Southern Fried Shorts

Somewhere Near The End

2012-01-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

There you were. You were alone. The world had moved on, but you were still here.

You were still here.

The world was covered with ash. The laughter of children – your children – faded to nothing. All was still. All was quiet. The world left you behind.

Toys rusted and degraded. Households were soiled and rotten.

You remembered the softness of your wife’s hair, her smile, her laugh. These things were now silent and gone.

She was bones.

Your children were bones.

Those bones were buried long ago. Gone but not forgotten.

You are still flesh and blood. Your heart still beats in your chest. You hold life within you, but no real life.

All is still.

You walk outside. The moon and the stars still shine through the clouds. And the sky is always cloudy. The light above gives light but no warmth.

You walk.

You find an empty bar. You find a nearly empty bottle of whiskey. You suck it down. You light a found cigarette. The tobacco is stale but still burns. You inhale. You exhale. The air tastes no different, no more meaningful.

The world moved on without you.

You hear a rustling in the trees outside. You feel things watching you. Perhaps they’re people. Perhaps they’re ghosts. It doesn’t matter. Because all that mattered once is now gone away.

There are cans of food and dried beans. These are in your bag. You eat, but nothing has any taste.

You drink, but the burn of alcohol is just a momentary sting before all feeling fades.

You smoke, but the air is already filled with smoke and carcinogens.

The world is not what it once was. There were sounds, there was life, there was something like normality, but normality is nothing but a memory. And life is a bitch.

And you almost had an epiphany. But it was gone.

It was gone.

Somewhere, on the other side of the world, the ocean still crashes against sand. Somewhere, there is rain and ice eroding the mountains. Somewhere, there is a cycle that goes on and on and on, and it will go on once you are long gone.

You are already long gone.

And you were gone before you even arrived.

And there is your epiphany, but it doesn’t matter.

There is no one left to hear your scream.

The Reluctant Huntress

2012-01-05T21:06:00.000-08:00

When they called her name, she stared up blankly.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

She clenched her fists. Slick fingers rubbed up against each other with no friction. She held her hands to her face and looked at the color. The wetness clotted in places.

“Diana!”

The stag next to her lied still. A redness contrasted the whiteness of snow. The sun shone bright overhead from a frozen and cloudless sky. He ran so far, chased by his own dogs. He ran so long. He almost got away.

She looked up at a patch of barren oak trees, noted the way their bare branches cut jagged lines through the blue unending dome of sky.

“Diana.” A hand fell on her shoulder. A soft grip on her chin tilted her head up. She saw a face she almost recognized. “It’s me, Diana. It’s okay. You’re not in any trouble, baby. I promise. I’ve come to take you home.”

Diana looked at the stag again. She willed it to move, willed the chest cavity to rise and fall once more. It stayed still.

I don't know who I am anymore.

She closed her eyes. She reopened them, and the world changed.

Her ears heard sounds. Cars honked. A pair of policemen milled nearby talking together with hushed voices. She turned away from the field and saw the grey brick back of a strip mall.

She turned to the stag.

In place of the stag lay a man: not Actaeon, not a myth, just a man. A young man who had tried to…

She shuddered and pulled her legs up to her chest. She cried.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. Shh.”

Diana found her voice. “Why’d he do it, Momma? Why’d he try to take me?”

Her mother looked to the policemen with glassy eyes. “Can I take her home now?” she asked. The words came out hitched and uneven. The woman released a stubborn sob.

The two men looked to each other. They nodded.

One of the policemen walked over. “The general manager says they have just about the whole incident on tape. Self-defense, so I don’t think anyone’s going to press any charges.” He reached out his hand to the mother to hand her something. Diana jerked away, startled by her own movement and instantly felt shame for being afraid. “Here’s my card, Mrs. Vines. Should you have any questions, give us a call, okay?” The policeman bent down and ran a hand over the back of Diana’s hair. She wanted to pull away but didn’t. The man tried to look into her eyes, but she hid herself in her hair. “Look, I know a good doctor who deals with this sort of thing all the time. I mean it, unfortunately. All. The. Time. Normally, after, you know, if it goes too far, we always have to take them to the hospital. But in this case, I think home might be best.” He sighed. “Anyway, please understand this girl will need to talk about this with someone. There’s good people out there who help people get through this sort of thing all the time.”

Diana’s mother nodded, said her thanks, and helped the girl to her feet.

They left fresh tracks in new snow as they walked back to the shopping center, back towards the parking lot full of people and something resembling normalcy.

Diana turned around one last time. She saw the dead stag, his fine coat shredded by his own hunting dogs. Something pulsed in her clutched fist. She opened her hand and saw Actaeon’s heart bleed through her fingers.

When the Doors Opened Wide

2011-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

The light at the end of the tunnel was not what you expected it to be. Instead of bright and warm and comforting, you felt it burn. It felt tight in your chest. You turned your face, your eyes, or you tried to, but you were not you any longer. You just were what you were, whatever that was.

No pulse. No breath. No skin.

You cried out and thought of so many things: sins, dreams, loves, lusts, wishes, desires, faces, names, places, sights, and screams. Their screams.

You did not want to be here. You wanted to be back there.

The house was falling in on itself. The wallpaper peeled. The moldy ceilings dripped when it rained and sometimes when it was just damp outside. Breezes chilled you there with the lack of insulation, with the cracks in the walls. It was no mansion, but it had been home. You had been free to be yourself there. You could be anyone, do anything. And you did.

You believed in nothing. You read your philosophy books. You once wanted to believe, but you decided you Kant. Not after what happened to you. Not after all that suffering. Not after what she did to you.

So, you made do. You did what you felt needed to be done. You did it to person after person.

You never wanted to suffer alone. So the world suffered with you. The world feared you, and this excited you.

Bodies upon bodies and news clippings in a soiled scrapbook.

You took Polaroids, too. You wanted to capture every single agonized face, every engorged strangled visage.

But no one saw your face when it was your turn. No one called your name. No one ever knew it was you, so it was all wasted.

There won’t even be a Wikipedia article on you.

The light at the end of the tunnel turned off and you fell back into your skin.

The light was just a fridge light. The tunnel had just been your vision fading out as the oxygen left your brain. But you came back. Just long enough to see yourself one last time.

The pain in your chest tightened. You clutched your shirt.

Milk spilled all around you, and you drooled. You wet yourself.

You looked up to the rotting ceiling, at the black spreading mold. In that mold you saw yourself staring back at yourself and you laughed. Or you tried to.

There was no breath left in your lungs.

Then the mold opened. It became a door. You felt yourself lifted up by cold hands. You looked around you, and there were many doors. Inside the doors there was only darkness and screams. You recognized their voices.

They were happy to see you again.

You wished you could say the same.

You look backwards but there is nowhere to go.

They call your name.

You scream.

Shoegazing/Negative Space

2011-12-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

I spent my days searching for the hidden spaces between colors, the silent tones hidden in melodies, and listening for the unsaid words in every conversation. Negative space, they call it. It is there. The meaning, that is.

I found you there. Your hair was a dark brown braid, your voice was a wind chime of laughter, and I heard you say “Here.”

I looked again and it was just a rusty railroad track, unused and covered by kudzu vines, sapling pines, and locusts. I could smell honeysuckle in the air, and it almost smelled like a woman, or a girl, it almost smelled like you, but you were not there.

Did you hear me call your name?

I fell backwards in space. Time is just another dimension of space.

We fell together and separated into two. We were once joined together, one, in love.

In pieces.

And there should have been another conversation here somewhere. Another word, or string of words, or maybe even a simple goodbye would have sufficed? But no, I would have still looked.

“Stop staring at your shoes!”

But I’m not staring at my shoes. I’m looking through them.

To something that looks a little like you and a lot like me…

Everything Matters

2011-11-24T17:44:00.000-08:00

Nothing matters, she said, but only it did. Everything mattered.

Fuck you, she said.

I love you, I said.

She took my hand in hers. She held it to her wet cheeks. I leaned down and tasted her tears. They were bitter.

She took my hand in hers. She held it to her breast. It was warm. It moved with her breaths, and I held my own breath, afraid to move, afraid that the feeling would stop.

I shouldn’t have worried. The feeling remains. Even all that came afterwards, even after what she did to me before, the feeling remained.

Even now, it doesn’t matter that she is no longer breathing.

*

I stared at the spot on the wall. I watched it grow. Maggots fell from rotting sheetrock. They squirmed on the ground without legs, just pale bodies grown fat and useless. I know what they feel like. It’s frustrating to sit around waiting for something that may never come, unable to feel like a grownup, being unable to fly.

*

She hid from me. Somewhere. I never found her. I cleaned my blades. I washed the floor with bleach.

*

Sometimes, she took my hands in hers without taking my hands. Her hands were so cold and stiff. The fingers hardly moved. I think her pinkie broke off.

*

One day her mother came by.

Where is she? she asked.

I don’t know, I said.

She finally up and left you, huh?

Yeah. I guess so.

*

I never liked her mother very much.

*

One night I lay in bed and stared at the stains and holes in the wall. I heard breathing. I held my own breath, but I could still hear the breathing. Almost like a heartbeat in another story but not quite. The sound didn’t disturb, it comforted.

She breathed in my ear and told me everything is going to be okay.

I believed her.

I always believed her.

Even when I knew better.

*

Time moves like a sick turtle. It crawls and lurches, and every now and then, it hides in its shell. I like my shell. It is covered in ancient faux wood siding. It hasn’t changed a lick since my parents died. Except there are holes in the wall and a lot more flies. Her scent pervades the house with the smell of the others.

*

Nothing matters, she said, but only it did. Everything mattered.

7 Messages

2011-11-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

Curtis emerged from his tent and relieved himself behind a nearby tree. He wiped longish hair from out of his eyes with the back of his arm. His clothes, soggy and heavy with dew, clung against goose-bumped flesh. He shivered and returned to the campsite. He pulled four split pine logs he had wrapped with a small blue tarp the night before and stacked these over three large handfuls of fresh pine needles which were kept protected in a plastic Walmart bag inside his tent. He struggled with his lighter and patiently waited for the small flame to take hold of moist kindling. Once the fire blazed hot, he sat next to it a few moments to warm up. He set up his ancient, fire-stained coffee kettle, poured a can of beans into an aluminum skillet, and roasted the remains of a rabbit shot the night before over a spit. He looked out from his perch high atop the Smokies and watched grey tendrils of steam rise to meet the obscurity of the grey, predawn sky. He thought about his pregnant wife Sharon and how she hated camping and smiled.

There were only ten miles between him and Sharon, but that was a good day's hike away through a winding trail of steep mountainous ascents and descents. He was completely severed from her, completely free. She was down there with her sister, Jenessa, and her best friend, Cathy. They were enjoying the tourist traps and shopping while Curtis enjoyed the real joys of a Smoky Mountain vacation: nature and isolation and absolute freedom.

He breathed in the wet morning air, inhaled the scent of dew-soaked pine, the acrid smoke of the fire, the sweet stench of roasting rabbit flesh, and fresh coffee. He exhaled and reached into his coat pocket for the flask containing some homemade applejack that his brother Jimmy had whipped up a week before this trip. He sipped the sweet liquor, grimaced as it burned on the way down, and twisted the lid back into place.

He turned the spit a few times, grew impatient, and ripped away a chunk of medium rare rabbit flesh. Warm, thin rivulets of blood dripped down his stubbled chin. He gobbled the entire can of beans. A pleasant and satisfying ache throbbed in his extremities from the previous day's exertion of hiking and hunting with a heavy backpack. He poured thick black coffee into a pewter cup and sipped as he examined his gear. He took a moment to oil his rifle. He sipped his coffee again. He pulled out his fold-up fishing rod and light tackle. He drank the last drops of his coffee before lifting some nearby rocks in hope of finding some worms, grubs, salamanders, or other bait. He found a few large worms and placed these with some dirt into a Styrofoam cup: litter from a previous camper he was more than happy to recycle for another use. There was a stream down the hill, and he hoped to be able to catch a bass or trout for lunch.

He picked up his rod, looked down over the mountains again and noted the rising steam. He now understood why they called this range the Smokies. He examined the skyline and found where Gatlinburg would be nestled in a hidden valley. The smoke seemed thicker there, too thick. He squinted and realized the steam rising from the direction of the city was black, not shades of pale white like everywhere else – too thick for pollution. Besides it was a tourist city: no factories, no mines, no industries. There was nothing in the town below capable of making that much smoke.

He rushed over to his tent and pulled his cell phone out of his backpack and turned it on. There were seven messages:

Message #1:

Hey baby. Hope you're having fun. Me and the girls hit the shops this afternoon. I bought some stuff. Hope you aren't mad at me, but I found the cutest little baby dress. It's white with all these ribbons and will be perfect for the Christening. It was a little expensive, but those pictures are going to last forever you know. Anyway, hope you're having fun up there, you wild mountain man you.

Message #2:

Hey Curtis. We just left the aquarium. You would have loved it. They had the biggest catfish I've ever seen. They were from South America or somewhere like that. Simply huge. There was this thing were you stood on a people mover and moved through a shark tank. There were even hammerheads. It was neat to be able to see the sharks up close, from the side and even from below. They're really cool animals. Anyway, we're heading out to eat at a little barbecue place back in Pigeon Forge. Janessa says they have the best ribs. We'll see. Anyway, I'll call you later. I wish you'd leave your phone on. I miss you. What if there was an emergency? Anyway, I love you.

Message #3:

It's gotten dark. I hope you set up your campsite in time and didn't forget anything. I know you probably didn't. "Be prepared" and all that Boy Scout crap you're always going on about. Well, we're eating funnel cake and sitting across the street from the Ripley's Museum watching the drunks walk by. There are a bunch of drunks tonight. There are so many people stumbling around stupid, incoherent, asshole drunk. I'm surprised with all the Baptists around here. This always seemed like a family friendly place before. This one guy bumped into me and didn't even seem to notice, no apology. He was looking up at the sky and drooling. It was kind of creepy, like Night of the Living Dead or some shit. Speaking of, Janessa told me that Jimmy whipped up some of his spirits before we left Gadsden. I hope you're not drinking too much up there all alone or doing something stupid like that. Remember, you've got a little girl on the way. I don't want to raise her as a widow because my irresponsible husband got drunk and fell off a mountain.

Message #4:

Are you ever going to turn on your phone? Seriously, what if there was an emergency? Fuck! Curtis, you can't do this shit to me anymore! We have a baby on the way. You need to take this seriously. I need you. You can't just go running off into the woods all alone all the time once we have kids. You need to be more responsible. Mom and Janessa say you'll never change. You say you don't like when they say that sort of thing. Well, prove them wrong! Man up. Be there for me. That's all I ask. Just leave on your phone for me. That's not too much to ask, now is it? A baby step, okay? Anyway, I'm sorry. It's just been a weird night. It's like the whole town decided to get smashed. It was weird, creepy. We're back in our cabin now. Janessa and Cathy tried to enjoy the hot tub, but had to come inside. Even up here we can hear the drunks in town down the hill. They're loud, but it's weird. They don't sound like they're partying. There's no music, just screams. You know in movies when some girl's about to get raped or killed or something. I keep hearing stuff like that. I'm kind of scared. I wish you were here. Anyway, I don't mean to lecture. I don't want to be some bitchy nag. I hope you're having fun. I really do. If you get this message, please call me, okay?

Message #5:

Shit! Please turn on your phone...

Message #6:

There's a fire! Curtis, there's a forest fire! I called 911, but there was no answer, just a busy signal. Earlier we saw people outside and some of them were on fire, but they were still walking. They're walking up the hill and spreading flames. There are some drunks outside right now pounding on the doors and windows. I don't know what they want! We asked them but they won't talk. They just moan. We locked the doors and propped furniture against the windows, but I'm scared it's not enough. Fuck! Wish you were here. Screw you for not being here! Fuck you, asshole! Fuck you!

Message #7:

Curtis, it's me. I hope you can hear me. I've got to be quiet. Janessa's dead. They ate her. Cathy and me locked ourselves in the bathroom, but they're right outside. We have a kitchen knife, but that's it, and it wasn't enough for Janessa. Screw you for not being here, Curtis! Fuck you, asshole! Shit! They're banging on the door now. I don't think it's going to hold. Damn it! Where are you?

Curtis put the phone down. He looked at it. He dialed Sharon. No answer. He dialed again. No answer.

"What the fuck?"

He wiped a tear from his cheek as his pulse quickened and grew erratic with panic.

He picked up his shotgun, left the rest of his gear behind, and ran down the trail towards a burning town. He paid no mind to the views and the natural world around him that he had enjoyed so much the day before. None of that mattered. His freedom no longer mattered. He no longer wanted to be alone.

He ran for two miles before he realized he was screaming. He fell over, exhausted, unable to catch his breath. He grew silent and listened to his own fading echoes as they bounced off the empty mountains.

He rose to his knees and screamed. "Sharon!" It was a plea and a prayer and completely meaningless. He understood she would never return his call.

The Way Back Home

2011-10-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

The trail rounds a bend, and I spy a granite wall. Inside that wall there is a cave. Inside that cave lies darkness. I have returned. I smell her. I smell him. I smell them. They call to me with the wind through the trees. Their voices sound from the gurgle of a small creek coursing downhill over mossy stones. They call me home.

Leaves fall around me from the tall maples, oaks, and hickories. Across the stream, a dervish of pine straw sweeps through the shady dark trunks of a patch of slash pines.

I don’t belong here.

I look at my hands. I see my wedding band. I shake the watch I received as a gift from my eldest daughter on my too-skinny wrist. I remember my girls. I remember their hair, their smell, and their laughter. I inevitably remember they are gone. I note my fingernails and how clean they are. I turn my hands over and touch the bumpy line running up my arms. That line is ugly and purple and seems to grow larger every year. I remember a crimson river collecting as a cloudy delta in the ocean of my bathtub.

I don’t belong here.

But it started here. I think. I don’t know because it was all so long ago. It seems a nice enough place for it to end, all the same.

I hear birds sing a song and know the words. Some people might say they are not words, but those people would be wrong. There is meaning. That’s all words are in the end. Songs convey meaning. Music carries emotions. The forest has a song all its own. That song is nothing if not meaningful.

A shock of cold creeps up my leg. I look down. I see myself walk into the stream. My pants grow dark with creeping moisture. Chill bumps rise on my arm. A shiver slinks down my spine. Overhead, a trio of crows caws as they leap from branch to branch to branch. A flurry of leaves, nuts, and pinecones shower down in their wake.

I hear a rustle and see something dark and large – A bear? A deer? A mountain lion? A wolf? A troll? A dragon? – creep through a patch of underbrush. Twigs rattle in the wake. There’s a growl or a cry or a laugh; it is hard to tell the difference. I think I see fresh hoof prints outlined in mud. Worms wriggle up and fill the dark indentations like anemones.

I don’t belong here.

My daughter had been a little girl once. She sat on my knee. She held my hand and dragged me around everywhere as little girls are wont to do with their daddies. I let her carry me. I thought I was the parent. I thought I was in charge. I thought I was the protector. I thought I was keeping her safe and sound. I never dreamed she was the only thing keeping me from being lost. That’s what I am without her: lost. I need her hand in mine so I don’t slip away.

I trudge forward through the creek. I splash as I lose my footing. I slip on moss and algae. I scrape my hands. Loose moss sinks beneath my fingernails. My arms are slick and white with cold. My teeth chatter, but I hardly recognize this. I don’t feel the cold even though it eats at me and sends my pulse into a frenetic fury.

I come closer to the cliff I first saw when coming around the bend. The gurgle of water becomes a roar. I look up and see the waterfalls. They cascade down from above. Beneath the base of the falls, I can just make out the dark outline of the cave. The walls on either side of the opening appear soft and languorous, worn smooth by an eternity of erosion.

I don’t belong here.

I look back behind me and realize I am on a rise. This is a natural overlook. Below me, a river snakes through a valley. A city sits on the bank of that river. Cars drive on streets. Children play on playgrounds. Adults sit in offices or work construction. It is Halloween. Once the sun sets, the carved pumpkins will be alight with fire. Families will take to the streets with glow sticks and bags for candy. People will smile and visit and knock on each other’s doors. They might not knock on each other’s doors any other time during the year, but they will on that night. At least the children will. The adults will hang back and watch from the curb or sidewalk or simply stay at home while getting drunk and watching horror movies.

I always liked Halloween. But not this year. Not last year. Not the year before.

Every little girl, no matter the costume, looks just like my little girl. I find myself wondering if she might be underneath that wig? That make-up? That mask?

I belong here.

The cascading water slows and then stops. Lingering puddles in the rock drip. The birds stop their song. The crows land next to me. They stand silent and regard me with obsidian eyes.

A tree falls behind me, then another.

A dragon sweeps by blowing smoke and fire.

A troll rides on the dragon’s back. The troll picks its nose and laughs. It sings a song whose words are meaningless and untrue. I hate that troll.

The dragon knocks the cliff with a spiked tail. I’m not sure if the action was on accident or on purpose. I doubt that it matters. The impact of the beast against the cliff breaks the stone apart. Rocks fall around me. It grows dark. I am buried. Water seeps through cracks above me. I relent. The chill overtakes me until there is no chill, only numbness.

I touch the scars on my forearms. They vibrate and pulse. I dig in with my hands until I can feel myself. Pink light erupts from my torn skin and muscle. This blushing illumination lights my way. I dig and dig. My hands grow wet. I will keep digging until I find myself, until I find my way back home.

Along the Lonesome Trail

2011-10-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Trace turned just in time to see something move away. Vines swayed along the brush in the wake of the unseen thing. He could smell it. It smelled like animal carcasses on a warm day and burning leather, overpowering the familiar scents of dry air and falling leaves. There was a howl, and Trace tightened his grip on his rifle.

“C’mon out you stinking bastard,” he said through clenched teeth.

Something stirred further in the brush. Leaves and pine needles rustled.

Trace pulled the rifle up and set his sights down the barrel. The full moon overhead glinted off the steel of his gun. He cocked with his thumb. He pressed against the trigger, ready to squeeze at the slightest provocation.

He looked up and down the trail. He found it empty. It was just him and Buttercup, an aged mare grown fat in pasture. Buttercup’s eyes were wide. Hot breath steamed out her nostrils as she shuffled her aged legs.

“Still, Buttercup. Still.” Trevor patted her greying coat. He walked down the trail and looked off into the brush.

Buttercup looked from side to side. She turned her head to regard the brush and screeched a pained neigh. Something large was atop her when Trevor turned around.

Trevor aimed his rifle and fired.

Something roared.

Trevor ran forward.

When the smoke cleared, Buttercup lay on the ground, a gaping hole bleeding from her side. Her hide was peeled back in three parallel shreds.

The leaves along the brush rustled and swayed, but the trail and clearing were empty.

“Damn!” Trevor reloaded his rifle. He stood over his horse and looked Buttercup in the eye. She stared back, her eyes moist and wide. She shuddered. He lifted the rifle to her head and fired. “Damn.” He didn’t look down at her again. There was no need.

“Come back here! Face me!” Trevor roared at the surrounding forest.

Somewhere in the distance there was a sound. Almost like a laugh, more like a bark.

Trevor looked up and down the trail. It remained empty. The dark mound that was once Buttercup lay lifeless and still. “That was my favorite horse, you monster. Now you’ve done it. It’s one thing to eat a man’s goats, but another thing altogether to eat his horse. I’d had her since I was just a boy. She was like a sister. Get out here!”

He stood silent and listened. There was no movement, no sound, just the wind.

Trevor turned around.

Something blocked the trail. As a shadow, it looked like a man – a very large man, but a man nonetheless – but Trevor knew it was something else, something equally as bad if not worse. And that was saying something considering Trevor’s opinion of humanity in general.

It stood still, blocking the trail ahead. The moon stood high above the form, making it a mere silhouette. Trevor pulled up his gun and fired.

Smoke rose into the sky. The bullet pinged as it ricocheted off a boulder somewhere in the distance. The thing was gone. It dissipated and came back together.

It laughed. The laugh turned into a howl.

Trevor quickly reloaded and fired. He reloaded and fired. He reloaded and fired. And then there were no bullets left.

“Die! C’mon. Die!” Trevor cocked his empty gun and fired off a click. He looked at his rifle. "Shit."

He looked ahead. There was a glint of sharp teeth raised into the facsimile of a smile inside a cloud of dark smoke.

Trevor took in a deep breath of air and raised his shoulders back. He tightened his grip on his rifle and prepared to swing.

The thing solidified and ran at him. The ground shook beneath Trevor’s feet.

Trevor reared back the rifle in his hands. As the form of the creature approached, he swung through the air, connecting with nothing.

There was a sharp pain in Trevor’s side. He dropped the gun, reached down with his hand, and pulled it away wet with blood. “That just ain’t fair!”

“Whoever the hell said life’s fair?”

Trevor fell to his knees.

“Pa?”

There was a laugh that turned into a roar and then the thing was upon him.

Trevor’s scream echoed along the lonesome trail.

Last Hope

2011-09-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

When the diamond fell into Brother Matthias’s hands, he worried it might burn. But there was no fire, no pain. All was well. He looked at the steaming diamond, held it to the sun, turned it, and stared through. Cloudy at first, it became clear. Another world on another side in another time looked back. Or at least her face did, and that was enough for him to smile and shed a tear. She summed up that other place: Beautiful.

He understood then that we are all outcasts here. We are all alone. Glimpsing her face renewed faith, reminded him there was more to our larger existence than hot asphalt and hazy air, than the buzz of fluorescent lighting, and sleeping on a bed of litter beneath the overpass. There was something and someplace better, and he had been there before. He would return.

The woman inside the diamond smiled at him, and then she grew smaller. She lifted away, carried by wings of glass. He heard the ethereal tinkle of her feathers and closed his eyes. It was the most beautiful song he knew.

He missed her already.

He opened his crying eyes, and the diamond was gone. In its place was a Steel Reserve tallboy. He looked at his palms. They were blistered and red and black. Bits of skin peeled away and blisters burst as he dropped the can from his tight-fisted hand. His hands smelled like the barbecue rib joint down the block. He looked up to the hot August sun. He fumbled with swollen fingers, gasped as he reached into his tattered jeans’ pocket for a crumpled pack of USA Golds, lit a cigarette, and inhaled the bitter blend. He watched the cloud of smoke drift away and disperse until it resembled her shadow.

Employment

2011-09-08T19:43:00.000-07:00

My first day at the office, I noticed nothing foreboding. Sure my boss had a forked tail jutting out from the back of her skirt. My partner was a light shade of periwinkle blue and had horns covered in blood, but she had a nice smile. Still, no matter what, it beat my last job as a telemarketer. Besides, I had my very own desk, my very own cubicle. Who was I to complain?

My second day at the office, I asked them to turn the heat down. They laughed at me. I noticed the other guys weren’t wearing suits. Some of them only wore little loincloths to cover their red, wiry-muscled bodies. So, I decided business casual would work. A polo shirt beat a suit in that heat. The only fashion accessory that seemed a must was a pitchfork. I don’t even know where to get one of those. They don’t sell them at my local J.C. Penny’s. Maybe I’ll try asking at the farmer’s market this weekend?

A few weeks went by and I got the hang of things. I kept my inbox down to a comfortable level. Mostly I was in charge of proofing and writing out contracts. I had to close any open clauses. These were strange contracts, too. It appeared our most important commodity was souls. We bought souls. I don’t know how this company could turn a profit with just souls. I’m glad I decided against the stock option when I filled my benefit forms on my first day.

Months went by. I started dating my partner. We kept it a secret. We tried to hide it from our bosses. Her periwinkle blue skin was so sexy. She was so hot! No, I mean, she’s really hot. Like, on fire! She wanted me to cuddle her at night, and I would do it sometimes for a little while – at least until she fell asleep, but then I rolled over to my side of the bed and kicked off the covers. She always left me sweating. We got along fine, but I needed to find some better quality sheets. She charred her side of the bed. Perhaps a higher thread count would have lasted a little longer? She never asked me over to her place. I wonder why?

During my performance evaluation, I received high marks. Apparently my contracts were bullet-proof. I managed to have 100% retention on clients served with my paperwork. Every clause was tight. My manager began smiling at me. Her tail rubbed up and down my leg beneath her desk. It became clear she liked me. I worried this could become awkward. She was a very attractive woman, her purple skin was very nice, but blue had always been my favorite color.

My manager came to my cubicle at least once a day. She sat on my desk and crossed her legs next to me as I worked. Her forked tail ran through my hair. I tried to be polite, but she made me uncomfortable. I thought about reporting her to HR. My partner grew a little angry about it, I could tell, but she was helpless and didn’t want to rock the boat – not in this economy. Her performance evaluation was not as good as mine. I knew I had to complain. What choice did I have?

Apparently HR was at the center of a labyrinth in the basement. I went down there and found it very unpleasant. Many of my coworkers were doing a Zoomba class as part of a fitness initiative, and I got slapped by a forked tail and nearly stabbed by thrusting horns at every turn. I thought it was strange to do aerobics in a labyrinth, but I understood they didn’t have a formal workout room in the office. I guess they made due with what they had. Anyway, I made it through the maze and found the HR office. A large minotaur sat behind a metal desk surrounded by filing cabinets. I told him about my manager, that she was hitting on me and making me uncomfortable. The minotaur snorted steam through his nose and mooed. After a few minutes, I realized that was it. Our meeting was done. Now I had to wait.

My partner was skewered. I came into work one day and she was cut apart and put on a large metal shish kabob stick with a bunch of gigantic Portobello mushrooms and red onions. My manager was turning her over a large flame.

I turned in my two weeks’ notice.

I hated to be unemployed again, it took me seven months to find this job after my last layoff, but there are worse things than unemployment lines.

Therapy

2011-08-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Shanna, a therapist, goes down on one knee next to her client. “Hey sweetie, I see you’re playing with some toys. Is there a story behind your game? Why don’t you tell me a story?”

The little girl looks up to the therapist with shining eyes. She smiles. She always seems to smile. “Okay. Diddy Pop is a happy little dog. He wags his tail. He likes to eat treats. Camantha is Diddy Pop’s mommy. Diddy Pop could be a naughty dog sometimes. One time he barked too loud. Camantha slapped him until he cried. Diddy Pop died that one time. But Doctor Potato made him better. Camantha said she was sorry, but she still hits Diddy Pop if he barks too loud or too much. Diddy Pop still wags his tail. He stays happy. He doesn’t know any better.“

“So, do you think it’s right that Camantha slaps Diddy Pop? How’s that make you feel, sweetie?”

The little girl does not look up to the adult. She stares at her toys. She makes the little girl doll, the one called Camantha, slap a little stuffed puppy. The stuffed puppy’s ears fly forward with the force of the impact. Camantha’s tangled yellow braids fly in violent circles as the little hand thrashes the toy around. The doll bumps into the stuffed puppy again and again and again, each time a little harder than the time before.

Shanna goes from a kneeling position down to a sitting position. She looks over the toys and into the little girl’s face. The little girl doesn’t look up. She smiles, lost in her game. “Did you hear me?” the therapist asks.

The little girl nods. “Yes. Diddy Pop is a bad doggie.”

“What makes him so bad?”

“He’s loud. Camantha doesn’t like it when he’s loud.”

“Are you loud?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does your mother like it when you’re loud?”

The little girl does not answer.

“Did you hear me, sweetie?”

The little girl puts down her toys and looks up at the therapist. A slant of sunlight comes through the window. Her brown eyes shimmer in the light. The little girl smiles. She squishes up her face so that one eye looks smaller than the other. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Oh, I know. I know, sweetie.”

“Don’t call me sweetie. I don’t like it. It makes me think you’re talking to me like I’m a dummy. I’m not.”

“I never said you were. I’d never say that.”

“Not with words. But actions are louder. That’s what Daddy says.”

“Daddy?” The therapist scratches her head. “You see your daddy often?”

“Every day.”

“Can you excuse me a moment?”

The little girl shrugs.

The therapist walks out of her office and into the waiting room. She strides over to the little girl’s mother. “Can I ask a question?”

The mother is looking down at a cell phone, her thumbs are moving furiously on the touch screen.

The therapist waits a moment. She grows impatient. “Excuse me, Mrs. Carlisle, I have a question.”

Mrs. Carlisle raises one finger.

“Our time is almost up. Chelsea just said something interesting. She said she sees her father every day. My admission paperwork shows you listed as single with nothing listed about a father. Is this a boyfriend or an ex or something?”

Mrs. Carlisle looks up. “That’s impossible.” Her eyes are bloodshot. Her face is too pale. The therapist sees tiny blue veins outlined in Mrs. Carlisle’s face. The tiny blue veins spread out like miniscule river deltas.

“I know this may be a personal question. It might be unimportant and stuff, but would you like to come back to my office and discuss this?” The therapist looks around the waiting room and sees other parents looking at her and Mrs. Carlisle. She wants to respect Mrs. Carlisle’s privacy, and worries she said too much in public already.

“No. I’d rather stay out here.” Mrs. Carlisle holds up her phone. “I’m in the middle of something here.”

The therapist hides the exasperation she feels. She controls the tone of her voice, her breathing. “Well, who is this Daddy that she says she sees every day?’

“You got me. There’s no dad. I’ve no idea who the father even is. Maybe some dude in Panama City, but I’ve never really worried about it. There’s no guy in my house, that’s for sure. Well there is sometimes, but I don’t like to let them get too attached, and usually only when Chelsea’s over at my mom’s for the night. I have no idea what she’s talking about. You’re the therapist, right? Why don’t you ask the little princess, okay?” She holds the phone up and blocks the therapist from her sight.

The therapist wants to grab this woman by the shoulders and scream at her in the face. Instead, the therapist apologizes for disturbing Ms. Carlisle. Ms. Carlisle does not acknowledge the apology.

The therapist returns to the room. Chelsea isn’t there.

The toys are on the floor. They are standing in place. The stuffed puppy begins to bark and wag its fluffy tail. The yellow braids of the little girl doll fly around as the dolly begins slapping the puppy. The barking turns into pained yelps. The little girl doll keeps slapping. Soon the puppy is nothing but torn fabric and fluff. Tufts of the fluff float up and fall down slowly. The doll turns her head towards the therapist. The button eyes gleam in the slant of sunlight coming through the window.

The therapist walks towards the doll. It crumples to the floor as if lifeless, as it should be. The therapist looks out the window and sees Chelsea in the clouds. The child’s hair is on fire and she carries a flaming sword. The sword’s name is TRUTH.

The therapist reaches out the open window and falls three stories. The concrete stops everything.

The Trees

2011-08-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Look at my arms. They are scaling and falling to pieces. Shards of bark fall like my autumn leaves, multicolored and fading. Look at the veins in my leaves. How brittle they are. Once these hands ran through your hair, and now I no longer have hands. I am incomplete.

Once we knew love. Once we knew each other. Once we touched and came together.

Now we are no longer what we were.

I look at you: A rotting stump. Crickets hide inside you and sing.

I stand still. The air is stagnant. I soak in the sun. I soak in the rain. I stand unmoving.

My arms are branches.

You don’t even have that luxury. You can no longer reach up to the sky. You are there, in the ground, rotting. Salamanders call you home.

Birds make their nests on my arms. I hold them tight and protect them from storms. I watch the young birds leap from their nests. Some take flight while others fall.

At my feet lie the bones of broken birds. They no longer sing. Yet, they still serve their purpose as food for ants and maggots. These things are necessary, too, no matter how unpleasant they might be.

You are necessary. You feed the earth. You feed termites.

I stand above and shelter you in my shade. I remember you as you were, as you used to be. When we touched and merged as figures of warm flesh and love. I remember the afterglow. I remember your green shoots and flowers.

I’m sorry I cut you down.

Sometimes.

But now I am old and the termites infest me. I feel them crawl past my bark and into the deepest of my many rings. Each ring is a year of life, and there are so many years. How many was it before I cut you down? I can’t remember. Not that it matters. You sit there and rot, and I will join you soon. I know this to be true. The sun will be hidden from me as the other trees surround us and hide us in their shade.

Kudzu moves in, and mistletoe steals the rain from my soul.

I am so thirsty. My roots are nibbled by moles and rabbits. My tangled wooden subterranean knots are now the home of a nasty family of gnomes.

The sky cries for me, but the tears offer no relief. I am drying from the inside.

I am just like you.

Once we were more than trees. You were more than a stump. You were everything.

Now I stand alone.

My last leaf has fallen, and the sound of termites crunching wood overwhelms my senses. I feel myself crack and break, little by little.

Lightning flashes, and I thank God for fire.

Unbirthing

2011-07-29T21:40:00.000-07:00

My name is Jim. I’m not a Lord, and this isn’t an autobiography. I’m going to tell you the story as I heard it from someone I’d rather not name who heard it from someone else he decided it was better remain nameless (and, why yes, I am distancing myself from this as much as possible).

Recently, I’ve been reading stories. Two come to mind: “How We Keep It Fresh” by Christian Tebordo (Pank, 6.01/ January 2011) and “Afterglow” by Sandra Odell (Ideomancer, 9:3/September 2010). These stories, among others whose names I can’t remember, relate a desire to return to the womb. I heard there is a term for this. When you Google “unbirthing” you obtain disturbing links to odd furry fetishes I don’t understand (and don’t really want to know too much about – I say leave the bedroom in the bedroom), but still the fact that this is a modern fetish (which I assume belongs to more than one individual), and there is actual paraphernalia designed for the specific purpose of acting out this fantasy says something about modern culture. I think. Even popular music makes references to unbirthing: Beck sings about a girl leaping into a volcano in his song “Volcano” off the album Modern Guilt. Beck asks, “Was she trying to make it back/Back into the womb of the world?”

Is this a modern phenomenon? What is the interpretation? I’m not going to go all Jungian on you. I promise. That’d be dull. Besides, I’m not smart enough for that kind of thing, and neither is the person telling this story (or the nameless narrator, for that matter). I won’t look for mythic roots, proof of collective unconscious, or point out older texts referencing these kinds of things (not that I couldn’t do so, but I’m feeling too lazy today). You can do all that yourself. Google and Wikipedia are good starting points, but always verify with other sources, preferably in paper format inside the rotting walls of a library reeking of dust and neglect and other modern clichés.***

So why return to the womb? Why is this a fantasy and a fetish? Why is this event expressing itself in literature and music? Is it coincidence that this image haunts me? No, this is not an interpretation. What follows are simply my unenlightened observations.

A quick note on the positive traits of life in utero*:

It’s quiet. All sounds are muffled. Sometimes mommies and daddies and others talk to pregnant bellies, and when they do, it’s always with a soothing, cooing tone. Sometimes people even read stories and play music, deluding themselves they will increase the child’s brain capacity, when in actuality they are only decreasing their own. **

There’s no friction. Everything is well-lubricated and without sharp edges. If you trip and fall on your umbilical cord, you won’t get hurt. I guess you could get tied up in the cord and choke and die. I’ve heard of that happening, but thankfully, this is unusual.

Mothers protect you in the womb. Sometimes they do this outside the womb, but when you are actually inside their body, they are even more protective. Perhaps it has something to do with you still being a part of them, physically, at that point in time? Whatever the reason, this is nice.

When inside the womb there is blind optimism directed your way. Parents dream big for their child, buy footballs or art sets. Parents live out their own fantasies through their unborn. You haven’t disappointed anyone. Yet.

It’s dark all the time. You can sleep whenever you want. This means lots of dreams, and in dreams you can be whatever you want to be. Even if you want to be a giraffe on the plains of the Serengeti, you can do that. Or you could be an alpaca tied up in a trailer park in Mississippi, or an inside sales representative, or a short order cook, or whatever. Endless possibilities. Personally, I’d dream of being an entry-level data entry clerk or maybe the back seat of a 1970 Chevy Nova . Dream big!

Anyone who hits a pregnant belly is a jerk and can actually have attempted murder – or even murder – charges brought against them. Once you’re born, people can hit you all they want. As long as you live, it’s only assault.

There are no temptations. There are no vices. You haven’t fallen. Not yet.

Negatives:

You’re kind of trapped...

There are no mountains to look at.

You can only hear the ocean, not see it.

Music is muffled and you probably only hear the beat and not the details of a melody.

Voices are muffled and easily misunderstood.

Range of movement is limited.

There’s nowhere to jog, hike, or fish.

You’re kind of trapped…

All the same, this is a cultural desire (and not just mine, whoever I am). The pros outweigh the cons. Besides, how often do you have days you simply don’t want to get out of bed? How much better would it be to be in a womb? It’s warmer, softer, quieter. Sure there’s no light for reading, but you still have time to dream. That’s worth something. Also, you are a blank slate. You are perfect.

Unlike me. I screwed up so many times. Too many times to count and disguised as many different people.

So, I went back. But there’s not much room in here, to tell the truth, and I really, really need to stretch. It kind of smells funny, too. It reeks of failure and other clichés.***

* …and a certain Nirvana album cover comes immediately to mind just like that!

** “"There are no studies on the effects of stimulation before birth on intelligence, creativity, or later development," says Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist who studies fetal development at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.” (http://www.babycenter.com/0_music-and-your-unborn-child_6547.bc -- Yes, I researched this online because I’m lazy. There’s no proof that if my mother played music to me or my father read to me in utero that I would be any less lazy. I’m also a hypocrite sometimes as you can see from my not following my own rules about using libraries to verify.)

*** Why does the verb “reek” often accompany so many clichés? Perhaps I’ll ask my friend to ask his nameless narrator. It might make for a good story.

TOUCH -- Chapter 1: The Guardrail

2011-01-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

Bill Wake’s clothes fluttered in the wake of cars and trucks as they sped past. Sometimes drivers honked their horns. The sound beleaguered him for only a moment before trailing off into a droning moan. Occasionally someone shouted out an open window. The muffled syllables drifted down the highway and away from him. Occasionally, at intersections, people would yell out obscenities and various indignant terms. He heard their voices – usually male and usually only a few octaves past adolescence – call out words such as “rag head” or “terrorist,” but these vacant sounds didn’t faze him; they were just empty syllables and nothing more.

He ignored the cars as he walked. He ignored their sounds. He ignored the voices. He tried to ignore everything.

But he could not ignore his clothes.

He wrapped himself as completely as possible with cloth to hide himself from the world, to protect the nerve endings everywhere along his epidermis. He had heard it said that the skin was the largest organ of the human body. He hated that it was also the organ which gave him the most trouble.

Everything he touched told a story. Whether or not he wanted to hear the story was irrelevant.

Even the stitching of his clothes – the tiny threads and various fabrics – left their impressions. He saw writhing silkworms or content sheep. He saw cotton stalks waving in large fields under sunny skies. There were tiny hands pushing fabric through machines. There was the raucous noise of factories and voices in other languages. Sometimes needles pricked skin, and sometimes children were not allowed to be children. In the cloth itself he could detect the faintest hint of pain. The pain was there. It was everywhere and in everything. He wondered why it had taken him so long to notice the pain imbedded in all things. He could not understand how other people could not feel it, too. It was so tangible, so real, and so obvious.

He stopped on the road to rest and squatted down. He rested his thin arms on his bony knees. He leaned back against a guardrail. It was slick with rain and scarred by innumerable accidents. There was a dent beside him which exposed the shine of fresh steel. Lines of black paint marred the metal surface. There was red paint there, too. The metal was stained by the blood of at least two cars.

Too late, he realized there was a hole in the elbow of his shirt. He tried to stand away from the dented scar in the guardrail. As he stood, his skin touched the cool metal. He froze.

A woman sung along to the radio. It blared out a pop song. Bill had heard it many times. It had been popular when he was younger. He could remember Shelby singing it as she washed the dishes at the home they had once shared together before things went wrong.

The woman singing the pop song nodded her head back and forth in the front seat of the car. She was dressed in a conservative grey business suit and a white blouse. A baby sat behind her dressed up in a pale green onesie. A tiny hand reached up towards a mobile. Tigger and Pooh spun around and around and rocked with the movement of the car as it rocked over the shoddily paved highway.

Bill remembered that his boy Chase had owned a mobile just like that one. It had been passed on to his little sister Chastity before eventually being given to the Goodwill once his kids were too old for such things. They had grown too old for so many things, and they continued to grow. He could not stop it, could not face it. He had to leave the very feel of his former life behind. There was no other choice. His touch was too strong and too horrible.

Something vibrated in the plastic cup holder near the driver’s seat. It was a cell phone. The woman stopped singing and turned off the radio. The pop song was gone, and, for a second, all was quiet except for the soft hums of the wind, of the engine, and of wheels spinning over pavement.

The woman reached for her phone and flipped it open. There was a message for her. A big smile demonstrated her pleasure. With her thumb, she started to reply. She hit the send button. A moment later, the phone vibrated again. Her smile widened and her thumb began working the buttons once again.

A car honked. The woman looked up, her eyes grew wide, and she twisted the driving wheel. The car swerved. The baby’s mobile flew around in frantic circles. The clasp holding it in place came loose, and it clattered to the floor of the car. The baby cried. Angry little fists defied the forces working against the little baby. It screamed out in anger at the world which had so unfairly taken its toy. The baby was tied down and could never reach the mobile. It would never see the mobile again, and this was unfair.

The woman in the driver’s seat breathed deeply. The phone vibrated again.

Bill cursed at her and screamed out in his mind, Don’t pick up the phone! Don’t do it! It isn’t worth it!

The baby’s cries became louder. It was as if it protested what the mother was doing. It was almost like the baby knew what was coming. Bill conceded that this was in fact possible. There are many ways to perceive the world, after all.

Leave it alone! Bill protested in his mind once again. He knew it would do no good.

As expected, the woman didn’t acknowledge Bill. She couldn’t. He wasn’t there – not at that physical place, or more accurately, not at that physical time.

She cursed under her breath and reached for the phone. She flipped it up and a smile crossed her face. Her thumb began working and then she lurched forward.

There was the shattering of glass. The windshield broke apart into tiny little beads and flew outwards.

The baby cried louder as steel crunched steel.

Little fists flew outward, clenched tight.

The woman yelled. Her eyes expanded and revealed a primal fear at the moment of her understanding.

And then all grew quiet. The baby no longer cried. The only sound was the dripping of some fluid or another as it dribbled against cold, hard asphalt.

For Bill, the silence of the once screaming child was the worst part. The child had given up and given in to the universe working against it. The poor baby never had a chance. It never had control. It was just a passenger. What happened was no fault of the baby. All it had wanted was to play with its mobile. It never even asked to be born. It had never asked to be a victim, but Bill had seen enough to understand that no one ever asks for that. Never. Yet everyone is victimized in one way or another.

He had seen enough. He never asked to see this, had never asked to feel this.

Bill jerked away from the guardrail and looked at the dented metal scar where the flesh of his elbow had contacted cold steel. He shook his head.

Even the guardrail was a victim in its own way. It would live out the rest of its life – if such an existence can be called a life – with this scar. That scar would never go away. The paint may wash away in time, but the dent would remain along with the impression of all that had transpired.

Bill could identify with the guardrail. He wore his scars, too. Some of them were physical; if asked, Bill could point them out on his skin. Others were mental. Some of them had not even happened yet, but he knew they would, and that knowledge alone scarred him deeply in its own vicious way. It was a kind of scar that no one could understand – the scars of events yet to transpire.

The visible scar of the guardrail was a result of its past. Those kinds of impressions were fairly easy for Bill to read with his touch – sometimes too easy. The past had already happened and its events continued to reverberate into the present. Those indentations and scars and marks on all things would continue to reverberate long into the future: the more powerful the event, the more powerful the recollections and visions.

Bill left the past behind and hoped to find ways to avoid a future he feared.

How We Met

2010-12-30T18:54:00.000-08:00

The Geek loped in circles after the chicken. His gangly arms and legs swung in clumsy arcs. Thick drool trailed from his chin. When he ran, translucent plumes of snot and saliva erupted from his face as he gasped and laughed. He would jump towards the chicken, the chicken would veer off at the last second, and he would grunt as he hit the dirty ground, sending up a cloud of dust.

The gathering audience laughed and cheered.

The chicken ran in circles while it clucked with terror.

Bawk. Bawk. Bawk.

The Geek smiled and followed the clucking chicken with his eyes which were large, glassy, shining, black, and empty. His pupils contracted into tiny condensed dots full of darkness. The crowd could see The Geek’s posture shift as he made slow calculations with whatever it was he kept contained inside his large, conical, and bald skull. The Geek crouched low and leaped. The chicken clucked. The Geek grabbed it tight and pulled it up towards his open mouth and revealed jagged, uneven teeth.

Bawk. Bawk. Wet crunch.

The Geek chomped the tiny skull and smiled. A thin trail of blood and spit coursed fresh rivulets down the thick layer of dirt and dust coating his filthy chin.

The crowd groaned because it was expected of them to be disgusted, but their eyes still smiled. They feigned horror and pulled out their wallets, hungry for the freak show to begin.

I saw it happen. I was there. I was eating fire. My mouth tasted like gasoline spiked with cheap vodka. My tongue burned. My inner cheeks burned. My eyes and lungs burned thanks to the harsh chemical fumes wafting off my torches. I saw you, and I felt everything. I noticed everything. Through the haze, I found something resembling clarity.

You know because you were there. I noticed you because you cried. You were the only one who cried, and right then, I knew I wanted to leave the freak show behind. I just wanted to drink your tears. I knew they would taste sweet. They would be cool and refreshing. They would wash the chemicals and fire from my mouth and leave me healed. I would be baptized in the purity of those tears and reborn as something better.

I approached you. You took my hand when I offered to help you up. I saw the faint hint of a smile borne from my own act of kindness and felt a real sense of purpose for the first time in my life. I could show you kindness, and through my kindness, help you forget, or at least forgive.

For you.

My heart. My love. My wife.

We left the freak show hand-in-hand.

Sometimes, in the years that followed, I would turn around. I would hear the applause, the jingle-jangle of loose change, the laughter from The Geek, the shout of The Barker, and I would consider returning. I would remember the taste of fossil fuels and alcohol and fire. Sometimes, I wanted to taste those poisons again. But always, your hand was there – and then other hands, smaller hands – and together, you and the family you gave me would pull me back so I could remember what really matters and understand.

My heart. My life.

The Geek smiles only because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

You know. You care.

And now I do too.

Running in Circles

2010-12-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

George Orwell ran inside his red plastic wheel. The metal bits had not been oiled in quite some time, so it squeaked loudly as his little paws pushed the wheel round and round and round. He enjoyed running in circles.

Margaret Catcher, a rather obese orange and brown tabby, rubbed up against Orwell’s cage. “Good afternoon, George.”

“Afternoon,” Orwell replied. He breathed heavily and the word came out as a rush of air. He almost turned the word into one syllable instead of two. He slowed down so that he might speak more clearly. He enjoyed Margaret’s company. He knew this was odd, with him being a gerbil – a rodent not too much different than a rat, really – and she being a cat and all, but still, they tended to get along rather marvelously. He had known her from the time she was a wide-eyed and innocent kitten. He remembered when they first met. She had not been much larger than himself at the time, after all.

Margaret stretched out her front paws. Pearly white claws extracted and retracted as she stretched. She had never been declawed. She had learned to scratch her post instead of the furniture at a young age. She rather liked her claws and was not too keen on the idea of losing them in the event that she ever had to defend herself or was forced to catch her own food. The lady who owned her was a silly, delirious old thing, a wannabe writer who lived most of her life inside dusty old books, and Margaret worried the poor old bag of bones could fall over dead at any time at the slightest provocation due to her numerous nervous conditions, and then where would she be if she did not even have her claws? This was a dreadful thought, more than enough to motivate Margaret to scratch the post instead of the sofa.

“Why do you run?” Margaret asked.

“Because I like it, of course,” Orwell replied. His breathing was steadier now as he had slowed down to a steady jog. The squeak of the wheel quieted some but remained audible. It released a metronomic screech, screech, screech, as it went round and round in an endless slow circle.

“But why? You’re not really going anywhere, are you?”

“Perhaps not,” George admitted thoughtfully. “I guess it’s not the destination that matters, however. They say it’s the getting there – wherever there is – that matters, but really, I don’t think that matters too much if you get there in the end. Once you get there, the journey stops and there’s nowhere to run. And if it is the getting there that matters, than why should I worry if I never get there? What’s the point of even having a destination if getting there is the good part? Perhaps we’d all be better off if we forgo destinations altogether and just enjoyed our rides? Besides, I’ve seen some of the destinations of my brethren. I’ve heard stories, you know: crushed under rockers; starved to death; no offense, but some I hear have been eaten by cats; embraced too rigorously by small, well-meaning children with strong, chubby hands; and then don’t get me started on what I’ve heard some adult humans do with us … where they, uhm, put us.” Orwell stopped running and shuddered visibly. “Yes, there are worse things in life.”

Margaret had grown bored during Orwell’s diatribe, no matter how brief it might have been, and began licking her paws. His speech had not once mentioned her or cats at all. It was all about himself and gerbils. This was quite a boring speech for a cat to have to endure, obviously. Once he stopped talking she looked up at him and decided she needed to say something, just to remain polite. George was her friend, after all, even if he only talked about himself and his kind. “I suppose so.”

And that was that. Margaret Thatcher walked away to rub up against the legs of the old lady sitting in her reading chair. She had not moved in quite a long time, and Margaret rather hoped that the old bag was still alive. Not that Margaret was worried about her owner’s well-being, mind you, but because Margaret was a fat, hungry cat and hoped the old woman might open a nice tin of tuna for her to eat.

George looked at the cat as she walked away and was grateful to have a friend, no matter how self-obsessed she might be. She was still his friend, and that was quite good enough. The entirety of his life was rather good enough, he decided, and he began running again. The inadequately oiled metal parts of the little wheel screamed as it worked itself round and round and round while going nowhere.

A (Kind of) Fairy Tale

2010-12-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

Sheila clutched a Swiss army knife in her hand. She extracted a small blade to carve an opening in the cardboard box surrounding her. This released a blinding stream of light that poured down like a phosphorescent waterfall. She closed her eyes and then opened them slowly, allowing them to adjust to the new light. It had been a long time since she had looked outside. A very long time.

She peeked through the new opening and saw that the world had not changed. It was still the same as it was before. The river coursing over the rocks had straightened a little. It no longer curved the same way. The white water had calmed somewhat, but other than that, the world was no different. The leaves were still green. The sky remained blue. The birds still sang.

Then the leaves fell and then winter came and snow collected on her new window. Translucent stalactites of ice dripped over her opening and distorted her view. She shivered, decided it would be better to hibernate, and fell fast sleep.

The world was her bed and it was soft and comforting. It made sense when nothing else did. She woke as the snows began to thaw, and she tried to remember why she was here, where she obtained the Swiss army knife in her hand, why she was in a box, but decided that these were worthless questions. She was here because she was here and that was all. This is no different for anyone else, no matter how strange or sensible or senseless they might happen to be. People aren’t all that different, though they often like to think they are special. She had had time to think and no longer clung to false notions. Maybe she wasn’t special, she decided, but at least she was free. She said, “Freedom is in the mind, not a physical state of being,” and she chanted this over and over and over until she almost believed it, but not really, because she was a protagonist, and this, by default, made her special. At least it made her special in her own self-contained universe. Without a character there can be no story, after all, and without a story there is simply nothing to tell.

Then the box dissolved with the raging rains of spring and she emerged during a storm. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, but then the winds swept the storm – and the dissolving remains of her box – away. As the clouds broke apart to reveal the sun, she outstretched her arms. Her joints popped. She ignored the pain and bloomed. Delicate and colorful petals flitted with a soft breeze. She was beautiful and fragile and, ultimately, meaningless.

The Sitcom

2010-12-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

Ted fought against the metal mountain as he climbed. The thick cloths and leather straps wound around his hands and feet grew snagged and tattered and worn as the level ground – covered only by a thinning blanket of dead grass and glittering permafrost – fell away beneath him. As he climbed upwards, the smoldering heap of rusting steel smoked in places. Red lines stained crags and eddies. Ted was unsure if the stains marring the mountain were rusted iron or ancient blood. Both had been offered over the years to appease The Monster. Yet, The Monster was never appeased, not fully. The Monster looked down on what was left of the world with a toothy smirk. The Monster’s giant lips frothed with blood. Tremors rising from deep inside the core of the earth told Ted that The Monster hungered. Wings creaked overhead and blocked the pale light of a dying sun as The Monster stretched.

*

“Why must you do it?” his mother asked him. She ran around the kitchen. The spotlights overhead and the yellow flowers on her wallpaper kept her cheerful, kept her smiling. She whisked something in a bowl. Scrambled eggs maybe? The beginnings of a cake? Cookies?

Ted did not know. He stared down at his hands. They were caked with dried blood.

His mother tsked. “Ted, you tell me right now, what is it you want to prove?”

He looked up to his mother and saw her. Really saw her. She was beautiful, radiant. Light streaked out of her eyes and warmed the chill in his soul, but he still felt cold. His brother was gone. His mother tried to remain happy, wore a permanent smile, but even as young as Ted was he understood this was her front, an act. He knew she was lonely. Since The Censors invaded she had been forced to sleep in a tiny twin bed. She no longer knew the embrace of her husband. She no longer knew what it felt like to be kissed with the exception of chaste brushes of indifferent lips against her cheek. The Censors wanted her pure. The Censors did not care if that false purity killed her soul.

“Mom, I just killed my brother. Dad made me do it. He said it was in the damn script!” Ted tugged at his crew cut hair. “I need answers!”

The laugh track erupted into a joyful cacophony of canned emotion.

*

“Why do you climb, boy?” The Monster asked. He had no name. He was simply The Monster. That was enough.

Ted lay sprawled out on a small metal platform. His hands and feet pulsed and wept with blisters and blood. “Because I have to know.”

“What do you want to know? How do you know I have the answers? How do you know, if I do have the answers, I will give them to you? What makes you think I can be trusted?”

Ted laughed. “It’s not about trust. It’s about truth.”

*

His father never came home from work. No “Honey, I’m home!” or tumble over furniture, no canned applause for his clumsy, over-stylized entrance. Instead, the house grew silent.

Ted looked at the fourth wall. The cameras had stopped rolling. The studio audience had been left deserted. A tumbleweed from the western that was filming on the set next door rolled across the linoleum kitchen floor.

“Why do you do it?” his mother asked again, softer this time. She fell over and shivered.

Ted wanted to rush over to her, to hold her, to cry over her. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and ate his cereal, trapped by an unforgiving and unyielding script. His mother died as she slept: alone.

*

Ted spoke between clenched teeth. “I just want you to answer one question, you sick bastard. Who are you?”

The Monster smiled. “I think you know.”

“Why do you do this?”

“Just to see if it works.”

A shock of lava and smoke erupted near Ted. Some of it splashed down against his outstretched arm and left instant whelps and burns. “Well? Did it work?”

Sheets of typed paper were crumpled into a ball before being tossed into a trashcan littered by empty beer cans.

“Nope.”

Family Portrait

2010-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

One

There was one man in a room. He sat alone and looked out a dirty window. There was nothing outside besides parked cars lining a quiet street. The stoops in front of the duplexes were all empty. Behind the man, the filter of his nasty aquarium whined while lumps of algae and dead fish floated and twirled in the artificial currents. He poured himself a glass of cheap whiskey and adjusted himself on the couch because his left leg had fallen asleep. The motion sent a spray of dust mites into the air. They twirled in a slant of sunlight like pixies, but they weren’t pixies. It was only dust.

Two

The mother sat at the kitchen table. She pressed her hands against her temples as she stared down at a pile of unpaid bills. Some of the unpaid bills were written in red print. Far too many of the bills were written in red print. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes to dam up swelling tears.

In the next room, something crashed to the floor. The sound startled her. The mother looked up and saw that her boy had broken a lamp. His dirty bed sheet was tied roughly around his neck like a cape. He had been pretending to be Superman again. He told the kids at school that Superman was his father. When the other kids asked the boy where his father was, the boy explained that Superman flew away.

Three

There is a picture on a wall showing a happy family. The family is posed in front of a lake, framed by trees, and the sun casts a golden glow as it sets behind them. The mother, the father, and the boy all wear smiles. No one would know it by looking, but the smiles are fake. At least they are for the father and mother. As for the boy, his smile was real enough, just all too fleeting. Shortly after the photograph was taken the mother’s eye would be bruised and black. The father would be drunk and screaming and throwing furniture around. The boy would be cowering under his bed, reading his Superman comics, and thinking about his own father’s strength as furniture crashed against the wall.

One

The boy is now a man. He sits in a small economy apartment. He sorts through stems and seeds on a dish looking for any decent leaves for his pipe. The pipe is stained with thick resin. The past stains his mind. He wants to fly away like Superman. He looks at the crooked spot on his finger where there had once been a wedding band and thinks about his father. He thinks about his father’s fists. He thinks about his own fists. He really was Superman’s son. He releases a clipped chuckle and throws the glass pipe against the wall. It shatters the framed picture of his family vacation. He looks at the fresh shards of glass and hopes they don’t cut him too badly once he eventually feels motivated enough to pick them up off the floor.

Navel Gazing

2010-11-25T20:19:00.000-08:00

Uno

I was born in a pickle jar. My first view was of the inside of a kitchen cabinet. Stubborn bits of label and glue that would not wash off the jar obscured my vision. It was dark, but my developing eyes didn’t mind. Enough light filtered through the cracks in the doors to see all I needed to see: a coffee cup hand-painted with a beach scene from Mexico City. It was paradise. I contently swam in circles.

Deux

I smoked my first cigarette at two years old. I was outside a Laundromat beside the dumpster I called home after being tossed out by my parent who was an inconsequential and slovenly short hunk of hairy man. I had been a mistake, apparently. My parent had tossed me out, jar and all, two years previously. The jar broke, and I was born, and now here I was contemplating. While toddling around, pondering my fate, I found a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the ground. There was one lonely crushed up cigarette inside. I lit it with a Zippo lighter I carried in the chest pocket of my dirty OshKosh overalls. The lighter was decorated with a Confederate Flag. It said: “The South Shall Rise Again!” I inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed again. Yet, by my fourth toke, I found I was already used to the process. A thin blue trail of smoke wafted up from my chubby hand as I waved the cigarette in lazy arcs. I cleared my throat. “The contemplative life is often miserable.” This was from a book of Chamfort plays I had found beside the dumpster one pale afternoon. I decided to follow his advice then and there to “act more, think less, and watch oneself live.” I found a tattered beret and placed it on top of my head.

Trinity

By the time I reached my teens, I realized that everything came in threes. There was me, my beloved, and my beloved’s beloved. There was a fight. I won the fight but lost the war. My beloved’s beloved fell in love with my beloved as she nursed him back to health. They went away together. Then I was alone again: two and one, one and done.

Quattor

A priest gave me a copy of his Latin Primer. He said it had been his only book as a boy. He said this in Latin of course, so I did not understand what he said at the time. I loved that book. I was in my twenties and trying to find my place. I had left the dumpster behind and moved into the Laundromat. I liked the big glass windows. When I leaned my face up against the cool glass and looked out at the cold world, it felt something like being home. Domis dulcis domus.

Five

By the time I reached my thirties, the Laundromat had been torn down. I heard they were going to turn the shopping center into a Walmart. I wasn’t sure why they would do this – there were already three Walmarts within two miles – but sure enough, that’s what they did. So, I left for the woods. I found some people out there with long hair who were very nice at first. They welcomed me, called me “Brother.” It brought tears to my eyes. They said they were Rainbow People. I liked them. They asked me if I wanted to be one of them. They said according to Rainbow tradition, there is only one prerequisite for joining the Family: a belly button. Once they realized I had been born in a dirty pickle jar with no umbilical cord and therefore no belly button, they apologized and left me alone.

Sex

By the time I reached my forties, I was coughing constantly. After years of smoking, the air I breathed was a consistency more like razorblade-infused syrup than a gas. I knew it wouldn’t be long. I walked towards an apartment building. I snuck in through an open window. I moved straight towards the kitchen. There was an empty pickle jar. It stunk inside, but I was pleased by the organic funk. I filled it with my own urine and sloughed off tiny flakes of dry skin with my dirty fingernails. I blew in a puff of cigarette smoke before closing the lid. The conditions were perfect. I smiled and watched as the fragments of myself danced in the dirty water. They came together, one by one, and coalesced into a swirling fetus. I placed the jar inside a cabinet and turned it so it would face the coffee cups. There was a nice cup in there with a hand-painted beach scene from Mexico City. I looked in the mirror and realized that I had grown into an inconsequential and slovenly short hunk of hairy man. C’est la vie.

Man in the Bar

2010-11-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

Man left the bright off-white daylight of a stormy day behind and let the heavy oak door slam shut behind him. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the blackened smoky interior of the bar. Man wrinkled his nose. The sudden change in atmosphere came as a shock. He took small breaths – he did not want to smell everything all at once – as he adjusted from the scent of the ozone and rain outside to the acrid and condensed scents of burning tobacco and spilled beer and body odor confined within this tiny den of despair.

Man took off his funky green hunting cap – a reference to his literary hero – and swept back strands of greasy black hairs so that they were plastered over his spotted, bald head. But no one would call it a comb-over, a comb-over is something done on purpose. This hairstyle wasn’t exactly a style. It didn’t look brushed or washed. In short, it fit Man exceedingly well.

No One looked up as he entered.

There was a bartender. He was an obese man with a large gut extending over the tie of his dirty apron. He spit into wine glasses and shined them with a soiled red bandanna. He finished washing and then tied the bandana on top of his shaved white head. Rolls of fat and tufts of curly coarse hair sprouted up from his dirty white t-shirt. There was a stain just to the right of his armpit – on his chest, next to his heart – that looked a little like America.

There was a woman. She sat with her legs and arms crossed; inaccessible. The slit of her skirt exposed a hint of bare skin and the lines of garters which held up frayed nylon stockings. She smoked a cigarette, sipped from a martini glass, and stared at herself in the mirror. Her reflection scowled back at her, as if angry over the heavy toll exacted by years of self-abuse on her once youthful and perfect body. She looked away from the mirror and stared down at her dingy shadow on the floor and could still see the outline of the girl she used to be. She dropped her lit cigarette down onto that shadow and smothered it with a violent twist of her high-heeled foot.

There was a kid with a mop and a bucket. He was tall and lanky. The sweet, almost rotten smell of marijuana followed him. He danced a little as he pushed the mop around, nodding his head to the unheard music being broadcast from the ear buds of his personal MP3 player. Inside his bucket, bits of food – perhaps vomit – twirled on the oil-slicked surface of the murky mop water. It seemed the more he cleaned, the dirtier everything became, but he was unaware of this, lost in another world, dancing to the sound of a song only he could hear.

There was an older grey man looking into a beer. His mind raced with fragments of memories. Most of these were bad, but the good ones were the worst of all. The good memories were a reminder he had once had something else, something better. He had once been someone better, but that was years ago and far away; in another time, in another marriage, in another city. There had been a bar in that other city, too, he remembered. It had been much the same as this bar. He knew for a fact that the view was the same as he watched the carbonation bubble inside his warming beer. His last beer, he promised himself before taking another gulp, drowning himself with the warm remainder. He quickly and purposefully forgot this promise to himself as he asked the bartender for yet another beer. He felt a moment of remorse, but just a moment. After all, it wasn’t his first broken promise, not by a long shot.

Then there was Man watching it all. He noted each face, each posture, and each sordid article of clothing. He noted the lonesome wail of steel guitars in a country tune playing softly from a jukebox hidden behind a well-worn pool table. Man smiled with the knowledge he had found his place, had found his people. This was where he belonged. Here, he wouldn’t have to feel self-conscious. Here, he didn’t have to feel ugly. Here, he could be King!

He straddled a barstool, held up a chubby finger to get the bartender’s attention, and asked for a Shirley Temple.

I Am the Princess

2010-11-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Officer Dawes touched the walls of the tiny attic. Rough wood was splintered with tiny lines. The lines formed letters. The letters formed words. The words formed sentences. The sentences formed paragraphs. The paragraphs formed a story:

Once upon a time there was a fairy princess in a dungeon. I am the princess. My name is Elizabeth.

It feels like I born in the dungeon. I was there because my mommy who was pretty and nice died when I was a baby. My wicked stepmother Denise hated me because my dad loved me, so I was put in the dungeon and kept there. She was jealous of me so wanted me gone.

One day a prince would come to rescew me. I know this to be true. I can see him when I close my eyes. He is on a white horse that likes to eat apples. The prince and the horse named Pearl because hes colord like a pearl both wear silver armor with dimonds that shine with light.

Theres no light in the dungeon. Its always dark, but I can see okay. I just close my eyes from time to time and it helps everything seem a little brighter when I open them back up. The only time I see light is when they feed me and open the dungeon door. I’m sick of SPAM and greenbeans, but thats all they feed me.

Sometimes I smell myself and I stink. I hope my prince is okay with that. It stinks up here because I don’t have a potty…

Officer Dawes had to pause. He called over his shoulder. “Hey guys, get someone to transcribe this stuff down and take lots of pictures.”

Another man, wearing a white doctor’s coat nodded his head and walked over and began snapping pictures. Officer Dawes touched his hands to the wall again and sighed.

There was more writing, much more. Some of it was about a stepmother who could turn into a dragon and a father that grew evil and began fighting off princes, killing them, and feasting on them. Much of it was a day-to-day account of life in the dungeon. The parts that seemed the most realistic hurt the worst of all. He read:

Everything is dark today. The dragon ate the sun. The princess hurts. Almost to much but not qwite to much to write. But she knows she must write. It is the only way to keep the shadows away.

Officer Dawes turned away and faced the tiny limp body being outlined by investigators. He looked at an arm that was much too thin and wiry with muscles. It was clear the little girl forged those muscles while carving these scrapings into the wall with the broken wire laundry hangar still clutched tight in her stiff, clenched fist.

He turned his attention back to the wall where the writing ran out. The paragraphs grew shorter, became fragments of images; the words less understandable, sometimes made-up; and the letters lost coherence, becoming random scrawls and scrapes.

There was no happy ending. There was no ending at all.

Nike's Resignation

2010-11-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

Nike soared into the sky. Her large wings caught updrafts and lifted her higher. She felt the winds grow cooler and more refreshing as she ascended towards the condensing presence above her. The nothingness solidified into darkness. The darkness became solid and welcoming. She flew upwards and flapped her wings a little harder, hungry for home.

Beneath her, the clouds were small, insignificant. Prismatic shifts of reflected sunlight filtered between the nothingness below. She saw right through those clouds and their superficial beauty. Below the meaningless wisps of condensation lay a sea of deep blue and aquamarine dotted by sandy brown and green islands. There was a flash and one of the islands erupted into a mushroom of smoke and fire.

She turned her attention upward. She decided enough was enough. No longer did she want to be among the miserably congested anthills, unthinking bee hives, or diseased roach nests of humanity. War had evolved with these insects and their own self-defeating stupidity.

The skin of her face stretched taught as she ascended towards Olympus. Her robes flowed down in her wake until they were pulled free from her body. She smiled as her skin fell away leaving only her incorporeal essence: her true self, a star entering the massiveness of the night sky where she might find her place in the unending space of the universal. The skin and cloth she shed floated downwards, became a cloud, and then rained down on a blood-soaked battlefield to wash a moment of pain away. Then the corporeal shell rotted with a sea of smoking gore and viscera. Naked now, she glowed a little brighter as she ascended into the Pantheon.

She looked down. She watched as the skies of Earth burst with unending fire. The world burned and she shook her head. Drops of her essence fell down beneath her like tears. She turned her attention upwards and worked her way through the cluttered debris of dead satellites.

There were no victories left to herald, no new songs to be sung of the glories of war, at least, none she could recognize.

"I quit damn you!" Nike yelled down towards the embers of fading civilizations.

"It's okay, dear."

Nike turned around to face the song of another star. Athena moved towards her, their lights connected in a loving embrace, and Nike trembled, overtaken by the sensed impact of an infinity of gentle kisses.

Athena drew Nike closer and the two stars merged into one. "Shh. It's okay. You did your best. You hung on as long as you could. I gave up on them centuries ago. I saw the signs. It wasn't the first time, after all."

The stars shined with their timeless and unchanging beauty.

Back on the wreckage of earth, a man and a woman stood upright. They emerged from the soot and gore and waste of another lost time, of another lost city, of another lost world. They looked up to the stars hoping to find warmth there, but only felt a chill. The man and woman frowned, turned their backs on the stars, and focused on one other.

They began to love. They began to rebuild.

The world continued to spin. Hope continued to burn along with their passions.

Athena and Nike danced overhead. They circled in joy to the tune of new songs that sounded like the old songs but were still their own songs, somehow.

Piggy

2010-10-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

The Mother stood and looked out her kitchen window. Her hands mechanically washed dishes and scraped away bits of dried gravy and beef: the remnants of last night’s meal. Her hands were protected from the scalding soapy water, from the dirt, and from the waste caking the inexpensive china by the thick skin of her pink rubber gloves. She looked out the window towards the clouds and watched them march overhead, marking the passage of time, and so much seemed wasted. She didn’t think about her hands. They moved on their own with an ingrained knowledge borne from endless repetition. Instead of thinking, she dreamed.

“Momma, I made a friend.”

Startled, The Mother turned around to face The Daughter. “Oh, really? That’s nice, sweetie. What’s your friend’s name?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll call her Piggy. That’s kind of what she looks like. She’s got a curly tail and everything. She’s pink!”

The Mother rolled her eyes. She thought it might be a real friend this time but knew this would be too much to ask for. “So, she’s not real then?”

The little girl laughed. “She’s real. Why don’t you come outside and see her?”

“I’m busy washing dishes, honey. You go on out and play, okay?”

The little girl looked down at the floor. “Really, Momma, why don’t you come out and see her. I don’t know if I trust her all the way. She’s kind of weird. She walks on her hands and knees. She’s got a pig nose. She’s got a bunch of ninnies all up and down her tummy like a doggy. She lives in the gutter.

“I’ve told you about that gutter! You don’t play there! You’ll get bit by a spider or a snake or something.”

The little girl looked outside. “She’s calling me. Should I play with her? Would you like to meet her?”

The Mother turned her back to the child and rolled her eyes. She looked up to the clouds, remembered her daydreams and smiled to herself. Her daughter was just like her. She turned back around to face the child. She knelt down to her level and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You can go on out and play with your new friend. Just make sure you stay away from that gutter, okay?”

The child looked outside. She turned to look back at The Mother. “Okay, Momma, I got to go. It sounds like Piggy’s in trouble. Can I have a knife?”

The Mother smiled at her daughter. “No, honey, you can’t have a knife.” She left the sink and walked over to the cutlery drawer. “But you can have this.” The Mother handed The Daughter a wooden spoon. “Here’s a nice sword for you, okay?”

The Daughter looked at the spoon. “This isn’t a sword; it’s just a spoon.”

“It’s whatever you want it to be, right? Remember what we talked about?”

“Imagination, huh?” The Daughter shook her head and walked outside.

The Mother resumed washing dishes with her hands while her mind wandered to strange vistas. She lost herself.

***

“Sweetie! Honey! Where are you?”

The Mother turned around in frantic circles. She looked behind shrubs. She looked in the storage shed. She held her hands over her eyes to block the sun as she stared across her lawn. A chorus of grasshoppers infiltrated her mind, and the beginnings of a migraine formed just behind her temples.

“Sweetie!”

She decided she should check inside. Maybe she did not hear The Daughter enter the house? Maybe she was just in her room playing? She scanned the yard one more time with her eyes. Then she saw it.

There was a strange darkness in a corner of the gutter. Where a concrete drainage pipe had once been, there was only a massive opening. Bits of asphalt from the road crumbled down into the newly shaped hole. It looked to be about ten feet across. The Mother ran to the hole and looked down. She could see nothing but blackness.

The Mother fell to her knees and cried out at the empty sky. Clouds rolled by overhead, but she did not notice them.

***

The Husband grew concerned. Every day when he came home from work The Mother would be standing on the edge looking down into the darkness of the sinkhole. Once the rescuers stopped searching, The Husband hired a contractor to fill the hole, but The Mother would have nothing to do with that. She wanted it to remain open. She still believed The Daughter would emerge unscathed.

Best estimates provided that the depth of the sinkhole was over fifty feet deep, at minimum. They learned their land was built on top of an old iron mine. The ground had shifted and revealed a network of long-abandoned mine shafts.

“It’s dangerous. We need to fill it up.” He said to her one day while she stood looking down over the edge. He stood behind her and held her shoulders.

She shook her head. Tears dripped from her face and fell into the darkness.

***

“Do you hear that?”

The Mother looked at The Husband. It was dark in their bedroom. The lights were off inside the house. The Husband rubbed sleep from his eyes, sat up, and leaned over to turn on the bedside lamp.

His wife’s eyes were large and bright. She turned her head quickly, her hair whipped around her face. “Do you hear it?” She grabbed The Husband by the collar of his faded TOOL t-shirt.

“Hear what?”

“Pigs.”

The Husband frowned. He held up a hand to silence The Mother. He listened. There was the tick-tock of the antique clock in the living room just outside their bedroom. There was the whir of the air-conditioner. He focused his ears for anything that might sound out of the ordinary and jumped as the ice machine clinked out a fresh batch of cubes in the kitchen.

He shook his head. “I don’t hear anything. Can I go back to sleep now?”

The Mother nodded her head.

***

Time passed. The Mother's sleep grew restless. She often awoke to the squeal of pigs. They sounded both far away and nearby at the same time. She'd lay awake with her glassy eyes trained on the popcorn ceiling. Sometimes she connected the dots on that ceiling and imagined the profile of The Daughter's face. The Daughter was never smiling. The little girl's mouth was always open wide in terror as she released a silent scream.

***

The Husband snored. The Mother did not mind. This helped her stay awake. She wanted to stay awake.

Once she knew The Husband was good and asleep, she slipped out of bed. She wrapped a robe around her shoulders and slunk her feet into a pair of flip flops she used as slippers. She walked slowly and carefully, not wanting to make any noise, trying her best to avoid the spots in the wood floor that creaked if stepped upon. She did not want to make a noise. She wanted to be alone.

The sound had been for her. The Mother was the only person The Daughter had told about Piggy. Piggy was waiting. Piggy would have answers.

She slipped out the door and into the humid night. A thin layer of fog clung to the overgrown lawn. She rushed towards the sinkhole.

She looked down over the edge.

A pig’s squeal rose up from the darkness to greet her. Tears fell down The Mother’s cheeks.

“I should have listened, baby. I should’ve come out and met Piggy for you like you asked. Why didn’t I listen?”

Clouds moved overhead. A shaft of moonlight revealed something on the edge of the sinkhole. The mother squatted down to see what it was.

She saw the splintered remains of a broken wooden spoon covered in dark stains.

The Mother reached for the spoon and held it in her hands. She imagined The Daughter’s final struggle.

A pig squealed and The Mother looked up. A large pig stood upright directly in front of her. The pig's eyes were endlessly dark. The beast’s chest and stomach were lined with swollen teats which seeped a dark liquid.

The Mother growled and ran at the beast. She stabbed and stabbed and pushed against the weight of the monster.

Earth shifted during their struggle.

The Mother slipped. She fell. The sinkhole ate her.

***

The Husband hired a new contractor. This time they filled the gaping hole in the yard without protest. It hurt The Husband too much to see the sinkhole. It was a constant reminder of good things lost.

One night he heard pigs squealing somewhere beneath him, somewhere deep down below. The sound made him shiver. He rolled over and went back to sleep by focusing his attention on the mundane reality surrounding him: the whir of the air conditioner, the song of crickets, the tick-tock of an antique clock, the fresh ice cubes crashing into their container. He knew these sounds. He understood them. He never was much of a dreamer. He thought the squeals were just his imagination – they had to be – but still the sound disturbed him. He eventually fell back to sleep that night, but the sounds continued.

Other oddities made themselves known. The sinkhole in the yard refused to be filled. Every few weeks another truckload of fresh dirt was needed to fill in the hungry hole.

One night his bedroom grew unnaturally quiet. He woke up alone in a pool of his own sweat. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of his unlit room he could make out a shadow: the outline of a large hulking beast. In the cool blue glow of moonlight, he saw the impossible: a large sow with seeping teats. It stared at him with black, uncaring eyes. The Husband closed his own eyes. When he reopened them, the beast was gone. He heard the echo of a squeal.

The next morning, once fresh sunlight cast a measure of sanity onto the room around him, he washed a brown liquid out of his carpet where he told himself he had dreamed the figure of a beast stood the night before. He scrubbed and scrubbed and applied more stain remover. He spat into the rug and cursed the impossible stains that refused to be impossible and refused to let him forget.

The Problem With Folks These Days

2010-10-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

I guess this is the type a story I expect you might not believe. In fact, I expect you might wonder if I actually believe it myself.

Well. I do.

It’s the kind of story that starts on a deserted road. That’s always where this type thing begins, ain’t it? And as you might expect, I was all alone. Just me and the trees and the sky and the asphalt beneath my Firestones.

I was down on Route 40 down past the city limits. I know this to be true because I remember all them potholes. I’ve gone back a time or two and those potholes don’t start up till you get past the city. I guess the state or the county or whoever don’t care much about the state of that road once it gets past where all them voters live. It ain’t used much, I know, but still, it just seems a waste to let a perfectly good road go outta shape thatta way. It’s just a dang shame. I never been much for letting things go to waste.

That’s the problem with folks these days. Everything’s disposable. Heck, just look at the divorce rate. Even spouses are disposable these days. Ain’t nothing sacred or meaningful anymore. It’s all just recyclable.

But,you know what? It really ain’t. Nothing’s recyclable. Once it becomes waste it’s waste and will always be waste and there ain’t nothing you nor no one else can do about it.

But people these days don’t think thatta way. Nothing’s worth preserving to this generation except maybe some danged old swampland or forest full a nothing but rodents and reptiles. I just don’t get folks these days. Animals and plants and stuff like that matter while people don’t? Seems a self-defeating philosophy the way I figure.

Anyway, everything made by us people is disposable. Or at least that’s the way most people think. But I don’t. I don’t think that at all. Just look at my truck. Now, I reckon to you it don’t look all that good. I’ll admit it was once much shinier than it is today. It don’t look much like it did off the lot thirty years ago. But, all the same, it’s a good truck. That commie Obama and his Washington cronies said they’d give me a tax credit for it if I traded it in a while back. My boy told me I should get one of them hybrids, can you believe that? But that’s just a waste. It’s been a dang good truck. It still is. It gets me where I need to be anyway. That’s all I ask for.

Besides, it’s packed full of memories. I know you don’t get that – the past don’t matter much to folks these days – but I can remember taking my wife and our oldest son home from the hospital in that truck. My boy had just been a little blue bundle at the time. He had the tiniest fingers. It’s hard to believe that anybody could ever be so small, but I guess we’re all tiny at one point or another the way I figure.

Some of us live our whole lives thatta way. Small, I mean. Some never want to grow. They live like children and die like children…

What’s that? You want me to get to the point? Dang it, I’m getting there! Just wait. Some things are worth waiting for. Now, I don’t know if the point, as you put it, is worth getting to or not. I reckon I got no way of knowing what you’ll feel or how. That just ain’t the way it goes, but all the same, sometimes it’s hard to know what to leave off and what to put into a story, you know what I mean?

No. I guess you wouldn’t. Your whole generation’s forgotten how to talk, I reckon. It’s all text this and email that. Sometimes there needs to be a little back and forth. You just can’t get that the same way on that there smart phone in your hand as you get it on a porch. I don’t know if it’s better or not. I don’t really care, but I know one thing: I’ve never had that carpal tunnel my boy got a year back. The Good Lord made us to talk with our mouths and not with our hands the way I figure.

Well, as I told you, I was out there in my truck. I was just taking a drive and hoping to catch a few catfish from a small pond down in the wildlife management area. There’s good fishing there at night, you know. I just toss out a few lines with some Oscar Myer’s and reel ‘em in till morning. The cats out there just love them hotdogs. But then again, catfish will eat just about anything, and I do mean anything.

That’s when I saw it. It came out of the water. Dangedest thing I ever did see. Like an octopus with the face and body of a man. Maybe I should say it looked like a man with a beard made out of squid. Hard to describe, he was. I studied him long and hard and think he had to be the most peculiar sight I ever did see.

Well, he came over and talked to me. I didn’t see his mouth move none, but I felt what he thought. He told me some of the craziest garbage I ever did hear. All about crumbling galaxies and hidden cities and people he called The Old Ones – they sounded kind a like politicians the way I figure – and he went on and on and on. He talked about worlds beyond worlds. I knew just by looking at him that he was crazy as a loon. Talking about other gods and such. That’s blasphemy the way I figure.

I told him I don’t believe in no God except the one I sing about on a Sunday.

The world kind of shimmered then and I saw things I reckon no man ought to see. I saw the sky itself as what it was. What it really was, I mean. He explained it in my head as the space between elements, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I tell you what it looked like. It looked like nothing at all. That’s the best way to describe it.

I told him that if that there was what he was selling I’d have none of it, and then I started telling him all that I thought was wrong with the world.

Eventually, he just left. He just up and walked into that nothing space and kind of drifted apart. He held his hands over his ears as he walked away.

That’s what’s wrong with folks these days, the way I figure. They just don’t want to listen. Let me tell you, there was this one boy who…

Hey! Where ya going? You ain’t even finished your tea!

Young people today just let everything go to waste, I tell you...

That Cold, Dark Womb of Stars

2010-10-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Davis stared up at the sky. Lying on his back, his shadowed form resembled a pincushion in the gloom of twilight. The fading light from the disappearing day reflected off glassy eyes. He reached up a bloody hand – he wondered how much of that blood was his own and how much had once belonged to others?—and grasped the protruding shaft of an arrow. He grimaced as he pulled it free.

He pulled out arrow after arrow. The notched heads tugged and ripped at flesh and fiber. He ignored the pain. He held his breath as he yanked out each arrow, gasping with pain with each gush of fresh blood. He knew no sorrow. Each revealed seeping wound brought him one step closer to something resembling freedom.

His open wounds bloomed upwards into roses of red. They unfurled above him and rained down blood-soaked tears. Their scent reminded him of love, of something not quite but almost forgotten: another time, another place, a much more comfortable bed, soft skin like rose petals.

He gasped and felt his heart shudder. It shook like a frightened bird unable to extend her wings because the cage was much too small. Those unfurled wings ached and grew stiff from lack of use until the bird found itself paralyzed. He sucked in a draught of air and tasted the roses blooming above him in the sky. Unlike the wings of the bird in his chest, the roses growing from his seeping red wounds could unfurl. There was no cage up in the sky above him. It was wide open.

The night grew dark and stars emerged. He watched the stars dance across the horizon and tried to remember the names of forgotten constellations and saw revelations: glimpses and hints of the now lost stories the images in the sky above him represented once upon a time for another race of man. He smiled and listened to the stars sing a song that only the dying get to hear – a small consolation to offset the fear.

The sky tugged him upwards, and he felt free. The sky was open. There were no cages, but there was a chill. Stars shined, increased in size, and then receded.

Davis blinked, found himself back in his body, and tears rolled down his cheek. His breathing resumed. A sudden awareness of pain shook him to his core, and he cried out. He prayed he might soon return to that cold, dark womb of stars. The shell of his body seemed much too constricting. His roses withered and joined the dust of the desert surrounding him. The wings of his heart cracked as they were bent back and broken. A medic called out his name.

Bubbles*

2010-10-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Jelly watched the shadow orbs bounce around the room. They transformed her perceptions, changing the soft lighting and filtering it into a pale glimmer. She helped her mother paint the room a soft pink last summer. The pink resembled maroon in the half-light.

It looks like blood, she thought to herself.

The orbs continued their clumsy dance. Her bedroom resembled a life-sized lava lamp. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn't.

It had grown familiar long ago.

She turned up the Lady Gaga playing on her IPod, laid back, and smiled.

***

"Momma got run over by a reindeer," Jelly would reply to any idiot dumb enough to ask about her mother. In reality, she had succumbed to cancer. For Jelly, however, the why didn't matter so much. All that really mattered was the finality of it.

At times she had felt sorry for Momma, seeing her pain as her cells degraded and her body wasted away. At other times she did not care so much that Momma had hurt. At least Momma had been there. In pain or not, Momma survived and was willing to hold Jelly's hand while she described her pre-pubescent soap opera tragedies. Momma would nod and smile and stroke her hand.

Aunt Grace had said it had been for the best, but Aunt Grace was a poop-for-brains, as Daddy would say. Except Daddy usually said that other word.

***

It was the night after the funeral that the shadow orbs had first appeared. Jelly was terrified. She screamed into the night for her mother, having forgotten that Momma had passed on.

Her father came in place of her mother. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he asked what was wrong.

Jelly told him, but as the words came out, even at her young age, she felt ridiculous. The orbs bobbled through her room, soaking up the light of her Princess Barbie night light. It was clear her father couldn't see the dark bubbles.

Jelly had called Daddy in a few nights after that before she accepted he never would see them. The orbs – whatever they were – were hers and hers alone. A vision she could share with no one.

Over the years, she discovered they seemed to like music, or at least when she listened to music. Even while wearing the ear buds from her pink IPod, when no living soul other than her could hear the songs streaming through the wires, the bubbles seemed to be in tune. They pulsated, varying between differing shades of grey and black, soaking up the light in different frequencies.

***

The therapist asked her about the bubbles. Jelly felt anger towards her father for betraying this secret. She would never talk about the orbs to her therapist, she decided. He creeped her out, and the only emotions she dared to share with the bespectacled weirdo were imagined. Her reality was her secret. Besides, her fantasies and daydreams were realistic enough. The therapist never questioned her honesty.

Whenever the bubbles came up during their sessions, Jelly shifted the discussion. She would talk about the confusion caused by her budding sexuality. She fabricated stories of pillow fights with girlfriends that went too far. Her therapist didn't seem to mind. In fact, he always forgot all about the bubbles. He would blush and dab the sweat away from his forehead.

***

Night after night she looked up to the ceiling, listening to music, awaiting their arrival.

They bounced and danced for her. They soaked up the light. They vibrated and hummed. Sometimes she imagined words and symbols. Jelly felt the bubbles communicate, but meaning eluded her.

Accustomed to their presence, she grew bold. Listening to a mix tape of gothic dance music her friend Shanna had given her – mostly a collection of remixed Cure and Evanescence songs – the orbs grew around her.

Eyes wide and with a feeling she could not describe, almost a hunger, she reached out her hand.

The orb enveloped her flesh and caressed it. The orbs closed in around her. Invisible fingers stroked through hair. Nonexistent legs wrapped around her. She sucked in a deep draught of air as her lungs tightened. Something held her tight in a bear hug. She held her breath as an orb descended over her head. Inside looking out, everything wavered. Her hair billowed around her head as if she were underwater.

The grip around her, holding her down, relented. The urge to breathe took hold, and she relaxed. She sucked in a breath of…

Suddenly, the bubbles were gone. She was on her hands and knees, coughing, gasping for air. She knew what a fish out of water must feel like.

She purged out a thick puddle of black goo. It bounced and jiggled on the floor like Jell-O spilled from a mold. She shivered. Her body convulsed. She rolled around and felt the texture of the carpet pressing against her bare skin.

"Jelly? You okay in there honey?" she heard her father call from the other side of the door. His voice was muffled by the wood and the distance between them.

She tried to reply that she was fine, but couldn't gasp in enough air to say anything.

She attempted to breathe in but the air felt too thick to enter her lungs. She thrashed and crawled on the floor. Using a dresser, she managed to pull herself upright.

Looking back at her in the mirror was someone she did not recognize.

"Jelly, babe, I'm coming in!"

Thud after thud sounded out as the door shook in its frame.

Jelly was only dimly aware of the rattling door. She was transfixed by her reflection. After the initial shock, she was able to see herself in that stranger's face. Her face had aged fifteen years since she last saw it.

Her hair hung sticky and wet around her. The face was covered with wrinkles. Deep frown lines marred her lower face. She was bruised and battered. A tourniquet was tied around her arm, and a half-plunged syringe stuck out of a vein. She looked into her eyes. They were lined by wrinkles. The pupils looking back at her were black holes on a bloodshot canvas. She was naked and withered. Loose skin hung from her skinny frame in places. Smallish breasts drooped over an exposed ribcage.

The door crashed open and a man she did not recognize entered. He was tall and lanky. Blond dreadlocks hung around a yellowed and acne-covered face. The man's build was nearly as withered as hers.

"Jelly? Baby? You okay?"

Jelly felt the man rush up and embrace her as she fell.

She saw the orbs again and smiled. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt her heartbeat shudder. Death embraced her with the stranger.

*Originally appeared in Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales, Issue #2, Fall/Winter 2008.

The Jogger & The End of Everything &

2010-09-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

I. The Jogger

Leaving the red and heat-scorched road behind, he veered down the trail into the shadows of the forest, grateful for the respite from the sun’s relentless burn. Tall, slender pines swayed with a breeze. Cicadas sang. Off in the distance, he heard the ancient warning of the rattlesnake, but he ignored the primal fear rising on the periphery of his senses. The bulk of his focus placed on his pulsating heart and the steady beat of his feet hitting earth as he jogged. The wilderness was just a passing landscape: a fading entity less real than the internal thrum of blood pumping through veins.

The humidity pressed down upon him. His sweat-stained shirt stuck to his chest and back. He felt movement all around, but shrugged it off, assuming it was the flock of wild turkeys he knew frequented this forest. There was a rustle in the wild blackberry bushes lining the path, but he left it behind without giving it any thought.

The kudzu laughed as it entwined itself along the trunks and branches, an exotic import dominating a new home. Dragonflies gathered together, forming thick clouds which hummed with the beat of millions of lacy and translucent wings. The ghosts of empires long gone – hidden beneath centuries of ancient hard-wood forests which preceded the current pines – whispered riddles in languages lost and forgotten.

And he jogged, oblivious to it all.

The mystery surrounded him, shimmering like heat waves on asphalt. There are windows into other worlds and realities that all too often go unnoticed as we run past them at a relentless pace. He left his past to find a temporary present sparing no thoughts for the darkness ahead.

II. The End of Everything

“We are nearing the end,” she said. Her hair shimmered beneath the sun as it waved, wind-swept and disheveled. I had never seen her look more beautiful.

“The end of what?” I asked as I pushed the throttle forward. The boat sped up and I squinted despite my sunglasses because the sun was magnified and fractured by the ripples all around us.

“The end of everything.” She smiled at me, her teeth fell from her mouth, and her beauty melted. She aged and degraded from beauty queen to corpse to dust, and then she blew away.

The lake became primordial ooze, and it stunk. It stunk with the rot of life, the stench of reproduction, a hint of honeysuckle beneath it all. With the stench there was beauty, the promise of spring, the rebirth from the wreckage. Roses fertilized by manure.

The vision passed quickly like a summer storm and I saw her again. Smiling and beautiful, she rubbed a swelling and exposed belly pulsating with new life as she lounged on the padded seat next to me in her maternity bathing suit.

“Or is it the beginning?” I asked.

III.

Beneath open skies, flowers bloom and sway with a delicate breeze while casting shadows in silence.

Directions

2010-09-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

I understand how the person I used to be shaped the person I am today. I see it now as I look at myself in a distant time. I’m awkward. My hair cut is terrible. I reek of cigarette smoke and other kinds of smoke. My breath stinks from cheap malt liquor. I hear the words coming out of my mouth and cringe at their crudity and sometimes downright idiocy, and I remember self-righteously believing that I was absolutely correct about all that crap and venom spewing off my wagging tongue at the time. Obviously, I was wrong. I know that now that I am looking at myself through the clarifying filter of time.

Is it wisdom that changed me? I would argue this, or would like to, but I know that it would be untrue. I am no wiser. I understand that now. The only truth I’ve learned since then is that I don’t know it all. I can never know it all. There is simply too much to know.

So, I sat down and asked him (myself) questions. He (I) was sullen. I remember this day and know I did not want to talk to a creepy old guy in a stained white polo shirt with long curly hair and a beard full of potato chip crumbs, not when Tansy was there with me, halfway drunk and emotionally vacant.

I had lusted after her then. I could not see the bloated burn-out of an alcoholic she would soon become. I could not know the regrets she would feel daily because of her misspent youth that I myself helped misspend. Could there have been something like love there? I like to think so sometimes, but I know better. My vision was limited then as it still is now. Maybe when I get back I should call her? See how she’s doing. Last I heard, she was three months sober. I clapped for her at that meeting, but it was my last meeting before figuring out time travel. Not that I could go back to the meetings now. I’m not exactly sober these days.

I called him (myself) over again, offered him (me) a pack of cigarettes – I knew his (my) weakness – and finally he (I) came over. I sat down on a fallen log on the stinking exposed bank of the riverside. It was fall and the river was at its lowest point thanks to the hydroelectric dam upriver. The air was full of the scent of falling leaves and rotting fish: a pleasant and nostalgic mix for me, even if the city folk back home would find it offensive. He (I) snatched the cigarettes from my hand and moved a couple feet away from me. He (I) lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. He (I) nodded his (my) thanks. I motioned for him (myself) to sit down. We had a lot to talk about.

I asked, “What do you plan on doing for the rest of your life?”

He (I) released a bitter laugh. “What the fuck do you mean? I don’t even know what I’m doing this afternoon, man.”

“Trust me. I know exactly what you mean. I still don’t know what I’m doing myself. We’ll never know, will we? Not unless we find direction.” I sighed. I placed my hands on my knees and pushed myself up to a standing position. I looked down on him (myself). “Remember this moment. It will happen again.”

He (I) shook his (my) head and tossed his (my) cigarette butt into the river. Together, we watched it wash away with the current until we could see it no longer.

I turned and found myself gone. Tansy walked over with a lit joint in her hands. “Who was that guy?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“What did he want?”

“Directions, I think.”

I thought of the cigarette rolling downriver. It would eventually wash up against a distant shore with the flame long extinguished never to be lit again. There was a sudden burning in my eyes, the threat of tears, and I turned away. I wasn’t sure where I would go, but I knew it was time to leave the riverside.

Indefinable

2010-09-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

Her pain tore through her insides like a serrated blade, yet she smiled. She refused to cry out. She refused to be bowed down by that which she could not see. If it was unobservable, it could not possibly exist. To admit the pain was there, that it was real, would be to accept that unseen things were possible. It would mean the unseen could be real, even if unquantifiable or otherwise indefinable. This opened up too many possibilities she shuddered at internally. She remembered believing in ghosts and curses, but that was long ago, in a time much less rational than today.

Every test had been performed. Every sonogram and ultrasound came back clean. Various probes entered her through various orifices. There was no physically identifiable reason for the pain per her lab results and multiple examinations. They called it fibromyalgia. She accepted this diagnosis. It seemed to fit, but she held her doubts. She understood her doctors were simply classifying the unclassifiable. The doctors’ little checklists best matched up with this diagnosis based on questionnaires and spoken (if intangible and unseen) symptoms. The symptoms pointed towards a diagnosis, and the doctors prescribed treatment.

Yet, none of the therapies helped. None of the medicines worked, not even nerve blocks. The pain refused to retreat. It clung tight to her joints and abdomen like “white on rice” as her mother liked to say. Her sick days – once so plentiful – began shrinking away.

She wanted to know so much. She had so many questions. What was the pain? Where did it come from? Why was it here? And, most importantly of all, how could she make it go away? The doctors provided no answers. The medicines offered no solutions.

So she kept smiling as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan. The blades twirled in cycles. She thought there might be meaning there, but could not fully decipher what it might represent. It could mean so many things. Her thoughts twirled with the fan.

The days grew long and the nights longer. The pain increased until it hurt her too much to move at all.

Her sick days disappeared. She stopped answering her phone.

She lay still. She refused to move. Movement only made things worse. So she remained motionless.

The fan spun above her in an endless loop.

She thought again that it might have meaning, but then decided that this, too, must be meaningless.

She lay still and grew stiff. Her smile remained as she turned to stone.

When the landlord eventually found her, he was moved to tears. He wanted to pay his respects. He wished he had thought of her sooner, but last time he saw her she smiled. He assumed she was okay.

To assuage his guilt and pay his respects, he put her on display in the playground in the center of the apartment complex. It seemed the only sensible thing to do. Now, she smiles throughout the day as children play. The kids twirl on a multicolored steel merry-go-round in cycles while tight clusters of their laughter crowd upwards towards an open blue sky. At night the stars cycle above her. Inside the statue, her ghost imagines it all means something, all these cycles, even if these hints at meaning sometimes grow confused and indefinable. Yet, she learns to accept these hints as something resembling meaning.

She smiles now, not to hide the pain, but because the pain is going away, replaced by mystery.

The Death of Orpheus

2010-09-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

Orpheus looked up at a circular clearing in the ceiling of the forest. Wisps of chilly fog clung to the dirt and long grass swaying around him. Bumps rose on his bare ankles from the cold. He stared heavenward and waited for Apollo to appear. In anticipation, he tuned his lyre then began singing out psalms to meet the rising sun. Wild animals gathered around. They grew tame and peaceful and listened.

The sun appeared, flaming and orange and bright. Its light began to break the chill. Orpheus smiled. He paused in his singing. He heard another song, a darker chant, rising with the new dawn.

A woman emerged from the forest. Bare skin covered in dirt and leaves. Thick tresses of wild hair – that may have once been blonde, may have once been black, but were now a muddy brown – splayed out around her head like Medusa’s serpents.

“Will you join us? Will you play your lyre to Lyaeus? Will you dance with us and succumb to wonderful oblivion?” The woman gyrated her hips and ran her hands down her body. She began to gasp. A smile crossed her face. Her eyes rolled backwards to hide her iris and reveal only whiteness.

“I am Apollo’s poet. I only sing his song.” Orpheus ignored the woman and resumed his song to the sun.

The woman stopped her ecstatic dance and stared at Orpheus. She snarled. “Have it your way!”

A spear rushed at him. The man sang harder and the spear, tipped with leaves, passed him by and left him unharmed.

Other women emerged from the forest. None of them were clothed in robes. They were only clothed by dirt and filth and dried blood. They chanted and sang and danced and laughed. They rushed at Orpheus and attempted to tickle him and seduce him with leaves and flowers and hinds.

Orpheus ignored them and continued his psalms. The sun became brighter as it rose higher in the sky.

The women grimaced as they touched Orpheus and found his body unresponsive. His discipline, his song, carried his concentration.

“This is the one who scorns us!” the first maenad cried out.

The women laughed and picked up stones. They threw them at Orpheus. He sang as rocks bounced off his skin, leaving him cut and bruised and bleeding. But he would not be broken. The attacks only strengthened his song. The attack gave him something new to sing about.

But soon the Bacchantes emboldened their own song. They beat their own drum at an opposing beat. Orpheus lost his way and lost his song. Once the psalm ended, he cried out to Apollo for help as the women rushed him. They tore skin with tooth and nail. They ripped flesh from bone and rendered organs to one another, presenting them as flavorful offerings to Lyaeus himself. Blood dribbled down filthy chins. The God Who Releases appeared pleased as the women danced in abandon in an embrace of primal ancient rite. The world as it was faded and shifted around them. The world devolved into a depraved feast.

The animals of the field, those innocents who had gathered to hear Orpheus’s songs, became prey. They were ripped and torn and devoured while still crying out. The brays of fallen oxen became part of the maenads’ song. Beating hearts, extracted from chests, beat to the rhythm of their drums. There was laughter and ecstasy within a riot of terror, and chaos danced in the light of the newly risen sun.

Orpheus was ripped apart, tendon by tendon and bone by bone. The echoes of his song were lost in the mindless maelstrom of abandon.

Orpheus's now silent decapitated head eventually floated on winding streams to Lesbos. Apollos rescued the silent head of his poet from a hungry serpent.

But this was all above. Below, Orpheus’s ghost sank beneath the blood drenched soil.

Orpheus now looks to Eurydice with confidence. He knows they are together, they will be together, and they will stay together. At last, he no longer fears looking back. He stares at her and smiles. She remains by his side and they love each other. Orpheus no longer feels the need to sing to Apollo. He finds eternal contentment with Eurydice as his new sun, and she loves him in return even without the glamour of song.

The Blank

2010-09-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

A tick-tock mechaman wandered around the shining metal room trying to plug into anyone. The machine was drunk on data, greedy for more. He wandered over to me. His iron wheels screeched and scratched steel floors. He rolled in my direction with his lead thrust outward. Sparks flew from his vision processors. I knocked him away, but he pushed harder against me. I took his lead and jammed it into the punchbowl and laughed as acidic smoke poured upwards from his circuit board. I poured myself a glass of punch and sipped. I received a fading glimpse of a million stolen memories. None of them meant anything to me. None of them were mine. At least there were none I recognized.

I was a blank. There was nothing left.

The data junkies had already taken me. Or rather, I had already given myself to them. At least that is what TomTammy told me. She was my best and only friend. She was the only other organic. It didn’t matter that we did not share the same mold of flesh. She was short and squat and walked about on a multitude of jointed appendages. Her pitch black exoskeleton shone underneath recessed mercury bulbs. It was only because of her that I knew who I was. I saw my reflection on her back and in her compound eyes. I saw many sides of myself reflected in those eyes. I was tall and pale with long legs, long arms, and a sprout of coarse, wiry, salt-and-pepper hair sticking out upwards from my head. A splotchy beard marred my face. My loose flesh was pockmarked and scarred. I looked nothing like TomTammy, but this did not matter. In my way, I loved TomTammy, and based on how fully she saw me, I liked to think she loved me, too. We shared something special being organic. The rest of the ship, the other occupants of this isolated place, rusted around us.

TomTammy walked over and told me my story:

“Once there was just me and the mechas. Then there was you. Then I wasn’t alone. We spoke and told each other our stories. We spoke of our homes and where we were before we came here. You were from a place of light and land and water. You came here to find out more, to learn, to study. Like the mechas, you were addicted to data. You came to converse, to learn. Then you drank with the mechas. Then they plugged into you, and you fell. I sat back and watched and hid. They had tried to plug into me previously, but my shell held me safe. They grew drunk on you. They pushed their leads into every available opening. Once there were no available openings left, they made their own. They cut into your flesh until you were slick with blood. I drank some of this – I am sorry, but I was thirsty. Then you lay still for a very long time. I thought you were dead. I came over to drink the rest of you – I am sorry for this, but I was hungry. Then I noticed you still stirred, if just barely. Your chest moved to take breath, so I carried you back to my web and wrapped you in fibers and sat next to you, watching you, feeling you through my strings. You awoke, you spoke, and I knew you had forgotten me. You had forgotten where you were, where you came from. You had forgotten yourself.”

So, TomTammy rescued me and reminded me of myself, even if I was forgotten, and for that, I owed her my thanks. I did not remember any of her story but knew it was true. I trusted her. She was the only other organic. I had to trust someone. Without someone to trust, there is no life – or no life worth living anyway.

I took another sip of punch and felt inspired. “Are you still hungry?”

TomTammy pulled up on her tiny appendages and rubbed her mandibles. A viscous liquid dribbled from her dark, gaping mouth. Her compound eyes blinked and twinkled. “Come with me.”

I followed. We pushed hungry mechas out of our way and walked to her web.

“Just lie there.”

I did as she said and balanced on a network of strings. The lines clung to my skin. They seemed insignificant and fragile but held my weight. She wrapped me tight with more strings that emerged from her abdomen, and I felt hugged and loved. It was good to feel contact, to feel pressure from something outside myself holding me tight. It was like the embrace of a mother or a lover or both. She hummed a song out from her carapace as she worked.

Once I was wrapped tight, she looked at me. She ran her appendages through my wiry hair, gently taking out the many knots. I closed my eyes and enjoyed her touch. “Are you sure you want this? You give of yourself with willingness? I would never take that which isn’t given freely.”

I nodded my head. “I love you. I want to be a part of you forever.”

“I loved you, too.”

She dug her mandibles into my neck, and I smiled as she drank me away.

A Letter Found Near The End

2010-08-26T17:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Them,

In the beginning, we believed the fairy tales, the myths, the legends. We took all of the stories, processed them, embraced them, and savored them as Truth. This was in the days when The Light seemed to go on forever, when the sun stood overhead as a silent sentry watching over us and protecting us from the darkness on the edges of our enchanted places. Those were the days when we did not know any better.

But those days ended (as we always knew they must), and we were cast outwards into the unknown, to places where not even moonlight could break through to light the shadows in the underbrush all around, where unseen things crept ever closer. We jumped at the sound of breaking branches and shuffling leaves. We turned in circles, blind. We entered the night without dreams where stark reality ruled and cast away our visions and pleasantries, where nightmares replaced dreams, and horrors replaced fantasies.

We learned of murder, rape, and thievery. We committed necessary acts hoping to survive in this new world, the real world, where we never smiled. We missed those days of before when this present was the only thing we were incapable of imagining.

We despaired over the loss of daylight, the lack of kindness and happy endings. That was what led us here into this place beyond the fringe, to the land where stories are never told, and where books are used as kindling.

Our legends faded. The myths dissolved like vapors. The stories … We missed them. Once forgotten, we buried them in the mulch. Worms ate them, and we tasted rot in the air. We found it a sweet stench: earthy, real.

In the end, we lay down with our fading stories as our memories drowned. We fell down onto a mound of water-stained pages and inkblots. We closed our eyes and went to sleep, knowing that our sleep would be dreamless.

We stared upwards, watching, as clouds hid constellations whose names we could no longer remember.

And when The End came, we embraced it.

Sincerely,

Us

Socrates at the Strip Mall

2010-08-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

A class of children sat in a circle at the back of a parking lot. In the center of this circle, a man stood and talked to his young congregation. The man swept his arms behind him with a dramatic flourish. “You see, our story is indelible, written into the very fabric of this world. Look at this cliff. Look here at the layers of stone in this spot revealed when they blasted away a hill to make room for this shopping center. You can see our history. It is written in fossils, obviously, yet also in languages more subtle, if not downright obscure. Notice the striations in the rock, the shifts of color in various layers of soil. Yes, there is writing here. There are stories. You just have to look.”

“I see,” said a broken prepubescent squeal.

“You do? What do you see, Tye?”

“Uhm. What you told me to see.”

“Ah. What if I told you the earth was flat? Would you believe me then?”

Ginger Farrell raised her hand. The teacher lifted his head and pointed his thin chin in her direction. “Yes, Ms. Farrell?”

She swished her head and moved a lock of blonde hair away from her eyes. She held her pen in her hand. The pen sat poised and ready over the colorful notebook in her lap. “Is the world flat, Mr. Jenkins?" She asked the question without a smile. Her face wore the vacant look of sincerity.

Mr. Jenkins slapped his forehead with his palm in an overtly dramatic gesture of frustration.

The children laughed uneasily.

Mr. Jenkins wondered if they even understood the joke? He doubted it. If so, they wouldn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

Mirror Image

2010-08-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

The first time I saw him, his face was pounded in. It was nothing more than bits of bone and flesh and a pool of blood. He was beautiful in his way, a masterpiece of the grotesque, but he wasn’t my type, so I ignored him. He croaked like a toad and gargled fluids.

The next time I saw him, he looked much better. His face had mostly healed. Scars crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead. Yet, his skin was a bit too pale and swollen, unnaturally so, almost like a mushroom. I thought if I touched his face that my hand would sink right in, leaving an impression, like a mushy foam pillow or something. He smiled at me, and I shuddered. I didn’t like the way he looked. Not at all.

The last time I saw him. He was immobile. He was still. He was dead, or at the least, he was dying. A pool of blood originating from a slit neck spread outwards around his head like a strange, gory halo.

My mirror fell forward and shattered into a million reflections. I never knew his name, but at that moment, I knew he meant everything.

Survival

2010-08-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Seth was not sure how much time had passed. The sun had set and risen and set again and again. He lost track of the days. Time did not seem to matter. The shipwreck was already a fading memory. He only knew it had been a long time ago.

Seth’s lips always felt dry no matter how much he licked them with his swollen tongue. His skin was burned. The sun beat down against him relentlessly in the morning until early afternoon.

Luckily, rains fell frequently in the tropics. During the afternoon showers, he sat in the boat with his head turned upwards and mouth open. He drank in the salty sky during those afternoon storms while clinging to the sides of his boat as it rocked and rolled to a soundtrack of thunder. When he was hungry, he gnawed on the bones of his friends.

He survived.

And the sky told him stories when he decided to pay attention. Clouds shifted into the shape of girls, and sometimes, he would smile and feel himself when he had the strength. He remembered the touch of a girl back on the mainland. It had been a long time ago, in another life, in his old school, but the memory was enough to stir him. He sometimes almost felt alive.

He began talking to the gulls until one day they answered him. He did not like the stories the birds told, however, so he blocked out their prattle. He tried to forget their language. One of the gulls grew annoyed with him as it screeched out for attention. Once the gull realized Seth was ignoring him, it dropped a big, wet, white bomb on the boy’s head. Seth laughed, leaned over the wooden sides of his lifeboat, and rinsed the excrement from his shaggy unkempt hair in the ocean.

Underwater, he opened his eyes. He saw mermaids down there, but they were all being raped by sharks. The mermaids screamed up to him for help. Those cries for help soon turned into bubbly terror as the waters became pink and then burgundy. The sharks looked up to Seth through the clouded waters with dark, beady, uncaring eyes. There was no hunger there – just hatred. Seth pulled his head back out of the water and spent the remainder of the afternoon watching shark fins circle him. He tried to decipher the patterns of their movement.

Seth gnawed on John’s femur one night. Upon reaching the marrow, he heard John talking, but the words were obscure. Seth turned around and there was John. Seth’s best friend’s face was distorted. It was pulled too taught, as if it were an elastic sheet stretched over a crudely shaped metal frame. There were no arms on the figure, no legs. It was as if John were made out of transparent gauze. John was nothing more than a distorted face and bare torso. Seth reached out for John. Seth said he was sorry, but John wasn’t really there. John faded into the clouds and rose upwards. Eventually, the cloudy thing that was not John blocked the light of the moon.

Stars swirled above Seth in the darkness, and he traced their lines in the sky. Once the stars provided direction to sailors, but Seth did not know anything about that. The GPS ran out of batteries long ago.

The shark fins circled in concentric patterns.

Seth looked towards the pile of bones. He grew sick and vomited over the side of the boat. Gulls descended out of the darkness of sky and lapped up the slick of his sickness from the swelling surface of the endless ocean.

Seth asked the gulls if they were hungry in their secret language. The birds regarded him with darkness in their eyes. Their squawks became laughter as they descended and tore away flesh with hard beaks.

He survived.

A ship emerged. It ascended from the distant horizon and grew larger until it towered over him. Seth was brought onboard. The men on the ship asked Seth his name, but the boy could no longer speak their language. The gulls stripped his humanity away, leaving him a shark. Dark eyes gleamed under the moonless sky. The boy bared his teeth, rushed at the men, and began to bite.

Above him, the thing that was not John smiled.

The Caveman in the Flowerbed

2010-07-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

I found the first of the cavemen in the loose ground behind Momma's flowers. All around me, the roses bloomed in hues of red, white, yellow, and pink. Between the blooms, between the thorns, I saw his hand sticking out of the dirt. I only got scratched a little as I crawled on my hands and knees to make the discovery. A line of ants crossed his skin. A few bit me on my knees and ankles before I swatted them away. I touched the grey skin of the hand and it felt cold and hard. That's how I knew it must be a frozen caveman.

I went inside to get my shovel. Momma was upset.

"What's that dirt on your new dress?"

"I'm digging up a caveman, Momma."

She made her eyes look big and said, "Really? A caveman?"

"Yes, Momma."

She smiled at me and patted my head. "In that case, you go on up to the bedroom and change into some play clothes, okay? You don't need to be getting your school clothes all dirty."

I nodded my head and ran up to my room where I changed into my pink shorts and a cranberry juice stained i-Carly t-shirt. I grabbed the small plastic shovel Daddy had bought me last summer at the beach and rushed back downstairs.

"Be careful of black widows!" my mother yelled to me as the screen door pulled shut behind me with a hiss.

Digging in the dirt, I was able to reveal an arm. Parts of the skin moved a little, and when I touched those parts they felt gooey. I worked my way up the arm and revealed his body. The caveman wore a t-shirt with a black Metallica logo. Then I dusted off the dirt from his face, and open eye sockets looked back at me. There were no eyeballs. Curious, I poked an empty socket with a stick, and little white bugs were on the stick when I pulled it back out of the hole. Despite his lack of eyeballs, he looked kind of like one of the older guys in my school. Like one of the kids who had moved on to the middle school last year. I think his name was Trent.

I looked at the throat and it looked funny. There was a black line across it, and more of the little white bugs were inside that line. They seemed to have found a home there. I started feeling sick. But I was excited about my discovery and ran inside to tell Mommy.

She did not react the way I expected her to. She came out smiling, letting me lead her by the hand. "I have revealed the caveman!" I yelled while moving my arms around with a dramatic flourish like that magician at school did during his show that one time. Then I stood back and noticed her face.

It turned white, really pale, almost green, and then she fell to her knees and began throwing up all over her flowers.

"Don't dirty your dress, Momma," I told her.

She waved me away. She wiped the spit trails falling off her nose and mouth and pointed to the house. "Get inside, baby! And don't look back out here."

She stood up and grabbed the upper part of my arm. I tried to wiggle away, but she grabbed me tighter. "C'mon! Get inside!"

"Don't you like my caveman, Momma?" I asked her. I looked up to her face. She didn't look back at me. Her eyes were wet with tears and focused on my caveman.

"I've got to make a phone call. Now! C'mon!"

She jerked me so hard tears formed in my eyes. I had a bruise from that yank for a few days afterwards.

She sent me up to my room. I heard her make a phone call. A few minutes later there were sirens. I looked outside and watched policemen talk to Mommy. I saw some men in orange suits take my caveman. They put him in a black plastic bag which they loaded into an ambulance. Mommy signed a piece of paper, and some people in white suits began digging at other places in the flower bed. More cavemen were revealed. All of them looked like boys I knew from school.

When Daddy pulled into the driveway, he started shouting. A policeman grabbed him, leaned him over his Buick, put a bracelet on his wrists, and took him away. I asked Momma that night where they took my caveman and where they took Daddy.

She never answered me. Anytime I brought it up, all she could do was cry.

Maya

2010-07-23T05:01:00.000-07:00

Despite the significance of her name in the Hindu religion, dreams never really sat well with Maya. In fact, the more she attempted to ingest, the more frequently she choked. Her throat burned and blistered every time she tried to swallow another new idea.

Yet this never stopped her father from trying to force another dream down her throat. He would make her stay at the table until she cleaned her plate. He took no excuses. Never mind she just really wanted to watch her favorite cartoon show on television, read her story book (she liked that one about Disney Princesses), or perhaps even work on her homework – anything was preferable to trying to swallow down yet another dry and lifeless dream, and all dreams are lifeless, or at least it seemed that way.

But on this night, her father promised something different. He brought her a dish of greenery. Out of this sea of green, a lotus flower bloomed. A man walked towards her. He stepped lightly across the soft petals.

This man was tan and well-muscled. When he looked at her, a shy dimpled smile cut across his face. A glimpse of white teeth and pink gums. She was hungry. She pinched him. She lifted him. She opened her mouth.

He screamed, and she salivated. She began to chew. She chomped and chomped until his screaming ceased. A line of reddish spittle and blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

“Delicious!” she said with a smile. Then she tried to swallow. “Water!” she cried with her cheeks puffed out. The lump of dream lodged itself against her hard palate.

Her father smiled and poured her a glass of water. It was clean and clear. She took the glass eagerly and poured the contents into her mouth. She could not swallow.

She gagged and coughed. A tiny arm landed on the white table cloth and left dots of blood as it bounced. She coughed again, and a small leg landed in her mother’s dinner glass. It swirled in the pinkish hues of her plum wine. Her mother scowled at her.

Maya wanted to say she was sorry, but all she could manage was another cough. A tiny head struck the tabletop with a small thud and rolled away like a misshapen marble.

Maya’s face turned red. She broke out in hives. It became impossible to breath.

“I’ll get the Benadryl,” her mother said with a sigh. “Seriously, honey, why do you keep trying?”

Maya’s father shook his head and sat down heavily in the massive wooden chair at the head of his family’s table. “Because we are what we are.”

“But just because we are what we are doesn’t mean that she has to be.”

He nodded his head. “But we’ve been this way for so long.”

“Times change. People change.” Maya’s mother stole a glance in her daughter’s direction.

Maya grabbed her napkin and began spitting up the gory mess inside her mouth. She dared not look at either of her parents.

Maya’s mother looked back to the father. “Everything changes. Roles change.”

“But we are the unchanging.”

“Nothing is unchanging.”

“Then, who will destroy the dreams?”

Maya’s mother left the room and returned with a cup full of Benadryl. Maya hated the way the medicine tasted. It burned her already sore throat on the way down.

Once the hives receded, once her breathing was easier, Maya asked, “Can I be excused now?”

Her mother gave her a sad smile. “Sure, dear. Clean up your room before bed, okay?”

“Yes, mother. And father?”

He looked up at her. “Hmm?” A forkful of naked young women were impaled on the tines of his fork. They screamed.

Maya had to shout to be heard over their screams. “Father, I think I know the answer.”

“The answer to what, dear?” Her mother smiled at her from across the table.

“You know, his question. About who will destroy the dreams.” She paused and looked at the lavish dishes spread out across the table. “If you just give them time, dreams have a way of destroying themselves, don’t they?”

Her father shrugged, said “Maybe,” and stuck his fork back into the bloody rose on his plate. A chorus of tiny young women screamed. “Who knows?” he said over their terrified cries. He looked off into the distance and started to chew. The screams soon ceased.

Feeling ashamed, knowing she could never meet her father’s lofty expectations, Maya turned away.

Why?

2010-07-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

Why?

Sadie looked around for the source of the voice. She looked under the bed, in the closet, leaned her head out the bedroom door, and peered down the narrow hallway of her trailer towards the small kitchenette and living room. She was alone. She was always alone. His crap still filled the closet, his tools still cluttered the back porch, but he had been gone for a long time. He never entered the trailer anymore. He knew his place.

She unscrewed the top of her Wild Irish Rose, tipped it up, and tried to forget.

*

Morning struck her like a sledgehammer. She opened one eye and then another and found herself looking sideways at the dirty orange shag rug. The world seemed to have tilted on its axis. She put her hands beneath her to try to sit up, but a wave of nausea rolled through her. She fell back to the ground and breathed in the scent of dirt, of dust, and mold.

The thought of mold sent an erotic shiver up her spine, but she lay still and resigned herself to rest a little longer. A sharp pulsing pain which matched the erratic beat of her heart threatened to split open her head. She closed her eyes again and tried to sleep. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go anyway. The bills were paid. The state made sure of that.

*

Hours later, an eager knock echoed across fiberboard walls and flooring.

She sat up and looked at the clock: 3:15. He used to get off at 3.

“Crap.”

She ignored the pain in her head, ignored the sour taste of bile as it rose in the back of her throat, and wrapped her stained robe around herself. She stumbled down the hallway, using her arms against the walls to hold herself upright.

Why?

It was a whisper in her ear.

“Not now. You’re at the door. Hear that knocking? It’s real this time.”

She thought something grabbed her around the ankle. She tumbled forward and nearly tripped and lost her balance. She looked down, expecting to see she had tangled herself in the belt of her robe, but the robe was untied. The belt was not there.

Why?

She waved her hands around her head as if trying to knock away flies.

The knocking on the door became louder, more insistent.

She rounded the corner. She opened the door. No one was there. A shaft of sunlight poured through the clouds overhead. It lit the stretch of clumped, overgrown crabgrass that served as her front lawn. The gravel driveway was empty.

She stepped outside. “Hello? Wayne? Baby?”

The wind rustled the weeping willow on the corner of the lot. Silvery green leaves danced in the bright sunlight.

Sadie fell to her knees and cried. She yelled out a string of curses which echoed back to her. There was no one to hear. There had been no one to hear her for a very long time.

She walked back inside and looked at the clock on the microwave. It flashed 12:00.

*

She tried to find something to eat. Her supply dwindled. There was a can of corn, sweet peas, an unopened bag of saffron rice, two cans of turkey SPAM, flour, and cornmeal. She took out a can of SPAM, the peas, and the bag of rice.

“How about a nice little casserole?”

Why?

She dropped the can of SPAM. It burst open. The contents bounced, leaving spots of grease like a slug’s trail on her dirty faux linoleum vinyl flooring.

“I had my reasons, Wayne!”

She felt a hand touch the back of her neck. Fingers moved upwards and caressed the back of her head. She leaned into the touch and felt him comb out her tangles. She turned around to face him, wanted to embrace him, but he wasn’t there.

She didn’t cry this time. She expected it. This wasn’t the first time; it wouldn’t be the last time.

Why? Why? Why?

The soft voice was a relentless echoing whisper in her ears.

She looked down at the floor. She saw a rectangular outline in the floor. She thought about mold and fungus and worms and maggots. She looked out the window, checked to make sure there were no cars on the long mud lane leading to her house. She lifted back the thin vinyl flooring, pulled up a hidden door cut into the fiberboard floor, and dropped down into the crawl space below the trailer. She lay down next to him. She smelled mold. She kissed his dry bones.

Why?

She whispered her replies between delicate kisses. “So you won’t never leave me baby. So you won’t never go.”

Overgrowth

2010-07-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

According to a book I read, kudzu is edible. I laughed when I remembered this. Thanks to my datagraphic memory, I was able to pull up the image of those pages in my head. Flipping through the file, the pages even included recipes for various salads and sautéed delectables.

At least the kudzu might be good for something, I thought. I hated the way it grew over everything. It had completely taken over. It even suffocated the trivets – that other hardy foreign botanical invader – where the blackbirds had once hid, jumping from branch to branch. Now the birds, even the black ones, had flown away.

We were so lost in ourselves -- lost in our data -- we ignored the vines growing wild around us. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the world. All that remained was the kudzu, the whirring of hidden cicadas, and me.

And I had grown hungry.

When I tore off a handful of leaves, amber blood pulsed from stems as if they were green arteries. I thought I heard a scream and then stifled laughter, but I ignored this as I shoveled the leaves into my mouth.

They tasted sweet and reminded me of a tender rare steak that Jon had once bought me on a Valentine’s Day date long ago. There had been some effort on his part to make his messy apartment romantic. He even decorated the table with flowers and candles, but it was the steak that won my heart. I remembered having to struggle to leave those last few bites of meat on my plate that day. I wanted to eat it all, but did not want Jon to think I was a pig. We all wear masks like that, especially for those we love. At least for those ones that we want to love us in return.

Like that steak, there was a metallic aftertaste to the greenery, like iron. This was complimented by a hint of something citric or maybe minty on the back of the tongue. I shoveled handful after handful into my mouth. Drool dibbled down my chin. I ignored this and ingested more.

Then the whirring of cicadas buzzed inside my bones. Their song pounded in my head. My vision went spotty, then black. I doubled over in pain.

Vines erupted from my skin as the kudzu grew out and over me. My leaves rustled with bitter laughter.

The Beautiful Visitor

2010-07-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

Jeremy stared at the scene through the grime coating his small hospital window. Beyond a gravel rooftop he spied a speck of blue sky breaking through grey clouds. He breathed in the antiseptic aromas of soap and laundry detergent. He tried to lift himself up, but found it awkward because of the plastic leads trailing down his arm. He thought about The Bionic Man and about what he once thought the future might be like and resigned himself to his present. He looked at the speck of blue and watched as a Jacob’s Ladder of sunlight descended.

The door opened.

A woman stepped inside his room. She was tall and lean and young. She was shapely and perfect. Tresses of golden hair framed a fine face with high cheekbones and large emerald eyes and full lips.

Jeremy worried a moment about his appearance. He wished he had a mirror, but then, considering his present position, he decided it was better he did not have a mirror. This way he could at least imagine he looked like something resembling okay. He ignored the pain in his back as he sat up to face his visitor.

“Oh, it’s you.” Jeremy thought for a moment and then blinked. “Wait. Who the hell are you?”

She smiled and sat down next to him on the hospital bed. She was so light, the flimsy mattress barely moved. The scents of jasmine and honeysuckle washed over him. He breathed her in.

“You remember me? You know me?"

He nodded his head. “I have no idea who you are.”

She smiled. “Confused, huh?”

He thought about the drip lines coursing down from above into his arms. “Maybe it’s the morphine.”

She nodded her head. “Probably. Maybe. What do you think?”

He tried to focus on her question but it filtered in and out of consciousness. “What are you doing here?” He finally managed to spit out. He could not answer her question. His head filled itself with more questions the more he looked at her. The more he looked at her, the more he longed for her. He thought of his wife, his loyal wife who visited him every day, and before he was hospitalized had taken care of his every need, no matter how embarrassing, no matter how undignified. He was ashamed of the amount of dirty bed pans he had made for her, but at the same time was resigned to this. What choice did he have? Age and prostate cancer had led to very little in the way of choice. Life was what it was, and mostly he had found it disappointing. But now, looking at his visitor, he felt an adolescent irresponsibility rising inside of him overtaking all feelings of guilt (and that wasn’t all that was rising – he hoped and prayed his visitor did not notice the rise in his bed sheets).

“I’m here because you wanted me.”

And he knew this was true.

“I’m here because I’m everything you’ve ever desired.”

And he knew this was true, too.

He regarded her and thought of his first kiss, of his first time with a girl, of the first time he had smoked marijuana with some buddies at a KISS concert. “You look so familiar. You look like something I remember from when I was younger, like someone perhaps, but for some reason the word something feels more right.”

She smiled at him and gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

He looked into her emerald eyes and saw things there, everything, all he ever wanted, all he ever desired: that CEO position that had passed him by twenty years ago, the fancy cars, the cabin nestled in the Smokies, the beach house, a model wife followed by another model wife and then another and on and on and on knowing that when one woman grows old and saggy he could always trade her in for another (if Larry King could pull it off, why couldn’t he?), the comfortable retirement (opposed to his current existence where he was bound to leave his wife with nothing, nothing at all, except a pile of medical bills to sort through once he passed without the benefit of his meager pension which no longer offered a survivor’s benefit due to the recession), the kids who grew up to become famous athletes and rock stars (instead of the truck driver and the idiot in jail for possession charges with intent to sell). These green-tinted dreams swirled through his mind and heart and body until he felt a longing more powerful than any he had ever known before. He wanted to embrace his beautiful visitor. He wanted to lose himself insider her. He wanted to rip her apart and take all that was good out of her so that he could devour it and take it all for himself. He wanted more. He always wanted more. Nothing had worked out the way he had once hoped, the way he had once dreamed.

She smiled at him and leaned down. Her bosoms heaved (simply because that’s just what bosoms like hers were supposed to do), and she breathed on him. “You want me? You can have me.” Her breath was soft and warm against his face.

But there was an undercurrent on her breath – the slightest hint of sulfur. The jasmine and honeysuckle fragrance that had once seemed sweet became cloying and suffocating. He coughed.

Jeremy thought of his wife, he saw her washing his bed pans without ever complaining, and saw her for what she was: beautiful. He saw himself for what he was: silly and vain and ungrateful, always ungrateful – no wonder his kids hated him. He looked back to his visitor. She grew pale. Her hair lightened to a brittle grey and then fell out leaving a scabbed and rotted scalp. Her eyeballs began to sink into her decaying flesh leaving black holes in their place. A maggot fell from a nostril and took a chunk of her nose with it.

“What’s wrong? I’m everything you ever wanted, aren’t I?” she asked with a teasing voice.

She embraced him. Her touch chilled him to the bone. He recoiled, fell back against his hospital bed, and watched the sky through the dingy window over the exposed bone jutting through the moldy flesh on her shoulders with unblinking eyes. Clouds came and went. A rain storm passed. Eventually the sun returned. The clouds marched across the blue sky of yet another day. He smiled and found himself able to ignore the cold touch of his visitor. He watched the sun set over the gravel strewn rooftop. The blinking lights of airplanes from the nearby airport swept through the darkening sky.

The door opened. His wife stepped inside the hospital room. He wanted to get up, to embrace her, to tell her how much he loved her, to tell her he was sorry for all he had done, for all those affairs she had ignored (he knew she knew) for the sake of creating an illusion of happiness for their children, and that she had mattered to him and that she had always mattered to him, that she was good enough, and that she was better than he deserved. Only it was too late.

He heard his wife’s cry and understood the only tears she shed were tears of relief.

Cheating

2010-06-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on vacation this week, I am not posting a new story. Sorry about that...

I will post a nice, new, shiny story and return to normal programming next week. Promise.

In the meantime, feel free to read "The Day My Hands Fell Off," a story published a couple years ago at the now (sadly) defunct Dog Vs. Sandwich.

Cheers!

Context

2010-06-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

… and the beach fell away …

When Charlie woke up, the room spun around him. He held his hand to his head and looked to the window. A shadow crossed the light – it was in the shape of a child, then a woman, and then it was gone. He heard something that sounded like laughter.

… the ocean receded …

The tractor whirred across a field of cotton. Charlie steered the machine forward and watched a column of dust rise in his wake. Something ran in front of him. His heart skipped a beat. He tried to steer the machine away from the object. He could almost hear a voice over the roar of engine. Something like a scream. He became aware of the scent of exhaust and felt suddenly ill.

… the stars fell to the earth and burned …

It was impossible to see through a veil of tissues and gauze. He hurt all over. The pain became all he knew. The never-ending aches overwhelmed his perception of the world. Every now and then he heard a voice, a whisper in his ear. More often than not, the voice sounded accusing and cold.

… but the stars were not real, the sea was not real, not even the beach was real …

Charlie sat in the wheelchair and looked out his window. The world rolled by as a parade of pickup trucks and automobiles. Sometimes he would see families pull up and park outside his window. It was never his family. They never visited. Not once.

… “It’s all about context. Without it, you mean nothing.” …

There were words on his page. He wrote them, he knew. They were in his handwriting, but he didn’t remember writing them. Charlie read them again and again and wondered what they meant? In the end, he gave up. They could mean anything. Or nothing. Images invoke feelings, sensations, and the impressions sometimes tell stories. Sometimes. Not this time. Or maybe he just didn’t like the story they told?

… the ocean, the beach, and the stars disappeared leaving behind a parade of cars which were pulled and pushed by endless unseen tides while circling a void …

Charlie can still smell the exhaust. He can still see blood stains splattered across white flecks of cotton. He almost remembers, but knows he will never understand. He touches his head where it hurts and notes the circular scars on his temples.

… “It’s all about context.” …

“I mean nothing,” he said.

… and the beach fell away …

The Empty Road

2010-06-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

A man lay splayed out against the asphalt. A thin but widening circle of pooling blood crowned his head. His face was pale and white. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and trailed down his grizzled face. His breathing came quick and fast. He spoke, and I leaned down to hear his broken whispers.

“The sky is a ball and I am bouncing it on my knee. We play four square with the sun and dodgeball, too. I love dodgeball. If I catch the ball you’re out. You’re out. But who are you?

“And where’s Goldie? She was around here somewhere. Oh, yeah, she chased a squirrel across the road. That car hit her Momma, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You told me I should never let her off the leash.”

He wept and sobbed.

I tried to calm him. “Shh. It’s okay.”

His wild eyes turned in frantic circles. Lids fluttered.

“What’s that? Not the dark. I’m scared of the dark. Can’t you leave the door open, Dad?”

At this point, he shuddered. Tears fell down my face as I listened to him ramble. I just wanted to comfort him any way I could. This was all my fault. “It’s okay. Shh. I’ll leave the door open. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” I hoped he didn’t hear the emotional uncertainty in my breaking voice.

“Tell Brian that I forgive him. It’s okay. I never loved her anyway.

“Ooh. What’s that? There’s so much here. So much light. So much of everything. So much. Too much, almost. There is beauty in the not here, and the not here is there, it is really there. Whatever it is.”

He stopped and looked at me with a sudden and forceful clarity. “I forgive you.”

I thought about the dull thud when I hit him, and how quickly I had sobered up as I pulled my car over. I knew the police would be here soon, but I would not run. Tears streamed down my face, and I sobbed. “Thank you,“ I told him. “Thank you.” And for the first time in a long time I knew something close to peace, but it hovered beneath an oppressive veil of grief and guilt, yet he forgave me again.

“I forgive you.”

“Thank you.”

His eyes glazed over.

“Where’s the train? Where’s the train? I hold out the butter and it melts.”

I reached down to him and felt his burning wet forehead. He looked at me one more time, one last time – there was clarity in his eyes for just the briefest of moments – and then he looked through me towards the hills and the rising sun behind them. It may have just been his muscles finally relaxing once he gave up, but I thought I saw him smile.

I also thought I heard the faintest of whispers: “Beautiful.”

Distant sirens echoed through the hills. They sounded empty. They sounded unreal, as if from another world.

I reached out a trembling hand to close the dead man’s eyes. I closed my own eyes and prayed while his cooling blood congealed.

... Beautiful ....

His Dreaming

2010-06-04T04:17:00.000-07:00

He molded me out of clay. Small fingers pressed down to make eyes. A lump of pink approximated a nose (not that it was any good for smelling, of course – it was purely decorative, just like the rest of me). He called me Geronimo and pressed me down onto the top of His television. The elongated balls of blue which served as my feet and presented an extremely vague resemblance to stitched moccasins were mushed flat at the bottom so that I could stand. From this perch I stood and watched Him as He slept beneath the glow of his nightlight. I held my toothpick spear at the ready in case any intruder should slink in the window or barge through His locked bedroom door.

I didn’t do much, but it was enough. I served my purpose, I protected Him while He dreamed, and this made me feel content in my way. At least it did most of the time.

In fact, I quite liked my existence at night. I watched Him sleep, noted how His eyes darted when He dreamed, and sometimes I could peer inside His mind and follow His nocturnal adventures. We drifted down the Mississippi together in a splendid canoe. He came up with so many adventures, so many stories, so many characters, and He did it all without any apparent conscious effort. He left me in awe.

Nighttime was my time. Dreamtime was my time.

Daytime, on the other hand, was something to dread. It was so lonely. The toys sat sprawled about, unmoving. They were lifeless without Him, and so was I. Sometimes The Mother would come in and make up the bed or vacuum the rug, but she never played with us. Sometimes she organized the toys. Sometimes she threw some of the broken toys out. Sometimes I feared her. I was just a useless lump of clay. I could be garbage.

But she left me alone. Sometimes she even smiled at me. I knew how ugly I was, I could see my reflection, but I guess she saw some part of my creator in me and that made me beautiful through her eyes. I was an extension of Him, and this comforted me during the long days.

I would watch the sunlight slant across the room and move slowly, ever so slowly, while He was gone to school. The days crept by while the nights flew past in a blurry haze, and time went on this way until one day He didn’t return.

I waited and watched His bed. I watched the toys. I watched the windows. I saw red and blue flashing lights at one point. I watched the door. There were muffled questions being asked of The Mother by strange authoritative male voices just outside the room.

Time went on and no one entered the room. We were alone. We were without Him. We grew dusty. The nights were long without His dreaming. I mourned the loss of my purpose. I mourned my failure – my spear remained in place, unused. Without the sun slanting into the room, I did not even have a way to mark time. The nights seemingly stretched on into infinities before the morning sun finally appeared to light the windows.

Days passed. Nights passed. The room remained still and lifeless.

Months passed.

One day The Mother entered the room with garbage bags. She wept as she shoved everything into the bags. All the toys, all the clothes – they were all removed. I grew scared, not knowing what my future might bring. The toothpick spear trembled in my hand.

The room grew empty except for the furniture and except for me. I remained as time crawled onwards, and every day brought more sorrow and more trepidation. The future was unknown. The past was gone and I couldn’t change anything. My toothpick spear, my all-important weapon, had been useless to stop whatever had happened. I had been helpless to protect my maker. A fit of terror seized me when I realized my purpose would remain forever unfulfilled. My spear would forever be unused.

Then one day, The Mother noticed me. She stopped. She smiled. A tear fell on her face and she lifted me up. She caressed me with tender fingers. I thought about how His fingerprints were embedded all over me, and I felt something like hope.

She carried me to her bedroom and placed me on her nightstand. She placed a glass jar over me, and there I stood.

From time to time she looks at me. Sometimes she cries, sometimes she smiles, but I always feel wanted, perhaps even needed. I have a purpose. Yet the toothpick in my hand remains unused; a painful reminder of all that I could not stop. I forever mourn the loss of His dreaming.

Under an August Moon

2010-05-28T04:32:00.001-07:00

We sat among empty beer cans, broken bottles, and cigarette butts in the small clearing. The night was sweltering. Our shirts, sopping wet with sweat, clung to our backs. A cloud of sticky smoke rose above us and slunk through the thin canopy of stray branches overhead. We coughed loudly with every exhalation underneath the full August moon while laughing at nothing at all.

We talked and joked with one another, spread rumors, and swapped horror stories of sexual conquests gone wrong. So far, they had all gone wrong for all three of us. We were still young, still inexperienced in the ways of women, still light years away from even the remotest understanding of the mysteries hidden in blessedly comforting curves.

The camping lantern shed an artificial glow on all of our faces, casting shadows where none yet belonged, giving us each a glimpse of how the other might look after the years wore down on us, and we became mere ghosts of the people we were that day. We were still healthy then, still blind, still smiling.

We knew the world moved on around us. We heard the low hum of cars on the freeway a half mile through the brush to our east. Airplanes flew overhead, red and green lights flashing. A train whistled as it rode through what would be an empty intersection at this time at night in this part of the world.

Life was moving, but we were stationary, lost in our smoke, sipping warm beer, and we stayed there a while longer, laughing at nothing at all.

Sally

2010-05-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

The Pastor Comes A Courtin’

Pastor Jason shook hands with Momma and Daddy at church. Momma asked what such a fine young man was doing without a wedding band? He said he just hadn't found the right girl yet. He looked to me and smiled.

He never asked me out, but he asked Momma. Momma agreed, and he took me on a date. He took me on a walk down a nature trail and talked to me about God while he did things to me I thought God should never know about.

Marriage

I suffered morning sickness on my wedding day.

The Honeymoon

I sat down on a toilet seat that was cold and wet with his urine. Before going to bed, he put a fresh roll of toilet paper on the roll. He made it go under. I prefer the paper to go over.

Birth Pains

Still newlyweds, he would not come to the hospital with me. I was there all alone while I miscarried that first time. It was the same the other three times. He said his parishioners needed his comfort, and he had God's duty to perform. My stillborn infants' dead eyes never saw their father. Perhaps that was for the best?

The Parishioner

Cathy Jacobs, a single mother, kept having children out of wedlock. All three of her children looked like Jason.

Insomnia

There were recurring dreams of my children. They looked like me, not Jason. They looked nothing like Cathy's children.

I woke up sweating and feeling an empty pit in my stomach. I touched the scars from my last C-section, and went to the bathroom to cry. Once again, the toilet seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

The bastard!

The Request

I asked for a certificate of divorce the next day. He quoted, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." I mention that divorce is permitted in the case of infidelity. He claimed there was no infidelity, and even if there were, a Christian woman would forgive.

Trapped

He refused the divorce. I talked to Momma, and she told me I was being ridiculous, that Pastor Jason had opened up so many doors for the family. She told me to stop being so selfish.

"Besides," she reminded me, "you don't have a job. What would you do?"

I had no answer.

Jason moved us to a big house in the country. I was only allowed to leave the house on Sundays. I sat on the front pew, listened to him preach, and forced a smile on my face.

Bruises

He no longer slept with me. The only time he touched me was when he hit me. As lonely and isolated as I was, I made him hit me a lot. I know it was wrong, but I enjoyed the touch.

A New Day

There was a new parishioner. A middle-aged man named Charley. He was a tall blonde with an athletic build. Despite his age, he looked younger than me. Before coming to town, he used to play football in the city. He's retired now.

He smiled at me. I smiled back and uncrossed my legs.

A Second Request

I asked for a divorce again. Charley promised he would provide me a way out.

My husband refused, quoting "And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."

He hit me and called me a sinner before leaving me alone in the house. Jason drove away to be comforted by his parishioner.

Salvation?

Reading the Bible, looking for a way out, I read "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell." I didn't want to sin. I understood I had to cast off the hand.

A Bonfire

I got up to go to the bathroom. The seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

I had enough.

I took the roll of toilet paper into the bedroom. I straddled Jason, used the sheets to hold him down, stuffed the toilet paper roll into his mouth, and lit it on fire. His screams were muffled as the sheets caught the flames.

The firemen found me laughing in my nightshirt while I watched the blaze burn the house to the ground.

The Caged Bird

On Sundays I am surprised by how free I feel despite being enclosed in my cell. I sing and write long love letters to Charley.

He never writes back.

The Fisherman's Tale

2010-05-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

Wrinkled hands, spotted by an age of outdoor living, reeled in the line. The fisherman squinted as he watched his line dart across the rippled and sun-dappled surface of the pond. He pulled back. The reel squealed. His fishing pole bowed into a steep curve. The tip pointed outwards and flicked around as the line moved.

Something leaped in the water about twenty feet from the shore. Something big. It shined a multifaceted reflection of golden sunlight.

“Ha! You’re a big one, ain’t you? C’mon baby. Don’t fight it.” He held his breath and let out a little slack, worried the line would break from the strain.

The reel whined as the fish ran out towards the center of the pond. Once the line stopped moving, the fisherman inhaled and pulled back on the pole again. The fish struggled, but not quite as hard as before.

“That’s right. C’mon over here baby.”

The fish gave up the fight, and he was able to reel it in. He bent down among the reeds lining the muddy shoreline and reached into the water to pull out the bass. It was the strangest bass he had ever seen. It was as golden as sunlight; it reminded him of how his wife’s blonde hair had shimmered back when they were still young and used to swim in this very pond.

He reached down to grab the fish by the mouth.

“Excuse me.” The fish said.

The man fell back on his rump. Reeds and mud cushioned his fall, protecting his fragile hip (it had just been replaced six months ago). “What the –“ He pulled his pole up and began slamming it against the fish.

“Ow! Cut it out! Damn it! Stop it!” the fish screamed.

The man began to yell himself now. “Dang demon! What the hell!”

The fish tried to swim away, but could not. The line was tangled among the reeds. The hook was caught in its lip. “Stop it, old man! I can grant you wishes!”

The man paused, his pole held up above his head. “Wishes, huh?”

The fish looked at him and nodded its head by contorting its body. Scales glistened. “Yes. Three wishes. That’s how this thing normally works, right?”

The fisherman shook his head. He thought to himself that he needed to check the side effects of his new cholesterol pill. He could not remember the warning label saying anything about talking fish.

“So?” The fish looked up to him expectantly. “What’s your first wish?”

The old man thought about his wife, he thought about his kids and grandkids, he thought about the warmth of the sunlight beaming down against his bare scalp and soaking into the t-shirt on his back, and he paused to listen to the songs of grasshoppers and cicadas. He shook his head and began beating the fish once again with vigor.

“I don’t need you, demon. I gots all I need!”

Shining scales littered the pond. Like rising ghosts, steam filtered up from the dissolving golden flecks along with the smell of corruption.

The fisherman nodded his head, spat into the water, packed up his tackle, and turned towards home. He smiled. He knew his wife would be waiting on the front porch with a smile and a nice glass of iced tea.

The Day the Sun Slept In

2010-05-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

The sun didn't come up, so I decided to stay inside. I figured there was no point going out if there ain't no light to see by. I remembered hearing about something like this back in Sunday school – that God had done something with the sun for some battle or something, but I've always been fuzzy about details. I've never been a good student.

I thought I'd paid the power bill, but the lights went off. I kicked my toe against the coffee table and it hurt like hell. It's a wonder the neighbors didn't call the cops with all my fussing. My damn apartment has thin-ass walls.

With nothing better to do, I tried to play some music on my iPod. I thought some Zeppelin would do nice, or maybe some Sabbath? But that damn thing didn’t work either, and I knew I just charged it. Fucking piece of shit!

After sitting in the dark a while, I got tired of staring out the window. The swirling purple clouds were pretty weird, but after a while they got boring. I pulled out the old hookah and lit up some stems and seeds, all that was left in my baggie after the night before. I coughed on the harsh smoke. It burnt like fire.

Hoping to refresh my stash, I called my buddy Roach, but my cell had no charge. I tossed it out the window because it pissed me off.

The phone broke through the window and stopped in midair among dozens of glass shards. They sat a moment, still, and then began spinning before slowly floating up into a black and purple swirl of sky.

Papers fluttered throughout my apartment. A couple taped-up concert flyers from my old band ripped off the living room wall.

I decided I didn't need any more weed after all; my tongue felt like a stuffed sock.

Shuffling my feet and using my hands to guide me through the dark, I carefully walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and spilled my milk. It pooled on the floor. I felt an odd urge to cry, but it passed.

I pulled out a beer – the only liquid I could find since the sink wouldn't work – but it was one of Bob's damned imported pieces of shit. I tried to twist off the cap and cursed as the serrated edge cut into my hand. I needed to find a bottle opener.

I remembered a flashlight I kept on the fridge. I pulled it down and laughed because it didn't work. Of course that piece of shit would be out of batteries, too.

I put the flashlight back in its place and worked my way over to the little window in the kitchen, unopened beer in hand. The cold condensation felt nice on my bleeding palm.

I looked out and knew something was wrong.

Behind our apartment is a school. Normally, when I wake up around noon the place is swarming with kids. They're out there hollering and going on during their recess, generally pissing me off as I try to sleep.

But the playgrounds were empty.

The school was dark and without students.

I couldn't have known it at the time, but I felt it. I knew deep inside that I'd never see another kid again. And I'm glad.

What's left of this world ain't no place for children.

After Hours at the Surf & Turf Express

2010-04-30T04:34:00.000-07:00

Wayne lay face down with his fingers interlaced behind his head.

So this is the way it ends?

And the men in masks yelled out commands. They demanded money, more cash. They screamed and yelled and fired bullets into grease-stained ceiling tiles.

Maybe if I could just reach up and grab the fryer basket? Maybe I could toss it into his face? Maybe? No, don’t be stupid. The other dude would just shoot you. But maybe it could create a distraction? Stop it, Wayne! This isn’t a movie!

Wayne heard Jill the cashier whimpering next to him. He knew why she cried. She had a baby at home. She would be wondering if she would ever see her baby again. She wondered who would take care of her baby. But the gunmen ignored her fear. They ignored her tears.

It’s not like the movies. I might die right here, right now. There is nothing here. No hope. No choir of angels. No music. No light. There is only desperation and greed.

One of the men held a gun to the manager’s back. “Unlock the safe!” he demanded. The manager complied. The men took out a black plastic deposit bag. It was thick, but not too thick. It contained perhaps two thousand dollars in assorted bills and change.

So, this is the cost of my life? The cost of all our lives combined? This is all we’re worth? A few thousand dollars? What are dollars? Meaningless. Paper symbols of imagined wealth.

And then the men with guns left. They walked out into the parking lot, leaped into their car, and drove away. Jill’s tears became tears of relief. Wayne stood on shaky feet.

I think I’ve had enough of the fast food biz. I think I’ll take up another line of work. Something safer. Maybe I’ll be a rock star? If nothing else, music will be there with me. I’ll make my own choir.

*Inspired by an actual robbery at Long John Silvers as reported by Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Coyne#Early_life). Many artistic liberties taken, only bare facts used as inspiration. Soundtrack Recommendation: “Watching the Planets” by The Flaming Lips, from the album Embryonic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQX4R9yHWc&feature=related.*

An Empty Sacrifice

2010-04-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

The dog fell among the carnivorous flowers on the riverside. I saw her glassy brown eyes, her wet nose sniffling with fear, and she whimpered. Greenery wrapped around her and held her tight. Toothy flowers suckled like the hungry mouths of newborn babes. She looked to me with trust in her eyes, with a fading glimmer of hope. I had no choice but to drop her leash and turn away.

The woods ahead were silent. I was alone and lost and scared. The trail was only hinted at, hardly ever used – but still used far too often – and I tripped among overgrown strands of ivy and kudzu littering the forest floor.

A trickle of water gurgled on a nearby granite wall where a small creek had hewn stone into a steep cliff, and I pondered the immensity of time, and for a moment, lost myself in thoughts of the eternal.

Then the sunlight glared down at me through the trees as if to shock me out of my random reflections. I stopped thinking and began walking again. Forward to the village, onward to civilization, or at least the remains of civilization, towards my new home where they would welcome me with open arms as one of their own now that I met their requirements.

At the gate of my new home I was met by piles of bones and the buzzing of flies.

I had sacrificed all that was dear to me, so I was able to enter, but I knew part of me would always remain on that riverside. That part of me was washed away with the eddying currents. I just hope that the muddy river led that part of me towards a world better than this.

Inside my new home I looked around. I touched my hand to the rough walls of the fort. I felt rusted aluminum, a patchwork of salvaged fiberglass, and the drying husks of ancient fallen trees. I looked up and saw a noisy haze obscuring the sky -- a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. I looked around and everyone looked just like me. Distraught, I sat in the dirt and wasted away and thought about how much better everything might have been had I simply retained the mental fortitude necessary to go it alone outside girded walls.

But, in the end, we all must make our sacrifices. Society demands it.

I thought I would sleep better once enclosed in the safety of the fort; I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Reunion (Based on a True Story*)

2010-04-16T04:55:00.000-07:00

With thanks(?) to Berrien Henderson. This one is your fault!

The doublewide sat in a field littered by clumps of crabgrass, rusting tricycles, and the random husks of automobiles propped up on crumbling cinderblocks. Waylon Jennings crooned through an open window, but we could hardly hear him over the sound of our riotous laughter and exaggerated gossip. Uncle Vanya passed around a bottle of white lightning -- he drank the stuff like a baby drinks milk -- and we all took turns sipping and spitting fire. Cousin Geli -- affectionately nicknamed “Sasquatch” -- ate all the potato salad. She didn’t share any of it. That boy of hers, Tommi, jumped her -- the crazy ass fool -- and sucked bits of devilled egg and mayonnaise from the chest hair on top of the fleshy bosoms exposed by her tight hot pink halter top. Geli giggled, giggled, and giggled some more as we pulled Tommi away. I slapped him on the nose and chastised him. We decided it would be best if we cut him off -- he’d had enough for the day. We locked him in the tool shed out back, and he howled like a hound dog.

My brother, Skinhead Charlie -- so-called due to his hairstyle and not because of any ideological reasons, at least as far as I know (or his wife either for that matter; hiding it from her would be difficult indeed) -- stumbled around singing my long hair can’t cover up my redneck as loud as he could, and I laughed because the irony was totally lost on him. His wife, Clarista, and his boy, Natanyon, shook their heads in embarrassment. They looked around with apologies written on their faces. Her brown eyes met mine. I nodded to her, leaned over, and ruffled Natanyon’s overgrown knot of tight curls. I winked to Clarista to let her know it was all good, nothing we haven’t seen before, and besides, the night was just getting started. I’d met them in the city where they lived once. I spent the night in their clubs and grinded and bounced while the MC scratched records and the smell of sweet cigarillos filled the air. It was a good time, but she was wrong if she thought that that was the extent of what it means to party. That wasn’t a party. It was a good time, yes, but not a party. Our reunions are a party. If they survive, they’ll know the difference and never forget it. If, when morning rises, their sanity is left intact, they will be one of us. Yes, they’re family now, but there’s family, and then there’s family.

So, I got up and grabbed a Bud from our ancient mud-stained cooler, cracked it open, and licked the foam from my fingers. I walked over to the grill where Granny wore her finest plaid apron inscribed with the words “IF YOU SAY IT AIN‘T DONE ENOUGH, YOU CAN KISS MY ASS!” She had her own jug of moonshine. It hung from her pinky finger. She brought it up and took a big old side-sipped swig without even making the hint of a grimace. She smiled and pointed to me with the tongs she held in her other hand and asked well, what the hell you looking at, shit head? I smiled back and gave her a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. Despite the heat of the day, her skin felt cold. I said I was just coming by to check on the vittles, and she said fuck off. With a jerk of my hand I grabbed one of the ribs from the rack. It fell off the bone, tender as pudding. Granny slapped me on the back with her tongs and laughed. Then she kicked me in the ass, so I stumbled away.

And then the real festivities began. The sun dipped low in the sky. The surface of our small fishing pond shimmered in alternating bands of orange and red as the water rippled. The wind picked up and we smelled it -- the life of the party. A tentacle shot up out of the center of the water. I shouted and pointed.

The music stopped. Everyone stopped. We waited.

Uncle Vanya walked to the pond. His eyes were rolled back into his head; all we could see were the whites. He held back his neck and sang his song, a single wavering note. I heard Natanyon and Clarista ask what was going on. I would have told them it weren’t nothing to fear, but that’d be a lie, and besides, being scared is part of the fun. Uncle Vanya paid no mind to anything besides his song. We all sat in silence and listened to him. His skin began to pulsate around his ribs. It opened, just a slit, and the single note became a loud creaking croaking. The croaks emanated from his inner depths. He reached up a fist, his wiry arms covered in burly dark hairs, and thrust it into the slit. He reached around a moment -- you could see his arm moving under his skin -- and then grabbed something and pulled it free.

The catfish flipped and flopped in Uncle Vanya’s fisted hand a moment. The shell of skin that had once been Uncle Vanya collapsed in on itself. The catfish walked on its spiky fins towards the pond, but we all knew it wouldn‘t get very far. The water began to roil. Tentacles reached upwards and waved towards the dimming sky as if trying to grasp the stars that had not yet appeared. There was a thunder of applause and we hooted and hollered. Granny walked down to the pond’s edge and picked up the bloated catfish and tossed it into the water. She kicked Uncle Vanya’s shell behind her. The tentacles scooped up the worthless bag of skin and tore it apart. As the tentacles sank back down into the water, we could all hear Uncle Vanya laughing, laughing, and we laughed with him, and I was a little jealous. A selfish part of me hoped it would be me this year, or at least Granny -- lord knows she’s waited around long enough -- but we love each other, and celebrate for each other, and don’t hold no grudges. I sipped Vanya’s white lightning and said cheers under my breath, and I knew he heard me. They all heard me, all my relations, and sometimes, when I’m fishing, I can hear them down there. They’re always partying whether we're here for the reunion or not. For them, the party never ends.

Once Vanya was gone, and the ripples faded into a smooth glassy surface which reflected the rising moon, we all turned away. Skinhead Charlie pulled out his banjo and played his twangy version of David Bowie’s Let's Dance. I did as the song asked and danced with Clarista -- her eyes were wide with fear, or maybe wonder, but glossed over by confusion -- and I told Natanyon to cheer up, to stop crying.

It was a party, after all.

*No, not really. Just goofing off. My family is actually much weirder than this one.

The Screech

2010-04-09T04:43:00.000-07:00

He walked forward into the woods until the vines strangled the path so that he had to duck and dive through briar-littered lengths of new growth, and dying leaves fell from the sky in slow lazy pirouettes, and the world lost all luster, and the grey bark of towering trees threatened to overtake the horizon, and deer leapt past him and ignored him, and the sun set behind the hills, and it grew dark, and the brook burbled, and frogs splashed as they jumped into cool depths and out of sight, and there was a screech on the horizon he could not place – was it some strange breed of owl or mountain lion? – and he did not know, nor did he care, and the world went on and on and on without him, and the world did not know anything of him or that he was missing from the cradle of civilization, and his boot tracks were a twin trail behind him sunk in wet red clay, and he kept walking forward on a trail long overgrown, and the briars scratched and ensnared his tattered clothes, and he ignored the tiny cuts, and the trail turned upwards, and, despite the chill, sweat beads rolled down from his forehead, and his shaggy hair plastered to his clammy forehead, and he breathed heavily with his exertions, and the sky grew a pale salmon then a deep purple then faded to black, and stars peeked out of the blackness overhead, and a pale orange moon smiled down on him from between the boughs overhead, and he lost himself in shadows, and he heard another screech – this one was closer – and he looked around and tried to make some sort of sense out of the nonsensical ideas which filtered through his head, and he remembered bogeymen and vampires and werewolves and zombies and men in masks carrying machetes and other oddities remembered from the television screens of his fractured childhood, but then he remembered who he was – what he was – and he smiled, and he touched the blade of the knife sheathed in his pocket and found it sharp and hungry, and he walked down the hill and towards another quiet little suburb of another sleepy town just waiting for a wake-up call, and he could see the lights through the windows where silhouettes of families dined together, and he imagined how they would react to his sudden entrance, and he laughed, and he realized that the screech had only been the echoes of his own twisted laughter all along.

Blinders

2010-04-02T04:56:00.000-07:00

Walking out on the downtown streets, I watched piles of trash float in the water coursing down the gutters. A used condom stuck to the bottom of my shoe. A bearded skeleton of a man sat naked in the rain, shivering.

People walked by as if they could not see the pitiful figure sitting on the curb. Seeing him, I realized I had walked past him many times, but never noticed him until now. I looked up to the dark clouds overhead, watched a bolt of purple lightning strike between the clouds and felt the rain splash my cheeks. The rain camouflaged my tears.

The crowd walked around him, and began to walk around me. I stopped, but the crowd moved on without me. I saw my coworkers pass me by, heading to the refinery, getting ready to work that stinking Martian clay into fuel. I took my black trench coat off my shoulders and bent down to drape it over the naked man.

He looked up to me with his wrinkled and hardened face. A glimmer of a smile appeared through the veil of his beard: pale rotting teeth and bleeding gums.

"Thank you," he said to me.

"You're welcome."

"I've been here for five years now. No one has noticed me. They walk past me, leaving me here cold and shivering in this unending artificial rain."

There was another flash of lightning overhead. I saw his face, saw through his face, and saw something majestic, but just as quickly as it appeared it was gone. The wrinkled visage returned.

"Look at them passing us by, looking forward, looking to their work, looking to their paychecks, looking to get wasted, looking to get laid, make babies, and send them off to Institution. They don't see us. They're obstructed by their own self-imposed blinders. Do you know why horses used to wear blinders back on Earth?"

I shook my head, bending down closer to hear his raspy voice over the howl of wind and the roaring rain.

"The old stagecoach drivers would put the blinders on so the horses wouldn't be spooked by what was around them. That way the horses could only see the trail ahead and not be distracted by the dark shadows hiding in the brush lining the trail. It kept them on course."

His smile widened and he pointed across the street.

"With your blinders off, what do you see?"

Wasted and crumbling buildings lined the other side of the street. The remnants of an old mine now used up. Beyond it the world ended. There was a maroon waste beyond a clear Plexiglas wall as far as the eye could see.

"Now look at me."

I looked back to the man. The lightning flashed again, and this time the brightness seemed to linger. In the light, I saw the true features of the figure below me. He unfurled his wings and glowed against the dingy world surrounding us.

"Do not be afraid. I come with tidings of great joy."

I felt a smile widen on my own face and fell to my knees. I held up my hands to the figure rising above me.

He reached down and touched my mouth. It burned as if touched by flaming coals, and my lips were sealed.

He floated further up and shouted down at me. "Spread this message because it is good! Let it take root! Once you do your part you may join us."

The sky parted and I saw others in an unreal whiteness above the clouds. Above the Plexiglas dome I glimpsed ultimate knowledge and unity before the clouds closed to me.

I sat naked on the curb and looked around.

No one had seen. The patrons of this world walked around me. They always looked forward thanks to their self-imposed blinders. Wondering how long I would have to wait for the next prophet, I sat down naked and began to shiver.

Known Meets Unknown

2010-03-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

When the crewman found the angel hovering outside the ship, the first thing we did was cut off her wings.

It screamed. The scene was awful in every sense of the word. Something about that sound made everyone in the entire room cry, even the most hardened atheist skeptic among us fell to their knees and wept and secretly wondered if there might be something more to this universe than empty space, radiation, dead planets, and stars.

It was the ultimate tragedy, and it was beautiful, oh so beautiful.

I carry those wings with me to this day. As the surgeon who performed the exploratory surgery, I felt I deserved some trophy, no matter how token. The wings are brittle now. Most of the feathers have fallen away. The dry surface of the hollow jointed bones glisten with pearly iridescence. In those swirling mute colors I can almost see another way, but the wings are dead. They will never move again. We sacrificed our guide in our determination to make our own way, to understand the universe on our own terms.

The angel did not survive for long afterwards. She looked at me with blank white unblinking eyes and a chiseled face that betrayed no expressions. Yet, her cry echoed in the small chamber, and I felt her sense of pain and betrayal. I understood her confusion. It made no sense to her, and it made no sense to me (I was just following orders, after all), but it happened, facilitated by my own hands. She bled air and song and life, and we returned the favor by severing bone and flesh and fiber.

I fear it was unavoidable -- when the known meets the unknown, the unknown always dies away. Unable to accept a mystery, too egotistical to accept there may be any other way, we always kill what we cannot understand.

Perseids: 1861

2010-03-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

The sun set long ago, yet the heat of the day lingered and radiated upwards from parched rocky soil. My bare feet were burned and blistered and open sores wept. I did not feel any of this. I did not feel anything beyond an inner emptiness and a tinge of loneliness. A harsh dusty wind moaned as it picked up sand from the desert floor, and my dry eyes burned. A dull ache throbbed in my head; I touched it with my hand, and my fingers came away wet with blood.

In front of me, the moon glowed large and looming on the horizon. A Joshua tree stood before me casting long, dark shadows.

Bats fluttered overhead, and, above them, an occasional star fell and trailed lines of color and light. The falling stars increased in number, and it seemed as if the sky itself might fall down.

I grew dizzy and faint and sat on the ground. I pulled my pistol from my holster and touched the steel barrel to my neck. It felt cool and refreshing in the hot night.

A scorpion crawled on a rock in front of me. I took aim and fired. Faster than the eye could register, the scorpion was gone. Smoke drifted up from my gun. The barrel was hot to the touch now.

Life one moment, gone the next.

It all seemed so fleeting, so meaningless. I thought about my girl. I had wanted to marry that girl. I thought about the burning farms. I thought about the flying arrows and bullets and screaming and blood – so much blood. The ground was muddy with blood once it was all done and over, and what had any of it accomplished? What was the point? After all, it was only land, and there was so much of it. Why couldn’t it be shared?

So many lives were lost in the confusion. A panicked horse trampled a toddler – she was my neighbor’s kid – but I had been helpless to stop it. Soon afterwards, that same horse bucked and kicked me to the ground. I lay unconscious and bleeding in my cotton long johns beneath some scrub. Once I awoke, the massacre was over.

I looked, but there seemed to be no survivors, just bodies and blood and acrid smoke. This morning, the sun rose, and birds sang just like any other day. By midday, the life I knew was gone forever.

In the present, a coyote howled in the distance.

I looked towards the horizon behind me. Beyond the ridge – where the land was moistened by a cool mountain stream, and the soil was fertile – thin lines of smoke snaked upwards into the empty night while vultures circled. My cheeks were suddenly hot and wet with tears.

I lay back down and looked back up to the sky and watched stars fall. They burned up before ever touching this cursed land, and I envied them.

All at once, everything grew fluid around me. The land beneath me encircled me as it became a canoe, and I felt myself float downstream. The falling stars became floating candles. They flashed by as the currents grew stronger, carrying me down into a widening and endless waterway. The mouth of the darkest ocean opened up and devoured all I ever was or would be.

Then I became aware – at the final moment before this world faded into the next – that the stars continued to fall, and I knew they would always fall, year after year, oblivious of us all.

the agent & the avant-garde

2010-03-12T03:47:00.000-08:00

I looked down at the display on my cell phone and saw it was my agent calling.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“All right. I got your latest manuscript and there are a few problems with it.”

“Really? Like what?”

“For one thing, the length – it’s only three pages long. Most of that is a repetition of the phrase ‘Naughty Johnny was a woman.’ What does that mean, anyway? The rest of it was some kind of space opera, am I right?”

“Sheesh! You don’t get me at all. It wasn’t space opera; it was a piece of progressive, transgendered, and cross-genre steampunk. Didn’t you see my illustration of the airship?”

“I thought that was a coffee stain. All the same, I don’t think I can sell it as a book. The length isn’t right.”

“But didn’t you get my multimedia content?”

“You mean that Beta tape? Yes, I got it. I had to search all over the place for a player for that damn thing. I went to every pawn shop in town. I searched e-bay. You do realize those old dinosaurs can cost a few thousand dollars these days?”

“No, I did not know that.”

“Well, now you do. I finally found a player hidden away in my grandfather’s basement. Then I had to find a television that had the correct hook-ups. I had to take the player and the tape over to my great aunt’s house for that.”

“So, you watched the tape?”

“Yeah, I watched it. I don’t know what you want me to do with it though.”

“I was thinking about turning it into a multimedia package. I read some guy on the internet say ebooks were the way of the future. Maybe it could be sold as one of those vooks.”

“I don’t know how many people out there will be interested in watching thirty minutes of you sitting around in your boxer shorts eating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli from the can while singing off-key Broadway tunes between bites. I have no idea what that had to do with the manuscript you turned in.”

“You didn’t watch it all the way to the end, did you?”

“Oh, you mean the part when you farted? Yeah, I saw that. Like I said, I don’t know how many people will be interested.”

“It’s a commentary on the human condition.”

“Look, whatever. I really don’t think it would be a good idea to present this to any editor in its current form, and that brings me to what I’m really calling you about.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“I think I’m going to have to let you go as a client. Our arrangement just isn’t working out. Our contract has expired, and I don’t really want to renew.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll just talk to you later, then. See you around?”

“Yeah. Sure. Maybe. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hung up the phone and smiled. I had already sold the story rights for a miniseries through a back door deal with a network television producer. The contract was just waiting to be signed, and now I could keep my fifteen percent.