The Judge...and the Waitress


Clive checked his watch. 8:00 p.m., sharp.

She’d be logging on any second now. You could set your clock by the woman. It’s one of the things he liked about her.

He’d been watching her for nearly four months, and talking to her for the last few weeks. It’d taken him that long to truly decide that she was the one.

“Where are you, MadMax?” he said. “You’re never late, girl! You and I would have made a hell of a team.”

Clive knew it wasn’t true, but you can’t really control your thoughts. Actions? Well, that was another thing completely. Training could make actions automatic. But thoughts? No, those had a mind of their own. The revelation struck him funny, and he bellowed out loud, making K2 stir on the gaudy comforter adorning the motel room bed.

“Sorry, old dog. Didn’t mean to rouse you from your slumber. Go on and get back to dreaming about chasing rabbits, or screwing poodles, or whatever it is you dogs dream about. It must be something pretty remarkable though, because you sure do make some strange noises when you’re dreaming, old boy.”

The aging lab stretched in response, then rolled over to expose his vulnerable underside to his owner. Clive took the obvious hint and scratched the lab’s rounded belly a few times before hitting the refresh button on his laptop.

The little ‘online now’ marker that’d been absent a minute ago now glowed beside her screen name.

“That’s my girl. Right on time, per usual,” he said aloud, causing K2 to perk an ear in Clive’s direction.

“Sorry, old boy. I’ll try to keep it down over here. You’d think you’d be used to me talking to myself by now after all these years. I know, I know. She can’t hear me. But sometimes a man needs to hear the sound of a voice, even if it’s just his own. You see, boy?”

K2 couldn’t offer a verbal answer, of course, so he did the next best thing, giving Clive’s hand a nuzzle with his cold, wet nose.

Clive laughed, and scratched the old dog’s ears. He’d sure miss him when he was gone. Best not to think about that right now though. More important things on the agenda tonight.

He glanced over at the duffel bag in the corner of the room. It might be camouflaged in the woods, but here in the seedy motel room under the cheap painting of the mountain stream that hung on the smoke stained wall, it was about as inconspicuous as a giant glowing neon sign.

The ding alerting him to the IM brought his attention back to the computer screen. He hit the yes button at the prodding of the instant messenger asking him if he wanted to accept the incoming message from MadMax, and a small box popped up in the middle of the dating site home page.

He’d joined four months ago, when the idea had come to him, and he’d noticed MadMax immediately. She was hard to miss with a name like that. The 1979 flick starring Mel Gibson had been one of his all time favorites as a kid.

He had to be about ten when it came out, and at such an impressionable age, his mother hadn’t wanted him to see it. His father had told her to shut up and let the kid have a little fun. “What the hell can it hurt, ya foolish woman?” he’d said to his worrisome wife. “You think the boy’s gonna have nightmares over a little blood and guts. If so, he ain’t gonna be much of a man. Stop coddling him, ya stupid woman.”

He hadn’t liked his old man very much. Mean son-of-a-*****, he was. Former marine. Clive often wondered if it’d drove him to do what he did. Of course, nothing could really explain what he did, but Clive liked to think the old man had a tad bit to do with it. Or maybe his mom was right and the classic film had warped his fragile, impressionable mind.

This MadMax had never even seen the movie though, having chosen the screen name because her name was Madison Maximillian. She’d shortened it, not realizing that it was an old flick starring a vengeful assassin with a penchant for killing.

“Hey Maddie,” he typed into the box. “How you doing tonight, doll?”

“Tired, CJ. Long night at the diner. You?” she replied back after a few seconds.

They’d been meeting online each night precisely at 8:00 since he’d messaged her the first time as CacheJudge. She called him CJ for short now, even though he’d told her his real name. She said Clive sounded like a horse’s name, like maybe he should be pulling the old Budweiser wagon. He’d laughed at that, something he hadn’t done too often in the past few decades.

“Not bad. Better now that you’re talking to me, if you call this talking,” he responded honestly.

He added a little winking smiley face on the end of it for good measure. He liked the little emoticons, strangely, considering he was the consummate big, bad tough guy. Call it a soft side, although Clive was pretty sure he hadn’t ever possessed one of those at any time in the past twenty or so years. Maybe he was softening with age. Or maybe the effects of his little problem were taking their toll.

He tried not to think about it while waiting for the next little bing.

Almost on cue, it blurted its alert.

“One of the regulars, guy named Big Gus, grabbed my *** tonight. I had to smack him upside the head, and the owner gave me hell for hittin’ a customer,” she wrote. “I told him Big Gus wasn’t a customer, he was a…”

Clive waited. She’d run out of room in the box, like usual, but he knew the rest of the thought would be popping up shortly.

“..moron!” it concluded two seconds later.

He chose the laughing emoticon, and added a short message. “Do you want me to come take care of him?”

“Nah, I can take care of myself. But thanks for the offer. You’re such a good guy!” She’d added a big grinning smiley.

Clive smiled back, although Maddie couldn’t see his well worn face from her apartment just on the other side of town from the seedy motel he and K2 now occupied.

“If you only knew!” he quipped back, and hit the send button.

“I know what I need to know. We’ve been talking for three weeks now. I think I have a good idea who you are. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you. And don’t go getting all philosophical on me either. I know some guys…”

Clive waited again.

“…on dating sites aren’t who they claim to be. I‘m not stupid, you know?”

He knew it. Without a doubt. You could learn a bunch by watching someone for awhile.

“I’m just looking out for you, doll. Lot of nuts out there. You never know. I could be a serial killer!” he wrote, then added the winking emoticon, for good measure.

He glanced at the duffel bag again. Still there, at least until tomorrow.

She replied with a whole row of laughing emoticons.

“What are you laughing at, Maddie? How do you know I’m not your worst nightmare?” Clive answered back.

“You know I’ve already lived my worst nightmare, CJ. Nothing could be worse than that. Well, you know…”

He did know. He’d lost his wife and son twenty years ago to a drunk driver also. She’d been taking Gabe to his one year check-up, and some ******* in a Ford pickup had plowed into her head-on. Marlene had died instantly. His son had survived five days before succumbing to his injuries.

“We’ve done all we can, Mr. Judge,” the doctor had said to him. “I’m sorry, but the brain damage was too severe. There’s nothing more we can do. You’ll have to make the call. We can keep his little body alive, not sure for how long, but he’ll never wake up. He’s brain dead. I‘m sorry, sir. I‘ll give you a few minutes.”

The words had been unbearable. First Marlene, now Gabe too. He’d pulled the plug that afternoon, cradling his tiny offspring in his huge arms, the tears pouring from the six-foot three strapping hulk of a man. “Time to go see mommy, little guy,” Clive had murmured through his tears, kissing his son on the forehead as the doctor turned off the life support. “Give mommy a kiss for me, okay? I love you, Gabe. Don’t worry, justice will be served, buddy. I promise. Mommy‘s waiting for you now son. It’ll be alright. Go on baby love…” he’d told him, before sobbing uncontrollably into his limp son‘s broken body.

The pain was far beyond wrenching, but he was thankful he got to say goodbye to Gabe. His last words to Marlene had been, “Pick me up a six pack on your way home, would ya, love?” At least love had been the last word she heard out of his mouth.

Gabe had ultimately been killed in the horrific car crash along with his mother, but he stopped breathing there in his father’s arms, and Clive had walked out of the hospital a numb man. The senior officer had called that night to find out how he was doing, and to offer condolences from the entire unit. He’d been a Navy seal since he’d married Marlene five years before Gabe was born. He’d told his superior that he’d be okay, but he was wrong. He’d retired from the Navy, with an honorable discharge, six months later.

Honorable. He thought about the implications of the word and shivered.

Maddie had lost her teenage son in a similar incident. Except it’d been a Pepsi truck that had careened on a snow covered Vermont road into her son’s Honda Civic, freshly decked out with the cranking stereo system he‘d just bought with his first paycheck. One of the speakers had been found two hundred yards from the wreckage, next to her son’s severed leg. The driver of the Pepsi drunk, still two sheets to the wind from an all-nighter the previous evening, had been trying to carry the limb back to the mangled teenager when the police had arrived.

Maddie had read it in the report she obtained from the agency three weeks after the accident. She’d been devastated, telling Clive that if she could beat the driver to death with her son’s severed leg, she would.

Clive had pictured the grisly scene in his head, with the driver crouched in a corner, and Maddie swinging the bloody stump with all her might. Not the most efficient way to kill a man, but he’d been sure that she could do it, if given the chance. A mother’s rage was a powerful thing, especially when you hurt her child, and this idiot hadn‘t just hurt her child; he’d taken him from her permanently.

And he was all she had.

It had to be similar to a father’s rage, one would think. At least, that’s what Clive thought. He knew exactly what she’d been feeling.

“I do know,” he replied, “and I know that it’ll get easier with time. Might not seem like it now, because it’s still so fresh with you, but it will get better.”

At least he didn’t promise her.

He didn’t like lying to her, but he couldn’t tell her that not a day would go by that she wouldn’t think about the tragedy. It’d been twenty years now, and he still thought about Marl, Gabe, and Joe Swakowski on a daily basis.

Especially Joe.

He’d watched him walk out of the courtroom after the prosecutor had botched the case, the glib smile plastered on his face as he made his way down the courthouse steps. Clive had been seething. Apparently the first responding officer, a rookie by chance, had been so disturbed by the scene that he’d forgotten to read the guy his Miranda rights when he’d placed him under arrest. The case had been dismissed on a technicality and his family’s killer had walked out a free man.

Justice had not been served.

Not yet anyway.

The ping from the computer jarred him out of his reverie, and caused old K2 to lift his head up off the uncomfortable single bed in the stuffy motel room.

“You promise?! You’re not the type to make promises you can’t keep, are you CJ?” she replied.

“No, ma’am. My momma taught me well. Her and the corp, actually. They taught me lots of things, and being a man of my word was one of ‘em. If you make a promise, you better damn well stand by it.” He hit the send button.

“Hmmm. I like a man in uniform, and a man of his word. Does this mean you’re still going to meet me tomorrow night after work?” She’d added the winking emoticon to the message.

Clive rustled uneasily in the barren room, thinking about the planned rendezvous the following evening. He hoped she wouldn’t hate him after that.

“I promise! I’ll be there with bells on. You sure you’re up to meeting a stranger? I mean, I could be some fat, horny pervert with a waitress fetish for all you know!” He’d hit the send button before realizing that the statement might scare her off. You really couldn’t be sure with the internet. Anonymity was a wily animal.

“Don’t be silly. I handle morons like that everyday. What’s one more? Plus, I’m pretty sure a former Navy seal isn’t going to let himself go to pot. If you’re fat, I’m rich, and we both know that I couldn’t afford the…

Clive waited for five seconds, watching the little blinking screen name that indicated she was still typing.

“…cost of a postage stamp to mail Obama a letter saying “I’m still waiting for that hopey changey thing to kick in, oh fearless leader! What’s the deal, Mr. Presidente? When are us peons going to get a break?!”

“Sooner than you think, Maddie,” he typed and hit the send button.

“From your lips, or fingertips as it is, to God’s ears!” she replied. “I swear, if I have to spend one more night bringing cold beer and nachos to a bunch of rabble rousing hoodlums, I’m gonna snap and start killing…”

Clive waited again.

“…people.” She’d added the angry emoticon, followed by the laughing one.

Clive grinned. She had spunk! He’d liked her from the moment he’d read her first response in the forums. The question had been, ‘What would you do if you hit the lottery?’

MadMax had responded, “I’d use my little note pad and pencil normally meant for scribbling down orders to write my boss a little note that says “Take this job and shove it!”. Then I’d give my son a proper headstone, fitting of the fine young man he was. Damn drunk driver took him too soon, and I hate that I couldn’t afford the headstone. Tips supported us in life, but they didn’t cover the expenses in death. Go figure.”

The response had nearly shattered his already broken heart.

He’d knew she was the one right then, but he’d wanted to be sure, so he’d watched her responses to the various threads over the months. He would come home from a hard day’s work and find solace in her strength and determination. She was a good person, despite the raw hand she’d been dealt.

He’d found out a wealth of information over the last few weeks. She’d worked two jobs most of her life after becoming a single mother at the tender age of eighteen. She’d left an abusive home the year prior, finally able to escape the years of physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by her father, only to get hooked up with somebody just as mean spirited. The expectant father had beaten the hell out of her when she told him she was pregnant, and after leaving the hospital with the baby still intact, she’d promised not to let him hurt either one of them ever again. She’d left town and moved to the little village in Vermont that she and her son had called home, until his untimely demise that fateful winter morning nine months ago.

Now it was just Maddie, trying to get through another day filled with grief, and struggling to pay the bills. He’d learned the whole story over the past few weeks after the initial introduction in which he’d shared his own tragic turn of events, effectively creating a bond between the two of them that others probably couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand.

“Until you’ve walked in their shoes…” Clive sighed, letting the thought trail off into the near empty room.

He returned his attention to the matters at hand. Time was running out. He glanced at the duffel bag and scratched K2’s belly absentmindedly before setting his fingers to typing again.

“You couldn’t kill a flea, you big liar! Killing isn’t that easy, you know?! It’s not like the movies. You’d be a ball of Jell-O after the first round went through the dude’s head. Not that that’s a bad thing. I like Jell-O. Green especially”

He’d reached the end of the allotted space in the little box, a rarity for Clive. He was a man of few words. He was going to add the winking smiley, but it wouldn’t fit. He hit send without it. Hopefully she’d read the humor in it anyways, and overlook the actual content of the statement.

“I am not Jello, green or orange or red for that matter! I may wiggle and jiggle a little after thirty-five plus years on this earth, but give a girl a break. It’s not like I’ve had a man to work off the extra pounds. Yet!!!” She’d had room for two of the winking smiley things.

Clive almost felt bad for leading her on. The remark made it obvious that she was hoping things would go well tomorrow. They would, he hoped, but not in the way she imagined.

“I wouldn‘t worry about your weight. You look absolutely beautiful to me. And I‘m sure I‘m not the only one! Think of all those guys grabbing your ***. It can‘t be THAT fat!” he responded, having enough room to put a laughing emoticon or three.

“Keep it up sunshine, and I won’t let you see my ***, fat or otherwise, tomorrow. I need to go let the dog out though. You gonna stay on or do you have to go to work tonight?” she queried.

He thought about the Pepsi driver.

“Gotta run, sweet cheeks,” he replied, knowing that she wouldn’t take the sarcasm as insulting. They shared a similar love of quick witted comebacks, and the longer he’d communicated with her, the more he was sure that she was the one.

She deserved it more than anyone else. He knew it now, just as surely as he knew Gabe would stop breathing when they turned the machines off. “I’ll see you tomorrow at 7:00. Your work. Don’t be late!” he added, before hitting the send button.

“Ha Ha! Very funny. YOU don’t be late!” she wrote. “I can’t wait to meet you, CJ. I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped me cope with Brandon’s death. I didn’t think I was going to be able to go on living without him but…”

Clive waited.

“…since I’ve been talking to you, I have some hope for my future. It might not be the future I wanted, but maybe it won’t be so bad after all. Maybe I can stop thinking about death and start living again. Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you see what I bring you tomorrow. Then you can thank me!” he wrote, glancing at the duffel bag. He didn’t know if she’d be thanking him or turning him in, but he hoped for the former as he waited for her response.

He didn’t need to wait long.

“You don’t need to bring me anything! I just want to meet you and hug you and tell you thanks in person. I mean it, CJ! I couldn’t keep going in this miserable life. After that bastard took my son, what’s left? This job? Shoot me, pleas”

No blinking screen name. She apparently wasn’t going to add another message with just the letter ’e’ in it. He laughed, knowing it was killing her to not do it. She was just like him, a stickler for the details. In his business, you had to be. In hers? Well, maybe it wasn’t so crucial, but over the past four months, he’d learned enough about Madison Maximillian to know that she didn’t like to leave things unfinished.

Almost as if reading his mind, he saw the flashing lights indicating that she was typing, and the “e” appeared in the box on his screen, followed by a period and a laughing smiley.

“That’s my girl,” Clive thought before responding.

“Shoot you? Never, sweetie. You don’t deserve it. Pepsi dude and Joe Swakowski? Well, that’s another story, but justice gets served, Maddie. Don’t ever believe differently. They’ll answer for what they did to us.” He plunked the send button again.

He didn’t need to tell her Joe already had, almost twenty years ago. He was Clive’s first.

“Okay, CJ. You better get to work dear. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night. Don’t kill anyone!” she advised.

Clive guffawed out loud, stirring K2 from his deep sleep on the bed. He rubbed the old dogs ears and scratched his snout. He hoped his best friend would get along well with his new friend and her dog. She had a lab too, although hers was just a pup compared to old K2. He wondered what the first meeting would be like. Too bad he wouldn’t be there to see it.

“Not unless they deserve it, MadMax! I promise. And you know I don’t break my promises. I’ll see you tomorrow night, doll. Get some rest. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He added the kissing emoticon, for good measure.

“Good night, CJ. See ya soon, ya big goon! Later gator. In awhile crocodile, and all that good stuff. Kisses back at ya, until I can plant one on ya in real life! Tomorrow!!” No smiley faces this time.

She’d closed the instant messenger box.

He felt a little sadness at that revelation, knowing this might be the last message he got from her. Tomorrow he’d tell her everything.

The struggle to make sense of his wife and son’s death. The anger and pain he’d felt watching Joe Swakowski descend the courthouse steps. The realization that he couldn’t let the guy get away with murder. He’d taken his wife and son for God’s sake, and who would be next? Another innocent victim? Maybe a seventeen year old kid with a new stereo system on his way to his first job? Clive hadn’t been able to stand the thought. And he’d promised Gabe that justice would be served.

He’d stewed about the idea for months, finally deciding to leave the corp and carry out his plans. He’d scoped Joe out for three weeks until he learned the loser’s routine. It hadn’t been hard to do. The Navy taught their seals how to be invisible, and how to kill with precision and efficiency.

He’d put the bullet through his brain after reminding Joe about the woman and child he’d killed while he was too drunk to care about the precious thing we call life. He sure cared a lot about it when Clive had the muzzle of the gun pressed to the quaking loser’s forehead. He’d begged for his life, pleading with the unknown black clad stranger that’d been waiting in his house when he got home from his Thursday night softball game. The fat bastard had actually sobbed until snot ran down his face, offering Clive money and anything else he had, if Clive would just let him live.

Clive hadn’t. He’d told him, “Sorry pal. Justice will be served!” and pulled the trigger, the silencer on his weapon muffling the fatal shot. Joe’s brains blew out against the foyer walls and Clive’s killing spree had begun.

He hadn’t known then that he would keep doing it. He’d thought that he’d end Joe’s life, that justice would be served, and that he’d be able to put the pain behind him.

He’d been wrong. The pain kept gnawing at him, unrelenting in its torturous grip, until he spotted a newspaper article about another drunk driving accident, this one in the state bordering his.

The idiot had plowed into a mini-van full of teenagers, killing all four instantly in a fiery carnage after it rolled down an embankment. The driver of the car had been arraigned on his fourth count of drunk driving, and would be facing a stiff sentence if convicted, the paper said. He’d been released on bail while awaiting trial and Clive had tracked him down three days later. He’d snapped his scrawny neck like a twig as the man stepped out of his newly fixed Volvo in the dimly lit garage. He’d saved the taxpayers a tidy sum of money, and the dude got the stiff sentence he deserved. Clive had seen it as a win-win situation.

“Justice will be served,” he’d told the guy, before giving him a fatal case of whiplash. It was important the target knew what he was dying for. You can’t just go around killing people with a two thousand pound weapon fueled by an alcohol induced stupor. If that’s the choice you made, well then, you should have to suffer the consequences of your actions. Clive had already seen the wonderful job the justice system did at doling out an appropriate punishment.

So he’d decided to handle the punishing from then on.

He traveled the country, researching incidents of fatal drunk driving “accidents“, and going wherever he needed to go. Unfortunately, his services were needed throughout the country every goddamn day.

He chose his mark, stalked his prey, and meted out the punishment quickly and efficiently. His training had been top notch, he could say that much. He’d become a killing machine, and had notched hundreds, if not thousands, of “victims” over the past twenty years.

The cops never put two and two together because Clive was smart. He moved across the country, a silent unknown assassin, whacking drunk drivers at will.

He’d ransack their house, take whatever cash he found, and make it look like a robbery gone bad. Or he’d slit the throat of the convicted man, (well, convicted by Clive, at least!) and pull his pants down, leaving him in the dark alley looking like a John that gotten the bad end of a twenty dollar whore.

Cops had too many other things to do than try to investigate such random crimes. If they’d known Clive’s lifework, maybe they’d be a little more interested in the seemingly unconnected crime scenes, but they hadn’t connected the dots yet, and chances are they never would. Time was running thin.

His spree would soon be brought to an unceremonious halt. He’d been informed five months ago that he had a brain tumor growing inside his head. He’d noticed the headaches had been getting worse, but chalked it up to a guilty conscience, even though he was pretty sure he didn‘t have one.

He’d collapsed on the sidewalk one night, only an hour after strangling a young woman that’d killed an elderly couple on their way to church. Luckily, he’d already disposed of the mask and gloves in a trash bin six blocks from her apartment. When he’d awoken in the hospital, the doctor had given him the bad news.

He had six months to live, if that. It was inoperable, being just above the brain stem. Eventually, he’d lose all his faculties, and then he’d just stop breathing like Gabe had done in his daddy’s arms. He didn’t want to go like that.

He’d amassed quite a chunk of change over the twenty years from the now dead lushes. Eighty-three thousand dollars, to be exact, give or take a buck or two. It sat in the camouflaged duffel bag in the corner of the seedy motel room where K2 and Clive had resided this last week, waiting to be delivered to somebody that deserved a break.

Somebody like MadMax, like Madison Maximillian, who had lost her son to the same sorry son-of-a-***** that had taken his wife and young son, only her version had a Pepsi patch on his shirt at the time. He’d lost the Pepsi patch along with his job, and maybe even his dignity, but he hadn’t lost what Maddie lost, what Clive had lost. He couldn’t very well kill the guy’s family to make him understand. But he could cut his life short, just like the lives that he and all the other inebriated idiots had cut short. Innocent lives. Good lives.

Justice was served, and Clive had been the waitress, or waiter if you were being gender correct. Only seemed fitting to give the rewards to one, especially one as good-hearted as Maddie. She’d had a tough life, and she’d done the best she could over the years, only to lose what had mattered most to her. Clive knew the money wouldn’t bring her son back, but she could at least get him the headstone he deserved.

Marlene and Gabe each had one. Brandon deserved one too. A nice one.

“Eighty-three thousand dollars could buy a damn nice marker, dontcha think, K2?” he asked the old dog sprawled out beside him. The loyal retriever whimpered in acknowledgement, as if sensing this would be his last night with his beloved owner.

Clive was sorry he wouldn’t be with him during his final days, but he was sure Maddie would take him into her home and treat him well until he went to dog heaven in a year or two. She’d have enough money to cover any incurred expenses, after all, and K2 was a good old boy, so Clive hadn’t worried too much about his fate in her capable hands.

He’d chosen her from amongst all the others.

He needed to tell someone about the things he’d done, the people he’d executed, the justice he’d inflicted. He’d been the secret judge, jury, and executioner the past two decades, and if God wanted to take offense at that and deny him an afterlife with his wife and child, then he’d serve his time in hell.

He didn’t see it that way though, and maybe Maddie wouldn’t either. He’d done what he had to do. They could be sorry, but they could never understand the pain they’d caused to the families of the deceased that had been left behind. In fact, every last goddamn one of them had said they were sorry, and it hadn’t done them any good.

“You drink, you drive, you die.” Wasn’t that the slogan they aired on the public service announcements?

So Clive had made sure of it. Could you really fault him? Would Maddie? If anyone would understand, it’d be her. She might not forgive him, but she might at least know why he did it.

The Pepsi guy would suffer his fate tonight. Clive’s last job. He’d meet Maddie tomorrow night to give her the duffel bag full of cash and the knowledge of his demise as her ultimate present. She’d take both, eventually, because he knew how much it’d been eating her up to sit at her son’s unmarked grave, and he knew how much she wanted that bastard dead. He’d killed her son, just like Joe Swakowski had killed Clive’s, and both children were just the innocent victims of a senseless tragedy.

All because some idiot chose to drink and drive.

Well, Clive had done his duty, and meted out the richly deserved justice. He’d end his own life on his own terms now, and pray for the best, as far as seeing his wife and son again went. Maddie wouldn’t like it, she’d probably even protest, but he wouldn’t be swayed from his decision.

He was a man of his word, and she’d respect him for that. She’d take K2 and the duffel bag, and leave with tears in her eyes after hugging him for a long time. Hopefully she’d be able to do what Clive couldn’t and move on with her life. He wondered if it was possible.

But not for long. He had a date with the Pepsi guy and didn’t want to keep him waiting. Clive was punctual, if nothing else.

Wow....did I enjoy reading that. I wish I could write the way you do. I hope you'll put an ending? I would enjoy reading that.

OK, blonde moment. I get it (duh). The ending is up to us to imagine if they will actually meet and how she will react that he killed the drunk driver. Your story was so good I just read it again.

I was gonna write you up a special ending if you really wanted one!

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Most people wouldn't attempt one go around, let alone two.

I just wrote another one...I'm debating whether to post it...it's a little risque in one part...

I'm hoping to put 'em all together into a collection centered around the internet dating theme, but we'll see how that works out. One story at a time I guess...

Thanks for the kind review.

You have an exceptional talent, and you're rapidly gathering enough material for a superb anthology.

If you post it, they will read (and gladly so will I).

Thanks Lex!

Writing the stories is the easy part. Knowing what to do with 'em when I gather enough of 'em up is another ballgame all together...and then there's the major hurdle of actually selling it if I do manage to find a publisher and get 'em into print.

But publishing a book has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl. Who knows?! Maybe dreams do come true... I'm going to give it a shot anyways!

Thank you for the encouragement.

I'm not sure how many people actually read these entirely long short stories, but if even one person likes them, I'm more than happy to post them.

I just finished editing and attempting the proof reading thing on "The Meeting", although I'm not very good at that last part yet. I'll put it up shortly.

Thanks for reading 'em.

I absolutely loved it. But now I am thinking they are sooooo good that you should get a book on how to get a book published and find a person to represent you. And before you put more stories on the internet (and possibly lose them) send one of your stories with a querie letter to a publishing agent. Lex may even know of one. You are good girl. I don't have a lot of time to read and these short stories of yours are a perfect read and you write so clearly that I can see. That is a talent....a real talent. I meant to post this in your newest story, blonde moment again (ha). It was that story that really made me want to send this note to you. Although this one is great too (ha).

I kept putting off reading this, but eventually I did, I throughly enjoyed it.

My humble thanks for these very kind words.

I've done a bit of research into the publishing, but I don't know too much yet, other than I can self publish (which anyone can do but it costs money!) or I can try to find a publisher that wants my work.

That second one is more difficult... the big guns--Random House, etc.--don't take unknown author's manuscripts. And short stories don't normally garner as much interest from publishers, unless the collection is followed by a book, although that's a distinct possibility since I have one half done, and another started. Those won't get done for at least a year though as I'm back to school here shortly (my senior year, yeah!). This collection of short stories was my summer project!

The querie letter to a publishing agent sounds like a good idea. I don't know exactly how I'm going to do this, but I'm definitely going to take a stab at it. It's on the list of things to do before I die and I'm not getting any younger!

I'm glad you enjoyed both the stories...and thanks again for taking the time to comment.

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Much thanks to you also, for reading and commenting, Bonny.