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A DEAD HAND
A Dead Hand reaches out to me. . .
A Dead Hand . . . is alive inside, without the strength of flesh. It looks for stars to shine through, hands to move, along the page. Eyes behind the eyes to show things to.
Dead hands don’t really listen. They only halfway smirk about the things you say. Small talk bores them. They are confused about the flesh. But only flesh can rock the boat. A dead hand sits inside.
Character Driven Literary Fiction
based in Louisville, Kentucky
the Caretakers
Rooster Dog
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The following works have been written and edited by Rebecca Hassett at Spanish Moss Books.
Photographs taken by Rebecca Hassett.
In New Orleans, in a mansion without locks on the doors, where gunshots can be heard at night and sometimes during the day, THE CARETAKERS hold their annual tradition of an Easter Party. The people who live there work on repairing the enchanted old home, instead of paying rent.
While at the Easter Party, the Caretakers: MAMA SOLEIL, HERICOT VERTS (French for Green Beans), and AUGUST, each fall in love with someone new, as the Blues Musician sings `Amazing Grace,’ and soon they move out of the house. All except for MAMA SOLEIL, she is waiting for her daughter and granddaughter to move back home.
The house had fallen into materials that needed many adjustments, like the curvy spine to a chiropractor, and MAMA SOLEIL cracked the back of the house and let in the sunshine. While she worked hard at her job as a housekeeper for the historic hotel in the French Quarter, waiting gracefully for tips from guests she seldom received.
Character Driven Literary Fiction
based on an actual Easter Party
in New Orleans.
The opening paragraph has been published in Kentucky Monthly's Literary Issue, February 2018.
ROOSTER DOG who howled like a rooster whenever he was left alone for more than a minute, was a big black pitbull with big ears, who believed he was a tiny lap dog, curling up to his owners in the smallest of places, until he heard someone at the door and then he made the most vicious sounds known to man. He played with little four year old CHRISTINA like a protective uncle and when she ran off to hide in the sandbox one day with the lid on in the hot sun, ROOSTER DOG came to Christina's grandmother, MAMA SOLEIL, with his look of fatherly concern and MAMA SOLEIL followed him to the sandbox and took the lid off. She found little CHRISTINA sweaty and in a daze of heat, with her eyes floating. ROOSTER DOG was a good dog after all and in his deep sleep one night on the couch, his big black ears twitched, as he dreamed that his black ears that he usually pointed straight up to the sky, began flapping like wings and he flew up to the sky and turned into a bat. His black body shrank and he flew around the night sky dreaming of stars, until he heard the words, ‘This bat is a cat, and he turned into a cat,’ and he woke up from sleeping, curled up in a ball on the couch. He almost said, ‘Meow,’ but he stirred himself up with a, ‘Ruff!’ and then a ‘Growl!’ that responded to the ‘Ruff!’ He looked around the living room, feeling like part bat, part cat, part dog. And then he fell back asleep again and forgot about his dream.
The Sequel to the Caretakers.
Character Driven Literary Fiction
based on an actual Easter Party
in New Orleans.
