Stepping Through

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door. She had read two chapters too many, two more than she had allowed herself when she started reading, and now she was pressed for time. Still she lingered, putting on her trench coat slowly, deliberately, and patting her coat pockets to make sure her keys and purse and cell phone were in them. Having run out of contrivances for delay, she turned the knob and pulled the door open. Framed by the door were a rectangular patch of the powder blue wall across from her apartment in the hallway, the unlit sconce light on the wall, a slice of her neighbor’s door. Ordinarily invisible from long familiarity, they were vivid today, alive – and they seemed to implore her to stay on her side of the threshold, where it was safe.

She closed her eyes and tried to soften them, to ease their quivering. She took a deep breath. And from the swirl in her mind a calm thought threw itself clear. It said: If you go through this door, your life will change. Not a warning; not an objection; a simple statement of fact.

She opened her eyes and contemplated the thought for a long, still moment. The wall, the sconce, the slice of door held their peace, waiting. So be it, her mind said quietly, and she stepped through.

***

She was four minutes late to the coffee shop, but he was even later, so she was able to catch her breath from having run three blocks from the train station while she waited in line to order. She got an herbal tea and took it to a table by the window. She was just settling into her chair when Jack walked in through the door, scanned the room, spotted her, and flashed a grin. She stood up to receive his kiss on her cheek, then sat back down as he pulled out his chair and sat down himself.

“I hope you weren’t waiting long,” he said. “Client kept me on the phone.”

“Not at all. Do you want to get a coffee first?” she said. She marveled that her voice did not crack.

He shook his head. “I’m amply caffeinated.” He smiled again. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to thank you again for taking a look at my McConnell presentation. I appreciated your comments.”

“Oh, sure. I was glad to do it.”

He leaned back and placed both hands on the table. “So. What’s up? You said you needed to talk to me about something.”

Her heart started thudding against her chest. Here it was.

“Jack, I’m…” A final fearful pause. Then, through the door: “Jack, I’m in love with you.”

His eyes, which had been looking at her with curiosity and anticipation, widened. His face changed.

(March 2012)

Canciónes de Amor

Though you held me long and tight,

You never let me stay the night.

Now you’re gone, and missing you is doing me no good.

Still, I think about you more than I should.

Miguel strummed the song’s sad final notes. His hand floated away slowly from the guitar strings. He looked up to see his friends smiling at him warmly, indulgently. He said, eyebrow cocked, “Gonna be a big hit.”

Everyone laughed. Anise held his hand and said, “It’s not half bad, sweetie. The melody’s beautiful, anyway. Keep at it.”

Katie said, “Keep playing, won’t you, Miguel? Another slow one?” She and Evan had been slow dancing just inside the circle of light cast by the bonfire. Her head still rested on Evan’s chest.

Miguel smiled. Anise let his hand go and he began plucking a delicate canción de amor. Indifferent he may have been as a lyricist, his fingers were magic on the guitar, a bequeathment from his Cuban uncles. The melancholy strain rose into the night, rendering them all momentarily still.

Katie held Evan even more tightly around the waist. They resumed shuffling from side to side.

They were eight friends on the beach on the last night of their camping trip, staying close to the fire to keep away the briny chill from the ocean.

Matt took a swig from his bottle, stood up, and extended his hand to Anise. “May I?”

She looked up at him with suspicion. “You’re not going to try anything funny, are you?”

Matt said, thickening his Southern drawl, “No, ma’am. You learned me my lesson good and proper last time.” He took her hand, got her to her feet, and drew her to him – but not too close. He led her in a stiff, exaggerated box step: forward, to the right, backward, to the left. She laughed and softened in his arms.

Katie said, “I am so tired, I could sleep for days. My thighs really ache.”

Hoots and laughter erupted from the group. Gina called out from where she lay on Maggie’s lap, “That’s what happens when you two keep ducking in the bushes.”

Evan blushed. Katie wrinkled her nose at her mockers. “From the hike, you evil people.”

“All right,” Matt said, releasing Anise and making a small bow to her. He took the guitar from Miguel. “Mike, ol’ buddy, ain’t no one can make a guitar weep like you, but it’s time to SHAKE IT UP. With a little song called ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One BEER.’”

Matt slapped the strings, then launched into the hard-driving rhythm of the song’s intro. Everyone began whooping and laughing. Anise pulled Gina up from Maggie. Miguel got up and raised his eyebrows to Maggie, who smiled and shook her head. He nodded and joined the dancers kicking up the sand.

Maggie looked at Sam, the only other person still sitting. She went to him, wine cooler in hand. “I don’t suppose you want to dance, Sammy?”

Sam smiled. “No.”

She sat beside him. “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” He paused. “It was a really good day.”

She smiled. “Yeah, it was. A wonderful weekend.”

He watched the others swaying and jumping to Matt’s off-key croaking. He felt such love for them all at that moment that his heart edged towards breaking.

“What’s wrong, Sam?” she asked.

He glanced at her, wincing, embarrassed. He nodded at the others; she followed his gaze. He said, “Look at them dancing. Isn’t it a shame we have to die?”

She peered at his face glowing in the firelight. She took his hand. “Yeah. It is.”

(March 2012)

Round 8

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and, finally, decided to walk through the door. The book had other notions, though, and transferred its matrix to the door. The door glowed just as she came to it, and the page she had been reading appeared on its surface.

“You said you’d read two chapters today,” the book reminded her.

She sighed.

“Hmmm,” he thought to himself, leaning back on his chair. “Maybe. Sci-Fi doesn’t seem to go over well at Three-Minute Fiction, though. And once you begin with a twist like that, you’re almost left with having to come up with even bigger twists. Nope, too gimmicky.” He started over.

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. She needed some air. The forest of flower arrangements, the earnest sympathies offered to the family, and, most of all, the loving stories of Hal that people had written in the memory book were just too much. She only knew him a short time long ago, but she was certain he couldn’t have changed enough to deserve all these signs of sorrow and post-mortem affection.

“Aack! Death again? I think we played that out in Round 7.” He highlighted the paragraph and deleted it. He drummed on his armrest with four fingers as he stared at the screen. After an interminable pause, he started tapping on the keyboard.

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and – finally – decided to walk through the door. She was loath to leave. The chill, clean, rain-freshened breeze washing through the high, open awning windows mingled with the musk from the old books, making the air in the cavernous building the sweetest to breathe. The cool scent reached behind her thoughts to educe – not the memories – but the sense of libraries past where she had spent a good portion of her contented life. She had always felt, turning Borges’s phrase around, that a library was very like heaven…

He frowned as he re-read the words. “A little too static. I might be able to paint a pretty little portrait of a blissed-out literary spinster nerd, but a picture isn’t a story.” He cleared the screen again.

Sighing, he turned to look around the room, staring at various objects in turn, willing them to offer, talisman-like, a story full-blown and complete. But they were all silent and told no tales.

He turned back to his laptop, getting more and more frustrated.

“The basic problem is that the final phrase in that mandatory first line is halting. The first two actions are commonplace, but firm. Then, after a beat and a build up, all she does is decide to walk through the door? She couldn’t just do it? It slows the rhythm down right there. Who is this hesitant, indecisive bitch anyway?” The more he thought about it, the more exasperated he became. His anger grew and turned from the amorphous fictional character to the pitiless judge who had issued this round’s impossible challenge, then to the folks at All Things Considered who just had to come up with this stupid, addictive time suck of a contest in the first place.

His irascibility was a ruse, of course; a blind for the deep-hidden fear that he was a poser, a fake, and no writer at all.

He got up. “The hell with it. I’ve gotta get out of here. Anyway, I’ve still got ten days to the deadline.”

He closed his Notebook (it was already on the table), and walked through the door.

(March 2012)

Night Voices

This one I like.

The voice in his head was expected, but not the words.

Ben opened his eyes and there was Alison sitting in the dark on the comfort chair by his bed, glowing softly from within, hands resting on her lap. He gave her a lopsided smile, eyebrows questioning.

I’m shocked, he said in his mind. That’s the first time you’ve liked someone I’m dating.

Alison’s eyes flicked over the woman asleep beside him cradled in his arm, then looked down at the floor. Well, more than dating. She raised her face to him. She’s nice. I think she has a good heart.

He glanced down at Jane, gently extracted his arm from under her head. She shifted, rolled away from him onto her side, took a deep breath and released it, and became still again, breathing slowly and softly. He sat up gingerly and propped himself against the headboard.

He sighed. Why do you only show up after I’ve slept with someone?

Alison shrugged. Why do you only see me after you’ve slept with someone? It feels to me like I’m watching you all the time. But you only seem to see me… you know, after.

Their eyes locked, each trying to fathom in the other’s irises the answer to the riddle, the deep mystery. After a minute, they broke their gaze and leaned back.

So, he thought, Sasha you thought too calculating, Michelle too cowardly, Deirdre insecure and self-destructive – and what was it you said about Kathleen?

She fidgeted. A batshit loony.

You’ve had choice words for all of them. But Jane meets with your approval?

She turned somber. She’s smart, she’s forthright, she’s quirky. After a moment’s reflection: When you were at dinner tonight and the waiter brought you the appetizer dish with three scallops, she cut one of them in two and placed one and a half in your plate and took one and a half for herself, so you both had equal portions.

He tilted his head back and laughed silently. That’s it? You think she’s great because she’s fastidiously fair?

It’s important. It’s the little things that count. You’re a good man. You should be with a thoughtful woman.

His smile faded. I should be with you. Then, despairing: Where are you, sweetheart?

Nowhere. I’m dead. Except now and then I find myself looking over you. She gave an exaggerated sigh. And then I catch you cheating on me with one of your slutty tramps. But there was a twinkle of mischief in her sidelong glance.

He laughed inwardly again. So much for liking her.

She leaned forward, suddenly dead serious, with an unfinished motion as if she meant to reach out and take his hands, only to replace her hands on her knees. I do. I think you should take a chance with her. I think you should give her a chance.

He looked at her in anguish, then peered at Jane. But what if that means you never show up again – I never see you again? he thought, turning back to Alison. But the chair was empty.

His faced crumpled into a sad grimace. She always disappeared whenever he took that step over the threshold towards what he feared.

He lay back down. Jane, sensing the bed shift, roused and turned over to him and rested her cheek against his bicep. He wrapped his arm around her and she sank back into deep sleep.

When she woke up in the morning, she glanced at him once as she got up. Sleep-deprived, he watched her with heavy-lidded eyes as she picked up her clothes from the floor, put on her underwear, and went into the bathroom carrying her dress. He heard the water running for several minutes, then silence. She came out of the bathroom cleaned up and dressed, the tattoo portrait of Guanyin covering her entire back veiled once again. She searched in the folds of the quilt blanket and dug out her silver hoop earrings. Her face was pensive as she put them on. He thought he saw a tiny squint, a hint of trepidation in her crow’s feet.

He got up and sat on the side of the bed and stared at the comfort chair. Jane hovered near him, uncertain, then moved closer. He thought for a moment she would sit in the chair; if she had, he would have broken it clean off and never seen her again. But she sat beside him instead.

“So…” she began. He turned to her, saw clearly now that she was afraid. She reached out timorously and rested her hand on his. Her hand was soft and warm. “Breakfast?” she said, trying to make her tone light. “You said the deli down the street has bagels to die for.” She mastered her nerves and looked at him directly. “Or did you already have plans for the morning?”

Gazing at her, he recalled how he had told her last night over dinner that closing his father’s casket seven months ago had felt like he was lowering the lid on his 10-year-old self. She had looked at him steadily with those green-hazel eyes and listened quietly without saying a word.

He deliberately refrained from glancing at the chair. He smiled, leaned over, kissed her quickly, then stood up.

“It’s not the bagels, it’s the garlic cream cheese. Half a minute while I shower.”

(January 2012)

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)