Barder, Cole, and the Man with the Orange Turban

The Prompt: Assuming the dog in your story is named Barder, and that the orange turban gives him the power of flight…

<<.The Photo

The Story:
Northeastern Afghanistan, 1527 hours
PFC Cole and Sergeant Barder took cover behind a rock. Bullets and mortar rounds whizzed overhead as insurgents attacked their convoy.
“We need to find better cover!” screamed Barder over the roar of the battle.
“I saw a cave about 100 yards down the road!” Cole yelled back.
“That’ll have to do, Private! On the Count of three, you make a dash for it. I’ll cover you. When you get there, turn around and cover me!”
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
PFC Cole broke from cover just as Barder opened fire on the cliff face above them. Cole dodged bullets as he ran back down the road until he reached the mouth of the cave. He hit the dirt and aimed back up the road just in time to see Barder leave the rock and come sprinting toward him.
When Barder was 10 feet away from the cave, Cole saw an insurgent aim an RPG toward their position and the puff of smoke as it fired.
“RPG!” Cole yelled, and he and Barder dove headfirst into the cave just ahead of the wave of head. There was a cloud of dust and rubble, and then everything went black.

PFC Cole woke up in darkness. He noticed that he was wearing something that was too comfortable to be his army fatigues. He stood up and did a quick check. All the important body parts were still there.
“Sergeant?” he called into the blackness. “Sergeant Barder?”
There was a growl at his elbow. “Cole, is that you?”
“Yessir. Are you alright?”
“Hell, I hope so. Are we alive?”
“I have no idea, sir.” Cole noticed a light at the end of the tunnel. “I think the tunnel caved in,” he said, coughing from the dust. “But I see a light up ahead.”
“May as well find it. Do you have your pack? I can’t find mine.”
“Me neither, sir. Guess we’ll have to rough it.”
As they walked toward the light, Cole noticed that his body seemed oddly proportioned, and that Sgt. Barder’s feet made funny clicking sounds on the rock floor as he walked.
When they reached the light, Cole was momentarily blinded. When his eyesight returned, there was no sign of Barder. There was, however, a large German Shepherd sitting next to him.
“Sergeant Barder?” Cole called. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” said the dog. “I’m right here. Are you blind?”
“Sir?”
“Right here, idiot,” repeated the dog.
“Sir. You’re a dog.”
“Stop messing with me, Private. Why do you look like an 8 year old?”
They both looked down at themselves.
“Oh. Shit…”

“I’m like 5,” moaned Cole.
“And I’m a damn dog!” barked Barder. “At least you’ll grow up. All I have to look forward to is chasing squirrels. And sniffing butts.”
“And getting neutered,” Cole said helpfully.
Barder whined and covered his nose with his paws. “Don’t. Mention. That.”

They stayed sitting at the cave mouth for about half an hour, neither of them saying anything. Cole looked up. Flying in the air about 100 feet was a flying carpet carrying a man with a bright orange turban.
“Sergeant? Check it out.”
The two soldiers stared at the strange sight until it almost disappeared behind a mountain.
“Have you ever?” Cole started.
“Never.” Said Barder.
“But it.”
“Yeah.”
“So can we?…”
“Yeah. Lets go get it, Private.”
They got to their feet and ran after the flying carpet and the man with the orange turban.

Honors Vocab #1

Flourish: to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, esp. as the result of a particularly favorable environment

• I flourished at the ice cream store.

Guerilla: a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces

• The guerrillas attacked the Marines but were unsuccessful.

Stereotype: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

• Colt was a stereotypical cowboy.

Tempo: he speed at which a passage of music is or should be played, the rate or speed of motion or activity

• Swing has a fast tempo.

Tundra: a vast, flat, treeless Arctic region of Europe, Asia, and North America in which the subsoil is permanently frozen.

• There are a lot of polar bears and wolves on the tundra.

Randolph and Payne (Subway Picture Prompt)

In class we were assigned to select one or two people from Bill Sullivan’s collection of photographs of people entering the subway and tell their story leading up to when the picture was taken.

Dr. Frank Randolph is private eye. He and his partner Ruth Payne have been working for the last ten years, exposing cheaters, and finding lost objects, people, and dignity. Randolph was the brains, Payne was the brawn. He is about five foot six, small, wiry, and always wearing a suit and fedora. She’s well over six feet and built like a linebacker, with frizzy hair and ever-present sunglasses. Payne doesn’t talk much, but Randolph talks too much, so it evens out.

A few days ago a woman burst into their office, almost in hysterics. She hired them to track down her cousin, who was trying to have her killed in order to claim her grandfather’s inheritance. It seemed like a fairly open and shut case.

They had taken the job, and Randolph left the woman in the office with Payne while he went to find them all dinner. When he returned Payne was holding her head groggily and their client disappeared. Next to his desk was a used stun grenade casing. Randolph helped his partner to her feet and poured her a stiff glass of bourbon. This was going to be harder than they thought.

That was three days ago. Today they are in a black Buick, trailing a man that they hoped would lead them to their missing client. The man’s cab pulls over and he climbs out. Randolph cuts off another driver in order to steal the last parking spot on the block. As the other driver curses at them, the two PI’s climb out of the car and follow their man down the street. They follow him for four blocks until he catches a glimpse of them in a storefront. He breaks off in a sprint. The two detectives chase after him. The man dashes down into the subway, with the two PI’s hot on his tail. He hurdles the subway turnstile and Randolph and Payne lose precious seconds swiping their passes.

The three push through the crowds, knocking bystanders left and right. The man is heading for a subway that is about to pull out of the station. He just reaches the doors when Randolph body checks him against the side of the subway. Payne grabs him and pins the man against a support pillar.

“Alright buddy,” pants Randolph. “Are you going to make this easy, or is Payne going to get to have some fun?”

The Metric System

The metric system is one of the greatest ideas ever that failed miserably in execution. The idea is great, a base ten system makes conversions simpler, better than English standard's hopeless gibberish of 12's and 3's and 36's and 5280's. However, this beautiful idea was destroyed and made not awesome. The metric system has to have the worst units of measuring length ever conceived. In basic usage it jumps from centimeters (which are too small to be useful) to meters (which are too big to be useful) to kilometers (which, again, are too small to be useful). Credit the English, the foot is the perfect distance. So many things can be expressed as a foot that just don't work as well as 31 cm or .31 meters. No. Its a foot. Nothing in nature is naturally a meter. Oh, that racoon is .6 meters! Nope, that's two feet.

Come on, metric system, you dropped the ball. I blame the French. Its usually their fault anyway.

What is up, America?

So, yeah. This is where I lay down the law on everything government. It's going to be legendary. Beware, corrupt keepers of America's trust. That's right, it's going down.