Fiction Friday - The Doorman

The Doorman pulled open the heavy glass door.

"Welcome, Mrs. Whitmore." He gave a knowing smile to the well-dressed matron who entered. She scowled at him. 

"Wipe that smirk off your face. Do you know who I am?"

With one hand on his heart, smile still intact, he bowed very slightly. "Mrs. Margaret Whitmore, widow of Douglas Whitmore, mother to Patty and Doug Jr., grandmother to Michael, Stacy, Karina, and by adoption, Chase..."

"Beg your pardon - who's that?"

He ignored her interruption. "...current Chairwoman of DexCo Industries,..."

"...Chase who? I don't know any Chase."  

"... running highly profitable sweatshops in Pakistan, China, and ...Myanmar." He paused. "Although that last one is strictly off the books." Now that his recitation was complete he addressed her question. "And I did not mean to suggest that you knew Chase. Nevertheless, he is your legal grandson, the adopted son of your estranged son Douglas and his partner Eric."

Mrs. Whitmore's jaw dropped. In the silence the doorman gave her a wink. "Nice profit margin last quarter, though."

Her small eyes narrowed at him. Then, as if making a decision, she stepped past him and looked around at the vast lobby. Obsidian floors gleamed in the firelight coming from fire-pots near the ceiling, and glowing through the windows. "Where am I? What sort of place is this?"

"Welcome to Hell, ma'am. If you'll step over to the concierge, you will be given further information." 

She turned back to him, about to speak, but the Doorman made a sweeping gesture toward the reception desk at the far end of the lobby. His part of the conversation was over.

He turned back just in time to greet - "Jamal Okafia, welcome!" He gave the young man in the red T-shirt a complicated handshake while gently removing the gun from Jamal's waistband. "That fight was never going to go your way."

"Psh. Fuck you, too, Bolo-tie! You don't know nothin'. I gotta get back to my crew..." he turned toward the door, but the Doorman redirected him by the elbow. 

"There is no going back, Mr. Okafia. Your past has finally caught up with you. Now, if you would..."

"The fuck do you mean? Where the hell am I anyway?"

"That's right, sir. Welcome to Hell. Please check in at the front desk." He directed Jamal toward the concierge. Another soul was approaching the door.

Once more he pulled open the glass door. "Ahh, Miss Sofia Petrov. You've been a busy girl, haven't you?" he said with a smile. 

A surly twelve-year-old with short, dishwater-blond hair scowled at him. He received a lot of scowls. Smiling at people, here of all places, seemed to make them angrier. No one liked it when a stranger knew their secrets.

"Who are you? Where are my parents?" The questions came rapid fire from the girl's angry face.

"Ah, well, after you locked them in their bedroom and lit the fire, your whole house burned down. No one survived."

She looked down at her singed cuffs, then out the door the way she'd come in. Somehow, she still looked defiant.

He followed her gaze. "They won't be joining you, I'm afraid. Their souls have a different destiny."

At that, Sofia's face cleared. "Good." The scowl evaporated and her curious eyes finally looked around the lobby in fascination. "So, this is Hell?"

Every now and then, someone caught on without being told. 

"Cool. What do I do now?" But she had spotted the concierge. "Over there?" With a brief glance back to see the Doorman's nod, she was off.

The Doorman turned back to guard the door. Sometimes it was good to get them young. 

This story was inspired by the character of The Porter in Macbeth, which I'm currently reading. He is rousted from drunken sleep by the sound of knocking at the gates and considers what if he was answering the gates of Hell. It's comic relief in a dark play and I wanted to play with the "what if?" Hope you enjoyed it! 

Don't forget to leave your inspiring writing prompts in a comment.

Wednesday Poetry Corner: King of Storms

Thor is not amused.
He has declared war on us.
Heavy is the storm. 

(Haiku written by me, Oct. 6, 2026)

View during the evening storm 06.10.26

 I read a lot of Shakespeare, and although I can't tell you which play has the line "heavy is the head that wears the crown" (maybe one of the Richards?) I think my Shakespeare reading habit is leaking into my haiku habit. 

Coffee Klatch: Spicy Coffee

It's pumpkin spice season in the U.S., and I do love me some pumpkin spice. (Not available where I live.) I love all the fall spices. In fact, I add cinnamon to the coffee I make at home everyday. 

Fall spices are more than that, though, pumpkin spice, mulled coffee, mulled wine... I enjoy making a big pot of mulled wine so much that, when I couldn't find mulling spices here, Brett ordered the individual spices to be delivered so that I could make it. 

I still have a lot of cloves left over, so when a video about adding cloves to coffee crossed my YouTube feed, I clicked on it. Apparently, adding one to three crushed cloves to a cup of coffee can act as an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and a bunch of other good stuff. 

So I tried it. 
I enjoy a little spice in my coffee. 
It works. 

 

I'm not such a fan of spicy books, though. Not in the traditional sense of spicy = racy = sexy. There's other spice, though, wouldn't you say? 

Take Agatha Christie, for instance. Her books often include a romantic element, but that's not the spicy part. Murder, secrets, betrayal, fighting over inheritance - that's the sharper spice in an Agatha Christie.

That's the kind of spice I like in a book: whatever stirs things up. I've tried reading spicy romance. I have. Just can't get through it. I struggle enough with regular romance!

And when I'm writing, the romantic part often goes sideways. The protagonist ends up better off on her own or in a different relationship, or just more self-aware. If the romantic element survives, it's a sidebar.

So I'm curious - What makes a book spicy for you?

Is it romance? If so, what makes romance relatable or interesting?

Is it a dramatic situation or plot twist? 

Is it secrets, betrayal, or murder? 

Fiction Friday - The Best Time of the Year

For eleven months of the year, I live in the dark.

Not perpetual blackness. No. Every month or so someone lifts the attic trap door to come up and search for something. While they dig around in some other box not mine, light follows through the door and casts shadows all around. 

But it never lasts. Usually it's just me and the other seasonal decorations, piled into a couple of white tubs near the ladder. 

It's crowded in here. That's the worst part. 

One year, the plastic cauldron had been packed away without a proper cleaning. Maybe that was the worst. We had ants that year. It's a mistake the family hasn't made since! 

But eleven months hidden in the dark when all you want to do is make people smile, laugh, maybe scream with joyful surprise is a long time.

October is different. 

When the attic door opens, I know. They come right over to my side of the attic. My storage tub plus two more are carried down the attic ladder.

The hands that reach into my tub are big and strong. They lift me carefully, "Got him."

I know that voice so well.💗The one they call "Dad".

He pulls me out and holds me up. "There you are, old boy." He fluffs up my fur, flat from being pressed in a box all year.

I don't know why he calls me boy. I don't know why they call me him. I've never been particularly curious about it. I'm a wolf. Maybe that settles it.

Dad carries me downstairs. Actually, he wears me. With my head over his own, he descends growling. 

"Oh, for God's sake," Mom says from somewhere below. The humor in her voice makes me happy.

The boy comes running. He's getting big enough now that Dad doesn't have to squat for him to scratch between my ears. "Wolfie! Who's a good boy?" Dad laughs, and lifts me off to take me outside.

The sun is warm on my fur. I can feel the breeze moving through the porch, and I smell the leaves, mown grass, and some fresh hay. 

Much better than being packed in a crowded tub in the attic.

Three bales of hay form a low pyramid at the back of the porch. Dad looks at it, then steps up to move one of the bales a little. "How's that?" He sets me on the top.

Not quite. 
He takes me down again.
A little higher. A little to the left. Then back to the right.

Finally, he gets me exactly where he wants me. I always have a front-row seat for the best month of the year. Gardening gloves are propped on either side, making it look like I'm gripping the bale from behind.

Dad pulls a handful of hay loose and sprinkles some on top of my head. 

He steps back, nods. "Our Halloween mascot. Perfect."

The rest of the family has been busy. There are decorations all around us now. At the other corner of the porch, the skeleton is rocking in his chair. Fake spiders have spun cottony webs across the windows, helped by Mom. A whole circle of bats hangs above the front door.

And me. Dad's favorite. Their mascot.

Mom takes out her phone and snaps a million pictures from the yard.

A neighbor walking past stops and stares. A man coming up the sidewalk slows to scan the skeleton, then the bats, then me. He stops, points. Everyone talks. Everyone smiles.

Later, a few people come into the yard to look more closely.

One woman jumps when she notices me. Then she laughs. I love that.

The family laughs too. The son tells her, "That's our Wolfie."

Yep, that's me!

As the afternoon fades, the family goes inside and the lights come on. They blink orange and green around the yard and in the windows, making the webs glow and bat shadows dance against the siding. 

The sky turns a beautiful pink and purple before fading to full night. 

Finally when Dad locks the front door, he comes out and stands beside me, leaning on the hay bale to look over everything. Then he reaches over and drapes his arm around me. "Gonna be a good season."

He goes inside and the house goes dark.

I'm back. It is going to be a good season. It always is.

This story was inspired by my dad's favorite Halloween decoration when I was a kid: a giant wolf head that he wore, along with wolf paws, to give the older neighborhood kids a friendly fright from our darkened porch (after trick-or-treating hours). That wolf was just a footnote to our Halloween, so it was fun making this guy Main Stage! 

Don't forget I'm always open to writing prompts. Have an idea? Drop me a comment! 

Wednesday Poetry Corner: Enough

It is enough
To read without sharing the humor.
To see beauty without taking a picture. 
To sing a song no one will hear.

It is enough -
The sight.
The sound.
The joy.

It is enough.

One world is enough.
For me.
For you.
For each.

Or are we each one world unto ourselves?

Overlapping.
Interconnecting.
Underlying.

We. Are each. Enough.

(poem written by me on Sept. 29, 2026)

The irony is not lost on me that I wrote these lines about not requiring an audience while knowing that I would share it publicly. I'm not a poet. I don't know if it's "good" by critical standards but for me, it is enough to practice writing publicly. 

Coffee Klatch: Dark, Darker, Darkest

Last week I was in Cambodia. Not a country known for it's coffee, you might say. True. Now that I've been there, I'd put Cambodian coffee somewhere between Vietnamese and Thai. 

You know I LOVE Vietnamese coffee! But when I visited Thailand a year or two ago, I was distinctly underwhelmed by their coffee game. Not worth commenting on.

Cambodian coffee is strong. Super-strong, like in Vietnam.

But without all the bells and whistles of Vietnamese coffee - no sweetened condensed milk, no salted cream, no frozen coconut milk. Strong and black. Unless requested otherwise.

I wasn't mad at it.

Breakfast coffee overlooking the hotel pool.

A good wake-up jolt: Strong. Black. Dark. No fuss. Just coffee.

Very. Dark. Coffee.

…

Speaking of dark.

Mr. Dark.

Mr. Dark is the villain in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Guess what I'm reading right now?

Something Wicked This Way Comes was a repeated reference in The Dead Zone by Stephen King. I finished Dead Zone and wondered if there was a significance. 

There is. 
Of course there is! 
It's Stephen King! He's not known for being random.

I wanted to post something about the dark Cambodian coffee, and reading today I thought "Mr. Dark! Dark coffee! There's a link!"

And incidentally, the book itself is quite dark. 

Nighttime dark, attitude dark, dark deeds made my corrupted souls.

Dark on many levels.

...Dark like Cambodian coffee.

Fiction Friday - The Crazy Chicken

One day, a crazy chicken wanted to leave home. She waited until no one was watching and jumped to the top of the short wall around her yard. Then she jumped down outside! This was the real world! 

But outside the wall, she was in a street with many bicycles and motorbikes. They went past her too fast - very scary! Now she wanted to go back into the yard, but couldn't get to the top of the wall. 

What was this? There was a small break in the fence, so she rushed toward it! But it pushed her back out. She fell down onto the road, dizzy. 

Crazy chicken! 

(image by me)

This was the original Crazy animal story that I wrote for my Vietnamese lessons. Like The Crazy Frog from last week, it was based on something I actually witnessed. This time, while riding my bicycle on my own street. I kept it short and used very simple words that I would be able to translate. My teacher only had to help me with a few vocabulary words and some grammatical errors in the Vietnamese version.