Sarcasmo's Scribblings

Nanowrimo Fakeout 2007 - Story Snippet -

2006-11-02T20:20:00.000-05:00

“What are you doing, Helen? How can you sleep? Don’t you understand, the world is going to end?”

Helen gently removed Edgar’s meaty hands from her shoulders and finished clothing the buttons on her nightshirt. She sat down at the old wicker vanity and began to brush her hair in the traditional 100 strokes. At stroke 30 she said to Edgar, “Ed – for years now that idiot box has always been predicting something; they’d tell us the Russians were going to get us, or the Arabs – or heck – even the snow. And every time they scream doom and gloom I go to bed and get up the next morning and life still happens. The bed still needs to be made, breakfast still needs to be cooked, and the books at Mr. Johnson’s feed store still need to be balanced. And you know as well as I do I’m not worth a darn without a good night’s sleep. So, Edgar, I am going to bed so that tomorrow, if the world hasn’t ended, I can still function as a normal human being. And if that world has ended – well – quite frankly, I’d rather face my maker refreshed from a good night’s sleep than with a grumpy face and eyes red-rimmed from crying.” She finished her hundredth stroke and got into bed. “Now, of course Edgar, you may do what you’d like. Call all your friends. Sit down and finally write that novel you’ve been talking about. Go out and have an orgy – whatever you feel you need to do. If it were up to me, though, you’d put on your flannel pajamas I got you last Christmas, climb into this bed next to me and put your arms around me. When I married you I told you I wanted to do everything by your side – that includes go to sleep, wake up, and, if God so wills it – be turned to goo by alien invaders.” Helen gave Edgar a peck on the check, climbed under the covers, put on her reading glasses and picked up yesterday’s crossword. In a moment she was chewing on the pen cap in her mouth, muttering about 16 across.

Edgar went out into the living room and stared hard out in to the darkness. Down in the valley, he could see all the lights in the city burning, bright as day- search lights and sirens exploding in frenzied activities from all corners. “I should be there,” he thought. “I should do something.” He grabbed his hat and coat from the hook by the door, and ran to the lockbox where he kept his gun. He got his rifle and stormed towards the door. He’d show those alien bastards. He was the best shot in town. Why, there wasn’t a deer or trash-troubling raccoon that hadn’t gone down after he aimed and fired….

Helen looked up and smiled as Edgar came into the bedroom, wearing his flannel pajamas, still creased from the package. “Well, don’t you look handsome?” she said, putting down her crossword, and setting her glasses on top of them. Edgar got in to bed and put his arm around her. Helen switched off the light – and didn’t move from the circle of his arms even though they both heard her pen scuttle from the end table and roll across the floor. “I love you Edgar,” she said. “I love you too, Darlin,” he murmered into her hair. And they slept.

Stories That Never Were #6

2006-08-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: 20,000 Geeks Under the Sea

The Result:
Roger realized the Titanic LARP had gotten out of the storytellers' control when the ship capsized for the 3rd time. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, allowing the dot.com millionaires secure the locations - they had the money and energy to get each and every detail right to create a truly immersive gaming experience.

Even the lack of modern communication.
And the giant iceberg.
And, sadly, a poor ratio of passengers to life boats.

Ah, well. Roger, being a NPC in the band could do nothing else but play on.

Stories That Never Were #5

2006-08-16T00:19:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: "Seventh sneeze of a seventh sneeze."

The Result:
There is a well known myth, that the seventh son born of a seventh son will be possessed of a great power.

A lesser known, much rarer and darker myth, is that the seventh sneeze, caused by a germ transmitted by a seventh sneeze, if left unchecked, will be the sneeze that will unravel the universe.

It is because of this, that it is considered poor manners not to cover your nose and mouth upon sneezing – not because you may infect others – but because there is no way to know where your infection came from. To sneeze without appropriate handkerchief measures is the etiquette equivalent of announcing that you hold the world in great disdain and would destroy it in a breath if you could.

In some countries, this is crime enough to end in a quick and public stoning.

Always cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze.

Stories That Never Were #4

2006-08-16T00:17:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: Ignatia Hypotenouse And The Case of The Rusty Trombone

The Result:

Ignatia Hypotenouse’s fantasical name, like most names, was entirely the fault of her parents. In her case, she did not suffer the indignities of woefully inherited names that could be explained away by having been in the family for generations. Ignatia was an adopted child, and her parents felt that instead of assigning her the bland, recognizable names of their families: Mary, Ethel, Nana – or even, in fact, their family name, the detestably common Smith – these free spirits thought she should have a name that was entirely her own. So - they took their passions – homeopathy and mathematics (and not spelling), and an 8 year old Ignatia Hypotenouse was so re-introduced to a world.

A world which would, due to her name, taunt, tease and shun her in her formative years. Although she heard through certain channels that when of her fellow inmates at the orphanage had gone to some Disney fans, and had been saddled with the moniker “Tinkerbell” – eventually shorted to “Tinks.” As the story went, Tinks ended up an exotic dancer – since her name made it difficult for her to be taken seriously anywhere else. Whenever Ignatia felt badly about her name, she thanked heavens for that her name only gave her the sort of lonely difficulties that had chased her into books for companionship at such an early age – a passion for reading that had subsequently led her to become well versed in the fine art of detecting. It began with Encyclopedia Brown then Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes. By high school she had tired of fictional cozies and had turned instead to the hardstuff – forensics, pathology, criminal psychology.

So – complain as she might, (and she did, often and to anyone who would listen) – Ignatia (or “Iggy” as she was known around the studio) knew she owed her career as head writer for CSI to her parents and their unorthodox naming methods.

In this role, she received many calls from fans and cranks wanting to give her an idea for her next big case – so when she started getting repeated notes regarding a “Rusty Trombone” she quickly filtered them into her trusty circular file. But one day, when the receptionist was out to lunch and Iggy had to answer her own phone, a strangely familiar voice came over the line. “Is this Ignatious Hypotenouse? This Tinkerbell Johnson – we…we were at St. Mary’s together.” A sob should the receiver. “Tinkerbell?” Iggy whispered into the phone. “Tinks, what is it?” “It’s the bandleader of the burlesque house – he’s missing and their blaming me because of some instrument they found in the dumpster of my building. Please, Ignatious, I need your help. I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

Ignatious grabbed a well-chewed pencil and her notepad. “Slow, down, Tinks. Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. And Tinks..”
“Yes.”
“Call me Iggy.”

And so Ignatious Hypotenouse began the strange case of The Rusty Trombone – her first hands-on investigation and…the following year, her first Emmy nominated episode.

Stories That Never Were #3

2006-08-16T00:16:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: To Hell in a Handbasket and Back

The Result:
Mary Sue squirmed in her seatbelt. “Insulated my ass,” she muttered. It hadn’t been difficult for Martin to convince her that Hades would be a grand vacation adventure now that the underworld had opened its doors to tourism due to the increasingly high cost of torture. “Rekindle the old fire, ha ha” he said. How easily he sold her on the “Jesus Special” (“Descend into Hell – Return on the 3rd Day or Your Money Back!”) as a good way to get the lay of the land without making too much of a financial or spiritual commitment. And how calmly he assured her that the advertised “Handbasket” mode of transportation was just a clever marketing euphemism for “Coach Class”

Now, strapped tightly into sharp, leaking wicker that was allowing the River Styx to stain her best travel clothes, Mary Sue cursed Martin under her breath. She didn’t know why she listened to him –things always ended like this. Mary Sue miserable thanks to Martin’s machinations – from which Martin inevitably & elegantly extradited himself at the last moment. Not that the heartattack had been elegant, exactly, but at least it didn’t involve his pores being permanently infused with sulfur.

On the plus side, the resort had called to confirm her trip, ensuring her that Martin had already arrived (This was promising, the prompt service – their call came before the hospital’s did). At least they’d still get to have the weekend together. And she could give him one last piece of her mind.

And then see if she could exchange an extra torture or two for him in order to get herself a travel upgrade for the return trip.

Stories That Never Were #2

2006-08-16T00:15:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: In One Word--Umbrellas!

The Result:
In a future world where both written and spoken language are forbidden to anyone outside the powerful elite, a young girl discovers a relic hidden in the bottom of her dead grandmothers jewelry box. At first she assumes it is a dirty rag, but something in the imagery stops her – the markings seem deliberate. Ordered.

As working class, she has never encountered words before – even grunting is forbidden to those taught only to communicate via simple body semaphore. Because speech is forgotten to them, no one has whispered to of legends times past when things were different. And she wouldn’t have understood them even if they had.

What she did understand was that her grandmother had kept this thing – safe and secret for a reason. And when she unriddles it’s meaning, with the help of the young boy to whom she has assigned no name (never knowing why she should), she will shake down the oppressive phylarchy like the trumpet tumbling down the walls of Jerhico in word—“Umbrellas!”

Stories That Never Were #1

2006-08-16T00:14:00.000-04:00

The request: Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories.

The Title: Was it Really Gazpacho?

The Result:Edgar Anderson was a trustfund baby, raised, along with his interest, by a board of financiers and the blind old family Nanny who often had time distinguishing Edgar from the family dog, (also named Edgar, as his mother, exhausted from childbirth, couldn’t be troubled to think of a second name at the time), which was given to Edgar as a gift on the occasion of his birth by his perpetually absent father. By age 5, he had stopped correcting Nanny. By age 7, he had begun seeking inward for those intangibles he couldn’t find around him. By 7 ½ he had suffered his first existential crisis. By 16, he had subscribed (and made sizable donations to) most of the world religions. At 21, and fully in control of his finances, Edgar exhausted them immediately, in search of a mythical yogi atop a distant mountain, about whom he heard whispers in every cult, ashram & “estate” the board of financiers had spent his teen years rescuing and deprogramming him from. At 23 – he succeeded, and was able to ask this wisest of wise men one question.

The book begins with Edgar at 24, trembling, broke, exhausted, half-way around the world from everyone and everything he ever knew….preparing to make a new life for himself armed only with the cold coffee left in his thermos and the answer to the question that had plagued Mankind throughout the ages. Join Edgar as he makes sense of his life among the ruins, and wonders, each and every day at this wisdom of the ages, whispered so succinctly from the weathered lips of the old man. Was it really, “gazpacho?” Or had the yogi merely mistook Edgar for the young man who regularly took his lunch order?

2005 - Hamlyn2 (the other side of the story) - still in progress

2005-11-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

Like Hamlyn - this is a pretty static sequence, with one person relating a story to another. I'm really just working an idea out I had a while ago - and haven't quite hit the right balance with it yet. This section is probably about 1/2 finished.

“Married, friend?” Fluvio asked, leaning close enough to the fellow next to him at the bar that his lips nearly touched the man’s shoulder. His stool wobbled, and he swung back a little too quickly to right himself, sloshing more than a modicum of ale on the already sticky bar surface. When he finished swearing, he turned to see that his erstwhile companion had beat a hasty retreat to a table in the far corner of the common room. Fluvio raised his half-empty mug to him in a combination salute/apology. He turned back to the bar and continued to no one in particular. “I was married once. Still am I suppose.” He empty his mug and slammed it suddenly on the bar – pushing it forward with a grunt to indicate to the stoic bartender that he’d like another. He’d put a guilder down when he game in the bar hours ago – so the bartender was happy to let the fellow drink himself blind (or, hopefully, hoarse) – but that didn’t mean he had to talk to him.

“Women,” the little man continued, “Women have been the root of all my trouble. Specifically, wives. Well, and witches. Women, wives and witches. Yessir. I’m through with all of ‘em.”

Roberto (the bartender, who will take the narration of this tale from here-on-in, as I have arbitrarily decided to change point-of-views mid-paragraph) righted an overturned mug on the bar top, and began wiping it with his greasy rag. “Surprised they’d have the likes of you.” Fluvio snorted and buried his head deeper in his cup. “Besides. Can’t ‘ov given you too much trouble – not when you’ve still got a purse like that.” Roberto had a real loathing for men of this sort; loafs and lay bouts that life seemed to work out for. The weight that jangled in his purse (which he’d be keener to put away, if you asked Roberto – flashing that much wealth around without care was liked to get his purse strings – not that that was Roberto’s business, so long as his bill was paid in full first) spoke volumes about his ease of life, and his pipe informed all that this was a man of the road – with no job or home or whelp to tie him down. Granted – his clothes (the huntsman’s shirt and breeches, combined with the cape as wild as a foolscap and that ridiculous red hat) were a bit of an oddity; but having listened to the man rant for the past few hours – Roberto felt that this could well be one of those instances where the clothes might actually reflect the man within them; crazy.

“What, this?” he said, waving his purse about. The noisy chatter that filled the background paused a moment; Roberto could suddenly feel the intense gaze of a hundred pairs of eyes on them, and he inwardly noted that if the gentleman kept this up, he’d likely end up with his throat cut instead of his purse strings) – “Feh. Pointless. Useless. It’s disgusting. Covered in blood.” Roberto picked the guilder up from the bar, spun it in his practiced fingers, and even bit it openly.

”Looks plenty clean to me, musician.”

“Musician? Me? Aye, once. Now I’m no better than your average mercenary. An animal.” Roberto began to suspect the gentleman was looking to have his throat cut – and said so. Fluvio laughed. “After witches and a wife, why should a fear a few men with knives?”

Roberto sighed and leaned closer to the man at the bar. He could see his daughter, Brenda, making her way thought the crowd, serving the customers – both high born and low, with her usual sass and grace. She was a good girl, his Brenda – but Roberto found himself wondering how much longer it would be before she sent men crying in their cups.

If she hadn’t already. He shook the image from his head; the thought was more than his paternal heart could bear.

“Alright, musician, you’ve clearly got a tale to tell – so out with it and be done. And don’t be expecting me to pay you for it in the end; I know that trick. And the last man who came looking for a shoulder to cry on and then tried to demand payment for the ‘entertainment’ when his weeping was done left here with a fewer bones intact than when he came in through my door.

Fluvio snorted, and tossed a few guilders loudly across the bar. Roberto made them vanish with a silent skill to rival that of any cutpurse. Roberto gave the musician an appraising look. He was well (if strangely) dressed, that much was true; but despite his heavy purse his face with thin, and his eyes threatened to be swallowed any moment by the dark hollows of their sockets. He signaled for his daughter to take over coverage of the bar, and ignored her look of disdained incredulity. He produced a dusty cobalt bottle from beneath the bar (it was without label, covered only in a layer of fine dust), and two glasses. He came out from behind the bar and half-drug/half carried the musician to a private room just behind the bar area. Tossing the musician into a seat, he removed the cork from the bottle with a practiced ‘pop’, and poured a measure of thick, amber liquid into each glass. Even from the tabletop, the sweet sting of the drink made his eyes water. He shoved a glass roughly into the musician’s hand, then clicked their glasses together.

Roberto took a thoughtful sip – fighting back the cough that threatened his throat when the first few drops went down, warming his insides with its familiar flame. “You’ve an audience now, musician. Might as well talk.”

Fluvio stared down into his glass, his head bent so far Roberto was surprised it did not simply roll from his neck and into some dark corner under the table. The musician stayed so long that way that Roberto wondered if he hadn’t passed out already. Irritated, he pushed his chair back from the table. He had customers to care for – why he had even come back here –

Before Roberto could stand to leave, a baleful sigh whistled through the musician’s lips.

”She was,” he said, his eyes still in his cups, “the plainest, most stubborn, least agreeable woman I had met in all my travels. Every time she looked at me with her cold eyes, my stomach turned and my skin crawled.”

Roberto eased back into his seat, his glass growing warm in his hand. “The witch.”

Fluvio laughed – it was a surprising sound – raspy and unnatural; it shook his thin frame till it rattled. “No. The witch was a delightful, obliging woman…very obliging. This young harpy was my wife.”

“Maybe you should have married the witch.”

Fluvio spat. “I should’ve burned her, is what I should have done. But I am a sad, weak man. My wife – she was a good woman. Deserved better than that…to die that way. If she is dead.” Roberto’s hand moved stealthily, unconsciously beneath the table to the knife he kept at his hip; he hadn’t anticipated the drunk to be the violent type – but his years behind the bar had taught him about the deceptive quality of looks.

“So…” he ventured carefully, “you killed your wife to run off with witch … or tried to? Why not just leave her – walk away?”

“You don’t understand. My wife…she was a harpy when I met her – or so I thought. Cold, aloof, the other girls from her village would blush and pull their skirts up if I so much as looked their way – and there she was – this ugly thing who wouldn’t even give me a smile in exchange for a song.”

“Ah,” Roberto said, “a challenge.

”Exactly. And there was a time…when I was young…when a challenge was not something to be turned away from. So I wagered myself that I’d bed in a week’s time.”

“And did you?”

“No – she was a tougher nut to crack than that. It took me a month – and I had to wed her besides. Oh – I didn’t mind – marriage was my idea – and a surprise it was too. She was…the more I wooed her the more besotted I became myself. She was different. Smart – and not just the book kind, but witty too. She barely spoke – sometimes I wouldn’t hear a word from her for days – and then when she broke the silence it was but a few words that cut so deep I actually felt I would bleed. So instead of wooing her with love songs and sweet words, I worked hard to get her to turn that tongue of her sweetly to me. So I talked to her. I talked until I was blue in the face. And when I couldn’t talk anymore I listened – and I learned how much of herself she hid away behind her mousey hair and thick waste. Outside, she was the quintessential milk maids daughter – but beneath – she was alight with a curiosity and passion and independence I had never seen in another woman – or indeed man – in all my days. And when she talked about the world and her desires that passion burned her up from the inside – and then she was beautiful. And I knew if there was going to be any woman on this whole earth to share the road with me, it would be she.”

2005 - Hamlyn

2005-11-06T22:52:00.000-05:00

“May I smoke?” she asked, already pulling a long-thin lady’s cigarette and tapping it on a silver case. It seemed out of place with her casually modern attire – a white sundress decorated with small green flowers, and a matching green sweater and mules. I pegged her as the conservative sort as soon as she walked through the door. I never would have made her for someone to waver something so obviously valuable about. Maybe I was slipping.

No chance. Her case was… different. I knew that. Now was not the time to start second guessing myself, times being what they were.

“Of course,” I smiled, gesturing to the crystal ashtray at the end of the couch. She moved it onto the coffee table in front of her, placing her case besides. I couldn’t read it the initials from where I sat, but I could see that it was elegant, monogrammed, and bearing the slight tarnish of true silver.

She lit up with a cheap, drugstore lighter (her practiced hands quickly bypassing the parental safeties that my own hands often stumbled over) and inhaled gratefully, then let the smoke out slowly, reluctantly, from pursed lips. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t tell you how long its been since I’ve the luxury of smoking indoors. I can never get one of these lit in the wind.”

“I like people to be comfortable,” I smiled and nodded towards her case. “Family heirloom? I haven’t seen one in ages. Looks quite old.”

She laughed – it was a deep, throaty laugh that exploded from her tiny frame, and broke down into the hacking cough all smokers share. I offered her some water from the decanter by my elbow – but she shook her head and held up her hand as the cough subsided. “Old,” she said, still coughing. “You have no idea.”

“So tell me,” I said, leaning back in my chair and threading my fingers behind my head; unsure which had creaked – my back or the old office furniture.

She pushed her hair back behind her ear and took another drag from her cigarette, her body crouched over the ashtray as though it might escape her any moment.. “Well, it’s like this, Doc,” she said “I’m about 700 years old – give or take a few decades.”

“I’m a Detective, Ms. Farmer, not a Doctor. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look a day over 30.” I almost never took the loonies anymore – but I’d had her vetted – and she had seemed sane enough. And more importantly, her back account was full to bursting – and things being what they were, I couldn’t be too picky.

A grim smile pursed her lips, “Sorry, Detective. Force of habit. Almost everytime I tell this story, it’s to some damn doctor or another. Oh – don’t worry – they’ve always found me to be “harmless,” but of course you know that. Now, now, don’t be embarrassed, I wouldn’t want to work with a detective who hadn’t been thorough enough ohave me checked out.” I gave a non-committal nod, as I mentally began firing my street guys. Outsourcing never did pay in my business. She leaned back onto the soft, stretching her arms out along the top; the smoke crawling up her cigarette towards the chipped plaster ceiling. “In fact, do you mind if I just call you ‘Doc,’ Detective? It’d make things go faster.”

“As you like, Ms. Farmer.”

“Please, call me Edna,”

“Please, Ms. Farmer, you’ve given me a PhD; the least I can do is maintain the manners my mother gave me.”

“It’s your office, after all, I suppose you’d better do as you will.”

“Please continue, Ms. Farmer.”

“Well, Doc, as I said, I’m just over 700 years old – nearing 750, actually, but I am a woman, so you must allow me my small vanities. I was born in a small village in Germany which hasn’t existed for so long even I can’t remember what it was called. My parents were famers – hence the name – and I was the perrineal farmer’s daughter.”

“German?” I interrupted. I don’t hear any trace of accent.

“Really? People often tell me they hear some Boston in my vowels. Still, I’ve been a long time in this country. I haven’t sounded like a haus frau for..well..ages.” She stubbed out her cigarette butt and lit another. She offered her case to me, wordlessly, and I fought the impulse to take one. I’d given it up long ago…and the smell of her own, girlie cigarettes were almost enough to drive me to distraction. I feared an entire cigarette would push me right into a lung-eroding bliss and oblivion. She pulled her legs up under her.

“This part of the story isn’t terribly original, I’m afraid. Young, naïve farm girl meets worldly, musician who fills her head with stories of the big city. It wasn’t that he was especially good-looking, you understand.” She leaned back and closed her eyes, the faint trace of a smile making it’s way over her face. “Oh, I suppose he was handsome in a common sort of way; strong jaw, bright eyes – and a slim build—making him decidedly different from the farm boys I was accustomed to. It was his stories; he’d seen the world – or more of it than I had, you understand. And, of course, the music. Young girls have gone giddy for musicians since the dawn of time itself. Just ask Eurdyce.”

”You know her?” I asked.

“I’m speaking metaphorically, Doc. I’m old, but not that old. And certainly not that crazy.”

”I never said..”

“They never do. My point is that he was a big city musician and I was a small town girl…”

“And one thing led to another,” I said, fiddling with my pen. “You’re right. It is an old story.”

”That’s just it – one thing didn’t lead to anything. At least not right away. Look at me, Detective. I’m not hideous, but I’m nothing special.” She pressed on, surprising me but not allowing me to suggest she was wrong. “Even without 700 years of gathered wisdom I knew better than to let some fast talker turn my head. Or at least I thought I did. After all, there were many other girls far prettier than I who’d bed him for a smile and a song; and I was smart enough to know a song wouldn’t feed a child any children he might leave behind.”

She leaned her back against the faded velvet armrest; and folded her stocking feet beneath her. “You know, in all this time, I never really figured out what drew him to me in the first place.” She held her cigarette to her lips for a moment, and just held it there, not breathing. Without inhaling, she laid it gently down in the ashtray. “In the end, I guess it was because I resisted him so strongly at first. I think he’d become so accustomed to pretty young girls falling at his feet that he was challenged by the plain, resistant one.

“In any case, woo me he did, and in no small manner. After I rejected his advances, he put down his pipe and fast-talked my father into giving him some odd jobs at the farm. Father wasn’t hard to convince – I had no brothers and he was getting on in years. He never trusted him… but he wasn’t so foolish as to let his worries stop him from having a willing, strong back around. Father didn’t allow him into the house except for at mealtimes, so he wooed me in the fields and when we met up on the road to and from market. He told me stories that made me laugh until my side split; he revealed the secrets of his youth. He engaged me in arguments about what was going on in the world, and listened to everything I said as though I were his equal. One night, when the moon was dark, we sat in the fields and he wept on my neck over a long lost love who broke his heart.

“Don’t laugh at me Detective. I know now these are the way to remove an earnest woman from her smallclothes – but at the time, I believed he believed in me. And when he asked me to marry him, I was sure.”

“My parents could see right away it was a bad match – and made no bones about telling me so. That’s where they failed, I suppose. The quickest way to get a stubborn young girl to do anything is to tell her not to. But I can hardly blame them – this was the 13th century; reverse psychology hadn’t been invented yet.”

“The worse part is, even then I knew it was a bad idea. He was a young man, accustomed to independence, and the very things that made him attractive to me were going to make him attractive to many other young women. And I was just a farm girl, with little education and barely a bosom to speak of. On the night we became engaged, he kissed me with such force and clasped me so tightly I thought he would squeeze all the air from me and leave me a husk on the ground; and even then I knew I’d never be able to hold him tightly enough to keep him from straying. Three days after our engagement, I offered him a chance to walk away without reproach. And he swore to me with tears in his eyes that I was the only woman he wanted, and the only one he’d ever need for the rest of our lives.” She rearranged herself again, lifting her eyes up to meet mine. “And you know what, Doc, I knew at that moment he was lying – but he seemed to want to believe it so badly – and I wanted it to be true more than I had ever wanted anything – so believe I did. And so we were married. I’ll take that water, now, if you don’t mind.”
I sloshed some water in a glass, inwardly sorry that I hadn’t at least dusted them clean before her appointment. They hadn’t been used in ages. Still, she took it from me gratefully, and if she noticed the dust and cracks, she was too classy to acknowledge them.

“Take your time, Ms. Farmer,” I said gently, crossing my legs and tapping my pen on my notepad. I’d taken very few notes during her story. “Traveling musician” I had written. And “Infidelity?” She was right; aside from her incredible claims about her age – there was nothing extraordinary about her story. “Marry in haste,” my mother had often warned me, “and repent at your leisure.” It’s one of the many things that had kept me safely a bachelor. That and the slug imbedded in my body that all but insured I’d never father any brats of my own. Made marriage seem a bit needless in my estimation. And the one woman I’d thought I’d try it with anyway was too eager to be a mother to try it without the whelping. “Would you like to take a break, stretch your legs on the balcony a bit? You’ve been talking quite a while.”

She shook her head again. “No, I’m fine. Funny though, isn’t it – time passes and you think all those feelings are gone. You’d think 7 centuries would be enough to forget. I can’t recall where I was born, or my best friend’s name or my mother’s face; but then I catch a scent in the air like the sun on his skin in the morning and well…well, I’m getting ahead of myself here, Doc. Let me back up some.”

“By all means.”

“So, it went well enough in the beginning, as most marriages do. Have you ever been married, Doc? No? You should try it sometime. When it’s good, it’s very, very good – and when it’s bad, well,” she shrugged playfully, “it makes you see the good in being single. In any case, I traveled with him for a few weeks following the wedding – and he doted on me every day. This was it, I thought, my life on the road – a man who loved me and adventure every day.”

“After about 2 months of travel, however, I was exhausted and our conversation was becoming strained. I wasn’t used to traveling; and when I had in the past it had been only to the nearest town and back – either by foot or wagon; all this horseback riding and sleeping on roadsides and haylofts was more adventure than I bargained for. At first I bit my tongue, afraid to complain; but soon enough he made noises about how he was usually much more successful around that time of year, but he moved faster on his own and could visit more villages in a short amount of time. I confessed I was road-weary and homesick – so he promised to take me to his cottage where I could set-up house while he earned our living. He said it so kindly that I wept with relief and ignored the eyes he made at the serving wench at the inn where were spent that night. And I said nothing when I awoke to an empty pallet in the morning. He said he was making some extra money by assisting with the morning collection of eggs, and I believed him; I knew it wasn’t true in my heart of hearts – but a marriage is based on trust, afterall – and one must start somewhere.

“So he set me up in a small cottage at the base of the mountains.” She laughed bitterly. “Cottage. Even now I’m protecting his image. It was barely a shack – one room with a chimney, a dirt floor and a handful of thatch that was less ceiling than sky. Worst of all, it was several days walk to the nearest village. He deposited me with a kiss and an ear full of promises of gifts and riches, and soon I was spending days, weeks, even months at a time alone - far away from everyone and everything.

“I was fifteen.

“I busied myself for a time making the ‘cottage’ a habitable place to live. And every so often my husband would come home to me. If his pockets jingled then he would cover me with kisses and sing me songs and kept me up nights until I thought the world itself would become tousled and breathless. And if he came home without a song in his step, I was treated to sullen silences, overturned stewpots – and anxious waiting when he stormed out the door if my nerves were stretched far enough to ask about the love bites yellowing on his neck and chest.

“Still (although he often threatened) he never raised a hand to me in anger; worse marriages had been made, and even if I did not have the life of song and adventure he wooed me with, I was not altogether unhappy.

“But I was terribly lonely. Sometimes, when he was in his silences, I tried to pick a fights with him so he would strike me – so long as he’d at least acknowledge me. Funny, isn’t it, Doc? You’d think being lonely when someone else was around would be easier – but it wasn’t. It was much, much worse.” She lit another cigarette. This time it took her several tries to maneuver the child protection lid.

“I see nothing humorous about spousal abuse, Ms. Farmer.”

“No, of course, not, Doc,” she said, scratching her knee, and causing a small hole to form in her hose.

“Ms. Farmer, if your husband was in someone abusive, you would be better served by going to the appropriate authorities. I don’t know what you’ve heard about my services – but I find people – perhaps spy on them a bit. I’m not in the …how shall I put it… revenge business.”

“No, no, Doc. Don’t you worry. I just want you to find him for me. No funny business, honestly.”
“You understand stand, I’m not a lawyer, there’s no confidentiality agreement between us; if you tell me you mean to do him harm.”

“Doc, relax. Honestly. Have a smoke. I’m a tiny woman. I could hardly do him any harm. I just…want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

She made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort of derision. “Million dollar question, that is, Doc. I suppose I want to know why?”

“Why what?”

“Why he left me like that. Why I had to be punished.”

At last, I thought. Familiar territory, the woman scorned. This one wouldn’t be the first to let the disappointment make her a little batty. “Left you, Ms. Farmer?” She looked down and bit her lip, giving only the smallest of nods. “I don’t mean to be … indelicate… but I assume there was another woman?”

“No,” she said, a bit too firmly for my comfort. Why had I agreed to see her alone? “I mean, yes, of course there was another woman. It was the one who gave him that stupid red hat – he thought it such a prize – I could never get him to take it off, and red was a terrible color on him. But – it wasn’t her, the woman. There were so many women – how could I have left him for her and not the others? No, Doc. It was them. The children.”

“Children?” Her background check had not turned up any known relations.

“I told you, Doc. He was gone so often, and I was so lonely. I thought perhaps that if I had a babe to bounce on my knee I wouldn’t have to be alone. And so I told him I wanted children.” She tapped her fingers against her case, her nails clicking staccato.

“And he didn’t?”

“Honestly? I don’t think he cared either way. The longer we were together the more evident it became to me that the cottage wasn’t any kind of home for him. The road was his home, and our little cottage was just another inn and I was someone to tend to his knees. One child there more or less wouldn’t have troubled him either way.

“And, besides, he liked to have something to brag about now and then. And a new father is entitled to the odd free drink here and there.

“I think it was my timing that was bad. The Plague was starting..you know, the Plague, Doc?”

“’Ring Around the Rosies’ and all that?”

“Got it in one. Well, The Plague was becoming a real problem…and it made travel difficult – and out-of-towners – even those that might bring news and songs. So the money dried up – and he was finding himself forced to be at home more and more. And all the while he was home, I was troubling him for babies.”

“Some men would be happy for such a willing wife.”

“Yes, well, all he could seem to hear was that I wanted another mouth to feed. I was young, then. Foolish.”

“Folly is meant for the youth, Ms. Farmer.”

Again, she graced me with an unexpectedly large and open smile. Right that moment, I could see how a young man might fall in love with a smile like that. Perhaps even an older one. I felt the sudden need for something stronger than water, and went and fixed myself a whiskey, neat, from the sideboard. I made one for Ms. Farmer as well, and she held it carefully in both hands.

“Someday, Doc, when you have a few weeks of free time, I’ll tell you my whole life’s story. I think you’ll find I’m a woman who is forever doomed for folly when it comes to love. But that’s for another time. Let’s just say, for now, that had I been wiser, then, I would have simply stroked his ego and seduced him into bed, rather than trying to woo him there with requests for squalling babies. I didn’t understand about egos then. Mine or his.

“The more time he was forced to spend at home, the more difficult and withdrawn he became; and the more withdrawn he became, the more lonely I was..and the more I begged for a child. He called me ungrateful, and demanding, and a host of other names – and told me that if he wasn’t company enough for me, than maybe I’d be happier alone. And he grabbed his pipe and his coat, and stormed out of the cottage.

“I did not see him for a month or more.

“I was besides myself with grief and anxiety for the first few days. I wept until I hadn’t the energy to weep any more, then I’d sleep, only to wake and weep some more.

“Then one day I woke up, cleaned myself and the cottage, had some food, and went back to my routine. And to be honest – when I thought he might not come back, I was a little bit happier than I had been, for a time.

“Or so I had thought. One day as I was sweeping the floor he walked in the door, bold as if he’d never left, and gave me a great kiss and squeeze. He was dressed in the strangest clothes I’d ever seen him in; a patchwork coat of many colors..and..of course, that damned hat. I’ll admit, my heart was full to see him, and every harsh word and recrimination I had practiced, every refusal and rejection I planned to say was quickly forgotten when he smiled at me.

“I told you, Doc, folly in love. It’s my fate.

“He was so excited when he came in, I couldn’t have asked him to explain where he’d been all this time even if I had been in the state of mind to try. He sat me down on the rocking chair by the hearth, and told me that all of our financial woes are over. He had, he explained, discovered the most wonderful talent – one he must have had all his life, and had never known before. And each time I opened my mouth to speak and ask him what he meant, he would interrupt me and tell me to ‘Listen, just listen.’ And then he played.

“Now, I had heard my husband play many a time before. He was a proficient piper, if not impassioned; he could well carry a tune a tarvern full of drunkards could happily sing along to for a few pennies and a tankard of ale. But the noise that came out of the pipe…it was…discordant. Painful. I was so afraid I’d anger him into leaving again if I so much as flinched, so I smiled a painful smile, and grabbed a fistful of my apron and skirt to stop myself from raising my hands to my ears.

“It was when I felt something soft brush against my foot that I looked down and saw them. They were everywhere. Beady eyed and long of tooth, coming from all dark corners, and coming like a river in from under the doors.

“Rats?” I asked, suppressing a laugh.

“Rats,” she said with uncommon seriousness. “Never before or since had I seen so many. I would have fainted dead away if I hadn’t been so engaged with screaming.

“My paused his playing just long enough to laugh – a sort of maniacal glee in his eye I hadn’t seen since I agreed to be his bride, then he picked up his pipe and played again, marching out the door. I was rooted to my chair, convinced he had somehow summoned the rats to get rid of me or eat me…but I saw soon enough that they followed after him…every one.

“I was still sitting there, shocked and shaking, when he returned, ruddy and triumphant a half-an-hour later.

“Once he was able to calm me, and convince me that his army of rats had been safely drowned in the river, he explained his plan. Rumour had it that Hamlyn had been run over by rats. The problem was so bad the mayor was looking to someone, anyone, to rid them of them for good. The reward was more than a king’s ransom. He’d march those rats right out of town, and we’d never have to worry about money again. And then, he promised, we could have all the children I could stand. In fact, he was so sure of his success, that we started trying that very night.

“I guess you know the next bit? He did go to Hamlyn and take care of their rats – but then they put off payment. For month’s he waited – and as you can imagine – the longer he waited the more sullen he became; and it wasn’t long before we were fighting about expanding our family – only this time he was crueler – bitterer. And when he vanished again – this time I was convinced it was for good.

“It was only a week that time. But this time when he came in there was no kiss and no laughter. He just took me by the wrist, and drug me kicking and screaming to the side of the mountain. ‘Never let it be said,’ he spat at me, ‘that I don’t keep my promises. All the children you can manage, dear wife.’ Then he tossed me in a cave before I got my bearings the opening closed behind me and I was alone in the darkness.

“I despaired myself for dead – and beat my hands against the walls until they were near bloody. I don’t know if hours passed or minutes – but at some point I realized that not all the crying and screaming I heard was my own. I turned and looked, trying to get my eyes to adjust in the darkness. And there they were, all around me.

“More rats?”

“No, Doc. The children. The children of Hamlyn.”

“I see. I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a children’s story.”

“Children’s nightmare – you mean. Imagine being a child and following someone you think is your friend and saviour – only to have them lock you up to die in a mountain somewhere; and no way of knowing if you’ll ever be saved – or even missed.

“There were fifty-three of them Doc. And their screaming was terrible.”

“What did you do, Ms. Farmer?”

“What any woman would do. I put aside my own fears and tried to calm them. And sang them the songs I knew; some I had learned on when I traveled with my husband - and perhaps they weren’t the most appropriate songs for children – but they were what I knew – and it quieted them soon enough. I hugged them all – every one – and started taking stock of our situation. There was condensation for water – and I soon learned to get over my fear of rats, since whatever I (and, soon, some of the older boys) were able to catch we learned to eat for food. I did my best to keep their spirits up = and we made looking for a way out a game. I learned all their names and kissed all their scrapes and bruises and told them every story I’d ever heard or could make up. I can’t tell you that we were happy, Doc, or even comfortable; we were frightened and cold and lost – but I loved those children. Every one.”
“The day the wall rolled open was one of the most surreal of my life. It was mid-day – and the light that flooded in was horrific. The smaller children ran behind my skirts, screaming – while the bigger children clutched whatever rock or stick they had been using for hunting tighter in the their tiny hands.

“What a sight we must have been – emaciated, filthy, trembling. I can’t even begin to imagine the smell. It wasn’t until the mothers – their real mothers – started shrieking and weeping that I understood we had been saved.

“Saved. That was the word that came from my cracked lips. Someone official grabbed me, and I all but fell into his arms. ‘Saved,’ I mumbled again. But instead of wrapping me in blankets and feeding me as was happening to the children, I was hauled roughly into the sunlight, to blink and stammer as demands were made as to the whereabouts of my ‘demon husband.’”

“Demon?”

“Well – the laws of Nature were different then. And whose to say he wasn’t? He had stolen their children and locked them away – the fact I had been locked away as well didn’t seem to make a difference to them. The boy – the hobbled one who was so famously left behind? – he had seen my husband taking me to the cave – and since I was there and he was not – they were quite happy to punish me for his sins. Since I could not give them his whereabouts – they assumed I was protecting him.

“And who am I to laugh that they called him demon, anyway? After what they did next.”

“What was that, Ms. Farmer. What happened next.”

“They cursed me. Oh – I know it sounds ridiculous – but they called me ‘Witch’ and ‘Demoness’ and all sorts of horrible names. I believe they would have committed me to flames if the children of the town hadn’t threatened to thrown themselves in with me. This too, the people of Hamlyn blamed on my witchcraft - but having just got their children back, they weren’t willing to take the risk. So instead, they cursed me.”

“Cursed you?”

“Yes – they found a man who claimed to be a wizard, paid him what they were meant to pay my husband. Since I was the only one found, I was forced to stand trial – but the curse was on us both. The punishment was manifold. First, for bringing witchcraft to Germany, I was exiled from my homeland on pain of death. Secondly – for stealing their children, the wizard cursed my womb and my husbands seed so neither of us could bring forth issue; and third, and most cruelly – I would be forced to live an additional 15 years per child forced to live in the cave to repay the world for all those years of innocence lost.

I did some quick figures in my head. “That is quite a fantastic tale, Ms. Farmer. But every assuming it were to be true, which as a man of reason I don’t see how I can, it seems to me that if this curse were true, you’re time would almost be up. Why look for your husband now?”

“If not now, when? I’m an old woman, Doc, and as you say, I’ll likely begin aging sooner rather than later. He could have spared me all this, you know, all he had to do was show up and tell them I was a victim too – I had nothing to do with it. I could have stayed in Hamlyn and helped care for those children - and my weary soul could have been put to rest generations ago. Instead he left me there; perhaps he intended me to die in the cave. But surely he must have heard about the trial. If he hadn’t wanted to father my children, surely that didn’t give him the right to let them take away my ability to have my own? What man has the right to take that away from anyone?”

I grimaced, and tasted sour copper in the back of my throat, but said nothing.

“And it’s not that I still carry a grudge; even a woman scorned only has so much energy – but I find I still have so much I don’t know. How could I have failed him so much that he could walk away from me so entirely? Our relationship was far from perfect…but for centuries now I have not been able to stop myself from wanting know that he loved me, at least a little bit – and at least for a short amount of time.

“And, of course, I need to apologize to him.”

”Apologize to a man who was emotionally abusive and left you first for dead and then to face the tribunal for his crimes? Ms. Farmer, really.”

”Don’t you see, Doc. The thing with the children…I think..well, it’s my fault, don’t you think? Going on about children like that when he was clearly so…unbalanced about Hamlyn. Those poor children, and their parents. I’d apologize to them if I could – but I can’t. But I can apologize to him, at least. It would help clear my conscience for when the time does come. “

“Ms. Farmer –are you looking for reconciliation?”

“No, Doc. Whatever tenderness I had for him is long gone, along with my ire. I just…it would just be nice to talk to someone from time to time who I know will be around as long as I am.”

“I still don’t understand what I have to do with this? Assuming – for argument’s sake – that the curse is real, and your husband is still alive – I don’t see what I can do to help you. He could be anywhere in the world.”

”He’s in New York, Doc, I guarantee it. This is exactly the sort of place that would appeal to him. I would track him myself – I certainly have the time – if I thought it was a simple matter of simply calling all the “Piper’s” in the phonebook. And I hear you’re good at finding people who don’t want to be found.

“To tell you the truth, Doc. I’m a bit afraid to find him. Terrified that he’s forgotten me entirely – even with the curse. I’ll bet he doesn’t even think it’s a curse. He’s probably delighted – extended youth and relations with abandon. But even he has to know the loneliness.

I raised an eyebrow. “To hear you speak of him, he doesn’t seem the type to be lonely for long.”

“No – fair enough, Doc. But it’s different, this loneliness; it’s not just being alone – it’s knowing that everything you’ve ever known and loved, and everyone you’ll know and love for a long time to come will eventually disappear from your life. He, at least, could understand that. And maybe if we could face that together, it wouldn’t be so bad, that last century or so wouldn’t be quite so bad.”

“And if I should find him, Ms. Farmer – would you want me to make contact – or just tell you where he can be located?”

She smiled her strange little half smile. “Find him first, Doc. You do that, then we’ll figure out the next step. In fact – I was wondering if you might be able to recommend the services of a good lawyer.”

“Lawyer?” I asked downing the last of my drink. “I could recommend a few. What do you need one for.”

“Well, the way I see it, that bastard owes me a few centuries back child support.”

And then it was my turn to laugh.

Hall of Mirrors

2004-11-22T23:34:00.000-05:00

A little comic book style silliness, inspired by this post.

The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger strollied through the lush, tropical nature preserve that sheilded her hidden fortress from the eyes of evil; stopping on an overbluff to sit, watch the sunrise. She sat, stretched her legs, and poured herself some hot coffee from a stainless steel thermos in her pack. The sun crept slowly up from the horizon, stretching it's colorful fingers into the sky. The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger smiled as she sipped her coffee - this is what she missed most when they held her in the deepest pits of the demonic alien planet, the sun. Sure, they had given her powers, but they had taken everything else from her - her identity, her family, her freedom. Well, she had her freedom now - having clawed her way out of the depths of her hellish prison. When she got out, she saw the planets seven firey suns. That's when she knew she had defeated them, that she was free.

That was when she knew she had a purpose.

And that she would never miss a sunrise again.

Some would have consider the Earth's single sun a disappoint after the explosive spectacle of seven simultaneous sunrises, but for The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger, it was the most beautiful site in the universe.

Just as the sky threw off the reds and oranges or morning to cloak itself in its azure glory, The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger felt a sharp pain in her head. "Trouble," she thought as she squeezed her eyes closed, pushing back her fedora to press her red hands to her temples. She could see an amusement park, once grand, now worn and past its glory. Somewhere in it's depths she could sense the pain and confusion of dozens of patrons, their fingers coated in the powdered sugar of funnel cake, their souls sure of their place in the heirarchy of the world. "America," she muttered, "Coney Island." The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger whistled for her Firebrand, her flying Zebra. Soon she was miles above her beloved natural paradise, her coffee forgotten and cooling on the verdant forest floor.

Soon The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger was racing over New York, her long, thick braid whipping violently about in the wind. She tapped whispered something into Firebrand's waiting ear, and they set down by a Nathan's Hotdog stand. "Somethings not right, Firebrand," she said, looking around. It was a beautiful summer day, and yet Coney Island seemed deserted - discarded bits of cotton candy blowing by like tumbleweeds in the wind. "Where is everyone?" she wondered aloud."

Just then she heard a rustling sound behind her. She turned in time to see a small, hairy, blue demon appear in an unecessarily elaborate puff of grey, smoke. The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger blinked away the sting and stench of smoke and brimstone. "Jeffds," she said coldly, keeping her stance open while her muscles tensed to prepare to defend an attack.

"What are you doing here, Ranger?" The satanic Jedffs Warrior asked, his voice like a silky growl. He stood in front of a large atrium, which a wildly painted sign proclaimed 'Hall of Mirrors!. The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger could here a quiet weeping coming from inside.' "They stopped using animals in their amusements decades ago."

"Step aside, Jefdds," The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger demanded, slipping a fire disc from her belt, readying it as it ignited in her grip. "I'm going in."

Jefdds pointed to the Hall of Mirrors, grinning. "What's the matter, Ranger, need to check your makeup before I defeat you?"

The fire disc grew in intensity; and The gallant Twaoonsi Ranger skin illuminated as though she was burning inside. "I...SAID...STEP...ASIDE," she said, and she threw the disc. The world exploded briefly into flames...and then an unconcious, slightly singed Jefdds lay unconcious at the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors. The Ranger kicked his supine, smoking body as she ran inside the hall of mirrors.

The weeping was louder as she ran into the Hall of Mirrors. "Hang on," she called out. "I'm coming." Then she hit the mirrored wall, hard. When she stood, she found herself standing in the center of circular mirrored chamber. She systematically felt around the walls, and could find no exit. She could still here the weeping and moaning of many souls in torment; they seemed both at once near and far. She whistled for Firebrand, but instead of the familar pumping sound of Firebrand's wings, Jefdd's voice filled the air.

"Leaving so soon, Ranger? And you were so anxious to get in."

So. A trap. "What is this Jefdds? Some kind of game? Where am I? What I have you done with those people? Whatever it is, you won't get away with it."

"Relax, Ranger. It's just as the sign said, a Hall of Mirrors. A 360 degree hall at that. Look around you. I'm just giving people a chance to see themselves as others see them, as they really are. I can't help it if they don't like what they see.

" Look there. Look in the mirror. Did you know that duster coat made your rear end look so big?"

"My rear end is NOT BIG," the Ranger screamed, shooting a fire disc at towards the disembodied voice. The mirrors reflected the firey explosion so brightly she feared for a moment she would never be able to see again. She shook with anger listening to The satanic Jeffds Warrior laughter as her vision came back into focus.

"My dear," he said, still laughing - a deep, throaty, animal laugh. "There are things that don't lie: Mirrors, Scales, and I."

"What are you talking about, Jefdds?"

The room got dark around here - until there was just a concentrated beam of light on The Ranger. She could sense Jefdds very close to her - but could not see or touch him. His voice came quiet and close to her ear.

"You may kid yourself about your size, kitten; try to hide yourself under all those men's clothes, but we can see you. I can see you. I know how much you weigh. Shall I tell you?" Then he whispered a number in her ear, then added, "but your outfit makes you look twenty pounds heavier."

The Ranger's eyes grew round as she stared at herself in the 360 degree mirror, her hands working desperately to pull her clothes simultaneously tighter and looser - trying to make the image in the mirror match how she felt on the inside; lean, sexy, strong.
Did she really look this bad? All the time? Why hadn't anyone ever told her? How could her friends have let her walk around like that? She thought she looked good, especially for being a firey red freak.

Her eyes watered, and she could feel the moan rumbling in her stomach before it exploded from her mouth. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" She summonded all of her super-strength and banged both her fists against the mirror in front of her, shattering the mirrored room around her. She found herself face to face with a startled Jefdds in the middle of Coney Island - weeping men and women curled in the fetal position around them.

Before Jefdds had a chance to react, The Ranger was pummeling him, tears streaming down her face. When the authorities arrived, they had to pull her off of Jeffds. After he had been secured they told her she had been screaming; something about "unrealistic media-created body image" and "water weight." She couldn't remember anything but a blinding, debilitating rage, but her throat was sore, so she had no choice but to believe them. She whistled for Firebrand, and before she mounted she turned to the young Red Cross volunteer who was bewildered that all the affected park guests were so violently refusing his offers of food and hot coffee while they waited to speak the detectives. "Hey," the Ranger asked sheepishly, "hey. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," the Red Cross volunteer smiled, coming over with a donut and coffee and hand, clearly relieved someone was speaking to him civilly.

"Do you think...I mean," the Ranger asked sheepishly,"do these cargo pants make me look fat?"

The Red Cross volunteer shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "I - that is - I mean - I'm sorry m'am. I'm not supposed to answer questions about people's - I mean - you look fine to me - I - just - oh-god - please do hurt me - I'm just supposed to give people donuts. Do you want a donut?" He outstreched a shaky hand, offering the Ranger a donut, she good smell it's sugary glaze. It made her stomach rumble.

She felt her hand reaching for the donut and shuddered. "No, thank you," she said curtly. She mounted Firebrand and escaped into the sky. She promised herself that she would jog to the overbluff tomorrow. And she would start drinking her coffee black.

Feh

2004-11-18T16:25:00.000-05:00

Today I was tired and cranky. Does it show?

Becky was tired; the kind of tired that overtook all else. She was too tired to eat, to think, to sleep. Her glassy eyes stared at her computer monitor, as she desperately struggled to look busy lest someone provide he with actual work to do. In her state, actual work was a disaster waiting to happen. Her eyes glanced around her austere desktop. A clean black radio; neatly-lined up, alphabetical file folders; a pen cup organized by pen type and ink color. Becky chewed on her thumb cuticle and silently cursed her anal-retentive ways. Organizing always looked liked industrious activity.

She alt-tabbed her open text document back to her browser – wondering with ire which co-worker was whistling loudly on the other side of the office. (Who could be happy enough to whistle in this desolate place?) Even the Internet, with it’s up-to-the-nanosecond news and things that went “flash” and “bing” couldn’t offer anything to focus her muddy brain.

She bent her head simultaneously lifted her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. It was that damn anxiety dream. Could you call it an anxiety dream if it didn’t make you anxious? It had had all the classic hallmarks: an task of some importance she was expected to but entirely unprepared for (in this case a performance of the scene with an “acting partner” in an acting class); strange celebrity guests (including a television chef (who she believed was an imposter because he offered her sugar-free chocolate – as if), a British actor dressed as the character she most recently saw him play on TV, Donald Rumsfeld, and her boss (as “The Teacher’). In the dream she was pretty sure that she could cram-memorize her lines in the few moments before the performance – but she was entirely bewildered by her partner’s desire to obtain live worms for the scene.

In any case, she hadn’t been nervous about it – yet there she had lain in bed this morning, from 4AM onward, her brain adamantly denying her body’s desperate cries for sleep.

To sleep perchance, yadda yadda yadda. Becky wondered how many of her fellow cube-veal would notice if she found herself a duvet and crawled under her desk for a few hour power nap.

Not the whistler, at the very least. Stupid, bland, Snow White mimicking bastard.

Becky leaned back, yawned and stretched; pretending that the creaking noises came from the chair and not her joints. Almost everyone she knew seemed to be having anxiety dreams lately. Maybe there was something in the water, or something missing from it.

Oh, Christ, she mused. I hope my brain isn’t having some sort of high school graded crisis – generating sleeplessness just to be a joiner.

“Stupid, insecure brain,” she muttered, as she flipped through her still empty email box.

“You’re not stupid? Why would you say that?” The chipper voice Becky detested most in the world chriped from just behind her chair.

“Marcia,” she said as civilly as she could manage, barely turning her chair to face her office-arch-enemy; tall, slender, blonde, with a permanent and huge forced-smile that only Botox could stop from causing her face to become one giant wrinkle. “Oh, hi, nothing. It was nothing. I was just talking to myself. Rough night.” She turned back to her monitor and pretended to start writing a memo. Instead of going away as she had hoped, Marcia leaned her sat her tailored skirt on the edge of Becky’s desk. She made tutting noises and put a well-manicured hand on Becky’s shoulder.

“You know, Bethy, girls our age can’t be going out like we used to. It’s so bad for our complexion. And no-one promotes a woman with pasty skin.”

Becky took a deep breath and willed the growl that was growing in her throat to subside.

“It’s Becky actually, Marcia. Did you need something? ‘Cause I’m kind of in the middle of something here…”

“No…I just hate to hear you say you’re stupid. You’re not. Why don’t you come out to lunch with the girls and me today? Fresh air might wake you up.”

I’d rather skewer my own eyes out with a Number 2 pencil. “Oh, thanks. But I brought something in with me.”

Marcia’s mouth frowned - but her forehead resisted. “Well, ok,” she said in her best disappointed-voice. “You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

“Thanks. Really. I’ve got stuff to catch up on,” Becky waved her hand vaguely at her computer. She shrugged apologetically as she watched Marcia turn out of her cubicle.

“The girls” was the a tight-knit group of thirty-somethings who lunched together everyday – carefully crafting and enforcing the pigeonholing office hierarchy between bites of Caesar salad and TV sitcom recaps. She had a standing invitation to join them; they seemed to think that since she was in the same age range she was just like them, but after the first ten minutes of the first painful lunch she knew that wasn’t true.

For one thing, Becky’s voice couldn’t even produce that high-squealling sound they seemed to make when they were excited, her political views were all wrong, and she had a hard time keeping up with the conversation as they all seemed to be talking around one another rather than to one another.

And Becky always felt they were over-interested in the state of her ovaries. When Brenda (whose conversation usually consisted of reports of what she did with her church group that weekend) observed during the “why don’t you want to have kids” conversation for the third time in so many lunches that if Becky didn’t want to have kids, she must just want to have “lots and lots of fun sex” – (an observation based on no input from Becky herself, and one that Brenda seemed overly-eager to share anytime the words “Becky” and “babies” came up in the same conversation) that Becky decided brining her lunch in was a safer, saner option.

Becky pulled her blue, insulated lunch bag out from under her desk, and freed a peanut-butter sandwich from it’s plastic wrap. She pulled off a corner and chewed it absently.

At least that weird one who used to shadow them, Esmerelda, seemed to have gone away. She had been a piece of work, that one. She could barely manage to answer the phones effectively, and yet she always seemed to think she knew everyone else’s job better than they did.

Rumor was she was fired for being part of some subversive internet website. “The Girls” were insisting it was porn. Becky didn’t see how – Esmerelda had been so mousey – so poorly kempt; but then again – she supposed everyone was somebody’s porn idea. (What a great bumper sticker that would be, she grinned.)

Birthday

2004-11-17T16:38:00.000-05:00

A long post - but possibly not much to see here. There is no purpose - I just followed this character around a bit - trying to incorporate a few suggestions (and also my mis-reading of a headline today, which actually read "Poetry Beamed In Space"). I guess what I'm saying is don't expect too much. And don't get too attached to Fraser. There might be more later, and there might not.

Fraser Bright stepped through the portal and back into the leather-appointed office of the Honorary French consul. “Bienvenue en arrière, madame. Allait-il comment votre voyage?” asked the unsmiling intern, not even bothering to look away from her computer monitor. Fraser could hear the familiar dings of an instant message conversation ringing from the mousy girl’s computer.

“Beau, merci, mademoiselle.” Fraser answered as she plopped herself into the thick honey-colored leather chair put aside for visitors who experienced travel sickness. Fraser had traveled by portal a handful of times, she was pratically a pro; she learned long ago that squeezing her eyes during the travel process went a great way in quelling the initial nausea and disorientation most people felt watching the landscape dissolve around them. She was just a little light-headed – and knew it would pass, but she slumped down slightly in the chair and gave out a low moan. She could hear the abrupt cessation of the click of sharp nails against the keys, and the barely surprised sigh as the intern pushed her chair away from the desk and went to the water cooler. Fraser put her head between her knees so the intern couldn’t see her grinning.
Snotty little bitch.

Fraser kept her eyes down as she listened to the girls heels click against the parquet floor. The intern’s toes appeared just beneath Fraser’s overturned auburn hair. They looked painfully pointed. “Etes-vous bon, Madame? Avez-vous besoin d'un docteur?” Fraser shook her lowered head and gestured for the girl to put the water on a nearby table.

“Non. Pas de docteur,” she muttered. She waited until she heard the return of the sign-song AOL chimes to sit up and sip the water slowly.

She understood the girl’s scorn. Fraser was a Luncher – the lowest of the portal travelling low. Lunchers could travel to the destination country for a vastly discounted price – with the caveat that their trip could not last more than one hour. Originally started as a promotion to introduce the wealthy business traveler to the pleasures of portal travel (see the Seine on your lunch hour, be back in time for your 1 pm board meeting!), it soon became the illicit splurgey thrill of young, urban 30-somethings who couldn’t afford a proper vacation but still wanted to fill the languishing pages of the passports.

Fraser prided herself for not being like other Lunchers. For one thing – she always strove to learn a bit of the official language of the country she was visiting, she never got drunk and argued with the locals, and she never advertised her country of origin unless pressed. She considered herself a guest of these countries, not a conqueror. She was also very, very prompt when it came to her return trip; although this was more about good finance than good manners. She hadn’t visited a country yet that hadn’t charged excessive “overage fees” for every minute a Luncher overstayed their one-hour visit. Fraser worked with someone whose indulgence of a half-hour during their anniversary lunch in Tibet meant they had to take out a second mortgage on their house.

Fraser stood up, pulled her faux rabbit fur coat tightly around her, and headed for the door. She bypassed the brochures offering more flexible travel options (weekend packages, visits limited only by the length of your visa – special European Union packages that allowed Americans to visit 6 countries in 6 days!). She used to pick these up as a courtesy – or perhaps out of fantasy – but she had given up on that. Airlines, though frustrating, were still the cheapest way to travel – and until she hit the elusive big time (or bagged herself a millionaire) – she’d have to live with jet lag, crying babies and cramped legs when she wanted to travel.

The cold January air cut into Fraser’s skin as her feet hit the slate paving stones. The sky was gray and dark – not so different from the weather in Paris. She walked by the old brownstones and admitted to herself that Philadelphia was a lovely city – but it was no Paris. She’d be brown-bagging it for months to pay for this trip – but to lunch lightly on the Seine on her birthday had been worth it. Her annual trip to Paris always renewed her spirits- made her feel bright and alive. Let others have Paris in the Springtime! She much preferred it in winter – slate gray skies, streets less crowded with hopeful young lovers, and a substantial discount for off-peak travel.

Although she was disappointed, as she had, predictably, forgotten to bring along her camera. Typical.
Were it not for her passport stamps – no one would ever believe she had left the city, let alone the country.

Pulling her hands into her lined sleeves, Fraser considered her options for the rest of the day. She could window shop – the only kind of shopping she’d be able to afford for a while, maybe catch a matinee. She never planned too much ahead for her birthday celebrations.

They started the same way– Frasher pulled her overcoat and Galoshes over her flannel pajamas, plunked a hat on her still unbrushed hair – and then braved a quick trip to one of the many Starbucks ™ in her neighborhood (you could pick a random direction from her front door . They were on every corner now) for a triple Venti latte and some chocolate croissants. Then back home; crawling back under the covers to eat her crumbly breakfast with no apologies –sleeping, reading, stretching, and or/lounging as long as her body could stand to be supine. For the past two years she cut her lounging a bit short in order to be showered in time for her birthday lunch. Sleeping-in was a joy, but then Paris was…Paris. After lunch she liked to wander around and see where the day took her. Despite years of disappointments, Fraser believed firmly in the magic of birthdays – and was certain that if she had faith, one of these years the universe would take her on a real adventure.

Today seemed too cruelly cold for an adventure. Fraser could see her breath fogging up before her – and the metal arms of her glasses burned icily against her skin. She pulled her hands into a giant fist and blew into them – relishing the brief warmth.

Clearly, today was not a day for wandering.

She considered going home, getting back into her flannels, mulling some wine, burying herself on the sofa under a huge down comforter and renting hours of weepy films on her all-purpose home media entertainment unit. Comfy and tempting – but she knew that evening ended; ill-advised text messages to old flames, weepy phone calls to friends, and a very bad hangover to suffer at work the next day.

Besides, whoever heard of an adventure showing up at one’s door? Ok, she conceded, Bilbo Baggins maybe. But otherwise – it was incumbent on the adventurer to find the adventure. Fraser stopped at a corner paper box and freed a local paper, took herself to the nearest coffee shop for something warm, caffeinated and delightful; and sat herself down in one of the carefully market-researched and strategically placed over-stuffed chair and opened the paper to the events section.

It was always important to know one’s options.

Fraser flipped through pages of ads for bars and sex services until she found that day’s listings; bars and sex clubs she could go to any old night (they were basically all the same to her – dark, smoky, and devoid of potential for interesting conversation. The only discernable difference was whether the anonymous sex was happening in the bathroom stall or on the bar top).

It was her birthday, dammit. It should be something special.

The water front casino arena was staging a Giant Atomic Chicken fight that afternoon. They were both rookie fighters – barely out of their eggs apparently - so there weren’t likely to be any interesting celebrities in attendance. Fraser chewed absently on her lip – and considered it. Since learning the chickens’ massive 12 ft statue was due to years of top secret genetic mutation and cross-breeding and not anything remotely radioactive (the term “Atomic” was apparently a marketing term meant to remind folks of the oversized animals in old B movies) she had a morbid, curious desire to go to a match. Maybe even bet a little money. The bleeding heart hippie liberal in her held her back – safety from radiation exposure aside – cock fighting was a barbaric practice; only pandering to the most basest bloodlust of man.

On the other hand – she couldn’t deny her human, deeply-seeded and slumbering blood-lusty roots. And if she did want to see it, she knew she’d have to soon. NPR said the ASPCA hadn’t been able to shut the Giant Atomic Animal Corporation down because some of the genetic tinkering they had done apparently made the chickens technically not chickens – or any other recognizable animal – which affected their party line.

And also – they had a hard time convincing the public that the chickens should be freed. First of all – they were ugly, snarling, violent beasts with red beady eyes and hideous chicken feet; not cute, cuddly, big-eyed creatures of comfort.

Secondly – no one could think of a good place to let them go. They had no natural habitat. And certainly couldn’t have them wandering the streets. How do you fine a Giant Atomic Chicken for blocking the box on a Saturday afternoon? Who do you sue when they lay a giant egg that crushes your car? Some folks wanted to destroy them, or ship them to one of the fledgling moon colonies (if only there were portal trips there, Fraser mooned) – the ASPCA couldn’t publicly support an action of extermination or deportation, so the shows continued with little trouble.

Fraser secretly mused that they gave up when USA Today did an Info graphic that showed more A-list celebrities attended the matches than protested them outside arena doors. (The Gant Chart depicting celebrity match attendance/protest crossover had gotten many a press agent fired.)

Fraser nibbled the last of her shortbread cookie and listened to the intermittent hiss of the espresso machine punctuate the air. It’ll have to be it, she decided. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Besides, if it were awful, she could always fall back on her sofa plan.

She treated herself to a cab.

The waterfront casino was always busy – didn’t matter the time of day or day of the week. Scores of folks from bright-eyed young twenty-somethings to cloudly-eyed eighty-somethings streamed in and out of their darkened doors all day.

She made her way down the strip towards the Barnyard – a farm-themed casino that catered to folks who liked to bet on cattle and pig roping, bronco riding, and, of course, Giant Atomic Chicken Fighting. Outside the Milky Way (space-themed) she had to push her way through an adamant crowd of angry young protestors. A young man carrying a silvery placard jostled Fraser as she tried to Excuse-me her way through; his elbow dug sharply into her chest.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you. These streets are so narrow. It’s getting to be you can’t protest properly anywhere anymore.”

Fraser grinned and rubbed her ribcage. “Hey – at least they don’t lock folks up in those Free Speech zones anymore.” He was cute, she found herself thinking. Dark hair, thick, Poindexter glasses. Just the type she went for. “Say, what are you guys protesting, anyway? Not the chickens, I hope?”

“Chickens? Huh? Oh no. The chickens are great. Saw them last week. Really exciting. And frankly a little surreal. Lost a bundle on Little Pete. I heard the mob’s got a line on him – so I wouldn’t put my money there if I were you.” His smile was crooked. Fraser tried not to swoon. “I’m Bob, by the way.”

“Thanks for the tip, Bobbytheway. I’m Fraser. Fraser Brights.” They shook icy hands. “So, is that what you’re protesting? Little Pete? Rigged sporting events? Losing money?”

Bob turned a red that was too dark to be from the cold. “Oh, no. Sorry. I – we- want to ban poetry in space.”

Fraser hated when old adages were true. The cute ones were always crazy.

“You want to do who with the what now?” Fraser asked, backing away slightly.

Bob’s face became very serious. “Ban poetry in space. They’re talking about teaching it in the colony schools. I don’t want to have to pay for that. Those people wanted to take that risk, try to farm those dead worlds, fine. They want to drag their families into the cold tundra of space – ok. But it’s not up to me to pay for their kids to have a liberal namby pamby education. I say teach ‘em farming, basic math., survival skills. That’s what they’ll need up there. But poetry? I’m not paying for that crap.”

Fraser nodded slowly. “O-kaaay, Bob. Well, I got to go – the fight starts soon and I still need to get my ticket. Good luck with your protest,” as she turned away she quietly mouthed “crackhead” to the wind.

“Yeah, thanks!” he shouted out to her. “Don’t forget – stay away from Little Pete. Maybe I’ll see you out here after the fight.”

Fraser turned and gave a fake smile and friendly wave and then began to walk faster. She had never been so relieved to be in enough of a crowd to get lost in.

The inside of the barn-shaped casino was surprisingly dark despite the seemingly endless rows of machines and doodads the swallowed money with their flashing, blinking, hypnotic lights. Fraser checked her coat with a young man who was wearing something she could only describe as “bondage cowboy” – cowboy hat, cowboy boots, the tightest leather shorts she had ever seen – and naught else but a bolo tie any girl with imagination could easily use as a leash – or some other things. The cocktail waitresses all looked like every girl who had ever tried to go out for Halloween as some trashed up version of Gilligan’s Island’s Maryann; it was a veritable sea of belly-revealing gingham and shorter-than-short-shorts.

Fraser sashayed up to the nearest slot machine, dropped in a quarter, and spun the wheel. Then she pressed the service button. Two quarters lost later, and she was the proud holder of a watered down cosmopolitan.

Fraser often pretended to gamble in casinos. She had discovered as a broke college student that a carefully spent five dollars could be meted out into a mind-meltingly good night of complimentary food and drinks. After her morning’s splurge it felt good to get back to her penny-pinching roots.

She wandered through the casino and found her way to the arena.

Dingus Part II

2004-11-16T16:39:00.000-05:00

There was originally going to be more to the ending - involving some miscommunication and cross-purposes - but frankly it was rather obvious and even I loss interest. Hope for something I'm more connected to tomorrow.

Any topic suggestions most welcome - as I am more than halfway in, no where near the halfway mark, and floundering...

The ship hummed like the old generator in the back yard.

The tall one waved the little one away with a spindly arm; the little one ran off with Randy’s rifle, and joined the group of average sized ones standing closer to the mother saucer. They frequently pointed at him, making erratic gestures with their hands.

Randy was pretty sure the little one was laughing at him. Randy never did trust folks who talked foreign around him; in American, you should speak American. Anyone who didn’t was clearly up to no good. Or talking trash about someone standin’ near ‘em.

Randy was fairly certain they were talkin’ about him.

The tall one stepped closer to Randy - bringing his smell with him. He moved quickly, but with great care, keeping his hands folded in front of him. The alien looked at Randy, and opened his mouth. The noise that came out was the most jumbled bunch of gibberish Randy had ever heard. The noise stopped, and Randy found all the aliens were staring at him. He could feel his muscles relaxing; he felt like something was expected of him. He could try to knock the big one down and get his gun of course – but they’ d like put him in that sleeper hold again – so he did the only thing he could think to do – what he did anytime Edna ever bothered him about something he couldn’t understand.

He shrugged.

The tall one regarded Randy for a moment and then repeated the gesture. Randy watched those bird-like shoulders lift up to that solemn look on the alien’s face. Yes siree, it was funny. And yet somehow it made Randy homesick for just about any other member of the human race.

Randy grinned, and shrugged again.

This set off an explosion and shrill conversation from the group that went on a good five minutes (the small one shrugging from time to time. Looked like a monkey making fun of tourists at the zoo.)

Just when it seemed they had forgotten all about him and he might be able to go in and get some of the coffee he set percolating on the stove the night before, the tall one turned to him and said something again. Randy still didn’t know what he had said, but he had heard the language. It was something foreign. German maybe. Or French.

Randy shrugged again. “Sorry, friend,” he croaked, his throat surprisingly sore and dry. “I don’t understand that Frenchie talk.”

The tall alien shrugged. Randy shrugged again. This was getting ridiculous. “English,” Randy said. “EN-GL-ISH. THIS IS AMERICA. WE SPEAK ENGLISH.”

“This you understand?” the alien asked. His accent was strange and heavy. It reminded Randy of the man who ran the station where he got diesel for his tractor. He was some kind of foreigner too.

Randy nodded. “Yes. English.” The group by the saucer began chirping again but the tall one silenced them with a wave of an arm.

“This…land,” he asked, slowly, “it is yours. Belongs to you?”

At last, Randy thought. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Yes, this is mine. My farm, my land. You trespassing. Must go. Fly away.”

“Call me Maghart. I speak for my land. Do you speak for this land?”

“Like I said, Mugwart. It’s my land.”

“You speak for it?”

Randy was beginning to suspect that although they spoke the language, they didn’t really understand it.

“Yes. Whatever you like. I speak for it.”

“You and I, we must talk.”

He just wanted them to leave – to get off his land – so he could get back to bed. Back in the back of his head he could hear Edna’s voice telling him that it wasn’t everyday visitors came out that way – alien or no – and that he should try and be more neighborly.

So he did the neighborliest thing he could think to do.

Randy sighed. “Alright, then. Why don’t you fellas come in and have some coffee?”

Edna would have about bust a gut to see the five of them sitting their on the sofa (the little one and the four regular fellas) – their pencil-thing fingers splayed over their boney knees. The sat almost perfectly still, like chastized children; still except for their eyes, which darted all around the room. Randy didn’t like that very much. He felt like they were sizing up the place, like maybe they were planning to move in or something. And that would happen over Randy’s dead body. This was the Brauson place; it always was and always will be. Well – it would be as long as there was Randy. But just because he didn’t have any young’uns to leave it to didn’t mean he was just going to surrender it to some skinny aliens who couldn’t even shrug properly.

The tall one, Mugwart, sat in Randy’s leatherette recliner (the thing he held most dear) holding the red and white checked ice pack on the back of his oblong head. (He originally tried sitting in Edna’s old rocking chair; one rock and he managed to flip the thing clear over.). Randy put a tin mug down on the coffee table in front of Mugwart.

“Here ya go, Mugwart. Drink up while it’s still hot.”

Randy took a sip from his own tin mug; show it wasn’t poisoned. It went down hot and thick; strong, the way coffee was meant to be (not like that jarred crap Edna liked to keep around). “Now,” Randy said, pulling up a kitchen chair to the coffee table. “What’s so damned important that you needed to crush my wheat, spook my animals, and wake me up in the middle of the night.” Randy liked to be direct whenever possible. His daddy raised him to believe this ways the best way.

“Ran-dee. We want this land. Your land. Our planet is dying. We are need a new place to start again. Already, so many old. So few young. Soon, none left.”

Randy swallowed his coffee, hard. “Are you tellin’ me you folks are coming here to invade the Earth?”

Mugwart put the icepack down. “No, Ran-dee. We want to no war. Peace. My people and your people are almost same. Breathe same air. ” Mugwart picked the tin cup up and cradled it in his long fingers. He took the steaming mug to his face, and drank the whole cup down with a gulp. “Eat same food. See?”

“Hrhn,” said Randy, and took a long pull from his mug. The coffee was still piping hot, and it burned his tongue going down. He looked at the five aliens whispering to one another on his flowered sofa – and the one on his recliner, his recliner, scratching the white lump cresting on the back of his head. “Hrhn,” he said again. He knew he couldn’t run, that much was certain. He could excuse himself and try and use the telephone, call Sheriff Johansen…and tell him what? That he had some aliens in for coffee and they were planning on taking over the Earth – yes, that was him up on Creek road you can recognize it by the giant flying saucer on the front lawn? Oh, no – they already thought he was a crackpot. They’d laugh as soon as listen to him.

It’s not that he didn’t appreciate their problem – he did. He knew what it was like to watch your line die out. It wasn’t easy. It made a man (and, Randy supposed, alien) feel the weight of his mortality – and that was a heavy stone to bear. Without a next generation, who would remember you when you were gone? Visit your tombstone and put flowers on it when the weather got cold? Look at pictures of you and smile sadly.

No one, that’s who.

Randy stood up and walked to the stovetop. He watched the coffee pot bubble – still scalding hot. A man had to be careful with a pot that hot. Someone might get hurt.

Moments later he was back in the living room, coffee pot in hand. He sat down and lifted the pot gently with a potholder as he poured Mugwart another cup. “So tell me, Mugwart, how many of your people have you got on that ship of yours?”

The first thing Randy noticed about the interior of the ship was that the smell was seemed to be gone once he was inside the ship; or it was so overwhelming that his nose had gone on permanent strike. Other than that the interior was a real a disappointment. He expected flashing lights and dials set among sterile linoleum floors. Instead the inside was dark, dingy, dull, and crowded with slumbering aliens of all shapes and sizes – maybe twenty in all. One or two looked to be children…and although Randy did not know what they looked like when they were healthy – he was pretty certain these children were not.

And the women – he noticed the women. Unlike the men, they had long strands of silver hair, that caught and reflected the light when they moved and breathed. Like the men - they wore no clothing. Also unlike the men, they seemed to have all the right privates, in all the right places.

He felt stirrings in places he thought life had forgot.

“Hrhn.” Randy had said again. “Hrhn. Mugwart, I think you and I can make a deal.”

That had been nearly a year ago, and Randy had done a lot of work on the farm in that time. He paved over the one of his fields – building a barracks in place of fallow. He had been amazed how cheaply you could get bunks and other things through military surplus. Oh, sure some government suits came out and asked a bunch of question – probably afraid he was building an army or something. But in the end – in the end he had told them the truth – that he was building it to house the remains of a dying alien race that was green, smelled bad, and really liked their coffee exceptionally strong.

After that they pretty much left him alone.

He had done some work in the house too. After all, he was going to need that spare bedroom now.

He looked at the ship sitting there on his front lawn once again – the sunrise glinting against it, washing it in an iridescent rainbow. Mugwart stood looking solem at the bottom of the ramp. A nervous flutter gripped Randy’s stomach. “Hello, Ran-dee. Shall we have some coffee?”

Randy smiled. “Business first. Then coffee. How is she.”

“They are fine, Randy.”

“They? You mean?”

She came down the ramp sheepishly, holding a small bundle. Randy’s heart skipped a beat. She handed the bundle into Randy’s waiting arms. It looked like a normal human - tiny hands, tiny fingers, tiny toes – a more olive complexion than most people in these parts, and the fine fuzz on his head was more silver than blond – but he’d just have to tell people his mother was foreign. After all, it was true.

A boy. His own boy.

After all – it was the Braunson farm. He couldn’t very well let folks live here if they weren’t family.

Dingus

2004-11-15T16:39:00.000-05:00

I meant to get twice this amount done tonight but I seem to have run out of steam. Will continue this tomorrow...

This piece was inspired by the recent hijacking of my PC speakers by who knows what...

“So those alien bastards have come at last,” Randy Braunson muttered as he lifted the once-white eyelet curtains (yellowed from years of smoking with the windows closed) with the muzzle tip of his 422. He gave his chewing tobacco a long, thoughtful chew, then spit into an old Folgers can. “About damn time. I don’t care what damn planet you’re from, a man should show up when he says he will.” Randy gave the alien a curt nod of recognition before abruptly dropping the curtain.

Randy placed his weapon on the gun rack, and walked into his bathroom. He studied himself in the mirror. Sallow skin, loose around the jowls and neck; cloudy blue eye; uneven gray stubble. This was a historical moment after all – perhaps he should shave. If Edna had been here – May-her-soul-rest-in-peace (though how it could with her being buried so near the new highway he never did know) – she would make him shave. Well, she wasn’t here, and Randy was his own man. Instead he smoothed his thin grey hair, replaced his hat, and smiled a broad, amber smile.

Then he leaned back and took a nice, long piss.

“Ugly green fuckers,” he thought, whistling, “let them wait.”

Bladder relieved and blue jeans zipped. Randy had checked twice. Today was a big day for him, he didn’t want to march out there with his dingus hanging out. They’d probably think it was some kind of alien-killin’ gun – and zap him. Randy grinned as he checked one final time. Edna always said that dingus of his would get him into trouble.

He wished it had gotten her into trouble once or twice. He sure would like to have a pack of grand-babies with him now – how proud they’d be that their grandpappy was the Diplomat of Earth. Sure, it wasn’t an elected position, and maybe he did exaggerate his position in the world the first time those weird lizard things landed their tin can in his wheat field (lucky that crop was still green or there woulda been a fire blazin like who knows what!)– but the little tykes wouldna known any better than those things did.

Yup. It woulda been nice to have grandkids here.

It would have been nice to have someone here.

Randy sighed, opened his front door, and stepped out onto the porch he and his Daddy built when he was 11. Damn, but November nights were cold round these parts. He didn’t know how them aliens walked around without any clothes on. Didn’t lizards like the heat? He pulled his heavy flannel shirt closed and marched down the steps and into his front yard, the frost crunching beneath his heavy mud-colored boots.
The foremost alien gave a slight bow in Randy’s direction.

They always did that when they saw Randy – bowed. He liked it too. He liked it just fine.

Of course, he hadn’t marched up to them like this the first, time, calm as you please. But things were different now. They had a sort of an understanding.

The first time around, Randy came out shouting – flood lights on and gun raised. It was the animals that had let him that something was wrong. They made a heck of a noise, all at once. The cows crying, the chickens screaming – even the horses seemed to be trying to bang their way out of the barn. Woke him up from the sleep of the dead – and he was one mean fucker when he didn’t get enough sleep. He opened up the window to holler at them damn animals – and that’s when he saw it – and them, green as grass, and thin as it too, looking at him with their black beady eyes and heavy lizard heads. They were standing there, out in his wheat field, pullin’ up stalks like they owned the place.

He couldn’t remember what he hollered, he just remembered that he hollered but good, swearing a blue streak as he pulled on his coat and hat and grabbed his gun. He ran right up to the little one and pulled the stalk out of his hand and knocked him to the ground. Then he raised his gun at the big one.

He remembered what he said then. He had been waiting years for an intruder to come onto the farm just so he could say it. “This is Private Property. Know what that means son? It means if you want to keep your privates you’ll get off my property.” Edna – well – Edna had always thought it was a pretty stupid thing to say. In fact, she held to the theory that if there ever was an intruder, Randy would do better than to lock the doors and call “Nice Mister Johansen” – that young nip of a sheriff. Edna said weren’t nobody going to come steal anything from them – they had nothing to steal. At worst they’d get some kids drinking in the dark. And weren’t nobody going to be scared of an old man like him.

Old man? Old man? He’d only been 60 then – and that was five years ago – before the cancer took her. When the aliens came he was sixty-five - and fit as ever. His family – they weren’t quitters, no sir. His Daddy had plowed that field until he was in his mid-seventies. Call the sheriff? Bah. What had that woman known? Randy was a Braunson – and Braunson men protected their land.

Of course – his little speech hadn’t had quite the reaction he hoped. It occurred to him as he was standing there in his long johns, gun cocked, that whatever those things were were naked as the day they were born – and they didn’t have any privates that he could see.

Almost felt sorry for ‘em. But that didn’t worry so him so much. An intruder was an intruder. Shooting a bunch of holes in them was his right as a landowner and as an American.

Now, had they been punk –assed kids from the local high school – they would have been scared shitless by then, Randy was sure of it. The aliens, they just looked at him, feathery eyelids blinking.

Well, if hollering wasn’t going to get them off his land he knew what would. He pointed his gun up in the air and fired off a round.

That got there attention. Damn straight.

At first he thought the kickback had knocked him over; (something he never would have lived down.) Thankfully, the aliens had just put him in some stranger sleeper hold. The short one lifted him up and dusted him off. He tried to pull away, but realized that he could see and hear and breathe all right – but he couldn’t move.

He realized it should have made him angry. First they came and took his wheat – and now they were taking control of his body. Instead, he felt that strange otherworldly calm that comes from being completely and totally out of control of a situation.

The first thing he noticed – now that the screaming had stopped – was the smell. Randy was a farming man – born and raised. He had been shoveling shit – out of stables and onto mulch piles – since he was old enough to hold a shovel. He breathed shit, carried shit, tracked it in his house when he forgot to take off his boots; once a man has handled the excrement of a cow with a stomach ailment he assumes there’s not a smell on Earth that could wrinkle his nose. And perhaps that man was right. But whatever these things weren’t from Earth – and they stank.

The smell was the most awful thing Randy had ever experienced. They were rank and fetid – it came off them in rank and fetid waves. His eyes watered and his stomach wanted desperately for him to revisit the mac and cheese he had had for dinner. Instead he just shuddered uncontrollably and tried to get enough control of his motor functions to breathe out of his mouth.

He knew he had to concentrate or he would vomit – and he didn’t want to die choking on his own sick like some goddamned hippie rockstar.

He figured they probably couldn’t help it. His brother-in-law had been a big-rigger – and when he stopped by to say “heya” in the middle of a cross-country jag where he went days without showering, he had been a fair sight rank too. Randy didn’t know where these fellas had come from, but he was sure it was a damn site farther than Allentown, Pennsylvania. A roadtrip like that was like to make anyone stink a bit.

By God, it was disgusting.

Immobile and barely breathing, Randy tried to organize his thoughts. He looked at the intruders – who were carefully considering him and making noises among themselves.

H had never seen anything like that silver contraption hovering over his crops – well – not except in those movies Edna used to like to see at the matinee (Randy preferred adventure movies – those science fiction thrillers always put Randy to sleep. In the end Edna gave up trying to get him to enjoy them - she’d just give him a sharp stick in the ribs every now and then to keep him from snorin’ in at the Bijou.) Never in real life though. It was a real proper flying saucer – flat and silver and constantly spinning like a top. They never landed it – not really – it just hovered there, spinning, a black ramp leading the way from the ground to the door.

The Tree

2004-11-11T19:46:00.000-05:00

Just a description exercise really. (once again no dialouge. sigh) The way I figured there were two ways to end this piece - either with escape or without - and then I decided it didn't really need an ending at all. If you're the kind of person who hates stories without endings, you are more than welcome to write your own.

Maribella dropped her haversack at the base of the oak tree, sat down, and leaned back to feel the rough bark press against her scalp.

The air was rife with the sweet rot of autumn and the throat tickling sting of auto-exhaust. She picked up a handful of the yellowing leaves that had exploded like confetti among the acorns and over the browning grass; disappointed that they were still to damp – to determined to cling to life, and refused to crumble to dust in her fist. She tossed them to the side with disgust, having forgotten about them as soon as they were out of her hands.

The tree sat near the edge of the one square block of depressed, stunted vegetation that counted as a city park. Besides the stout trees and withering vegetation one could find city wildlife: squirrels so used to humans they thought they were one of them, and the black rats, large as cats, that darted in and out of the cracks beneath the concrete stairwell that led out of the park and into the rusting steel and worn black rubber of the forgotten playground.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and pressed her body hard against the tree and the grass – trying to imagine herself in some cool, deep forest, but the noises of urban life wouldn’t grant her imagination a reprieve.

She stood and pulled her leather jacket closer around her, and took a quick stomp around the tree. When was ten years old – this had been her favorite tree, her favorite place to sit on spring day. Even now, twenty-odd years later, she could still recognize some of the tree’s charm. It was wide; too thick to wrap even her adult arms around – and being situated on a hill – the roots cut into the dirt creating staggered landings which she had once pretended where the rooms of her magical tree house. She had circled that tree dozens of times, maybe hundreds; circled it util her chubby, tender hands had been red and blistered; trying to find the secret doorway she was certain lurked there. Books had taught her that if you were clever and knew where to look, the world was full of doorways to other worlds; worlds full of adventure and wonder where everyone –even the loneliest, most awkward child – would find a kindred spirit to be friends with.

Well – the door had never revealed itself…no matter how hard she had willed and wished for it…she found no escape into wonderland. She kicked the tree softly with the toe of her boot. “Fucker,” she whispered.

Her adult escape routes hadn’t fared her any better. Four years in an out-of-state school and one near-miss down the aisle and here she was back again – back in the bosom of her misunderstood childhood – her clueless adolescence. And all she had to show for it was a piece of parchment with a gold seal, and an unworn gown infused with the heady smell of mothballs; both packed in boxes (along with her pride ) and buried deep within her parents basement.

This is not where she had planned to be by now. She was meant to be living abroad, painting and lecturing, embroiled in a tempestuous romance with a playboy prince; not working in the local arts and craft store, spending almost all her income on art supplies that dried, half-used around the ruined canvases that had overtaken the above-garage studio apartment she was renting from her parents.

From her parents.

Maribella sighed and shrugged against her erstwhile favorite tree. What the poster in the break room at the work said was true; life did, indeed suck.

Hard.

She couldn’t paint, she could barely afford to feed herself – and her Mother had started the mortifying practice of inviting eligible men (the plumber, the pizza delivery guy, the Sears repairman (Maribella was certain she sabotaged that avocado Kenmore fridge on purpose)) to stay for coffee and cake just at the time Maribella traditionally stopped in to let her parents know that she had safely returned from the endangering wiles of the downtown shopping center.

The worst thing though, was being unable to paint. Every night she’d face the white expanse of canvas, brush in hopeful hand – only to find herself frustrated and trembling within the hour; the canvas still pristine or else slashed in to bits by her exacto knife.

She couldn’t remember how to do this anymore. It all seemed so forced, so fake. All technique and no passion.

Not being able to paint was like having no control of her vocal chords. Everything she wanted to scream and shout at the world died a choked whisper.

She needed this. God how she needed this.

She moved back down the base of the tree, and pulled her supplies out of her worn bag. There was already a hint of rose to the west – she wouldn’t have light enough to work for long.

She deftly set up her small easel – placing the ten-by-fourteen machine-stretched canvas so upon it so that she was facing the tree. Instead of oils she pulled out pastels – their storage box staining her already colorful fingertips before she had even gotten it open.

She sketched the park. She sketched it dark and foreboding, with the glassy eyes of giant rats glinting in the shadows, dead clownish squirrels clenched between their slimy, pointy teeth. Blackened her fingers scrawling boxy, look-alike cars- belching pollution that coiled up to the sky in a black, lecherous cloud. She sketched the playground on the opposite corner – sharp and worn, bereft of children and full of loneliness.

She sketched the tree. She sketched it’s wide trunk and it’s stepping roots. She sketched it’s shady top and it’s indented base (perfectly sized for sitting). She sketched it big and bright and wondrous. Golden apples hung ripe and heavy from it’s branches, mingling with heavy, hearty acorns and leaves all colors of the rainbow. In it’s branches all frolicked every kind of small creature she could remember; the snake, the hamster, an armadillo.

She could feel the light fading around her, but her hands were fevered – her knuckles aching as they remembered this movement and were waking from a heavy sleep.

On the miniature tree trunk, she drew an arch – then used her fingertips to rub the arch into a doorway. Her fingers flew and the doorway became a door – heavy, oaken, and carved almost seamlessly into the trunk of the tree.

Then she sketched herself standing in front of the tree.– hair blowing in a violent wind, haversack slung over her shoulder, pastel stained fingers raised to the door - flat and spread wide – not to knock, but to open.

The darkness descended and Maribella had to squint to make out her drawing in the yellow pool of streetlamp light. She stepped back from it – adrenaline pumping. She looked at the drawing. She looked at her fingers. She looked at the tree.

Maribella through her haversack over her shoulder, grabbed her charcoal stick and walked slowly towards the tree. She bent down to the spot where she had sat so many times and touched the ground, cool beneath her fingers. Then she pressed her charcoal stick against the base of the tree and stood – drawing an arch that passed just above her head at full height, than back to the floor. She drew another, narrow arch above it, until there was an archway. Her hair whipped around her face. In the back of her mind a small voice warned that a storm was kicking up and she should get her things back in her bag and get home before her Mother called the National Guard to come find her, then invited them all over for coffee. Instead she stood back and looked at the tree.

She looked at it for a long while.

Then she lifted up her hand, fingers stained in a rainbow of colors.

She stepped forward, put her hand against the newly drawn door, and pushed..

Poolside

2004-11-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

As previously promised - some dialouge. Hooray!

Quentin peered around the doorjamb and into the open courtyard. His dark bangs, long from the neglect his peers called “hipster fashion” snaked under his coke-bottle lens glasses as he snapped his head back to avoid being seen. He pushed the hair back absently with his computer pale, clammy palm as he tried to make himself, his black Aerosmith t-shirt (pre-aged for that retro look by Urban Outfitters), his blacker than black jeans and his black Chuck Taylors’ blend, flat and seamless, into the cream-colored, popcorned lobby wall.

“Damn,” he thought, trying to swallow his breath to stop being heard; his chest ached from the effort and he could hear his pulse thudding in his ears louder “Damn,” he thought again, but this time it escaped in a harsh whisper – the breath eager to get out and mingle with the damp, chlorine of the apartment complex’s nearby pool.

It was her. It was definitely her. And she had seen him. He was certain of it.

Sunlight flooded the doorway like a spotlight. The stairs – two flights to the cool sanctuary of his apartment where the blinds where kept permanently closed - were only ten feet away. He’d have to pass the doorway – exposing himself, but if he were quick, he could make it. Even if by chance she did happen to look this way when he passed – there were a good fifteen feet from the pool to the stairs. It wasn’t like she would chase him. Would she?

Quentin heard the dry scrape of the metal chair against concrete. “Shit,” he thought, pushing his bangs back again even though they were well out of the way of his eyes. “Shit.” He stopped breathing all together and listened for the tell-tale splash of someone jumping in the pool.

It didn’t come. Instead – the persistent and grating “flip” and “flop” of someone with poor choices in summer foot ware grew closer.

Quentin closed his eyes and swallowed hard. She hadn’t been the only person at the pool. Maybe Mrs. Dangle – the elderly neighbor he would forever associate with the smell of Ben Gay and stale cat piss, had woken from her daily five hour siesta and was coming in to feed her cats. Maybe..

“Hey.” Her voice was clear and close.

Christ, did he jump? He hoped he hadn’t jumped. His insides shook violently – causing his hands to slightly tremor. He swept them behind his back and said “Oh, hey.”

He didn’t look at her. He didn’t need to. He new it was her. He could smell her perfume mingling chlorine and sun-heat steaming from her skin. Her shadowed silhouette bore the stance he knew so well: arms crossed across her chest, head tilted slightly to the left, right foot slightly more forward than the left. His heart twisted.

“Hey,” he said again. He wasn’t sure where this conversation was meant to go. What was she doing here, anyway. It couldn’t be that she had come to beg for him back; he had given up on that dream months ago. Besides, people who realized they made the biggest mistake of their lives by letting one go wait pentitently on one’s doorstep, wringing their gift-laden hands and smiling hopefully through red-rimmed eyes. (Quentin knew this to be true – as he opened his front door every day – several times a day – for weeks – expecting her to be there, crying and sorry - her perfect blonde hair unbound and wild around her red and puffy face. He find himself always petrified she would be there – and sick with a depth of sorrow he didn’t know he could reach when she was not.) They certainly didn’t show up in a rainbow bikini and sun themselves bronze by your swimming pool until you noticed them out of the corner of your eye on a cigarette run.

Did they?

“So…” he said, turning to face her. Christ, her fair was even perfect after swimming, pressed flat against her head in uniform rows. He was sure she had done it without the benefit of a comb. She was so controlling even her hair fell into line in fear of screaming retribution. “…Um…so what are you doing here.”
She smiled, it was a surprisingly open and friendly smile considering how things had been left. He felt himself smile in return; involuntarily open – but too late to take back. “Swimming,” she said, and laughed. It was a short, quiet laugh – but it seemed to rock her whole body.

She seemed truly happy, Quentin couldn’t deny it.

And he hated her for it. How dare she, come here and be happy when he was happy being miserable here without her. He found himself fumbling the cellophane off his new pack of Marlboro reds. Robotically, he pulled one out and lit it, his hands no longer shaking but on auto-pilot.

He held the smoke in his lungs for a moment – then let it out slowly – inwardly gloating as she wrinkled her tiny nose. “No pools where you live?” Even as he said it he realized how that sounded. He might as well have said “Have you gone psycho? Are you stalking me?” or possibly “And don’t you want to stalk me?” although he desperately hoped the edge on his voice was sharper than it felt.

Another time, this, any questioning of her actions or motives would have made her angry. He wished she would get angry. He new how to fight with her. He know how to scream and curse and shout when she was around. He didn’t know how to deal with this friendly demeanor; this small talk. It was like he was talking to an alien who had replaced this woman he had…well, this woman. Shrew, even.

“This is where I live,” she said, squinting her blue eyes against the changing position of the sun. She moved into the doorway, into the shade, standing now directly between him and the staircase.

The cigarette dangled from his lower lip as he gaped. “Excuse me?” he managed.

“Oh, Quent…we can be adults about this, can’t we? You were always saying how great this place was, it’s close to work for me….Look, I’m sorry. I know this is awkward, ok? I would have told you sooner – but calling seemed so impersonal and well, I couldn’t exactly stop by and borrow a cup of sugar, could I? It’s not like you keep any actual foodstuff around.”

“Ramen is food,” he snapped back automatically. Awkward? This was awkward? Barbara always was the master of the understatement. He had given up so many things to avoid just this kind of confrontation; stopped going to concerts he knew she would also attend, picked petty fights with mutual friends, stopped going places, doing things; all so he could claim his life back – make his own new place, new life, without her icy blue eyes and cold perfect skin. All he had left was this place – a large one bedroom apartment with an in-unit washer/dryer and a northern view so he wasn’t troubled by the sun – and a shared balcony on his floor where he could watch the honeys at the pool while he played Doom III on his laptop. (Granted, the closest thing he usually got to seeing honeys was Mrs. Dangle – but he held onto the hope that a Swedish Bikini Team would move in downstairs – else he might not leave his apartment at all on the weekends).

When he saw here – that horrible rainbow bikini jogging his memory of summer’s past like a beacon – he felt the walls of his sanctuary crumble. He had been infiltrated, exposed, violated. He took a long drag from his cigarette.

Barbara’s mouth twisted into a half smile. “Fine. Ramen is food. But you know what I mean, Quent. I didn’t want to come crashing in. You know,” she curled her fingers into air quotes (he had always hated that), “’respect your space’ and all that.”

Because this surprise attack was so much less disconcerting, Quentin thought. Although he tried to look aloof, his eyes flicked down to check out her body in the bikini. He noticed she had lost some of that weight in her ass. Must have gone back to that step aerobics class she tried to get him to go to when she had still thought things were worth saving.

Damn. She looked good.

“You look good, Quent,” she said, taking a step closer. It took most of his mental will to stop himself from moving in closer to her – to touch her hand, or brush an invisible eyelash from beneath her eye. Why did it take the skin longer to forget? His brain and his heart knew she wasn’t his anymore; but to his body it was perfectly natural to reach for her – to touch her. It knew her scent, her texture, her taste. It knew that it was wonderful and comfortable and good.

He felt like he was standing in the moment between the lightning flash and the thunderclap.

“Yeah – it’s good to see you too.” He could feel the heat rise up his ears. He was blushing…and mortified for it. Her lips turned from a half grin back to a real smile. Oh no, she had noticed. “Christ her smile is infuriating,” he thought. “Why do her cheeks have to dimple like that?”

A door slammed above them, and then a horde of boys – ages ranging from 8 to 15 – ran past them peeling off their sweaty play clothes to get down to their swimsuits – leaving a trail of jubilant noise and GAP products behind them. Quentin and Barbara had to step back from one another to make way for the eight year old – you had stripped down to his bare bottom.

There was a brou haha of splashes and laughter from outside. Quentin and Barbara looked at each other – confused and stunned – then began to laugh. They laughed until tears streamed down their faces – and their shoulders – which neither had known were tense – finally released their nervous tension.

“Wow,” he offered.

She countered with “Yeah.” Then they laughed some more.

“Well – I guess my sunbathing time is over. I should probably head home – you know – get a shower…”

He grinned bashfully and tried hard not to picture her in the shower. Instead he looked down at his Chuck Taylors’ and watched one ground down his spent cigarette butt. “Well, look, since you’re here – maybe we should – I dunno – get together some time. Have coffee. Catch up. You know. Be neighborly.”

She looked at him for a long minute. “I’d like that,” she said, touching his arm lightly – then, on an impulse, reached up and gave him a quick hug.

It seemed it took forever for Quentin to remember how to let go.

“You’ll have to come over sometime,” she said. “See the new place.”

”I’d like that.”

”Great. I know Reg would love to meet you.”

Quentin leaned against the wall in a way he hoped both looked casual and would provide full body support – as he was sure the ground had just given way. He found he was lighting another cigarette. It took him three times. “Reg?” he said, as nonchalantly as his suddenly swollen tongue would allow.

“Yeah – Reg. My boyfriend? Surely Ben must have told you?”

Ben, that bastard, hadn’t mentioned. But then Quentin never asked.

“I haven’t really talked to Ben lately. Geeze, Barb, didn’t take you long, did it? It’s only been a couple of months – assuming you weren’t seeing him behind my back when we were together – and you’re already moving in with him? What happened to ‘being an independent woman.’” He could feel the adrenaline course through him; his hands were no longer shaking – no – when he was angry – he was in control.

The kids laughter rang reverberated through the courtyard. It was the most aggravating sound Quentin had ever heard.

Barbara sighed, all the light gone from her smile. “Cut the crap, Quent. You were the one always going on about needing your independence. I always liked being in a relationship. You knew that. You were the one who felt ‘stifled’ and ‘boxed in.’ You wanted your space, and you got it. Don’t get pissed at me just because I met someone else and you’re stuck upstairs, alone – ogling old ladies at the pool.”

Quentin spat, he saliva yellow with nicotine. “Whore.” It was a challenge. He felt alive for the first time in months. Whatever she came back with, he was ready for her. Their fights had once been the thing of legends. Mrs. Dangle was in for a rather rude wake-up call. “Unfeeling. Superficial. Bitch. Whore.”

“Bring it,” he thought. “I can take it. Bring it.”

But she just looked at him, her arms now lax at her side – her smile faded into a thin, tight line. Her eyes looked like they might spill over any second, but you wouldn’t know it from her voice, which was quiet and cool.

“I’m sorry, Quent. I thought – well – I thought you were – that we could – I’m sorry. I was wrong. I can see you want to be left alone.”

And so she left him.

Alone.

He watched her walk quickly up the stairs, vanishing onto some unknown landing.

He wanted to scream “Don’t walk away from me, whore,” but his mouth wouldn’t make the words. Instead his lips contorted into a great grimace - with his cigarette perilously perched beneath.

As he climbed the stairs slowly back to his apartment – he could hear quiet sobbing. It wasn’t until the tears slid down to his chin that he realized it was his own.

I Prefer Medium Rare, Myself

2004-11-08T23:14:00.000-05:00

Brain utterly knackered thanks to first day back to work post vacation. (You know you are being punished for taking vacation when, upon your return, you are literally unable to see the top of your desk thanks to countless papers, requests, and memos covering the surface). Ergo, I took inspiration from Mike Arzen's Twisted Prompts for Sicko Writers - choosing to spin off the third.

I have noticed that everything I've written so far has been a monolouge. Fine for character studies (in fact, I have another one planned) - but one of these days I'll have to do some proper descriptions and dialouge.

This is an outrage – Detective..an outrage I tell you! I’ll have your badge for this. It’s true what they say – all men created here in this country – unless they look different, or have an accent. I’ll have you know I am a citizen of this country. I’ve been naturalized, and am entitled to good treatment, a lawyer.

A good lawyer, Detective. I am a very wealthy man.

Instead you treat me like this, like an animal – pull me from my sleep and drag me to this…establishment. What is this? A … what do they call them in your action movies…”safe house.”

This house … that gun …your badge and yes, even that gaudy medallion around your neck – none of this will keep you safe.

Even without my money, I am a powerful man. A force you will wish you never reckoned with.

And then to have the audacity to stick me with that needle. I imagine you think it ironic, don’t you? Sticking a sticker? You Americans. So droll. I can feel it now, coursing through this blood. I fear you may be disappointed. You may wrench some words from me, but I’ve have tainted blood before – and still I survive. Free.

Get that light out of my eyes…such juvenile theatrics. This is barbaric. You know full well I am photosensitive. I know it’s in your file. Always you pitiful men and your journal and files. I am in all of them. And your ridiculous little books and films.

Seen them? Of course I’ve seen them, of course. You are Italian, Detective, are you not? Have you never seen The Godfather, or any of those other charming mafia films? Don’t you find yourself somehow drawn to the caricature they make of your people, your ancestry; coveting that bile that bubbles inside you because although you recognize some truth of what they show, you also know the secrets film can never expose; the nuances and depths that lie beneath.

I wonder if they make you as lonely as your “monster movies” make me?

That blasted woman? Of course I did not know her. This is what I mean about those movies. Ridiculous romanticizing of a basic act of survival. Tell me Detective, what did you have for dinner? You and the tall bag of bone and muscle behind the mirror there. (That’s what he’s here for, I assume? Muscle? I know you can’t see him right now, detective, but I can tell you, it’s delicious to watch him squirm. Just because I can’t see myself in the mirror doesn’t mean I can not see.)

You both of the stink of dead flesh on you – cooked so dry there is nothing of value in it…no…he did. You had your’s..rare? It’s better that way, isn’t it? Closer to the truest taste of flesh without you having to dirty your hands or acknowledge your slumbering lizard brain. You think because you stand up on two legs, but on a suit and a hat and pretend to pray to some higher being once a week that you are somehow not an animal?

Well let me ask you this, Detective. Tonight, when you sat at that greasy spoon, that piece of meat clinging so desperately onto your fork, the red juice dripping down to pool on your plate and stain your tie…did you, before you put that morsel in your mouth and rent it between your teeth, tearing the flesh and freeing the juices…did you stop for a moment and consider the cow? Was it a cow you picked out before hand? Did you drive out to the farm, and court if from afar? Watch it from afar– a living thing – chew it’s cud and laze about in the sun? Perhaps you did that charming things you humans do and “mooed” at it tenderly as you drove by? Soon becoming brave enough to court it with sugar cubes and then steal it away to your backyard to treat it to fresh grass and be with you for the rest of your days?

Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even have the decency to kill it yourself. It is food. You went out, your ordered it without a single thought for the mindless, sub-human creature that died for you, and then ate it without remorse.

Have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes, Detective? They are terribly soulful things.

Why, no, Detective. I am not saying humans are cows. I am saying they…you…are the steak. If I could have you packed for my consumption and convenience, I’d patronize those garish corner stores of your much more often.

That woman – shout her name at me all you like. She had a family? Then I hope she had a good insurance policy. What do expect from me? Pity?

It’s about survival, Detective…the food chain. I, like you, must eat or I die.

I? A monster? Now, you make me take it back. I do feel pity. Pity for you and your entire self-important brethren. Why do you assume you are different from any other animal? Because you can speak a language I understand? Because you can reason? Lie? Create art?

There’s a rather famous gorilla who does all those things. And yet – if I had treated myself to monkey for dinner, you and I wouldn’t be here right now – having this…civilized conversation.

Allow me to be frank, Detective. I could live on bugs and rats and small mammals, and eek out something of an existence…just as you could subsist on sprouts and beans. But just as you prefer steak..well..

What can I say, Detective? We are men of distinctive tastes.

You don’t mind if I stand a moment, I get so cramped, sitting. Despite what you may have been led to think, I don’t like cramped spaces. You should see my bed – it is wondrous thing. King sized, four poster, carved mahogany – heavy burgundy drapes. A bit ostentatious really – more fit for royalty – but we must have our vanities, mustn’t we?

The bonds? Oh, Detective. Really. I thought you had done your reading. And this little drug of yours – well it does where off. It’s temporary. Even at that dosage.

It was a bit pleasant, really. Much like the effect I once got from a good vintage.

Don’t bother signaling your friend. We’ve had…a meeting of the minds, so to speak, why you and I were chatting.

It’s harmless. He will wake later with a slight headache, and, if he is the type of man he seems, a permanent distrust of his sanity and
You do please, me Detective. Of course, you are right. I will tell you what you need to know.

I did it. She was insecure, lonely, and easily led like an eager lamb to the slaughter.

She was a little drunk, and very fertile.

It is very likely she felt pain, but she did not struggle.

She tasted like cigarettes and honey.

If you have more empty packages that fit the profile, then yes, I may have been responsible.

How do you put it…I am your man. I bow to your dazzling intellect and slightly yellowed smile.

Now I will tell you the answer to the question you will not ask, Detective.

You will taste of red meat, fear, bad coffee and stale cigarettes.

I’d give you some of that drug to relax you, but you seemed to have used it all on me.

Besides, it would spoil the flavor.

You have but a few moments, Detective. You can pull your gun, urinate down your leg, weep or pray – as you wish.

Yes, you seemed that sort of man.

I think I will take your badge with me, Detective, so I can remember you. The cow who thought he was a God but became a steak.

Rare is the best, way, don’t you think?

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

2004-11-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps my worst Nanowrimo cheat so far - not a story or a character study - not even an essay so much as straight ahead self-indulgent journaling. And a bit redundant journaling at that as I have touched on the some of this topic before.

I would like to remind anyone reading that sometimes when a writer journals - they slip seamlessly back and forth between reality and a fictionalized account.

I tell you this, because I don't want you to know how much of this is true.

Which is all of it.

I am a horror genre fan; as a child I’d thrill to the black and white horror classics on the now defunct Channel 48 which I watched with my Dad. I read gothic horror novels, graphic novelizations, and gorey comic books. I watched The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, and The Munsters. I watched the classic horror movie marathons on AMC.
By age 8 I knew the full litany of Universal Movie monsters – and with no uncertainty that Frankenstein was the name of the doctor – not his creation. By ten I was reading Stephen King and seeking out Vincent Price titles at the video store. (I would stare hungrily at the rental boxes in the horror section that promised more gore – but it was a neighborhood store with a very strict rental policy.) At angsty 13, I lay in the upper bunk in a distant cabin in the woods – packed full of girl scouts – wishing real-life vampires would come and spirit me away. (After all, being trapped in the woods with two dozen tween girls is a scary thing.) I had dreams and fantasies where I would appear in black and white – sometimes trying to escape these nefarious creatures, but most often walking among them; I would meet my demise, cold and lovely, my hair fanned out perfectly at the bottom of a spiraling staircase in a stone tower.

Even when I was 18 (and fancied myself an adult) – I had a dream right after I got engaged (the first time around). In it, I was visited by a (pack? Coven? Pride? Flock?) of vampires – all elegant in Victorian and Renaissance regalia. The leaned over the bed I shared with my finance and laughed at me, mocking me in leering whispers. I was a fool, they jeered – I had given up my chance to be with them, to be one of them – they who understood me. By giving up my “innocence” I had irrevocably turned myself away from the freedom and adventure I begged them for that night in the woods when I was 13. Missing the blatantly obvious metaphor at the time – I woke up saddened, like I had truly lost something.

I am not putting this all down to demonstrate my tendency to be a bit morbid (I am) or to put into question my sanity (31 years and never certified!) – I assure you I also played in the sun and with Barbie ™ dolls and emotionally tortured my younger siblings just like every other normal child.

My point here is that these Hollywood and book monsters never frightened me. They had a fascination – even a life for me, certainly (the armchair pop-psychologist in me suggests that being a lonely child I may have empathized with their being societal outcasts and exploited – and even jealous of the very things that made them special – rather than being frightened by their otherworldliness. (This is why writers’ journal, folks. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than therapy!) )

Additionally, most of the classic monsters: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature, had been through the sanitizing blender of pop culture by the time I learned to recognize ideas and concepts and attach them to faces and shapes. Franenstein’s monster had become a clumsy, addle brained oaf, thanks to the pathetic portrayls by Karloff, the camp of The Munsters, and countless cartoony Halloween decorations. (It wasn’t until I actually read Frankenstein in high school that I learned that the Creature had sharp intelligence, superhuman powers, and a tragic need for vengeance. Just thinking about that book gives me the shivers.) Dracula, the Werewolf, and hundreds of ghosts suffered similar fates at the hands of Scooby Doo, & Abbot and Costello and William Castle. (Hammer Horror Productions (filmed at Pinewood Studios) also heightened the psycho-sexual aspects of the stories for me – but that, I feel is another essay for another time.) After this sort of treatment – how could any of these monsters or their movies frighten me beyond, perhaps, a silly little thrill?

It occurs to me that I’m taking the long way round this topic – and I’m not entirely sure why.

I didn’t intend to talk about the monsters that don’t scare me. I meant to talk about the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night that do.

While discussing with a friend the horror movies that had the greatest effects on me (Nightmare on Elm Street, Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives, Candyman) I came to a somewhat surprising realization – these are all films in which the protagonist may be battling external forces or their own sanity.

I don’t fear violent, otherworldly creatures who leap from the darkness and endanger both my life and my immortal soul. Oh no.

It seems I am most afraid of myself.

Of my own mind.

Of going mad.

It’s reassuring, really. I never have to worry that this night will be the night my worst fear attacks me in the alley. Because my worst fear is with me all along.

I’m not sure from whence this fear springs. I am imaginative – yes – perhaps overly so – but I’ve always been able to separate the facts in my life from the fiction.

But of course, everyone thinks this about themselves; and for some people – it is most simply not true.

I never did worry about being a solipsist…it’s not that I mind the responsibility really – I mean – if I were a solipsist I wouldn’t feel badly about things like genocide because the people dying in it wouldn’t be any more real than the horrible acts themselves; you can’t destroy what was never there. No – the reason I can’t buy into solipsism is because – although I do consider myself very creative – I can’t begin to believe that my humble brain could conceive things like the Taj-Mahal, the Mona Lisa, and the entire socio-economic history of Norway. It is too much – and I can not have simply created it all from nothing.

Maybe that’s why my brain punishes me from time to time; it thinks I think of it as an underachiever.

And let’s face it – this is an enemy who will always know what I am thinking.

My brain and I have a good relationship – but from time to time it gives me the most hideous of nightmares – dreams cycles in which I believe myself to be awake and interacting with the real world – in such minute detail to my real life – only to realize I am dreaming – then I wake up and interact with the real world only to realize I am dreaming …..

It sometimes goes on all night. They are fully sensory too – these particular brand of nightmares. I feel the air - the quality of light is always just as it was when I went to sleep – my blankets are always just out of place. And then there is touch too – I once kicked over a glass at that was resting on an table near the end of my daybed – only to find it shattered on the floor. It’s as if although even with my brain in deep REM sleep I am still completely tapped into all 5 of my senses. I don’t know what I ever did to them, but they help feed the dreams.

When I do wake from these sorts of dreams I am terribly disoriented, and suspicious of everything around me. I once spent the better part of a day not entirely sure I hadn’t killed someone – because a dream had barreled back at me one morning like a repressed memory. (I even did some online research for the crime). In college – I spent a night with my muscles tensed – unwilling to turn over or even stretch my legs – because I dreamed the room just as it was – only Jack Nicholson’s voice had been speaking from my closet, telling me to kill myself.

If you’ve ever had aural hallucinations on pain killers – it was much like that. Hyper real.

Now – with Jack Nicholson – I knew it was a dream, it frightened me terribly at the time – because it is a terrible thing to hear anyone – Hollywood celebrity or not – suggest that you take your own life – but I didn’t feel compelled to do it or for a moment believe that it was real. There were three logical things to do here: (1) get out of bed, pull back the closet curtain, and see that there was no Jack Nicholson in my closet (and if there was a Jack Nicholson in the closet – get an autograph before calling Campus Police!) (2) tell Jack Nicholson to take a flying leap (perhaps not the most realistic option. After all, no one talks to Jack Nicholson that way) or (3) try to wake up my roommate – who I could plainly see sleeping in her bed not 5 feet from me.

All easy enough.

Except for, well, the paralysis. That’s right. Since the brain controls the whole body – it’s not content just to toy with my psyche – oh no – it’ll lock the body down too just to make it difficult for me to escape. Oh, I can move around find in the dream scape – but once I determine that I am dreaming and must therefore either wake myself up or try to make enough noise for someone else to hear me and wake me up – my body goes into total rebellion. My dream limbs become too heavy to move - and if I can move them – I can tell the movement isn’t being mirrored by my actual limbs – because everything feels tingly - as though there has been no blood circulating. I always try to cry out or scream – or even just talk – but my vocal chords go taut. I think the best I’ve managed is a strangled whisper – or the sound of a small, hurt bird. If I try this…and in these situations I always try this…I will wake up with a terribly sore throat.

Being a product of The Information Age – I have, of course, researched these types of dreams (it is somewhat relieving that I am not the only person ever to have suffered them. I’ve always referred to them as “Dream Loops” but other people have deemed them “False Awakenings”; a kind of “Lucid Dreaming”) In my research I have picked up a few tips on how to rouse yourself from them; mostly dream actions to perform. And I’ve tried them too.

But here’s the rub.

My subconscious knows whatever my consciousness knows – and the dreams were ready for me.

One such trick is to attempt to operate something electronic – particularly a light switch (for some reason switching a light switch allegedly doesn’t work in dreams). I was stuck in a particularly vicious dream loop – I was so many loops in that I would recognize almost as soon as the loop started that I was dreaming – and would immediately try to wake up. In this particular loop I directly confronted my subconscious (in the dream it was in the guise of my then – husband – the only other person actually in the house.) In the dream I told him all I had to do was flip the nearby light switch – that it wouldn’t work, then I will have proven it was a dream. And my subconscious laughed and told me all it had to do was tell me not to do it – and I wouldn’t be able to.

And you know what – it was right. (It is my brain after all; controls the whole central nervous system. Very difficult to disobey it when it tells you no.)

What have we learned here, children? Never tell your adversary your plan.

The worst part about these dreams is I have to ride them out. I don’t wake up until either (a) the alarm sounds or (b) my brain is good and ready to let me go. When my lizard brain wrestles my people brain – the lizard brain usually wins.

I should say, I do have dreams where I realize I am dreaming and which are not at all adversarial.

But when they are – let me tell you – I am totally my brain’s bitch.

This explains why, even before ever seeing the film – I found the idea of Freddy Krueger so terrifying; I’ve had a wise-cracking dream villain in my head all my life. And no plucky Heather Langenkamp nor a team of teens to help me fight it.

It’s not as though I wander around day to day, worrying that the line between fantasy and reality was irrevocably fade for me – or even that one day I’ll get caught in a dream loop and never get out. I worry about banal things – like paying my rent, doing my laundry, and finding a benevolent sponsor who will fund all my desires for travel and personal artistic projects.

But still, the fear is clearly nestled there – or I would simply laugh at pitiful, spineless Rosemary, or inwardly cheer when Tony Todd appears at the bonfire (the way I do for most horror movie monsters).

Instead of the monsters – it’s the heroes that haunt me. Them, and their struggles.

If only my conscious could know my subconscious the same way my subconscious knows it. Then I would be prepared. Then I could take it on without fear.

Then I wouldn’t worry about waking up.

Perhaps – then – this is why I write. To pull back all those curtains in my subconscious to see what manner of beast if mimicking Jack Nicholson, hampering my motor skills and taking away my voice. To face the monsters inside so I’m not afraid of those on the outside.

To keep away horror of these wicked dreams.

And now that I’ve called my brain out to battle – I worry that I shall sleep tonight.

Always Pack Your Backpack in the Event of a Blighter Future

2004-11-04T01:48:00.000-05:00

I was working on the horror movies essay - when I decided I was too tired to go on. I opened a new document page to jot down some ideas I had, including an opening line that had come to me while I was out walking this evening. After I wrote the first line, the rest of this jibberish came tumbling out.

Not sure where it's all going - but I think I might revisit it.

When I've had more sleep.

It was cold the day I sat on the grassy hillside near my childhood home and watched the world crumble. I wish I had thought to pack a sweater. And a picnic lunch. It was the kind of sunset you really wanted a bottle of wine and a cheese plate for. Clear, without haze, the blood red of deserted civilizations give the sky a deep amber glow and the fires surrounding the sun like a million tiny stars exploding in a new galaxy.

It was my fault. And of course I knew I should be running. The survivors – if there were any…would seek me out soon enough. Then it was burning torch and pitchfork time for me for sure (these being their most effective weapons since the massive electromagnetic pulse I inadvertently generated knocked out every electronic device – well – best as I could tell (news being hard to come by) on the planet.

Surely you’ve seen someone (or been someone) whose tapped their fingers impatiently while counting the last 30 seconds for a bag of microwaved popcorn, or bitched and moaned when their broadband had gone down for 30 seconds. Well – imagine telling these people - in fact, imagine someone telling you that the irritating “I’m done!” beep of the microwave will never, ever, arrive – or that even if the broadband did come back on it wouldn’t matter, because your newly-update-to-play-the-latest-video-game computer would never work again – what would you do.

You got it. Pitchforks and torches. And possibly a traditional public hanging.

You know. For the kids.

So why wasn’t I hightailing it to the recesses of a cave somewhere - one that I had hopefully had the foresight to stock with the remainders of my Y2K survival kit.

It’s simple really. First of all, I didn’t plan ahead. Not for this and not for Y2K, not ever for anything. I have been told that this is a liability when it comes to my personality – but it let’s me be flexible, spontaneous, free and easy. I like to think of it as an asset, really. Aside from ending human life as we had always known it, it hasn’t really been a problem for me.

So, there I was, with only me, myself, and my no picnic and no sweater.

Secondly, I’m a sucker for a spectacle…I mean often does one get a chance to sit and watch the civilization literally crumble? Buildings as far as I could see would shudder, than collapse slowly from the bottom up.

The dust was incredible. And the sound. – phenomenal. Terrible, but phenomenal.
It made the earth shake.

It made my bones shake. Or maybe I was shaking from the cold. I would have liked to have had a sweater, my favorite gray one, particularly. It was wool, and so durable – and I had finally worn it in enough that the fibers were soft and silky, not prickly and itchy. Wool is great because it’s so warm, but new wool is so uncomfortable.

I don’t know how sheep stand it.

Well – how they used to stand it.

I mean, sheep were once wild…at least I think they were….so they may still make it. No more Dollys though. They’ll have to go back to making sheep the old fashioned way.

I hope the sheep can remember the old fashioned way.

I hope I can remember the old fashioned way – in case I find someone else out there someday. Someone who can forgive me for dooming the rest of mankind. I mean, you’re a lovely rock - you’re all lovely rocks here in this cave – but frankly sometimes I get lonely – and it’s been so quiet lately I think it might be my duty to re-populate the human race.

I’ll need another human for that. Someone who can pro-create.

And cook. If I eat lichen one more day, I’ll scream.

I’d even marry them if they could knit.

I would really like a sweater.

Fear Itself

2004-11-03T18:10:00.000-05:00

This was meant to be an essay (I know, I said no essays - so sue me), spawned by a recent conversation I had, about the nature of the made-up horrors that frightened me as a child.

However, I was in a dark mood when I sat down to write (care to guess why?) and this is what came out. I was like pulling teeth writing it, and I don't particularly like it, but word count is word count.Essay, brain permitting, will be forthcoming.

Roosevelt said the only thing we have to fear “is fear itself.” And to him I say “Poppycock.”I don’t fear Fear – I seek it out, I revel in it. The tingle that starts on the back of your neck and makes all the tiny hairs rise, spreading down to make your shoulders rigid, snaking its way around your heart and lungs to make the beat faster, the breath quick and shallow;– then finally nesting itself in your stomach – no longer a tingle but a nauseous flutter. It is only then my dears, my darlings, within that infinitesimal moment when Fight wrestles with Flight that one is truly alive.

If I am not striving towards survival, I do not live – I merely exist – like the millions of gray cloned zombies that shuffle haplessly down the street like so many clockwork toys.

Like you.

I watch you following their track: They wake in the self-assembled, flat-packaged beds, blink their way through pretentious overpriced caffeinated beverages and flock like sheep to jobs they can never enjoy – having let the easy weight of drudgery crush their empty souls long ago; they watch the clock, then fight hordes of traffic in race to see who can fall asleep with the television remote in their hands first.

Silly, pitiful creatures. Killing them really could be a kindness. Ah, you’re shivering, my precious. Do you feel it grabbing you – your pulse pounding in your ears, gravity pressing against your lungs like you’re underwater and unable to catch your breath? How I envy you right this moment! Delicious!

But you needn’t fear right now. There are those in my little fraternity who find their thrill in the kill, so to speak; that’s true; but I’ve always found it a bit distasteful. The coppery smell of blood, the sickly sweet of their panicked vomit; and the…shall I say…when their bowels release….I can’t even change my niece’s diaper without the sick rising in my throat – so well..let’s just say I have much too delicate a constitution for that sort of thing. This knife? Oh, precious sweetling! It’s just a prop, an artifice. I like the weight in my hands while I am talking to you. I like the way it glitters when I twist it in the darkness.

Here. See? It barely stings when it bites your flesh. Just a pinprick, a sting, a tiny little drop of scarlet. I was never much of an art afficiando – but I do appreciate the contrast of dark on light – the sinewy trail it will leave as it runs down your neck…although I am afraid that shirt of yours is ruined. Mustn’t be a slave to material things, though, should we?

If I couldn’t only make you understand the gift I am giving you…you do feel it, don’t you? Alive? Like your life has value and meaning enough that you want to save it – keep going. What are you thinking of? All those things you’ve been putting off? The opportunities missed? All the changes you’ll make if you survive? It’s good that you cringe when I get this close to you…good that you’re aware of everything – each rivulet of sweat seeping into your eyes, your lips – the heat of my breath on your face. But I can see you don’t believe me yet – something in your eyes. If I were to let you go now you’d be back to your gray routine in a month – with maybe a few new scars and a good pub story to tell.

When you appreciate the Gift – when you can trust me, then, perhaps, I’ll let you go.

Trust me on this at least, poppet; stop worrying the ropes: I’ve lots of practice; they’re tied good and tight. You’ll be sorry for the burns later.

I was once like you, pet; that’s the wondrous thing…it means with my help you too can be free..then we can…oh, dear, if it weren’t so dark in here you’d see I was blushing. I’m afraid I’m getting ahead of myself. I was never good at being gallant.

Ah…but you’re so lovely when you’re weeping. I wish I could crawl up inside your brain right now, and wrap my hand around your heart – and just…feel you…your essence…your will…your Life.

I’ve seen you, you know. At the movies – not just the mainstream ones either…but the classics, the foreign ones – all the repertoire pictures in those faded auditoriums of colleges and despairing movie palaces (full of their own ghosts)– the films and features people do not stumble on accidentally – they must be actively pursued – lovingly followed.

The first time I saw you – it was that Miike film at the art house – I only noticed you in passing – you and your loud friends laughing before the opening credits ran – mocking those around you; typical, superior androids, I told myself, not realizing they are just as programmed as all the other robots.

But even then, critiquing some brusquely critiquing some locally-made scholk film you saw, I recognized something in you…something familiar. I thought perhaps it was the tilt of your head, or that sharp tone in your laugh. But then the lights fell and you were forgotten.

Forgive me, darling? If I had only known then – known that I would continue to see you at every show I’d go to – from the obscurest to the most retro – that you’d be there, in the dark with me – seeking the dark with me.

I knew – it was at Calligari that I knew. I turned in the flickering darkness and there you were – just a few seats away…and the look on your face was…well, I daren’t summon heaven pet, but it was unworldly. All those around us – those philistines, those restless, silly creatures – we slumped in their seats – whispering or surreptitiously pushing tiny buttons on electronic devices or molesting each other below the armrests. But you…you were radiant and rapt – like you knew the story and were the heroine and I the doctor, and all the world around us thought itself sane and we mad and never knowing it was the reverse. That’s when I knew you went there seeking something…something I could help you find.

Oh, dear. I’m sorry to have to cut you again, pet – but if I am to help you – you must stay awake.

The films – the books, the carnival houses – they’ll give you the thrill for a bit; believe me precious, I’ve done them all, seen them all. But they are safe, too safe, and you can only fool the body into that fear for so long. It is manufactured, manipulated, unfulfilling. Soon enough you’ll crave more. True danger…true survival…true fear.

Then, you will know true release, true life.

What would you do, child, if I cut you free right now? Would you try to run - find your way through the darkness? Would you weep and beg me for your life? And if I put down the knife?

To live, could you kill me?

Would you kill me?

And if you did – how would you live?

Go back to that office where they don’t heed you, to your frozen dinners and Must See TV and fumbling, unexciting sexual trysts?

Is that living?

Is that what you’re struggling for, there in that chair?

I see you almost have the ropes undone.

That’s good, precious. That’s very good. Makes one feel almost proud.

I can’t let you go, of course, darling. Not back to that.

You’re going to have to show me your life will mean something.

Start now.

Part the First: Esme's New Job

2004-11-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

When one is without plot or inspiration, what could be better than poking some fun at oneself? After all - aren't most early novels largely autobiographical?

Esme breathed deeply over her coffee mug, warming her hands and allowing the bitter heat to steam her glasses. “This,” she thought, taking a long pull from the chipped blue mug, “must be what Mana was like.” She leaned back in her desk chair and sighed, inwardly wincing and laughing at the idea of great storm clouds of coffee gathering over office buildings everywhere, and raining the down on sluggish office workers.

If that ever did happen, she could think of a few people she’d like to see forget their umbrellas.

Being down-sized had been the best thing that ever happened to her (a fact she reminded herself of in front of the mirror each morning, on the advice of her friend Suzy (who learned the technique from a doctor so well respected he did all his care-giving on tv)). She had hated working in the cube-farm, being forced to make small talk about diets and reality television with people she was sure spent all the time not working on things she had needed to make that important production deadline – but rather gossiping at the watercooler about her. She knew they thought she was snobbish because she wouldn’t dish dirt about her fellow co-workers. She found that kind of thing distasteful and childish.

Besides which, she was certain That Bitch Becky in accounting (with her designer label clothes and terrible bottle blonde) had turned everyone against her just because she had suggested some of the reimbursement issues the company had been having might have been due to some laxness on Becky’s part. Shunned by the whole office, just because she was trying to be proactive. Was it her fault that people like Becky only knew how to move up in the world by lying on her back (Esme was sure it was true – the whole office said so). Clearly whomever she was making time with was high up in the company because it wasn’t too long after that Esme found herself standing bewildered at the bus-stop – carrying a Staples box full of her smiling Happy Face desk trinket collection, looking at her now defunct name plate “Esmerelda Harrison, Receptionist.”

That.

Bitch.

Becky.

Deep breaths, Esme. Deep breaths. This is the best thing that has ever happened to you. You have freedom now. You can pursue your Big Dream.

She glanced around her home office approvingly – it was cramped- floor to ceiling bookshelves; overstuffed with papers and books till they threatened to topple, crowded every available wall. Dog-earred writing books, from Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” to Stephen King’s “On Writing” were crowded her desk in haphazard piles, their pages so high-lighted they seemed to give off their own yellow halo.

This was the kind of space she belonged in – comfortable and full of creative chaos; not gray rooms with fluorescent lighting and rows and rows of straight lines, like some suburban prison. She had fallen in love with Ray Bradbury’s cluttered office when watching his show as a child – and stopped organizing her living space ever since. It suggested to her a certain mad freedom…freedom to let her mind go where it might. This is where she would create – this is where she would finally give in to her secret desire: to be a writer – a real writer. Sure, she had her fanfic on her friend’s “Superheros Make Super Loves” website, and that was certainly something. (Her mother had suggested that if she must “write that garbage” she shouldn’t put it on the Internet – at least not under her own name – but when her readers swooned at her tales of Green Lantern and the Wonder Twins – she wanted them to know it was her bringing happiness. When she lost her job, her mother suggested including that staging on of the stories in her office building (and having the Legion of Doom kill-off fictional versions of many of her co-workers) may have led to her being let go – but Esme knew it was That Bitch Becky. Esme secretly hoped That Bitch Becky had read the story – she would like to have seen her perfectly made-up face react to Lex Luthor’s bodyguard slamming the head of ‘That Bitch Betty in Accounting’’s head in the lumbering old Xerox machine over and over again.))

But Esme was growing tired of mere Internet fame. She wanted to see her name in print, preferably above a picture of Fabio (or a Fabio-like man) with a swooning heiress in his arms. She wanted to be someones whose books were sold at airports and written about in the magazine she saw at the doctor’s office: important one’s like “Woman’s Day” and (when she wrote her children’s novel – she had much more original ideas than JK Rowling) “Highlights.” She smiled and stretched, imaging her name on the page – right next to “Goofus and Gallant.” (Inspiration! She grabbed a piece of nearby scrap paper and scribbled “Goofus and Gallant slash fiction – bad boy teaches a good boy a thing or two!) and pinned it to the corkboard which was sitting on the floor (languishing for two years to be hung) next to her desk.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to make a living at it right away. But she couldn’t pass on this chance – she had to take this opportunity to find a job that would accommodate her personal projects and still pay her enough to maintain the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. (She had, two month’s into her unemployment, briefly considered answering some receptionist ads. It would have been a step backwards (or at least, sideways) she knew – but she had to admit her receptionist duties had given her plenty of time to write. After all – the filing never had to be done right away – and most people were so used to being put on hold when calling large companies that they didn’t even seem to notice when she’d leave them on hold for long blocks of time when inspiration struck. (She hated it though when some people, like That Bitch Becky) would interrupt her to ask her to fax something. Couldn’t they see she was busy?)

Luckily, before she convinced herself to go to Kinkos and fax her resume to a local real estate company, an Craiglist ad caught her eye. “Writer’s Wanted. Make money from home working for an international company. Flexible hours – how much you make depends on how much you work.”

She emailed them a writing sample straight away.

There were two tense hours of latte’s and Snood playing before her email “ding”ed (the triumphant sound of a character leveling up in “Everquest”) letting her know she was a proud new employee of NSI. In her introductory email they sent her a detailed job description, a list of email addresses, and an assurance that her demonstrated use of “creative spelling techniques” was an added bonus for the job. (Esme inwardly beamed when she read that – she always felt it was more important for an author to get their meaning across – things like spelling and grammar were the jobs of editors – not writers!)

The job description was a dream come true – it would allow her to work on her character development and storytelling skills. Sure – there was a barebones format she had to follow, and some suggested prototypes – but she had free reign to develop her character’s background as she saw fit – the more tragically persuasive the better.

Esme resisted the urge to immediately blog her good news, and instead got to work right away. She created a Yahoo! email account, and loaded her list of Registered Subscribers into the BCC field, fired up her Writing playlist (AM Gold MP3s) and opened Microsoft Word.

Paid to be a writer! Never had she been so excited to wrestle with the blinking cursor on the ultra-white fake paper page.

She took a deep breath. This was it. The first day of the rest of her life.

“Dear Sir or Madam,” she wrote, “You may be surprised to find me writing to you, but I have heard wonderful things about you, and know you are kind-hearted and can be trusted….”

Esme grinned as her fingers flew across the keyboard, clicking a litany of sorrowful events, and a hope for mutally beneficial financial arrangements. She couldn’t believe someone was going to pay her to write! And it was so easy – she’d be done in plenty of time to start on her Great American Novel (and get her Goofus and Gallant story done too!). But first, things first. Singing along to Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel” she clicked send, then immediately set about filling out her new employee paper work. She wondered why they asked for her bank account number…did they offer direct deposit?

As she as she finished that, she was going to call her Mother. Unrealistic world view indeed.