Networking with Hobgoblins

When Merrimat’s pickup shook from bumper to bumper, he pulled over and spotted six little people, each about two-feet tall, crawling out from under his truck. The laughing little critters sprinted into the cornfield adjacent to the road.

While charging after the diminutive culprits, Merrimat clicked on his cell phone and attempted to engage its onboard video camera. Despite hitting the right button, the darn thing wouldn’t come up. On the fourth try, he spotted the cornstalks dashing by on his screen, but it was vertical format. He turned his smart phone sideways and waited for his screen to adjust.

And waited.

He kept running while waiting.

He arrived at a place in the cornfield that reminded him a those corn mazes farmers create to earn extra money at Halloween. His video camera adjusted to the horizontal so he was able to shoot excellent cell phone quality video of the crop circle and several pathways leading out of the maze or maize depending on your preference.

Merrimat heard laughter to his left and followed the path in that direction. He came to a junction, turned left on nothing more than a gut feeling. Fifty yards later he arrived at a smaller crop circle with a half dozen of the ugly little scamps milling about. They brewed coffee over a camp fire.

“Who are you people?” Mirrimat asked.

“Don’t insult us, please, human,” declared one of the tiny folk.

“Sorry. What are you?” Mirrimat asked.

“Much better. We’re hobgoblins. What did you think we were? Trolls?” The little fellow appeared to be the leader because he talked while the others kept their own counsel and he was a bit huskier than the others.

Merrimat shrugged. “I simply didn’t know. That’s why I asked. Have you always been in this neighborhood?”

“Our kind always live right in the same neighborhoods as you humans.” the hobgoblin leader passed coffee to Merrimat in an old fashioned six ounce cup of dainty china. 

“Why did you shake my car?” Mirrimat sipped the coffee. It was dark roast with a hint of exotic spices and campfire charcoal.

“We wanted to get your attention. We need to speak with you,” said the lead hobgoblin.

“What about?” Mirrimat asked.

“Are you prepared for retirement? What would happen to your family if you should pass away? Would they have the financial security they need? Let’s talk about your financial future.”

Mirrimat ran screaming from the field not bothering to follow the path laid down by the hobgoblins. On the way he kept thinking about how he must warn the others. He hoped the cellphone video turned out because he doubted anyone would believe his story.

He was wrong, of course. Turned out his friends all knew about financial planners.

THE END 

Quotable
"The aroma of dead flesh became worse as I approached Penny."
Paul R. Lloyd
Steel Pennies
    

Without Annette

Before Miley… before Lindsey… before Britney… before Jodie… and even before Hayley… there was Annette, Disney’s first teenage heart throb.

Articles covering her death yesterday at age 70, remind us that Annette Funicello was an accomplished singer, dancer and actress. But many of those writing about her have missed her greatest talent and contribution to television and film.

An American Icon
For the baby boomer generation, Annette Funicello was our first crush. That’s her legacy.

For millions of American preteen boys in the mid-fifties, she was our “it girl.” She stirred that magic something in our collective hearts that made us run a bit faster coming home from school. When we turned on the Mouseketeers that first time on October 3,1955, it was to experience that new program from Walt Disney. But from day two on, we hurried home to watch “Annette.” She was the curly-haired brunette with her name written across her blouse and those iconic mouse ears on top of her head.

Our preteen sisters loved Annette because she was everything a preteen girl wanted to become: a pretty star who attracted boys. She was a girl who always dressed right. She was that special older sister who had her act together. She was worthy of imitation.

Annette’s great charm was her sweetness and purity. Wow, isn’t that something. Did I actually write “purity” in describing a Hollywood star? With the original Mickey Mouse Club, you watched a group of good, wholesome kids with talent. At thirteen, Annette was one of the older children, one of the leaders. If she was sexy or flirtatious, it was always in a wholesome way. Even in the later Beach Party movies, Annette played the girl who was saving herself for marriage despite the bikini beach all around her.

With Annette, you always had the feeling she was playing Annette. And that was her special magic.

Think about it. The Boomer generation began in 1946 so the oldest Boomer watching Annette that first time in 1955 was all of nine years old. That means Annette was only thirteen when she stole our hearts. For the boys, she was our virtual big sister, baby sitter and famous actress combined into one giant grin.

I paid tribute to Annette in my new novel Steel Pennies. The story is set in 1960. The main characters are teenagers. In one scene early in the story, Tommy McConnell, the main character, and his buddy, Bob Durkin, turn on the television and catch a rerun of the original Mickey Mouse Club. They stop the action of the novel long enough to watch because they have a crush on Annette.

Annette Funicello stole our hearts when we were young and kept them for us until we were old enough to find our own personal sweethearts, like my bride Lynn Zuk-Lloyd.

Quotable
“… I flipped the channel knob to watch the Mouseketeers. It was a rerun, too. We watched it anyway. Bob and I have a crush on one of the Mouseketeers named Annette.”
Paul R. Lloyd
Steel Pennies

I’m a Were What?

Doctor Blutmeister said, “Roger, it only took ninety stitches to close your wound. And you arrived at the ER a good thirty or forty seconds before you would have bled out.”

 Janice Bingbuster stayed with me. Some Saturday night date that was.

When Janice bit me earlier that evening, she apologized profusely. At the time, I thought her apology over the top until I placed my hand on my wound and felt the blood gushing. And yes, she was definitely chewing as she drove my car to the emergency room.

I planned to have her drive me home after the ER visit and my overnight hospital room hangout. But when I awoke around noon, my pal Vernon stared me in the face. He volunteered to drive me home.

Vernon had that far away, thoughtful look he gets right before his Cousin Janice visits. “There’s something I have to tell you, Roger.”

“No need to apologize. Your cousin already covered that with profuse sorrow and lots of kissing while chewing.”

“That reminds me. Do you have any toothpicks?” Vernon glanced my way.

“In my car?”

“Never mind. I have something I have to tell you, and it can’t wait.” Vernon gazed back at the road.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You know me as Vernon Bingbuster, and I trust you consider me a friend.”

“I do. You’re the best, but this is old news.” I adjusted the bandage around my neck.

“And you like Cousin Janice despite her propensity for deep nibbling?”

“This may surprise you considering the depth of my wound, but yes, I like your cousin very much. What’s not to like? She’s beautiful. She’s kind. And she’s smart. So what if she clamps down a little hard during a make out session. We’re young. We’ll both get better with experience.”

Vernon took his eyes off the road to stare at me. “The problem, Roger, is you know both of us.”

I glared at the pickup stopped in front of us. “How’s that a problem?”

“Haven’t you wondered why you only see Cousin Janice once a month?” Vernon faced forward and slammed on the brakes.

“That’s because she only visits you and your mom once a month. She lives like four states away, right?”

“That’s my cover story.” Vernon waited for the pickup to move on before continuing. 

“It is?” The aroma of blood from my wound filled my nostrils along with an unhealthy amount of stone cold fear.

Vernon pulled the car to the curb and stopped. “I’m only telling you this because of the accident, the bite. Most of the time I’m your friend Vernon Bingbuster, but during the full moon, I’m Cousin Janice.”

“What?” I backed against the passenger door. “I’m on painkillers so I’m not sure I heard you right or even why I would want to hear what I just heard.”

Vernon shifted in his seat so that he faced me on the passenger side. “I’m a werewoman, Roger.”

“What is that exactly, a female wolf?” My head spun from Vicodin and weird news.

“Roger, don’t you get it? I’m a guy who turns into a sexy girl whenever the moon is full. I bit you so guess what?”

“I might get rabbis?” I cranked my head to one side trying to think, but I must have stretched the stitches because a sharp pain shot through my wound.

“You’re now a werewoman, too.”

“I’m a what? Vicodin doesn’t affect hearing, does it?”

After Vernon walked me to my door, I attributed the conversation to the painkillers from Doctor Blutmeister and any lingering drug abuse on the part of the blood donors who provided for my several transfusions. If Vernon was telling the truth, that meant I kissed a guy. I went upstairs and threw up.

As the weeks passed, I worried more about my future and less about boy lips. What would happen to me during the next full moon? I watched the evening sky, but most nights were cloudy in our neighborhood. I tried talking to Vernon Bingbuster about his Cousin Janice, but he claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about.

In case something were to happen on the next full moon, I spread the word on Twitter that my cousin Rhoda was coming to town. Vernon tweeted me that he thought my cousin might make a great friend for Cousin Janice the next time she was in town. Now, I’m the only guy I know, besides Vernon, who has to worry about a monthly visit from his “friend.”

THE END

Quotable
"Wickedness attracted and scared us at the same time"
Paul R. Lloyd
Steel Pennies

Steel Pennies

My new novel – STEEL PENNIES – is ready for purchase on Amazon for your Kindle reader. The paperback version will be ready in a few days. 

Set in 1960 in a working class neighborhood of West Chester, a small Pennsylvania town, Steel Pennies is racially-charged murder, mayhem and mischief wrapped around a teen romance gone wild. When teenagers Tommy McConnell and Bob Durkin discover the body of a long missing neighborhood girl, a series of killings ensues. As the body count mounts, will Tommy and his friends learn the identity of the killer before his girlfriend becomes the next victim?  

Steel Pennies explores racial tension and forbidden love during the early days of the civil rights movement. It examines the mystery of coming of age in a love story that turns Romeo and Juliet on its head. Laugh, cry and remember the struggles that brought America together as one people as you read my new novel – Steel Pennies.

What People Are Saying About Steel Pennies
“Machine-gun sentences.  Fast.  Intense.  Mickey Spillane-style.  No way around it.  Paul R. Lloyd is a top-notch noir writer.  Top-notch.”
Thomas Phillips author of Molech Prophecy—describing Steel Pennies by Paul R. Lloyd…

“I predict it will win awards and become assigned reading in high school, with the benefit that it will be a book that students will want to read. I loved this.”
Judge’s written comment on Steel Pennies in The Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense Unpublished Division.

BTW, PLEASE DON’T REVEAL THE BLOCKBUSTER ENDING!

You can read a chunk of Steel Pennies on Amazon by clicking here.

Return on Monday to read my new short fiction.

Killer Crowds

Have you ever watched one of those old films of city street scenes shot more than a century ago? The people are scurrying about like folks today in our big cities. The clothes are different. The cars and horse-drawn buggies are ancient. The brick and stone buildings in those flashing images have been replaced with ever higher glass and steel towers. But the action of the people is still the same. City life is, and always has been, about hustle and bustle.

Have you ever wondered where all those people in those old films are today? The simple answer is they are dead. But are they? Where do the people go who once hurried about our city streets?

I have seen people come and go for a decade in Philadelphia and multiple decades in Chicago. My travels, business and personal, have taken me to Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, El Paso, Tucson, Detroit, Cleveland, Seattle and other great cities. The scene is always the same. Even in Canada, where I have visited Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and their other cities I have witnessed the phenomenon: people in motion.

But where do they go?
Chicago, where I have spent the most time studying this mystery, makes a great example. The people scurrying about the Loop today are not the same people who labored there a generation ago. Where did those other folks disappear to?

I asked people in my business network. Their answers can be summed up in four words: “home, retirement, Florida, death.”

But do they really go to those places?

Try this experiment
Follow someone you see on the street in the evening rush hour when a mass of humanity heads for the train station. It doesn’t matter which city you’re in. Pick a person and follow him or her. Most of the time that person will simply disappear into the crowd and you will never see her again. Where did she go?

The mystery of the vanishing horde has haunted me these many decades. I have followed thousands of individuals. Pick the right person on the correct day and you’ll tail them right to their train. Those folks went home for dinner that night. But what about the people who vanished into the crowd right before your eyes? You watched them walking not more than 10 paces in front of you when suddenly they were nowhere to be seen.

Where did they go?

Two theories
In the interest of science (fiction and otherwise), I humbly offer two theories for further development by you or an expert of your choice:

Transcendental Departure: Could it be that when our time in the city is up and our business tasks are performed enough for one lifetime, we disappear into the crowd? We in effect become part of the crowd or one with the crowd. We are absorbed into the crowd. Our essence, our personhood, is distributed to the other individuals who make up the crowd. Our essence invigorates and strengthens the crowd, but at the price of our individual existence.

Adult Rebirth: Perhaps we become someone else as we are absorbed into the crowd. At one end of the mass sea of heads bobbing up in down to form a wave pattern, we vanish unnoticed by our casual passerby neighbors intent on making their homeward train on time. At the other end of the crowd, someone emerges, new and vigorous from our essence, someone you have never seen before. Meanwhile, no one in the city remembers you once you have vanished forever into the crowd.

A possible third theory? Beam me up, Scotty.

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Don’t Cry Over Spilt…

Police Detective Larson’s Irish green eyes didn’t light up when Primerot explained the reason for our late night gatherings of the Fox River Writers Group. Larson apparently had no experience with horror novels or the creatures who create them. His interest was that huge blood stain to the right of the bar at Murphy’s tap in St. Charles.

Morty the barkeep tried to explain that it was his fault the blood was spilled, but Larson didn’t get it. What’s not to get? We all have our little accidents. People are so data-focused these days, not like frontier times when a little bloodletting was a normal part of life and nobody much cared unless it was their own blood.

When Larson asked to see the liquor license, Morty laughed. “I don’t sell alcoholic beverages in this establishment, detective.”

“What do you sell?” Larson rubbed his hand across the pull tap for one of the kegs under the bar.

The rest of us laughed except Primerot who took notes for her new novel Bloodlust.

I tried to be helpful. “You may have noticed, Detective Larson, that we are not exactly like the people you meet every day in your job.”

Larson had enough of us. “Pour a glass of whatever brew you have in this keg.”

Morty snatched a beer mug from the warmer oven. He raised the glass high in the air. Our entire writer’s group including Primerot, Nosebuster, Suckbreath, Dimsnort and me craned our necks with eyes the size of silver dollars, for those of you who remember silver dollars. Anyway, they’re big.

Morty grinned a little wider than most people’s mouths will allow. This little trick made Larson’s eyes light up. Certain he had the detective’s attention; Morty pulled the tap, filling it with red joy.

“What is that? Some kind of wine?” Larson had not yet made the connection between the sweet aroma of fresh kill and the rubicund liquid Morty handed to him.

The link became obvious when Larson gawked in our direction. We, who couldn’t resist that flavorful scent, had our mouths open wide enough to expose the full length of our three-inch needle sharp incisors.

Larson pulled his handgun. I think it was a Glock, but what do I know of weapons other than my own fangs? As for the blood stain on the floor, Larson should have arrived earlier when we wrestled for the privilege of licking it up.

Despite Larson’s tough guy exterior, we each had a share with Primerot taking the devil’s portion. She is, after all, our leader.

Read Hags for Free Now – Offer ends March 15, 2013
Download Hags for free this week only from Amazon for your Kindle reader by clicking here.

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Evil Incarnate at Your Local Coffee Shop

Ted Wilson had no intention of kissing a vampire hag full on the lips when he entered the coffee shop earlier than usual yesterday morning. With the local Twilight Coffee Shoppe operating a 24-hour Latte and Leave service, Ted knew he could caffeinate on the 50-minute drive down the Reagan to the Eisenhower to the Loop. Fifty minutes if you left before the morning rush which explained his stop at the Twilight Coffee Shoppe.

When the tall, extremely pale barista asked if he wanted the usual, Ted moaned yes, but when he opened the plastic top to pour in a little almond-flavored imitation creamer, he did not expect to see a blood-red brew.

“What’s this?” he inquired.

The barista flashed a toothy grin before announcing, “Oops, that one’s mine.”

Ted snagged the correct brew cup and slid his debit card through the machine. He headed for the door without the almond-flavored imitation creamer.

“Wait,” said the barista. “Please allow me to apologize profusely for the error. Entirely my fault.”

Ted, who by this time had a hand on the front door, spun about. “No problem.” He didn’t see the barista so he shrugged. When he turned to leave, he bumped into her.

“When I say apologizes profusely, darling, I mean profusely.” The barista planted her ample lips firmly over Ted’s.

Ted was not one to mind a pair of warm female lips connected to his own, but they must be warm. The barista’s lips were as cold as Italian sausage yanked from the refrigerator, not that Ted ever kissed a cold Italian sausage. He preferred his meat hot, juicy and well done, but that’s another story for a different sort of blog than this one.

When the barista pulled back from the kiss, Ted noticed her fangs. It’s hard to miss a pair of three-inch upper incisors on a woman whose beauty is in the range of oh… let’s say Morticia Addams.

“What the…” Ted began to say before he was interrupted by the insertion of the barista’s incisors into his jugular vein.

As I said, that was yesterday morning before sunrise. This evening, Ted returned to the Latte and Leave.

“Usual?” the tall, pale barista asked.

“Yes, the usual,” replied Ted.

Read Hags for Free Now – Offer ends March 15, 2013
Download Hags for free this week only from Amazon for your Kindle reader by clicking here.

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