The Road to Astroworld
Synopsis Promise Goodday a little black girl eight years old, wakes up one Saturday morning wanting to go to Astroworld, the see her favorite singer at the amusement park. However it’s also the day of her brother’s funeral. She complains of being tired of going to funerals and all of the sadness. Obviously her mother and grandmother won’t let her go to any amusement park. At the last minute she hatches a plan to run off and take a bus to Astroworld. Unfortunately the driver is a serial rapist/killer who takes advantage of her when she is left on the bus alone. This molestation robs her of her childhood naivete and her life is forever changed. Promise eventually winds up in a brutal mental institution. She escapes and finally makes her way to Astroworld. What will she find when she gets there? Chapter 1 Promise Promise sat in bed and yawned. She listened to the telephone ring. It stopped and she heard her mother call out the name Susan. Big Mama’s voice took over the phone. “Yes dahling. Yes , baby, anything you bring we can use it. All right.” Promise sighed. She knew there wouldn’t be a sweet anything in that bag of whatever her Aunt was bringing later that day. Streaks of morning sunlight blazed through the Venetian blinds and warmed her room. She frowned at the red and blue lights pulsating from the lopsided mirror on the wall before suddenly springing out of bed. “The police! The police,” Promise shouted as she hit the floor. “They got the ‘Leaky Eye!’ They got the ‘Leaky Eye!’” Her shoulders sank as she peeped out the window. A cop stood with his foot on the bumper of his car writing out a ticket to a man on a bicycle. Nowhere in sight was the “Leaky Eye” with his hands hoisted to the sky and gray water pouring from his eyes as Promise had expected. She sighed and raised the blinds. The window was cool to her nose pressed against the pane. It was fall. The sky was brilliantly blue. Trees planted next to the broken swings had turned orange and looked as if they had bits of fire in them. Whitish sunlight danced off the red brick duplex apartments where she lived. The duplexes stretched two by two down Lyon’s Avenue like rows of glazed cakes. Her good friend LaKeisha Ann’s shaggy mutt, bounced on his three good legs as he chased his tail. She lifted her skinny arms, and snapped her fingers like the girls on Soul Train. “Astroworld, Astroworld, baby girl,” Promise chanted and danced around the room. Someone grumbled outside her door. She stopped and listened as her grandmother’s feet shuffled down the hall. When the bathroom door slammed, she relaxed. “ MAURA AND HER TWO HUSBANDS Synopsis Maura walks in on her husband Sidney having sex with his male co-worker, Easy. Maura’s reaction is not quite what you would expect. Though she is shocked and angered at Sidney, she fears a divorce would bring a curse upon her. Her Mother and all but one of her Aunts died after they had divorced their husbands. Another twist in this lite literary romantic erotic story, is Maura’s attraction to Easy. The scene between him and Sidney awakens deeply buried passions in Maura. A major theme is change and embracing a new life. Maura sees in the affair a chance to live a sexually uninhibited life. Sidney wants to turn the misfortune of getting caught into a chance to live true to himself. Easy envisions a life of bling--sex, cars, clothes, and money when he gives in to Maura’s pleading and coaxes Sidney into staying married to Maura. But this “new life” is not without scandal and jealousy On a trip to Las Vegas to escape a scandalous event, Maura, Sidney, and Easy meet a threesome from France. It’s hot steamy sex of boy-girl, boy-boy, and girl-girl. During a drunken night of fun, Jacques (a member of the French ménage-a-trois) suggests that Maura marry Easy as kind of a joke. She agrees after all “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” The two French girls marry each other. But the ugliness of that trip did not stay in Vegas. Maura finds herself pregnant with twins and facing bigamy charges. Their life of affluence disintegrates and the residue from the previous scandal causes Maura to lose both men. Maura and Her Two Husbands Part One The Beginning of Easy Chapter 1 Maura reached to put her key in the lock, but a sliver of light coming through the front door stopped her. She turned and looked at Sidney’s BMW parked next to her Audi A8. “I’ve told that man a million times to lock this door,” Maura said to herself as she pushed the door open. Sidney’s briefcase sat where he normally parked it on the bottom of the stairs. Maura didn’t know why her husband had that habit. She had nearly broken her neck tripping over the thing the night they moved into their three-story condo. She learned to avoid that side of the stairs. She threw her briefcase on the couch. Maura started to call out to Sidney, but changed her mind. He was probably playing WarCraft or some silly game on the computer anyway and wouldn’t answer her. She went to the kitchen for a drink of water, paying scant attention to the half full glass sitting on the counter. As the water from the refrigerator splattered into her glass, she thought she heard someone moan. Maura cocked her head and pulled her glass away from the spigot. The refrigerator hissed, gurgled, and dropped an ice cube in its bin. Maura sighed and continued filling her glass. “This is what he gets for picking out a fridge without me,” Maura thought. “This thing isn’t a year old and already dying.” She opened the door to check the ice making mechanism, but closed it right back. “Sidney’s problem.” She took a sip of water and glanced at the mail lying on the kitchen table. She was about to reach for it, when she heard what sounded like someone crying. She turned and looked at the silent refrigerator then at the iPod clock radio on the counter. The little green light was off. She looked up toward the direction of their bedroom upstairs. |
THE HOLEY SWEETS UNDERWEAR MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Synopsis The Holey Sweets Underwear Manufacturing Company from New York invades Butler’s Butte Texas to open a new plant and manufacture intimates and undies. New York snobbery clashes with small town values when Edna Glaspey goes to work for the firm. Her life will never be the same when she walks through the doors of Holey Sweets. The town of Butler’s Butte is as much of a character as its inhabitants of backwoods, hill country people. Crooked business deals, murder, prostitution, secret abortions, a serial killer and underwear add to wackiness of this tale. The plant brings more than jobs to the town. It brings a new way of thinking. Edna is forced to abandon her small town closed mindedness and become tolerant of people who are different from her. It’s Edna who catches a notorious killer of gay me from Dallas. Butler’s Butte was his dumping ground. This is the same Edna who had threatened to read Leviticus 20:13 to her grandson when she thought he was spending too much time with the town sissy. The Holey Sweets Underwear Manufacturing Company Edna Glaspey slammed her arms like two fat hams onto the newspaper. She took a pencil in her right hand and began circling ads. Her circles were thick like mascara. Her grandson Jericho had suggested she use the computer to hunt for a job. But Edna would have none of that. No beeping little box full of blue writing and flashing pictures lead to anything solid, Edna reasoned. “A newspaper is solid,” Edna said to Jericho as he lapped coffee out of a saucer. “Solid as the pages in the Bible.” |