Tropical Storm Calliope

The beach was empty of tourists except for the familiar few who’d been hunkering down on Negril’s 7 Mile Beach for years and years. A pandemic sure wasn’t going to stop the hardiest of the runaways and castaways. At this stage, they didn’t actually qualify as tourists, at least not to the hustlers and vendors. Tourists, to the hustlers and vendors, were unopened presents on Christmas morning. Tourists, fresh off the plane and enjoying their first taste of Jamaica, were ripe fruit just ready to be plucked, like the coconut dangling from the tree closest to the waves. Tourists, mainly white North Americans and Europeans, would pay for their white guilt by buying overpriced souvenirs, trinkets and ganja from the collection of vendors harassing them as soon as they neared. Everything was for sale. Food, drink, smoke, pills, sex, you name it, it was available. Jamaican boyfriends would teach you to paddleboard in the daytime and ‘juice you up’ as the darkness came. The traders, resellers of...

It was sun up as he toddled to the kitchenette, plugged in the kettle and prepared two mugs for the instant coffee, with two sugars for him and two teaspoons of coffee for her. He made his way to the mini-fridge and took out the can of condensed milk that was tucked into the shelf of the unit. Putting that on top of the fridge, he bent back down and rummaged to the back, pulling out the can of tuna fish wrapped in paper towel. He took both cans back to the counter just in time for the kettle to have boiled. It was still cool in the early light so the steam off the kettle transfixed him a bit as he poured the water, first into his mug and then into hers. Hers he filled only halfway, turning on the faucet to add the other half-cup of cold water to her mug. He figured that by the time she awoke, her coffee would be that perfect temperature, for her, that he preferred to call lukewarm. His mug, on the other hand, was steaming and brown. He slowly poured the condensed milk from the can, pun...

“Where did she come from?” she asked, turning her gaze to Calliope. “She was probably born here on the beach,” he replied, adding, “and probably comes from a long line of ancestors that have also called this beach home.” Jamaica had been the crown jewel of the British Caribbean colonies, prized for its natural wonders and for the conveniences offered to the Royal Navy and merchant ships taking resources from the new world and shipping them back to Great Britain. It was a trading outpost that made the itinerary for just about every passing ship - and many of those ships had crew members of the feline variety working to keep the mice and rats in check, thereby preventing disease while also acting as mascots for the various ships at sea. When the ships would call to port in Jamaica, some of the cats would take the opportunity to jump ship and begin life as a castaway. Other cats came with the British as house pets, although they would soon be intermingling with the native, feral cats and ...

By the third day, they had settled down and settled into a routine. A calmness had replaced the freneticness associated with the exertions of the journey. And with the emotions and feelings associated with the exertions of the journey. There were lots of emotions and feelings. He felt them, she felt them. Each of them felt their own, informed by their own perspectives formed from the same shared experiences over the past few years. The past few years had been quite the experience, with pressures external due to the pandemic and pressures internal due to their own issues. And, given their ages when they met and their life’s journeys that had brought them to that point, there were lots of issues, too. Initially, these issues pulled them together as their love and their passion took shape in the bright fires lit from an initial spark of lightning. Eventually, these issues tried their best to pull them apart, ghosts and gremlins in the marital machine, wrenching and pulling and tearing at ...

"I can see her wounds much clearer. Smart idea to grab some pics while she’s asleep,” he said to her as he examined the images on her smartphone. There were two obvious bite wounds to the underside of her jaw. These were fresh enough to be infected, although the infection hadn’t progressed beyond the angry-red-edge stage. As he was examining the next image, the cat, Callie, rolled on her back and fell asleep again with her mouth agape. It provided them with an even better chance to expect the damage. The bites to the under-jaw definitely pierced her lower palate while the cheek wound seemed to have been more superficial. And the size of the wound - and the limited ecosystem of potential suspect species - pointed to a canine culprit. But there was something else. Callie seemed to be missing her front teeth, top and bottom. It might have happened at the same time she suffered the other dog attack. Zooming in on the image just snapped helped to answer the question. “Is that a cleft p...

It was still dark when he stumbled first to the bathroom and then to the veranda, trying to be as quiet as possible given the late night and early morning. She was fast asleep, with the most contented look on her face. He hadn’t seen her that peaceful looking in a long time, if ever. “She’s home,” he smiled to himself as he stepped outside. The coffee was hot. It was Jablum instant coffee, derived from the wondrously flavourful Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee that was on his must-buy list back when having a palette for coffee seemed fashionable, if not sustainable. He’d started drinking instant coffee a few years back, mostly for convenience but also in a self-deprecating bit of homage to his former coffee snobbery, and to his Dad who drank Maxwell House double-doubles from eyes-open to eyes-shut. The coffee he was drinking in the early morning tropical darkness was sweetened with Jamaican cane sugar and lightened with condensed milk. And given the slight headache running in the backgrou...