You know you are addicted to writing when …
Every time I turn around I read another article telling writers not to quit. Years ago, I realized I can’t quit. I’m addicted. So to help others recognize the signs that they most likely have a writing problem, I have compiled a list. 🙂
You know you are addicted to writing when …
1) It takes up all of your free time.
2) You would rather write than do anything else.
3) You neglect your housework and tell your kids, “Give Mommy just one more minute.”
4) You lose sleep because you’re thinking about the next time you’ll be writing.
5) You go to meetings with people who have the same problem.
6) You’re thinking about the next draft even before you have finished the one you’re on.
7) If you are unable to write, (because of illness or obligations) you get antsy.
8) You blog, tweet, Facebook, talk, email, and dream about writing.
9) Rejection makes you write more.
10) Every day you tell yourself you should just quit … but you can’t.
So, do any of these sound familiar?
Love and Laughter,
Dorlana
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Fairy Tale Inspired Short Story: Muse by Dorlana Vann
Muse
by Dorlana Vann
Since Jackson couldn’t channel his frustration onto the blank page, he used his fist to pound it into the desk. “Ahhh,” he cried, swooshing his fountain pen and several loose pieces of writing-paper to the floor.
His caged birds squawked with excitement from the sudden movement in the quiet room. Feathers flew. Jackson stood up, his breaths labored and lonely. “I’m sorry ladies. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He draped a stack of dark sheets over his arm. “Are you ready for your beauty sleep, my Echo?” He covered her and moved on to Valley, giving her several sweet kisses. Continuing his ritual, he covered all twenty birds leaving Isis, his two-foot Scarlet Macaw, as his last goodnight. She blinked her yellow eyes at him.
“Sleep well, Love,” he said and then ran his fingers through his slick hair, noticing how dark and stale the room had become.
He opened the window, lit a lantern, and picked up the paper and his pen, setting them back on his desk. He thought about writing another letter but knew they were only stall tactics. “I’m a novel writer,” he reassured himself. “Now write something novel!”
He felt anxious. There was nothing left for him to do. He had moved to one of the most crime-ridden areas of London to conduct his research. When observations had stopped inspiring his writing, he had taken it to the next level. The first hand accounts had given him dozens of pages: a feel for the weapon in his hands; the reaction on the faces of the women when they knew they were going to die; and the color and temperature of the blood. After each attack, he had sped home and written feverishly, until the words stopped, died on the page—
He conducted more studies, pushing himself to the limits of his own capacities. “Why am I still blank?” he said in a sob. “Why?”
Isis began to squawk in her cage, beneath her cover.
“Shush,” he said off-handedly. “I’m having a difficult enough time as it is.”
“Let me out.”
Jackson turned his head slowly toward the covered cage. He listened. Sure she could talk, “Pretty lady.” “I love you.” But never… “Let me out.”
She said it again.
Jackson scooted his chair back and stood abruptly. “Was that you, Isis? Did you learn something new?”
“Open the cage, Jackson. Let me out.”
Jackson shook his head, trying to clear the confusion. Obviously, because he was exhausted and tense, he was now hearing things. That’s all. However, he eased toward the cage. One step—stop. One step—stop… Swiftly, without thinking, he uncovered Isis.
She sat on her perch, head down, asleep.
“Isis?” he whispered. “Was that you?” He looked around the room when he heard rustling coming from the other cages. All the sheets were moving. Jackson heart thumped.
But then he remembered he had opened the window. After taking the six steps to the window and ignoring the lack of breeze, he closed it. He turned around, backed against the window, hands stretched out—palms wide, like he was keeping the walls from closing in on him, because all the cages were uncovered.
It seemed like morning: birds bounced, stretched out their wings, walked, and whistled, however, much more so. The cages were actually open, and the birds began to explore. Isis, eyes open now and sitting on her perch in her home, stared at Jackson.
Jackson peeled himself away from the window and cautiously moved toward her. “Love?”
“Come closer, Jackson.”
He felt terrifyingly wonderful. Sweat gathered on his brow and above his lips. “Isis? Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
Jackson tried to steady his blinking; he shut his eyes hard and then reopened them. “Why now? Why not before? I have told you my most intimate secrets and feelings and you never spoke an intelligent word.”
“The time was not right. I am here when you need me most. Let me be your inspiration.”
“Oh, Isis! How I do so need someone to talk to. I have so many troubles. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me now.” He put his arm in her cage, enduring the sharp claws he usually protectively wrapped his arm against. He stroked her red feathers. “My beautiful, Isis, what words do you have for me? Do you know what I must do to finish my story?”
“I do.”
“Tell me.”
“You have watched, but you have never felt. In order to achieve realism and depth, you will need to experience the pain for yourself.”
“Yes, yes… I see. I see what you mean. But how? How can I achieve this insight?”
“I will be near whilst you sink the edge of your knife into your skin. Not too deep my dear, just enough to feel a twinge.”
“Marvel upon marvel, you are my muse!” He set Isis on the back of his chair and ran to his bedside table and pulled out his knife. Its long thick blade still stained from his latest research project. “Where? Where shall I feel it?” he asked, sitting on the edge of his bed.
“The same as you wrote. The same as you gave.”
The coldness of the blade against his neck caused his heart to quicken with excitement. He stared at Isis as she moved her head to and fro with tiny jerks. “Just this fills my head with ideas, with words…” He sucked in his breath and pressed a little harder, the sting bringing quiet tears to his eyes. “How absolutely stimulating.”
He heard them before he saw them, but only by a second. All of his beauties came towards him, Isis in the mix, their feathers, and beaks, and claws causing his hand to yank deeply inward and then slide to the side. Falling backward, Jackson still imagined how his ghastly and perfect pain would translate onto paper.
As the feathers settled and the squawks calmed to a low murmur, Jackson’s last breath was accompanied by his last vision: five faint ghostly figures dancing above him. He heard the words, “Jack the Ripper, our story ends in revenge,” as his eyes closed.
The End
Supernatural Fairy Tales by Dorlana Vann
Muse is one of the short stories from my paranormal short story collection: Supernatural Fairy Tales. Muse was inspired by the fairy tale Prince Ariel from, “The Fairy Tales of Madame D’Aulnoy.”
These 9 Supernatural Fairy Tales are not retellings of the original fairy tales
but were inspired by them. They are paranormal themed stories about vampires,
ghosts, mermaids, witches, and more, in genres ranging from romance to thriller.
And fair warning: they don’t always have a happy ending.
eBook available for only .99 cents!
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My Characters Are Not Me
“Listen to what I said here,” I said to my husband and then read a sentence from my work-in-progress. After I had finished reading, I said, “Well, I didn’t say it, my character did.”
Don said, “Wait. You wrote it. So doesn’t that mean that’s what you said?”
“No, not really. My characters are not me.”
This answer might seem a little strange. But it’s true.
Now of course every character was created from my experiences, my thought process, my head. But they didn’t have the same childhood or experiences I had. My characters react and say things differently than I would. Otherwise, all my characters would all be the same—they would be me—and that would be very boring …
It’s kind of like an actor who plays a role. The difference is: I make it up as I go. I become every character, instead of every character being me.
And oh my goodness – I can’t believe the mouths on some of these people!
Love and Laughter,
Dorlana
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Concept, Characters, and then Story. Oh…
Call me crazy (You’re crazy) but I didn’t realize, until this morning, that I need characters before I can plot out any of my story. I’m working on my romantic comedy series, and I have the first book finished, and I’m 10,000 words into the second one. I’ve been trying to get a vague idea for the story-line (at least the first chapter) for the third book, but my mind refuses to go there. And then it dawned on me, I don’t have my characters yet. (Each story in the series will be concluded and will have different main characters.) And now that I think about it, I realize my process has always been concept, characters, and then story.
The concept seems to be what I think of first. With Jaclyn’s Ghost, which I started writing nine-years-ago, the working title was Old Ghost and my concept was: A ghost, who has existed in a building by himself since the 20s, has to deal with a new modern-day ghost. With The Princes of Tangleforest, I had the fairy tale, Rapunzel and mind-control, but I also had an image: a new boy in a new neighborhood sees a beautiful girl at her window with blonde flowing hair, but he doesn’t see her at school.
My characters usually come to mind second. I’m not a character questionnaire profile type of writer. The thought of it makes me cringe. But I do have a basic understanding of the characters before I begin to write. They have a name, a gender, and a personality but that’s about it. Sometimes I don’t even know what they look like. In Silverweed I never gave Scarlet a hair color. By the time I had finished writing, in my mind, she was dark headed, but I never did add it to the book because after I’d asked several prereaders what color hair they thought she had, they all said a different color. Which I thought was very interesting. Anyway, I learn about my characters as I write them, but I at least need a basic understanding of their role in the story.
My conclusion: I can only write the first chapter after I have a concept and characters, then I can plot along the way. So it looks like I will have to be patient and figure out who my characters are (I may have to even wait until I’m finished with the rough draft of book 2) before I can figure out what is going to happen in my third book. Like I always do … apparently.
Love and Laughter,
Dorlana
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Chapter 1 – Passage to Queen Mesentia by Dorlana Vann
Passage to Queen Mesentia by Dorlana Vann
Chapter 1
Thursday April 14, 2005
“That was so freaking boring,” Wade Roberts said as he lowered the passenger side window. “Please, don’t ever make me sit through one of those again.” He fought with his tie until he won and then threw it in the backseat.
“Really?” Lilly said. “I found it fascinating. Would you mind? With the window… we still have dinner.”
Wade pressed the button, and the window made its way back up. “That’s because they’re your parents: the greatest archaeology team in the whole universe.” Even though he knew Lilly would freeze in her little sundress, he turned on the air conditioner. She had been the one who had insisted he wear the hot, miserable suit in the first place. He knew the reason he’d been the only one Sunday-schooled up at the lecture was because she wanted to impress her parents. That’s what had annoyed him the most about the entire evening.
“That’s not it,” she said. “I mean, I am proud of them. My goodness, they discovered the tomb of an Egyptian queen who no one even knew existed.”
“It doesn’t even make sense. This cat Unas…”
“The last pharaoh of the fifth dynasty.”
“Yeah, yeah. Why wouldn’t he want anyone to know he had this third wife? It’s not like they had to worry about bigamy. Everyone already knew he had two wives. What’s one more?”
“Oh, so you were paying attention.”
He exhaled, causing his lips to putter, and shrugged his shoulders.
Lilly tucked her long, dark hair behind her ear and her face lit up as she said, “But that’s what makes it so incredible. Don’t you think it’s weird how they found Queen Mesentia’s mummy buried off on its own and not with the other wives? No pyramid or any other indication that there was a tomb, just an underground tunnel.”
“Uh huh. Hey Baby, stop over there at that fillin’ station so I can grab me a pack of cigs.”
“Wade, we’ll be late.”
“Well, call and tell them we’ll be a little late. Unless you want me to pace and be nervous all night.”
She huffed but pulled off the highway and then into a Texaco station.
Wade got out of the car and took his time walking inside. No way was he going to hurry. He could see Lilly through the window with the phone up to her ear. Probably saying, “Mommy, I’m so sorry Wade’s such an ass.” Actually, he mused, she would never use the word ass, it would be more like, “He’s such a meanie-wienie,” or some other silly word she had picked up from her 3rd graders.
Wade climbed back into the car a couple of minutes later, hitting his cigarettes upside down on the palm of his hand, packing the tobacco.
“I tried them three times,” Lilly said as she drove onto the access road. “I don’t understand why no one answered. Even if they’re upstairs, Constance should answer in the kitchen. ”
When Wade noticed she had turned the air off, he started rolling the window back down.
“You’re not going to smoke that now are you?”
“Uh… yes,” he said with the unlit cigarette already in his lips and his thumb on the lighter.
“Come on… I don’t want to stink.”
“What the hell did you think I was going to do with the things? Eat ‘em?”
The tires squealed as she turned into the next driveway and made an abrupt stop.
“Get out,” she said.
“What?” His mouth dropped open, and the cigarette fell to the floorboard.
“I’ll wait while you take a couple of puffs. All right? And please, take off your jacket.”
Wade gladly rid himself of the jacket. With the door ajar, he lit the cigarette, inhaling a long satisfying drag.
“Why aren’t they answering the phone?” Lilly asked, holding the phone up to her ear.
“We saw them like five seconds ago,” he said, wishing he had a cold beer to go with the nicotine.
“You know how they hate it when I’m late, and we’re already thirty minutes behind.”
“Will you stop? It won’t hurt them to wait a couple of minutes.” He squished the fire of the cigarette out with his fingers and put it back inside the pack. He sighed as he sat back down in the passenger seat, hoping she would catch his annoyance so he wouldn’t have to tell her what he really thought of the situation. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Perfection. He didn’t understand why Lilly wasted so much energy on people who would rather be half way across the world digging up bones than near their only daughter. He did hate that they were home, but it would be hard on Lilly to see them go back to Cairo in a month to count, or catalog, or whatever people did with mummies, when she hadn’t seen them in over a year.
As Lilly sat there, all tight mouthed and mad at him, he remembered what he used to call her when they’d first met: Princess Lilly. How someone as classy as Lillian Steward had fallen for a blue-collar cowboy like him, he would never know. Her parents still didn’t approve of him and probably hoped Lilly would grow out of her rebellious behavior and get back together with Mr. Sophisticated. They especially didn’t like them living together without a piece of paper but didn’t want them to get married either. He couldn’t wait for their reactions when she finally did say yes. He had proposed to Lilly twice, and even though she had shot him down both times, he knew one day she would be his wife.
As Lilly turned the wheel and pulled into the circular drive that led up to the four-columned two-story, she said, “Answer my father when he talks to you, don’t be bored, and please don’t fall asleep after we eat.”
“Yes, Miss Steward. I will raise my hand if I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I wonder why the lights are out.” She turned the ignition off letting the night sounds in.
“Maybe they got tired of waiting and went on to bed.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Lilly said as she stepped out of the car.
“Sure they wouldn’t,” he responded, right after she had shut the door.
Wade gathered all the mental strength he could find to face Lilly’s parents before forcing himself out of the car.
Lilly stood on the front porch and slowly turned towards Wade as he walked up stairs. “Something’s… off,” she said.
Wade absorbed the same weird vibe. Other than the streetlights filtering in through the huge oak trees, darkness surrounded the house. After a moment of neither one of them moving, he said, “Maybe we were supposed to meet them at a restaurant.”
“No, Mom said here.” She put her hand on the door knob. The door hadn’t been shut all the way; it silently glided open. After a pause, she looked at Wade with an expression of worry hardening her delicate face.
“Stay here,” he said.
Lilly shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
He tried giving her a firm looking at, but still she shook her head.
“Fine,” he said through his teeth. He walked through the dark entrance with Lilly right behind him, holding onto his shirt. He waited a second for his eyes to focus, and then jumped when the light overhead snapped on. He turned to Lilly, and she shrugged her shoulders, her hand on the switch.
When Wade got a whiff of dinner, the silence and the darkness of the house didn’t add up. And then Lilly glanced past him. Her brown eyes narrowed but then quickly widened. Wade followed her stare to the destroyed living room area.
“Mom… Dad?” Lilly ran past him, stopping for a second to examine the living room.
“Wait! Lilly, don’t!” Wade yelled.
But Lilly didn’t stop. She ran up the stairs calling her parents’ names, each time her voice a little more panicked. Wade chased after her, but as soon as he reached the top of the stairs, he heard Lilly scream.
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Chapter 1 – Jaclyn’s Ghost by Dorlana Vann
Jaclyn’s Ghost by Dorlana Vann
Jaclyn’s Ghost by Dorlana Vann
Chapter 1
Another One Bites the Dust
Jaclyn Jade felt the sensation of a trillion tiny needles prickling just beneath the surface of her skin. She opened her eyes to darkness. “Why am I standing on my bed?” Gradually, the tingling faded, but the overwhelming contentment made it difficult for her to shake the suspicion that something was terribly different. She squinted and blinked her eyes as she searched her bedroom for answers.
The room seemed normal. Even the earliest of the morning brought an orange glow through her sheer curtains; so obviously, she had woken up in the middle of night. Jaclyn’s scan stopped abruptly when she spotted an unfamiliar six-foot silhouette in the shape of a man. It moved, causing an involuntary shriek to burst out of her mouth. As she attempted to run, she stumbled over a huge lump in her bed and fell, face first, onto the floor. She recovered to her feet in a flash, turned to see what she had tripped over, and then dashed out the door.
She stopped in the hallway, right outside the bedroom door, already doubting what she had seen. No one followed her out. “Stupid.” After a moment, she put her hand on her chest trying to regain her composure. Oh man, I slept in my party dress. “Keten’s going to kill me.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Jaclyn looked up to see a man standing right across from her. She sucked in a deep breath and responded appropriately with another piercing scream and ran back into her room.
“I know you’re confused,” the man said from behind her. “If you will give me a moment, I can explain everything.”
She looked for something to use as a weapon. “If you don’t get the hell out of my house this instant,” she cried and turned around, “you’ll be explaining everything to the police.”
The intruder stood in the doorway, his face covered by the shadow of his hat.
If I can just get over to the table by the bed, I can get my phone. However, as soon as her focus drifted toward the bed, the heap that had caused her to trip earlier grabbed her attention. Is someone under there?
“What’s the last thing you remember?” the man asked from the doorway. “Give yourself a moment. It’ll come back to you.”
She had to force herself to concentrate. Frustration and fear made it difficult for her to rummage through her memory. I feel so strange. “Why can’t I remember anything?”
All of a sudden, as if someone had smacked them into the back of her head, her memories of the night before emerged. “The party,” she blurted. “That’s it, the champagne.” She nodded her head in satisfied realization. “I just partied a little more than I should have. Keten must have brought me home and just stayed over. He does that all the time. I must have been sleepwalking and caught you in the middle of, who knows what. I suggest you disappear before I wake up my boyfriend and he—”
“Pretty shoes,” the man said and nodded toward the bed.
“Excuse me?”
“I say, your boyfriend sure has pretty shoes.”
Jaclyn stared at the foot that stuck out from under the blankets. When she recognized the shoe, she looked down at her own feet. She wore the same exact pair of pink, pointy-toed sling-backs. Not Keten. Did a friend, who was wearing the same exact shoes, come home with me? She would have noticed that before. She would have remembered shoe duplicity.
“OK,” she said. “That’s it. I’ve got to get this over with.” She took a small step toward the bed.
“Poor bunny, are you sure you want to go over there?”
Jaclyn stared at the stranger. Nothing made sense. He wore a black jacket over a double-breasted vest and dress pants. Clearly it had been bought off the rack, but still, it was a bit much for a burglar. She also wondered why he hadn’t left when he had the chance. If he wanted to hurt her, why hadn’t he even tried? The way he leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed, he almost seemed to be amused by her chaos. “Did someone hire you to pull a prank on me? Is that it? Are you an actor? Just tell me what’s going on and who’s in that bed, and maybe I’ll tell the cops to go easy on you.”
“If that’s truly what you want.” He held up his hands and took a couple of steps inside the room.
“Now you’re starting to piss me off. Just tell me who is in my bed!”
He grinned. “It’s you. Well, the former you. You see, now you’re you, and that’s just a body.”
The man stood a handshake away. Jaclyn tried to ignore the hazy luster around him—too much to think about at that moment—but she couldn’t disregard his attractive face, his square jaw, and his deep black eyes, which at that moment seemed insanely sincere. “Oh… my… goodness.”
“I know… it’s really crazy.”
“No. You’re psychotic.” Without giving herself another chance to chicken out, Jaclyn marched over to her bed and tossed back the bedspread.
Her mouth fell open as she took a step back. It’s just a trick. It’s just someone who looks a lot like me and went to a lot of trouble to play a joke. She had the same long dark hair, the same skin tone, the same nose and the same… everything.
Jaclyn decided to wake the imposter and tell her to take her boyfriend and get the hell out of her apartment. But when she reached down to shake the woman, her hand went smooth through the shoulder like it was made of smoke. She jerked her hand back immediately and took an apprehensive breath.
“It’s screwy seeing yourself like that.” She heard the man say.
She stood there, examining her body in the bed as a calm embraced her. “Why am I not freaking out? Shouldn’t I be upset, screaming, and freaking out?”
“When you die, the psychological need for your physical body ends. You instinctively know that you don’t need that body anymore.”
“I look really pitiful,” she said. “What happened? I’m not sick or anything.”
She looked around to see if she noticed any hints as to what took place. She eyed the phone, close enough now that she could grab it and call someone if she wanted, and laughed to herself. Who? What could she say? She noticed a container of pills and a bottle of champagne beside the phone on the nightstand. She tried to pick up the pills. Yet again, her hand had no substance and went through the bottle. “Ahh, this is driving me crazy. Can you pick those up?”
The man stared at her blankly, and then a small, concerned expression seemed to grow across his face. “What?”
“Something’s wrong with me. Would you mind?” She moved out of the man’s way so he could get to the table. He inched his hand really close to the bottle and then snatched it back again.
“Oh, just forget it,” she said.
“No, it’s no problem.” He grabbed the bottle and studied it, turning it one way and then the other.
“Well? Does it say what they are?”
“There’s no marking of any kind. The torpedo must have left them. I apologize. By the time I arrived—”
“Torpedo?”
“Hit man, assassin, hired gun… torpedo.”
“Hit man? That’s ridiculous. I’ve accepted every ludicrous thing you’ve said so far, but now you’re actually trying to tell me… what? That I was murdered?”
“You must have your share of enemies.” The man nodded as he looked down at the body in the bed.
Jaclyn stared at the man, not believing his gall. “Wait… who are you, and why are you in my house?”
“The name is Logan Smith.”
“OK… and why are you here?”
“I live here.” Logan crossed his arms as he leaned back against the wall. An arrogant smile appeared on his lips as well as in his eyes. “Just your friendly resident ghost.”
“As in boo?”
“I suppose.”
She ran her hands through her hair and exhaled in defeat. “Well, that would explain your glow.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Does that mean I’m a ghost, too?” Jaclyn looked down at her hands. “I look the same.”
“But you’re not.”
Jaclyn thought about it for a moment. OK… I’m a ghost. This warranted sitting down, but when she went to sit on the edge of the bed, she fell through to the floor. She just stayed there with her head poking up through the mattress. She crossed her legs under the poof of her cream-colored gown and sighed as she considered her demise. “You’re wrong,” Jaclyn finally said. “I don’t have any enemies. At least not ones who would want to kill me.”
Logan sat on the bed. “Then, it’s a mystery.”
Jaclyn glared at him. “How did you do that? How come you can sit on the bed?”
“There are things you’ll have to—”
“And where the hell is my light… and tunnel and stairway to Heaven?”
“It’s complicated,” Logan said. “Well… not really. Some people go straight to Heaven and others, for some reason or another, are rejected.”
She stood up and faced him. “Rejected? You’re telling me I didn’t make it into Heaven. What then? You can’t seriously be saying I’m going to—”
“Hello,” a man’s voice spoke from behind her.
Jaclyn shook her head and turned around. What now? She had her hands on her hips, ready for combat, but was ambushed by the new man’s appearance. His beauty rivaled Logan’s masculinity. What is this? An audition for a Calvin Klein ad? She opened her mouth to protest his intrusion, but her voice turned out to be just as flabbergasted.
“Give her a break,” Logan said. “She just bit the dust.” He stepped beside Jaclyn and then gestured to the new arrival. “May I introduce Charles Charles.”
“Charles Charles?” Jaclyn said, coming out of her trance.
“I’m taking her now,” the man said.
“Taking me? Taking me where?” Panic caught in her throat. She had just found out about this rejection thing and needed more time to process what had happened.
“Exactly where you should be, Butterfly… Hell.”
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Fairy Tale Inspired Short Story by Dorlana Vann
If it Weren’t for Bad Luck
A Rumpelstiltskin Inspired Short Story by Dorlana Vann
I walked through the front door a little after midnight. Jana sat on the couch in the darkness covered by the quilt from our bed, the images from the television flickered on her solemn face. “Oh, you’re up,” I said and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“I want to talk to you, Trevor.”
When I caught a glimpse of deep concern in her eyes, I immediately thought something had happened to the baby. “Is Ethan okay?”
“He’s a handful to deal with by myself… but he’s fine.”
“Good… good.” That’s all I needed to know; I could go on to bed because anything else could wait until morning. “Well, goodnight.” I turned and walked down the hallway. But I didn’t get very far.
She yelled after me: “I hired a P.I. today!”
As I stormed back into the room, fear flushed my face. “You did what?” I stood over her. “Why would you do that?” When I realized my hands had a death-grip on my hair, I tried to relax but still couldn’t control my fidget.
“Because every time I try to talk to you, you walk away. I want the truth. I deserve the truth. Where do you go every night?”
“You know I’m out drinking with the guys. I’ve told you a thousand times.”
I watched her jaw tighten, and through her teeth she said, “Why are you lying to me?”
My heart raced. Had she found something? “What makes you think I’m lying?”
Jana tossed the blanket off her lap and stood up. I tensed my body, prepared for a slap. She eased to her tiptoes, so we were face-to-face, breath-to-breath. “You don’t smell like a bar,” she whispered. “For a man who has been out drinking all night long, you certainly are sober. You don’t drink at home. Why the hell would someone pretend to be a drinker?”
I plopped down on the couch and rubbed my face hard with my hands. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
“Leave it alone? This is our marriage!”
I had nothing to say, nothing to offer.
“I give up,” she said. “I’m just going to ask, since you can’t be a man and just admit it. Are you cheating on me? Is there someone else?”
An affair. It would be a simple enough explanation. “Would that be something you could forgive me for?”
“Wait a minute. That’s not it, is it? Shit… I can see it in your eyes. Trevor?”
“Just do yourself a favor. Do our family a favor. Call the private detective, and call it off. Let me protect you. Don’t you see? If I tell you, I don’t know what will happen. I’m afraid you’ll never forgive yourself.”
“What? Forgive myself? What are you accusing me of?”
I looked at her, exhausted, tested, tears filling her eyes. It had gone too far. I knew she would probe until she found the answers. And I knew that it wouldn’t look good if a P.I. came back with pictures. Jana would just draw her own conclusions. Conclusions that would end our marriage, and I had lost too much to let that happen. I inhaled and then exhaled slowly. “You tried to sell Ethan.”
“What?”
“I had to buy him back,” I said. “Now I can’t catch a break.”
“Just stop it. Stop it…”
“You wanted to hear this; so here it is.” I stood up and grabbed her hands. “Luck, like anything else, can be bought and traded. Before we met, you made a deal with Luck. Because you had such horrible luck, you agreed to trade your first-born for what you thought was really good luck.”
“Really?” She pulled away from me. “I don’t know what you’re doing—”
“After we were married,” I said firmly, “After we were pregnant, you told me what you did. You told me how you found out too late that good luck was just an illusion; that there were only three types of luck: extreme, medium, and weak. With extreme luck, really good things happen but so do really bad things.”
“Maybe you haven’t been drinking,” Jana said, “but something is wrong with you.”
“You told me you tried to take it back, but it was too late. You had already given up all rights to our unborn child, before we met, to some couple with medium luck.”
“This is crazy, Trevor. Do you know how crazy this sounds?”
“I thought so too… at the time. But still, I asked you where I could find this luck guy. Even though I didn’t believe you, never believed a word of it, I went there. And after I found the guy, I still didn’t believe he was who you thought he was. But for your peace of mind, I made my own deal…” I had to think hard. As time had passed the details had faded. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would completely forget… just like Jana had.
“What kind of deal?” she asked with impatient sarcasm.
“I remember asking if you could just give back the money you had won in the lottery. But that had already happened. He said something like he couldn’t erase time. I had to make a new arrangement so that I could keep my son. He called it weak luck, but it’s worse than that, it’s no luck at all.” I shrugged my shoulders because I knew that even if I would have known the outcome I still would have done whatever I had to do to protect Ethan.
When I looked at Jana’s face—her puckered lips and firm jaw—I knew she hadn’t believed a word I had said. But I had to finish. “I gave myself a little test all the way home that night; I flipped a quarter. Even after it never landed on what I said it would, I didn’t believe it. As each day passed, I pushed the limits a little more. You know, I had to see if it was real. I kept testing my luck, until it became an obsession. Until…” At this point, I couldn’t look her in the eyes. I cleared my throat of my sudden panic and then whispered, “I’d lost everything.”
“What do you mean?” Her words trembled.
“I’ve lost everything that was left from your lottery winnings. All of our savings.”
“No, no, no… this isn’t happening.”
“I’m sorry. I just keep thinking that I have to have some portion of at least medium luck. That’s where I go! To try and win it back.” Suddenly, it became so clear. This could be good. Together we made medium luck! “You can win it all again. All you have to do is buy another lottery ticket, or we could go to the horse races.”
“No! Stop it!” She reminded me of a cat in defense mode: hunched back, hair on end, eyes wild, claws loaded. “I can’t believe you would make up such a ridiculous story so that you could blame me for you losing our son’s future? You don’t have bad, weak or whatever luck, Trevor, you have a gambling problem.”
“What? No…” I wondered how it had happened. How had I become the bad guy? “I know it’s hard to believe. I didn’t believe you when you told me, either. But I gave you a chance.” My body had begun to shake. “Just think about it for a minute. I know the memory of meeting him fades for a reason or everyone would be at his door. But there has to be something there. Think Jana, think!”
“You need help, Trevor. Are you willing to get help?”
“What I need is for you to believe me. How many times have you said it yourself ‘Your luck sucks’? How many times has everyone said it? I traded it for you, for Ethan, and that’s why the car keeps breaking down, the lights turns red at intersections, the reason I have lost so many jobs.”
“What? You’ve lost jobs? More than one? You don’t work for Laurence anymore?”
“It’s been six months.”
She stood with her mouth open as tears streamed down her face. I took a step to comfort her, but she held up her hand and said, “Tell me his name and where I can find him.”
I closed my eyes trying to think again, trying to recall.
“What is it Trevor? Give me something. Is it John? Peter? Frank? Larry?”
But his name had left my memory months before. “I can’t. I don’t know,” I said without opening my eyes. The soft breeze told me she had left the room.
I sat on the couch, waiting for her to go to sleep, thinking we could talk it through in the morning. Maybe as she slept some of the memories would return. But a few minutes later, she walked past. When I looked up, expecting another confrontation, she stood at the open front door, her back to me, Ethan asleep in her arms. And then she said, “Good luck.”
The End
Supernatural Fairy Tales by Dorlana Vann
If it Weren’t for Bad Luck is one of the short stories included in my fairy tale inspired collection: Supernatural Fairy Tales – Ebook available for .99 cents at Amazon.
Dorlana Vann - Author 