Sunday Stories

No good reason

2007-03-04T14:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-12T19:27:00.000-08:00

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

2006-06-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

“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

2006-04-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

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

2006-03-05T22:57:00.000-08:00

“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

The downside of knowledge

2006-02-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

She asked me if I remembered. I told her:

“Remember? How could I forget? I recall it specifically because the … the … the thing!”

No. I had no idea what the thing was. I didn’t remember. My memory isn’t like that. My brain has it’s own way. It recalls that Captain Picard, at the end of the episode called Darmok, was reading the Homeric Hymns.

It does not recall whatever it was she was thinking I should remember.

“What “thing” are you talking about?” she asked.

“The … the … thing!” I bellowed back, scrambling.

I was in deep shit. I knew it. She knew it. We both knew I had forgotten. The difference was, I had no idea what it was I had forgotten. She, on the other hand, knew exactly. And we both knew that. So we both knew who was in a position of strength and who was weak.

But neither of us was saying so. No, we would play this out. For my part, as long as it remained unadmitted, I had a chance.

But then she said, “Oh God … I just don’t care. Whatever.”

Whatever. What does that mean? What does it mean when she says, “Whatever?”

I didn’t know. So now I didn’t know two things. I didn’t know what I’d forgotten and I didn’t know why she was saying, “Whatever.”

And I could feel myself becoming angry. I know why I was getting angry – because I didn’t know. Apparently I didn’t know anything. I’d forgotten the one thing and I was clueless on “whatever.”

So now I was pissed.

I told her, very clearly, “I remembered the thing.”

I used my pissed voice.

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said again.

And then I wasn’t pissed anymore. I was only scared. Because I had forgotten. And there was no thing. And even if there were and even if I had remembered, it would all be the same.

And we both knew that. And I knew that was what “Whatever” meant and I knew that was why I had forgotten.

It no longer mattered. Not for us.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #26. Influenced by the mood of the movie I saw tonight.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

After we went to bed

2006-01-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

There was something a little bit quiet about Mary-Ellen and something a tad unusual about her face – a look not commonly there. For a woman normally vibrant and carefree and brightly loquacious, she was strangely somber, perhaps even anxious. She simply sat at the table and stared at her coffee.

“Hey, dear? What’s up?”

She turned her eyes to me slowly and gave me the suggestion of a shrug.

“You’re not usually this quiet,” I went on. “Something must be up.”

“Nothing,” she murmured.

I began to worry. Something must be seriously bothering her. She simply wasn’t Mary-Ellen being this quiet. Were it me, it wouldn’t be remarkable. I’m moody. But Mary-Ellen?

No, something was not right in the universe.

I decided to prod.

“Come on, something must be bothering you. You’re never like this. You’re always flitting around the house in a stream of giggles. This morose lethargy is not like you.”

An irritated expression passed over her face. “‘Morose lethargy’? Quit writing what you say.”

“I’m a writer. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah, but no one talks like that.”

This was even more unusual than I had thought. While others often complain about my conversations being halting and deliberate, that I was writing and editing what I said rather than just talking, Mary-Ellen never did. Actually, she was my greatest supporter. Not only was she proud of my being a writer, she thought I was the greatest writer alive – even if the money I rarely saw contradicted that belief.

At least, she use to feel that way. Had something changed?

Menopause? I had heard about that but wasn’t sure when it kicked in. Mary-Ellen was 42, four years younger than me. Was this the “change of life,” as my mother had referred to her own period of hot flashes?

I made a mental note to google menopause.

“Come on, Mary-Ellen. I can tell something’s wrong. Why not just tell me what’s up? It’s probably nothing. You know, people make things bigger in their heads than they are in reality. Tell me what it is.”

The normally shiny, cheerful Mary-Ellen looked at me a long moment without any expression in her face. Then a slow, joyless smile stretched across her face. “Don’t ask,” she said. “You shouldn’t ask.”

Unfortunately, saying to me, “Don’t ask,” was a way to ensure I would ask, and keep asking until I got an answer. After twelve years of marriage, she knew that. But maybe she hadn’t considered that. I can’t be sure.

Did she say that because she wanted me to? So that it would come out, finally, and she could say later it was because I had insisted?

It’s difficult for me to ascribe that kind of thinking to Mary-Ellen. It wasn’t her character. But then, this sobered, serious Mary-Ellen was out of character too.

“I’m asking,” I prodded. “Tell me. I want to know. Hey, I want to help. Tell me.”

“No … ,” she muttered, turning away.

“Come on,” I insisted. “You can’t just suddenly become a different person without any explanation. Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

She looked back at me and her eyes widened slightly as if she had just realized something.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “People can become different. A person can change without explanation. No reason. Just – done. I know.”

“Now you’re being cryptic. How do you know?”

“It happened to me. I changed. I didn’t ask to. I wasn’t expecting it. But I did. I’m just not sure when it happened.” She began speaking as if to herself, not to me. “When did it happen? Had I already changed and it was only last night I realized it? Or was it then, in that moment, that I changed?”

I was getting frustrated now. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Listen, what changed? What are you talking about? Forget about the when, tell me the what.”

“Love,” she said, talking to me again. “Love changed.”

“Love? What changed about love? Is the Oxford Dictionary now spelling it l-u-v?”

She sighed, then told me. “It was last night, just after we went to bed. I was lying there staring at the ceiling and the way the starlight from outside makes small glowing lines as it comes through the curtains.

“I suddenly knew I didn’t love you. Not anymore. But I didn’t know if it happened in that moment or whether I had only just realized something that had been true for a while. And I thought maybe it was just a strange night feeling that would be gone in the morning. But when I woke up today it was the same. Love was gone.”

Tears began to glisten her eyes. “It’s gone and there’s nothing in its place but questions. Was it ever there? I thought so. Once. But I don’t know now. And if it wasn’t ever there, what was it that had been there? Anything?”

I’ll give Mary-Ellen this – she can be articulate when she wants to be. Too much so, I think. Well, she had certainly answered my question. She had definitely explained why she was so different that morning.

But as with certain kinds of questions, its answer just created more questions.

The chatty Mary-Ellen, the bright Mary-Ellen, the laughing Mary-Ellen … who had that been? If not a Mary-Ellen in love, was that simply a show for me, or perhaps for herself, so the truth would stay in the street outside?

Did I love Mary-Ellen? Or had I merely loved the idea of a woman in love with me?

What was true?

And what would happen to us now?

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

A ghost story notion with too much exposition

2006-01-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

It was raining for the 28th straight day and everything, even birthday parties, felt funereal. As this was a funeral, of sorts, there was a sense of excess to the occasion.

The mourners arrived just in time dressed as clowns. Trent scratched his head, sighed and said, “That’s all they could get? Clowns?”

Flo shrugged. “You’ve got to remember,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

“They don’t know that!” Trent sounded peevish.

“Listen, paperwork’s the only reason they’re doing this. They don’t know whether you’re dead or not. They don’t know you. No one does. Anyone who ever did forgot about you. And so …”

She made a presentation kind of gesture in Trent’s direction and said, “Ta-da! The ghost that ain’t actually dead.”

With a gloomy voice, Trent added, “The dead man who isn’t dead but might as well be.”

With a reassuring smile, Flo said, “Ah, you’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last. Anyway, the point is they wouldn’t even be doing this if that woman hadn’t been so finicky with her paperwork.”

A wispy Mr. Franks stepped up behind them, seemingly from nowhere.

“Strange business, that. Reminds me of my wife. Sort of thing she’d do. She was always very fussy. Very particular. What I don’t get is the secretary.”

“Yeah. That is weird,” Trent agreed. “She didn’t know me. No one knew me.”

Flo just rolled her eyes. “It’s not that hard to understand. She’s just a nice girl who wanted to do something nice for someone. Besides, it makes her paperwork look a bit more … oh, I don’t know. Legitimate, I guess. I use to work in an office. I know about these things.”

“She may get into trouble though,” Mr Franks speculated. “Using city funds.

"Good God, look at those clowns. The rain’s making their make-up run. Geez … now that’s depressing. Speaking of which … Trent. Have you noticed anything different in the last day or two? Felt anything?”

Trent frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you seem different to me. Flo?”

“Yes, he’s a bit more … more … oh my! I know what it is!”

Confused, Trent asked, “What?”

“Solid,” Flo said.

“Solid?”

“Solid,” Mr. Franks said.

The clowns began moving away. The brief, somewhat formal ceremony, had ended. There was a sense of haste to their movements.

The rain was still falling.

“How could I be getting more solid? That makes no sense.”

“Fading out of the world without actually dying … that makes sense?” Flo asked, sensibly.

“Yeah, but how? How’s this happening?” Trent was flustered. It had taken him three weeks to get use to being dead without actually being dead. To be possibly coming back to the living, something neither desired nor undesired but rather something he had not really considered, was confounding.

Mr. Franks tried to explain. “It’s all guesswork, Trent. But I’d say someone, maybe that secretary who set this up … maybe the little awareness she has of you is enough to start bringing you back.

“I mean, we’re just guessing here, but weren’t we assuming that’s how all this happened? You’d been living alone for so long, hadn’t been in touch with anyone for years, life forgot you existed. And so you didn’t.”

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

Chinook

2005-11-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

If Annette’s mother was on the floor, her jaw askew from a punch firmly delivered and her head bloody from the blow it took in the fall that followed, and she was seriously dead, no blame can be laid except to the wind, the damnable, disreputable wind.

My worry was that police and lawyers and courts would, like Annette, not see it this way.

But it was the wind, the bloody-minded wind.

The jet stream had arched up over Alberta, an infrequent thing, and only drooped back down when it reached the eastern edges of Saskatchewan. Thus the Arctic high November would normally invite into this prairie province was denied entry. In it’s place a high from the south, a trundling traveller from the Pacific, was shown in. It accepted and came from the west, leaping up and over the mountains like a gymnast, blowing strongly and warmly and disruptively.

It was a chinook and it put me in a rage.

Almost from the moment it began to blow I fumed, aimlessly, pointlessly, fatally.

“Why do we have to go to your mother’s?” I had asked earlier in the day, using my cranky voice.

“Because we have to,” Annette said dogmatically, the chinook a bellows to her own restless anger.

“I don’t want to. I’m not going.”

“Yes you are.” Although I could hear her voice becoming quiet, her words fewer (certain signs she was approaching the point of exploding in a rage) the winds were acting on me and I prodded.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m ...”

The plate crashed against the wall beside my head. A shard flew off and scratched my temple. Though it bled, it was a flesh wound only.

“Fuck!” I bellowed stupidly.

“Fuck!” Annette cried back. “Look what you’ve done now! That was one of the good plates!”

“I did? I’m not the one who threw it!”

“You might as well have!”

And so we fought and fumed and fought some more until we eventually went to her mother’s, where we battled on raging, raging.

Outside the chinook’s winds continued to breathe disorder and disaster. Like Spain’s tramontanas or California’s Santa Anas, they streamed over us like flame and we were firecrackers, our wicks exposed and ready to ignite.

Annette’s mother, too, was in a mood. For spite and contrariness she had planned a dinner of liver and onions, though she knew I despised this.

“I can’t eat that!” I insisted.

“Try.”

“Yes, try,” Annette added as a warning.

“I won’t!” I shouted.

“You’ll eat what you’re given and be thankful!” her mother yelled back.

“Eat this, bitch!” I exploded. “Be thankful for this!”

I hit her. It hardly seems possible now, yet I did.

Her jaw swung right but, strangely, the rest of her head more or less remained in place. She was like a puppet. Her eyes widened in wonder. I don’t imagine anyone had ever socked her before.

In the street beyond the house, the trees’ thrashing increased in violence as the winds grew, howling like drunken revelers rushing past.

And then Annette’s mother, in a rigid weave like a dropping bowling pin, tilted left, then right, forward, and back. Finally, she fell, cracking the back of her head on the kitchen counter.

She lay on the floor like an abandoned doll, blood pooling around her.

“Oh god,” Annette whispered. “What have you done?”

“It wasn’t me,” I said quietly. “The wind ...”

“The wind?” she said, turning to look at me. “The wind? Did the wind hit my mother in the face? Did the fucking wind fucking crack her fucking head open?”

Annette’s anger had it’s second steam. Beyond the house, the winds still blew though it seemed to me they were somehow different.

“I don’t mean that ...” I tried to say.

“Well what the hell do you mean?”

“I mean ... oh shit. Shouldn’t we do something? She’s bleeding.”

“Should we do something? ‘Should we do something’ he asks. Of course we should do something. So fucking do something!”

“What?”

“I’m a nurse now? How do I know!”

I had my cell phone. I called 911 although I knew there was a strong likelihood of unfortunate consequences for myself.

“Help,” I said.

“Can I get your address, sir?”

Thus the call was made. Not long afterwards police and paramedics arrived. The scene unfolded just as it does on local TV news, only without the editing or banal narrative. I saw a neighbour of Annette’s mom with a cell phone taking pictures. Another appeared to have a video camera. Both were buoyant with the tools of happy technology. Disaster was like going to Disneyland.

I had to recount my story several times to the police. I remember saying, “So anyway, my girlfriend was pissed about the whole thing. The whole thing being me because I was pissed. We were all pissed. It’s the winds, you know. The chinook? …”

Later, we would all be on the news – with editing and banal narration.

In all the collecting of details, the pronouncement of a death, the stern expressions of the police and earnest looks of the paramedics, I believe it was only I who noticed that, as I had suspected earlier, the wind had changed. It lacked commitment now. It had acquired an austerity and Zen-like ambivalence.

And it was now not so much from the west as from the north. It was no longer warm either. It carried a retributive coolness in it.

And my anger was spent. As was Annette’s.

The chinook was over.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Saturday November 19, 2005.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

The Introduction

2005-10-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

It was just a bad feeling. I couldn’t coordinate my limbs. Stepping forward, I would weave right. Reaching out to the fence for balance, I clutched air and staggered in quick-step fashion till I came to an abrupt stop, arms outstretched, weaving like an unstable antenna.

I tried to speak but my words slid, one into another, in an unintended stream of verbal sound.

“Uuuhthinkuuuuhhhhshouldsitdown …”

I was not as articulate as I had hoped. Someone else said:

“Maybe you should sit down …”

“Uhseddthat…”

I dropped like a sack to the ground. Strangely, my ass felt no pain.

Buddha-like, I remained there in a contemplative pose. My mind was utterly empty of thought except for a sense of perplexity. I could not understand why the world was tilting as if the planet itself was one of those Hollywood gimbal machines they use for rollicking special effects films.

My state of tilt-a-whirl peace then vanished as a new sensation swept up through me, along with much of the alcohol I had drunk and the evening’s Japanese cuisine.

“Ah geez …,” I heard a voice cry. “Well he’s sure as hell not getting in my car now.”

“We’ll have to hose him down.”

“Who was the genius who ordered sake anyway?”

I began to raise my hand as a way of indicating that it was I who had ordered the sake but as I did the world, in almost cinematic fashion, faded to black and I fell into the deep, dark and lifeless slumber of the man who will wake, many hours later, to the agonies of the hangover and other consequences.

No, it was not the best way to introduce myself to my future Japanese in-laws. But then it was Utako’s idea that we should meet this way. Surely it was her fault, not mine?

I’ll convince myself of this eventually.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday October 30, 2005.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories, Stories, Short stories

I once knew a man with a hole in his head

2005-10-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

"I once knew a man with a hole in his head. He put it there himself. He used a hand drill ..."

The rest of this story (4500 words) can be found here ...

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories, Stories, Short stories

Children's games

2005-10-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

The children are gone. Roger’s pants are gone. So is his wallet and with it our money.

I can’t help but think there is a connection.

Roger, in his early fifties and with a “paunch,” meaning he’s considerably overweight and very out of shape, stands raging. He wears nothing but an ill-considered thong. I am reminded of the week we spent on a beach in France.

Not very convincingly, I argue that it is just youthful hi-jinks. “Mischief,” as my own mother use to say.

Roger is having none of that. He is already out the door, on the front lawn, his head jerking wildly from left to right as he scans the street in both directions bellowing into his cell phone at some poor unfortunate who fields calls for the police.

Yes, Roger is a bit of an ass. This is probably why my children dislike him so much. Why they are so determined that, contrary to Roger’s ambitions, they feel he and I should be parted as soon as possible.

But what do children know of need and loneliness? Roger … well, he’s better than bloody Celine Dion songs and Chilean red wine by yourself on a Saturday night.

Still, the kids argue that I should be stronger than this. And I can’t help but agree with them.

But being alone is … alone.

Still, Roger in a thong on the front lawn screaming into a cell phone … maybe alone is not so bad?

My kids think so. That’s why they took his pants. I can picture the looks of wicked glee on their faces as they decided to do it.

Taking the wallet? I know Angela and Dez too well (they are my children after all). That was just an added touch. A last minute, “Hey, why not …”

For Roger, of course, the wallet is the whole thing. Nice touch, Dez. (He’s the one who thought of that - I’m sure of it. But Angie, she would have been in like Flynn.)

Though Roger would be focused on the wallet, I know it was all about the pants and the thong we are all too familiar with.

Certain older men have this mistaken notion that the suggestion of exposed genitalia is sexually arousing, hence things like thongs. But really, it is just another argument for youth. You only want those suggestions when there is a reasonable expectation of … well, a degree of fitness.

But it’s funny, you know. As I see Roger, ridiculous on the lawn, thundering madly in his thong, taking impotent swings at the inexorable progress of time, I can’t help but wonder if he is any more comical than me with my sad love songs and wine.

My children, love them though I do, and as much fun and laughter as they bring into my life, don’t get this. And they won’t, not for many years.

Inarticulate though he is, uncomprehending as he may be, it is Roger who, if he doesn’t understand me, at least feels what I feel even if he can’t put it into words (and thus expresses it through ill-fitting underwear and tantrums on the lawn).

But, oh, if he could!

As it is, when Angie and Dez return (giggling, no doubt), we’ll have yet another of our family talks – with me trying my damnedest to keep a straight face.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday Octobe6 16, 2005.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories, Stories, Short stories

Blue

2005-10-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

Neil Young was singing about prairie winds and Canada geese and I was getting into a relaxed, perhaps melancholy mood, when Russ said, “I had no idea that’s where that goes.”

“It doesn’t go there,” I said

“Oh.”

“Put it there. With that.”

We were cleaning up my mess. Trying to make sense of things. Or at least put them someplace where I wouldn’t keep tripping over my crap.

I was trying to put everything in a box, an individual, isolated place separate from the anarchy of collected things, which was what I spread had out over the floor.

So why, Russ wondered (I could tell) did I put a blue crayon in a box that had balloons? (And I had a lot of balloons – bags and bags of them.) Why did I put every other crayon in another box that, as anyone could see, was for crayons?

It was, of course, a memory box. Blue crayons and balloons. But Russ had no way of knowing this.

“Why did you put that there? That crayon with the balloons?”

I considered the question, then said, “Her name was Sherrie. When I met her the first time she was with her daughter. Her daughter’s name was Erin.”

“No one’s named Sherrie now.”

“No. You just don’t meet them anymore. I wonder what happened to all the Sherries?”

“I don’t know. I guess people got tired of them.”

“I never did,” I said.

It is peculiar, you know, the way names come and go. For a while it seems there are oodles of people with certain names. And then they’re gone and you can’t find anyone named that anymore. I wonder why that is?

“Sherrie use to say if you see something in blue or with a blue background, like sky or water, then it was like, whatever it was, it was okay. Because there was blue and you can’t be sad or angry or frustrated or anything except kinda happy when you had some blue.”

Russ looked at me in sort of a funny way, like he wasn’t convinced but would go along with it just to be agreeable.

“I guess that explains your place,” he said.

He was talking about my house. There’s a lot of blue. Russ even called it my Little Blue House. Walls, couch, towels – all shades of blue. I like to have a lot of it around.

Who doesn’t want to be happy?

Sherrie explained it when I saw her that day with Erin and they were colouring. Both were kneeling over, colouring. Erin had a bunch of balloons floating up behind her, bouncing lazily together, all on a string that was tied about her waist. When I asked why all the blue Sherrie said, “Because blue is our happy colour. Right Erin?”

Erin kept colouring, very intently, but I saw her head nod. The balloons waved in the air above her with the movement.

“Some people think blue is sad,” Sherrie said. “But it’s not. I suppose it can be but I can’t see how. I mean, if you’re singing the blues, the blues aren’t really blue. Not if you sing them right. If you do you probably feel pretty good because … well, you’re singing the blues. But blues, as in something sad, aren’t blue. They’re black.”

It sounded convoluted enough to be true.

I had met them at a folk festival. They were having a fine time colouring under a tree while someone up on the stage, I don’t remember who, was singing about a tragic love that involved liquor and knives and a woman named Betty who had loved “too well, too long.”

Erin and Sherrie weren’t listening. They were drawing and colouring. And all their crayons were blue.

So I asked why and that’s when Sherrie told me about blue and afterwards I told her my name and after that, well, things progressed.

Later, things kind of went to pieces. I’m not really sure why or how.

* * *

There was a knock at the door. I opened it and saw a young woman standing there. She was dishevelled in a fashionable way.

We shared what the novels would call a pregnant pause, then she said, “I’m Erin.”

“I know,” I said.

And I did know. I would have recognized her anywhere even though I hadn’t seen her in roughly twelve years. She was a budding young woman now with a keen, if wary, intelligence behind her eyes.

There was another long pause during which she looked past me into the house. From a distance, she was studying it. Learning it. Finally, she said, “That’s a lotta blue.”

“Yup,” I agreed. “I like it. Blue that is.”

She turned to me and looked directly in my eyes in the challenging way some young people can have.

“It wasn’t the blue, you know. It was Mom.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. But blue is all I have.”

She nodded. “Crayons. For me it was crayons.”

Reaching into her pocket she pulled out a handful of them. They were all blue.

(Originally publishd in Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday October 2, 2005.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories, Stories, Short stories

Does it ever stop raining in this town?

2005-10-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

“It’s raining.”

“Yes.”

“Will it stop?”

“Eventually.”

“When?”

“Dunno.”

“Shit. So why do you like this town so much? All it ever freakin’ does is rain.”

“There are places in Africa where this would be proof of God’s beneficence.”

“God’s what?”

“Beneficence.”

“What’s that?”

“Kindness. Goodness. A helpful gesture.”

“Well, this isn’t helping me. If it’s from God, I think he’s saying this place sucks.”

“No. Beneficence. God knows exactly what he’s doing. Doesn’t he?”

As he spoke, he turned to the rest of the crowd. Soberly, they all nodded in the affirmative.

The stranger, who did not care for the rain, sensed he was missing something the others all shared.

“So …” he began haltingly, wondering what it was everyone but he knew, “So what’s God know that I don’t? What’s he doing?”

The man he had been speaking to smiled at him. “He’s making a suggestion,” he said.

“And a damn good one!” he laughed, again nodding to the crowd.

They laughed with him. The stranger quickly developed a sense of discomfort that soon evolved into anxiety.

“Well, I think I’ll head back to my hotel now …”

“Oh, no, no …”

The crowd drew closer.

The stranger felt hands on his shoulder. The clasp of firm grips anchored on his limbs. The crowd of locals lifted him. The stranger remembered his youth and mosh pits.

But this was different.

They were moving him outside into the rain.

“Hey! Put me down! What’s the hell’s wrong with you people? Put me down!”

They did not put him down. Rather, they carried him aloft, almost as if he were a sacrifice, and carried him down to the dock.

They tossed him in the water.

Sputtering, he cried out, “Fuckers! Asshole fuckers!”

He swam back. But he could not get out of the water. Dozens of arms reached out to him. Unforgiving palms slapped down on his skull and forced him beneath the surface.

He struggled. He swallowed water. He lost consciousness and ceased resisting.

The crowd moved away.

As they left the dock someone said, “Look. I think it’s beginning to clear up. God, I love this town.”

Someone else laughed, and shouted, “Hey! I’ve got ‘Blonde on Blonde’ on my iPod!”

(Originally posted on Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday September 25, 2005.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories, Stories, Short stories