Distasteful Conduct

Ron Koppelberger

Distasteful Conduct

The assets were agreeable and the inner longing he was avenging claimed his conscious perceptions with lilac and vanilla flesh, sweet lips and tender throbbing neckline, in bursting ardor and the thirsty dreams of a vampire.
She spun and sang, she danced in pirouettes and gentle swirls as he applauded and cheered her performance. When she had finished he hurried to the stage and handed her a single blood red rose, a touch of drama for the masquerade he thought, sweet homage to my feasting desire.
She disappeared for a moment and the lights dimmed. Romantic he thought as he was the entire audience. She returned to the stage moments later with a small basket and a bottle of cognac. She sat down gently and opened the wicker basket. The vampire disguising his impatience smiled and said, “ Tis a loves feast, well worth the performance darling!”
She replied, “Indeed grand vampire, if I am to console your bloodlust I must be carnivorous as you are!” After saying this to the vampire she took a small sip of the cognac and pulled a large cobra from the basket. Holding the tail she lifted it above her head and milked its venom, each drop landing in her upturned mouth. The vampire blushed and made an excuse leaving her in the dim lights of the stage.
She was an once too much and he didn’t care for snake venom, his ancestry denied the ballerina her vengeance as she was toxic to anyone’s touch.

Lunacy Keen

Ron Koppelberger

Lunacy Keen

Adhering to the bond of wolf and man, full bloated suns at night and the wild lunatic in his heart, he governed the new fangled device with a folklore howl and a dribble of spit. The rippling resolve of the beast wore its elegance in a mad cloak of half-light existence. He thumbed the electronic note pad and read by bright stop’s and go’s. The tiny light in the forest was a beacon for the others. They would come from far and even farther to see his treasure.
The wolf read and soon the thrush sang in rhythm to his excited lunacy. By silver and happenstance the other wolves, none just wolf all men and women changed by the curse, gathered to read the chronicle, the legend bought by the survivors of the curse.
Soon they understood and in union they left the presence of the lunatic wolf, the holder of the electronic book. The passage had read, “ By moon glow gods till the sun sets nothing deters the creed and the wont of starved spirits in moonlight!” It was signed, The Immigrant Wolf.He sighed and howled in glee, for he enjoyed his freedom and now knew it would be eternal.
By advances and steps their creed would find blessings again, for theirs was the wolf.

Twilight Court (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

Twilight Court

His confidence was a certain annoyance to the pool of spectators. Straying a glance at the prosecuting attorney, he offered a grin and an innocent expression of bewilderment. She returned his look with cool confessional disregard. He imagined the sweet passions of sleepy innocent indulgence and fresh air rather than the odor of urine and sweat that had permeated his jail cell. He had spent the last sixteen years in that cell and now he remained silent, calm, composed as the prosecutor questioned the witness.
“ Innocent.” the convict whispered. The witness wore a cloudy look for a moment before finally answering.
“ I believe he’s innocent.” the witness professed. The prosecutor sighed and dismissed the young woman.
“ Innocent.” he whispered again. The judge coughed and banged the gilded wooden gavel.
“Unless you have something more substantial, I’ll allow this injustice to end, the defendant is obviously,” he shouted, “….innocent!” The prosecutor gasped and swore under her breath.
He thought about the crime he had been convicted of sixteen years earlier and the additional charge they were trying to pin on him. A story in every cell block he thought. The book had lain open before him and the small sliver of metal he had fashioned in the metal shop served it’s purpose. A small slash against his palms and he had recited the words, the words contained in the text, the leather bound book “Voodoo Taboo”.
“ By the will of the great snake in coil and oblivion, by the wines of a forgotten snare, by the call unto the dance of voodoo high, I submit the powers of hoodoo chance by the way of the innocent man…………my soul unto the great snake for the freedom of the innocent, for the freedom of the innocent, innocent, innocent.” he had gasped through clenched teeth.
“ Innocent.” he whispered to the courtroom again. The prosecutor stared ahead and sighed in resignation. “Innocent.” she said aloud, moved by unseen forces. “He’s innocent.”
The defense attorney jumped up beside the man and shouted, “ Move to dismiss your honor.”
“ Granted.” the judge responded. News crews waited in throngs and throes near the court house steps and as he walked arm in arm with the defense team a final thought filtered through the glee he was experiencing, A life for a life he thought in synchronicity with unseen forces, a life for a life. Long ago he had taken something from the world, a moment, a second from the existence of his victim, the murder that had landed him in jail. He shook his head clearing away the old thoughts and feelings. I’m free now, truly free. Just then, in the moment of his reverie’, an enormous explosion tore through the air ripping it in two. Bodies flew in helter-skelter array and the defendant lay buried beneath the stones of a twilight court.
In distant observation a passerby, a common suit, whispered a brief word of accusation.
“Guilty!” he said from across the street. “Guilty!”

The Root Trader (new Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

The Root Trader

The ground tugged at Louisiana Paleos’ supply of independence and mounted concern. The crop slapped at the stallions hindquarters leaving tiny welts of conveyed direction. The sleepy waters of Wabble Morass pulled at the hooves of the horse, Trembling, prepared for the worst Louisiana feared the payment of the root trader.
He had untangled the trail that the morass had presented and near the end of the quest he had found the day, hour and age of sublime barter with the root trader. A tiny wood and plank thatched house sat like a beacon for those who ventured the Wabble wash, the intervening morass. Knot holes let the fires of candles within show through the tattered walls of the cottage. He had stifled the urge to scream as the root trader had shuffled through the front door of the ramshackle construction. The house had shifted nervously as the jabbering fortune of boogey barter and dabbling reputation moved in slow halting breaths of swamp fire toward him.
“A bit o Arrow Root fer ye sir?” he questioned. “Arrow root on tha powers of love fer yer flame?” he chuckled as he held a small leather pouch outward in tempting offer.
Louisiana pushed the image of the root trader from his mind as the horse became entrenched in the morass, wallowing and floundering in frothy fear. The trader was covered in leaking pustules his face, or rather his nose, the place where it should have been was a vacuous set of holes bubbling crimson droplets with each of his wheezing exhalations. Louisiana gagged for a moment as he returned his attentions to the leather pouch. Arrow root for his love, the magic of the root trader, but at what cost.
The mark of Louisiana’s hand was swelling and leaking water like fluid. The root trader had scratched him in a giggling frenzy of chattering, gibbering ferocity. Louisiana had grabbed the pouch from the root trader, slapping the horses flanks wildly in fear. He endeavored to free the stallion from the bog as imagined the trail back to safety, back to his love, back to life and away from the root trader. The matter of pest house madness created suspicious fingers of pain and unbound vicious welts in his hand as the root traders scratch became a myriad of leaking cuts and spider web wounds. The Wabble root trader had tried to stop the stallion and Louisiana from leaving with a cattail frond and a screeching yell. The hose nothing but truth and a ferocious fear had trampled the root trader into the damp earth.
Louisiana thought about the crunch of his frail bones and the gasping curse he had spoken. “Heap o sleep and scratchy glue, let the death of Arrow Root be on you!”
The horse became dense shrub; the scratches became sprouting leaves and roots as Louisiana evolved, revolved and resolved the traders curse. An ancient oak grew from the seedlings of the curse and the spot became the center of the morass as a marker for the trader and the curse.

Orphan Picnics and the Bandit

Ron Koppelberger

Orphan Picnics and the Bandit

The sign wasn’t altered in it’s exclamation, nevertheless it was an indicator of past terrors, the harbinger of wild rumors and bloody exaltation, it read,

“Do not feed

The bears!!!”

The sign was a chipped gray and scarlet, the lettering a bold exclamation of warning. Handy Bandit sighed and touched the roughly speckled surface of the sign. The surface was covered in spatters of crimson, blood perhaps he thought. Wrinkling his brow he surveyed the pine straw littering the ground, the piles of freshly scattered dirt, in telltale mounds, half buried in moldering leaves and torn dirty soils, a row of graves.

“Do not feed the Bears.”

He read again as his sneakers left impressions in sporting claim against the blood sodden dirt.

“Do not feed the Bears.”

The graves were haphazard constructions, built in grizzly instinct and scarlet paw. A crow sang, yelled from atop the pine bows, “caw caw.”
Handy sat the picnic basket on the dry patch of earth and opened the burnished lattice lid. The scented desires of starving campers and hiking hunger poured from the basket. Fried chicken, Potato salad, and neat containers of potato chips.

“Do not feed the Bears”

He whispered reverently, by prayer and eyes revolving in desires of chance.
Handy unfitted the restraining straps of the backpack and removed a blue and white checked blanket. The nature of his aloneness forebode reason and rational as he layed the blanket across the bloody soil. The crimson tinctured the blanket in disdain, in warning. Handy closed his eyes for a moment as he sat down on the blanket. He saw seas of scarlet and suns blazing amber in painful clarity. The mists of a wrath untold and blind by the need of what sapphire eyes and mulberry wont express. Eating the call of ravaging danger and tears of senseless diversion. Handy ate chicken, potato salad, and the crisp chips lined neat in stacks.
The balance of night and day divided the hours as handy ate and thought. In the end he concluded the twilight ceremony with a prayer, “By Gods grace we take the wisdom of sense and the desire to live in passions of safe futures and asylum.” He prayed in quiet breaths of new resolve. The night sang sure and the remnants of old chicken bones and plastic containers marked the sodden ancient soil, by bidden release he was reborn and given the will to survive.

Sheppard's Wisdom

Ron Koppelberger

Sheppard’s Wisdom

Streams of complete, immigrant wisdom paid the greater part of his debt to the nascent birth of a generation. He reclaimed the accident of circumstance with musing poetry and the wonts of a teacher, in midnight moons and shadowy whispers of common invocation. He found the poles of near and far, between the age of innocence and the labor of the ancients; his students soared, flew in easy enchantments of air sorcery. A dragon and his underlings in sated castes of flight from the gardens of peace, rose blush unto the mountains of obsidian shadow.
He taught in perfect coincidence to the wind, the gentle currents of forever and a second, in convicted dragon sense and glimmers of cherry blossom rain. The dragon studied the students and in turn they challenged the skies with awkward wings and soaring souls. In this endeavor he found hope, hope for the legend of the dragon and the fast bidden sun alight by distant vistas.
A monument to the advent of reason, renaissance and eternity, the old dragon discovered peace and covenants of respite with the rise and fall of a breath, with the eyes of a babe borne by the frayed edge of an immortal dream.

A Dragon Sage

Ron Koppelberger

A Dragon Sage

Vapors of ethereal creation tangled in arrangements of weeping mist. The dragon stood erect, its leathery wings in full bloom and in redeeming sovereignty over the tiny human. It was a forbearing tail of prophecy and a rose colored belief that destiny swore to. The willingness of the dragon sage to bequeath the secret of the least in vistas of enormity was at the heart of the humans failing.
“To the western fray……human. The witchery and voodoo eye will defy the quest of your kings heart and in seductions snare you will abide.” The dragon rasped in heavy whispering fuss. The human seemed satisfied in that she took comfort for the burden of children, the children of war against men and their asylum was fully realized in her asylum, her hidden conclave. Obedient she had submitted to the man in the commons guard, she had given the impression of submission and ignorance, thusly she had decided to seek the dragon sage, for her children, her kingdom. Her children would amend the covenant of the dragon, but the dragon knew her weakness lay in the temptation to vengeance and the easy path to diversion. He knew, nevertheless he would teach the woman his way and the way of ancient war against the men who would have destroyed his lineage and his spirit. In the heartbeat of a dragon she stood waiting for her destiny, the destiny of a princess and vagabond queen.