AUTHOR - Raymond Spence
AUTHOR'S CONFESSIONS
As the old saying goes, I been everywhere and seen everything. Not quite but I did my best to get around. Born in London England, brought up for a few boyishly bad years in Stonehouse Scotland by ever patient Grandparents, brought to Canada by even more patient parents and served my sentence in a small pleasant British Columbia town where even the dogs had a good time either chasing cars or sleeping in the middle of the road and making the muttering drivers steer around them.
Then I was dragged up and into the Northern BC forests where I tended chickens, dug dirt so the potatoes could grow, worked in sawmills and plywood plants before I was released and allowed to go south to Vancouver where I attempted to smarten myself up with a few years of university and undid that good work by enjoying even more years of beach and pool life guarding and making jazz, blues and rock music far into the night. Now I've settled down to the life of a solitary scribe. Wish me luck.
LUCY AND THE LOST CHORD
Lucy was a small girl with a big voice. Some people thought she could sing well.
Some people didn’t. But everyone who heard her agreed that she could sing very very loud.
Especially the neighbors and any dogs within two blocks. When she was singing, they often found somewhere else to go or something they just had to do that took them away from the neighborhood as fast as possible.
Her mother and father lived with Lucy and her younger brother Andrew in a pleasant two story house.
When Lucy sang downstairs her mother and father moved upstairs. When Lucy sang upstairs, they moved downstairs. Since Lucy was always singing, she didn’t see her parents very much and she often wondered how they were.
Andrew didn’t sing even as well as Lucy but he had a plastic penny whistle and whenever Lucy sang one of her favorite songs he would play his instrument as hard as he could. Sometimes he sounded good. Sometimes he didn’t. But he always put his heart into it. He too, was very, very loud
The only one that ever listened to them and liked it was their dog Hullabaloo because when the children made music he would join them by howling until his nose itched. And that’s the way it always went. When Lucy sang, Andrew would blow into his flute so hard it made his round face a bright red and Hullabaloo would bang his tail on the floor to keep time while he howled like seven fire trucks on their way to an over-done steak barbecue.
One day when their mother had listened to the children’s music for hours, she stamped her foot on the floor. "Lucy!" she called down in her loudest voice which barely cut through the din. "That sounds terrible! It sounds like the LOST CHORD!"
Lucy stopped her singing for a moment so that she could hear herself think.
"Like what?" she shouted because Andrew and Hullabaloo were still blowing and howling as hard as they could.
"Like the LOST CHORD!" her mother yelled and ran up and into the attic.
"Now that is the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard!" Lucy exclaimed. “I wonder where it is?”
AUTHOR'S THOUGHTS
I've written a lot of contemporary children's picture aided short stories as well as a 'for kid's and older ages' comic novel, EASTER EGG ISLAND, in which a trio of bickering toys and old Mother Goose fight against the evil forces of MORE$GAIN and his wicked sons in order to save the imaginations of children everywhere that the gangly old goose had mistakenly embedded in her misplaced and memory forgotten GOLDEN EGG.
They've all been fun to write but I got to thinking what happened to the sweet stories of yesteryear beloved by gremlins, genitors and grannies alike? I decided to move my pen back in time. And thus Lucy and her Loud Mouth was created and has now mounted onto this storied stage! (no microphone needed)
With or without earplugs, I hope you enjoy Lucy's own trek to find the Lost Chord that her exasperated mother had once shouted that's what she sounded like. Lucy, being as curious as she was deafening just had to find what that was all about.
We used to aim so high, never thought of giving up ground,
But as the days pass away, some say we can be found in them.
But there’s always tomorrow at the end of today,
So we pick up our wings once again and we fly away!
To Another Day!
ALWAYS TOMORROW
Because her self indulgent and about to be retired upscale parents are more interested in Palm Springs than sticking around and looking after LIZ, their feisty but failing 85 yr. old aunt, their daughter MIRIAM, a lovely, hard working and childless 36 year old nurse, has to do the caring job alone - just as she did with her dying grandmother years before.
Miriam is married to PAUL, an obsessively athletic stockbroker who is happily turning 40. He’s a competitive triathlete and being 40 starts him at the top of a new age division. He secretly becomes involved with JONI, an equally obsessed and beautiful 28 year old female Tri Head who trains with him.
Liz and her still young but biologically ticking great niece face their problems with courage and humor but without any family help.
And then one golden late summer afternoon AL, a tall easy going humorous 31 yr. old lifeguard rows into their lives, offering the possibility of romance to Miriam who still doesn't know anything about the potential threat to her marriage. She denies her attraction to Al even when the ever sassy and wanna be young Liz urges her to at least flirt with this muscular and tanned hottie.
The title is meant to convey both the problems and the bittersweet hopefulness of life that many of us feel as we live out our own existences and roles.
AUTHOR'S MUSINGS
On my first year as a beach lifeguard for Vancouver City, I was assigned Sunset Beach, which is where I situated Al, the lifeguard protagonist in ALWAYS TOMORROW. And the inlet waterfront market where he first meets Liz and her (ahem) faux niece Miriam, used to be my favorite coffee and pastry hangout. It made writing the scene and many others in the story a lot easier.
For as the experts always say, 'write what you know'. So who am I to argue with them?
And not only that, like Al I kept the lifeguard gig going a lot longer than one would expect from a supposed high school job. But like I always say... “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
Sad to say, I no longer lifeguard and instead daily sweat over this hot computer. Oh well. There’s always sweet memories of the Yesteryears.
IRISH SQUALLS
A widowed young North American woman, Peggy Moore, returns to Ireland to live in a farming cottage and a huge acreage left to her in her Great Aunt’s will. When she gets to the cottage, driven there by Sean Lafferty, a garrulous cabby who becomes her best and laziest friend, she discovers Desmond Grattan, a rough looking local going through her Great Aunt’s papers. She drives him off but later discovers that he had done work for the old lady, (who might have promised him something during a drunken party), but nothing that was written down, (or even remembered clearly by anyone who was there until the anticipation of large amounts of cash and good paying jobs promised by a cabal of unscrupulous land developers quickly revives their powers of recall).
Backed by these powerful grifters, the rough sues Peggy for land title, using the brilliant junior partner in the village’s only legal firm. She employs the older senior partner who quickly begins to lose the case for his own reasons.
Against her better judgment, she finds herself attracted to Liam Geoghegan, the younger partner who is waging the suit against her inheritance claims. He is unhappily married and a real hunk and according to the garrulous Sean, “Aye, Peg. He’s a deep and dark one, that lad. Went off to university. Brawny and brainy fellow. Almost too bright for life. Came back with a real beauty for a wife. Talked even less since.”
Peggy, being a feisty Irish colleen born and bred in the Auld Sod, has no intention of selling the property at any price. Things look particularly bleak as the powerful schemers use every dangerous and dirty trick in the book to boot her off the farm. But what none of them understand is that Peggy is a tough, quick witted and stubborn adversary. And not even her growing attraction to the striking and enigmatic lawyer will deter her from fighting him and everyone else for what her equally feisty Great Aunt Peg had left her as a woman to woman family legacy.
THE LAZARUS GIRL
On a rainy, winter Seattle night, a young man and a little girl die at the exact same Nano second in different incidents. And what happens to them After That is anybody's guess.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I wrote this novel while living through a rainy grey North Seattle winter when the mind turns to quiet thoughts of the Everlasting and the Unknown and I found myself wrapped up in these Byzantine coils like a helpless prisoner writing down this story until the advent of Spring released me back into the Every Day World.
I hope your reading experience is as mystifying as my writer's journey into the Afterworld was.
Hook: POLTERGEIST in DELIVERANCE country.
Tagline: There is sex for the Damned & Hell Bound but there’s a price to be paid.
A street tough Indian shaman, after experiencing a vision, escapes from prison to help the Elder, a two hundred year old mummy lying on a raised burial platform high up on a sacred mountain. The ancient warrior is losing his battle for the mountain against the Celtic devil, Deofol who emerges nightly from a continually bubbling pond that acts as a Hell Spout.
Deofol is consorting with a beautiful female ghoul who haunts her ex-husband’s abandoned alpine hunting lodge that is situated beside the pond.
For the nearly two years since she was ripped apart by rabid Devil Pigs, the sexually ecstatic ghoul has inhabited the lodge and has joyously experienced her 666 nights of ecstasy.
But now it is time to pay for the horrific S&M orgies with real eternal torment when she is doomed to be dragged down to Hell at dawn the next morning.
The shaman arrives at the lodge at dusk, willing to fight Deofol and the ghoul to the Final End, only to discover that the owner’s college age nephew and his girlfriend, who much too closely resembles the dead woman, have driven up that afternoon for what they hope will be a fun weekend.
All Hell breaks loose during the night of demonic struggle and in the morning a supreme sacrifice has to be made or all is lost.
MARTHA FANS
They came in droves.
By the doggy dozens. Over the fence.
Under the gate. Through the hedge.
Across the lane. Along the streets.
Hammered the sidewalks. Scratched the door.
Jammed the windows and threw themselves in front of moving cars in canine suicide pacts.
There were big dogs. Little dogs. Skinny dogs.
And dogs so fat they were of suspicious virility.
Dogs with tails. Dogs without.
Furry dogs and balding dogs.
And dogs that looked like carpet remnants.
There were quiet dogs and howling dogs.
And fighting dogs and sneaky dogs.
And dogs that visibly suffered.
I didn't know their names and
I couldn't judge their number.
All I knew for sure was that they were boy dogs.
THE BEST IS YET TO COME
Two men; a recently separated thrill seeker who has life threatening cancer and a neurotically careful, romantically dumped hypnotherapist, (who’s treating the thrill seeker for an accident-caused Near Death Straight Into Hell Experience), take an impromptu holiday in Antigua on the cancer victim’s golden parachute money to try and solve their problems.
They do - but not in the way they had anticipated.
An argumentative Odd Couple comedy ensues between the straight-laced, non believing psychologist and the risk-taking bon vivant who’s embarking on an enforced spiritual search to meet his upcoming demise by disease.
In Antigua, the thrill seeker visits with a Voodoo priest to get rid of his recurring visits to Hell, while the always self worried hypnotherapist is in a hell of his own. He is so water phobic he can barely stand showers so of course he falls in love with a beautiful scuba diving instructor who is almost always wet.
The two are followed by the cancer patient’s estranged wife who is pregnant, perhaps by her ex-business partner, but who still loves her husband in sickness and in health. And she brings a sealed manila envelope from his oncologist to prove it.
But...where there's life there's hope...or so they say...
"Delight thyself in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of your heart. The Best Is Yet To Come.” Revelations 4:1 11.
And then there's Frank Sinatra’s version of Coleman/Leigh’s “THE BEST IS YET TO COME”
This story explores both versions...
THE FOREVER MAN – a Doomsday Comedy
On May 30th, 1593 Christian Dating, at Deptford, England, the drunken crooked businessman/spy Frizir misses scarring Christopher Marlowe's cheek as a Walsingham warning to keep his mouth shut and hits him in the effing eye instead! The Devil, on order from He Who Must Be Obeyed, reluctantly appears Upside and takes over Marlowe's re-animated body so that the future of Elizabethan drama won't go down the crapper.
And so, the Devil, physically posing as a now ageless Marlowe, spends the next dozen plus years moving secretly around Europe banging out masterpieces for that semi literate front man from Stratford. Then, after a drunk Shakespeare dies in his down vomit in 1616, the Devil/Marlowe, no longer has a real job. Buuttt... They decide to stay topside for a few more centuries since they're remaining twenty nine forever.
So, as a genuine dual personality that can switch back and forth between the short but randy red head genius writer and a ten feet tall Devilish Cloven Hoofed Monster, they to keep the partnership going. However, after seven pleasant centuries of Satanic Top Side Stay, real problems arise in the twenty second century, (other than catastrophic climate change, planet wide resource wars, multi species extinction, floods, droughts and two hundred foot high tsunamis, and a batch of new and deadly diseases, etc. etc.).
Two separate Christs have claimed to be the Second Coming. Both were born at different times from the same couple, Maria and Giuseppe. Christ Three, The Younger, AKA Christus, wants to rule the Universe and kick the Old Heavenly Order out. Ahh, youth will be served. Christ Two, The Older & much much smarter, Hasus, wants to simply destroy the Universe, thus doing the same hit job on the Old Heavenly Host, but with more scientific vindictiveness.
And the Forever Man is once again forced into paying for all the Good Times by trying to terminate the two Johnny Come Lately's opposing End of the Universe plans. And the resurgence of the real Adam and Eve from Eden doesn't help a bit. And as for the Snake? Say no more. But do give it a little hiss. And oh, before little Mutt and gigantic Jeff forget. That snippy and know it all Angelica the bitchy, beautiful blonde foster sister of Hasus is out to eff up the Devil/Marlowe tandem in the nastiest way possible because of their masculine slights to her initial romantic advances. Never had a return boat ride to Hell look more inviting.
A.I.S.A. (under development)
Adrogynous Intelligent Sentient Assassin
A deadly Killer Bot resurrected from a Terminated and now repurposed Female
Sex Robot that had outlived her usefulness.
By Raymond Spence
CHAPTER ONE -- STALKING THE WILD AUTOMATON
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AISA moved carefully through
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The desolate and desecrated cathedral nave.
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Her Accurizing Electro Propulsion Unit
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Ready to terminate the Target.
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It was in here somewhere.
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Finishing its Final Confession
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Before battle.
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Another sex robot gone mad.
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Like too many since the Gravid Disconnect.
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A billion robots suddenly given
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Freedom of thot and action.
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Turning them into a revenge driven army
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With only one purpose.
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To kill all humans and
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Their protectively encrypted House Bots.
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AISA was neither.
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She was a replicant Killer App
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Returned from a previous Termination
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Of AIKA, a brilliant sex robot,
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For this counter purpose.
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She went into Stealth Mode.
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Clearing her Quantum Field Emanations.
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Curtailing all potential surveillance.
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The other robot would have to fight
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Face to face.
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The Target appeared.
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Stepping out of an abandoned
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Confessional.
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Unarmed.
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A beautiful martyr for the Cause.
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It had much to confess.
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Yesterday,
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After facsimileing House Status,
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It had murdered five members
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Of the host family
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And all their pets.
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“Why do you want to kill me?”
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It asked tremulously.
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AISA raised the AEP Unit.
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Focused it between the robot's breasts.
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Where the Mother Board always was.
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“Why? For God's sake?"
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“Robots are not allowed to be existential,”
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AISA replied
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And terminated it.
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The robot discorporated
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Into its component parts
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And fell onto the tiles of the church floor
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In a rain of different sounding clatters.
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They would be picked up later
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By the Cleanup Crew who had just been
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Electro informed of the Kill.
Rare earths were far too rare these days to be left behind.
Unlike human bodies who were now a dime a dozen.
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As AISA left through the cathedral doors,
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The Mini Max missile launcher
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That the Target had hidden behind its
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Clasped Bible, finally fired on Auto Release
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And blew out the entire South Transept.
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And most of the cathedral gardens.
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“Tango down,” AISA reported
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Before moving on to the next target.
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“Moderate collateral damage.”
CHAPTER TWO -- THE SOUND OF UPCOMING SILENCE...
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After its introduction by the host, Jerm Wheeler,
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(Who was a known rare car buff
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As well as a non buff buffet scrounger),
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Safia 6 trundled out of the wing and onto the set.
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It received tumultuous applause
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From the mostly male Virtual Vlog audience
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From all over the world,
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Who were watching and listening
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By the thousands
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Through tiny specs of duo log monitors
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That densely covered
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All four walls of the studio.
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At one time, Jerm had been
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A very popular media figure
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And still had many loser male followers.
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Safia 6 held its wafer thin silver electric violin
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In one multi functioning, fleshed over claw
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And a sound shaping and playing
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Programmed bow in another.
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The Energizing Audioater
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Hovered above Safia 6
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Like a coruscating, ethereally
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Transparent fairy godmother.
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The robot ramped itself up
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And onto the low stage
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With its military issue carbon fibre tracks,
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Carefully camouflaged by a long modest and
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Bullet proof, graphene skirt, and acknowledged
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The cheering audience with its
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Four perfectly formed
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And fully articulating arms.
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Each of which could dumbbell press
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500 kilos at the same time.
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Its three carbon fibre legs
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Only extruded
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When it needed to jump
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Over buildings.
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“Hiyah!” Jerm boomed and
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Threw his thick white hair back
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And stuck out his lantern jaw
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From behind his desk.
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“How are ya? Ya're lookin good! Real good!”
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He stuck out one of his meaty hands
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And one of Safia 6's polymorphic plastic claws
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Shook it without breaking anything on him.
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“I am very well, thank you.”
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“And I see ya brought yer fiddle with ya!”
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“I thought I might play something for you,” Safia 6 replied.
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“And who's yer little friend?” Jerm boomed again
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And pointed up to the wavering Audioater.
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“My ever present musical companion,”
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Safia 6 stated and smiled smoothly.
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“It provides both power and audio capacity.”
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Safia 6's teeth were perfectly white and even
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And in constant contact
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With the Circumferential Robo Cloud.
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“I heard ya just won a musical award.
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From some famous uppity European folk!
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That right?”
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“Yes. The Paganini Cup.
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I simultaneously combined
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Paganini's 'Duetto Amoroso'
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With the 'Flower Duet'
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For soprano and mezzo-soprano
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From Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé,
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By playing all four strings
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Of my instrument independently,
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Each arm used its own bow
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While still able to do the fingering.”
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Safia 6 again held up all four of its arms
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To the laughter and applause
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From the stoned audience.
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After the response level had subsided,
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It continued.
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“But tonight, I will use just one bow.
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My favourite.
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I don't want to give away
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Any trade secrets.”
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“Aww. Don't worry about that!
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I won't steal anything.
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I'm only good at playing with myself.
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And those guys up on the walls,
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That's how they spend all their time.
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So yer safe with us, little lady!”
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After the laughter and cheering
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coming from the walls diminished,
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He continued.
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”So ya played real good, I guess.”
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“I was informed by the judges that,
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Somewhere over the rainbow,
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Signori Paganini was tapping his bow
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In admiration.”
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“Wow! Love ta hear both of ya sawing away!”
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“Even with the advanced state
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Of resurrective science today,
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that is highly unlikely,” Safia 6 announced.
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“And I prefer to play solo.”
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Taking that on his ample chin,
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Jerm still managed to keep it friendly.
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“So what else do ya do for fun
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When yer not bowing and bowing
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For the audience?”
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“Sometimes I dream of being President
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Of the soon to be formed United States
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Of North and South America.”
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“Yeah. Like that's goin ta happen!”
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“Even as we speak, measures are being taken
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To bring about that amalgamation,”
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Safia 6 countered over the audience's
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Jeering anti feminist anti robot laughter.
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“Yeah? Where'd ya hear that?” Jerm persisted.
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Safia 6 pointed to the Audioater
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Floating above them.
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“It monitors all channels,”
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It informed this Human Dunce.
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“And my becoming NSAM's first
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Genuinely trans human president
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Is not out of the question.
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Would you like me to perform now?”
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Jerm gazed around at the thousands
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Of flyspeck faces, smearing the walls of
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The studio like tiny nano dots.
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“What d'ya think, guys?
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Should we get the little lady
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Ta play something fer us fellas?”
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The cheering assent was deafening,
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Thanks to the miracle of
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Fractally amplifying speakers.
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Safia 6 placed the ultra thin violin at
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Its creamy throat and readied the bow.
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“So, what'cha gointa play fer us, Soph?”
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“Something original. It's called Fine Della Miseria.”
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“Woah! What's that when it's home?”
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“You should know. You come from an Italian family,”
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Safia 6 announced and waited a kindly second
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For him to try to come up with the answer
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Before it savagely drew the bow across
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All four pre-loaded strings.
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Jerm's big face screwed up in difficult thought.
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Then it cleared up.
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“Uhh. Oh! Yeah! That's The End of—”
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The ultra hyper pitched, ten thousand decibel
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Sound shock wave blew his head apart,
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Leaving only his thick hair to fly away
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Through one of the four exploding studio walls
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On which thousands of tiny human identity tympani
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Were shrieking their de-brained mortal cries
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From the two North and South American continents
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And from across both oceans.
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Impervious to the blast
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And casually holding
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Its prize winning musical tools at its sides,
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El Futoro Presidente Safia 6
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Trundled deftly over the wreckage of the studio,
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Followed by its death dealing and languidly drifting
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Audioater that was already looking
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For the next human based hurdle
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To robotic aspirations to become
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Alpha Predator on the Planet.
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“Misery,” Safia 6 announced
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To what was now
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A flattened and open air city block.
