For Fandango’s Flashback Friday  I have chosen a story I wrote in 2008

It’s called:

If Your Name Was Mara Petgrave

With a name like Mara Petgrave nothing you can ever do or say will ever shock or scare people. No one will ever expect you to wear anything else besides black and if every one of your six husbands died shortly after you were married and you walked into a big inheritance every single time-

No one would notice.

If your name was Mara Petgrave and you lived down the street from a family in Fall River Massachusets and one of the two sisters  just happened to mention, down her long and snobby nose,   that with your dark looks and dark eyes you could be mistaken for one of those Sideshow women that danced with snakes,  you might be moved by their quip about the snakes to take up an Ax and dish out about 81 whacks and you may have gone for 40 more on top that.

Because  if you had name like Mara Petgrave you might think that the chance to watch someone else dance at the end of a rope for what you had done was funny.

With a name like Mara Petgrave no one would ask why it was that you never seemed to age and why they never saw you laugh or cough or sneeze.

Or blink.

If your name was Mara Petgrave you could work with the dead in a Funeral Home and no one would ask why it was that on your first day of work you stood over a very messy corpse and then looked up and said, ” so, where’s a good place to grab some lunch? ”

If your name was Mara Petgrave you might get bored with doing all these dark deeds and not once…. even for a minute get any sort of recognition for being the most Macabre Danseur in the field.

All because of that name of yours.

So if your name was Mara Petgrave you might change your name to say

….Anita Marie Moscoso