The Butterfly Killer (Short Story Version)

This short story serves as the introduction to the novel Butterfly Killer

Elliot Cross is the Butterfly Killer. He targets anyone with dreams and aspirations. In this short story we are introduced to his cunning ways. He stops at nothing to gain his victim's confidence. If you have a dream,he's ready to make sure you don't live to achieve it. It doesn't matter how simple or elaborate. As you see in this introductory short subtitled The Driving Lesson, the dream can be as simple as a teen boy anticipating passing his driver's test. It can be as large and complex as a Mother about to give birth to a baby after many failed attempts. Whatever your hope or ambition, Elliot waits until you're at the threshold and snuffs the dream. 
He invokes God as the justification for his crime. In his mind, he says he is doing the work of the Lord. God is jealous because the victims care more about their aspirations than they care about him. God is using him enforce his first commandment: "Thou shall have no other Gods before me" to show his power and how little he cares about people's "foolish follies."
Included is an excerpt from a scene further into the novel. For now relax and enjoy this free short if you can indeed relax. 

The Driving Lesson (The Butterfly Killer)

Timmy thought it was odd that Carrie’s Father didn’t want anyone to know about the Sunday driving lesson. He churned it over and over in his head, Mister. Cross’s reasoning for the secrecy.

“Your friends will be as mad as wet hens if they fail to pass and they find out you passed because you had an extra lesson. I can just hear my Carrie, ‘But Dad, you gave Timmy private lessons, but not your own Daughter?’ Whoo! That gal can be jealous. But you know her. You and her are tight like a drum aren’t you?”

That explanation sounded reasonable to Timmy. Kids at South High tended to act like crabs in a barrel. If half of Mister Smith’s Trig Class was failing, they all had to fail. Shining stars weren’t tolerated. And Mister Cross was right about his daughter Carrie. Most kids shied away from Carrie, partly because of him and his crazy love for chasing butterflies all over the neighborhood. But she also had a jealous streak that was about as green as her hair. Girls didn’t stay friends with her very long. Even other lesbian girls fell victim to her rants and arm twisting because she had caught them talking to boys or other girls. But Mr. Cross had put his hand on his shoulder in a most fatherly way. Or was that creepy, Timmy wondered?  The hand lingered a moment longer than it should and squeezed harder than it should have, as if it was a massage.

If only he could see better, Timmy thought to himself as he looked deep into his blue eyes while he brushed his teeth. He knew he needed glasses. That’s why he squinted and held books far from his face as he read. He heard his Mother cough. He listened as she hacked and gasped for air. Then there was silence. Timmy’s toothbrush rested against his left molar. He was about to yank the brush out of his mouth and run to his Mother’s room, but she cleared her throat. He continued brushing. “Another false alarm,” he said to himself. He didn’t want to bother her about his eyes. Lord knows she had had enough problems of her own with a breathing disorder so bad it had placed her in a scooter. Money was tight. He had to pass his driving test. She had scrimped and saved the one hundred and seventy-five dollars in a pickle jar for him to take Driver’s Education. He had to do all he could to keep from failing. But as much as he wanted to be a man at that moment, he also knew his Mother insisted on knowing his goings and comings. Even at sixteen, she warned him as if he was six, about getting into stranger’s cars. But Mister Elliot Cross was no stranger and he wasn’t like Mister Slaughter who lived in the pinkish house two doors down from him. Carrie’s dad chased butterflies, not boys.

“Maybe I should tell Mom,” Timmy thought, as he stood in front of her closed door. He had his hand on the knob when he heard her begging his Aunt Peggy for a ride to the grocery store. Timmy turned, grabbed his jacket and cellphone, and headed out the door to meet Mister Cross.

The Thing

Sample from THE THING

The Cardinal arrived at the base arrayed in a fine peacock headdress. His robes shimmered as if they were a golden heat mirage one might see in the desert. His black leather pumps outshined any General’s polished hooves. He leaned on a staff of gleaming emeralds. At the crown of his staff was a four headed python. Inscribed in Latin on this pole were the words, “The Eyes of Man.” A young boy in white robes carried a cross and walked in front of the cardinal. The Cardinal stopped and kneeled next to the granite typewriter-shaped monument dedicated to “POETS WHO SPEAK AS INSTRUCTED.” He touched the ground with his forehead and the boy marked the spot with his cross. The priest led the commanders and their men in prayer.

“Oh God, strike dead our eyeless enemy. Rent them from your earth. Confuse their sexuality. Make their men lust after their own sons and their Mothers eat her daughters. Pour bitter sugar down their throats and make their gears grind to a halt. Scud their missiles and make them blow up in their homes. They are dogs! Yes, yes, yes, strike dead our eyeless carrion eaters. May their head Mullah pop his cork. This is our prayer. Your humble servant, your peace loving vicar of the Godful people of this land. Amen.”

After this prayer was uttered and the Cardinal sprinkled the crowd with holy tomato juice, the events that followed made the biblical Day of Pentecost seem like a meeting of stamp collectors.


Charles Harvey on the Web
The Thing Free on Smashwords
Amazon Author Page
Bedroom Tales on Amazon

Writing Tip 9 The Value of Editing

I'm not an Editor nor do I play on on TV. However, as a writer I  see the tremendous value in editing. I highly recommend people hire and develop a close relationship with an Editor. They can do so much to help shape your book and your writing. In my opinion, a good Editor doesn't rewrite your book. They help YOU write it better. Your unique dialog, characters, plot, settings, voice, and narrative are what you are bringing to the table. An Editor helps by getting rid of the "clunkiness" that plops up in all of our writing. You should be catching most spelling errors and some grammar errors with your word processor's spell check and grammar check. An Editor shouldn't have to waste time correcting spelling and grammar errors--at least not the easy to catch things. Of course these tools aren't perfect and another set of eyes are helpful to catch words like "united" that get written as "untied." I made such a boo boo once in a fund raising letter I had written for an organization. I didn't catch it until weeks later after dozens of letters had gone out. Software has its limitations.

The Black Queen

Excerpt from Black Queen

You try the spa again. Mr. Sims is dead.  (You wiped your ass with his obituary.) You wrap yourself in your “Angelic White“ Martha Stewart Home bath towel and float next to the jism sticky walls. Eyes disturbed by the lines in your face, drop to the floor. But you strike gold--you think. A Spanish accent invites you to his cubby hole for “cake and cream.” Just when the “nicca” was opening the door, two college age boys black as sable cats, slim as gazelles, and hung like colts, walk by leading a parade of tented towels and tongues hanging from mouths. Your “nicca” with the Spanish accent joins the parade.

You had you a man briefly. Well it was for eight years--millennium for gay lovers. He had a job when you met him. You both dreamed of picket fence domesticity.  You yoked yourself to a thirty-year mortgage. At the  housewarming you caught him patting the ass of somebody’s friend. A week later, you caught him dining on that ass on top of the new Calvin Klein bed ensemble, the day after he declared he was a man and would never eat your ass and nobody else’s ass. You closed your eyes to all his enigmas and psychosises. His dick was so big it blinded you. He lost his job and became a “househusband.” You worked, he whored.  The bedroom was his kitchen.  When he wasn’t drunk, he battered more cakes than Betty Crocker. You came home to cold pots and a hot bed reeking of sex funk.  You quietly stopped paying the mortgage. The sheriff  hauled him clad in his polka dotted drawers and all the furniture to impoundment storage. Whiskey and coke wouldn’t let him get out of bed. Today, you imagine him still locked away in the storage shed--his teeth  the color of shit and the polka dot drawers hanging on his bleached bones.

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Writing Tips 8 -- Memoir or Catharsis

Harvey on Smashwords

Is it Memoir or Cathartic or Both

I ran across someone’s blog recently, where they were writing about some painful childhood experiences. I didn’t read deep into it, because, well for one it just wasn’t that interesting to me. I asked him what his goal was for the project? He said, “Heck at this point just to remember as much as possible and get it down. Suggestions?”

My response was, “I know the memories mean a lot to you. And it's very personal. But I'm not sure a stranger would understand. Augusten Burroughs had a not so great childhood, but he makes his stories so lively and engaging. Sometimes you have to look for the humor in the bad situation and hit us with a sort of irony.”

Othello Jones

He's all mouth and all braggart, but there's an interesting twist at the end.

Excerpt:

OTHELLO JONES

“Othello Jones! Othello Jones, is that you?”

“It’s me and my twin brother.”

“Your twin brother?”

“Must be. You called my name twice.”

“You don’t have to be so rude. Especially the kid I taught eleventh grade English, and the kid I took to the clinic to clear up a bad case of clap.”

“I don’t hug men. It ain’t been no hundred years since I seen you last. And besides, I wuz born rude. My Mama said I gave my middle finger to the Doctor who slapped my ass to life.”

“You sure are full of yourself.”

“If I ain’t full of me, who’s goin’ to be?”

“But don’t you think humility has its place?”

“Yeah, under the bottom of my two hundred dollar alligator blue-skinned patent leather shoes!”

“Oh.”

“Is you humble?”

“Well yes. I’m not boastful at all.”

“You just told a contradiction.”

“Life is full of . . .”

“If a bastard is humble on the outside of hisself, he raging with hatred on the inside of hisself.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to dig my grave and fill it full of me?”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t you like to kill me, man?”

“No.”

“Liar! You’re itching to end my existence on the planet.

“No. You’re my ex-pupil. Why would I want to kill you?”

“Yeah you would. I see it in your sideways glance at me. You don’t like my shoes, my gold watch, my four hundred dollar Brooks Brothers European cut blue silk suit that shimmers like the blue sea in front of your pale gray eyes, my white John Henry shirt with real pearl buttons, my Oscar de la Renta tie. And to top it all off you would severely despise my red Calvin Klein silk lowrise drawers if you could see them! And I know you hate this clean cut Mister Joe masterfully put on my head. It makes your own stuff look like a wet mop. You white, but you not nearly as pretty as I am.”

Othello Jones

Amazon

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February is Black History Month...But all our history didn't happen in February

                                                A majority of Emmett Till's family members said Thursday that they object to plans by the Justice Department to exhume his body in order to find clues to solve his brutal murder 50 years ago. . . . Till was 14-years-old when he left his home on Chicago's South Side to visit relatives in Mississippi on Aug. 21, 1955. His mother advised him about how to behave when interacting with white people because race relations there were a lot different than in Chicago. On August 24, Till and his cousin, Curtis Jones, went into the small town of Money, and stopped at Bryant's Grocery store to buy some candy. Some local boys dared Till to speak to Carolyn Bryant, the white store clerk. He allegedly whistled at the woman when he left the store. Four days later, Till's body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a cotton gin fan tied around Till's neck with barbed wire. Two men, storeowner Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, were charged and acquitted of the murder. They bragged about the crime three months later in a Look magazine article.

-- Karen E. Pride, Chicago Defender May 6, 2005

 The Fan

What y’all aim to find by

digging up his old bones?

Old old bones, old and innocent bones

Why y’all want to disturb him?

He ain’t with his bones.

He down here in the muck with me

and ain’t nobody trying to dig my rusty ass up.

His Mama, bless her heart, she got the bones

and that head that looked like a bad cabbage.

Thousands seen it in Chicago. Millions through Jet.

Where was my picture? I suffered.

I used to gleam prissy and howl

now mud bugs nest in my teeth.

I kept the good stuff off that boy—his spirit, his soul, his spleen

caressed it out of his naked body

The real Emmett sometimes he runs up the road to Money

gooses that white gal between her legs—boy still gots

that spunk in him.

Then he runs back to me for shelter.

Carolyn wakes up, rubs her thigh

goes back to sleep.  1955 was a long time ago

She wants to rest. I want to rest, and even Emmett.

You got the pictures.  You won’t forget

Every now and agin some black boy still gets

drugged behind a car, still gets strung up in a tree

or the roof rafters of a county jail

They still make fans like me

heavy enough to drown boyish devilment.

Charles Harvey