“Tower 18 requesting green light.”

“Negative. Once word spreads that signal is available, maximum target rich environment will be attained. Standby.”

The Commander was right; crowds began surrounding Tower 18’s base. Signal was life to them. Their tech dependence made this almost too easy.

“Engage at will.” The order came.

Curious, he first checked what the targets were viewing:

Political arguments

Porn

Conspiracy theories

Social media influencers

Cat singing “go meow”

TikTok challenges

Woman spitting

Clearly, this operation held value. Some looked up from their screens long enough to see the incoming ballistics. A handful managed to livestream their demise.

Mariah closes out what area_man opens, while anchored in the middle beetween is something from ModernAntigone that can only be described with words like addictive, gorgeous, seasoned... Just like the piece before and the piece after. From the finest dining to feed the arts, to the light blocked and two litanies of sorrowful flavor so deliciously dark and told with iron breath, to the sweet song of what has died on the vine, number 53 on Prose. Radio features three writers with something beautiful to say, no matter how we slice it

Here's the link to Prose. Radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpGJ5qRys8Q

And here are the featured pieces.

https://www.theprose.com/post/822012/blocking-the-light https://www.theprose.com/post/819551/litany-i-ii https://www.theprose.com/post/811664/loves-death

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

My past lies viscous

Unleashed when pressed upon

Squeezed between good and bad

A forever-disheveled Rubik's cube

Uncapped and unable to be undone

I can't put the past(e) back in the tube

ENVIRONMENTAL TRIGGER:

A tube of toothpaste, on a shelf, uncapped, with a blob of paste at its opening, gumming up the cap and the shelf it lies on.

The things I have conquered today, may not seem like much to you.

But while you were at work away, I did laundry and then went though

Our old baby's old clothes and his room, Some I threw out or gave away.

A few I kept, because quite soon, our boy's child may come here to stay

A night or two, with me and you.

If I keep up my health and smile, our son might allow me to hold

The precious girl just for a while and keep me from growing too old.

I washed the dishes and dried them, and I changed the sheets on our bed.

In your pants, I took up the hem. I painted the chicken coop red.

I wanted to spruce the lawn up.

A two-toned, red and white Chevy pickup truck was parked in a bare spot which wouldn’t grow grass underneath the shaded limbs of one of the two magnificent pecan trees which dominated either side of the old farm house’s front walk. From the covered front porch the excited voice of Eli Gold could be heard describing action from The Charlotte Motor Speedway clear out to the road, even through the hand-sized transistor radio. Beside the truck, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a dripping sponge in hand, a man was caught in a curious pause from his truck washing, having stopped to watch his four year old at play. The child was behaving in an unusual, if enticing manner, having climbed down inside her pink, pedal-powered plastic Barbie car to remove the bicycle-chain linkage which acted as the little car’s transmission. The man’s ’Lil Miss had managed to identify the master link, then had used some unknown tool to pry it apart, and was currently attempting to shorten, or tighten up some slack which had grown with time and use between the gear sprockets.

The man with the dripping sponge didn’t have nearly enough time at home with the kids, so it was with great effort that he resisted the urge to jump in and help his baby girl, though it appeared that his youngest had gotten herself into something that he was uncertain if she could resolve on her own. A good father, the man determined to let her try, just as he would have let her older Bubba try.

The child’s chubby, undeveloped fingers struggled with the tiny pieces of linkage. He watched as she dropped a part, found it again, and spent some time figuring how it fit back with the larger pieces. But she did figure it out! His pride swelled nearly to bursting as he watched her remove a link from the chain and slowly jigsaw the thing back together. Unable to contain himself any longer the man finally did step in as his little girl fought to snap the master link back together again, knowing she would not have the strength to do it.

”Here.” He handed a pair of pliers up under the toy car’s chassis, then he watched on amazed as his Missy pondered the pliers for a long moment before finally gripping them correctly, centering the linkage between their jaws, and snapping the chain almost expertly back together with them.

”Fixed it.”

”Yes! Yes, you did. And you made a nice job of it, too!” There was no camera present, so the man made a snapshot of the moment in his mind, desperate to hold on to the memory of it forever.

But the child’s expression remained serious. She took the car in a quick, neat circle around her father before handing up the pliers to him. ”It needs woobwicant.”

After a moment lost in translation the man chuckled aloud, the pride which had swelled his breast having pushed its way up through his choking neck and into his eyes, embarrassing him no little bit. “Yes Missy, it probably does need some lubricant, but how could you know about that?”

”Fiwabaw is teaching me to be a wace caw dwivuh.”

”Fiwabaw? Fireball? Fireball Roberts?

The girl’s smiled sparkled. “Yea! Fiwabaw!”

”Honey, Fireball Roberts has been dead twenty years!”

Ignored, the man was forced to keep up as the little car sped off towards his tool bench in the barn, and the can of 3in1 oil atop it. He watched from the doorway as his baby girl expertly held the can in place, turning the car’s pedal to rotate and lubricate the entirety of the chain beneath the can’s dripping tip as if she’d done it hundreds, or even thousands, of times.

”Fireball Roberts, huh?” He smiled as he said the name.

”Yea! Fiwabaw!”

You know, Fireball was your Grampa’s favorite, back in the day.”

”Yea! Gwampaw!”

The truck gears ground down as the man pulled out onto the highway towards both town and the Western Auto, his Lil Missy perched happily up on the seat beside him. Momma wasn’t gonna like it one bit, but who was a mother to interfere with fate?

Daddy’s girl was getting herself a go-cart today!

He knew immediately when he woke. It was so cold that his skin burned in little bursts. He could feel a layer of frost crackling under his nose and on his eyelids as he fought his body. He gasped, the sharp pain of frozen air entering his lungs drove him into full wakefulness. How did I get here? He wondered. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been out, but it couldn’t have been long - he wouldn’t have woken if it had been long. But what had roused him?

Something pawed at his back. It was warm. Suddenly, uncomfortably warm. He turned very slowly. It was a baby dragon.

His frozen mind fought to make sense of this new puzzling piece of information. He was nearly frozen, half-dead, in the snow, with a baby dragon at his back, prodding his quilted coat and melting the snow to slush around them. How had he gotten here?

Where I come from, the best killing season is summer ’cause the ground is soft; makes for easy digging…though times are the heat can be damn ornery. And you can’t keep a new kill around too long if you don’t want to deal with stink and rot.

Spring is good; blood seeps into the ground right quick with all the rain washing sins away…’course, trudging through the mud leaves tracks you don’t want nobody seeing.

Autumn has a double whammy, in a good way: Falling leaves provide cover for new graves and if that don’t work, soon-to-be hibernating wildlife devour details, leaving behind an unidentifiable pile of bones. Lots of trekkers are out in the fall, come to see the leaves changing colors and take pictures. Me ’n cameras don’t get on too well, if you know what I mean. But, trekkers, especially the lonesome ones…well, maybe I was wrong. Fall might be the best season.

But, winter? Winter is a time to rest, eat, and sleep. To think and to plan. To get better acquainted with next season’s target. Targets.

Ol’ Granddaddy told me this story and I ain’t ever forgot it. “Boy, if’n – or when, I ‘spect – you find yourself in a killing mood, winter is not when it needs doing. You might think the deserted, snowy mountain is your friend, but you’d be wrong. Not everybody knows this, but ‘roun here, we have us a murderous snow where blood bounces off and clings to death. I seen it with my own eyes back in ‘53. We was fixin’ to teach a lesson to some boy had no business stopping in our town. Mind you, I was just watchin’ as I was too young yet to have my own knife. Didn’t get my first till I was six. Just like you.

Anyways, boy’s there on the snow, naked, hogtied and cryin’ for his mama when my daddy’s friend, my Uncle Bo, says I’ll give you something to cry for, boy. Uncle Bo takes out his hunting knife and slices the boy’s side like they did Jesus on the cross. But when the blood poured out, it didn’t seep into the snow like blood should. Naw, call me a liar if that blood didn’t bounce off the snow and splash in ‘ol Uncle Bo’s face. He started to scream and all the men who was about to join in the killin’ backed away. The snow blood was stabbing, ripping and tearing at Uncle Bo’s skin. And when it spilled onto his clothes, they turned to ash leaving his skin covered in snow blood. In the end, don’t know if it was the stabbing, the burning or the drowning what killed him. Drowing, you say? Yep, he was gurgling and clutching at his throat, a bleeding mess before he finally fell down dead. Snow white as it was when it fell from the sky. Some kind of deadly miracle. Boy was dead, too. Bled to death, I ’spect. Or froze. My daddy picked me up and ran so I don’t rightly know.

So, son, listen when I tell you, winter is no time for killin’.