Cooking the Hook - NEW

Too near death today... I rolled up to the red light at Rt.29 and Killian/Indian Trail today, heading back from the park in Lilburn. It's a broad, busy intersection. I was first in line in the left northbound lane, the lane to my right was empty. Some kind of police activity going in the gas station on the corner there. Two cars, blue lights. First responders. There were no cars passing through the intersection. A pedestrian crossed in front of me. He had the light, he was in the crosswalk. I saw this: a man, sixty-ish, silver-haired, tan, fit and smiling. Taking a pull from a soft drink. Crisp, striped short sleeved shirt, pressed khakis, a gold watch on his wrist, he was close enough that he might have gotten crud on his pants from my bumper. He was watching the cop show too, head up, eyes front, not stuck to some damn gadget. He was in line with the passenger seat of my car ready to take a step into eternity when a flatbed truck - the big kind that can carry tw...

A train of thunderstorms passed through the area  last night. Brief, violent and not wet enough. The power flicked off while I was wrapping up a long report for a customer. Whoopee! No power means I'm offline until it's restored. Of course, it also means I don't get paid for the missing time.  But, oh well, act o' god and all that. It was too early to sleep and I caught the bones of a good story while paddling around in the pool earlier in the day. I took a few notes at the time, but couldn't read them in the dim light so I just started from scratch scribbling away by candlelight. Five minutes into it,  I heard a huge splash from the pool and went out on the deck to investigate. A large limb fell from one of the overhangs and circled lazily with all the other tree trash that happens every night. The drizzle stopped, the clouds parted and a brilliant moon turned everything blue-white. I shut off the flashlight, took my tarot deck and went down ont...