In 2004, on my now defunct LiveJournal, I asked for volunteers for the challenge of writing a fictional memory of how we met.

I just rediscovered them today. Not half bad:


For Lost Dragon:


In late October, 1918, shot down just five miles behind the German lines, LD and I hid in the burned out remains of an old manor outside the deserted village of Château de Chambord. Our self-imposed imprisonment was relieved by a well-stocked wine cellar and a deck of cards with the 8 of Hearts missing.

For weeks we regaled ourselves with tales over bottles of Bordeaux from such vintages as Lafite Rothschild, La Conseillante and Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. Playing poker, LD ended up owning all of France.

Weeks later, desperate to rejoin our unit, we drank the last, cast fate to the wind, and ran into the night in a mad attempt to breach the lines from behind.

The next morning we found ourselves near frozen in a potato field, our heads pounding.

A farmer told us the war had been over for weeks.


For Stoker Bramwell:


"Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’" Stoker waved his hands like an orchestra conductor and created a herd of snow-white unicorns out of whole cloth. "Let’s applaud cerebral implants."

Another wave and gryphons joined the dance.

"I just can’t seem to be able to do that," I complained. I waved my hand and a dyspeptic unicorn smelling of old fish appeared and promptly melted into a greasy puddle. "What am I doing wrong?"

Stoker snapped his fingers and the puddle congealed into a pretty fairy who soared away on streaming wings trailing ginger and violet. "How are you building them?" he asked.

"Just like you. One molecule at a time."

"Ah!" he said with a nod. "There’s your problem. Your building blocks are too large. Start with smaller particles."

"Particles?" I asked. "What particles?"

"Elementary, my dear Loewen. Elementary."


A very lovely lady whom I will spare embarrassment by not revealing her identity:


I journeyed to Saint Kitts hoping the Caribbean sun would burn away my ennui. My paints had dried in my mind; my soul remained a blank canvas.

I heard her where she sang to herself in the front door of a little beach shanty. “My name is Tracy.”

She showed me mysteries in the tide pools and the sea caves. We explored the vendor stalls and I bought her a straw hat. We fed the pigeons in front of Saint Martin’s. She taught me how to drink Margaritas and how to laugh once again.

That night on my easel, I painted wild arabesques of color, pirouettes of pastels. Inspired fatansies flowed in watercolor.

The next morning, the beach stood empty, no trace of the shanty or its muse.

My watercolors are now famous, my best capturing her features with brightly-colored pigments mixed with tears from my heart.


For another friend whom I shall keep anonymous:


He sat in my counseling chair like it was a throne. “Humanity has grown weak,” he said grimly. “We gave them their chance, but they squandered their stewardship for bread and circuses. Now it is time for our return until humanity learns its responsibilities anew.”

I nodded and wrote “Delusional” on my notepad.

He stood and I cried out in surprise and awe as his eyes changed from human to the large orange slitted orbs of a tiger to the the large dark wisdom wells of a bear. His features changed from feline to ursine and back and then he vanished with a roar.

The receptionist burst into the room. “Dr. Loewen!” she asked, “What happened?”

I sat staring at an empty chair. “The old gods have awakened,” I whispered.


For another lovely lady:


“My problem,” Razz said, reaching for her sketch pad and pencil, “is that I have too powerful an imagination.”

To demonstrate, she drew a butterfly that suddenly shimmered and flew off the page. I watched it flutter about my counseling office.

Razz shook her head in despair. “My apartment is filled with bats, unicorns, fairies, cartoon characters; all of them about the size of an eight by eleven inch sheet of paper.”

I meditated for a moment and then wrote out my prescription. Razz read it and smiled.

The next day, she returned grinning. “I never thought of drawing Aladdin’s lamp,” she said. “I used my last two wishes to solve my problem.”

I twitched my nose. “Let me guess. Because you doubted his powers, you wasted your first wish on turning me into a giant green rabbit?”

“Bingo!” she said.