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Category Archives: Line By Line

Poetry by myself and others.

Excerpt: Project Burning Bush

Posted on March 23, 2022 by dragons4me3

(A Work in Progress)

For #LineByLineTime: The Good Guys Win

Everybody swung around as one old woman cried out.  People screamed, pots were dropped, and everybody ran, except the pregnant girl, still sitting by the fire, and the old man, who gripped his staff in shaking hands and stepped in front of the teens. 

Four horsemen stared back at them.  One pointed toward the deer carcass as he chattered excitedly in Spanish to his companions. They nodded, their mouths open and their eyes wide as they looked at the four teenagers.

Nita didn’t take her eyes off them as her hands slid to her knives still hidden in her jeans. “Apparently they’re upset we caught a deer.  Sounds like we did a big no-no.  They also think we look way too much like their bosses.  I’d assume that means they’re the bad guys.”

“Not to mention the way the locals ran off screaming.  Wonder if these are some of the guys who were here before?”  Harper scratched his chin. “Maybe we should go hide somewhere, too?”

Minji stood straight, then marched, shoulders back, to stand beside the old man.  “I will not leave Dark Moon Rising and Singing Water to them. They are brave, but helpless.”

“Maybe I can scare them,” Luthor growled, and flexed his arms, waving the bloody knife in his hand.

Harper shuffled backward.  “I’ll just stand behind the tree, shall I? I wouldn’t want any of you to trip over me…” He trailed off as he reached the tree and darted around to crouch behind it.

“All of you shut up and let me talk to them and stay out of my way.  I just killed a deer and four rabbits.  These guys are no challenge.” Nita’s hands were in her pockets now.

Minji sniffed. “There is a large difference between hunting animals for food and killing a human,” she began.

Suddenly all four horsemen drew sabers and charged, screaming and waving their weapons.  Before the others could move to escape or defend themselves, there was a knife in the throat of the foremost. He toppled sideways off his confused horse, who stopped charging and turned in circles, dragging its rider. 

Another knife appeared in the middle of the second rider’s torso.  He dropped his saber and clutched at the knife, his mouth open and his eyes wide.  His horse also stopped charging to step nervously side to side as the rider swayed and fell back across the horse’s rump before the horse’s movements made him slide to the ground, his feet slipping out of the stirrups.

Before Nita could aim at the other two riders, Minji snatched the staff from the old man and screamed at the one coming at them. She swung her staff at the man’s sword arm.  There was a loud crack and the blade dropped to the ground beside her.  Her attacker yelled and clutched his arm as it flopped loosely, the bones in it moving in different directions halfway between the elbow and wrist. Minji spun on one foot as the horse and rider moved past her.

Her momentum slid the staff through her hands until she held the end of it. She swung it like a bat at the back of the man’s head.  There was a sound like a melon dropping on pavement, and the rider flipped forward, falling past the horse’s shoulder.  The horse shied, kicking at the fallen rider as his body landed at the horse’s feet. 

The fourth rider spun his horse and started to race away out of the clearing. Before he made it to the trees, the old woman their host had called Burning Wind ran out in front of them. She waved a blanket and shouted as the horse almost reached her. The horse squealed and reared.  Its rider fought to bring him back down, sawing at the reins and shouting. But the horse reared up again as the old lady snapped the blanket at its nose and screamed.  

Unbalanced, the rider yanked at the reins again trying to pull himself up, and the horse rolled backward and landed on the rider.  The rider’s legs spasmed, then went limp.  The horse rolled back and forth a few times before he got his feet under him and stood up, leaving the man on the ground.  The man did not move.

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Posted in Excerpts, Line By Line, Writing | Tagged Christianity, creativity, fiction, imagination, Writing | Leave a comment

Excerpt from Tales of the Lunatics: Skyshaker and Moonsinger

Posted on March 2, 2022 by dragons4me3

Author’s note: This is a work in progress about an alien world and alien creatures.

How to show surprise and shock for #LineByLineTime

The one-eyed guard stared through the bars at the big male. He had never in his life seen an alpha feed lesser members of the pack, but he remembered the tales from his grandsire. He turned and strode away. His movements were careful, normal. They kept an ALPHA male in their prison?

As he passed other guards, he kept his face frozen in its usual surly expression. When the others tried to speak to him, he snarled to avoid speaking back. He was already known for a foul temper, so nobody was surprised. They finally left him alone.

He kept walking, all the way past the guards’ rooms and past the storerooms buried deep within the underground complex. He walked faster, then finally ran, deep into the tunnels he had discovered there. He staggered to a stop in a small cave, his breath whistling out of his snout, partly from exertion, but mostly from pent up emotions finally allowed to escape.

He threw his head back and screamed.

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Posted in Blog posts, Excerpts, Line By Line, Writing | Tagged creativity, imagination, science fiction, Writing | Leave a comment

Excerpt: Project Burning Bush

Posted on February 23, 2022 by dragons4me3

(A work in progress)

Right in the middle of another funny face, Harper grabbed his head and dropped to his knees with a high-pitched scream.

Nita fumbled her phone back into her pocket and scowled. “Knock it off, Chico, that’s not funny. People gon’ start callin’ 911!” She cursed briefly in Tex-Mex when he thrashed on the ground, making more high-pitched noises.

Luthor and Minji ran back to them. Luthor tried to pick Harper up but couldn’t hold onto him. He finally pinned the smaller boy to the ground with his own body. “Call Mrs. Williams!” he shouted. “Harper’s having a seizure!”  He managed to get a hand to Harper’s mouth to check if Harper had bitten his tongue. Harper’s teeth were grinding together, but there was no sign of blood.

Minji shook her phone. “I’m only getting static! What about yours, Nita?”

Nita yanked hers back out of her pocket. “You serious? He’s not putting it on?” She tapped her phone and shook her head. “Same here. Nothing but static! What’s going on?”

Luthor did his best to brace Harper’s head where the boy was whipping it side to side on the gravel. “Never mind the phones! One of you run as fast as you can to find the teachers! If he doesn’t stop seizing soon, he might get some serious damage! Go, already!”

“I’ll go!” Nita jammed her phone back in her pocket and hitched her backpack up. But as she spun on one foot back toward the start of the trail, she found herself falling sideways across Luthor and Harper. “What the!” she started, then lost her breath as Minji piled on top of her. “Hey, get off!” She tried to push the other girl away but discovered neither of them could get their balance.

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Posted in Blog posts, Excerpts, Line By Line, Writing | Tagged creativity, fiction, imagination, Writing | Leave a comment

Excerpt from Project Burning Bush

Posted on February 9, 2022 by dragons4me3

(A work in progress) for #LineByLineTime on Twitter.com for “The Switch”

Both boys glanced at the girls, startled. Observing Nita’s tense posture, Luthor followed the direction she was looking and stepped in front of Harper. 

“What do you think?” Nita mused. “Perv alert? Maybe you’re about to earn your pay, big boy. He’s been giving Harper the eye since we’ve been standing here.”

“How do you know he’s been looking at Harper?” Minji demanded. “Maybe he’s been watching all of us.”

Nita shook her head. “Nah, you can tell by where his eyes go, especially when Harper was standing away from the rest of us.”

“Maybe I should go convince him to move along,” Luthor growled.

Harper grabbed his belt. “Ignore him. If he’s who I think he is, he could take you without breaking a sweat. He’s just doing his job.”

The other three stared at him. “Doing his job?  What do you mean?” Minji snapped.

“You really think parents who didn’t let me out of the house practically my whole life would suddenly think it was okay to send me off to the middle of nowhere? My dad knows lots of guys who owe him favors for computer stuff.”

He stepped clear of Luthor and waved and whistled at the man, who reared back, eyes wide. Harper yelled, “Tell my dad I’m having a great time! But don’t stare! People think you’re a pervert!”

His voice rang clearly along the trail. Other hikers turned around, some with camera phones ready. The stranger glared and vanished into the brush surrounding the trail.  “Yeah, that looks like one of my dad’s friends – if you can call them that. They all kind of scowl like that.” Harper blew out his breath. “Now I’ll probably hear it from my dad when I get home.”

He shook his finger and scowled at an invisible smaller figure as if a parent scolded a child. “‘You know better than to expose someone working undercover.’” Then he took a step forward, turned and faced where he had been standing. He clasped his hands under his raised chin and looked innocently up, eyes wide and batting his eyelashes. “But daddy, I don’t know anything about undercover operations,” he said in a baby voice.  “I’m just a wittle boy!”

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Tension: Excerpt from Project Burning Bush (a work in progress)

Posted on January 12, 2022 by dragons4me3

Excerpt 1:

“Who might you be?” he called to them. 

They ignored his question.  “Get down here, right now!”

“Why? Who are you people?”

“Get down here now! We’re not going to wait forever!”

“Why? Are you the law? Where’s your ID?  I’m on public property, I know, because this is a rest area, so I’m not trespassing.  Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

The door on the Jeep opened and a man in a suit climbed slowly out. He looked around, his expression blank.  Finally, he raised his head and stared silently up at Tom.  Tom stared back.  He had been a Marine for a long time, and recognized danger when he saw it.

Excerpt 2:

Minji started to snap back at her but Harper stepped between the girls holding up a hand. His voice was high and strained.  “Never mind adventures in Oz.  Maybe we wound up in a Tolkien story.  Those guys definitely look like orcs to me!” His raised hand pointed to the side of the clearing.  

Everybody swung around as one old woman cried out.  People screamed and everybody ran, except the pregnant girl still sitting by the fire, and the old man, who gripped his staff in shaking hands and stepped in front of the girl. 

Four horsemen stared back at them.  One pointed toward the deer carcass as he chattered excitedly in Spanish to his companions. They nodded, their mouths open and their eyes wide as they looked at the four teenagers.

Nita didn’t take her eyes off them as her hands slid to her knives still hidden in her jeans. “Apparently they’re upset we caught a deer.  Sounds like we did a big no-no.  They also think we look way too much like their bosses.  I’d assume that means they’re the bad guys.”

“Not to mention the way the locals ran off screaming.  Wonder if these are some of the guys who were here before?”  Harper scratched his chin. “Maybe we should go hide somewhere, too?”

Minji stood straight, then marched, shoulders back to stand beside the old man.  “I will not leave Dark Moon Rising and Singing Water to them. They are brave, but helpless.”

“Maybe I can scare them,” Luthor growled, and flexed his arms, waving the bloody knife in his hand.

Harper shuffled backward.  “I’ll just stand behind the tree, okay? I wouldn’t want any of you to trip over me…” He trailed off as he reached the tree and darted around to crouch behind it.

“All of you shut up and let me talk to them and stay out of my way.  I just killed a deer and four rabbits.  These guys are no challenge.” Nita’s hands were in her pockets now.

Minji sniffed. “There is a large difference between hunting animals for food and killing a human,” she began, but suddenly all four horsemen drew sabers and charged, screaming and waving their weapons.

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Foreshadowing: An excerpt from Project Burning Bush (a work in progress)

Posted on January 5, 2022 by dragons4me3

TWO WEEKS POST-EVENT

“Now for anybody who’s been sealed up in a cave or a locked room in a government lab for the past week, let me bring you up to date. First, I’m situated just outside of Enchanted Rock State Park in sunny South Texas, west of Austin and north of San Antonio. There was a big – 6.0 on the scale – earthquake here last week. Folks said Enchanted Rock, which is a big old hunk of pink – yes, I said pink – granite sticking up out of the ground, vibrated like a tuning fork.”

“So, first off, what caught everybody’s attention was the fact that even though two big ol’ cities were right nearby, they didn’t catch any of it. Totally unnatural!  Scientists headed here, and so did first responders as soon as all the 9-1-1 calls started about people getting injured because they got shook off the mountain when the quake hit. Then word about missing folk started coming in. Some busload of school kids on a field trip couldn’t find everybody that got off there.”

He peered at the screen. “Hey, is that somebody rooting around in the brush wearing a hazmat suit? Let’s see if I can give you a closer look!”  He directed the drone higher and closer to the activity. He decided to continue the monologue. “Other folk disappeared for a little bit, then showed up all changed. Changed as in clothes – some looked like they just walked out of the wild West frontier, and changed as in insisting they were somebody else and acting real confused about what was going on. As if they were time travelers!”

He zoomed the camera on the drone to get a close-up of the people on the ground.  “Looky here, those are hazmat suits. What are they waving around down there? There’s a metal detector for sure, there, and I do believe that’s a bomb-sniffing dog.  Poor thing, I hope they’re giving it plenty of water and rest. South Texas in the spring is a hot summer elsewhere!” 

His eyes gleamed. “See these guys here? They belong to one of those agencies that don’t go by the alphabet. FBI, CIA, DHS, them and all those other agencies – and the military – they’re insisting they don’t have anything to do with these guys. These shady fellows showed up soon as the stories started hitting the Internet from the witnesses. Kicked out the locals, then the Texas Rangers when those lawmen showed up to find out why the locals were pushed out, and then the FBI when the Rangers complained. Somebody pulled some serious strings, folks. They got rid of the press, the law, then set up a perimeter – which I’m outside of, thank you. Then the witnesses started disappearing. Especially the folks who came back different. Those school kids? They got to go home, but the teachers didn’t. My sources tell me the parents of those kids they can’t find have disappeared, too.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “Looks like they noticed my drone, folks. Just look how excited they are! I do believe they’re trying to hide some equipment there – what do you figure that is, for sampling air and water, maybe? Dirt, too, of course. Definitely something shady going on! Oops, looks like one of them got some orders to shoot me down!” He worked the controls, but the man with the rifle had good aim, and the video from the drone went blank after it sank to the earth.

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Posted in Blog posts, Excerpts, Line By Line, Writing | Tagged Christianity, creativity, fiction, imagination, Writing | Leave a comment

A Veteran’s View

Posted on November 11, 2016 by dragons4me3

I’m not the veteran I’m talking about this Veteran’s Day.  I never got to serve in the military thanks to my physical health.  Several other members of my family did, but the one I’m talking about here is my dad, William Almas Perry.  Born March 4, 1926, he was at the right age to join the military during World War II.

He rarely spoke at all about his service, mentioning to his young daughters only that he had served in the Philippines and in England.  “But what did you do in the war, Daddy?” we pressed one day, probably on a Veteran’s Day.  He shut us down quickly with “I picked up dead people” and walked away, leaving us with the horrific mental scene of a battlefield filled with bodies.

It was not until his funeral and afterwards many decades later that we learned the truth.  His “I picked up dead bodies” was what he did after the war while finishing his service in England as an ambulance driver for the military.  He just didn’t want to talk about what he did in the Philippines.  We heard about that from the veterans who had gone to war with him, from the same small town, who had known him as a boy and a man.

My father, like many country boys who had to catch their own food, was a dead shot with a rifle and had a hunter’s keen eye for his prey.  The army chose him to save the lives of many of his fellow soldiers by sending him into the jungles of the islands first and taking out the enemy snipers waiting for them.  The fact that he came back alive is proof of how good he was at his job.  The fact that I never saw him use a gun in anything but a demonstration to my brother in law of his military shooting pose and his continued ability to hit a bulls-eye was proof of how his service affected him.

After his death, one of his many cousins gave us a couple of poems he had sent back to his mother during his service that she had sent to the newspaper for printing.  The exact dates of the writing are uncertain, but they were both written during the war.  She told us that there were more, but until more of the old newspapers are scanned into the computer and I can look them up, these are the only two I have.

 

OBJECTIVE – HOME!

By PFC William A. Perry, United States Army

O God, I did not

Come out to this war

From a park bench,

Or from a rented room.

I came from HOME!

And I brought with me family words:

Garden, crib, fireside, front door,

Wife, little fellow.

Now they are all mixed in

With the war jargon:

Jeep, tank, foxhole,

Tommy gun, blitz.

Help me, God, to keep

My thinking straight.

Grant the impossible –

Make home – our Home –

Seem real in battle.

Show me how to

Sort out my thoughts

And use the words about home;

Even when I am sitting in a swamp

Hours at a time,

Not daring to move

More than my eyes;

They’ll keep me sane.

I’ll be a better human,

And just now,

When fighting is my job,

I want to stay human.

It didn’t take a war

To show me

How I love my home.

But it has taken a war

To show me

How it will feel to

Walk out from Hell

Straight to a Paradise

That men call Home!

O God, let ours rest

Under the shadow of Your hands.

 

MY BUDDY

by PFC William A. Perry, United States Army

Hit again! That’s twice today;

Why don’t they get it over

And blast me all away?

Feeling mighty weary,

Losin’ all my stuff.

Buried in a foxhole –

That’s what I call tough.

Ain’t got strength to wiggle,

Must be awful weak.

Tongue is just one big blister;

I can hardly speak.

I’m no Christian soldier,

Never had the luck.

Just a no-good drifter,

Just a fighting buck.

Never had no learnin’

Never taught to pray.

Want to talk to Jesus –

Don’t know what to say.

Where’d you come from, Buddy?

Wasn’t here before.

Don’t look like no soldier,

You ain’t used to war.

Wanna use my foxhole?

Cuddle up right nice;

Have a drink of water –

Sorry, there’s no ice.

Gee, your hand is bleedin’

Guess they got you, too.

Nasty rats of Hitler,

That’s the way they do.

You and me together

Strangers in this sink;

Sharing drops of water,

All there is to drink.

What’s that on your shoulder?

Buddy, that’s no gun!

You should have some weapon –

War ain’t just clean fun.

Guess that blasted bullet

Threw me for a loss.

Eyes are getting hazy;

What you got, a cross?

Funny sort of helmet,

Looks just like a thorn.

Never seen one like it,

Never, since I’s born.

Aw, your head is bleedin’,

Let me wipe your brow.

I got strength to do it –

Strong as ever, now.

Say, you tryin’ to help me?

Well, that ain’t no use –

I’m beyond all helpin’;

Took too much abuse.

Still it makes me better

Just to know you’re here;

Yeah, I know I’m dying,

But I got no fear.

Crown of thorns and cross?

Golly, I remember –

You’re the King! The boss!

Thought I was unlucky –

All I’ve sacrificed;

But I’m dying happy

In the arms of Christ.

I’m a Christian soldier.

Got no pain, no grief.

Take me up to Heaven

Like you took the thief.

Jesus, gentle Jesus,

Got no pain, no fear.

Hidin’ in a foxhole,

And you found me here.

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Posted in Line By Line | Tagged Christianity, creativity, family, memories, military, poetry, veterans, words, Writing | 1 Comment

The Gardeners

Posted on September 21, 2015 by dragons4me3

By Peggy Perry copyright 2015
The garden path was smoothed and cleared by the gardeners gone before.
Flowers bloom, birds fly and sing. It seems to need no more.

Butterflies soar gently by, sweet scents float on the air,
The sun shines warmly on the scene. Contentment is found there.

But this is not our garden path to simply walk along.
It only shows what we must do to keep from going wrong.

Our work starts at their garden’s edge with their work finally done.
Plow the soil, plant the seeds, and work for the Chosen One.

Can it be called a heavy task to leave behind such beauty?
To spend our lives doing His will cannot be called mere duty!

The best memorial to give the loved ones we recall
Is to continue on the work for which Jesus gave His all.

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Posted in Line By Line | Tagged Christianity, grief | Leave a comment

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Recent Posts

  • Excerpt from The Warlord’s Heart January 25, 2023
  • Excerpt from Project Burning Bush January 18, 2023
  • Excerpt from Project Burning Bush January 4, 2023
  • Excerpt from “The Warlord’s Heart” December 28, 2022
  • Excerpt from Tales of the Lunatics December 14, 2022

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