The Truth Is-

For Truthful Tuesday

Are you into Halloween? Will you be dressing up and going out; handing out candy to trick-or-treaters; or staying home with the lights off, waiting for All Saints’ Day?

On Halloween I will be handing out candy, I will be setting out my pumpkins and decorating my porch.

I will be dressing up my dog but I won’t be wearing a costume because when you dress up your dog and you’re walking him around on Halloween nobody cares if you are dressed up.

That can be an ego cruncher, but I don’t mind being upstaged by my dog.

Halloween 2017-The Year Hamish was a Christmas tree for Halloween: Photo A.M. Moscoso

Halloween is the one night, the one day when the world smells like candle wax, log fires mystery and a little fear. Halloween feels like dust and spider webs caught in your hair and clinging to your face as you rush through basements and attics in haunted houses on a dare.

There’s no way I’d miss a second Halloween- and that is the truth.

The Drowned Fisherman

Word of The Day Challenge: PRESENT

I also challenged myself to only write about the things that I could see or taking place in this picture.

The drowned fisherman
Michael Ancher1896

In a small room with smooth whitewashed walls, a drowned fisherman  has been laid to rest on an oak table that he built years ago with his own rough and calloused  hands.

Sunlight is being  filtered through a single dusty window just above his head and little droplets of ocean water, caught in his hair and his beard glisten like little bits of broken glass in pale light that strikes his face and chest.

Around his resting place where his wife is clutching his hand to her chest, where  his  Mother and son are staring  down blindly  into his pale face, where  his crew are holding their breath, all of them  want to know- how can it be that in that room full of  beating hearts and plans for tonight, dreams for tomorrow,  can death be here with them?

He will open his eyes they are thinking, he will take a breath and to the marrow of their bones they believe he will sit up and together they will leave that room together and return to their work and their life at Sea.

There is a dark man with no face sitting across from the Drowned Fisherman and he knows better then all of the people in that room what will happen next- he and the Drowned Fisherman.

A Holiday Ritual Returns

RDP Tuesday: BREAKING NEWS

A scene from the lost 1923 silent film BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE.

We all have our little rituals.

Some of us buy fancy expensive underwear and chocolates  to hand out for Valentines Day.  Some of us eat Waffles on Sunday.  Some of us get tattoos every time we pop out another child.

My ritual is a special one and I look forward to performing  it every Halloween.

On Halloween I kill you,  sometimes I do it  more then once because, darn it-it feels good.

I guess this is the part where I mention that you turn up in various stages of decay in the stories I write- sometimes you are already dead and the part you get is that of a rotting corpse. Other times you get done in by a Devil or a psychopath.

Once I baked you in a pie.

It was yummy, I mean the story was yummy. It was funny too. And well written, if that counts for anything.

For the curious, you worked your way into this special ritual because when I told you my nephew had died from a terminal illness- that you knew about his illness because I told you about it when we learned seven years before that at the age of 14 he would probably be dead by the time he was in his early 20’s,

you sent me this message

That was all you said about my nephew’s death. That’s how you expressed your condolences for the death of a young man you watched grown up.

I wouldn’t have wished his death on anyone, not even you. But to be honest sometimes I do.  Yeah.  Honestly. Sometimes I do.

So let me take away the  mystery, let me erase any doubts, let me make myself perfectly clear. In  August when I start setting up my blog for Halloween and the body count racks up around here, I just want you to know, so that there is no question about it  that in that pile of ink stained corpses is you.

For the record, I toss in a few more people into that pile  for different reasons that don’t matter right now.

But you my dear and special friend,  I kill you every Halloween, sometimes more then once during Halloween but I never do it thoughtlessly or carelessly because unlike you my Soul might be dark but it is not empty.

And I put a lot of thought into what write and send out into the world.

Hamish Puts His Paw Down

#100DAYSOFHALLOWEEN HAPPY– Whimsical

Last year my pawesome dog Hamish Macbeth- (say hi to Hamish everybody)-

Hamish Macbeth 2023
Photo A.M. Moscoso

got this cool Halloween plushie toy from Barkbox.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

This is where Barkbox stuck their label.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Hamish doesn’t chew his toys up, but he does pull these labels off- he’s done it to everysingle toy except this one.

Hamish Macbeth
August 29, 2023
Photo: A.M. Moscoso

That’s okay Hamish Macbeth- we get it.