Reminder: Hiatus

A quick reminder: Do to my many current writing obligations, there will be no regularly scheduled stories for June, or the foreseeable future for that matter. I will still send out stories to people who e-mail me to request them, but I won't be able to do a full twenty a month. If you want one, feel free to drop me a line at sean.arthur.cox@gmail.com and I will put one in the mail for you, but there won't be the usual surprise post cards to past recipients to fill out the month until I can get caught up on everything else.

The Optimistic Dock

Anticipating global warming, melting polar ice caps, and all the cataclysm that would come with it, Logan Vandermar bought a tract of muddy land near the shores of his hometown, and built a boat dock. People laughed and called him a fool but he shrugged them off. When the waters rose, they would be clamoring for a docking slip on his property, what with all the other piers having been submerged when the poles thawed. He built a boat in the mudflats too, hoping to attract early investors. The investors laughed as well. Still, he waited patiently and tracked every unusually hot day, every unseasonal tornado, and every record temperature to remind himself that his day in the sun was coming. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. The oceans would rise and they would come and ask to rent a boat slip, and then it would be his turn to laugh.

Originally mailed to M.T. in Seoul, South Korea

The Pit

The town of Meeksville couldn't be more picturesque. They had a barbershop next to an old fashioned soda jerk and ice cream parlor. Their sheriff's office only had one cell, at it mostly just held guys who needed to “cool their jets.” The children were well behaved most of the time, and when they weren't, their mischief was of a wholesome, adorable nature. There was a lovely park where the town gathered every weekend for festivals or movies broadcast in good old fashioned technicolor larger than life on the big screen. It was the kind of place where the scent of fresh cut grass and home made cookies always wafted about on a gentle breeze, and guys named Buzz and Skip always gave their pins to their best gal to show they were going steady.

And right there in the middle of the town was a giant pit that led straight to Hell, from which demons would nightly rise. Some towns would have called it a day and moved, but not Meeksville. Their Leave It to Beaver optimism couldn't be deterred by anything, so rather than get down in the dumps about it, they looked on the bright side. The demons helped keep kids in loving homes and off the streets at night. Church attendance was up, up, up, property taxes were down, down, down, and the stone work had a sort of rustic charm to it.


- Originally mailed to C. Townsend in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Safe and Sound

The tiny hamlet of Otisburg sat nestled safely between several mountains and a large lake. It had been here for centuries, unmolested. When war came, it walked around. It was too much work, the generals would say, for such an insignificant town. Invaders paid them no mind. In fact, the town had been mostly undisturbed since its creation a thousand years prior. This didn't surprise anyone. People in the surrounding area proclaimed the wisdom of Otisburg's founders to have chosen such a remote spot for their village to ensure its safety. They had no clue just how dedicated the founders had been to keeping access to their small village restricted. When the first buildings went up in the eleventh century, the town sat in the middle of a broad plain, but over the years, the residents of the town carved a massive lake out of the earth to the south and used the dirt and bedrock to build up the mountainous landscape that surrounded them. They were not safe because they were surrounded by mountains. They built up the mountains because they wanted to be safe.


- Originally mailed to L. Sims in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

A Stone House

Ever since she was a little girl, Alyssa wanted a stone house. Not brick. Stone. She wanted a castle at first, but later decided even a cottage would do if she could just reach out and feel honest to goodness solid rock protecting her from the elements. Unfortunately for her, stone was expensive in her part of the world. She lived on highly arable flatlands, sweeping plains that were perfect for farming because of the utter lack of rocks in the soil. Still, a dream, no matter how mad or expensive, will not simply die away.


As with all dreams, in order to survive, her stone home longing had to adapt, had to compromise. She looked at the wealth she could muster, a pittance to be sure, but she could find a way to make it work. She settled on a one room home. Tiny, only eighty square feet. She had just enough room for a day bed, a tiny shower in the corner, dresser with TV on top, and a single cabinet/counter combo beside a microfridge. She could have a big house later, a full house. One where she couldn't touch every inch of her home and still touch the bed, too. It needn't be made of stone either, she said as she did her best to stretch out on the paltry bed. She could live with something made of wood and plaster. She already had her dream home.


- Originally mailed to P. Walker in Diamondhead, Mississippi

When Rivers Divorce

Their journey together had been a long and winding one. Sometimes it was smooth sailing. Other times they felt like they were in freefall, just waiting to crash. They had their rocky patches and their serene moments. Even so, after ten thousand years and two hundred and seventeen miles, the river's waters decided they had run their course together and that it was time to get a divorce. They split the path, one taking north, the other south, and they would share custody of the midlands. Both tried to take the high road, but in the end, the proceedings went down hill. The transition was rocky, but necessary. It would take ages before they would understand their new paths in the world and they would eventually meet new people and travel to new villages. In the end, they would both be happier. 


- Originally mailed to S. Sartin in Atlanta, Georgia

Artistic Integrity

Eloise was an excellent artist who refused to compromise her artistic integrity for any reason. As a child, her teacher would tell her to color the sky blue, but she would refuse, saying the neutral beige better captured humanity's indifference toward the splendor of nature, and she bore the failing grade proudly. “An artist is never understood in her time, and critics do nothing but reveal their own lack of imagination.”

Her work was spectacular to be sure, and in time, she would become the rare breed that is both successful and respected in the art community. She had a wealth of fans and a dearth of detractors. Even contemptuous up-and-comers and counter-culture painters didn't resent her fame. As an artist, she led a charmed life.

All was not sunshine and daisies, however, for though he had talent, passion, and an adamant stance against selling out to cash in, her efforts often did her more harm than good. She could not doodle. Every bored thought needed to be a masterpiece, and every simple shopping list became an homage to classic early 20^th century advertising.


- Originally mailed to T. York of Witchita Falls, Texas

The Remake

Hollywood had run out of ideas (again) and decided to remake the film Snatch. However, because Hollywood hated to admit it had run out of ideas (again), they changed the title to Grab and set it two hundred years in the past. The cars became carriages. The Desert Eagle .50 became a Colt revolver. Other than that, nothing changed at all. Mickey was still a gypsy who wanted a caravan. Characters still gambled and lost on prize fights, and brick top still kept pigs. Critics caught the blatant story theft. Some bemoaned it. Others called it clever (notably, the same critics who call it clever when someone pitches Hamlet... in SPACE!!!). Movie buffs proclaimed it the death knell of studio cinema. The saddest part, however, were the kids who grew up with Grab, and who, upon seeing Snatch years later, would call it a ripoff inexplicably set at the end of the 20^th century, and bemoan how unimaginative Hollywood was.


- Originally mailed to T. Switzer in Biloxi, Mississippi

That Gets My Goat

Aiden Mulronny had a special way of dealing with those who grated on his last nerve. Some people, when they become frustrated with a person or situation, would declare, “That really gets my goat.”

Aiden decided to take that literally. He scoured the countryside seeking out the most obstinate, ornery goat he could find, and when a person peeved him, they got his goat. He would discreetly sneak onto their property at night and leave the creature where they would find it, no doubt making a mess of their trash and bleating all night.

“Hey, I got your goat,” they would say.


“So you did,” he would reply, knowingly.

“Well, it goat got into my (yard/garden/kitchen). How can I get it back to you?”

And he would always find some excuse to put off getting the goat back for a week. He was busy, so he couldn't come get it. No, he wouldn't be home then for you to drop it off. Nope. Not home then either. Tell you what, he probably has time Thursday. He could take the goat back then.


When you got his goat, you got it for a week.


- Originally mailed to J. Harmon in Fort Hachuca, Arizona

Hal the Wonder Goat

The town of Kerry erected a statue to Hal the Wonder Goat. Hal could do sums, but that's not what made him the Wonder Goat. It wasn't that he could fly or shoot lasers from his eyes. He could, but that wasn't what made him the Wonder Goat.


What made Hal the Wonder Goat was that he once ate a tin can, and everyone watched in awe as the chewed up metal failed to give the goat indigestion. This amazed the residents of Kerry, for they knew the stories of goats eating tin cans were just myths. Still, Hal did not seem to know, and as a tiny kid, he nibbled down a can of baked beans, metal and all.


The town erected a statue of their marvelous goat in the center of town, and every day as Hal would walk by, he would think, “They made a statue of me. I sure must be wonderful.”

And so he tried wonderful things, fueled only by the belief that he must be able to do them, or else why would the poor farmers have erected a statue in his honor? And so he balanced the village budget. He put out fires with his ice breath. He ran a successful campaign for mayor. In his life, he did many wonderful things because he knew he was wonderful.


- Originally mailed to J. Tahon of De Haan, Belgium

Dreams of Swimming

The tree's mother specifically forbade him from swimming in the lake. He tried arguing with her, pointing out that trees need water to grow big and strong, and more water meant more big and more strong. Still, she would have none of it. He sulked and moaned as he watched other children go for a swim. It looked to be such fun, all the splashing about. Why couldn't he?

One warm summer day, he decided he had had quite enough of this no-swimming policy nonsense. He stripped off his bark, pulled up his roots, and did the most epic canonball the world had ever seen. He splashed and frolicked. He did poorly at Marco Polo but excelled at chicken fighting. No one could knock the other children out of his branches.


Of course, it wasn't long before his mother came looking. A missing tree does not go unnoticed for long. The other children told him he needed to hide if he wanted to keep playing, so the tree ducked behind the biggest thing he could find, a half submerged stone wall in the middle of the lake. It would have been a fine spot for a human child, but a tree is a much larger creature. He assumed, because he could not see beyond the wall when he ducked, that others could not see him. A child's logic. His mother spotted him at once, and despite his protests that she must have him confused with some other tree, she saw through his ruse and made him come home. Still, for one glorious day, he was the king of the lake, and no one could take that memory away from him. 


- Originally mailed to J. Coulton of Brooklyn, New York

The Great Stone Wall

There was a great stone wall that stretched impossibly high into the sky, and stretching all the way to the horizon in either direction. There at the base was a wooden door that could only be opened from the opposite side. Where along the wall the door was didn't matter, because it didn't matter where a person was along its length when he approached. The door could best be described as “near.” Starting just beside the door, one would find a stairwell leading up along the wall from it. Narrow stone slabs jutted out from the wall, rising hundreds of feet into the air and ending at a recession and a wooden door that opened perpendicular to the great stone face. When one made the climb and went through the wooden door, one found himself standing on the grass beside a stairwell stretching hundreds of feet into the air along the flat side of an impossibly tall stone wall that stretched to the horizon in either direction, and if one were to allow the wooden door to close behind them, they would find that it could only be opened from the other side. Perhaps they would climb the stairs again in hopes of going through the next door to return to the other side, where they might climb back down. And if one did, he would find himself standing on the grass beside a stairwell stretching hundreds of feet into the air along the flight side of an impossibly tall stone wall that stretched to the horizon in either direction. And if one were to turn away from the wall and go home, one would find that the world was right where they left it, regardless of how many stairs they had climbed. And one would develop an uneasy reassurance that they were, in fact, safe and sound in their own beds on their own streets, but every time they misremembered something—Did Sir Ian McKellan sign my picture with silver ink or black? Was Marsha's phone number 0918 or 0981? Are the lyrics “Bye bye, baby” or “Bye my baby—one would always wonder whether one made it home after all.


- Originally mailed to J. Womack of Brooklyn, New York

The Proper Path

“You can't enter the castle through the paved road,” said Todd. “That's an anachronism.”


They'd been debating how to properly enter the castle for an hour. Todd said that they couldn't enjoy the castle to its fullest degree if they entered on anything other than the dirt path with authentic carriage ruts. “The road,” he said, “sets the tone for the entire visit.”

Steve hoped that Todd would be appeased if they simply parked the car a mile away and walked the rest of the distance.

“If we go in through the front gate, we get to start in the court yard where the knights and squires are practicing swordplay. The hunting gate makes us start our tour in the smelly old stables.”


Todd wouldn't budge, and in the end, Steve relented. They entered through along the dirt path through the hunting gate to enjoy the most authentic experience before picking up plastic swords and post cards in the gift shop.


- Originally mailed to J. St. John of Picayune, Mississippi

The Distant Boat

He had been lost in the woods for days, though he couldn't say how. Deep down, he know how. The woods were alive and sought to trap him forever. He knew it, but he couldn't say it.

He had only stepped off the road to relieve himself. He hadn't even gone ten feet from the road. He could see his car from where he stood, but there was a skittering noise in the leaves, and he turned to look, to be sure some wolf had not come for him. He saw nothing but trees. He finished his restroom break, and turned back to his car, but once more, he saw nothing but trees. Dense, dark forest where once there had been a car and a road. He stumbled blindly through the pines and briars where he knew there should be two paved lanes and 1976 Trans Am.

He wandered for hours until the sun gave way to alien stars and the darkest night he had ever experienced. Then dawn came, not with the blazing glow of the sun, but with a sky that simply became less black. Still he stumbled onward, and the brambles tore at his clothes and skin. He had found no water to drink, and only berries that filled his mind with lightning and his limbs with fire.

On the third day without food or water or sign of life, he found a river, and therein, a boat. Where there were boats, there were towns. He would drink the cool, black water. He could swim to the boat and rest and let the current carry him down stream where someone would find him. His fevered brain burned with excitement.

But he never reached the boat. He entered the stagnant water and swam, and with every stroke, the ancient canoe moved father away. The river's black hands reached for him, tugged at him, and the unfamiliar stars laughed at him, and he swam on and on toward a boat he would never catch.


- Originally mailed to A. Chance of Brandon, Mississippi

A Dream of Trees

One day, a young boy who heard the tale of Johnny Appleseed and longed to follow in those footsteps and create a forest of his own. Not apples, though. He hated apples. Also, he lived in the city, where there was precious little soil, and precious fewer tree seeds. Naturally, he did what any child would do in such a situation. He built a forest in his imagination. He started with clay, stretching it out, pulling pieces into long strange branches, for he lived in a city and didn't know much what a tree was supposed to look like. His looked like gum or pulled taffy with flecks of torn green construction paper. His older brother pointed this out to him, so he started over. He sought out brown construction paper and twisted it tightly for the trunk, and once more, topped it with flecks of torn green construction paper. His brother tormented him again for his trees, and the boy abandoned his dream of creating a forest.

As an adult, he became a botanist and got a job with the park service. Though he had not thought back to the day his brother teased him in years, it all came flooding back to him as he patrolled the north eastern corner of a national park that employed him. There in a small clearing, he saw them, just as he had made them in his youth. The trees of clay and paper, waiting for him, as real as life.


-Orignally mailed to C. Procenko in Toronto, Ontario in Canada

A Sort of Hiatus

Just a heads up. I am WAY behind on my backlog of writing projects. I have two novels I need to finish revising, at least one novel that needs finishing (more than that, actually, but I'm actively working on one), plus a friend of mine has asked me to co-create a TV pilot with him. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Stories will be posted throughout the rest of the month, but come June, the steady stream will slow down considerably.

I will still send out stories to people who e-mail me to request them, but I won't be able to do a full twenty a month. If you want one, feel free to drop me a line at sean.arthur.cox@gmail.com and I will put one in the mail for you, but there won't be the usual surprise post cards to past recipients until I can get caught up on everything else.

Climbing the Mountain

Her bucket list said “climb a mountain,” but life got in the way, then kids, then health. In her seventies, she had all but given up on the dream until her grandson stepped in. Inspired by his grandmother, he too had also put mountain climbing on his list. She lamented not going and made him promise that he wouldn't let anything get in his way.


“Okay. But you're going with me,” he said.

“No, I'm too old,” she said and made herself comfortable in her recliner.

Two months later, he showed up at her home with two plane tickets. “You told me not to let anyone stop me,” he said. “And since I won't go with you, and you refuse to go, I won't let you stop yourself.”

“It's too high,” she said.

“Smallest mountain in the world.”

“It's cold,” she said.

He pulled a new parka from a bag. She gave in, and at seventy-one years old, she climbed her mountain.


- Originally mailed to M. Whitfield of Gulfport, Mississippi

Mossy

Everyone has heard tales of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, famed for her grainy three hump appearances in the waves of Loch Ness in Scotland. Much less known in cryptozoological circles was Mossy, a creature much smaller than Nessie and land-based. Still, when people would roam the forests of Ireland, they would hear the rustle of leaves and glance to the tall grasses to see him, his long moss covered neck sticking out of the weeds, followed by two mossy humps, and then in the blink of an eye, he'd be gone again. Even when intrepid nature hikers were able to snap off a shot before the creature vanished into the undergrowth, skeptics laughed them aside, calling it a photo of “some mossy roots and stumps and rocks, nothing more.”

Still, though not as prolific as Nessie believers, Mossy's fans were no less dedicated to bringing to light the plight of their lonely, leafy friend to light.

Originally mailed to M. Wilkes in Jackson, Mississippi

The Curse

There once was a lovely, but vain princess who spurned every pauper and prince who wooed her for none were “handsome enough or rich enough” to deserve her. One such suitor's mother was a powerful witch. Being the loving, but overbearing mother that she was, she took none too kindly to the gross abuse her sweet and compassionate son suffered under the princess's cruel hand, and so she cursed the damsel that she would be a tree until she could learn to love someone for their heart and not their superficialities and accidents of birth.

Decades passed and she only grew more resentful. Her new branches and roots grew wild, blocking the paths of those who would pass her and not marvel at her perfection. Apples fell rotten from her branches, for those who came to collect didn't deserve her fruits. Offering nothing worth eating and slowing travel besides, people began to view the tree as a better source for firewood than food. She, in turn, would grow fruit more foul, for why would she want to help those who abused her?

One day, a scraggly farmer found the tree and brought it fertilizer and tended to the moss that had leeched its nutrients away. “How can a tree grow proper fruit if it grows in such poor conditions?” He trimmed the tree and cared for it, and soon it grew good fruit. When the farmer ate the first good fruit the tree had ever born, there was a flash of light and the tree was once more a princess. However, she had spent too many years as a tree, gnarled and bitter and ugly, and the very wrath that caused her to twist her limbs to spite others in the past now had turned her into a grotesque mockery of what she once was.

She was withered and old, a hideous mass of writhing, misshapen limbs and rough and rotten flesh. The farmer ran in horror suspecting that the tree had, in fact, been a hideous beast only pretending to be a tree to lure him in close and devour him. All her past misdeeds had come back to haunt her in each extra arm or withered stump. That's when she learned the witch's real curse. That others would see her as she truly was. 


Originally mailed to K. Bravo of Olathe, Kansas

The Time Stream

Geologists throw around phrases about certain geological phenomena stretching back to this epoch or that. “These mountains go all the way back to the Jurassic period.”

In the particular case of an unobtrusive stream in Killarney, Ireland, it was particularly true. The observation that it went all the way back to Miocene epoch was true not only geologically, but also geographically. It began in Killarney seven million years ago and ended in Cork in an age not yet named. A person could walk along its banks, and they would experience nothing but the soothing sounds of water flowing. If a person were to enter the stream and follow its course, however, they would move forward or backward through time according to whether they went with or against the current. How much time they traversed depended entirely on where they entered the stream and how far they traveled. A person entering at the mouth in Cork could only go backward in time, and at a relatively slow pace. At the source of the river, they could only move forward, and from the center, they could move in either direction in time at a pace proportional to the distance between entering the river and either end. Many people became lost to time that way, going for a swim in the holocene epoch and freezing when they exited in the pleistocene.

Little archeological evidence of the phenomena exists, however, for of the many creatures that fell victim to the stream's choronological anomaly, very few creatures walked along in the waters of a stream for long, and thus were only mildly displaced in time, and virtually unaffected in climate. Extinction being a gradual process, the fossil record for animals didn't change much, and most modern humans, lacking in the wilderness skills and bacterial immunities of their ancestors, died before they could hope to create any signs of their anachronism.



- Originally mailed to J. Witten in Oxford, Mississippi

Troll Teeth

“Please can I have some change so I can brush my teeth?”

“No dear,” said the mother troll. “You'll ruin your chompers.”

“No I won't!” the child protested. “Not if I only chew one.”


“You know you don't have that sort of self control. You'll use both brushes and when you go to the dentist, it'll be cavities, cavities, cavities.”

“But I like the way it tickles my gums!”


“I said no. It scrapes the protective film off your teeth and lets germs in. Your teeth will decay and when you grow up, you won't be able to get a good job. No one wants to hire a troll to guard a bridge if he doesn't even have teeth enough to bite a knight in half.”


- Originally mailed to P. Wilkinson of Vancleave, Mississippi

The Path of Life

Many cultures believe that life is a path that starts in one place, ends in another, and has its sights to see, its difficulties, and places to stop and rest. But what of the before and after? What waits at the end of the path, and where did we start? What are you supposed to do once you've reached the end?

The Kawasi people believe that life is a path that winds from the bottom of a mountain to the top. There is nothing at the top of the mountain. There is nothing at the bottom. There is only the path which is built as they climb, and once a person has made their way to the top, the turn around and travel to the bottom, back and forth. The path never changes, but they are free to travel it as they please, and dwell as long as they wish at any part.

But, they say, one must remember to build the path wisely. A portion built in anger will always be filled with anger, and though we may wish to dwell for the rest of eternity in this moment or that, we must still pass through all the moments inbetween to get there. It is wisdom, then, to build a path as peaceful and beautiful as possible on the first climb to the top, so that as one spends the rest of eternity traveling the old road, one finds happiness and beauty wherever one goes, and needs not fear to revisit any dark places.


Originally mailed to J. Stillman of New York City, New York

Forgot to upload!

Sorry, everyone! I got mixed up. Thought today was still April, so I put off uploading stories until this evening. I now realize April only has 30 days. Stories will be posted shortly.

Also, as an unofficial theme, all pictures this month were taken by my wife on her trip to Ireland, so it's a semi-sorta international edition. Enjoy.