When the wolves came down the mountain, we rang the bells and took turns throwing rocks at the damned wild hounds. All teeth and eyes. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to it all, ‘cept they wanted our blood split from open wounds onto the female earth’s holy gash.
And we damn well wanted theirs.
An aged Scotsman stood next to me, the one we called Ancient Mac Cock on account of his obsession with his withered mediocre genitalia, and launched a large stone that misfired and smashed the dull stained glass window that showed Christ’s crucifixion on the grim, hunched-over Presbyterian church. When the realization of the consequences of his wayward action hit him, he turned to me and whispered, “Might wake th’ ol’ bastard up fer once, hey lad …”
As I brought down a rock and cracked open the skull of one of the beautiful creatures, watching its pale blue eyes become shot with spilled scarlet ink and its grey purple cerebral mass seep through its ears, I noticed a little girl squatting over the dismembered stomach of a lupe and pissing all over its entrails, washing the blood away. Then I knew I was nothing more than a cell in a gigantic beast that went on forever and forever. The question was whether I was a virus or part of the immune system. As I looked around at the carnage and the numbers of the dead on both sides, I glimpsed the answer and prepared for tomorrow.
Jason Michel has been turned on, tripped up and stumbled over all around the world on an eleven year(so far)self imposed exile. He now lives in France.
He has recently published his first novel “Confessions of a Black Dog” at lulu.com and has had work published in various print and online magazines.
His work can be seen at http://beatendog.blogspot.com/
Showing posts with label Work: Flash Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Work: Flash Fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Todd Among the Nightingales by Mikael Covey
Todd meanders down the street, scrawny, pot-bellied; I see he’s lost most of his hair now. Comes over to the guys outside the half-way house with a big smile on his face. They’re sitting there smoking cigarettes watching the grass grow, whatever. Friends of his, I guess.
I’m making a delivery, dropping off a package. “He was one of the Chicago Seven” I tell ‘em. Todd smiles, starts recounting the names “Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin...” Yeah, and Todd Obermeyer.
We used to talk about it, back when I was his caseworker, as if that’s all there was. Paging through the high school yearbook, pictures in black and white. Pretty girls in pep club outfits, Pierpoint Rustlerettes 1967.
Todd looks at the pictures objectively, distantly; tells me how shy and dysfunctional he was in school; even though his folks had money. A scrawny little mouse with droopy eyes and big ears, short hair cut. Like none of that ever mattered anyway. “I’m forty-eight years old y’know.”
Then in college, somehow in a fraternity, in with the bright young going somewhere crowd. The cusp of future leaders. Chicago ’68, when he had the breakdown. They brought him back from Canada, put him in the hospital for twenty years. Ten more after that on the outside, still that’s all there ever was.
Lives alone in a spotlessly clean apartment, government funded. Everything neat and orderly, very nice. “I got no food” he says, objectively, not that it matters. Just something to talk about, making conversation. We have to meet, we have to talk. What else is there to say.
First of the month his check comes in. The vultures swoop down and take it away. Tougher needier mental patients who prey on the weaker ones. Borrow things, like your money. “They talk me into it” he says “what can I do? He says he’ll pay me back, and he never does. Next time I’m gonna just tell him no.”
Aint gonna happen. I’d like to see Todd get really angry about it, just to see how far he’d go before he’d back down. Like a couple of pomeranians fighting each other. Or maybe that’s how we all are when you think about it.
Take him to the food pantry where people donate food so that others who don’t have any can come get some. Todd’s very picky. “Do you have...” this, that, the other, like we’re at the supermarket, anything you want. I’m embarrassed. This is free food Todd, just take what the lady gives you, okay? Asks if he can come back every month, his problems would all be solved.
I like Todd, he’s so different from what you’d think a schizophrenic would be. So quiet calm peaceful. That slight smile, like things are amusing to him, or beyond his control. Always so friendly, gentle, dignified in his own way. A pleasure to visit with him, to escape from the constant tension and stress of the job. Just to sit here in this spotlessly clean apartment, reminisce about old days.
When I get to know him better, he confides in me a bit. The color coded signals God uses to tell him things. He saw a man on tv wearing a blue suit. Blue means royalty, that was a good man. Something yellow in a magazine would be a warning. Don’t go out today. Orange is even more dangerous.
That was years ago. I’m surprised he’s made it this far. But I like Todd, I’m happy to see him. Later run across him meandering down the street, big fleshy bulge on the side of his neck. “Todd, how you doing?” “Well...I got cancer. Of the lymph nodes, I guess. They’re giving me chemo... I’m fifty-eight years old, y’know.”
I’m making a delivery, dropping off a package. “He was one of the Chicago Seven” I tell ‘em. Todd smiles, starts recounting the names “Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin...” Yeah, and Todd Obermeyer.
We used to talk about it, back when I was his caseworker, as if that’s all there was. Paging through the high school yearbook, pictures in black and white. Pretty girls in pep club outfits, Pierpoint Rustlerettes 1967.
Todd looks at the pictures objectively, distantly; tells me how shy and dysfunctional he was in school; even though his folks had money. A scrawny little mouse with droopy eyes and big ears, short hair cut. Like none of that ever mattered anyway. “I’m forty-eight years old y’know.”
Then in college, somehow in a fraternity, in with the bright young going somewhere crowd. The cusp of future leaders. Chicago ’68, when he had the breakdown. They brought him back from Canada, put him in the hospital for twenty years. Ten more after that on the outside, still that’s all there ever was.
Lives alone in a spotlessly clean apartment, government funded. Everything neat and orderly, very nice. “I got no food” he says, objectively, not that it matters. Just something to talk about, making conversation. We have to meet, we have to talk. What else is there to say.
First of the month his check comes in. The vultures swoop down and take it away. Tougher needier mental patients who prey on the weaker ones. Borrow things, like your money. “They talk me into it” he says “what can I do? He says he’ll pay me back, and he never does. Next time I’m gonna just tell him no.”
Aint gonna happen. I’d like to see Todd get really angry about it, just to see how far he’d go before he’d back down. Like a couple of pomeranians fighting each other. Or maybe that’s how we all are when you think about it.
Take him to the food pantry where people donate food so that others who don’t have any can come get some. Todd’s very picky. “Do you have...” this, that, the other, like we’re at the supermarket, anything you want. I’m embarrassed. This is free food Todd, just take what the lady gives you, okay? Asks if he can come back every month, his problems would all be solved.
I like Todd, he’s so different from what you’d think a schizophrenic would be. So quiet calm peaceful. That slight smile, like things are amusing to him, or beyond his control. Always so friendly, gentle, dignified in his own way. A pleasure to visit with him, to escape from the constant tension and stress of the job. Just to sit here in this spotlessly clean apartment, reminisce about old days.
When I get to know him better, he confides in me a bit. The color coded signals God uses to tell him things. He saw a man on tv wearing a blue suit. Blue means royalty, that was a good man. Something yellow in a magazine would be a warning. Don’t go out today. Orange is even more dangerous.
That was years ago. I’m surprised he’s made it this far. But I like Todd, I’m happy to see him. Later run across him meandering down the street, big fleshy bulge on the side of his neck. “Todd, how you doing?” “Well...I got cancer. Of the lymph nodes, I guess. They’re giving me chemo... I’m fifty-eight years old, y’know.”
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Belt loops by Crystal Folz
We go to a party at a friend's farm. The moon sits in the sky, as bright as the Skoal ring on the back pocket of my husband's blue jeans. I carry food into the house. He totes his guitar and cooler out to the weathered gray barn.
Moths whirl in the spotlights set up around the table. Laughter stirs the tassels on the corn. They play Hank Sr., Waylon, and Kristofferson before meandering into that harmonic southern rock they quietly strummed in their rooms when learning to play the guitar.
Sometimes on date night we take the pickup. Before we leave, my husband cleans out the truck. Tool belts and safety glasses and shotgun shells are placed inside the garage door. He gets a sheet from behind the seat, one that has holes cut for seat belt buckles, and tucks it in tight. I prop my foot up on the dash, and he lets me take control of the radio.
I've always wanted men, not boys - gruff and greasy men who seem to have been born knowing how to weld, whittle, and eye which socket they need to loosen a bolt.
There's little things I've stopped thinking about for a long time: the way he plays with the back pocket on my cutoff shorts when I sit in his lap; how he tucks the sheet between us on hot nights so we don't stick together; how he says my accent is sweet, secretly knowing I've spent years trying to shorten those long vowels and remember the 'g's at the end of my words; and those calloused hands, fingers that snag strands of hair when he brushes it over my shoulder.
I lean up against the truck, fixing to grab him another beer, and wonder if he wants me to be hard enough to take care of myself, or soft enough to let him drag me back by my belt loop whenever I walk away without kissing him first.
Moths whirl in the spotlights set up around the table. Laughter stirs the tassels on the corn. They play Hank Sr., Waylon, and Kristofferson before meandering into that harmonic southern rock they quietly strummed in their rooms when learning to play the guitar.
Sometimes on date night we take the pickup. Before we leave, my husband cleans out the truck. Tool belts and safety glasses and shotgun shells are placed inside the garage door. He gets a sheet from behind the seat, one that has holes cut for seat belt buckles, and tucks it in tight. I prop my foot up on the dash, and he lets me take control of the radio.
I've always wanted men, not boys - gruff and greasy men who seem to have been born knowing how to weld, whittle, and eye which socket they need to loosen a bolt.
There's little things I've stopped thinking about for a long time: the way he plays with the back pocket on my cutoff shorts when I sit in his lap; how he tucks the sheet between us on hot nights so we don't stick together; how he says my accent is sweet, secretly knowing I've spent years trying to shorten those long vowels and remember the 'g's at the end of my words; and those calloused hands, fingers that snag strands of hair when he brushes it over my shoulder.
I lean up against the truck, fixing to grab him another beer, and wonder if he wants me to be hard enough to take care of myself, or soft enough to let him drag me back by my belt loop whenever I walk away without kissing him first.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
&(forty-six) by J. A. Tyler
The girl, flying, she mingles with the white of doves and clouds, the blue, her lithe arms swinging, the spin of oars, moonshine eyes in motion. She smiles, charms at them, their flapping wings, the tongue of sunbeams. Her mouth the shape of the earth, the tilt of an axis, her pelvis reclined invisibly, soft back on sweeping, the billowed air, the sky. She flies.
Inside a womb she was an egg. She was a circle. She was a sphere. She was a ball. She had a shell made breeze gentle. She was she was she was.
Now she is flying. Clouds and blue. The iris.
Her mother was a statue of reproduction. It was this, her mother’s womb, where she existed as an egg, a circle, a sphere, a ball. It was her mother’s womb that entrusted her with a thin exoskeleton, the luster of potency. Her mother had tangled hair and slick fingernails, the shine of beauty. Her mother was beautiful. Her mother was never her mother. Her mother was a woman who nodded back to a man who nodded to her. Her mother was a woman shaking her head at a shaken head. Her mother was a woman, was not her mother.
Until now she is sky, she is blue, dipping fingers in clouds, flying.
And the man was her father, was not her father, was the man who nodded at the woman who was not her mother. A handsome man. Knuckles of his father’s, sawdust coming wrinkles. He never touched her, this man to this woman, this father to this mother. They nodded heads to one another, passing footsteps on the dirt of a road, almost daily, enough to know, enough to get, but they never said a word. His mouth opened in the gape of fish breath, but he did not speak. She did not hear anything. She did not turn a word into a phrase, a sentence into a long running paragraph, a day into a daughter. They did nothing.
And she flies now, this girl, their girl, this woman and this man, this mother and this father, stumbling past each other’s calves, pushing on. And she becomes the sun. She is the sun. She is a circle and a sphere and a ball. She is a gentle breezing shell of a girl. The imagining. She is imagined. She flies, rowing oars, swinging arms, speaking sun-tongue to the white of flapping bird wings, clouds, the blue sky iris of her mother, this woman, this womb, the one who walked past another, her mother and her father, not her mother and her father, tripping down, stuttering beyond a girl of blue and clouds, flying, rowing oars, unliving.
J. A. Tyler is the author of THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press), EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING ABOUT DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series), & SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (Ghost Road Press). He is also founding editor of MUD LUSCIOUS and ML PRESS and was recently nominated for a Pushcart. Visit www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com for more info.
Inside a womb she was an egg. She was a circle. She was a sphere. She was a ball. She had a shell made breeze gentle. She was she was she was.
Now she is flying. Clouds and blue. The iris.
Her mother was a statue of reproduction. It was this, her mother’s womb, where she existed as an egg, a circle, a sphere, a ball. It was her mother’s womb that entrusted her with a thin exoskeleton, the luster of potency. Her mother had tangled hair and slick fingernails, the shine of beauty. Her mother was beautiful. Her mother was never her mother. Her mother was a woman who nodded back to a man who nodded to her. Her mother was a woman shaking her head at a shaken head. Her mother was a woman, was not her mother.
Until now she is sky, she is blue, dipping fingers in clouds, flying.
And the man was her father, was not her father, was the man who nodded at the woman who was not her mother. A handsome man. Knuckles of his father’s, sawdust coming wrinkles. He never touched her, this man to this woman, this father to this mother. They nodded heads to one another, passing footsteps on the dirt of a road, almost daily, enough to know, enough to get, but they never said a word. His mouth opened in the gape of fish breath, but he did not speak. She did not hear anything. She did not turn a word into a phrase, a sentence into a long running paragraph, a day into a daughter. They did nothing.
And she flies now, this girl, their girl, this woman and this man, this mother and this father, stumbling past each other’s calves, pushing on. And she becomes the sun. She is the sun. She is a circle and a sphere and a ball. She is a gentle breezing shell of a girl. The imagining. She is imagined. She flies, rowing oars, swinging arms, speaking sun-tongue to the white of flapping bird wings, clouds, the blue sky iris of her mother, this woman, this womb, the one who walked past another, her mother and her father, not her mother and her father, tripping down, stuttering beyond a girl of blue and clouds, flying, rowing oars, unliving.
J. A. Tyler is the author of THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press), EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING ABOUT DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series), & SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (Ghost Road Press). He is also founding editor of MUD LUSCIOUS and ML PRESS and was recently nominated for a Pushcart. Visit www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com for more info.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Plain Jane Let America Die by F. Scott Francisco
America was born on Independence Day 1976. He had a troubled childhood. His father, George Chevron Washington, was arrested for gun smuggling around the day of his birth. His mother, Janette "Plain Jane" Hancock, never told him the truth. Instead she explained that his father had been one of the last good men to die in prevention of The Communist Domination of Southeast Asia.
When Plain Jane stopped breast-feeding, America went on hunger strike, dumbly staring at the microwaved formula. Until she again nursed him naturally. At thirteen, armed with cobblestones picked from Lexington Market, he and his friends wildly ran the streets of Baltimore smashing car windows and stealing radios and hubcaps until they were caught, arrested, and taken to jail where they refused to call their parents for bail.
America did poorly in school for apparently inherent refusal to conform to its mannerisms. He left his year-late graduation early to get stoned with two fellow graduates.
Plain Jane blamed America's attitude on his father. She would write George Chevron the occasional letter to document their son's progress.
America woke the day after graduation, smoked a cigarette scratching his head and balls alternately, lay his head down, and fell back to sleep.
The following day he decided to sell drugs for a living, and did so without interruption for the next ten years. It was his calling: he'd plenty of charm and little fear.
On unrelated charges around the ten-year reunion at his high school, America began a one-year sentence.
For another five years he sold until he was shot and robbed clean by a favorite customer, Axle President. He lay dying for a day before Plain Jane made an unannounced visit and saw her son on the floor, perhaps fatally wounded.
She offered ice to him, drinks, home-cooked food, to change the television station: all in the hope of easing his pain, making him more comfortable--as if he had simply come down with a case of the flu. Plain Jane acted as if she didn't notice the blood trickling out of her boy into the carpet, as if everything were in perfect order.
Although she had come in her Toyota Camry, which her son had bought for her with ill-gotten gains, she did not offer a ride to the hospital to her son; and although she had one of the newest cellular phones available, she did not call emergency people.
America's last coherent thought was that she had perhaps hired the hit.
America's story came to a quiet end.
Plain Jane never spoke of him again, and when folks asked about her son, she acted confused, as if she had never spoken of him before.
And America was soon forgotten.
f. scott francisco (b. 1981/tampa bay), postal employee, writes occasionally. reads daily. he began submitting writing in 2008. e-mail fscottfrancisco@gmail.com or see his site at http://fscottfrancisco.info.
When Plain Jane stopped breast-feeding, America went on hunger strike, dumbly staring at the microwaved formula. Until she again nursed him naturally. At thirteen, armed with cobblestones picked from Lexington Market, he and his friends wildly ran the streets of Baltimore smashing car windows and stealing radios and hubcaps until they were caught, arrested, and taken to jail where they refused to call their parents for bail.
America did poorly in school for apparently inherent refusal to conform to its mannerisms. He left his year-late graduation early to get stoned with two fellow graduates.
Plain Jane blamed America's attitude on his father. She would write George Chevron the occasional letter to document their son's progress.
America woke the day after graduation, smoked a cigarette scratching his head and balls alternately, lay his head down, and fell back to sleep.
The following day he decided to sell drugs for a living, and did so without interruption for the next ten years. It was his calling: he'd plenty of charm and little fear.
On unrelated charges around the ten-year reunion at his high school, America began a one-year sentence.
For another five years he sold until he was shot and robbed clean by a favorite customer, Axle President. He lay dying for a day before Plain Jane made an unannounced visit and saw her son on the floor, perhaps fatally wounded.
She offered ice to him, drinks, home-cooked food, to change the television station: all in the hope of easing his pain, making him more comfortable--as if he had simply come down with a case of the flu. Plain Jane acted as if she didn't notice the blood trickling out of her boy into the carpet, as if everything were in perfect order.
Although she had come in her Toyota Camry, which her son had bought for her with ill-gotten gains, she did not offer a ride to the hospital to her son; and although she had one of the newest cellular phones available, she did not call emergency people.
America's last coherent thought was that she had perhaps hired the hit.
America's story came to a quiet end.
Plain Jane never spoke of him again, and when folks asked about her son, she acted confused, as if she had never spoken of him before.
And America was soon forgotten.
f. scott francisco (b. 1981/tampa bay), postal employee, writes occasionally. reads daily. he began submitting writing in 2008. e-mail fscottfrancisco@gmail.com or see his site at http://fscottfrancisco.info.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tin Roof by Crystal Folz
Tin Roof
We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don't know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops.
It occurs to me that I haven't been this still for a very long time, and I think if I could reach out and touch them both, I could mold this moment like a piece of jewelry to wear a groove around my finger. Then the rain comes down hard and soaks the trees until they are black and wet like my insides, and I know I have to move or shake or let go of his hand.
We walk up the hill together, one of them on each side of me, and I want us to keep walking past the parked cars outside the bar house, cross the road, and stop for a moment at the pond. There, we could stand beside each other and stare at our distorted reflections as the rain comes down and laughter leaks through the windows in the bar. We might be happy, the three of us, gawking at the smiling faces in the water. I know I would.
Instead, we go inside and sit at a round table. They talk about the noise on the tin roof, and I buy the three of us double shots of whiskey. I should feel caught or busted but I don't.
The waitress brings a shot of Jagermeister, compliments of the gentleman at the bar.
They shake their heads as I drink it down. Cold, black, and wet, it coats my throat, feeling like victory inside.
Then there's just us, the empty shot glasses, the last of the acorns pouncing on the tin roof, and the man at the bar patting the stool next to him.
We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don't know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops.
It occurs to me that I haven't been this still for a very long time, and I think if I could reach out and touch them both, I could mold this moment like a piece of jewelry to wear a groove around my finger. Then the rain comes down hard and soaks the trees until they are black and wet like my insides, and I know I have to move or shake or let go of his hand.
We walk up the hill together, one of them on each side of me, and I want us to keep walking past the parked cars outside the bar house, cross the road, and stop for a moment at the pond. There, we could stand beside each other and stare at our distorted reflections as the rain comes down and laughter leaks through the windows in the bar. We might be happy, the three of us, gawking at the smiling faces in the water. I know I would.
Instead, we go inside and sit at a round table. They talk about the noise on the tin roof, and I buy the three of us double shots of whiskey. I should feel caught or busted but I don't.
The waitress brings a shot of Jagermeister, compliments of the gentleman at the bar.
They shake their heads as I drink it down. Cold, black, and wet, it coats my throat, feeling like victory inside.
Then there's just us, the empty shot glasses, the last of the acorns pouncing on the tin roof, and the man at the bar patting the stool next to him.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Alleys are the Footnotes of the Avenues by Peter Anderson
The old man paused, his brimming shopping cart rattling to a stop. A window just above stood a few inches open, the apartment’s inhabitants tentatively seeking spring’s first warm wisps of breeze. The man himself had more than enough breezes, along with the bitter winds of the preceding winter just passed, none of it impeded by any window’s barrier.
The long alley he had traversed, veering slowly side to side to peek into trash cans and dumpsters for things of interest and maybe of value, ended in a T which he followed toward the street. There was no dumpster to be picked through here - nicer buildings kept their trash in chain-linked pens to discourage men like him from lingering, silently imploring him to take his business elsewhere.
He stopped, not ready to return to the street. Low sounds emanating from the window drew his attention, but he listened with eyes cast downward, the pose of a tired man merely pausing to rest. He knew that looking up at the window might mark him as a peeper, drawing the ire of neighbors and bringing the police.
He already had enough hassles in his humble life without bringing another upon himself.
~
The television murmured, excited putdowns and canned laughter occasionally rising through the living room’s slumbering lull. Bluish light flickered through the shadows, illuminating a middle-aged man who slumped in an easy chair, stockinged feet propped up, a half-empty highball glass within his reach. He dozed, having lost interest in the sitcom’s inanities, its forced mirth.
Before sleep came the old familiar words eased through his mind, the words of the essay he had pondered for so long, the treatise which would finally put television, and everything it represented about our culture, in its place. Down where it belonged, far down.
The medium numbs the senses, lulling us into dull complacency, cheapening our discourse down to a blather of catchphrases. Laugh tracks have taught us how to respond—uproariously at the more outrageous stunts, chucklingly at rare instances of subtlety. But laugh tracks teach us nothing about how to respond to seriousness, to sadness, and thus we have become immune, no longer caring, no longer sympathizing. If we can’t laugh we don’t respond at all. We have become disconnected from the world outside…
But the words, so often thought but still unwritten, soon gave way to the whiskey’s strength. He slid into heavy-lidded torpor, then finally into sleep. The words would remain unwritten for another day, another month, year, perhaps forever.
~
Outside the window, the sounds from within no longer held the old man’s interest. He reached into his cart, again securing a bag of soda cans, obsessively tightening the handles as he had done repeatedly throughout the long clockless day. Satisfied, he grunted quietly and leaned into the shopping cart, moving slowly toward the street.
As he cleared the building he felt a jolt of wind on his weathered face, the air turning colder as night fell steadily around him.
Peter Anderson's stories have been published in many fine venues besides this one, including Storyglossia, THE2NDHAND, Wheelhouse and RAGAD. He also has three novels-in-progress that may or may not ever be finished, depending on his whims, and a completed story chapbook that is desperately in need of a home. He lives in Joliet, Illinois, with his lovely wife Julie, charming daughter Madeleine and two literature-averse cats.
The long alley he had traversed, veering slowly side to side to peek into trash cans and dumpsters for things of interest and maybe of value, ended in a T which he followed toward the street. There was no dumpster to be picked through here - nicer buildings kept their trash in chain-linked pens to discourage men like him from lingering, silently imploring him to take his business elsewhere.
He stopped, not ready to return to the street. Low sounds emanating from the window drew his attention, but he listened with eyes cast downward, the pose of a tired man merely pausing to rest. He knew that looking up at the window might mark him as a peeper, drawing the ire of neighbors and bringing the police.
He already had enough hassles in his humble life without bringing another upon himself.
~
The television murmured, excited putdowns and canned laughter occasionally rising through the living room’s slumbering lull. Bluish light flickered through the shadows, illuminating a middle-aged man who slumped in an easy chair, stockinged feet propped up, a half-empty highball glass within his reach. He dozed, having lost interest in the sitcom’s inanities, its forced mirth.
Before sleep came the old familiar words eased through his mind, the words of the essay he had pondered for so long, the treatise which would finally put television, and everything it represented about our culture, in its place. Down where it belonged, far down.
The medium numbs the senses, lulling us into dull complacency, cheapening our discourse down to a blather of catchphrases. Laugh tracks have taught us how to respond—uproariously at the more outrageous stunts, chucklingly at rare instances of subtlety. But laugh tracks teach us nothing about how to respond to seriousness, to sadness, and thus we have become immune, no longer caring, no longer sympathizing. If we can’t laugh we don’t respond at all. We have become disconnected from the world outside…
But the words, so often thought but still unwritten, soon gave way to the whiskey’s strength. He slid into heavy-lidded torpor, then finally into sleep. The words would remain unwritten for another day, another month, year, perhaps forever.
~
Outside the window, the sounds from within no longer held the old man’s interest. He reached into his cart, again securing a bag of soda cans, obsessively tightening the handles as he had done repeatedly throughout the long clockless day. Satisfied, he grunted quietly and leaned into the shopping cart, moving slowly toward the street.
As he cleared the building he felt a jolt of wind on his weathered face, the air turning colder as night fell steadily around him.
Peter Anderson's stories have been published in many fine venues besides this one, including Storyglossia, THE2NDHAND, Wheelhouse and RAGAD. He also has three novels-in-progress that may or may not ever be finished, depending on his whims, and a completed story chapbook that is desperately in need of a home. He lives in Joliet, Illinois, with his lovely wife Julie, charming daughter Madeleine and two literature-averse cats.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Stalking Dana by Paul Corman-Roberts
With a bottle of pink hearts gripped firmly in my
right hand, quivering, like I was jerking off and…I
suppose I really am after all.
There must be a hundred of these little heart shaped
pills scored by my flaxen haired roommate from one of
the most “reputable” pharmaceutical firms in Tijuana.
She told me I could take a pill or two whenever I
wanted and since I’ll always be home before she is I’m
not seeing anything particularly wrong with a few
consecutive whenevers.
I swallow four, one right after the other, light a
clove cigarette and try to look innocuously through
the window of my innocuous ‘83 Nissan Sentra from my
innocuous parking stall, and into the storefront
window of the Al Phillips Dry Cleaners, only all too
conspicuous in my innocuousness.
She’s at the window. There’s no mistaking the
freckles, the all-American girl next door pony tail.
Kimberly Drummond: convicted of robbing a video store
six months ago. But I fell in love with her years ago;
endless masturbatory sessions in my grandma’s shitter.
It’s not like I don’t have business on this side of
town. My agent on a shoestring got me an audition
down the street forty five minutes from now and I have
uniforms that need to be pressed and creased. It’s not
easy holding down a bohemian lifestyle while passing
for a government employee.
The tell tale heartbeat and adrenal flow begin their
all too familiar buildup from my toenails all the way
up until they hit the top of my teeth which then begin
sliding across the surface of my bottom teeth with a
consistency known by Hell’s Angels and a long standing
ritual engaged in by many a pathetic lonely young man
since the advent of the industrial age.
Am I proud? No. I feel dirty. Would I rather be doing
anything else?
…
Hell no.
I hold the uniforms under my left arm, the clove in my
right as I make my way through the front door.
I’d found out she works here at my job, when a Tech
Sergeant said that washed up drug addict actress they
busted last year pressed his uniforms. How to break
the ice?
“Hey, I’m an actor too.” She doesn’t work the counter
though. I’m stuck with the homely woman who in turn
looks longingly at the slot machines being serviced by
a tech guy on the far side of the waiting room.
I place my order loudly. I want her to notice. Notice
my pungent clove cigarette, which always pisses off
the old Vegas service crowd. She looks right through
me though. My hair is too short. My face is too clean.
I get my suits pressed and creased. She wants a bad
boy. She wants long hair. She wants weed. She wants
blow. How do I tell her?
“Hey, I have weed. Hey, I can get blow from Evil
Knievel. Hey, I’m an actor too. Hey if you quit this
job, join my newly founded theater company and move
into my shared room apartment it’ll help out both of
our careers and you can have the pleasure of knowing
that I am your wonderful savior every time I crawl up
on top of you just to see that crease in your brow.”
Transaction ends. I’m going back to the Sentra. I look
back hoping to find her staring out the window after
me. Too late; she’s at the counter talking to a guy
with a pony tail. Is it…? Goddammit, yes, it’s the
service tech guy. He’s got a pony tail.
Years later of course, I find out what Dana really
wants is something neither myself nor the pony tail
has. Years later I find out she turned down the role
of Regan in The Exorcist and the role of Violet in
Pretty Baby; years later when she overdoses in her
in-law’s bathroom. I still like to think I could have
been all those things to her, a way for opportunity to
translate into, if not happiness, at least a
manageable contentment; a warm body that makes you
laugh & can be counted on to be there.
If only it were that easy.
For now; brain bubbling in a primal cauldron and eyes
exploding, I head to the auditorium at the Summerlin
Public Library for the most prestigious community
theater organization in Las Vegas, which is the
artistic status equivalent of the most prestigious
pantomime troupe in Los Angeles. In front of an
audience of two dozen competitors, a girl younger and
more beautiful than Dana, which is to say less
experienced, melts down completely at the beginning of
her improv assignment and stalks off the stage “I
can’t I can’t I just can’t do this & I guess I’ll see
you guys down at the mall or something.”
I nail my improv. I get the spot in the prestigious
workshop. I know now what I’ll say to Dana. I come
back the next night to pick up my uniforms from the Al
Phillips Cleaners with my rap and my approach down
pat.
Dana’s not working that night, something about a hot
date. Heading back to the Sentra it seems to me this
particular dry-cleaning shop does an incredibly lousy
job of pressing and creasing my uniforms and I swear I
will never return to this place for my business again.
I try to convince myself that I am somehow different,
that I am somehow better than the meltdown girl at the
audition sure to be hanging out at the mall I am now
headed towards with a handful of Pink Hearts.
Paul Corman-Roberts toils in a boiler room next
to the edge of a major-interstate highway. "At least
it's job security!" Shoot him if you get a chance. Or
check out his site & stuff at
www.paulcormanroberts.com.
right hand, quivering, like I was jerking off and…I
suppose I really am after all.
There must be a hundred of these little heart shaped
pills scored by my flaxen haired roommate from one of
the most “reputable” pharmaceutical firms in Tijuana.
She told me I could take a pill or two whenever I
wanted and since I’ll always be home before she is I’m
not seeing anything particularly wrong with a few
consecutive whenevers.
I swallow four, one right after the other, light a
clove cigarette and try to look innocuously through
the window of my innocuous ‘83 Nissan Sentra from my
innocuous parking stall, and into the storefront
window of the Al Phillips Dry Cleaners, only all too
conspicuous in my innocuousness.
She’s at the window. There’s no mistaking the
freckles, the all-American girl next door pony tail.
Kimberly Drummond: convicted of robbing a video store
six months ago. But I fell in love with her years ago;
endless masturbatory sessions in my grandma’s shitter.
It’s not like I don’t have business on this side of
town. My agent on a shoestring got me an audition
down the street forty five minutes from now and I have
uniforms that need to be pressed and creased. It’s not
easy holding down a bohemian lifestyle while passing
for a government employee.
The tell tale heartbeat and adrenal flow begin their
all too familiar buildup from my toenails all the way
up until they hit the top of my teeth which then begin
sliding across the surface of my bottom teeth with a
consistency known by Hell’s Angels and a long standing
ritual engaged in by many a pathetic lonely young man
since the advent of the industrial age.
Am I proud? No. I feel dirty. Would I rather be doing
anything else?
…
Hell no.
I hold the uniforms under my left arm, the clove in my
right as I make my way through the front door.
I’d found out she works here at my job, when a Tech
Sergeant said that washed up drug addict actress they
busted last year pressed his uniforms. How to break
the ice?
“Hey, I’m an actor too.” She doesn’t work the counter
though. I’m stuck with the homely woman who in turn
looks longingly at the slot machines being serviced by
a tech guy on the far side of the waiting room.
I place my order loudly. I want her to notice. Notice
my pungent clove cigarette, which always pisses off
the old Vegas service crowd. She looks right through
me though. My hair is too short. My face is too clean.
I get my suits pressed and creased. She wants a bad
boy. She wants long hair. She wants weed. She wants
blow. How do I tell her?
“Hey, I have weed. Hey, I can get blow from Evil
Knievel. Hey, I’m an actor too. Hey if you quit this
job, join my newly founded theater company and move
into my shared room apartment it’ll help out both of
our careers and you can have the pleasure of knowing
that I am your wonderful savior every time I crawl up
on top of you just to see that crease in your brow.”
Transaction ends. I’m going back to the Sentra. I look
back hoping to find her staring out the window after
me. Too late; she’s at the counter talking to a guy
with a pony tail. Is it…? Goddammit, yes, it’s the
service tech guy. He’s got a pony tail.
Years later of course, I find out what Dana really
wants is something neither myself nor the pony tail
has. Years later I find out she turned down the role
of Regan in The Exorcist and the role of Violet in
Pretty Baby; years later when she overdoses in her
in-law’s bathroom. I still like to think I could have
been all those things to her, a way for opportunity to
translate into, if not happiness, at least a
manageable contentment; a warm body that makes you
laugh & can be counted on to be there.
If only it were that easy.
For now; brain bubbling in a primal cauldron and eyes
exploding, I head to the auditorium at the Summerlin
Public Library for the most prestigious community
theater organization in Las Vegas, which is the
artistic status equivalent of the most prestigious
pantomime troupe in Los Angeles. In front of an
audience of two dozen competitors, a girl younger and
more beautiful than Dana, which is to say less
experienced, melts down completely at the beginning of
her improv assignment and stalks off the stage “I
can’t I can’t I just can’t do this & I guess I’ll see
you guys down at the mall or something.”
I nail my improv. I get the spot in the prestigious
workshop. I know now what I’ll say to Dana. I come
back the next night to pick up my uniforms from the Al
Phillips Cleaners with my rap and my approach down
pat.
Dana’s not working that night, something about a hot
date. Heading back to the Sentra it seems to me this
particular dry-cleaning shop does an incredibly lousy
job of pressing and creasing my uniforms and I swear I
will never return to this place for my business again.
I try to convince myself that I am somehow different,
that I am somehow better than the meltdown girl at the
audition sure to be hanging out at the mall I am now
headed towards with a handful of Pink Hearts.
Paul Corman-Roberts toils in a boiler room next
to the edge of a major-interstate highway. "At least
it's job security!" Shoot him if you get a chance. Or
check out his site & stuff at
www.paulcormanroberts.com.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Abacus: A Love Story; Or, the Concept of Zero by Donna D. Vitucci
She thought about the way water shapes stone. Face it, stones take a battering over time. She wanted to put the stone on his tongue, but instead she put it in her mouth and sucked on it. It tasted of the sea and every element of the sea—-grit and rain and brine and live creature, fish, cousins to fish, snails, kelp, microbes, algae, a living universe that swims to reach light.
“Why have you so many ideas of violence?”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. When an expectation is created your head, you prepare yourself for assault, blood, mayhem. When really, all that’s around the corner is disappointment, is love.”
“You make it sound like those are the same thing.”
She raised her eyebrow, held her tongue, bit down on her next words to keep them hid.
“Maybe it’s my career in law enforcement,” he said.
“Maybe you don’t want to be happy.”
“No, I do want happiness.”
“You seem to avoid it.”
“I do not.”
She let him hear himself.
He paused, and said, “You don’t know me like you think.”
“This could be true. I can admit that. So inform me.”
She motioned him toward her but he knew it was a gesture meant to go with her next words.
“Give over something important. Something I can begin building you on in my unconscious. A base, a foundation, a pedestal, something you-true that won’t erode.”
“Now that sounds esoteric.”
“You think so?”
The way he cut a glance to her and away, the thrust of his profile insisted, “You know it does.”
She guessed it implied “Quit harassing me,” but she wasn’t about to quit. She was just getting started. And she wouldn’t call it harassment anyway. Again, she’d call it love.
She even spoke this aloud: “I call it love.”
“What?” The very word flailed. She’d pitched him into the middle of a sea, water over his head, choking salt and gulping for air. She did that, she stole his share of breath.
She’d been talking around the stone in her mouth, a pretty neat trick. She had an adept tongue and good concentration. Thoughts didn’t sidetrack her, but emotions might. The stone was to help her focus. The stone was enduring.
She took it out of her mouth and closed it in her fist. She tugged his arm to make him stop walking this beach, to stand still with her. With her hand at the back of his neck she drew his face down to hers and kissed him. When they stopped kissing to breathe she again reached to his face, the back of his jaw. She ran her fingers along the line to his chin, pulled his chin down. She curled her fingers over his bottom teeth and pressured him.
His slackened jaw felt like it might widen and engulf the sea. He would not resist the need to lick her knuckles.
She set the stone in his mouth, on his tongue, a squid-like sea creature as it appeared to her. She closed his mouth, that gaping trap.
In the stone, he tasted her, he tasted the first earth, the first waters, the angels and hell. He tasted what was cast out, what was cast away, what was saved; the violence she abolished in him, her salt, his own blood. He tasted the New World and the seas that spanned her globe.
This was only their first day on the beach. There would be more. They tallied blocks of language and suffering and desire, not numbers, and so they abandoned the tools like calendars and diaries, that documented gain and loss. They counted on nothing. They had one stone between them.
-1_edited.JPG)
Donna D. Vitucci lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio, helping raise funds for local nonprofits. Since 1990 her stories have appeared in dozens of print and online journals. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Front Porch Journal, Juked, Night Train, Ginosko, Insolent Rudder, Smokelong Quarterly, mourningsilence and Another Chicago Magazine. Abacus was written after walking the shore of Lake Michigan during a very special artists’ retreat this past September.
“Why have you so many ideas of violence?”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. When an expectation is created your head, you prepare yourself for assault, blood, mayhem. When really, all that’s around the corner is disappointment, is love.”
“You make it sound like those are the same thing.”
She raised her eyebrow, held her tongue, bit down on her next words to keep them hid.
“Maybe it’s my career in law enforcement,” he said.
“Maybe you don’t want to be happy.”
“No, I do want happiness.”
“You seem to avoid it.”
“I do not.”
She let him hear himself.
He paused, and said, “You don’t know me like you think.”
“This could be true. I can admit that. So inform me.”
She motioned him toward her but he knew it was a gesture meant to go with her next words.
“Give over something important. Something I can begin building you on in my unconscious. A base, a foundation, a pedestal, something you-true that won’t erode.”
“Now that sounds esoteric.”
“You think so?”
The way he cut a glance to her and away, the thrust of his profile insisted, “You know it does.”
She guessed it implied “Quit harassing me,” but she wasn’t about to quit. She was just getting started. And she wouldn’t call it harassment anyway. Again, she’d call it love.
She even spoke this aloud: “I call it love.”
“What?” The very word flailed. She’d pitched him into the middle of a sea, water over his head, choking salt and gulping for air. She did that, she stole his share of breath.
She’d been talking around the stone in her mouth, a pretty neat trick. She had an adept tongue and good concentration. Thoughts didn’t sidetrack her, but emotions might. The stone was to help her focus. The stone was enduring.
She took it out of her mouth and closed it in her fist. She tugged his arm to make him stop walking this beach, to stand still with her. With her hand at the back of his neck she drew his face down to hers and kissed him. When they stopped kissing to breathe she again reached to his face, the back of his jaw. She ran her fingers along the line to his chin, pulled his chin down. She curled her fingers over his bottom teeth and pressured him.
His slackened jaw felt like it might widen and engulf the sea. He would not resist the need to lick her knuckles.
She set the stone in his mouth, on his tongue, a squid-like sea creature as it appeared to her. She closed his mouth, that gaping trap.
In the stone, he tasted her, he tasted the first earth, the first waters, the angels and hell. He tasted what was cast out, what was cast away, what was saved; the violence she abolished in him, her salt, his own blood. He tasted the New World and the seas that spanned her globe.
This was only their first day on the beach. There would be more. They tallied blocks of language and suffering and desire, not numbers, and so they abandoned the tools like calendars and diaries, that documented gain and loss. They counted on nothing. They had one stone between them.
-1_edited.JPG)
Donna D. Vitucci lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio, helping raise funds for local nonprofits. Since 1990 her stories have appeared in dozens of print and online journals. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Front Porch Journal, Juked, Night Train, Ginosko, Insolent Rudder, Smokelong Quarterly, mourningsilence and Another Chicago Magazine. Abacus was written after walking the shore of Lake Michigan during a very special artists’ retreat this past September.
Friday, December 5, 2008
The Look of Love, Take Two by Ben Tanzer
It is late. The sky is meringue. The dress is retro. The hair which is sometimes highlighted, and sometimes shaggy, is without bangs, and there are little pigtails bleached at the tips, wildly jutting out from each ear. She has a crooked nose and a crooked smile and she makes it work. She listens to The Sadies and reads George Eliot.
You warily move around each other at the office, almost stalking one another. Or do you? Maybe it’s all in your head.
Still, there are times when she looks right at you, through you, with longing and desire, both humored and intrigued.
Tonight she sits there on the bumper of a van outside some club where a work event has just gone down. Her eyes are half-open. Coin slots on the uneven plain of her face. She’s been drinking again.
“Sit down,” she says patting the spot on the bumper next to her.
“How’s it going?” you say as you take a seat.
“I need to stop,” she says laying her head on your shoulder.
“Why?” you say feeling the heat from her cheek burning a hole through your shirtsleeve.
“I have a problem.”
“Do you?”
“My husband says I do.”
“But do you think there’s a problem?”
“Yes, and I need to stop if I want to save the marriage.”
“And do you want to save it?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know,” she says briefly looking up at you.
Is that an invitation, or is that just defeat? Her head drops to her chest. It looks like defeat.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007) and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press, 2008) and the short story collection Repetition Patterns (CCLaP, 2008). He also blogs at This Blog Will Change Your Life, which is the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux, media empire, and edits This Zine Will Change Your Life, which you should totally submit to. Cool?
You warily move around each other at the office, almost stalking one another. Or do you? Maybe it’s all in your head.
Still, there are times when she looks right at you, through you, with longing and desire, both humored and intrigued.
Tonight she sits there on the bumper of a van outside some club where a work event has just gone down. Her eyes are half-open. Coin slots on the uneven plain of her face. She’s been drinking again.
“Sit down,” she says patting the spot on the bumper next to her.
“How’s it going?” you say as you take a seat.
“I need to stop,” she says laying her head on your shoulder.
“Why?” you say feeling the heat from her cheek burning a hole through your shirtsleeve.
“I have a problem.”
“Do you?”
“My husband says I do.”
“But do you think there’s a problem?”
“Yes, and I need to stop if I want to save the marriage.”
“And do you want to save it?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know,” she says briefly looking up at you.
Is that an invitation, or is that just defeat? Her head drops to her chest. It looks like defeat.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007) and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press, 2008) and the short story collection Repetition Patterns (CCLaP, 2008). He also blogs at This Blog Will Change Your Life, which is the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux, media empire, and edits This Zine Will Change Your Life, which you should totally submit to. Cool?
Monday, December 1, 2008
This Man by David Erlewine
The man sitting across the desk once offered me $20 to run down his block in my underwear. He never paid. Such moments still snake through me. He ends his phone call, holds out his hand without standing up. No blink at my fake name (thank you, chemo!). Before I can answer, he informs me I look like a Lexus guy. It is quite possible this man has never given me another thought. I find myself unable to listen to other things he goes on to say. This man will listen to many, many grievances during his final hours.
David Erlewine has flash fiction and short stories published in a variety of print and web lit journals, including HOBART, IDENTITY THEORY, IN POSSE REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, PINDELDYBOZ, SLOW TRAINS, SMOKELONG QUARTERLY, and WORD RIOT. Most recently his work has appeared in the anthology "WHAT HAPPENED TO US THESE LAST COUPLE YEARS?"
He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children. When informed that Daddy writes, David's son exclaimed, "And he does dishes!" Thankfully he didn't reference Daddy's unhealthy time spent refreshing Facebook.
David Erlewine has flash fiction and short stories published in a variety of print and web lit journals, including HOBART, IDENTITY THEORY, IN POSSE REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, PINDELDYBOZ, SLOW TRAINS, SMOKELONG QUARTERLY, and WORD RIOT. Most recently his work has appeared in the anthology "WHAT HAPPENED TO US THESE LAST COUPLE YEARS?"He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children. When informed that Daddy writes, David's son exclaimed, "And he does dishes!" Thankfully he didn't reference Daddy's unhealthy time spent refreshing Facebook.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A Standard Pack by Kristin Fouquet
(click image to enlarge)
“No TV,” my wife said. “I want this week to be just about us as a family.”
That’s how my vacation started, with a television ban. We never seemed to have any money to actually go anywhere for it, so we’d just cocoon, you know, become mad reclusive types and not even answer the phone. Before my son was born, I’d take my week of vacation and we’d rent around twenty videos, buy bottles of booze and comfort food, and prepare to shut out the rest of the world.
Back before my son, she and I would get drunk watching whatever was on the tube or maybe a movie. Then, if we were in the mood, we’d just have sex right there on the sofa, maybe on the rug, but you know, right there, right then when we wanted to. After, I’d fix us some refresher drinks and we’d sit nude in the blue glow of the set. It was the best, like a hedonistic marathon. Sometimes, we’d forget what day it was. Oh Man, how I looked forward to that week off.
That Friday before my vacation was the greatest; I would be so psyched. We’d run our errands: video store, liquor store, drug store, and grocery store. We called it getting our supplies. We had no real plans but we’d try to set a festive mood. Like one year, we did this Mexican theme where we drank margaritas and did tequila shots…licking the salt and lime off each other’s lips. The two of us have these crazy straw hats we call fajita hats for no better reason than we wore them while eating fajitas during our Mexican vacation. Then there was our Greek vacation when we got stupid on Ouzo and ate gyros. The Italian one sucked when I blacked out on Strega and cut my foot wide open on a piece of glass on the kitchen floor. And the vacation themes weren’t limited to just a place. One year we did the 007 thing and watched every single Bond film out on video, even Casino Royale. My wife shook vodka martinis wearing nothing but a white tuxedo shirt. Man, that was one great week.
Well, it was just the two of us for ten years, one wild decade. After my son, there was no more booze because she breastfed him for a couple of years. She’d loosen up sometimes and have a glass of wine but she never really let go like in the old days. What we ate changed too. God-awful rice cakes one year; trail mix the next. Holy crap, carob.
So, we got our supplies of healthy snacks and red wine but, instead of videos, she told me we’d “read about other places, locate them on the globe…play games, tell stories, you know just talk- as a family.” She got her way, alright, for a few days, until the outside world came knockin’. It was our neighbor Stan wanting to know why we hadn’t boarded up yet.
He asked, “Y’all are headin’ outta the city, aren’t ya? I mean they’re sayin’ this could be the big one. Category 4, maybe 5 by the time it gets here.”
By nightfall, our street is abandoned. We decided to ride out the hurricane. We had food and wine but, no money or place to go. We boarded up. My wife made X’s with masking tape on the little windows. We filled the tub. In light of the situation, she even lifted the ban on the tube so, we watched the coverage of the mass exodus. The dismal fact was that many would be trapped in traffic when the storm hit. The rain and wind really picked up but we were fine, even after we heard the boom of the transformer blowin’ out. We listened to the radio and got by with flashlights. My son thought it was kinda fun till the batteries started burnin’ up. He took the last working flashlight and put it under his pillow before he went to sleep. We decided to conserve the radio batteries so, we shut it off.
It was pitch dark and all we had left were birthday candles. She came in the bedroom with three little swirled candles stickin’ out of a slice of bread. We sat cross-legged on our bed, the plate with the bread and candles between us. We sipped some wine. My wife stared at the little flames. She was beautiful; it was like I hadn’t really looked at her in years. I entwined my fingers with hers and she rewarded me with a smile. Damn, it had been ages since I’d seen that. I kissed her and ran my hand down her hip.
She said, “What’ll we do when these burn out?”
I said, “Light the rest.” I tried to lose my face in her chest.
“Those are it,” she said.
“Standard 24 pack?” I asked stupidly.
She answered, “Yeah, why?”
Then what I said next ruined everything. “Well, if he’s five, then there should be six left, right? I mean with these three and…”
She cut me off and yelled, “Patrick is six, Ron.” My wife spat, “Six.”
“I know that, just got confused.”
She didn’t buy it. Her face was eerie looking. “I can’t believe this.” She screamed, “It’s like you’ve missed an entire year of your son’s life. Where were you, Ron?”
I tried to defend myself. I said, “It’s not like I just took off for a year or something. Goddamn, Pam. I was here. I just forgot, right?”
So, we just sat in the dark. All I could hear was her breathing and that’s when it hit me. I flicked the radio back on. The storm turned. It went east of us. They said we had been spared. They said it would’ve been the big one.
Photo by Kristin Fouquet
Kristin Fouquet, a native of New Orleans, was born an anachronism. Having reached adulthood but, not necessarily maturity, she is also a writer and fine art photographer. Her work has been published both in print and online. Fortunately for Kristin, she lives in a city rich with mystique, offering up many intriguing subjects. More about her can be found at Le Salon: http://kristin.fouquet.cc
Le Salon
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Personal Rituals by Miss E.
Personal rituals. The things we hold onto that keep us from never having been.
There are days which blend into a sameness, where half-forgotten things crawl, gather, and a vague restlessness chokes the air. The eyes go blind. The fingers grasp for yellow straws of normalcy. Whatever normal means.
I mute my screams and photoshop my memories.
I need to breathe again.
I love dance. The studio, the music, filling the emptiness within, without. The old, familiar aches of the back, neck, the bruises on the shin and ankle. Etching the song into space with the lines of the body. I live pain, without its suffering. I take pleasure, despite its bitter reality.
Somewhere, a cage sits silent. And a broken-winged bird died, dreaming of flight.
The music flows, whispering life into rose-leaf memories and stillborn futures.
The emptiness, it becomes a channel.
Expression?
Catharsis.
For the things beyond words, the body speaks for me.
And in that heartbeat between notes, within songs.
I burn once more.
Personal Ritual by Crystal Folz
Long before she bought her first pair of fishnets and rolled down the waistband on her skirts to raise the hemline, there was a nakedness in her eyes like swollen blackberries on a leaf-barren vine.
She looked for it in other people, touching strangers' arms in passing to lure a glance and thumbing the brows over young eyes soggy with whiskey, until one night, there was a wicked dance between the conversationalists in her head that lasted well into morning.
Her ugliness was unique.
She wore it in embarrassment, like stained panties, discreetly, always glimpsing behind to ensure invisibility. She tried to calm the pain by holding in her stomach. Jutted hipbones, concave stomach, fleshless between her thighs, she fumbled around like a skeleton, a skeleton with bulging ugly eyes.
Crystal Folz lives in rural Indiana with her husband and two sons. She works as a bookkeeper for a small Carnegie library.
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