Category: fiction

Shopping

I’d just been thinking, if a sales person asked me if I needed assistance, I would answer, “Yes, I’m taking up cross-dressing. Do you have suggestions on what I should wear?”

Running into another interrupted my innertainment. In the Eileen racks at Kohl’s in the women’s department, we were intent on the garments being offered, ironic, as we’re both sixty something white men. Yet, bang went our heads.

We drew back, rubbing the afflicted areas and gazing at one another. “Oh,” I said. “Fancy running into you here.”

Shrugging, smiling, and still rubbing his head, the bespectacled bearded fellow replied, “Yes, you never know what’ll happen in a dream.”

Then he went on.

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The Spiral

It’d been a rotten day. Crew show wasn’t early, eight A.M., but nothing had gone right. Maintenance problems undermined plans.

Away at Sigonella, they spent hours broiling on the flightline while trouble with a GTC was tracked down and resolved. By then, they had to abort their primary mission. Though it was beyond his control, he felt responsible. A secondary mission of overwater navigation training was taken on, six hours of droning over the Med, then through the STROG and over the Atlantic, and up Europe’s coast. Matching the day’s tone, thunderstorms pushed them to change those plans and find the most direct path home. Between the flying time and debrief, he got home at ten that night.

He wasn’t expected, of course. They were supposed to be out two more days, but that GTC issue terminated that plan, so here he was.

The house was weirdly dark. Entering, he found his wife in the bedroom, with another man.

He knew the other man as her friend, Curt. She was in bed. Curt was clothed, but on the floor beside her. She leaped out of bed. She was in the sweat clothes she usually wore to bed. Curt’s watch was on the nightstand, beside an unopened condom package.

Coming to him, she hugged him. “It’s not what you think,” she said. “It’s not what you think.”

He didn’t have thoughts. He couldn’t answer.

“What are you doing home?” she asked.

“Aircraft problems,” he answered. Turning, he picked up his car keys and left, going to the club for a drink.

He stayed there for a while.

She explained the next morning that Curt was just visiting. She was cold, so she’d put on her sweats and went to bed to stay warm. They were just making jokes about the condom.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t know if he believed her.

It wasn’t visible for twenty years, but that’s where the spiral began, he saw. Now he was so far down in it, he didn’t see any way up.

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Trust

Alan had a dream. He often corrected himself, calling it a “visitation,” when he shared it with others.

It wasn’t Alan’s first visitation with the dead. Others had come back to tell him something they thought he needed to hear them. The first came when he was seventeen. A dead aunt visited, warning him that his uncle was preparing to pass. Uncle Paul was his favorite, taking Alan on a fishing vacation every summer in an act of empathy that Alan didn’t appreciate for decades. Uncle Paul was so young, just forty-two, when he died of a heart attack while getting an Iron City beer from the frig. A Steeler game was on television. He wasn’t missed for almost a quarter. It was too late by then, back in that era. A snow storm was bruising the city, and the ambulance couldn’t get through.

There’d been other visitations since, but Granny’s visitation was one of the strongest, perhaps because he’d developed a comfort level with them by then. She’d only been dead for ten years, dying in nineteen ninety-six, a month short of one hundred years, yet, there she was, in one of her voluminous blue and white flowered dresses, in his room, accompanied by the smells from talcum powder and coffee. From Alan’s first memory on, she announced, “Let me make a pot of coffee, and we’ll sit awhile,” whenever his family visited her.

Addressing him in a stern but kind voice, she said. “Let Barbara do what she needs to do.”  Not permitting time for a response, she was immediately gone.

On awakening, Alan thanked Granny for the visitation. It took a morning of thought through two large mugs of coffee before he accepted what she was telling him. Though it was probably going to pain him, he’d let Barbara do what she needed to do, whatever the hell that meant. He would just have to trust Barbara.

Really, he was trusting two people, if you think about it, maybe three.

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Soul Mate

The first night, we met, crashing into one another as we entered a bar. Classic, right? She bought me an IPA to atone for the accident, even though I claimed responsibility. After paying and smiling, she disappeared into a clutch of friends. I drank the beer and had a cheeseburger and fries. Sometimes, I glimpsed her on the other side of the club. She was usually laughing and surrounded by admirers. I wished I’d gotten her name.

On the second night, I found her sitting at the bar, watching the door. I’d been hoping to see her. Saying, “Hi,” I walked up to her. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. I felt like I’d smoked a lid after that.

Gushing with an energetic joy of life, she told me her father was a state senator on her third night, and on the fourth night, after we went to my room and did the nasty, she revealed she was adopted, and I told her my life story.

“My father molested me,” she told me on the fifth night. “That’s why I was taken away from him and put into foster homes. I was lucky to be adopted, but my new father molested me, too.” Her spirit amazed me. She was indefatigable.

I was told she had no brothers or sisters on the sixth night, and on the seventh night, she explained that she was a millionaire’s daughter. She was in hiding because she’d witnessed some crimes, and Donald Trump had come to her father’s house once, and groped her. “I didn’t mind,” she said, shrugging. “He was rich and sexy.”

We talked about 9/11 on the eighth night. “I was already supposed to be at work,” she said, tears dripping down her face. “For a company meeting. But it felt like a hand held me down and a voice whispered in my ear. “Don’t go,” it said. “Stay home. Be safe.” So I did. All my co-workers died.” I comforted her through the night.

“I love you,” she whispered on the ninth night. “I love you, too,” I whispered back. We kissed, long and deeply, the way you do when you’ve found your soul mate.

I asked her to marry me on our tenth night. Hugging me, she slobbered me with kisses and tears, and answered, “Yes, yes, yes.” We made love and slept together for the first time. Then we stayed in bed the next day, ordering room service for our meals.

On the eleventh night, she slipped out to get clean clothes. I never saw her again.

On the twelfth night, a woman knocked on the door and asked me if her sister was there. I spent the twelfth and thirteenth nights looking for her, and then, heartbroken, I went home to my wife and children.

God, I miss her.

2

Going Retro

Yea, verily, I’m struggling.

I’m dissatisfied with an aspect of my novel in progress, “Incomplete States.” I love its sprawling sweep, but it sprawls too much. The sprawl dilutes focus on the characters, and I don’t think the typically reader will care about them.

Which, in thinking about writing this novel’s first draft, is understandable. Its concept consumed me, as did trying to understand and convey the concept to readers through the story. Thinking about it during the last several days was at first depressing. Then, I thought I began to more fully see the issue. I let my imagination off its leash. Ideas about what to do began streaming in.

Still not satisfied with the process, I pulled out a pen and notebook. I’ve done that several times while writing this novel, so the notebook is already in place. It’s a rawer and simpler way to process information for me, and that makes it faster.

I’m, of course, partially just disappointed. I wanted to be done with the damn book so I can move onto other projects. Yes, I’ve entered the stage when my beloved novel has become the damn book, a thorn in my side as much as a joy of creation. This is like that D.I.Y. project, like putting down new floor tile, that is progressing well until, halfway through, you realized you made a major error. You know it must be fixed, but first, a little venting and stewing is in order. Those who are more stoic would probably just begin fixing it immediately, but that’s not how I roll. I must simmer in emotions first.

But, issue thought out, choices considered, and decisions made, I’ve bounced back up. Here I go again.

2

After the Eclipse

It started a few days before the eclipse, with cats.

Cats and I are positive and negative magnets meeting. My ex-wife claims felines have secretly marked our house as a place for a nap and a meal. They’re always coming around, and often stay. But, two days before the eclipse, the cat count increased from seven to ten. The next day, the congress of cats doubled. Another eleven arrived on the day of the eclipse.

All were healthy and none fought, spooky, given how my four boys typically war with interlopers. The situation fed my imagination that cats knew something was happening. Sure, something was happening; it’s called an eclipse. Humans had been talking and writing about it, but none of my floofheads seemed concerned about the impending event.

That would be weird enough, but it wasn’t the weird, scary aspect of the post-eclipse day. Afterward, actually, that night….

I was in my study, as is my habit, imbibing a glass of tawny port, and watching a television show. Noises outside caused me to mute the sound, and then pause the show to investigate. Grabbing the flashlight, I turned on the front porch light and slipped out. It’d been a hundred and five degree day. Though we were slipping past ten P.M., the temp still shouldered eighty. Yet, it felt refreshingly cool.

The cats were on the front porch and yard. Every foot seemed to hold a cat. None watched me, or moved, but a few made soft mewling noises. They all stared outward. I turned my light in that direction.

Something was in the street past the rock rose.

The something stared back with large amber eyes. They narrowed as they watched me.

Not a raccoon or deer, I decided. Wolf? The shape behind those eyes were uncertain. Sweat dripping down my face and body, I crept forward with the flashlight. The amber eyes rose higher. I realized they were in a head on a neck as thick as my torso.

I realized it was a fucking dragon.

I realized that was fucking impossible.

I realized I was completely motionless.

I realized the fucking dragon was moving toward me.

I realized that I had no fucking idea of what to do. Some part of me seized the situation by the balls. I said, “Well, aren’t you a pretty dragon?” My tone suggested seeing a dragon was as common as seeing a cat.

Crawling forward, the dragon issued a creaky growl in response. The creature was bigger than my circle of light. My testicles climbed up into my body for protection. I tried swallowing, but there wasn’t anything there.

The cats all began meowing. The dragon shuffled forward, parting the rock rose like it was grass. My light revealed wings, scales, claws, a snout, and teeth. Yes, those were the primary dragon parts. I didn’t think running would do much good. I figured a dragon could probably take me, and that if it wanted to, I’d already be gnawed on like a bucket of chicken wings at a bar.

Stopping, the dragon thrust its head toward me. Taller than me, it lowered its head until our eyes were at the same level. Then it looked me over like a John sizing up a hooker. I did nothing but sweat and breath. I’m not positive about that latter, but I felt the sweat dripping off my hair onto my neck.

The dragon snorted. I jumped. I think I pissed myself a little. Realizing it was moving, I stumbled backward. With the cats meowing more loudly and intensely in a way that I’d never known, the dragon crawled forward into their midst on my front yard. Stopping, it curled up, drawing its tail around its body, and folding its wings against its sides. The cats swarmed over it. Many sniffed and licked the dragon.

He or she allowed it.

Finding body control and reasoning, I went into my house, brought out my cell phone, and took a photo.

The photo showed nothing there but the yard. Not even the cats were visible in the photo.

The felines were all settled against or on the dragon. All, dragon and cats, were looking at me. A chorus of purrs thrummed the air. Uncertain of what the fuck else to do – call animal control? – I stole back in the house. I left the front light on, opened the blind, and spent the night hours alternating between watching the dragon, searching the net for news about dragons, and trying to get a photograph of it.

It was still there in the morning, as the first people began their daily routines of biking, walking, jogging, and driving to appointments. None made it past my house. All drew up to stare, as I did, and try to photograph the beast and the felines on my front lawn. Dogs seeing the dragon, though, turned and fled.

I think this might be the beginning of a new era on Earth. Or maybe it was the return of an old cycle. You know.

Round and round.

 

1

Watching

I was a Watcher. It suited my personality. I like to watch…sex, cooking shows, dancing, sitcoms, dramas, sports (including golf, bowling, and NASCAR racing), I like watching. It started when I was young, and I watched cartoons.

It was natural that I’d become a Watcher. From there I became a Watcher who watches the Watchers to ensure someone was always watching. Otherwise, if no one was watching, someone could take advantage of what they saw and learned when they watched.

Eventually, moving up the hierarchy of watching, I became a Sentinel. That’s what they call us, Those Who Watch the Watchers Watching the Watchers.

As a Watcher, I watched five people. When I was a Watcher watching Watchers, I watched five Watchers. Now, as a Sentinel, I watch ten Watchers watching Watchers watching people.

I wonder how many people are watching me.

##

n/t to Little Fears

2

The Magic Beer Bottle

I’ve had my Magic Beer Bottle for ten days. It’s a harmless novelty, like Mattel’s famous Magic Eight Ball. You ask the Magic Beer Bottle a question and give it a shake. Then you turn it over, so the bottom is up, and the answer floats up to the bottom of the bottle.

Made by Magic Hops, there are caveats to using the Magic Beer Bottle. One, all your questions are supposed to be about drinking beer. That’s it, actually, except using the Magic Beer Bottle can affect your counting ability.

I find it an excellent aid for when I’m torn about having a beer. “Magic Beer Bottle,” I say, shaking it, “Should I have a beer now?”

Peering at the answer, I learn, “All indicators point to yes.”

That frees me from feeling guilty. After all, it’s fated for me to have a beer. Although your questions must all be about having a beer, the Magic Beer Bottle provides interesting answers. “Go with wine, this time,” it once told me. “Yes, drink an IPA,” it answered another time, while it suggested, “Yes, enjoy a lager,” at another questioning.

It has also told me, “No, you’ve had enough,” and, “Go pee first,” so it’s not all about encouraging me to drink. What really interests me about the Magic Beer Bottle are three things: one, the brown bottle is empty. There’s nothing in it. It doesn’t have a cap, so you can blow into the bottle.

I’ll get back to you on the second thing, as it escapes me now. Time to consult the old Magic Beer Bottle.

2

A Cold Summer Morning

Union Square was black with new snow, heralding a dismayingly cold summer. Raccoons, rats, dogs, and a cougar had set off the alarms during the night. I checked when each went off, not anxious, worried, or nervous, but wary, and I think, intelligent and proactive. The systems all worked; none of those creatures approached my vehicle. Except for those breaks, I slept soundly, accumulating five hours and forty-six minutes of rest. It would be enough. I’d nap once I returned to my place.

Coffee always helps, so I was gulping down fresh unadulterated French Roast. “Good coffee,” I said, nodding.

I’d already been out for four days, and was ready to return to my place. This was just a ‘let’s-see’ jaunt. My day was planned with broad strokes of where I’d go first, and then, et cetera, but looking at the windows and monitors in the cab preparatory to scavenging, I saw movement.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Could be a human,” I answered.  “Could be,” I agreed.

Walking the path of questions and accumulating details, I targeted the motion and zoomed in, confirming, it was a man. Four hundred yards away, he was beyond my perimeter alarms, so nothing had been set off. Snow didn’t cover him, and his path through the black sheet was clear. No animals had approached him, either. He was lucky.

“How lucky?” I asked, checking the temperature. Thirty-two, with the sun out. Systems noted that the overnight low had been thirty. “Pretty lucky.”

“Pretty lucky that I saw him,” I agreed.

Wasn’t he?

0

The Breakup

They were a sweet couple, and seemed so nice, as a couple, and individuals. No one suspected either of being killers or thieves.

We didn’t know anything was up, at first. But gradually as a slow-setting sun, we noticed snippiness nuance their voices, and covert hostility shade their glances.

Well, a little rain falls in every relationship. It’s not always smooth sailing.

The rumblings intensified. Witnesses reported seeing fissures open and smoke billow out. Still, they were young, or relatively so. They hadn’t been married that long, relatively, again. Of course there would be adjustments. Still, it was his second marriage, so…what could we make of that?

Two little girls came along. They doted on them. Photos and videos appeared on Facebook. They were everywhere, doing everything.

Then, he, gradually, slipped out of the photos and posts. Later, he began sharing his own photos and posts.

Word reached us after a few years, he’d moved out. He had a new girlfriend, and she had a new boyfriend.

Why? we asked ourselves. What had gone wrong? They were nice people. Neither were killers or thieves. But something, apparently, had gone wrong elsewhere. The unexplained that attracted them to one another had evaporated.

It was something that we just could not see.

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