Screaming Hills – A published Story

This is the first chapter of Screaming Hills. An additional 4,000 words (along with this of course) is published with Z Publishing House. Enjoy the read!
Written by -M. Taggart
Fiction

Screaming Hills

“What can burn your thoughts, can burn your soul.” Nick tossed a rock over the edge of the cliff. He listened carefully as the rock hit the side of the cliff face. He didn’t hear it land at the bottom.

“What the hell does that mean? You should write that down.” Rick stepped on his cigarette.  Smoke spilled from his nostrils as he spoke.

“It means whatever you’d like for it to mean. Have you ever noticed how people are in this town? Not all, but most. The depressed expressions with sunken eyes and an edge of hostility in their walk?” Nick opened his arms wide with his palms up. They stood at the top of Indian’s Leap, the town overlook. One side consisted of the entire view of their home town, The Falls. The other side was a view of their High School rivals, Little-Vegas, as they liked to call it. “It’s as if they’ve given up.”

It was noon. The sun was too hot to not be under shade. Rick knew the heat of the sun wouldn’t keep Nick from standing in this one spot for the next hour. Sweat would soak both of them and their shirts would stick to their backs and he knew Nick wouldn’t move. He’d stand there and look at the town.

“I guess. Maybe I’m one of them. I don’t know. There’s not much money in either of these towns. The paper mills went under years ago and now they sit and rot. What’s to be happy about?”

“Isn’t that just it though?” Nick smiled.

“Don’t go on one of your rants. Come on, let’s get down and find a place out of the sun.”

“It’s funny. When I’m asked a question, I expect that I’m expected to answer the question. You asked. Now I answer. How about the corn fields. How about the next strong thunder storm, or the wind that comes with it, or the rain that drenches the fields which creates the corn. All this corn throughout this valley and the sweet smell it spreads and no one can find a reason to love this? No one but maybe the farmer? But! We know the farmers’ kids, and they are dealing, and walk with their sunken eyes and spread nothing but filth and hate along with a deadly addiction. So the happiness stopped with the farmer who created the sweet smelling corn and begs the skies to open and dump beauty on his fields; only to be crushed to a stop by his off springs’ inability to accept happiness. Does that sum it nicely for you?”

Rick lit another cigarette, inhaled fully, and again smoke vacated through his nostrils. “You won’t be here much longer will you?”

“I’ll stand here longer. But no, I will not stay in this town. I argue with myself. I’d like to stay and conquer my back yard. I’ve read and heard how important it is to do this before leaving. Otherwise you chase what you had failed to accomplish. But, I doubt this is true because if it were than no one would ever be anywhere without having failed first. I also think most of the people who say this only say it to sound as though they’ve put true thought into the statement. And from what I see, people are full of shit. I want to develop as a person and I’m sure I’ll stunt my development if I don’t leave. I want to walk in a town that lives on hope and feel what that might taste like. Do you see?”

“I get it. You asked me a question. I need to answer. But you asked if I see. Yes, I see, but I don’t understand. How can you feel what hope might taste like?”

“I only said that to be sure you were listening. Actually, it’s like this; what if hope was chicken soup made from scratch served at a restaurant that was loved by the town. What if the chef was a grandmother who had ten grandchildren and those grandchildren stopped in from time to time to have the chicken soup. What if the grandchildren loved their grandmother so much they hoped she might live until she was one hundred and twenty and what if each time they stepped into the restaurant they said a prayer asking for just that. And then, they order the chicken soup.”

Nick’s face was tense. Rick knew it wasn’t easy for Nick. How Nick expressed himself with words was a fraction of what Nick felt inside. He’d seen Nick turn to the Nick that the others talked about. Feared. “You know, this time, I think I do understand. And yes, I’d order that soup. And I’d taste hope. I get it.”

“Then why can’t the people of this town get that corn is their fucking chicken soup. They are blessed with the most fertile valley in all of New England. The fucking river rushed over its fucking edges so many times in the past that it’s literally farmland handed to them by God and they don’t see it. They don’t get it. They smash their bodies with heroin and coke and whatever other drugs they can get. And they fall into what they consider normal for any small town with its mills gone. And they die. They all fucking die.”

Rick watched as Nick’s face transformed from tense to focused and angry and relaxed again. The sun was still too hot. And their shirts were now sticking to them. But he’d stand right here with Nick and the both of them wouldn’t be going anywhere, just yet.

***

Here’s the Amazon link if you’d like to read the rest.

https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Emerging-Literary-Fiction-Writers/dp/1097684032/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Emerging+literary+writers+Northeast+region+z+publishing+house&qid=1568726600&s=gateway&sr=8-1

And here’s a wonderful testimonial:
“This a fantastic short story collection of current emerging writers. Lots of great, varied stories. Matt Taggart is the reason that I bought this and his small town, mystical nuanced story is excellent! Matt is a fantastic writer and poet with a fantastic blog on word press. I highly recommend you check out his writing in any format.”

Have the best day possible,

Matt

 

Short Story Based on True Events

I received a touching review on ‘Don’t Be A Sally’ a short story based on true events.

“Wonderful short story about Adam and Goldie, lyrical, honest, masterfully written (with a sad touch), plus a lot of suspense along the way and a great character building. A remarkable treat for short story-readers!”  –Victoria Ohlsson 

Victoria is a fantastic author and has a wonderful blog which you can find here: https://raynotbradbury.com/

An excerpt, Chapter 1

His heart pounded in his chest and his ears rang. He was in hell. He was sure of it. This moment; with this feeling of sickness, and pure hatred for what he felt, was hell. Welcome to hell.

No vomit came from his stomach. No vomit came from his throat and no vomit came from his mouth. His mid-section wretched up and down looking like an October cat in a filthy dance. Up and down his body rose and nothing came out. Yet he smelled his own vomit lingering all about him. Again, he rose up, and again he produced nothing. Beads of sweat were on his forehead and it wasn’t long before they fell onto the surface of the tub. He lurched heavily downward with a massive cough and something came up. Something vile and red landed onto the tub’s floor. Black. He saw nothing but black as he slowly faded and fainted again.

 

I think about my cousin, Adam, often. I haven’t spoken to him in months. He has chosen a path that most wouldn’t and I can only hope he is as happy as possible. The photo on the cover is the valley where the story takes place. I took the photo. This is a self published, raw and honest story.

I’ll do it – Poem

A great childhood friend wants me to write for him.
We lost another.

He said he wants to remember the memories
that made him a better person while being with him

We knew Sean since early childhood. Sean didn’t have it easy.
Now, he’s gone.
So I’ll write
The best that I can. And he’ll give that to Sean’s mother.

Life’s a funny thing until it’s not.
If I close my eyes, I see Sean, with his wide grin
laughing and going on with a story.

I tried telling myself it was no big deal.
I don’t know about how to fix any of this.

 

-M. Taggart

Let’s not play pretend – Odd Walking Thoughts

We’ll go here now. It’ll not matter because the filled glass will be put away. It’s not for them to do this. When they do we leave. It’s not truth and we know this. Because we know we cannot care about them or how they came to think. Their decision is their own and then there’s more.  There’s always more it’s odd that we continue to care.  A cob fell from the stock. A boy picked it from the mud and wondered where it came from. He turned and faced the morning sun. He wanted to ask.

-M. Taggart

 

O.W.15

A Short Story

A Short Story
Written by
-M. Taggart
Non Fiction

A Short Story

 

It was her birthday. She wanted to talk. A lot. I like to listen, but had planned on reading a book. I ordered a Guinness.

She told me she was lucky to make it. She was now 60. She didn’t say the number out-loud, instead she faced me and asked me to count her fingers.

For the next half hour I listened to her story. She had lived in foster care, had been abused, physically and mentally, found herself at 18 with a vicious tongue and lost herself completely in her twenties.

She had attempting suicide multiple times. The last attempt landed her in a coma and in the hospital. During the explanation of her life she bounced from age-to-age and from addiction to health. By her mid-thirties she had once again found herself and had stopped drinking. She also stopped using drugs.

She found both again and lived another round of almost not living. She was homeless for a time. She vomited feces while she was dying. She woke up on a Monday, put her make-up on, and lived.

I didn’t bother trying to read my book. I wanted her to finish her story. This happens to me often when I sit at the bar. I don’t mind. When I don’t want to talk, I stand in the corner, alone, with a book and a beer.

She is very kind. Full of love for life and happy to have not died during her attempts to end hers. She told me this while pouring her new beer into an empty pint glass. Her eyes widened as she started a new chapter of her story.

Slowly, I entered small facts about myself into the conversation. “You lived in Turners Falls, MA?!” she replied? “No, I went to High School in that town. And Turners was a border town to my home town.” “No wonder you had anger! There’s nothing there!”

That wasn’t the reason I had anger. I love that town.

She knew the drug houses, the homeless issue, the violence, the left over edge one has after spending any length of time in that region. And here we sat, in a pub located in Maine.

She asked if I was familiar with Greenfield. “Yes. Greenfield is where I was in one-too-many fights and also where I spent time in jail.”

She told me she lived in the woman’s home in Greenfield and that’s where she got clean. It took over a year, but they were amazing to her and saved her life.

I told her I wrote a short story that had much to do with the small town mindset of that area. And there we sat, enjoying our lives in the now, talking about the past. About the very town where I’ve lost friends due to addiction and violence. The very town where I found love for the first time and where I learned driving alone late at night, with the windows down and radio off, was a form of freedom that I was only just beginning to understand.

 

-M. Taggart

Odd Walking Thoughts

And mud walks on. We smear our hands to feel. Isn’t it nice to know. He tilts the bottle one more time until empty. When I tell an addict they’ll be OK they say, “I know.” We walk toward death with an even pace. I ask, “Does it bother you much?”

-M. Taggart

A Short Story – No Thanks, Lady

Short Story
Non Fiction
Written by -M. Taggart
7/8/18

 

No Thanks, Lady

 

Yesterday evening I went to the pub to have a beer, relax, and read Hemingway. Kim, the bartender, asked how Megan and Gavin were doing. I told her they are good and happy. After she brought the beer I dove into my book.

I needed a moment to clear my head.

A woman zeroed in on me. She sat on the stool next to me. She put her hand on my back and called me baby. I tried to ignore her.

Kim saw that I was annoyed. She came over and asked what I was reading. I told her which short story and that it was Hemingway. I told her that his sentence structure and delivery of words seems to calm me.

The woman sitting next to me told me I was a man of depth. She put her hand on my left arm, near the bend in my elbow and squeezed while leaning closer to me. She told me she would know because she’s a therapist.

Kim looked concerned for me and again asked how Megan and Gavin were doing. I quickly replied they were doing good while flashing my ring in the woman’s face. I told Kim that the building of our house was in full motion.

My thoughts raced. I wanted to scream at this disgusting being. I wanted to tell her to get her fucking hands off of me. I’m not a piece of meat. I would never do this to another person. But I didn’t. I had fought enough earlier in the day. I didn’t want to again.

I had purposefully chosen the bar stool closest to the wall. Hell, I had waited for it to open while standing in the corner. I wanted to be alone, with my book, around people without being touched. I dislike being touched. But I calmed myself and listened to her tell me about addiction. About how bad the town was suffering. She told me about all of this while licking her lips constantly. She even removed her glasses and tried her best attempt to show me her younger self.

She droned on and on and said, “I don’t fucking know, there’s the f word, I never say fuck, I don’t fucking know how to fix these addicts. I don’t know what to do.” All while finding any possible avenue to touch my shoulder, arm, back, and even reaching for my hand, the one with the wedding ring. “Do you know what I’m saying, baby, don’t you feel their pain. I pulled away, pushing myself into the wall the best I could. Then she made the mistake of calling me brilliant. She doesn’t know me. I’ve hardly spoken and now I’m brilliant? More like now I’m the therapist. This is nothing new to me. People latch on to me and vomit. I sit and I listen and I smile and I think. This person is a dime a dozen and when I was done listening to what I could gather for writing material I told her ever so nicely, “It’s time for me to read my book.” And I let her fade away into realizing how little I cared for her attempt at knowing me.

I ignored her when she tried to engage me again. She paid, quickly finished her drink, and left the pub.

I did want to ask her a few questions. Such as, “What are you views on sexism?” But I didn’t. I did tell her that I was a writer. She didn’t listen. But I did. I learned she isn’t capable enough to help her addicted clients to the level she wishes and she wasn’t aware enough to know I was going to use her possible sex addiction in a short story. That’s what happens when people talk too much and don’t listen.

 

-M. Taggart

 

Poem-

Sometimes memories are like metal fans.
With each blade sharpened-
They aren’t beckoning you
They are pushing you away-
When you reach for them
You are cut, again-
Leaving you reeling
Running from closet to bedsheets
to where you no longer
own your memories

-M. Taggart

 

 

It’s just a dream

I had a very disturbing dream last night. I was unable to fall back to sleep. Instead I looked at the bedroom door, wondered what might be on the other side, and for the first time that I can remember I thought of Hell as an actual fact.

To the best of my daytime memory it went like this:

I was jogging in the inside of the circumference of a tennis court. The tennis court had a gate made of wood built around the entirety of it. The wood planks stopped roughly two feet from the ground. I noticed two homeless men sleeping under the two foot gap. They both wore blue jeans. Their faces were haggard. The men appeared to be sleeping off a large affliction of some kind.

I jogged to the exit of the tennis court where a third homeless man awoke as I came near. His eyes had dark circles under them. He meant to speak to me, but I jogged passed him and down the hill to the building below. I entered the building. The building resembled an old YMCA and was empty. I stood near the entrance desk. The form of a man I knew appeared, squatting, with his back against the wall on the other side of the desk.

“Hello, Matt.”

He looked healthy. He looked good.

I don’t remember everything he said. I wish I did. I asked him about the three homeless men. He told me they are stuck in a cycle and that they will be stuck. The three men were him, but not him. This was a healthy him.

The dream fluttered and I found myself outside of the YMCA look-a-like building with the man’s son. My best friend.

“I just saw your father.”

“What?”

“I saw your father’s ghost.”

His smiled. “Show me where.”

I took him into the building and showed him exactly where his father had been squatting against the wall. The dream developed into the oddity of being that it is, his father reappeared with a bit of a halo. Now though, he was standing, and his eyes shown a deep imprinted knowing.

“There he is.” I nodded my head toward his father’s ghost.

“Where? I don’t see him?”

“He’s standing right there looking at you.”

Scott was speaking, I can’t recall what he was saying.

“Why can’t I see him?”

Scott replied to both of us, “Because he’s still dead.” Only I heard.

“What did you say, Scott?” He replied. I can’t remember what he said. I wanted to know how I was dead. Scott then shook my hand and said something similar to, “I’m going now.” He then turned toward the wall and opened an unseen door. As though it was a portion of time, or fabric of time, itself.

I thought I might see the entrance to heaven. Scott stepped inside the most pitch black tunnel heading steeply downward that I’ve ever seen, dream or otherwise. He was gone.

 

-M. Taggart

 

 

 

I’m Fine – Short Story

Short Story
Fiction
Written by -M. Taggart

I’m Fine

 

His father never called him. And when he called his father, it was generally ignored. If he wanted to see his father he drove to his father’s house and knocked on the door. Sometimes the door wouldn’t open. Other times it would open before he reached the steps. He never knew which father he was going to get. He was never asked inside. His father was too ashamed of the interior of the house. They’d sit on the steps and talk sports. Or about beer. Sometimes they would talk about government corruption and always they talked about humanity. Never, though, did he step inside.

One time he drove to his father’s house to find his father passed out drunk in the driveway. He went to town, bought a six pack of beer, and came back. His father was still passed out in the driveway. He didn’t care. He loved his father as he was. Even if his father didn’t love himself. When his father finally woke, he offered him a beer. It was still cold. His father took it, drank half down, and said “Did you see who they voted in? This isn’t for self desire to love what’s to come, it’s for self duty to be what is!” He wasn’t sure what that meant, but they talked about politics while drinking beer for the next two hours.

A large cloud, shaped like a simple circle, produced shade on the mountainside. He thought it looked nice. He liked how the wind was just strong enough to push the leaves in a continuous hurry. It was easy to watch.

He used a stick to draw a circle in the dirt. He was sitting on a rock just above the water line. The riverbank mud and dirt was spattered with leaves and smelled of organic waste. It was going to get worse before better. He knew this. He wished the getting worse part would go nicely on him the way a mean dog eases up just before biting and instead of biting only shows teeth and raises its fur. Maybe death is like that. Maybe you only feel bad for a small amount of time, and then you’re free. He drew an ‘X’ in the circle.

The cloud had moved on and now he thought the mountainside looked bright and alive. He tossed the stick into the river, watched the creation of water rings disperse, and pulled his knees into his body. He felt as though he were hovering just about his body. Looking forward, searching for another kind of shade, he saw double as tears filled his eyes, then saw nothing because he would not blink.

He missed his father. He wished he’d been able to spend more time with him. Now the option of time is gone. He wanted to drive to his father’s house, sit on the steps, and talk. Because talking to his father’s steps is better than not talking at all. And he thought if he ever has a child he’ll sit on those same steps and tell exactly how everything was instead of hiding how it should be.

 

**

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