Grove

Grove was a typical town in the rural American West.  Except that Mayor Vicks had just shot and killed Sheriffs Micheals and Markson.

"What are you gonna do about replacing them?" asked the local preacher, a Reverend Milner.

"I'm gonna appoint that Augustus fella and that Ozric fella," Vicks answered without giving much thought to his answer.

"Augustus, the cattle thief?" Doc Lewis gave the mayor a look of concern.  "And the village idiot?  You sure you want to make those two sheriffs?  Aren't there more capable men out here that are more deserving and, quite frankly, respectable?"

Vicks turned to the doctor and looked at him like a man would look at an ant.  "Lewis, I'm the Mayor here.  What I say goes, is that understood?"

Doc Lewis shrugged his shoulders.  "All I'm saying is that those two aren't particularly sheriff material and I think most of the town would agree with me."

"Tough shit," Vicks said.  "I'm the mayor, you're the doctor.  I don't run around telling you how to do your job, so I'd expect the same kind of respect from you."  He walked away to christen his new choices for sheriff.

Reverend Milner clapped a hand on the doctor's shoulder.  "I understand your concerns Doc."  Lewis, staunch atheist, was surprised by this show of support from the man he had had several arguments with during the course of his tenure as doctor of Grove.  "Those two are going to be trouble."

Within a matter of days, the reverend's prophecy was fulfilled.  High on the authority given to them, Augustus and Ozric treated the other townsfolk with derision and scorn.  A rancher complained to the mayor that his youngest daughter had been raped by the two sheriffs and they had stolen two of his horses.  The owner of the saloon pleaded with the mayor after they ransacked his supply of liquor.  More atrocities were committed by these men than could be recorded in the annals of Grove's history.  The two man took whatever they desired of everyone and demanded respect from the townsfolk.  After a raid on a ranch a couple of miles out of the town from a rogue group of Apache, the lawmen refused to form a posse and give chase.  Fed up with this, Doc Lewis arranged for a town meeting at the town's church.

Doc addressed the crowd that composed the vast majority of the town.  "It's time we get a new mayor.  Obviously Vicks isn't going to do anything about the problems he's created by anointing these fools sheriffs."  The crowd cheered in assent.  Vicks stood in the back of the church, giving off an attitude of indifference toward the growing displeasure drifting his way from the town.

Then the unthinkable happened.  Augustus walked straight up to Doc Lewis and stood within inches of his face.  "You don't like me much, do you doctor?"

Lewis looked down into his eyes.  "No, I reckon I don't.  You're a cattle thief and a disgrace to this town.  You've made us the laughingstock of everything west of the Mississippi."

Augustus nodded and started to walk backwards.  "If that's the way you feel, so be it."  With a flurry of motion faster than the eyes of most of those gathered, he drew his gun and shot the doctor between his eyes.  Doc Lewis didn't even have the chance to look surprised as he dropped dead on the church floor.

The crowd began screaming and running towards the exits.  They realized they were stuck with these two bullies as sheriffs indefinitely.  Reverend Milner stood aghast over the body of the doctor.

"Murder!  In the very house of God and before a hundred witnesses.  Hell and damnation await you, Augustus!" he cried.  

The sheriff gave him a quizzical look.  "You telling me I'm not already in Hell?" he asked before he brought his pistol back up and aimed at Milner's head.  Milner looked up towards the ceiling, ready for the embrace of God he knew with certainty he would soon feel with his imminent death at the hands of a madman made sheriff.  Augustus sneezed and holstered his pistol.  "Too bad you didn't shit and piss yourself.  That's what I was hoping for."  He walked out of the church.

Later that night, in a drunken stupor, Ozric knocked over his lamp and was soon lost in a blaze of fire.  The fire spread through the town quickly, as if spurred on by the vengeful spirit of Doc Lewis.  Augustus fled into the countryside as soon as he realized the town would be consumed by the flames.  Every house in the town burnt to the ground and in the end, only Reverend Milner and Mayor Vicks were left alive, surrounded by the ashes of Grove and its citizens.

Vicks looked at Milner with clear desperation in his eyes.  "What am I going to do now?" he asked.

Milner laughed.  "If I were you, I'd start digging.  The blood of an entire town is on your hands because your head was swollen with pride.  At least you'll have one of your idiot sheriffs to keep you company in Hell."  He left the mayor in the midst of the town and walked in the direction the sun would soon rise from.

Of Writers and Strippers

It's been a long time since I've shared any thoughts via blogging, but I keep intending to.  The truth of the matter is that I'm the world's worst (or best if you want to be optimistic) procrastinator.  Well, hopefully, I can work on fixing that.  One step at a time.  Maybe tomorrow I'll start.  All jokes aside, here are some reflections I had yesterday.

I'm just going to cut the chase here and put aside any kind of pretentious bullshittery.  Writing is so vastly and incredibly difficult for me to do.  In one sense, I feel like a stripper.  For the ignorant among us, a stripper's job is to get naked for complete strangers.  Writing is a similar experience, but at the same time, almost completely different.  With what I write, I'm peeling off layer after layer of the "clothes" of my personality.  When I write, I put everything into it.  Every piece I have written (and many of those I have thrown out or burned because I have massive self confidence issues with what I write (a point in which I'll get to eventually here)) contains everything I am.  And I mean capital E Everything.  My hopes, my dreams, my fears, my failures, my successes, my secrets, my beliefs, my philosophies, my scars, my loves, my hates, my envies, my prides.  All of that (and likely, more which I failed to remember to mention) goes into it.  And that's a huge part of why I have so much trouble writing.  It can get taxing extremely quickly.  (And to all the writing or English majors/degree holders flipping their biscuits over how many adverbs I've been using and how rakishly amateurish this monologue is, well, fuck off. This isn't for you, this is for me.)  I write because that is the best way I have of expressing myself.  It's entirely of a private nature and because of the nakedness of what I reveal about myself, I'm mortified of sharing what I write with others.  (To the extent that the the people who have read any pieces I've written can be counted on one hand.)  The second half of that fear is that there is a large part of me that feels grossly inadequate about what I write.  That my works reek of immaturity and awkwardness.  There's a feeling of mass inferiority after finishing reading something like Ulysses or One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Works that are just so immensely complex and are really and truly crafted by geniuses.  How could I possibly write anything that comes close to a single page of such works?  Daily I struggle with those feelings of inferiority.  Because those are precisely the types of works I want to write.  There's nothing wrong with escapism literature and I'll gladly admit that I'm an avid fan of (some) science fiction and fantasy, however even among those writers, I feel dwarfed.  I guess what I'm trying to get at here, as ineloquent yet genuine as it is, is that writing is the ultimate form of isolation.  All we ever are is alone.  But that's not entirely a bad thing.  Because there are billions of us, and we are all alone, but we are all alone together. (I promise that if I ever find the original owner of that quote, I'll provide them credit for it.)

Finally, I'd like to thank the cute girl at the bus stop I met today.  (And let me again apologize for my toxic Funyun breath fumes, in the off chance you happen to read this.)  Even with the briefest of exchanges and the most common of small talk, you've managed to reignite a fire within me that I have been trying for many, many years to raise from the dying coals of the deepest cave of my soul.  "Everything happens for a reason."  Those words you spoke are words I've spent countless nights pondering over while I battled (and frequently lost to) insomnia.  Maybe I'll never strike it big, maybe I'll never write something as massive and impressive as Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, but the scant words we shared today have been enough to fill me up with enough energy and inspiration to give it everything I have.  Thank you.  We may never see each other again, but you've managed to turn me from an "aspiring" novelist to an Aspiring Novelist.

As for you, the readers of this blog post, you are welcome to join me in this journey.  It will likely be a long and arduous journey full of highs, lows and dull, boring landscapes.  You are my witnesses here and I fully expect you to hold me accountable.  Because there will be times when I'm gonna need a kick or a shoulder to walk on.  So, I cannot make it without your help.  Your comments and criticisms will be more appreciated than you may ever realize.  Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this and allowing me to share some of my most personal thoughts with you.