Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
“You mean you’ve never broken your nose?” the other man asked.
He looked at the guy. “What’s the big deal?”
“I don’t understand how a boy can grow up without breaking your nose. You weren’t ever punched in the nose?”
“No.”
“Wow.” Grinning, the man shook his head. “Wow.”
Which made him feel bad. Two broken necks, a digit cut off, stitches in five places, a broken ankle, and a displaced wrist, but he’d never had a broken nose.
It felt like he’d been doing something wrong.
Thousands of small, black ants were swarming over the kitchen’s granite counter-top. Looking at his tanned forearm, he began crushing ants under his thumbs.
Yes, there was no doubt; each time he killed an ant, a black spot appeared on his arm. There seemed to be more and more ants, too.
Discounting what he was seeing, he kept killing ants. His arms blackened, and then his hands. He refused to stop even when he felt tingling on his face and an itchiness on his back and legs.
He would get rid of the little bastards.
He would win.
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.
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.
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.
Rising late, he moves like he feels old as stone. Boiling water for tea in the kitchen, he coughs out the night’s dust. His hacks echo through the house, debilitating his soul, and leave him wheezing and gasping, his eyes tearing. Sipping tea, he takes his meds and vitamins.
In his living room, he sits in his leather recliner, a gift from his wife before she died, and opens his notebook, recording the day by time, activity and amount. Then he turns on the television to the news, and surfs the net on his laptop, bemoaning the world’s news while shouting, “You fucking piece of shit,” at his computer when pages fail to open and videos don’t run.
Tiring of this when then noon has come, he laments his life, plans his meals, and decides to dress and go wash his car. There are things to do.
He just doesn’t want to do them.
Having not had opportunities to write to my satisfaction for a few weeks, I thought about writing and why I write. I realize that besides fiction and thinking, there’s more to it. Being the pedantic beast I am — and trying to understand it all for myself — here it is.
I write to understand. I’ve not fully understood that until recently. I often go inside myself to think, delving into deep thinking. Deep thought is used about relationships, analysis of events, and, critically, fiction writing. It’s about the pursuit of ideas, directions and outcomes. It’s often a chase.
I can go so far into deep thought before turning to drawing, or more frequently, writing. Writing forces me to crystallize structure and organization. That exercise results in clarity.
Beyond that simplistic structure, there’s also my writing about my dreams. I dream a great deal when I sleep. The dreams intrigue me more than they aggravate me. I always wonder if I’m trying to tell myself something, or something — someone — is informing me, or warning me. I write to remember and hunt for meanings. Of course, I believe my memories of my dreams are faulty. I suspect I embellish them to fill the vacuum.
I’m also trying to understand myself, to strip away emotions and preconceptions and question my motivation and reactions, hopefully resulting in growth. My writing, too, is about recognizing how I was, what has changed, and what didn’t change. Writing is about struggling with my flaws, conceits, self-confidence and insecurities.
I write to entertain myself. When I was a child and teenager, I often drew. Besides still life settings and contour drawings, abstracts and portraits in pencils, charcoal, water colors, oils and acrylics, I designed star ships, cities, forts, cars, aircraft, whatever volunteered to take root in my mind. I had sheaves of results. Eventually, stories became associated with each drawing. I didn’t start writing any of them until years later. It never occurred to me that I could write fiction. Some will claim, I still can’t.
But I’ve envisioned settings, characters, plot and situations. I enjoy the deep thinking necessary to mine and understand these stories. I can do that in my mind’s confines, but to fully enjoy and realize them, I must write. That allows me to refine the stories and their elements, which makes them more satisfying, because now I can enjoy them as a reader.
Sometimes I write a poem because the words come to me. Those are usually inspired by another’s blog post. I write to inform others of my goofiness, too, like my catfinitions.
I write to remember. My memories remain powerful. Their veracity is likely questionable. That’s the beauty of emails and blog posts. Keep enough of them and organize them, and it’s stunning how flawed my memory can be. Still, I enjoy peering into memories’ corridors to see what the light finds. For myself, I find looking back helps me find balance and look forward.
I also write to affirm knowledge. Part of how I learn is to attempt to express what I think I’ve learned into my words. That forces that clarification of thinking I earlier mentioned.
I write to rant, whine and complain. I do a great of this, I know. I really am a whiny, petulant person. Politics aggravate me. Poor customer service infuriates me. Abuse of other people and animals anger me. Lies, falsehood and fake news sickens me. The lack of critical thinking or applied intelligence appalls me. Mindless acceptance and worship horrifies me. War and violence shock me. Greed and selfishness wearies me.
So I write to relieve myself of these feelings. Once released, I can go on. I post them; others can read them, if they’re inclined, but by writing them instead of verbally complaining, I believe I’m doing a kindness of sparing others from hearing my ranting, whining and complaining.
I write to thank others and support them. Reading of the tragedies that pockmark our global existence and history, I’m frequently reminded how fortunate I am so far as the sperm lottery goes. Others have endured horrors that I can read of and imagine, but life and the fates have always steered me around them. I try to support those who have endured and are attempting to move on. I try to help the exhausted, sick and injured, but my own tanks are not very deep. They empty fast and seem to take time to refill.
I write to find my tribe. By writing and posting, I discover others like me, and they discover me. We can usually get along with others, but they’re not driven to explore and understand themselves and existence but writing about it. Others often don’t understand that passion. So when I write and post, I’m putting up a light, “Hey, writer, here I am.”
I’m thankful to those who read and press the like button. I know I’m not alone. I’m thankful for the comments that pop up, and the shared experiences.
All in all, writing is about coping with who I am, who I think I am, how I appear to others, and who I want to be. Once again, I’m handicapped by my limited intelligence and education from expressing myself more deeply, intelligently and accurately. But again, writing is an effort to expand and stay in motion.
Most of all, tritely, writing is about my flawed existence.
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: Meet and Greet: 12/10/16
Danny has offered writers and bloggers another chance to meet and connect over on Dream Big. I hope you take the opportunity to see what others are offering.
Enjoy the writing, create a vision and pursue the dream. Cheers
Writing like crazy….
Well, actually thinking like crazy and developing background information to help me advance my understanding of what the hell’s going on in ‘my’ novel. I don’t know if I claim it as much as it has claimed me.
But, as frequently happens with me, this noodling about background sprouts tangent ideas. Writing about another intelligent race (the Milennial) and their complexities (the Lavie (which are their elders) gain weight and lose their limbs, becoming a food source for the larvae), my writing brain comments, “Boy, there’s a terrific short story in that.” Naturally, an argument commences between the novel writer in residence in my brain and the short story writer.
Does this ever happen to you? You’re writing one piece but another suddenly calls and makes an inviting proposition?
Naturally, I said no. The short story writer in me has less traction. I enjoy short stories, love reading and writing them, but I enjoy the novel form more. I tilt toward the novel. So I tell the short story writer, “I appreciate the idea, but we need to stay focused.”
“Come on, it doesn’t need to be long, just twenty-five hundred, maybe five thousand words.”
“I said, no.”
“But it’ll be easy. You can knock it off in a couple days.”
I laugh. Writers are always making such promises. “No.”
Pouting, the short story writer sulks away. “You’ll be sorry someday,” I hear him muttering. “You’ll see.”
The novelist doesn’t let me dwell on that. “Excellent,” he enthuses. “You dispatched him with aplomb. Now, on to the Profemies and the heritage left behind their departure….”
I remember the day we couldn’t set the water coming out of the faucet on fire. That was just the start.
Little Stevie had made the find. He came out and said, “I can’t set the water on fire.” Daddy said, “What are you saying?” I looked up from my texting to see if Stevie was joking, and then texted, ‘St says water won’t catch fire’. B, S and J all sent back ‘OMG’ and shocked emojis. ‘Really’ we all texted and texted ‘LOL’.
“The water won’t catch,” Stevie said. “I’ve been trying for like five minutes.”
Daddy snorted. “You must be doing it wrong, son.” He chuckled the way he does when he’s acting superior. Without looking up from her iPad, Mom said, “Go check on it, Heath.”
“Okay,” Daddy said. “Pause the movie for me, would you?” He stood up, stretching and groaning while Mom paused the movie. I followed Daddy into the kitchen. He was instructing Steve like he was a little kid, which he is, he’s just six, but it pissed Steve off, and Steve was saying, “Give me the lighter, I’ll show you.”
“I got it, I got it,” Daddy said, holding up the lit lighter to the faucet and turning on the water. The water didn’t catch. “Huh,” Daddy said. I laughed. “Shut up,” he said. I laughed again, and texted what had happened to my friends. They all sent LOLs.
Daddy bent down to the running water. “There’s no smell.” Standing up, he yelled, “Bev, the water won’t catch fire. And it doesn’t smell.”
“What?” Mom called back.
‘Water doesn’t smell’ I texted.
Turning off the water, Daddy went into the other room with me and Stevie. “Kid is right, the water won’t catch on fire,” Daddy said.
The earth stopped shaking and the wind fell still. Daddy froze in like mid-step. I tell you, it was unnatural. Then the rain stopped. All of us looked up at the ceiling and listened. “What’s that noise?” Mom asked.
“That’s it,” Daddy said. “There isn’t any noise.”
“You’re right,” Mom said.
I texted, ‘It stopped raining’. Nobody responded. ‘Hey’ I texted.
It was so quiet. Little Stevie said, “Mama, I’m scared.” Tears sparkled in his eyes and gobbed out and down over his cheeks. He’s such a babby. He moved to Mom and held onto her legs. I wanted to do the same but I’m older. I’m supposed to be cooler. “Stop being so clingy, Steve,” Mom said. “Honestly.”
We went to the windows and looked out. The rain had stopped. Weird. Mom’s iPhone rang. “Barb,” she said, meaning, Barb, her sister. She answered it. “Barb. Yeah, it stopped here.” She said to us, “Barb said it stopped raining there, too.”
Aunt Barb was about five miles away, out in the new subdivision by the mall. She lives above a Trader Joes. It’s really cool.
Daddy’s phone rang. “Dan,” he said, meaning his friend, “Dan.”
“Hey,” Dad said into his phone. “Big D.”
Dad calls Dan Big D because he’s a little guy but he has an important job. He’s a store manager but he’s talking about going into politics. Daddy says he should. I don’t know about that. Big D means Big Douche to me.
“I was just about to call you,” Daddy said to Dan and Mom said to Barb, “And Stevie said the water won’t catch on fire. No, Heath tried, too.”
Daddy said, “It’s not raining here, either. When is the last time you remember that happening?” I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me because it hadn’t made any noise. Mom said something else to Barb on the phone and laughed.
“Why isn’t it raining?” I asked. “It’s June. It always rains and hurricanes in June.”
“Thank you, miss obv,” Daddy said as I finished, “Well, what’s going on?” As if they would know.
Mom said, “Come on, everyone, something is wrong. We better turn the channel and see what’s going on.”
“But I’m watching Caddy Shack,” Daddy said. To Big D, he said, “Yeah, it’s the new remake. Yeah, I’m watching it again. Yeah, it’s better than the last remake. I think it’s better than the original.”
Mom said, “It’ll still be there, Heath.”
“Okay, okay,” Daddy said. “Dan says he has CNN on and there’s nothing on it.”
Mom picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. Nobody was saying anything about this. Nobody was texting me either. ‘Hello’ I texted. ‘WU@?’. Nothing. I checked my signal. Five bars. ‘WTF’ I texted. Mom was looking at her iPad and talking to Barb on her iPhone but she said to us, “I don’t see anything on the Internet, either,” like the Internet would be able to tell us anything.
Then it started raining again, and we all sighed, because it sounded normal again. Then my phone pinged. My friends started telling me what was going on. It had stopped raining at their places, too. Mom was talking to Barb and Daddy was talking to Dan, and he started watching Caddy Shack again.
I remembered it all because it was just last week, either Monday or Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, one of those, I don’t remember which. Steve came out with a flaming glass of water to show us and I could smell it clear across the room, which made me feel better.
It was good having it all back to normal, but for that one day, everything was so weird.
Michael Seidel, writer 