Dew Point Excerpt

Dew Point

A Weekend In Passionville

A Synopsis

Passionville, California, a small, but upscale community of the nearly do well who struggle each day to maintain the façade that things are going well. The truth is that things are not going well at all. Most live on the edge of the means to pay the mortgage and they certainly don’t have the income to furnish their mansions fittingly.

Passionville, a beautiful area that captivates visitors as soon as they enter; the rolling hills and valleys of Passion Fruit farms, the warm and sunny climate, the nostalgic old time theme of downtown, the tax relief for property buyers and the abundant array of large executive mansions, just outside town, available for a very low down payment for those with great credit.

It's too enticing and too good to be true, but for those who believe their dreams can be made true in Passionville, come and they come, and that dream is beautiful and wonderful…and they all feel giddy with excitement and some astonishment as they quickly accept that they have finally made it.

Then the bills come.

Mortgage payments of $2800.00 a month, utilities of $650.00, private school costs, extracurricular activity costs for the children, food, clothing, car payments, charge card payments, insurance, maintenance on the house and car…it goes on and on.

Enter the relentless heat and humidity and…the Dew Point!

Passionville is over eighty days into the hottest season on record, the hottest and the most humid, with dew point readings into the seventies. Then, combined with mounting debt and relentless calls from creditors…and the incessant heat and humidity and dew point, the people of Passionville quickly change into, well, not very nice people.

They begin to fall apart.

Slowly at first, then, as more and more of them fail to cope with their situations and feeling that there is no way out...they become mean and ugly and turn on each other.

The phenomenon that occurs in Passionville takes place over a long weekend. As the temperature goes up, so does the body count, as the entire town self-destructs. It’s not the heat or the humidity…it’s the Dew Point!

A Note

Dew Point strums on that nasty nerve that’s inside all of us. It’s a dormant nerve that awakens quickly for some of us, and later for others…in any case, when rubbed the wrong way, the absolute worse in us comes out.

Dew Point does not possess a protagonist; instead, its characters are made from bits and pieces that we all possess…none of it good. And, it’s timely and takes place in a location that most of us, if we could, would want to live.

It’s a short story, and that purposeful word limit was necessary to condense the intensity and forever affect you, the reader.

You will encounter some very disturbing scenes that go on and on. Comic relief does come, but it’s presented in a horrific manner…your laughter may be a nervous one.

Also include in Dew Point is a bonus short story titled "True Fiction". Yet another romp through madness!