A Thousand Words

Anxiety

2012-01-19T05:39:00.002-06:00

I sit at my computer, my fingers hovering over the keyboard expectantly. I have opened a new window but I don’t recall where I was going to go. Someone walks by. My heart seizes in my chest as if I have done something wrong. The footsteps recede, and a massive adrenaline dump makes me woozy. I can barely see straight.

I worry about the last thing that came out of my mouth, twenty minutes ago. Worry that it may have been taken the wrong way. Worry that I gave something away I shouldn’t have. Worry I seemed stupid when I said it.

I open the new window on my computer again and freeze. What was it I wanted to do? I check the usual sites. Nothing has changed in the two minutes since I last checked.

My breathing is shallow. My heart, stopped only moments ago, now races to make up for lost beats. I feel a slow thud forming behind my left eye. I clench my fist around my pen. My knuckles don’t turn white; they are blood-red. I dig the pen into the flesh of my wrist until there is a large stain of blue ink there.

It will be hours until this goes away. Maybe until I wake up tomorrow. Worse, it could be days. This anxiety is going to kill me.

Alone

2012-01-12T05:55:00.001-06:00

I match the gait of the person ahead of me. Step left, shuffle, step right, pause. My gaze is glued to the sticky concrete sidewalk. The flashing lights do not draw my eyes. A roar of conversation fills my ears, wrapping me in an anonymous cocoon. People yell across the crowd at each other, elbow each other, laugh and even sing bawdy songs. No one speaks to me. Though I don’t look up, I’m sure no one glances my way.

I pause as the Converse sneakers in front of me pause. I hold out my ID and allow my hand to get stamped without glancing up. I wait until a large group squeezes through the narrow black door, jostling each other and fighting for prominence. When the doorway clears, I enter the room.

A blast of loud music punches my chest, empties my lungs of air. I take a deep breath; I taste the sickly tang of smoke and sweat and alcohol. I make my way to the edge of the crowd and hover in a bubble of space that no one is willing to pop. I wrap my arms close to my chest and plunge into the crowd. I slide against sweaty arms long ponytails. I am invisible, short, unobtrusive. I make my way through the crowd between elbows and knees. I reach the center of the mob and pause. There is so little space here that I am being touched by four people around me. The music blares and the people around me scream to be heard. Some hold hands or touch each other lightly on the shoulder to be noticed.

I do none of these things.

I am utterly alone.

Leaving the larkspur

2012-01-05T05:38:00.000-06:00

“I don’t know, Sissy,” said Starla. She brushed her blue hair from her eyes. “What if we get caught?”

Sissy fluttered her translucent wings impatiently. “Who cares?” she said. “We’ve never been out of the faery patch.”

Starla took flight and hovered uncertainly over the deep purple petals of her mother’s house in a tall, proud larkspur. It was one of a million in the hillside patch, but it was her favorite. She had hatched just a week and a half ago in this very larkspur.

“You know the larkspur doesn’t bloom forever, right?” Sissy said. “All the faeries will have to find new houses when the flowers turn brown. So we’d just be getting a head start.”

“Oh, all right,” Starla said.

The two tiny faeries took off together. Their wings made a faint buzzing sound, softer than a hummingbird. They passed ladybugs headed out to market and honey bees with pollen-speckled faces. They laughed as they spun higher and higher on a gentle updraft. Soon the vast larkspur forest was spread out below them like a green sky filled with deep purple stars.

Sissy took Starla’s hand. “Are you ready?” she cried over the rushing wind.

“Ready!”

They snatched at a passing dogwood petal and clung to it, screaming with glee. “Where will we land?” Starla yelled.

“Who knows? It could be anywhere!” Sissy replied.

Hummingbird, part three

2011-12-10T08:26:00.001-06:00

My tears dried, salty riverbeds traced on my cheeks. I listened for the fall of footsteps, but only the calls of a thousand birds reached my ears. I stood and moved toward the sound. I stepped softly, hoping no one could hear me over the cacophony of the birds. At the end of the hall, I tried a massive door. It was locked. I knelt and whispered to the lock, and it slid out of place. I opened the door, pulling with both arms against its weight.

Inside, the moonlight poured though the leaded glass windows like melted silver. It illuminated hundreds of birdcages. The birds fell silent as I entered the room. As one, they turned on their perches and watched me with inscrutable black eyes.

My predecessors.

Baba had told me I was to become a hummingbird if the prince didn’t take me. Looking around, I saw everything but hummingbirds. Great horned owls with twitching feathery tufts, speckled brown sparrows, proud blue jays, slender white cranes, tiny goldfinches with little black hats, all of them stood perfectly still and watched me.

Perhaps I could free these women from their enchantments. I opened my arms wide and spoke some sacred words. Nothing happened. All the birds gave a great squawk of disappointment.

For the next hour, I opened every cage and freed the birds. They walked or flew in a cloud around my head, making no noise. When the last birdcage was open, I pushed the door wide and went into the hallway. A blackbird flew ahead and paused, hovering in midair, looking at me. I followed.

Through the castle I followed the blackbird, down and out, treading on bunched carpet and cold tile. When we reached the main door, I pushed it. No one had locked this door, and it swung wide. The blackbird flew outside to freedom… and transformed. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair, tangled and disheveled. She looked at her long white hands and smiled.

“Come!” she cried, and her voice was the raucous call of a blackbird.

The cloud of birds flew through the doorway, each transforming in the moonlight to the woman she had once been.

When every last bird was through the door, I followed. We left the door standing wide and started to run together, running for freedom.

It was time to go see Baba.

Hummingbird, part two

2011-10-07T15:18:00.001-05:00

The prince shoved me into the carriage and followed me inside. Baba trailed behind him, calling for payment. He slammed the door in her face and called for the driver to whip up the horses. The carriage lurched into motion, and I clung to my seat to avoid being rocked onto the prince. With Baba gone, I relaxed a little. I didn’t know what the prince was capable of, not yet, but I knew only Baba could turn people into birds.

We both remained silent for the carriage ride up to the castle. When we halted, the prince grabbed my arm again and yanked me outside. I ran to keep up with my dragged arm, stumbling twice. The prince led me through the castle gate, flanked by liveried servants, and into the building. The high ceiling dwarfed me, and I felt myself shrinking at the shoulders.

He led me down hallways, up spiral staircases, through grand rooms, and up more stairs. Left, right, left, right, right, up, over, left, through... I became completely lost. As my breath began to come more raggedly, he finally halted before a large wooden door and opened it. “Your quarters, wife,” he said.

An icy chill ran down my spine at the word, but I gave a half-bow and entered the room he indicated. As I was staring at the furnishings and trying to take in my new surroundings, the door shut behind me. I heard the sliver of a steel lock slide into place outside the door.

I waited for hours. I paced the room, treading on the thin rug and cold tile floor without noticing their grandeur. Someone sent up food when the light in the window grew orange. I gobbled down the warm stew hungrily and waited for full dark to descend outside the window that overlooked the steep forest below.

When darkness fell, no one came to light my fire. I took that as a sign that no one would be wandering the corridors. I knelt by the door and pressed my lips to the keyhole. I had learned a few tricks from being Baba’s slave. I whispered the sacred words, and I heard the lock slide away. I turned the handle. The door opened without resistance. I crept into the hallway and shut the door behind me, panting softly. I had to escape.

I went down the hallway and took my first left turn, then the last hall on the right, then through a dark dining room, and down some stairs. I walked to the third door on the right and opened it. A cupboard. I felt my panic rising. I was lost and I couldn’t get out even if I didn’t get caught.

I wandered the halls for hours, growing increasingly frustrated as I tried and failed to get out of the castle. On my eighteenth failure, I sank to my knees and wept softly.

It was then I heard it. The call of a thousand birds.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hummingbird, part one

2011-09-08T06:52:00.003-05:00

I stared at the white expanse outside my window. The glass was smudged, fogged... but it didn’t matter because there was nothing to see out there but snow. This was the first carriage I had ever been in that had a glass window. I wasn’t thrilled about it; it let in the cold. Suddenly the horses stopped; I threw out my arms to prevent myself from toppling to the floor.

“It’s time,” said Baba.

She reached out; I flinched away from her. She slapped my arm with one hooked hand; the sting was sharp and immediate. She pinched my cheeks. “Nice and rosy,” she said. Her voice turned dark. “You know what will happen if the prince doesn’t fancy you.”

“Yes, madam,” I said meekly. I felt my options slipping out from beneath me; soon I would be as a castaway, clutching an ice floe and treading frigid water. Baba had sworn to turn me into a hummingbird if the prince didn’t select me. I believed her.

I pulled up my hood to cover my red hair and opened the carriage door. The driver was standing outside; he held out his arm to help me down. I caught his eye and begged him silently, with my gaze, to help me. If he understood, he ignored me.

I straightened my dress and looked up. My breath caught. The castle was perched on the mountain straight ahead. It looked straight out of a fairy tale. But it looked desolate, unreachable, cold and drafty. I shivered.

A man hurried up to me. He stood only as high as my waist and had bluish skin, as if he were made of ice. He pressed a cup into my hands. I sipped tentatively and sighed. Hot glühwein. It warmed my spirits.

The little blue man suddenly prostrated himself on the snowy road as a very tall man with black hair approached. He wore a golden ring on every finger; this must be the prince. I curtseyed.

The man spoke in a cold voice. “What is this you have brought me, Baba?”

“Your future wife, your highness,” Baba said. “She is timid and pretty and knows how to cook.”

“What need have I for a cook? I have three already.”

“She comes from good stock,” Baba said, ignoring the prince. “But her family are all deceased, so none will pester you.”

The prince considered me for the first time. I withered under his gaze. I stared at the ground as Baba continued to wheedle, but her voice fell on my ears as random noise. I was so afraid, my hand shook out some of the glühwein from my cup. It fell on the snow like a splash of red, red blood.

Abruptly the prince grabbed my arm. Roughly. I gasped and dropped the cup. The prince paid no mind and steered me into a gilt carriage that was waiting nearby. I should have been listening more carefully. What had he decided? Was I to be transformed, turned into another bird for his collection? Or was I to be enslaved as his wife?

And which was worse?

TO BE CONTINUED...

The nickel

2011-07-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think back over my many short years and they flash before me like a butterfly, vivid yet fleeting. But they always slide away like a dewdrop in the morning heat. The doctors tell me I’ll live among my memories soon enough, that I will no longer have a present except in my past. Sometimes I don’t believe them. How can such a strong man ever become so hopelessly lost in his own brain? But other times, I think of the liquid nature of my memories, how they slip away like molten glass, and I sink into pure terror.

I don’t want to live in a jungle of confusion. I don’t want to hurt my sons, not remembering their names. I don’t want to forget my grandchildren’s cherubic faces. I am afraid. And yet the one thing I want most to remember is slipping away fastest, because I have never told anyone. Will you remember it for me, when I have fallen into nonbeing?

When I was a pilot in the war, Jeremy and I were inseparable. He had blazing red hair and freckles and was not a day older than eighteen. We passed a nickel back and forth between us, each day. It was a token of being alive. Sometimes the only time we saw each other was in the mess hall, when we would pass the nickel for another day. He’d smile as the nickel changed hands. “Can’t believe you made it outta that one,” he’d say, and thump my shoulder three times.

Jeremy shaved my eyebrows one night as I slept. We had been off duty and celebrating our last day of freedom before returning to the war. I had gotten a little drunk, homesick for the pretty young bride I barely knew back home, so I never woke as Jeremy shaved both my eyebrows clean off my forehead.

Well, there was nothing to do but retaliate when I found my brows hairless and strange in the morning. I found Jeremy’s helmet and filled it with shaving cream. He was suiting up as he passed me the nickel. “You carry it today, naked-eyes,” he said.

I pocketed the nickel and watched with a smirk as he climbed up into his helicopter. He didn’t put on his helmet until he was in the air. Over the microphone, I heard him mutter, “You son of a—”

The helicopter exploded. Shot down by the enemy. The grin faded from my lips as I clutched the nickel in my pocket. I didn’t even duck from the debris flying everywhere. I just held on to that nickel as tightly as I could. I just knew Jeremy could come back if I held on to that nickel.

I still have the nickel, after all these years. The memory slips away from me like dew on a crisp golden apple on a warm autumn morning, and in some ways, I am happy to see it go. One day, it will just be a nickel. I hope someone holds on to it for me.

In the rosebush

2011-06-11T09:24:00.002-05:00

Lynxie didn’t bother building webs. Spiders who built webs relied on stupid creatures to blunder into them. No, it was far better to be clever and trick one’s prey into coming near enough to pounce.

It was high noon, and she was admiring the way her perfectly green skin matched the color of the leaves on the rosebush when she saw it. A fat black fly was preening its wings on a nearby rosebud. All eight of her legs tensed with anticipation. She hadn’t eaten in a few days and was starting to feel weak. She needed this meal.

“Hello, fly,” she called.

The fly froze, one leg hovering over its translucent wing. Its many eyes looked frantically for the source of the call, but she was too well camouflaged for it to make her out.

“You’re looking very black and shiny today,” she said serenely.
The fly lowered its leg slowly and fluttered its wings.

“You must be king of all the flies,” she crooned, “with your shimmering eyes and vibrant wings.”

The fly puffed out its abdomen proudly.

“But why,” she asked, a note of eloquent sorrow in her voice, “why do you sit on that browning rosebud? That cherry perch detracts from your beauty. Nay, green would suit you far better.”

The fly glanced down and considered the petal beneath its sticky feet. It inched toward a leaf, toward Lynxie. She sunk onto her legs, ready. “The king of the flies deserves a better throne,” she said softly. “A nice verdant leaf is what you need.”

The fly lit into the air and hovered for a moment, deciding. She followed it with her shrewd eyes; she held absolutely still on the leaf. The fly circled, and then landed on a particularly luxuriant leaf.

She pounced.

Pot of gold for two

2011-03-29T10:03:00.001-05:00

“The sprite came through here,” Kardent said. He pointed at the snow. “See? He tried to disguise his tracks as hare footprints.”

“I don’t know,” Galla said dubiously. “Looks like bunny tracks to me. If that.”

Kardent rolled his eyes. “That’s the point, innit?” He set off after the tracks, and Galla had no choice but to follow, lifting her skirts to keep the snow off them. Kardent kept stopping and sniffing the air, as if he could smell a creature that stood no higher than his knees. Once he even stripped some bark off a birch and licked it. She was pretty sure that was for show. Aye, he had no idea what he was doing and was lucky it had snowed so at least he had tracks to follow.

Suddenly, he stopped and pointed to a scrubby jumble of branches and leaves and said, “He’s in there.”

Startled, Galla peered at the burrow. “You sure?”

“Sure as a tax man,” he said firmly.

She frowned. “How do we get him out?”

Kardent didn’t reply. He pulled his tinderbox out of his tunic and struck his flint behind the burrow. It was damp, so it kept going out, but he was persistent, and eventually it was aflame.

They waited.

And then the sprite leapt out of the burning burrow and into Kardent’s waiting arms. He struggled, kicking and biting and flailing like an angry cat. He had flaming red hair and a scrunched-up nose. “What’re ye doing tae me home, ye filthy buggers?” he screeched.

“We’ve caught you,” Galla said serenely. “Fair as pie. We want the gold.”

The sprite stared up at her, his big green eyes comically round. “There’s nae gold here, ye dunderhead,” he squeaked. “Ye don’t see any rainbow, now, do ye?”

Galla looked around. “No, but we want the gold anyhow.”

The sprite laughed. “You burned my house, ye blaggards! There’ll be no gold for you, not now, not ever!”

The air shimmered around the sprite, and, though Kardent visibly tightened his grip on the creature, the sprite transformed into a hare and wriggled out of his captor’s arms. He bounded away, white tail twitching indignantly.

“Ugh,” Galla said. “Now we have to start all over again.”

Alone

2011-02-24T10:25:00.003-06:00

I sit on the bench and, shivering, wrap my shawl tightly around my shoulders. It is a fall morning, cold and crisp like a chilled apple, and every breath plunges into my lungs like icy water into a swimmer’s mouth. But the colors are lovely; the tree line across the barren field is beginning to show splashes of crimson and gold amid the dark greens and browns. The sky is a solid azure, the color a sky should be, the color it rarely is.

I am waiting… for nothing. I sit here with no purpose. I don’t watch people as they jog by with huffing breath, and I don’t expect anyone to join me on my hard bench. I don’t enjoy the weather or the scenery. I merely sit. I am here to be alone, and that is all.

It has been a long time since I found company. I have been lonely, surrounded by friends and family, screaming silently in an earless crowd. But now, as a flock of geese rushes above my head, honking and beating the air with powerful wings, I find my company. Alone. I take a deep, cold breath and slowly close my eyes.

The anthropologist and the mummy

2011-01-18T11:08:00.002-06:00

The hieroglyphs on the walls of my tomb speak of how my spirit will accomplish eternal life, and all the tasks I need to perform before I can live forever. The writing praises the gods, describes my mighty battles, shows me with my wife and son, and outlines the curse against all who dare disturb my tomb. The curse is powerful and protects me against grave-robbers.

I thought the hieroglyphs took care of everything. They give my soul nourishment and instruction, they glorify my name and the name of the gods, and they protect my body and my possessions. I thought that was enough, but it wasn’t. Nothing could have prepared me for you.

When you entered my tomb, you were carrying a dazzling light. My spirit watched you and wondered how the light made no smoke. This was a strange, cold fire that formed your torch. You wore a headdress with a wide brim to protect your fair skin. You had beautiful, kohl-rimmed eyes and painted lips. Your skin was exposed to a point of scandal, but your comrades did not look askance at you. Your knees were showing, and your skin glistened with sweat in the heat. You exclaimed in your high voice over the beauty of my possessions, and it was then that I fell in love with you.

I felt the curse begin to take hold of your neck, and I hastily loosened its grasp. You went straight to my sarcophagus, ignoring that of my wife and son, and you laid your soft fingers gently on the gilded wood. A tingle shot through me at your touch. I loved you completely, already. I would let you do anything—take my possessions, remove my body to your world, anything—for your love.

The hieroglyphs on my walls do not protect my soul from love.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

2011-01-13T11:03:00.005-06:00

It was brutally cold. I was wearing two pairs of pants, two sweaters, a coat, gloves, and two hats, and I was still shaking violently. The snow muffled everything. The mass graves were hidden from sight under a serene blanket of snow, which lay over everything like a crisp linen sheet, freshly ironed and bleached. There was no sun, but the day was bright from all the whiteness.

I was so cold, it was hard to listen to the tour guide. He said, “Ja?” a lot and told stories about the people who were imprisoned and died here. Horrific stories, like the man who was beaten bloody and then forced to strip and clean up his own blood with the rags of his clothing. I tried to imagine being imprisoned here and wearing nothing but a thin pajama-like outfit. I couldn’t. I shook in the cold and tried to tough it out, as if by standing for a couple hours in the cold I could somehow stand with the thousands of people who suffered here, an act of solidarity. If I couldn’t do it, in all the warm clothing I had, how could they stand in two-month-long death lines?

We reached Station Zed. It was only foundations now, but the building was easy enough to imagine. We saw the room where people were sent to be shot. We saw the gas chamber. We saw the incinerators. And then I closed my eyes and saw her.

Her face was gaunt, her hair thin and wispy. Dirty gray rags hung from her skeletal frame. She reached out to me, a gesture of supplication. Tears welled in her gray eyes. She gestured at me to come and join her. Gestured desperately. I opened my eyes and gasped, struggling for breath as if I had almost drowned.

I wanted to get away from this evil place, as fast as my feet would carry me.

Heidelberg Castle

2011-01-06T09:30:00.002-06:00

The fog was dense; we couldn’t see more than a few hundred meters in any direction. It had a silencing effect on the normal noise of the city; car horns and voices seemed muffled and far away in the fog.

We lazily sauntered alongside the river, watching a dog chase geese or pointing at the regal buildings that overlooked the shore. Great chunks of ice floated in the rushing waters, washed away to unknown distances, soon out of sight. Each step revealed more of the city across the river. A steeple materialized, then a statue, then a towering city gate.

We were walking across the Old Bridge when we realized something dark hovered in the fog above the city. We could barely make out its edges, jagged but clearly manmade with straight lines and arches. We realized we were looking at the castle. It floated serenely in the fog, tempting us to walk back in time through the mist.

Low tide

2010-11-10T19:26:00.002-06:00

Her whole life was lived between high tide and low tide, moments of giggling grandeur and moments of sheer emptiness. She stood in the shell-pocked sand that would normally be underwater and looked across the sound to the island. There, at the island, people laughed. There, a man touched a woman’s arm, his glove whispering across her sleeve, whole books of communication in the touch, almost obscured by the wind. There, a girl tugged the sleeve of her mother, and the woman’s hazel eyes fell with a smile on the face of her daughter. There was where people belonged.

She was barefoot; her toes slipped on the fungus that blanketed the shells like moss. How many creatures was she killing just by existing, by standing on the shore? A seagull lighted on the sand just out of the water and began to search for food. It was merely a silhouette in the gloaming. Was that all she was, just a being in search of sustenance? But no, seagulls culled the population of their prey, didn’t they, served a purpose. She had no purpose, except to stand on the shore and wonder about the people on the faraway island.

She stretched her arms wide. Her loneliness could not be contained in the gesture. She shut her eyes as tight as they could close. She screamed silently, her mouth agape in a perfect O.

The mansion

2010-11-03T08:49:00.000-05:00

They call it Mount Pleasant, but to Joseph, it’s anything but pleasant. The stifling heat of the outbuildings, the occasional beatings, the hands rubbed raw from hours of scrubbing, none of it is in the way of pleasant. The whites call it the Grand Dame of the houses in the area, something about how pretty the house is, a mixture of Scottish and Georgian style, he overhears. But no Grand Dame harbors such wanton cruelty in her house. Surely not.

The people who hold the tours never talk about Joseph, hardly mention the slaves that live in this house. Joseph resents being ignored, forgotten. No one remembers them this far north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Oh, he’s heard the abolitionists, after his time, talk in these halls. He’s heard the modern folk talk idly about how terrible slavery was, before moving on to exhort the lovely architecture or the mysterious door that goes nowhere, set in the wall just for symmetry.

But when it gets dark and the tours are all done and the shutters have been secured against the night, Joseph makes sure the Grand Dame remembers her past. He waits until the uniformed people check the halls with flashlights at intervals; then he sends things crashing through the upstairs hallway, and he remembers the sound of a scream, a footstep, a fallen pot of soup for which he is beaten.

The security guards refuse to face Joseph alone. They either neglect their duty to check the building at night, or they come in pairs, never venturing upstairs, even if they see a light on. They, at least, know the Grand Dame’s secrets. Joseph lives to make sure someone remembers. Joseph is of his time, and this time, and all times. Joseph is past, present, and future. Joseph is here, always.

Social agoraphobia

2010-10-21T15:50:00.001-05:00

In my shell, I lay silent, striving to make even my heartbeat faint. But I must come out sometimes. When I do, it’s claws first. My eyes blink rapidly in the sudden brightness, and my arms tremble. The world does not understand my kind. My world is filled with people chatting happily away, never knowing how much I need to hide away in my shell. When I see the funny guy across the way, my heart seizes up. My eyes dart this way and that, searching desperately for a way to change my route so I don’t have to walk past him and laugh at his jokes.

When I finally get a glimpse of a life I think I want, it’s out of reach. I hate myself for making it so impossible to attain. The first step would be easy, invited even. But I think ahead; the next ten million steps would be torturous and unsafe. The people around me are all crabs. But I have invested so much in them. Can I really crawl out of this shell? Self-doubt consumes me. I don't know what I want.

I draw deep within my shell. I have to think about this.

The grape

2010-09-30T10:09:00.001-05:00

There was a pleasant, chilly bite in the October breeze, sharply contrasted with the warmth of the citrine late-afternoon sun. It hadn’t rained in more than a week; the grass was brittle and crispy beneath my shoes. I held a grape in my hand. The iris sphere was dusty with pesticide and slightly wrinkled from being clutched like a talisman as I ambled through the vineyard. It was fat and squashed. I regretted finding it after its prime. This one perfect grape had been missed in the harvest, seemingly alone.

I imagined putting it in my mouth; I would burst the tender skin with my teeth, allow the juice to spill over my tongue, not chewing until I felt I might drown. It would be slightly bitter, and the taste would remind me of my grandmother’s cooking. I would dream that night of her, tell her about the grape, and wake in the morning convinced I had spoken to her actual spirit. I would tell no one, but fervently search for the next encounter. I would fail to keep appointments in favor of traveling from one distant restaurant or farm to another, trying to find foods that tasted like hers. I would lose my job and eventually my friends, having succumbed to obsession in finding taste memories to prompt spirit dreams. I would eat through my savings; I would be reduced to begging on the streets and hoping for a sign of her in soup lines.

I buried the grape in the dusty soil at the base of the barn. My fingernails bore a faint purple stain, the only evidence of my barely escaped future. Something so powerful and dangerous should never be eaten.

Love story

2010-09-07T11:35:00.001-05:00

You began to follow her because she intrigued you. She was full of elegant contradictions. She always told people what she thought, but she valued respect. She was a rebel, but she played by the rules. She was wildly emotional, but she schooled her face to enigmatic impassivity. She was quiet, funny… shy when you met her, outgoing among friends. She was smarter, more ambitious, more obsessive than you could begin to fathom. She was an intellectual crazy person. She was as tender as a butterfly, as tough as stone.

You curled your tail around her legs and ensnared her. You entwined the threads of your life around her, tied them to her. Your heart rejoiced with the knowledge that you had caught her, made her yours. Her edges met yours like the continents of Pangæa coming together for the first time in two hundred and fifty million years. Your world sang with rightness.

As time passed, though, you discovered her edges to be sharp. Her blunt nature became less engaging, more difficult to tolerate. She demanded too much respect, too much correctness. Her mood swings were baffling and unpredictable. Her silence seethed; her jokes fell flat. She held you back socially with her shyness and craziness. You feared she looked down on you because she was smart, ambitious, obsessive. You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.

Quietly at first, then with increasing rage, you began to cut the threads. You had forgotten why you were here. Your guttural yell shredded your throat as you pushed her off the cliff. You stood with your hands on your hips, your lips pursed grimly, and watched with satisfaction as she fell and fell and fell.

Things to do at a concert

2010-08-06T09:41:00.005-05:00

I grinned and elbowed a girl who was jumping up and down and throwing out her hands. She happily pushed me back. My face smeared across a slick shoulder; both were so covered in sweat, I immediately slid off. I lost my balance and teetered dangerously, but there were too many bodies between me and the floor for me to actually reach it. The owner of the wet shoulder grabbed my arm and righted me. He grinned. He was missing a canine. His septum piercing glinted in the indirect red-and-blue stage lights.

He was bulky and nearly a head taller than most of the others around. I gestured, pointing to the ceiling. “You mind?” I had to scream into his ear to be heard over the Celtic punk music, which was so loud the wooden floors vibrated.

He looked at me appraisingly. Probably guessing how much I weighed. “All right,” he shouted. “Come on.” He tapped the shoulder of another big guy and pointed at me, then pointed at the ceiling.

I checked my hair. It was lopsided and straggling out of its bun, but not yet completely loose. My newfound friend cupped his hands and I stepped as gently as I could into them. The other guy steadied me by grabbing my thigh.

“One…” he counted, hoisting me and lowering me instantly. “Two… Three!”

With a huge heave, I was flung over the crowd by one foot. People’s heads slammed into my ribcage. With one hand, I held my pants pocket, which contained a wad of cash and my cell phone. With the other, I reached out to try to spread my weight across other people.

Soon people realized there was a crowd surfer nearby. They threw up their hands and grabbed whatever part of me that threatened to crack their skulls. I did my part; I kept my feet elevated so I didn’t smack someone in the face with my shoes. My body heaved in time with the music, held up by a dozen people.

I surged forward and tipped over the front, just before the stage. A beefy security guard caught me and lowered me to the ground. Here, the music was a solid thing; it pushed me back. The security guard pointed me in the direction he wanted me to go. I looked up at the bass player, whose foot was near my head, and smiled. I turned and jogged back to fight my way back through the crowd and do it all over again. From my chest bubbled a strange noise, a hysterical screaming laugh from the thrill of a great show.

Cutting grass

2010-07-29T15:35:00.004-05:00

It’s the headstones he can’t read that bother Jimmy. Uncle Rick started preaching at the Lutheran church before he was born, so Jimmy’s used to the cemetery. Mostly. He’s been mowing the church grounds since he turned twelve. An exhilarating prospect, it seemed, the ability to operate machinery without any grown-ups looking over his shoulder. Uncle Rick and Aunt Eliza never give him any peace at anything else. It’s always wash your hands or help can these pickles or have you finished your homework? He wonders if his parents were like that when they were still alive, but he can’t remember.

He drags the mower from the shed. He pulls a cord, and the mower starts with a wheezy cough. It would be better if he had a riding mower, he thinks as he begins his circuit of the churchyard. If he did, he wouldn’t feel the chill of walking over someone’s grave. With his parents’ graves, he stands to the side and pushes the mower way over, bending his body in a funny arc to avoid stepping on them. But he can’t do it like that for every plot; it’d take all weekend to mow.

No, other than his parents, Jimmy walks all over the dead every Saturday. Ordinarily it’s no big deal. The somber, shiny headstones don’t seem to mind, and the big fancy pillars almost seem to like having the unruly grass tamed and in order. But a few of the really old ones, the thin flaking slabs with indiscernible markings on them, the ones that encourage dead-looking weeds to flower and bloom nearby, those don’t like it at all. A chill shoots through his heel, up his leg, and grips his heart with icy fingers each time he walks on one of those.

His friend Bo says it’s because witches are buried in the ancient graves. Jimmy doesn’t think that’s right. Weren’t witches forbidden from hallowed ground? Something like that. Thinking of Bo makes him suddenly appear, as usual, and Jimmy lets the mower die. Locust song rises to fill the silence.

“Ho, Bo,” he says, grinning.

Bo waves and stuffs his hands in his overall pockets. He is chewing a piece of wheat, even though there are no wheat fields in town anymore. Not since—Jimmy screws up his face, trying to remember what Ms. Taylor said in a history lesson—not since the Depression or some crazy long time ago. It’s all about corn anymore.

“Whatcha doin’, Jimmy?” Bo asks amiably. He is a simple boy, who would be in special ed classes if he went to school, which he doesn’t. Now he thinks about it, Jimmy is sure he’s never run into Bo outside the churchyard. Bo always asks questions to which the answer seems ridiculously obvious.

“Mowin’,” Jimmy replies. “The old ’uns are angry today. They been grabbin’ my heartstrings something fierce.” He likes that word - heartstrings. He imagines his heart tied up with loose shoelaces when he says it.

Bo nods wisely and squints toward the older section of graves. “They ain’t happy with you,” he says. “They figured with all the racket you make you’d take the time to figure out who they is.”

Jimmy frowns. He is never sure if he should respond to Bo’s fantasy world, or just stay quiet. “I dunno,” he says finally, “how they expect me to do that. Not like there’s a map. All the records got destroyed in a fire before I was born.”

“Pah!” says Bo. “You talk to ’em, of course. You talk to me, don’t you?”

He saunters away without waiting for an answer. By the time Jimmy has thought of something to say to that, Bo has disappeared behind a tree. He shakes his head. Bo is always appearing and vanishing. He’s a strange boy and he never knows how to end conversations politely.

Jimmy starts up the mower again. The other grave he doesn’t walk on is a tiny square on the ground. It has the name Bo Morley on it, 1906. He thinks it’s cool that someone in 1906 had the same name as his friend. He leans way, way over and pushes the machine in front.

Sunset on the mountain

2010-07-15T09:54:00.004-05:00

Donald tried to ignore the burning in his thighs as he trudged up the mountain. The man ahead of him was using his sword as a walking-stick. Dust and dirt was caked the blade, which warped ever so slightly, but at least there was no mud. It hadn’t rained in weeks.

Donald had strapped his gun to his back; he’d sold his sword for flour months ago. It chafed under the itchy, unwashed wool of his plaid. He snatched a loose end of his tartan and mopped his face with it; he was dripping with sweat. Back home, dusk fell quickly. Home… he felt a familiar pang to think of Mary and the bairns. But here, in these unfamiliar, bug-swarmed mountains, dusk took its time. Or maybe he just felt that way because of the intolerable heat and the march through rhododendron hell. He wondered if it was this miserable in the Indies. Some of his clan had ended up in those islands. He doubted he’d ever see them again.

He shook himself. He always got like this after a long day of marching. He always brooded on what they were up against, and the cruel knowledge that he’d narrowly escaped death in one war only to march directly toward it again. You’re only tired, he told himself sternly. Just hungry and tired.

Thankfully, it looked like the column had stalled ahead. Were they finally to make camp atop this ghastly mountain? He reached the rocky precipice and couldn’t help but gasp. The bloodstain of sunset had crept across the sky and was reflecting off the granite of the mountain in a thousand shades of pink and amaranth. It filtered through the thin green leaves of the rhododendrons; they were suddenly laden with fruits of carmine and vermilion light. As he drank in the beauty of the land, the pipers filled their bellows and slowly took up a haunting song. The melody fell on the air and soared up the mountain. Donald closed his eyes against it all, and wept.

Home is where the fire is

2010-06-23T12:28:00.006-05:00

It was a chilly night, the kind autumn sends to make sure you remember it has arrived. Brendan showed up late to the party. He hung back a moment, unsure of himself. A small fire crackled in an iron pit on the patio; people clutched plastic cups and laughed manically at jokes that weren’t all that funny. The men wore fedoras and artfully torn jeans, the women tank tops or skirts; they all shivered or rubbed their hands vigorously, having chosen to underdress and be stylish rather than warm.

He walked up to the patio; he made it all the way to the steps before anyone realized someone new had arrived. A chorus of loud greetings assaulted him. He smiled wordlessly. He hadn’t seen most of these people since high school.

The hostess, an old friend, appeared from inside the house carrying a camera in one hand and a drink in the other. “Brendan!” she shrieked, nearly dropping both items as she raised her arms to hug him. He had never understood why some people feel the need to start and end every encounter with a hug, but he complied. “Ooooh,” she said pulling back and winking at him. “What’s that I felt in your pocket?”

He pulled out his two staves. “I spin fire these days, remember?” he said. “I was told you wanted me to spin tonight.”

“Oh, will you, please?” she said, batting her eyelashes. He smiled again, a little charmed despite himself.

He had no idea why he was here. He was starting to feel like it was a mistake as he accepted an apricot beer from someone he didn’t know. This wasn’t his crowd. He’d moved out of state right after school because he’d never felt like this was home. But his cousin had talked him into the party. These people were talking politics. These people were worried about their weight. These people had children. None of them had ever seen anyone spin fire, or any of the other things he could do.

He finished his beer, stepped into the modest yard, and began arranging his things. The moment the poi were alight, he felt more at ease. Out here, he couldn’t see the faces of the other party-goers. They fell mostly silent, though occasionally they yelled at him good-naturedly. He started to spin, slowly at first, but gradually gaining speed and complexity. Just like always, a dozen camera bulbs began to flash. He was home, after all.

Outcast

2010-06-04T10:27:00.008-05:00

Glaring at the post, Blikkerd morosely rubbed his sore tooth. Those jerks would get it one day, he thought, pounding one green fist into the other with a satisfying fleshy smack. Oh sure, they could point and laugh now, but Blikkerd was certain that he’d hit his growth spurt one day and grow three times bigger. Then he’d finally stand nose-to-nose with the ogre bullies, those arrogant debonair dudes who had all the girls falling over themselves for attention. Then he’d be the one tying people to posts by their teeth and winning misty-eyed female gazes.

Surely he couldn’t remain a shrimp forever.

He kicked a tree trunk in anger; its bark split a few inches. He roared in frustration. If any other ogre had kicked a tree, it would have fallen with a magnificent crash. A squirrel sat in high up the tree, skritching away at a walnut and eyeing him curiously. He roared again. The squirrel barked back at him and stuck out its tongue.

Blikkerd sighed heavily and walked on through the woods. It would be days before he could show his face back in the caves. No one would soon forget his flailing arms and unmanly shrieks when they’d tied him to the post. No, he’d need to let that effect wear off before returning home.

Feeling rather lonely, he walked for hours, barely noticing where his feet led him. As it grew dark, he started to look for a glade where he could sleep. He was NOT afraid of the dark, not at all. He had a severe allergy to darkness, was all, and the only cure, unfortunately, was sleeping near others. It was not going to be a good night, spent all alone.

He stumbled through a thick patch of fragrant pine and stopped dead at what he saw. In the clearing there lay sleeping three beautiful faeries. Their skin glimmered like snow in the late evening sunshine; their diaphanous wings caught the light and reflected prisms of color. Their lunch, clearly stolen from humans in the nearby village, lay snugged by the nearest faery. But most beautiful of all, an ogre slept against a tree, part of their little group. The ogre was ridiculously small… barely bigger than Blikkerd himself.

Blikkerd could hardly contain the feeling of hope that set his heart to hammering. He crept into the circle and settled against a tree across from the other ogre. He would wait until they awoke. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t tie his teeth to a post when they discovered him.

Nest

2010-06-04T08:42:00.006-05:00

Spring cleaning fever set upon me in early March. Something about chartreuse buds peeking from behind the russet film of winter triggers an innate need to tidy our human nests. I scrubbed, I donated, I reorganized and folded. I turned my gaze to my little lawn, where my wrath fell upon the blight embodied by a giant rusted satellite dish.

I had no idea how to get rid of the thing myself; it was far too large and I hadn’t the proper tools to dig it up. So I posted an ad online. “Free to the first taker: scrap metal in the form of old satellite dish. Must remove it personally.” Within hours I had four replies and wondered if I should have charged people for the service. I arranged for someone to remove it while I was away from the house.

When I got home, I strode purposefully to the spot where the satellite dish had once darkened my yard. A deep hole was the only indication it had ever been there… except for a bird’s nest. Tiny naked creatures with yellow bills and bits of brown fuzz filled the nest. Anguish rose in my chest. I hadn’t even considered the time of year, the likelihood that a bird might choose the satellite dish as a safe place to lay her eggs.

I tried to leave the nest alone to entice the mother back. But when it became clear the mother wouldn’t (or couldn’t) return to the disturbed nest, I dug worms and tried to feed the birds. I fed them sugar water. I frantically telephoned animal rescue outfits within a hundred-mile radius; they all told me there was no chance of saving birds so young.

Days later, all options exhausted, my husband put the dying creatures out of their misery, tears streaming down his face. After burying the tiny bodies, we held each other, shoulders shaking, gazing at the nest and wondering why the stupid satellite dish couldn’t have waited another month.

Tarpon

2010-05-24T06:38:00.010-05:00

It was seven o’clock in the morning. We’d awoken in the dark before dawn and hastily eaten stale toast with funny-tasting peanut butter for protein. Then we’d assembled our gear in the sandy bed of the truck and grilled each other to ensure nothing was forgotten. We piled into the truck and left as the sun began to stain the clouds orange.

Like every other morning, it was cool and windy when we arrived at the dive site. The clouds were low and heavy. They promised rain, but we knew by now that the rain would not come. So, threatening skies notwithstanding, we donned our gear and waded through the surf, sometimes clutching each other for support as the waves lapped our legs and threatened to topple us with all our heavy gear on our backs. Once we were far enough out, we pulled on our fins and, with a last wide smile at each other, dove.

The reef was bare here, and the visibility was less than ideal. Some days, one could see the sunken ship almost from the shore. This morning, though, its massive hull slowly materialized before us only when we were quite near. There were no other divers this early in the morning; we had the wreck to ourselves. We explored her from bow to stern. Coral adorned every surface like jewelry on a fat old lady.

As the others explored the deck, I hovered out in front, following their progress by watching their bubbles. I turned and scanned the deep blue behind me. Just as I was about to turn back, I realized a long, slender shape was emerging from the gloom.

My heart hammered in my chest. I could feel my excitement mounting, and I carefully regulated my breathing so as not to use my air any faster than usual. Was this it? I’d hoped and hoped to see a shark. A diver had mentioned to me over dinner the night before that he’d seen a gray reef shark near this site, and of course early morning was a good time to spot one.

The silver, torpedo-like shape floated serenely nearer, barely moving a fin. Gradually, the mouth became clear, and the wide silver scales. My heart sank. Just a tarpon. He was nearly as big as I was and held the cold, calculating air of a predator, but a shark he was not. He regarded me with cool interest. I lifted my camera. Even if he wasn’t a shark, it wasn’t a bad start to the day at all.

The others emerged from their exploring and the tarpon, seeing the divers, moved away. My moment with him was over.

Weather

2010-04-16T15:27:00.002-05:00

Spring is always too early. Almost no one thinks so, certainly not homeless people, not insects or woodland creatures. Even people who live in heated homes look out their glass windows and sigh heavily about the lack of sunshine. But for me, spring comes too soon, without fail. The temperatures rise without regard for what I wish; the mercury of my emotions falls in a flawless mirror.

My eyes feast on the colors of springtime blossoms, but my heart sinks with their coming, for hot, sticky summer lurks just beyond the horizon, waiting to swallow me up in misery.

Squeaky shoes

2010-04-16T15:03:00.003-05:00

Her new shoes were huge; she bought bellbottoms to hide them. Her new shoes were squeaky. At the office, she walked through the carpeted areas, head down, and cringed inwardly at each loud, creaking step. She was not interested in engaging in the loose circles of employees chatting around the coffee maker, but her shoes announced her presence as she entered every room. People would look up, wait expectantly. She would smile and look for something in her pockets. They would return to their conversations.

Every morning she put on the shoes. Told herself she didn’t look that bad. Every morning she forgot how squeaky her new shoes were until she was around people. Until it was too late, when everyone had already heard her coming.

Wings

2010-02-16T10:20:00.003-06:00

It was September, still hot and so humid that she immediately felt as if she’d been wrapped in cellophane whenever she stepped outside. But she’d found a bit of ivy clinging to her brick apartment building, and that vine had a single red leaf on it. No harbinger of autumn like that could be ignored. Fall, the season of death, was her favorite. She wanted to be watching when hit.

She drove three hours to a national park. She hiked several trails that day, leaning down and closely examining every fallen leaf, every nut and mushroom, every wooly caterpillar that trundled across the packed earth. She smoked cigarettes every few hundred yards and put them out in a water bottle in her backpack, to be disposed of later. She nodded and smiled at other hikers headed the opposite way. She stopped to read snatches of Edgar Allen Poe poems. She imagined she had wings. She sweated completely through her tank top and wiped her brow with a rainbow-colored bandana.

In the end, she was so hot and tired she hiked the road back to her car, rather than take the long way around. She was looking at the ground, testing her balance by walking heel-to-toe along the white line painted at the edge of the road, when something small and light brushed her cheek. She looked up to see a brilliant orange butterfly struggling to open its wings and failing. It looked miserable. She picked it up and held it in her hand. She felt like a god.

She placed it gently on a tree branch and turned back to her path.

Battle

2010-02-02T08:56:00.003-06:00

Giggling, Brandy stood and staggered across the ditch. The traffic cop, standing ten feet away in the middle of the road, gave me a look as I leapt up after her and snagged her hand. I was giggling, too. “Come back here! Listen, I can hear the bagpipes. They’re coming.”

She subsided next to me in the dewy grass. She laid a finger across her lips and looked meaningfully over her shoulder.

We were camping at the Scottish highland games. There were two groups of campers: the family side and MacRowdy. The family campers took up all the flat space to be found in the area. They got warm showers and went to bed at eleven o’clock. We were on MacRowdy, a mountain across the road. We had two or three drum circles going into the wee hours of the morning; as we slept, we slid into human puddles at the bottom of our tents. But tonight, the family campers were invading, armed with marshmallows, led by a troop of pipers in full regalia. Brandy and I hid, ready to ambush them before they knew what hit them.

The pipers came into view. We waited. Stifling a grin, the traffic cop held up his hands to approaching cars; they’d have to wait until the war was over. As the first few campers came into view, Brandy stood, released a shriek of a war cry, and pelted them with a handful of marshmallows. One of them actually hit someone.

I hit one girl in the chest; the marshmallow slid down the front of her shirt. She retaliated. A sticky white pellet slapped into my cheek. Brandy and I ran out of marshmallows before anyone else did and jogged toward MacRowdy under a shower of strangely glowing goo. We held hands to avoid being separated.

We stopped, collapsed into the grass behind someone’s tent, clutched each other, wheezed with laughter. “C’mon,” I said after catching my breath. “Let’s get ’em!”

We helped each other up—an extraordinary feat—and plucked marshmallows from the ground. They were sticky and warm, covered in dead grass and mud and sometimes gravel. We started throwing our goods at someone. “Stop!” our target yelled indignantly. “I’m with MacRowdy!”

We splayed our hands apologetically. Our fingers stuck together. Then we hid and watched a maniac advance on our mountain. He had taken ashes and smeared them across his face. For camouflage or acne, we would never know. He was roaring mightily and chucking white things indiscriminately. He hit me in the forehead. It stung like crazy. Brandy and I grinned at each other and, without a word, rushed him. We stood ten feet away from him and hurled everything we had at him, screaming defiance. We missed.

Arms around each other’s shoulders, we retreated.

Significance

2010-01-12T09:51:00.002-06:00

Some people look out at the world and conclude from its vast, awesome nature that they are insignificant. They can’t handle the overwhelming hugeness of it all, the fact that we’re tiny clay flecks spinning in an infinite universe around a trivial star. So they lock themselves in their houses and find solace in things that make them feel comforted and more important, like reality television shows, microwave popcorn, and central air conditioning.

But those things—an office job that makes no difference in the world, an evening routine of checking email and watching other people live out their fictional lives—are the very things that make me feel small and insignificant. When I wake up and look around, I’m crippled by a crushing sense of meaninglessness. So I go out and look at the world. Seeing its vastness and awesomeness makes me feel larger than my little life again, and I feel whole for a few more days.

Brooding

2009-12-28T11:30:00.000-06:00

He is going to have to leave her, if he ever wants not to be miserable again. But even though the logic works, he can’t stop brooding. And wondering.

Whoever said, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,” should be dragged naked through the desert. First, for the split infinitive. But second, for the sentiment. Long ago, he was consumed with despair, empty and cold. Resigned to be alone. He should have been left for dead.

Instead, he was given a tantalizing taste of what life should be like.

To take that away is worse than not having had it before. He’s not the blind man who treasures his five-minute rainbow. He’s the poor man who never should have tasted gourmet food, because he’d never have known what he was missing.

Family

2009-12-26T09:26:00.001-06:00

I love taking photographs. I record my life with forensic determination. I realized this morning that I don't have a single picture of you. You don't factor into my life, because every time I let you, everything seems to explode around me. If I had the choice, you would not even exist on the fringes of my life anymore. But what they say about family is true. You can't choose them.

I know people have unreasonably high expectations of family and holiday togetherness. So I try to empty myself of those kinds of thoughts. But my expectations—of having a holiday when you were quiet and maybe even civil to me—were still too high.

Sitting by the river, I run over the argument in my head. I came to you because I thought I'd somehow offended you. I asked how, and apologized. You started yelling. You didn't stop. I look over to the other side of the river and realize there is no bridge that will get me to the far side. It will always be within sight, but forever out of reach.

Maple

2009-10-21T14:31:00.001-05:00

The drive home was frantic. I knew he was okay, but I also knew the tornado had hit our house; his spare descriptions left too much to the imagination. The roads were wet and sometimes flooded; my car floated over these spots at eighty miles per hour, completely out of my control. I was banking on the hope that we could only be hit by one disaster a day. Luckily, I was right about that.

I only willingly slowed down when I pulled into the neighborhood and began to see the damage—trees down, power lines littering the road, and houses smashed by invisible fists, their guts yanked out and jumbled grotesquely across yards and ditches. I pulled into the driveway and saw the old, stately maple tree in the back yard had been pushed over by the tornado. Its corpse lay across the yard, its root system standing taller than a person. Its tender, vivid green leaves didn’t know they were dead yet.

He rushed out to greet me. As I fell into his embrace and bit back relieved tears, the maple tree inexorably drew my eyes over his shoulder.

Abandoning

2009-10-17T18:22:00.001-05:00

He flicked his cigarette; the pale ashes caught in the breeze and carried for a few feet before landing among the leaves. She hated this about him. He took another drag. He pulled so hard she could hear the tobacco crackling from where she sat, her legs dangling out of the driver side door. The powder blue of the car, she reflected, perfectly matched her eyeshadow. She was going to miss this car.

He exhaled a noxious cloud of smoke and tossed the butt into the leaves. She was glad it was wet. She tapped her long red fingernails on the steering wheel. She didn't know why she had to be here, and not one of his thugs. She rolled her eyes but said nothing. She knew better. She folded a new piece of chewing gum into her mouth.

He jerked his head in an arrogant gesture. Time to move on, then. She swung her platform-heeled feet inside and looked through the broken windshield. With a mighty grunt, he pushed the rear of the car, and it slowly rolled forward. She turned the wheel every time they threatened to hit a tree.

"All right, get out," he said as the car rolled to a stop.

She did so, carefully checking for twigs and branches before stepping anywhere. "I don't think anyone's going to find it all the way out here," she said, gum smacking. He shook his head.

They stood together looking at the car. She promised herself to come back and look at it in a few years. Who knew what it would look like then?

Cold

2009-10-17T17:48:00.001-05:00

Minutes after we received the phone call that she had passed away, we stepped out into the wintry yard, numb from more than cold. We didn't speak. The breath that crystallized in the air between us was enough. The sun rose, threatening to melt the pristine snow into muddy sludge, but for one pure moment, it was she, catching the white world on fire in a final celebration. We looked back at the house for a while, somehow yellow in the dawn. Before the cold could settle into our bones, we turned and headed back inside. The crunching of our boots was the only thing we said to each other. It was enough.

The Show

2009-10-17T07:52:00.000-05:00

Her blood hammered through her veins with such force that her body vibrated. She couldn't keep her hands still; she picked up an object, rolled it between finger and thumb, felt its texture and coolness, then set it down at random. The bass of the music seemed to dictate the frenetic pulsing of her heart. It wasn't the kind of thing she normally liked, this techno-dance music, but it was perfect for tonight.

A burst of applause and cheers rocked the building, and the girl ahead of her took a sweeping bow, her hair extensions dusting the floor of the stage. She stepped behind the curtain; their shoulders brushed. A new song, slower than the last but still so loud it was hard to think, began to wind its way from the speakers. It was time. Her hips began to sway as she stepped out into the spotlight.

The Scotsman

2009-10-16T21:14:00.002-05:00

Panting, he released the sharkskin hilt and pushed the blade into the soft mud. The few pounds of steel had become an unwieldy weight extended from his arm after hours of fighting through the heather. He wiped his sweaty brow and tried to get his breathing under control. Abandoning the sword, he walked a few paces to the top of the hill. Hovering just above the moist hills that stretched into the distance, the sky was a pale gray-white. Beyond that was a thick, gray-black wall of clouds. It looked as if Hell had inverted and was stretching downward to reach the earth.

He sighed and retrieved his sword. There was a long way yet to go.

Ignorance

2009-10-05T12:43:00.002-05:00

“What on earth are you eating?” Fish’s disapproving voice was small and somehow squiggly, like her. She spoke through fat maroon lips that clashed magnificently with her tangerine scales.

“Don’t patronize me,” said Turtle, turning up his nose. It was speckled in lime green algae. “Anyhow, I’m busy.”

Fish huffily swam away in a flutter of wispy fins and bubbles. Turtle rolled his eyes irritably. Who had time for that kind of theatrical nonsense? The world was about to end, and he hadn’t even been to the other side of the swamp yet. He hefted his shell up and glanced at the sky. It was late afternoon already; gold streaked the bits of cloud that showed through the Spanish moss. He took a careful step along the log and felt it rock comfortably beneath him; he would miss that.

A blue heron alighted in the shallows a few feet away and eyed Turtle beadily. “Don’t bother!” Turtle yodeled. “The world’s about to end, you know.” The heron blinked. It was an articulate blink, which said, Oh dear. Another doomsday prophet. Turtle got a lot of those blinks, but he didn’t care anymore. They’d all be sorry enough soon.

He resolutely turned his back on the heron, feeling smug and righteous. He took another step and slipped. He clenched with his other legs, but it was too late. He somersaulted into the water with a crack and a splash. He flailed and righted himself just in time to see Fish swimming up, looking thoroughly judgmental. He turned his flailing into a graceful stroke as she pulled up beside him.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m going to the other side of the swamp,” he informed her with as much dignity as he could muster. “It it’s all the same to you.”

“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “Those waters are polluted. And I’ve heard wheeled machines go very fast on the flat gray part of the ground. You’ll be flattened.”

He shook his head ponderously. “Only if it’s the end of the world,” Turtle replied. “I’ve a feeling I’ll be around for that.”

“Pah!” Fish said, and swam away again. Turtle ignored her and went up for a much-needed gulp of air.

Only a few minutes later, he was out on dry land again, but unfamiliar territory. The droopy grass was a dusty brown color, and the cattails were stiff and rustled with every heavy breath of air. Turtle resolutely walked up the gentle slope toward the noise, not stopping to rest even once. He made it to the flat gray part that everyone talked about. It was hot and smelled funny. Every once in a while, huge things rolled very fast along it and never stopped to look around them. A long way down, buzzards gathered around something in the grass and chattered evilly over it. Turtle shuddered and stepped out onto the flat gray thing. Two, three, four steps out, and a huge wheeled thing passed within inches of his head. It had almost killed him! He darted inside his shell, trembling. This was a mistake. But he didn’t have the courage to move forward or turn back.

Suddenly, a horrible screeching sound rent the air, and a huge rolling thing stopped nearby; he felt the air it pushed and smelled its awful smell from inside his shell. There was a slamming sound, and then something clutched him by the shell with gentle pressure. He was lifted into the air. Flying! He was flying! It was the end of the world, he knew it. He’d almost made it.

He peeked out to see the ground rushing far beneath him. Occasionally this sight was marred, oddly, by the appearance of a red sneaker. He’d seen them on the lower limbs of fishermen. He closed his eyes in rhapsody as he was transported through space.

Suddenly he was submerged in warm water, and he knew he was in the afterlife. He sat there for a long time, adjusting to the idea that the world was over.

“Well?”

He was startled into opening his eyes. Fish hovered in the murky water, almost lips-to-nose with him. “Well what?” Turtle said sleepily.

“Well,” she said, puffing herself out, “what are you doing now? Would you like to get away from my side of the swamp, please?”

He smiled and nodded gently. The poor thing didn’t realize the world had ended already.

Dress-Up

2009-10-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

“I freaking hate Halloween,” she muttered, shredding another hole in the perfectly good pantyhose she’d bought for the kitty cat costume. She wasn’t sure why holy tights were the thing to wear on Halloween, but then, who was she to argue with what was trendy? She followed fashion religiously, from bell bottoms to skinny jeans and back again. She’d look at pictures of herself from six months ago and wonder what on earth she’d been thinking.

She slipped into the vinyl shoes. Too big. She did a test walk around the room and stepped out of them twice. So she wouldn’t move too much at the night club. No big deal. She’d find some sap to buy her drinks and bring them to her.

She popped on the headband with the black triangular ears and made a kissy face at the mirror, batting the two-inch long fake eyelashes. Yep. Perfectly adorable. The line of the Spanx slimming girdle was just visible under the leotard, so she rummaged through the three-foot by two-foot plastic box under the bed and finally pulled out a rhinestone-spangled belt and wrapped it around her waist. There. Now no one would see her little secret.

The doorbell buzzed, and she waited a minute or two before heading downstairs. She opened the door, and glanced out. “I’m not going!” she exclaimed, seeing her friends’ costumes. She slammed the door. They’d dressed as the Brady Bunch, and hadn’t asked her to be Marcia? And not a bit of skin above the elbow showing on any of them.

Her cheeks burning, she rummaged in the fridge for the leftover pumpkin pie, ignoring the repeated banging on the door.