Picture 2
Muffy Wilson’s Picture Choice: Both
Title: The Burning Night
The burning flare illuminated her front yard with an ethereal hazy rose-colored glow. When Wallace rounded the corner in her Peugeot, she saw it and all the yellow tape. Her blood pressure rocketed as panicked alarms gripped her heart.
I’m late!
Her sixteen year old daughter was home alone every day after cheerleading practice for two hours before she returned from work. She screeched to a blood-curdling halt at the first yellow taped line, jammed the car in park, and flew out of the front seat, the engine still purring. A uniformed flatfoot tried to stop her but neither he nor anyone else was going to stop the tsunami that was her fear driving her to the front door.
“I live here! My daughter…where’s my daughter?!”
“Lady, stop. I need to see some I.D.”
“Fuck you! Where’s my daughter?!”
“Ma’am…”
“My purse’s on the front seat. Help yourself! Where’s my daughter, Goddammit?!”
A giant of a man emerged from her house, stood in the doorway and blocked out the light behind him.
“Let her go.”
The copper raised the yellow tape that separated the world from the insanity that consumed what was once her home. She ran up the path, through the purity of the afternoon snowfall and past the flare burning to a quiet end. The goliath grabbed her shoulders and told her she couldn’t go inside, it was a crime scene. Forensic and crime scene techs brushed past them, both in and out in a flurry carrying brown paper bags, tackle boxes of chemicals, brushes, tape and the tools of their trade.
Wallace crumbled into his arms as he caught her descent under the weight of the news. They didn’t know about her daughter, they couldn’t find her. Her laptop was on in a chat room; they had taken it to the tech types that would scour it for clues and the history of her Internet travels. He told her all this as he walked her into the living room and sat her in her wing backed over-stuffed easy chair by the fireplace, still aglow with white-hot embers from the fire her daughter lit when she came home from school.
The traces of her daughter’s ordinary, everyday presence overwhelmed her and she collapsed into the chair, crying. As Wallace stared at the pieces, the remains of her daughter’s existence surrounding her in a still-life, the controlled chaos whirled around the inside of her home. It seemed like a dream, a netherworld of dual dimensions separated by a fine film of reality. The pandemonium faded to mute as she focused on the simple bowl of fruit that was placed on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Wallace, may I call you Wallace?”
“What happened here, Detective?”
“You have to calm down, Wallace,” he cautioned her, “if you are going to be any help to us.”
“Yes, of course. What happened? Start with the flare--where did the flare come from?”
“We don’t know all the details. We received a 911 call at about 5PM from your neighbor—the flare was burning unattended in the front yard. The patrol officer on duty came by, tried to get someone to answer the door, but couldn’t. He looked through the window and saw the TV was on, the bowl of fruit on the coffee table so he walked the perimeter and noticed the screen off the back window and called for back-up.”
Wallace was late. Her hungry daughter was left to fix her own dinner and she put a healthy compote of fruit together to eat. If Wallace were home on time, her daughter would be here now and they would be eating the mac and cheese she planned to make for dinner.
But, there it was—a simple bowl of fruit—marking her daughter’s disappearance.
It was the glaring evidence of her crime silently screaming, accusing her of the felony of her neglect.
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Returning from France with her family, Muffy finished high school in Northern California and attended the University of California, Davis, and majored in Business Management. Muffy entered the work force, independent with a fierce work ethic, and retired at 39 from IBM as a Mid-West Regional Director in the Real Estate and Construction Division. She and her husband moved to a small Island in northern Wisconsin where they owned a historic tavern, restaurant and resort business which they since have sold. They now live a charmed life by the water in SW Florida. Muffy pretends to be a serious real estate business person but, in real life, indulges her private interest in writing sexy short stories and sensual literotica ~ Live, Laugh, Love with Passion. Website | Blog | Twitter | Email | Facebook | FB Fan Page | Google+ | Triberr | Amazon | Ganxy | XinXii | Kobo Books | iTunes Books | Barnes and Noble | All Romance eBooks | Smashwords | Yellow Silk Dreams Publishing |
Previously Published: Secret Cravings, Blushing Books, Oysters & Chocolate, Decadent Publishing, Ravenous Romance, Yellow Silk Dreams
Coming Soon: The Para-Portage of Emily ~ Secret Cravings Publishing March 2015 Moonbeams of Unintended Consequences ~ Blushing Books March 2015 Cheerleaders in Heat ~ TBA April 2015
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Pablo Michaels writes LGBT fiction and has published with Naughty Nights Press, http://naughtynightspress.blogspot.com You can follow him at @bell2mike
#DailyPicspiration
Thanks, Miranda, for allowing me to fill in for Pablo Michael's while he is recuperating from knee surgery. It was fun and I would be delighted to substitute again. xo
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a dark side of your writing. I haven't read anything by you that's full of this much guilt and remorse. Yet you make me feel compassion and sorrow for Wallace, losing her daughter. I can see this emotionally packedt scene expanded into a longer story. Excellent writing as usual, Muffy.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed excellent writing. The parent guilt is overwhelming and exactly how it would be. I need to know more - what happened to her daughter?! Great stuff.
ReplyDelete