Notes on the Previous Five Stories

A bunch of tales slightly longer than three-minute (600-words-or-less) stories this time, though all still falling under the realm of microfiction (which seems to be the literary form that suits my temperament best – more on that later, maybe). Origins:

1. “Walking Home” was a counterweight to the story immediately preceding it, “Silent Sue,” in which I met a sad little girl who was well and truly lost. I wanted to reassure myself (and Sue, in that strange oneiric way that is one feature of our imaginations) that sometimes little lost children can be found – or can find themselves.

2. “Possessed” came from a story suggestion by Lily Rose: a demon is possessed by the spirit of a human and requires an exorcism to get rid of it. Given the subject matter, the prospect of going into the dark to pull this one out made me more than a little nervous, and yet no story in this blog came out as easily as this one did. And it actually came with bits of sweetness inside it. Weird.

3. “Dreams” more properly belongs in the previous suite of five stories since it, like “Silent Sue,” was written in response to Mary C. Charest’s challenge: construct a dream within a dream – where one dreamer starts and another wakes up. I actually made a draft of it before I wrote “Silent Sue,” but it took me longer to get it into shape, so it got left out.

4. “Made in Heaven” was written because nearly all my recent stories have been somewhat bleak and I wanted to come up with something sappy and sentimental and unambiguously upbeat for a change. So, yeah, I wrote a love story.

The accompanying photo, by the way, was one I took from the real White Island, off the island of Camiguin in the Philippines, where I did feel like I was walking on the ocean itself, under a sky on fire. Sadly, although I was with people, I wasn’t with anyone special.

5. “Silent Screams” came about from a simple, innocent goal: to write a science fiction story. This is what emerged. What can I say? Whole sections of my brain are mucky and apocalyptic. And apparently raving lunatics and caustic bitches live there. (“And he was such a nice, quiet guy…”)

Silent Screams

Amber saw her first time traveler the day they were wrapping up Episode 6. Tonya was right: they were annoying as fuck.

She was hurrying down the last block to her job at Real World Productions, dragging deep from her cigarette to finish it off before she got to the building entrance. He popped up right in front of her, floating several feet off the ground, facing her square. Which meant the thing she saw – what stopped her in her tracks and made her gasp and jump back – was a wrinkled pecker peeking out forlornly from under a salt and pepper bush, right in her line of sight.

Startle reflex shot adrenaline into blood already juiced with a double jamocha. She yelled, “You fuckin’ perv!” Then she raised her eyes, taking in the splay of ribs on his bony chest, the thin, contorted face screaming silently at her, and realized who he was. She heard cries from all around her. “It’s one of them!” a woman behind her shrieked.

She looked around and saw she was in the epicenter of a scrum that had formed instantly around the time traveler, a flash crowd that trapped her in and grew outward like a ripple as more people came up from all directions. She saw the slack-jawed expressions, the looks of disgust in some of the women, the mocking sneers from a gaggle of teenagers. Hands dipped into pockets and purses and came up with camera phones.

Oh, come on, people! I’m late already, she thought. It’s not the fucking Rapture. Haven’t you seen enough of them online? She sighed, dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with her boot toe, and got out her own phone. She supposed she should take her own video, for posterity or whatever.

She couldn’t step back to get a wide shot of the man, so she pointed her phone to shoot his face (she sure as hell wasn’t going to focus on his shriveled prick). She got half a minute of his red-faced mouthing before her image screen suddenly showed power lines against slate gray sky. He was gone. She put her phone back in her bag.

The crowd, mumbling disjointedly, broke up slowly, jostling up and down the sidewalk but steering clear of the patch of air where the time traveler had been. She weaved her way through, got to the portico of her building, went in, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and, after a quick scan to see if Stanley was around, rushed stealthily into her cubicle.

Tonya peered over the divider. She said, “He’s meeting with the cable network guys. You lucked out, bitch. What happened?”

Amber hung her jacket on the coat hook and fired up her monitor. “One of them appeared, right in front of me.”

“One of what?”

“One of those time traveler guys.”

“No! Where?”

“On the sidewalk, almost in front of the building. You were right: they’re pretty fucked up.”

“I know! Right?” She disappeared, came around, and entered Amber’s cubicle. “What’d he look like?”

“Like all of them: naked, scrawny, screaming his ass off. You know: on mute.”

“How far away?”

“God, like five feet from me. Here.” Amber took out her phone and handed it over. Tonya played the clip. Revulsion wrinkled her nose. “One I saw was two stories up in the air. Girl, you could have stepped up to him and given him a blowjob.”

“Oh, Gaad!” Amber grabbed her phone back. “What the fuck, bitch?”

“What? You would have been sucking air. You can walk right through them, you know. They’re not there.”

“Who’s not there?” They turned to the cubicle entrance. It was just like Jeremy to sneak up on them.

“Nothing, creep,” Amber said at the same time that Tonya said, “A time traveler.”

“No shit,” Jeremy said, ambling closer. “Somebody saw a time traveler?”

Tonya said, “She did. Full frontal.”

Jeremy frowned. “They’re only naked because non-living matter can’t be projected back in time, not even clothes. Because inanimate objects don’t experience time. That’s what the quantum guys at CERN say, anyway.” He was the geek who kept all the office work stations and editing machines running. He was harmless enough, and smart some ways, but his earnestness made Amber and Tonya want to gag.

Tonya snorted. “So, what, they can’t hold up a, a kitten to cover their dicks?”

Jeremy blinked. “Umm, guess I never thought of that.” Then, to Amber: “You make out what he was saying?”

Amber waved a hand in the air. “Probably what they all say. They all just keep saying the same thing.” Lip readers had long deciphered their voiceless ravings from video captures.

Jeremy said, meditatively, quoting, “Stop before it’s too late. Don’t spread the satin glow.”

Tonya said, “Whatever the fuck that means.”

Jeremy looked somber. “Best guess: they’re sending us warnings so we don’t do whatever it is that’s causing some catastrophe in their time.”

Amber raised an eyebrow. “The satin glow.”

“Yeah.” Jeremy looked at her intently. “Whatever it is, three hundred years from now, it’s going to make them so desperate they’ll send these projections back to us – tens of thousands by now. Telling us to change our ways.”

Amber laughed. “What, to repent? So they’re not just pervy flashers, they’re like those loonies with the signs? ‘The end of the world is near’? Which makes sense, they’re all maniacs the way they keep screaming. What next, they’ll drool on us and ask us for spare change?”

Jeremy paused. “Maybe they are all crazy, three hundred years from now. Maybe this satin glow thing is what’s getting to them. Anyway, things might not be looking good for the species; our expiration date may be coming up fairly soon.”

Amber said, “Ahhh, I think we’re just seeing these guys ‘cause only the insane can time travel. Or else it’s a sicko joke.” She shrugged. “Things can’t be all that bad if they can transmit these holographic thingies back across frickin’ time.”

“Maybe. Though it’s hard to look at all those faces and not catch a little of their despair.” He looked at her again, morose. “Doesn’t it worry you, though? Doesn’t it make you sad? That just maybe we don’t have a future, our children’s children don’t have a future?”

Amber and Tonya looked at each other and laughed. Amber said, “’Our children’s children’? Jeremy, I know you wank off in the supply closet thinking of me, but I never thought you had dreams of having ‘our children.’ You gotta know there’s no way, right? You know what you should do? Go online at mygirlfriendfortonight.com; go see a girl who looks just like me. It’s just two or three Benjamins. You can go without comic books for a month.”

Jeremy’s face turned to stone. He was about to turn away when Stanley’s voice bellowed from across the office: “All right, people, listen up!” Heads popped up from cubicles like whack-a-moles. Stanley continued: “Everyone in the conference room, now. We have to re-edit the last segment of Ep 6. The network didn’t like the voice-overs.” He stared coldly at the blank-faced suits standing beside him. “Seems they don’t think we played up the catfight between Lizzy and Kiara enough.” He snapped his fingers several times to cut short the grumbling. “All right, people, bitch later! Let’s get moving!” He and the suits disappeared back into the conference room.

Jeremy was gone, Tonya gave Amber a wink before taking off herself. Amber gathered her tablet and notes. She paused to look at her phone. She took it and played the video, watched the time traveler’s tortured face again. “That what you were doing, perv? Trying to tell us to change? Don’t you know you can’t change the past?” She pressed Stop, then Delete. Then hurried to join the meeting.

(December 2011)

Made in Heaven

Years after, our wedding would still come up at gatherings of family and friends. People would say how wondrous it was, how imaginative; how everything unfolded like a play, how it embodied perfectly who we were as a couple.

Of course, everyone would key on different details when they recalled that early evening in September. Your parents would express their happiness that we had our wedding in the same church garden where they took their vows. My sister Elinor would rave about the strapless cobalt blue number she got to wear as part of the entourage, which she wore to critical acclaim on a number of other occasions (she would lament that she never could find another formal dress that flattered her so well). Your college roommate Alex would remember Noel’s solo guitar and vocal rendition of Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky” as we walked down the aisle (northwards, of course, towards the arch festooned with string lights and gardenias under which the minister waited). “Cool song, dudes,” he would say to us. My cousin Sally would inform us she still had the bottle of Casablanca merlot (sans contents, she would always add with a laugh) with Rumi’s “This Marriage” on the label that she took home as a wedding favor.

What everyone would remember, though, what would set off the reminiscences were the faeries – the diaphanous helium globes with LED lights inside them that you so lovingly crafted – that lit up and floated from the bushes to gasps from the crowd during the recessional (Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely,” played by the Delancey wind quintet). You timed it perfectly so they would lift off and illuminate the night sky with a hundred flickering sparks just as we walked together hand in hand amongst our loved ones for the first time as husbands. Your wedding gift to me.

But while the wedding was great and I got a warm, appreciative glow whenever people complimented us for it, I still always thought to myself: Why should it have been such a surprise? We are both creative, meticulous people who leave no details unturned. The wedding was the product of careful planning and the thoughtful application of our gifts. I’m an event planner; you’re an inventor and an artist. Our talents, like us, were a marriage made in heaven.

And, really, these things always come off as memorable and perfect – even the ones that go all to pieces; even the cheesiest nuptials where the bridesmaids wear gold lamé; even, I imagine, the drive-by weddings presided by Elvis impersonators in Vegas – when the marriage is true. Even the glitches and outright disasters become part of the story, things to look back on with embarrassed mirth. And our union was felicitous from the start and continues to be good, despite the travails and challenges that are part of the bargain in even the best of marriages, despite those moments when I would gladly have strangled you, and you, I’m sure, were sorely tempted to walk out the door. I could not imagine trading this life for ten lifetimes without you and the kids.

Nevertheless, I have to confess that even though you always come up with something sweet whenever our anniversary rolls around, our wedding is not what comes to mind when I think of how we got started on this adventure of a lifetime. What I remember is that day on White Island, long before the big day; months, even, before I got around to proposing.

White Island was what the locals called it, even though it was really just a sandbar that disappeared under the waves at high tide. And when it did emerge, it never rose more than a few inches above the water. The currents sculpted it constantly, the locals said, so it was never the same shape twice. We had rowed out to it in a rented tandem kayak on a glassy sea that Sunday afternoon. At the time, we had been together just long enough to start wondering, fearfully, if this was leading to someplace serious – and the uncertainty and trepidation were starting to rub sparks between us: misunderstandings and squabbles over nothing much. I remember we had been arguing on the drive to the coast, over García Márquez, of all things. Our nerves were slightly frayed as we rowed the two miles out; we barely said two words to each other.

Our silence changed in tenor, though – quiet turning to quietude – when our kayak grated on the sand and gravel of the island, which at that point was perhaps a hundred curving feet long and twenty at its widest. We stepped ashore and, without any forethought, you wandered off in one direction and I went the other – not drifting away from each other because of our tiff, I don’t think, but just because for the moment the other had ceased to exist and we each just headed in the direction we had been facing.

I was on ground almost at level with the sea, with calm water all around me, so that if I didn’t look down it was as if I was walking on the ocean itself. There was no sound but the soft swish of tiny waves lapping the shore. When I stopped and turned to the west, it was to see the lowering sun slowly and silently igniting the sky in plumes of deep burnt orange.

I remember thinking to myself, with sorrow: This is not something you experience alone; this is something you share with someone – and it was with a start that I realized I was with someone: I was with you. I like to think you thought the same thing. At least, you turned to me from the other half of the island just as I turned to you.

We walked slowly towards each other. We met in the middle and smiled shyly at one another, as if we were meeting for the first time. We turned again to the boundless sea and the westering sun and the blazing sky. You put your arm around my waist and I put mine around yours.

After a time, without a word, we turned and walked back to the kayak, still entwined. We hopped in and pushed off. I’m sure we were both thinking we should be heading back before it got dark, but I think the deeper reason was that we did not want to overstay the moment. It had already left its mark on us, and it was best we left before it faded away. Indeed, in all the years since, we have never gone back to the island, even though we have kayaked up and down the coast many times. I think we silently agreed that to have done so would have been an imprudent attempt to recapture something that is given to you but once.

We were married that day. That day was our true wedding. That day I knew I would spend the rest of my life with you. All the rest that followed – the proposal in the glass elevator, the planning, the gnawing over the wonderful and persnickety details leading up to that lovely ceremony – was just confirmation of something that already existed, that had already been consecrated, that day on White Island. We made our nuptials as beautiful as our hands and minds could make it, but we did so in the solemn knowledge that nothing we could ever design or craft would measure up to, or be as much of a surprise or gift, as what had already been created around us, for us, between us – by a planner and artist very much greater than ourselves.

Happy Anniversary, sweetie.

(November 2011)

Dreams

She was under the surf – not drowning, but suffocated, pressed down by the water and tumbled by the waves. The water drew into itself and was a translucent, pulsating blob. Then it resolved into Ryan, at once vivid and insubstantial: for all that it was clear to her it was him on top of her on a bed of sand, she did not feel him inside her, or his skin on hers or his hot breath on her cheek; all she felt was a weight rocking her, shaking her bodily. She willed herself to fly away, saw Ryan making love to her from above – a porn scene from an overhead camera – then slowly drifted away.

She slept.

Stephanie awoke slowly, sullen and sad and not knowing why. She turned to Ryan, asleep beside her, saw his morning erection bulging his boxers, and the dream, which had been slipping away quietly, flew quickly back and played in her mind. She leapt out of bed, went to the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee, quivering with rage.

“We don’t fuck enough that you still have to have wet dreams of me?” she yelled at him the moment he appeared at the kitchen door, hearing the injustice ringing in her words but not caring. Shock, bewilderment, recognition, guilt, defiance flickered in rapid succession on his face, which finally settled into pained silence. She knew he was riffling through all the things he might say, trying to pick the words that would make things right. But what could he say that would explain, atone for, the egregious, unintentional violation? It was just a dream, Steph? I can’t control my dreams? I’m sorry? I can’t help it, baby, I’m just so hot for you? He just stood in the doorway in anguish, accepting her angry glare.

He was a good man, and he adored her. That was the tragedy of it.

She seethed through the morning shift at the bank, HR-mandated smile on her face, soft words floating sweetly out of her mouth into her customers’ ears, but her eyes blazing bright. Her phone vibrated twice during her lunch hour; she ignored it. By mid-afternoon, anger had given way, in inches, to an enormous lassitude, a somnolence as heavy as the planet. She slogged through to the end of the day. She dragged herself into her homebound bus and lowered herself with relief onto a window seat.

It had seemed a strange, inconsequential thing at first, that they began to slip into each other’s dreams when they first moved in together. One of them would describe over breakfast a dream fragment recalled, and the other, startled, would recognize it from his or her own slumberous visions from the previous night. It was peculiar, but it sort of seemed natural enough. They were in love; ergo, their dreams started to merge. Their friends, on the other hand, found the odd convergence curious and enthralling. How such a thing could happen was a source of avid speculation among them – psychological, psychic, metaphysical. Jasmina, their friend from college, a romantic, opined over dinner that it was a sign of how they truly were meant for each other, a notion Stephanie found vaguely unconvincing but that Ryan had latched onto eagerly. He had been happy for days. Indeed, he cherished the images he woke up with, the fragments of her no matter how strange and alien to him; he saw them as a gift. But the more it happened, the more she felt hemmed in by his memories distorted; the people and artifacts in his life reshaped, misshapen, made ineffable; his wishes, feelings, fears, desires given fleeting and incomprehensible forms. She felt she was wading in the muck of their co-mingled minds, and she began to resent it, then to be repulsed by it.

The lights streaming past the window of the bus were a growing burden on her eyes. The days were so short nowadays; the body felt the weight of the long nights bending it to stupefaction. She started to nod. She was in their living room – only it was the living room of Ryan’s parents’ house, the house he grew up in. Ryan was kneeling under the Christmas tree, a boy of six or seven cast in the yellow, rippling glow of the tree lights. He was blissfully, carefully removing the gift wrap from his present. Only it wasn’t Ryan, but his son, their son, and he was not taking something out of the box, but putting something in: a gift for her: a heavy, jeweled necklace. The necklace seemed to grow, its links multiplying, so that the box filled to the brim with cold, coiled, writhing metal, then overflowed. She backed away in horror.

She came to with a gasp and slammed the bus’s stop button on the side panel with her palm before she was fully awake.

In their living room, Ryan, who had given up trying to fix the glitch in his client’s website in the morning, left messages for her midday, spent the afternoon furiously cleaning their apartment, and finally fallen asleep on the couch in weary hopelessness, opened his eyes. Though he woke in the dark, disembodied, he knew with perfect clarity where he was, who he was, and what he had lost. He knew she was not coming home.

(November 2011)

    

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)