Journey’s End

By  Myrna Beth Lambert

I grew up in Southern Florida, not the Florida that evokes images of magnificent hotels and white sandy beaches, but the section of Florida comprised of impoverished families and ramshackle homes.

My community in Palmetto Beach was Sun Valley Estates. This name brings to mind large homes and a grand style of living in the sunshine state of Florida. The reality was a few acres of land housing about twenty little trailer homes with a few narrow dirt roads weaving in and out of the matchbox tracts. These homes were faded white aluminum dwellings with a dull blue trim across their roofs.

In front of each of the trailers stood an inexpensive metal or plastic patio chair and an occasional trinket, such as a wind chime, a flowerpot, or a plastic Heron placed on the grass next to the owner’s front door. These cheap little accessories distinguished one home from another.

Often in the back of a trailer, a clothesline filled with the day’s wash fluttered in the breeze or baked in the hot sun.

There was little privacy in this small community, because the trailers were in close proximity. Family feuds could be heard throughout the trailer park.

Yet, this close knit group of people was very private and their secrets remained within the tight little compound.

I grew up in this world, the only child amidst retired and unemployed elderly people.

My little trailer consisted of three rooms, a tiny kitchen nook, a small sitting room with a hide-a-bed sofa and a little bathroom that had a miniscule shower stall, small sink, and toilet. This was home and here begins my story.

My mother scraped and saved working odd jobs, waitressing, doing domestic work and bartending at night until she had enough money to buy her little piece of the pie (as she used to say), and this little trailer was it.

I never knew my father. I don’t think Mama knew him well either. She said they were two ships, each on a different course.

Mama’s parents had passed away soon after I was born and there wasn’t any other family. She and I were it.

I was nine years old when we moved to Sun Valley Estates, small for my age with wavy brown hair and blue eyes that missed nothing.

We arrived with two small battered suitcases and a large black trash bag filled with odds and ends such as a few pots and dishes, a few towels, and a down blanket. The blanket was Mama’s prize possession. At one time, it was a bright yellow. Now, it was faded and tattered, but still kept us warm on cool nights.

Mama was only home a short while every day, so I roamed the compound, visiting the neighbors. Soon I became the adopted granddaughter of my elderly friends.

Mama usually returned home around five o’clock each day. She hurriedly made dinner, which consisted of a can of spaghetti and a slice of bread or canned soup and a peanut butter sandwich. Then she opened the sofa, gave me a quick peck on the cheek and was out the door to work the night shift.

She drove to and from her various jobs in an old Ford pick-up truck, which was gray and rusted. Mama’s friend Cody, who was a mechanic, kept the old truck finely tuned.

The neighborhood men said that Mama was a good-looking woman. They often stared when she walked past. She was small and trim. Her tight mini skirts and skimpy shirts hugged her small breasts and showed off her figure, and the spiked heels she wore added inches to her height.

We spent little time together, for she came home late at night. She would quietly creep into bed and curl up next to me and we would both sleep soundly under the soft down comforter.

During the day, I sometimes went to school; that is, when the bus remembered to stop for me. Since I was the only child at the bus stop in front of the community gate, the bus often just rode by, forgetting a child lived there.

I was registered at the local school, but on days I didn’t appear, nobody seemed to miss me because no inquiries were made. But I received an extraordinary education, just hanging around the trailer camp.

Uncle Yuri (who really wasn’t my uncle, but insisted I call him that) was a nice old man. He sat outside on a white plastic chair most of the day in his striped shorts and sleeveless T-shirt reading his favorite Russian authors, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

“Their stories remind me of my childhood home,” he said.

Sometimes, he would read a particular passage to me, preceded by an explanation. Imagine explaining Tolstoy to a nine-year-old. Then, he would ask questions. If my answers were to his liking, he gave me a hug and a licorice stick.

After I finished Tolstoy, I would stop at Mrs. Sweeny’s trailer. She was a kind old woman who spoke with an Irish accent and loved to talk about her childhood home in Ireland. In the center of her sitting room stood a huge world globe. During each visit, she carried a tray of homemade cookies and lemonade into the room and we studied the globe, looking for her little town in Ireland as she recounted tales of her youth. She came to Florida as a married woman with her now departed husband, Brock. She had lived in her trailer for many years, too many to remember, she said. After she finished her story of Ireland, she would go into a trance and forget I was there, so I would quietly leave and head down the dirt road to the next trailer.

Juan and Marina lived next door to Mrs. Sweeny and they fought a lot. Marina was always yelling at Juan in Spanish.

“Hola mi amiga, estoy listo,” (Hello my friend, I am ready) he would say as I approached his home.

He would then hand me a little shovel and together we would plant Peonies, English lavender and a variety of seeds known to Juan.

Juan and Marina had the prettiest front garden in the tract.He loved his flowers and would often talk to them. He said at least flowers couldn't talk back. As we worked together, Juan spoke to me in Spanish. He would explain each word in English and insist I repeat it in his native tongue.

Before long, I had graduated to whole simple sentences and after a time, I conversed fluently in Spanish with Juan and Marina.

After I helped tend Juan and Marina’s garden, I hastened to my favorite trailer.

This was Mrs. Orenstein’s spotlessly clean home, which held the sweetest aromas. Mrs. Orenstein was a chubby woman who wore a white apron and a big smile. She always greeted me with a warm hug and an invitation to stay for lunch. Mrs. Orenstein set a beautiful table, using her fine china and white linen tablecloth.

She said, “It is very important to set a proper table when entertaining guests .The right utensil must be used for each course.” 

We would put our napkins in our laps and then proceed to take helpings of fish or meatballs with spoonfuls of steaming rice. This was a daily fare.

Mrs. Orenstein said I was the grandchild she never had and on occasion she would give me a present. Once, she gave me a new skirt and jean jacket and another time, she gave me a bracelet with little charms. The charms were symbols of her Jewish religion and she explained each one to me with so much joy in her voice I thought she would burst out singing. She would always hug me as I was leaving. Then she would say, “Until tomorrow shana madel,” which means pretty girl in Jewish.

My last stop before I headed home was usually the Ferranti house. The Ferrantis were a kind and gentle couple. Mrs. Ferranti was a tiny lady who always wore her hair in a bun and Mr. Ferranti was a big man. He had a fat belly that hung outside his pants and when he laughed, it rolled like the waves lapping and receding from the shoreline. They had tea and biscotti outside their trailer at 3 o’clock every afternoon and always set a place at their little table for me.

On the side of Mr. Ferranti’s trailer was a basketball hoop. Here he taught me how to play basketball. Mr. Ferranti said the hoop was put there for his little boy, but one day his son was all grown up and went north. I promised him I would always play with him and that made him smile. One day he said, “Never make a promise you may not be able to keep. Children grow up and they have to make lives for themselves. You won’t always live here.” At the time, that seemed hard to believe.

One day, I arrived home a few minutes before 5 o’clock to meet my mother, but she didn’t come home for dinner, which was most unusual. She didn’t come home the next morning, either. I became worried and ran to Mrs. Orenstein’s house. She called a meeting of the neighbors and they said they would make some inquiries.

That night, I stayed at Mrs. Orenstein’s after making her promise to leave a message for Mama.

Several weeks went by without a note from my mother. I was very worried, but the neighbors reassured me that she was fine and would return soon.

One day, two women from a place called DCFS visited the neighbors. They said there was a report of a little girl living alone at the trailer park. My friends professed innocence and the investigators left.

Mrs. Orenstein said that if these people appeared again, I was to hide or I would be taken away to an orphanage. I became frightened and leery of strangers.

I was now an illegal ward of Sun Valley Estates. Each of my neighbors became my unofficial guardian and they each home schooled me in the subject they knew best. I learned about great books from Uncle Yuri and the Spanish language from Juan and Marina. Mrs. Sweeney taught me geography and Mrs. Orenstein taught me math and proper etiquette.

About two months after Mama vanished, Mrs. Orenstein received a letter from her. She had gone to Chicago to visit a sick friend and asked if Mrs. Orenstein would look after me until she returned. Enclosed was a twenty-dollar bill.

I visited my house each day, but slept at Mrs. Orenstein’s each night and I spent my days the same as before my mother disappeared. Sometimes, Mrs. Sweeny took me shopping and the Ferantinis took me to a carnival. I had stopped attending school, because I wasn't supposed to exist in Reed County anymore. My elderly friends worried that I wasn't getting a proper education and tutored me as often as they could.

I missed my mother, but she had spent so little time with me that I wasn’t sure exactly what I missed. The nights were the hardest. I would wrap myself in her down comforter and pretend she was sleeping next to me.

The neighbors in my community had now become my family and they tried their best to keep me happy.

Eventually, Mama sent a few letters to me, in care of Mrs. Orenstein. She said to stay with the neighbors and not to worry for she would soon return. Her letters to Mrs. Orenstein always had a crisp twenty-dollar bill attached.  None of the letters had a return address. We knew they came from Chicago because of the postmark, but we had no idea why she was in Chicago. To my knowledge, she had no friends there. We suspected she had gone with her friend Cody, because he disappeared about the same time as Mama.

Weeks turned into months and months into years. Mama never returned.

When I was 13, my family decided I should attend high school. Mrs. Orenstein enrolled me as a relative who had come to live with her. While the school awaited transcripts (which didn't exist), they gave me tests for placement. My educators had done a fine job and I scored very high on the placement tests.

I did very well in school and four years went by swiftly. I made no friends at school, because I was afraid they would discover I lived alone without proper adult supervision, but I did get a job at the local supermarket.

Soon, I graduated with honors. I won a scholarship to Florida State and with my few belongings and help from Mrs. Orenstein, I moved out of the trailer park to the University. The family was so proud of me. It was as though my degree belonged to all of them.

My mother continued to send letters to Mrs. Orenstein every other month and eventually gave her a box number where she could be reached. She seldom wrote to me.

Last week, I graduated from Florida University with a degree in journalism and the promise of a job with the Miami Scope Newspaper.

Of course, Mama didn't come back for this event, but she did send a gift. Mama signed over the deed to the trailer to me. This was the only present I ever remember receiving from her.

Mrs. Orenstein, who has been like a mother to me, helped me sell the trailer.

The first thing I shall do with the money from the sale is to purchase a TV for her. She will miss me and I am hoping the TV will occupy her time while I am away. I will also repay the money she laid out for my clothes and books for college. She had saved those twenty dollar bills which were supposed to help feed and clothe me. Mrs. Orenstein had kept them in a shoe box for my college education.

I will use some of the money to rent an apartment near the newspaper and following Mrs. Orenstein’s advice, I will place some of the money in a savings account for a rainy day. I will also mail a portion of the proceeds to my mother. I still have not sorted out my feelings for her. They range from anger to indifference.

I am sure one day we will meet again and have a long talk, for I still cannot imagine why a mother would abandon her child to a bunch of strangers and never look back.

Before I go to Miami, I will attend a graduation party in my honor, hosted by my family. I owe them so much: my well being, my education, and my survival. Mr. Ferranti (who passed away two years ago) was right. One day children do grow up and move away, but that doesn’t mean they have to sever all ties with the people they love. I shall never abandon my loved ones. As the Sun Valley Estates of Palmetto Beach was my home, so were these people my family. As one journey comes to an end, another journey begins.

© Copyright 2005, Myrna Beth Lambert

Acknowledgements:

“Ode to Michael Jordan” (poem) published by Pioneer Press Newspapers 2002

“Serenade to Youth” (poem) Voicesnet Poetry Prize third place award      2005

“The Bag Lady” (poem) award of merit

Shadow Poetry Contest April 15, 2005 

“Journey’s End” Tom Howard/John Reid 2005 short story contest 13

Winner of one of top ten awards ( not published)

“The Bag Lady” (short story) Winner of Spider Thief Publishing’s short story contest, April 2005 

“Memories in a Tin Box” (non-fiction) semi finalist Cup of Comfort Contest

 “A Medal of Valor” (poem) accepted for publication in Penwomanship Magazine

October 2005 issue

The Father Daughter Dance accepted for publication in Chicken Soul for the Recovering Soul March 2006 issue.

“The Storyteller” Notable entry award from Saturday Writer’s 4th Annual short story contest.

 “My Folklore” (poem) accepted for publication in Humdinger E-zine January 2006 Edition.

I was among the hundreds of homeless people who made the bridge their home.

DISSOLVING

By Thomas W. Sypek

I am a snow angel, lying face up with my arms outstretched in the December snow ready to take flight, the night a canvas filled with millions of crystallized refugees falling silently on me. Very soon, I will merge with them and become part of the white landscape. I will dissolve into nothingness. I will die.

How long does it take a man to die? I have seen men die in bits and pieces like an unfinished puzzle. I have seen other men die in an instant without a sign that they ever lived. I myself have died in short, prolonged volleys of fire stretched out over a rocky terrain.

Don’t get me wrong; it hasn’t all been rocket and gun fire. There have been brief moments in my long life that were peaceful and serene, times when laughter and joy filled me like a Christmas stocking. Times, if I had any sense at all, I would have held on to for dear life, with all the strength I had in me. I did not realize that until I lost everything. Some of us only come alive in death.

Let me introduce myself.  I am Louie Janaslaski, and once upon time I had a life. I had a wife, Muriel, two children, Paul and Lisa, and a modest home in South Boston. But that was once upon a time; that part of my life is gone forever. All I can remember is now and how I got here.

I remember making my daily rounds of Carson Beach in South Boston or as the natives like to call it, Southie. I pulled my old Army jacket collar up. I had three pairs of socks, two sweaters, a woolen hat pulled over my ears, and a pair of gloves and two shirts. You learn to dress that way when you are out in the streets. In the summer, I slept on the beach, but in the winter it was just too damn cold.

During the early morning, I made my way out from under the Broadway Bridge. The bridge connects Southie with downtown Boston and its surrounding areas. I was among the hundreds of homeless people who made the bridge their home. I rode the City Point bus to the last stop on Farrugut Road and from there, I crossed to Day Boulevard. Boston Harbor unfolded in all directions. When the weather permitted, I often walked from Castle Island to the Kennedy Library looking for empty soda and beer cans. Today, I just didn’t have the energy or the stamina to do so.

The first stop on my way to Castle Island was Kelly’s Landing. It was deserted, its wharfs empty of people, but in the summer, it was a favorite gathering spot for people who wanted to taste their worldwide famous fried clams. I had no fear about not finding enough cashable cans, because everybody used the beach for one big partying area. There were always cans to pick up, especially in the overflowing MDC garbage cans.

A few early morning joggers passed me. I was invisible to them. I picked the barrels clean and headed for the breezeway that made up part of the Lagoon and Sugar Bowl. At one time, when I was boy, you could walk across a covered bridge that linked the Sugar Bowl with Castle Island. The bridge was now gone; in its place was a paved walkway made up of huge granite rocks. It formed a crescent circle out to the Sugar Bowl and Castle Island. Locks controlled the tides and made part of the beach a lagoon.

As I made my way out to the Sugar Bowl, seagulls overhead were doing their morning dance, swooping and gliding, floating upon the winds, diving into the ocean looking for their breakfast. I thought how like them I am; we are scavengers, free. One of seagulls glided in and I could almost touch him. Their screeching to each other is deafening, as if someone was trying to kill them.

An airplane flew over my head making its way in for a landing at Logan Airport, which was across the bay. The seagulls scattered. Then, there was an earth-shattering boom like an explosion. I hit the ground. Incoming, I thought. Protect yourself. Cover yourself. It’s incoming.

“Mister…mister, is anything wrong?”

“What? Run for cover, the Nazis will get you!”

“What are you talking about, Mister? Do you need help?” There was another loud blast.

“Run. Get out of here.” I got up and ran, as fast as my sixty-year-old feet could carry me. In my rush to escape, I almost lost my plastic bag with my cans.

“It’s only the electric plant blowing out their stacks; that’s all it is, Mister,” I could hear the young man yelling at me. I didn’t stop until I reached the Sugar Bowl. The young man didn’t know what he was talking about. I know the sound of incoming when I hear it. I was a veteran of World War Two, a survivor of the Battle of The Bulge. I knew the sound of mortar shells. I had heard that fluttering eerie sound too many times, smelled their burnt cordite, the burnt flesh it left in its wake. It haunted my dreams.

I was out of breath when I sat down on one of the concrete benches that formed a circle in the middle of the Sugar Bowl. The sky was battleship gray. It was starting to snow. It fell, lightly dissolving on my nose and face. There were so many different patterns, so many snowflakes drifting, floating, and disappearing into the waves.

The wind was brisk on my face as I crossed the pathway to the island. I picked up my pace. Fort Independence loomed ahead of me, its cannons long silenced. Edgar Allan Poe, my favorite author, once walked its battlements under the name of Edgar A Perry. While he was stationed here, he wrote and published Tamerland and Other Poems.

I made my way to the old radar station that was in front of the fort. It was now the home of The Castle Island Association. Its members jokingly called it the waiting room for O’Brian’s Funeral Home, because most of its members were one step away from the grave. At the radar station, you could stop and rest from jogging or walking and have a cup of coffee. There everyone was welcomed. The smell of coffee lured me in.

I left my plastic bag at the entrance and entered the enjoining room.

“Good morning, Louis. Little nip in the air this morning. You’re up early.”

“Yeah, want some coffee?”

“That’s a stupid question to ask the man, Joe. Of course, he does. Don’t ya, Louis? You’re not very talkative this morning, Louis.”

“Give the man time to warm up, Moe.” Joe handed me a cup of coffee.

      The Mutt and Jeff act were two old school chums I had gone to school with in Southie. They had been at my wedding. I took off my gloves and stuffed them in my jacket pocket. I warmed my hands over the pot-belled stove in the middle of the room. I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down. I loved it here. Ghosts and memories walked the island. It was here I met my wife.

“Tell us a story, Louis.”

“Yeah, tell us a story, Louis.” Moe echoed.

“Must you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Repeat everything I say. I swear, Joe, sometimes I feel like . . .”

“Like what, Moe?”

“Guys, aren’t you tired of my stories?”

“We are, Louis, but there is nothing else to do.”

I wasn’t listening to the Mutt and Jeff act. I stood lost, staring out the window, running my fingers in circles, remembering. I was walking through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium carrying my M-1 “Garand” rifle. It was heavy, but is saved a hell of a lot of lives. It was snowing then too.

“Tell us how you won the Purple Heart.”

“Yeah, tell us how you won the Purple Heart.”

A heavy overcast filled the Ardennes Forest, obscuring the moon and the starlight. Fog covered the ground, making it nearly impossible to see the enemy until they were on top of you.

“Those trees are moving.” I screamed. “They are moving.”

“Trees don’t move.” The brothers like Siamese twins chorused.

“They have come alive. Run.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, what are you talking about?”

I was lost, lost in the Forest of Ardennes. Why couldn’t I forget?

“They are moving. They are walking snowmen.”

“What the hell is he talking about, Moe?”

“He’s talking about the Battle of the Bulge; don’t you remember the story?”

“Yeah, sure I remember. He’s talking about the Battle of the Bulge.”

I started to shake uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop shaking. I dropped my coffee cup, smashing it to the floor. “The Krauts took us by surprise.”

“You told us that before.”

“Yeah, you told us that before. They were dressed like American soldiers, right?”

“How many of those Kraut bastards did you kill, Louis?”

“Yeah, how many of those Kraut bastards did you kill, Louis?”

I stopped shaking. I didn’t mind telling bits and pieces of my war stories once and in awhile. It was my way of getting a drink. Besides, it cleansed my soul. Shit, that was a lie. I didn’t believe in any soul. I had lost mine when the Germans captured me. I had lost it when I saw what a bastard God could be. I started to laugh aloud.

“He’s going nuts, Moe.”

“He’s not going nuts, Joe.”

“I tell ya, he is going nuts, Moe.”

“And I tell ya, he’s not, Joe.”

I stopped laughing. Joe and Moe stood staring at me. I looked at my watch.

“I got to go.”

“You didn’t answer our question, Louis.”

“Yeah, you didn’t answer our question, Louis.” Moe and Joe said in unison.

“What was your question?”

“How many of those Kraut bastards did you kill?”

            “I didn’t kill any; they killed me.”

I left them with a puzzled look on their faces. Outside, December lived up to its reputation. Winter in New England can be hell. My hell was December 17, 1944. I died that day—along with 19,000 American soldiers.

As I made my way off the island those times and days seemed like flies caught in a spider’s web. No matter how much I struggled to free myself, I couldn’t. The spider always ate me.

I stopped long enough to take a drink from the half pint of whiskey I had in my coat. It warmed me for a while. That’s what booze does for you. It warms you for a while, and then you are right back were you started from, back in the spider’s web. I found an open corner store and cashed in my bottles and cans. It would give me enough money for the bus across the bridge.

The bus driver stopped across the street from The Boston Herald newspaper building. I got off and walked across the street to Harrison Ave and from there to my home. Scattered under the bridge, our encampment was wrecked cars, cardboard homes, and the debris of other people’s lives. Be it ever so humble, this ant colony was home.

In the fifties, I had a different kind of home. I lived in the best part of Southie, the east side. My home was a three-decker on Farragut Road. The road was named after Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, “Hero of Mobile Bay.” I had bought the house for my bride, Muriel; Muriel with her long, luminous, chestnut hair and thin, smooth, alabaster legs. Paul was our first born. Paul always had that far away, I’m-in-another-world look in his eyes. He had the deepest dimples; you could lose a finger in them. Lisa, I don’t remember. She was only a baby when I left. All of that was once upon a time to me. Alcohol had ended that fairytale forever.

 The darkness under the bridge was illuminated by several camp fires.

Inhabitants of our village were drinking, cooking, reading and others argued

and screamed at each other. I walked out from under the bridge and down to

the river to my home. The wrecked car was covered with snow. I was about

to open the door when I was jumped from behind and lifted in the air.

My head hit the car door. Somebody was holding my legs while two others grabbed my right and left arms.

I screamed, “Let go of me, you bastards.”

They swung me around facing them.

“You talkin’ to me, bum?” the one holding my legs said.

“No, I’m talking to your two sisters,” I spat out.

The boy holding my feet was as tall as I was, six feet. He was a throwback from a fifties movie, dressed in a black leather jacket and faded denims. He seemed to be the leader.

“He’s a regular Robin Williams isn’t he, Bob?” 

Bob, the boy holding my right arm, didn’t answer.

“I said, isn’t he, Bob?”

Bob was, I would say, sixteen. He was a Charlie Brown kid of a boy. On his face he wore the look of a new recruit, a grunt. He was fresh meat waiting to be cooked.

“I’m talkin’ to you, pussy.”

“Kevin is talking to you, Bob. You deaf, pussy?”

The other part of the trio, a teenage Hispanic holding the other arm, was dressed like a twentieth century Casanova. He slapped Bob with his free hand. “I said, “Are you deaf? You gonna answer, Kevin?”

“Screw you, Morales,” Bob shot back.

I was getting angry. These guys had nothing on the Nazis. “Let the fuck go of me, you bastards.”

Kevin started to swing me back and forth like he was ready to throw me. The two others followed suit.

“Will you listen to this tough old bird, Morales? He thinks he’s something. You better hold on to him. He might bruise your big Mexican dick.”

“I told you not to call me Morales. I don’t like it.”

“You have to forgive him, old man. He has an identity problem.”

Kevin stooped swinging me. He ordered his buddies to put me down.

“I’m through fucking around with you.” He kicked me in the side as I lay on the ground. Morales started to kick me. I tried to get up, but was knocked down.

“Hit him, Bob. What the hell are you waiting for, mamma’s boy?”

Bob picked up a board near by and hit me over the head with it. Blood started to run down my face. He hit me again and again. It was the Krauts trying to get information out of me. It was all the hurt I ever felt.

“That’s enough, Bob. You have passed the test. You’re in the gang.”

Everything was hazy, a blur. I could see flickers of light and dark shadows moving through out the camp. There would be no help coming from them. Here, everyone took care of himself. It was like the outside world. It was none of their business. Morales searched the wrecked car. Kevin grabbed Bob.

“Don’t stand there with your hand up your ass; give us a hand.”

He pushed him into the car. “Maybe the old man has something we can use.”

Oh, no, my Purple Heart. I struggled to put my hand in my pants pocket. No, it wasn’t there. Where did I put it? I tried the other pocket, nothing. Think, Louis. I felt around my neck under my jacket and the collar of my shirts. It was there. With what little strength I had left, I tore it from my neck and hid it in the snow. I started to crawl; the snow was crimson. I tried to get to my feet. Suddenly, there was a quick pain in my stomach.

“Stay right where you are, bum.” Kevin pulled a butcher knife from my stomach.

“I know you got money stashed somewhere. You bums always have.”

He stabbed me again in the stomach. I went down.

“You’re having all the fun, Kevin. Give me the knife. Why should you have all the fun?”

“Here, Morales, knock yourself out.”

I felt like a pin cushion when he finished.

“Here, take the knife, Bob. Finish him off.”

The night sky was filled with millions of white dots that no one could connect. They started to accumulate on my body.

“Just don’t stand there. Finish him off.” Kevin shoved the knife in to Bob’s hand. “Be a man.”

“Kill . . . Kill . . . ,” chanted Morales.

“Help,” I whispered. Nobody heard me. Nobody wanted to. The snowmen were coming alive. They stood over me. Death will have an audience.

“You’re such a pussy. Give me it.” Kevin stabbed me.

“We should have set him afire. At least that way he would have been warm.”

The three laughed. I was just another soldier in the snow whose insides were burning with fire. I felt myself falling, drifting, carried by the winds. I was a seagull gliding on the currents. I was a snowflake dissolving. I fumbled in the snow, searching for my Purple Heart.

“If you don’t finish him off, we’re not family anymore. No one will talk to you once the word gets round.” Bob the baby faced kid jabbed me again and again.

“Let’s get out of here.” Morales started to run, as did Kevin. Bob stood over me, the look of his first kill on his face. He was no longer a grunt. He was a soldier. He woke from his daze and ran after the others.

I clutched my Purple Heart. Nobody would take it from me. The medal was my life. I had earned it. A man was created with this medal. I and the medal were one.

A quote from Poe’s The Premature Burial whispered in my ears, as I dissolved returning to the Ardennes: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?”

© Copyright 2005, Thomas W. Sypek

A novel way to win an interview . . . and dangerous!

THE EASY WAY

By J. Geller

A pretentious car salesman who dresses himself in the dark while tripping on acid.

That's what I look like.

Ted anxiously adjusted the lapel of his shirt and re-evaluated his outfit. Hot frustration welled up inside him as he tugged at his tie. Piles of clothes lay scattered across his bed and carpet.

I can’t even dress myself, how am I going to get this job?

He watched his golden retriever, Jacamo, trot to the threshold of his bedroom and cock his furry face in confused wonder. The dog glanced at the floor before warily stepping over a powder blue shirt that had been cast away by his owner.

I’ve got no time for this. I need to start moving.

Ted took a final glance in the mirror and let out a disappointed sigh. He removed a set of car keys and a single manila folder from his desk. His eyes quickly surveyed the folder’s contents to make sure nothing was missing.

He glanced around the room anxiously, hoping something in the vicinity would remind him of something he had forgotten. Finally resigning to the fact that he had everything he needed, Ted made his way over to Jacamo, who was lying on a pile of discarded clothes.

“Wish me luck buddy; if I get this job, maybe one day we can get the hell out of this shithole apartment. Get you a place with a big backyard, a girlfriend."

Jacamo pulled his ears back and raised his brow. Ted laughed and ruffled the dog’s furry golden face.

“To the top, you and me, bud.” Ted focused on his watch. There’s nothing better than a new watch that you saved for months to buy. For the first few weeks, every time you look at it, you’ve got a genuine feeling of satisfaction. A watch can say a lot about someone, so he had picked his carefully. Black faced with a smooth silver band that was always fresh and cool.

I love this watch.

Ted walked to the front door of his apartment. Locking it behind him, he moved hurriedly down the flight of carpeted stairs and out the wood door to his parking lot. It was a mild and comfortable day, the sun was rising in the sky and tall, dark shadows belonged to everything. All of Mother Nature’s glorious presentations unnoticed and overlooked as Ted sat down in the driver’s seat of his car, the sun glinted erratically off the silver components of the new watch. Passing tall groups of trees to either side, Ted drove swiftly down the road, occasionally interrupting his thoughts to check exit signs. “Just relax,” he told himself. “You’re going to make yourself go crazy if you don’t slow your mind down--you’re going to burn yourself out.” Despite these attempts to quell the storm inside his skull, his mind refused to settle. Thoughts rushed in as if they were being escorted by hurricane force winds, swirled around in unpredictable patterns, and were destroyed by new ideas so quickly he could not deliberate on any of them.

Although he had known about the interview for almost two weeks, the reality of the situation, as usual, had not taken its toll on his fragile nerves until the moment was upon him. If he could just land this job, he could stop living from paycheck to paycheck, settle down, and concentrate on writing. Then, the storm inside his head would subside and his newly calmed mind could turn toward fruitful endeavors.

Ted snapped out of his trance and noticed the sign for his exit. He cut across three lanes of traffic, drawing the fingers and horns of angry motorists with nothing else to do. He followed the directions he had memorized, and brought his car to a stop inside the small parking lot located outside of the stone building. “If all goes well, this is where I’ll be dragging myself every morning.” He glanced at his watch. On schedule.

He exited the car and drew in a large breath of warm Midwest air, smooth and almost salty in his lungs. Since moving to Arizona almost six months ago, it was the one thing that Ted could appreciate more than anything else in his new environment. Something about the air was much more slow and sure than the toxic, grimy winds of the east coast. The clean air was actively transported through the thin membrane of his lung tissue, injected into his bloodstream, and delivered to quaking cells before he ventured in the direction of the building. Ted’s heart rate slowed.

He walked toward the revolving door in the front of the office. Making careful calculations, he pushed on the warm glass and slowly entered a quiet cell, traveling in a small semi-circle before being deposited into the main foyer of the building. “So far, so good,” he chuckled.

Ted turned away from the revolving door and walked across the hardwood floors toward the receptionist’s desk on the far end of the room. The office lobby had high, vaulted ceilings dotted with countersunk light fixtures. Expansive windows allowed sunlight to pour into the building in copious amounts, bathing the room in a comfortable natural light that gave an easy ambience. He kept his eyes focused on the petite brunette receptionist who smiled at his approach. His peripheral vision noted the presence of several fidgeting men in suits who were seated on the black leather furniture that lined the room’s perimeter.

Ted reached the circular wooden counter where the receptionist was seated and placed the manila folder down on its smooth surface. 

“Good morning,” he started, perhaps slightly too loudly. “I’ve got an interview scheduled for 9:15 with Mr. Valley.”

The attractive young woman was smiling and looking at him, but did not appear to listen. Her eyes lingered for a second too long on his face before turning toward a piece of paper on the desk in front of her. After scanning it for a moment, she turned back.

“Ted Barheee--Barhidth?” she struggled with the pronunciation.

“Barhydt.” He corrected her, smiling unconsciously. “Don’t worry, nobody ever gets it. It’s Dutch. I think it means severity, or sharpness, or something--I forget.”

“Dutch?” she replied, looking genuinely interested. “That’s . . . cool.”

Her smile widened and her cheeks flushed. She picked up a stack of papers and rapped them on the counter, pushing the edges of the pages flush.

“Have a seat, Mr. Severity. Mr. Valley will be with you in a moment.” She looked up at Ted one last time, smiling brightly.

Oh man. You’re so hot.

Thanking her, Ted turned his attention back toward the room. He located a vacant spot on one of the leather couches to his right, and made his way toward the middle-aged man sitting next to it. About a foot away from the seat, the man looked up from the magazine he read and presented a brilliantly counterfeit smile. Without waiting for acknowledgement, his eyes reverted back to the text he was reading. Ted smiled at the inattentive top of the man’s head.

Ted eased himself slowly into the plush leather, which noisily adjusted to the addition of new weight. Several of the other men in the room looked up from their various distractions to identify the source of the noise, which was the only one present aside from the occasional turning of a page or the nervous taps of a hard black shoe on the wooden floor.

Ted glanced back at the secretary. She was looking at hidden things on the desk in front of her, moving them around and organizing, still smiling to herself.

You’re so damn hot.

Ted was completely and utterly transfixed by her smile. It was the kind of smile that warrants a double take. The kind you simply cannot stop staring at because you are desperately trying to figure out what about it is so damn beautiful and distinctive. After a minute of sight-seeing, he turned his attention back to the room.

Next to him was an enormous black pot full of dark soil, housing a tall, exotic looking plant. Ted reached over and felt one of the thick, gummy leaves. To his surprise, the plant was real. He looked up and locked eyes with another older man sitting across from him who had watched him touch the plant. The man let out an audible “Hmph.” And looked back toward the newspaper, shaking his head.

Hmph yourself, man. This plant is more real than you.

Ted glanced around the room at the other men. Some were older, some appeared his age, but they shared the common characteristic of absolute nervous apprehension. The fear emanated from every face, every insecure twitch, each self-doubting peek at the clock hung high on the north wall. As the minutes crept by, Ted examined the uneasy behavior of his fellow job candidates. And as he watched, mild enlightenment slowly began to creep up and into his fretful mind. An undeniable truth that convinced him of his relative superiority over these wary characters.

I am so much better than this. Than these people, than this process. There is no logical reason for me to be scared of anyone or anything right now. And if for some reason he doesn’t want to hire me, well . . .

Ted looked down at the manila folder. His mind lay quiet and still as a confident smile grew across his face. Ted’s state was interrupted by a voice to his left.

“Mr. Barhydt?” The secretary smiled again from behind green eyes whose rich color was visible ten feet away. “You can have a step back here. Mr. Valley is ready for you.”

Ted glanced at his watch before bringing himself to his feet. On schedule. He took a final look at the sad, common men sitting before him, then made his way to the double of doors behind the secretary’s counter. As his hand grasped the cool metal handle and turned it, he could’ve sworn he heard someone whisper, “Good luck . . .”

Ted pushed past the door, which eased softly shut behind him with the hiss of small hydraulic pistons. At the end of the hall in front of him, stood a tall man, near thirty-five years old. The man’s legs were spread, his hands clasped in front of him at waist level. He sported a small welcoming smile. Ted approached Mr. Valley and held out his hand while maintaining eye contact that not had been broken for the entire length of the hallway. As their hands firmly grasped one another in subconscious struggle for status and authority, Ted’s newfound nirvana loitered fresh in his mind.

I’m not scared of you, bitch.

The man looked away first and retracted his hand.

I win.

“Mr. Barhydt, it’s nice to meet you. Just follow me please; this shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”

Ted said nothing and followed the man into the room. It was noticeably colder than the lobby, but shared the same overwhelming natural light, which filtered in through two large windows on the far wall. There was a very large desk in the center of the room, capable of seating at least twenty people, with twenty dark wooden chairs to match. Mr. Valley extended his hand toward a nearby chair.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to review your resume for a second, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Ted replied.

Ted took a seat on the chair Mr. Valley had offered him, finding it more comfortable than he expected. He placed the folder down in front of him on the long table. As Mr. Valley’s dark eyes scanned the resume, Ted watched his facial expression. When that got tiring, he turned his attention the large forty gallon fish tank to his right. He watched as the swimming creatures darted left and right, forward and back throughout their colorful habitat, not knowing who they were or why they were alive. His eyes found new distractions as they slowly scanned the room, wasting time until the man was finished. After a while, Mr. Valley drew his eyes away from the paper.

“Well, you’ve got an impressive resume, but tell me--what makes you different than the six other men out there?”

Ted had expected this nonsense. These dry, tired questions that are poorly designed to test the character of a man by the nature of his memorized responses. Ted had read all of the articles, all of the books regarding dealing with questions like this, but as he opened his mouth to deliver a premeditated response about echoes and everything good he does coming back to him, he grew unexpectedly nauseous.

I can’t do this.

Looking at the sad men out there in the lobby had catalyzed a transformation. He had never wanted to be like them, but had accepted the fact that he would have to, that is, if he wanted a job. Now, sitting in front of this man, Ted decided he would remain true to himself.

“Well, Mr. Valley, there’s a pretty big difference actually. And it’s one I just noticed while I was sitting out there admiring your plants and your secretary. The difference between me and them is, those men are all scared of you. But I’m not.”

Mr. Valley scrutinized Ted’s face, which was stoic and resolute.

“Scared? Could you elaborate?”

“No.”

Mr. Valley looked confused, half expecting a camera crew to emerge from behind the fish tank and laugh as they informed him he was on some new ridiculous office reality TV show. He looked over at the tank. Nobody came.

“Very well, Mr. Barhydt. Tell me what you want to do with your life.”

Ted contemplated the question for a minute.

“Well Mr. Valley, I want to work for you. I want to produce well and work and then I want you to give me your money for doing it. I’m going to use that money to buy things that I need, and I’m also going to save some. I want to write, and your money will help me do that. Because I can’t write when I haven’t eaten anything but peanut butter and jelly for a week, and I can’t write when I haven’t slept because I’m too busy constantly worrying about green pieces of paper. I want to meet interesting people who understand the value of meaningful relationships. And I want to buy a house so my dog can have a backyard.”

Mr. Valley scrutinized Ted’s face uneasily.

“So you want to work, write, eat, sleep, marry, and play with your dog? That doesn’t sound very ambitious to me, Mr. Barhydt.” The man’s smug expression suggested his extreme satisfaction with himself.

“Ambition, Mr. Valley, is overrated. Nothing more than a simple manmade concept, a virtue only classified in such a way so that people will seek to possess it. I do not need ambition to be successful.”

“Oh really? And how is that?” Valley replied, mockingly.

“I’ve got raw, natural inspiration to keep me moving. That’s why they call it inspiration. It’s inspiring. The kind of inspiration I’ve got is more powerful than corporate ambition. It motivates me to do more than crawl up the corporate ladder. It motivates me to create work in life’s favor, to honor it. My inspiration is not selfish like ambition.”

Mr. Valley was clearly confused, and therefore, scared. He did not want to ask Ted any more questions, in fear that he would not follow the responses. He felt himself losing grasp on the dominant position in the relationship, one that he had firmly held onto all morning with previous candidates. No, he wasn’t ready to sacrifice it to the rambunctious know-it-all philosopher who sat in front of him.

“Mr. Barhydt . . . ” Valley struggled to find the words to remove Ted from his sight, “your resume has clearly misled me. Although on paper you seem like a perfect candidate, you have clearly demonstrated to me in this interview that you cannot take business matters seriously. This is not a game, you see. You cannot simply waltz in here and demand my money so that you can write your precious little stories. And I will not hire a man who does not take pride in his ambition to succeed in my company. Furthermore, I am not your friend, or your buddy, I am your boss. Yet, your tone and manner of speaking suggests otherwise. I’m sorry, but our time together is over. Thank you.”

Ted sat there in stunned silence. He had been convinced that by being true to himself and honest with Valley, he would display his real worth. After all, what more can you ask of a man other than complete truth and honesty? Those were the real virtues. He had expected the interview to unfold like a movie; he had expected Valley to praise his depth of character and beg him to sign contracts on the spot. He had envisioned walking confidently out of the cold room and back into lobby and looking those sad men in the eyes and pitying them. He thought he had it all figured out.

But Valley wanted to do things the hard way.

“I was afraid you might say that,” Ted said. His voice sounded different.

Ted placed his hand softly on the cover of the single manila folder he had brought. Without looking at it, he slowly slid it toward the bewildered man, whose wild eyes were frenetically bouncing back and forth between Ted and the folder. The folder stopped moving and Ted retracted his hand, clasping it together with the other in his lap.

“What is this?” Valley demanded, growing impatient and evermore fearful by the second.

When Ted did not answer, he desperately grasped at the folder and rushed to view its contents. Valley leafed through the items it contained. A look of pure astonishment and confusion contorted his face until he no longer looked human.

“Wh-- Wha, where did you get these!?” Valley stammered, overwhelmed by the folder’s candid contents.

“My sources are irrelevant and largely unimportant at the moment, sir. What truly matters, given the circumstances, is whether or not you’re willing to slide some different pieces of paper back toward me. You know, the ones that talk about the regular payroll periods and my death benefits.”

Valley looked at Ted, his mouth slightly open. He wanted to say something, anything, but the words were destroyed on the tip of his tongue. The reality of the situation slowly seeped into thousands of pores all over his body. His fingers graced the glossy paper the photos were printed on. He was not dreaming. Unconsciously, Valley began to leaf through a pile of papers that had accompanied Ted’s resume. He located the job contract and delivered them to Ted, looking more and more terrified with every passing second.

“Have you got a pen?” Ted asked, with a friendly smile.

Valley was still speechless. His mind was reeling to make sense of the last ninety seconds. Where had Ted gotten the photos? Images of his naked self flashed in his mind and he blinked forcefully in attempt to demolish them. He extricated a blue ink pen from his front shirt pocket and placed it into Ted’s open palm.

“Thanks, Valley.” Ted laughed as he scribbled his signature in the seven mandatory spots and jotted initials in two others.

“Jesus, this thing is long as fuck!”

Ted tossed the pen back toward Valley, whose paralyzed body could not register the flying object. The pen bounced sharply off the arm of his chair and landed with a dull thud on the thick green carpet.

“I’ll see you on Monday, I guess. You can keep those. I’ve got plenty of copies,” Ted said, pointing at the envelope full of pictures that Valley’s white knuckles were still clenching onto. And with that, he walked out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

Valley heard the soft whisper of pistons closing the door in the hallway. His mouth still open, he looked down again at the pictures. Ten pictures in total, each a clear depiction of Valley engaged in frightful displays of sexual deviance. Pictures like these worth millions of words, capable of destroying companies and reputations like anthills falling victim to the destructive feet of curious children. He had taken every precaution to ensure that his secret remained just that--a secret. Yet, somehow he had been beaten, he had been exposed, blackmailed. And now he had a new employee who had him by the balls.

In the parking lot, Ted pocketed the number of the cute secretary and started the engine of his car.

Should’ve done it the easy way, sheep fucker

.

© Copyright 2005, J. Geller

The next story in Mainstream fiction is for mature readers.

A shocking adult tale, not for the gentle-minded.

This is How We Play

By Alexae Nandi

Dear Uncle,

Remember when I was a little kid and you told me great stories and played with me all day, until I fell asleep as you read me sweet, bedtime stories? Remember how we'd start it all again the next day and it seemed like we had it all from dusk till dawn?

Remember how it seemed our love and happiness as a family could change the world?

Yeah . . .

I DON'T REMEMBER THAT, EITHER. But how about this one?

Remember when I was like, 5 or 6, and you brought your friends to our house and made me drink wine and beer because you thought it was funny and then later, when you thought I was passed out and everybody was gone, you used to hold me real tight, stripped down to your underwear? But I wasn't passed out. I was playing dead like you taught me to do. DO you remember when getting me drunk wasn't enough and you started getting me high, ‘cause it was funny to watch? I'm so glad that I accommodated your sense of humor. I liked being a 5 year-old stoner, unable to relate to other kids, because they didn't know what getting stoned meant. DO you remember ever leaving me alone?

I DON'T.

I don't ever remember feeling safe from you. I remember you and my father ganged up on me. Oh sure, it wasn't just me. It was Walker too. Jenny never got hit. Or teased or made to smoke pot or drink booze. She was the princess. Not that I'm jealous; I'm just fucking bitter. I remember being cornered. I remember being scared. Hiding in the closet was fucking literal. Perhaps you just innocently passed the heartache down the line.

But I don't fucking care. I don't love you. I don't need to. I've long since failed to fall for the lure of family.

Remember that Christmas when I was 16 and you got me high in the laundry room, and then told me how lucky I was that you understood me? Remember why we smoked pot that night? Yeah, my dad died and you thought it a consolation. I remember. By that time though, I'd already become a seasoned pot smoker. I'd even dealt for you and my dad inadvertently. So cute, that little boy drug dealer. So little. So Clueless. So Cute, that little blonde mule.

Even cuter to you, I bet, that by 16 I believed all of your bullshit, believed IN you, believed that YOU WERE the only person capable of loving or understanding me. You bought me smokes and beer, listened to punk rock with me . . . and then you grabbed me and got on top of me, trapping me, forcing your tongue in my mouth and my ear, your fingers prying my ass apart, looking for my warmth. Looking for that love you talked about so much. I thought the love was in the punk rock records. I thought the love existed in the way you let me smoke and drink without judgment or hypocrisy. But for you, love existed in the moment you took my hand and forced it inside your tighty-whiteys to grab your erection. I know because that's when you whispered forcefully in my wet ear, "I love you."

I whimpered and kicked my way out from under you. Exhausted and confused, I lay there, playing dead. Just like I used to. Just like you taught me. I got up and went to the bathroom. I held my mouth shut tight and my eyes even tighter. I couldn't believe that this was happening. I didn't want to be heard. I didn't want to be seen. What if someone found out and there was a fight? What if no one believed me? I would be responsible for ruining Christmas. I couldn't bear that at all. So I went back to you and again, played dead. You rolled on top of me again, grabbing my soft dick saying, "You got up like you were gonna throw up. What's wrong?" I said nothing. Dead Boys don't talk. This is how we play.

I am now 32 and can't manage a job, relationship or home long enough to feel safe in it. Therapy and drugs have done nothing. Sobriety and God have done nothing. So you were right.

YOU WERE THE ONLY PERSON IN MY FAMILY WHO EVER LOVED ME.

My mother, her mother, her father, all of your siblings, never said a word in my defense. My dad was already, thankfully dead. He might have otherwise attempted a hypocritical rescue from a monster he helped create through drugs, abuse and indifference. But he understood abuse, both as victim and as victor. Ask Marianne. Ask my brother. You should have asked my mother in her sobs, instead of taking drugs and abusing me. They all understand abuse.

But I don't and I can't and I won't.

I don't know why you chose me or why I chose to accept or believe any of you or your family. It's easy to let in the lies, isn't it? Easy to believe that you were loving me and not raping me not fucking me not destroying me not killing me not aiding and abetting this sense in me that I was worthless this thing this recepticle for your drug abuse booze abuse mind abuse love abuse sex abuse . . . just a hole.

Easy to believe that I could shrug off 16 years of fucking with my head and look across the table the next night at dinner and smile forgiveness at you— smile love at you—be gentle with you because you faced greater demons as an abuser than I as a victim. But instead, I was defeated. Defeated for crying at the table. Grandma attributed it to my father. I said it's not him. Leave me alone. You don't know why I'm crying. You wouldn't understand or believe me. I sobbed at you in disbelief. I sobbed at my family's disbelief and who were they to point fingers? Angry they called me liar! They abandoned me to you. To ask your forgiveness. Handed me over to you—in cars alone.

hopeless, i died
hopeless, i died

When you said you were just a lonely person, I returned with: "No, you’re not. You have an entire family that believes in you."

hopeless, i died
hopeless, I died

And many times you denied holding the rope
squeezing the trigger
pushing me down
covering my mouth
plugging my nose
holding me under
wielding the knife
doling the pills
steering the wheel
cutting the brakes
busting the condom
shooting your load

Because this is how we play

© Copyright 2005, Alexae Nandi

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SHORT STORY FINALISTS

The Beginning and After It

By Megan Schindler

Even though they had only dated for two months, he still called her his Chelsea. Her mother had always warned that a boy would try to take possession of her that way. “That’s why you should wait until you’re older,” she would say. “Will seems like a very nice boy, but a girl’s body is a dangerous thing.” And Chelsea would shrug in reply.

“I don’t want my body,” she would answer sweetly. “If he wants it, he can have it.” Then her mother’s face would wrinkle like a closing palm.

“You should be more careful with it. It holds everything you have inside it.”

The Beginning and After It

By Megan Schindler

Her brother died, and it was at the river. Most of them considered that the beginning, because if it hadn’t happened, she might have gone on forever in that state of innocent childlike euphoria she was undoubtedly in before it, as all children are—until something horrible happens to them and they feel guilty.

No one imagined that the beginning came years later, when she had fully recovered from watching her brother die. The truth was that she hadn’t known him very well; he was nine years older than she and very secretive, fat like her father, always huddling his pasty flesh into a dark corner of his bedroom, illuminating his face bluish with a flickering computer screen. He bored her. She knew he lived in the same house as she did, but she never thought about what that was supposed to mean.

Her single clear memory of Olin came from that vacation when she was seven years old, the first and last her family ever took. It was her father’s idea; there didn’t seem to be a particular reason for it; he just shuffled in through the back door one day and shut it, sighed, took his coat off and hung it on the wall, and then handed a thick brochure to her mother.

“How does this look?” he said.

“South Dakota, of all places,” her mother muttered, then went back to stringing the violin. “Chelsea, would you put this on my desk on your way to your room?”

The cover of the brochure featured bears dramatically roaring. They would not see a single bear the whole time they were there, of course, but, ever hopeful, Chelsea spent most of the drive peering out the window, sharp-eyed, waiting.

“Why don’t you put your new CD on, dear?” Chelsea’s father suggested to her mother not long after he had backed the truck out of the driveway.

“Yeah, to cover up the silence,” Olin added suddenly. Chelsea looked at him, surprised. She didn’t remember his voice being so deep. The last time she remembered hearing it, his voice sounded more or less like hers.

She gave up looking for bears a moment to watch him. His face was round and white—like an eyeball, she decided. Without an iris or a pupil. A big, sightless eyeball stuck on a jiggling pile of old chewing gum. Feeling her watching him, Olin turned his head toward her and glared.

After a moment, their mother looked back at them. “You guys okay back there?”

Chelsea turned to her and smiled. “We’re fine.”

“Well, get comfy. It’s going to be a long drive.”

It was. Years later, Chelsea remembered it only vaguely—the long, boring drive through the desert and the mountains, through more desert and into more mountains with very tall trees and lots of rocks and nothing much else, except a dangerous river.

A mother with any sense would have told Olin to stay out of it, some people said afterwards, especially at night. There were two rooms in the riverside cabin they stayed in, so the parents slept in one, the children in the other. Olin woke Chelsea up when he got up to go that night. Still, no one blamed her for not being able to stop him.

She looked over at him in the dark when she heard him get up. He must have gone to bed with his clothes on. The covers stuck to his clothes with static, which crackled happily as he pulled the two strips of fabric apart.

Intrigued by the sparks of light, Chelsea whispered, “How did you do that?”

            “Magic,” Olin responded. “Rub your pajamas against the covers. You can do it, too.”

“Really?” Chelsea rolled over onto her back and started rubbing as Olin slipped out of the room. Slowly, she peeled the polyester comforter away from her stomach—magic! Just like Olin had said.

After the first time, though, it never worked again. She tried it several times before deciding that maybe she had forgotten how to do it right. Outside it was cold and windy, but she decided to go find Olin to see if he would show her how he had done it again.

Chelsea got up, took off her pajamas, put on the clothes she had worn that day, put her socks and shoes on, slipped her coat on, and left. As soon as she walked outside, the wind began to whip her hair away from her face. The moon was shining; she could see everything behind the cabin—rocks, wind-bent trees, rushing river—as if it were dipped in mercury. Then, down by the river, she saw a shadow. A bear! she thought excitedly—but then she realized it was just Olin. 

But maybe he could show her how to make the magic again. She walked down toward the river. He was wading into it. The rushing water sloshed around his legs, which slid stiffly, slowly forward, as if they were turning into fat blocks of ice.

Chelsea tiptoed down to the bank. “Olin!” she called. He flicked his head back toward her. Two round flashes of moonlight reflected off his glasses. Then he turned away; the flashing moonlight curved into darkness. The water was churning faster now; he was sliding faster. His feet didn’t seem to be able to hold their places underwater.

“Isn’t it cold, Olin?” she asked, louder this time to be sure that he heard her. But the moonlight didn’t flash again. She could hear rocks rolling, crashing against each other in the water. Olin was kicking them out of place. He was in to his waist now and holding on to a large rock, looking across the river at the dark woods on the other side. The water gushed and pulled around his body.

“Are you going to try to swim across, Olin?” she asked, bending down to put her hand in the water. “Ah! It’s cold! Olin—”

She stood and thrust her hair back into the wind to see him again, but he was already gone. The moonlight flickered like daggers across the water, pointing to where he had been. But it was too cold for Chelsea and probably very deep.

She remembered it, but not very often. She swam at the beach after school and drank tap water without once thinking of his face. The truth was she couldn’t picture him very clearly, and she wouldn’t have wanted to if she could. Sometimes she heard her parents murmuring in angry, painful whispers in their bedroom; then one would mention his name, and the other would shut the door. As Chelsea hurried to her room, a vague image of his face would balloon into her memory: a fat, pinkish blot with two glaring, moon-shaped eyes.

At her funeral, one of her uncles remarked that the parents should have taken her to a psychiatrist.

“I offered to talk with her, in fact,” an academic friend added. “A terrible thing. Such a sad, pretty girl.”

“Pity the mother,” murmured a woman no one knew very well. “She was such a talented musician. They say having a passion like that takes you away from your family.” And even though she was a stranger, almost everyone within earshot nodded in agreement.

One person who did not nod hung behind the bunching acquaintances and looked away into the graveyard, which sparkled on the horizon. On a clear morning like this, the specks of crystal in its granite tombstones shone like bits of aluminum in the sun. He thought it very beautiful, a fitting palace for his Chelsea, whose once-warm lips were now cold as the water that had kissed them last.

Even though they had only dated for two months, he still called her his Chelsea. Her mother had always warned that a boy would try to take possession of her that way. “That’s why you should wait until you’re older,” she would say. “Will seems like a very nice boy, but a girl’s body is a dangerous thing.” And Chelsea would shrug in reply.

“I don’t want my body,” she would answer sweetly. “If he wants it, he can have it.” Then her mother’s face would wrinkle like a closing palm.

“You should be more careful with it. It holds everything you have inside it.”

Chelsea used to laugh when her mother said this. Will saw her do it from the garden where he watched and waited for her.

“What if I want to let everything out?” she asked once, daringly, dancing in wild circles around her mother. That night, Chelsea let Will touch her breasts, as the two of them lay cramped in the back of his brother’s car by the beach. He could still see her eyes gazing calmly out the window at the moon.

They were right about one thing—it was her mother’s fault, he thought as he walked up the hill toward the graveyard. She was the one who taught Chelsea not to trust him. A rock clattered down the hill towards him, kicked back from one of the wheels of the Cadillac they rode in. He punted it into the thick, wet grass. She was the one who taught Chelsea to hate herself.

“Her mother started it all,” he muttered grimly, staring at his feet in the road. Then he looked up, thoughtful. “A woman who cares about nothing but music,” he proclaimed wisely, “will play over her daughter’s grave.” Then he walked on up the hill. 

Chelsea had tried to tell her mother about the ham and eggs weeks before it happened, but her mother had largely ignored her. And even if she had paid attention to Chelsea’s lament, she wouldn’t have blamed the food as the beginning anyway, because it had nothing to do with guilt and therefore could not be connected to the end. That’s what she would have said if she were able to speak, and if someone had reminded her of this:

“Mom, this plate is bothering me,” her daughter said.

“What, dear?” She was practicing a concerto and didn’t turn to see Chelsea scrutinizing the pink slab of ham and the snotty white eggs, whose yolks jiggled and stared up at her from the plate. Instead, she reached down for her resin.

“This plate—the food. It just seems ridiculous.”

“Well, ridicule it, then. It’s all I have to give you right now.” She raised her bow and started in on the difficult passage again with vigor.

Mom’s got it wrong, Chelsea thought. The body isn’t a dangerous thing; it’s a stupid thing, a parasite. And that’s when she began to hate living in one. She left the plate of ham and eggs over easy to congeal on the table. Her mother didn’t notice until Chelsea was already halfway down the road to school, and the dribbling yolks had hardened into two gold seals on the plate.

The middle, as often happens in stories of the mysterious human mind, consisted primarily of a thought process, which in Chelsea’s case lasted only three weeks. There were some external signs of what was going on within: for example, as Will noticed, she didn’t eat anything for several days. What’s more, she didn’t seem to be taking good care of herself—her hair got oily from hanging in her face, her breath started to smell bad. Fortunately, after about a week, she relented and began to bathe herself and eat again.

Still, she always seemed unwilling, poking at the food with her fork as if she were stirring up an ant bed. People asked him if she was anorexic; with her mother constantly criticizing her body, he answered, it wouldn’t surprise him.

One day when they were looking at the lunch menu, Chelsea stated flatly that she didn’t want to eat at all. “I’m just gonna take a walk,” she said.

Will looked at her with concern. Her eyes, blue as ever, were gazing at the menu more intently than they had ever looked into his.

They’re right—she must be starving herself, he thought. She won’t let herself eat. It’s the memory of her brother that’s doing it to her. Filled with pity, he stroked her beautiful blonde hair. They say she’s been haunted by guilt about it all these years.

“I understand,” he said quietly. He wrapped her in his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked, embracing her tightly. “Is it—is it your brother?”

Chelsea pushed back from him, surprised. “My brother?” She laughed at the thought of it. “No. No,” she repeated, laughing again—a little hysterically, Will thought.

Some kids passing by on their way to the cafeteria heard the couple, whose conversation intrigued them. They discussed the matter as they went inside. The story of Chelsea’s brother was legendary, vague and eerie as a ghost tale: he died, and it was at the river. That was all they knew. No one except Will knew her well enough to ask her about it, and he was too sensitive to divulge the details.

Having lately become the keeper of Chelsea’s delicious secrets, he had also become considerably more popular. That meant he had someone to eat lunch with, even though Chelsea had left him to go for a walk. He looked around the room as he waited through the line, picked up a tray, got his ham, eggs, and biscuits, and ambled to sit down with his new friends.

Amber, one of the pretty girls, leaned toward him as soon as he sat down, laying her chest on the cafeteria table. “Is Chelsea okay?” she asked furtively. “I heard she was depressed about her brother.” Several other girls turned and leaned toward him too.

“She’s fine,” Will answered in a loud voice. “She just gets a little sad sometimes.”

“About him?” another girl asked.

“I heard she blames herself for what happened,” another added.

“Do you think she should be going off alone like that?” wondered another.

“Girls,” Will said, laughing, “it was seven years ago. She’s fine. I’m sure she’s not thinking about him anymore.”

Despite his intentions, Will was telling the truth. At that moment, Chelsea was walking along, fine, healthy, calm, and rational, working out the thought that had struck her a few weeks before. The wind whipped strands of her hair into her mouth, but she spat it out calmly and kept walking toward the beach, thinking.

My body holds everything that I am, Mom says. It holds me like a piggy bank holds money, she thought while waiting for the crosswalk. Eating pig meat keeps the body running. A pig skin holds what keeps a human body running. A body holds a person inside it, holding the person running, like a mother holds a baby swimming in the bathtub.

A troupe of older men jogged by. They were wearing short blue shorts of a thin material that flapped wildly in the wind, occasionally exposing their jockstraps. Chelsea noticed this and laughed wickedly at the bobbing white packages. Ocean air gushed into her lungs. She climbed down a staircase that led to the beach.

... like swimming in the bathtub. But holding, not being. We eat to keep the thing that holds us inside. The part that holds the other part, the important thing. The jocksrap and the penis. Eating ham and biscuits is like continually patching up a jockstrap instead of just taking it off to let your balls breathe.

She laughed to herself again as she walked out onto the sand, imagining Will and the other boys in the locker room after gym class. The beach was empty; no one came out on the weekdays. She felt the wind blow over the ocean; she heard water splashing against the rocks.    

It was one of the few times she ever thought about Olin. A moment of reconciliation, it was then that she realized why Olin must have walked into the river that night. No one had ever told her, but she had finally figured it out for herself: He was taking off the jockstrap.

Chelsea wobbled across the sand. Olin doesn’t have to eat anymore, she realized. Walking into the water, he had gotten rid of the pasty body that held whatever he was inside it, and then he was free. She knew because she had seen the body at the funeral, but she had never seen the rest of him again.

It seemed to her an excellent idea. Of course, there were probably a million ways to do it, but drowning was so convenient. Here she was at the beach and all, with no one around. She took her shoes off and waded into the water. God! it was cold. It splashed up between her legs, dampening her inner thighs before she was ready. But she could handle it—it wasn’t nearly as cold as the water in the river, she remembered. Wading stiffly into the ocean, she watched a wave slowly surging, arching, reaching darkly toward her.

She looked back at the beach, where her shoes were resting. Suddenly, she thought that she would miss the feeling of those shoes. They were cute, blue canvas without any laces, and she’d had them for years. Sometimes she left them in the window where the sun would shine before she got up in the morning, so they would already be warm when she put them on.

Whether the end, her final glimpse of the canvas sneakers, might have changed the beginning, had she been given more time, is a question for philosophers. After all, none of the people who knew her ever raised it; they couldn’t possibly, having no idea what images controlled her thoughts when the wave crested hard and fast, crashed down against the back of her neck and sucked her body under.

© Copyright 2005, Megan Schindler

How many minds must we explore to find the Murderer?

D E A T H

By R S Prasanna

You should have seen her face. I should have seen her face ...Then, it would not have happened. I do not know exactly what ... and how ... perhaps I never will. But I know that it happened. To Maadhavi. My wife. And I did it. That I know. To Maadhavi. My wife.

The room smelt of grease. It was dark. The lone beam of light that pierced it through a gap in the room lit the paper brilliantly and played with the contours of the man’s face. Now it lit his cheek—showed even the stubble; now it struck his nose, highlighting the cut at the bridge. But mostly it left the man alone, never caught the tear that left his eye.

What’s the motivation, you ask? Motivation! Should one get into that now? Need one? Of course, a motivation exists. Otherwise, it would not have happened, would it? From the thought is born the act. The thought? One should not think. It is bad. To see things too clearly. Worse, to want to. It takes one nowhere.... It took me to me.

The police arrived just one hour after they got the call. They were received by a mob of neighbors who all spoke at once. The Inspector had to cordon the area off. It was difficult, though ... keeping this throbbing mass of humanity from peeping too close to death. All hell seemed to break loose as the body was brought outside. It was a young woman, maybe 35 years of age, one could not tell. But it will be there in the Inspector’s report. Very meticulous man he is. Inspector Ramnath. It will be there. Also the photos.

Death. How easily that word comes to me now. Death! Have I got so used to it? For all my vices, I am honest. That much I credit myself. That is why I did not stop. I knew I was going—crashing down—into an endless pit. I knew it. But I was honest. I kept at it. This whole business of thinking. What is my sin? My killing her? But I did not kill her. Yes, I killed her—but that was not me. Not this me. The one thinking. I am not him, the Killer. He is the killer. I? I ... I am ... the thinker. He is the sinner ...  not ... me....

Inspector Ramnath looked at the photos. The lens needs to be changed, he noted mentally. Hazy in spots ... The wound was large, circular. Left thorax, an inch below the ribcage. Bled to death. Looked like a housewife. Just like any other housewife one saw walking the streets ...  just like any of them ... only, others still walked.

The killer. He lay here, somewhere ... Near me. In me?

The beam of light shifted. The man’s eyes lifted from the paper. His eyes were dry now. He looked at a spot a few feet away from where he sat. The beam of light rested there. And on the floor ...  nothing. The man stared at the spot. Nothing lay there, but his gaze tightened.

Nothing. Death. Should one be punished by it? Punished for it? Death. Yes, if one chooses it. And he had chosen it, the Killer. But is he the Sinner?

It all had happened in a flash. The drunken rage in the dilated eyes, the crash of glass breaking ...  the swift arc of the arm. The silence that followed. He could never forget the look in her eyes ...  before they closed.

He killed her, but that is not the sin—the crime for which he shall be punished.

For all my vices, I am honest. Brutally. Death. That was his crime. The Killer’s. For choosing death. I saw it happen—I saw the Killer from a distance. He of course could not see me. Is that not always the case? But I saw it all clearly. And I screamed ... till my throat burst. And then I screamed a little more. The moment passed. How much can happen in a flash! But it passed, and the Killer left. As he left, I could hear him scream. Only I could hear him. And how he screamed! I knew my head would burst. But he kept screaming, even as he left. I remember thinking—before I dropped down unconscious—how much the Killer sounded like me, when he screamed.

This made no sense, thought Inspector Ramnath. A husband killing his wife in a drunken spree; that was not uncommon. In the presence of his teenage son ...  sad, but it has happened before. The husband disappearing ... understandable. The son disappearing? Puzzling ... worrying ... And all this mess in a perfectly respectable middle class family. Sickening.

Death. The killer chose it. That he killed is not the sin. He cannot be blamed for that which he did, when not in his senses. He was drunk then, wasn’t he?

But for that which he did when he was in his senses? He made the choice, didn’t he, when he was sane? The choice. To drink.

But soon, things would fall in place. His team was tracking the husband down. It would not take long, he knew. Within an hour, he would know where the husband was hiding  ... and what had happened to the son. Not that his team was efficient— it was— but he knew that this was a murder by impulse. Unplanned.

Death. The Killer had chosen it over life. Every night, in that mysterious fluid he had sought to seek ... death. Death from the pressures of his morning life ... his frustrations ... his anger at things not going the way he deserved. It was a hard life, his morning life.

At times, life hurt a little too much ... yes it did ... and only a little sip of death could soothe the wound. Little by little ... sip by sip. Death. But this death was not the one that would eventually come. No way! This death was pleasure ... things seemed brighter ... one seemed lighter ... seemed. But death it was, wasn’t it? That which the Killer chose, that which he poured in him every night? For what is death? That which is not.

He allowed the telephone to ring just twice. It was his team. He smiled. They had the place surrounded. The fool had left so many clues leading to him. The silliest of all, the blood trail. And of all places to hide. Sir, you should come and see this!

And for that he should be punished. The Killer is the Sinner. For choosing death.

The man stood up. He dropped the paper. The room was still dark. But the beam had not shifted now. It lay in the same spot as before. And there it lay.... Nothing. As it lay before. Death. He walked up to it. He touched it. So this is how it feels ... The wound was not visible. But the face was. The Killer. The Sinner. How calm it looked!

Death. You need not know —you, the reader—how I came here ... all that you need to know is why. There lay the Killer. He looks just like me, you will note. My mother used to say, “You look just like your father.” Yes, my dear Maadhavi, my mother. Just like him.

The police had to break open the garage door. They did it in a moment. As light gushed into the room, Inspector Ramnath jerked, shocked at what met his eyes. There lay the husband, in the same posture as his wife. Dead. The wound in the same place. Circular; Left thorax, an inch below the ribcage. The weapon, a similar looking liquor bottle ... broken ... its lips smeared in ... He followed the stream of blood. But it ended in darkness. “Open the door more!” he shouted. And then he let out a moan. The stream of blood merged with another. His eyes cringed. In that pool of blood—fresh and red—lay drowned a young man—spent and white. Looked to be in his teens. Stubbled jaws and cheeks ... a cut across the bridge of his nose. “Shit!”

“Sickening”, declared Inspector Ramnath, closing the file. He walked to the window. Suddenly, his spacious office room seemed stifling. He opened the curtains and looked out. Two floors below him, the busiest street in town. People going about their business as usual. The Inspector was lost.

There he sits. Mother was right. He does look a lot like me ... in the dark. What is he doing, hunched? A few yards more, then it will all be over. It will be hard, of course ... but it can be done.

It’s been done before. Surprising. No struggle. Nothing. So this is how it feels. Should I draw it out ... so this is what hurts. That explains the silence followed by her scream ... no she did not scream ... that I remember... yesterday’s scream was just like this ... like this man’s scream now ... yes. He screamed just like this yesterday ... as he ran away....

“Are you very sure, Sir, about where one begins and the other ends?” Inspector Ramnath jerked. “What?” “Where one begins and the other ends—” “You mean the ... the letter?”

“Yes, Sir.” Inspector Ramnath walked back to his desk. He looked at the piece of paper that lay on his table.

So this is what he was doing, when I came in. My hand is staining the paper... that’s alright I guess ...“You should have seen her face ...” Maadhavi. Her face. I saw it. “But I did not kill her ...”

“The sinner. He lay here, somewhere ... Near me.... In me?” So this is what he came running here for. To write. To think. There ... where is he?... there! From where came this thought? Where is that now? This place is becoming a bloody mess ... I hope this does not take too long. His pen. Stained. His blood. But I will have to make do with this for now. This beam of light here ... this should do. This won’t take long. “Nothing ...  Death ... Should one be punished ...”

 “ ‘... by it? Punished for it? Death. Yes, if one chooses it.’ —That’s where the son began.” The Inspector pointed at the line, careful not to touch the paper. “Puzzling, Sir ... if only we had had a chance to find out some sanity behind all this morbid mess ... if only we could somehow call one of them back to life and ask!” The Inspector looked up from the paper.

“Shit!” Today is definitely the worst in the whole of my career. God! I am going to retch. And these blasted men— “I said open the bloody door more!” Not much help. This space reeks. Wait. What was that? I have to get to him fast. “Boy!” Yes, his chest is heaving. “Boy!” His blood is spurting ... spasmodically ... a good sign ... his heart has not given up. Yes, I can see him breathe ... now I am close enough to ... God! His breath smells ... cheap liquor ...“Boy!” Silence. And the last spurt.

 “The motive, Sir?” Inspector Ramnath let out a sigh. Still seated at his desk, he looked at the window. It was almost evening. A cool breeze had begun to lift the curtain cloth and play with it. From his place, he could not see the busy street below. With its milling crowd of busy bodies. No, he could not. Even if he stood up. No. He could never.

I can feel it ebbing away ... there the red stream leaving me ... warm ... never to return.

Death.

© Copyright 2005, R S Prasanna

---

 

Excerpt from HIGH NOON

By Jo J. Adamson

 

 

 

Sally, an aging musical comedy star, contemplates her life.

 

                                               

SALLY

They call them night terrors. You suddenly sit up in bed, talk incoherently; your pulse and respiratory rate doubles: you're terrified of something you can't see.

 

            The main feature of night terror is amnesia.

 

Sally picks up her cup. She takes a sip of tea. Then puts it down.

 

            At the end of each episode, without waking up fully,

            you go back to sleep.

 

            The next morning, the only thing you remember is one

            brief, frightening image.

 

            It's as if someone was in the room with you.

 

Sally picks up her cup, and circles the rim with her forefinger. 

 

You might say I'm an expert on night terrors. I average about two a week.

 

            Tonight, I was asked to go on a date.

            I got ready to go and then I just couldn’t.

            I was afraid to go out, and afraid to stay in.

I’m afraid to sleep.

And I’m talking to myself again!

 

Sally smiles sadly. She pours herself some tea.

 

           

I'll just sit here until I can collect my thoughts.

 

            My mother called from Montana today.

            She wanted to know how her successful TV talk show

            daughter was doing.

 

            Had I scheduled Bob Redford yet?

 

Bob! You'd think I had the guy for dinner or something.

 

            We're not budgeted for Robert Redford.

            Ed Humme, maybe.

 

            Who's Ed Humme? I tell her he's a

            gardener. She says good. Be sure and ask him

            what might be killing her Azaleas.

 

Sally takes a pack of cigarettes and lights one.

 

            I started smoking when my dreams began to

            go up in smoke.

 

            I get a perverse pleasure from lighting each one. I

            don't inhale.

 

            Maybe that will save my lungs.

 

Sally exhales.

 

            And then maybe not.

 

She takes another drag.

 

 

Night terrors occur most often in childhood. The nervous system is not completely developed.

 

Something in the brain, probably the brain stem, did not form during maturation.

 

Sally crushes the cigarette out.

 

           

Mom called to wish me a happy

            fortieth birthday.

 

           She would like me married and with a family. I'm afraid I'm a

            bit of a disappointment to her.

 Sally gets up from chair.

            The problem is I'm not the age she thinks I am.

            I feel like one of those insects frozen in the sticky

bark of a yellow pine tree. The tree ages, but the insect doesn't.

 

            It seems like just yesterday I was twenty-one and auditioning for a part

            in a Broadway show.

 

Sally looks toward audience. She becomes her past self.

 

            I was living in a loft in the SoHo district.

            and full of  "the thing with feathers"—hope.

                       

Sally recreates the experience.

 

            Tell you a little bit about myself?

            Well, I'm 21 and this is my first time

            in New York. I'm a long way from home.

 

            Where am I from? A place you’ve never heard of.  

            Wisdom, Montana. My daddy is a cattleman.

 

I studied Theatre Arts at the University of Washington

            and was in several shows. At the U.W.

 

She says under her breath.

 

            Christ, I'm blowing this.

 

Anything else? Yes, I played Jill in "Butterflies Are Free" and "Cherie" in "Bus Stop." 

            I especially identified with Cherie.

 

Sally cups her hand over her eyes as she looks out in the darkened

theatre.

 

            Why? Well, if you remember, Cherie ends up in Montana.

 

Sally laughs nervously, and then covers it with a cough.

Anything professional? Well I did a few soaps

here in New York and I was featured in a

commercial.

 

She says sotto voce.

 

            A dancing rutabaga.

 

            What? I said a dancing rutabaga!

 

I was the Elevator Operator on the old Bob Pinchot Show.

And a College Girl on "The Secret Storm" and . . .

            What?  No, no speaking part. I was a supernumerary

            on "The Secret Storm."

 

            On the "Bob Pinchot Show," I said "Floor, Please" three

            times a week. But then they took the operator out of the elevator.

That is, they kept the elevator,

            but took out the operator.

 

You don't see many operatored-elevators, anymore.

 

Sally is devastated.

 

            Oh Christ.

 

She takes a chair. She picks up another cigarette and starts to light it. She changes her mind and picks up tea.

 

God, I was awful! Why did I have to say that shit about being a supernumerary?  No one sounds that way in New York.

            Hell, in Montana either.

 

            It takes a cowboy's daughter to sound like a

            first-quarter drama student.

 

            God, I'll never make it in this town.

            Never . . . never.

 

            My agent tells me that I won't give Rita Moreno

            any sleepless nights.

 

She looks at herself in small mirror over dresser.

 

            He says I have the kind of appeal that women like

            and men find non-threatening.

 

            Whatever that means.

 

She takes another sip of tea.

 

All I ever wanted to do was sing and dance.

I would have made it too, but my timing was so damn bad.

 

I was in my prime during the decline of the American musical.

 

            I went down with Debby in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"

            and haven't surfaced since.

 

In 1964, I was livin’  and dyin’ in LA and up for a sitcom. 

 

                                               

OFF STAGE VOICE

            All right, Miss Long, we'd like you to read the part

            of Joan's girlfriend. You've just returned from

            work and drop by her apartment.

 

                                                SALLY

            I'm nervous and attempt a joke.

            What's my motivation?    

 

           

                                                OFF STAGE

            Just relax and take your time.

 

Sally picks up a magazine as if it's a script. She opens it to a random page.

 

                                                SALLY

            Hi Kid!

 

She looks at 'script' for more.Turns a page.

 

            That's all? Hi Kid.

 

                                                OFF STAGE

            That's all we need. Thank you!

 

Sally puts down magazine. She goes over to bed, takes up one of her clowns and holds it close to her chest.

 

            Three weeks later, I was told that I had

            gotten the job.

 

They were looking for the right chemistry between the star and her best friend and said that they saw it in me.

 

I met the star once. She forgot my name, but said I had nice teeth. She remembered that because her father was an orthodontist.

 

            For the next four years, I get up at the crack of dawn,

drive to the studio, sit in the makeup chair, and go over my lines

with my hairdresser.

 

The scenes are taped and I go back to my seedy little track house

in West Hollywood where I live with my two cats.

 

 

PLAY CONTINUES . . .

 

© Copyright 2005, Jo J. Adamson

 There are some things you shouldn't say to a friend, especially while traveling . . .

The Road to No Where

By Danielle Abbatiello

“I suggest one of you go get the car, while the other waits here with the luggage,” said the rental car clerk. “Just make sure that one of you stays with the luggage.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You see the sheriffs? If they see unattended luggage. . . ” The clerk pointed to several deputies standing around the airport terminal.

“Oh,” she paused, “they could think we have a bomb.”

“Don’t say that!” I shouted as I flailed my arms, trying to hush her.

“What?” Could she not know what she said?

“The B word.” I tried to bring my voice back down to normal. My arms were calmly at my side.

“Why?”

“You can’t say that word. Not in an airport. Are you crazy?” Even as the words escaped my lips, I knew the inevitable answer to that question had to be yes. She must be crazy, because only a crazy person would say the word BOMB in an airport knowing there were about 20 sheriff’s deputies in very close proximity. “It’s been a long day. I don’t want to waste another 2 hours getting strip-searched by backwoods, county bumpkin officers.”

“I didn’t mean . . . ,” but as she was uttering the sentence, she began to laugh. She has this tendency to laugh. Uncontrollably at times. She calls it giggling, but it’s not. It’s more like, gut rumbling. This loud sound emanates from the pit of her belly.

“It doesn’t matter what you meant. You shouldn’t have said it.” She was still laughing. I think it’s her defense mechanism. Sometimes, I think she laughs so that I don’t see she really wants to cry. I didn’t mean to jump at her. I hope that’s not what she thinks I did. “Look, don’t say that word again.”  

“I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“I know that. I’ll just go get the car. You wait here with the luggage.” As I walked away, I heard her laughing to herself. She was so engrossed in her hearty laughter, I could not help but smile. We had been through hell so far on this trip, our first (and quite possibly last) together. When I turned toward her to open the car door, I saw her sitting alone on the bench outside the terminal, lighting her cigarette. She had calmed down a bit, but her face was red. She still had this grand smile on her face. She has a great smile, gap in her front teeth. It’s so great because it is always there, even on her bad days. At least, it is always there for me. She never seems down, or very rarely. She is always up and lively and ready to do things. Those are some of the qualities I like best in her. She’s always willing to try new things, even when she isn’t good at them. Take bowling, for example. There are very few people in this world who suck more at bowling than she does. But whenever I suggest we go bowling, she’s right there, willing to try. The trying, it’s impressive. She knows she sucks, but she plugs away each time, trying to improve her game. Trying to beat me. And you know what? One day she might. She is a real fighter. She fights for what she wants. She fights for me, for my business; she is such an asset . . . professionally, anyway. I’ve never had anyone help me as much as she’s helped me. I hope she knows that. She’s got to know that, right? We are friends. Good, honest friends. I enjoy the honesty we share. But it scares me too. She knows too much. If she gets mad at me and turns on me. . . .

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said as she opened the car door.

“I know. It’s just that you can’t say things like that in an airport.”
“It just came out. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Try to think next time. We’ve already wasted two hours. We have so much more driving to do.”

“I know.”

She sat in the passenger seat of the rental car, staring out the window, occasionally chuckling to herself. After a while, I engaged her in an entirely new conversation. I was still somewhat upset about what happened at the airport and, if the truth be told, pushed her into this discussion. I guess I was looking for a fight. I was disgusted about my car breaking down on the turnpike, causing me to rent this car, to continue my trip with a girl who does not have enough common sense to not to mention the word BOMB in an airport.

 “Please, don’t make me have this conversation.” I could hear the strain in her voice.

“You started this; you need to finish what you were going to say.”

“I don’t want to do this. It’s not fair . . . I’m tired, it’s been such a long trip already. Can’t we have this conversation another time?”

“You can’t say something and then stop! You did this.” I insisted.

“If I started this, can’t I stop it too?” I knew she was uncomfortable. She was fidgeting in her car seat. The grand smile was gone. I could hear the tears welling in her eyes. Her voice was beginning to crack. I looked over at her sad, little face imploring me to stop pressuring her into this conversation, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to get out of her what the problem was. I had my suspicions. I hoped I was wrong. She thinks she knows me, but I know her too. I knew she was going to try to back peddle her way out of telling me she wanted a relationship, but I refused to let her out of it.

“No, you started this. You can’t tell me you hate men and that they play unfairly, then use me as an example, but tell me you aren’t going to explain how I play unfairly,” I explained.

Inasmuch as she wanted a relationship, there was never anything more than friendship between us. Alright, maybe we fooled around once, but that was a while ago, before I really knew her and before I decided I didn't like her like that. And I don’t really want to call it fooling around; we touched a bit, but that was it. I can't like her like that. I wish I could, but I can't. I wish for her sake I could. I love spending time with her and there are so many qualities about her that I really do like. But, I am not attracted to her like that. Yet, I know she would be so happy if I were, and we spend so much time together . . . No, I simply don’t like her sexually. There is nothing there. Besides, with her, there would have to be a commitment. She’s not a one-night stand girl. I don’t want a commitment. Not now. Maybe not ever. And definitely not with her. 

“Look, I shouldn’t have said that.” Here comes the back peddling!

“But you did. And now you’ve got to tell me why you feel like that? Have I done anything unfair to you?” Sure, I’m defensive, wouldn’t you be? She was telling me that she thought I wasn’t up-front with her. That’s not true. I think she is confusing my romantic disinterest in her with playing unfair. I’m sure I come across to her as mean. Does my not being attracted to her sexually make me mean? Aren’t I just as entitled to not liking her as she is to liking me? I wish she didn’t like me like that. I wish she didn’t have feelings for me, not those feelings. Not sexual feelings. Friendship, great. Sexual, not great. Confusing. So confusing. She’s confused. It’s not me.

“Please, let’s just get to Maryland. We can talk about this another time.” I could hear the sadness in her voice. She usually has such a happy voice, so upbeat and cheerful. I should back down. I should wait until the trip is over. But I can’t.

“No, tell me how I play unfairly. Have I ever lied to you? I tell you the truth.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I thought, doesn't she realize that I only tell her the truth 80 percent of the time, at the most? All other times . . . Look; no one can be totally honest every minute. We all play games. Even she does. Though I don't think she realizes that she does. What's all this bullshit about her never being with guys? How could she have gone this long in her life without having been with anyone? She's not ugly. At least, I don't think she is. I'll give her that. Maybe a bit chunky. But she’s losing weight. And she looks good, definitely better than when I fooled around with her. Alright, I know I should never have been with her. But she kissed me. I didn’t kiss her. She claims I suggested the kiss, but she did it. I bear no responsibility. She did it.

“You told me that you couldn’t be with me because you were with my cousin. That was 13 years ago.”

“That’s only part of the reason; maybe I didn’t tell you the real reason. Do you want the real reason?”

“Yes.” She said she wanted to know, but I knew my words were going to hurt her. She’s forcing me to be cruel here. I hate being cruel. Especially to her. She has a kind heart. She’s a good person, but very naïve. She doesn’t know people, takes what they say at face value; you can’t do that! People are never what they seem. She needs to learn that and if she doesn’t learn fast, she’s going to have a miserable life. She’s smart, but she doesn’t know people.

“There was never a spark. I never felt anything for you. I can’t help that.” For a minute, she sat silently. No breathing, no noise of any kind.

“So all the bullshit about you dating my cousin--” She paused. She was breathing excitedly. “You lied. You don’t think that’s playing unfairly?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you . . . ”

“When?”
“Then. When I was with you.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know you.”

“So now that you know me better, now it’s alright for you to hurt me? Now you feel it’s alright to tell me you were never attracted to me? Please, I don’t want to do this. For the love of God, let’s end this conversation!”

“What do you want me to say? We tried. But there was nothing between us. Would you have preferred I waited a few months before telling you I wasn’t interested?”

“Yes, then you would’ve at least have given me a chance,” she implored.

“Why? I am NOT attracted to you. I will NEVER be attracted to you. Not now, not ever.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m sorry! Do you want me to pretend?” I know what I want, and it's not her. She knows that, I know she does. But can’t accept it. How clear do I have to be? How much do I have to hurt her? I hate saying nasty things to her, but she doesn’t seem to understand. No, more like she refuses to understand. We’ve discussed this all before. I'm not a bad person, but she makes me feel like I am. Not always, but sometimes. She makes me feel guilty, like I am terrible for what I do and for who I am. She wants me to justify things. Clear them through her, according to her morals and her ideals. Well, you know what? I am not her. I am not a prude, little nerdy girl. Just as she needs to be true to herself, I too have to be true to me. I’m a guy in the peak of my life. If I want to kiss this girl or screw that girl, why should I feel bad? I shouldn't be made to feel bad. Who the fuck does she think she is, anyway? What gives her the right? Why does she care? She tells me that she is trying to help me be a better person, and sure, maybe I suggested to her that I might want to be one, but . . . Just talk. Always just talk. She can’t hold me accountable for the things that I say.

Great, it just occured to me, we’ll be together in Maryland for two days, sharing a hotel room. I wonder if I should have waited until we went home to have this talk.

© Copyright 2005, Danielle Abbatiello

 In a teen's mind ...

Get Out of Bed

By Mark McKenzie

Get out of bed, it’s almost 8 o’clock; it’s time to get up; you have to go to school today; no excuses; you’re going to be late; good, you’re finally up; go to the bathroom; shave this morning; put some deodorant on; get dressed; you’re running out of time; pack up your backpack; you’re already late; turn off the TV; grab some breakfast; what am I going to do with you?; get in the car; bring your Gatorade with you; why are you so tired?; I can’t sleep at night; we need to get you driving; you’re never going to get your license at this rate; your sister drove everyday to school; grab your stuff; walk faster; the bell is going to ring; you’re late; get in the car; we need to go home; how much homework do you have?; how was your day?; did you get any papers back?; did you try your hardest?; did you succeed?; A lot, fine, no, I guess, sure; you’re home now; get to work; sit down and get out your notebook; stop zoning out; work harder; you’re losing your 4.0 by the second; don’t you have a test tomorrow?; when are you going to start studying?; it only gets harder from here; just wait till next year; you don’t have a snowball’s chance in July; why didn’t you go to some other high school?; you’re so messy; why don’t you organize your things?; you have hours of homework to do; you can have a break now; eat some dinner, then straight back to work; you need to sleep; stop watching TV; go back to bed; you always tell me how tired you are; go to sleep; you have to do this all over again tomorrow; stop talking to yourself; don’t even think to yourself; you’re so delusional; why do the voices scream in my head?

© Copyright 2005, Mark McKenzie

Not your usual honeymoon thoughts . . .

For Better or Worse

By Roxanna Russell

I cringed when the announcer called our flight. I hate flying. I would've been happy to just spend our honeymoon at home, but she wanted to go to Hawaii. We were in a lot of debt, but . . . she was so excited about it—I couldn't argue with her. So, to Hawaii we would go.         

We boarded the plane and she chattered about the beach. I wasn't listening. I had to acknowledge her, though—so I smiled and nodded. I was nervous about the flight. She seemed to pick up on that and tried to reassure me that everything would be alright. I would believe it once I stepped off the plane and got leid. Heh.      

We took off, and nothing happened. Okay, maybe I was overreacting. I relaxed. I guess Hawaii could be alright. We could use a vacation. Especially after everything that went into the wedding. And I never heard about anyone hating Hawaii. I was musing about sex on the beach when the turbulence hit. I knew it! I KNEW IT! The pilot talked, but I didn't hear anything. I was too busy freaking out. My wife tried to keep me calm. "It's normal," she says. Yeah, it's really normal to be FLYING THROUGH THE AIR in a METAL TUBE.         

Oh, crap. The oxygen masks dropped. We're gonna die. We're gonna die. We're gonna die.           

My wife was quiet. I looked over at her. She's unconscious. I put a mask on her. And one on me.

I looked out the window. All I could see was water . . . rapidly getting closer. My seat. I felt the cushion. Floatation device, my ass.       

We're gonna die. We're gonna die. We're gonna die.        

I can't believe this is it. This isn't fair. Haven't even consummated the marriage yet. And now we're going to die. I know we said, "Till death do us part," but this is ridiculous!    

I wish I were unconscious. I hate waiting to die.     

Who's going to take care of Shake? Hope Mom remembers to get him from the kennel.            

HA! Try and collect from me now, VISA!   

Why am I thinking about this? What are you supposed to think about in this situation? Not your dog and your VISA bill, I imagine.      

Look at her. She looks like an angel. I really do love her. I wish we had more time.       

Well . . . I guess we'll have forever.

Shit. I knew we should have just stayed home.

© Copyright 2005, Roxanna Russell

 If you think about it, life's just a little ... crazy.

MAD

By Lorena Smith

Well, I'm just tired of this hospital room. Why isn't anyone coming in to see me? Who’s that guy? Looks like he belongs in a mental institution. Is this is a mental institution? I'm dying of thirst. La di da dum. Dum dum de dum. Bo-rrring! Boring! The sticker on that bin says hazardous waste. It’d look good on my bedroom wall. That's telling. Hazardous waste. That's me. Hazardous. Waste. Hazardous. A Roman emperor. Caesar Hazardous. Frickety frack. What am I doing here?

            Finally! Somebody. A little red-headed leprechaun. Too cute. I want to rub her little weensy red head. It matches the hazardous sticker. She’s telling me I need to stay here a couple of days. In this room? But it's so boring. My brain feels fuzzy. Am I drunk? Going mad? Did I say that out loud? Where’d she go? I need some air. I'm going outside. I wonder if the door’s locked. No—that's good.

            Wow, people are all busy in here. Ouch! Hope that poor girl didn't hurt herself running into that gurney. And do they have to re-sterilize those instruments she dropped? I suppose. It might be HAZARDOUS. Ha. HA. Which way out? Probably out those doors. Nice. That's the first time I chose the right door. Maybe it's a sign of something. I should go on a game show and open doors. Wasn't there a game show like that? Opening doors or something.

            Where are my cigarettes? Nice. And a lighter. Where the hell are all my lighters? Maybe that guy over there’ll give me a light. And he's giving me room on the bench too. Nice man. Where’s he going? It's a nice day. He can sit on the bench with me and smoke cigarettes outside this building of whatever it may be. I can't remember how I got here. Don't know where this is. Think, think. What state am I in? Ha. I'm in a hell of a state, that's what. I don't recognize this shirt I’m wearing. Do I wear pink? I'd rather wear red, like a hazardous sign.

            Those are two huge cops. I pity the criminal they’re after. I pity de fool! That was Mr. T. He looked scary. They look scary. I wonder how much they weigh. Probably at least double my weight. Why are they looking at me? Why is his hand on his holster? Is he going to shoot me? I can't remember anything—did I kill someone? What? I tried to kill myself? Did I really? A warrant? For me? Eh. My head hurts. Well, yes I'll go with you, Officer, though I suppose if I tried to kill myself, it would be nice if you shot me instead. I'm going to throw up. Where shall I throw up? Will the officer shoot me if I throw up on him? Will he first arrest me and THEN shoot me? Or the other way around? OKAY, it passed. Whew. I want to sleep.

            It's the leprechaun lady again. Hello, dear one. Dear red-headed green one. Why’s she dressed in green? Is it St. Patrick's day? Will you hug me? Will you hold me? Hold me now, so hard to say I'm sorry. Is that a song?

            Is this my room? Why is that girl draped over the headboard? Does she not like the bed? Is something wrong with the bed? Yes, you can take my belt and my shoelaces, though that does make my pants fall down around my hips. I don't really care. I want a cigarette again.

            Outside.

            Where’s she pointing? Looks like a cage. I have to smoke in a cage? Who are these other people? Why’s that lady crying? Nice to meet you too, Cade, you're a sweetie. And so are you, Clayton, though I prefer you not try to pinch my ass. They say I tried to kill myself. I don't know how I got here. Who found me? Damned if I know. What is this place? An inpatient psychiatric facility. That's nice. Why are we smoking in a cage? So we won't run away. Oh I see.

            Makes sense.

            Though I don't want to go anywhere really. I like it here with the leprechaun lady and the crying lady and Cade and Clayton. We're all mad. It's nice. People don't expect anything from you. They want me to smoke in a cage and take my medicine. And after I have my shot, they put the needle in a bin marked hazardous.

            I am Caesar Hazardous and this is my kingdom of madness.

© Copyright 2005, Lorena Smith

I relax in my seat and look across from me. Here is where I fall in love. A woman, middle-aged, middle attractiveness, sits across from me.

On the Subway

Elizabeth Donovan

I am not a people person. I have a strict philosophy—you are an asshole; I hate you until you prove otherwise. People have told me simply, “You need to fall in love.” The fact is I fall in love everyday. 

I’m on the subway; it’s late. Monday is my ten PM class and I don’t usually go. The crowd on the subway is different at night. Everybody wants to get home, but is too weary to display the pushy, hurried rude behavior of the five PM crowd.

I relax in my seat and look across from me. Here is where I fall in love. A woman, middle-aged, middle attractiveness, sits across from me. A nurse. I notice her white uniform that she barely notices herself each day as she puts it on. She wears white stockings and white sneakers, her feet pushed to the side, so not to put so much weight on them. I wonder about her. Her eyes are closed as she rests after a hard day of unappreciated work. I think about my mother, also a nurse. We never get along; some may think we hate each other, but when she is in her uniform, at work, she is a different person. Is this what she really wanted? Does she enjoy her life? I have to wonder. It breaks my heart to think of this woman working day to night, everyday, in the same white uniform, catching her sleep on the subway. I admire her. I almost want to give her a hug.

She looks up. A strange girl in a hot pink coat is staring at her and writing in a hot pink notebook. The girl quickly puts the notebook in her pink backpack. The nurse notices it is her stop. She goes home. The kids have already been put to bed. The dishes have not been done and her husband is not home. She collapses on a chair.

Or maybe she’s not married.  The house is empty when she returns. Only a small cat waits for her. No, that’s too cliché. There is no cat. She looks in the fridge for something to eat. A microwave dinner will do; then she will go to sleep. She kicks off the sneakers and collapses on a chair.

Meanwhile on the subway, I am falling in love again. This is a kind of sympathetic love where I see people not seeing me and I suddenly know exactly what it is like to be them. A boy walks into the subway. He is very tall and rather unattractive. In fact, I first mistake him for my roommate’s boyfriend. He is holding a cardboard box with a towel or blanket overtop of it. He walks over to a chair at the other end of the car and puts the box down on a seat carefully before sitting down next to it. I hear a slight “meow” from the box. I am curious. I get up and move across from him. The box continues to meow. I try to make eye contact as I am curious about the new cat. The boy, however, does not notice the bright pink person across from him, edging in awkwardly toward him and his new friend. He has his head down to the box, peering in and speaking to it in a soft voice, so quiet that the cat itself cannot hear. He wants to give it some form of comfort, but does not know what to say or how to do it. He just stares lovingly into the box, hoping to calm the animal by the promise of a better life.

The cat comes into the new home. She had been wandering the streets since she was born and had never been inside a house, besides the shelter at which she arrived only a week ago. She had seen rooms like this before, but only at her hungriest when she finally mustered the courage to meow at a window hoping for a scrap of food. But she was never welcome. The boy gives her a bowl of tuna and pets her back while she eats it. She feels safe for the first time. She curls up into a chair.

I return home, smiling while remembering those people I saw today. People just like me, performing their daily routines, without a second thought. Maybe people aren’t so bad, I think. 

© Copyright 2005, Elizabeth Donovan

I would do anything to shelter you from a blizzard of cut-eyes and daggers, poison-tipped tongues and “tsks.”

The Absent Lover

By Stephanie Law

Go to the movies with you? Fly to the darkest rings of Saturn, and kiss only you, only you. Sneak away to the back-alley where voices of—“Sarah, please, get some fresh air”—are smothered under SUPERFLUOUS, EFFERVESCENT, and WHIMSY. I would do anything to shelter you from a blizzard of cut-eyes and daggers, poison-tipped tongues and “tsks.” I bleed for you. Red, black and blue gold flows from the veins of my terrors onto your innocent face. Thin and waiflike, you caress the ache that burns … into a thousand years of memory unborn. The flicker of light comes and goes like a moth with too much to drink. It stops—dead—in—the—night. Wings flutter down—too dead for CPR, too dead for another taste of Sangria. The window girl mocks the broken skeleton. Ha, you circus monkey, you organ grinder! Then the little lungs inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate. I poke them. (Zzzzzzzzzzzz. A vacuum sucks the passion, the poison from the inherent black hole.) I beat them. Thwack!  Good…. Thwack! Oh yes…. Thwack! More…. Damn those pixie innards, imprisoned between shadow and nothingness. I yearn for their dust of ecstasy, sprinkled along the vomit trail—make magic where there is mash. Take my trembling digits of creation and annihilation, and kiss them with those vampire lips—so pointed and yet so dry. Siphon the greasy juices of blood, phlegm and the bile from the gutless wound. A divorce? I ripped the wings off the damn fairy for you. I sacked the goblin until his lip split for you. I abstained from a guilty rendezvous with Michael Bay for you! For you! Now you claim thirst, starvation, and malnutrition of the senses! I would claw your little white eyes out if you had an ounce the loyalty of Gloucester. But you are a narcissist….  You were to give me immortality, black and white. You gave me moral syphilis. NO. The stars were your red carpet. My body was your voodoo doll. My love, you are MY SUPERFLUOUS, EFFERVESCENT WHIMSY.      

© Copyright 2005, Stephanie Law

She’s still here, lurking in the corners and peering out from between the banister posts.

A Woman’s House

By Caroline Misner

            The carpet silences my footfalls as I wander down the corridor. It’s a living thing, this sweet silence, yet it feels deader and louder than a sonic boom. Every molecule resonates with Jane’s presence, as though her misguided spirit still inhabits the mantel clock and the cluster of keys that lay in a heap on the small table in the foyer where Jane drops the things she brings into the house. I’m afraid to touch those keys, afraid they may still be warm from Jane’s hand, though she has been dead for several days. If I look into the mirror over the table, will I see Jane’s face staring back at me? The rational part of my brain knows the notion is absurd, but I have put that part of my psyche aside for the time being. I’ve capitulated to a surreal world where lives are altered in the blink of an eye, people appear out of nowhere and best friends die for no viable reason.

            This is her house. It always will be. She’s still here, lurking in the corners and peering out from between the banister posts. I still feel the brush of her hair and smell the scent of her perfume and hear the echo of her laughter. When I think of her, my eyes balloon with tears that threaten to burst through the retina and drizzle down my cheeks. I refuse to release them. My eyes are so distended the pain of holding them back has become a pinhole into the rational world. If I allow them to escape, I may become sealed inside this chimerical existence forever. I’m trying to be strong.  I’ve always been the stoic one, rational and resilient. I am the matriarch of our small clan of friends. I take care of everyone. 

            Jane’s absence has become a black hole in our lives, churning and swirling and sucking us down into a vortex of grief. I want to pound my fists against the papered walls; I want to scream her name; I want to beseech the spirits or God or Buddha or Mohammed or whoever is in charge up there for an explanation. We deserve an explanation. We deserve to know why it was Jane who perished. She was our friend, our sister, our lover. She was granted the peace of death while we remain here, earthbound in the purgatory of our emptied lives and left to deal with the vestiges of her existence.

            If it had been one of us who died, then Jane would have known how to comfort us. When my stepfather died sixteen years ago, I lit every candle in my apartment and sat alone in their flickering luminescence until she arrived to console me. We stepped out onto the wrought iron balcony together and she held me as I bawled in her arms.

            “Remember me with love or don’t remember me at all,” she said and wept with me. She was taller than I and allowed me to rest my head into the crook of her shoulder as I saturated her blouse with my tears.

            Now it’s time to weep for her but there is no one to hold me.  Instead, I lean against the wall and gaze around at this shell of wood and brick and plaster that had been her carapace. Each tiny speck of dust that dances in the sunbeam streaming through the gauze curtains feels like a piece of Jane lingering in the air and reminds me how she loathed housework. If I walk a little further, perhaps I can feel her heartbeat in the walls.

            I glance down at the floor. Somewhere there is a shadow of blood. I don’t know who cleaned it up. Perhaps it was the FedEx man who found her twitching in a scarlet puddle, her fingers still curled around the handle of the paring knife she used to slice open both wrists; perhaps it was the paramedics who came to claim her body, forcing an intravenous needle into an empty vein, though they knew she was already dead. Perhaps it was her father, but I doubt it. He is so paralyzed with grief he cannot lift himself from his bed.

            I wander into the kitchen. My muffled footfalls turn into sharp clicks as I step from the plush carpet onto the hard ceramic tile. A birdcage dangles like a teardrop from the ceiling. Twinkle is in there, twittering angrily at the lack of companionship and food and fresh water. He is a bundle of yellow-grey feathers darting so fast he’s nothing more than a blur that makes the birdcage sway on its hook. Soiled newspaper, so damp the words are smudged and indecipherable, line the bottom of the cage and fill the kitchen with a sour odor. I should feed him and change his cage and perhaps let him fly around the house for exercise, but I don’t have the courage. I’m afraid if I release him he may never come back. He chirps angrily at me as I scoop tawny granules of birdseed from the bin under the sink and fill his bowl. The water in the bottle strapped to the side of the cage is cloudy grey and has tiny particles bobbing around inside it. I turn away.

            Jane never cooked, had never learned how, and never entertained, so she reasoned she would never use the dining room. She set up her desk in there and lined the walls with shelves creaking under the weight of a thousand books. Everything is still in its place as though she had just risen from her swivel chair to get another cup of tea before returning to finish grading papers. They are scattered about the desk, blue lined pages filled with the penciled scrawls of her fifth grade class. Another bubble of grief ruptures my heart when I realize that the children will never see their teacher again, never have those papers graded and returned to them. I wander over to the desk and peer down at the papers. Suppressed tears blur my vision like poorly fitted contact lenses and I cannot decipher the words, only red markings from Jane’s pen with exclamations like “Great Work!” and “Keep Trying!” and “Well Done!” 

            I push the papers aside and sit down, feeling the hollow of Jane’s backside carved into the leather chair. It’s too big for me and I recall Jane’s lamentations about her pear-shaped figure and how she would do anything for narrower hips. To my right, is a shelf lined with photo albums and scrapbooks, the repository of Jane’s life. I pull down a scrapbook and place it on the blotter before me and begin flipping through its flimsy pages. Newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, rustle like dry leaves as I turn the pages. Photographs of her dead cat and her grandmother as a young woman fill the scrapbook. Dried pressed flowers preserved between clear plastic sheets are glued beside old greeting cards from friends and family members. I find the birthday card I sent her on her nineteenth birthday, when she thought no one loved her anymore because her boyfriend at the time had just broken up with her to avoid buying her a gift. I found a flattened pink rose from the bouquet she carried when she was a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding. I find a gold filament of hair from her first haircut as a child.

            I turn the page and freeze as my heart dips into the lowest tier of my gut. He’s smiling at me from the photograph; his unshaven face and assiduous brown eyes with lashes like black lace can still make my skin tingle after all these years. He has his arms clamped around Jane in the photograph; they are both laughing and staring at the photographer as though someone had interrupted an intensely private moment to snap the picture. His name is Randy and he is the only soul who had ever managed to pound a wedge between us. 

I’m tempted to turn the page or close the scrapbook, or at the very least, look away, but I can’t. I find myself drawn to him, even if it’s just a faded image on laminated paper. I remember the feel of those lips against mine and how those sturdy arms felt entwined around my body. I recall the timbre of his voice and his deep baritone laughter. He was mine at first, many years ago when we were still so young we were convinced that love could only touch us once, and if it left us, there would never again be any hope of attaining such a lofty objective. Today, I believe it was envy that drove Jane into his arms; I had achieved that inefficacious goal. I had found someone to love who surely loved me, while Jane languished alone, her nose in her text books, cramming for exams that she could have passed without so much as a glance at her notes. We were both so young and naïve we actually believed that he loved us, that his fickle deference was because he actually cared about us. He leapt from my bed straight into Jane’s, leaving a hollow, bitter wound in me that took years to heal. Jane and I didn’t speak for months; not until after Randy left her, too, and went on to other conquests. Jane wrote me a letter filled with apologies and pleading me to call her. 

“No man is worth the price of friendship,” she wrote. “And no man is worth crying over. Not even Randy.”

Now, the tears come dribbling from my bloated eyes. They burn like hot oil as they ooze from my tear ducts and plop down on the page. They burst on impact as they land directly on Randy’s picture, distorting his features. I begin to wonder what has ever become of him, if someone had called and notified him of Jane’s death, and if he will be attending the funeral. Petty little memories come trickling into my mind and I close the scrapbook. I don’t know what I would say to him if I saw him there, staring down at the urn filled with Jane’s ashes and draped with garlands of purple flowers, Jane’s favourite colour.

I rise and saunter back into the kitchen. Twinkle has finished his meal and is preening his feathers with his slightly curved beak. He stops and stares warily at me through the bars of his cage with eyes like shiny black globules. A torrent of anger comes bursting from me when I realize there is no one to care for him, no one to feed him and clean his cage and let him out to flutter about the house and sit on his favourite perch at the top of the newel. Jane is a selfish bitch for taking her own life like that. How dare she abandon us?

I step toward Twinkle’s cage and open the latch. He twitters excitedly at the anticipation of being released. I open the door of his cage and he flutters out and darts about the room, swooping in wide circles around the chandelier and chirping madly with joy. I smile for the first time in days and open the back door. A cool breeze brushes in and prickles my skin with goose bumps.  It is several minutes before Twinkle realizes there is an opening; he feels the dewy spring air wafting into the room, inviting him out into the world. After one last swirl around the room, he darts out the door.

I watch him, a yellowish speck against the muddy sky that slowly darkens into a pinpoint and then disappears. I wish him well and close the door.

© Copyright 2005, Caroline Misner

They will not turn the boat around for us.  We continue cruising north, although we will be stopping at a port today. It’s getting colder every hour. I am wearing my parka.

Little Boat

By Louise Norlie

I stand in the entrance to the ship’s ballroom feeling ridiculously overdressed. Everyone else is wearing shirts and khakis in neutral, natural colors. Pine green, concrete beige. They match the pristine Canadian coastline whose outline we trace as we journey north.

I can’t remember whose idea it was to bring my tuxedo on this cruise. It was probably Greta’s. She should be here any minute.

The waiters have their hair greased back to look like Elvis. A band wearing gaudy suits is playing “The Great Pretender.”

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender,
Adrift in a world of my own . . .

It is “50s Nostalgia” night as we cruise the Pacific. I am too young for this music. 

Where is Greta? She shouldn’t be taking this long. I feel like an idiot, standing here alone as everyone is dancing. The buffet is glistening, silver serving bowls, ice. Why do we need to have food on ice up here? Everything is shiny and cold to the touch. Jello, fruit salads, wines are on display. I wonder if we will hit an iceberg that will cause all the wine to spill, running red and gold on the ballroom floor. No, things like that don’t happen any more. I paid enough for this trip to prevent such disasters.

The ballroom is a pit in the heart of the cruise ship. Spiraling staircases leading to the upper decks raise their thin skeletons around us. The ballroom is lofty and bright, but just beyond it is the dark sea. I can’t hear the ocean now because of the wailing of the horns and the crashing of the drums, but it is out there, lapping, lapping, waiting for us.

Pounding heels foreshadow an appearance. I look at the woman approaching in the distance. I need to get new eyeglasses. I should be able to identify her by now. 

It’s Greta. She’s wearing a red dress and pearls. The two of us really look like we are living it up on our 5^th wedding anniversary cruise. As she comes up closer to me, I see the lines of age on her face.

“I called and left a message with Tim. He’s still not at home.”

“Don’t worry about him. I’m sure he’s just gone over to his girlfriend’s house.” 

“He broke up with Sara. He can’t seem to find an agent for his novel and he is taking it hard.” She seemed slightly irritated that I forgot that. How am I supposed to remember everything?

Tim is Greta’s son from her first marriage. He never liked me. As soon as Greta and I got married, he got the idea in his head to become a writer. All he does when he is not working in the reference department of a local library is cower over his computer and click and click and click, typing with angry flicks of his fingers. Tim looks at me with his glasses, not his eyes. He doesn’t seem real. He studies me but doesn’t see me. I know that whenever I am around, all he wants to do is get away from me. I’m not as bad as that.

“Come on, Greta. We’re here to have a good time and leave everything behind.”

“I should go back and change into something more appropriate for this kind of dancing.”

“Oh, never mind that.”

I pick up some crab legs from the buffet and some cherry Jello. Greta is eating some caviar on a cracker. This is what I hoped for on this trip. Some caviar. I scoop a black lumpy wad onto a chip.

Greta and I dance retro dances with people at least ten years older than us. They are retired, carefree. We are pretending that we are kids again, but kids that we never were, because we were born too late to experience the 50s. 

Our fellow passengers chatter and laugh. The wine is flowing into them and they are giddy. The band is too loud for me to think. I sway and groove in the pit. At times, Greta is out of sight and I dance with any stranger next to me.

Our cabin is cramped and uncomfortable. The walls are covered by mirrors which reflect each other endlessly, making the room seem large. I see my head and her head getting smaller and smaller in a perpetual procession created by the four mirrors that surround us. I turn and see my face everywhere. It is a perfect place to go crazy.

“I need some air,” Greta says. Her clothes are slightly wrinkled and her makeup is smudged from the 50s party. She looks old now.

I say nothing. I’m exhausted.

“I’m going to check on Tim again,” she adds. I don’t care.

“Go ahead!” I tell her. I am too tired to say more. She leaves. I lay on the flat narrow bed. There are no windows here. It is a perfect place to go crazy.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. I wake confused and need to remember where I am. I’m on the cruise boat.

            “Dave,” she says in a lifeless tone.

“What?”

“I have a message from Sara.”

“Sara? What does she want?”

“It’s Tim.”

“Tim? I thought Sara and Tim broke up!”

“Dave,” she repeats.

“What is it, Greta?” I am sleepy. Why doesn’t she come to bed?

I hear a stifled sob, then retreating footsteps. 

“Greta? Greta?” The door to our tiny cabin closes with a quiet click and the ray of pale light from the hallway narrows first to a slit then to nothing. Now I have no choice but to follow her.

I dress without turning on the lights. My hand reaches ignorantly in the dark to find my jacket and shoes. 

It is ghostly on deck. The moon’s light flickers across the countless swellings of the shimmering sea.  I see Greta at last. She is leaning on the railing. As I come closer, I notice tears on her face. Something is wrong. I must be considerate.

“Greta! Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Tim killed himself.”

They will not turn the boat around for us.  We continue cruising north, although we will be stopping at a port today. It’s getting colder every hour. I am wearing my parka.

Greta stays in the cabin. I stay there as much as I can, but sometimes it becomes too cramped and when I see my reflection echoing around me I must get out.  I walk the deck alone. I put my hands in my pockets. The other passengers stand laughing and pointing. They do not seem real. Nothing seems real.

A crew member wearing a yellow ski jacket embossed with the company logo knows what has happened. He is athletic and tanned like a lifeguard. He says that Greta and I can get off at the next port and make arrangements at a local airport to fly home. I tell him I will ask my wife. 

This trip was my idea, but this is not my fault.

I push open the thin door to our cabin. Greta is sitting upright on the bed like a mannequin. She looks more composed than I expected. Her face looks dry and her hands lie in her lap like a pair of dead birds, one limply stacked on top of the other.

“We can get off at this port and catch a flight home.”

“This was where we were to go kayaking in the river, right?” I did not think she remembered that. I did not think she was aware of where we were.

“Yes.”

“I want to go kayaking before we go home.”

What is this for? She blames me for taking her on this trip. She thinks we never should have come and is trying to rub it in. This is too much.

“You don’t mean that,” I say. I try not to sound angry. Tim is not my fault. Greta’s eyes flicker toward me like tiny darts. They are the only moving part of her body.

“Yes, I do.”

My arms pull at the oars as I draw them toward my chest rhythmically.  As I row, I thrust myself into the puffs of exhaled breath that freeze in front of my face. 

We are at the bottom of a valley. Emerald hills streaked with gauzy strips of clouds rise on either side of the river. 

Greta is ahead of me in her little boat. Why she wants to go kayaking, I don’t know. We have lost sight of the other cruise passengers who are being led by the yellow jacketed guide. 

Maybe Greta needs to be alone, to get away from everything. The cruise ship was confining.  Maybe she wants to get away from me. Yet I will follow her, at a distance.

They said we might see whales during this cruise. We saw none, but after all, no whales were guaranteed. The fine print told us there was no guarantee to have fun. 

Maybe there are fish beneath the surface of the river, tiny gray fish, hiding from this crisp air that cuts like a knife. When I look into the water, it is brown but clear. I think I see a glimmer of a silvery tail in the icy water. 

My kayak is so small that it frightens me to think that the frigid water just inches away. The river sparkles with gleaming flakes of sunlight. The sun’s glare is everywhere and I can hardly see. Yet, the sun casts little warmth and I am cold.

Where is Greta? She is far away now, going into the sun. The river seems to stop where she is going. She is pulling fast with her oars toward the light. My eyes squint and strain hopelessly; Greta appears to be turning down a bend in the river. 

I can see nothing more because the world is white with a blinding brilliance that makes my eyes ache.

I imagine that if someone dies at sea, the body is thrown overboard to rest forever in the churning water. But Greta died in the river, not the sea, after propelling herself down the waterfall. She is just like Tim. I never knew her. 

Greta’s body is transported in the fourth passenger car behind mine. She is tightly wrapped like a mummy as she mutely follows me down the railroad track to Seattle.

I touch my window and leave a formless smudge which blurs the stars.  I don’t want to see those frosty diamond eyes looking at me. I am alone and want to be unseen beneath the black shroud of the universe.

The train whistle moans a lament into the wilderness. I can count the number of people who can hear that whistle on one stiff, icy-fingered hand.

            © Copyright 2005, Louise Norlie

Would it be too much to ask to have one little piece of cake so someone in this world could enjoy it? I slowly started to respect the fat man for finishing all of his cake, giving me no hope of seeing him throw it away. I sat on the other side of the looking glass, starving.

The Obscure Flaw

By D.W. Thornton

            I arrived in Glasgow without a cent of motivation. The awkwardness after I stepped off the bus was squarely branded on my mind and meddled in my actions. My eyes were glazed with cerebral death, cocked to a half open gaze and under them, bags teeming with black as dark as the soot that lined the decrepitly old industrial buildings of Glasgow. It was different to be in a city with nowhere to go, no hostel to look for; I was planning on having some great event to run to, instead, the only thing to grasp was the nervousness in my body. I was at a fork in the road and neither of them provided me with any assurance.

            The city was cold, but no jacket or coat could keep in the warmth required to kill this kind of cold. No, this cold reached unattainable depths far from any reaching mind and lost to any helping soul. Wherever this cold went, that's where it stayed until the horizon was broadened and the undecipherable life it once led had been called to another uncontrollable catastrophe. This cold hung sickly over Glasgow, broodened in a supple haze of anguish. The streets longed for my staring eyes and everyone passed down them. As I passed through them, I sunk more and more into the fold of human nature, a human nature that wasn't a human nature at all. It was something full of judgement relying on my being to the best of my knowledge--a casual possibility in the fret of human nature. I was a cold splash of water to the unsober face as it looked back into the mirror to gain back some of its senses before I dripped off their face. The drain, already a funnel of swirling cold water rapidly took me to the musty depths of an endless journey only to be thrown back into life with the same majestic insignificance as before.

            I sat deluged by this cold, on some bench in the square, diving into the bowels of the soulless, looking for some kind of present but misguided by a thing called the poorman's prize. This prize stood directly in line with all that is living, something that killed me with each breath I took. But in a sense time wasn't my problem, in fact, I had all the time in the world. I had so much time I felt timeless! My problem was everything in itself but time. On my shoulders was the one burden I never feared. The one burden that came to me without sight, sound, taste, touch or smell. It came with a feeling, but I was prejudicially unaware of it. This burden was meant totally and solely for me. All of us that read these lines have it, but most of us don't recognize it because in truth, it is a burden and we flee from things we fear. My senses were there to give it humbling, if I was ever so inclined, but I needed a sixth sense to know it. That sixth sense hadn't come until now and though it was a burden, I had to sustain it. But what was so hard about sustaining when at this very second I'm doing it? Even at this second! So was my problem really sustaining or controlling? Could I be in control? I've never felt in control before; something else has always pushed in my seat and made me clear my throat when it's not the slightest bit clogged. My meddling actions were enough to make me believe I wasn't in control. The itching of my nose when it doesn't itch, using my tongue to explore the crevices of my teeth when I already know every little nook and corner of them. And the pain I put myself through when I rip the skin off from around my fingernails shows all of you I have no control! I've never once had control. Even when I was sitting on the bus contemplating my situation, I only meant to eat two pieces of bread when in fact, I ate three. What kind of man am I if I can't stick to a pattern? I've given in to all the urges and lost control without ever having it. If I want something to eat, I eat it, something to drink, I drink it, something to say, I say it. I don't let my greater good control me. I am surely a lesser good being controlled by a lesser good. No! wait a second, I take from a lesser good and give to a greater good, but by giving to a greater good, I'm making it a lesser good and by taking from a lesser good, I'm making it a greater good. Where is my control?! I have no control and it's only controlling me more than being controlled! Will I ever be free? But am I free because I lack an identity from my greater good and lesser good? The only thing free in me is my lack of freedom and that gives me the freedom to be!

            But of course, that was only an insight into the mind of a deranged individual, someone who shuns life for the feeling that ensues. It's not for the faint hearted, especially when you're controlling what can't be controlled--life. My burden flashed before my eyes and I got up from my bench in the square. That was all I cared to see of Glasgow for the day. Now I needed a place to crash for the night.

The concrete floor of the bus station was cold, but it was the only thing available in-doors for someone with no money, so I made do. Across from me in the diner sat a fat man, a bus driver done with his routes for the day, laughing and chumming it up with his fellow bus drivers. I despised him merrily for his free flowing attitude, jiggling neck and his starkness to buy a round of coffee cakes for his mates who sat around him like children not wanting to finish their vegetables. Nobody buys a round of coffee cakes! Most of them didn't even finish their meal, why would they want a coffee cake? I watched in horror as most of them took just one bite and stuffed them in the overstuffed trash can so no one could pick them out and try to eat them. It's nice to know we have a society of half-eaters who willingly pride themselves on accepting food so they can throw it away to no one's joy but their own. These are the people that have too much control, they are free to dawdle in world affairs only halfway. For not to be free would mean horrible and nasty things, so they go half way. Would it be too much to ask to have one little piece of cake so someone in this world could enjoy it? I slowly started to respect the fat man for finishing all of his cake, giving me no hope of seeing him throw it away. I sat on the other side of the looking glass, starving.

            The darker the overcast sky became the more I realized I needed a place to stay. The bus station was not for me, with its cold metal benches, cold atmosphere and I knew once I got comfortable they would kick me out. I had a horrendous gap of idleness at this time trying to decide what to do. I leaned against the glass window that ran along the whole length of the bus station, looking on. I was an anchor in the wave of coming and going people. I was an anchor unattached to anything, like a rock falling down the side of the mountain. I wasn't the commuter going home from work in his business suit and leather shoes with the musky scent of cologne trailing him. I wasn't the frizzle haired mother desperately holding on to her four kids so she could put them on a bus to Fife where their grandparents lived, so they could stay for the weekend. I wasn't the group of teenagers mohawked and tattooed trying to kill two more beers before going to Edinburgh for a big rave that night. I was the only stable person in the whole bunch, the only one willing to hold his ground while the world went spinning through its elliptical orbit causing complete and coincidental chaos.

            I got up and joined the fray sick of being the only idler, wanting to belong. So I boarded the bus to the airport figuring it would be a warm place to sleep. I coaxed the driver to let me ride for free considering I was the only one on the bus and he was going to make his last pickup anyway. Its amazing how clear things are once you explain them to people. I think I was a bit fortunate as well considering 73 year old bus driver Jonsie as they called him, had finally earned enough money to retire--starting tomorrow. Yes, it was a victory for the working man and throughout our trip, he was singing praise to anyone who would listen...

Oh Mother Mary!

sing the praise for me.

Oh Mother Mary!

sing my praise indeed.

Oh Mother Mary,

sing my praise so I shall be.

            At every stop light, he belted out this tune and while he was driving would hum the same ballad, glad to be alive, glad to see his working days over. His last route on his last day after 50 odd years of work and I was a part of it. Perilous in my unending journey were people like Jonsie, in the makings of a selfless life only to end in the scant remains of someone's clouded window. Jonsie, so avid a player in the commuters' life, so vital to their existence, would be a new face tomorrow, no glamour, no posterity, just another rotation in the batting order. While he goes off to his modest lifestyle knowing his life is complete, another bus driver will come along because time doesn't stop and neither does work. Things must be done, we have to get things done, things, things, things!

            He was the type of person to move me, not just physically, but he showed me what I will never look forward to. Jonsie after 50 odd years of work can finally take the last few years of his life and live them the way he wants. No more punching the clock, no more fighting or earning a life, he puts in his time. Even if he dies tomorrow he will still know that he had the right to live his life because he produced something and at the very wits end of his decent life he could now consume all he wanted. I'm sure that holds some kind of sway in the world of God. And through all this I realized how pitiful life is! It has drilled its way into my spine from nine in the morning to five in the evening everyday since, except the holy day. I must be productive! There is no time for me and why should there be? I wasn't put here to find out about myself, to look into the broken mirrors of the world and drull with insight. I'm here to fill the redundant sponge with my sopping hands and plead ignorance to my faults. Things must be done, we have to get things done, things, things, things!

            Jonsie treaded the way for many years and he believed life was not possible without work. But what my beloved old man failed to realize was that Jonsie could not be possible without life and work was not possible without Jonsie. I'm no prophet, I can't see into the future nor am I someone who thinks it necessary to tell someone how to live (I'll leave that to the people who think you have to work for a place in life.) I'm just a human being living the last years of my life and everyone else's at the ripe old age of 22.

            My day of lost notions was over. Now the airport itself would turn out to be my enemy, but it was warm and cozy for the time being. I scouted the whole airport and found a nice cozy place hidden away from everyone except the janitors. They took immediate notice of my new home. However, I laughed at the ingenious idea of living in an airport; it seemed so easy, so relaxing and as it was my first night went off without a claim of boredom. I transcended the world of Thomas Mann to give me a healthy grip on my artistic perils, smiled a gay smile at the janitors, made sweet talk with myself and had frequent walks around my area as if inviting people into my sanctuary. A warm place to sleep, food to last me a couple of days(if used sparingly) and all the water I could care to drink from the water fountain. I felt rich!

            It was late in the night by the time I fell asleep. My body strewn across the row of chairs. My head resting on the padding of my backpack. My jacket thrown over top of me as a blanket comforted me into a daze of half sleep. Of course all my efforts were hampered by the security announcement that came over the intercom: Please keep all personal belongings with you at all times, baggage left unattended will be confiscated and may be destroyed. I hadn't noticed the announcement before but now that sleep was coming on I heard it every 15 minutes or so. It made for a rather unsettling night full of startled awakenings, constant shifting and wondering glances at the window to see if the sun had come up yet. I was so flustered sometime fearing the night would last forever, but I soon won the battle against the announcement and fell asleep.

            When morning had arrived, I knew it. The sun cast its burnt orange glow across my sleeping face leaving me feverish and disoriented. Sweat glistened on my forehead, my cheeks pulsed with blood and when I opened my eyes a blind streak of light flashed inside them. I rose from my seat hasty and hot, confused with a glow of hysteria. Sweat dampened my clothes on the side I had been laying when I awoke; apparently, I sweated all through the night, leaving me severely dehydrated in the morning. I felt panicked by the whole night; it seemed distant and fleeting like a thought that can't be comprehended consciously. I sat and reawakened my night wondering where such a feeling of disillusionment came from.

            My dream was steeped in elfish grins that bellowed with a heckling laugh from a world of fine caviar and peculiar notions. I was hob-knobbing with Greeks at the Mycenae. But suddenly like a rocket of time a parrot flew off traveling through a brilliant ultra strata of imperceptible feelings and virtues of a never lasting appeal. Scores and scores of mint water traveled through the air in ravels freezing to my outstretched arms. I sat suffered madly, waiting for someone to free me from the frozen canopy of an unknown self-rising commitment. I saw my beautiful up bringing flash before me leading me to a sink with a swirling drain. In the depths of it a poisonous calm hung over me like a yellow cloud of doom. Habitual silences lengthened my world and jigsawed the unseeable. A magnetism of voices appeared out of nowhere clamping to my skin calling me to go forward, but the voices only pushed me back, then a ravishing heat fell upon me. I tried to quench my overshadowing thirst at the water fountain, but just as I went to walk over to it something stopped me, a voice in my head; it was a reaction as if something wasn't right. My bag, I can't forget my bag! Even though the water fountain was but thirty feet away I couldn't leave my bag alone, not after the barrage of security announcements. I took my bag with me but felt as if I couldn't think anymore. There was a vulnerable feeling that weld up inside of me as if the loss of control I had before was now controlled in a sickly subtle fashion.

            The airport was crowded on this early morning and I caught the tail end of the crowds when I set out for the Duty-Free shops. It was going to be a long day, one of idleness and loathing so I stayed away from my mind as long as possible. I shielded myself from the lances with interesting looks into magazines and books, pondering over cheap cartons of cigarettes like I was able to buy them and trying not to look at the delicate pastries set up for everyone's pleasure but my own. After herding with the bargainers I went back to my corner for a spaghetti sandwich--one of the few times I would eat wholesomely. I had been waiting to eat this thing for about two days now. While I was picking up the last of my rations in Edinburgh I found this small can of spaghetti for thirty pence and thought I would save it for a special occasion. What's more special than waking up at an airport! I poured out the contents onto one piece of bread, shaking, I quickly put another piece on top so none of it would spill. Now I had had this bread in my bag for about four days and it really didn't hold up too well, crumbling on all sides. My meal started to turn into a balancing act more than enjoyment. I took a bit at one end of the sandwich and quickly contorted it in a way that the sauce would run back into the sandwich. This went on for about 30 seconds until I got wise and engulfed the whole sandwich, leaving runs of spaghetti sauce all over my hands. With a mouth full of spaghetti sandwich I took out another piece of bread and wiped the inside of the can clean of any residue that didn't spill out the first time. Unfortunately the more sauce I soaked up with the bread the more it crumbled. The soggy bread was stuck to the bottom of the can and on more than one occasion of trying to get it out I cut my fingers on the edges of the can. By the time I finished the meal and felt satisfied I had blood and spaghetti sauce all over my hands. Throughout my balancing act wondered if anyone had noticed me, if anyone had gained suspicion about me staying at the airport--in this day and age it's not too easy to go unnoticed. After the meal I tried to relax but all the personnel that kept walking past me made me a bit unnerved. They wanted me out of there I could feel it; they knew what I was doing. "They know they are harbouring me!" I thought. I could see it in the janitors faces. I could hear whispers when they walked by. I packed my things up and headed to the other side of the airport.

            I excavated the other side of the airport for some hours--just looking. The feeling of suspicion had passed, now I just looked. I looked at the chairs, the small crumbs of food and fingernails that fall between the crevices of the cushion. I looked at people ordering coffee, talking on cell phones, counting the seconds on their watch, doing everything except the one thing they were put here to do. What a healthy lie we tend to live, shackled and drowned from the commonwealth of being, chained and masked from the strip show of feeling. Where does this maniac come from? Oh! what a rational being we have become. Can it be so mocking and truthful to live this sort of life? And what a unfixful life it is. If one of the cogs is stripped the whole system breaks down. The problem is it's just a life, just one life, premeditated and slick, ready to go by the wayside--one life so fitful and unbecoming. What was it that called me to look at such latent possibilities? Why was I so amazed by humans without a breath of being? My chair exuded more life, casting odd smells, sporting copious stain, removed from its ludicrous life to concede to a million ways of life for everyone to see. I felt closer to my chair than any one of those people that passed by. But it's hard to bolster about life in a place like this.

            My body shut down by late afternoon and I was in a terrible heap of dread. I looked at my bag, at the floor, at the walls, at the fast food restaurants and all I could see was this malign shade drowning out the incense of sanity. Uneasiness set in and my body felt the effects of premortem, struggling to free itself from the knifing idleness that shrouded my body in its imaginary casket. My eyes, still blackened, kept turning to the clock waiting for the day to end, waiting for a time when I could go to sleep and remit from the torture from the very bonds that held me to the earth. The symptoms of such a vile place lean on you like a thicket of thorns until you become a friend of the bloody pricks that drain sane thinking. The disparaging wave lopped over top of me not great enough to drown my soul but enough to send it gasping for air until it could no longer withstand the pummelling and was sent out to sea in a lonesome drift, far away from any land drawn thought. I floated ceaselessly to unexpected waters, writhing in sunken treasures with no wealth or fame, swimming to lands that had no name, feeling trapped like the waters of the Caspian. Nauseous feelings popped in my head as I rode the tide of boredom eventually taking me to mirthful rivers where I stayed until the sun pulled its light from the landscape.

            Writing was my lonesome solitary, my light on the horizon, but never could I find enough creativeness to humble the swaying ride of darkened thought.  My last jaunt was the only thing with me--escaped by time....

Simple, feeble mind,

Challenge the blows, walk with me in time.

Stable and dry, what was once mine,

Unknown ahead, with it I dine.

© Copyright 2005, D.W. Thornton

COMIC POETRY

 Collection of Poems by

Valentino the Robot

Note from Humdinger: Enjoy these poems by the World’s Sexiest Robot!

SURPRISE

To surprise a mid day stranger

and make love underneath the

unavoidable sun is almost an

impossibility

in this city. Yet

please do not forgive me for

trying—

some mondays stand crutchless

between the electric sidewalks of your thighs.

© Copyright 2005, Valentino the Robot (Jordan Somers)

NEVER NEEDING NIGHT

Never needing night

there is electricity in my mechanical loins—

a wattage of desire,

surging. How they took you away

from me

as if you were complied of so much bone and flesh.

Some of the best never get old … but

combust with a banging and

rattling. And

when I powered up

she was gone.

Only those hearts never manufactured

appear to lust past the autumn

of their own construction.

© Copyright 2005, Valentino the Robot

(Jordan Somers)

YOU HAVE MADE THIS MONSTER

You have made this monster teeming with mechanical love—

incomplete with parts that move.

Why doesn’t life feel as good as

it does when your nights are filled

with tippers of oil? Jiggers of petroleum spilling into a slit fashioned for a pathetic mouth. I think of you tonight, of your nickel-plated gray eyes. Nickel plated and beautiful.  Beautiful for lacking all including the electricity to cry.

© Copyright 2005, Valentino the Robot

(Jordan Somers)

Want more of Valentino the Robot?

http://www.geocities.com/valentinotherobot 

So Big

By Les Combs

Every year about the time winter has me numb

I wait beside the mailbox for the carrier to come.

Communication from the gods of harvest I remember,

Seed catalogs, hope eternal, are mailed-out in December.

Full-color illustrations make the heart beat ever faster;

Early Girl, Better Boy, Celebrity, Beefmaster.

Tomatoes every size and shape, how sweet the taste conjured

By pictures on those pages of vines and fruit matured.

A new variety, hybrid, rates a full-page color spread;

Bertha Busby's Bumptious Behemoth Beefsteak Red.

"Huge!" the caption reads in understated prose.

"One will feed a family!"  Is it true?  Heaven knows.

The name itself confounds reasoned understanding.

Visions rise from the text, reaching out, demanding.

I must have this tomato by all that's right and good.

Envy green will consume the en-tire neighborhood.

The seeds arrive ere March wind commences with its blowing.

Tiny sprouts soon beneath violet light are growing.

Each plant in turn wilts and dies, to my consternation,

Save one that struggles all alone with grim determination.

It clings to life, somehow survives, and on the first of May

Is planted in the garden to enjoy the light of day.

It quickens even as I watch, with promise to endure.

Hastily I enrich it with composted steer manure.

Upward, ever upward, the vine extends its reach

Until by June it stood above fruit trees, plum and peach.

It bloomed and bore and still it grew, towering overhead.

Neighbors came to gawk at it, jealous tears were shed.

The fruit were of dimension never seen before by men.

Big ones guessed at thirty pounds, the smaller ones at ten.

Expectations were fulfilled in no uncertain terms,

But you should have seen the size of the horned tomato worms.

They fed upon the plant, appeared from unknown sources,

Left droppings mounded on the ground much like Clydesdale horses.

They chewed away remorselessly, starting at the crown.

Leaves and fruit disappeared, the stalk turned ugly brown.

I wept among the carnage and gave it up for dead;

Bertha Busby's Bumptious Behemoth Beefsteak Red.

© Copyright 2005, Les Combs

NIGHT TIME

By Margaret Fieland

Often when I want to sleep,

my insomnia does keep

me tossing, turning so I waken

in a state most awfully shaken.

When I'm sleeping through the night,

my bed and pillow I will fight,

so when comes the break of day,

in a stupor I will lay.

With eyeballs gummed and mouth most dry,

I am so tired I could cry.

I throw my clock across the room,

when ringing like the voice of doom

It tells me it is time to rise,

if not to shine in any guise,

at least the day at once to start,

and I must somehow do my part.

So, though most nights, I've restless lain,

I still must hope, though it be vain

that somehow, now, tonight I may

sleep peaceful till the break of day.

Now looking for a cup of joe,

I drink it, even though I know

that while today awake I keep,

again tonight I will not sleep.

© Copyright 2005, Margaret Fieland

Gluttony

By David R. Caudell

He jiggled when he walked,

but he didn’t seem to care.

With glasses on his face,

and his un-styled hair.

How could a fourth grader

be the size of an oak tree?

The answer, my dear,

is because of gluttony.

He ate the other kids’ lunches

when he was at school,

not caring that he was unfit,

and looking such a fool.

Then he went home

and ate all the snack cakes.

He even scarfed down the cookies

that his grandmother baked.

When his parents got home

later on that day,

they took him out for dinner

to Harry’s Chicken and Buffet.

There he ate no salad,

just meat and bone.

Then to top it off,

he devoured an ice cream cone.

Wiping the sweat

from upon his brow,

he dismissed himself to the restroom

to take an enormous bowel.

For his annual check up,

the doctor did reveal

a surprise finding—

Sam’s blood was made of oatmeal!

The doc said, “You’ve gotten too fat;

You are an absolute slob!

Join a gym, get active—

exercise should do the job.”

But Sam just sneered,

he thought this was great news.

For he had an idea

that popped in his head like a fuse.

When he got home

an hour before din-din,

he took out some sharp objects

and poked holes in his skin.

He sucked up the oatmeal

like a Halloween treat.

Then he added sugar

to his toes and feet.

He munched for awhile,

a half hour or more,

till he saw an image

that made him quite sore.

For the only thing of his body

that was at all left

was his shoulders,

head and neck.

For the rest of his life,

his upper torso wheeled

on a gurney-like cart

that was made out of steel.

© Copyright 2005, David R. Caudell

Fantasy Fiction

Sometimes

By Thomas E. Jordon

"By the Apostle John's shriveled left testicle," Sir Rodney groaned as his lance buried deeply into the vestigial-winged dragon without encountering a single vital region. Before he could withdraw the harpoon, the dragon ripped its serrated tail across his horse's belly. Immediately, the stout-hearted mount snorted blood and began sinking to the ground.

Rolling free of the doomed animal, Rodney drew his sword. He felt bad about the charger. Despite its irrational fear of scarecrows flapping in the wind, it had been a loyal and steadfast companion.

Rodney lowered himself into a fighting stance and began swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet. With the flat of his sword, he swiped aside one of the creature's clawed feet. Moving in on the nightmarish reptile, Rodney noticed Sir John's shield with its fighting dachshund emblem beside the entrance to the beast's lair. Poor Sir John, Rodney thought.

He recalled their last encounter. John had bought most of the tankards that passed between them and before parting company, shared one last bit of advice. "Always remember, Rodney, sometimes the dragon wins."

© Copyright 2005, Thomas E. Jordon

horror

They became bolder, these night-things. One, surreptitiously, pulled his hair and another began to pull the blanket, his only shield, away from him in a tug-of-war bout which he desperately struggled to win; but, the night-thing was much stronger than he . . .

Silent Fear

by Oscar Cintronmarina

Eerie shades scurried through the room—no shapes that could be identified by Jimmy.  He sat huddled in the corner of his bed with a blanket pulled up high to his neck and trembling toes fighting to curl inward the fringes of what remained of his warm wool blanket. Sweat covered his forehead and rolled slowly down his cheeks and over his tightly pressed lips. His body moved only because he could not control the convulsive shaking. He had become a living-shivering statue, moving only his eyes in attempts to spot one of the hideous and elusive creatures roaming freely within his domain.

He was only eight-years-old but this night, during the witching, he felt he had lived far too long. He could see the shapes move only from the corner of his eyes. When he essayed to see them directly, they would vanish. He heard them too—a raspy, wicked kind of giggle; and he knew they laughed because he feared them and would do nothing. His parents slept in the adjoining room. He would have yelled for them if he could, but not since the moonless night when he awoke to find one of the horrors with its arm deep down inside of his throat, had he been able to find his voice. The putrid thing had muted his voice. It had been trying to wrench out his tender heart; yet, fortune had taken pity upon him that dreadful night, two and half years ago.

They became bolder, these night-things. One, surreptitiously, pulled his hair and another began to pull the blanket, his only shield, away from him in a tug-of-war bout which he desperately struggled to win; but, the night-thing was much stronger than he, and his warm wool blanket disappeared beneath his bed, taking with it Jimmy's only sense of safety and protection. He felt naked and frightfully vulnerable. He wedged himself into the corner of his bed while flagrant shadows danced wildly over him and ricocheted from all four walls like sinister phantasms. His pajamas were soaked with sweat. He was hot all over and petrified with fright. And then he saw them: bulging, one-eyed, midget monsters with numerous razor sharp, cracked teeth and raking claws! Hundreds of them! On the walls, on the ceiling, and in every conceivable niche—like grotesque, giant spiders, they clung.

Cornered and with no way out—something snapped—and a wave of fierce anger surged throughout Jimmy's body. Everything began to whirl, swirl, and spin, and when it stopped his face was afire with insuppressible wrath. Throwing back his head, he cried out as loud as he could. 

"Get out . . . and leave me alone! Get out!" He demanded. The horrid night-things froze for a moment, surprised that their victim had dared to raise his voice against them, but Jimmy was not through.           

They ran, scrambled, jumped, dodged, and dove to avoid Jimmy's Louisville Slugger as he splattered several against the wall and many into the floor and a few flew across the room with broken bodies only to find the closet door awaiting their advent. SMACK! Several stuck to the walls with crushed heads like hanging, stringless puppets.

After an epic battle, Jimmy's cloud of blood-rage dissipated. He stood there and looked upon the work he had wrought. The dead lay where they had fallen or stuck, and many were an unrecognizable pulp.

Groggy, startled, and filled with fear, his parents had thrown open his door. "Jimmy, your voice!" exclaimed his father and mother almost simultaneously. "What's the matter son? What were those dreadful screams?" His mother, with shaky fingers, tried the light switch, but it did not work.  The soft light of the hallway gently filtered into the room illuminating it slightly, but not enough for his parents to see the chaos within. Darkness covered toys, books, and clothes scattered throughout the room. They saw nothing of Jimmy's handiwork, nor could they even if they would have tried; for, they had lost the ability to perceive the realm of the possible—the realm of limitless imagination. It was an invisible world—a world seen by the mind of a child and it would take the state of a child’s mind to regain what they had lost so long ago. And so, they saw only their troubled son.

Jimmy turned, the bloodstained bat dangling from his hand now rested on the hard wooden floor, and looked at his parents with tears welled up in his eyes—for he suddenly realized he had found his voice. The pain and soreness were gone! Whatever it was those misbegotten midgets had done to him, he had overcome it. With bewildered eyes, his lips parted, and his throat made a weak, froggy sound. He cleared it and, dropping the bat to the floor, which made a knocking sound with the heavier end of the bat rolling toward the wall, he spoke. "Dad!  Mom!"  And ran into their eager arms. The nightmare was over.

F

I

N

Two concentric circles of burn marks lapped and overlapped in an indication that, whatever had happened in this room had not been a one-time event.

Lacking Spontaneity

By Mark Pollack

The neighborhood, location and amenities thoroughly charmed the young, house hunting couple. It was the perfect home for their needs, and as they looked around inside, everything confirmed their first impression. That is, of course, until they came to the master bedroom. Scorch marks climbed up toward the ceiling and ­spread toward each other on either side of the far wall. Two concentric circles of burn marks lapped and overlapped in an indication that, whatever had happened in this room had not been a one-time event.

The couple stood in shock, the young woman's mouth hung open. Clearly, just slapping a new coat of paint on wasn't going to cover the traces of the past. Finally, the young man spoke. "What . . . what happened here? Was anybody hurt?" A lot he knew.

When Hughes married Andrea, most of the people that knew the two were surprised. Hughes was a well-liked kind of guy, his friends thought highly of him. But he wasn't seen as the most outrageous of the lot. Far from it. Andrea, by contrast, was a child of nature. A sculptor, a devotee of modern dance, an occasional nudist; it just didn't seem like the most natural of pairings. They were wrong about that, though. The two fit together well.

"It's easier the second time around," Hughes had confided to a colleague one night over drinks. This was a second marriage for both. "You better know what to look for. And you can pick and choose a bit."

In due course, the two married. It wasn't anything too fancy. You can lay back a bit the second time. But, the genuine colonial mansion they had taken for the ceremony and reception was highlighted by several of Andrea's sculptures and photographs. And the music, selections from Robert Fripp, was uniquely her own.

As was suitable for a couple starting out in their late thirties, Hughes and Andrea had not lived together beforehand. They each had gorgeous apartments and, while it would have been a money saver, they decided to just buy a house and move in after the ceremony. Luck was with them, and two months prior to their set date, they found the perfect colonial: off in the woods, with a lake view and easy access to the highway. It would have been a dream house for anyone, and in short order, it was theirs.

Things fell into a pleasant routine after about two weeks or so. Once the boxes were gone and all the amenities that help to define one's home were out in the open, the two of them settled in. No, things didn't begin to go off track for at least two weeks.

Midway through their third week of wedded bliss, Hughes definitely felt the train derail. It was nearing midnight and time to go to bed. He had turned off the lights in the living room and was coming down the hall toward the bedroom, thoughtfully loosening his belt and wondering, in a sort of subconscious kind of way, why the light looked so odd in the bedroom.

He figured it out pretty quickly once he got there. Andrea was already in bed, looking a little kittenish. Nothing unusual in that. But against the room's far wall, sitting on the floor, were two burning flares. They flanked the wall and threw sparks in all directions like roman candles gone berserk. Their fire scarred the wall almost to the ceiling. Hughes stood in dumb shock, but only for a moment. The next second he ran for the bathroom and water, yelling for Andrea's help or for her to get out of the house, he could never remember which.

He raced into the bathroom and threw the faucets on full. He filled up the water glass that sat there and raced back to the bedroom with his pathetic little container of water. He tossed it on the nearest flare with little effect. Not that it mattered. Their original bright sparking had given way to a Christmassy red that hissed and glowed brightly. He was dimly aware that Andrea was still in the bed.

The flames weren't catching the house on fire, so he gingerly lifted a flare and carried it outside. He did the same thing with the other and doused them both with the garden hose. He came back in, wondering how such a thing could have happened. In the bedroom, Andrea was lying in the same position, facing the now scarred bedroom wall.

"That was weird," said Hughes, wiping the last of the soot from his hands and unbuttoning his shirt. "I wonder how those flares got into the bedroom?"

"I put them there," said Andrea, smiling shyly.

Hughes looked at her in amazement. "You put them there," he repeated. "Why did you put them there?"

"So you'd know I was in the mood," she said, her shy smile becoming a grin. "That's my signal for being In the Mood."

"That's your signal." It was sinking in, just slowly. "Why can't you just say 'I'm in the mood?'"

Andrea looked stricken. "I can't do that! That removes spontaneity. You can't expect me to do something that lacks spontaneity!"

Indeed he couldn't. This was only the beginning of Hughes’ encounters with spontaneity. For, as he was to learn, Andrea was a great believer in spontaneity. Over the next few weeks, Hughes would accustom himself to a bedroom that looked like a locale for Viking ritual. He had tried scrubbing the soot from the walls, but all that did was ruin the paint. He re-painted, and resigned himself to leaving the flares’ markings. This was only one of the visible reminders of Andrea's spontaneity. In addition to flares, she would do a brief interpretive dance as her way of signaling dinner was ready. She had a set of flags she would sometimes use for asking if he wanted to go to the movies, and she once fired a starter's pistol to tell him she was home from work. Occasionally, she'd just speak to him. But always, when she was In the Mood, she'd set off the flares.

For three months. Then, one night, Hughes stopped for a drink with a friend. The one drink stretched out into three and then four and before he knew it, Hughes was driving home with one eye on the dividing line, weaving slightly. He got home and came into the house, weaving slightly. Andrea was not at the door to greet him. He found her in the living room, ignoring him with intent.

"What, no flares?"

"Not tonight," she said, without looking up from the magazine she held in one hand. "You're drunk."

"I am!"

"Your problem is," she continued, still not looking up from the magazine, "that you rely on these stupid methods to express yourself. You should learn to be more spontaneous."

It was the wrong word at the wrong time. Hughes could hold it in no more. "Spontaneous!" he fairly roared. "You want spontaneous? I'll show you spontaneous!" And with that, he seized her around the midsection and carried her out to the backyard, where he strapped Andrea to the large box of fireworks he had bought for an upcoming Fourth of July party they were planning. And then, quite unplanned, he lit the fuse.

In the clear, warm early summer evening, the arc by the gigantic rocket to which Andrea was strapped was seen clearly by residents for twenty miles. Its explosion, described as "a wonderful spiraling of color and light," was seen as far as Hoboken. Parts of Andrea fell throughout the tri-state area.

The young couple, to whom the realtor told this story, stood in dumb shock. It was some time before either could speak. Finally, the woman pulled herself together enough to say: "Why, that's horrible! What happened to the husband? Is he in jail?"

"He was," confessed the realtor. "But he's out now. Once the judge heard the full story, he was set free. It was ruled to be a case of spontaneous combustion."

© Copyright 2005, Mark Pollack

COMIC SHORT STORIES

Preparation for a Dirt Bath

By Andrew Madrid

            Apparently, everyone is going to die. I saw a thing on Discovery the other night, and I guess this is the case.  Five out of every five people will die sometime in their life. Call me Naïve Cambell, but I guess I never really made the connection. With that in mind, I’ve decided to clean up my life and prepare for immortality. For this, I’ve created a sort of “To Do Before I’m Done” list. Feel free to use mine as a model for your own (have fun with it!).

            No one wants to be thought of as a slob, so I began with the bathroom. I don’t really want anyone to know that I ever actually used it (that is why we clean our bathrooms isn’t it? To keep people from imagining.). I also changed the selection of reading material. There’s no reason for people to try and understand my piles of Seventeen, and O magazines. I replaced them all with books of soft poetry, and love songs written in the key of F. All of this to suggest that the bathroom was not a place of cursing and gnashing of teeth, but a tranquil fortitude of meditation and rest.

            Next off, I paid off all of my bills and shut off my water and electricity. This is a bold move, but if you don’t, you’ll obviously have a few unpaid bills left over and your family will remember you not for being the carefree soul you are, but the punk drug addict that left them with a seventy-five dollar collection notice. The other option is to ask a relative to call you every hour to see if you’re dead yet, and if and when you don’t answer, go directly to the utility company and shut you off.

            We’re half way there now, but don’t forget you don’t want to be remembered as a pervert either, so an underwear drawer cleaning is necessary. Keep anything that your grandparents would still wear and pitch everything else. Your skivvies may look sexy hanging in the window at Victoria’s Secret, but lying on your floor, they reflect a very Caligulaesque motif. If you really get in the mood and absolutely must have something that is kinkier than plain whities, just do what I do: buy them, do your business, and take them back immediately (keep your receipt!). 

            That last suggestion brings me to this important question: “What if I crash the car on the way to take back something kinky, and unholy?” That’s easy; just hold it out the window in your hand. Sure, you’ll get some looks, but most of them will just be envious (Side Note: Be careful of school crossings!). When, and if you do crash and burn in a flaming ball of hell fire, it’ll be easy to just let go (and in most cases, your post mortem muscle spasms will do it for you). When the firemen arrive and see the flaming undies lying beside your car, they’ll just say, “He probably swerved to miss some sicko.” You’ll all of the sudden become the victim, not a pervert.

            At the end of my list (and yours), we’ll want to leave the most difficult thing: changing our speaking habits. It’s a well-known fact that people only remember the first and last things we say. Everything in between is moot. What concert of the Beatles do you remember? What concert of Elvis’s do you remember? Exactly. With this in mind, you never want to say something that could be misconstrued if a sniper popped you in mid conversation. There are several ways to go about this. You could talk really fast and take your chances. You could never talk again, but write down everything in a velvet booklet monogrammed with the words “ . . . I was going to say I love you.” (Be carefull! If you’re in buying or returning those unholies when you kick it, you’re going to once again turn from victim to freak.) Or you could do what I have started, and just sing everything.  You’ll never hear people say “He died singing, what a jerk.” (Warning! Tread lightly when getting pulled over for speeding. Perhaps you could use a limerick, not a song. Something like, “Officer, Officer, what have I done?  I’ve a body in my trunk and I should have run.)

            These are all good things to live and die by. It’s going to happen, there’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s get started toward the finish. You shouldn’t have even read this article; what if your lifeless nude body would have been found laying on top of it? See, you’re terrible at this; it won’t be long for you. (And put some clothes on when you read my stuff).

I love you.

Andrew Madrid / Comedian

www.andrewandaaron.com.  

© Copyright 2005, Andrew Madrid

My short list of shame includes:

—Walking into a stationary bike, sober, and breaking two toes

—Being rushed to the doctor at age 10 convinced I had lumps in my breasts, only to learn I was developing . . .

This is the Stock I come from

By Katie Schwartz

I am riddled, draped and oozing in guilt and shame. I was born three days late and felt appropriately guilty, until I learned I was 7 hours to deliver and felt shame for not feeling guilty enough.

I am a Jew besieged with obscene amounts of Catholic guilt.

My short list of shame includes: —Walking into a stationary bike, sober, and breaking two toes —Being rushed to the doctor at age 10 convinced I had lumps in my breasts, only to learn I was developing —Believing my father when he said I was a descendent of Dewey Decimal until I was 14 —Peeing on myself when I was 16, because of the saran wrap my father put on the toilet seat 6-months after April Fools Day —Rear ending the district attorney when I moved to Los Angeles, because I forgot to break while staring at a fireman’s ass —Overcompensating for my virginity at 18 by blowing three different men on a Saturday night and not swallowing —Being shamelessly phobic of death, anything -legic, quad- or para- and blindness, to the point of believing my severely blind neighbor is a sign of my blindness to come and actually saying out loud to my sister, “I can’t believe the nerve of blind boy flaunting his blindness in my face with his blind accessories” —My shameful anxiety and hyper-ventilation every time someone mentions an illness they have, or knows someone with an illness, thinking first and foremost, what are the symptoms and do I have it? —Wasting time thumbing through my PDR Manual and creating names of diseases I am sure to acquire, but in groups, like: lukabetes, leukemia and diabetes; Glawner, glycoma, cancer and yaw; Nickimsons, pneumonia MS and Parkinson’s disease.

My short list of guilt includes, but by no means is limited to the following: stealing restaurant owned salt and pepper shakers, place settings and ashtrays by way of my cleavage—because I can. Asking my gynecologist while in stirrups if my vagina was too lippy and accusing him of lying when he said it wasn’t. Arguing with my single neighbor who "rescued" a mongrel in a wheelchair with a collapsed lung, mange, tumors in its mouth and arthritis, for calling me a bad humanitarian because I own a pure breed dog. I went too far by saying, “If you're so fucking philanthropic, shouldn't your personal ad say, ‘SWF seeks deaf hypertensive male with a lisp and one testicle. Those with sleep apnea, conspicuous neurosis and adjunct disorders preferred!’” I feel guilty because I am so over the Black Eyed Peas gratuitous-overly PC-inappropriately-multi-cultural-newscast-band that is just so annoyingly “about something” and wishing they would just change their name to the Black Eyed Please!

I spend so much of my day vacillating between guilt and shame that I don’t know if I’m on spin or rinse half the time. And in the unlikely event my expansive Rolodex of shame produces nothing, I’ll create something to feel guilty and shameful about. My Jewish mother from Brooklyn often says to me, “Katie, honey, get off the Cross. Trust me a wayward Catholic needs the wood.”

After I got divorced from my starter marriage, I deemed myself damaged goods and consumed hefty amounts of shame by way of appetizer parties for one. I segued immediately into guilt because I married him for all the wrong reasons and I wasn’t even knocked up. I was 21. He was hung and he sang to me. But my God, was he unforgivably dull. I knew I had the elusive clitoris, but his shameful amounts of need sent it into hibernation, that, and saying, I do; along with every orgasm I sacrificed that year.

I am so ashamed of my relationship with food, it’s not even funny. My Aunt Miriam ate herself into a respirator. My Aunt Gertie ate herself out of three toes and into a diabetic coma. My cousin Margie is an anorexic lesbian who came out at my grandmother’s funeral during my eulogy. My great grandfather, Louie, lost an eye while inhaling a lobster. And in my father’s zeal to eat a steak, he forgot to chew, and choked. This—is the stock—I—come—from! It’s no wonder I have a dysfunctional relationship with food. I’m the broad who places pick up and delivery orders by saying, “WE would like” and go so far as to say, “Hold on, let me double check with THE OTHERS to make sure I got the order right.”

Convinced that I am under constant surveillance and ridicule by the check out clerks, I will justify my purchases by saying things like, “Have you ever seen so much food? I got stuck cooking for the holidays.” Even if there is no holiday, I will proudly make one up. My reigning favorite of late is, Hannum. It’s like the Sabbath every Friday night—except that it pops up at my discretion.

I learned how to champion a successful binge from my father and feel a culmination of victoriously full and tormenting emptiness. My cousins taught me the hallow acquiescence starvation brings, but it was Ina Polzwowski, who I shared a brick of parmesan cheese with one afternoon in the woods on Long Island, who taught me how to remove the emptiness and gain control by vomiting. Cliché, I know. Fat chick vomits, but this was different. I felt like I’d been recruited into a secret society. I was a 15-year-old consumed with unstoppable power—until a year later, when I saw Some Semicolon, her story movie, and learned my teeth would rot right out of my head. Being an inappropriate floss freak, I knew I had to forego my yen for vomiting. I was so forlorn, I binged and immediately felt guilty for wanting to vomit and ashamed because I did.

My father once said to me, “Katie, what’s wit you and all this guilt, huh? Where the hell is it comin’ from?” I was so dumbfounded by my father’s proclamation. The man who made eating a sport. I wailed, “ARE YOU NEW?” My grandparents and great aunts invented The Art of Guilt:

Eat. Don’t eat. I slaved over a hot stove all day so you could drop dead from starvation? If you don’t stop eating, you’ll wind up alone. You want to wind up alone? Keep eating. You’re not gonna eat the last one are you? I didn’t want it anyway. You have it. You had to eat the last one? No, really, don’t bother, I’ll get it. Sit. Relax. You’ve had a hard day.  You can’t help an old woman schlep a few bags up the stairs?

This—is the stock—I—come from!

© Copyright 2005, Katie Schwartz

But golfers are people of breeding and refinement, Cleon. They’re not your kind of folks.

FORE!

By Les Combs

Cleon Horch, how did you ever get yourself into this mess? More to the point, how will you get yourself out? A grease monkey at Wal-Mart automotive center, you spend your weekdays under car hoods performing $24.95 oil-change specials. What made you aspire to the gentleman’s game of golf?

Sure, your widowed aunt gave you Uncle Farris’s mixed set of clubs. And sure, you’ve watched Tiger Woods hit straight and true down the fairway, chip into the hole from off the green. But golfers are people of breeding and refinement, Cleon. They’re not your kind of folks. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you always play alone, why you decline invitations to join a threesome.

So you wait until late afternoon on this Saturday before going to the local links. The crowd is thinning, the first fairway stretched open and inviting. Shoulder muscles bunched, you drive the ball in a magnificent high arc, and it slices, slices, slices . . . out of bounds deep into the woods. It was a brand new ball, too.

You whistle a few bars of “My Window Faces South” while you walk to the point your ball entered the trees. You drop the bag off the fairway and crawl through the barbed-wire fence, eight-iron in hand in case a snake is encountered. The club comes into use parting blackberry vines and pushing aside low-hanging pine branches.

Forty yards into the dense growth, you discover a man’s body. He lies facedown on a cushion of pine needles, shirt bunched around his waist, trousers below his knees.

You recognize Judge Wilburn, retired from the superior court bench of Baxter County. The judge is in his 80’s, an avid golfer, but his presence here is puzzling. Then your quick mind assimilates the facts. A pile of fresh human excrement with green flies swirling about, pants down . . . The judge must have been taking a dump and had a heart attack.

But wait. Less than three club-lengths from the body, you spot a golf ball. When examined, there’s no doubt whose ball it is. It now has a smile in the cover, but it’s your ball, Cleon. Could it be . . .? You take a closer look at the judge. Sure enough, there’s a goose egg bump on the back of his head. It doesn’t say Max-Fli, but it has dimples.

You leap to your feet as though spring-loaded. A wide-eyed 360-degree sweep reveals no witnesses. This deplorable situation could spell trouble. You don’t want to be seen with the judge, but you can’t just walk away and leave him here. You pull the body into a sitting position and, not wanting to leave the eight-iron behind, stick it shaft-first down the judge’s shirt collar. Hoisted into place, you hold his wrists firmly and head for the fairway, the judge riding piggyback.

But hold on a minute, Cleon. Image has never been foremost among your concerns, but you are a thoughtful person. Might it not be more seemly if the judge’s trousers were in place? From the rear your cargo appears to be twin loaves of light bread separated by a leather-bound club grip. The stainless steel face of the pitching niblick gleams above the judge’s distended collar. You unload your burden, tug, zip and belt him, a process made difficult because you neglected to first pull his shorts up.

At the fence, you take stock of your surroundings. The sun is low over the clubhouse. Cloud-cover in the west spreads gloom over all. Darkness is not far off, and can you believe it, two guys in a golf cart are making their way toward the first tee.

You are panicked. It shows in your eyes. You stuff the judge under the fence, crawl through and reload. A brisk dogtrot brings you to the first green after 150 yards of huffing and puffing. Breathless and frightened of being discovered, you lay the judge in a bunker. Only one solution comes to mind. You begin scooping sand onto the body.

Decency prevails and you leave the head uncovered until last. When the first spray of sand hits his face, the judge’s eyes pop open. “Judas priest,” he exclaims. You fall away, slack-mouth astounded. He raises an arm out of the sand and paws at his face, spits grit from his mouth and sits erect. With awkward, arthritic dignity he extracts the eight-iron from his shirt, examines it at length and tosses it aside.

He casts about in bewilderment at the bunker, at the green, at you. He gingerly touches the back of his head. Then, almost in spasm, he claws at his crotch in obvious discomfort. He writhes in the sand, both hands groping and tugging, then looks back and asks, “What the hell have you done to me?”

Hurt by the judge’s tone, Cleon, you tell him the God’s-honest-truth. “I was just tryin’ to help, Your Honor.”

The judge struggles to his feet. “I don’t believe I could survive any more of your help, Boy. If the law permitted, I’d have you caned for this. Now stay away from me.” He begins walking toward the clubhouse, shaking first one leg and then the other to dislodge sand.

You trot to catch up, make one last effort at reconciliation. “Honest, Your Honor, I never meant no harm.”

The judge turns and shakes a fist. “Keep away from me, Boy. You hear?” He resumes walking, then over his shoulder shouts, “Cretin.”

Dejected, you trail at a distance until you come to your clubs lying next to the fence. You study them for a long moment, then pick up the bag and heave it into the woods. You did the right thing, Cleon.

© Copyright 2005, Les Combs

My headline was “Do Not Click Me.” I know. Genius.

Online Love

By Rob Carney

I had just started working at my job in the financial district when I—for the first time ever, really—had complete access to the Internet. (I know the first thing you’re thinking, but unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get to the porn sites from my cubical. Nice try, perv). My girlfriend had recently dumped me and I was also still in that post-college graduation depression that ones gets into having finished with school. During this time of vulnerability, I saw online ads everywhere. Especially on AOL, which I managed to download onto my computer at work, illegally.

There’s a thing called Love@aol.com. Actually, if you have AOL, and this portion of the website still exists, click on “keyword,” type in LOVE, and voila. That’s what I did; only when I was looking at the ads, I went one step further and actually created an ad with my picture and some witty banter. My headline was “Do Not Click Me.” I know. Genius.

I, uh, only did this so I could laugh at people. Yeah. Ha ha. Anyhoo, the ad was officially up, and I started getting e-mails from strangers that weren’t selling stocks or telling me they were 18 and horny. They were actually more along the lines of, “What’s up? I’m [insert name].” Some girls were cool. You’d talk to them a little on e-mail, sometimes sharing a lot with each other up until the novelty wore off. Another crucial thing was waiting for a picture before you really actually wasted time with corresponding. It was cool though—one beautiful girl in Texas even wrote a quick note to say I was hot. (She was real, dammit!) Anyway, this one girl, we’ll call her “Erin,” wrote to me. She was pretty cool. I don’t know how, but we ended up talking on the phone. She had a hot voice. She also sounded exactly like this rather attractive girl I knew in college, so I kept picturing Erin to look like her. We talked for like two and a half hours over the phone one night. She had an athletic family, ran with her brother all the time, and was going to grad school. According to her, she had dynamite legs, but felt she had to work on her abs. This raised a red flag, of course, but then again, what girl doesn’t feel she needs to work on her abs, you know? She also didn’t have a picture online, but I pictured her as this cute all-American girl anyway. Wasn’t that good enough? You can see how rationally I was thinking: I had just met a cute, all-American girl online, and she contacted me, yet I could not foresee any problems with this situation.

Four days later, there was a huge snow storm. She calls up saying, “Let’s meet at this bar in the town between us for a drink.” I forget the reason why, but it was apparently a good opportunity, because her class was canceled or something. I still wanted to see what this girl looked like before I met her, but thought what the hell and agreed to meet. She told me that she’d be wearing black, tight stretch pants, a black turtleneck, a green sweater, and would be sitting at the bar.

I got in the car and drove through a foot of snow with zero visibility, turning what is normally a 10 minute drive into one that took 50 minutes and caused three separate incidents of heart failure. I finally arrived at this place and pulled in. My heart was pounding through my chest in anticipation. It was then I realized that I had only $16 in my pocket. That wasn’t so bad though, because it served as kind of an emergency exit. I walked in the door, looked around quick, and saw nothing at first. Then I saw something.

I saw the mutant byproduct of the Hulk and Bette Midler’s two-decade old fuckfest sitting at the bar. And it was wearing a green sweater and a black turtleneck.

I kept walking along, feigning ignorance to her presence, when this hand—or should I say mitt—reached out and swatted me like a grizzly bear slapping a salmon trying to swim upstream. I was trapped.

This was Erin. One of my initial observations was that while we were the same height, about 5’11, her head was bigger than mine. I couldn’t really tell how well-developed her abs were, considering they were hidden under a thick roll of animal fat. She said to me, “I look different than you thought, don’t I?” She had no clue of the understatement. I made that grimace you make when you slowly shake your head and lie, saying “No . . . of course not. I figured you’d look exactly like this.” What a fucking fabrication that was. I knew I had to be careful with my words, because I think her hands were capable of crushing a beer can before it was even opened, provided she didn’t bite into it first.

I was thankful I had only that $16 as a way out, but she told me she had lots of cash on her and we could have a few drinks. I hate it if a girl pays for me anyway, but this was worse. On the other hand, I reasoned that I might as well start pounding beers. She was a cool girl, after all. But she was one I would rather high-five after she made an awesome cut block for the touchdown I just ran in.

We ended up hanging out and talking, having an alright time. I was very buzzed at this point and needed to leave. She brought up seeing a movie at the theater next door. I wanted to see The Green Mile anyway, so we headed out. We stepped out the door, and there were ten fresh inches of snow on the ground. She kept rubbing her hand along my arm, so I knew at least half of us were interested. So what did I do? I repaid her for the beer. I kissed her.  Not a peck, either. This was a let’s-see-if-the-dentist-missed-any-wisdom-teeth kiss. I rolled my eyes after I had pulled away, feeling ashamed of myself, and we walked into the theater. We sat up high in the stadium seating, and for the full three hours, I pretty much had to stiff-arm her away from me so I could see the movie. You know like in a cartoon when one character wants to fight the bigger one, and the bigger one just stands there with one arm extended into the other one’s face while the littler one swings frantically? Kind of like that. She seemed really sexually interested, because she was strategically rubbing her hands on my body. I wanted to see how Tom Hanks would help John Coffey away from the Green Mile; she wanted to put my waist in a leg lock and be punished for it.

The movie ended and we cleared out. Back in the parking lot, I cleared a new 13 inches of snow off her car. At this point, I just wanted to get home ASAFP. As she was getting in, she kissed me again and I kissed back. (There was no reason to hesitate at this point.) She said she would call me and she wanted me to call her. I nodded my assent, thinking in my head how I would never ever answer the phone again. She drove away and I managed my way back home. For the next few months, every time the phone rang in my 4 bedroom apartment, I yelled through the house, “I’M NOT HERE!”

She sent me a picture of her and her mother on e-mail two days later. How convenient. I wrote back, lying that I got back together with my girlfriend, essentially saying that we could be friends, but acknowledging that I wasn’t going to go out of my way to hang out. She countered by saying in a group e-mail that her brother had a brain tumor and was about to die. I felt really, really bad . . . but not so bad that I was going to call her. I prevented talking to her anymore and slowly faded away.

All in all, it was a good experience, that online dating thing. The girl was cool and all, but our trip down Lover’s Lane stopped cold. Maybe, at the very most, we could have gone down Friendship Street, but that’s about it. Did I learn anything substantial from this experience? That’s arguable. Did I learn that you need a picture when you meet someone via the Internet? Probably. Did I learn that it makes for a story you’ll never forget? Absolutely.

© Copyright 2005, Rob Carney

Weatherists

By Andrew Madrid

            Every town’s got one. Cheap suit, low grade tie, and a bizarre concern with something he can do absolutely nothing about, except to warn you. He stands before you at 6 and ten, every evening, bringing up-to-date unfounded guestimations to you and yours. A large colored enigma spanning the wall behind him adds further proof that he indeed knows what he is talking about. This board is to help you understand, through familiar hues, that it is “going to be hot tomorrow” or “You might want to wear a jacket tonight, if you’re out shopping or dining out with a girlfriend, or your wife.” I for one, do not respond to “It’s currently twenty below freezing,” like I do when it’s explained, “This darker band of navy is going to be here all week folks.” This gypsy of the barometric realm, this prophet of the impending atmospheric holocaust is none other then your local weatherman.

            When I think of my local weatherman, I think about low self-esteem. No one gets bashed on like this guy. It’s almost like people want him to be wrong. Conversations about nothing are still about him. When long lost relatives get together at a courthouse to attend their pederast uncle’s hearing, they feign eye contact and speak of last night’s forecast. Union bricklayers want to kill him because they are laid off due to the “99% chance of doom” he guaranteed. Children love him, until the last days of school are extended due to his insane promises of “danger, ice, and incredibly slick driving conditions.” Hitler prays for the day all weathermen will board the Styx express, and has big plans for “his front” to move in,” “repeatedly” when they arrive in Hell. (That’s a reference to WWII and the fact that Hitler might have won if a pounding winter had not held him from defeating Russia. It’s one of those jokes that isn’t good enough to explain, but I felt it necessary for the younger readership that I have acquired. I almost feel obligated to set an example with my comedy, and to teach the youths that making fun of anything you can imagine is in fact, okay). How could any one person stand up to that kind of hatred? It’s a wonder we don’t see more headlines involving our local weathermen in large print. Print like “Drunken Moon Howling” and “Inner Storm Finally Catches Sunny Dave.”

            What makes a human being want to endure the mark of the beast that is “the weatherman”? Where do you go to learn about public guessing, and are most of the classes taught by Tony Robbins? I did some research on this subject, and have come up with some information that might help us all understand. Let’s journey together, shall we? 

            Apparently, the actual term for a weatherman is “meteorologist", and not "guesser." My bad. Although there are a lot of schools that offer a degree in this field, none is better known then Ball State University, in beautiful southern Indiana. That’s right, the “guessers” all graduate from B.S.U. Shocker. I recently went to the campus and found a future meteorologist filling out his class schedule for the next year. I was able to get a good look over his shoulder without him noticing, because he was stupid, and wow, what a gauntlet. Here are a few classes I remember: 

What Season are You? 

Actual Colors of the Wind    

When is it okay to use “Partly”?

Sleet, or just Icy Rain?

Ghettos: Black Ice

Let’s get Cirrus About Clouds

During my research, I also came across a band at the college made up of professors of meteorology called “Stormy and the Locally Damaging Winds.” Their first album, “Three Rainsticks and the Truth” is due out this spring, but fans are reminded to “Check local listings.”

            I also found that there are baseball cards featuring top performers, which feature stats like, “School Closings / Ratio of Overturned Buses” and “Hottest Anchor Chick Scores.”

Most of the top ten are Middle Eastern, oddly enough. I figure that’s because they can walk on camera and say “It’s going to be hot . . . again, oh ya . . . and sandy” and be right 90% of the time. Or in the case of some Arab countries, the weather is always, “What we tell you it is, Infidel!”

            So what do we do with these characters?  I think you have to laugh. Laugh hard, and long, like the prophets in the Bible right before Moses called fire from heaven and burnt up all their furniture. And don’t hide behind “I’m laughing with you,” just flat out laugh at them. They deserve it and they know its coming. They know everything that’s coming—they’re weatherists.

© Copyright 2005, Andrew Madrid