Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Strange Light of Little Diablo
    The Strange Light of Little Diablo
    The Strange Light of Little Diablo
    Ebook52 pages50 minutes

    The Strange Light of Little Diablo

    By Richard H. Schweitzer

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Based on an actual incident - In the mid 1970s, a group of high schoolers cut school and take a day trip to a nearby mountain. Robert, the instigator and under-aged, unlicensed driver; Greg, an easy target for Robert's shenanigans; and the girls, Vicky and Brenda, up for anything... anything, paying only lip-service to reluctance. They spend a lazy day high and horny on the mountain. It would be a push-pin moment in their memories if it were not overshadowed by the unearthly and life-changing encounter on the way back down.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichard H. Schweitzer
    Release dateFeb 18, 2012
    ISBN9781310396663
    The Strange Light of Little Diablo
    Author

    Richard H. Schweitzer

    Richard H. Schweitzer is an aging fledgling storyteller, and a denizen of various Los Angeles-based coffee shops and tolerant restaurants. He grew up a military brat, he has long since dropped the "military." Being the son of a sailor, he grew up in various locations throughout the known accessible universe. Mostly Texas and California. His own military experience was unremarkable, though he wrote a lot of songs while he was avoiding subordination and perfecting his skills in temporal homicide. "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity..." (Thoreau). His literary interests lean toward books with words; speculative fictional science and historical fantasy.

    Read more from Richard H. Schweitzer

    Related to The Strange Light of Little Diablo

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Body Issues

      Jul 23, 2019

      Body Issues
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Good Samaritan

      Dec 6, 2022

      It was hot that day, hot for the morning and hot for April and with a stickiness in the air that suggested something had to break. I was headed up the street to ask my neighbor Meech to give me a jump when I heard a scream come from the fourplex next

      10 min read

    • Article

      This Lousy Heart

      Jul 18, 2019

      This Lousy Heart
      14 min read

    • Article

      Ben Marcus

      Jun 15, 2018

      My wife, Gin, once knocked gently on my head, as if it were a door. “Hello,” she kept saying. “Hello. Who’s in there?” She and our therapist, Dr. Sherby, laughed a little about this, so I did, too. What fun. Keep knocking on my head like that, like i

      23 min read

    • Article

      Diary Of A Country Mouse

      Mar 3, 2020

      THURSDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Giles shows us the sample mice and I am, as if for the first time, overcome with joy. Perhaps when I was a child I had feelings like this—but not in many years. I look, for instance, at a small gray mouse, smaller than the othe

      17 min read

    • Article

      Carrie Fountain

      Mar 1, 2020

      Outside Dublin, Texas the radio stationsdisappear and I’m left alone with the faintvoice of a call-in psychologist talkingto a man in Cleveland about the voiceof the self, the narratives that voicetells, how they can be sharp and wrongand cut to the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Paul O’grady

      Sep 12, 2022

      Paul O’grady
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mature Adults In Your Area

      Aug 8, 2022

      I would say that I don’t normally do this kind of thing, except that on and off over the months and years, I’ve done “these kinds of things” too many times for that to be true. So yeah, I go on dates from time to time. This recent guy wouldn’t choose

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Devil You Know

      Jul 10, 2021

      I met the Devil today. He was walking down main street, right by the undertaker in B____, which is a little town near here, and which, for obvious reasons, I’d better not name. I recognized him straight away because he had furry legs with hooves for

      8 min read

    • Article

      Mr. Rogers Changed My Life

      Aug 27, 2021

      Mr. Rogers Changed My Life
      3 min read

    • Article

      You Talkin’ To Me?

      Sep 16, 2022

      You Talkin’ To Me?
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Reflections

      Feb 1, 2019

      Do you know what’s worse than a hypochondriac? A vindicated hypochondriac. You know it’s going to be bad when your GP gets choked up. No one likes telling a mother she’s got cancer. Doctor Tearful needn’t have worried. I’d been working towards this m

      9 min read

    • Article

      Dating? We All Make Mistexts

      Jun 9, 2022

      Dating? We All Make Mistexts
      2 min read

    • Article

      Anti Hero

      Apr 7, 2022

      Anti Hero
      6 min read

    • Article

      You Talkin' To Me?

      Aug 17, 2023

      You Talkin' To Me?
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with My Dachshund

      Dec 11, 2019

      The Problem with My Dachshund
      10 min read

    • Article

      Perfection

      Jun 9, 2020

      For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume. My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when

      9 min read

    • Article

      I Confronted My School Bullies

      Jul 3, 2019

      I Confronted My School Bullies
      6 min read

    • Article

      Not That Story

      Oct 28, 2017

      Not That Story
      7 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      Love And Other (chemo) Drugs

      Apr 14, 2019

      Love And Other (chemo) Drugs
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Book

      Oct 30, 2019

      The Book
      20 min read

    • Article

      My Funny, Angry Dad

      Mar 19, 2022

      My Funny, Angry Dad
      6 min read

    • Article

      Spray Tan, Short Shorts And Not A Care In The World: My Quest To Have A Big, Dim Himbo Summer

      Aug 6, 2022

      It was in May this year that we perhaps reached peak himbo. Standing around a map of the UK, England midfielder Jordan Henderson beckoned over his teammate Jack Grealish to reveal the answer to a challenge he’d taken part in. “I had to guess where yo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Shame Is Ever-Present When You’re Sitting in a Cell

      Oct 23, 2020

      Between a strained relationship with my family and the death of a good friend, I’ve struggled to feel like I’m worth something.

      5 min read

    • Article

      How Deep This Grief

      Aug 16, 2017

      IAN STANSEL is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) and the short story collection Everybody’s Irish (FiveChapters, 2013), a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. He teac

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Strange Light of Little Diablo

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Strange Light of Little Diablo - Richard H. Schweitzer

      The Strange Light of Little Diablo

      By

      Richard H. Schweitzer

      Copyright 2011 a TinDog Entertainment Stuff production

      Smashwords Edition

      Some days stay with you forever. Time can cover them in fog, but it does not take much to blow it away—a breeze; a gust; sometimes, just a breath—and you relive them again. Each day and each memory is a story; this one is based on a true incident. To protect the frightened, the names have been changed. Even mine.

      Oh, crap. I just fucking cannot go to that place again today!

      I was standing at the corner of Hill Lane and Parkway Drive watching the school bus drive by. The faces of the other kids peered out at me, unaware of my internal struggle. Chris Oak. My arch-nemesis, sort of, was sitting near the back of the bus leering at me. He shook his fist threateningly.

      There’s something about Northern California. You can feel where you are on the planet; a near perfect neutral zone with the climate in a permanent stand-off between the middle of the earth, and the top. Sometimes you feel different depending on the direction you’re facing; the chill to the north, the warmth to the south. I remember the air had an expectant quality that morning, and a slight chill that belied the approach of summer.

      I followed the path of the bus to Galway High, where I attended school. It was just up the street and around the corner. I was on my way to school, but I was not on my way to class.

      By the time I got to the corner, the bus had pulled into the campus parking lot and was off-loading the other students. Chris Oak got off and looked back in my direction. I slid behind a light pole, peering around until I could see the bully start walking toward the classrooms.

      Ass wipe.

      I wasn’t afraid of him really, just disgusted; a bug you’d rather avoid than squash. I often wondered if I could kick his ass, just once, and get it over with; but the answer was, probably not. He was bigger than I, significantly bigger, but more to the point his violence was motivated; mine would not be. I did not like or dislike him for any reason other than his harassment. Beyond that, he could be a tree or a fire hydrant as far as I was concerned. His existence did not matter.

      But for him it was different. In his own mind he was more important if he was able to dominate others, it made him feel a little more real I guess. More accurately, it could be said that unless he was feared he was fearful himself. So, he was motivated by his own psyche, his need to create and avoid fear. I was not. Might serves the motivated, right? It’s how small armies prevail against vastly greater odds.

      Just the day before, on my way home from having visited a friend after school, I was passing through Chris Oaks’ neighborhood. It was his, I should have known better. I rarely saw him away from the school campus but there he was on the sidewalk walking toward me. He wasn’t alone, one his regular cohorts was with him. I cannot recall his name so I’ll just call him Butch.

      I quickened my pace and tried to avoid our inevitable encounter, but of course, he wasn’t going to allow that. They formed a blockade across the sidewalk and shifted in front of me when I tried to go around.

      So I stopped. I clearly remember taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

      Do I bore you, geek roach?

      He called me geek roach and thought it was roll-on-the-floor funny.

      What, Chris? I said, packing my voice with as much exasperation as I dared. I have to get home.

      "Like I care what you gotta do." He said with exaggerated emphasis. I would have laughed, he sounded ridiculous, but I really did not like pain and I don’t look good in a black eye. Some guys look tough with a

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1