So I’m putting together that collection of Lonnie and Tiny stories I’ve been threatening. I submitted the first story, the old original “Lonnie, Me, and the Hound of Hell,” to the Southern Indiana Writers Group for critiquing. This story is currently the title story of LONNIE, ME AND THE HOUND OF HELL, currently available in electronic format:

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Please note that the first edit was to add my beloved serial comma to the title.

Here’s how the story begins.

The Beginning of Lonnie

excerpt from “Lonnie, Me, and the Hound of Hell”
by Marian Allen

My wife and Lonnie’s wife leant against the back door with their arms crossed over their chests and that blank look they always get when they’re trying to decide whether to laugh or rip us new ones.

They didn’t know yet what happened — come to that, neither did I.

First I knew of any of it was when I opened his tool shed door and saw him throw something into a bucket of fire. The flame foomphed up and I grabbed his shirt-tail and hauled backwards, both of us going ass over tip just before the whole shed went ka-blooie. Now we were explaining things to the cops.

“It was an accident,” I said. I’m a big guy — bigger than Lonnie, bigger than the tall cop, three times bigger than the short cop — and my voice rumbles. Naturally, everybody calls me Tiny.

“Yeah. It ain’t like him and me are terrorists.” Lonnie did that head-bobbing silent chuckle that meant he thought he was being funny. He waved at the girls and called, “Hey there, Mrs. Terrorist and Mrs. Other Terrorist.”

“He was making wine,” I said, which was pure meanness. Lonnie’s wife, Leona, is a hardshell Baptist. She would come closer to countenancing a terror bomb or a deal with the Devil than she would Lonnie making liquor.

~*~

The collection will probably be out by the end of the year. Now, don’t all cheer at once.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character tells a lie that gets them in worse trouble than the truth would have.