Possessed

I would not have believed it was possible. I have been a clot of darkness, a maw for the souls of the perished for eons beyond counting. He was an old man, wasted away from long illness and dementia. Indeed, if I had any concern, it was that his essence was so incoherent it would not survive being severed from his body for more than a few moments. Thus, as I waited by his head, I was poised to swoop in instantly, to devour his spirit before it dissipated. I did not want to be deprived of my repast.

The old woman sitting by his bed holding his hand and the two others standing to one side were inconsequential: I was as insubstantial to them as the interstices between their thoughts. The moment was coming. I could sense his breath faltering, his heart fluttering. I stooped down and imbibed the first few whiffs drifting out of him…

His body gave in with a sigh and slowly exuded his immaterial being, as garbled and dissociated as I’d feared and already losing cohesion. I enlarged myself to envelope it, flowing around the woman as she moved in to kiss his cheek…

And from the wreckage of his foundering mind a final memory – vivid, fully formed, fully realized – broke free and took life outside his body – and I swallowed it with the rest of his disintegrating soul.

I was aghast. The other scraps and pieces – the remnants of his memories, desires, impulses, fears, longings, dreams – these I consumed. They dissolved at once into my being, giving me sustenance. But that memory, a full-blown secondary creation existing of itself – that I absorbed into my mind. It grafted itself into, became part of, my own suite of memories, my own soul.

I fled that room with the lifeless husk and the woman weeping over it, shaken to the core. I stole into the woods and hid in a cave, to still my horror, to gather myself, to assess the damage done to me.

Such a thing could not be conceived. A few of my kind have spoken of fragments of mortal spirits that somehow kept their form past death and roam the earth still – always with the admonition that they were not to be touched. I did not need the warning. What you possess possesses you; that is basic knowledge. I did not need to be reminded of it. But neither did I believe the stories. Mortals at the point of death were shaken embers throwing off a few final sparks before fading quickly into darkness. In the eternity that I have existed, perhaps once or twice have I seen a soul hover in the air for more than a minute before dispelling. I had always believed that to be the extent of their existence – until the old man.

Such a thing could not be concealed. I could already sense in the distance the unease among my kind. They would soon seek out the source of their perturbation and converge upon me. They would hold me down and tear me apart to remove the corruption; and they would do it out of kindness. It would be pure, interminable agony, but as I am undying, I would in the end be recomposed, healed of my affliction.

And yet as I sat in the cave, I could not bear the thought of being restored to my former state. The memory that had embedded itself in my mind was so real it could not be teased out of my own lived experience. I saw a young woman wearing a straw hat and a light purple summer dress sitting on a blanket between tufts of sea grass on a dune. The image was so clear and deep that it embodied layer upon layer of other memories and associations. The sand was warm when I sat upon it. The breeze from the ocean played with wisps of her brown hair. Her smile rendered me silent with wonder. Her laughter rang in my being. I could not look into my past and not see her. I longed for a life with her.

As I sat there in torment, I knew that I should welcome my brethren when they came; indeed, I should go to them at once, so they could begin excising the glow that contaminated my darkness. But instead I wanted to take flight, to hide in the wilderness, to keep that light within me. It was a part of me now, and depraved as it may sound, the thought of having it taken from me was unfathomable. I imagined it would be like what mortals experience when they die.

(November 2011)

Walking Home

The little girl sitting on the log border edging the small city playground smiled at them as he and Megan walked by. He smiled back. Megan, who was recounting the semi-finals her team had lost, heartbreakingly, on penalty kicks, barely glanced at her. He had been listening quietly, with pleasure, at his daughter’s long, involved tale, but now he found himself losing track of her words. Half a block down, his gait faltered, he slowed, and he stopped. He looked back at the little girl.

“Megan, hold on,” he called out. Megan, who had gone on, oblivious, still chattering away, halted and turned around. He shook his head in the direction of the playground and walked back to the little girl, making sure to approach her in a wide curve so she could clearly see him coming.

The little girl’s lips were still upturned in a smile, but he could see now that her eyes were wide and shining. She could not have been more than five or six. He asked her if she was all right.

She nodded rapidly, then turned her smile to Megan as she appeared beside him. Megan looked at the girl, then at him, questioningly. He asked again of the little girl if she was all right, if there was anyone with her.

She nodded again. “My mama,” she said.

He and Megan scanned the playground and the street. No one who looked like she might have been the girl’s mother was in sight. The two women on a park bench chatting away as their children played with buckets and trucks in the sandlot were Vietnamese; the girls in helmets skateboarding down the sidewalk on the other side of the street were barely pubescent; the woman striding by, talking brusquely to the air in front of her, bluetooth in her ear, was obviously on her way to some other destination than this little child.

He knelt on one knee in front of her and asked her if she knew where her mama was.

The little girl shook her head and the smile vanished, unmasking the fear underneath. Upon gentle prompting, she told him that her mama hadn’t come yet, but she would soon, her mama had said she could play in the playground after the grocery – she was insistent that permission had been given.

He sifted through her words, trying to glean the story behind them, decided the most probable version was that the girl had run off to the playground by herself and had not simply been left there. He asked her if she knew where she lived, if she lived up the street – he pointed up the block, or down the street – he thumbed the other way. She gave a quick, helpless shrug, and her face pinched in an effort to hold back tears.

He thought of taking her up the street, in the hope they would chance upon her house and she would recognize it – and dismissed the idea at once. The picture of a strange man walking around with a child not his own could all too easily be misconstrued. Best to stay put. He was glad Megan was with him; she was a shield against any number of potential misunderstandings.

“Well,” he said to the little girl, sitting down on the log beside her, “why don’t we just stay with you until your mama comes? Okay?” He turned to Megan. “Sweetie, why don’t you ask those women on the bench if they know who her mother is?”

Megan had just stepped over the log when a piercing cry of “Leila!” rang down the street. She, he, the little girl, the women on the bench, the kids in the sandlot, assorted pedestrians, all turned as one to the woman who had just turned the corner pushing a stroller and lugging several bulging canvas bags. Despite her burdens, she covered the distance to the little girl in an instant and was all at once hugging her and crying and yelling at her in fear and rage to never, ever do that again, what was she thinking? She all but smothered Leila in her relief.

He stood there knowing his job was done, but that there were still formalities to be gotten through. He told her his name was Daniel; he and his daughter had found Leila sitting here by herself. He listened as she narrated breathlessly that she had been going home with her children from shopping, but the baby was fussing and she had really bought more than she should have, more than she could carry, and she thought Leila was behind her all the time, until they got home and she saw that she was gone, and she had panicked and ran all the way back to the grocery and looked up and down the aisles, but she was afraid to ask the clerks if they had seen her for fear of what they would think; she should have left the groceries at home before looking for her, but she wasn’t thinking straight, they had just moved in to the neighborhood and were still finding their way around, everything was still so confusing, and she finally remembered that Leila had been pestering her this morning to go to the playground and decided to look here, and Leila should have known better, and she was the worst mother in the world, and thank you, thank you for finding her, for staying with her. The two Vietnamese women and their children and several passers-by had been drawn to the scene, so she was explaining, confessing, expiating her guilt to a small crowd. He was quick to absolve her, telling her several times that it happens, he’d done it himself (which elicited a quizzical look from Megan), the important thing was that Leila was safe.

The talking took more time than the finding and safeguarding of little Leila. Finally, when all the necessary words had been spoken, he watched with Megan as the woman walked away, holding Leila’s hand firmly in one hand and steering the stroller awkwardly with the other. The two Vietnamese mothers carried the shopping bags for her, their kids chattering in their wake, carrying their sand-encrusted trucks and buckets. Leila’s mother had finally accepted, after much importuning, the proffered assistance with the bags, but had drawn the line on any help handling her children. When the caravan disappeared around the corner, he and Megan resumed their journey.

“How did you know?” Megan asked him after they had walked a little while. “She was just sitting there. I thought she was with those kids playing in the sand.”

He considered it. “I don’t know. There was something off about her smile.” He continued, “Sometimes you just catch something in someone’s face, you know?”

His daughter nodded slowly four or five times, in rhythm with her steps, then glanced at him sidelong, as if still puzzled but not knowing what questions to ask.

He thought about it himself. He supposed it had something to do with this knack of his for homing in on lost little girls, because of his need to protect them, rescue them – a disposition that had given him all sorts of grief in the past. It had been what had drawn him to Sheila in the first place – and why he had blown it with her. He had met Sheila when she was still new to the city, a country girl unmoored from family and home town and already drifting aimlessly from job to dead-end job; he had pulled her out of the doldrums. But when she finally found her bearings, he had persisted in seeing her as someone he had to save. He knew no other way to be with her.

He was glad things had worked out today, that this faculty of his had proved unambiguously useful for a change. It also felt like confirmation of the hard lesson he had had to learn: when lost little girls were found, you let them go.

He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder and drew her close as they neared the steps to his brownstone flat. Megan had had a tough time of it after he and Sheila had finally broken clean what had been falling badly apart. There was a long, painful period when Megan's only utterances to him were clipped words toneless with anger. He had despaired of ever being forgiven. But her hurt had given way over time; she really was too good-hearted to keep him out in the cold forever. She was most precious to him, his one saving grace: his girl, still somewhat small, no longer lost to him.

He would have to get her things ready. Sheila would be by soon to pick her up.

(November 2011)

Notes on the Previous Five Stories

As I wrote, the five preceding stories were written to meet story challenges posted in the Three-Minute Fiction Facebook page. The stories and the challenges, in order:

1. “Uncool” was in response to Justina Ireland’s challenge: the story would have to include the word “shenanigans” and at least one reference to bacon.

2. and 3. “I Like” and “Visitors” were in response to Terri Zeller Wallace’s challenge: it would have to include a “healing,” contain the word “smörgåsbord,” and feature at least one reptilian character. (Because “I Like” went over the 600-word limit of a three-minute story, I wrote the other story, “Visitors,” to fall within the limit.)

4. “Vertigo” was in response to Rick Amicon’s challenge: someone would have to fall down in the story.

5. “Silent Sue” was in response to Mary C. Charest’s challenge: construct a dream within a dream – where one dreamer starts and another wakes up.

Serendipity note: As I was writing “Vertigo,” my computer monitor started to shimmy. 3.2 earthquake. Honest to God.

Silent Sue

Mama was happy when she got pregnant. She dreamed she was curled up on her daddy’s lap, even though her daddy died a long time ago when Mama was very young. But Papa started coming home late again, sometimes drunk, and she became sad again. She dreamed she was in a hallway trying to find a room, but she couldn’t find any doors. She dreamed she was trying to catch a man who kept walking around the corner. She dreamed she found a shoebox full of treasure, but when she opened it, the moonlight turned the jewels into powder.

Papa was sad, too. He dreamed he was under a heavy blanket, but every time he threw the blanket off, he found he was still under it. He dreamed he was driving around and couldn’t find the ramp to the bridge, even though he could see the top of the bridge over the roofs of the houses. He dreamed his heart was beating in someone else’s chest.

His dreams when he was drunk were hard to take. Usually he would pass out on the couch, but sometimes his dreams were strong enough to pull me in even from downstairs. They were always so dizzy. Pieces of dreams kept flying around, never landing or taking shape. I kept waking up from these dreams. Every time I woke up I felt like I had to go to the bathroom and be sick.

I don’t know what I felt myself. Mostly I was just really tired. Being in their dreams is like being awake, so I got very little rest, even if I slept the whole night. It was good they didn’t dream all night long, so I got at least a little rest.

I can’t remember the last time I had my own dream.

Even though Mama was not happy, she wanted me to be happy. She wanted me to be happy about the baby. She said, “Silent Sue, are you looking forward to being a big sister? You can help take care of her when she’s here.”

She calls me Silent Sue because I don’t talk much. I really am so tired most of the time. I didn’t answer her because I didn’t know if I wanted to be a big sister. I didn’t know if I wanted to help take care of a little baby.

One night when Papa was really late, Mama said I should sleep with her in their bed. I didn’t want to. Sleeping beside her would mean I would be in her dreams for sure. But I try to be a good girl, so I got under the covers with her. I tried not to sleep. But my eyes were so heavy I fell asleep right away. I fell into a dream.

I think it was a dream. I wasn’t sure. There wasn’t anything to see, just darkness, though sometimes one side of the darkness would turn dark orange, and sometimes there would be little flashes of red light. I was warm all over. I could hear squishy and faraway noises, and a thump-thump that seemed more like a shaking than a sound. It wasn’t scary or anything. It was kind of soothing.

I woke up. Mama was asleep, but not deep asleep, so I knew it wasn’t her dream. I touched her belly. The baby was moving inside. I whispered very softly to her inside Mama’s belly, “When you come out, don’t have bad dreams, okay? I’ll take care of you, but don’t have bad dreams. Okay?”

(November 2011)

Vertigo

We were on the balcony. We had slipped out of the office party celebrating Julia’s having made partner to have a quiet toast, just the two of us. I was leaning against the railing with a champagne glass in my hand. I was so proud of her. I heard the sound of glass tinkling in the distance, which, strangely, seemed to be coming closer. I was about to ask Julia if she heard it, too, when I felt that convulsive queasiness you get on a plane when you hit an air pocket. I dropped my glass and grabbed the railing instinctively – and it leaped and tried to twist away. Julia was crouched low, feet apart, arms extended, swaying, trying to keep her balance, her footing. I looked to the side and saw the dark edge of a corner wall rocking wildly back and forth against the backdrop of the window lights of the building across. There was an explosive crunch, and the railing gave way, and I started falling backwards with it. I clawed the air, trying to grab hold of something, anything. Then I felt Julia’s hand seize mine, like a vise, and I felt a shock along the length of my arm as I was jerked to a stop, my legs kicking air. I looked up, past the straight, quivering line that our arms made, to see her face taut with absolute strain. She was half over the jagged edge herself, the crook of her elbow hooked around a steel post. She’s a strong woman, a triathlete, but I have thirty pounds on her, and I knew she couldn’t bear my weight, I knew I would pull her down with me. I didn’t feel much of anything – except it seemed as if my whole body was my heart pounding. I felt myself slowly slipping down, I could see her sliding over the edge, so I said, “Honey, let go, let go.” That’s when it happened.

It was as if the world was a turntable, and it made half a turn, and I was looking down at Ramón’s face. He looked so scared, so scared. He was screaming, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying for the roar in my ears. My arms felt like they had been wrenched out of their sockets. I knew we were going to fall: the ledge would buckle from under me or the metal stanchion would uproot itself from the floor or my arm would slip from it and I would tumble after him. But I knew that I was not letting go of his hand, I knew it for a certainty. I would let go of the stanchion before I released his hand. Only our hands were damp from the champagne, I could feel his slipping slowly from mine – it was like squeezing a bar of soap. All at once my hand was a fist and I was watching him drop away from me. He kept falling and falling. Eighteen stories. I must have seen him hit the ground – I was in too much shock to have turned away – but I don’t remember it. Seven months now since that night when I saw through his eyes those few penultimate moments – when I watched him fall and he didn’t seem to stop. I’m still waiting, sick with dread, for the impact.

(October 2011)

Visitors

Jonathan looked up from his Nintendo DSi when the piercing, two-tone chirp sounded from the papaya tree just outside the window – which was disconcerting. He had begun to fancy that the game player was a flashing ornament hanging from Jonathan’s nose.

“What the hell is that?” Jonathan said.

“A tuko,” he answered reluctantly. “That’s what we call them. It’s, like, a gecko.”

“Seriously? Like that little car insurance dude?” Jonathan saw his blank stare. “What? You don’t have that commercial here?”

Well, no. He turned away to mask his thoughts. Just because you see something in Seattle, doesn’t mean it’s everywhere else.

The chirps came every few seconds now: Took-koh! Took-koh! Jonathan sniffed. “I guess it’s obvious where their name comes from.” After a minute’s listening: “That’s wild. They eat bugs or something?”

“Yeah, all kinds. Flies, mosquitoes, centipedes.”

“Well, they must think it’s a bug smörgåsbord out there. I swear, dude, you guys have a lot of bugs. I’ve been itching since I got here. Don’t know how you stand it.”

He returned to his book and shifted in his cot – his bed until Jonathan left – feeling like he had an itch himself he couldn’t scratch.

His uncle’s family had flown in from the States for the summer. Jonathan had walked in a full head taller than him, with hair to his shoulders and a studded leather bracelet on his wrist. His father had said, “He’s your age” – meaning his responsibility – though at 14, Jonathan was actually a couple of years older. So for three days he had dutifully tagged behind this sullen, disdainful giant, until he began to feel he was dissolving into the videogame noise cloud that trailed Jonathan wherever he went.

But Jonathan was intent on the tuko now. “How big are they?”

“Oh, all sizes. Some of them grow maybe a foot long.”

“They’re not, like, poisonous, are they?”

“Umm, no.” He put his book down. “They’re actually pretty shy, though they can be nasty if you poke them. They’ll bite you and won’t let go, and they’ll take a chunk of your skin if you try to pull them off. Some boys at school used to catch them and make them fight, until somebody's finger got bitten. The nurse had to drown it in a bucket before it let go.”

Jonathan was looking at him. Sensing he had the upper hand for the first time, he continued: “They’re an endangered species, you know. Some people think their tongues can cure AIDs, so people have been catching them and selling them in the black market. It’s illegal, but the police don’t really try to stop it. I’m surprised it’s here now, I haven’t heard one in years.”

Jonathan said, “Maybe it heard I was coming.” Then: “You sure know a lot about them.”

He shrugged. “I’m a nerd.” He surprised himself by how matter-of-fact he said it.

Jonathan nodded. Then he frowned. “I’m not doing too good in school.”

He nodded in turn. He had heard. “Smart, but dyslexic,” his father had said.

The tuko had stopped chirping. Taking it as a cue, he said, “You think we can go to sleep now?” The lamp was on the side table beside Jonathan.

“Sure.” Jonathan reached into the lamp and the room went dark.

He turned over and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Mario.”

What? he thought irritably – then pulled up, realizing Jonathan had just called him by name.

“You think tomorrow we can look for that gecko? I’d sure like to see it.”

“Sure.”

(October 2011)

I Like

I like things in clear, discrete pieces in clean patterns. I like that the rooms of my house are containers of functions: one for sitting, one for sleeping, one for making meals, one for eating them. When I eat out, I like distinct food in their own plates: appetizers, sushis, tapas; or else served in sections, like smörgåsbords, buffets, hors d’oeuvres. I like keeping the food items I put on my plate separate; I do not like it when the sauce of one leaches to the others. If only all restaurants provided compartmented plates, I would really like that.

 

I like my day broken into to-do lists, my work into tasks. My boss likes this in me, though I do not like him. I do not like that he is a disorganized, creative type who keeps coming up with ideas, most of them stupid, but a few of which, unfortunately, are brilliant. I do not like visionaries for the changes their innovations keep inflicting on the world, though I accept that his is an essential gift. I do like that my gift is the ability to see which of his ideas are workable and can be made real. I like that I am the one to chart the thousands of steps it takes to transform these ideas into tangible products we can bring to market. I do not care much for the products themselves.

 

I do not like coming to work and walking through the company’s central open space, with all my slovenly co-workers fluttering about and chittering, though I do like making it to my soundproofed office, with its neat desk and simple workstation. I like going deep into my flowcharts and spreadsheets and calendaring software. I do not like making or getting phone calls, since conversations always run the risk of turning in unexpected directions. I prefer IMs, emails, and texts, the more concise the better.

 

But I did not like the text I received this morning, though it was just four words: Come home, she’s going. I liked that my boss immediately said get out of here, take all the time you need. I did not like it when my co-workers flocked to me with sympathetic chirps before I could make my escape, though I appreciated how they – even the new ones – knew better than to pat me on the back, or, God forbid, give me a hug.

 

I liked that everything I needed for the trip went quickly and fitted neatly into my black carry-on bag. I like that it took just six and a half minutes to book a flight online and a 20-second phone call to order a cab. I really disliked the stench of the cab. And I am really disliking sitting in this departure lounge interminably, with strangers rushing by me in an unceasing stream. I dislike transit points of all kinds: bus stations, train stations, building lobbies – but I dislike airports most of all as purveyors of the most rapid and far-ranging of transpositions.

 

I like to front-load my feelings, so as to be calm when facing events, so while I sit, I think back to when my mother called me to inform me of her diagnosis. I felt blank when she gave me the details: stage 4 mesothelioma, mitigation but no viable therapies, six months. But I liked that I had the means to pay for her home hospice care, since she, of course, had no insurance. I like that I was at least able to visit her a couple of times, and called her now and then despite my antipathy to phone calls. I did not like the discomfort of our conversations, especially when she described how her friends were trying to stave off the inevitable with Shamanic rituals, aura cleansings, and medicinal herbs – but I liked having made the calls anyway.

 

I do not like to think of my childhood with her, but I feel duty-bound to recollect it now in advance of her passing. I like that she raised me by herself after my father left, that she had been a strong woman who stood on her own and stood by me despite all the difficulties I posed. Nevertheless, I did not like growing up in her house, her bohemian ways, the way all her hippy-artsy-mystical friends came and went as they pleased. I disliked the Wiccan celebrations in our garden, the communal dinners of foraged or homegrown food, the ever-present miasma of incense. I disliked the men who drifted in and out of her bedroom. I disliked the snakes, lizards, gekkos, and chameleons of the reptile menagerie she kept in the barn. I disliked the makings and the detritus of her projects always strewn about: the canvases and paints, the yarn, the spools of thread for weavings, the discarded photographs, the candle wax, the metal junk for sculptures. I like that I moved out the first instant I could.

 

My blood runs cold when my phone chimes and a numbness comes over me as I listen to the voice that says I’m very sorry, she’s gone, it went much faster than anyone anticipated, at least now she’s free of the pain. I am aware that people around me are turning to me as I start rocking back and forth, but all I truly see is the grief welling up like water like a flood like darkness dissolving the compartments of my brain submerging me, I hate this I hate this I hate this, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

(October 2011)

Uncool

His phone chirped. Grateful for the distraction, he took it out and read the text: Rob’s Romps?

He tapped his response quickly: Umm no.

He looked up and caught the flash of annoyance on Alison’s face. “Seriously? You’re negging me? Who was that, your roommate?”

He was genuinely surprised. “Umm, no. It’s…” He hesitated, then came clean. “It’s my father.”

An elegant eyebrow went up.

“He’s, sort of, in a crisis right now.” The sentence ended on a rising note, as if he half meant it as a question.

The eyebrow stayed up.

“He’s asking me for advice.” Same rising note.

She looked at him blankly. His heart sank. He was going to have to explain.

The date was not going well. He had been stunned when Alison tossed him a casual “Sure, why not?” when he asked her out to dinner, and he stayed stunned the whole week waiting for Saturday night. He was a lowly engineering undergrad; she was five years older, a tall, achingly pretty, stylish, singularly focused woman working on her Masters in History. She was so frickin’ smart it shook him. He had no idea why she hadn’t excused herself and bailed by now, so paltry had been their conversation thus far, all biographical stuff.

“He’s… found Facebook. He’s…” He sighed. “He’s uploading photos and he wants a ‘cool’ title for the photo album. He’s been shooting me every silly name he can think of.”

His phone chirped again: My Shenanigans?

He smiled. “Thing is, my Dad’s pretty much the uncoolest guy you’ll ever meet. I mean, he thinks breakfast is cool. When I was a kid, I’d walk into the kitchen and he’d give me this goofy grin and say, ‘Hey, buddy! Bacon today, isn’t that great?’ And this foray into the world of social networking? He’s got, like, 12 friends, mostly relatives and people at work – those who can figure out how to get online, anyway. And me. But he spends hours. He’s been uploading photos from, like, his bowling league and book club and wild office parties at the clubhouse. Right now he’s fixated on finding a cool name for this album.”

He gave her a quick look, missing her already. He texted: Are you *trying* to sound like a geezer?

He leaned back. Might as well go down in flames. “He actually cried when I was born. They took me to the nursery for shots, and he cried when I started crying. I had an excuse: someone just stuck a needle in my butt. He said that when I started crying, he cringed and had to look away. He couldn’t stand that he had helped bring this person into the world, and in the first hour of his life someone had already caused him pain. And he realized that he would be hurt over and over and over again, and he couldn’t stop it. He promised then that he would do everything in his power to make sure that he – I – would be happy as well.

“He tells that story. A lot.”

She was looking at him steadily. And there it was again: the sensation that even though he was sitting stock still, he was falling forward, into those big blues, drowning in them.

His father settled on “Wacky Times.” Three years later, his father uploaded 847 new photos. The album cover photo was of him and his father flashing identical stupid grins, with Alison and his mother between them, Alison radiant in white. In the comments, she had written: Pops, thanks for giving me the coolest guy in the world.

(October 2011)

Notes on “In the Glade” and a Teaser for Upcoming Stories

The challenge for the recently concluded round of the Three-Minute Fiction contest was: a story of 600 words or less in which one character arrives and another leaves. (The winner and runners-up are posted on the website.) “In the Glade” was my entry.

I love this story. No surprise there: this blog is precisely meant to be a repository of things I have written, crafted, and made that I am proud of and that have been my joy to create (which means this blog is probably going to be dotted with these proud parent asides). But I love this story particularly: for the effort and grief it took to write it (yes, grief is part of the process), for the gift I was given as I was writing it, and for the way so many odd pieces of me came together in one strange place.

* * *

Three-Minute Fiction has a Facebook page where writers, would-be writers, and fans come to shoot the breeze. A little more than a month ago, I posted a question: If you were the judge, what would your story challenge be?

The post generated a lot of responses, some of them whimsical (William Lowe: a discussion of what kind of pizza to order), some of them hilarious (Alan Pratt: a cheese grater must exchange actual dialogue with a main character, gasoline must be consumed as an aperitif and only one mammal may appear in the story), some of them earnest (Emily Smith: a story with a character who has a flaw they do not know about).

I had a lot of fun writing for the contest, and I was aching to continue riding the creative swell, so I decided to take on several of the challenges, to use them as prompts to write more stories, just for fun.

The next five stories in this blog (which I will post as I am able) are what I came up with in response to the challenges.

Postscript to “In the Glade”

I was working on this story deep into the night on Saturday, Sept. 24, trying to finish it by the Three-Minute Fiction contest deadline the next day. About 3:00 am, I went downstairs for a smoke break when I found this very young, petite woman passed out in the stairwell of my apartment building. I asked her if she was all right, and she roused and sat up. I could smell alcohol from her. She was so out of it she couldn’t remember what apartment she came from or had been heading to. I couldn’t even figure out from her incoherent statements if she lived here or was just staying with someone. At one point, she even asked what city she was in. She kept saying, “This is not good, this is not good,” and that she just wanted to sleep.

I couldn’t leave her there. If someone found her they might call the cops, and I wanted to spare her that trouble. I told her she could crash on my couch and sleep it off. I took her to my place, I gave her a glass of water to rehydrate and left a plastic container nearby in case she had to throw up. She fell asleep. I continued working on my story and turned in a little after 5:00 am.

About 5:30 am, when I was in bed but not yet asleep, I heard her leave my apartment. I heard her in the hallway knocking on doors. I didn’t hear any response. Then she knocked on my door, having given up or thought better of it, and I let her back in. She was so distraught. I found out she was staying with a friend. She thought she had somehow left her friend’s place and fallen asleep on the stairs, though she couldn’t remember having done that. And she couldn’t remember her friend’s apartment number. I said she couldn’t go around knocking on doors so early in the morning, so just get some more sleep, we’d figure things out later. She went back to the couch and I went to bed.

At 8:00 am, I woke up, she was sitting on my couch, still very upset. She still couldn’t remember what had happened that caused her to end up in the stairwell; it was all a blank to her. She kept repeating how this was the worst night of her life. I asked her her friend’s name, which was Debra. I went out and knocked on one of my neighbor’s doors to see if she was Debra, and found that my neighbor had heard knocking at 5:30 am and had been so frightened she had called the cops. I had to explain to her the circumstances and reassure her that there was nothing to be worried about. I went to the apartment manager’s unit to see if he could tell me what Debra’s apartment number was. He was upset that I had woken him up so early on a Sunday morning. He wouldn’t tell me the apartment number (which I understood: a matter of confidentiality), so I asked him if he could give Debra a call and let her know her friend was with me, and to call me.

I went back to my place. She and I decided to go downstairs and look around, to try to find her car or try to figure out where her friend’s apartment was. She couldn’t find her car (or couldn’t remember where she had parked), which upset her even more. She knew her friend’s apartment was on the poolside part of the building, so we went to the pool area. Looking up from there, she thought she recognized her friend’s place through one of the windows. We went to that apartment, she knocked on the door, and it was the right one. Her friend let her in, and I went back to my place. I got a few hours more of sleep, then was able to finish my story in time.

It was only towards the end that I learned her name. I asked her just before we went down to look for her car. Her name was Wendy.

True story.

(October 2011)

In the Glade

Night fairies are voyeurs; it is a compulsion with them. Being such frail, tiny beings who mate as they fly – delicately, flittingly, coupling in mid-air then coming apart with no more passion than dragonflies – they find the amorous exertions of the big people deeply fascinating. From their vantage, human lovemaking seems an endless, stupefying, thunderous spectacle, like redwoods clashing in a storm. They spare no chance to watch the act.

This worked much to his advantage. He had but to guide a woman to the glade and be certain that the glimmering creatures would glide in from all points of the forest (so well did they know him), trailing incandescent dust, to circle around slowly or alight upon branch or fern and set it aglow. The woman, already primed for wonder, would be entranced by the floating sparks. Then he simply had to draw her close, gaze into her green or blue or brown or gray eyes, and lean in for the first, lingering kiss.

He actually remembered the name of the latest one: Angelica. She had floated in from the sky, as they all did. They were all sorts who came to the island, not just boys and girls; people who in their longing for enchantment had decrypted the secret of magical transport – but it was only the women in their first true bloom that aroused his interest. Angelica was such. She had landed in an indecorous heap, having misjudged her speed. Laughing, he had come to her, brought her to her feet, taken her to the singing brooks to feast on muscadine berries and watch the waterfalls of the fire cliffs change shades (now blood-orange, now crimson) as the afternoon waned. And, of course, when evening fell, he led her to the glade.

Her name had stayed with him only because when she spoke it, the laughing look about her eyes reminded him of the other one, the one who left – though Angelica’s hair was dark and hers had been fair. He thought there was some resemblance. But it was so long ago, by now her face had shimmered into obscurity in his mind – how could he tell?

When she returned to her unmagical world, he had let her go with what he thought was a light heart. But in time he found himself pulled to her world, peering into her window at night to see her laughing with her sisters – a young woman now. He visited her window again and again – to watch her knit a cap, write in her journal, sleep quietly under downy covers. He saw her hold her man, dandle her children, and, last, sit in her armchair and read, her deep-lined face quiet and serene.

When he returned to the island after that final visit, the strain with which he landed made him suddenly aware of how heavier he was, how changed. He realized that in his visits to her world of passing seasons, his body had ticked forward – in spurts, but accruing growth, so that when he went to a pool of still water and looked in, it was not a boy but a young man who peered back. He never again left his island.

The more fiercely curious of the fairies hovered even closer as he and Angelica cleaved and writhed together, drifting between the trees. He leaned back to watch in the play of elfin light the grimaces working her face. Maybe she looked a little like her. How could he know? She was earthbound now, in the earth, turned to earth. He gripped Angelica closer and surrendered to oblivion.

(September 2011)

Notes on “To His Coy Mistress” and “Suo”

For several years now, NPR’s All Things Considered has been running a short, short story contest called Three-Minute Fiction. The idea is simple: people send in stories that can be read over the radio within three minutes – that is, stories of 600 words or less – and an author-judge selects from among the entrées what he or she considers the best of the lot. To make things even more interesting, the judge will toss in a challenge: stories must include certain words, for example, or start and end with specific lines. The contest has generated a lot of enthusiasm, with thousands of submissions each competition round, from professional and aspiring writers alike. After all, anyone can tell a story of a few hundred words – and at that length, a novice or amateur has a chance of coming up with a gem of a tale as well as the most polished of writers. So, therefore, many try.

A regular NPR listener, I had been aware of the contest and listened to some of the winners read aloud on the program. (There are small prizes awarded – signed copies of the author-judges’ books, usually – but the real reward is the exposure your story gets from being read on air and posted on the NPR website). But the thought of joining the game myself never crossed my mind – at least, not until I was driving around the Haight in San Francisco one evening earlier this year in January, heard on the radio that another round of the contest was coming up, and was suddenly determined to submit something of my own. What gave rise to my resolve at that particular point in time is a tale in itself – one that would take considerably more than 600 words – and maybe someday I’ll tell it, when I’m feeling a little more rash and a lot more self-revealing.

In any event, that particular round required a story (of 600 words or less, of course) that had one character making a joke and one character weeping. What came up for me was the first story in this blog, “To His Coy Mistress.” I’m quite fond and proud of it, since, well, I wrote it. Also, it’s the first piece of creative writing I had done in a long, long time that was longer than a haiku or short verse, so its service as an icebreaker endears it to me all the more.

Many months later, the next round came up, and the challenge this time was to have a character come to town (or village, city, whatever) and another one leave. “Suo” was my first response to that challenge, one that I did not submit since it’s pretty bleak (among other reasons), and yet one I also hold in much affection (see reason stated in previous paragraph). I came up with another story that I did submit, which I will post at a later time.

Anyway, that’s how these first two stories came about.

Suo

His name was Suo. Once as a child gathering grass seeds in the brush outside his village, he found beneath the stalks a field mouse, prone and torn. Maybe it had wrenched itself free from a hawk’s claws and fallen from the sky – but shredded and bloodied as it was, it was still, barely, unimaginably alive. There was not enough flesh on its bones to make more than a morsel – not worth taking home for supper – but every night Suo’s mother had sang to him the words of Merciful Tual, and heeding those words, he stooped to the ground for a rock with which to put to an end its suffering.

As he knelt by the mouse and raised the rock, he saw its eyes looking to him. Caught by those dark, silent beads, Suo’s arm was stayed. He knew then that as he held the rock over the creature’s head, a rock in another hand was raised above his. Suo was still for the space of three breaths – then swung down his arm.

Now Suo is a man turning the last bend on the path before his village gate, enduring his brother’s pleas. His brother asks over and over if he truly was willing to let his nephews and nieces starve. Suo had just visited his brother’s farm with a sack of bean meal and had to refuse his brother’s implorations for another, having barely enough food to put in his own children’s mouths. His brother had walked out, to stand on his parched field, and Suo, taking leave of his brother’s wife, had left. Halfway home, his brother had caught up with him. Now, just in sight of the village gate, his brother becomes silent at last. Now his brother’s hand digs into his leather pouch and comes out with a flint knife.

Now Suo is white-haired, and staggering in the dark, in lightly drifting snow. He no longer feels the coarse, sweat- and pus-drenched cloak about him. The harvest had been meager, the winter harsh. In the middle of a long night, a stranger had come to the village, squeezed through the village walls between two logs, and died in a barn under a cow’s udders. Boys who came to steal a few mouthfuls of milk stole his shirt, and soon boils were budding in their hands, soon sprouting in villagers’ skins. In time Suo, too, felt ripe little lumps growing in his armpits. He hid in his little hut for days as his flesh was slowly devoured. In the end he did not wait for the headman’s men to come and beat him with their long sticks and drive him out the village gate. Wanting to spare his sons and grandsons the duty of standing by him and being beaten themselves, he stole into the black night, into the desolate plain.

Now Suo is running through the wavering, searing air of his burning village, pitchfork in hand. The headman in desperate rage had ordered torches to be put to the granary, to deny the raiders their prize, and the flying cinders had started the nearby thatch roofs to smoldering. Suo had rushed his wife, heavy with their first child, to the footpath behind the village, there to join the women, children, and half the village men fleeing into the hills. Now he is running to the walls, to take his place on the wooden ramparts with the men who stayed; now he is gazing at the dust cloud in the plain, growing ever larger.

(September 2011)

To His Coy Mistress

He climbed the red, dim-lit stairwell to her loft for the last time as anxious as the first. But whereas then he had been filled with trepidation and excitement, now he was simply fearful at still not having found the words with which to say goodbye.

She opened the door in her dark blue negligee, smiled, and let him in. He looked around the candle-lit room, at the poster bed with lace sheets – at her.

She had become unpretentious and more beautiful over the years. When they first met, her face had been fuller, her demeanor distant and haughty. She had described herself as “fully independent” in her online ad and later made clear that she looked down on the girls who were managed. Youthful flesh had gone and left her face sculpted, exquisite, and she had become kinder, more forgiving, though still proud that she was her own woman.

There was a flash of movement on the floor. She stooped down and came up with a ball of ginger fur. “A friend’s cat had kittens, and she gave me this one,” she said.

“What’s – his? her? – name?” he asked.

“Him. I haven’t named him yet. I want to know who he is first,” she replied, putting it down.

They moved in for their usual first long, lingering kiss. He thought to himself, How could she not know? Even if I’ve been too much of a coward to tell her about meeting Clara, surely she must know by how cold I’ve become?

They undressed, went to bed, and made love, then lay in each other arms, quietly breathing. It was sweet, and it was release. But where before it had also been a desperate longing, now it was just that: sweetness, release.

As he started dressing, the kitten jumped on the bed and she took it in her arms. As she stroked its fur, she said, trying to make her tone light, “You know, there’s a farmer’s market in the park on Sunday. I was thinking of getting some artisan bread and cheese for a picnic.”

He froze. Now? he thought. Now you hint that you might see me outside of this room? For years he had begged to take her out to dinner, for coffee, for a walk – to spend time with her off the clock. Not once had she agreed, or given him more than the barest glimpse of what her real life was like. She had never even given him her real name. He felt strange calling her by her handle, “La Courtesan,” so he had taken to calling her “Ell.” “Boundaries,” she kept repeating, whenever he pushed.

His will hardened as he finished buttoning his shirt. He had Clara now, and he was anxious to get on with real life, with her. And the words were there at last. He smiled as he went to her and scratched the kitten’s ear. “I know what you can name him,” he said in a bantering tone. “Call him ‘Pimp.’ So when people ask you his name, you can say, ‘He’s my Pimp.’”

He frowned as her face fell. “Sorry,” he said, “Bad joke.”

He left the envelope on her dresser, the same amount as always, even as she had raised her rates on her other clients. “Goodnight, Ell,” he said as he walked to the door. She had sat down on the bed and did not follow him, did not kiss him goodbye as had been her custom, merely kept stroking her kitten. He gave her one last look, then left. Inside the room, she began to weep.

(January 2011)