Spot 032: The Tyranny of Things

Posted by mdjb on

 

UNDERWOOD
by Gita M. Smith

The shootings continue.
Last night, they eliminated teenaged girls who had gone mad when they could no longer text. The night before, it had been 13-year-old boys who were berserk over the loss of video games.
Fuck the whiny-baby pissants, anyway. It’s time young people learned to fend.
I myself have been very careful to stay in the weeds, and when asked how I’m doing, I say, “It’s a great day for golf, sure is!”
Out in mid-town park, there is fear and chaos. People have gathered, and they are stoking each other’s panic.
“If the machines never restart,” people cry, “what of the future?”
Yes, when the machines first quit, the quiet was eerie. But without radios, TVs or internal combustion engines, the world is actually quite a lovely place.
Noise was just another form of tyranny, when you think about it, because you could never escape it.
Once, I’d been fishing in far northern Canada where you would think you could get away from man-made sounds. But every 15 minutes or so, jets would boom overhead.
No, it’s definitely best not to whine or complain about what’s missing. Best to come up with a plan, and mine is to get out the old Underwood with sticky keys from the attic and bang out as many copies as possible of a newsletter.
My daddy always said, “Better believe it, he who controls the press, controls the people.”
To which I’d like to add, “and controls the future.”

This week’s theme was suggested by Gita. See Authors page for her bio.

 

 

FEDEX-PLETIVE
by Paul de Denus

“WHAT-THE-FU…!”
My pen is dead, out of ink.
“MOTHER-FU…”
The word falls with a heavy thud from my quivering lips. It transfers to my hand – the cramped one, the one doing all the writing, the one that presses through the four-layered shipping label, pen tip carving the heavy paper veneer, initialing a jagged trench along the tabletop.
“SUCKING-DOG-BAL…!”
The air bill is torn. It shouts at me: Please print and press hard.
“SHIT-FUCKER…!”
Ripe, it slips from between my teeth as I punctuate the air bill with spittle before crumpling it up, firing it across the room. If I have to write that FedEx account number one more time, I’ll…
“BITCH-HOLES…!”
I’m almost out of FedEx slips.

The FedEx system is down. How can that be? Hello? Press some buttons dudes and get it up again! You’re the world’s best delivery system, aren’t you? Please.
It took me two hours to find my print out copy with all these addresses. Sixty-one locations. I may kill myself.
SIXTY-ONE-HANDWRITTEN-BASTARD-DINKHOLE-LOCATIONS!!!

I’ll show them. I’ll make them work for it. Here’s an initial in front of my surname, an abbreviation for Street, one for Drive, random digits for phone numbers, a scribble for a signature. Does this shipment contain dangerous goods? Oh, it will. I promise. My hand pounds the table. I make a fist. It’s all I can do to attempt a middle finger. The hands too cramped to open.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

AFTER THE MACHINES FREAKED
by Bill Lapham

The day the machines freaked, the U.S. Defense Department felt the impact first and hardest. All its submarines, surface ships, fighters, bombers and drones, all the defense radars, missiles, guns and satellites were rendered useless.

The Pentagon requisitioned every sailboat in every marina on both coasts and Hawaii and dispatched them around the world to rescue stranded crews at sea. For months, convoys of sailboats brought the armed forces home.

With no means to generate power, everything that relied on electricity sat idle. Without pumps, production of petroleum products failed, and mechanized transportation ground to a halt.

Borders became indefensible. Governments, their laws and law enforcement became futile.

Populations migrated on foot to places that stayed warm and supported limited, organic farming. With the mass migrations, and the attendant bank failures, the architecture of religious organizations collapsed.

Competition for scarce resources became ferocious and homicide by blade and garrote proliferated. Blood ran in perilous streets and soaked the barren soil. The population of the world fell precipitously due to wide-spread famine, localized wars, and genocide. Viruses went viral.

With time, the population of Homo sapiens reached a sustainable equilibrium. Cells of families formed tribes. Those that found defensible cave complexes to live in, thrived by resorting to ancient hunting and gathering methods. With the evaporation of leadership, anarchy became the only workable political philosophy.

In the west, the most successful cells became known as Apaches; in the east they were called al-Qaeda. Separated by oceans, they lived peacefully for centuries.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

I DON’T SUCCUMB TO TYRANNY BUT I WONDER…
by Sandra Davies

I never would have continued without the Amstrad enabling me to type it up – my handwriting is so bad ¬– and although I was as willing as the rest to pay for pink and green certificates, to heave the slab-sized books around in dusty subterranean rooms, to scrabble away the ivy from the stones, I couldn’t help admitting it was easier when so much was made available on-line.
For convenience and cross-reference I pretty near abandoned multiple ring-binders of typed trees, pencilled annotations faded and photocopied documents taking space. Without the skills of Photoshop to zoom in and then compare the faces, the people in the photo albums would have remained unknown. Exchanging information with the similarly-minded from around the world would not have taken place.
But now my children tell me ‘If you really want us to know you will have to put our kin on Kindle’ I wonder whether when it all goes blank it will be as if I and my family’s history never was.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

THE TYRANNY OF THINGS
by Michael D. Brown

I wanted to sound clever and tell everyone present a story of some poor schlep who tried his damnedest to make things work, but who kept coming up against obstacles on which he had not counted, and then, you would all smile because you would see yourself in him and say oh, yes, well, it be that way sometimes, and really, what are you going to do about it? Unfortunately, the schlep turned out to be me, and I do not find the situation amusing enough to relate it in a way to evoke that smile. I am fucking pissed about where I find myself, if you want to know the truth. I never foresaw how being put in charge of friends and companions would place me in a different camp altogether nor how they would nod in agreement to everything and then proceed to follow their separate agendas. I never foresaw how being too busy to comply with an activity that brought me happiness would leave me sad all the time. I never thought I would have to beg off going to Kansas to be with other friends. I guess I just never thought ahead, period. The real tyranny is in how I trusted to fate, and it screwed me royally, and there isn’t much amusement in that. Things may yet be resolved in my favor, but at the moment, I’m feeling glum. I just wanted to share 250 words in an attempt to sidestep the malignancy. Everything sucks.

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

IN THE BEGINNING
by Kristine E Shmenco

The sun lit the face of the earth, time zone by time zone, as it had since before machines recorded time. There was no herald, no precursor, no sign that it would happen. People took to their holy books to see if they could divine the meaning, but there was no prophecy, no name given to understand why we lost our machines. What horseman had come in the night and took the power away? No answer was found, no prayer answered.
It was a mercy that simple machines like wedge or pulley did continue to work, and that is probably all that saved us. People’s dreams began to change, and they dreamed of candles and clean water. Clean water—suddenly everyone on the face of the earth felt the same way about it—understood what it really meant. Families living in remotest Brazil, China, India, would find our new lives unremarkable. We all now stood on the same ground, only we were astonished. Agonized at the loss of connection.
The words “rain barrel” were resurrected. Men with horses were kings, and for a time there were riots for bottled water and when that was gone, we learned to cry over spilled water. The face of the earth changed, forever, in one night. The changes I’m certain you can imagine. I don’t know why I feel the need to write down what happened, because right now no one cares about why. But on this ship with pen and ink, I must write.

See Authors page for Kristine’s bio.

 

Illustrations?

 

Spot 031: Peripatetic Parallelism

Posted by mdjb on

 

IN SYMPATHY
by Sandra Davies

As far as physical distance was concerned, it was no distance at all – I could see her house from my bedroom window. (What was her house – she committed suicide in 1989.) What I’d hoped to find in going there was that I had travelled, had learnt some social skills, some understanding of the language, the mores of such civilisations in my half a dozen years of going out and partying.
But despite a moment when I held the floor – when midway through the occasion she received a heavy-breathing-then-suggestive phone call, similar to one I’d had a couple days previously, and I could reassure and explain that laughter effectively dissuaded (which I’d done accidentally, thinking it a friend of my husband, playing a trick) – I discovered nothing had changed. I was as tongue-tied, incapable of both thought and speech and as bored and claustrophobic as ever. Without a shared interest, a reason to be there, such as the demonstration of the (excellent) children’s books I sold via party plan, I was incapable of functioning at a purely social, neighbourly coffee morning.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

ANYWHERE IN AMERICA
by Paul de Denus

Luckily for Crissetti, the bank was on the outskirts of town; nobody chased his dust. Peeling away, he passed the gas station next to the bank. He saw Stupid Sloan standing by the empty pumps eyeballing him. No problem. The retard – a kid from high school – wouldn’t remember seeing anything.
Crissetti sped north on I- 80, the First National telescoping down his rearview mirror. Two bags with overflow cash rustled next to him. The bank had been virtually empty, an easy knock-off. He licked his lips, fired up a blunt and eased off the gas. Stay cool. No time to draw attention.
He’d spent his whole life in Loomis; the bank job now paid his way out. Though he loved the dreamy comfort of California, there were more worlds waiting. For the next several miles of open stretch, Crissetti absorbed his surroundings, passing through California’s dry yellow hills, clusters of pine, eucalyptus and juniper and a heavy patch of tule fog that rolled over the highway. Exiting it, he viewed the trees, road and sky again, imagined the exact same scenery anywhere in America. Could be in Pennsylvania or Tennessee, he mused. A smile zigzagged his face as he crossed into Nevada.
The mile marker indicated the town of Sparks up ahead. He saw a gas station and started to pull in. Stupid Sloan stood at the pump, a finger pointing at him. Just beyond, sat the bank. Anywhere in America, Crissetti thought as police cars wailed. Behind him too.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

TESTING DESCARTES
by Bill Lapham

I woke not knowing where I was or how I had gotten there. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open, it was so dark. Gravity was the only way I could tell I was laying on my back, otherwise I could have been in the void of invisible space.
I straightened my arm in front of my face and touched something solid, wooden. I pressed against it and it didn’t move. I felt a surge of adrenaline and tried to resist the onset of panic. I relaxed my arm and set it down by my side. I was breathing very fast. Too fast, I decided, and tried to slow it down, tried to relax, like when somebody is taking my blood pressure.
I could feel the various parts of my body, wriggled my fingers and toes, turned my head from side to side. I was thinking, therefore Descartes could have been right. I was pretty sure I was alive.
I lifted my arm again and this time pushed as hard as I could against the solidness above me. It moved, fractionally, and a ray of light entered the box. Encouraged, I continued to push the lid open and as quickly as the panic had set in, it vanished, leaving me relieved, relaxed and pleased. I climbed out of my friend’s cargo trailer and went inside his house.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.
“Out getting a second chance,” I said.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

YOU’RE SIXTEEN
by Gita M. Smith

We had stopped for a bathroom break, Sal and I, at a low cinderblock roadhouse that smelled of gin and Dr. Pepper (please God don’t let that be an actual drink).
The jukebox was set on soft, but I could still hear the words of a long-ago and far-away song: “The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol when they do the Bristol Stomp.”
Next to me, a slouch of a drinker mumbled, “Far out song.”
A sidelong glance showed me shaggy hair and bell-bottoms.
“Help you?” the bartender asked.
“A Cosmopolitan, please” Sal said, lighting a Doral 100.
“Wow, never seen that brand before,” Slouchy said.
The bartender told Sal he’d never heard of a Cosmo.
We ordered two Buds instead, but something had started nagging at me.
The cash register was the old-fashioned, non-computer type. The two beers had cost $1.
“How much to play the jukebox?” I asked.
“Nickel gets you one, a quarter buys six,” barkeep replied, still perusing his guidebook for Cosmos.
Sal and I exchanged an electric look, the kind that couples sometimes share.
She approached the jukebox as if it were a hot stove. A small scream escaped her lips. All her high school favorites were there: “Poetry in Motion,” “Palisades Park,” and “You’re Sixteen.”
I knew the answer, but still had to ask, “Bartender, who’s the vice president nowadays?”
“Lyndon Johnson!” he said disdainfully.
That’s when Sal grabbed me and we ran to our car – the only one in the parking lot without a carburetor.

See Authors page for Gita’s bio.

 

 

ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO
by Michael D. Brown

He recalled early morning dew glistening on Mrs. Mooreheart’s Crimson Beauties and the distant calliope of a Good Humor van almost drowned out by the nine boys and a girl choosing sides for an impromptu game by chanting, “One potato, two potato…”
The stout, elderly woman, smiling at Everett on his way to the curb, did not seem to think it odd he was not taking the Chevy. She could not have known he was not on his way to work, nor that it was possibly the last time their eyes would meet, though she might have intuited he would not be returning for Round Two in the evening. She must have overheard most of the shenanigans occurring with increasing frequency those days inside 2513, but kept her own counsel and made the most of a morning’s greeting.
Now, Everett went about mostly on foot, uncomfortable dickering in high school Spanish with taxi drivers, unconscionably excessive in overtipping according to his past norms, and ineluctably excluded from newfound neighbors.
Standing in his garden late one afternoon, Señor Cal y Mayor appeared to be contemplating some unpardonable misstep, as the water delivery truck dragged chains and pieces of bent steel clanging down the road, and five girls sang out a choosing song, familiar only to themselves, while one tiny urchin dressed in tatters, barefooted, clutched a weathered doll to her chest and stared longingly, shifting her gaze between the man among the roses and the laughing children, never looking at Everett.

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

Are there illustrations for Spot 031?

 

Spot 030: The Big Picture

Posted by mdjb on

 

WAR IS HELL in Two Parts: Part II
by Bill Lapham

[Note: Read Part I here.]

“You ain’t quite got the big picture, do you, shitbird?” the chief said. He didn’t need a bullhorn, he had a megaphone mouth. “You weren’t sent out here for no pleasure cruise. Now git yer ass down to the galley and report to the galley watch captain for assignment as a mess cook.” Then he paused and looked out to sea like I was and yelled, “Move!”

It took me two hours to find the mess decks, another hour to work up the nerve to find the galley watch captain. By that time it was time to serve supper. The galley watch captain assigned me to a kid named Panagiotis Potaskevopoulos, the lead mess cook in the scullery. We just called him Pans’n'Pots. He put me on pots and pans, which had been piled in a sink so high I couldn’t reach the faucets.

But I got to work and sometime around midnight, I got done. Pans’n'Pots showed me to my rack. Four hours later, he woke me up again, and twenty hours after that, he showed me to my rack again. This went on for three months before my chief rescued me.

When we got back to the hangar bay, the chief asked me some questions about my time on the mess decks and what I’d like to do now that I was out. I was all “Yes, chief; no, chief; whatever you say, chief.”

I was ready to fight a war. Kill people and shit.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

CHANGE OF FOCUS
by Sandra Davies

I usually say ‘no thanks’ when they offer me the box, but these were ordered for delivery and arrived well-stuffed and protected with loads of screwed-up tissue paper. Ankle-high black boots, not exactly what I wanted but the others didn’t fit. And perforce I read the label and saw the name this style had been given.
A long, long time ago I worked one summer in a shoe shop, back and forth from the narrow-aisled and ladder high-shelved stockroom, becoming familiar with the order and the fancy names the different styles went by.
From longer still before then my father had a last – triple-legged, three different sizes, heavy and portently fascinating to a child. And I know shoes of the sort I buy are factory-made, never saw a last (and are sometimes barely made to either) and I found myself thinking that these days it’s likely that whoever made the names up for the styles is probably considered more important than the factory workers, although how coming up with ‘Barely edible’ for bog standard boots equates to the skill of a master cobbler I will never know.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

CLEAR COLOR
by Paul de Denus

The little girl fidgets; it’s boring waiting in line but it is what her patient mother wants them to do; she sees the value of it. It’s not until they are in the gallery and entered the room that the little girl understands.

It dominates a plain wall, six feet high and forty feet long. The bright continuous panels remind her of the graffiti covered subway cars she saw on the way to the museum. It is a painting- Monet’s Reflections of Clouds on the Water-lily Pond. The colors speak to her and she will remember.

These days, she’s walled in with canvas. On a plain white surface behind her desk sits a row of clear glass. Each glass contains groupings of colored pencils, each in its specific color group. When she looks at them, she finds they please her in the simplest of ways, calmly creating highlights and undertones to her day. A smile draws across her face as she fidgets with a blank canvas. The color takes on a shape and the little girl sees.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

SUNLIGHT OFF GLASS
by Michael D. Brown

The mural on the wall displaying the growing of corn and reflection of sunlight off glass explains the mission succinctly in a way even the indigenous, ostensibly unsophisticated parents from outside the city limits, who have never had the wherewithal to fully understand the overarching ways the children of privilege have had developed for them, would comprehend. This school forms leaders. There are no indigenous at tonight’s meeting. They cannot afford the tuition. But there is an annex, a quadrangle of adobe huts, sans the great murals, where dark-skinned, barefooted women in wraparound skirts can learn to sew on machines left over from the last century, and will be given coupons for bags of corn and other grains if they will participate in the birth control program, and that is tuition-free. The discussion underway this evening revolves around ways to make the program more widely known, and there are coffee and cookies, baked by the staff, allowed to linger so they may hear the decisions and bring the news home to their dusky hardworking wives who are trying to make do in these grainless times. Humberto, the head chef, who trained in Mexico City, and still single, nudges Julio Cesar, who has a wife and five children, and whispers, “What do you think of that blond sitting alone at the big table?” forgetting that Julio has trouble with Spanish as he was raised by parents who only spoke pure Nahuatl until he brought home a few words from elementary school.

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

NIGHT CLASS
by Gita M. Smith

Pipefitters Local 212 occupied a squat cinderblock rectangle on Broad Street. Daytime business was conducted in small beige offices. By night, the spacious banquet hall was used for social events.
Occasionally, pipefitters got in the mood for something a little offbeat. I was asked to teach Tuesday Night Art For Beginners.

First, I showed slides of American landscapes and European Impressionists. We discussed the use of light and shadow, of certain colors or effects. Finally, I clicked to Van Houte’s Dutch modernist painting of a boy in a middy-blouse with neckerchief and jaunty blue cap.

The energy in the room shifted from polite interest to vivid focus.

“How come he has no face?” asked Pete Vanelli. “Did the painter forget the face?”

“Shit, that looks exactly like a picture my Ma has of my kid brother,” said Johnny DeFalco. “He had a suit just like that. You remember our Petey?” he asked the man beside him.

“Sure,” the man said, “he’s the one died in Vietnam.”

Pain made a crooked stick of Johnny’s mouth.

“Hey,” said a man with a wad of Copenhagen in his cheek, I had that same red kerchief.”

“So how come he has no face?” Vanelli repeated. “What kind of painter paints a little kid with no face?”

I wanted to say that good art has universal meaning, that the facelessness was exactly what allowed them to relate to the painting, each man imprinting his own beloved boy on the canvas. But all I could bring myself to say right then was, “Hey, that’s modern art for you.”

Note: Another version of this story appeared on Thinking Ten: A Writer’s Playground. See Authors page for Gita’s bio.

 

 

Illustrations for Spot 030 supplied by Sandra Davies and Gita M. Smith.

 

Spot 029: The Fine Print

Posted by mdjb on

 

BINDING CONTRACT (The Malefic Bureaucrat)
by Bill Floyd

You’ll say I’m in the details, like it’s my fault, or the details’ fault. If you people paid the least bit of attention, exercised even minimal diligence, I couldn’t get away with any of it, could I?

It’s right there in black-and-white when you click ACCEPT.

You surrendered your right to a fair trail when you signed on so you could access the service, and if said service turned out not only to be not quite what you thought you were getting but something altogether shoddier and more disposable, well, blame yourselves.

It was right there in black-and-white when you signed the line.

(But you could taste it, you couldn’t wait. I barely had to sweeten the deal, barely had to touch it up with the airbrush.)

Now your only recourse is to an arbitrator, one who gets paid by me and decides in my favor 99% of the time. (And believe you me, he gets an earful about that 1%.) This was clearly stated in Section I44b, “Allowances and Restrictions, Cont.”, line 4,779.

I used to walk in the sun, among the angels. But I got shorted, deprived of the attention I deserved, and I guess I kind of pitched a fit. Cast down from the beatific realms, my name cursed by the human units of our currency, the ones whose value gives a clue to our true nature.

Now I’m just another bloody lawyer.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

WAR IS HELL in Two Parts: Part I
by Bill Lapham

The fine print said the government would assign me to a branch of service and a theater of operations according to its needs; God and the chief petty officers would do the rest. I thought, “Geez, that’s swell, whatever I can do to help.”

I signed on the dotted line. The sergeant said, “You look like a swabbie to me, son.”

“Swabbie,” I learned, is slang for a sailor in the Navy. Shoot, I ain’t never seen more water than could fit in a bath tub.

I went to boot camp at Great Lakes. Never been colder in my life. Then advanced shipboard training in San Diego. Up and forward on the starboard side; down and aft on the port side; General Quarters and man battle stations; bend over and kiss your ass good-bye. All that shit.

When I finally got my orders, it was to this behemoth fucking aircraft carrier. Hell, the only thing I knew could fly was a baseball and some birds. When I saw the ship for the first time, I thought, “Hell, yeah, I can get lost in that thing for a couple of years, ain’t nobody gonna find me.”

That was wrong. I got this chief who figured my ass was made to shine his boot. He was always gittin in my shit. First time I ever got underway on that ship I was leaning on the lifelines looking out at all that water when boom—up the ass with his boot.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

THE FINE PRINT
by Sandra Davies

some print’s too fine to read
some prints so fine and only feel will do
some prince – but that’s for the blind to hear
sum prints, thumb prints, one on one prints
finger on skin prints
yours on mine, prince
finger whorls shadow as the sun goes down
delight whirls damp as your hand slips down
your imprint in mine forever known
some prints are fine

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

GULLIBILITY
by bolton carley

“So did you call the doctor or the drug company?”
“Company. I was so furious. Probably more with myself than them by the time I got done. I was on the phone with them for two hours. I finally just asked the customer service rep to pass me on to the manager who went rounds with me like it was a boxing match. Perhaps I was a giant fool to believe that over the course of six weeks, a pill with the magical powers of a genie could grant me a stomach plain instead the rolling hills of flab I possessed. Guess it was wishful thinking on my part. But damn those companies with their detailed messages hidden on the bottom of the box in writing as foreign as Sanskrit! I swear it’s like they’re muttering under their breath, ‘Duh, U Missed Big Awful Secret Side-effects!’
So then I wondered to myself, ‘What was I smokin’ that I didn’t look at the fine print? No wonder I’m looking like Santa Claus on steroids!’ I’m tellin’ you though, Rick, dumbass or not, they still took advantage of me!”

See Authors page for bolton’s bio.

 

 

THE FINE PRINT
by Paul de Denus

The guy was a genius. Marlon Fine, I mean. You know, the renowned artist. My God, have you looked closely at those brush strokes? He applied the paint in such believable layers one could almost feel the movement of the fabric. Like the famous portrait, ‘Major D’Abernville’; the uniform glows in hues of dazzling white and gray. And the intimate ‘Mrs. Cowen’, the drape and folds of her yellow gown… utterly radiant. As for ‘The Wellsley Children Seated in the Garden’… well what can one say other than, ‘completely masterful’. It’s agreed; color was important. I heard he studied and mixed his own pigments using techniques the Old Masters employed. But to my mind, it was his attention to detail that paid off.

I studied too. I learned to copy his work and must say – no pun intended – I did a fine job. I followed every detail and stroke, even chemically aged both canvas and frame. It was very lucrative; there were plenty of happy art dealers willing to cough up big money to get their hands on one. Everybody was happy… until I was caught.

I’ve been charged with a treasonable act. Here in Mr. Fine’s country of birth, he is revered; it seems the authorities are overly protective. The offense carries a life sentence. I have been going over the details of the court transcripts and the laws regarding forgeries. I need to fool the judge. The key is in the fine print.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

NOT TOO FINE A POINT
by Michael D. Brown

Marvin took up popular causes. He contributed spare change to whoever stuck a collection box in front of him, and when someone told him they wanted to form a union to increase their hourly wage, he signed the petition. He did not really feel they had a chance in hell (his words at an extended liquid lunch with his boss at The Angler) of getting anywhere with their plans, but he liked Angela, who never quite finished her business degree as every cent went to her parents, and she was usually sent to approach him for his input. Marvin had his own fish to fry. He was in line for a promotion, and if it took getting bombed twice a week while listening to his manager’s marriage problems, he would. He liked the Angler’s seafood platter, but it was murder with gin. After three months’ of wicked weekend hangovers, he was finally promoted. His first thought was to celebrate by asking Angela out, but that Thursday, Othmar called him into his office. Curiously sober, he laid out Marvin’s contract telling him to look over the fine print. He pointed to one particular paragraph. “So, as you see,” he said when Marvin looked up, “Management cannot participate in the forming of unions. As a matter of fact, the first order of business is I want you to find some way to get rid of Bill Stefanofsky, that goddamn insurrectionist, and your girlfriend, too, what’s her name, the bleeding heart in Accounting.”

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

Spot 028: Dropping a Dime

Posted by mdjb on

 

Dropping a Dime
by Amy Hale Auker

I know there are miracles happening all around and that questions rock and answers are suspect : I knew it when I rode out on the dawn.
I know that I am a writer, even when there are days when the ink dries in the nib.
I know that I would dry up like a morel in August if I had to live in the city, and I would have to find a small piece of nature to soak in so as not to lose my flavor: I knew it in San Antonio in 2004.
I know that wrong turns happen, that early mornings warm and mid-afternoons cool, that daylight fades and it is better if you can be out of doors when it does, that the ground is hard and forests are messy.
I know that love is the thing : I knew it when you showed me.
I know several poems by heart, how to make you weak with kissing, how to make good bread, and that I am one of those people who has to let idea-mud squish up between her toes.
I know how to skinny dip and go barefoot during a full moon.
I learned most of this the first time I squeezed lemon over a platter of raw oysters. I was drinking cold beer.
I know that I must show up at the page and wet the ink with my tongue and hope it dribbles onto the page before it comes in a flood.

See Authors page for Amy’s bio.

 

 

The Epistemology of Smart
by Bill Lapham

In the town of Saffron a man named Smart claimed to know nothing but that one thing.

When appearing lost one day, the town constable asked Smart where he lived and how to get there. Smart said he didn’t know. The constable took him into protective custody. Unable to hold Smart against his will for more than a day, the constable hauled him before the judge on charges of vagrancy so he could hold him until the authorities could locate his home and return him safely to it. The judge ordered it so and the constable escorted the ‘prisoner’ back to jail.

Smart was quiet and content in his new surroundings: he was dry, had a bed, and three meals a day. As time passed, the jailers forgot about him and the constable retired without ever finding the Smart residence.

One day a lawyer was visiting his client in the slammer when he noticed Smart, by then an old man, sitting quietly in the corner of the common area looking at a book. The lawyer went over to him and asked what he was reading.

Smart looked up and said, “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Can I see the book?” the lawyer asked. Smart handed it over.

The attorney read the title: What You Never Knew You Didn’t Know.

“What have you learned?” asked the lawyer.

“Oh, well,” Smart said, clearing his throat. “I don’t know—”

“Really?” the lawyer interrupted, “nothing, ever?”

“Just that one thing, I guess,” Smart said.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

So ‘Fifties
by Michael D. Brown

“I thought I was getting away with something, but that jimope dropped a dime on me, and now they wanna bring me up on charges of embezzlement.”
“How can you watch that show? It’s so ‘fifties.”
“So am I. Did you ask German about the rice paper lampshade?”
“I’m reluctant. He’s likely to be protective of his family, and his son-in-law’s the most likely suspect.”
“So you think he took it without intent, or damaged it and got rid of the evidence?”
“Something like that. It’s just a mystery how it completely disappeared from the house.”
“I always thought he was a bit sinister. Perhaps he’s a kleptomaniac.
“…keys were in the sugarbowl. They couldn’t have known that. Unless they think like me.”
“That may be, but I don’t like unexplained disappearances, especially with something so obvious. I mean as soon as you walk into the kitchen, you notice it’s gone.”
“…with Ol’ Blue Eyes playing on the hi-fi night and day, it’s easy to see where your head is at.”
“Will you turn off that freakin’ TV and pay attention?”
“Sorry. My, but we’re touchy today.”
“I thought we left all that behind on Fourteenth Street. I never expected things to go missing in this place.”
“And you never counted on simple-minded workers, or their thieving ways. German did a great job on the patio, but I never trusted the son-in-law.”
” You never really liked that lampshade either, did you?”
“Are you tryna pin this rap on me?”

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

A Ramble, Not a Justification
by Sandra Davies

Dropping a dime: when did I know it? This phrase? Never before today, but having Googled it, the quick and easy, and over-glib reply is ’just now’, the use of ‘dime’ pointing up its non-Britishness.

And in Britain, not telling on someone is ingrained from childhood – all those repetitions of ‘tell-tale tit, your tongue will split’ made sure of that.

I didn’t tell tales when for weeks Hazel persecuted me, made my life a misery with constantly poking me, hard-fingered, into my back from the desk behind, (not until I put her into a novel that is, describing her ‘boot-button black with anger’ eyes, her skin ‘so densely freckled as to suggest that she’d been liberally sprinkled with grated nutshells’ and making sure she was rejected by the hero.)

Instead I ran away from school, put the headmaster into a state of apoplexy, so that he came after me, and shouted and banged on the windows of my house until I emerged, scared and crying. I still didn’t tell on her so he put the entire school into ten minutes silence, hands on heads – including me – and was bad-tempered for the rest of the day.

I DID go and knock on the village constable’s door once, specifically to tell tales on someone, but I can’t remember who, what or why, only that he later came round to our house to commend me.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

Superman
by Paul de Denus

I knew I was in trouble when Grandma called me upstairs to her room tucked neatly at the end of the hall. Damn, it was only a couple of nickels and quarters! Well maybe more like fifteen but who was counting?

She had a little jar on top of her bureau; it was half full with loose change. She never used it as far as I could see. It was spare change I reasoned, dreading each step as I ascended up the stairway.

She sat on the side of the bed and motioned me in. There was a cross with an impaled Jesus hanging over her thin bed. She didn’t yell, only said she knew I’d taken the money. I asked how she knew. “My house has sensitive eyes,” she said. Her house was creepy, old and spacious with a basement I never went near. “We see many things and you need to also.”

I found out later it was my sister Kath who’d squealed, dropped the dime while I was out spending the money on a new Superman comic I’d wanted, the one featuring Super Girl. Kath was mad because I kept insinuating she was adopted from the asylum on the edge of town. Geez, I was just kidding!

She was in her room goofing with her dolls. She was getting too old for that. I didn’t say anything about Grandma. Casually I skirted her bed and dropped the comic next to her. “It’s cool,” I said.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

If there are any illustrations for Spot 028, they have not arrived yet.

 

Spot 027: By Halves

Posted by mdjb on

 

A Brown Day’s Conversation
by Sandra Davies

‘You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it …’
Safety net lyrics – but these days I bounce and drop again, to the memory of a conversation in Amsterdam, a conversation which, due in part to being out of place, out of time, had been unusually frank.
She’d wanted lunch, I knew a place to go, and we sat on tall stools in the window of a stepped, dusty-wooden floored café near the Rijksmuseum, one used by locals, the food cheap and unpretentious, the day’s menu chalked palimpsest on a ragged-edged blackboard, barely discernible amongst the clutter of dull and long-drained bottles.
A virtual stranger, ballsy and hard lacquered, face in shadow, angle-poised fingers stubbing out a cigarette, mouth an acid sine wave. I listened, and saw without seeing the staccato traffic-light control of the scurrying, lunchtime pedestrians, the sparkler-wheeled bicycles and the stop-go cars as, à propos of nothing at all, she said ‘If I’d known then how hard it would be I’d never have done it, never have left him.’
Another song: ‘If I’d known then’, and I wondered how often are our lives dictated by the lyrics of our adolescence? But then I thought of Neil Sedaka’s ‘dum dooby doo dum dum’ and knew that was one that would never stop me.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

By Halves
by Amy Hale Auker

The poor man stood as if turned to stone, with wide eyes, open mouth, and the empty halves of his flip phone in his hand. After a moment, he slapped it shut.
He’d been the puppeteer and he’d been the puppet. He’d been the songwriter and he’d been the song. He’d been the horse and he’d been the rider. He’d been the balloon and he’d been the helium. He’d been the highway and he’d been the sunset. He’d been the whiskey and he’d been the bitten lips that sipped from the highball glass. On the rocks.
He had stood in the wings and listened to the dedicated love song thinking, “How sweet.” Earlier he had heard the singer say, “She’s free. If she ever comes to me and says she’d be better off with you, I tell her to go with my blessing.”
He missed the next song the singer sang, the one about friendship and some roads, mainly because he was thinking that now the ball was in her court. He wanted to jump up and down and scream, “I’m open, I’m open!” Wave his arms wildly to get her attention.
But she was sitting in front of the stage, smiling at the show.
So, he’d waited, made his call later, explained what her lover had said. Repeated it to her again, “You are free. He said so. Said you could come to me with his blessing.”
And she’d laughed.
He never did anything by halves, even act the fool.

See Authors page for Amy’s bio.

 

 

Some People
by Bill Lapham

The world is divided.

Some people have walked on the surface of the moon while others have merely been shot into space to gaze weightlessly on the face of infinity. Still others, of course, have never escaped the limitations that bind us to earth.

Some people have driven submarines, some have circumnavigated the globe while remaining submerged the whole way round; others, sadly, have never left their home ocean, the one called Atlantic, the Pond between North America and Europe. Some have never been to sea, poor sots.

Some people have seen war, some have died of mortal wounds, or disease, or starvation, and some have suffered the horrible damage of body and mind; others, thankfully, have known only relative peace. Maybe they are the one percent.

Some people have gone to college to learn which questions to ask; others have intuited them their whole lives with little help from school.

Some people have been incarcerated as convicted criminals while others simply haven’t been caught, and still others stand falsely accused.

Some people are some of us and some people are Others. Some are fellow citizens and some foreign aliens. Some look like us, but most don’t.

Some people fly and some people swim, I take the train on a traveling whim. Some people rhyme and some people just can’t.

Lots of people are in the one percent, and some are the ninety-nine. Some people go back and forth.

The world is divided; but not in equal halves.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

The Other Half
by Michael D. Brown

“Sally, my boy, you don’t do anything by halves, do you? I never finish my projects to more than eighty percent. Why do you think that is?”
“‘Cause you’re a fuck-up.”
“Never one to mince words either. Thank you for that.”
“Well, you want me to be honest, don’t you?”
“I always thought honesty was over-rated.”
“Oh, please. Don’t be trite as well as tardy.”
“No, you’re right. You’re a shit for saying it, but you’re right.”
“Wanna go to the movies? The Quad is having a Whitney double bill, The Bodyguard and The Preacher’s Wife.”
“As attractive as that sounds, I really have to finish this essay on Class Management and Planning.”
“And you don’t wanna put that off.”
“Well, I’ve got it half done. I need another 1500 words, but, really, I can’t think of anything at the moment. I guess I could use a break.”
“Just call me devil’s advocate.”
“I can think of a few more things I’d like to call you, but I don’t want to endanger our friendship.”
“No chance of that, Jules. Who else could I so easily persuade with my brilliant banter? I wanna dance with somebody. I wanna feel the heat…“
“All right, I’ll go to the movies with you; only, please stop singing.”
“Listen, you come and watch Whitney with me. Then, we’ll grab a bite to eat, and I’ll help you with the essay when we get back.”
“Thanks. That’s the kind of thing I’ve learned to count on.”

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

All halftones for Spot 027 supplied by Michael D. Brown.

 

Spot 026: A Long Time Coming

Posted by mdjb on

 

Dreadfully Speaking
by Bill Lapham

I spent my whole life trying to avoid this one last decision. I ate healthy food, avoided the carcinogens I knew about, wore my seatbelt before “Click it or Ticket,” ran the equivalent of once around the planet at the equator, got married, raised kids, had some friends, yada yada yada. I wasn’t a perfect health nut though. I smoked cigarettes from time to time, but always gave them up. I drank yours and my share of booze over the years, but gave that up, too. Still, in the end, the end has come.
I made all those life and death choices over the years, daily choosing this healthy alternative over that unhealthy one. That’s okay, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We all decide, all the time, everyday, even if we decide to postpone the decision, again.
But today I got the diagnosis, and it ain’t good, brothers and sisters. It ain’t good at all. Not that I’m going to die, at least not right away. No, first, the medical community rip-off artists want their cut. They want to see how long I can hold out. Ply me with talk about ‘courage’ and shit. Well, I know about courage, folks. I’ve seen courage; and cowardice, too. And this decision isn’t about either.
This is about how I want to spend the rest of my ‘nasty, brutish and short’ life. Because looking back from the abyss of eternity, the span of a human lifetime will look dreadfully, pitifully, brief.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

An Early Lesson, Not Fully Heeded
by Sandra Davies

White shoes, low down in the window, behind yellow cellophane to protect from midday sun shining down into Hertford’s narrow Fore Street. Low heels, which I needed because I was embarrassingly tall. Only twenty-two shillings and sixpence, which, at half a crown a week pocket money, meant nine weeks’ saving, without buying anything else at all. No good asking my parents, they would disapprove.
And so I saved, and went back every week to check that they were still there.
And eventually I bought them, aware but not admitting to myself that by then the ones to have were much more pointed, had narrower, higher heels and were shiny leather and not some sort of imitation suede. And cost more money than I was prepared to save for any longer.
And so I wore them, at the dance in the Widford village hall, a mile up the road from where I lived.
And no I don’t remember why I left there early and alone, but I still remember crying on the way home and am far from sure it was just from the pain from my now-bleeding feet.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

Laid in Her Arms
by Amy Hale Auker

She’d envisioned it as a celebration… warm, sparkling, with raised glasses, and compliments, and oohs and aahs, and the makings of an event, perhaps a speech or two, her thanking everyone for their support.
But the actual moment reminded her of the birth of her son which had not gone down as she had envisioned. There had been no slick wet baby recently pushed from the cooperative womb laid still gooey in his tired, but happy, mother’s arms with father looking on, a full breast waiting for a hungry and alert mouth.
No, he’d been several hours old before she got to hold him, her eyes swollen shut from the meds and unsuccessful pushing. She’d struggled out from under the anesthesia, and she wished she’d read the chapter on c-section in the birth books, but she hadn’t entertained that possibility. Her husband had already gone off to sleep for awhile, and the baby was as groggy as she was.
Now that baby, and the others, were grown, busy with their own lives, and the ink was more than dry on the divorce. Her first book was stacked in boxes left by the UPS man. And she had walking pneumonia, though the diagnosis was three days away. She slit the tape with her knife and pulled a book from beneath the invoice.
The still bitey spring wind blew. The book was wrapped in plastic. No party, no loving man at her side, no editor making nice noises, no toasts. Just wheezing.

See Authors page for Amy’s bio.

 

 

Pilgrim’s Progress
by Paul de Denus

Looking up from his book, the old man peeps, “I hate to say this, but I did mention it’d be a waste.” His glasses teeter on the precipice of his nose, hand waving. A glacier of ice cracks and shifts in the amber glass. I hate him for saying anything but oh… I’d wanted this thing bad. All my friends own one. Shit, everyone does.

“The dark ages are over,” I shot back. “Time to catch up with today Pop. That’s called progress, in case you didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I read that somewhere,” he says, pushing back into the recliner, disappearing back into a tattered book.

The old man’s stuck behind the curve. The cell phone he carries around is an embarrassment, pure old school technology. “I call people on it and they call me back,” he says. “Works perfectly… the way it’s supposed to. Don’t need no fancy contraption to simply communicate.”

Okay, he may have a point but I sure as hell won’t give him the satisfaction of it. This here is supposed to make things easier but I’m having doubts. It doesn’t feature any bells and whistles and the keyboard is a little bitch. Maybe my fingers are too big. Maybe I’m too impatient. Or maybe it’s just a piece of crap. I don’t know how many times I’ve toggled the ‘previous page’ button. Even then I’m unable to find the page I want to reference.

In the other room, the old man laughs at his book and I want to scream.

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

That Open Avenue
by Michael D. Brown

“Helps keep out the riff-raff,” she said, but I was too distracted by the lateness of the afternoon to remark how elitist she sounded. These days it darkens around five-thirty, and I have a distaste for the indications concerning work done or yet to be done. My nights are sacred. Soon I would be free to walk away from unpleasantness, but not yet. Her sister was a onetime aberration. Her brother is another story.
“Christ, it pains me to think we won’t reach our goal by the weekend,” I said, more in the way of a rejoinder than I had planned. I wanted her to think I paid little mind to her sarcasm.
“Help me with this, won’t you?” She was attempting to hold the soft paper poster against the wind while applying paste to the wall of outdated announcements.
Last concert I danced with twelve different women, my apostles I called them, though half of them did not listen to anything I said. Julie was one who did. “My mother told me she wished I was more like my brother,” I had told her.
“By which she meant…”
“I don’t really know.”
“I think you do,” she said.
Now, I observed that open avenue down which a stiff breeze was moving and traffic was not, and recalled I would be attending the concert with Doubting Thomas. “I guess it was just a long time coming.” This time, she appeared not to hear me as she slapped on more paste.

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

There are no illustrations for Spot 026. Please go back and have a look at those in Spot 025.

 

Spot 025: Mime

Posted by mdjb on

 

2501

 

 

2502

 

 

2503

 

 

2504

 

 

2505

 

 

2506

 

 

2507

 

 

2508

 

 

2509

 

 

2510

 

 

2511

 

 

2512

 

 

2501: Woven Orange
2502: Storm Crossing
2503: The Owl with the Heart-Shaped Face
2504: The Italy Story
2505: Ladder to the Loft
2506: No Return
2507: The Unfailing Flock
2508: Grad School and Blue
2509: Please Renew Your Subscription to Netflix
2510: Back when the Drive-In was Open
2511: Necessary Nests
2512: No Martinis
by Amy Hale Auker

See Authors page for Amy’s bio.

 

 

[2508] Blue Watch
by Sandra Davies

I couldn’t in all honesty claim I’d thought it out beforehand, especially when I’d already gone through how and when and who to ask to get the name and logo painted over, but it didn’t take long to realise that an old BT van would be even more anonymous. As anonymous as they had been to start with. The houses ‘fully-refurbished’ but there’d been little they could do to improve the folk they moved back in.
And a week of sitting, clipboard resting on the steering wheel, hard hat beside me on the seat and I’d identified her. Third house from the end. She’d changed, but so had I, and after five years she’d started to believe she was safe. Safe from me at any rate. Well, safe from thinking I might find her. Because now I had found her she wasn’t any longer. Just that she didn’t know it yet.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

2501: Brave The New World
2502: Trains Don’t Run Through Here No More
2503: Character Study
2504: The Missing Boy
2505: Bent
2506: The Family on Indian Woman Road
2507: Waves
2508: Harmony Road
2509: The Appearance
2510: Shift
2511: Black Eye
2512: Last Night Out
by Paul de Denus

See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

[2511] Metaphor
by Sandra Davies

Neglect. Through carelessness – not caring enough – abandonment or sabotage?
Could not be denied it had originally been built with care, if not experience. The intention – to make something which would hold together, protect, contain, be beautiful as well as functional – had been clear. Built to last, if not forever then for the foreseeable future.
Awareness of danger had been there, had been guarded against, protections put in place; the need for privacy had been anticipated,
Repairs had regularly been made, to remedy early mistakes caused by ignorance, to mend expected wear and tear.
But it had outgrown its … not exactly usefulness, but was no longer deemed essential, or even, at times desirable. And so began a time of gradually-accelerating neglect. Followed by abandonment, to the elements.
The silver, beautiful in its way, in the weathered wood, flakes of blue adhering, remaining high-spots of a once-all protecting coat.
Their silver – their twenty-five years – their marriage – no doubt whatsoever of its greater tarnish, its rot, rather than just weathering..

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

2501: When Autumn Leaves
2502: Thunderhead
2503: All My Exes…
2504: Tracked
2505: The Gravity
2506: Gone to the Dogs
2507: Flight Tracking
2508: The Average Blue Homeowner
2509: When Sam Cooke Came to Clarksdale
2510: A Beautifully Rusted Ford
2511: The Main Chance
2512: Southern Comfort

[2513] The Spectacle of the Mime
by Michael D. Brown

Wordlessly, he gave a faultless performance, but it was as much the honky-tonk musical background as his body English or facial expressions that made the first act in any way memorable to me, teenagers drinking from bottles in plastic Oxxo bags, or gathered couples and single strollers. He appeared browless in a solid black leotard, with his shaved head painted in the same deathly-white paste that crusted where the neckline veed below his clavicle, suggesting the marks of noose burn. I don’t know that I would ever be willing to put my life on the line to preserve another’s, nor that I would ever expect another to do so for me, but I applauded as heartily as the rest as we, his audience, were unaware he had dressed and made up appropriately for his final show. He mimed a man obsessed by his ticking watch and some sort of mission; waiting for his destiny, which was a long time coming, seemingly overdue. Then, in mere seconds, he reacted quickly, shoving a pedestrian out of the way of an oncoming sports car, was struck himself, and performed a triple somersault before landing on his feet, then falling, arms outstretched, forward onto the pavement in front of us, as the driver sped away. We cheered, whistled, and clapped spontaneously for some time before someone remarked the mime had not moved a muscle from the moment his body hit the ground, and in our awestruck silence, we realized the rescued woman was sobbing.

Note: This piece originally appeared on The Six Sentence Social Network. See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

[2512] With Apologies to Amy
by Bill Lapham

When Daniel Dinkins stepped inside the saloon he knew: he would not get a martini in this place, shaken or stirred. Here, the desert dust inside was the same as the desert dust outside. His Birkenstock sandals blended in.

He waited to be seated for a minute then realized he might stand there all day for all anybody cared, looking like an idiot in his Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts and Yankees cap. Finally, he got the idea, perched his sunglasses on his hat and took his own seat.

He was in luck, the bartender came over.

“May I have a menu, please?” Daniel said.

“Hamburger, beer and whiskey,” said the man who looked like a refugee from an Alaskan caribou grazing range. “That’s the menu.”

“Excellent,” Daniel said. “I’ll have a burger—well-done, of course—and a Heineken.”

“We ain’t got no Heinies.”

“Coors Light then.”

“Coors.”

“Coors it is.”

“That’s it?”

“And a shot of Drambuie.”

“Wild Turkey.”

“Fine. I’ll have a burger, a Coors—in a frosted mug, please—and a shot of Wild Turkey.”

“Hmph.”

When the Alaskan served his lunch, Daniel noticed the following discrepancies: the burger was charred black, the beer was warm and the whiskey was hot. He called the bartender over.

“My burger is burnt black, the beer is warm and the whiskey is hot.”

The music stopped. Patrons at the bar turned to look. The bartender’s black eyes glared.

Daniel placed a twenty on the table and left.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

Images 2501 through 2506 supplied by Kelly Hoyle Fuller © 2011.
Images 2507 through 2512 supplied by Gita M. Smith and Mike Handley © 2012.

 

Spot 024: Looking Forward

Posted by mdjb on

 

HOMEWARD BOUND
by Paul de Denus

Dearest Mom and Pop,

This is my third lap on my journey home. I’m writing this from Mrs. Bennett’s little desk in Warrington. I arrived here about teatime and were they surprised! Mr. and Mrs. Bennett are both looking very well. They have a lovely home with roses everywhere. There is a small pond and rockery just beside me out the window. They told me Ron was in Rangoon. He will be home in sixteen days. They miss him very much.

It has been a hectic week over here; everybody’s so excited, they’ve gone mad for a few days. We are all very relieved and thankful it is all finished in this area. I think I realized – for the first time in five days – the war is over. It’s so wonderful when you think about it. That George could see this day! But that is not for us to decide. God rest his soul. We will never forget him.

Mrs. Bennett and I went to town to look around this morning. I tried to contact Emmie Flavell at Pont Street but nobody home. We had coffee at a nice place then back home for lunch. After supper we took a walk in the country.

I slept in Ron’s room last night and had tea in bed this morning. It’s wonderful to be a human being again. I do hope you are both well. The way things are going I should be there well within two weeks time. Keep smiling.

All my love,
Freddie

Inspired by letters from my Dad to his folks 1945. See Authors page for Paul’s bio.

 

 

…and it makes her want to drink.
by Grey Johnson

They are walking down a rusty dirt road, and the sun is kissing little clouds of afternoon gnats in the golden aster. The day is at that sweet spot where the light turns warm and low but the clouds have not gone wanton. She is walking slightly ahead, holding his hand, and just as she turns to see his face, he becomes distracted by an early moth. Absently, he drops her hand, and there, in the dirt, she sees the bigger picture, as the releasing motion of his hand magnifies to fill her heart. Their shadows spread behind them, like parted cloudy water…

See Authors page for Grey’s bio.

 

 

GEOMANCY
by Gita M. Smith

Sixteen rusted boxcars stand in line, joined by rusted couplings on a long-abandoned sidetrack. From a distance, they are beads in a necklace strung out against a blue silk sky.
They, and the fallow land around them, have no more use, mirroring what America has become. All they can do is stand in place and decay.
Here in this vast, flat Mississippi Delta, stasis is as much a fact of life as cotton bolls and red-tailed hawks.
Stand or walk among the rows for one full day until the sun’s long evening rays turn everything auburn. Stay until the sky is bruised and the first stars blink on.
You will understand how the land can fasten your humanity to a place and hold you down. You’ll understand that change is temporary and all man’s endeavors – subdivisions, boxcars and microchips – will eventually fail.
You don’t need a geomancer to divine that all your plans and resolutions are phantoms. Only the land is for certain, and it will swallow you and take back your phosphorous as surely as it reclaims the iron of old freight trains.
This broad indention that was a sea bottom 65 million years ago, that was worked by slaves 300 years ago, is a mighty force. Do not be fooled into thinking it is only a stretch of soil.
It is a magnet more powerful than any modern tool and certainly more powerful than fools with plans to change it.

See Authors page for Gita’s bio.

 

 

I DON’T WANT TO ENFEEBLE THE IMAGES ON ISSUES FILLING A SPACE
by Michael D. Brown

I waited too long. There was all that moving and shuffling and the problems with Immigration. Nice people sent photographs dynamically charged with fervor and meaning, but I had no Internet connection, and the days slid into weeks. The New Year is already upon us, and the stories I have lived through are yesterday’s news, but I am not beyond slipping in a dream or two to grease the wheels.
Know what I will do? Next issue will comprise the missing images and I will theme it Mime. You, dear reader, will have to supply your own tales. As we are still behind the halfway mark, there is plenty of time to catch up. I know, I know. We have already played that game, but this time there will be nuances to make it worth your while.
When the Mayan calendar concludes, and we are screaming at the edges of craters, we will have moments to remember, and won’t that feel like a safety net? Well, maybe not so much. If we lose the electricity, all will be virtual, but some of these images should provide a respite before we succumb to disaster.
I’m not making this up as I go along. I promise you, I had it all planned out, the issue, I mean. I never counted on the artful pioneering leaving me disconnected, but that has always been my problem, the lack of foresight. Plan, plan, snap, snap; before you know it another year has gone belly up.

See Authors page for Michael’s bio.

 

 

CLARITY OF CRYSTAL BALLS
by Sandra Davies

She was always one to speak as much for effect as to impart information and I had grown resistant to her oft-repeated tales, always told to put her in a good light. This one was meant to demonstrate her quick-thinking, her ability to outwit a fortune teller. She’d removed her wedding ring and had been both amused and scornful to be given the usual ‘meet a tall dark stranger’ spiel, because he was fair headed.
But he was shortly after dead, and less than two years later the tall dark stranger became my Dad.

See Authors page for Sandra’s bio.

 

 

LOOKING FORWARD
by Bill Lapham

My sister died of leukemia when she was thirteen. I was the big brother who couldn’t keep her safe from those sorts of things, like disease. After her funeral, I was mad at God, but I tried to remain friends with him. About thirty-five years later I gave up on the bastard as if he existed. When I heard the last line of the poem you read yesterday, “God allows three year olds to die of leukemia,” I was shocked, but I’m guessing it was the reaction you sought to evoke. It took me a second to realize I needn’t be angry, though; indeed, I suspect we share a similar perspective on divine providence. To get to the point, I look forward to the day when we can protect all children from all evil, tyranny, disease and dogma.

See Authors page for Bill’s bio.

 

 

No illustrations included in Spot 024.