Chapter One

Feeling more than a tad techy, Maze lay down on the sofa, a badly embroidered pillow made decades ago by her youngest as a 4H project stuck rock-hard under her neck, and held the ice cold can of beer to her forehead. The dog, who had been dozing in boredom on the farthest cushion, nipped her ankles in complaint and jumped off, only to collapse in a sneezing heap on the sprung footrest of the neighboring recliner.

“Dopey, you are a pain,” muttered Maze. “You are my last dog, I swear it!” A bead of water from the can dripped into her eye and she groaned. “Migraines!” She set the unopened can on the carpet next to her and covered her face with the fleece lap robe that was draped over the back of the sofa. While the sudden darkness felt good on her eyes, the fluff of cat and dog hair made her sinuses shut up and she jerked heavily forward, gasping for breath. “Geez!”

She contemplated going back to her bedroom and pulling down the old blackout blinds left from when her grandmother had owned the house. The swamp cooler in that bedroom was broken, though, and the heat and mugginess argued against that as a solution for the knife being ground through her left eye and into her brain. She was gonna have to swallow the fear of side effects and swallow one of her headache pills. No avoiding it today.

As she got up off the sofa, a boom shook the little house and threw a hundred years of knickknacks and Franklin Mint plates off the shelves that made up the sitting room walls. Shaking shards of porcelain out of his coat, Dopey gave a sneeze so loud that even he looked to see if his brain had come out his nose. “What the!” Maze staggered toward the hallway just as another blast tossed the house like a bad cat.

The last rattle seemed to have knocked the bungalow askew on it its foundation slab and the door to the front porch was wedged in the frame. She put her fingers on the upper hinge pin and tried to pull but the torsion was off just enough that she couldn’t get it to so much as budge. A third blast knocked her off her toes and onto her butt. “Danged! Middle-aged women don’t bounce, ya know!”

perm: first off, I enjoyed the informal tone and the lively and colorful dialogue. There are a lot of really good lines here: "You're my last, dog, I swear," and the line "...looked to see if his brain came out his nose." It feels real; it's humorous; and I get the feeling of a hard-working and soft-hearted woman whose last dog that isn't.

I'll bet "techy" is a PA thang, isn't it? I never heard it once in Johnstown. Anything like "teched"?

There is something about the first sentence that seems overly-long to me, and could need some work. I can't put my finger on it; maybe someone else can help me here. I liked the reference to the girl's 4-H pillow. It gives a lot of information in one image. Liked the knick-knacks and Franklin mint plates. I can see the walls in her house.

It's an appealing start, worth continuing, in my opinion.

Tetchy perhaps?

perm3800,

...just as I was beginning to drift, the three explosions, moving the house brought me back...and, yes, got my attention.

Would certainly want to know what happens next...

Perm 3800 I cant wait to read more,you had me going and then it stopped!

Thank you! Actually, it doen't take place in PA, it takes place in East Texas, just over the LA border - at least, this part of the story does.

Okay, here's what's next....

next bit:

Rising carefully, half-afraid to get up off her knees lest she be knocked down again, Maze put one hand on the wall and headed toward the sliders in the kitchen. “Come on, Dopey, we best get outta this house before it falls down on us!” The light stabbed through the freshly polished glass of the patio doors and straight into her brain. She stumbled to the sink and ran the water as she sicked up into the basin. Her stomach had just begun to settle when the house heaved with yet another boom and the water faucet snapped off at the wall, sending a fountain of cold water into her face causing her to sputter and gasp.

She grabbed a cast iron pan from the oven and a tea towel from the door handle and staggered toward the sliders, the tea towel pressed against her eyes. Draping the towel over her head, she took the pan in a two handed batter’s grip and swung at the center of the left slider, creating a great, sparkling tinkle of safety glass to settle in pellets at her feet. Still using the pan, she swept the remaining glass from the frame and, one hand holding the pan over her head as a helmet and sunshade, snatched up the dog with her other hand and ran out into the fallow field behind the house.

She thought briefly about heading for the old root cellar but the next blast blew in too many horror-show images of being buried alive. Still clutching Dopey to her chest, she ran to the middle of the field, laid herself as flat as her fat belly would allow and, keeping the pan over her head, began to pray as loud as she could. “Dear Jesus!” came out more like a curse than a prayer as another blast made the earth move beneath her. Her already sodden housecoat became malodorous as well as both she and Dopey released their fears into the roughly furrowed dirt.

She and the dog lay shivering with worry among the stubbles of last year’s crop of beans. They lay there, wet, dusted with safety glass and porcelain bits, and waited for some sign that the earth was done exploding. They waited while the sun over their heads settled to shine on their butts and they waited while it slid past the stubble of the field until it set. Finally, a little more worried about the dark than the blasts that hadn’t come again, they both stood up and saw the horizon in flames, lighting a hellish red the mass of rubble that had once been a home to eight generations of Dormans.

Setting the pan down by her feet, she unwrapped the tie from around her waist and made a leash for the dog. “Folly of a thing, anyway. Danged dress zips.” Holding the sash in her left and the pan in her right hand, Maze not-so-gently dragged the shaking, sneezing dog toward the remains of their home. “Let’s go see what’s left, Dopey.”

The sky, normally bereft of stars due to the smog from the refinery, was glowing orange and shot with sparks as midges and moths combusted in the superheated air. The wheezing and sniffling of the dusty pair of Maze and Dopey rang counterpoint to the distant clangs and pings of the tanks and catwalks under their oil fed coats of flame. As she walked, she added the blast-blown bits of her family treasure to the pockets of her housecoat: a small kewpie doll her grandfather had bought for her mother when she was a child; her daughter Livie’s graduation tassels in red and gold; Sleepy’s collar with his tags attached, the only part of that dog she had kept. She placed Milo’s old John Deere cap atop her head and tucked the tea towel in her pocket.

“Ah, ha! A can! Beer! It might be warm but I am dry enough, who cares!” She swallowed, thought about what beer might do to the dog and figured it would do less than being too dry would and gave the mutt a splash. He sneezed. She wedged the beer can into the pocket with the tea towel and walked on.