No good reason

He ran in front of the assembled crowd wearing nothing but chaps. It created a commotion.

***

She ran in front of the grocery cart and addressed the woman pushing it in declamatory fashion.

“That is not food to be serving growing children,” she exclaimed, adding, “It’s unhealthy!”

“It’s for my husband,” the other woman responded.

The first woman reacted with a quizzical look, then said, “And you married him?”

***

They ran in front of the bus. It was a political gesture. They were determined to prevent the association from leaving its retreat without having their say.

Regrettably, the bus driver was in a mood and not about to slow down for anyone.

The incident made the news shortly thereafter, in a blood and carnage sort of way.

***

Wherever people are, interesting things happen for no good reason.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #62, which I missed out on by a couple of months.)

A brief update

I haven't posted anything new for a very long time - life has been quite busy. In fact this post isn't really a post. It's just a way to get Blogger to show my updated profile, which should indicate that I've moved to the other end of the country.

I no longer live in Alberta. My new digs are Fredericton, New Brunswick. And I'm loving it.

A system for socks

He woke up, wondering where his sock was.

“I’m looking for 14B. Have you seen 14B?”

No one answered. They may have still slept. Again, Roger asked, though more quietly now, “Has no one seen 14B?”

14B was a sock. Specifically (as indicated by the ‘B’) it was a right sock. Left socks were categorized as ‘A.’ (Roger did everything left to right.)

Almost everything anyone would need to know about Roger was understood by simply understanding his system of socks. The fact he had a system for socks was itself revelatory.

Roger had 31 pairs of socks, all numbered. That made for 62 socks in all, each one categorized by an A or a B which indicated whether it was a left sock or right. He believed once a new sock was worn it conformed to the rightness or leftness of the foot it had encased and, therefore, became either a left or right sock.

Roger had sown the numbers and letters into the inside of each of his socks. There was 1A and 1B, 17A and 17B, and 29A and B and so on.

Calling for 14B implied he had 14A – he was missing the matching sock. His right foot was naked.

You might have expected him to be more concerned about his pants as all of him, excluding his right foot, was naked. But he was methodical in his dressing – socks always went on first. Even Roger would have been hard-pressed to say why.

“Why not just take one of Dean’s? He won’t mind.”

The voice came from Stacey and was muffled because she was buried beneath a comforter, entwined in bodies akimbo fashion, with Dean who slept the sleep of the drunk.

“I can’t,” Roger replied anxiously. He hesitated to explain why – that it wouldn’t match and, were he to take a pair of Dean’s socks (assuming they matched), he would have no way of truly determining which was left and which was right.

He knew it didn’t matter yet, for some reason, it mattered to him. If he tried to explain, he would be mocked. He always was; he always would be.

Really, if someone is that particular about socks, mockery must be expected.

Stacey simply groaned beneath the covers and said something Roger thought was probably profane, but he couldn’t be sure.

“I’ve gotta get food,” Roger complained as he searched for his sock. He lifted the edge of a blanket up off the sofa and Belle blinked at him.

“Food?” she asked. “Go out like that, Sunshine, all you’ll get is arrested.”

“I’m looking for my sock,” Roger said.

“You outta look for pants.”

“I know where my pants are.”

“Then put them on!”

“I can’t. I need my other sock!”

“You need a fucking therapist is what you need!”

“I’ve got one. She doesn’t understand the sock thing either.”

He glanced at Belle and frowned. “You know, you look like hell this morning.”

“Oh, aren’t you the charmer. God, I feel like shit.”

She sat up, the blanket dropping from her shoulder, piling in her lap. Like Roger, she was naked too. She did not, however, have any socks on.

“Hey,” she suddenly said. “There’s something under my ass here.” She lifted her bottom, reached under and pulled out a sock. “Hey! Buddy boy! This it?”

Roger grabbed the sock, triumphantly crying, “14B!”

“Shit,” Stacey’s voice called from across the room, beneath the comforter. “Who gets excited about a fucking sock?”

“Our boy Roger!” Belle called back to her.

“Yeah,” Roger muttered, putting his sock on, “You laugh. But …” He didn’t finish his thought.

He was calming down.

Amid the chaos of people, here was order, arbitrary though it might be. Here were his socks, making sense, each with a place and purpose.

With sock 14A on his left foot and now, 14B on his right, he went to put his pants on.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #42.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

The starter sentence

“I was not offended that JJ didn’t use my starter sentence.”

I said this aloud although there was no one in the room but the cat to hear my declaration.

Well, that was not entirely true. A character was there, ill-defined though he or she was, but with a need to respond.

“So what was chosen?” the character asked.

“3.. 2.. 1..” I said.

“What the hell kind of starter sentence is that?” they quickly shot back, brushing back a wave of bangs from their dampened forehead. They were agitated. I could see that. Hmm … maybe I didn’t so much see it as imagine it. But agitation was certainly in the air and it was clearly evident in his manner.

“3.. 2.. 1..” he muttered, his gender established. “That’s not a sentence. It’s not even the beginning of one. In my opinion.” As he spoke, he lifted a chilled martini (old school – gin and vermouth, no pansy fruit flavours). “I see problems with it.”

I sipped my almost cold tea, glanced over at the snoozing cat, sighed and said, “Listen, don’t be an ass. We have a few free moments finally. We can throw some shit together, can’t we?”

“Can we?” he replied. He gave me a look that not only communicated doubt, it communicated downright lack of confidence. It held belittling amusement. It was a look of scorn.

I scowled. I didn’t like the guy’s James Dean-like look (that hair!). I had never liked James Dean anyway and resented the fact I’d sat through those movies of histrionic rubbish because he was suppose to be the great young actor “lost too soon!”

“Yes,” I answered firmly. “We can. We can toss something together.” I was wishing my tea wasn’t so cold and so non-alcoholic. I envied him the martini. Though I sensed it was inappropriate for a James Dean look-alike.

The cat was indifferent. She kept sleeping.

“3.. 2.. 1..” he murmured. “So what’s this going to be? A story about a rocket ship? Kids playing hide-and-seek? Blowing up shit with mid-50’s film noir dynamite? And what’s with the two dots? What the hell kind of ellipsis is that? There should be three dots. I’m pretty sure of that. What’s the business of two? I don’t think we can work with that.”

“I can work with that!” I shouted. “Who cares what you can work with? You’re not real. You scarcely even exist! I just threw in some horseshit about your hair and James Dean and a martini because I couldn’t think of anything else. You're barely here!”

Strangely, he suddenly had a lit cigarette dangling from his lips as he once again brushed his hair back.

“So,” he began, “I hardly exist. In that case, I can leave.”

“Yes!” I bellowed back. “You can leave!”

He shrugged – Marlon Brando style, which was a bit confusing. But in an odd way, it was appropriate.

He left.

And I was without a story. All I had were three numbers, sequential though in reverse, and an unsettling sense I had wasted everyone’s time, including my own.

And the tea was still cold. And the cat still slept.

Yet outside, in the street, a gunshot rang out and when I looked through the slats of the Venetian blinds of the window over the swamp green couch, in the street I saw the sprawled body of a young man who looked remarkably like James Dean.

It occurred to me that maybe there had been a story here but I had failed to find it.

I thought, “If only the starter sentence had been ‘1 … 2 … 3 …’”

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #37.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

Dinner is cancelled

It was either a pill or a piece of candy. Or it was Donny’s missing eye.

I was hoping for the pill or candy.

If it was the eye … Well, Mitzi the cat had it and was swatting it around the room as if it were a pinball and her paws were flippers.

She scrambled after it through the living room and out and down the hall.

“What the hell’s that sound?” Donny moaned. “I can’t see damn anything.”

“You’ve still got your other eye,” I said.

“So what? I’m distracted. You try having a hole in your face.”

“I do. It’s called a mouth.” I thought I was pretty funny. Donny didn’t.

“Piss off,” he muttered.

Our banal conversation was then interrupted by the most blood-chilling scream I’ve ever heard, better than Janet Leigh in Psycho. It was followed by a string of short shrieks, like telegraph talk, all from the kitchen.

It was Helen. The cat had made it to where she was cooking and, judging by her reaction, I figured it wasn’t candy or a pill that the cat had.

“I think we found your eye,” I said.

Her face contorted with panic, Helen entered the room and began to sputter.

“The cat! The cat! Do you know what …?”

She glanced at Donny and released another of her screams. Briefly, I wondered if there was any Hollywood money to made from those screams. They were awfully darned good.

“My God! What happened to your face?”

Pointing at me, Donny answered, “Numb nuts here came up behind me and gave me one of those ‘hey buddy!’ slaps on the back. Except he confused my back with a brick wall. He hit me so hard my damn eye popped out!”

“It couldn’t have been in there very firmly …” I spoke a bit sheepishly. I did hit him a little harder than I’d intended.

“Well the bloody cat’s got it!” Helen said. “What are you going to do about it?”

She looked straight at me. She was not smiling.

The awkward moment was disturbed by an odd noise – almost like a rattling combined with a strange swishing sound. We all turned as Mitzi suddenly shot through the room, batting the eye back and forth. She moved like a manic cue ball, her direction constantly changing as she veered at new and sharp angles.

“Well!?” Helen glared at me.

Trying to catch a wound-up cat is like trying to nail down a politician’s commitment. It can be done, but not easily and it usually requires aggressive tactics.

“Where’s the gun?” I asked.

Almost like a chorus, Donny and Helen both said, “Gun?” They looked appalled.

“I’m not going to shoot the damn cat! But a shot, a little above it, into the wall … well, that’ll freak it out and it will forget the eye. She’ll probably scoot out of the room like greased lightning. Then we just get the eye.”

“And the wall?” Helen wondered.

“Small stuff. Bit of plaster, bit of paint. It’ll be good as new. Now where’s that gun?”

Normally, I don’t think there is any way Helen would have agreed to this. But the cat was now behind the sofa and we could all hear the rattling of the eye on the hardwood as she played with it and that was a little unnerving. Just the thought gave you a kind of unsettled feeling.

So Helen went and got the gun.

Looking back, I suppose Donny probably should have been the one to use it since I’d never fired one in my life. (You know, those things have a heck of a kick back on them. A person doesn’t always consider things like that, but they probably should.)

Donny, of course, was missing an eye. Still, he was use to firing the gun as a one-eyed man. But the fact that one socket was empty just made it seem wrong for him to be handling a gun. So it naturally fell to me.

Naturally, but not necessarily wisely.

Helen came back with it and handed it to Donny, who did something to it (I’m not sure what – I don’t know much about these things). Then he held it out for me.

“Okay,” he said. “Just there, over the couch where Helen’s taking that picture down.”

“Hang on!” Helen said and quickly took down a framed family picture then quickly ran back beside Donny, who said, “Right about where the picture was. Then we can cover up whatever mess you make with the picture again. It’s high enough you won’t hurt the cat but it should scare the crap out of her.”

“Brilliant,” I said, taking the gun.

I held it up. I put some pressure on the trigger and immediately saw it would require more than I’d anticipated. I planted my feet, aimed again, then squeezed.

The gun went off. I didn’t hit the wall. I wasn’t sure what I’d hit. The kick back had spun and flattened me. Had my right arm not been firmly attached to me shoulder, it probably would have been flung into the next block. There was a scream (Helen, I assumed) and a bestial howl (the cat?). Something shot out from behind the sofa and fled the room.

“Holy shit!” Donny shouted. “You ever fire one of those?”

A little groggily, from the floor I said, “Nope.”

“What did you hit? I can’t see where the bullet went.”

I sat up. “I’m not sure.”

Helen went over to the sofa and looked behind it. “Oh shit,” she breathed.

“What is it?”

“You hit the eye!”

“The eye?”

“Yes! It’s a mess back here. And there’s a hole in the molding along the wall. And blood. You must have hit the cat too … Oh my God!”

“What? What?”

“There’s a piece of Mitzi’s paw here! Or maybe that’s her tail …”

It hadn’t gone the way I had planned, yet I felt there was an upside. I rose to my feet and said, “Let’s look at the positives. We wanted to get the cat away from the eyeball and we did. We wanted the shot to be somewhere easily hidden – what could be better than behind the sofa where no one can see it?”

Angrily, Donny said, “And my eye’s gone! And my damn cat’s dead!”

“Oh, she’s not dead,” I said. “I’m sure that was her tearing out of the room.”

“Look at my sofa,” Helen said.

“What about the sofa?” I asked.

“How do you think the bullet got behind it? It went through it!”

I nodded. “Yes, that would make sense.”

“Get out,” she said – calmly, but there’s always something worrisome about Helen’s calm voice.

“Yes, get out,” Donny agreed. “Dinner, for you, is off. Just get the hell out of our house.”

I didn’t think it was the most hospitable treatment but I made allowances. I could see where they might be a bit upset by the day’s events. Besides, my nose was telling me something was burning in the kitchen so I guessed I wouldn’t be missing much.

“Alrighty, then. I’ll be off.” I made my way to the front door and gave them both a wave. “Maybe next week then. By the way, Donny? You’ll want to do something about that.” I pointed to his face. “You don’t want to be going into the office looking like that. You know how people are – staring and so on. And really, you look like one of those zombie guys from the movies. It gives me the creeps …”

“Get out! Get out of our house!”

Despite the hostility, I gave them a smile as I shut the door and left.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #34.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

The porcelain urns

The sound it made when it broke proclaimed the sudden turn my life would take. Though not sounding anything like a starter’s pistol it managed to convey the same sense – begin. Now!

Through the window I could see the sky graying with clouds. The air surrounding me was becoming thicker, heavy with increasing humidity and the assurance of rain.

The streets grew quiet.

The world stilled with a sense of premonition.

The silence of anticipation was broken only by the soft tread of Beth’s footsteps coming down the hall.

I thought I heard a faint roll of thunder but could not be sure if it was really there or just my anxious imagination.

When the door opened I turned and watched as she stepped into the room.

Her shriek was like a quickly jabbed dagger into my skull. Or perhaps it was more like the sharp thrust of knitting needles into my ears. Yes, it was like that.

“What have you done?” she then whispered, staring with horrified fascination at the ruined antique porcelain urn, one of a pair. The other contained the ashes of her father. It rested above the fireplace on the mantle. The one I had broken was intended for her mother who lay peacefully at the funeral home.

There was little I could say so I answered simply. “I broke it.”

“How …?”

“I was just holding it. Looking at the detail and it … it fell.”

Thick angry drops of water began slamming into the window, slowly at first as the rain began, then the downpour came and with it the claps of furious thunder.

She looked at me and I was surprised by her expression. It wasn’t the anger I had expected. It was fear. She was terrified of something.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done.”

I nodded and said, “Yes. I think I do. These are very expensive urns and I’ve broken one. And making it worse, they were a pair and were meant to hold your father and mother’s ashes. So I do realize …”

An enormous crash of thunder interrupted me and as it faded a sharp crack came from the mantle.

Both of us turned to the fireplace. It was as if time had been stilled. The other urn had a crack running almost right down its centre. It remained that way a moment then a large piece dropped from it, shattering on the floor, and the ashes of her father spilled out.

“Oh God!” she cried. “It’s him!”

“What him?” I asked stupidly.

“Him!” she shouted as the window suddenly exploded with a monstrous gust of wind. Glass showered me and I fell to the ground bleeding.

The wind died almost immediately and the skies quieted into a steady rain. As I rose to my feet I saw her, akimbo and face up on the floor, five shards of glass lodged in her, including one in her neck from where the majority of the blood was spilling.

The look of fear and horror remained on her face.

Then there was another, different crash. The larger portion of her father’s urn had tumbled off the mantle and shattered. Somehow it had broken amid the pieces of the urn I had broken earlier. The two, in breaking, had mingled and it would be impossible to separate them, or put them back together.

Just as it would be impossible to ever breathe life back into Beth, who had no urn of her own.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #32.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

The cowboy in the transom

“This is not the sort of thing you expect to find in an upscale law office.”

Mr. Wentworth was commenting on the cowboy who was lodged in the transom of the entryway to our offices, Wentworth, Dysan and Gushaty. I had to agree with him. It was an uncommon place for a cowboy to be.

As Mr. Wentworth was the senior partner, I felt I had to offer him an explanation, inadequate though it might be.

“Well, sir, it happened late yesterday when Mrs. Murakami arrived for her appointment. We were to discuss how we would proceed with the divorce process when Mr. Murakami arrived …”

“That’s Murakami in the transom?”

“Yes sir, that would be him.”

“You don’t often see Asian cowboys. Not in Alberta.”

“No, sir. I suspect that’s true …”

“He’s asleep now? He's not very animated. Not for a man in a transom.”

This was true. Mr. Murakami, having raged almost constantly through the night, had finally succumbed to exhaustion.

“Yes sir. He is asleep. The night was a long and stressful one for him.”

Mr. Wentworth gave his head a disapproving shake. “I never did like the idea of a transom. It was Dysan who wanted it. Thought it would give the place a certain stylish flare. To hell with style and flare, I say. Results. That’s what people want.

“Never should have gone along with that business. Now we’ve got a goddamn Asian cowboy stuck in a transom. Not the sort of thing clients expect to see in a law firm. Bad for business. Get him out of there.”

With that, Mr. Wentworth headed into his office, shutting the door as he always did.

I was left with the problem of the cowboy in the transom.

* * * * *

Mrs. Murakami was in Mr. Gushaty’s office, which was free. He was in Montevideo destroying his family with a waitress he had met in a Boston Pizza.

One of the most stunningly beautiful women I have ever seen, Mrs. Murakami was curled up asleep on the chaise lounge in the office. Her night had been long. As Mr. Murakami had raged from the transom, she had wept through the night.

She had refused to be consoled.

She had refused Mr. Murakami’s insistence she return to him and end her foolishness.

She had moved about the office, distracted, like an ethereal being, something or someone not merely apart from the rest of us but better, or so it had seemed to me.

How a woman of her beauty and mystery had come to be married to a cowboy baffled me, but it did not keep me from trying to handle the situation. Though still a mere student of law I had seen enough of it, and through it life itself, to know that all things are possible where human beings are concerned. In fact, the less sense they make the more likely they are to occur.

I had several tasks ahead of me. The first, I felt, was to see that Mrs. Murakami was appropriately settled – safely removed from our offices and returned home, assured the divorce proceedings were moving ahead with alacrity. Hopefully, this would be accomplished quickly as the second task, removing Mr. Murakami from the transom, was a pressing one. Soon the day’s clients would begin to arrive and, as Mr. Wentworth had pointed out, they would not be assured by the sight of a cowboy in a transom.

Lastly, I would need to find a suitable moment to profess my love to Mrs. Murakami. Yes, during the troubled night I had been captured by her and could no longer see a way of continuing in life without this exquisite, if curious, woman.

I leaned over and touched her should gently (a thrill running through me).

“Mrs. Murakami? Mrs. Murakami? Please, wake up. You must go home.”

For a moment, there was no response. Then, as if a single motion, with the fluidity of water, her eyelids slowly lifted and she rose to a sitting position and said, “Yes. That is what I must do.”

I smiled hoping to reassure her.

“Mr. Murakami?” she asked.

“Still in the transom, I’m afraid. But asleep!”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“We must kill him,” she said.

“We?” I asked.

* * * * *

When I first took up my junior position at Wentworth, Dysan and Gushaty, Mr. Wentworth set aside a few minutes to discuss how I should approach my duties.

“You don’t want to make the mistake of trying to understand the clients,” he said. “They’re all crazier than cats in heat. Just focus on the facts of the case. Ignore the people. They don’t exist. Only facts do.

“Never get involved with people. They’re always a balls-up. Facts aren’t.”

I never quite understood what he meant by this until the moment Mrs. Murakami stated calmly and with dispassion, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that “We must kill him.”

To begin with, killing Mr. Murakami seemed rather an extreme measure and one leading to all manner of legal complications. Yet I was less disturbed by this than her use of the pronoun “we.”

It struck me as just the sort of thing Mr. Wentworth had advised me to avoid. On the other hand, Mr. Wentworth didn’t have Mrs. Murakami’s legs.

It left me in a state of indecision.

Mrs. Murakami leaned over and picked up her purse which was on the floor at her feet. She opened it and took out what looked like a stiletto. Whatever it was, it was clearly a knife and seemed wickedly dangerous. As others have observed, women keep the oddest things in their purses.

Eying the blade, Mrs. Murakami said, “It should be easy. Just a quick thrust and swift slash. To the throat would be best.”

She looked at me thoughtfully, then continued, more to herself than to me, “The transom. I forgot the transom … You’re not a tall man. You will need a chair.”

Mr. Wentworth’s advice had neglected to suggest ways by which I could just “stick to the facts” and ignore people. As I was discovering with Mrs. Murakami, people often will not be ignored. They have an almost blasé way of insinuating themselves into your life and before you know it, you're bugggered.

I felt this was the case with Mrs. Murakami. I had become an assumption in her life. My own life, as a result, was buggered.

* * * * *

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #27. Unable to come up with a complete story, this is an "in progress" submission.

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories