive in a world I never knew, a political world you loved and believed in, a world you shared for a while with me, a simple man, unschooled in the finer etiquettes of life, a man who shunned the crowds, sought only his lonely miserable solitude in introverted and fearful insignificance... He looked at his watch. The posted time for the politician's arrival at the square was only twenty-five minutes away. He licked his lips but only because they were dry from being out in the open so long. He ran his open palm back through his sandy hair. It would not be long now. He was at the party by chance. His old college friend, his only friend, had insisted he attend with him because he was ‘worried about my own introverted and quaint nature’, his friend said, and I shall never know how it was he convinced me to go with him. And, there, I sat in a golden stuffed love seat in a corner of the huge ornate room while a soft roaring of incessant chatter from small huddled groups came resoundingly to my ears. The robotic roving waiter brought me my second Manhattan, and as I timidly took a sip I saw you, Laura, walking toward me, your long flowing colorful hair with a streak of peroxide somehow adding and sculpting the rest of your gorgeous body, tightly caressed by the burgundy gown. As you neared me, I gulped for I saw that you were about to speak and the awful fear gripped and held me stupefied. Your beauty notwithstanding, my sudden paralysis was an awful discomfort mixed with both anxiety and a modicum of hope. It dawned on me to stand in meeting a lady, and that began the only three years of my life that would come to have meaning for me. We fell in love so effortlessly and hopelessly. It was you, Laura who taught me the manners and the ways of culture and refinement...to the extent they could be taught to me. It was you, dearest Laura, who taught me love. The happiness and the love shared by the two of us, our trips to far-away places, the few friends with whom we shared some special moments, all would be the stuff of painting, poetry, songs. Then, you were gone, taken from me by a foolish political ploy that caused your death...and, my death. He checked his watch. Five minutes. With his gloved hands he opened the long leather case, assembled easily, quickly all parts of the high-powered long-range rifle, the telescopic sight, the barrel, checked its heft, took a test-pose to check scope, and leaned back against the short roof wall...and waited. Laura, my one and only love, this is for you. There is something within me that cannot allow this man to live, this man who took your life from me. Not through love did he take your life, but through a ruse that would cause your death and my only real reason for living. I know you would not approve of my action here, my love, but men measure equities and losses in different ways than do beautiful women. But, still, I will ask you to forgive me this frailty of mind and body that urges me on to fulfill this deed. And, please, if there is that divine gate on golden shores of after-life, please be waiting to open that gate for me, dear lady of my heart. The tall handsome man stood, took his position at the parapet, kneeling, sighting, as the black limousine came to a stop at the beautiful flower-laden square. The tower clock struck six lovely tones. All the secret service people came from the vehicles, gathered near the politician responsible for the man’s deep sorrow. The politician took his first step from the limousine. A gunshot pierced the early evening air, unheard by the cheering crowds below. The man lay dead on the roof floor by the short wall, blood slowly seeping from his head wound. There was static heard only on the building’s roof, and these words: “Subject target eliminated. The president entourage may continue." Flash Fiction by: Billy Ray Chitwood – October 14, 2018 Please preview my books at: https://www.billyraychitwood.com Please follow my blog at: https://www.brchitwood.com Please follow me on: https://twitter.com/brchitwood
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  The Clock and the Car The Clock and the Car -Some Scintillating Dialogue- (Dedicated to John Howell – My Dialogue Hero!) *** “What’s with the clock and hammer, Henry?” “You don’t want to know, Helen!” “You’re angry! Why are you angry? Stop walking, Henry! Talk to me! Your face is flushed!” “I told you, you don’t want to know! Move! Out of my way!” “My God! Henry, you’re going to crush the clock with the hammer? Henry, stop and talk to me!” Back door slams! Guess he’s on one of his rampages! Why bother when he’s in these moods? He has to put his fire out! That’s the way He’s made, God help him! I’m glad we have a few acres here – wouldn’t want neighbors hearing his pounding and yelling out there! Time for my ear plugs, Social Media and the reading room upstairs. Poor Henry! In thirty minutes, or less, he will be all loving and sweet again, asking forgiveness for his fiery temper! I love him so much, and it is kind of a comical break to the day… He’s so darned predictable. I’m surprised he hasn’t hammered his laptop…he’s threatened often enough! Oh, well, Henry got his genes at a ‘pawn shop’ back room! He’s so sweet most of the time! It’s that blasted meltdown he inherited from his father (he owned the pawn shop!). Papa Gregory died of an abdominal aneurism! Henry gets his regular medical tests for those ‘meanies’, but his doctor tells him each check-up all his systems are ‘go’! It’s been about thirty minutes, and this book is just not wrapping me all up in its narrative. Henry has got me spoiled! He’s an author who can really paint several portraits in a book – he’s written fourteen, working on fifteen. If his anger with the laptop doesn’t kill him first! Guess I better check on him! It’s really quiet all of a sudden! “Henry! Henry!” (Gotta get that stair-step creak nailed down!) “Henry, are you down here?” Darn, forgot to take my earplugs out! “Henry, why are you sitting all alone here in the living room?” “Cause my mistress didn’t show up for our afternoon play-party! Why you asking? I’m relaxing, having a Willet on the rocks…it’s not Maker’s Mark but it gets the job done! Thought you were gone to the store?” “And, why would you think that, Henry? Told you earlier I wasn’t going to the store until tomorrow.” “Well, where did you go?” “I’ve been upstairs in the library, reading, you old fool! Did you get over your anger spell with that clock?” “Well, yeah, and I’m sorry about that…Time is just flying by! I look at the darned clock and it’s almost 5PM – it seems it ought to be still AM… don’t like clocks not even a little bit! But, hang on a doggone minute, Helen!” Henry is finishing off his Willett on the rocks in one gulp and getting out of the LazyBoy in a big hurry! “Now, where’re you going, Henry?” “Just a minute, Helen!” He’s going toward the front door! “Henry, stop! Where are you going?” He’s looking out the side window at the front door! “Henry, will you please tell me what you’re doing?” “Where’s the car, Helen?” “In the driveway, Henry!” “Sorry, hissy Helen. There is no car in our driveway!” “Oh, My God, Henry! The car’s been stolen?!” “I’m fixing myself another Willett on the rocks, sweet lady, while you talk to the police!” “What are you mumbling under your breath, Henry? I can hear you here in the living room!” “Take your best guess, sweetheart! Just keep dialing the phone…the police department, not, 911!” “The phone is ringing, Henry, at the police department. Come, sit next to me on the love seat while I’m waiting for them to answer.” “Afraid I might spill some of my Willett on you, Helen. ‘Ain’t’ going to lose a drop of this valuable stuff! You just get our car back!” Billy Ray Chitwood – February 28, 2018 Please Preview my books of Mystery, Suspense, Romance, Memoir, Thrillers at: http://billyraychitwood.com Please follow my Blog posts at: http://brchitwood.com Please follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brchitwood  The Mission of Hope
 The End I was a beaten man! There was nothing left! No wife! No children! No job! The only clothes I owned covered my body. The black ashes that were once my house had an acrid, gagging odor, mixed with the smells of fire-fighting liquids, dampness, and death. How does one describe a body bereft of feelings, a body with all its tears shed, a hollow core of nothingness covered with flesh? Nothing there! Nothing I could or would ever be able to find. That was my truth! Standing there in a starless night of misty rain and appropriate bleakness, looking for the last time at the sum of my existence, there in those black, damp clumps of earth and bones, there with the only pieces of love I had ever known, there in that eerie graveyard of ashes. We had a silly argument after the boys were put to bed. I made a petulant escape into the night of bar rooms and feigned grievance … my starring role in a ‘D-Movie’. I heard the sounds of fire engines through my whiskey haze and gave it little thought. Fire engines rushed to others’ houses, not mine. Finally, the Bacchus glow came, went, and I recognized the inanity of my actions. That rapidly fading glow took me home where I would do my habitual ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart’! Repentence was an eager surge within me as I sped onward for home. It was then, the car finishing its sharp turn, when I saw the halo of red and white flashing lights ahead. My body began to quake as the first pang of alarm came to rest inside my imbued brain. It was my home from which those wind-driven flames came … soon to be, at my arrival, the charred ruins of my only prized possessions. I stumbled from the car, stunned, inconsolable, watching my neighbors holding hands, praying, tears flowing down their cheeks, already knowing what I was about to find out. My wife, my kids, were consumed by the fire … a fire caused by my forgetting to turn off the barbeque. I fell to my knees, grasped my head with both hands, heaving, roaring my grief in loud sobs, piercing the smoke-filled skies above. The concept of Time had no reality for me as I gasped and breathed in particles of ash. People talked to me, uttered their pity and sorrow, tried humbly to comfort me. Their voices were lost in my sobbing growls. The movement of fire engines, firemen, my neighbors going back to their homes were on the periphery of my awareness. I shook my head in negation to acts of kindness, of pleas to help me. Then, I was alone with my mind and its torturous playback of my fatuous acts in life, alone with the agony which now possessed my soul. For three days and nights, I stayed awake, unseen, not wanting to be seen, in the wooded area behind the damp ashes where once stood my home. I was soon bereft of any meaningful thought, on the brink of madness. At 11:00 PM that third night I heard off in the distance the freight train whistle. I walked the quarter mile to the trestle and watched for the light that would announce its coming. I listened for the roar from the rails. Like a thief in the night I left the bush behind which I hid and stepped onto the trestle. The train’s beacon of light came onward toward me, and the faint whistle registered somewhere in a tunnel of my mind. The train was but a hundred yards away when I raised my arms to the heavens and cried, “Oh, God, please forgive me!” Flash Fiction by Billy Ray Chitwood – January 7, 2918 (Rev) Please preview my books, about me, & some of my book reviews at: http://billyraychitwood.com My Blog: http://brchitwood.com Please follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brchitwood Please leave a comment ...  Enigma Of The Soul How often do you use the word, ‘Soul?’ How often do you think about your ‘Soul?’ Mirriam-Webster defines ‘Soul’ as: 1. the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life 2. a: the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe So, that’s enough, right? The two definitions pretty much say it all, and there are more definitions there in the dictionary if you want more. ‘Soul’ seems to me, though, such a huge word to be so small. Writers likely get the most use out of the word than the people who really work for a living — no anger, please, just adding a little levity here. Really, it seems to me that ‘Soul’ is not in too many mundane conversations. ‘Soul’ is usually saved for the philosophers, poets, preachers, Romantics, sentimentalists, and writers. You can almost envision the literary expatriates who gathered in Paris between the period of World War One and the onset of World War Two…wtiters like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell, Gertrude Stein to name a few — okay, okay, I’m name-dropping — but these were the people I read and studied in college and their lives got somehow interwoven with my own, with my ‘Soul.’ I can see them sitting at the sidewalk cafes talking in the afternoon about their writings, about how the devastation of war had impacted their lives. I can see them drinking the Bacchus liquids and debauching in the evenings, pausing in their fun and frivolity for serious and sober moments to discuss the condition of the ‘Soul.’ These were the people Gertrude Stein referred to as ‘the lost generation.’ Certainly, why not Paris? Why not gather in the great city of lights with so much art and beauty? It was the place to be if you were disillusioned by a world intent on war and destruction. It was the perfect place and time to discuss matters of the ‘Soul,’ and these great writers held those discussions in the finest style and with some of the most celebrated erudition prevalent in those days. So, why do I post about ‘Soul?’ Guess it’s easy for me, an oldtimer looking back on his life, how he’s lived, somewhat of an anachronism in today’s fast moving digital world. ‘Soul’ is such an all-encompassing word. It holds such a fascination for me in these sunset years, but it has always held that fascination for me — guess ‘Soul’ for me is what writing is all about. We live, we pay taxes, and we die, but the ‘Soul’ offers us so many delectable scenarios of which to consider and ponder. ‘Soul’ is that defining part of us that we can’t pinpoint, can’t know exactly where it is, but we have to know that it is there. ‘Soul’ is everything Mirriam-Webster says it is, but so very much more. There are times when the directions we take as a world concerns me greatly. It is my hope that we can still take time, Paris or not, to discuss the implications of such an enigmatic and beautiful word. ‘Soul.’ Billy Ray Chitwood – 12/10/17 (From the Archives, 8/12) Please preview my books of Mystery, Suspense, Thrillers, Romance, Memoirs, et al: Author's Website: https://billyraychitwood.com Please follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brchitwood  Martin and Sybil
-Short Fiction by Billy Ray Chitwood- When the thought came to me I cannot say. The thought came and stayed, growing steadily through the minutes, hours, and days. It seized an uncommon, unpredictable control of my mind, macabre, mad thoughts pounding incessantly, relentlessly, a drum beat so wildly cacophonous I began to doubt my sanity… Sybil was everything in my world, her devotion and love the building blocks of my future, our love destined for the scripts of poetry, pretty phrases, and romance novels. It was a summer day on the white sandy shore in La Jolla, California. I sat on an unfolded beach seat reading one of my favorite books - soulful poetry by ex-priest, James Kavanaugh. Each time I read the book, I became engrossed. The book had me engrossed once again. It was a shattering compilation of soul-rending and searching. It was, and, is, a book that is both compliant and kindred to my own soul. The book’s passages reminded me of my own childhood and young adult life. the words and phrases touching the soft spots of pain and remembrance. It was but a spray of sand that brought the exhilarating discovery of Sybil Moreen. She almost tripped in the sand. She wore a tantalizing yellow bikini, her tanned body of curves and voluptuousness arousing the gonads and the heart’s pitter-pat. But it was her face, framed by a delicious spill of golden hair, blue eyes and an elegant face that spoke supremely of angelic purity. Something passed between us, that thrill of something discovered that just might be the defining moment of one’s life, a magical spate of emotions that come but once in a lifetime. We stared at each other for some seconds before I found my voice. From some source within of clumsy mutterings, my first words to her were: “Are you with someone?” She smiled and did a funny thing with her eyes and answered: “Well, no, I’ve just come from a modeling shoot. Are you suggesting I join you?” “Look, you’ve staggered my senses here. You must know you’re beautiful… I just sense, uh, something passing through us, and that’s just not an ordinary event with me. But, yes, I am suggesting you join me. Will you consider such a sudden quake of my mind? Please don't be insulted!” She placed her hands on her titillating hips, gave me a coquettish smile: “Well, may we start with names? My name is Sybil. Yours?” “Martin Hoover." So, began our relationship, built with the finest intentions and promises two people in love can make to each other. We enjoyed being together with as little time apart as possible. We were in love, akin to some of the greatest loves of all time. Our adoration for each other bordered on rapture. I’m convinced no other love ever possessed more idyllic space in time. We married three months after our La Jolla beach meeting, and life was storybook from every angle. Other than time at my Consulting business and Sybil’s modeling, we were at all times together. We wanted a family but not immediately. We were enjoying life too much, our dinners at great restaurants, occasional evening visits with mutual friends, beach time, and some golf. It was at a golf course that the first sense of trouble arrived. Sybil and I were put with two men to round out a foursome. That was fine with Sybil and me. We liked meeting new people. These new people we could have done without very nicely, at least, one who called himself, Bryce Cowling. The one fellow, a John Gibbon, was a nice guy who had apparently been paired up with Cowling to satisfy the tee-times and crowds of golfers. Bryce Cowling spent most of his golf-time looking at Sybil, an inane smile on his lips. He was a rude and brazen individual, showed no golf etiquette. He was always close to Sybil, making insulting non-sequiturs. Sybil gave no encouragement to the brash bastard and moved away from him when he came her way. My run-in with him came on the thirteenth hole when I overheard Cowling utter an insult to me and to Sybil – her insult a sex-related quip. I grabbed him and shoved him away from Sybil, and he gave me a mean gritted-teeth stare and a menacing smile. It was my good fortune to go thirty-eight years before meeting a crude and rude playboy type like Bryce Cowling. I told him this and to stay away from Sybil. Fate can at times be cruel! Cowling developed a fixation on Sybil, tracked her down at a modeling shoot and began stalking her. Not only was the guy ugly and mean, he had a ‘rap sheet’ with the San Diego PD that included felony arrests for rape and assault. It became my habit of taking time away from my work, driving Sybil to her ‘shoots’, but that was not doable on November 8, 2005 because of a consulting conflict. When she went missing, I was frantic! I called the San Diego PD and was told forty-eight hours needed to pass before they could do anything. The police found Sybil’s ravaged body seven days later in the hills above La Jolla near our home, near the beach where we met and fell in love. My anguish became anger and rage. The SDPD questioned Bryce Cowling and cleared him of the homicide of Sybil. The PD said his alibi checked out. Cowling’s alibi checked out for them, maybe, but not for me. My life became null and void without Sybil. There was nothing that would countervail my rage. Daily, nightly, I tracked Bryce Cowling and finally gained unnoticed entry into his San Diego condo. He was with a woman who, unlike Sylvia, gave herself to dancing, laughing, telling of her sex-capades, copulating with this man I hated so much. I watched from my hidden spot until I retched, but the retching did not rid me of my anger. With my hunting knife slicing and stabbing, I killed them both while they were sexually rapt. I would not know how many stabs, how many slashes I put upon their bodies. I can only say my rage was spent. A neighbor in an adjoining condo heard the screams and called 911. The police came. I was arrested. Now, I hear footsteps outside my cell. It is time for my execution. I’ve been here for years and I am ready for my sentence to be carried out. There are no regrets for what I did. That is perhaps the saddest part. That and the not knowing whether I shall see my beloved Sybil in the next dimension. Anger and Hate are beastly emotions, but I somehow cannot regret the mutilations of those l savaged... Even, when the real killers were apprehended later!? What does that make me? Short Fiction © by Billy Ray Chitwood Please visit my Website: https://billyraychitwood.com Please follow me: https://twitter.com/brchitwood <!-- Hotjar Tracking Code for www.billyraychitwood.com --> <script> (function(h,o,t,j,a,r){ h.hj=h.hj||function(){(h.hj.q=h.hj.q||[]).push(arguments)}; h._hjSettings={hjid:651326,hjsv:6}; a=o.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]; r=o.createElement('script');r.async=1; r.src=t+h._hjSettings.hjid+j+h._hjSettings.hjsv; a.appendChild(r); })(window,document,'https://static.hotjar.com/c/hotjar-','.js?sv='); </script> 
Well, here you are! Settle in…tell me about the roads you travelled to get here. What dreams did you chase? How many did you catch and find an ecstatic, enduring rapture in their fulfillment? How many were somehow forbidden by tenuous moments of doubt and indecision? How many routes along the road did you take? How many loves? How many heartaches? How many moments of despair? Well, you’re here in Twilight, here where you can suffer not so much the decisions you’ve made, here in the near-pleasant world of ‘been there, done that’, here where one can attend the parties without concern for the morrow, here where the golf club, shopping, lunch with friends are the only things that matter… Unless, of course… You’re a romantic and wanderlust, still carrying sad baggage of mistakes and minimal accomplishments, a quaint legacy void of grand, lasting dimensions. But, then… We all are somewhere in that passage to Twilight. God forbid, you might be in politics! Even, the leader of the free world, and, if you have not been too indiscriminate to matters of heart and soul, it is likely Twilight will fit you just fine. Along those roads to Twilight, many of us were charmed and/or deceptively beguiled by people who have love or evil in their hearts. Both of those groups will have no problems in Twilight. Each in her/his way has not the heart-wrench in recounting their lives, both convinced of purity in their souls. (Only one, of course, could be correct.) Sadly, though… Those of us who carried too much Joy, love, and regret in our baggage along the roads travelled, whose feelings are fraught with emotional quakes of sorrow, fragile in the remembering, will have the toughest time in Twilight. Why? You ask. Because their souls lend them along the way the brush to paint the sunrise, the sunset, the musical instrument and voice to bring tears to our eyes, the pen to write the pathos and poetry of our lives. To be blessed with that tenderness of being must make Twilight difficult because they have searched and loved most arduously, have kissed the sensual and hungry lips, have strolled the Champs-Élysées most fervidly with easel and pallet, have shown their hearts most beautifully playing the tenor sax. AND, Because the desires never diminish for these people of the night – these people who speak to us from their hearts and souls. But, so be it… Twilight can make exceptions and can be a most wonderful place to be. Welcome to Twilight… Post by Billy Ray Chitwood – October 10, 2017 Please preview my books, some reviews, and a bit 'about me' at my Website: https://www.billyraychitwood.com (See above Menu) Please view my Blogsite (here) and at: https://www.brchitwood.com - The Final Curtain1 - MUSINGS: Authors - Books - The World and/or https://thefinalcurtain1.wordpress.com Please follow me on: https://twitter.com/brchitwood Facebook: https://facebook.com/billyray.chitwood and https://facebook.com/billyrayscorner #RRBC #RWISA #ASMSG #IAN1 #AHA Please SHARE This Page With Social Media >>> Please the 'Contact Us' If You Would Like to Communicate. 
 'It Takes a ‘Hurricane Harvey’ Amid the chaos, destruction, and devastating rains of epic proportions come prayers, tears, and a true glimpse of the American character – beauty along with heartaches… Hopefully, we all can listen to the harsh lesson of ‘Mother Nature’ and her message to a portion of our republic that believes in political chicanery, deception, and greed. What else can we call the liberal progressive agenda of hateful labeling? Identity Politics? A haphazard agenda of riots, tearing down historic statues in an attempt to sanitize and erase our history? A public education system where professors indoctrinate our youth with historical perspectives that have no valid promise on the compendium of time? It takes a disastrous hurricane that destroys life and property, changes dreams, hopes, and creates a ‘new normal’ for so many. It takes a calamitous hurricane to show the heroic hearts and death-defying efforts of our citizens to help one another in their times of peril. It takes an awful reminder from higher intelligence that Love is still the core of existence, caring about family and neighbors, not an indulgence of liberal power brokers in their familiar and steady march toward some global and socialistic Nirvana. Forgive me if it appears I’m using this Hurricane Harvey to make some points. It’s just, when there is a national disaster like this, one sees so many volunteers, people who lose their homes but also aid their neighbors with an outpouring of love and daunting rescue efforts while still able to smile and say: ‘We’ll get through this’…well, it touches most profoundly this old man’s heart and soul. Billy Ray Chitwood – August 29, 2017 Please preview my books at: billyraychitwood.com Please see my blog at: brchitwood.com Please follow me on: twitter.com/brchitwood Share this: https://www.twitter.com/brchitwood https://www.facebook.com/billyray.chitwood https://www.plus.google.com/+billyraychitwood https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?trk=404_page www.pinterest.com/brchitwood/books-of-mystery-suspense-and-romance/ https://www.youtube.com/billyraychitwood PREVIOUS POSTS: Life and Choices Books by Billy Ray Chitwood CATEGORIES: Family, HurricaneHarvey, Love, RescueEfforts TAGS: AHA, asmsg, billyraychitwood, blog, IAN1, RRBC, youth family, amwriting, Chaos, Destruction, Hurricane, Love, MondayBlogs, Rain. |
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