great escapes

Posted by admin | July 15, 2021

I was working on my pickup (replaced the clamps on the battery terminals as I had a loose connection) one day while the dogs were in the backyard, so I didn’t worry about them. At least, I thought I didn’t have to worry about them. I heard a familiar twinkle noise of Milo’s dog collar behind me. When I turned, I found him in the neighbor’s driveway.

Not finished with my work, I held Milo in one hand and finished my project with my other. Once done, I put Milo inside and also brought Zailey in. I found the hole that was dug under the fence and moved a giant rock on it after filling it in some.

A few days later, we’re at the lake when my wife gets a text. This was a neighbor two houses over and Milo was in their yard. They were able to get him back in the correct yard and they thought he could push the gate enough to get out, so they put a block on it. Milo was still able to escape.

I looked and looked and finally found a gap where my fence meets the neighbor’s fence. I thought there was no way the dog could fit there, but I screwed a small board in place anyway. Since then, I haven’t seen any sign of him escaping and the neighbors haven’t called or texted us.

Last fall, I had a nightmare. A POW had returned home after escaping his prison. Reclaiming his life was going to be hard and even harder since his former fiancé was marrying his best friend. The POW was even invited to the rehearsal banquet and started noticing people disappearing left and right. Finally, he was abducted with the last of the people at the party. But this prison wasn’t any ordinary prison. To escape was going to take something miraculous. If, that was, he could even figure out what was going on.

The next day I went to work on the skeleton of this novel. I started throwing in all sorts of flashbacks. The past was repeating itself. So, there are really two stories to tell – how he got in his first prison and escaped and how he got in his second prison. Really, he goes from a physical prison, to one of the heart (the fiancé who jilted him), and then to another physical one. There really is no escape. Hence the title, No Escape.

Milo has created a nightmare for me in his escapes. Another nightmare created a novel about escaping. Time to write!