Writer's Muse Magazine: Spring 2014 Issue Read online

A Baby’s Plea

  By Shirley Denton

  It's almost time soon the clock will strike one

  Then a baby's life will be gone

  No one can hear him cry this little boy don't want to die

  He kicks and turns around trying to get his mothers attention but she ignores him

  He can't understand why she doesn't want him

  So he starts to cry weeping endlessly

  One little eye opens to look around at his safe haven in his mother's womb

  Soon it will be all over as a little baby begins to die

  His cry is unheard yet he begs and plea's for another chance

  Now the clock strikes one

  The doctor walks in

  The baby begins to cry please mommy I don't want to die

  But his mother just lays there hiding her emotions

  She turns her face so she can't see

  Her baby begins to plea

  His heartbeat stopped

  His tiny body still and cold

  One more unborn baby died

  Nobody even cried for him

 

  About the Author

  Born in Kentucky, Shirley grew up in Ohio. She had three children. Two passed on to their reward in Heaven. She has one son and two beautiful granddaughters. She attended beauty school, started caregiving, wrote and published poetry. Poetry is her greatest passion and inspiration to her heart and soul.

  https://www.realspecialeducation.com/

  Cyn Sational and Creeper Vance

  By Sumiko Saulson

  He was the kind of person who didn’t believe in doing any kind of research, ever. Vance was the bane of all Internet conversation because he always forced everyone else to do his research for him, allegedly to assuage his curiosity, but all of us knew that was a lie. The minute you furnished your side of the story with citations and supporting arguments, he was back at you with some small point in what you provided that he could throw back in your face. He was the reason someone invented Let Me Google That for You. He was both an insufferable jerk and an incredible bore.

  Still, none of us could have predicted what happened to him. None.

  I never saw Vance the way Karen did. She told me afterwards, that it was because I was a guy. She said all of the women knew the guy was a creeper. One day he got drunk and grabbed Lisa’s breast while howling that she was asking for it because she was showing a little side boob. No, he never did anything to Karen: she’s my kid sister. I’m sure he knew that if he tried to grope her I’d punch him in the face. And she was right, Karen. We really did see him differently. To me, he was kind of like my own personal Renfield. If I said, “Vance, go pick up that turd with your mouth,” I give it a 50/50 chance that he’d do it, just to fit in. Just to hang with the cool kids.

  Let me tell you something, though: I always thought he was an idiot. Annoying as hell, really, the way he would try to argue with me and everyone else. He would ask you all of these questions, because his away of arguing was to get you to supply all of the evidence. He was mentally lazy. I guess I didn’t think of him as stupid, only unwilling to do the work it took to support his position. We always had to do the work for him.

  I feel for the dude. I really do. Even a low-grade moron doesn’t need to be taken advantage of that way, you know? Sure, it was kind if his fault. Everyone knew that he was going to believe whatever you said, because he never looked into anything. In a way, I guess he was naïve. That’s probably a kinder way to think of it, nicer than considering him a pretentious douche bag.

  But none of us could have predicted what happened to him, because nothing really happened to him – it’s more like things happened to him. Vance never changed. The world changed in its reaction to him but he stayed the same, this constant variable.

  The last thing I heard, he’d been dumped again. His latest girlfriend had to kick him to the curb because he wouldn’t stop bothering other women in the building on his way up in the elevator. These girls put in a complaint that they were being sexually harassed. Vance got banned from the building.

  He wasn’t on the lease and… frankly he didn’t have anywhere else to live. He didn’t have a job because he lost his last one due to coworkers filing… you guessed it, sexual harassment complaints.

  So to make a long story short… he lost his girl, his home, and his job all because he wouldn’t stop giving women unwanted sexual attention. And because he couldn’t seem to understand he was being inappropriate, he never made the connection. Like I said, he never was that smart.

  If he was smarter, he might have known better than to go mess with Karen’s new girlfriend Cynthia. Cyn was built like an Amazon, or maybe more like one of the bad girls’ teams on a roller-skating rink. She was tall, and busty, with thighs like Xena, Warrior Princess and butt cheeks like a pair of basketballs.

  “I bet you could bounce a quarter off those tight buns of yours,” Vance said, drunkenly leering and giving her his best sloppy wink.

  I rolled my eyes. I was sure that the powerfully built Cyn was going to turn around and slap him in the face, and let me tell you something, she was not a little girl. She was five foot ten, which was a good two inches taller than Vance. She was wearing heels, and when she spun around to face him, that additional elevation was too much of a temptation for the mental man-child. He stared at her chest with a horrible, leering drool that made him look for all of the world like Bram Stoker’s Renfield.

  I wear size five shoes and Cynthia’s hands were quite easily the size of my foot. A smack delivered by the long, delicate and rake-nailed fingers on those ample appendages would have bruised more than just his ego.

  I suppose that if we all knew Cynthia better, we would have known for certain that she would ever stoop so low as to dirty her hands with the sweat pouring off of this fetid pus stain Vance. She didn’t, though. Smiling, and not saying a word, she dipped her slender fingers into the tight back pocket of her weathered jeans and fished out her little cell phone. It wasn’t one of the oversized smart phones teenagers carry these days; it was a business-like little number that looked like it would hold up to a good amount of jostling and activity without danger of breaking or cracking some oversized glass screen. Its screen was small, double-paned glass, and the back of it had a single head-nod to modern technology – a high resolution camera.

  “Grow up, man,” Cyn said softly, in her heavy and sweet but naturally sultry voice, a voice that poured forth from her lips into the world like syrups onto a stack of pancakes. “What are you, fifteen?”

  Cynthia pressed the button and took a picture of his face.

  His face…

  In the days that followed, something disturbing began to occur deep within the subcutaneous levels of his flesh. Fatty deposits began to swell and bulge, giving him a chubby cheeked, adolescent look. Shortly thereafter, a pitted roadmap of inflammatory acne spread over his cheeks, chin and forehead. The papules and pustules erupted unevenly over the fetid folds of his forty something face, and then they began to spread over the generous expanse of his pudgy back. Some of them festered and burst.

  Over the course of the next several weeks, a socially embarrassed Vance spent more and more time lurking in the corners near the bar with his remerging teenage skin problems. It took a couple of years for his problems to clear up, and by then he was a much more mature person. I hear he is in a long term relationship with a really nice lady now. Rumor has it that she turned him around somehow, like the Frog Prince. Not that I believe in fairy tales, but they say the nicer he treated her, the better he looked.

  We saw more and more of Cyn, and got to know her better. She was a minor celebrity of sorts, a television psychic named Cynthia Camden who went by the fabulous stage name Cyn Sational.

  I take back what I said earlier about how no one could have predicted what happened to Vance. I guess Cynthia could have. As Cyn Sational she claimed multiple powers of the paranormal, including predicting the future. One day she lo
oked me square in the eye and told me, “One day, I’ll be your sister-in-law.” That was before same sex marriage was even legal in California. But let me tell you – the wedding is tomorrow. That Cyn was right on.

  I really love my future sister in law. She makes my baby sis happy, and what more could you want in an in-law? I can’t see how anyone would not like her, but I also have to say that no one would really want to be on the wrong side of her, either.

  People who do wind up thinking she’s kind of a witch.

  About the Author

  Sumiko Saulson is the author of three sci-fi/horror novels, and a horror blogger. She is a native Californian, and has spent most of her adult life in the Bay Area.

  https://sumikosaulson.com/

  Angels Watching

  By Shirley Denton

  In our darkest hour angels are beckoned there protecting and bringing comfort though fear sometimes strikes like a snake you are never alone although we might not see them in the distance their white wings guide them there they never forsake you even in prayer angels carry every care to our Heavenly father who waits there

  The Artist

  By Shirley Denton

  I lose self control when I indulge in your vastness of beauty high mountains painted with white snow as the sun begins to rise swirling blue waters in a river below The light over shadows the tree tops that are planted by the riverbank colorful wild flowers lifting their buds toward the sun's rays grays and pink splash their way into the scene green clover blankets the ground white doves chirp a sweet melody the sound soothes Gods creation in the wilderness a cool breeze sweeps away dust on a beaten path every creature big and small falls into the magic painted by the hand of God

 

  About the Author

  Born in Kentucky, Shirley grew up in Ohio. She had three children. Two passed on to their reward in Heaven. She has one son and two beautiful granddaughters. She attended beauty school, started caregiving, wrote and published poetry. Poetry is her greatest passion and inspiration to her heart and soul.

  https://www.realspecialeducation.com/

  As The Winter Winds Howl

  By Jacqueline Driggers

  As the winter winds blow,

  and the snow does fall,

  I think of spring flowers.

  I love them, one and all.

  From the simple little dandelions

  growing in the yard,

  To the tiny little violets

  poking up among fall’s leaves,

  In winter, the tree’s limbs are bare,

  and sometimes covered in snow or ice,

  But then spring comes,

  and they dress themselves in new leaves and blooms.

  So I wait, patiently wait,

  for winter’s time to pass, to go;

  Knowing that once again

  spring will come,

  bringing with it the blooms of spring

 

  About the Author

  Jacqueline is a housewife from a small town in Kentucky, who is finally pursuing her high school dream of being a published author. She also is a blogger, author's assistant, book reviewer, editor, and stays very busy. You can find out more about her on her writer's page on Facebook.

  https://www.facebook.com/jdswrpg