Notes on the Previous Six Stories

Sometimes stories come at you sideways. Working late one night, the image of a guy lying in bed in the dark seeing the visage of a lost love just as a new love has become a possibility came to me unbidden. So I put work aside and wrote “Night Voices” as an exploration of that image. Some things are just more important than work.

The latest round of the Three-Minute Fiction contest opened in March, and this time the challenge was to begin a story with the sentence “She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.” As always, the story had to be 600 words at most.

I kept playing around with so many story possibilities that went nowhere that I decided to go meta and incorporate several story beginnings into one whimsical tale: “Round 8.” The story was too self-referential to be my entry; in fact, I hesitated even posting it here (a lot of the bits are inside jokes), but obviously I decided in the end what the hell.

“Canciónes de Amor” started off as a possible entry, with the contest line being the first line of the song stanza that starts the story. But the stanza kept bugging me; the story required lyrics that were mediocre, and what I had written was downright awful. So I chucked the original stanza and came up with a different one – and there went the first line mandated by the contest.

The story I ended up submitting for the contest was one that I co-wrote with my niece Emily (which I can’t post here until the results are announced – in a few weeks). After we had sent it off, I felt that I needed to write just one more story that wasn’t a lark, that actually had the required first line, that wasn’t co-authored; just a straight-up story of my very own in response to the contest challenge – just for my own satisfaction. “Stepping Through” was what I came up with.

A few months ago, I found a flash fiction website, Flash Fiction Friday, that offers weekly story prompts that anyone who cared to could use to write stories. The next two pieces arose from a couple of the prompts.

“Wild Heart” emerged from the cue: “Take your typical fairy tale villain or monster and make them the protagonist. Must use ‘something wicked this way comes’ as a line in the story. Word limit: 1,200 words.” Rather than write about a wolf or a witch or a wicked stepmother, I went with a creature from Philippine folklore instead – the tikbalang – and wove a fable around it.

“Driving Away” was in response to the cue: “Write a story where your protagonist is mistaken about something they ‘know’ to be true. Length: up to 1,200 words.” The obvious route was to create a character who was cocksure about some belief, comfortable in his certitude. Contrarian that I am, I decided to write instead about someone who was absolutely certain about his flaws. Someone, in other words, a lot like me.

Driving Away

Paul sat in his car in a patch of darkness between streetlamps, across the street from the McMansion. When he saw Ethan emerge from the bushes lining the front yard, his grip on the steering wheel tightened reflexively. Ethan looked both ways cautiously, crossed the street towards him, and got in the car on the passenger’s side.

Ethan’s face was grim. He didn’t have to say a word. Paul’s shoulders sagged.

Ethan said, “I’m sorry, buddy.” Then: “You all right?”

It took a long moment for Paul to reply. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

Ethan tried to make out Paul’s expression in the dark. “You okay to drive?”

“Yeah.” Paul started the car and drove off slowly, only turning the headlights on after he had driven past several houses. But they had not even gone three blocks when he pulled over, placed his head gently on the airbag casing, and started shaking. “No, I’m not. Maybe you should drive after all.”

"All right." Ethan got out and went around to the driver’s side. Paul sidled over blindly to the passenger’s seat, snagging his thigh on the gear shift and not even feeling it. Ethan got in and took over the wheel. Paul spent the 20-minute drive home hunched over and trembling.

Ethan parked in front of Paul’s apartment building and turned the engine off. He sat back tight-lipped, looking sideways at Paul.

“You warned me, didn’t you? Five years ago,” Paul said quietly, bitterly. “You said it was a mistake. You said I would never measure up to her.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “I’ll cop to the first. Never to the second. That’s kind of your formulation, not mine. What I said was I thought she was the kind of woman who would always be strongly drawn to authority figures.”

“Alpha males. Which is what her boss is. Which I’ll never be.”

Ethan snorted. “Alpha, beta, soup,” he said. “Fuck that. You’re a good man. That’s what counts, not that baboon social hierarchy shit.”

Paul shut his eyes tightly, rubbed his temples, and said, almost meditatively, “I was so pissed off at you.”

Ethan replied wryly, “I know. You barely spoke to me for two years.” He continued, in a measured tone, “What I think – what I always thought – was that she didn’t measure up to you. She was always…” – treading even more carefully now – “…She keeps looking for Daddy, you know? And you, my friend, will never be that. Except to the kids you’ll have someday.”

Paul shook his head. He muttered, in a tone dead with resignation, “Not worthy…”

Ethan shook his head in turn. “You were always so sure of that…”

They fell into a long silence.

Finally, Ethan sighed and said, “Paul, what do you want to do?”

The muscles along Paul’s jaw started working. He whispered harshly, “Knock her fucking teeth in.” Then he took a deep, halting breath. Then another. Then another. He scrubbed his eyes of tears with the heel of his hand, straightened up, and blinked his eyes open. “Which is why I probably shouldn’t be here when she comes home.” He turned to Ethan. “Would it be okay if I crashed at your place tonight? You think Sonny would mind?”

“Never. You can stay with us as long as you like.” Ethan turned on the ignition, glanced at his friend as he put the car into gear. “Like I said,” he said, smiling softly, “a good man.” He steered the car into the street.

(April 2012)

Wild Heart

You were a spindly child of eight or nine the night you first came into my woods. You had stolen away from your sleeping hamlet to see for yourself if the stories of my existence were true. I spied you through gaps between the gnarly, epiphytic roots of a balete tree from the grove where I was resting as you walked up the path, holding before you in one hand and cupping with the other a pearl of light: a small, brave glow in the deep gloom of the forest.

As you came closer, I moved behind another tree, taking no care to avoid rustling the leaves on the ground. I meant to signal my presence, to presage the terror I was about to loose upon you. There was no question of mating with you, since you were too young to have borne my child, so what remained was to stalk you, harry you from behind the trees and the branches above, taunt and hunt you until your heart pounded in your head from the running and the fear and you were so turned around and lost you could not find your way back. And yes, I meant to chase you down in the end and trample you into the earth, since you seemed so small and helpless.

But you heard me stirring in the grove and, instead of fleeing, stood still and peered in my direction, holding out your tiny flame and trying to make me out in the black, tangled mass of tree trunks and hanging vines. You could not see me. I with my nocturnal eyes was caught by yours: dark and shining, curious and questing. I snorted loudly and pawed the ground to see if that would change your expression. You stepped forward, cocking your head from side to side, still trying to catch a glimpse of me. I forewent all thought of hunting you then and stepped out from behind the tree, to see if your seeming courage was true. I stretched to my full height and walked towards you until I stood towering over you, the hot breath from my nostrils falling upon you like a haze.

You looked up at me in wild-eyed wonder. You must have been afraid then, for you dropped your candle and I could hear your heart pulsing madly in your bird-like body. You knew that in my hands and my hooves was your death, the likely price you would have to pay for your curiosity. Yet you stood your ground and did not flinch. And I knew then that here was a creature who was even fiercer than I.

I bowed, turned around, and stooped to the ground. After a moment’s confusion, you understood and clambered upon my back. I galloped deep into the forest and up the tree branches, the wind and the leaves whipping our faces as I leaped from limb to limb under the stars. My booming neighs and your joyous screams carried over glen and glade, terrifying what forest creatures were about. We ran till near daybreak, when I brought you to the outskirts of your village, so you could slip back home and catch a little sleep before the light crept into the sky.

You came to me many, many nights afterwards, whenever you could escape your daylight world – and it was never often enough for me. You grew taller and sturdier as the years went by, though of course you remained minuscule compared to me, and no burden at all as I bore you on our midnight runs. Indeed, at times it felt as if you were the one carrying me on those wild flights, the beating of your heart against my back the hoofbeats that drummed our passage.

Sometimes when we stopped to drink from a pool of water or rest on a mossy crook between branches, you would whisper to me of your desire to go even farther than our gallops could take you; to mount steeds faster than me that would sweep you away from your village, past the towns in the plain, through the heavens and over the waters that ringed our island, to distant lands you longed to see. Perhaps you thought since I could not speak your tongue I did not understand your words, and therefore felt free to entrust me with your dreams. But I did understand. And I knew from the start you were not a creature to be confined to one place, not even the vast forest though which we bounded. Who knew better than I how untamable you were? Still, it pained me to hear your schemes of going beyond where I could take or follow you.

When you turned twelve, I plucked the thickest spine from my bristly mane and gave it to you. I knew your people believed that such an object was an anting-anting, a talisman that binds the will of a creature like me into servitude – which was ridiculous, of course. Who among your people could have come upon one of us unawares, or leapt upon our backs to take a spine against our will? And were this even possible, why should obtaining it have rendered us helpless and witless? It’s just hair. But it was right that I should give it to you – not as some magical device with which to tether me to you, but as a token that I already was. You fastened it to a loop of twine that you wore around your neck, and you swore you would keep it with you, always.

As you grew into a woman, your visits became fewer and fewer, until one night, you held me tight about my neck before dismounting, then walked away without a word or backward look.

Since then the world has changed beyond recognition. The towns have spread across the plain like mold on a fallen bole, until your little hamlet was overrun and my forest encroached upon. Countless trees have been felled and swaths of woodland cleared and overlaid with farms and roads and the dwellings of men. Something wicked this way comes, from all sides. Your people are still unable to catch more than a glimpse of me – I have not lost my swiftness and I can still vanish into the trees before they can come near – yet more and more I am hemmed in. Now I am the one who is harried, I am the one whose way is lost. It has been many, many years now since you left, and I can barely keep alive the spark that I cup in my heart: the hope that you will yet return before your world closes itself on me like a fist.

Oh, I know you will not be coming back. Why should you, who are free to roam the endless earth? I would not, if I had the same chance as you to fly away. But if it is foolishness to long for your return, then allow me to hold on to this much at least: I hope you have kept the gift I gave you; I hope it reminds you of me sometimes; I hope it continues to see you safe.

(April 2012)

tikbalang by cownose