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Poor lighting, but here’s my latest painting 🙂 I like the simple lines & the way the red blended with the black to give the dress a flame-like appearance

Little Bunny FooFoo

AJ Mullican

Bill and Mary decided to adopt a bunny for their little boy Adrian as an Easter present. Adrian was so excited he jumped and squealed and clapped his hands. Being the imaginative three-year-old that he was, and being that “Little Bunny FooFoo” was his favorite song, he named his new rabbit “FooFoo.”

What Bill and Mary hadn’t anticipated was FooFoo’s delicate nature. Unlike, say, a puppy, FooFoo couldn’t take being so roughly handled, as three-year-olds are wont to do.

A week after FooFoo came to Bill and Mary’s house, he died.

A week after that, the headaches began.

Adrian began waking with pounding headaches every morning. Adrian complained that it felt like he’d been hit on the head in his sleep. Bill and Mary tried to reassure him, but after a month Adrian grew to be terrified of sleeping. For a little while, they let him sleep in their room with them, but they eventually grew tired of his nonsense and insisted that he sleep in his own room again like a big boy.

The next morning, Bill and Mary woke to find Adrian dead in his room, his skull bashed in. On the wall these words were scrawled.

“Little Bunny FooFoo, hopping through his new house

“Catching all the children

“And bopping them on the head.”

Leaves on the Wind

AJ Mullican

Annalise looked up at the strange old tree, its leaves and branches always stretched to the west as though it was trying to grasp the last vestiges of each day’s light. She had met Jonathan there, and it was under this tree that they were most happy.

Under this tree, they had grown from small children to sophisticated adults. Jonathan had first kissed her under this tree. He had proposed under this tree. Their children had grown under this tree, coming to it every day the weather allowed.

They called it “their” tree, as though someone could own a piece of forest older than man itself. How many times had they played tag under its branches? How many times had they climbed it? How many times had their children played under it? It was impossible to count.

Jonathan had been called to join the war two years ago. It made her terribly sad, but every day she came to their tree and prayed for his return.

That morning he had returned, or rather, his body had.

Holding her children’s hands firmly in hers, Annalise cried silent tears as she trudged up the hill to their tree.

“Let’s play a game, children,” she said, handing each the ends of some lengths of rope she’d brought. “Thomas, I want you to climb onto the strongest branch you can find and toss the ropes over it. Emma, I want you to tie your ends to the trunk of the tree here. Make sure your knots are good and strong.”

Emma looked up at her with the innocence of youth. “What are we doing, Mommy?”

Annalise smiled and patted her daughter’s brown curls. “We’re going to hang some presents to honor your daddy’s memory. Won’t that be fun?”

“Is that what the flowers are for?”

“You’ll see, sweetie.”

Their work took little time, and soon the ropes were hanging over the branch, swaying in the wind. Annalise took the free ends and tied some knots of her own.

“Momma,” Thomas piped up, “Those knots are too big to hold flowers. What are we hanging for Daddy?”

She didn’t answer the question. Instead, she asked the children to climb the tree with her.

“Now Emma,” she said, “This part I need Thomas’s help with. Close your eyes dear, because it’s a surprise.”

Emma closed her eyes like the good little girl she was. She didn’t see her mother clamp her hand over Thomas’s mouth. Didn’t see the loop of the rope tightened around his neck. Emma didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

By the time Annalise and her children were found, swinging like leaves in the wind, the birds had nearly picked them clean.

Got half of my poetry book recorded this morning. I’m loving the spare bedroom in the new apartment. No background noise from the jet-engine air conditioner of the old apartment.

Tomorrow I plan on finishing my recordings, then comes the challenge of trying to figure out how to merge all the files. I’m no one-take wonder, so there has been a lot of swearing and deleting mistakes. If I knew how to cut out errors it might be easier, but I figured that by recording each poem separately I wouldn’t go insane from having to restart the whole thing from the beginning every time I tripped over a word.

Progress on my novel has been temporarily paused until I can get these recordings done. It’s still brewing in the back of my head, though. I’ve got to think of more trouble to get Serenity Hope into before I (maybe) get her out of it. 😉

I can’t seem to decide what I want to do artistically lately. Or rather, I want to do too many things.

I’m going to attempt to record some of my poetry soon (now that we have an extra room) so that I can hopefully publish it in ebook form.

I have started two new polymer clay projects that I hope to bake soon, and I am still plugging along with my novel.

Lots of things I want to do and not enough attention span to finish all of them lol

So I’ve noticed that I have been writing in fairly important things in the story line and then forgetting to keep track of those loose ends. They’re not plot holes exactly, more like things I wrote in that I made sound important (which they are) but then promptly faded into the background. I’m having to go back and add in more story to make these things seem as pertinent as they are.

On the plus side, this will likely add to my pathetic word count by giving me more directions to spin from. This should teach me to be more organized, but I doubt I’ll learn. I’m just too set in my ways.

This will unfortunately make the writing process take longer, but I hope that it will add depth to my novel.

Be on the lookout for new polymer clay sculptures & drawings & paintings as I get settled into the new apartment 🙂

I will also keep writing, of course. I’m just spreading my creative wings once again.

Reflections

AJ Mullican

There it was. The mirror that Mummy and Daddy hid in the attic. They’d told Jane she must never play with it, for it was old and heavy and might fall on her. Much too dangerous for a child.

Jane’s nanny had fallen asleep, and Jane had snuck into the attic to find it. Now that it was in front of her, she was almost afraid to touch the dark cloth that was draped over it. How could an old, dusty mirror be dangerous? Surely her parents were more afraid of her hurting the mirror than the mirror hurting her.

After several minutes of debate, Jane reached for the cloth with shaking hands, half expecting the mirror to reach back and grab her. When nothing of the sort happened, she gained confidence and pulled at the cloth with all her strength.

The cloth came free, and Jane stared in awe at the elaborate carvings on the frame. She was so enamored of them that she forgot to look into the mirror itself.

She was not alone in the reflected image in the glass.

Jane whirled around to look but there was no one behind her. She looked back into the mirror and saw him again. A little boy, about her age, dressed in his Sunday best and wielding a large kitchen knife.

Every time she turned back to tell the boy to leave, he was gone. Every time she faced the mirror, he was back.

“Leave me alone,” she said to the mirror, hands planted firmly on her hips. “This is my mum and dad’s house. You need to go away.”

The boy said nothing.

“I’m serious. When my mum and dad get home and I tell them about you, they’ll be really cross.”

In the mirror, the boy seemed to move closer.

Jane trembled with fear. This mirror-boy would not go away. Instead, he inched towards her, knife in hand.

From the open attic door, Jane heard her parents come home.

“Mum! Dad! There’s a strange boy up here!” she yelled down to them. “Come make him go away!”

The mirror-boy smiled. By this time he was so close to Jane that she imagined that she could feel his breath on her neck. She spun around, waving her little arm to try to hit him, but there was no one in the attic with her.

Jane turned back to the mirror just in time to see a thin silver blade tinged with red emerge from the stomach of her reflection. She looked down to discover that her jumper was covered in blood.

Wedded Bliss

AJ Mullican

Mara stood in front of the mirror, checking every last detail. Makeup: perfect. Hair: glorious. Cleavage: hell yes. Just one final touch before she could go downstairs.

The veil.

She’d been waiting for this wedding her whole life. From a tender young age, her mother had told her stories of how wonderful her wedding night would be. Fantastical tales of what a young woman can expect from her first taste of marriage. It all sounded so delicious.

Stepping into her delicate heels, Mara glided down the hall to the spiral staircase, every step the picture of elegance. Tiny crystals woven into her gown glittered in the lights from the sconces. Every nerve ending quivered with the knowledge that she was about to join an elite society of matriarchs, an unbroken line stretching back centuries.

As she crossed the threshold of the cathedral, the organ played a beautiful yet haunting tune. Not quite a traditional processional, but then again her family had its own traditions. Mara had no father to give her away, so she marched alone down the aisle with all the grace and poise demanded of a woman of her stature. A woman on the verge of marriage was considered quite powerful in Mara’s family.

She reached the altar and turned to face her soon-to-be husband. Her excitement was such that she nearly forgot her vows.

To love. To honor. To become one with this glorious male specimen before her.

The priestess—one of Mara’s cousins—finished the ceremony and declared them husband and wife. All five hundred attendants rose in unison. Five hundred of Mara’s closest family members.

The kiss was announced, and Mara’s new husband lifted her veil. She smiled, exposing razor sharp, sparkling white canines, and gave the terrified man the last kiss of his life.

All in all, it took less than twenty minutes for Mara to clean the flesh from his bones. She used her veil to wipe the blood from her mouth as more than a dozen generations of women applauded her new eternal life.

The new apartment is much more spacious than our last, but it’s definitely in need of nightlights or something. I also need to find the extra lamp I have, so I don’t have to use the bathroom light to see in the guest bedroom/craft room. Once the sun comes up it shouldn’t be too bad, though, because there’s a nice window that I can open up.

Later today I’ll share a couple pieces of flash fiction that I wrote last week but didn’t get around to posting because of all the moving madness. Right now I’m going to try to see what I can do with my work in progress. Not feeling very motivated or inspired right now. Maybe this futon is just too comfortable. 😉