A Chat with Joan Schweighardt, author of 'The Last Wife of Attila the Hun'

Joan Schweighardt is the author of six books. In addition to her own projects, she writes, ghost writes, edits and blogs for private and corporate clients.

Mayra Calvani: Please tell us about The Last Wife of Attila the Hun, and what compelled you to write it.

Joan Schweighardt: The Poetic Edda, which I read and studied in college, includes a collection of legends that travelled from Germanic territories to Iceland with the Vikings and were shared orally for centuries before they were finally recorded in the thirteenth century. I fell in love with some of these legends, and when I saw that they insisted on including the historical Attila the Hun in some of their narratives, I began to read the history of the times Attila lived in. When I found places where the legends and the history intersected, I began to write the book.

M.C.: What is your book about?

J.S.: The Last Wife of Attila the Hun weaves together two threads: In one, Gudrun, a Burgundian noblewoman, dares to enter the City of Attila to give its ruler what she believes is a cursed sword; the second thread reveals the unimaginable events that drove Gudrun to this mission.

M.C.:  What themes do you explore in The Last Wife of Attila the Hun?

J.S.: The book explores many themes, but one that I was particularly interested in is how the needs of the community and the needs of the individual impact one another. I think balancing community and individual needs in the times we live in is an important issue that gets played out in political and social arenas regularly. I was surprised to find the same issue coming up in the research I did for the book.

M.C.:  Why do you write?

J.S.: My husband is a photographer. He explores the world through the lens of a camera. He’s very exacting about lighting, about composition, etc. In the same way, I explore the world through writing, writing and reading and researching.

M.C.:  When do you feel the most creative?

J.S.: When I’m working on a project I feel really passionate about.

M.C.:  How picky are you with language?

J.S.:    When I was a younger writer, I wanted each of my sentences to be a thing of beauty. It didn’t matter to me that what I thought of then as a beautiful sentence could slow down the plot or that some of my beauties could be somewhat over the top. My first editor begged me to make changes to some of the purple sentences in my first novel, and I conceded a bit, but not as much as I should have. When a reviewer said of that novel that it was “concertedly poetic” I was aghast. That was several books (and many years) ago. Now I go for precision, which has its own kind of beauty.

M.C.:  When you write, do you sometimes feel as though you were being manipulated from afar?

J.S.: No, I can’t say I feel manipulated. But I’m very grateful for the insights and flashes of inspiration when they come.

M.C.:  What is your worst time as a writer?

J.S.:  If I’m writing something and it doesn’t feel “good” to me I usually continue anyway, thinking that I’ll get to good and then I can go back and fix the section I didn’t care for. But sometimes the path leads to a dead end and I know I’ll have to backtrack quite far.

M.C.:  Your best?

J.S.:  The best is when the ideas are coming so fast I can hardly keep up with them, when I’m making notes on paper napkins or deposit slips from my check book, whatever is handy.

M.C.:  Is there anything that would stop you from writing?

J. S.: I don’t think so.

M.C.: What’s the happiest moment you’ve lived as an author?

J.S.: Nothing can compare to the first time you get a call from a publisher saying, “Welcome aboard.” Permanent Press is run by a husband and wife team, Judith and Martin Shepard. Judith called me one day after I’d sent in my submission and said, “I like the way you think. I’m halfway through your manuscript and I want to make sure it’s still available.” I was a wreck waiting to hear back from her, thinking, What if she hates the second half? What if she hates the ending? But then I got the call from Marty Shepard a week later saying they wanted the book. I was very happy. They published my first three novels.

M.C.:  Is writing an obsession to you?

J.S.: I write for my own pleasure; I write for clients; I write for a charity for which I do volunteer work. I’m not sure that means I’m obsessed, but it might.

M.C.:  Are the stories you create connected with you in some way?

J.S.: Again, because I’ve been writing so long, I can make comparisons between myself as a younger writer and myself as a seasoned writer. I played some role in my earliest novels, yes. But the more I write the more I get away from myself. The story in The Last Wife of Attila the Hun has almost no connection to me personally, though a couple of the minor characters are modelled after people I know. I recently completed a new novel, and there is no part of it that is connected to my real life, except for the fact that I visited the Amazon rainforest, where much of the action takes place. I’ve gone from writing about different aspects of my own life to being a magpie: I pick up shiny things wherever I find them and add them to my nest.

M.C.:  Ray Bradbury once said, “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Do you agree?

J.S.: Stay drunk on something, whether it’s writing or painting or glass blowing.

M.C.:  Do you have a website or blog where readers can find out more about you and your work?

J.S.: www.joanschweighardt.com

www.facebook.com/joanschweighardtwriter

www.fivedirectionspress.com

Chapter reveal: The Crimson Calling, by Patrick C. Greene

Title: THE CRIMSON CALLING

Genre: Horror

Author: Patrick C Greene

Website:www.PatrickCGreene.com,

Publisher:http://hobbesendpublishing.com

Find out more on Amazon

Centuries after the eradication of vampires and the death of their Queen in the Great Fire of London in 1666, the vampire population now numbers in only the hundreds. A few of the remaining survivors have regrouped and formed a High Council to unite their numbers. Now a new threat has arrived: modern day military is not only tracking members of the council, they are attempting to create their own vampire soldiers. Enter Olivia Irons. Ex Black Ops, doing her best to live a normal civilian life, but it never feels right. No family, no friends, trouble always close. When the Sanguinarian Council offers her the chance of a lifetime, the biggest risk of all seems like the only path left to choose. How will she answer The Crimson Calling?

Prologue:

The Italian Job

Sergio Toscatti wiped down the pristine MP5, the last of the guns that had arrived earlier that day. His crew, having inventoried this latest shipment from their American source, was already lighting cigarettes, rolling blunts, and pouring wine.

Sergio looked down the long, scarred work table and discreetly scanned the faces of his crew as he always did, looking for any signs of chicanery, potential betrayal, or worse, growing conscience. He had eliminated more than one of his employees in the past, and was sure he would have to do so again; all part of the black market gun trade. It was the last of the evening’s immediate business matters.

He tapped the old school long barrel .38 holstered at his side, the piece that had earned him the nickname “Blue Eyes” despite his irises being so brown they were almost black. The title was based on The Man with No Name character played by Clint Eastwood in the trilogy of westerns produced by Sergio’s countrymen in the mid-sixties.

The big gun was both an insurance policy and a flashy fashion accessory. If Sergio had run the statistics, he would have found nearly all of his “transactions” had gone much more smoothly since he had begun wearing the rig. As an added bonus, he also got laid more consistently.

Melina, exhaling smoke through lips parted and shaped perfectly to suggest a blowjob, returned Sergio’s gaze with eyes very much the blue of Eastwood’s iconic character. “Seeing what you want to?” she purred.

Sergio only smiled, noting both Carlo and Pierre deliberately avoiding his gaze. “You’re just such a sexy band of rogues. I can’t get my eyes off from you,” he answered in his charmingly slaughtered English.

Carlo ventured a nervous glance at Sergio, receiving a wink in return.

Melina nodded, crossing her arms and leaning back against the edge of the table. Ballsy little bitch she is, thought Sergio.

“All right. Listen up,” he shouted.

The others lined up along the front of the table, passing along a roll of sanitary wipes for the gun oil on their hands. Starting with Pierre on the end, Sergio inspected each of the four with the scrutiny of a drill sergeant. The Frenchman’s gaze darted around the sparsely lit warehouse like he was watching a pinball game, never landing anywhere for more than a split second, never meeting Sergio’s at all.

The American headbanger Muffin, who looked like a satanic Chris Cornell and knew it, smacked his chewing gum and brushed dust from his Iced Earth shirt, clearly bored.

Carlo, slight of build and far from confrontational, relied on a dazzling smile in any instance which did not absolutely require violence, and he flashed it now as he raised his wine glass, ever the charming bastard. Sergio imagined quick-drawing his six-shooter, shattering the glass with a precisely placed bullet and a pinging ricochet sound effect.

Her eyes never leaving Sergio’s, Melina wagged her head slightly, as if implying she was contemplating a renewal of the sexual element of their efficient, but often stormy working relationship.

“Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for all your hard works.” Unlike his marksmanship, Sergio’s English was hit and miss at best, but it was the only language they all knew. “By far, this is our biggest shipment yet. Already in this afternoon, I have buyers for roughly sixty percentage of all these guns.”

The crew responded with celebratory claps, whistles, and the raising of glasses.

“We will be very rich peoples in a matter of weeks.”

High fives, fist bumps.

Sergio narrowed his gaze, as he deliberately zeroed his keen stare on Pierre. “Hey, Pierre. Tell me something. What will you do with your cut of the monies?”

Pierre pointed at himself comically, his eyes suddenly as wide as silver dollars. “Me?” A nervous laugh escaped him. “Oh I dunno. Maybe, go to America? Vegas?”

Beside him, Muffin laughed cynically. “America sucks. And Vegas blows.”

Sergio suddenly drew his gun, spun it on his finger like Eastwood, dropped it smoothly back into the holster, and returned his gaze to his crew, never missing a beat. “You, Carlo. What will you do when you get paid?”

Carlo was speechless, startled by the furious quick-draw display. Sergio slowly stepped closer to him, letting the clacking sound of his hand-tooled cowboy boots echo through the gloomy warehouse.

“Something is wrong with Carlo. Don’t you think something is wrong with Carlo, Pierre? What could it be?”

Pierre pointed at himself again. “You want to know what I … what I … think is wrong?”

Muffin issued a quiet, fake cough, pushing away from the table and stepping past Sergio, careful to remain in his periphery.

Pierre glanced forlornly to his side, toward the guns lined along the table, none of which were loaded.

Sergio continued to stare a hole through Carlo.

Carlo smiled his dazzling smile, laughed his disarming laugh. “Hey, hey, Sergio. I feel like you are not trusting me right now. What can I do to prove I’m with you? Eh?” When Sergio didn’t answer, Carlo held his arms out wide, as if expecting an embrace. “Come on, my brother. I would never want to ruin what we have here!”

Sergio tapped the six-shooter. “Carlo, my friend. I swear if I was a faggot, I would fuck you so hard.”

All of a sudden, Sergio drew the gun, pushing it against the hollow of Carlo’s throat, drawing a startled gasp.

Pierre glanced at Muffin, Sergio’s ever-loyal enforcer, and knew Muffin would give chase if Pierre ran.

Melina uncrossed her arms and slowly walked backward to stay clear of any flying grue.

“No no no no no, come on, old friend!” Carlo sputtered.

“A few crates from our last shipment have gone missing … old friend,” Sergio said. “And you, Mister Charming, smart business dude, you have been acting strangely.”

“Wait! What … what about Pierre?”

“Pierre? Oh, Pierre knew, didn’t you, Pierre?” Sergio said, arching his dark eyebrows. “He just wasn’t sure how to tell me. Isn’t that right, Pierre?”

“Oh yes!” Pierre pointed at himself again. “I was waiting for the right time!”

Sergio sharply turned the gun to Pierre, taking a long step back from Carlo, who gasped, before deflating with relief.

“The only right times are the nows, Pierre,” Sergio intoned. Melina tried to stifle it, but snickered at the clumsy sentence structure. Sergio spun the gun toward her, infuriated by her disrespect. She merely rolled her eyes, every inch the jaded sexpot.

Sergio had almost decided to gun them all down and start fresh—when the lights went out.

“Shit! What the fuck?” Carlo cried.

Remaining cool, Sergio drew his Maglite from its little nylon sheath as deftly as he had the six shooter. He had it clicked on and was scanning the crew before any of them could react to the sudden darkness. “We’re all here, no?”

“We’re all here, boss. Relax.” Pierre, who Sergio would have expected to be the first to bolt, drew closer.

Sergio pointed the Maglite into Carlo’s eyes, the six shooter at his chest. “Are you doing this, Carlo?”

“No no no, boss. Never!” Carlo’s denial was as emphatic as a liar’s. But Sergio saw a fearful sincerity in his eyes.

“Muffin. Check the breakers box.”

Cursing under his breath, Muffin stalked away.

A flickering, dim beam suddenly emerged from Melina’s position, followed by a pair of smacks, the girl trying to coax more juice into the bulb. She raised it to inspect, casting herself in eerie, campfire-tale light. “Fucking piece of shit …”

There was a restrained rustling in the air above them, crossing Melina’s beam. She had only a millisecond to look up before a large pale spider leapt onto her face. With a yelp she was suddenly lifted into the high darkness. Her light clattered to the floor and fell black.

Pierre and Carlo gasped, and Sergio realized it wasn’t a spider that grabbed her, but a hand.

He shushed his men, shining his Maglite into the air where he’d seen Melina take off like a rocket. Crates of various goods were stacked twelve feet or higher, above which there was only whirling dust and space and rafters.

Keeping the thin beam trained on the edge of the top crate, Sergio stepped back carefully, now cursing the loud boot-steps he had relished just moments ago. Carlo was in cuddling range, preferring the man who was planning to murder him over the unfathomable darkness. His breath danced unnervingly across the little hairs of Sergio’s neck.

A small hand appeared at the edge of the crate, gripping it with shivering fingers. Carlo tensed, drawing even closer to Sergio.

Then Melina’s terrified face was there, shock visible in her eyes even through the long, curly strands of auburn hair falling before them. She brought her other hand around and made a “come on” gesture. She spoke with great effort. Sergio could not hear her, only read her lips: “Shoot … me …”

Obscenely long fingers clapped across her face and wrenched her head back, her muffled gasp echoing through the rafters. Her body was dragged out of sight in an instant.

Sergio realized Carlo was clutching his left arm like a woman. Whatever this did for Carlo, it offered Sergio no comfort. “Get your ass off me!” he stage-whispered. “My left boot, another gun.”

Carlo relinquished his death grip to grapple with the cuff of Sergio’s tight jeans, finding the little .25 after sending chills up Sergio’s spine with his scrabbling, corpse-cold fingers. Sergio shook his leg impatiently, sending the little gun sliding into the blackness.

“Dammit!” Carlo exclaimed, his voice shaking, as he searched on hands and knees. “Shine the light, Sergio!”

But Sergio ignored him, keeping the beam pointed at the swirling dust motes where Melina and her spider-fingered assailant had just been. “Muffiiiinnn!” he called, not liking the thin, high tone in his voice.

“Here!” Muffin called back. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Just get your ass over to here!” Sergio answered. He suddenly remembered Pierre. “Pierre! Where are you?”

Pierre had no intention of sticking around. From what he knew of the sellers with whom they had just done business, it was a simple leap of logic to realize they’d been set up. After seeing that bone-white killing hand, Pierre knew he was better off on his own.

Pierre felt his way along the crates, knowing when he reached the end it was only a few meters to the door, and the industrial sector beyond, where a rat or a coward, or even a shady gunrunner with a future, could hide-and-seek his way right into the heart of the city.

He found the door handle and pushed it, relieved it opened onto moonlit fog and wasn’t barricaded. His foot never touched the outside ground though. Something grabbed his collar, yanking him back inside with impossible speed.

Slamming back first into the crate, Pierre saw something like the finale to Star Wars in his mind’s eye; all starlight and explosions. Bouncing off the crate and hitting the floor, he scrambled to a stand. Pierre cried out, feeling his shattered ribs crunch and flex so painfully he could barely move. But move he would, if only so he could die outside.

He stumbled right into the chest of a man. A man who seemed rooted to the floor, for he did not move a fraction of an inch when Pierre ran into him. The impact left Pierre crying out as the shockwave registered in his ruined ribcage. He fell to his butt, holding his sides, trying not to breathe.

Then, eyes blazing with the cold white light of damnation were drilling into his, breath like grave dirt blasting his nostrils. Pierre tried to scream but had no air in his lungs. Icicle fingers grabbed his chin and wrenched Pierre’s head to the side. In his last seconds, Pierre remembered something from history class that had always terrified him.

Something about vampires.

Fangs pierced his neck like a giant staple, but did not stop there. The vampire clamped its jaws together, taking a huge bite of the muscle and tendon in Pierre’s neck, growling like a jungle cat as it wrenched its head sideways. Pierre died contemplating the strange feeling of blood pumping from his neck.

Sergio hadn’t responded when he asked what was happening, but Muffin could still hear the cowboy boots scraping and clopping about, and it sounded like a small firearm had clattered to the floor as well. That meant either Carlo or Sergio had had it hidden and now it had come into play. There had been no gunfire, so either they were struggling over it, or something else had come up. Judging by the power outage, the latter seemed more likely.

Sparking his Zippo, Muffin found his Glock where he’d hidden it between the wall and a supporting brace. He let the lighter go out and checked the magazine, happy to feel the weight of a full load, the smooth cylinder of the topmost bullet. He slapped the mag back in and skimmed the Zippo across his jeans to re-light it, holding it out to the side with his left hand while pointing the Glock straight ahead with his right.

The breaker box was about twelve to fifteen paces dead-ahead, well outside the light output of his lighter’s flame. He thought he heard an exit door open at the other end of the warehouse; likely Pierre making an escape. Good. Muffin never liked turning his back to the Frenchman, much less being with him in pitch black darkness.

Something shuffled between the rows of crates he was passing. The Zippo’s sphere of illumination extended eight feet or less, and the shuffling sound seemed to have come from a bit farther.

Muffin cursed the confining crates, wishing Sergio had made a deal with somebody else for their business headquarters. Warehouses were so fucking cliché anyway.

The boot clatter stopped. “Sergio!” he bellowed.

Muffin didn’t like this feeling, his heart pounding, something softly shuffling inches from his range of vision. It was nothing like the adrenaline rush of a well-lit gun battle. “SERGIO!” he called.

His heart sank as the darkness and silence grew heavier. Then: “TURN ON THE FUCKING BREAKERS, DUMBFACE ASS!” Sergio yelled. Muffin had never been so relieved to hear such obnoxious butchery of the English language.

Turning back to the aisle between the crates, Muffin almost jumped out of his skin. A squat, bald man dressed in dark military fatigues stood there. Muffin might not have seen him except his exposed face and hands were pale as white satin, and his eyes were like glowing ice.

Muffin raised the Glock. “Bad plan, crashing our party, fireplug,” Muffin quipped, then fired twice.

In the second that it took for his eyes to adjust from the muzzle flashes, the figure had disappeared.

“Muffin! What are you shooting?” Sergio demanded.

“Fuck this,” Muffin said to himself, turning to make a bee line for the exit—only to find the squat man standing in front of him, grinning with jackal’s teeth. Muffin tried to take a deep step back to make room for shooting, but the pale assassin grabbed his lighter and snatched it away, along with any hope of escape.

“NO!” Refusing to accept the inevitability and ease of his demise, Muffin discharged another two rounds, seeing in the muzzle flash that the demon was not in front of him but at his side, opening its toothy mouth wide.

Muffin’s long hair was a convenient handle, used to pull his head back so violently it broke his back. Muffin had the sudden idea of blowing his own brains out, but no longer had the necessary motor control. He didn’t even scream as the jagged teeth sliced and crushed his esophagus.

“MUFFIIIINNN!”

When the metalhead did not answer, Sergio realized his chances of survival had dropped dramatically, for there would be no light to expose their attacker. He finally relented and brought the Maglite beam down to help Carlo find the .25.

He instantly regretted it, for the expression of sheer terror on his countryman’s face nearly destroyed Sergio’s already decaying fighting spirit.

The erratic beam finally danced briefly across the handgun, and quickly returned to it.

“There! Go get it,” Sergio commanded.

Desperate, Carlo looked like a hideous man-monkey hybrid shuffling on all fours toward the prize. But once he had it, he rose to the height of a man. “Now we get this bastard, Blue Eyes.” Carlo ran to Sergio and the two came back-to-back, pointing their weapons into the threatening blackness.

“Now you see my loyalty,” Carlo said, and Sergio allowed himself a moment of regret for nearly killing the slender Sicilian. Then he realized he might need Carlo as a distraction.

“Okay, Carlo. We walk together to the corner where we can see everything, and we wait. You walk in front, and I shine the way. We see something, we both shoot.”

“You sure about this, Sergio?” Carlo asked, sensing Sergio’s motives. “We fight together, right?”

“Just go,” Sergio ordered, turning and pushing Carlo in front of him with the barrel of his pistol.

Carlo managed only a single furtive step before the side of his neck exploded, sending a hissing spray of steaming blood into Sergio’s beam. Carlo spun, looking to Sergio for help.

“Mi Maria, Mother of God …” Sergio whispered.

The tall, beefy vampire who had just slashed through Carlo’s jugular stepped into Sergio’s beam, smiling a bloody grin as he caught his victim mid-collapse.

“We share the last one,” the vampire said.

It took Sergio a moment to realize the nightmare with the crew cut had been speaking not to Sergio, but about him.

His skin crawling, he spun and found the bald one standing there, wiping his mouth with Muffin’s blood-soaked Iced Earth shirt. Sergio raised his gun, shooting the musclebound monster directly in the eye, and was comforted to hear a cry of pain.

Sergio wasted no time waiting to see how much damage he’d done. Keeping the Maglite beam as steady as he could, he plunged forward, in the general direction of the same exit door where Pierre had met his demise.

The taller vampire landed in front of him from an impossible leap, only three or four meters away. Sergio raised his pistol, squeezing off round after round in the general direction of his assailant, switching courses to head between a row of crates, and immediately cursing himself for it. The tight row left him trapped. If the pale killers decided to cover both ends-assuming the one he’d shot in the eye could still function-he was S.O.L. He wasn’t about to underestimate the fuckers.

But it wasn’t the vampires he found waiting at the other end of the row. It was a trio of … aliens? No. U.S. military operatives wearing night vision gear.

Sergio grew hopeful at first; assuming the soldiers were the proverbial cavalry, come to kill the monsters. Then the leader of the trio, a lustfully fit female, removed her headgear, exposing her face in Sergio’s Maglite beam.

It was the woman Devereaux, who hours ago sold him the very gun shipment he and his crew just processed. Only now she was in military tactical garb.

“What are you d—” Sergio’s question died when Devereaux essayed a perfect left crescent kick, breaking his wrist and sending the pistol clattering along the aisle to bounce off the crates like a hockey puck. She continued her momentum into a full spin, her right boot crashing into Sergio’s gut with wrecking ball force.

The gun runner fell to his back, smacking his head on the concrete floor. Now hurting fiercely in three places, Sergio simply lay there groaning.

Then the lights came on, and his eyes hurt too.

“What the fuck went wrong?” Devereaux impatiently asked one of her troops, Belfort, as he removed his night vision goggles.

“This one’s starting to … dissolve,” came the response.

Devereaux started down the aisle, pointing to Sergio and speaking to the soldier on her right. “Porter. Stay with him.”

The soldier grinned as he stepped close, nodding at Sergio. Sergio, trying to catch his breath and holding his broken hand gingerly, didn’t have it in him to stare Porter down, even if he could focus. Instead, he looked down the aisle to see what Devereaux was doing.

“Oh, you wanna watch?” the black soldier asked in a cocky, almost whimsical tone. “Come here.” Porter dragged Sergio by the collar. Seeing what was transpiring, Sergio almost felt sympathy for the predator who had nearly slaughtered him.

The squat bloodsucker was on his knees, shaking so violently he was a blur, blood and brain matter spewing from his eye socket. Six more soldiers, two of them wearing some kind of tanks on their backs, stood a few paces back, watching. Except for the stone-faced Devereaux, they seemed not only shocked, but dismayed. The taller vampire was leaning against the crates wheezing, a strange look of pained terror on his face.

As the bald vampire’s convulsions became more intense, the soldiers began to back away, warily looking toward the end of the aisle in case they needed to retreat. Blood and other fluids sloshed around the doomed vampire, hitting the floor with a sickening splatter.

A moment later, his entire body simply collapsed upon itself like an inflatable Halloween decoration just unplugged, putrescence oozing like molasses from his sleeves and pant cuffs.

The soldiers stared at the mess with grim expressions.

“This doesn’t look good for you, my friend,” Devereaux said to the other vamp standing nearby.

One of the soldiers picked up Sergio’s six-shooter and handed it to Devereaux. She opened the cylinder and dumped the remaining bullets and empty shells into her hand. She inspected them, rolled them around a bit, and turned toward Sergio. “Standard .38s?”

Sergio didn’t give an answer, but Devereaux didn’t need one. She handed the shiny pistol back to the soldier and stepped toward the still wheezing vampire. “Can you describe what’s happening, Frakes?”

The tall vampire, his icy eyes watering and his chest heaving, struggled to speak. “… You have to … help me …”

“Frakes, you knew the risks. You agreed to continually provide us with information on your condition, even if things went wrong,” Devereaux said coldly.

Frakes’ legs and hands shook. And in his eyes: good old-fashioned fear for his own imminent demise. “… No … help me, now … and I’ll … I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

Devereaux shook her head impatiently. “You’re obsolete now anyway.” She turned to the two soldiers with tanks on their backs. “Hose him.”

Frakes, feral in his desperation, tried to push away from the crate, hissing at the approaching executioners. They aimed what amounted to large-gauge pesticide spray nozzles at the shaking bloodsucker and blasted him. Frakes lunged at the nearest one, but dissipated into a roiling, hissing cloud of steam in the time it took Sergio to gasp.

Devereaux was already on her cell phone. “Devereaux here. Phase one successful. Phase two? Not so much. The stress of combat seems to overload their systems. Both subjects crapped out, one from a fucking bullet wound. Full report by 1200 tomorrow. Weapons recovered, test control subjects eliminated.”

Looking to Sergio’s babysitter, she made a thumbs-down motion. Sergio screamed his pleas to be spared—but Porter quieted him via a sharp blow with the butt of his assault rifle, before turning the gun around to make use of the other end.

Chapter reveal: TRISOMY XXI, by G.A. Minton

Title: TRISOMY XXI  

Genre: Horror

Author: G.A. Minton

Publisher: World Castle Publishing

Purchase on Amazon

Sixteen-year-old Joshua Allen was born with an extra chromosome—a genetic aberration known as Trisomy XXI, or Down Syndrome.  When a serious accident leaves him in a coma at the hospital, Joshua receives a mysterious injection that endows him with supernatural powers.  The transformed teen is linked to a string of bizarre, unexplained deaths that have both the town’s sheriff and the coroner baffled. But when a ghastly creature from another planet lands on Earth and begins its hunt for Joshua—viciously slaughtering anyone in its path in order to complete its deadly mission—Joshua and his friends are thrust into terrifying circumstances.  What follows is a horrific life-and-death struggle with this seemingly-indestructible extraterrestrial being. The salvation of an entire race of aliens hangs in the balance…  

TRISOMY XXI

by GA Minton

Chapter I

HENRY

Spring had finally arrived in the small town of Tranquil.  The winter snow had melted, and all that remained were a few patches of frosty white ice nestled under the shadows cast by some of the loftier pinion pines and alligator junipers.  Like clockwork, Mother Nature had once again displayed her magnificence.  The newly transformed landscape was now alive with a panorama of plant and animal life, recently awakened from a forced slumber under a blanket of wintry snow. 

Drawn by nature’s fragrant bouquet, ruby-throated hummingbirds and bumblebees could be seen hovering over colorful spring blossoms, sipping nectar, only to be exploited as naive vectors of pollination.  As a white-tailed deer lapped up freshly melted snow from a babbling brook, two rock squirrels emerged from their seasonal nap, giving noisy chase to each other across a sun-soaked, high-desert terrain.  Off in the distance, the muffled bugle of a big bull elk was faintly audible.

Tranquil, a rural Arizona town with a yearly population of almost three thousand, was located in the picturesque White Mountains, which boasted an elevation of seven thousand feet above sea level. 

Most of the people living in this close-knit community were honest, law-abiding citizens who worked in the large copper, silver, and molybdenum mines dotting the area.  The rest of the townspeople were either retired, or small business owners who catered to the assortment of tourists that visited the region each summer. 

Tranquil was just like its name, a sleepy mountain community where nothing much ever happened.  Yes, there was that incident that had occurred around six months ago, when Henry Pickridge, a local resident and retired miner with a fondness for straight bourbon whiskey—or  for that matter, any other spirits he could get his hands on—claimed he had been abducted by a space alien. 

According to Henry, the extraterrestrial being he encountered that day wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill visitor from another planet.  It wasn’t a little green man or a Grey.  Nor was it cute, furry, or friendly.  The otherworldly thing that attacked Henry was a nightmare—a monstrosity that he’d never seen the likes of before, or ever wanted to see again.  Unfortunately for Henry, the horrific image of that alien creature was permanently etched into his brain.  

Henry Pickridge was Tranquil’s proverbial town drunk, a crusty old-timer who lived by himself in a little wooden cabin located on the outskirts of town.  He grew up there, back when it was just a widened area in the road, missed by most passing motorists if they had blinked their eyes.  His father, Foy, was employed by the Midas Mining Company as a miner who worked hard in, at that time, the only molybdenum mine in the area.  Foy worked the lode for over twenty years until he died of lung cancer, when Henry was only fifteen. 

In order to help his mother out with the bills, Henry was forced to drop out of school in the eighth grade.  The boy worked in the mines off-and-on for longer than he could remember, until finally retiring a couple of years ago at the age of sixty-eight.  On two separate occasions, Henry ventured out to find work in Texas and New Mexico, but within a few short months found himself back in his beloved Tranquil, homesick and broke. 

A rough-and-tough abrasive man, Henry possessed a mouth so foul that it would have knocked the socks off of anyone’s Aunt Mildred.  The old duffer had about as much appeal as a turd in a punch bowl.  He was the king of cuss; the prince of profanity; the sovereign of swear; the viceroy of vulgarity.  Over the years, Henry amassed a huge repertoire of curse words and expletives—an obscene vocabulary that would have elicited the envy of any seasoned sailor or traveled truck driver.  And he didn’t limit himself to the use of the same profane phrases over-and-over again, ad nauseum; nope, the wily senior was too sophisticated for that.  The patron saint of smut had the unique ability to combine certain words together—creating a descriptive expression that would be offensive to anyone around him—one of Henry’s favorites was “pig fornicator.”

Taking immense pride in his unsavory slang, Henry became a connoisseur of the cuss-word, mixing and matching obscenities that would best accommodate his particular conversation or situation—even to the point of applying the art of alliteration in the deliverance of a choice selection of his vulgar verbalizations.  Even though he had barely attained an eighth grade education, Henry must have paid special attention in English class that day when the teacher was discussing the merits of alliteration in sentence construction.  To question if old man Pickridge had a foul mouth would be as ridiculous as asking if the Pope were Catholic—or, in Henry’s language—if the Trojan Horse had a wooden dick, or if a bear craps in the woods. 

The silver-haired speaker of smut did his research.  Curious about the origin of cusswords, he visited the town library and learned about some interesting historic accounts pertaining to the derivation of certain obscenities.  Take the word crap, for example.  Henry read in The History Book of Slang, that this word is merely a shortened version of the name Crapper, taken from the English plumber and royal sanitary engineer, Thomas Crapper, the inventor of the modern toilet. 

Henry’s verbal antics were even too much for his wife, Mabel, to handle.  She divorced the foul-mouthed fogy many years ago for what her lawyer called irreconcilable differences.  Differences. . .yes; irreconcilable. . .definitely.  “Fix me my damn dinner, you bony bitch!” wasn’t exactly the most romantic of phrases one could use to greet a wife when arriving home after a hard day’s work.  And Mabel didn’t appreciate Henry’s gift of alliteration either, especially when it was used that way—no woman appreciates being called the “b” word.  The old geezer’s lewd language had kept him a bachelor ever since—no self-respecting female would even think about tolerating his vocally offensive shenanigans.

Henry was truly the father of filthy four-letter-words.  If the citizens of Tranquil ever decided to hand out an award for “The Most Potty-mouthed Citizen,” he would be its proud recipient, winning hands down.  It would be a dream come true for Henry—one that he pictured often.  The master of ceremony would heartily announce to a hushed audience, “This year, the recipient of ‘The Most Potty-mouthed Citizen of Tranquil’ award goes to. . .Henry Pickridge!”  The crowd would erupt into loud clapping, cheers, and cat whistles. 

Old Henry, dressed in his best fishing outfit, would graciously walk across the stage to receive the prestigious honor.  The boozer would step up to the microphone and read from a wrinkled napkin that he had scribbled his acceptance speech on earlier.  “I humbly accept this bitchin award and I want to thank all you a-holes out there who voted for me!” 

The unruly members of the cheering audience would go crazy—hooting and hollering, screaming and yelling—some chanting “Hen—ry. . .Hen—ry. . .Hen—ry,” while others would cry out, “You da man, Henry. . .you da man!”  Amiably waving and throwing kisses to his rowdy admirers, Henry would proudly exit the stage, shining trophy in hand.  Like perpetual constants of the universe; the earth revolves on its axis every day and Henry Pickridge cusses—that was the name of that tune.  

Around six months ago, Henry camped out one night next to Fletcher’s Pool, a small pond that was located about five miles north of Tranquil.  There were some nice trout that resided in the deep fishing hole, and he was going to try to catch a stringer-full.  The only way to get there was to travel on Route 44—a poorly maintained, winding mountain road that everyone used before they built the new highway to Tranquil six years ago.  Now, the pothole-ridden artery was only utilized by those wishing to fish, swim, or picnic at Fletcher’s Pool, although occasionally, a group of backpackers would also take the scenic journey to explore the wooded hills and grassy valleys enveloping the area.  Henry fished there many times before, so he was familiar with the surrounding countryside.  He parked his old blue pickup truck, and set up camp about fifty feet away from the dirt road that was adjacent to the small body of turquoise water. 

Henry was the proud owner of a 1965 Chevrolet pickup truck that still sported its original factory paint job, except that now, as a result of weather and time, the “blue” had degenerated into at least five distinct shades of color—ranging from light gray to dark purple.  He would affectionately refer to his well-traveled vehicle as Betsy—Ole’ Betsy if she wouldn’t start.  All of the townsfolk in Tranquil were familiar with Henry Pickridge’s mode of transportation—it was the ancient, broken-down, bluish pickup truck sporting the white sticker with red printing on the back bumper that read, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THEN YOU ARE DRIVING TOO CLOSE TO ME—SO BACK OFF, JACKASS!  And Scotch-taped to the truck’s rear window was a sign saying, When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns!  Henry was just that kind of a guy—a free spirit who didn’t give a rat’s butt about what others thought of him.

After starting a small fire from the kindling he had gathered from a nearby wooded area, Henry sat down next to the warmth in his worn-out folding sports chair—one that he purchased many years ago when living in Irving, Texas.  The seat and back supports of his wooden throne were constructed from some type of cloth fabric, now noticeably discolored and tattered from weather and wear.  Imprinted on the frayed seat was a faded image of a blue-and-white football helmet, and stenciled on the back of the armchair were the washed-out and barely legible words, Dallas Cowboys.  For all the years that Henry lived in Irving, he had never attended a Dallas Cowboy’s football game, but he did use that chair religiously—for all other outdoor events. 

Gazing upward, Henry took off his raggedy New York Yankees baseball cap and repeatedly repositioned it on his head until it felt just right.  The full moon was out that night, shining brightly in all its splendor, and there wasn’t a single, solitary cloud in sight.  His eyes followed the somber stretch of dusky sky, dotted with twinkling luminaries that radiated their brilliance in a way that reminded him of countless white sequins reflecting off of a solid black evening dress.  As Henry meditated the vastness of the firmament above, an occasional streaming white trail of a distant shooting star would entice his peripheral vision, only to disappear from sight as he turned to observe its celestial journey.

While downing several shots of his favorite brew, Henry noticed some strange blinking lights—darting in a zigzag pattern, much like a misguided bottle rocket—moving across the clear, nocturnal sky.

“Well, crap fire and save your matches,” Henry spouted.  “What, in the name of fornication, is that?”

As the mysterious flashing beams approached his campsite, he could visually make out the outline of a cigar-shaped metallic object, dark gray in color.  A dome-like structure extended upward from the middle third of the craft, and Henry estimated the soaring thing’s length to be about fifty feet.  There was absolutely no sound emanating from the unidentified flying object, which hovered effortlessly in a fixed position over the gently swaying, neighboring treetops. 

In a state of awe, Henry vigilantly rose from his chair—eyes bugged out and mouth gaped open—astounded by the surreal presence and sheer magnificence of this alien mechanical masterpiece.  He watched intently as the Mack Truck-sized, sheeny Cuban cigar peacefully glided over the nearby assemblage of towering evergreens.  Then in one smooth fluid motion, like a raindrop falling from a leaf, it vertically descended out of sight—into an open meadow located about a hundred yards away from his camp.

“Mamma mia. . .if that’s what I think it is, I’ll kiss a rang-o-tang’s butt,” quipped the old-timer, as he followed the flying saucer’s flight through inebriated eyes. 

Outwardly, Henry tried to remain calm, but inside the retired miner’s chest sat an adrenaline-driven heart that was fluttering faster than a thumping pair of hummingbird wings.  His wrinkled flesh crawled with goose bumps, sending a huge wave of chills streaming down the entire length of the weathered fisherman’s scrawny back.  Momentarily spellbound by this strange and unusual event, Henry slowly took off the scruffy baseball cap and scratched his grizzled head, pondering about what his next move should be.   

Sitting down next to the fire, he took a big swig out of the whisky bottle, swallowed hard, and then wiped his alcohol-soaked lips on his dirty shirtsleeve.  As he stared across at the crackling flames, a wisp of crisp mountain air coolly caressed his pensive face.  Heaving a deep sigh of deliberation, Henry screwed the cap back on his glass container of booze and defiantly stood up. 

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!” he crowed.

The effects of the alcohol may have helped, but the determined old imbiber had made up his mind.  He walked over to his truck, opened the door, and grabbed the ivory handled Smith & Wesson, three-fifty-seven magnum, snub-nosed revolver lying on the seat, tucking it under his belt, behind his back.  There was a history behind this hand-held cannon that fired .357 magnum bullets—hollow-point projectiles with enough power to knock down a Clydesdale horse.  It had belonged to his big brother, Fred, who was a member of the Phoenix Police Department—a senior detective with only three months of duty left until his retirement—when he was killed in the line of duty.  Needlessly murdered by two new members of a street gang robbing a 7-Eleven convenience store as a part of their initiation.  It was around four in the morning, and Fred had walked through the front door to buy a pack of cigarettes, catching the robbers totally by surprise.  They had already killed the store clerk, so the pair of punks emptied five caps into the unsuspecting detective—Fred was dead before he hit the ground.  Never even had a chance to un-holster his gun.  The thieves got away with less than a hundred dollars.  This was just one of the thousands of countless, senseless murders that occurs every day when someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Henry used to jokingly caution his brother, “Fred, those damn cigarettes are going to kill you someday,” and he was right—in a bizarre, Twilight Zonesort of way, it was the addiction to the neatly papered cylinders of tobacco that were responsible for the police detective’s untimely death—Rod Serling himself could have authored the script, with its unforeseen O’Henry ending.  Never in his wildest dreams would Henry have thought that something like this could have ever happened to his only brother.  The sterling Smith & Wesson was happily gifted to him by Fred’s wife, who never, ever wanted to see a gun again in her life.  Henry always kept the firearm close by, treasuring it as a memento, in commemoration of his brave older brother. 

Hellbent on finding out what the metal thing with the aerial acrobatic maneuvers was, Henry slammed the truck door closed, walked back to the fire, and downed another big gulp of liquor.  Then he set out toward the UFO’s landing site—located due west of his campsite, just beyond the haughty rows of pine, juniper, and fir trees that majestically bordered Fletcher’s Pool.

Slowly making his way through the arbor of wooded columns, Henry’s eyes caught a glimpse of fluorescent light, shimmering brightly from the settled saucer ahead.  As the surplus of coniferous branches gestured in the wind, the rays of illumination radiating from the alien ship twinkled and flickered, like shiny strands of colored tinsel draped loosely over the boughs of a freshly cut Christmas tree. 

Exiting a thick grove of ponderosa pines, Henry observed the gargantuan metallic beast with its collection of blinking lights, obscurely nestled in the open grassy field ahead.  As he approached the docked spacecraft, the only sounds audible were the high-pitched chirpings of the crickets around him.  The jittery old coot slowly and silently walked through the thick grass, cautiously stopping about ten feet away from the mystical flying machine.  A sudden gust of howling wind swept across the open meadow, upsetting the rabble of wild flowers clustered around Henry’s feet.  The perennials thrashed about angrily, making thumping sounds as they unmercifully whipped against the pant legs of his trousers.

Standing motionless and taking in a slow deep breath, the amazed septuagenarian marveled at the exquisiteness of the interplanetary phenomenon from another universe.  The smooth outer surface of the saucer was fabricated from a dark gray metallic substance, an alloy that Henry had never seen before.  Flashing luminescent lights, which reflected a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors, extended in a horizontal fashion around the centrally placed dome.  Five symmetrically placed, teardrop-shaped landing extensions projected from the belly of the craft to the ground below.

Henry had watched enough documentaries about military aircraft on television to know that the complex design of this mechanical creation was far too sophisticated to have come from this Earth.  Besides, there were no jets that he knew of that could instantly reverse their direction of flight while traveling at such fantastic speeds—physically defying the laws of gravity.

This thing was definitely extraterrestrial.

Henry happened to look down at the gold plated watch strapped to his left wrist—an inexpensive timepiece he had received as a retirement gift from the Midas Mining Company.  Its luminous white hands were spinning like an airplane propeller, stopping at the high noon mark that was pointed directly at the spacecraft in front of him.  He frowned and grunted, “Suck my sausage. . .this goddam watch had better not be broken—it’s almost brand-spanking new!”  The perturbed souse moved his arm at a forty-five degree angle, extending it away from his body, and like clockwork, the hands again spun furiously, this time ending up praying to the three on the dial.  Henry shook his wrist and said, “Must be some son-of-a-bitchin magnetic thing. . .from that freakin flyin contraption over there.”  In reality, the retired miner was clueless when it came to knowing anything about wristwatches, magnetic forces, or for that matter, alien saucers from outer space. 

From a distance, the curious elder examined the UFO’s outer structure, but could see no seams, rivets, joints, or openings on the exterior of the ship, so he carefully moved in closer to get a better look. 

Then something suddenly dawned on Henry.  There was no sound coming from the landed spacecraft. 

Not a peep. 

He cocked his head and listened. 

Nothing. 

It was disturbingly quiet—too quiet to suit Henry.  A particular reminiscent thought flashed through the old codger’s boggled mind.  He recalled the 1951 science fiction epoch, The Day The Earth Stood Still, a movie that he had seen countless times before.  Would an invisible door suddenly slide open, exposing Gort, the giant frickin alien metal robot that could beam out disintegration rays from where its eyes should be? 

Unsure if he would be facing friend or foe, Henry slowly and carefully reached behind his back, pulled the snub-nosed firearm from his belt, and held it nervously at his side.

Not knowing what to do next, Henry took a deep breath in and anxiously cleared his throat.  His voice quivered as he called out, “Hel. . .hello, is any. . .anyone there?  Any. . .body    . . .home?. . .I ca. . .come in peace!”

Silence.

There was no response from inside the metal aircraft that had arrived from another planet.

Attempting to pacify his building anxiety, Henry jokingly recited the outer space vocabulary he had memorized from his favorite old sci-fi movie—the utterances used to keep the giant robot from harming any Earthlings—“Gort. . .Klaatu. . . Barada. . .Nicto!”  The old drunk felt really stupid saying that, but those were the only alien words that he knew of, and besides, it couldn’t hurt.

Again, no reply was given to the trembling alcoholic.

Henry swallowed hard, gripped the pearl handle of his magnum tightly, and began to slowly raise the barrel. 

Without warning, a condensed beam of rainbow-colored light discharged from the undersurface of the craft, seizing the surprised senior citizen in its paralyzing grip.  Henry struggled to get away, but was unable to move a muscle or scream for help.  The gray hair on the back of his neck stood on end, sending a cold shiver down his bony spine.  Henry was so horrified that he thought he was going to lose control of his bowels—take a crap, pinch a loaf, or dump a deuce in his pants, as he would fondly say.  He was petrified. . .too petrified to do anything!  The terrified tippler wouldn’t have been able to drop a load even if he had wanted to.

Son-of-a-bitch!  I’m screwed. . .what am I gonna do now?

Henry was trapped.  He was helpless. 

The engrossing iridescent shaft of luminosity lifted the senior citizen slowly and methodically toward the ship.  Floating ever closer to the mammoth spacecraft, the frightened old-timer sensed that someone orsomething inside was watching him. 

From nowhere, and without making a sound, a small oval-shaped panel slid open on the hard metallic covering of the UFO, discharging a yellow cloud of foul-smelling gaseous material into the air.  Henry caught a whiff of the vapory miasma, which reminded him of the sour acid reek that he had occasionally inhaled when he was a miner, working in the deep shafts of the molybdenum mines.  It was a fetid smell that he would never forget.  The stench was overwhelming, so Henry held his breath to avoid inhaling any of the noxious fumes. 

As the gas slowly dissipated, he caught a shadowed glimpse of something moving from inside the ship.  Rapidly blinking his irritated eyes in order to help clear up the blurry vision, the drunkard could barely make out the gangly figure of an alien being—human-like in appearance—lumbering directly towards him from within the portal opening.

Henry wasn’t one to believe in creatures from outer space—the only aliens he knew of were the illegal ones from south of the border—those with black hair and brown skin that spoke no English and worked for below minimum wage.  Old man Pickridge was in for one helluva surprise!   

Holy Jesus!  What the hell’s that thing?    

As the dark anthropomorphic being approached, Henry squinted to try to see its face, but was unable to discern any features—only that it possessed a large, oblong-shaped head.

Don’t come any closer, you overgrown alien piss-ant!

A monstrous reptilian-like extremity reached out for him, grabbing at his frayed shirt collar.  The limb was bulky and muscular, covered with coarse green scales.  Four long flexible fingers with two opposable thumbs, joined together by bands of thick fleshy webbing, extended from the animal’s grotesque hand.  Projecting out from the end of each lime-colored digit was a thick, black fingernail—a horny claw that was long and curved, with serrations—ending in a razor-sharp point.  Henry’s heart was pounding like a rock band’s drummer, and he could feel the surge of adrenaline racing throughout his quivering body.

Do I still have my. . .where’s my damn gun?  Even though he couldn’t move his arms, Henry sensed that the revolver still remained at his side, its pearl handle tightly gripped in the sweaty palm of his trembling right hand. 

Closing both eyes and using every ounce of strength that he could muster, he moved his right wrist just enough to elevate the snub-nosed barrel of the Smith & Wesson.  Unable to accurately aim his gun, he would have to shoot from the hip, just like a quick-draw artist—only minus the quick-draw part.

The saurian hand latched onto Henry’s left shoulder, and the frail old man could feel the vise-like grip of the beast’s claws painfully tighten down on his bony flesh.

Then a terrifying thought raced through his head.

This motherthumpin thing is gonna kill me. . .I don’t wanna die. . .not like this!  Henry didn’t want to end up like his brother, the haphazard recipient of a senseless murder.  You weren’t given no chance to do anything, Fred, but I will. . .I will, dammit!

Panicked but determined, the leather-skinned whiskey guzzler concentrated all of his will on his right index finger, which was firmly curled around the contoured trigger of the .357.  Even if he could only fire off one round, his hollow pointed slug was bound to inflict some serious damage to whomever or whatever it hit.

Come on, you pussy. . .squeeze your finger. . .pull the trigger. . .move the hammer. . . shoot the freakin gun!

Forcefully flexing his forefinger, he felt the metal trigger slowly begin to budge, then depress. 

Screw you and the horse you rode in on, you alien bastard!

The trigger finally yielded to his finger pressure, firing the weapon once—discharging its deadly hollow-nosed projectile in the direction of the alien aggressor.  

“Boooom!”

The report echoed through his ears—a deafening sound, as if two symbols had been clashed together next to Henry’s head.  The recoil of the magnum’s barrel was so intense that the gun flew out of the old man’s hand and landed on the grassy ground below his levitated feet.  A cloud of blue-gray smoke fumed before the alcoholic’s terror-filled eyes, and the strong distinctive odor of gunpowder permeated throughout his flared nostrils.  Those were the last things that Henry remembered before he passed out.

#

When Henry awoke, it was daylight, and the sodden old-timer found himself at the campsite, lying on his sleeping bag, fully clothed, with his baseball cap and shoes still on.  The elder’s revolver, along with his half-full bottle of liquid spirits, lay innocently on the grass next to him.

“What. . .what in the name of Jesus H. Christ is going on?”

Groggy and disoriented, the rousing rummy slowly lifted himself from the sleeping bag and sat up.  His head throbbed, and he felt woozy and weak—like he had been drugged with a Mickey Finn.  Henry instinctively reached over for his nearby bottle of hooch, uncapped it, and tossed down a few nips of intoxicant. 

“Oh, man. . .I feel like hammered dog crap.”

Wait a minute. . .how the hell did I get here?  Was that all a dream. . .a damn hallucinatory?  I didn’t drink enough to pass out. . .did I?

 Henry popped his baseball cap off and swept back his scraggly locks of silver hair with both hands.  The old alcoholic had suffered through enough hangovers to know that the sensations in his head were very different from those symptoms that he usually experienced after a night of heavy boozing. 

“This is just too friggin freaky!” 

The befuddled inebriate felt mighty weird, and knew that something creepy had befallen him the night before—something he was presently unable to explain.  Determined to find out what happened, Henry picked up his gun and walked back to the area where the UFO had landed.  He meticulously explored every inch of the grassy field and found nothing—the saucer was gone, leaving no trace that it had ever been there before.  No footprints, no blood, no wounded monster from outer space.

Jumping in his pickup, the dazed dipsomaniac raced back to town and reported his fantastic story to Buck Evans, the sheriff of Tranquil.  Buck was very familiar with the alcoholic antics of Henry Pickridge—he had arrested the old coot several times before for drunk and disorderly conduct.  The experienced lawman was extremely skeptical, but still drove out with the protesting boozer to search the area.  When they arrived at Fletcher’s Pool, Henry led Sheriff Evans to the grassy site where the alleged alien landing had occurred.  They hunted for any signs of an extraterrestrial visit, but found nothing—there was no evidence to indicate that anything had landed there, much less a flying craft from outer space. 

Most of the townsfolk never believed Henry’s bizarre account, attributing it either to hallucinations conjured up by his alcohol-demented mind, or to the dream illusions associated with an affliction of sleep paralysis.  Besides, no one else saw the flying saucer or any aliens, and the retired miner had no tangible proof to back up his startling story—except for the oddly shaped bruises on his left shoulder, and the fact that one of the bullets in his three-fifty-seven magnum had been fired.

Henry Pickridge was the talk of Tranquil for the past several months—and because nothing that exciting had ever occurred in the town before, the local gossips milked the scary story for everything it was worth.  Frequenting the local bars in town, the liquor-loving lush would gladly spin his tale over a wet whiskey for anyone who would listen—especially if they paid for the drinks.  Henry really didn’t care whether they believed his grisly encounter with the alien or not—in his mind, he knew that it had happened.

#

After enduring months of a snowy, harsh winter, the community of Tranquil approvingly welcomed the onset of beautiful spring weather.  In preparation for the upcoming tourist season, the residents hung up a“Welcome to Tranquil - The Quietest Town in Arizona” sign over the street entrance to its business district—a city block of about twenty stores, shops, and eating establishments located on both sides of Main Street.

As an orange-red sunset slipped into the western sky, the townspeople prepared for the approaching darkness of night.  Scattered puffs of grayish-white smoke could be seen arising from a handful of chimney tops, as the evening chill still had enough bite in it to warrant the welcome of a warming blaze in the household fireplace.

Most of the residents and newcomers had already departed the downtown area and were heading for home, but a few window shoppers could still be seen milling around the outside of some of the quaint gift shops that were interspersed along the row of small business establishments.  Even though a spattering of rental cars belonging to a handful of visiting tourists remained parallel parked along the curb located on the north side of Main Street, virtually all of the shops and stores in town had pulled the shades, hung up their CLOSED signs, and locked their doors for the night.  For now, everything was peaceful and quiet in the charming little mountain village of Tranquil. . .but that would all change drastically in the days to come.