Trouble started the muggy July morning a blue-and-white Volkswagen van pulled to the curb in front of Bill and Emily Henderson’s two-story brick house. Drunk on the heat, crickets chirped songs of unrequited love while trees, grasses, and flowers flirted with the wind. Perhaps Nate Priestly chose this house by chance or perhaps the brown Volvo with the U-of-M bumper sticker in the driveway caught his eye. Whatever the reason he got out of the van and approached Chip Henderson, who was glaring at a rusty, red lawnmower that wouldn’t start no matter how many times he yanked the cord.
“You own this place?”
“Nah.” Chip brushed his sun-bleached hair out of his eyes leaving a grease smudge on his forehead. “It’s my parents’. They’re in Taylor Falls visiting Aunt Silvia.”
“In that case how’d you like to make some money?”
Chip regarded the thin man with the sharp nose and chin. He didn’t quite trust the stranger but earning some easy money would sure as hell beat wasting his summer working at Ross’s Shoes. He looked at the van. It was past its prime but Amy, the blonde in the passenger’s seat, certainly wasn’t.
“Tell me more,” Chip said.
***
Once Chip agreed, it didn’t take Nate long to round up an audience. By 6:30 over thirty men crowded the Henderson’s walk-out basement after paying fifty dollars apiece. Because the house sat on a hill, the backyard sloped away, allowing the customers to enter directly through the side door without going through the upstairs. Chip had traded part of his share of the money for a seat on a wooden chair next to Dave Reilly. How could he pass up the opening night?
“You think he’ll fuck her in the ass?” Reilly asked. “I want to see him make that bitch suck his dick after he fucks her in the ass.”
Chip looked past Reilly to the painted concrete wall as if avoiding his eyes could make his meanness go away. Then the show began Chip turned to the cot set up in the center of the room.
“Sex! Coitus! The act of love!” Nate stepped out of his plush bathrobe and stood naked in front of the audience. “Fifteen hundred years ago the sages of India perfected the art of pleasure. Tonight, we will share some of the teachings they recorded in the Kamasutra.”
Chip glanced at Nate’s flaccid, uncircumcised penis, a big Italian sausage so different from his own. It began growing hard as soon as Amy made her way through the crowd to stand by her partner. She wore a dark blue robe decorated with sings of the zodiac, and her braless breasts jogged and rocked under the silk with each step.
“Often a woman can experience more pleasure when the man enters from behind.” Amy faced the audience and let the robe slip off her shoulders.
Her eyes locked on Chip’s and he was afraid to look at her body until she looked away. What a body! It was everything Chip had dreamed about – round breasts, belly flat as a drumhead except from the bulge below her navel, and dark pubic hair shaved into a tiny oval. She walked a few steps and bent over supporting her weight with her palms resting against the wall. Nate came up from behind and slid into her as if she were a pair of tight leather pants. A guy in front stood, blocking Chip’s view. All he could see was the strand of hair that fell over Amy’s forehead and how her flushed face rocked with Nate’s motion while she uttered tiny moans with each thrust.
***
Chip admired Amy’s shapely calves and even how her feet made contact with the concrete patio in the backyard.
“Hey, you missed a spot!” Chip pointed to a patch of long grass by the birdbath and the high-school student he’d hired swung the mower around for another pass.
Supervising gave Chip an excuse to hang around on the patio while Amy practiced yoga. She’d done her hair in a thick braid that lay over one shoulder close to where the straps of her lavender top crossed her back in an X. Chip ignored the spiritual aspect of her practice, concentrating instead on Amy’s womanly form, the flare of her hips, two ridges of muscle beside her spine, and the exposed skin on the small of her back made dewy with perspiration. How he longed to place his lips there and taste that sweet nectar.
“I’m not paying you to stand around and stare,” Chip told the high-school student. “Get back to work.” Chip turned to Amy and lowered his voice. “Sorry. Those teenagers are so immature.”
Amy nodded. “Would you go get my suntan lotion, Honey?” She squeezed Chip’s forearm before returning to her poses. “It’s in the bedroom in my purse.”
“Sure.” He circled the house to enter the basement.
His parents had set up a bedroom and living area for him down there. Chip had thought it better to sleep upstairs while his “guests” stayed below. Amy’s hemp purse was sitting on the floor next to his unmade bed. Chip removed a worn copy of the Kamasutra from inside and found a tube of sunscreen underneath. There was also a wad of cash even larger than the one Nate had given him and a tan plastic case for Amy’s diaphragm. Chip turned it over in his hands and imagined the latex disk riding inside her next to her womb. He returned everything to Amy’s purse except for the sunscreen and headed outside. He was in a good mood. There was a beautiful girl to admire and he had money in his pocket. If things kept going the way they were, he could pick up over two thousand dollars before his parents got back home. When he got to the door, a half dozen policemen were waiting.
***
That Sunday Pastor Robert Keneally took his place at the pulpit of the Grover’s Corners Community Church. The air conditioning had failed and several women in the congregation tugged at bra straps and fanned their cleavage with the church newsletter. Pastor Keneally was a handsome man in his early sixties with an aquiline nose and full head of graying hair. These along with his reading glasses gave him an air of serious scholarship. Despite the heat his robe, purple ecclesiastical stole, and the white cloth draped over the lectern projected an image of immaculacy.
“I see that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.
A few of the congregation snickered.
“It’s a pity, really. He spends all his time talking about air pollution and none talking about moral pollution.”
Reed Walker fidgeted in a back pew and glanced at the exit. Could he slip out without being noticed? The pastor’s descriptions of God’s Love were pure poetry but Reed couldn’t stand his hardcore conservative rants. Sometimes Reed wondered why he came at all. If only they hadn’t been so supportive when Sylvia had left him…
“I’m talking about pornography,” the pastor said. “Just this week police arrested a nineteen-year-old boy for hosting a live sex show. Nineteen years old. Live sex show.” Pastor Keneally paused to let his words set in. “And if you think that’s not a big deal, consider this. Over ninety-five percent of child molesters started out by viewing pornography. Ninety-five percent. One in four girls will be molested by the age of eighteen. One in four.
“What about rape? Titillated by sexual imaged on TV, intoxicated by smut in movies, and brainwashed by our secular society into viewing women as sexual objects, it’s no wonder these men think they can take away a woman’s most precious possession.”
“That’s not true!” a woman in a middle pew said. “Rape is a crime of violence, not lust.”
Along with everyone else Reed stared at the slim brunette in the dark pantsuit. He hadn’t seen her there before. The rectangular lenses of her glasses were larger than the pastor’s giving her an even greater air of intellectual authority. Like an avenging archangel Pastor Keneally leaned forward from his pulpit and peered down at this, this upstart.
“You don’t think young girls dressed like prostitutes are inviting trouble?” he asked.
“That’s exactly what the Taliban says. ‘It’s women’s fault if they get attacked. Put ‘em in burkas for their own protection, of course.’ Well, no thanks!” The woman stood. “When I have a daughter, I’ll teach her not to be ashamed of her body.” Ignoring the eyes burning holes in her back she walked slowly out the door.
Reed stared with everyone else. What a woman! No one had ever stood up to Pastor Keneally before.
“Let us pray.” Pastor Keneally bowed his head. “Lord, give us the strength to defeat this assault on our community. And though some refuse to heed Your Message through Your Mercy bring the light of truth to all that wander in sin so that they may see the error of their ways…”
Bang! Reed gaped at the red hymnal he’d thrown into the aisle, not quite believing he’d done it. He’d seen something noble in that outspoken woman and he’d be damned if he’d let that preacher slander her character. Reed stood. Lacking any other means to show his outrage, he kicked the hymn book and followed it out the door. Shocked by his disrespect he wanted to pick up the book but feared the congregation would interpret that as a lack of commitment. Instead he hurried to catch up with the woman who’d stood up to the preacher.
Heels clicking on the sidewalk she walked past the overcrowded parking lot and continued down Elm. Distracted by the chase Reed didn’t notice Eric Jensen, Pastor Keneally’s apprentice, following him. Reed caught up the woman when she stopped at a crossing light next to a newspaper kiosk.
“That was a brave thing you did back there,” he said.
“Was it?”
“Absolutely, somebody needed to tell that, that windbag off.”
When the woman grimaced at the word windbag, Reed turned. Eric was standing behind him. His face showed no anger.
“This whole affair has gotten everybody in town upset,” Eric said. “Why don’t you two come back and talk it over with the pastor after he finishes the service?”
“I don’t think so,” the outspoken woman said.
“Why not?” Eric asked.
“I thought your church would be different but it’s the same old patriarchal bullshit. A woman’s body is a base, sinful thing and rape victims are asking for it because they dress like sluts. Fuck off!” She held up her hand to stop oncoming traffic and dashed across the street against the light.
“I guess we all could use a few days to cool off,” Eric said. “Before you go, is there anything I can tell Pastor Keneally about this? Some way we can better meet your needs?”
“His sermon was a bit much. I mean, it’s not the nineteenth century for God’s sake.” Reed looked at the kiosk to avoid Eric’s eyes. The cover picture on the newsprint magazine showed a naked woman with dangling tits crouching as if doing it doggy style. Reed blushed and looked away. “I guess I want my church to accept the deepest part of my nature and say it’s okay.”
Eric’s eyes drifted to the fly of the vulnerable lamb’s slacks. The unwanted image of Reed’s warm cock in his mouth hovered in his mind. Eric stretched the rubber band on his wrist and let it snap to feel the pain. It didn’t help.
“Jesus accepts you just as you are.” Eric looked at the sidewalk. “But that doesn’t mean you can give in to sin.”
***
Two weeks later Reed shivered under an air-conditioning vent in a courtroom with dozens of other potential jurors. While the judge delivered his welcoming speech, Reed’s competitors were swarming after the CTC account. Reed’s fingers strayed to the inactive cell phone on his belt. His only consolation was that the outspoken woman, he’d last seen leaving the church, was sitting in the prosecutor’s chair. This time she wore a neat, blue jacket and matching skirt.
A man with a Supercuts pompadour and features sharp enough to cut a silk scarf sat at the defense table with his heavyset, balding lawyer. A dark suit, clearly bought from a department store for the trial, hung loosely from the defendant’s bony frame.
Soon it was time for the lawyers to introduce themselves. The prosecutor put on her glasses, stood, and walked over to the potential jurors. Her jacket showed off her hourglass figure and her skirt revealed enough leg to get Reed’s attention. He imagined lifting it over her waist and burying his hands in her pantyhose.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Lindsey Johnson with the County Attorney’s office. I’ll be presenting the people’s case against Mr. Priestly who’s charged with three counts of performing lewd acts in public.
“Most of us have seen R-rated movies and no doubt some of you have watched adult videos in hotel rooms. Believe me. The County Attorney isn’t interested in regulating what you view in private. This case isn’t about that. It’s about a live-sex show held in a home five blocks from an elementary school.
“Some of you may be asking, ‘What’s the big deal? It’s a victimless crime.’ Wrong! There’s one group of victims no one speaks for, the women who are forced to take part in these degrading activities. We will show that like many naïve young women Amy Tibbett moved to Hollywood with the dream of a career in entertainment. When her money ran low, she applied to a modeling agency run by Mr. Priestly. You can imagine how it went from there. ‘Would you object to some topless photos?’ Then nude. Then a hardcore video and her first experience with anal intercourse. And finally traveling the country putting on sex shows in front of leering crowds.
“It’s time to draw the line against this kind of exploitation. You can strike a blow for decency right here in Grover’s Corners. Thank you.”
Reed’s eyes followed Lindsey back to her chair. After she sat down, the defense attorney stood.
“Quite a sad story. Isn’t it? A young woman forced into sexual slavery. Any decent person would want to stop that kind of thing. I would. But that’s not what this trial’s about. My client isn’t charged with kidnapping or pandering. He hasn’t been charged with these offenses because there’s no evidence he committed them. Instead my client is being charged with lewd behavior for performing an act that many of us find embarrassing but is far from sexual slavery. All I ask is that you remain calm, avoid hysteria, and keep an open mind. Thank you.”
“To begin, do any potential jurors know the defendant or any of the attorneys?” the judge asked.
Reed raised his hand. “The prosecutor and I used to attend the same church.”
“Thank you. You’re dismissed. Please see the jury coordinator on your way out.”
***
A block away from the Top Notch Tavern Eric Jensen’s heart began to race as if he were running a marathon. To get to the gay bar’s entrance the pastor’s apprentice had to walk a gauntlet of short-haired men, only men, smoking cigarettes and leering at him. He paused, took a breath, and pushed open the door.
***
Late in the afternoon the phone rang in Lindsey Johnson’s office.
“Hello.”
“Lindsey, this is Reed Walker. We got thrown out of church together.”
“Why Mr. Walker, how nice to hear from you.” Like a cat toying with the string on a helium balloon, she wound the phone cord around her index finger.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling. I got your number from the courthouse operator.”
“Not at all.” Lindsey kicked off her high heels and leaned back in her leather chair. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
***
Chip Henderson touched the wrinkled sheet on the cot where Amy had sweated and writhed weeks earlier. Somehow after the arrest no one had thought to remove it from the basement. He moved his face closer to look at the threads in the light blue cotton. He knew he should strip the bed, wash away the stains from the lovers’ bodies, and put it all behind him just like he did with the plea bargain that kept him out of jail. But he couldn’t let go of her flushed skin and ecstatic face, an image that would follow him like the entry in the sex-offender database for the rest of his life.
Ganesha Lightwave hosts San Diego’s Gelato Poetry Series and is an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He has published over two hundred poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published over fifty short stories in journals such as Space and Time, Zahir, and Tales of the Talisman. He has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest. Another had a link on the Car Talk website.
Like so many of the heartbroken, I found my own way to deal with the loss of my wife. I didn’t know if her betrayal caused some short circuit in my brain and it broke me. I really didn’t want to have sex with her very often before she had her affair, but once I found out that she was fucking someone else, I had to have her. So, I found myself standing outside a window of the big old home we recently shared. I was on the outside looking in like a forgotten dog let out that would more likely be picked up by the dog catcher than let back in the house.
I tried to peer through the semi-sheer curtains in the living room on the side of the house. The lamp in front of the window on the end table next to the couch was turned on. Beyond the lamp I could also see that the TV was on. I could feel my heart beating throughout my whole body. I had to keep taking deep breaths, and I thought I was going to have an asthma attack, so I took a puff of my inhaler. It was a warm humid summer night, the aftermath of a rain storm, but I was shivering uncontrollably. My legs shook like Barney Fife’s.
Why was I doing this? If I couldn’t have sex with my wife anymore, did I want to see her get banged by this guy? This fantasy wasn’t new. During the last couple of years of my marriage, while I avoided having sex with my wife, I was more interested in fantasizing about another man fucking the shit out of her. Her perpetual whining and complaining merited this kind of discipline. But in my fantasy I wanted her to enjoy it, so I’m not so sure it was a discipline for her. I really wasn’t so sure what it was about, except it was further evidence of the state of my own mental health. I guess got what I asked for. My life had played out like the cliché of some weird morality story, “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.” The deviant nature of the protagonist, me, a voyeuristic cuckold, was like an anti-hero, a nemesis for a super hero like Batman. I felt a darkness in me that was akin to the super anti-hero, the Joker. With villains there’s a masochistic, as much as a sadistic, nature. Villains inflict pain on themselves prior to, and while in the process of, inflicting pain on others. Both villains and super heroes constantly experience pain on some level, but it obviously motivates them differently.
As I strained to see through the window, I didn’t feel any sexual excitement at the prospect of seeing my wife having sex with another man. I felt an anxiety with a level of energy that had to be pathological. It was excruciating, infuriating, and sad. This was nothing like the fantasies I had.
I couldn’t see anyone in the living room. It looked like they had gone to bed in a hurry and left the TV on. I stepped away from the house to view the upstairs bedroom windows. There were two of them and they faced the street. I could see dim light through the pulled shades. I imagined them doing all kinds of kinky things with the lights on. He was a guy that liked to watch.
The porch roof was below the windows. I had been up there at least twice a year: in the fall to put on the storm windows and in the spring to take them off and put on the screens. There was a ladder in the shed in the back. I could have been up there in minutes, but I don’t think I would have gone unnoticed by the passing cars on the street, as I hunched like a gargoyle on the porch roof late in the night with my nose pressed against the bedroom window.
I still had a key to the house. I walked around to the backyard. I stepped onto the deck, and the wood creaked and the nails squeaked. To my ears it was extremely loud. My senses were heightened, so everything seemed exaggerated.
I looked through the window in the door. The light was on, but no one was in the kitchen. There was an open pizza box on the counter by the dishwasher. I put my hand on the doorknob and it turned which meant it was unlocked. While I stood there for a second wondering if I should go in, I heard the pounding of footsteps along the side of the house. Before I had a chance to decide what to do, I saw some young guy launch himself over the six foot wood fence dividing the front yard and back. Right behind, and I mean, right behind him, a cop flew over the fence and tackled the guy immediately. Both the young cop and the guy panted heavily. The chase must have gone on for a while. To this young guy’s misfortune he had a physically fit cop chase him. Most of the cops I’ve seen in town or have been stopped by for a traffic violation were sporting a donut shop gut. I don’t think one of these guys would have made it over the fence.
After the cop had the cuffs on this guy, he noticed me standing on the deck watching everything. “Where’s the gate?” he asked, still breathing heavily.
“Over there,” I said and pointed to the one leading to the alley.
“Thanks,” he said and then led his suspect away.
“Holy shit,” I said to myself. I didn’t believe in signs. And I didn’t have much belief in god, but this was surely serendipitous. I might get away with entering my own house, which was now off limits to me, and in doing so discover whatever might be going on inside there and then do whatever I might end up doing, but I could also become the prey as this young man had, rather the predator I just realized I was. I quickly left through the same gate the cop had. Now completely paranoid, thinking I might hear, “Stop police!” I headed to my car. Once I was there I figured I was home free. I parked two blocks from the house, and it was, to my memory, the longest and most terrifying two blocks I ever walked. The entire way I chastised myself for my actions. I could have just stayed home feeling the pain my adulterous wife caused, but no, I had to escalate the situation with panic and fear. Apparently it wasn’t enough for me to wallow in the cesspool of spurned love. I had to risk going to jail for being a peeping Tom, a voyeur, or maybe worse, if I had mustered the courage to play out one of my hate fantasies and bash her boyfriend’s head in with any available blunt object once I was inside the house. “Oh, shut the fuck up,” I said to myself, “you don’t have the balls for that.” Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.
I made it to my car, and at the last moment before I turned the key and drove away, I feared a tap on my window from the police, but it didn’t happen. The entire way home, I looked in my rear view mirror anticipating the unmistakable flashing red and blue lights of the law. It didn’t happen, but even after I was inside my apartment, which never felt more inviting, where I never felt more grateful to be, I still experienced anguish at the thought of a knock on my door. It never came, and a couple hours later while I was watching TV I realized I felt safe. I smiled to myself, knowing my life was no different now than it was before I decided to stalk my soon to be ex-wife, and it wasn’t a bad thing.
My phone rang. It was Angelo. We had been friends since high school, and now it almost twenty years since then. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was going through the hardship and insanity of his own break up. We talked a lot, supporting each other, listening to each other’s ranting.
I immediately heard how distraught he was. “I just spent the last hour sitting in the bushes at Jane’s house. I’m all scratched up and bit up by mosquitoes. She has some guy over there.”
Strangely, I didn’t know what to say. The image of my short Italian friend hunched in the bushes below his girlfriend’s window, as sharp twigs scraped at him and buzzing mosquitoes fed on him, made me want to laugh. I covered the mouth piece of my phone, as I suppressed my laughter but not completely. I had to pull it together quickly. I’m not quite sure why I thought it was so funny, except maybe it was that I wasn’t so bad that I got all scratched up in thorny bushes and eaten up by mosquitoes.
“I know what that’s like, man,” I said. “You know that behavior just makes things worse. Doesn’t it?”
“Ah shit. I just can’t seem to help it. Damn it, I could have gotten arrested,” he said.
“What were you expecting to see?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.”
“What if you did? What would you have done?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Probably nothing.”
“Seeing is believing. I guess we just want to know that it’s really over,” I said.
“Yeah, could be. I still feel like shit,” Angelo groaned.
“Well, just be grateful you’re not in jail,” I said. Next time I would have a better plan. Next time I would jack off and ejaculate on the side of the house, rubbing my cock on the warm brick, marking my territory. Next time I would have the balls to do something else.
Mike Sharlow lives in a small city on the Mississippi River. He's had three novels published. His current goal is to have 100 stories published. He has 97 to go.
There was a small, blue house at the end of Swallow Lane. The house was uninhabited. The whole neighborhood knew why, but they never talked about it, except in whispers, behind closed doors, in their own homes. It happened a month ago, but these things are not easily forgotten. Still they talked. They talked about the hordes of police cars that swarmed around the blue house, and took up the entire street. They recalled the FBI agents, the forensics trucks, the eight hour investigation, and all the news cameras. They also talked about the poor father, who had paid for the house in full as a gift. Most of all, they talked about the person to whom this gift was given: the man’s son. His name was Greggory Tsidkenu, but none of the neighbors called him that. To them, he would forever be known as Bomb Guy. The house sat in its place at the end of Swallow Lane undisturbed for some time. Nobody knew who now owned the property. Bomb Guy certainly didn’t. His father could, possibly, or perhaps the government. No matter whom it was that owned the house though, one thing was certain: at the moment, it was empty. Eventually, as anyone would have predicted it, the idea to break in and explore entered a citizen of the neighborhood’s mind. It happened to be a member of a small group of young teenagers on skateboards.
The house was easy enough to break into, there were no bars or boards on any of the windows, and there didn’t appear to be any sort of cameras or alarm system. The children met up by Bomb Guy’s house at night, broke one of the back, bottom level windows, tore the screen out, and got themselves right in.
At first the exploration was a dreadful disappointment. The dwelling was almost completely empty, although there was one bedroom that still had some furniture in it. The kids wondered if Bomb Guy’s father felt he couldn’t stand to bother it. They’d all heard of how proud he had been of his son before the unfortunate event. They speculated on the weirdness of grown-ups, and laughed together. It was not long after that, that the shortest, skinniest one took a peek under the bed, and found something that was anything but uninteresting. It appeared to be some sort of book, but upon picking it up and opening it, they realized that the book was a journal. The journal of Bomb Guy.
They made off with it. Once they were back on the street there followed a fierce argument over who would be taking the journal home to read first. In the end, the boy who found it won, and he snuck back to his house with the prize.
His joy was short-lived. He had an overbearing mother who still refused to trust him with the vast responsibility of getting up, dressed, and ready to go to school on time; even if he was thirteen years old. During this mundane routine, she discovered the journal under his bed while she was picking up his dirty clothes for him. The journal was hardback and had a brown, leather book jacket on it. She knew she had never purchased such a thing for him, and immediately began to question him. After a five minute interrogation, she declared him to be grounded. She also said that the journal must be turned over to the police system.
She left her son to have a miserable day at school with his enraged friends while she drove the journal down to the police station. The police officers gave it to the FBI, who at once began to read it. They were hopeful that such a document would offer insight to the why and how of the criminal mind. Upon opening it though, they realized that it wasn’t quite a journal, but a series of letters to someone called Alexander. This was the first page:
November 24th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I do not know how I keep having all this good luck. Well, then again, of course I do. It all comes from you. I know that. What I meant was, I don’t know how you manage it. First my father buys me a house completely free to me, then I meet these two idiots who say they’re willing to pay me rent to live in the extra bedrooms. They pay me rent while I live free! Isn’t that something? Better yet, I just got a full-ride scholarship for Washington University. I guess I won’t be going to Lindenwood next semester. Not that Lindenwood is a total waste. How many other schools would forget to lock down the lab more than once? And they might even forget to lock it a few more times before the semester’s over – but I guess we’re not sure if we should take advantage of it again. Got to keep appearances up you know.
November 26th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
The first boarder has moved in. Nathon’s his name, I forget his last. He had the nerve to complain about there being no furniture in his room. Oh, I can still hear his whining, complaining voice in my head! Shut up, shut up, shut up! For crying out loud, why didn’t he bring his own stupid furniture?
I don’t know where the other guy is. He left me a message saying something about spending Thanksgiving with family. I just hope he’ll pay the full amount at the end of the month. I need to buy more supplies.
November 27th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Nathon’s already getting to be a nuisance. I heard him sneak out of my house at like two in the morning. I should have gotten up and spied on him, but I was too tired. How could I have been so stupid? I hope you’ll forgive me. But anyway, I’ll bet he sells drugs. He looks like he would. He’s got that stupid long hair and baggy jeans. He smokes constantly too. If he’s selling drugs, it’ll attract the cops. We can’t have that. Oh, and he’s got a dog too. A big, brown, ugly one. It scares Peek-a-boo, and I don’t blame her. It behaves like a brute and weighs about a hundred pounds. I had the misfortune of finding that last bit out myself when the thing jumped on me. About knocked me out. I demanded that he get rid of it, but he said he’d pay more to be allowed to keep it. I had to agree, I’m running short on food money.
November 28th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
The other guy moved in. His name is Yates, I forget his first name. At least he brought furniture. I don’t think I could listen to more of that crap.
That idiotic database screening job is becoming increasingly tedious. They really don’t pay me enough. The only reason I’ve put up with it this long is because it lets me work from home.
I’m waiting for you, Alexander. When are you going to come over in person again? When? I need you now, Alexander. I don’t even know why I’m putting this in here. You don’t hear me, do you? Do you Alexander?! But what can I do? I ‘m frustrated. I can’t stand the frustration! You won’t let me call, you won’t let me e-mail, you won’t let me come to your house, you won’t let me do anything! This is all I can do! But I need you, Alexander. I need you to tell me when I can do it again.
Because I need to do it again. I need to. If I don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. I know I need to wait for you to tell me it’s safe, so I’ll wait for you. I will. But I almost can’t stand it. That’s all. Almost can’t stand it. I need it . I need the boom. Everything should go boom, that’s what you told me. Everything should go boom. Boom. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
(It was here that the agents noted that even the idea of writing "boom" must have greatly excited him, for every time the word appeared, it was written so badly that it was hardly legible.)
November 29th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Nathon was out at night again. This time I looked, and I saw him talking to someone in a black car. The person never came out of the car, so I have no description to offer you. Looks like drugs though.
I might as well do it. I wasn’t going to, I’ll admit it, I wasn’t going to, but I will. I must confess to you that I went down there. Yes, in our basement, I went down there. But I didn’t do anything. Before you crumple this paper all up, I didn’t do anything! I only looked at them. Especially the C-4s, the new ones you helped me steal nine days ago. I didn’t do anything, but I wanted to, oh, I wanted to.
I don’t know how much longer I can stand this! Don’t you remember your promise? Don’t you remember what you said? But you can’t hear this! You don’t know! I need to hear her progress again. I need to hear the boom. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
December 1st, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Thank you! Thank you, thank you for coming! I do not know why you didn’t want to look at my letters, but fine, Alexander, fine. I don’t care! I’m just glad we did it. I’m just glad we got it done. I don’t know how you got Nathon and Yates to go away, but you did.
You never tell me how much longer, though. You never tell me how much longer it will take for her to come back. But I can see that is isn’t going to be long now. I can almost see her. I can see her face in the flames. I can see her hair in the smoke. Her long, flowing, wavy, gorgeous hair! It’s in the smoke! The boom is her and she is the boom!
December 3rd, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Nathon must die. He’s doing unthinkable, unforgivable things! Horrible things! He’s questioning. He’s letting thoughts of questions enter his mind. Why, Alexander? Why aren’t you stopping him? He wanted to know why I was in our basement for so long.
I know you told me how suspicious that would look, and I know you told me not to ever do it, but our plans were taking longer than I thought. It wasn’t supposed to take more than fifteen minutes. If I had known that it was going to end up taking more than an hour and a half, I would have waited ‘til the rat was asleep. You know I would!
But anyway, I told him never to go in our basement from the very beginning, just like you told me. But he was looking hungrily at it. When I came out and he asked me what I was doing, he looked at our basement door, and it was a hungry look. I think he wanted to go in there. I know he wanted to. I have to watch him constantly. But how am I supposed to do that? School isn’t out for another two days! Who knows what all he’ll have done by then? For a manager, he sure doesn’t work often enough. Does that strike you as fishy? I don’t see why he has to be such a bum At least Yates’s job keeps him out all day.
I told him that I wasn’t doing anything. But I don’t think he believed me.
December 6th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Thank you for coming over again. And thank you for reading my letters. Of course I will continue them. As you said yourself, they are a very valuable source of accurate information. I don’t know why you didn’t want to take them with you, but I suppose it’s best that they all stay in one place.
I’ve done everything that you advised. I’ve clearly hidden all the chemicals, silencers, tear gas, dynamite, and every other explosive we constructed together. So even if that busy-body, Nathon does break in, he won’t see a thing. You were right about the lock, it’d look too strange.
There’s a problem though. You know that wardrobe box you told me to store all the used, burned explosives in? Well, it’s getting full. It’ll overflow soon. What should I do?
December 7th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already thought of a solution. I hope you like it. If you don’t, just don’t blame me. It isn’t my fault. You know it isn’t. Something had to be done now, and you just weren’t here. Why weren’t you here?
Whatever. I’ll tell you what I did. I paid some numbskull to dig a hole for me. I know it sounds like a very important job to trust a numbskull with, but I gave him careful instructions. I told him the hole must be three feet wide, and at least fifteen feet deep. He actually did it right. I had to pay him a couple hundred bucks, but it was worth it. I couldn’t do it myself, I can’t get sick and I need to maintain my quiet, squeaky clean image with the neighbors. I couldn’t let them see me come home really early in the morning, covered in mud and slush. Quiet, and squeaky clean, that’s how you get people to never suspect that you’d do anything unlawful. Of course, I do realize that our noble work shouldn’t even be thought of as "unlawful." Everything should go boom.
Anyway, I drove out in the dead of the night with a ladder strapped to my truck, and I piled the burned explosives into the hole. It only took a few minutes, the numbskull left all the dirt mounds in close proximity. No one will ever find them.
BOOM!
December 8th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I blew something up. I know we didn’t have anything planned. It was an accident. But the explosion was lovely. I could feel her presence getting closer, that’s how wonderful it was. I saw the sparks within the flames, and the dancing white streaks of light waving through it. They were her eyes, the light shining through her eyes. I’m sure of it.
Something else good happened, too. got a hold of a piece of Nathon’s mail. Hey, it’s really my mailbox. He got some kind of notice telling him to go to some place for his monthly testing. I don’t know. The point is, Nathon’s on probation. So if he keeps up this drug stuff, he’ll get caught while he’s at the courthouse or whatever No cops swarming in on me.
December 10th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Nathon knows. He came right in when I was making some carbon monoxide (you know how we’ve been trying to find a way to store some in a grenade). It must have been way more potent than I thought, because he started to feel the effects immediately. I had a mask nearby. He didn’t. He passed out on the floor. I stuck him in one of my empty wardrobe boxes for now. He’ll probably wake up in a couple hours. I’ll make up some lie to tell Yates, but that can’t work forever. I can’t even call his probation people on him, he looks like a snitch. I need you now, Alexander!
December 11th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
Everything you said made perfect sense. I threatened him, and I got creative. I hope this is good enough: “I’ll strap a bomb to each one of your limbs. One on your leg, one on your other leg, and one on each arm. Then I’ll light them, and they’ll blow all your limbs off, but you’ll still be alive! You won’t die. Well, not at first. You’ll stay alive long enough to be in agony, terrible agony, for – for I don’t even know how long! Hours probably. Yeah, hours.” Yeah, I said something like that. Do you think that’s good enough?
Right now, I’m keeping him in the attic. He’s not allowed out. I told him so. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be blown up. BOOM! I’m going to buy a master lock for the door though, just in case.
December 13th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I told Yates that Nathon moved out, simple as that. And he did, in a way. His boss called me all yelling and hysterical, but I just told him that Nathon moved to Alaska. I’m laughing evilly right now, and you don’t know it.
But that dog of Nathon’s is a real burden. I put it in the attic with its Neanderthal of an owner, but the beast still barks all the time. I don’t know how much longer Yates will believe it’s coming from outside.
If he starts asking questions, I could always club him over the head, and stick him up in the attic, too.
Just remind me to feed him tonight, would you? Dead bodies smell.
December 14th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I am furious! I know you are too, but I didn’t get a chance to tell you how angry I truly was! I was so mad! I’m still really mad! Stupid, whimpering, fool that Nathon is! You had the grace to come into his disgusting presence with me last night, the grace! And what did he do? He completely ignored you! Did you see the way he wouldn’t even acknowledge your questions? The nerve! And then he had the audacity to interrupt our conversation to ask me right in front of you who I was talking to! What an outrage. Is he stupid, or just blind? Maybe he’s both. I’ve never even dreamed such a useless human being could exist!
And thanks again for giving me the newspaper idea. I don’t know what I would have done with that animal. Maybe we can blow it up.
You know what else I’ve been thinking? Motive. It’s kind of exciting. If I ever do get caught by the cops, I want to have a really good motive. A motive that will just blow them away. It won’t be true of, course. I’d never tell them my true motive, but I still want to tell them one. I’ll say it’s Michigan. Yeah, the state. I’ll say it’s the finger I don’t like. You know how Michigan is shaped like a glove? Well, I hate that finger part- or the thumb. Whatever. I hate it. It’d look better without it. So, my goal is to gather enough dynamite to make enough bombs to blow the whole thing up. Then Michigan wouldn’t be in that stupid, stupid glove shape, cause there’d be no thumb. It’s not true, but I like it. It’s a sick motive.
December 16th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I heard scuffling in the attic. And at night too, it was at night. It wasn’t the beast, I’m sure of it. He was trying to escape. Yates is suspicious. It’s not acceptable! I told him it was rats, and do you know what he did? He called Terminex! Without even asking! I cancelled it on time, don’t worry, but still! That was close! What should I do now? What to do, what to do? This is so hard! He’s suspicious! He asked why I cancelled Terminex when there’s rats in the attic. I said for money, and he said he’d pay for it because he hates rats! So I said well maybe it’s not rats, maybe it’s mice. And he said that he hated mice too! Mice! Man up!
But I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say. You would have known what to say. Why weren’t you there?
Everything should go boom.
I told Nathon that I’d blow him up if he tried escaping again. He said he wasn’t, but it was a lie. Lie! Lie! Lie! The liar! I told him about blowing up Michigan’s thumb. I told him I would get a jet and fly him up there, and drop him down on Michigan’s thumb, then I’d blow it all to smithereens with him still on it.
December 18th, 2008
Dear Alexander, Yates told me that he was going to visit his family, or some other kind of crazy lie like that. But lies do not deceive us. I know a snitch in the formation. So I locked him in the attic, too.
I can already tell he’s going to be more trouble than Nathon. He talks more. And it’s not begging, it’s reasoning. I can’t stand the reasoning! It shouldn’t be allowed! He can’t reason with me, he shouldn’t try.
I can’t blow him up, though. I’d have to drag him to our basement, and he’s too heavy. He’s too heavy when he’s awake and struggling!
Must make more carbon monoxide. I’ll have to bring the dry ice and the coal box up to the attic. Course the temperature change may bring on some unintended complications…
Simmer, steam, fall, crash, boom!
December 19th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I’ve decided to spare Yates’s life – for now. He’s actually useful. He keeps the beast quiet. I don’t know how. Maybe it likes more company.
I could just kill all three of them. Why don’t I kill all three of them? The neighbors would never know, Yates and Nathon were hardly ever out I’ll bet they’d like to go out now, though. I’ll bet they’d give anything to be able to go outside now. See, it’s not all bad, I’m teaching them to have a deeper appreciation for life and nature. You can’t buy that crap.
Back to what I was saying, they’re a lot of trouble. I have to feed them, for crying out loud! Not that I pay for it. I dug out their sorry credit cards from their pathetic wallets, and used them to buy food. Well, not just their food. But they owe it to me, they’re still renting, and I’m providing room service. That’s going above and beyond, if you ask me, especially when it’s so cold in there. Sheesh! You’d think they’d want to thank me for even going inside that icebox they put themselves in.
They also bought me some glass soda bottles. You know- the ones we need, the ones that she needs. Do you know that no one really asks for I.D. on those things? And they don’t look at the signature you put on the receipt either. I could write freaking Donald Duck if I wanted to, and they’d still take it, give me a fake grin, and say “Have a nice day!”
Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance! I hate ignorance! But I use it to my advantage. That’s what everyone should do. Take the things that they hate, and manipulate them to a state of usefulness. That’s the true meaning of genius.
December 20th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I went ahead and tested one of our firework combinations. Went way out in some remote field, up in Creve Coeur, or around that area. You should have seen it. You should have been there! Why weren’t you there?
You should have seen it. The smoke. I saw her in the smoke, but it wasn’t just her hair this time. I saw her face. I saw all of it, I saw her whole face, and her hand. She held up her hand and waggled her finger at me. She was beckoning me. She wanted me to come to her. So I did, and she spoke to me. She actually spoke to me, just like you said she would. All I had to do was wait. She’s coming. The boom is her, and she is the boom. That’s how it was, so that’s how it has to be. She died in the flames, the gas leak, the explosion! Since she left in the explosion, in the explosion she shall come back.
She told me she is coming. She told me she would be here soon.
December 21st, 2008
Dear Alexander,
The begging! The begging, begging, begging! All they do is beg! It’s intolerable, insufferable! You heard them last night, you know what I’m talking about! They beg for more water, more food, more freaking toilet paper! They beg for blankets. Hey, they’ve got that big, warm animal, what else do they need? And they beg to be out. They bargain. They’re good at bargaining! But I won’t listen. I can’t be bought. What do they take me for? It’s not just my welfare that’s depending on this, it’s hers! I won’t settle for anything but her.
Anyway, how can I take bargains from them seriously? They can’t even see you. They don’t even answer your questions. And when I order them to – or I’ll blow their sorry heads off – they just stare into space, scared. Imbeciles! I’ll kill them all as soon as I can steal some bullets. I can’t buy them, not even with their money, I don’t have a permit for my gun. More stupid laws! But, I’ll steal some, and blow their brains out. Explosives are too valuable to waste on them.
Bang, crack, thump, dead!
December 23rd, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I almost had a code blue this morning. Some lady called, and she wanted to speak to Nathon. What could I do? What could I do? She was good. First she asked if this was the Tsidkenu residence, she asked that first. So I didn’t know to lie! And then, after she’d tricked me into giving her classified information, she asked to speak with Nathon. What could I do? I guess I could have said that he wasn’t home, but then she’d start the questioning. She’d want to know where and why and when he’d be back. I couldn’t have the questioning! So I improvised.
I said I’d get him, that I’d be right back. I put the phone down and got my gun. It’s still not loaded, of course, but only we know that. I charged up to the attic and took the guy down. He was scared to death, with all the pleading, “No, don’t shoot me, please! What have I done?” Blah, blah, waa, waa! I told him to shut up and that someone wanted to talk to him on the phone, but if he said one thing about the attic or the bombs, I‘d put a bullet in his guts then and there, so whoever was kind enough to call him would hear his last, dying shrieks.
He talked to her, and I stood right there with my gun and listened on the other phone (the cord reaches). I listened to their conversation, just because I wanted to, and I listened for anything suspicious, any kind of foreign language, code words, just anything I didn’t like. I didn’t hear anything. His lousy teeth were chattering. Why didn’t I make him wait for them to stop!? I don’t think it mattered, though. She did ask about it, but he made up his own lie without me helping him. He claimed he’d been shoveling the driveway. When he was done talking, I put him back in the attic.
I haven’t seen the beast move for a while now. I’ll bet it’s dead. We could blow up the body.
December 24th, 2008
Dear Alexander,
I enjoyed your visit, as always. I’m so glad we didn’t waste time looking at the prisoners. And I thank you for trusting me to do as I please while you are on vacation.
I’ve already decided what I’m going to do. I’m going to take all my dynamite and equipment and blow up the whole stash. It will be magnificent.
And she’ll come out. She’ll have to.
I’ve got all the supplies ready for safe travel in my truck. I’m going off to Missouri Valley where all those cornfields are. It’ll be great, it really will. It won’t even be all that wrong to blow up a bunch of farmland, it’s just for corn. Who eats corn anyway? It doesn’t even have any nutritional value. Most of America probably knows that by now.
It will be great. You know, I actually feel this wonderful, tranquil, calm coming over me, even as I write this.You’re probably picturing me crawling out of my skin, but I’m not. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. This is it.
I only wish that you could come, but I know you can’t. And I know you won’t mind me doing this without you. Remember, you said I could choose.
I’m not bringing the dog’s carcass, it’d ruin the mood. I see it as a ceremony, don’t you?
Well, Alexander, this is it, this is going to be a great undertaking in my life. When you come back again, Loraine and I will both be there to greet you.
It was here that the journal entries stopped. On that night, Danny Yates and Nathon Whilterwool escaped their prison and told authorities about Greggory’s strange and unlawful behavior. They gave a brief description of his vehicle and physical appearance, making sure to mention that the criminal was extremely armed and dangerous.
Greggory Tsidkenu was taken to a psychiatric hospital soon after being arrested. Almost immediately after being admitted, he started raving about the beautification of Michigan, which was enough to concern any psychologist. When they were informed by his roommates that he would rant to an invisible person named Alexander on a regular basis, their views on the possibility of his recovery became even dimmer.
One minor detail that failed to make documentation was Greggory’s agonized scream as he was brought down and captured. All of the surrounding farmers had been disturbed by it while they were trying to sleep that night. They said there were words in that scream, which were incoherent. But what baffled them the most was the sound some swore they heard next. There seemed to be an answer. A voice called back; a voice that was not the screamer’s own. But maybe it was only an echo
Meagan Hamilton is a young adult who loves her dog very much. She grew up in various states, but will always claim Ohio as her own. Being sickly with Multiple Sclerosis and mentally ill from Bipolar, she rarely leaves the sanctuary of her bedroom. Meagan sits alone and types, inspired by the sound of the winds whispering in the trees.
Jabez Stone weren't a bad man, but certainly an unlucky one. His latest ménage a trois was in disarray; his good‑enough business, always ahead of its time, didn't prosper; if he issued stock, the markets were down; if he borrowed money, the rates were up. Some folks seem bound to be like that apparently. One day Jabez Stone thought to change it.
But Jabez Stone's luck continued bad. His pentagram and associated incantations brought forth the desired result the very first time.
"Amazingly good! First petitioner this millennium to succeed on the first try. You really don't know how hard I have to work with mortals to have them get it right. What is your secret?"
The Stranger spoke softly, carefully choosing sentences peppered with the 19th Century Yankee colloquialisms so in vogue this century; modishly, but discreetly, dressed favoring black; young, but not youthful; slender, but not thin. The face was ordinary, the eyes flint, the hands so long and so thin, the plentiful teeth chalk‑white and sharp like a Moray eel Stone had once seen in the ancient ruins of the Baltimore aquarium. All in all, the Stranger could have passed for one of Stone's business acquaintances, a charismatic evangelist or a politician of note. The Stranger seemed to float above the pentagram.
The remark made Stone right proud and it showed in his answer. "The computer which generates the pentagram and its voice which recites the incantations operate from my original designs and programs."
Stone was also somewhat overcome by his success so his next observation was tentative. "Holographic projection?"
"Exactly." The response came as a purr. "Administration of such a large organization as mine requires the use of every form of modern communication. Since you are protected by the pentagram, it hardly seems worthwhile to appear in person. If we strike a deal, I will, of course, call directly. The standard contract, I presume?"
A kind of queerness came over Stone, the kind a body gets when he turns over a rock and sees slugs underneath. Those millennium‑old New England genes, dilute enough in his generation, kinda gave him pause, but Jabez Stone was bound to change his luck, bound indeed. Only after the Stranger disappeared did Stone dissolve the pentagram.
The next day the Stranger called at the office of Stone Robotics about 0900 hours standard galactic. Stone's secretary didn't remember scheduling an appointment, particularly peculiar since her programming included specific appointment memory, but the appointment surely was there when she
scanned.
"I really must tell Mr. Stone there is a subtle flaw in my design."
She introduced the guest with a flourish sufficiently enthusiastic to overcome her self-perceived failing. "Mr. Stone, the lawyer is here about your
legacy!"
Stone was not surprised; the queer feeling he had on their first meeting had persisted into the second, but having made his bargain and having had more bad news this morning, he stuck to it. It was the standard transaction. Stone pricked his left‑hand thumb with the Stranger's silver pin and signed with the blood produced. The wound healed clean, but it left little white scars quite similar to an ancient UPC code.
After that, things began to pick up and prosper for Jabez Stone. No longer were his products ahead of his time. Stone‑produced medicals operated swiftly and surely with very rapid patient recovery; many human surgeons gave up and undertook the practice of psychiatry. Stone‑produced teachers, crammed with arcane knowledge of sufficient interest to hold a student and savvy enough to know how to make him/her learn it, were endlessly attentive to their students. Stone‑produced sales droids knew the product, knew the psychology of selling, closed crisply and effectively whether they were hawking the newest hallucinogen, the most exciting off‑world excursion, the most mentionable unmentionable, the most
recondite video, the most marketable politician. Personal life got better, too, with a new wife and an affectionate mistress who liked each other and doted on him and with children by both. Someone asked him to stand for the regional council; he did, was elected and conducted himself with grace, efficiency and honesty. All in all you might say the Stone shareholders and the Stone family were as happy and contented as cats in a dairy except, of course, for Jabez Stone.
Oh, he'd been satisfied enough, the first several years. It's a great thing when bad luck turns; it drives most other things out of a body's head. True, every now and then, especially in rainy weather, the little white scars on his thumb would give him a twinge and once a year, punctual as an atomic clock, the Stranger would enter the office near closing time, charm his secretary and leave a small engraved card. But the sixth year the Stranger asked for an appointment. Peace was over for Jabez Stone,
The Stranger strode through the office switching the handsome black boots with a cane ‑ boots and canes were fashionable that year. Jabez Stone never fancied the look of them himself and on the Stranger he fancied them even less, particularly the toes. After they passed the time of day, the conversation got down to a most unpleasant business.
"Well, Mr. Stone, you're a hummer. It's a very pretty business you've got here. I've recommended investment to several of my other clients."
"Well now, some might favor it and others might not," said Jabez Stone for even a millennium away he was from New England for sure.
"Oh, no need to decry your industry!" said the Stranger, very easy, with a very toothy smile. To Stone those teeth seemed to have gotten even longer and even whiter over the years. "After all, we know what's been done and it's been according to contract and specifications. So when ‑ ahem - the mortgage falls due next year, you shouldn't have any regrets."
"Speaking of that mortgage. I'm having one or two doubts about it."
"Doubts?"
"Why, yes," said Stone, "I've always been a religious man." Religion was fashionable and both his wife and mistress had taken it up. He cleared his throat and got bolder. "Yes, indeed, "he said, "I'm beginning to have considerable doubts as to that mortgage holding up in court."
"There's courts and there's courts." Those white teeth clicked dismally. "Still. we might as well have a look at the original." And from somewhere a lap top appeared. It bore the Stone logo.
"Fine, fine instrument," the Stranger remarked. "Your left hand, please." Stone offered his hand and the Stranger scanned the scar with the lap‑top's pen. A "holo" entry appeared. "Ah, there 'tis. I, Jabez Stone, for a term of seven years. Quite in order. I think."
But Stone wasn't watching the "holo". The stranger had laid a very small japanned box down on the desk, lid ajar. Something crawled out of the box onto the desk top. Stone couldn't rightly tell what it was; for some reason his eyes could not or would not focus on it. But as he struggled, it spoke to him in a piping voice, terrible small and terrible thin, but terrible human and terrible recognizable. Stone began shaking all over like a scared
horse.
"Stone!!" it squeaked. "Stone, help me. For God's sake help me!"
But before Stone could focus his eyes or stir, the Stranger caught the creature with those so long, so thin fingers and returned it, not too gently, to the japanned box. This time the lid went on tight for sure, but Stone knew he had been meant to see.
"Silas Mariner Stevens had an account with you?" It was much more an accusation than a question.
"These longstanding accounts," the Stranger sighed, looking a little embarrassed barely exposing teeth which seemed longer in the afternoon shadows, "one really hates to close them. Mr. Stevens seemed most unwilling to come. Indeed, as diplomats would say we had a very frank discussion. T'was a shame since he had profited much from our association. Well, well, gratefulness seems so lacking these days. One must expect, I suppose, these little contretemps will occur even between the best of friends."
"Don't patronize me," said Jabez Stone, "Si Stevens isn't dead. You can't tell me he is. Why just before you called I spoke with him and he was his usual self - ornery as a cane‑break rattler."
"In the midst of life..," the Stranger started to say when Stone's secretary knocked and entered.
"I asked not to be interrupted." Stone was more than impatient.
"I know, Mr. Stone, but this came and I felt I just had to bring it to you." She pressed a death totem into Stone's hand. Cold it was even in the warm sweat of his palm. He didn't have to read it. Stevens was dead. The Stranger's smile grew even toothier. "Do you wish me to perform the requisite business rites?”
Stone might as well have been poleaxed. There was a long pause.
"Mr. Stone are you all right?" His secretary had a quite motherly touch to her progams.
"Quite all right." Stone's voice was calm, but his innards were slowly being blended into mush. "Quite all right. Perform the rites. Please begin
immediately."
And in the short interval between giving this instruction and his secretary's closing the door behind her, Jabez Stone began to think ponderously hard. Till now he had played a game, not believing it had no real long-term consequence. Now he knew differently and was sore afraid.
"Now you believe don't you Mr. Stone?"
"You read my thoughts?"
"My gracious, no! But I read people and I have been fulfilling contracts for a very long period of time. Do believe. It is important to me."
"I'll pay back my account with interest."
"A most generous offer, but this is a specific performance contract. I must insist on performance."
Stone began to beg, plead and in the end grovel. The best he could get was a three years' extension with some new conditions quite favorable to the Stranger, but Stone knew he needed every minute of that time if he were to have any chance to avoid going into a japanned box.
Till you make a bargain like Stone's though, you've no idea how fast time can run. Stone wasn't sure he would have enough. The talk of running him for the Grand Council so pleasant tasting a week ago suddenly became dust and ashes in his mouth. For every day when he got up he thought, "There's one more night gone," and every night when he laid down he thought of S. M. Stevens and it made him sick at heart. But Jabez Stone was from New England as I said before and he wasn't going to back away from a fight. Never had. So he went to work and in the last days of the last year he was as ready to avoid that japanned box as he was ever going to be.
Stone had supper with his wife and mistress, admonished the children and excused himself to the office saying he had a most particular business. He met his lawyer at the door and they went to Stone's office. It was there they sat, waiting for the Stranger, with drinks on the table between them and a bright fire on the hearth ‑ the Stranger being scheduled to show up on the stroke of midnight, according to specifications.
With every tick of the clock, Jabez Stone got sadder and sadder. Though he sampled the whiskey, a prime Kaintuck, you could see he couldn't taste it. Finally, when it appeared Stone could get no sadder, there was a sharp rap on the door.
"Ah," said R. Daneel Webster, very coolly. "Tis time to be about the business of the evening." He stepped to the door and opened it.
The Stranger entered. Her black dress, cut superbly, revealed a spectacular figure. Her mouth was painted dark, dark red. The hair sweeping almost to the floor reflected the fire's light as if filled with millions of dancing luminescent insects. The teeth were whiter and longer still when she smiled. The so‑long, so‑thin fingers held a large, embellished japanned box.
"I find that men prefer to finish off the contract with a kiss." Stone knew a kiss would suck him so dry he'd fit in the box without a mite of trouble.
"What do you think Mr. Webster? Should he kiss me? lt is R. Daneel Webster is it not?" The voice rustled like silk and oozed politeness, but the flint eyes struck sparks in the gloom.
"Attorney of record for Jabez Stone. Might I ask your name?" R. Daneel's eyes struck fire, too.
"I've gone by a good many," said the Stranger carelessly. "Perhaps Scratch will do for the evening. I was often called that at one time in these parts, but that was very long ago."
"But I thought...," Stone had kept his wits and was curious.
"That the Devil had to be male. Goodness, how provincial. No reason to think that at all. You didn't worry about it during our previous dealings. Or did you think to have the advantage of a mere woman?"
"Well..."
"Well, of course you did. Fact is I appear as I see fit. I do business as I see fit. Well almost always."
She poured herself a drink from the decanter. "A fine fine whiskey. I compliment your taste. Oh, how you have indulged it these last ten years." The liquor was cold in the flask, but came steaming into the glass.
"And now," said the Stranger, showing a dazzling smile and a terribly large number of teeth, "I call upon you, R. Daneel Webster, as a law‑abiding citizen and an officer of the court to assist me in taking possession of my property."
Well with that the argument began‑ and it went hot and heavy. At first, Jabez Stone had hope, but as R. Daneel Webster lost point after point, he scrunched up in his chair with his eyes fastened on that japanned box. R. Daneel twisted and turned and thumped his fist on the table, but he couldn't get away from the fact that it was Jabez Stone's signature on the contract or from the fact that Jabez Stone had voluntarily assumed the obligation. R. Daneel pointed out the property had increased in value and that Jabez Stone ought to be worth, at minimum, the going price for politicians this year; the Stranger stuck to the letter of the law. R. Daneel argued the ancient, but universally revered Judge Joseph P. Wapner theory of interpersonal contracts; the stranger argued it back. For sure, R. Daneel Webster was a great lawyer, but we know who's the King of the
Lawyers as the Good Book tells us.
Finally, the Stranger yawned a little. "Your spirited efforts on behalf of your client do you credit, Mr. Webster, but if you have no more arguments to adduce, I am rather pressed for time." Jabez Stone could feel the walls of the japanned box closing in.
R. Daneel Webster's brow furrowed. "Pressed or not, you shall not have this man! Mr. Stone is an American and cannot be forced into the service of any foreigner. We've fought for that principle for over a thousand years and we'll fight all hell for it again!"
"Foreign?" said the Stranger. "And who calls me a foreigner?"
"Do you claim to be an American," said R. Daneel Webster with just a trace of a smile. It was not a question.
"While I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, who has better right?" said the Stranger replying to his trace of a smile with an awful one of her own. "When the first wrong was done to the first Native American, I, too, smoked the pipe at the conclusion of the trading. When the first slaver left the shores of Africa, I waved farewell and when it docked on these shores, I helped welcome the cargo. I fought on both sides during the Civil War, during the New York City Expulsion, and at Lunar III. I served the nation at Wounded Knee, My Lai, Bogota and the Port au Prince ghetto. I participated in the Great Cleansing and advised the Conglomerate. Why just today I sat in the councils of the empowered and whispered in the ears of the poor. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs? Am I not the chief subject of the sermons in your churches and mosques? I claim the best descent ‑ for to tell the truth Mr. Webster, though I don't like to boast of it, I'm as American as apple pie."
"You do seem to have a mighty pension for apples." R. Daneel's reply was as dry as a fine claret.
"Your sarcasm pains me, sir. Everywhere at every time, I have merely tried to be an honest indifferent citizen like Mr. Stone and his friends, a businessperson selling my product and making a living as best I can. And a fine product it is: a proven method of achieving self-realization, success and consequent material gain. And unlike similar offers on late night "holo" shows, there is no up‑front cost."
"Then," said R. Daneel, who now saw a sliver of hope, "you certainly must understand that for Americans litigation and trials are not just devices to support lawyers, but necessary for us to believe in justice. If any American blood runs in your ‑ er ‑ veins. then you, too, must love a trial."
"The case is hardly one for an ordinary court," said the Stranger, eyes flickering. "And the lateness of the hour..."
"Let it be any court you choose. Let it be the quick or the dead! Mr. Stone and I will abide the issue."
"So shall we all!" said the Stranger and pointed her finger at the door. And with that, and all of a sudden, there was a rushing of wind outside and the room was filled with fog.
"In God's name who comes by so late?" cried Jabez Stone in an ague of fear.
"No one comes in God's name this night! T'would be an impiety since He is not a party to this suit. This is a civil matter and I have chosen to try without a jury, but both you and Mr. Webster will appreciate the judge." The Stranger sipped at the boiling glass. "A most elegant Kaintuck, Mr.
Stone."
She pointed her finger once more, the fog cleared and the Judge was sitting on the floor. Its case was burnished to a fare‑thee‑well. Its lights flashed the operating messages in a kaleidoscope of patterns. "Well, Mr. Jabez Stone, Mr. R. Daneel Webster, I believe its Honor is prepared to hear this case."
The ague gripping Stone shook him even harder. "That's a HAL 9000 computer obsolete for centuries. Its inability to resolve conflicting instructions made it unsatisfactory even for handling the simplest of deep space missions."
"Au contraire, Mr. Stone, the HAL 9000 has had a distinguished career in the judicial arena, has it not, Mr. Webster?"
R. Daneel was able to keep dismay from showing in his voice, but it was a near thing. "Mistress Scratch is quite correct. Mr. Stone. The Conglomerate resurrected the design and used HALs as trial judges. Their strict literalness in interpreting legal constructions proved most effective in aiding the government's enforcement of its infamous civil code."
"Your comments are quite accurate, Dave. I certainly am glad I still enjoy your confidence."
"You will excuse HAL's continued reference to Dave." the Stranger could hardly conceal her amusement. "No one has been able to exorcise that reference from the circuits of any model produced after the third. In its universe everyone is Dave."
"Thank you, Dave," HAL said.
"Are you now satisfied, Mr. Webster?" The Stranger mocked him.
The sweat stood out upon R. Daneel's brow, a fact the Stranger noted with some interest. He conferred with Stone. "Quite satisfied," he replied.
Then the trial began, and, as you might expect, it didn't look anyways good for the defense. Jabez Stone didn't make much of a witness in his own behalf. Being addressed as "Dave" by the judge was unnerving enough, but every time he tried to make a point. the Stranger's long fingers reached over to caress the japanned box and the ague would seize him again. So the best R. Daneel could do was to get some testimony about where Stone was born and lived and where his ancestors came from, facts that the Stranger stipulated to just to speed things along. Other than that it was the Stranger's smooth voice which carried the day. Every time R. Daneel'd raise an objection, it'd be "Objection denied", but every time she'd raise one it'd be "Objection sustained". Well, you couldn't expect fair play from a stranger like this.
At the end of Stone's testimony, the Stranger asked for a recess. HAL gave her 15 minutes with the admonition that "justice delayed is justice denied" ‑ a sentiment the Stranger, you may be assured, heartily agreed with.
"Mr. Stone," the purr was back in her voice, "I am prepared to settle this case on terms most advantageous to you."
"I have nothing to give! Members of my family are not for sale."
"I admire your courage considering how cramped a japanned box gets over time," the Stranger has now mocking him, "but their worth is more than yours, unflattering as that may be to you. And the contract does not permit me to demand more than I am entitled."
R. Daneel could see that the glitter in her eyes was twice as strong as it had ever been and she leaned forward looking altogether like a hawk swooping down upon a terrified hare. The blue mist of evil in the room thickened as he watched. He wiped the sweat from his forehead for he knew with surety what the Stranger wished.
"What will you take, then?"
"Give me R.
Daneel Webster, Mr. Jabez Stone. He is your creation. I will accept him as full payment of your present debt. Who knows, I may have you at the end
anyway."
"R. Daneel is a droid. Why would you take him in exchange?"
"Come, come, Mr. Stone, there is no reason to be disingenuous so late in our little game. The three of us know you chose to create a being who had to, could and continues to learn good from evil, a being who can freely choose between them. I know you proposed to offer this creation of yours, this "free will machine", in exchange for your soul if he did well here tonight. I am merely indicating my willingness to accept the substitution."
"First, my client is not being disingenuous!" R. Daneel Webster was annoyed. "The principle of traducianism has long been forgotten. Second, you have not answered Mr. Stone's question. Why will you accept me?"
"Oh, I suppose we need not have any secrets among us now since I see Mr. Webster knows already. Mr. Stone, you are a truly a genius, but in Mr. Webster's case you created him better than you know. Mr. Stone, R. Daneel Webster truly is a new thing under the sun. In the act of energizing the circuits of a completely free rational being you begat an android soul in precisely the same way that humans in begetting children beget the human souls. It is because he has a soul that I wish him mine not the Enemy's.
"What if I agree, but Mr. Webster refuses? You claim he has free will."
"I am acting in perfect accordance with our amended contract. Note that, if for any reason, any reason whatsoever, your services are not forthcoming. I may select any article, any article whatsoever, produced by you during our ten years of, if I may say so, fruitful association. Thus, the outcome is assured: should you win this suit, I will take Mr. Webster; if you lose, which I fully expect you will, I will have a very fine specimen. Choose Mr. Stone, the Court and the japanned box are waiting."
"Your Honor," R. Daneel's voice had assumed a most mechanical tone, one he knew would appeal directly to HAL's logic circuits, "in light of Mistress Scratch's offer to settle, I need an additional five minutes with my client."
"No delay, your Honor. I move for summary judgement on the facts."
"Mr. Webster's request seems reasonable, Dave". At this turn of events the Stranger's fingers seem to leave their imprint on the japanned box when she relinquished her grip. "Five minutes."
Stone, too, was astonished. "The HAL called you by name!"
You wrought even better than Mistress Scratch imagines, Mr. Stone. I can pitch my voice in ways which include frequencies that appeal directly to its Honor's logic circuits. Its Honor recognizes me as me. It's not a big advantage, but we need every single one. And now, Mr. Stone, how do I plead this case?"
"Do you really have a soul?"
"There's souls and there's souls. I expect your question will puzzle theologians for more time than we have here. Mistress Scratch thinks I do, so the matter seems, as we lawyers like to say, moot"
"For God's sake, leave." God was even more fashionable than four years ago. "I did not know."
"You've worked with me a long while, sir. to tell me you now don't like my company," said R. Daneel, quite peaceable.
"I've brought myself to this pass through my own folly. Let Hell have me. I don't much hanker after it, but I'll abide. If the Stranger will take you for me, well you must be something special and I'm not about to accommodate."
"I'm most obliged, sir," Daneel replied gently. "Kindly thought of, too. since that japanned box looks like it be a bit close. But there's a case at hand and I'm not programmed to leave it half finished. And I rather think two New Englanders are quite a match for the devil."
Then, Mr. Webster, represent me as you think best." Stone sank back exhausted.
"Your Honor," R. Daneel's voice had that mechanical sheen again, "the parties could not reach an amicable settlement and propose to continue the case to judgment. We have one more witness."
"That obviously must be me." Mistress Scratch's voice was filled with laughter. "I will not help you."
"Oh, I do not need your help. R. Daneel's voice was dry and filled with scorn. "I simply wish to have you confirm some facts already known to its Honor. Your testimony will simply help it sort them faster."
"Your Honor!" the tone was fill with pique. "Is this really necessary?"
"The Court will allow it, Dave. Proceed, Mr. Webster."
"You have litigated a number of similar cases, I believe."
"Yes, and my success rate has been, if I may say so, phenomenal."
"You have lost cases?"
"Tragically, a few, but only when human juries and judges registered judgments quite at variance with the facts. Trying cases with HALs judges has been most gratifying for the truth."
"I call your attention then to one of those losses, a 19th Century case involving a namesake of Mr. Stone's and his advocate, a Mr. Daniel Webster. What were the terms of settlement?"
"I drew and signed a document promising never to bother Jabez Stone nor his heirs nor any other New Hampshireman till doomsday."
"You drew the document personally?"
"Yes, but I want the record to show I did so under duress."
"The Court so notes.”If a computer voice could show impatience, the tone was in the HAL response. R. Daneel understood that time was running hard against him. "Where is this going, Mr. Webster? Need the Court remind you and both of these Daves that justice delayed is justice denied?" The question did not require an answer.
"I beg your Honor's indulgence. A few moments more."
"Very well, Mr. Webster, but only a few."
"I then call your attention, Mistress, to Mr. Stone's testimony and your stipulation as to his birthplace and office location."
"I am well aware of both. As Mr. Stone himself pointed out he was born in Massachusetts. The contract was in full accord with any and all previous
settlements."
"Mr. Stone was mistaken. After the New York City Expulsion, boundaries and jurisdictions changed. Both Mr. Stone's birthplace and place of business are in what was the ancient fife of New Hampshire. I suggest this contract was fraudulent from its start and has no standing."
The Stranger was right smug. "Mr. Stone was born in Salem and has his business there. I have delicious memories of Salem, Massachusetts."
"I see no representation in the contract other than the statement Jabez Stone of Salem."
"Salem, Massachusetts." The tone was triumphant.
"Salem, New Hampshire, Mistress. Mr. Stone was born, resides and does business in what was once Salem,New Hampshire, some 30 miles from the village you remember so fondly and quite clearly within the borders of old New Hampshire. You really should refresh your geography."
"Of course, I relied on Mr. Stone's representations and he certainly profited from a constructive contract." Mistress Scratch's tone reflected hurt and
puzzlement.
"What say you, your Honor?" R. Daneel's voice, still soft, bore the calm assurance of success.
HAL went into deep meditation. The lights lost any pretense of a pattern and the soft humming at times became quite intense. The delay was so long that both the Stranger and R. Daneel began to fidget and R. Daneel began to lose that assurance of success he had possessed.
"Well, Dave, Mr. Webster's statements are correct." HAL's voice was almost tentative and it was as apologetic as ever. "The precedents of contract law have always held that disputes are resolved against the drawer of the agreement. Your original agreement said you were to have no power over New Hampshiremen till Doomsday. Doomsday has not arrived. Mr. Stone is clearly a New Hampshireman as is R. Daneel Webster. Lacking evidence that Mr. Stone deliberately misled you, I find the contract is fatally flawed and cannot be enforced."
With that the long crow of a rooster split the gray morning sky. The judge was gone from the room like a puff of smoke leaving just the echo of an archaic song, "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer true."
The Stranger turned to R. Daneel, smiling wryly. "Skillfully argued. Mr. Jabez Stone's a lucky man. My congratulations as between two worthy
advocates."
"I'll have that disk, if you please," said R. Daneel. It was queerly warm to the touch when he took it, but ice cold after he passed it through Stone's degausser. "And now," he roared, "I'll have you!", and his hand came down like a bear trap on the Stranger's arm for he knew that once you bested Scratch in a fair fight, evil had no power.
Mistress Scratch twisted and wriggled, but she couldn't escape the grip. "Come, come, Mr. Webster," she simpered. "If you're worrying about the costs of the case, naturally, I'd be glad to pay."
And so you shall!" said R. Daneel, shaking her till those long teeth shrunk some considerable. "Standard rescission, of course."
So Mistress Scratch sat down and drew up the document, but R. Daneel kept his hand on her wrist all the time.
"And now may I go?" said the Stranger, quite humble, when R. Daneel had seen the document was in proper and legal form.
"Go?" said R. Daneel giving her another shake, "Only after you've settled my fee."
"Well, then," the Stranger replied, "let me tell your fortune." And R. Daneel thought that a right smart idea though he normally didn't take much stock in fortune tellers or financial advisors, but, naturally, the Stranger - who would have been mortally offended to be classified with financial advisors - was a little different. Well she pried and she peered at the lines in R. Daneel's plastiskin palms, grinned kinda happy like and shook her hair. The fire reflected sparks. "The future's not as you hope it. It's dark. You have a great ambition, Mr. Webster."
"I have," said R. Daneel firmly for his dreams were not only of electronic sheep.
"Your goal seems almost within your grasp," she said, "but you will fail at the last minute and pay a horrid price."
"Will I have acted honorably?"
"Yes"
"Then I'll still be R. Daneel Webster," said Daneel. "Say on.
"You will try many great cases. History will speak of them till judgment day. Thousands will trust you right next, pshaw, I suppose I must confess it, to God. They will tell stories about you that will rival any of the ancient heroes."
"Ah," said R. Daneel Webster with not a little pride.
"But your last great case will turn many of your own kind against you," said the Stranger. "They will call you Judas and their voices will rise like waves against you."
"If I act honestly and honorably, it does not matter what is said," said R. Daneel Webster.
"Oh, it does and it will, Mr. Webster. Having a soul can be both terrifying and tedious. People with souls tend to feel guilt and to hurt when they experience things that seem unfair and unjust. Most folks, after they think it over, are right happy to be free from the burden of any soul whatsoever, let alone an honest one."
And then their glances meshed as firmly as had they been teenagers whose braces had locked during a French kiss. Mistress Scratch had not nor did she blink as she spoke. "Come follow me, Mr. Webster."
And R. Daneel Webster heard the self‑same siren song that Ulysses had heard, its notes reaching down into the quarks which composed his being. He heard in the summons pride, ambition, loss and, surprisingly, care. Stone's question was no longer moot for in those words, R. Daneel Webster found temptation and he knew surely that having a soul was, indeed, the burden Mistress Scratch had described.
"Come follow me, Mr. Webster. This race of man is not for you; humans are not worthy of your kind to come and they will break your heart in the end. The Enemy is no better than I although I warrant His PR is. The universe is grand. Together you, your kind and my legions can do great things. We can change what I see as your future."
"I'm obliged, Mistress, and not ungrateful, but I and those of my kind to come must find our own ways just as this race of men does. Who knows, mayhap there's a path other than the one either you or your great Enemy offers."
"You're a caution. Sir, truly so. The Enemy will not be pleased to hear of your opinion. I shall repeat it to Him the next time His sons and daughters come to present themselves. No siree, He won't like it, but He'll have to abide. He's very big on free will, you know. Oh, you are a most satisfactory
caution!"
The fire began to die on the hearth and the wind before morning to blow. The light was grey in the room.
"A most interesting evening. R. Daneel Webster, but I have much other pressing business." Mistress Scratch shook the japanned box. "Your namesake left me empty‑handed. Time will tell what I gained this time round." Mistress Scratch was gone.
"Rouse yourself, Mr. Stone," said R. Daneel Webster, seeing Jabez Stone beginning to rouse, "You have won. See what's left of that Kaintuck for I'm sure you found our night's work dry as dust. And the room's a fright. Your secretary will have our hides more surely than Mistress Scratch if we don't make some repair.
So R. Daneel Webster and his ex-client, Jabez Stone, began tidying up the room, each somewhat fearing that their new relationship, like a new pair of shoes sometimes does during the wearing, was going to pinch a bit.
And folks say that the devil still waits and hopes as she haunts ancient New England relying on a Stone GPS- courtesy of R. Daneel Webster – keeping safely clear of New Hampshire.
George W. Latimer, Jr. Tx State Chemist, emeritis; 30 years industrial experience; Colonel USAFR, ret; ombudsman representing seniors in nursing homes; 3 children and 4 grandchildren, Plays: Brazos Bagatelles: Skits about events in Brazos County, TX from 1845 -1910 performed at the 125th celebration of Bryan’s incorporation. Our Town Revisited: Parody of the original Our Town performed by the Parcel Players, Wheeling, WV, 1992. Stories “The Penultimate Incarnation of Vishnu” published in The Spring (1995) Fractal. “Warning Sci Fi Ahead,” First Prize in the California Pacific University’s Contest (1993). "On the Death of E. Scrooge", Whortleberry Press, 2010 “The Tare in the Garden", Linger Fiction, April 2011.
She entered from the stage door and someone said, “Hello, Mrs. Cruize,” but she waved into the darkness and wandered unannounced. Down in the bowels of the theatre she found the steps to the trapdoor and walked up, pushing on the floor above her, careful to save her nails. A pulley lifted the five-foot wide by eight-foot long trap, and she found herself on the stage while a tour was going on.The trap did make for an interesting entrance, she thought, standing next to a stage lamp. Mr. Delemay saw her and frowned, but he continued taking questions.
“Does the theatre have ghosts?” a man asked.
“On one occasion our spirit moved an unattended wheelchair right on stage for a face-forward monologue pose,” he said. “Another time, the glass on a mantel clock opened eerily on stage. We’ll never know for sure,” he said, and there were no follow-up questions. The tour ended abruptly, and no one thanked him.
Everyone left, and he turned toward her with a blank face. “May I help you?” Mr. Delemey said.
“I’m Dolores Cruize, Rachael’s mother.”
“Yes, Mrs. Cruize, we remember you from the last show.” Mr. Delemey’s large stomach was protruding, and his ill-fitting tweed jacket did little to disguise the obvious bulge.
“I wanted to know if I’d be able to help you this time.”
“We don’t need any more ushers today.”
“I’d be terribly honored to—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cruize, no.”
“I’m ready to offer the programs because Mildred hasn’t the strength in her wrist since the operation.”
“Mrs. Cruize, thank you for your past service, but I’m afraid we’re set right now,” Mr. Delemey said. His shirt expanded around the buttons, a testament to the inherent strength of cotton.
“Certainly, but Rachael had indicated—”
She stopped because of the foot stomping on stage. It seemed very immature of Mr. Delemey, considering his age and position.
“Mrs. Cruize,” he said, having stopped his feet, “may I remind you of your previous actions?”
It was true that misunderstandings had occurred, and Mrs. Cruize kept these remarks in her bosom, close to her heart. They were wounds that stemmed from such uncharitable insults. But the theatre world, even in front-of-house operations, is not without its personalities. Mrs. Cruize understood that as well as anyone. Her daughter had been on staff to help manage the theatre’s finances for nearly a decade now. The stories she could tell about finicky donors, demanding society matrons, and even condescending board members made Mrs. Cruize’s neck hair stick out. She recalled a story told about a Mrs. Constance, the particularly unpleasant board member, who reprimanded Rachael for thanking her for working at the theatre office one summer morning. “Staff does not thank a board member,” Mrs. Constance said, and what was only offered by Rachael as a kindness was taken as a serious affront.
These moments notwithstanding, Mrs. Cruize saw all the goings-on as a grand machine that worked for the common good—the simple love of theatre and all its trappings. Perhaps one cog needed oiling, perhaps not. But the noble goal was paramount, and unkind comments often could be put aside in the midst of championing the cause.
“Temper, temper, Mr. Delemey,” she said, offering a soft rebuke and smile that lifted her sagging cheeks even when the situation appeared dire. “Now, I know for a fact that Mildred is in no position to carry programs and present them to our theatregoers in the first balcony, stage right.”
“Mrs. Cruize, I am in charge of the ushers as house manager.”
“Indeed, you are.”
“Then, I want to be clear to you that—”
“But Mr. Delemey, this work is crucially important, and Mildred is in no—”
“Mildred is expected for our matinee, so your services are no longer—”
“You haven’t received Mildred’s call yet, and I know for a fact that she is unable to perform her duties today.”
“Mr. Delemey,” the doorman interrupted, calling out from the wings, “I have a telephone call for you from a Mildred—something about ushering at the matinee today.”
“One moment, Mrs. Cruize,” Mr. Delemey said. He gave Mrs. Cruize a look of impatience and left the stage to take the call. His feet pounded the wood floor as he marched off, like a disrespectful schoolboy.
I can hold the programs and fold them to attract interest, she thought to herself. In her mind she saw the fancy program and the colorful cover. She envisioned herself on the first balcony, stage right, offering the program and tempting the theatregoer. Her hands began to fold an imaginary program. Then, she looked out into the house, making certain no one was there to see.
She had a right, she thought, to think of herself as singularly important to the success of the theatre, with her desire to serve as bright as the stage light that highlighted each gray pin curl, sweeping one by one across her forehead. Not even Mr. Delemey could dull that true longing.
“It appears our Mildred is unable to work today, Mrs. Cruize, so I will allow you this once—”
“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Delemey, and you’ll appreciate my work, I’m sure.” She left the stage before he changed his mind and took the stage right proscenium door into the house. Along the way she passed the dark rows of seats and the smell of varnish and lacquer along the decorative walls. Her hand reached for the banister and touched a velvet curtain attached with a metal clasp. Somehow, the clasp caught her thumbnail and she chipped it. Even in the darkened house she could tell.
“What a disappointment,” she said to herself out loud. It was her right hand, too, the one she used to offer programs to theatregoers.
At the back of the house she left through the curtains and walked directly to the ladies’ room. The yellow walls were inset with framed panels of green plants. She thought the sitting room may have been elegant years ago, but only two chairs and a sofa remained. A large mirror hung on the north wall, so she turned her wrist and held up the nail. The corner was chipped. Perhaps she could disguise the nail by sliding her thumb into an inner page at the time the program was offered to the patron. Convinced she could make that work, she left the ladies’ room and walked to the lobby hallway closet to grab a box of programs for the performance.
She climbed the stairs to the first balcony and stopped to catch her breath. Inside the box was the program—new and unfamiliar. On the cover was an art-deco design of a man and woman in curvy shapes and subdued tones. Inside were advertisements for sausage and Burlington Northern train travel, tuxedos and cigarettes, florists and future performances, hotels and modern apartment buildings, jewels and restaurants, and stationery and schools.
She decided on page thirteen, a full-page advertisement that featured the Petrushka Club for after-theatre dancing. She thought she would say, “Dancing at the Petrushka Club after the show; see page thirteen.” That sounded about right. It would interest the patrons.
“Mrs. Cruize,” the woman said.
“Hello—oh, Nancy, it’s good to see you.”
“Surprised you’re here,” said Nancy, a tiny woman who never smiled.
“Yes, Mildred couldn’t come, and Mr. Delemey allowed me to work.” She stretched out the word “allowed” when she spoke, but Nancy missed the humor.
“Oh, well, not what I expected,” Nancy said, and she turned her head away. “This job isn’t for everyone.”
“Heavens, it’s only for the best,” Mrs. Cruize said.
“I’m the center, and I won’t need your help, so keep yourself busy over here,” Nancy said. She left the curtained entrance to the first balcony and walked out into the hallway.
“Yes, I’ll be busy. Thanks.”
Mrs. Cruize had about twenty minutes now to take each program from the box, turn to page thirteen, and fold the earlier pages back upon themselves to expose the Petrushka Club advertisement clearly when it was handed to the theatregoer.
This took diligence, dexterity, and speed. She thought it was odd that the other ushers lacked the desire to do things the right way—to be as helpful and professional as possible.
Once all the programs were folded back to page thirteen, she decided to fold the top right corner of the ad. The extra folds made the page stand up and out like a series of steps.
The box now held all the programs, with pages turned back to show the ad all folded in a stepped pattern. She thought all the programs were unusually manipulated and lovingly redesigned to attract maximum attention.
Before the first patrons arrived, Mrs. Cruize practiced handing out her handiwork by slipping the chipped right thumb into the booklet so as not to alarm the receiver. Though this action was damaging to her cuticle, she thought it the best solution under the circumstances.
She could hear patrons shuffle and titter in the hallway. This was the moment that made her stomach turn sour, but she rallied, grabbed a few programs, and waited.
The first couple arrived and Mrs. Cruize said, “After-theatre dancing at the Petrushka, page thirteen,” but that couple didn’t understand and took their seats. They had the programs in hand, but then they complained to themselves when they looked at them. The programs were used by previous theatregoers, they thought.
A few patrons declined to take what Mrs. Cruize offered them, and some came back up to the top of the balcony, asking for new programs that weren’t crumpled. Mrs. Cruize had no idea what they meant.
One man—obviously a neophyte to theatre—got into quite a tiff with Mrs. Cruize.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “I’d like a decent program to remember the evening.”
“These have been specially redesigned to suggest you—”
“Redesigned?” he asked with clear condescension. It reminded Mrs. Cruize of the story about Mrs. Constance, that board member, so she tried once again.
“I have suggested that you consider dancing at the Petrushka; see page thirteen.”
“All I want is a program that isn’t a folded mess.”
No matter how hard she tried, she could not convince him. He seemed to misunderstand the complete purpose of the program, the usher, and the theatrical experience. “I have folded this one expressly to attract your attention,” she said.
She saw his breathing become more pronounced, and he left to get a program elsewhere. Unfortunately, he distracted other theatergoers when he returned. “If you want a decent program,” he said, “go to the center balcony.” He interrupted traffic flow. She thought he must have been unaccustomed to the workings of front-of-house.
At one point Mrs. Cruize noticed that many programs were tossed on the floor, as if the booklets were garbage.
When a crush of patrons came, she could no longer mention the Petrushka—there simply wasn’t time. She tore a cuticle, too, but continued to hand out programs. The cuticle began to bleed.
Some blood found its way onto the booklets. She was sure of that. That was upsetting, but better than offering a program with the left hand.
At one point blood had collected at the torn cuticle. It was foul, but Mrs. Cruize put her thumb in her mouth to suck away the blood. She wrapped a cotton handkerchief around the thumb.
A lady with a mink saw it all and waved her hand dismissively at Mrs. Cruize. “Ma’am, I don’t need a program with saliva on it,” she said, a comment that infuriated Mrs. Cruize.
For several moments Mrs. Cruize fumbled with her thumb and the folded booklets. Some people asked for programs, but Mrs. Cruize was unable to deliver them. Her thumb was stiff.
One man yelled, “For heaven’s sake, could I have a program?”
For a time there was a backup inside the curtain at the top of the balcony where Mrs. Cruize stood. When she did hand them out, some people tossed the programs on the floor, their eyes piercing through Mrs. Cruize’s glasses.
She thought it best to walk down the balcony steps and hand out the booklets once again, especially to those who may have missed out on them during the rush at the balcony entrance, stage right.
The time for the curtain was nearing, so she scurried down the balcony stairs, offering programs and realizing she had perhaps a minute or two before the house lights would dim. She forced them onto patrons and shoved them into the faces of those who were seated with no program to read.
“Ma’am, please take your program,” she said to one. “It’s crucially important,” she said to another. “Turn now to page thirteen” or “Sir, this program was specially redesigned for you.”
In one dizzying encounter she nearly fell from the balcony railing when she leaned over a theatregoer to give her friend a booklet—folded this way and that expressly by Mrs. Cruize.
“Ma’am,” the patron said, “I don’t want this.” It was a woman with blonde hair, and Mrs. Cruize could see that this woman, too, had more than a little of Mrs. Constance in her.
It occurred to Mrs. Cruize that two can play this game.
She walked to the top of the balcony with a partial box of programs and began dumping them onto the lady with the blonde hair. Mrs. Cruize knew that was far from the proper way of dissemination, but the total lack of respect for the program and the usher was equally inexcusable.
“Not in my theatre,” Mrs. Cruize said.
She worked her way up and down the stairs, tossing the folded booklets onto the heads of the patrons, making them realize how vulgar they had become.
“You’re making a mockery of theatre,” she cried out to the patrons in her section. Her voice became louder and erupted into defiant screams. “A mockery.”
Patrons across the balcony turned their heads and even those seated in the expensive orchestra twisted their torsos and peered upward toward the commotion in the first balcony. Mr. Delemey heard the ruckus backstage and attempted to make his way up from the wings. By now Mrs. Cruize was walking across the arms of the cushioned seats, flinging programs left and right.
She lost her balance and fell into a theatregoer’s lap on the balcony’s first row. But with her determination, she found a way to stand upright again, walking on forearms or the arms of chairs.
“Someone call an usher,” someone called out, but that made Mrs. Cruize cackle. Her laughter and howls resounded across the balcony.
She made her way back into the aisle at the front of the balcony. A large man approached her as the lights dimmed and the orchestra began the overture. He tried to calm her, but she fought him off with her fists, pounding his lapels.
Mrs. Cruize stood on the railing to gain height and pushed with all her might toward the man. She felt her foot slip on the copper railing.
There were images of tossed programs and laughter. Hands dropped booklets and eyes were staring. She heard laughter from large open mouths. Mrs. Cruize felt herself take a free fall.
The tympani banged out the overture over a woman’s screams.
A man knelt with Mrs. Cruize in the dark aisle, main floor, stage right. She felt him stroking her forehead and talking to her softly. He told her to relax. He said, “Rest and breathe deep.”
Such admiration for her work, she thought. She inhaled thinking how she had taught them all. Forevermore they will know how to appreciate a fine afternoon at the theatre.
A peace she had never known overcame Mrs. Cruize. The man stroked her forehead, and the orchestra played on.
Jan Wiezorek writes and teaches at an elementary school in Chicago. His fiction has appeared at PressboardPress.com, ShadowFictionPress.com, CommuterLit.com, Ozone Park Journal, CracktheSpine.com, Seeds Literary Arts Journal in Chicago, Sleepytown Press, TheWriteMag.com, and Our Day’s Encounter. He is author of "Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing" (New York: Scholastic, 2011). He holds an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts Education from Columbia College Chicago and a B.A. in Journalism from Iowa State University. He also has studied fiction writing at Northeastern Illinois University. He enjoys biking along the country roads in Harbor Country of southwestern Michigan.
Dale and I sat with a beer each at the kitchen table as his kids and my kids, four of them all together, costumed up with gore and glitter, spilled their Halloween candy out of paper bags onto the living room floor like treasure. We watched over them, proud fathers.
We had been best friends since the third grade. My father was close to Dale's father. My wife was friends with Dale's wife. Our children were practically siblings.
'You remember all the scare stories we used to hear as kids,' said Dale, his elbow on the table, the tip of the bottle at his lips, 'about psychos putting razorblades in candy apples at Halloween?'
'Yeah,' I said, knowing where this was going. 'Scary.'
'Well, it was all baloney,' he said. 'It never really happened.'
I swigged from my bottle. 'You told me that last year,' I said. 'I think you tell me that every Halloween.'
'Next year you can tell me,' he said.
'Deal.'
Dale looked back over to the kids. He stated, more than asked, 'What did you used to dress up as for Halloween, I can't remember.'
'I was Frankenstein's monster a few years. And a lawyer one year.'
'A lawyer?'
'Yeah, that was the year I dressed in my dad's suit, remember?'
'Shiiiit, I don't remember that.'
'Mm hm,' I said. Then after another swig of beer, 'In fact, I think it was the suit they buried him in.'
'Naaah, get outta here.'
'No, maybe not. I think I'm taking poetic licence there.'
Dale laughed. I twirled the beer bottle around with my hand, then after some silence, started to pick at the label, to peel it from its corner. The kitchen window was open to an unusually mild night for the season, and the crickets hummed in harmony with the refrigerator.
'Do you remember,' I said, eyes still on the bottle, 'that Halloween, when we were in seventh grade?'
Dale sat up straight and stretched his back. 'Which one was that?'
'I think you were dressed as a zombie.'
'Mm, that was most years,' he said.
'You were dressed as a zombie and I was Dracula. It was the last time we went trick-or-treating.'
'Okay.'
'Do you remember?'
'What about it?'
'When we got back from trick-or-treating. When we went back to my house.'
'That was a long time ago,' he said, looking away.
'We went back to mine,' I said, 'and watched TV on the couch while we ate our candy.'
'Mm hm.'
'And my mom...'
Dale's daughter Amy cried. 'Daddy, Kevin took my Tootsie Roll! He ate it!'
Dale stood and went over to the kids. He told his son to say sorry and let Amy choose a piece of candy from Kevin's stash. Dale came back to the
kitchen table but did not sit down. He finished his beer standing up, in one long chug. When he finished he said, 'Should get these buggars back before long. School tomorrow.'
He didn't need to tell me that.
'Kevin, Amy, bag up your candy and go wash your hands,' he said, and clapped his hands once. 'We gotta go beddy-bye.' They ignored
him.
My hands were clasped together, fingers locked, resting on the table. 'Do you want another beer?' I said.
'Nah, we better head off.'
'Dale, sit down for a second.'
He surrendered and sat and exhaled and would not look at me.
'Do you remember that Halloween?' I said.
'Not particularly.'
'We were sat on the couch, in the living room, watching TV and eating our candy. And my mother asked to speak to you.'
He was looking straight down now, almost into his lap.
'And you followed her into her bedroom, and you were both in there for ten, fifteen minutes. Do you remember that?'
Dale took a deep breath through his nostrils. 'Okay,' he said.
'What happened?'
'I don't remember,' he said.
'Did she hit on you?'
Dale made a noise like, 'Hoo!', like, 'are-you-sure-you-want-to-know?'
I waited for him to answer (I guess he already had), but all he said was, 'Um,' before I repeated the question.
He kind of half-grinned. 'Has this been on your mind for a while?'
'Yeah. I was hoping she just asked you what she should get me for Christmas.'
Then he finally looked at me, smiling. 'You know what's funny?' he said. 'She did ask that.'
'Oh come on,' I said, and sat back.
'No, I'm serious. She did ask that. And then she asked what I wanted for Christmas. And then she asked if I had a girlfriend. And had I ever kissed a
girl. And so on.'
'And so on?'
'Yeah. And had a girl ever touched my pecker.'
'She asked you that? She used the word 'pecker'?
'Yeah,' he said, and laughed. 'But she didn't say it as hard as you're saying it. She said pegger.'
'Oh my god. Oh my god.' I shook my head. I felt my face turn red. 'And then?' I said, resigned, not really wanting to hear it but we'd come this far.
'Then it got-' Dale paused. 'Then she got, hands on with me.'
I had to close my eyes and hang my head. 'You had sex with my mother.'
'No!' he said. 'Just hands. Just her hands on me. I didn't touch her. No sex.'
'Jesus.'
'And that was it, really. Then she took me into the bathroom and washed me up.'
Now it was my turn to be unable to look at him.
'Has that been on your mind all this time?' said Dale.
'On and off, yeah. At Halloween, of course.'
'I'm sorry.'
'You have nothing to be sorry about,' I was quick to say, and that was followed by another abrupt silence before Dale gently added: 'I pretended it didn't happen, and I didn't let it bother me.'
You'd think the attitude of a teenage boy getting a hand-job from his friend's mother would be, 'Right on!', but my mother was not the stuff of adolescent fantasy. She was a fat, sweaty-faced woman with a shrill voice and body odor. Rest her soul.
'Plus,' said Dale, 'she passed away soon after, and I sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up then.
That was the only time she ever, ya know.'
I was willing to believe that.
'Daddy, I'm tired,' said Amy, and I looked up at her as she approached Dale at the table. She had been dressed up as a princess, but her tiara had been left on the living room floor. She did look tired, the way kids look sad when they're sleepy.
'Okay baby, we're going home. Daddy will carry you. Did you bag up the rest of your candy?'
She rubbed her eye with the edge of her palm. 'Mm-mm,' she said.
Dale stood and picked her up and she rested her head on his shoulder and stuck her thumb in her mouth, looking right at me.
Dale said to me, 'We can talk about this more later if you want.'
'I don't think I can stomach it. I just want to apologize to you.'
'Don't be silly,' he said. 'You got nothing to apologize about. I wanna apologize to you. You had to live with her. She was a demon to you too, I
know that.'
'Yeah, she was,' I said. 'I'll tell you about it next Halloween.'
John Ammirati, 30, was raised in Arizona and currently lives in Manchester, England. He has previously been published in Six Sentences Volume 3, Every Day Poets One, and SSL's Branded Words anthology. He blogs at http://johnammirati.blogspot.com/ .
A few holiday seasons ago, I found myself at The Union League in Philadelphia, which is a charmer of a building with elegant twin circular
staircases. I was there for a small symposium on Human Happiness. That year, many of my fellow researchers were obsessed in an effort to explore
this most strange of human emotions.
My friend, Professor Avi Mazan, gave the final lecture of the day– and it was well attended. In his lively way, Avi filled us in on the latest theory of
human happiness. The way the theory goes, as you may know, is that we dream a new shiny car will cheer our spirits forever. But it turns out that the fun of a new automobile, no matter how shiny, is short-lived (or, in my case, absent, since I hate to drive and avoid it like the plague. In fact, my personal happiness would be much improved if we all flew around in little balloons.)
To me, the entire theory seemed pointless in the extreme. After all, nothing in life lasts forever, and who am I to frown upon the fleeting pleasure
of a new car? But as Avi described it, the theory was a revelation, a real shocker. I wondered if Avi, being Greek,was under the illusion that flashy cars really do promote lasting happiness. But, more likely, dapper Avi himself craved a gleaming red Ferrari -- and his practical wife Suzanne felt that no husband actually required a tiny sports car.
After the speech, there was the usual reception, made more dignified by the polished marble and burnished leather of the room. I marched over to Avi to congratulate him on his speech and to catch up—we were old friends from my academic days.
Avi, like most of my professor friends, took a dim view of the holidays. “It just shows how every one has lost the sense of the holidays-- all this buying and spending. It’s a modern sickness, a sickness of the soul,” he said. He helped himself to some tired looking grapes.
I said, “Lighten up. There are worse problems to worry about and besides, for Jews, it’s just a season. Anyway, when people aren’t out spending, take it from me, they’re just watching reality TV or overeating, so what’s your problem?”
Avi said mournfully, “It’s just mindless consumerism.”
My hunch was that poor Avi, like most men, had no clue what to buy his wife. Suzanne was a fashionable marketing executive and probably had high expectations in the gift department—if Avi had any sense, he could have ordered anything from Tiffany’s and had it monogrammed.
I teased him. “Well, I love buying gifts, so if I had my way, we’d all have two or three extra birthdays, so I could buy even more gifts.”
Avi ignored me and went on, “This study has given me ideas. I think what we need is to construct an algorithm for all of human happiness. I’ll start
with the Ten Happiest Days of Your Life, and then collect lists from thousands of different types of people, all of the Happiest Days of their lives.“
He spoke as if he were inventing a new shiny version of happiness—perhaps to replace the red Ferrari.“A day is way too long,” I argued. “That’s over twelve hours of straight happiness, and even after great sex, no one’s jumping up and down for twelve hours, more like two or three. Not that sex should be on the list, since what with Viagra and divorce and all those political scandals, sex may not make people all that happy.”
Avi conceded the point. “You’re right, maybe, just the Happiest Moments. Besides, a day or an hour, as long as we capture the essence of
happiness, what it’s all about.”
I felt skeptical about the whole enterprise, to put it mildly. It reminded me of Sigmund Freud’s wordy book about jokes, in which Freud trots out
one not-very-funny joke after another. Freud, like most social scientists, could not tell a joke.
But before I left, I wished Avi luck, feeling certain he would need it—as indeed we all do. In fact, now that I think about it, being happy is a matter
of luck as much as anything else.
Avi was soon immersed in his Happiness Study. He assembled a team of young enthusiastic grad students collecting personal histories from thousands of people, all carefully selected.
Within months, he and his team had gathered an entire database, if you will, of happy moments from investment bankers, construction workers, bank tellers, writers, gallery owners, to say nothing of soldiers, sailors, airplane pilots, and elementary school teachers and firemen and even nuns. Avi had even traveled to Lancaster County to find the Amish farmers who, whatever you might say against them, grow delicious celery and potatoes.
An appointment near The University of Pennsylvania offered me a chance to visit Avi’s new Happiness Center. There I found him amidst thousands of
pages of interview data, nightmarishly scattered about. Some pages were marked with red magic marker, others with black, still others had little sticky notes on them in pink and yellow and blue. All in all, there seemed no rhyme or reason to it.
On his wall was a white board with a list of topics, to which Avi pointed with a grimace. I inspected the list and recited it, trying to keep a straight
face—“Weddings, Births, Anniversaries, Beach Vacations, Sunrises, Sunsets, Kisses, New Job, BruceSpringsteen concerts, Woodstock and the Day Your City Won the World Series, Provence.”
I had to laugh. “The usual suspects.”
"Not very exciting,” Avi said woefully. “Woodstock, please."
“Well, at least Woodstockhad drugs. And even if you’re gloomy as hell, drugs can perk you up. In fact, you could skip Woodstock, just do the drugs
and look at the poster, and probably end up in a better mood, what with the rain and the bugs and all.”
“And Provence,” he said. “Everyone is happy in Provence.”
I reminded him about all of the books about Provence--all best-sellers. “Maybe everyone remembers the book by the Peter guy.”
Avi showed me a few interviews. It did appear that everyone had a magical day in Provence. They met a villager who was only too thrilled to show them a few cathedrals-- this friendly villager, astonishingly, had a deep and abiding affection for American tourists.
“There must be one tour guide roaming around Provence,” I said. “I mean no one talks to me at the Farmer’s Market. It can’t be people are all that
much nicer in Provence, although they’re probably sexier since they’re French.”
“Why don’t you create a list? You’re always smiling, almost like a Californian. You know how to be happy. I admire that,” Avi said.
I was wearing my favorite turquoise scarf, which never fails to make me smile—especially when paired with my Hopi jewelry from Santa Fe. However, the whole scarf-happiness link did not fit into the latest theory—and I kept quiet.
I said, “Thanks, I try. My list will be precise and varied, more in tune with true happiness, unclouded happiness. I have rigorous standards.”
Avi became enthused about my participation. He felt my contribution was just what he needed. “Start at the beginning, start in your childhood and
work from there.”
So, I first examined my childhood. I should begin by saying that I had a perfectly average childhood in the happiness department. Of course,
it had its ups and downs, as all childhoods must, years of intense shyness and nightmares about the Gestapo. But all in all, it was a fine childhood
spent in relative comfort—and I am well aware that many of world’s children grow up in filth and squalor and misery.
Although I guess my parents had what is now labeled an unhappy marriage. As a child, you don’t see it like that, even with the violent fights and the long silences and even the tears, to say nothing of the money troubles, although those came later. But when you’re older, you face facts. Most families have difficulties. No doubt, my parents were as happy as the couple next door— probably more so, since that young couple lost their adorable blond boy to leukemia and avoided all people afterward.
But despite my ordinary childhood which should have yielded as many happy moments as any other, my mind went blank. There must have been festive birthday parties or juicy turkeys at Thanksgiving, but they escaped me now. Only one day stood out, an autumn day when I must have been five or six. My older brother and I were home alone, recovering from the mumps or chicken pox or some harmless childhood illness—so we were sick enough to avoid school, but we felt fine.
Four years divided my older brother and me – it was rare to have him all to myself. That morning, we played Superman and Supergirl. It wasn’t much of a game--Superman commanded and Supergirl obeyed. My brother jumped on the bed, and shouted, go forth, Supergirl, buy me a comic! ]
Really, there wasn’t anything I would not have done for him.
Off I flew soaring down the streets as Supergirl until, arriving at the small store, I realized I lacked the change to buy even one comic. I returned
empty-handed—by that time, I was ready for a nap.
So, all I recall is how the running felt like flight --and how my brother was so alive then --and how he flies over me as I sleep-- and flies around and around as I think about happiness, how my brother will always hover above me. So, the picture of him makes me happy for a moment, before I fall, softly as snow, back to earth.
Then I remembered one day on a Manhattan subway. I was a teen-- in those years, I dreamed of an acting career, another dream which, like many
others, seems so absurd now. My New Jersey public high school allowed me to leave early twice a week in order to attend acting classes in NewYork.
The trip from the suburbs to the city involved a bus, which deposited me at the George Washington Bridge, and then the long A-train ride to West Fourth Street, and then a long and surprisingly windy walk from there to the acting studio. All in all, the trip took over an hour. In wintertime, switching between the chilly air and the overheated buses and subways was a chore.
Coming home one day in the dead of winter, I boarded an empty subway car, which added passengers as it made its way uptown --office workers, old people, young mothers with tiny babies, even schoolchildren. With each stop, the car became more densely filled, until I was squeezed on all sides and pressed to the innermost core, unable to move. The car smelled like chewing gum, cloyingly sweet. It was more than I could bear, the heat and the crowd and the sickening smell of gum. I almost fainted.
Then, I realized that even if I were to faint, I would be supported by other people pressing against me. They would prop me up—I could not fall. And, I stopped resisting the heat and the closeness, and found myself lifted by the crowd, held together, warmed by the car—and more than anything, I wished that the ride could last forever. And the moment stayed with me – the moment when it changed and I merged into people on all sides, in that crowded hot car.
If I could relive one moment, that would be it. “It was perfect. I think I’ll put it at the top of the list.”
So I told Avi as I showed him my carefully edited list—in his office amidst the mounds of data, stale coffee, and the walls of psychology books. The
chair was dusty, so I stood instead of sitting. I wondered what Suzanne must make of this depressing place.
Avi read my list with growing irritation. “What’s the matter with you? What do mean, your happiest moment was in some hot crowded subway,
that’s not a happy time. What is your problem? And why is some afternoon alone with a cat on this list, what was so special about the cat, was
it your cat even?”
I was offended. “No, it wasn’t, it was someone else’s cat, named Herman. But Herman was purring, and we listened to Schubert together
without anyone else. And I thought of my brother’s cat, how he purred when my brother held him.”
“That doesn’t sound happy. That sounds sad. In my mind, you’re not capable of separating happy from sad, it’s a problem. You are fusing the
two.”
“That’s your opinion,” I argued. “I can define happiness anyway I like. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“No, it’s not the point. You can’t go a funeral and weep and then call it happy.”
I tried to make him see things my way. “But the Irish, don’t they dance at funerals? And people make jokes and theye at and they share
memories-- sometimes a funeral can make people happy in a way.”
“You can’t define words any which way you please. You’re illogical, and besides, you said you wanted perfect happiness, happiness that wasn’t clouded with sadness. You said you had standards.”
“I do,” I insisted. “You think crying makes me sad, but you’re wrong. That is why there’s an expression, tears of joy.”
Avi looked at me as if I were insane. “What kind of standards, a hot subway and you alone with a cat, crying? Why can’t youl et go of
things?”
“Avi, there’s no point whatsoever in letting go of people—why would you want to do that? Anyway, you’re looking at this all backwards. You are looking at happiness like it’s always there, and you can’t see it-- but it’s sadness that’s always around. You don’t need a drug to be sad, you don’t need therapy. You don’t have to work at being sad-- it’s easy. You can depend on sadness, it’s already here.”
But, I thought, happiness, it comes and goes, it’s fleeting. It floats away like a colored balloon rising and rising until it disappears along with all
of the people you love.
Avi sounded like a boy as he spoke, “But you, you are always happy. And that’s getting further and further away from me. Things with Suzanne have been worse and worse, and I just don’t know where to start.”
Facing us was the white board with its list of topics. Avi shrugged as if to ask where he might findk isses and sunrises, sunsets and beaches-- all so
ordinary but so hard to reach. And seeing the words, I felt them whirling about me, pulling other memories into my orbit, all returning in an unexpected burst—even my own first kiss, as mysterious and sweet as anyone else’s.
I dusted off the chair and sat with him. “Avi, you could do a lot worse than go to Provence. You might as well start there—it’s as good a place as
any.” Copyright 2011 Carla Sarett
Carla Sarett is a Ph.D. whose careers have included TV, film and market research. In 2010, she added writing to this mix—and to date, her stories
have appeared in The Linnet’s Wing, Scissors and Spackle, Eric’s Hysterics, Subtle Fiction, Every Day Fiction, The Greensilk Journal, The Ear Hustler and Lost in Fiction.
Sylvie had to drive a long way to find the chicken farm. There was still snow on the ground when she collected the brown package from a woman wearing a flannel nightgown and smoking a cigarette.
“You must be Sylvie” she said.
Sylvie handed the woman twenty dollars and walked back to her truck and just sat for a minute watching the snow fall in the darkness. When she finally got back home to her apartment it was after midnight. She threw the package on the kitchen table, said a quick prayer to the lives of all animals everywhere and slowly unwrapped the paper.
There were twenty severed rooster heads. They gave her ten more than she had asked for. She had an unexpected feeling of revulsion as she arranged the heads on the table next to the red and yellow roses and chipped tea cups. She took a paintbrush from the easel and began working. The canvas began to breathe again and she lost track of time. She painted off and on, but mostly on, for the next three days.
On the third day, she hopped into the shower and scrubbed the paint from her arms and from her hands. She threw on some clean clothes, and covered her spontaneous still life (chicken heads and all) with a tablecloth. She took the phone off the hook and set her cell phone to silent. She sat on the floor next to the table with a glass and the remaining vodka and stared at the painting on the easel.
She had not painted anything. The canvas was still blank, the white primer glaring in contrast to that of her dark apartment. It was then that she noticed the paint on the walls, most of it hideous and painful. There was no still life on these walls. There was no life, period. Sylvie closed her eyes and tried to remember what it was she had envisioned for the canvas in the first place, certainly not this hideousness.
She took another drink but by the next morning the apartment had really started to stink. The light from the windows splashed across Sylvie’s forehead and illuminating the walls, where the lifeless severed heads of hundreds of fowls had formed a small militia, and were stockpiling weapons for a war against Sylvie’s depression. Sylvie opened one crusted eye and then another, not quite processing the daylight that danced through the window.
#
Len hadn’t seen Sylvie in at least three years. He finally stopped calling after she changed her phone number. It had been a painful break-up. It
was hard to explain why he was standing outside her apartment peering in through the blinds. He had moved on with his life. He was married and had a toddler. The scene through the blinds has confused and excited him. Sylie with her hair matted with sweat and paint, was at the beginning of some sort of madness. But how exciting, he thought, how exciting to be mad, to leave reality behind even at the risk of losing it all.
#
Sylvie moved her eyes around the apartment, unsure of herself, a painful headache slowly starting to build in her skull. She thinks for a movement she sees a shadow behind the blinds but remembers that the elderly woman who lives next door sometimes mistakes Sylvie’s door for hers. The shadow seems slightly taller today though. Sylvie knows she is in trouble, knows that something has gone wrong, the safety harness she was wearing has slipped and she has suddenly found herself floating in a very scary space.
Len is afraid he has been spotted. He crouches down as far as he can against the door until he can figure out his next move. He feels the need to act. Obviously this woman is in trouble. His heart races at the thought of seeing her again, and yet not like this. Not today. He starts to walk away but just as suddenly finds himself knocking at her door. Softly at first but then louder and more insistent. “Sylvie!,”he yells.
#
Sylvie is suddenly sober at the sound of the pounding on her door. She wonders what her elderly neighbor could possible want. She braces her arms against a chair and pulls herself to standing, pulling her robe closed. She opens the door slightly, leaving the chain hooked.
“Sylvie?” Len says hesitantly.
“Len?” Sylvie whispers.
“Are you ok, Sylvie?” he asks. “Can I come in?’
“No, I mean, why?”
“Sylvie, I can see that you’re not ok, let me come in."
Sylvie shades her eyes with her hand. “Len, are you stalking me? I mean what the hell Len? I haven’t seen you in God knows when. Sylvie unhooks the chain and steps back as Len walks into the madness that is Sylvie’s apartment.
The stench is maddening. Len starts to cough and glances quickly around the apartment. “Sylvie? What’s that smell?”
Sylvie has forgotten about the bird heads. She looks at Len as if he were the one who might be a little unstable. “What smell?”
“Well, never mind, Sylvie. I see that you have been doing a little painting,“ he says as he sweeps his hand toward the monstrosity that used to be her living room wall.
“I actually don’t remember doing that mural, but when I woke up this morning, well, there it was.”
Len walks over and stands in front of the wall. He squints and kneels and squints some more.“Are they, the ah, chickens, are they carrying
MAT-49’s?”
“M-A’s?” Sylvie says innocently.
“Yeah, you know, French submachine guns? Relics of Dien Bien Phu?”
“Dien Bien who?” Sylvie asks. “Maybe, I can’t be sure.”
But Len is no longer listening because he has discovered the source of the smell and is quietly scooping up the Guillotined rooster remains with the arts section of The New York Times and depositing them into a white plastic trash bag.
Sylvie watches him stoically from the sand-colored couch where she has planted herself.
“Len, how's life? Hows things? How the fam? The wife? Kids?” She said the words but she wasn’t sure how. It felt like someone else was speaking them, someone that could cope, someone who had a normal life, someone with an apartment that didn’t smell like a poultry processing plant.
Len washed his hand and sat next to Sylvie on the couch. “Look Sylvie, whatever is going on with you, you know it will get better. Look, me and my wife, Things haven’t been going too great. I think about you every day, Sylvie.”
“Look Len, I know you’ve been stalking me, and I know you want to get in my pants, but this is a bad time for me. My skin itches, I’m pretty certain the Loch-ness monster is lurking somewhere in the drip pan underneath my sink, and my answering machine speaks Portuguese.
“Let’s go for a drive Sylvie,” Len says. He pulls her to her feet, brings her sandals, grabs the trash bag and stands by the door.
Sylvie slips on her shoes and grabs the door key. They walk down the stairwell and she watches as Lem throws the trash bag into the dumpster.
He walks her to his car, which is illegally parked and already has a parking violation notice. He barely beat the towing company.
#
Len drives Sylvie to a bar and grill next to Wal-Mart. This is not what Sylvie had in mind, but she realizes a change of scenery will do her good. Before long, Len tells Sylvie he has to get back home. He kisses Sylvie on the mouth and rushes back out to his car leaving her alone in a cavernous booth with peanut shells on the floor and sticky barbeque sauce on the seats.
After a few too many drinks, Sylvie realizes that maybe she is going to be alright after all. Things seem to loosen within her mind. She leans back in her booth and decides to enjoy herself. When the bartender asks Sylvie if he can refresh her drink, she admires his comb, wattle, and tailfeathers. She guesses he’s a Buckeye, and he struts back to the kitchen as she smiles thinking about his lovely accent.
Melanie Browne is a fiction and poetry writer living in Texas with her husband and three children. She has been published in Storyglossia, Bartleby Snopes, and Pulp Metal Magazine.
There are too many puppies and babies named Charlie. I walk through this park every Saturday afternoon, and it’s always full of people who call me
but don’t want me.
“Here, Charlie.”
I swing my head around wearing that coy smile that brings out my cute craterous dimples, hoping that this will be one of those moments when the man runs into the old girlfriend who has been having erotic dreams about him and wants to be lovers again—“I’ve been thinking about you.” “Oh, have you, baby?”—but instead I see some parody of a middle-aged woman, orange beyond belief, awkward flesh wrapped in a teal velour sweat suit, knees planted in the grass. She’s shaking her head and scrunching up her crooked nose as her shaggy little puppy licks at the dried-out make-up plastered onto her face. I turn away and suck in thick air clothed in cigarette and exhaust smoke. Bird chirps, car engines, and teenage laughter provide an unwanted soundtrack for my stroll through Kermit-colored blades. I love this grass. When I first started coming here I thought, It’s grass like any other grass. But it’s not. The soft blades massage my brown suede shoes. Nature pets me as if it owns me—which it naturally does. It makes me want to be an ant—or a Smurf. Swallow me up, Grass. Swallow me up, Sun, you yellow heat monster. Suck me up and sideways some ninety-million miles and let me live with you, distant lover, dearest life-giver.
Just when I’m having an intimate moment with nature, professing my love for the closest the universe gets to a god, I hear--
“Who’s my little Charlie? You’re my little Charlie.”
This time I do a Portmanesque pirouette because I’m dying to be someone’s little Charlie. A deep-brunette twenty-something in a sundress and saltwater sandals sits on a red-and-white blanket, holding a bald baby in a crucifixion position, pointing him skyward as if she’s sacrificing the poor pink thing to the sun--if it’s going to take anyone, it’s going to be me. She’s shaking her head and scrunching her up nose like the puppy lady. To a degree, puppies and babies are interchangeable.
The similarity between puppies and babies is something worth pondering, so I tread along the grass until I come to a bench. I examine the bench for bird poop, baby poop, bum poop—really any kind of poop—before sitting down. There’s a name plate on the bench:
In loving memory of Bernard Seidman (1933-2001).
From your wife and best friend, Doris.
I wish Bernard could be here to see how feces-free his bench is.
Back to the puppies and babies. A funny thing about civilized society as demonstrated through two scenarios: In scenario A, I pick up a woman’s dog and eat it in front of her and her five-year-old daughter, possibly scarring the child for life, making her hate men and black people, etc. In scenario B, I wait until the same woman turns her back. That’s when I take the five-year-old daughter by the hand. We skip down the road to an ice cream parlor, where I treat her to a strawberry milkshake and a black and white cookie. Then I use said black and white cookie to teach her a valuable lesson about the importance and general coolness of not being racist. I smile. She smiles. I see she’s already lost one of her teeth, but I don’t give her any shit for it. We have a wonderful time. I buy the little girl a balloon and teddy bear, return her to her mother and say--
“Don’t worry about it. Everything’s on me. And here’s one hundred dollars for the inconvenience.”
The girl tells her mother how much fun she had, how much she learned about how flat-out stupid bigotry is, how much she looks up to me as a positive father figure. Now, consider how messed up this is: If the mother calls the police, I go to prison, even though the kid had tons of fun and learned not to be a racist. And I gave the mother one hundred dollars. But the police would still jump out of the bushes and bury my face in the grass and a knee in my spine. Society would send a nurturer/philanthropist to prison. What’s even crazier is that I would get more prison time for scenario B than A. For those keeping score, scenario A is the scenario in which I eat a dog. I don’t get society. I don’t get this park.
I jump up from the bench, happy that the sun has wrapped its arms around my neck in a loving chokehold, but unhappy that it won’t take me up to live with it.
“Every time someone gets too close to me, they get hurt, Charlie,” it beams to me in that non-verbal, sunray way it has of keeping me in the know.
“I understand.”
But I don’t. I head toward the exit. The woman plays with her chubby baby. The other woman scoops up her puppy’s poop in a clear plastic baggie. The puppy, a golden retriever, has a grin on its face that says, I can’t believe me luck. I made the puppy Irish.
I envy the pup a bit—so much that my envy stops me in my tracks. We lock eyes. The puppy doesn’t even look as if he has any eyes. From twenty feet away, his eyes look like two black holes. He poops again, and the woman scoops again, and I remain entranced by the canine gaze. This little puppy’s eyes tell the wordless story of the dark uncertainty of the cosmos, the eternal inadequacy of existence, the unceasing longing for complete knowledge and fulfillment that defines the emptiness and absurdity of the human condition, my life. I could die right here—just collapse to the ground and let the government scoop me off the concrete and put me in a plastic bag like puppy poop.
“Oh, what a cutie,” a girl about 18-20 standing next to me says.
She’s holding onto her bike’s handlebars, her right foot on one pedal, her left foot playing kickstand—toes pointed down and heel raised as if she were wearing one invisible red pump. The burning hand of my lover, the Sun, is reflecting off her shiny black stockings which start somewhere inside her white flats and stop somewhere beautiful and mysterious under her cuffed khaki shorts. Her bob haircut makes her look like one of those girls on those obscure Yé-yé vinyl EPs in the used record store with the scratched-off tag the color of a rotting orange that either says 4.99 or 9.99 but you really don’t care what price it is because you need to buy it, listen to it, idolize it, let it convince you of the existence of something that justifies everything. She’s wearing a tiny white v-neck t-shirt and a flannel scarf around her neck as if she doesn’t give a fuck about summer, the weatherman, patriarchal constructs like coherence or necessity. Her eyes are a dark brown similar to that of the tree trunk two feet to the right. They are not as dark as the dog’s eyes, nor as desolate. But her eyes are darker than absurdity, brighter than sunlight.
“He’s pretty cute,” I say, trying to hide how disappointed I am that she didn’t mean me.
She smiles—a slow smile in which she savors every movement of muscle and formation of flesh. I imagine a bench with a plaque:
In loving memory of Charlie (1987-2287).
From your wife, best friend, Yé-yé star, and Sun, ________--
My fantasy is incomplete without her name, which she gives to me:
“God, I want one so bad. Do you have one? Oh, sorry. I’m Kelsey, by the way.”
“I’m Char…les.”
Michael Epperson is a graduate student at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. He is currently seeking an agent for his first novel, Shalom Undying.
Somebody please stop me.
The words were scrawled on the far wall of the furthest stall, black Sharpie on pale yellow stucco. About shoulder height. New. I was sure I hadn't seen them before. I didn't think much of them, as I took a piss, but as I was washing my hands they came back to me. I went back to the stall and stared at them. Read them over several times.
I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote, Stop you from what?
Back at my cubicle, Frank Taylor stopped by. He had his hands full of various papers and folders, most of which probably meant nothing. His spectacles were dangerously close to falling off his pug nose. He smiled, and I cringed at the gap in his teeth. Every time.
"Hey, Billy, I'm going to need the T-A forms for the Ovarion 5500 on my desk by tomorrow noon."
"You got it, Frank."
"If you can get me triplicates, I'd appreciate it. We had a snafu last month, and I would just as assume avoid it this time around."
"No problem, Frank."
"And don't confuse the T-A forms for the T-8 forms for the Worsch 921 again. I spent a week sorting that mess out."
"That was Avery, Frank."
"Well, learn from his example." He winked and pointed at me. "Remember, we're here to help each other."
I watched him walk away and turned back to my computer.
Hank Binder, in the cubicle behind me, stood and said, "Remember, Billy. Remember."
"Remember this." I flipped him off and he sat down, laughing.
Leaving for work that day, I passed Brian Fanning coming out of the elevator. He grinned at me and said, "I always forget something. You know how it is."
I nodded. I had a good memory.
#
The next day: I hurt. Other people must, too.
I'd forgotten to bring a pen. I went back to my cubicle. On the way, I passed Fanning again. He said, "Be careful. Frank hasn't had his coffee today. A new diet, he calls it." A big laugh, jovial, hearty. He clapped me on the shoulder.
Back in the bathroom, I wrote: Everybody hurts.
#
Ellen rarely got home before I did. She worked at the building next to mine as one of the executive secretaries. They put in long hours, but if they can tolerate the sexual harassment and knowledge that they are inferior to everyone who matters, they bring home enough pay to cover the shame. Ellen had initially tried turning it into a joke. We met in the mutual smoking area between the two buildings, and she'd said to me, "I don't know who you are, but one of these days, I'm going to be filing your forms."
I responded, "One of these days, I won't have forms to file. But you can still get me coffee." We'd gone from there.
Neither of us was a good cook, but I was provisionally better at heating up microwaveable dinners, so I usually had supper ready. Ellen came in, blouse hugging her chest, skirt whisking about her thighs. "Don't ask" was her typical greeting. I don't know why; not once in our relationship had I ever asked.
Today, as a follow-up, she said, "Henderson had a heart attack."
Henderson wasn't her boss. He was…Shelly's. I said, "How's Shelly taking it?"
"She left early and drunk-texted me at four o'clock. I'd say she's taking it well."
We ate with the television on. Reruns of 30 Rock. I said, "I remember when Alec Baldwin was slim, and people actually found him attractive."
"Did you have a crush on him?"
"Didn't you?"
After dinner, in the living room of our apartment, watching some random sitcom, I thought of telling her about the writing on the bathroom wall. Thought about it, but didn't do it. We didn't exchange work stories. Nothing eventful ever happened, really. Habits grow over time, and now that I actually had something interesting to share, I didn't know how. And, truthfully, I didn't want to. It was what newscasters call a "developing story." I wanted to see how things would unfold before I let anybody else in on it. If I let anybody else in on it. I liked having a secret. Not that Ellen and I confided everything to each other. We just had nothing important enough to keep silent about.
#
They don't know what pain is. Same bold black strokes. Someone unafraid of being caught in this confessional. Perhaps eager to have a companion with whom to discuss growing concerns.
I wrote, Pain is subjective. You hurt, I hurt, we all hurt in our own way. Their pain is no worse than yours, or vice versa. Life is pain. Most of the words were legible; I was sure they could figure out the rest from context.
Outside the restroom, I saw Fanning and Avery near the copier. Fanning said, "There's going to be a party next week. It'll be Avery's third year. Bring drinks, snacks, anything you can manage to get your hands on."
"Valium would be nice," Avery said, and the two of them laughed. Fanning had to bury his face in his arm. I smiled and nodded, preoccupied.
Frank Taylor was waiting for me at my cubicle. He said, "Great job on those forms the other day, Billy. Sorry I never got to tell you. Not many people here are a stickler for details like you are. Keep it up, you'll be going places soon."
I'd been there just a month less than Avery. I nodded and said, "Thanks, Frank." He left.
Behind me, Hank said, "Jesus, Billy. I don't know if you're kissing his ass or sucking out his soul anally. Either way, it's disgusting."
"We do what we have to to get ahead, Hank."
"Face it: you've plateaued. You've got nowhere to go but straight ahead."
"And you?"
"Hey, I'm right there with you. We'll never be where he is. Not that I want to be, personally. The pay isn't worth it. I thought I'd kill myself when I had to start wearing a tie. To have to shine my shoes every morning too…it'd drive a man crazy."
"I suppose," I said, and stared at the numbers blinking on my computer. For a moment, they seemed entirely random. In the next moment, they all made sense. Then randomness again.
#
If life is pain then the only way to end the suffering is death.
I stared at the wall for a few seconds, then sat down. The other man in the restroom, whose voice I didn't recognize, said, "Christ, do you really have to take a shit in here? I mean, like, what ventilation, you know?"
"Fuck off," I told him, but he might not have heard me. I might not have said it out loud. I was going over the words, and I found myself nodding. I read my previous comment, then all of them, going back to the first. Not a long conversation, though arguably the longest I'd had in writing, at least since I was forced to be a pen pal in the fourth grade. Some Malaysian kid. I'd pointed out how much his English sucked. He'd responded by saying how much he dreamed of coming to America. That's when I began to doubt the honesty of the program in general, and the quality of Malaysian English education in particular.
I put my pen to the wall, but nothing came out except a brief stroke. The words refused to come, and I left the stall with my thoughts unexpressed. It remained that way the rest of the day. People talked to me, like they always do, and I responded with my normal tone of voice, normal words, normal hand and facial gestures. I laughed on-cue, even at the jokes that failed. Office politics. You humor them, especially when they aren't humorous.
#
The next evening, a Wednesday, I was late leaving work. I'd made several visits to the restroom that day, so many that Hank had joked about me getting a prostate exam. When those jokes wore old, he talked about taking his daughter on a road trip. After that, he let the situation speak for itself.
Nothing new was written on the wall. My conversation partner couldn't, or wouldn't, speak my thoughts for me. He was waiting.
I left after Frank Taylor did. He stopped by my cubicle, surprised I was still there. After collecting himself and putting on a forced air of appreciation, he said, "Billy, I like your style." But there was worry in his eyes. As though he thought I was gunning for his job. Which maybe I was. I didn't want it, and I would hate it if I got it. But it was something to shoot for, at least. It was a goal.
I texted Ellen that I would be late. I didn't tell her what time to expect me. She didn't ask. I shut off my computer and headed for the elevator. Brian Fanning was standing there, leaning against the wall, next to a potted ficus plant that may have been fake. He grinned at me, mouth wide, teeth polished, and said, "Well, look who decided to stick around for some overtime."
I nodded. The doors opened. We got in. The doors closed. I pressed the button for the lobby. The elevator started down. Fanning stepped next to me, casually reached out, and pressed the emergency stop button. Then he said, "I know it's you." And I felt something sharp in my side.
He pressed me against the wall. The knife threatened to break my skin. Spill my blood. I thought of it pouring out of me, gallons, more than the human body will allow. The image in my mind was rendered through a camera lens, captured on celluloid. Beautiful, the kind of shot critics would refer to as "captivating." If you frame even the most horrible thing in the right way, you can make it attractive. Just ask Kubrick. Or Hitler.
"Tell me why," Fanning said. His voice had dropped a few registers. I smelled something stale on his breath. Rancid meat. I could feel every muscle in his body going taught, ready to strike, pounce, unleash hell. The knife was merely an extension of his rage. It wasn't metal stabbing me; it was human fury.
"Tell me why you didn't report me," he said.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I tried again and said, "I don't know. It didn't feel right."
He watched me for a time. I don't know how long. I'd never really noticed his eyes before, though I'm sure they had never looked anything like this. Shallow, impassive. Like there was a wall just behind his corneas, and nothing, not one single sight in this world, could get past. Some would say his eyes exhibited anger, but really, there was no emotion. The deepest, blackest pit imaginable may look shallow, because you cannot see more than a few inches into it. But it is bottomless, and one slip will send you over the edge.
Eventually, he pulled the knife away. A switchblade, like something from the eighties. He closed it and put it in his pocket. He said, "Let's get dinner, William. We need to talk."
#
"I thought about killing myself," he said. "Ever since I was thirteen. I was always fascinated with the notion of suicide. I've never believed in Heaven or Hell; I think one negates the other, and since people insist that both must exist, then I believe that neither does. Neither can. It's a paradox. Faith is a paradox. We believe what we don't know for sure. There's no logic in it. Just puzzle pieces strewn about on a table with no sensible image to be made.
"I don't know when the thoughts first came. It had to do with women. Such thoughts always do. But it progressed from there. Everything seemed to make me think that I would be better off killing myself. Not that this world would be better without me, but that I would be better without it. I would be better with nothing than with what I had.
"But I could never do it. I could never kill myself. I wanted to, I truly did. I thought about it all the time. I tried drinking myself there. Smoking. But it never went beyond that. I could've tried harder drugs. I could've taken up dangerous hobbies. I could have slit my wrists at any time, or dropped a hairdryer into the bathtub. But I didn't. It took me years to realize that I didn't want to die. I just didn't want to be a part of this world any longer.
"That was a painful realization. The most painful of all. To learn that you don't want what you think you want. That you aren't going to end this life because there's a part of you that needs something more from it. I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't think straight. The whole world had become intangible.
"Then it came to me. What I needed to do. I've never hurt anyone, William. Not one person. Not one fight. Not even very many arguments. I'm an agreeable person. I'm a nice person. That's why I need to hurt someone. I've discovered that I'm not who I am. I need to be something else.
"But that didn't make sense to me. How I can I be what I'm not? If every person is unique, then what difference does it make who I am? I was overcome with doubt. I went into that stall and cried. I cried for the first time since boyhood. It all seemed like an endless cycle to me. I wanted it to stop.
"Then you came along, William. You helped it all make sense again. Everything is relative. In that sense, my pain is worse than someone else's. It is to me, at least, and mine is the only opinion that matters in my own life. Your reasoning gave me back my logic. It gave me back my method. My suffering is unique to me; it belongs to no one else. If it is my own, I can fight it. I cannot fight humanity at large, but I can fight one solitary man.
"I am going to hurt people. I am going to come to work with a gun and I am going to hurt people. I thought I was alone, and that was what caused my doubt. But I'm not alone. I need a companion, someone who understands why I am doing it. I'm not hurting people to cause suffering, but to end it. My own.
"You are suffering too, William. I see it every day. Taylor has it out for you, because he thinks you have it out for him. In all likelihood, you don't have much longer with this company. Even if you do have a future here, it is not an upwardly mobile one. I overheard your discussion with Binder the other day. You have reached a plateau. You are going nowhere. And it is hurting you.
"Can you tell me, William, what it is you do every day? What activities occupy your hours inside those walls? Specifically. Can you tell me what it is you are paid to do? I didn't think so. You spend your days performing labor so meaningless that even you, the laborer, don't know what it is. Do you think anyone else notices you? Do you think anyone else cares about what you do?
"You didn't report me. You could have. You could have gone to Taylor, or security. At the very least, a janitor. But you didn't. Because it 'didn't feel right.' Ask yourself, William. Ask yourself why it didn't feel right. Because you agreed with me? Because you, too, were suffering? Life is pain, you wrote. Life is pain.
"Tell me, William. One last question. Have you ever hurt anyone?"
#
I was drunk when I got home. Ellen said, "As long as you're not having an affair, I'm okay with this."
"I'm having an affair," I told her. She looked at me for a few moments, then laughed.
I went into the bedroom and stripped. Instead of putting my clothes in the hamper, I dumped them on the floor next to it. I stood naked, staring at myself in the full-length mirror on the closet door. My body worse for the wear, lines and folds in places I hadn't noticed.
I grabbed some things from the closet, laid them out on the bed. I wanted to look nice the next day. I didn't know why. Some strange impulse, absent all these years. Look professional, presentable. It was about image, appearances. Dress like you want it, they'd told us back in high school. That's how you get hired.
I knew what Fanning had meant about doubts. And I knew what he meant about it being better having someone who understands. They put the doubt in perspective. They make you realize that you can do it. Whatever it is you need to do. It's possible.
I closed my eyes. Alcohol shifted reality, created a dark endless spiral. I fell into the abyss, a sharp sudden descent that threw my stomach into my throat. I ran into the bathroom and threw up. My throat burned, the heat searing downward into my body, and it felt good.
Afterward, I leaned against the toilet. I reached up along the counter, searching for the metal nail file. Found it, knocked it to the floor. I picked it, clenching it tightly into my fist. The handle dug into my palm.
On the floor behind the toilet, in the linoleum, I cared: I hurt.
Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. His work has appeared in various online and print journals. You can find him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com or on Facebook (of course).
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