Tag Archives: excerpt

The Museum, chapter one

Posted on by
6
I

woke to the sound of the cat puking.

With a groan I rolled over, pulling a sofa cushion over my head, tipping an ash tray over my chest. I don’t smoke. Cursing through a throat that felt like the Mojave I rolled over and brushed ineffectually at myself, squeezing my eyes open just enough to watch my shaking fingers move over a sweater that didn’t look familiar. My eyes felt like they were filled with kitty litter, and in my head was a junior high marching band on the first day of practice.

I closed my eyes and willed my heart to stop. For a moment I thought I had won, but after a second or so it thumped again, the pressure almost popping my eyeballs out of their sockets.

I took off the sweater and threw it across the room, along with the blanket and anything else that had ashes on it. I laid back, closed my eyes, and reflected on what I had just seen.

The sweater had hit a painting I’d never seen on a wall I didn’t remember. I opened my eyes and looked up at the popcorn stucco ceiling (could be anywhere) punctuated by a moose antler ceiling fan, wobbling slightly as the antlers lazily spun. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. No wonder I felt like crap; I had been sleeping under the thing while it blew a steady stream of antler-dust over my helpless form. God only knew what sort of sick mojo had been visited upon me in that sinister chamber. As soon as I could get off the sofa, I was out of there.

I didn’t chance another glance at the painting; if memory of my first brief glance served it might have induced vomiting no matter what condition I was in. Some genres should not be mixed, and impressionist/western nudes riding bulls was the new top of my list of Very Bad Ideas. Vargas, Renoir and Remington in a horrible collision that left no survivors.

At least, some perverse voice in my head said, it’s not on bleck velvet.

The cat began heaving again, a mighty sound for such a small creature, breaking the otherwise perfect silence of the place.

“You all right, bud?” I asked the cat. My voice sounded like I was the ogre under the bridge, but the cat took no notice of me, and kept right on heaving. “I feel for you, man,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

The cat. I rolled over and, careful not to look towards The Picture, or any wall, or the ceiling, I opened one eye and watched the tiger-striped cat cough up another load onto a Navajo rug. When it was done it turned to stare back at me. I had seen the cat before, I realized, recalling a dislocated image of the yellow eyes staring at me over a potted plant. “I told you not to eat those flowers,” I said. “Now you’ve yacked on the only thing in the entire room that’s not ugly as hell.”

The cat turned and left the room, tail high.

I summoned all my strength and sat up, putting both bare feet onto the cold saltillo floor. I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head, staring at the dark grout between the earth-color tiles. I ran my fingers through my hair and over my grizzled face. Somewhere in this house was a careless smoker with unspeakably bad taste. More important, somewhere in this house was bacon, eggs, and potatoes. And a toilet, I added as I stood. Most important of all.

My peripheral vision warned me of the monstrosities that surrounded me, so I was able to avoid looking directly at any of them. Some more resilient part of my wounded and cowering brain cataloged them, a mad collection from plastic to solid gold (and, yes, John Wayne staring out from black velvet), all somehow western, unified by the lack of any aesthetic whatsoever. It was almost brilliant in its awfulness. Blinders on, I plunged forward, through the portal the cat had used.

And stopped short, mouth hanging agape, my mind struggling to turn the messages my eyes were sending it into some sort of image. Gone was the western theme; I found myself in Van Gogh’s worst absinthe nightmare, art deco gone mad. I was not in a house, I was in a museum. An art museum with a blind curator.

The cat was watching me from across the room. “Where’s the litter box?” I asked. Tiger-stripe just watched me, unblinking. Something about the annoyed kink in her tail told me she was female. I continued my search, squinting my eyes now not because of the dry grit that still clogged them, but because after deco came primitive, and then the bathroom itself was almost as bad as the western. (If you guessed nautical, no points for you. Sports.) I stood before the shrine, trying not to be distracted by the baseball bat flusher, and NOT LOOKING UP at Kareem Abdul Jabaar staring down at me, a mild sneer on his face, his crotch at eye level.

Screw bacon. I wanted my shoes and a ride home. The shoes were optional.

I washed, splashed my face, and stepped from the Chamber of Manhood Diminishment. The cat was sitting tall, waiting for me, her tail wrapped around her front feet. I crouched down and she allowed me to rub her ears. “Listen, Tiger,” I said, “It’s not your fault, I know, but this is the most bug-ass crazy place I’ve ever seen.” She looked at me for a moment, then rubbed her head on my hand. “Whachya say, Tiger? Let’s bust outta here.”

Thanks!

The Dark War, Chapter One

Posted on by
4

The shots echoed up and down the twisting, deserted street. There were three, evenly spaced: pop, pop, pop, followed by silence.

The war had begun.

I moved deeper into the shadows, the metal of a security door at my back, waiting. Moments later I heard footsteps, running, coming from the direction of the shots. The shooter flew around the bend and lightly ran down the narrow lane, directly past me. Always in the right place at tht right time, that’s me.

The supressor on my 9mm reduced the sound of my shots to soft thuds. One, two, three, swiftly, the three bullets making a neat triangle on the runner’s chest. As the assassin fell his—her—face was caught by a street lamp. She crashed to the street, dead, her gun clattering across the ancient cobblestones.

In a quiet villiage like this one, the police would respond quickly, but there was little they could do now. What had started minutes before in the the little town square would have to be finished, no matter what the cost, no matter who died.

I looked at the form crumpled on the pavement, her face in shadow. For a moment I was tempted to go to her, to get a look at her face. I’d probably seen her around before. It didn’t matter anymore, though. I wouldn’t be seeing her again. She was lucky; she had only known war for five minutes, from the moment she killed the commissioner to the moment the bullets entered her heart.

She had probably wanted to grow up to be like me. In that case, I had done her a favor.

The girl had been running toward her friends; I walked the other way. I was tired, although all I had done was pull a trigger.

I dove for the shadows when I saw Hampton sprawled on the street. He was supposed to be on the rooftops, and if he wasn’t, then someone else was. Chips flew from the stonework around me as a burst of machine-gun fire tore thgough the space I had been moments before. I crouched in the recess of a doorway while the bullets continued to rain down, chipping away at the stone. My shelter would not last long.

I waited for the gunner to change clips, then turned and kicked at the wooden door behind me. It gave with a crash and I dove through into the darkness as the bullets streamed past behind me. One hit me hard in the ribs, but my ballistic armor stopped it.

I regained my balance and looked around. Stairs up, staris down. I had a choice. The town was famous for its catacombs; I chose down.

The stairs creaked above me; I turned and fired even as I fled. Someone grunted and fell. Enemy or bystander, it didn’t matter anymore.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door, locked, but no match for my steel-shanked boots. I have trained long and hard in the art of kicking things. Bullets followed me through the door into the apartment. A couple cowered in the corner of the studio. There were no other doors. Dead end.

Shadows flitted past the window high up on the wall, the feet of more people rushing to where I was. There were a lot of them. Perhaps I had at least diverted them long enough that the rest of my people could regroup or escape.

“Sorry about this,” I said to the two twenty-somethings cowering in the corner. I emptied my clip out the door, and heard someone cry out. Three cliips to go. “Is there another way out?”

The girl shook her head, a brief terrified jerk.

The situation wasn’t going to get any better. No sense in getting these two killed along with me. “Guess I’ll be going this way, then.”

I am a soldier, and a damn good one. Physically, I was blessed with the tools a soldier needs. Strength, agility, endurance. A steady shooting hand. Good night vision. But in this day and age, none of those things matter a great deal. Machines give us our strength. When you throw a hundred bullets at your opponent, you don’t have to be a sharpshooter to score a hit.

This war, however, would never involve great armies. It was an ugly war, a war of stealth and swift action. Action without remorse. It was the war I was born to fight.

I remembered the stairs I had come down, and knew just where the enemy would be. I dove through the shattered doorway, firing from memory. One, two, three. Two of soldiers waiting for me fell immediately, the third put a bullet into my armor before I sent him on his way. Above those three the stairwell lit up with furious gunfire, but they could not reach where I was, and they could not move until they stopped firing. I closed my eyes to protecct my night vision and waited.

The gunfire slowed but did not stop, and they advanced, spraying bullets before them. I pulled myself into a corner of the landing, then climbed, bracing myself between the door frame and the ceiling. I steadied myself and got one hand free.

They were blinding themselves with their own muzzle flashes, and as they descended I put a bullet into one, then the next. They assumed I had gone back into the apartment, and were working to get firing angles through the door. Another, then another fell. As the soldiers came down I would shoot a leg, then when the man fell I would shoot his face. No armor there.

My legs and the arm I was holding myself with were starting to shake. I was not going to be able to stay up there much longer. On the stairs, the bodies were starting to pile up. Whoever was in charge up there called a tactical retreat. I dropped to the floor. I heard voices above, but the ringing in my ears from the gunfire prevented me from hearing it.

I glanced back into the apartment. The two were still there, huddled in the corner, looking back at me wide-eyed. There were three bullets left in my clip, so I switched it for my last full one. I heard sirens outside; the police had arrived. That had to work in my favor now. The cops wouldn’t be able to do much, but they would try, and that would complicate any attack on my position.

I attacked. I stepped over the corpses on the stairs, counting my bullets as I put one man down, then another, then another. By the time I had killed five of them the rest were on the run, forcing me to shoot them in the back. The last of them spilled out into the glare of the headlights of the two police cars. The four cops, armed with little pistols, called for the heavily-armed soldiers to drop their weapons. Cops are so stupid. They are soldiers like me, but badly equipped and blinded by duty to something completely imaginary. They think they are defending the law, but there they stand, hoping the law will protect them. They talk before they shoot. The last of the men I had routed tore the cops to ribbons before I could kill them.

Outside again, I put my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. The windows looking down on the street were ablaze now, onlookers silhouetted in front of their laccy drapes. I stepped back into the shadow. The other guys still owned the rooftops.

Back in the shadows, I wrapped my scarf around my face and pulled my hat low. It didn’t matter who was out there, it was time to be going. Every policeman for a hundred miles was on his way, and probably the army, too.

I felt someone behind me. Close behind me. The hair on my neck stood and my ears tried to swivel to the back of my head, an ancient mammalian reaction, as I heard the action of a revolver right next to my spine.

“Excuse me, miss, do yo have a light?” The voice was a smooth baritone, calm, almost laughing. He spoke in English, my native tongue, with an accent. Austrian, perhaps.

I froze, trying to grow extra arms out from my shoulder blades, and eyes in the back of my head.

“Very well, then,” he said. “Would you like a cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“That’s too bad. Tobacco came from America, did you know that?”

“Our gift to the world.”

“Now, smoking is a worse sin than adultery in America.” He sounded mournful.

“There’s still plenty of both.” I had to do something soon. Time was moving, the world was closing in.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“What else is a girl going to do on a Saturday night?”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Well, damn. I should be washing my hair, then.”

“Do you know who that was you killed?”

There were bodies everywhere, but I knew who he meant. The runner. The assassin. “No.”

“That was my niece,” he said. I closed my eyes, knowing what came next. A bullet to the spine. He was more careless now, I could feel where the gun was. If I made a move I had a reasonable chance of winning. I just couldn’t muster the strength to do it. I wondered what it would be like to have a niece, or any family.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I loved her,” he said. “But I knew she would get into trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. There really wasn’t much else to say.

“She wanted to be like her sister.”

I knew what he was going to say, even as I knew it was not possible. I turned, hoping he would shoot me before he finished. He had lowered his gun.

“She wanted to be like you.”

Thanks!

Is this working?

Posted on by
12

Day of Atonement

Chapter 1

The rain fell gently, whispering on the roof, welcome after the heat of the previous day. I was standing at the window, enjoying the cool air and the fresh smell, not seeing even though my eyes were open. The moment strecthed, dilating until time itself was merely an abstraction. My mind was far from the rain, far from my motel room. It was in another place, hot and dry and shimmery, long ago when I was a different person, not the stranger I had become but a youthful and vigorous man. I had had a future back then.

A lonesome car hissed past on the wet pavement outside. My eyes followed the progress of the nondescript Dodge, probably blue once, until it vanished around the bend. Lush foliage crowded the 2-lane blacktop, threatening to swallow it back up into the forest. Eventually the forest would win, but by then no one would even notice. Only the locals had any use for the old highway, and they, too, were a dying breed.

Besides my car there was only one other vehicle in the parking lot, an old Chevy pickup that was more rust than metal. It was parked by the office, where the manager had a room. I had been there two days and had not seen any other guests.

Now that the back of the heat wave had been broken, it would be a good day to travel. I looked at my truck and wondered where to go. Anywhere but there. Anywhere but the windswept grave tucked between rock outcrops, far from the curious eyes of humanity, with the headstone, crudely carved, that said only “Helen 1952 – 1987”. I had known her birthday, but not her last name.

I was stalling, of course. I knew exactly where I was going to go. No need to check the wallet to know that I was going to head down to the gulf to find George and accept his offer. I had been resisting for a long time now, but he was patient. All those years ago we had both known the day would come I had no choice.

I looked around the room in a habit deeply ingrained, even though there was little I had left that I could leave behind. I hefted my pack up off the sagging bed and fished out my keys. The door to my room had swollen with the moisture and was wedged tightly shut. I gave it a yank and hoped the doorknob didn’t break off. With one last grunt of protest the door swung open and I was free.

The red lettering on the side of my run-down Scout had faded in the sun, but with some effort I could make out “Schmidt Geological”. Beneath that the black lettering was doing much better: “Exploration and Assay”, followed by a phone number that hadn’t meant anything in years. Not for the first time I wondered idly what would happen if I dialed it.

I tossed my pack in and climbed in beside it. I flipped the switch on the dash I had wired in when the ignition switch had worn out. When I pushed the doorbell button next to it the engine came to life. I coaxed the truck into gear and began my journey south.

Chapter 2

“I’m Helen,” she said, standing on tiptoe to offer her hand through the open window of my truck.

I shook it. “Robert,” I said. “Robert Schmidt. Most people call me Bob.”

She smiled, a little lopsided. “You look more like a Robert. Thanks for coming out.” Her face was brown beneath the white brim of her floppy sun hat. She wore a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and cut-off denim shorts. Her boots were sturdy and broken in. Where her sun-bleached hair had got loose from the scarf holding her hat down it blew randomly in the wind. Unthinking she would push it away from her face, but it would just blow right back a few seconds later. She had a line of sunscreen along her jaw; I resisted the impulse to reach over and rub it in for her.

I levered open the door and stepped out into the desert. Even that early in the morning the sun began immediately to bake the top of my head. I reached back into the truck and pulled out a straw cowboy hat, once white but now stained with sweat and grime. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I think I found something,” she said. She looked around as if it would be possible for someone to be eavesdropping out there. “I didn’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
I nodded. Much of my business was telling people they had not found gold. “What did you find?” I asked.

“I think maybe you should see for yourself.”

Chapter 3

I had been drifting in the general direction of the Gulf for several weeks now, knowing in the back of my heart that the day was nearly upon me when I would have to make the decision to track down George. It had been at least five years since I had heard from him, but I knew he would be down there somewhere, waiting for me, and he would make sure that I could find him when the time came. I pointed the Scout south down the narrow highway.

The truck ran well, enjoying the rain, but the old beast was always thirsty. After about fifty miles I pulled off the road for gas and breakfast. Fifteen gallons of regular would see me through till lunch time.

The parking lot of the little cafe was full, and I could see through the plate-glass windows that it was crowded inside. Must be the whole town in there. I parked on the road and didn’t bother locking the truck’s door.

It was loud in the cafe, and full, but there was still room to sit at the counter. I made my way between tables filled with well-dressed locals. Must be Sunday, I thought. “Be right with you, hon,” said a frazzled woman, her hair piled high atop her head, reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. She was the classic.

“No problem,” I said, but she had already moved on.

I looked around the room. The men were wearing their polyester suits, all navy blue, all from the same rack in the same department store. These weren’t the sort of folks who had to wonder which suit they were going to wear. For all uniformity of the men, their wives were another story. It was spring, and I was in a garden of floral prints. The women were dazzling and proud in their finery, and joyful in thier communion. There was no one in that place less than fifty years old, with the possible exception of the waitress. She may just have been tired.

On the wall was a poster with a kitten hanging from a pole by its front paws, eyes wide. “Hang in there, baby!” the caption read.

Chapter 4

“Hang in there, baby,” I said as Helen clung to my hand. I pushed the hair back where it stuck to her sweating face. “Hang in there.”

Chapter 5

“Coffee?” The patch on the waitress’s shirt identified her as Evelyn.

“Sure.”

Evelyn poured me a cup in a practiced gesture, just a quick splash that filled the cup without spilling a drop. “Not usually so crowded,” she said, “But, you know, Easter.”

I nodded and sipped my coffee.

“You know what you want?” she asked, although she had not given me a menu. There’s no need in a place like that.

“Bacon, eggs over easy, hash browns,” I said.

“You want some biscuits and gravy? Good on a rainy day.”

May as well live it up, now. “Sure.”

Evelyn was gone again. There were only so many places I could look while I waited for breakfast, so I pulled out the battered piece of paper and unfolded it for the throusandth, and possibly last, time. In faded pencil George’s awkward scrawl spelled out the name of a roadhouse somewhere near Pensacola. Lucky’s, YYY Fla.

Chapter 6

“You’d like this place,” George said, writing with furious concentration. The pencil looked tiny in his giant hand, and he was having difficulty controlling it. The black man was sweating profusely in the summer heat, turning his t-shirt dark.

Finished at last, he handed me the slip of paper. “They call me Big George down there. You just ask and they’ll know who you’re talking about.”

I folded it twice, neatly, and slipped it into my wallet, intending to throw it away later.

“It’s going to be fun working with you,” he said.

“I’m not going to do it, George.”

“Oh, yes you will. Sooner or later you’ll come knockin’. Your ghosts won’t give you no choice.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” I said. “You’re the one who can see them.”

He laughed. “Oh, I don’t see them; I just know they’re there.”

Chapter 7

Helen reached over and rubbed my earlobe. “Sunscreen,” she said.

“Thanks. You have some here.” I gestured to my own face, along the jaw.

“Which side?” She rubbed both. “This stuff works great, but it’s hard to rub in. How ’bout now?”

“That’s got it.”

“Thanks.” She flashed me another of her lopsided smiles.

After a pause I said, “So where is this thing?” She had told me we would have to hike in, and we would probably camp at least one night.

“About twelve miles. Is that OK?”

I opened the rear door of the truck and pulled my pack out. “Nothing left worth seeing that doesn’t require some walking.”

“Do you know this area?”

“I’ve been here and there.” There wasn’t much out here of interest to my clients, but I got out this way occasionally.

She nodded and turned to her battered, dusty Subaru. She had hiker’s legs, lean and strong. She fit the landscape perfectly.

Both our packs were heavy for their size; we were carryning lots of water. I added another canteen at my waist and watched while she did the same. The army surplus belt was adjusted as small as it would go, but it still rode low on her hips, making the canteen bob as she walked. Finally she pulled a bottle out of her car and took a long drink. She offered it to me when she was done. “Carry your water inside you, the Bedouin would say.” I had my own supply, but it seemed impolite to refuse her offer. Somehow she had managed to keep the bottle cool, and the water felt refreshing going down.

“Good water,” I said, inspecting the bottle.

“Finish it off,” she said. “I have more.” I did as I was told.

When I could drink no more I shouldered my pack. “Better get going,” I said.

She was looking distractedly behind me, back the way I had come. “You’re sure no one followed you?”

“I would have seen their dust cloud for miles.”

She nodded, not completely satisfied, and hoisted her own pack, settling it onto her back and cinching down the waist strap. I stepped to follow her up the canyon when she paused and looked at me over her shoulder, her face pensive. She opened her mouth, hesitated, closed it, and continued on her way.

Chapter 8

“You want anything else, hon? Some pie for the road?”

By the time I was mopping up the last of my gravy the cafe had quieted, only a few of the Easter celebrants remained, lingering over coffee and cigarettes. Evelyn and the others fell into an easy rhythm as the pace of the morning slowed.

“No thanks. I’ve got to get going.”

She started adding up my tab. “Where y’all headin’?”

“South. Florida panhandle.”

“They got some nice beaches down there. Howard and I go down there every summer.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Way better than Miami.”

“I’ll have to check them out while I’m there.” As I counted out my money she returned with a small container.

“For the road,” she said. “It’s on the house. Happy Easter.”

“Thanks,” I said, mildly nonplussed. “Happy Easter.” It sounded odd when I said it.

1

Thanks!

Should be good for a giggle if you know czech, because I sure don’t.

Posted on by
1
Ryba

Sedím v stůl pro dva. Dva sklenicy potí se na jejich ubrouseky, sklenicy maji rozdíln?½ ½ tvar. Jeden, to sklenice s rt??~?
?nku na obruba, odpo?~D?~Mivuje <elegantly> naho?~E?~D?e dluh?~C½, p?~E¯vabn?~C½ stonek. Alcoholov?~C¡ kv?~D?~@?tina s ?~E¡t?~C­hlou zelenou sl?~C¡mu pro <pistil>. Je mazan?
~C½ v?~D?~@?c, <conjugate skr?~C½t se> tv?~C©ho tmav?~C©ho ?~Cº?~D?~Mele vzadu sladký<-ness>, v?~E¯n?~D?~@?, a barva.

What the above is supposed to say:

I am sitting at a table for two. Two glasses are sweating onto their napkins, glasses of different shape. One, the one with lipstick on its rim, sits elegantly at the top of a long, graceful stem, an alcoholic flower with a slender green straw for a pistil. It is a cunning thing, hiding its dark purpose behind sweetness, perfume, and color.

Note: in moving from one database to another, the character encodings in this little episode did not fare so well. It’s just not worth fixing, I’m afraid.

1

Thanks!

It’s a Living

Posted on by
7

I awoke slowly, my eyes gritty and my mouth dry. The sun was painfully bright even through my clenched eyelids. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I saw when I opened them. One thing was for sure—I wasn’t in my apartment. The distant cry of an eagle floated through the hot, still air, confirming the worst. I wasn’t even on the same continent.

I raised my hands to my eyes and levered myself into a sitting position, fighting down nausea. I discovered a short beard on my chin. I wasn’t even in the same week. I looked around the bleak landscape and tried to piece together how I had got there.

The last I could remember I was sitting in one of the swankier bars in the city, chafing at the high price of beers. It not the sort of bar I’m generally found in, but if someone wants to talk to me about giving me money I’ll meet them on the north pole.

It’s not that I’m broke, not really, and the prospect of working isn’t that attractive, but I have to put beans on the table. And sometimes a job comes along that actually sounds interesting. This was one of those jobs. Challenging yet marvelously undefined.

I had not met my new employer yet; we had only spoken by telephone. His voice had been reserved and upper-crust English, and he was not one for idle conversation. “We wish you to do some research for us,” he had said in clipped syllables. “Your Professor Grayson thought your unique combination of talents might serve us well.”

“That’s a generous way to say it,” I said. It was a very kind way to describe my inability to stick to anything. When people asked me “what I did”, the inevitable question when you meet someone in a society that defines who you are by what you do for a living, I usually just said, “a little of this, a little of that.”

I hadn’t seen the good professor in many years, and while we got along well enough I was surprised to hear he would recommend me for a job. He had thought of me as a waste of potential, or so he told me over beers. I pointed out to him that once the boulder uses its gravitational potential and rolls down the hill, it takes a lot of work to get it back up to the top for another roll. Better to wait for the right moment to roll in the first place. He thought human potential might be different than potential energy, but that’s what anyone at the bottom of the hill is going to say. He had come to rest in a nice place, a secure university job, respected worldwide by his peers, head of a close and loving family, and he had no wish to be dragged up to the top of the hill for another go.

My boulder still teetered at the top, waiting for the right moment to start rolling. Or so I told myself.

“This job is going to be a delicate one,” my potential employer told me. “We have made a discovery and we wish to have your help in understanding it. The assignment will require diplomacy and tact, as well as your documented abilities in archaeology, anthropology, and particle physics.”

Tact I thought maybe I could do. Diplomacy was a long shot. “No problem,” I said.

“Good. It is likely this conversation is being monitored by others interested in what we have found. You may assume that henceforth all your communications will be similarly monitored, and all your Internet activity will be closely watched as well. For that reason I wish to meet with you in person this evening.” He told me the name of the place.

“What’s going to keep them from having someone at the next table?”

“That is a problem for me to solve, Mr. Nolan.”

“All right then. I’ll see you there. I’ll be wearing a red carnation.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s a joke. It’s something people on blind dates do.”

“I know what you look like, Mr. Nolan. I’ll see you there.” He hung up.

Julie was going to be pissed. I dialed her number as delicately as I could, already thinking of ways to placate her. “Hi, sweetie,” I said when she answered.

There was a pause. “You’re standing me up tonight, aren’t you?”

“But Pookie, it’s for a job. A really good job.”

“Laying tile for a twelve-pack again?” She never let me live that one down.

“No, hunny-bunny, a real job. For real money.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“I know. I’m real sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

“I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it. Any time I make plans you come up with some excuse to get out of them. How long have we been going out?”

She knew the answer. “Two years,” I said.

“Two years. And you still haven’t met my friends. They think I’m making you up. Gloria thinks I should find someone else I have more in common with. Maybe she’s right.”

I bit my tongue. Gloria was one of Julie’s friends I had met. The last time her name came up I had said, “Gloria is a bitter woman who wants no one to be happy if she can’t be happy.” It did not go over well. Julie knew the truth about the other woman, but she was loyal to her friend. I can’t fault her for that; if she was less tolerant we would have split up long ago.

Diplomacy and Tact. “Listen, this job is different. It’s a research job.”

“What sort of research?”

“I’m not so sure, yet, that’s why I have to meet him tonight.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Couldn’t you have met with him tomorrow?”

Probably I could have. I was not unhappy about having an excuse to avoid the party. I’m not so good in crowds, and when I finally met her friends it was going to be all the worse for the delay and the stories I’m sure Gloria was spreading. “They’re in a big hurry. They only called me a few minutes ago but they want to get started.”

“I told everyone that today would finally be the day. None of them believed me, but I swore it would be. You swore it would be.”

“Look, I don’t know how long the meeting will be. I’ll come by as soon as it’s over.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call me by nine and tell me how it’s going.”

“I’ll try.”

“Call me or it’s over.”

“I may not be able to call. There’s a lot of secrecy—”

“Call me or it’s over.”

“All right.”

“They’re all going to be laughing at me tonight.”

“No they won’t.”

“They all think I’m stupid for staying with you.”

I had to admit to myself that they were probably right. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to meet them. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Once I get this job it’ll be different. Not just the money, but you’ll be able to tell your friends you were right about me.” I hoped that was true.

“It’s my birthday.”

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.”

“I just—hold on. There’s someone at the door.”

Great, I thought. Gloria was there early to help set the party up. The rest of the conversation would have her sniping in from the background. I waited, listening to distant voices. Finally Julie picked up the phone again.

“Oh, my God, Honey, they’re beautiful,” she said.

“Uh…”

“You’ve never sent me flowers before, ever.”

That was true enough.

“They must have cost a fortune,” she continued. “I’ve never even seen some of these flowers before. What are they?”

“I, uh, don’t know, really. I didn’t pick them out. In fact—”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I know it’s more important in the long run that you finally found a good job. I’m excited for you. For us. You know what you wrote on the card?” She suddenly turned shy. “I feel the same way.”

It was not without some misgivings that I approached the bar that evening. Flowers don’t just drop from the sky. Either my new employers had predicted with uncanny accuracy my difficulty or they had been listening to the conversation and were able to get a bunch of exotic flowers to Julie’s place in minutes. Or something else. It was unsettling to say the least.

I got to the bar early, figuring to establish a little space and watch people come and go. I nursed my beer and tolerated the faint disapproval radiating from the bartender. I’m not a formal man at the best of times. I had had enough time to become afraid of all the patrons. As each came in they would look at me appraisingly, and in my head they all became spies for some hostile power. In retrospect, I may have been right.

At the appointed minute a slender, elegantly dressed man with a bowler hat entered and left his umbrella and coat by the door. Without even glancing around he walked over to me, his gait royal. “Mr. Nolan,” he said as he reached me. He offered his hand.

His withered hand was still strong as I shook it. “Nice to meet you,” I said. That was the last thing I could remember before waking up here.

I was thirsty. My hand was still running over my fuzzy cheeks, and I found that my beard was neatly trimmed. I looked at my hand, and then at my clothes. What I had been wearing was out of place at a nice bar, but now I was in silk. I had never owned tailored clothes, but these sure fit me well.
A shadow fell over me. I turned to see a mountain of a man, also immaculately dressed but not as dusty, standing over me.

“Well,” he said with a gravelly voice, “it looks like sleeping beauty is finally awake.”

Thanks!

Bulwer-Lytton Lives!

Posted on by
8

We stood in line, the splash of the street lamp in the chill summer fog making an island of us: there was the prostitute, chain smoking and immune to the cold in her fishnet stockings and yellow plastic miniskirt, hair in disarray and eyes only shadows; there was a young couple, junkies with colored hair leaning against each other for support, feet spread wide in a perfect square, holding each other in some half-remembered habit of intimacy or perhaps just attached by some of the hardware adorning their once-chic clothing; there was the derelict, lying in his own foul cloud, sprawled against a building in a twitching parody of death, unsure where the next bottle would come from but knowing it would come; there were the other assorted bums, lowlifes, and losers swimming to the shore of our island but moving on again after a while, lacking patience or still possessing hope; and there was me.

Thanks!

People Who In Sorrow Roam

Posted on by
6

“You ever been to the British Museum?” he asked me.

“Couple of times.” I like museums.

“There’s a tablet there. Babylonian; before the Bible. Bunch of cats exiled or something. The were called Amankandu. ‘People who in sorrow roam’. Their leader was named Ka’in.”

It made sense. Kicked out of the garden, wandering. “Banned be thou from the soil which has received thy brother’s blood,” I said.

“They’re still out there, the Amankandu. Still wandering. And when they meet, they know one another.” He raised his glass to me.

Thanks!

The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy

Posted on by
1

Bixby awoke with a start. He had been dreaming again. His stepmother had taught him to remember his dreams and record them; she said that dreams carried messages and told of the future. Dutifully he picked up his journal and turned a blank page to the moonlight streaming in the window. His stepmother insisted that he include every detail of his dreams. “You never know what will turn out to be important,” she would say. She was renowned far and wide for her knowledge of magic.

Bixby thought back over the dream. It was one he’d been having often lately. There wasn’t much conversation to speak of except for things like “Oh! Oooooooh! Yes! Yes! YES!” but he remembered the elf-maiden vividly. Not her face, so much, but the way her elf-hair cascaded over her smooth elf-shoulders, the softness of her generous elf-breasts as they defied gravity, her narrow elf-waist… Bixby set to work sketching what he had seen in his dream. He didn’t know much about dreams, but he was really hoping this one would come true.

Over the years Bixby had demonstrated a flair for sketching and drawing. His mother had always encouraged him, and if anything his stepmother was even more enthusiastic. He was uncomfortable sometimes sharing his drawings with his stepmother, but she always just shushed him. “This is important,” she would say. “Don’t be such a baby. Now, think carefully. Are you sure there weren’t two elf maidens?”

Suddenly the moonlight was broken by a shadow. He turned and was looking into a pair of beady black eyes. The squirrel regarded him, unblinking. “We know you have it,” the squirrel said. The squirrel grinned. “And we’re gonna get it.”

In shock Bixby jumped up and turned to face the creature. Had it just spoken? Was he still dreaming one of those dreams where you dream you wake up but really you’re dreaming and then you wake up and you’re confused because you didn’t think you were dreaming before? He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

“Honey, are you all right?” came his stepmother’s voice from the doorway behind him. “I heard a noise.”

“Um, I’m fine, ma.” Sure, fine. Talking squirrels. No big deal. It must have been a dream.

“Oh, I see you’ve had another of those dreams,” she said.

Not a dream, a nightmare. He turned away from her, back toward the window desperately trying to find a way to disguise the bulge in his pyjamas gracefully. The squirrel was gone.

Bixby did not get any more sleep that night. His stepmother had wanted to sit next to him on the bed and hear about his dream right then, but he had finally managed to put her off. Between getting caught by her in that condition and the talking squirrel, he was a wreck. At first light he decided to chop some wood to work off some of his tension. Ax in hand he was stepping out the door when his stepmother stopped him. “I think we have enough wood already, Honey,” she said.

“Can’t be too safe,” Bixby said. “Winter’s only a few months away.” He dashed for the forest. It was a longer dash than it had been; Bixby had transformed the small meadow that held the cottage into a much larger clearing, dotted with the stumps of the trees he had felled and chopped into firewood. He found a stout oak and set to work with the ax. Once the tree was down he hauled it over to the woodpile. It was much easier for him to move the trunks around these days; his constant chopping had caused his body to bulge with hard, lean muscle even as he grew into his tall frame.

He split up the log in record time, climbing the tiers of ladders to reach the top of the towering woodpile where he put the new logs. He could see all the way into town from up there, high above the treetops, and he imagined them laughing and pointing his direction, mocking his mighty accomplishment. “Just wait till winter comes,” he muttered. The exercise did the trick, though. He felt much calmer. He would be able to face his stepmother now, as long as she didn’t say anything that made him think… those thoughts.

He was surprised to find the tall, thin man waiting for him at the bottom of the last ladder. People mocked Graybeard, but never to his face. He wore the long flowing robes of a man who doesn’t have to work for a living, and the tall conical hat of a wizard.

“Hullo, Graybeard,” Bixby said.

“Hello there, young man. I have something very important to discuss with you. Is there somewhere we can go where they can’t hear us?

“Who?”

“The squirrels. I see you’ve done your best to eliminate their hiding places near your house, but they can be sneaky.” The wizard looked around and lowered his voice. “I need you to do something for me. There’s a thing, see, that I need you to go find.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Shhh!” Graybeard glanced nervously at the woodpile and steered Bixby away from it. “It’s an important thing. I’m putting together a team of experts.”

“I’m not expert at anything,” Bixby protested.

“Can you chop heads as well as you can chop wood?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“There you go then. The others are gathering in a rough tavern in a rough town many leagues from here. The journey will be very dangerous, as the squirrels and their evil minions will hound you every step of the way. Keep your crackers sealed tightly.”

“Why should I go, then?”

“Oh, there you are,” his stepmother said. “Oooh, you’re all sweaty.” She ran a finger over his sweat-slicked pectorals. ‘Rarrr,”

“When do we start?” asked Bixby.

Thanks!

Cold Water

Posted on by
Reply

The faucet was activated by a foot pedal. I pressed it gently but water gushed forth from the tap and splashed off my hands and all over my clothes. I released the pedal and lifted what little of the cold water I had caught to splash my face. I took a calming breath as I felt the cold bite against my skin. I carefully set my hands on either side of the basin and hung my head. There was no mirror, but I didn’t need one to know what I looked like. The days on the road were written there, their story etched in a language of fatigue and self-reproach.

My knees wobbled, but the basin, cool porcelain anchored to the wall, it’s plumbing hanging naked beneath it, held me. Too many days, too many miles, since innocent sleep. The next sleep that held me would never let me go.

Out there, beyond the fragile wood of the men’s room door, there was a creature sitting at my table, on the plate in front of her an untouched slice of pizza. I had not known I was ordering for two, but I had not been surprised when she arrived. If you run long enough, you forget what it is you’re running from. My memory is blessedly short. She was out there now, sipping her blood-red wine, looking at her pizza with distaste, and not wondering in the least what was keeping me.

I thought, briefly, about finding a way to slip out the back, but that would have left her with the bill, and that wouldn’t be right. She knew I was trapped, that’s why she wouldn’t worry if I took a long time. I could feel her out there. I could feel the heat of her, the unnatural power she held. After all my time running, demons nipping at my heels, it was no coincidence that she chose my table to sit at. She might not have felt the levers of fate at work, but they were there. In that way the instrument of my demise might be innocent of the destruction she brings.

I had been sitting, listening to the band tune up. The bartender said they were good. I’ve learned to trust bartenders. The bandleader had carefully set his guitar in its rack and stepped up to the mike. “We’ll kick it off in fifteen,” he said before switching it off. It was a Tuesday, but the place was starting to fill. A good sign for the music, but I was beginning to feel guilty as my pizza and I dominated one of the few larger tables. I began to plan my retreat. I don’t like to take up more than my fair share of space.

“Can I sit here?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, before I looked at her. Seeing her wouldn’t have changed my answer, it would only have made me afraid sooner. My flight was over. “Have some pizza,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said and flagged down the waitress with disturbing ease. “Another plate and your wine list please.”

“We got Cab, Merlot, and Chardonnay,” the waitress said.

“Merlot, then, please,” my guest said. The fact that I knew what she was going to order didn’t make me feel any better. The wine and the plate arrived and she regarded the pizza for the first time. “Is that egg?” she asked, poking at the slice on her plate dubiously.

“Yeah. Egg, ham and peppers.” I looked at the pie. “I ate all the peppers already,” I added apologetically, indicating the stems at the side of my plate.

She started to say one thing, then said another. “Can you help me?”

Any hope I had of escape vanished when she asked me that. Trapped by some archaic sense of chivalry, the captive of my own mistaken ideas, betrayed by my own hormones, I heard the chorus offstage, beseeching me to change my path, but I could no more deny my nature than Antigone or Oedipus. The only difference was that my tragic chorus was inside my head. There was nothing left but to go through the motions, doomed from the start. All the running, all the hiding, the embrace of anonymity and the erasure that the road provides were no more. I was found, and I was made.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Just pretend you know me.”

“I do know you.”

“What?”

“Does your boyfriend know if you like eggs on your pizza?”

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

I knew that. It was in the script. “Does he know?”

She looked at me for the first time. Wondering what she had got herself into, no doubt. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, then. We already know each other better than that.” I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t want to. A simple label would have undermined the intimacy. It would have, perhaps, given me a handle on her that I could have used to escape.

She reached across and took my hand in both of hers. Her cool touch sent a shiver through me. I was amazed that my hoary old skin could even feel softness like that any more, but the contact stopped my heart. Her fingertips gently explored my battered and abused hand without her direct knowledge, and the delicacy of them amazed me. I lifted my gaze from her hands to her eyes.

“Nature calls,” I choked out. “Be right back.”

Thanks!

The Desert

Posted on by
6

I came down through Splendor, passing the inviting breakfast shops and tourist traps, chasing the white stripes that would not let me stop, would not let me rest. Winding down through canyons of forgotten beauty I descended into saguaro country and further down onto the hard-baked bedpan of the desert floor. The sun directly overhead pounded the landscape into pure bleak flatness, robbing the land even of its shadows. The shimmering heat over the road reflected the bottomless cobalt sky, making it appear that the shoulders of the road were hanging in the air.

The white stripes paused; the road had been resurfaced here but not repainted. There was room to pull off to the side, with a rusted trash barrel standing with its plastic liner next to a picnic table sitting naked in the blasting sun. This is it. The gravel scrabbled beneath my tires as I pulled over to the side of the road. I sat for a moment, idling quietly, before I turned off the engine and felt the true silence of the desert crashing over me.

I opened the door and lifted myself up out of the low vehicle into the crackling air. I stood, listening for the whispered sigh that would announce the approach of another car, but there was nothing. There would be no one, I suspected. Not even the lizards would be coming out today.

I listened to the soft crunching sound beneath my feet as I walked around the convertible and hoisted out the nearly-exhausted jug of gatorade. I drained the last of the salty liquid and tossed the empty into the trash can. It wasn’t heavy enough to push its way down into the flimsy trash bag; it just sat at the top, peering out of the can as if rejected, hovering between the worlds of litter and trash, but unable to join either. Heaven or Hell. Just different kinds of dead. The bottle pointed North.

I adjusted my hat and turned, facing North, away from the road. The fence was down; the century-old wooden posts staggered drunkenly or lay in their final resting place as the wind slowly buried them under pale dust. Where barbed wire still clung to the posts tumbleweeds had collected, skeletons of Russian emmigrants who had done well in the new world, taming the west so thoroughly they had become icons. They watched me now with futile hostility. Their battle line broken by time and neglect, the sentries could do nothing to prevent me passing into their conquered land beyond the fence.

I turned back to the car and lifted the army-surplus duffel out of the passenger seat and hung its strap over my shoulder. It felt heavier than it should have, as if the Earth was impatient to recieve its contents. Careful not to dent the metal of the car, I pulled out the shovel. Using its long handle as a walking stick I set out into the desert. Moses beginning his exile must have felt this way.

I glanced back at the car, shimmering and ticking. Someone would be coming back for it, but I didn’t think it would be me.

1

Thanks!