Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Mom didn’t know that Visine could be used to kill people, so I explained what I knew of it.
Next day, I went out, returning after a few hours.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Drug store. I needed some Visine.”
She laughed but gave me a nervous look.
Later yet, she asked, “Did you really buy Visine?”
Funny how memory serves and disserves us. My recollection of events varies from others. Not surprising; so much of it is shaped and handled by private agendas, shaded by emotions, chiseled by what has happened since.
I know it’s a component of why I write. Trying to understand the intricacies of memories and the dynamics of being, I look into myself for understanding and then spin this process into fiction.
Just more first world blues, but I’m bummed out by those automatic toilets which flush while I’m still doing my business. Then, when I do finish my biz, it doesn’t flush, forcing me to search for the magic button to make it happen.
I mean, what exactly is that thing sensing when it flushes and doesn’t? Or is it just messing with me?
The coffee shop was busy. Only a few tables were available.
But I found one with what I needed: table and seat, a smidge of privacy, ‘puter power.
I set myself up, turned on and tuned in. Then amused myself. When coffee shops and cafes are busy like this, I always entertaining a thin fantasy that we’re in a business on a starship heading to another planet.
No real reason for the fantasy except that I find it fun.
A friend was telling me about his eye-sight deteriorating, which got me thinking. I finally asked him, “How are your ear-hearing and brain-thinking?”
I saw an online headline:
‘Grizzly bears to be reintroduced’
That’s nice, I thought, a grizzly romance, or maybe just a friendship. I wonder how they reconnected? Social media, like Bearbook?
The weather has pressed pause on the rain. Shards of broken sunshine are coming through but as soon as they broach the dark clouds’ defenses, a new mass of clouds rush in to patch it up.
A refrigerating breeze circles the streets with a load of petrichor. Like a madeleine for Prost, the petrichor delivers stacks of memories. I flash to being a boy in Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, PA, a young airman in Korea and Germany, a tourist walking outside a tavern on a darkening day to visit with Dad in West Virginia.
Such is the power of smells to foster memories.
I encountered a man yesterday as I was walking along a street. I wear a hat with ‘flair’, and it attracted him. He wanted to see my US flag one. As he admired it, he asked, “What’s that beneath your flag pin?”
“That’s my retired USAF pin.”
“Oh, you were in the Air Force.”
The Neurons jumped up with responses like, “No, I just like the pin.”
I beat The Neurons back and answered, “Yes, I was.”
I wondered what his Neurons were saying to him about his question. I imagine they were like Homer Simpson’s neurons, muttering, “That’s it, I’m out of here,” followed by footsteps and a slamming door.
Michael Seidel, writer 