Page 1 of All You Want
One
~ X ~
He hates her guts, but he’s a patient man.
He doubts she even thinks about him.
He was aware of her before he could even speak. He lurked near her crib, and he hid in her closets. She was loud and bold, the little princess born with a golden spoon in her mouth.
His mother made him be nice to her, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t hate her. He bided his time, and he did things to her that she’ll never know about.
Oh, they were small victories. Tiny things. Like the time he brushed her toothbrush on his ass, and the poison ivy he rolled her pajamas in. He was careful to cover his tracks, and even though his mother suspected and she warned him with her frightened eyes, she never knew how much he hated that blond little fairy with the sapphire-blue eyes.
He grits his teeth and grinds his molars, clenching his fists until his knuckles would pop. He kneels on the damp earth and brushes the pine needles off his mother’s tiny gravestone.
“Oh, isn’t she the prettiest girl you ever laid eyes on,” Mooma would say while ironing and folding the little monster’s many dresses. She was always buttering up her employers with her constant praise and adulation of the pampered puffybutt. It was a wonder anyone could breathe when all the hot air went to pumping up the prissy petunia’s poufy head.
The tinkling of the piano would draw him to the window, and he’d press his forehead against it to stare at her. He wasn’t allowed to stare or speak to her after his voice turned, and he was relegated to the basement. But his mother always kept him apprised of the princess’s many accomplishments.
Her flowing hair was light as wheat, and the blue in her eyes were those of an enchanting goddess. The sparkling tones of the piano tinkled and plinked like a colorful waterfall of crystal bells, and rays of sunlight enfolded her like a golden bath showering her from heaven.
A kick on the seat of his pants sent him sprawling. His mother was always cross with him. “Get back to work, you lazy bum. They raised the rent again, and I’m working my fingers to the bone for you.”
He picked up the axe and hefted the weight in his hand. How easy it would be to blot her beauty with ugly, dark-red spurts of blood.
But he was a patient man, and patience was a virtue.
One day, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
He raised the sharp axe, swung it high and hard.
Thwack.
A wedge of hard oak exploded into splinters.
He kisses the cold, dead gravestone and vows to his mother. “This is for you, Mooma. This is for you.”
Two
~ Tami ~
“Yoohoo! Barbecue beef incoming!” I hoot outside the squat cabin containing the Colson’s Corner police station. It’s nothing more than a square building converted from the town’s original bar. Aside from the single administrative desk, there’s a two-cell jail and a picnic table in the back inside a chain-link fence.
Depending on if the jail is occupied or not, it’s either the eating area for the prisoners, or lunch room for the sheriff and his deputy, or the party place for our tiny one-corner town.
Yes siree! I’m Tami King, party girl galore! And I’m the one who keeps Colson’s Corner sparkling and lively. I chair every festival committee, and I organize the charity events from food drives to road races. I’m also the one-woman real estate agency and my town’s biggest booster.
I was born and raised up in these Gold Country hills, better known as the Northern Mother Lode of the Sierra Nevadas. But I never truly fit in. I’m loud and love bright colors; I’m more Times Square neon than National forest green. I’m a glittering iridescent butterfly among the drab, crusty mountain folk of Colson’s Corner—a town founded by men who mined the gold miners and whose heyday passed on more than a hundred fifty years ago.
If only everyone would get on board to bring our dwindling ghost town into the twenty-first century. The biggest foot draggers are the old mayor, descended from the founder, Colonel Chadwick Colson, and the young sheriff also descended from the founder.
It’s the sheriff, Todd Colson, who I have the hots for. He’s a big man, as rugged as these hills and as strong as a freight train. Dark-brown hair with a cowlick up top, even darker-brown eyes, deep as twin wells, and a face as rugged as redwood, he’s the storybook hero from the cleft in his chin to his dark-shadowed jaw.
He’s also a stickler for rules and regulations, and he’s as good at holding the line as he was back in his high school football days.
“Yoohoo!” I hoot louder because those cops, all two of them, probably have their feet on the one desk between them, snoozing or watching football. “I can’t hold this huge crock pot forever!”
I’m here to bribe Todd into making a public appearance with me at my newest tourist destination—a haunted hotel all decked out for Halloween. It will be super awesome to have a real sheriff on hand for the promotional theatrics I have planned.
