“Click-click. Bang!”  
Cutter aimed an imaginary rifle at the ceiling, his left arm extended straight to a pointed finger, right fist triggered under his chin.
“So Pa takes his Winchester and starts shootin’ up the damn cherry-picker.”
Standing with his legs at an “A,” he pumped his fist, miming the repeat-lever action and sounding out the double-clicking lever noise and shot.
 “Click-click. Bang!”
Cutter’s voice rose as it gained momentum. “And that Electric truck takes off down the road with the guy still up in the bucket. The guy in the cab is strippin’ gears to get outa there and the guy in the bucket is duckin’ bullets and wettin’ his pants. And Pa’s shootin’ and shoutin,’ ‘It’s gonna piss power-company!’”

“I hate you,” she whispered hoarsely over the bronze gravemarker that lay like a fallen soldier amidst the taller granite headstones.  
The sun gradually illuminated the forgotten corner of the cemetery where the young woman knelt in front of the solitary plaque. She brushed away the twigs and wet leaves, revealing the inscription—“Nicole M. Fayette, 1956-1980.”  It didn't say “cherished wife,” or “loving mother,” or “dear daughter.” There were no cherubs, no weeping roses, no scrollwork, not even a flourish on the initials. The tendrils of Spring grass that framed it, in the coming months would thicken and all but obscure the name again.
She barely remembered her mother now, after so many years. She had been, after all, only a child of five at the time.

“Eminent domain, my ass—” Cutter Briggs stood scratching his croakies and his voice rose an octave as he said what they were all thinking. His long hair and chin-beard were dyed black now to cover the streaks of grey, something his new wife Angel had prompted. But none of his friends would mention the fact that his beard was growing out white at the roots “—it's tyranny is what it is. Tyranny!” 
The five friends—Cutter Briggs, Billy Jensen, Elmer Goodson, Arlo Tulliver, and Adam Sabeski—were gathered in Adam's livingroom for their ritual Sunday dinner. Mindful of old Goody's diabetes, Adam made baked cod and stewed tomatoes this week, along with a crockpot of kale soup. The kale, potatoes, carrots, onions, and tomatoes had come from his back garden.
Tully brought the last of his summer squash, Billy provided a loaf of crusty French bread that he'd baked himself, and Cutter supplied the moonshine labeled 'Liberty Juice' from his own stills. Goody usually brought something old-an odd machine part or a strange antique tool that had some lost purpose-that they could all ponder about. Today, however, the unidentified tool lay on the floor without discussion.

“Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through natur onto eternity.”
Snow was still piled high as hedgerows on the sides of the narrow road as a Model-B Touring Car careened 12 m.p.h. downhill around the frozen lake. As the young driver chattered amiably away at his silent passenger, the elderly woman had a stricken look on her face. Not only was she apprehensive about the driver paying cavalier attention to his driving, the redoubtable Madeline Abbott was even more dismayed that someone of his station in life was attempting to converse with her.  
Out of view of the road, the afternoon sun bounced off the lake ice like a bullet, sending shafts of frigid light deep into the woods and, along its trajectory, illuminating the bronze statue of an Indian woman just above the shoreline. Set on a marble base, she stood erect in fringed deerskin and boots, with arms stretched out over the lake towards the west. The plaque at the base was inscribed with:

Muskataqua
b. (?) - d. 1887
The last of her kind.

LOOSE ENDS– A Hodgepodge of Stories by Authors Without Borders (in press, 2010)