Trespasser (Part IV)

Posted on July 17, 2014 by R. Richardsson

“-nessa! Vanessa dear! It’s time to come inside!”

Several houses away from her home, Vanessa sat on the memorial bench that had been placed outside of the vacant home at the end of the block. It had been two years since the passing of the resident inside, two years that might as well have been lifetimes to the young girl. She had very little memory of the old man who had once lived inside, but she did remember that he had once crafted wonderful things for his friends.

She also remembered that she had been his friend as well, and while she no longer played with it, the unfinished ballerina continued to ever remind her of the kindness he had shown her and the other children in her community.

“Vaaaanesssa! Come on dear! Your dinner awaits!”

Of all the other children, she was the only one who remembered where her gift had come from. While they were playing the latest expansions of their favorite computer games, she began to follow in the footsteps of the veteran who had once kept a watchful eye over their community. Every free moment of sunlight, whether after school, during the weekends or over breaks, she walked the sidewalks just as he had done in her father’s stories. She stopped and talked to each of her neighbors with a much higher maturity than any of her peers, and often found herself in conversations about the more worldly things in life.

Sometimes she helped out when she could, picking up trash, sweeping the sidewalks or raking up leaves. Over the last two summers, Vanessa Rowen became a familiar and welcome sight among those who lived down Bryer Street way, and everybody loved the little girl whose heart was bigger than most of the other children her age.

“Coming mommy,” she finally hollered in response as she stood up and brushed off dress. Her mother smiled and waved before going back into their house and with one sad look over her shoulder, she pondered the meaning of the “For Sale” sign that now adorned the lawn of ole man Dryden’s house, and the “SOLD” sticker that was plastered over it.

From Hiatus to the Trenches

Posted on July 8, 2014 by R. Richardsson

Having been away from writing for far too long, I am finally finding myself returning to a place where I am most comfortable; buried up to my neck in a quagmire full of words and bad intentions.

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind of emotions in our home which began with my wife undergoing a rather painful surgical procedure that she is still soldiering through. My free time, what little of it I have, was redirected towards organizing the troops and getting things done around the house while she recovered.

Barely a week out from under the knife, we lost a beloved member of the family, on her side. Sadly, we knew that that it was only a matter of time, but in reality there is no preparing for the inevitability of death. It’s never how you think it will be. When it happens, you don’t just skip to the burial. There are an endless parade of arrangements that have to be made before you get to this point, not just for the recently deceased, but in getting the extended family together for the final farewell.

Every breath you take is a struggle against the sadness and despair of realizing that you will have to learn to cope, to live, without the one you lost and it feels as if every second will last an eternity.

Finally, the last calls have been made. Events have been set into motion and just when you think that you are going to be able to live your trembling chin up once more, you realize that it’s upon you to begin removing the final details of your loved one’s life. Clothes, pictures, knick-knacks and every little thing that helped define this person must now be sorted, divided, donated and/or thrown away.

Fortunately, this is the point of transition. This is when you pass the point of “he/she was just talking to me “x” amount of time ago” to “he/she is really gone…” The pain returns, spreading over your entire being like frozen napalm and once again you lose yourself in the sea of melancholy that has settled around you.

As a horror writer, I was able to look at the whole process a little more objectively than everyone else. Yes, I was affected by the loss of this person whom I had come to know over the last thirteen years. I will greatly miss the ribbing and brutal honesty she imparted upon everyone around her. It was part of her charm, and she will be missed.

But as often as I find myself writing about death, I don’t often think of what happens between the point of being alive and being buried.

With my trilogy, there were a couple of difficult losses to deal with. But, for the sake of time (not my own, but because the characters were working against it), it has yet to be dealt with.

I have been home for a few days now and my thoughts are abuzz with ideas. Unfortunately, these ideas involve my recent experiences and incorporating them into my characters during a few moments of their downtime. I say unfortunate because this means I will have to rewrite some passages in order to give them these traits.

It feels necessary, considering the hell they’ve been through together.

So here I float, in a stinking quagmire of dark emotions and words that need to be sorted, shuffled like a deck of cards and inserted into the final installment of J.R.’s Ballad. I know not how long this will take. Compounded with the editing and rewrites I have yet to finish, it certainly looks like a daunting task!

But I am hard at work my friends. I am home, in spirit and in body and have returned to John’s tale for this final battle of words.

Posts toward my webseries may come a little less frequently, I admit it HAS been awhile since concluding the intro to my latest, but they shall not be forgotten. I have two posts uploaded that will need some final edits, and I expect to publish them with-in the next few days.

R. Richardsson

The Morelli Bros. (Prologue, iii.)

Posted on June 22, 2014 by R. Richardsson

They eventually lost their father to alcoholism. That had been the toughest summer of their young lives, for it was then that they learned just how far he had sunk in his depression. Piles of bills were stashed away beneath his mattress or unpaid and forgotten in the dust filled shadows. Collections Services came calling at all hours of the day, all in search of the same thing; coin that neither of the brothers possessed.

Every day became a struggle to not only maintain their meager lifestyle, but in keeping food in their bellies as well. For every dollar they made, they paid two more toward the debts they had inherited and it wasn’t long before their father’s folly caught up to them.

One by one, their customers began moving away from the Morelli Plumbing business and towards more commercially known ones. Despite their knowledge and experience, there wasn’t very much they could do to convince anyone to hire the sons of Rocco Morelli, a man who rarely finished a repair in a timely manner and who was suspected of stealing from his clients.

The Morelli name had become a curse in most homes and only a small handful of people still stood behind them. These were the people whom they had helped the most over the years. The families they had moved from one home to another and those who knew the struggles they’d had in their lives. And in some cases, they were the friends they grew up with, or the families of these friends after the former had moved on.

Eventually, their past caught up with them and they lost their apartment. There were too many tools for them to store in their van, and with heavy hearts they sold whatever they could do without and still continue peddle their trade. The rest was donated to the plumbing supplier whom they had given all of their business.

They washed their clothes a a local laundromat, where they could also freshen up in the restroom as the clothes were being cleaned and they ate as often as their funds allowed, which was at least once a day. It was a poor way to live and they both knew that time was against them. If they didn’t find something better, and soon, they were going to have to begin selling the rest of their tools and take minimum wage jobs in order to survive.

Without a physical address, they had forwarded their mail to a P.O. box, where the bills continued to pour in. Neither could believe the amount of trouble their father could create for them, even beyond the grave! There were bills for unpaid tabs at various bars and gentlemen’s clubs. On top of the bills they owed for their apartment, there were also bills for jobs that had been improperly finished, including one for a septic tank repair that was almost five figures!

They were steadily losing ground, but what they didn’t know was that sometimes you have to reach rock bottom before things begin to turn around. Of all the things that their father had taught them over the years, optimism wasn’t one of them. His secret resentment of the boys didn’t have room for the brighter things in life, things which he knew very little about from the beginning.

Ever the optimists, they had a long way to go before they lost the one thing they had left. Hope.