Reading WWE NXT Year end awards - my picks by 
... reminded me of a scene in my own novel, "Left on Stonehaven," which I wrote from November 2008 to March 2009, then submitted to an online fiction workshop, where it was shredded, disassembled, and left to die on a bloody literary battlefield. So many opinions, so much conflicting advice, and the insistence that is is a YA novel (I don't think it is). Too many sordid and violent scenes, and I didn't let the teen protagonists do the crime stopping.
Despite having a long to-do list, I choose to reminisce over that WWF scene, which most of the workshoppers insisted I must delete, because Julian's mother is a nurse, and everyone knows that only rednecks and trailer trash watch Wrestling--not educated people.. Tickets to NASCAR? Why, nobody who can afford them would be so low-brow as to go there. *Sigh That was about enough to have me ignore every other comment these critics had for my story.
Left on Stonehaven
SYNOPSIS: Julian, 17, starts seeing things before they happen - such as a girl's hand left on the edge of Stonehaven Road. Whose hand? Where is the rest of the girl?One vision is positive but confusing. He sees his future bride, unless the girl in the vision is now an old woman in a nursing home. Her granddaughter, Cecelia, becomes Julian's ally in searching for a teen runaway who may be the girl who lost her hand. With Cecelia's computer skills and Julian's intuition, they locate the girl amid a sex trafficking ring in a nearby farmhouse. Before they can launch a raid to save the girl, Grandma 'awakens,' escapes the nursing home and goes after the traffickers herself.
Chapter 19: "Good morning, Madame Bleau"
Go through the motions of acting normal, Gage said. Spend time with people your own age. There weren't many in our neighborhood, and all they did was play video games or drive to adult-run sports. I played with the little kids instead. They hadn't learned simple backyard games like Kick the Can or Midnight Ghost. I hung out with fellow EMTs, with people I met at the university library or student union, professors who lived nearby, and, yes, nursing home residents.
Bartels Nursing Home. A place so depressing, everywhere else I went was like a dream vacation.
In the Rec Room, the more sentient ladies gathered around a big-screen TV to play Wi bowling. Every day, for hours, they pumped the air with their fists and shouted when they scored. "They're as addicted as teenage boys," one nurse said.
"Good morning, Madame Bleau," I said to the one woman I was here for.
With her roommate preoccupied in the Rec Room, it felt good to sit beside a surrogate grandmother and think out loud. Frieda Bleau wouldn't remember what I said or repeat it to anyone, or if she did, I'd chalk it up to dementia. I talked about foster homes, visions that led me back to my mom no matter where DHS had hidden me, and a girl named Cecelia. Didn't seem to trigger any recognition. I also learned the art of companionable silence while Frieda stared out the window saying "Victor" like a mantel clock counting off the quarter-hours.
Joe Dix told me she rocked all day in her chair by the window, rarely turning her head to acknowledge anyone. I'd bring Mom's home-made salves, scented with herbs, and massage her icy feet. I walked my quiet friend out to the patio garden, down winding brick pathways lined with flowers. She'd pick up a leaf, examine it, hang onto it for hours.
"Good morning, Madame Bleau."
Today, she wasn't in her rocker by the window. She perched on the edge of her bed, watching TV. World Wrestling Federation.
"Get 'im!" Her fists clenched. "Knock his block off!"
Bret "Hit Man" Hart versus Bam Bam Bigelow. Mom used to watch this stuff. Bret was her favorite, the 200-pounder with long, curly brown hair. I sat on the other side of the bed. Next up: Yokozuna, the 700-pound Polynesian. Someone had recorded Summer Slam off the TV onto VHS tapes. The old woman still knew how to use the remote to speed through commercials.
"Hey. Didn't Yokozuna die of a heart attack after seeing a spider in his hotel room?" I said.
"Nope." Madame Bleau didn't look at me, but she spoke. "Died in the ring. GO, MABEL!"
I remembered this fight. Mabel, the 500-pound Mastadon, tried the bulldog maneuver. Yokozuna was facing away from him. Mabel ran at him and leaped, grabbing for a side headlock, in which he'd slam Yoko's face into the mat and land on his chest. But Yokozuna didn't go down. His facial expression changed, he braced himself, and Mabel fell to the mat. The match ended in a double count-out.
Joe Dix wheeled his cart into the room, and I pulled off the faux pearls. Madame Bleau shuffled straight to the chair by the window, smoothed out her long calico dress and said Victor. Joe shook his head at her, then me. "Funny how she can focus on the TV, but she won't even look at her own grandkids." He held up a little white paper cup. "Here we go, Frieda. This'll make you feel good."
Slowly, her gaze shifted toward him, and her fists clenched.
"What are you giving her?" I asked.
"The usual anti-anxiety pill. It's like trying to get a pill down a cat."
Joe spooned it into her with some apple sauce, which seeped from the corners of her mouth and down her chin. He swiped it off with a napkin and turned to go. Her serene blue eyes came to life with an animosity that surprised me more than her wrestlers did. Her gaze followed Joe out of the room like a flaming arrow. I rushed to her side, took her hand in mine, tried to get those eyes to see me. Talk to me!
"Victor."
Her hand went limp and she stared out the window.
Chapter 20: Romany
Quinn, they're going to kill us. You know it.
He just offers me a puff of his long, slender cigar. It tastes like bourbon. I try to blow smoke rings like he does and it's so pathetic, he almost smiles. His eyes shift toward the light on the wall. They're always watching, he whispers. Every breath you take.
I wonder how many people pay to see us, live, on webcam....
(More in an old Word doc rotting away in my laptop)
pixabay images
by geralt Gerd Altmann • Freiburg/Deutschland