themed stories & observations
achilles’ heel amy hale auker aphorisms beauty benefit bill floyd bill lapham bolton carley brian michael barbeito camera candles burning catch up compunction darkness ed dean elliott cox fables gita smith golden grey johnson heavy jen schneider jk davies joe gensle kristine shmenco light michael brown mike handley mirrors need nicole hirschi numbers paul de denus peace renewal revolver robert crisman sam raddon sandra davies smoke stolen travis smith unwritten rules wee small hours within
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
“Beee, beee, beee …,” she wailed.
Nearby children stopped to stare, boxed Barbies and plush Nemos forgotten. Some tugged at their mommies’ skirts and pointed at the woman unraveling in aisle six.
It was June 6, a Saturday, and Shirley had come to Wal-Mart in search of chlorine for the church’s baptismal font. En route to the pool supplies, she’d strolled through the toy section, which is where the date and place slammed into her consciousness the minute she saw the figurine.
It was a leopard-like creature with bearish paws and seven heads, all with at least one horn. Ten in all. Runes decorated the leonine brows, and white bandanas encircled each.
“Beee, beee, beee …,” she continued to chant, a crowd cautiously gathering.
She fell then, her eyes rolling upward, her body releasing sea water to a final gasped “… ssst.”
© Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons License.
The real light is here, sitting beside us, taking our hands and guiding our race to the stars. We shall depart this Earth and start new generations of the Free, and we can say it began on this day.”
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. — Charles Baudelaire
"© Copyright Dong Haojun and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License."
Binary, in perspective:
1 – “It’s the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.” Three Dog Night lyric from smash single, “One,” ABC Dunhill, 1969.
11 – the second, as a replacement-synonym for “junior,” e.g. Pope Paul II. [Could we Catholics ever call a the Vicar of Rome, the successor of Peter, the Holy Roman Pontiff, “Junior“(?!)]
111 – Balls (you’ve almost walked); Strikes (yerrrrrrr OUT!)
1111 – Forty-one minutes past my bedtime; the year Henry V was crowned ‘Holy Roman Emperor’
11111 – Yahtzee!
111111 – Friday, November 11th, 2011–If you haven’t done it before, take the day off to wear a stars ‘n stripes pin and pack a cooler with sandwiches and drinks. Drag some cheap lawn chairs down to your local veterans parade because it’s Veterans Day. Sit and wave and smile and sip and munch and reflect and enjoy. If your town doesn’t have a veterans parade, conduct your own with your children or grandchildren. If you‘re alone and your town doesn’t have a parade, buy a big flag and march around your block until someone asks what the hell you’re doing. Please refrain from showing him your binary middle finger for his ignorance, choosing peace for the moment it takes to educate him.
I see the mole on the inside of your arm, the bone sticks you have pushed through your too-neat bun, how you hesitate to hug that one person in the group–but your eyes follow her. I hear how your voice changes when your mother calls, notice when you pinch your child hard on the shoulder even as you smile brightly and click along the sidewalk in heels, how you push the mushrooms to the edge of the plate. I am there when the appetizers come out of the oven, the guests gather round, and the first bottle of wine becomes a dead soldier. I see how your smile is not real when it is time to go home, notice the broken rubber band on the floor of your car, the way your eyes look when you are bored, and smell the smoke on your breath.
I will steal your glittery blouse, the mascara smear on your cheek bone, the way the waiter almost spilled the tea pitcher when the Suns scored on the television over the bar, the lint from your pocket, your shopping list, the way you talk baby-talk to your ex-wife, the way that guy tied a bandana around his neck.
Behind my innocent eyes, a red light blinks, for a writer is simply a camera obscura, and I have no off button.
Where’s my rifle?
Catch breath calm down don’t panic pay attention. Cross right arm over chest right leg over left now roll. Keep going keep going too exposed here. Roll. The earth is in front of me. All the danger is to my rear. Keep everything in contact with the earth. Sweet Mother Earth soil of protection shield me from my foe deflect his bullets harmlessly away and bring me to safety amen.
There is a rock a big rock a rock so big it might provide cover. Crawl to the rock. Crawl slowly slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I remember I can remember things! That’s good isn’t it? I have a memory? Slither be one with the earth like a snake. Don’t smile for the camera fool. This is no photo opportunity. Don’t lift up or smile or wave for the people at home. Send them a message.
Get me out of here.
The one in the photo – I will not speak his name – the one on the wrong end of the guns. He was the devil. Or perhaps I should say he is the devil. Diablo.
There was something about him as he stood there awaiting his fate, a patient look I saw through the lens. His dark face shifted, his mouth smiled and moved in silent curses. The day of the execution happened to fall on the Day of the Dead. It is normally a time of celebration; a day that encourages visits by departed souls. I believe something else was unleashed.
I have left the original exposure – the gelatin dry plate – and the original developed picture in a box in my dark room. I have doused everything with flammable chemical. You see… the picture has changed. The once white smoke from the ricocheting bullets exiting is now a pitch black, darker than death’s night. It’s bigger too… growing, taking shape and I must hurry… for now there are eyes.
His friend, Gabe, pleaded, “You need help, Mel!” on seeing the apartment trashed, the coin collection strewn about, learning Melvin abandoned his bowling team, lost the vice presidency of the model train club. But the goldfish and hamster, dead of starvation and stinking forced an intervention.
Dr. Engvaldsson asked, “You say ‘Mood Indigo…‘ because it was a cop?!”
Melvin brightened, “Classic case! I read it on WebPsychHelpLine. Mood Indigo’s a condition of jilted spouses experiencing devastating consequences from extramaritals with cops!”
The psychiatrist retorted, “Jilted? Your wife’s sexual appetites changed, you didn’t buy-in…don’t like rough stuff, dress-up, or bondage. Might that drive her into the arms and handcuffs of that so-called ‘kinky’ cop?”
Melvin blanched, teeth clenched, freed his stare to glance at photographs behind the doctor’s desk.
“You’re selfish, own your consequences. It’s pity-potted depression, not ‘Mood Indigo.’ Build a bridge. Get over it!” chuckled the blonde doctor.
Adrenaline launched Melvin over the desk, grabbing the letter opener in a clumsy lunge, but he missed. The blade angled into Melvin’s own over-aged baby fat.
Melvin’s blues were actualized in a navy blue prison uniform (for attempted murder). Prison foreplay inflicted purplish-blue bruises, his rape occurring in a checkered-blue tiled shower, ignored by blue-shirted guards. The infirmary was blue. Blue like the eyes of Engvaldsson’s children.
“Nnhhahhh.”
“Yeah, I know it hurts at first; it should hurt sometime, keepya modest, ya know? But it don’t take long to…hah! Got it already, didja? Mmm hmm, thaaaas why you keep comin’ back, right? Cause I makeya feel good, right? Makeya feel like you ain’t jus a tree in summer, coverin’ itself up, feelin’ like nothin’ but part of the forest. Naw, that ain’tchoo, friend, that ain’tchoo. You live the fall, right? You live the life, you drop your leaf’s an’ say check it out! This is me! Look rycheer! This is ME goddamnit! I ain’t jus another tree in the forest! Well, thas whatchoo should be doin’, anyway. Your own thing…hmph…be nice, right?
“Hey. HEY! You listnin’ to me? Nah, you out…guess you ain’t heard a word I said, didja? Hmph. Look atcha…feelin’ it, ain’tcha? Getchaself up, son. Longer ya let me enya head, longer Ima be enya head. Wake up, boy, ‘fore I putcha to sleep for good.”
I’ve forgotten you, just like I should – no more newspaper articles about your victims, no more angry letters, or my house being egged – yes, I’ve forgotten you, just like I should, of course I have.
Your letter came, and I had to ask my husband if he recognized your name. In a hurry he snatched the letter from me and threw it in the flames of our pre-winter fire. Flames licked and caressed the envelope until it consumed all of its contents. I stared at my husband’s face, questioning, until he finally answered, “It was from your son.”
A thousand memories flooded. Who was I to kid the moon, thinking I could forget you with years of no more tears. My hands trembled. I picked up the phone to call, as I had done so many years ago, to talk to you, my child, my son.
The number to the prison would not come to mind. I could hear the dial tone turn to those annoying beeps and placed the phone back on its receiver.
Why I’m writing this to a crazed murderer, who claims to be my son, I’ll never know except perhaps that I’m a fool.
Your letter, if read, would probably have broken my heart in two, so for now, I write to ask do not send anymore – for I’ve forgotten you like I should, of course I have.
I get along without you very well.
-Your Mother
From times long past
The fresh smell of washed hair,
Your scent on my hands;
The mingling of toothpaste, cigarettes and glands;
Eyes closed, yet registering the smoky hue;
When I’m deep in a dream of two.
We later swap leads on the floor and indeed,
No bounds for our passion remain.
We dance on the ceiling,
Our love is reeling,
Heat shared by the gliding insane.
I awake with a gasp, a shudder to sparks,
Mourn images fading,
It’s no longer dark.
Now a rudderless ship, afloat with no crew,
Plowing deep in a dream of you.
She smoked cigarettes, and I knew that she waited as I did.
I saw her nerves chewing, and maybe she waited on me. To save her? I felt lust in that doorway and lust is not rescue, yet also I felt an ache stirring, an ache that I’d felt through 10 lifetimes, an ache that had made me jump, dance, and sing to the music she played from Day One, when I saw that our sins would rule us, hers etched with scalpels, mine written on water…
My tears are silent, unshed, dried to dust now—as if I could match her indifference and then bleed her that way and then walk away, free at last from the fear that took hold of my throat the red night that we ripped at each other and she bled me first, then gave me to know that First Blood will last ‘til the end of my time here on earth.
I wait—hoping she’ll break? Yes, and bleed. I can go to her then and wrap her like smoke, pull her free…
And when, a couple of afternoons later, this younger-than-my-mother woman came tripping across, glossy black curls vivid against scarlet blouse, bare feet in scuffed and worn-flat shoes and a crinkle-eyed, chipped tooth smile, introducing herself as Maureen, in an accent I later learnt was Black Country but then saw as exotic(!), and clutching an album of her wedding photos to show us, I was charmed by her friendliness, thinking her kind and welcoming, and increasingly embarrassed at my mother’s off-hand disinterest, at the minor hostility she exuded. With what seemed ill-mannered haste my mother ushered her out, and turned to me with some derogatory remark, speedily enough for my encouraging comment to be clamped.
Only now do I recall that exactly twenty years later it was my turn to repel the advances of a would-be friendly neighbour. This one had tripped from further, her smile was far less innocent and disappeared completely when she saw that our furniture was impoverished and mismatched and that we had not yet put carpets down. Only now do I wonder how my children judged the tolerance of my behaviour then.
I know I hear someone calling, but I can’t remember if that is my name. I try to call back, but no sounds come out.
I remember other things. A woman. I can see her smile. My hands recall the feel of her hand resting in mine. I can see the soft curves of her body as those same hands, now limp at my side, trace them gently from head to toe. I can remember every detail about her, except her name which I can’t recall any more than my own.
I hear the voice calling again. It’s a woman’s voice. Is it her, or is it just my mind playing tricks to give me hope?
I am tired and I should rest. Maybe if I did I would be able to move when I wake up, or maybe I will still be stuck here, wherever here is, and the hope will be gone. I think I will stay awake, watching as my hope floats to the ceiling and dances in the watery circles while I think about the woman I remember dancing with under the soft glow of the moon in some other place and some other time. The details are not as clear as the image of her, moving so gracefully, entwined with my soul.
The floor vibrated with dance steps
(the tune, in case you need to know,
in case you want to make it “our song,”
was Soul Sacrifice by Santana)
and you were a glowing object on my periphery.
“Dance?” you asked.
I turned, seeing you for the first time, taking in your loose-limbed posture, your frank and curious eyes
and answered, “Sure, why not?”
Some hours later when the crowd had thinned,
you placed your hand on mine and leaned in close.
“I’d like to take you home,” you said.
“To meet your mother?”
“Something like that,” you laughed.
With no more sureness than a baby bird
about to take its first, precarious flight,
I contemplated gravity.
I judged your pull to be non-fatal
and answered, “Sure, why not?”
I lost patience with my daughter, had to pull her off of ‘em, scolding ‘em for this very thing.
“Enough, Belva-Jean! The kids aren’t the problem. You are.”
“PAPA! How COULD you!!”
“You don’t speak their language so you can’t understand it.”
“How’s that, Papa?” she demanded, indignant.
“I raised you right, didn’t I?”
“What’s the point?!”
“Took you to church, right?”
“Sometimes.”
“My grandkids are havin’ a religious experience!”
She glared, hands on hips.
“Sure, honey. ‘It’s all good.’ That’s biblical! Romans, chapter 8 an’ 28– QUOTE:
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good,’ blah-blah. See? It’s ALL GOOD, Belva-Jean!”
She fought a smile. I winked at the kids, who laughed and bumped fists.
“That’s not FAIR, Papa!” she said with a stomp in mock anger, spreading a grin.
“What-EV-ER, Belva-Jean!”
The grandkids lost it. Belva-Jean threw a throw pillow.
“Careful! I can quote ‘Whatever’ from the Good Book, too!”
I wasn’t the grandkids’ hero very long once she told them I showed her the error of her ways. My daughter’s dragging them to church this Sunday and every Sunday, thereafter.
Seems I have a fishing engagement and can’t join ‘em. Poor little bastards.
Belva-Jean’s mama sure wasn’t a vindictive bitch.
Now where’d that gol-dern rod an’ reel get to….
On the same day – at exactly the same time – ninety-seven-year old Carmen Whitehead, a suffering multi-billionaire recluse, received a similar box.
“The joys of the rich,” he smirked, absently rubbing his chest as his spindly assistant skittered about, making last-minute preparations around the life-support system.
Carmen couldn’t remember when he had first discovered the box. It had been long ago, in some long forgotten country where fantasy and reality seemed to meld together. He couldn’t recall the details. It was as if the box had always been. It was everything then, the box giving him virtually all the wealth and power he desired, allowing him to do things he’d never questioned, not even now.
In the operating room of his private island’s medical center, a shark’s smile swallowed his hardened face as he examined the contents of the box again. The newly delivered heart appeared perfect, absolutely perfect.
Good gifts come in small packages.
“The Most Interesting Man in the World” ran a distant second to Tim, he just didn’t brag about it; he let the Dos Equis beer man enjoy all the fame. Tim cared for none of it.
Then one day Tim couldn’t remember his wife’s name. He saw a doctor who ordered tests that came back positive for early onset dementia. When the doctor gave Tim the diagnosis, he drove home, put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the…
Last night’s meal had ended in argument, this morning she had appeared just before nine, immaculate as ever, despite it being Sunday. His answering the door, unshaven and barefoot, wearing old jeans and an ancient university sweatshirt, graphically underlined her failure to integrate him within her world. She did pride herself on her success in infiltrating his, but had she told him – not that he needed telling, since he was more astute than people credited him for – he would have laughed in her face knowing that she was merely paddling in the shallows, was unaware of the depths.
He recognised that she was, to put it crudely, posh girl believing she had found herself a bit of rough, and although he had behaved well within the bounds of civilisation, not bothering to act up to her fantasy, she still wanted to smooth his uneven edges. He had been both irritated and resistant and neither wanted nor needed her enough to let himself be so polished, but saw no point in hurting or antagonising her. Steering between truth and tact as he closed the boot of her car on the last of her neatly-boxed possessions he said ‘I hear that the ‘Herald’ has a new arts reporter, I suggest you get yourself along to ‘Tosca’ next week.’
MudSpots 