Monthly Archives: March 2023

Excerpt from Project Burning Bush

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For #LineByLineTime : “Disgust”

“Firestarter stick,” Luthor replied.  “Magnesium and flint.”  The gadget went back into one of his pockets.  He carefully arranged some small logs on the growing fire before he stood up and dusted off his hands.  “Now to prepare that rattlesnake. The wood should burn down to coals soon.”

“I’m still not eating any nasty snake meat,” Nita declared.  The other three turned but could not see her. Her voice came from above them.  They backed up until they could see her as she swept the horizon with Luthor’s binoculars while laying flat on her stomach on the flat top of the rock they had stopped at.

“More for us,” Luthor said with a shrug, as he had before.  “I just think we need to stretch our supplies as long as we can.”  He looked at Harper and Minji, frowning.  “Just occurred to me, though.  Do any of you have food with you, like sandwiches or such, that might spoil?  We might need to eat it with the rattlesnake, so it doesn’t go bad.”

“I’ve got a couple of sandwiches, so I still don’t need snake!” Nita hissed quietly from her perch.

Excerpt from “Project Burning Bush”

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For #LineByLineTime “Guilty”

Minji rubbed her face with both hands. When she sat up on the log, her hands dropping to her lap, her expression was haunted. “I’m a murderer,” she whispered. “I told the seamen who rescued me everyone else had died in a storm, but I killed them.”

Nita raised her eyebrows. “You? The Dragonlady? Miss Prim and Proper? A killer? No way. You passed out after you whacked that soldier. No way you could kill your family.”

Minji’s smile was twisted. “It brought back very bad memories. Memories I worked hard to erase.”

“What, you hit your family members over the head, too?” Harper asked.

“Impossible,” Luthor stated.

“I did not attack them. I poisoned them.”

Nita paced on the other side of the fire. “Was the whole ‘boat refugee’ bit a lie, then?”

Minji shook her head. “No. We escaped my country in a boat and were carried by the current out into the ocean. My father and uncles poisoned everyone but me. But I found the poison. I was so angry. I put it in their food. They liked highly spiced food, so they did not taste it. They died horrible, painful deaths. It took them a while. When they could no longer hurt me, I dragged them to the side of the boat and threw them to the sharks. Some of them were still screaming when the sharks ate them.”

“Sounds like a good ending for them,” Harper commented. “You should be looking satisfied, not guilty.”

“Satisfied? I am a murderer, just like them! I have never wanted to kill anyone in my life! I was a child! I killed my father!”

Nita stopped in front of Minji and held the other girl’s face with tight fingers and stared into her eyes, nose to nose. “You survived. They were killers. Not you. You were a survivor. You did what you had to, and avenged the other family members they killed. You remember that. You. Are. Not. A. Murderer!”