Frosty Night

My lights are casting halos in the freeze-out frost as I walk to the door tonight. I cannot capture it with a simple camera, though the effect is of walking into Van Gogh's painting. The snow has a tinge of the night upon it and the branches move subtly in the breeze as if standing at the edge of the room waiting to be asked to dance.

I think it amazingly beautiful.

Then my thoughts turn to those works I haven't finished that had promise this year.

I knocked a guy off his feet with a dead wet black bear. It was throw at him from the dark by someone unseen.

I killed a man with a .520 NE loaded with the medallions bearing the likenesses of saints.

I held a man under water in an ornamental pond with a garden rake. His teenage son did the work.

I drove a man mad and allowed him the illusion of being sane.

I placed a man and his nephew in a shack on the edge of an airfield and then ripped the shack apart with a chain gun allowing the nephew to live. He was glad the uncle died.

I had a fellow out trout fishing step into a deep hole and had his buddy resist the urge to extend him any aid. He sputtered and went under pulled along by a spring current. The buddy was after his friend's job and in an instant saw his chance. You might say "only a job" but what job would be good enough for murder ? We can all think of one or two. It's the crossroads at midnight but the devil inside us is all our own.

I had a man badly framed for murder in a hasty scene and his problem is that the cops buy the set-up. The suspect is uniquely positioned to be the subject of the lie.

Plots are not enough and the fact that I describe these unfinished bits by plot shows their weakness : the characters take real work for me. I think I might go to to a conference this year. I might need the guidance.