This is my inaugural Fiction post on Esoteric Orange. I’ve been writing stories and novels for decades but I’ve published almost none of them. Esoteric Orange gives me a place to show some things I’ve held for a long, long time. I’ll also be posting some Poetry before long. My printed book, The Deep Lake, is available below, as is my self-illustrated poem, The Speederlink, currently available in ebook. The following story, Canned Milk with a Cartoon Cow, is part of a novel I wrote twenty years ago. Please enjoy, Like if you do and Share if you like.
CANNED MILK WITH A CARTOON COW
The morning has always been my worst time for impressing others, responding to orders and getting on the ball. My father spent years trying to condition me out of that. He sometimes woke us beating pots and pans in our room, a sudden explosive jangling banging like firehouse alarm bells made out of car wrecks. I’d snap upright in terror, breathless, shocked back from my dreams of flight. But that was ordinary life for Daddy. He got a whole houseful of people ready to face society every day, preparing himself for a battle of wills with large groups of bull-headed people including judges, lawyers, cops and robbers, the Sheriff and all his deputies—including plenty of mutinous ones—as well as murderers and thieves, people talking from behind thick iron bars and victims and families of all these people. And morning happened to be his best time of day. He was always on full throttle in the morning. Read More