In 2008, though, I met TYG (acronym for The Young Goddess) while traveling and we began long-distance dating (Florida Panhandle/Durham NC). After two years I proposed and moved to Durham. We married in 2011, bought a house in 2012, and in 2014, decided we were ready to adopt a dog. We could even afford vet bills, which we knew were inevitable.
For the next couple of months, we hit the Durham County pet shelter weekly — I got to know some of the staff by name — without finding a dog. Either we didn’t see a dog that felt right for us or we did but someone else adopted them first. Friends assured us that when we found the right dog, we’d know it. They were right, except we found two dogs.
On one fall visit we met Dudley, a four year old Lhasa Apso/Shih Tzu mix who’d been turned in by his owner. TYG fell for him as soon as he walked over and mouthed her hand. I liked him too, but he seemed too quiet, the kind of dog who’d sit and snuggle next to you but wouldn’t play much. By contrast Trixie, an eight-month old chihuahua/cairn terrier stray was very lively and looked like she’d be more fun. I didn’t realize then that I’d fallen for the scrawny five-pound dog as fast as TYG did for Dudley.
TYG gave me the final choice of dog, seeing as I’d be sitting at home all day with them. Much as I wanted Trixie, I didn’t want to disappoint my wife; while I struggled to decide, she settled things with the magic words, “We can afford to get two dogs.”
I’d worried about how even one dog would cut into my writing time, and I wasn’t wrong. On top of the regular demands of new pets, Dudley — almost immediately nicknamed Plushie for his soft fur — threw his back out within a week of our bringing him home. Lhasas are literally dwarf dogs and dwarfism means back problems. Several weeks of cage rest followed, with us carrying him everywhere and enduring hours of loud, outraged barking.
Trixie didn’t have any health problems but she did not approve of me putting my computer on my lap — didn’t I know that’s where she sat now? To drive the point home, she’d hump my army non-stop while I tried to write. This was … distracting.
We got past all that, of course. Plushie got off cage rest, though he’s had to go back in several times. I broke Trixie of the arm-humping and she achieved a normal weight. They still took a toll on my writing: squishing me on the couch between them did not help me focus and neither does Plushie’s passion for barking (he’s so not the quiet dog we thought). Even so, I knew we’d made the right choice adopting them. Whatever it is that bonds people and dogs together, we’d found it.
Eight years later, the dogs take up more time. We take them to PT once a week for various issues (see what I mean about the cost?). Plushie gets 15 minutes of heat on his stiff hips every morning. Walkies takes longer because after Trixie’s knee got caught in Plushie’s leash and badly damaged, we walk them separately (her leg is fine now, but we don’t want a repeat).
On the plus side, the pandemic forced TYG to work from home and like so many people, she’s sticking with it. Being able to share dog care during the day is a huge help.
We’d have been happy stopping with our two snuggly pups, at least until after they go over the Rainbow Bridge. But in 2018 TYG opened the compost bin and found a cat giving birth. The momma carried the kittens off before we could trap them but eventually returned and began hanging around the back yard. We started putting out food but if we so much as looked through the window when she came for it, she’d vanish. I named her Wisp.
We got her trapped and spayed, set up a shelter on the back deck, and kept putting out food. After several months, Wisp went from disappearing at the sight of us to rolling over and asking for belly rubs. A year ago, she was spending most of her nights in our spare bedroom.
Enter Snowdrop. Like Wisp, at first he was just a ghost flitting across our yard. Before long, he began meowing his hunger and TYG, softie that she is, put down food for him. Then came the trapping and neutering. More than a year later he lets us pet him and comes in for food. If we close the door on him though, he has a panic attack. So he’s an outside cat for now and Wisp has decided to spend nights with him. She has started coming in more now that the weather’s turning cold; perhaps Snowdrop will too.
While the cats aren’t as needy as the dogs, they’re needy enough to suck up more time. But I can’t say no when Wisp wants to come in and be petted in my lap for a bit. I’ll be happy if Snowdrop does too some day (TYG will be ecstatic). All four of them are worth it.
In Victorian England, 1888, there are those who say Sir Simon Taggart is under the punishment of God.
In an England swirling with mentalist powers — levitation, mesmerism, mind-to-mind telegraphy — the baronet is unique, possessed of mental shields that render him immune to any mental assault. Even his friends think it’s a curse, cutting him off from the next step in human mental and spiritual evolution. To Simon, it’s a blessing.
Four years ago, the Guv’nor, mystery overlord of the London underworld, arranged the murder of Simon’s wife Agnes. Obsessed with finding who hired the Guv’nor, Simon works alongside Inspector Hudnall and Miss Grey in Scotland Yard’s Mentalist Investigation Department. Immunity to mental telegraphy, clairvoyance and mesmerism are an asset in his work — but they may not be enough to crack the latest case.
A mysterious killer has begun butchering Whitechapel streetwalkers. With every killing, the man newspapers call “the Ripper” grows in mental power and in the brutality of his attacks. Is murder all that’s on his mind or does he have an endgame? And what plans do the Guv’nor and his army of agents have for Simon and the Whitechapel killer?
Questionable Minds is set in a Victorian England struggling to preserve the social hierarchy while mentalism threatens to overturn it. The cast of characters includes Dr. Henry Jekyll (and yes, his friend Edward Hyde too), Jack the Ripper, and multiple other figures from history and fiction.
Warnings: Graphic violence. Victorian sexism and imperialism.
Simon Taggart’s plunge into the abyss happened in an instant.
Col. Moran, seated at the dining table on Simon’s left, had said something to the Duke of Falsworth about a fellow hunter Moran had known in India committing suicide. Falsworth snidely observed that given the man’s debts, hanging himself had been the only possible solution.
And suddenly Simon was standing in the drawing room again. Staring up at Agnes in her white nightgown, hanging from the ceiling with her tongue protruding, her face blackened. Rage consumed him at the memory, rage at the men who’d brought about his wife’s death. Pearson Bartlett, mesmerist. The Guvnor, who’d given Bartlett his orders. And behind them, the unknown man who’d paid to have Agnes slain.
It was the scent of mutton that snapped him back to the Montworths’ dining room, a scent rising from the porcelain serving platter levitating through the air before him. Steered by Amanda Montworth’s vril, the platter bore the roast saddle of mutton down the long dining-room table. Her grey eyes were fixed on the platter, of course, as levitators depended on sight to focus their vril. The eyes of her parents and eleven uneasy guests were also watchful as the dish approached the epergne, the massive candelabra at the table’s center. Simon knew he wasn’t the only guest imagining what a shower of spilled gravy would do to their formal black waistcoats, jackets and white gloves, or the women’s elegant dresses.
The platter clinked against the epergne and shuddered for a moment, but Amanda, brow furrowed, regained her mental grip. The platter ceased quivering, backed away and settled into the hands of one of the footmen, to be served a la russe, around the table. Amanda gasped slightly as she released control.
“There, isn’t that remarkable, Sir Simon?” Buxom Mrs. Montworth flashed a smile at Simon, the wealthiest of her guests. “I don’t know anyone with the strength of mind my Amanda has, do you? Well, not anyone who is anyone, shall we say?”
“Mother, please,” Amanda said. “This is embarrassing.”
“No, you did quite well.” Simon smiled politely, forbearing to point out that for all the money John Montworth’s ironworks brought in, in London society the Montworths were emphatically not anyone. Amanda performing a servant’s duties only confirmed that, as the poor girl undoubtedly knew. “A strong mind is—an asset to the Empire.”
“When the turtle soup comes out, Amanda,” Mrs. Montworth went on, “I think you should levitate—”
“Oh, no, my dear Mrs. Montworth,” Simon said quickly, remembering soup spurting from a shattered tureen at another dinner he’d attended. Besides, Amanda had been embarrassed enough. “A girl as lovely and delicate as Amanda, no matter how strong her vril, should be careful not to overexert herself.” As Mrs. Montworth simpered and nodded, Amanda, who looked as delicate as one of her father’s foundry workers, smiled her thanks at Simon.
“That’s enough entertainment for this evening,” John Montworth said in his north-country accent. “Carmody?” Carmody, the butler, gestured for the footmen to resume their duties; it was a faux pas for Montworth to address a servant during dinner, but the past few minutes had utterly nonplussed the staff.
Simon considered Amanda sensible and good-hearted. It wasn’t her fault her vril manifested as a crude, physical ability, nor that her mother was as blind to the social graces as some men to colors. Fortunately, with several months before the start of the Season, the guests had few people they could gossip with—and there’d be much better gossip by January, when the Montworths presented Amanda at court.
“It’s been a new world these past eight years,” Simon said, savoring Montworth’s peerless port. “Too new to have all the polite niceties of psychic usage down pat.” A courteous lie; everyone knew physical manifestations of mentalist power were completely inappropriate in society.
“You mean like yourself assisting Scotland Yard?” Thin, pallid Ronald Carpenter, Duke of Falsworth, smirked and blew a plume of smoke. “A man of your impeccable pedigree, mingling with the lowest orders? Gilbert and Sullivan could make a wonderful comic opera out of it if you ask me.”
“I don’t believe I did.” Simon’s anger surged up again, but the smile beneath his thin mustache stayed coldly formal. “And there is nothing comical about the beasts who use vril to prey upon others.” Like Pearson Bartlett, who could mesmerize a woman to put a noose around her own neck. “I do my duty to England, nothing more.”
His Grace met Simon’s cold stare, then looked away with affected unconcern. Dukes far outranked baronets, but Falsworth’s title was new, and the man was still insecure. A Taggart was never insecure.
“Men like your Inspector Hudnall have my highest respect,” Moran said to Simon. As usual the colonel had stuck with whiskey instead of port. “In the jungle or the London streets, it takes a sharp man to hunt predators successfully. And who’s better suited than you, Sir Simon, to the sport of hunting mentalists?”
“Hardly sport.” Simon replied. “Unlike you, colonel, I consider hunting man-eaters a public service, not an adventure.”
“But men like that are evolutionary dead ends,” Montworth said. “Thanks to Lady Helena, all mankind—almost all—will ultimately be elevated to a higher plane.” His glance had lit upon Simon at the “almost.” “The murderers, the butchers, the Varneys of the present day will become fairytales, like ogres or Bluebeard, in the world that is to come.”
It was a typical Theosophist sentiment, but Simon found he was in no mood to argue with it.
Although born in England, Fraser spent most of his life in Northwest Florida. He’d be there still if he hadn’t met his dream woman and moved to Durham NC to be with her. They’ve been married 11 years and are the proud parents of two small dogs and two half-domesticated cats.
Author Website: https://www.frasersherman.com
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