Charles Turner
Bio
My work is based on who I am now and have been in the past. It is based on a lifetime of reading. Autobiography, standard fiction, sci/fi, fantasy, westerns. I plan to put together a collection of short stories to publish via Amazon.
Stories (76)
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Around the Block and Back Home
It began with an incident in my own little mobile home neighborhood, triggered by an incident involving my friend, Ben Grazingstern. Ben is a mild man of middle age, who minds his own business. He likes to putter and fish. His wife and I exchange gardening tips and tidbits. It was a pastoral way of life until a separate breed of trailer trash came along to challenge it by moving into the trailer house across the street. They brought, along with tattoos and gangs of people, air poisoning machines and a wall of sound. All day and all night , bikes roared and revved. In the interest of "getting along," my wife and I suffered it to happen, as did the Grazingsterns.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Evicted
It was the final straw, that notice from the Social Security Administration. According to it, Darryl was deceased. Not just that, but he died four years previous and therefore his estate owed the government this humongous figure, he could not remember how much, for continuing to receive money after death. He was a bit simple, poor man. At seventy five he still could not grasp the ways of the bureaucracy, had no notion how to procure legal help. He was a television watcher. Being a lonely soul, who shunned contact with strangers, due to an inability to relax and hold interesting conversations, he had never entertained illusions of having a friend or a wife.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
The Wooden Angels
On this crisp December morning, blue-eyed, freckle-faced Willie MacCorkle went into the woods to search for mistletoe. For a few seasons now he had been gathering as much as he could for his parents to use in their small side business. Each year, he had to wander further to find any of worth. He had learned just this morning from Dad that mistletoe is not a fungus, as he had thought, but just an odd plant, its seeds spread by birds, that has to sink its roots into a tree limb in order to survive. Not that he had much fondness for the stuff. He just enjoyed making his parents happy. He watched his breath turn to steam. He loved being cold in the woods, especially in the merry days that lead up to Christmas.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Beyond the Dark Water
ONE 1 Seventy-six year old Mike Taylor recognized Rusty’s grin before anything else. That same ear to ear toothy grin that could so annoy or endear. Punctuated by the loose lanky walk, where the feet never came close together. To walk a straight line would be out of the question. It was similar to Mike’s own walk, except less self-conscious. He was dressed in rather nice slacks, sports jacket, slip-on shoes. It was Rusty all right, Mike concluded in shock.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Erin Christmas
The oppressive midsummer sun spread a stifling mantle above the divided land. Inside the city walls hummed a smug citizenry, like a throng of fat bees. Outside were the drones, struggling with heartbreak and starvation. Of these, an old man foraging for food came up with a few grubs and a questionable root that had a pungent odor. So absorbed and light-headed became he, the oldster absently wandered too near a checkpoint, coming on, head down, rheumy eyes barely open, the ravages of time hounds at his heels.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Death Came in with Gentle Jaws
Death came in with gentle jaws to steal away the life of Billy Delaney. The time was minus by a few moments half-past three. The arthritic old patchwork dog on the floor stirred an instant but did not wake up. Mrs. Delaney - Margie - snored ever more loudly, cunningly erecting a palpable wall of sound between herself and the visitor near the bed.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Spelville (conclusion)
CHAPTER SIX He felt as though he had just laid his head upon the hard, flat, pillow when Carl and Styxx shook the bed frame and whacked a stick against the headboard. To Carl, it was high humor, to razz a somebody that way. Joseph sat up to discover that Dylan already was on her feet. The main body of travelers had arrived. For the first time, they saw the total of men all together. And, behind the clustered group, Nicole and Annie attempting to break through, so they could be with Joseph. He grabbed Dylan by the arm. “There’s my family,” he said, trying to drag her with him.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Spelville (middle chapters)
CHAPTER THREE Joseph had grown up. The nineteen-year-old had for three days been putting out food to attract a half-grown Labrador Retriever that had been poking around, curious, and hungry. Nicole’s coaching awakened in him a need to want the dog for a friend. This time, he sat with a chunk of fish in his hand, ready to coax her to come and take it. The pooch arrived soon enough, appearing from the woods that encroached on Spelville from three sides, hoping to be fed. She came slowly forward, ears flattened, tail tucked in behind her, determined to do whatever she had to in order to chomp down on that mouth watering filet. Joseph quickly learned how dangerous a Lab’s teeth could be. She made a frenzied grab that sent fish pieces flying. A tooth grazed the side of his hand, drawing a spot of red. She swept up and swallowed every speck and searched the young man for more. He ran his hands across her shoulders and along a side. This act melted her resistance. She licked at his face and pushed her body against him. There was another slice of fish for her. Then a deep long drink of water.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Ebenezer's Ghost
Chapter One Edwin Bloom cheerfully awoke on this frosty December morning and he sat up in his bed. His awareness of the form bundled beside him evoked feelings of deep tenderness. He smiled at his wife Agnes’s vain attempt to gain one last little snooze, burrowing deeper as she did into the blankets. Edwin dangled his icy feet, then slipped down into some old worn slippers.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
Spelville
On this day of stifling air, when just a few clouds were hung in the distant sky, in ghostly puffs and spires, the uncontrolled jungles of growth along Beacon Trail Avenue looked beaten and submissive. On the property that once had belonged to a wealthy family named Morris, but now was lived upon by a woman who was named Nicole Pearson, there waited an aging pony. Because of anticipated toil in the blistering sun, it hung its head, weak, and surly, trapped in heavy harness, before a lumbering wagon, with a galvanized water tank in the bed. Unsympathetic Nicole wielded a switch that the diminutive pony knew well. It hunkered down, dreading the whipping it fully expected to endure. For, Nicole sometimes applied the biting lash across its shoulders with unprovoked viciousness. Today, such a beating did not right away come. Those aching legs finally moved when the human took a firm hand to the harness and led it on the path to the river.
By Charles Turner4 years ago in Fiction
