Beautifull. Thank you for sharing the stories with you. You so eloquently confey your story. A very good piece of work. You're a great writer and the book only confirmed my assessment of your skill. -J. Berkin, author/critic 'Writers Round Table', Manassas, VA.
Bleeding Hearts and Lady's Slippers
"Yeah, a lot of screaming went on in the Compton house that day. And a lot of blood spilled on the floor, blood that won't go away. Will it, Sister dear? No matter how much you scrub and scrub, it's always there. The sad part, Delphinia, is that when we were kids, I loved you."
Henry took a step toward the porch railing and fell. Doctor Boland's mild sedative was slowly beginning to restrain his muscles.
Delphinia walked over and pulled Henry's wheelchair away from him and sat in it. "This isn't so bad." She backed up and maneuvered her way around the body of her brother. Gaining some speed, she rolled herself to the other end of the porch and back again, coming to stop a few inches from Henry's prostrate body. "I got the feel of it, Henry. It's great fun."
Henry rolled over on his stomach and began to crawl toward the porch railing. Delphinia wheeled herself after her brother. She touched him with the toe of her shoe. "Go ahead and crawl, Henry."
"I saw you crawl, Sister. All the lights were on. You didn't want to stand up. Remember? It was the night you killed all the love in our family."
"You and your Daddy. You two always stuck together. I never liked him to come near me. He always smelled of tobacco and sweat. Well, I'm glad he's dead." She looked over at the Wisteria vines. "The vines. That's what Daddy was doing that day. He was digging the trench to plant the vines. He was full of dirt and mud. When he came into the kitchen, he wanted to know what all the yelling and screaming was about. I couldn't help but laugh when Momma made you tell him what a terrible thing you had done."
"He knew it wasn't my fault. He knew you were to blame. He wanted you to tell him why you let them do those things to me. He knew you girls planned the whole thing. He knew you did it to me."
"You're whining again, Henry. I remember Momma's outraged expression when he told her that she was getting so excited about nothing."
"Delphie, stop it."
Delphinia paid no mind to his plea. She persisted in her recitation. "Can't you just hear him? His voice had a kind of nasal sound. `You're making too much of an issue, Peg. Let it die down, Peg. Let it die down. It'll pass, Peggy. So he got his first piece at an early age. It only goes to prove he's all boy. Like father like son.' Those were his exact words. I can hear him so clearly. I can see him now, trying to comfort Momma. Those dirty, grimy arms trying to embrace her." Delphinia scowled and shrugged her shoulders in disgust.
Henry crawled to the railing and pulled himself up. He leaned his thin, exerted body against the railing's wooden slats. His legs were shaking uncontrollably. He held the rail with whatever meager strength he could muster. He took a couple of deep breaths before he spoke. "Delphinia, please! No more. I'm getting tired."
Delphinia was ecstatic. She saw him not as her brother, but as her prey, wrapped in silk threads she spun to encase him. She reveled in his
Excerpt
Angels Play
He was afraid to open his eyes. Afraid he might discover he was dead. The world was too quiet, and he feared the sound of the silence. He took a deep breath. The smell of burning flesh and forest assured him he was alive. He opened his eyes, slowly.
Trembling, he raised his head to survey his immediate surroundings. The wind-tossed smoke fumes limited his vision's range. What he was able to see made him retch. Private Thomas W. Manes, tenderfoot warrior, lay in a crater of decaying bodies dressed in uniforms of bravery.
Weak from fatigue, he closed his eyes, lay back and unwillingly surrendered himself into the unconscious state of slumber. When he awoke, the smoke and fire had died down and he could see, more clearly, the devastating carnage his coming of age manifested.
Lice feasted on his skin. Grime ringed his neck, enticing swarms of flying insects to partake communion of his skin. He was still too frightened to raise a hand to swat his devourers. Any movement -- or the sound of a movement, he was sure -- would be followed by a volley of gunfire that might end his life, so he let the vermin crawl over him. He reasoned to himself that the little bastards would only drown in the sweat oozing from his pores anyway. With a silent prayer, he raised himself a little higher to search the scorched scrub for signs of something or someone alive. Nothing stirred and no one had changed position. Was he the only mourner at the cremation of the world?
'No one is safe on the field of battle, Tommy, you know that. Did you hear the orders to hold your fire?' his inner voice spoke to him.
"I hope you're my guardian angel and not just my imagination. I need all the help I can get," he replied back to his inner voice. "I know someone's out there. I feel his snake eyes on me, like the fucking lice. If I could only see the bastard."
He prayed that if it came down to him or the sniper, that God would let him administer the last rites to the enemy.
Professional Reviews
Hidden Treasures
Hidden Treasures is a superb addition to the genre "noir un muystere"...It is a tale of Bleeding Hearts and Lady's-slippers...Murder and Mayhem amidst the Vines" that will surely grab even the gentle ladies of the local Garden Club - Burns writing is as "Sensitive as William Saroyan and as intense as Stephen King.-Chuck Zorning, Producer/Director (The Producers-Phoeniz, AZ
Hidden Treasures
Bleeding Hearts and Lady's Slippers is a magnificent, roaring piece of work...a roller coaster of anticipatory emotion. The reader knows something dreadful is going to happen, and he doesn't know why. Slowly, he learns the background as the rage builds. And then the murder. It was really beautiful.-Bruce Chadwick, New York Daily News
Hidden Treasures
Hidden Treasures: An anthology of short sories and poetic interjections beautiully written with all the emotion and spinning of characters to make this a true masterpiece of art.-M.K. Davis, author/singer
What if you were named as heir to a Will that you knew nothing about and members of your family were being kidnapped and tortured for information they didn't have? What if you went to the police only to find out the Russian Mafia and your own govern
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