Biff Mitchell's Blog: Writing Hurts Like Hell, page 19
July 11, 2019
The Weekly Man
I'm trying something new. I'm giving one of my novels away. It took my years to write it. It took over a year just to do the research. But I'll be honest...I'm hoping something good will come out of this.
The novel is called The Weekly Man and it's about seven people whose lives are intricately connected through a secret relationship that they're unaware of until after 30 years. And when they find out...all hell breaks loose.
I'm going to release it one episode at a time starting September 8 and running until the middle of November. There will be enough reading to fit into the morning coffee break.
In the process of overcoming some of many obstacles (pardon me...challenges) like problems with fonts and formatting, creating versions for various platforms, et al. I expected these things.
The novel will be serialized every day for two and a half months at www.theweeklyman.com.
The novel is called The Weekly Man and it's about seven people whose lives are intricately connected through a secret relationship that they're unaware of until after 30 years. And when they find out...all hell breaks loose.
I'm going to release it one episode at a time starting September 8 and running until the middle of November. There will be enough reading to fit into the morning coffee break.
In the process of overcoming some of many obstacles (pardon me...challenges) like problems with fonts and formatting, creating versions for various platforms, et al. I expected these things.
The novel will be serialized every day for two and a half months at www.theweeklyman.com.
July 26, 2017
Short Story: We Need to Talk
“We need to talk.”
Sure, dead three years and now she wants to talk.
“I mean it, Charley. We need to talk. We have unsettled issues. We need to settle them.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Susan. You’re dead.”
“You’ll be dead someday too. You’ll be here, where I am, Charley, and you won’t be able to get away from it. We need to talk now. Get this over with.”
“Why now? Why not when I’m dead?”
This was so much like her―bringing shit up right out of the blue, always taking me by surprise. But God, she’s still so beautiful, even in death, floating a few inches above the living room floor, long white gown billowing from some unseen breeze, long ink-like streams of…
“I’m doing this for you, Charley.”
“Sure you are Susan. Gimme a break. You never did anything for me. You were always about you. I can’t believe you want to do rat shit for me now. Why would I?”
“Because I’m dead. It gives you a new perspective.” She has that same old peeved look in her eyes, as though everything somehow pissed her off, as though the universe was constantly failing her. “Besides, that’s not entirely true. I did lots of things for you.”
“Name one.”
“I faked orgasms. A lot of them. Pretty much all of them. You’re not that great in the sack, Charley.”
“You can take off now, Susan. Go back to wherever and whoever you’re making miserable now. I’m over it. Over you.”
“No you’re not.”
“It’s been three years, Susan. I’m over you.”
“You’re still single. Haven’t dated in three years. You still love me. You always will.”
“You’ve been stalking me! You’re dead and you’re stalking me!”
“Charley, the dead don’t stalk. We haunt.”
I throw my arms into the air. “I’m not doing this, Susan. You’re dead. Gone. And I don’t still love you. I didn’t love you when you were alive and I sure as hell don’t love you when you’re dead. So stop haunting me.”
God, she has this…what? Sensual translucence in death. Or is this just the same lack of substance she…
“Go ahead, Charley, live the rest of your life in denial. But if you want me to stop haunting you, there’s a few things we have to work out.”
“When I’m dead. We’ll work them out when I’m dead.”
“Could you be more specific?
“What d’you mean…‘specific”?”
There she goes with the head-cocked-to-the-side-because-you’re-an-idiot look. “Dates, times?”
“You mean, when I’m going to die?”
“Duh.”
You’d think that three years of death would give a person some insights on the errors of their former lives, like the inherent evil of being a controlling, manipulative…
“Well?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
Ignoring me, she looks around the room and her eyes stop on the couch I bought just hours ago. “Where’s the red couch?”
“I sold it.”
“I loved that couch.”
“I hated it.”
“You owe me an apology.”
“A what?”
“You forgot my birthday.”
“What the hell are you…”
“You forgot my twenty-second birthday, Charley. Didn’t even buy me a card. No gift.”
“Susan, that was ten years ago!”
“No cake.”
“I’d just gotten back from a business trip. I was exhaust…”
“No flowers.”
Again, right out of the blue. I can’t believe this. “You didn’t say anything at the time. Why now, ten years later?” I throw my arms up. “And why now, when you’re dead?”
“I was afraid I might mention…” She puts fingers to her lips. She always did that when she pretended she’d let something out accidentally, but all she really wanted to do was tell me something she knew was going to piss me off. And I always fell for it.
“Mention what?” Still falling for it.
“You’ll just get mad.”
“Mention what?” Hook, line and…
“It was your fault. If you’d just remembered.”
“What, Susan?”
She floats over to the new couch. A dark brown couch. Second hand. Comfortable. Exactly the couch she would have treated like a flea-bitten dog and never allowed past the door. She sits and crosses her long, long...
“You went straight to bed. I went out, met Jerry, went to his place…and had sex with him.”
“You…?”
“Charley, drop the wounded face. It was only the third time.”
“You had sex with other men three times?”
“No…sex with Charley three times. Don’t even get me going on the others.”
“You cheated on me!”
“You didn’t give me flowers on my birthday.” And now she leans forward, deliberately letting the top of her gown fall enough to show those beautiful breasts that I used to spend so much time... “Besides, it was only sex. You had my heart.”
“You never had a heart.”
“Look who’s talking, birthday-forgetter.”
“You cheated on me.”
“Charley, we just covered that. Get over it.”
She’s winding my head up again, screwing my brain with her twisted logic, just like she did when she was alive. But, oh, those legs, those…what the hell am I thinking? She’s dead. “You have to leave, Susan. Get back to being dead.”
“Not until we’re finished, Charley. And we’re not finished.”
“We were finished when you died. When you…”
“You told me once that you would follow me anywhere. You swore you would, Charley. You said, no matter where, no matter what, you would follow me to the end of time. You broke your word, Charley.”
“Susan, you died.”
“So? Has time ended?”
“Your time did.”
“You didn’t specify what time; you said ‘the end of time’. That’s all time, Charley, all time.”
“You expected me to die…just because you died? That’s crazy!”
“No, Charley. That’s love. That’s commitment. That’s keeping your promise. You didn’t follow me.”
“You were cheating on me.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“But…”
“I told you, Charley, we already covered that. Get over it. You always get stuck on all the wrong details. A hug would have been nice. Flowers would have been better.”
“If I buy you flowers, will you go away?”
“It’s too late for flowers. I’m dead. Now, I have to settle for tormenting you eternally.”
“You’re going to torment me eternally because I forgot your birthday…just once…ten years ago?”
“You only turn twenty-two once, Charley. Just once. You never get to turn twenty-two again. You missed something that was going to happen just once in my life and for all eternity, and now I get to torment you…forever.”
“That’s just plain vindictive, Susan.”
“You only get one shot at twenty-two, Charley.”
“And besides, all you said was that we need to take care of some unsettled issues. You said we were going to talk, get this all over with. And now you’re talking about eternal torment.”
She thinks about this a moment. “I changed my mind.”
“You…”
“The dead’s prerogative, Charley.” She stands up suddenly. I step back. “You’re not afraid of me are you?”
“No. You just took me by surprise.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Look, Charley, things didn’t turn out the way I expected.”
“I know. You died young.”
She squints her eyes. “You didn’t have anything to do with that did you?”
“Giving you a stroke? I don’t think so.”
She nods agreement. “What I meant is that things didn’t turn out the way I expected here…in death.”
“How so?”
“I expected clouds, halos, harps…flowers. But it’s not like that.”
“And just how is it?”
“It’s work, Charley, work. We have to take care of things like balances in the universe, making sure that the properties of the universe are all in working order. I saw a place about a thousand light years from here where they let gravity slip for just a few minutes. For a while, we were almost the only intelligent life in the universe, but we fixed it. These things take a lot of math. You know how much I hate math.”
“That sounds really tough, Susan. But it sounds like you get to travel a lot. You used to love traveling.”
“Do you have any idea how cold space is, Charley?”
“But you’re dead.”
“The view between galaxies is cold. It’s dark. Empty. Cold.” She runs her fingers from her cheek, down her neck to her chest as she says this with a faraway look. And suddenly snaps out of it. “But I’m doing something new now.” She looks relieved, almost happy. “They’re trying a new program, running a pilot project for now. And I’m in it.”
“Well that sounds good, Susan. I’m happy for you. What is this pilot project?”
“Well…you’re not going to believe this. I mean, when I heard, well, it just blew me away. The coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
“Yes! Of all the people in the world, I got you.”
“Me?”
“You!”
“For what?”
“I get to be your guide when you die.”
“My guide?”
“That’s the pilot project! And I know, it’s an old idea, this whole thing about the long dead guiding the newly dead, but it’s never actually been done before.”
“And you’re going to be my guide?
“Isn’t that wild?
“But you just said that you’re going to torment me for eternity.”
She thinks for a moment. “I changed my mind. Now, we have to talk.”
“You can’t just keep changing your mind…”
“We already covered that, Charley. Get over it. Like it or not, I’m going to be your guide in the afterlife and before that happens, we have to settle a few things.”
“But there’s nothing more to…”
“Look, Charley, I didn’t ask for this. Luck of the draw. But it sure beats the math.”
I shrug my shoulders in frustration. “So what else?”
“Watch the tone, Charley. I’m going to be your guide.”
“OK. What…other things do we have to settle?”
“You didn’t tell me I was beautiful before we left the apartment for the one time you ever took me to a play.”
“But…”
“I bought a new evening gown just for that. I spent hours on makeup and had my hair done.”
“I never took you to a play, Susan. You’re getting me mixed up with someone else...someone you met before me.”
“Maybe I should just go back to eternal torment.”
“I said you were beautiful when you met me for lunch that time in the bookstore.”
She thinks for a moment. “Hmm. OK, I’ll let you off with the play incident. That might have been someone else.”
“Before or after we met?” I say this sarcastically. Susan frowns.
“I’m not sure, Charley. Do you really want to know?”
“Is there anything else we have to talk about?”
“Lots of things. And we have to settle them quickly. After I guide you…” She puts a finger to her lips and looks at me as though she’s just let something slip out. Once again I fall for it.
“Yes? After you guide me…?”
“Well, I suppose I can tell you since we already covered that…and you’ve gotten over it. After I guide you, I’m going to be guiding Jerry.”
“Jerry? You’re going to guide Jerry?”
“Charley, I only slept with him three times. Get over it.”
“But Jerry’s in the hospital with cancer. He only has a few days to live!”
“All the more reason to get things settled quickly, Charley.”
“Susan! If he only has a few days to live and he’s going to outlive me, then I only have a few days to live!”
“There you go again, Charley. Jumping to conclusions and focusing on all the wrong things. You always did that.”
For a moment, I think I see a bright spot. “So…you mean that Jerry’s going to live longer? The cancer’s going to go away? He’s going to live a long life?”
“Probably not. The cancer’s really advanced. I’d be surprised if he lasts more than a day or two. His own fault though. I told him to quit…”
“So when am I going to die?” She looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. Soon, I suppose. I just know that I’m supposed to guide Jerry after I guide you. So, how do you feel? Any pains, dizziness, rumblings? Anything that might be fatal?”
“I was feeling fine until you showed up.”
“Headaches? Nausea? Bowels OK?”
“Susan!” She looks at me almost startled. Good. “When are you supposed to guide Jerry?”
“That’s confidential information. Besides, I just know that I’m supposed to guide him after I guide you. They didn’t give me any dates. Do you have any premonitions? Some people just know when it’s their time.”
“No! No premonitions. And I’m pretty damn sure it’s not my time.” A hopeful thought comes into my head. “How long does it take to guide me?” I’m thinking that, if it takes a long time, then Jerry’s on his way to…maybe some kind of miraculous recovery.
“Not long.”
Damn.
“Just a few basics: the math of maintaining creation, time management―eternity’s a long time, you know―some yoga. The basics.”
“So…exactly how long does it take. I mean, you’re the guide.”
“It’s hard to say, Charley. Time is different when you’re dead. You suddenly have lots of it. And there’s no real day or night, no seasons. Besides, Jerry’s a goner…soon. And you’re a goner before him. Live with it.”
“Susan, I’m not ready to die. I have things to do, places to go.”
“Like, what and where?”
“Well…you know…things…places. All that stuff you do before you die.”
“You’re never going to do any of it, Charley. You never do anything. You work, you watch TV, you sleep. If your life were a restaurant, the menu would fit on a thumb tack.”
“But I have…”
“I just remembered…there’s a flower shop right by where you work. You could have stopped in for a few minutes. You could have bought me flowers.”
“Susan! I’m going to die! Soon! And you’re still going on about the flowers?”
“Look at the bright side…you won’t be dying alone. I’ll be here with you. How about numbness? Blurred vision?”
“Come to think of it, my throat feels a bit tight.”
“Now we’re talking. Difficulty breathing?”
“No! My breathing’s fine. You almost sound like you want me to die.”
“Charley, I’d like to start my new job sometime this century. You can be really inconsiderate, you know. Feeling any hot flashes, or anything?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Susan, but no…”
“What?”
“My chest.”
“Your chest?”
“It feels weird. Like it used to when I was a kid.”
“You mean when you used to get allergic reactions?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t had one of those in years.” I start coughing. My throat feels like a vice is clamping in on it.
“Charley, when did you buy the new couch?”
“Today. Why?”
“Charley, did you get a second hand couch.”
“What does that have to do with…”
“You bought a second hand couch.”
“I got a good deal.” I’m coughing non-stop now and wheezing.
“It’s probably full of fleas.”
“Fleas?”
“You told me you almost died as a kid from an allergic reaction to fleas.”
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I start gagging. Susan claps her hands together and smiles.
“Susan, do something!”
“I am.”
“What?”
“Waiting to start my new job.”
Some more gagging, some reddening of the face, and it’s over. I look at Susan and she’s beaming. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I look at my body lying on the floor, spittle dripping from my mouth. I look irritated. “That’s me.”
“That was you.” She extends her hand to me. “You said you had things to do, places to go. Well, you were right.”
“But I meant…”
She wraps her fingers around my hand and tugs lightly. “Time to go, Charley. But, before we begin the, let’s say…orientation…we need to talk.”
Sure, dead three years and now she wants to talk.
“I mean it, Charley. We need to talk. We have unsettled issues. We need to settle them.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Susan. You’re dead.”
“You’ll be dead someday too. You’ll be here, where I am, Charley, and you won’t be able to get away from it. We need to talk now. Get this over with.”
“Why now? Why not when I’m dead?”
This was so much like her―bringing shit up right out of the blue, always taking me by surprise. But God, she’s still so beautiful, even in death, floating a few inches above the living room floor, long white gown billowing from some unseen breeze, long ink-like streams of…
“I’m doing this for you, Charley.”
“Sure you are Susan. Gimme a break. You never did anything for me. You were always about you. I can’t believe you want to do rat shit for me now. Why would I?”
“Because I’m dead. It gives you a new perspective.” She has that same old peeved look in her eyes, as though everything somehow pissed her off, as though the universe was constantly failing her. “Besides, that’s not entirely true. I did lots of things for you.”
“Name one.”
“I faked orgasms. A lot of them. Pretty much all of them. You’re not that great in the sack, Charley.”
“You can take off now, Susan. Go back to wherever and whoever you’re making miserable now. I’m over it. Over you.”
“No you’re not.”
“It’s been three years, Susan. I’m over you.”
“You’re still single. Haven’t dated in three years. You still love me. You always will.”
“You’ve been stalking me! You’re dead and you’re stalking me!”
“Charley, the dead don’t stalk. We haunt.”
I throw my arms into the air. “I’m not doing this, Susan. You’re dead. Gone. And I don’t still love you. I didn’t love you when you were alive and I sure as hell don’t love you when you’re dead. So stop haunting me.”
God, she has this…what? Sensual translucence in death. Or is this just the same lack of substance she…
“Go ahead, Charley, live the rest of your life in denial. But if you want me to stop haunting you, there’s a few things we have to work out.”
“When I’m dead. We’ll work them out when I’m dead.”
“Could you be more specific?
“What d’you mean…‘specific”?”
There she goes with the head-cocked-to-the-side-because-you’re-an-idiot look. “Dates, times?”
“You mean, when I’m going to die?”
“Duh.”
You’d think that three years of death would give a person some insights on the errors of their former lives, like the inherent evil of being a controlling, manipulative…
“Well?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
Ignoring me, she looks around the room and her eyes stop on the couch I bought just hours ago. “Where’s the red couch?”
“I sold it.”
“I loved that couch.”
“I hated it.”
“You owe me an apology.”
“A what?”
“You forgot my birthday.”
“What the hell are you…”
“You forgot my twenty-second birthday, Charley. Didn’t even buy me a card. No gift.”
“Susan, that was ten years ago!”
“No cake.”
“I’d just gotten back from a business trip. I was exhaust…”
“No flowers.”
Again, right out of the blue. I can’t believe this. “You didn’t say anything at the time. Why now, ten years later?” I throw my arms up. “And why now, when you’re dead?”
“I was afraid I might mention…” She puts fingers to her lips. She always did that when she pretended she’d let something out accidentally, but all she really wanted to do was tell me something she knew was going to piss me off. And I always fell for it.
“Mention what?” Still falling for it.
“You’ll just get mad.”
“Mention what?” Hook, line and…
“It was your fault. If you’d just remembered.”
“What, Susan?”
She floats over to the new couch. A dark brown couch. Second hand. Comfortable. Exactly the couch she would have treated like a flea-bitten dog and never allowed past the door. She sits and crosses her long, long...
“You went straight to bed. I went out, met Jerry, went to his place…and had sex with him.”
“You…?”
“Charley, drop the wounded face. It was only the third time.”
“You had sex with other men three times?”
“No…sex with Charley three times. Don’t even get me going on the others.”
“You cheated on me!”
“You didn’t give me flowers on my birthday.” And now she leans forward, deliberately letting the top of her gown fall enough to show those beautiful breasts that I used to spend so much time... “Besides, it was only sex. You had my heart.”
“You never had a heart.”
“Look who’s talking, birthday-forgetter.”
“You cheated on me.”
“Charley, we just covered that. Get over it.”
She’s winding my head up again, screwing my brain with her twisted logic, just like she did when she was alive. But, oh, those legs, those…what the hell am I thinking? She’s dead. “You have to leave, Susan. Get back to being dead.”
“Not until we’re finished, Charley. And we’re not finished.”
“We were finished when you died. When you…”
“You told me once that you would follow me anywhere. You swore you would, Charley. You said, no matter where, no matter what, you would follow me to the end of time. You broke your word, Charley.”
“Susan, you died.”
“So? Has time ended?”
“Your time did.”
“You didn’t specify what time; you said ‘the end of time’. That’s all time, Charley, all time.”
“You expected me to die…just because you died? That’s crazy!”
“No, Charley. That’s love. That’s commitment. That’s keeping your promise. You didn’t follow me.”
“You were cheating on me.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“But…”
“I told you, Charley, we already covered that. Get over it. You always get stuck on all the wrong details. A hug would have been nice. Flowers would have been better.”
“If I buy you flowers, will you go away?”
“It’s too late for flowers. I’m dead. Now, I have to settle for tormenting you eternally.”
“You’re going to torment me eternally because I forgot your birthday…just once…ten years ago?”
“You only turn twenty-two once, Charley. Just once. You never get to turn twenty-two again. You missed something that was going to happen just once in my life and for all eternity, and now I get to torment you…forever.”
“That’s just plain vindictive, Susan.”
“You only get one shot at twenty-two, Charley.”
“And besides, all you said was that we need to take care of some unsettled issues. You said we were going to talk, get this all over with. And now you’re talking about eternal torment.”
She thinks about this a moment. “I changed my mind.”
“You…”
“The dead’s prerogative, Charley.” She stands up suddenly. I step back. “You’re not afraid of me are you?”
“No. You just took me by surprise.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Look, Charley, things didn’t turn out the way I expected.”
“I know. You died young.”
She squints her eyes. “You didn’t have anything to do with that did you?”
“Giving you a stroke? I don’t think so.”
She nods agreement. “What I meant is that things didn’t turn out the way I expected here…in death.”
“How so?”
“I expected clouds, halos, harps…flowers. But it’s not like that.”
“And just how is it?”
“It’s work, Charley, work. We have to take care of things like balances in the universe, making sure that the properties of the universe are all in working order. I saw a place about a thousand light years from here where they let gravity slip for just a few minutes. For a while, we were almost the only intelligent life in the universe, but we fixed it. These things take a lot of math. You know how much I hate math.”
“That sounds really tough, Susan. But it sounds like you get to travel a lot. You used to love traveling.”
“Do you have any idea how cold space is, Charley?”
“But you’re dead.”
“The view between galaxies is cold. It’s dark. Empty. Cold.” She runs her fingers from her cheek, down her neck to her chest as she says this with a faraway look. And suddenly snaps out of it. “But I’m doing something new now.” She looks relieved, almost happy. “They’re trying a new program, running a pilot project for now. And I’m in it.”
“Well that sounds good, Susan. I’m happy for you. What is this pilot project?”
“Well…you’re not going to believe this. I mean, when I heard, well, it just blew me away. The coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
“Yes! Of all the people in the world, I got you.”
“Me?”
“You!”
“For what?”
“I get to be your guide when you die.”
“My guide?”
“That’s the pilot project! And I know, it’s an old idea, this whole thing about the long dead guiding the newly dead, but it’s never actually been done before.”
“And you’re going to be my guide?
“Isn’t that wild?
“But you just said that you’re going to torment me for eternity.”
She thinks for a moment. “I changed my mind. Now, we have to talk.”
“You can’t just keep changing your mind…”
“We already covered that, Charley. Get over it. Like it or not, I’m going to be your guide in the afterlife and before that happens, we have to settle a few things.”
“But there’s nothing more to…”
“Look, Charley, I didn’t ask for this. Luck of the draw. But it sure beats the math.”
I shrug my shoulders in frustration. “So what else?”
“Watch the tone, Charley. I’m going to be your guide.”
“OK. What…other things do we have to settle?”
“You didn’t tell me I was beautiful before we left the apartment for the one time you ever took me to a play.”
“But…”
“I bought a new evening gown just for that. I spent hours on makeup and had my hair done.”
“I never took you to a play, Susan. You’re getting me mixed up with someone else...someone you met before me.”
“Maybe I should just go back to eternal torment.”
“I said you were beautiful when you met me for lunch that time in the bookstore.”
She thinks for a moment. “Hmm. OK, I’ll let you off with the play incident. That might have been someone else.”
“Before or after we met?” I say this sarcastically. Susan frowns.
“I’m not sure, Charley. Do you really want to know?”
“Is there anything else we have to talk about?”
“Lots of things. And we have to settle them quickly. After I guide you…” She puts a finger to her lips and looks at me as though she’s just let something slip out. Once again I fall for it.
“Yes? After you guide me…?”
“Well, I suppose I can tell you since we already covered that…and you’ve gotten over it. After I guide you, I’m going to be guiding Jerry.”
“Jerry? You’re going to guide Jerry?”
“Charley, I only slept with him three times. Get over it.”
“But Jerry’s in the hospital with cancer. He only has a few days to live!”
“All the more reason to get things settled quickly, Charley.”
“Susan! If he only has a few days to live and he’s going to outlive me, then I only have a few days to live!”
“There you go again, Charley. Jumping to conclusions and focusing on all the wrong things. You always did that.”
For a moment, I think I see a bright spot. “So…you mean that Jerry’s going to live longer? The cancer’s going to go away? He’s going to live a long life?”
“Probably not. The cancer’s really advanced. I’d be surprised if he lasts more than a day or two. His own fault though. I told him to quit…”
“So when am I going to die?” She looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. Soon, I suppose. I just know that I’m supposed to guide Jerry after I guide you. So, how do you feel? Any pains, dizziness, rumblings? Anything that might be fatal?”
“I was feeling fine until you showed up.”
“Headaches? Nausea? Bowels OK?”
“Susan!” She looks at me almost startled. Good. “When are you supposed to guide Jerry?”
“That’s confidential information. Besides, I just know that I’m supposed to guide him after I guide you. They didn’t give me any dates. Do you have any premonitions? Some people just know when it’s their time.”
“No! No premonitions. And I’m pretty damn sure it’s not my time.” A hopeful thought comes into my head. “How long does it take to guide me?” I’m thinking that, if it takes a long time, then Jerry’s on his way to…maybe some kind of miraculous recovery.
“Not long.”
Damn.
“Just a few basics: the math of maintaining creation, time management―eternity’s a long time, you know―some yoga. The basics.”
“So…exactly how long does it take. I mean, you’re the guide.”
“It’s hard to say, Charley. Time is different when you’re dead. You suddenly have lots of it. And there’s no real day or night, no seasons. Besides, Jerry’s a goner…soon. And you’re a goner before him. Live with it.”
“Susan, I’m not ready to die. I have things to do, places to go.”
“Like, what and where?”
“Well…you know…things…places. All that stuff you do before you die.”
“You’re never going to do any of it, Charley. You never do anything. You work, you watch TV, you sleep. If your life were a restaurant, the menu would fit on a thumb tack.”
“But I have…”
“I just remembered…there’s a flower shop right by where you work. You could have stopped in for a few minutes. You could have bought me flowers.”
“Susan! I’m going to die! Soon! And you’re still going on about the flowers?”
“Look at the bright side…you won’t be dying alone. I’ll be here with you. How about numbness? Blurred vision?”
“Come to think of it, my throat feels a bit tight.”
“Now we’re talking. Difficulty breathing?”
“No! My breathing’s fine. You almost sound like you want me to die.”
“Charley, I’d like to start my new job sometime this century. You can be really inconsiderate, you know. Feeling any hot flashes, or anything?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Susan, but no…”
“What?”
“My chest.”
“Your chest?”
“It feels weird. Like it used to when I was a kid.”
“You mean when you used to get allergic reactions?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t had one of those in years.” I start coughing. My throat feels like a vice is clamping in on it.
“Charley, when did you buy the new couch?”
“Today. Why?”
“Charley, did you get a second hand couch.”
“What does that have to do with…”
“You bought a second hand couch.”
“I got a good deal.” I’m coughing non-stop now and wheezing.
“It’s probably full of fleas.”
“Fleas?”
“You told me you almost died as a kid from an allergic reaction to fleas.”
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I start gagging. Susan claps her hands together and smiles.
“Susan, do something!”
“I am.”
“What?”
“Waiting to start my new job.”
Some more gagging, some reddening of the face, and it’s over. I look at Susan and she’s beaming. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I look at my body lying on the floor, spittle dripping from my mouth. I look irritated. “That’s me.”
“That was you.” She extends her hand to me. “You said you had things to do, places to go. Well, you were right.”
“But I meant…”
She wraps her fingers around my hand and tugs lightly. “Time to go, Charley. But, before we begin the, let’s say…orientation…we need to talk.”
July 17, 2017
Short Story: Smoke Break
A kettle boiling water into dry hell―Kyle’s first thought as he stepped out of the air conditioned building. Pools of heat wavered visibly on the rooftops of mini vans and cars parked in the asphalt lot as Kyle cussed himself for wearing a suit and tie. But the radio had said rain today, just like it had yesterday, when the temperature had soared to an energy-sucking ninety-five. He loosened his tie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. He took a package of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, opened it and thumbed out a cigarette, thinking that maybe after this pack he’d try quitting again. Yeah, quit the damned things for good and stay inside all day in the office rooms filled with computers and cool air. Pocketing the pack with one hand, he reached into his pants pocket with the other and took out his lighter. Sweat popped out of his underarms as he fired his cigarette and put the lighter back in his pocket. God, it was only mid morning. What would it be like in the afternoon? He took a deep drag, his first cigarette of the day, and felt his head spin into a nicotine high.
He blew out a long stream of bluish smoke that traveled straight ahead, dissolving into the air without even a slight movement upward. No wind to cool down the scorching heat. Sweat dribbled from the pores in his forehead. He wiped it away with the palm of his hand and then dried his palm on the inside of his jacket. He took another long haul on the cigarette, wondering why the hell they couldn’t put aside just one small air conditioned room for smokers, a room with vents to pump the circuit-destroying smoke outside into this godawful hot day.
Beside him stood a three foot high air conditioning box churning out a strained humming sound, the diamond mesh grill on top ripped open by a snow plow during the winter. Kyle looked at the splayed metal and thought that maybe the heat wasn’t so bad after all, not after the skin-numbing temperatures of a winter that had seemed to freeze and storm forever. The problem with weather, either too cold or too hot, but at least you didn’t have to shovel driveways in the heat.
As he lifted the cigarette to his lips, he noticed movement inside the darkness of the air conditioning unit. He blinked. Probably just heat waves under the torn metal. But it moved again, and not like any heat wave. Must be the nicotine high, playing tricks on his eyes. He stared at the hole in the unit. The metal was ripped right down the six foot length of the gray metal box with a round gouge in the middle where diamond-shaped mesh curled up and away from the hole like grisly lips. Another movement, something long and dark, it looked like. Something solid.
Kyle wiped sweat from his forehead again, wiped his palm inside his jacket again, stepped closer to the, felt air even hotter than outside blast into his face. Just as he was about to step back, he saw it again. Something long and dark, black, shiny black. He blinked his eyes again, wiped sweat from his brows, and stepped away from the unit. Yeah, just the nicotine high, and the heat, the godawful heat, and him wearing a suit, his shirt soaked under his arms and across his back.
He looked at his black Honda, parked thirty feet away, heat waves dancing on the hood where the protective coating peeled and flaked in white streaks. From parking under a pine tree, the autobody guy had told him. Have to strip it down to the undercoat and repaint. Too late to fix the protective coating. Bloody pine trees. Cost a fortune to have it painted.
And then he heard a faint thump in the direction of the air conditioning unit. He looked, saw nothing. Must be the motor stressing out on the heat. Or maybe it was his head stressing. And then another movement, something definitely long, slender, black, moving from one side of the gouge to the other. Something loose in there? Blowing around in the exhaust? But the movement seemed too slow, too deliberate. What the hell was it?
He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled the smoke before inhaling it fully, walked right up to the unit and looked into the hole.
There it was.
A twig? Too small. A branch? No. A thick, black spine, leading to what looked like a joint, and then tapering to another joint, and tapering into a smaller spine. No, not a branch, not wood, but something definitely familiar. Where had he seen that shape before?
He bent forward cautiously. The long black spine moved slowly back and forth. Gotta be something caught in there, moving with the exhaust. And then another one appeared from the left side of the hole, exactly like the first, long and shiny black, three spines tapering down through two joints. And they both stretched straight forward and stopped, forming two parallel spines about six inches apart, each at least three feet long.
Where the hell had he seen those before? Still bent forward, peering into the torn grill, He stepped back. Something too deliberate in the movement of those things, something too familiar that wasn’t invoking any pleasant memories, something sinister in the way they just lay there side by side, so intent on remaining still.
And then he heard it.
Not from outside, but inside, inside his head, like something effervescent bubbling into his awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words.
“What are you?”
Kyle jumped back, almost losing his balance, the cigarette dropping through his fingers, burning them as it passed through.
“Shit!”
Regaining his balance, he looked around, eyes popped wildly, shaking his hand as though he could shake the burning away. No one was there. Just hundreds of empty cars boiling under the blistering sun, and beyond the parking lot, the city fuming in a smoggy haze. Gotta be the heat, the nicotine high. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped them with both hands, felt the pinching hurt in his fingers begin to loosen into a throb, then waved his hand in a futile attempt to cool the burning fingers. He looked back at the hole in the grill.
The spines were gone.
Too creepy. Too much heat. He stepped quickly to the door, opened it and walked into the cool of the building.
***
You could almost bounce off the wall of heat and sear your brows in the process. It took Kyle’s breath away. The metal door thumped closed behind him as he reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarette pack. His mind bristled with flashing screens from hours of research on the Internet, the muscles in his right palm throbbing from using the mouse. Have to fill out a requisition for one of those ergonomic models. His burned fingers had stopped throbbing. Lighting his cigarette, he glanced briefly at the air conditioning unit, still humming its strained monotonous tune.
Christ!
Two long black spines stretched out in the hole. Damn, what are those things? Time to get to the bottom of this. Ignoring the alarms firing in his head and stomach, he marched directly to the unit, bent forward and gazed at the spines laying motionless, side by side on top of the fan box. He dropped his cigarette onto the butt-cluttered cement, crushed it with his heel and moved his hand slowly toward them.
Just as his hand reached the opening in the grill, the spines moved. And something in the grillwork right under his head moved. What the hell was that? His hand froze. His body froze. He watched as a dark mass of material roiled under the rusted mesh, moving with slow, fluid motion. The spines curled under at their joints and disappeared, the dark mass gliding forward to replace them. Kyle’s eyes widened, their lids the only part of his body that wasn’t paralyzed solid. The mass in the unit was round and translucent black with a coat of short shimmering hair. It must have been as big as a medium-size dog, or more like a large beach balloon, but bloated in the center and tapering to a point at one end. It turned smoothly around and the end facing Kyle lifted.
First, he saw a flat, crusty section attached to the bloated black beach ball. Sprouting out from the bottom of this, he saw eight of the long spines. The crusted shell rose to reveal four liquid black eyes forming a square under a shell-like brow. Beside the square of eyes, two more larger sapphire blue eyes bulged menacingly. Below the eyes, two hairy black appendages like swollen, droopy lips sucked in and out. Each appendage had two reddish black fangs that curved inward, almost touching each other as the appendages sucked slowly in and out.
Goddam, a spider.
Kyle broke through the spell and jumped backwards. He heard the flat dead-like words bubbling in his mind again.
“What are you?”
Everything in Kyle’s body was moving now, especially his sweat glands, his shirt and pants starting to drench. His heart thumped hard enough to make his head spin. And the words intruded into his mind again, floating somewhere between conscious and unconscious, sanity and insanity.
“What are you?”
And that’s when Kyle realized that the words came from the spider.
The realization came in layers: a spider, a giant spider, a giant spider somehow throwing words into his brain, a giant spider asking him what he was. Mustering his senses like melting tar in the sweltering heat, Kyle broke through the barrier of impossibility and whispered: “What?”
“No need to talk out loud. Just think it.”
Whispering again: “What?”
“Just direct your meaning to me. Just think your words.”
Kyle thought: “How ..”
“That’s it. Just like that.”
“But …”
“Yes?”
Kyle stared into the eyes, four black and two blue, all six of them vibrating with inner life, seeming to float around in their hairy sockets, surrounded by the monstrous body with the black fangs moving slowly in and out like breathing.
“What the hell are you?”
“I think I asked you that first, only somewhat more politely.”
What kind of craziness? The thing was talking to him. He was talking back to it. The damn thing had to be real, but the damn thing couldn’t be real. He reached for this cigarettes, the outside of the pack was moist with sweat. He opened the pack and fumbled out a cigarette, hands shaking. Returning the pack to his shirt pocket, he groped in his pants for this lighter. Craziness! Maybe some kind of Internet surfing-induced hypnosis? Too many screens flashing by on his monitor, like the dividing line on a dark night, inducing highway hypnosis? He lit his cigarette with difficulty, lip muscles shaking as much as his hands. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped it away with the lighter hand, left his wet hand on his cheek still holding the lighter, took a long drag on his cigarette, his eyes transfixed by the six eyes moving around but knowing they were focused on him, and he heard more words.
“No, Kyle, you’re not crazy.”
Kyle’s jaw dropped. “You know my name.”
“It’s in your mind. But what are you?”
“No way, you first.”
The spider’s head lifted up slightly, the eyes now all definitely focused directly on Kyle. “I’m me.”
Kyle pondered this a moment, still shaking from head to toes. “Fine. That’s what I am too … me.”
“But, what are you when you say me?”
Some of Kyle’s shaking began to loosen up in the rhetoric. This is not the way a spider talks. Not to mention that spiders don’t talk. And spiders don’t get this big. But there it was, a big spider, a giant black spider in the air conditioning unit. And it talked. “OK, I’ll bite. I’m a person, a human being.”
“What’s a human?”
“Oh no, you next, what the hell are you?”
“No, Kyle. Let’s focus on one thing at a time, take this step by step.”
Some kind of goddam analytic psychologist spider? What the hell was going on here? “Look, I don’t even know if you exist! Why should I answer questions from something that might just be a figment of my stressed-out mind?”
“How do you know that you exist?”
Kyle thought a moment. He knew the answer to that one, knew it from first year Philosophy. He took another puff on his cigarette. It came to him: “I think; therefore, I am.”
“Well, Kyle, I think too. Therefore, I am. And you’ve been reading my thoughts. Therefore, you know that I think; therefore, you know that I am. What’s a human?”
Kyle blew out cigarette smoke in a rush, the long blue stream racing through the windless air right into the face of the spider. The spider recoiled.
“Hey, watch that stuff! It burns my eyes!”
Kyle’s eyebrows lifted. The shaking in his body stopped abruptly, the spider not so menacing now in its vulnerability to the smoke. “Sorry.”
The spider shifted back into a relaxed crouch on top of the fan box, its movements smoothly fluid and silent, almost graceful. “Apology accepted. So what is a human?”
He thought. Images came to mind, images of people working, playing, doing a million different things, but how to describe human? Surely the spider could see that he was a smooth-skinned biped with hair on his head. Start with apes? Describe evolution? Opposable thumbs? The ability to think abstract thoughts? He took another drag on his cigarette and blew it out, this time away from the spider. He replied: “Look, I’m going to have to think about this. It’s kind of a complex thing. And I have to get back to work. Can we talk about this tomorrow morning?”
“You’ll come back?”
“Yes, I’ll come back. I come out here every day, twice, for a smoke break.”
“You’ll tell me what human is?”
“I’ll tell you what human is.”
“Will you bring others?”
Kyle thought about this. Tell Ernie and Jim when he got back upstairs? No. What if he was just imagining this? They’d think he was nuts, and maybe he was. Best to keep this to himself, for the time being. “No, I’ll come alone.”
“Good. I don’t like crowds.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m not sure. I just know it.”
Kyle dropped his cigarette and crushed it out. “Tomorrow, then.”
“And you’ll tell me what human is. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
More like six of them. Gotta be going crazy. Find out tomorrow, if it’s still there. Kyle opened the door and walked into the building as the spider glided back into the darkness of the air conditioning unit.
***
Almost like God had waved a wand over the sky and the earth, the weather had changed overnight, cooling down under a slate gray cloud cover. A soothing breeze brushed against Kyle’s face as he stepped out of the building, cigarette and lighter in hand. He ignored the breeze, the sky, the parked cars, and looked straight at the air conditioning unit. And there it was, crouched as yesterday on top of the fan box. So it hadn’t just been the heat, or Internet hypnosis. And any further doubt was shattered when the deadpan words invaded his mind.
“Good morning, Kyle.”
It was still unnerving. “Good morning. Sleep well?”
“As well as can be in here. Not much space to stretch out.”
“Ever think of moving to the suburbs?” Kyle lit his cigarette.
“What is suburbs?”
“Oh, just a place with more room, bigger air conditioners.” Putting his lighter back in his pocket, he stepped closer to the unit. “Just joking. Didn’t sleep much last night. Thought maybe I was going crazy or something.”
“I suppose I would have that effect. I don’t socialize much.”
What the hell was this thing saying? How would it even know to say these things? Kyle scratched his head, stared into the lidless, unblinking array of eyes. “You seem to have a good vocabulary for a spider.”
“Is that what I am? A spider?”
Kyle thought a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s what you look like. But different, bigger.”
“Then, that’s what I am. A spider. Have you had enough time to prepare your explanation of humans?”
Kyle sighed deeply. Between bouts of wondering about his sanity, he’d thought about being human, what it meant. He had his answer ready. “Yeah, I think I can describe humans.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Yeah, sure, where?”
“Just a manner of speaking. Please, tell me about humans.”
Pausing his thoughts for a moment, Kyle took another long drag and blew the smoke out, away from the spider. Today the smoke arced upwards in the light breeze, disintegrating quickly into the surrounding air. “OK. But, keep in mind, I’m not the world’s biggest expert on this kind of thing. Took some philosophy in college, read a few books, but mostly, this is just from living my life as a human.”
“Knowledge by experience is good.”
Kyle thought about this a moment. Where does it come up with these remarks? Got a library in that damned air conditioning unit? TV? “We weren’t always the way we are.”
“Nothing is.”
“Look, can we do away with the running commentary? This is hard enough as it is.”
“Sorry, Kyle. Please continue.”
The spider’s mass moved backwards gently, as though relaxing, the eyes still seeming to move, but not move, the black fangs breathing in and out from their hairy appendages.
“We started off as fish, turned into apes, evolved from apes into humans. It took millions of years but, during that time, our brains evolved into something that set us off from all other animals on earth, and maybe all life forms in the universe. We developed the ability to think, to solve problems, to think in the abstract.” Damn, none of this was coming out right. Why hadn’t he written it down the night before? It all seemed so apparent then. “What I mean is, we have the ability to change the world around us so that we enhance our ability to survive.” Kyle paused again, puffed on his cigarette.
“That’s it?”
“Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?”
“I can do all that. With the exception of fish and apes, I must be human.”
“But you can’t change the world around you.”
The spider waved one of its long, spindly legs over the inside of the unit. “Made some changes in here.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Would you like to stick your head in and take a look around?”
Kyle shuddered. Duck his head into the unit right under those two chomping fangs? Not likely. “Think I’ll pass on that.”
“You’re still nervous. Is that a human trait? To be nervous?”
“Only when we feel threatened, or when we’re in a situation where everything is uncertain, or improbable. Like when we’re talking to giant spiders that can’t possibly exist, and we think maybe we’ve gone over the deep end.”
“Would you like to touch me? Maybe that will convince you that I’m real.”
Kyle’s stomach tightened at the suggestion. “Thanks, but …”
“Right. Nervous.”
“No offense meant.”
“None taken. But is that really all there is to being human? It took you the whole night to come up with that?”
Kyle puffed on his cigarette, getting smoke in his eyes. He rubbed them with his free hand. “Well, no, it’s a lot more than that. I told you I wasn’t an expert on this. I’ll have to give it some more thought. I have to get back to work. Meet you here this afternoon?”
“You’ll come back?”
“Of course I will. Didn’t we already go over this yesterday?”
“That’s right. I hope I didn’t sound insecure. You’ll come alone?”
“Covered that ground too.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Kyle flicked his cigarette onto the pavement. In the distance beyond the parking lot, the tall buildings of the city appeared as gray as the sky, floating in their sea of exhaust and smoke. “Catch ya later.”
“Catch you later, Kyle.”
He opened the door and walked into the building. The spider remained on the fan box.
***
Mid afternoon, and the clouds were beginning to open up with a miserly sliver of blue sky here, a sprinkle of sun beams there. So what happened to the rain the radio promised? Kyle walked to the air conditioning unit. No giant spider. Nothing in there. He bent forward. “Hello, Mr. Spider!”
“Hello, Kyle.” The words rippling across his cerebral landscape like tiny bubbles bursting with meaning before taking any particular form.
Kyle watched as two long, black legs speared over the fan box and shifted to the left, the unimaginable black beach ball sliding in from the right. The spider perched on the box and lifted its head, all this in one elegant, fluid motion. The eyes focused on Kyle, but moving still, taking in the back of the building and the area around Kyle. The fangs moving in and out, in and out, slowly, like labored breathing.
“Before we get into this human thing… ” Kyle put a cigarette in this mouth, lit it. “…I have a question for you.”
The spider crouched motionless, only the fangs and their appendages moving, slowly, in and out. “The floor is all yours, Kyle.”
Where the hell did it learn that? “I’ve been wondering about this all morning.”
“Applying abstract thought?”
“Hey! The commentary …”
“Sorry. Please, continue.”
Another puff on his cigarette. Gotta give these damned things up. Maybe not a good time now, though. “Where do you come from?”
Silence. The fangs moving in and out. The legs spread out over the sides of the fan box, motionless. The lustrous, black body, motionless.
“Hello.”
“Yes, Kyle.”
“Oh, OK, just wondering if you heard the question. Where do you come from?”
“Here.”
He puffed again on his cigarette, eyes squinting with puzzlement. “Here?”
“Where I am.”
Kyle thought about this a moment, shrugged. “Oh yeah, well, that makes sense. Been anywhere else?”
“No, just here.”
“I see what you mean about your social life.”
“I get by. But enough talk about me. Let’s talk about this human thing.”
Suddenly, the spider’s eyes seemed to go wild, gyrating in their sockets, the appendages froze. In one quick movement, the spider was gone. Hearing something behind him, Kyle turned in time to see a red Dodge Caravan pulling out of a parking spot about fifty feet away from him. The driver, a man with short dark hair and a black suit, eyed Kyle as the mini van pulled out slowly and then drove to the far exit. All I need now. People watching me talking to an air conditioning unit. When Kyle looked back at the unit, the spider was there.
“A little on the shy side?”
“I enjoy my privacy.”
“Then, why are you talking to me?”
“Why not?”
Kyle expelled a long, forceful sigh. “Have you ever heard about semantics?”
“No. Are they a human thing?”
“Yesterday morning, I would have said yes. You seem to be an exception, though.”
“Thank you, Kyle. I’ve never been called exceptional before.”
“Have you been called anything before?”
“Not that I can think of. But again, enough chatter about me. What about this human thing?”
Kyle flicked an ash off his cigarette, took another puff. Blew the smoke out. “OK then, back to the human thing. I suppose the best way to put it is … we’re the caretakers of everything around us.”
“You clean things up?”
“No. Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. We have the ability to look around us and see the way things are. Then, we apply abstract thought and see the way things could be. Then, we apply creativity to abstract thought and this gives us a vision of how to turn the way things are into the way they could be.”
The four black eyes in the center, though motionless, seemed almost to be spinning with movement deep inside.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why change things from what they are to what they could be?”
“Well, to make them better.”
“I see. Could you give me an example?”
Kyle thought about this a moment, snapped his fingers. The spider jerked back. Kyle jerked back, regained his composure quickly. “Let me guess. Sensitive to sound?”
“Right on the money.”
“Sorry about that. Something we humans do sometimes when we get an idea.”
The spider moved forward slightly, relaxing back onto the fan box. “Apology accepted. What was your idea?”
“Rivers.”
“Rivers?”
“A body of water that flows through the land. If I want to drive my car from one side of the river to the other, my car will sink and I’ll drown. That’s the way things are.”
“I see. Not a happy prospect. But why do you want to get to the other side?”
“That’s not important. Maybe just for the sheer hell of it. Maybe I left something there and I want to get it back.”
“So you’ve been there before?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Well, you must have crossed the river without drowning. Why not do the same again?”
Kyle threw his arms up. The spider backed up again. “I haven’t been across the river!”
“Then how did …”
“It’s not important!” He tossed his cigarette down, and in the same movement, brought his hand up to his shirt pocket, took out another cigarette and lit it. The spider moved forward and relaxed. Kyle blew out a stream of smoke. “Let’s say I’m just curious about what’s on the other side of the river.”
“I can live with that.”
He glared at the spider. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Now, I want to change the way things are. So I apply some abstract thought and realize that I could drive across the river … if I had a way to do that.”
“How would you do that?”
“That’s what I’m coming to.” Another puff on the cigarette. “That’s the first step in being human. I accept that there is a way to cross the river. We’ve just gone from the way things are to the way things could be. And now we add a little creativity to the situation.”
The spider’s legs moved. Kyle asked: “What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just getting ready for the revelation.”
Smart ass spider. What the hell, talking to a giant spider. Well, this argument has the logic, even if the situation doesn’t have any. “The creativity is what allows me to put two and two together.”
“You use it to add?”
“In a way, yes. I use it to add up the things around me. For instance, I see trees. It occurs to me that, if I cut the trees down, and attach enough of them together, I can build a road out of wood that will span the river, what we call a bridge. Then, I can drive across the bridge without losing my car and without drowning.”
Again the spider’s eyes seemed to roll about without moving, the in and out movement of the fangs quickening slightly. “Amazing.”
Kyle’s eyebrows lifted as he puffed again on his cigarette, looked almost mockingly at the spider. “The human mind is amazing. Probably the most amazing and complex thing in the whole universe. It makes us special, gives us the ability to be the caretakers of everything around us.”
“The trees might not agree with that.”
“The trees?”
“Wouldn’t they die when you cut them down to make your bridge?”
“Of course they would. But they’re only trees!”
“But they’re alive.”
“But they don’t think.”
“I see; therefore, they don’t exist. Pretty shaky bridge.”
“No, they do exist, but they don’t think.”
“But you said…” “I know what I said, but that doesn’t apply to trees, or rocks, or anything that can’t think enough to ask if it can think.”
Silence.
Kyle lifted the cigarette to his lips, puffed slowly.
“Well, I’m glad I can think.”
“What?”
“It would appear to make me safe from the caretaker’s creativity.”
“I have to get back to work.”
***
A light breeze cooled the morning air under a blue sky studded with random puffs of cloud. Kyle watched the spider mount its perch on top of the fan box, repulsed by the horror of a creature so deadly grown so large, but mesmerized by the fluid beauty of its movement, fascinated by the anomaly it posed in everything he knew for certain.
“Beautiful day,” he said.
And the words came like hooded specters drifting through his mind. “Cool during the night, but nice now.”
An image of the spider shivering in the night-cooled metal of the unit dropped into Kyle’s mind and he almost felt sorry for it. He took the cigarettes from his jacket pocket, stared into the translucent eyes, his focus moving from one to the other, wondering how he looked through them. “I worked out a plan.”
“Plans are good. They give direction, establish order in chaos.”
“Exactly. Now, to continue…” Kyle lit his cigarette, took a deep drag, blew the smoke out slowly. “…I think the best way to handle this is to just let you ask questions and I’ll answer.” A horn honked loudly from the street beyond the parking lot. Kyle noticed that it didn’t seem to have an effect on the spider. “Horns don’t bother you?”
“I get used to them, and the sirens. You humans live in a busy world.”
“Not much going on in your air conditioning unit, I guess.”
“Just the usual things.”
Kyle decided to let that one go, took another drag on his cigarette, stared into the eyes smoldering with spider consciousness. “So, any questions?”
“Just one. How does it feel to be human?”
Damn, where was that covered in first year Philosophy? Psych 101 maybe? Kyle thought, dragged fitfully on his cigarette. He caught his fingers in mid snap, just as the answer came to him. “It’s kind of like a feeling of being in control, of nothing being impossible.”
“That must be a powerful feeling. Can you explain it?” The spider shifted its weight slightly to the left. Must get uncomfortable supporting all that weight on those spindly legs.
“Let me think now.”
“Take your time, Kyle.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“OK, here’s the way it works. As humans, we can control the world around us. Remember the bridge across the river? “How could I forget? A beautiful example.”
Kyle wondered. Smart ass, or sincere? He shrugged it off. “Well, that bridge would have actually been constructed out of metal.”
“Good news for the trees.”
“I’m sure they’re all breathing a sigh of relief. But it would have been constructed by people we call engineers, using something we call engineering. Engineering applies things like technology and science to control the world around us, to build things, to change the world into something that makes it better and safer for humans to live in.”
“Just humans?”
Well, no, for all living things.”
“Except the ones that don’t think.”
“I’m not going to get into that.” Kyle puffed on his cigarette. Damned spider with a one track mind.
“I’m sorry, Kyle. Sometimes I become fixated on details and miss the larger picture.”
God, where does it get these things? Graduated from Arachnid U? “Fine. Let’s look at the larger picture, then. But first, any questions…that don’t have anything to do with trees?”
The spider crouched forward, eyes seeming to blaze with movement under their surface sheen. “Just a small clarification.”
“Shoot.”
“Engineering is what makes it possible for humans to control the world?” “Engineering is one of the things. Like I said, it uses science and technology. These are really the things that make it possible for us to control the world.”
“How?”
Kyle sighed loudly. “I was getting to that. It works like this…science allows us to understand how the world works. Technology allows us to take what we learn from science and make the world do what we want it to do.”
“Could … “
A raised finger to shush the spider. “For example, science shows us how atoms work, and technology allows us to use the way atoms work so that we can build power stations to keep us warm in the winter and bombs to protect us from our enemies.”
“You protect yourselves with atoms?”
“No, we protect ourselves with the things that atoms do.”
“And what do atoms do?”
“They make large fires that destroy cities and make them uninhabitable for years.”
“And this is how you use atoms to keep yourselves warm in the winter?”
“In a way, but on a smaller scale. That’s where control comes in. We control the fire so that it heats buildings without burning them.”
“And using them as bombs means not controlling them?”
“No, it means controlling them so that they’re out of control somewhere else, away from us, in our enemies’ cities.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to just eat your enemies?”
“That’s what a spider would do. Spiders don’t have science and technology.”
“But spiders would be able to live in their enemies’ cities after eating their enemies.”
Frustrated, Kyle looked at his watch. “Gotta get back to work. Let’s try this again this afternoon.”
“You seem to be angry.”
“Not angry, just a little…I don’t know what. But, this discussion doesn’t seem to be going anywhere constructive. Let’s just try again later.”
“You’ll come back?” Kyle frowned.
“You’re right, Kyle, we’ve covered that ground. You’ll come alone?”
Kyle cocked his head to one side, remained silent.
“Right, alone. I’ll see you this afternoon. Have a good morning, Kyle.”
Walking away from the spider, Kyle felt his mind stewing in frustration and possibly a hint of anger. Getting flustered and boggled by a spider? Maybe start smoking at the front of the building? No, can’t do that. Not now.
***
The day was still breezy, the sky spotted with puffs of cloud as Kyle stepped out of the building. In the distance, high rises sparkled above the haze of smog. Kyle took a few steps toward the air conditioning unit, saw the black mass of the spider hunched in the darkness as his hand reached for his cigarettes. “New plan. I’m going to sum it all up, and we’ll leave it at that.”
“Is it wise to switch plans unilaterally?”
No longer phased by the spider’s retorts, he shrugged as he lit his cigarette. “Do it all the time. Called adapting on the fly.”
“You change plans on flies?”
“Just a manner of speaking.” Pocketing his lighter, a thought occurred to him. “By the way, you must eat a lot of flies.”
“Not really. Never acquired the taste.”
“Then, what exactly do you eat? I mean…” waving his hand over the direction of the spider’s body, “…you have to be eating a lot of something.”
“Oh, this and that. I try to keep my diet balanced. Tell me about your new plan, Kyle, your summing up of it all.”
He held a deep drag of smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, then blew the smoke out slowly, a bluish white plume rolling through the air from his mouth. “First of all, let’s forget about the allusion to caretakers. We’ve done a lousy job of taking care of things.”
“Admitting the mistake is the first step toward correcting the mistake.”
Kyle thought for a moment, puffing on his cigarette. “How do you know these things?”
Shifting its weight slightly to one side, the spider lifted its appendages, the fangs moving in and out slowly, and then crouched backwards a few inches. “I have thoughts about these things.”
Kyle waited, dragged on his cigarette. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Kyle shrugged. “OK, then, so … we’ve polluted the world, screwed up the weather, murdered millions in senseless wars, used science and technology to make money for a few while ignoring the suffering of the millions we exploited to make the money, and we’ve created nuclear and biological weapons that might eventually kill us all off.”
“Why?”
Kyle looked at the spider, smiling the smile of a victory won, nodded his head. “I knew you were going to ask that.”
“Then, you have your answer prepared.” The spider crouched forward.
“I have.” Another puff on his cigarette. “It’s because we know things are going to work out in the end. We know that our science and technology will save us in the end, because they are, after all, an extension of ourselves. What you said about admitting the mistake being the first step to correcting the mistake. You’re right.”
“Thank you, Kyle, it’s…”
“It’s the way we do things, throughout our history. We make mistakes, we learn, we go on. And what gives us the will to go on is a thing we call hope.”
“Hope?”
“We have hope in the future, belief that things will work out.”
“And that’s it?”
Exasperated, Kyle blew a long plume of smoke in the direction of the spider. The spider backed up. “Hey!”
Kyle waved his hand in front of him, an effort, too late, to stop the barrage of smoke. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. A little frustrated, I guess. What do you mean by: ‘That’s it?’”
The spider moved forward slowly to the top of the fan box. “Apology accepted. I meant, that your hope seems to put the future on a shaky foundation.”
“How’s that?”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something other than hoping?”
“We are doing something. We have people working on these things.”
“Who?”
“The scientists and the technologists.”
“The people who made the mistakes?”
“Well, yes, they’re the ones who understand the mistakes, and how to correct them.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s in the nature of humans. Nothing’s impossible for us.”
“So, the rest of you sit around and hope while the people who make the mistakes correct them.” “No, we keep track of what they do, form groups to protest and watch over the things we don’t like, pass legislation, write letters to the editor, post angry letters to news groups, promote dialogues, demonstrate.”
“Does it work?”
Kyle threw his cigarette on the ground, crushed it with his heel. “I have to get back to work.”
“You seem angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Flustered?”
“No, just a little drained.”
“You’ll come back…”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. Alone.”
“Sleep well tonight.”
“You too.”
***
Lighting his first cigarette of the day, Kyle looked over the puddles left by the early morning rain in the parking lot, the radio finally right. Yeah, predict it till it happens. Must be a lot of hand shaking at the station, maybe a few medals passed out, letters of commendation, promotions in the weather department, and predictions that, maybe, today we’ll have sun. To the west, small puffs of cloud trailed in the wake of the heavy cumulous clouds fading into the east. The spider looked dry and relaxed, legs spread over the sides of the fan box. Kyle’s hair was disheveled; his eyes, bloodshot.
“You look terrible this morning, Kyle.”
“Thanks.” Kyle pocketed his lighter, blew smoke through his nostrils. “New plan.”
“Didn’t like the way the last one was going?”
“It was going nowhere.”
“Time to change the fly.”
Kyle pursed his lips and opened his mouth with a pop. “Something like that. Here’s the way it works. Each of us humans do our own thing. We have scientists and technologists to do the science and technology things, accountants and financial experts to do the business things, laborers and clerks and salespeople to do their things. We specialize in our own areas and we all work together to make the world a place that makes sense. But, each of the things we do takes time and ability, just enough time to keep each of us busy with our own thing. So we have to rely on the people who are doing other things to do them right. And if they don’t do them right, we have to raise hell until they do them right. We can’t just start doing them ourselves.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
“Sounds too complicated.”
The spider froze, Kyle dragged on his cigarette, eyes on the ground as a blue Cavalier drove past them, splashing through the puddles. The woman behind the wheel ignored Kyle as she drove by.
“What do you mean by ‘too complicated’?”
“Sounds like a lot of potential for things to get out of control.”
“Sometimes they do. But, we get them back into control and go on.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Another long puff, and then inspiration following on the heels of nicotine ingestion. “OK. Money markets depend on thousands of variables and the cooperation of just about everybody who works in the markets. Sometimes some of the variables go haywire and people stop cooperating. The market collapses. But, then, people start cooperating again and the market rebuilds and comes back stronger than ever.”
“Until some of the variables go haywire again.”
He flicked his cigarette into a puddle where it fizzled out in a puff of smoke, and reached for his pack in the same movement. “You’re making me smoke a lot more.”
The spider slid forward a few inches, the huge black beach ball body rippling with the movement. “Why do you light those things and blow out the smoke?”
Kyle thought a moment. How to describe why he smokes? How to describe why he does something he wants to quit doing. “They make me feel better.”
“Then they must be good for you.”
“No. They’re bad for me. They ruin my lungs and heart with thousands of deadly gases, make my breath stink, stain my teeth and harden the capillaries in my brain. They make it hard for me to walk up stairs without losing my breath.”
“And that makes you feel better?”
Bloodshot eyes rolling, head cocked to one side, smoke rushing out of his nostrils. “No! That makes me feel really bad. But smoking them makes me feel relaxed, like everything is OK.”
“Even though everything isn’t OK. Even though they’re killing you?”
“I don’t think about that part.”
Silence from the spider as it shifted its body again, the luminescent eyes motionless in their sockets, but turbulent with whatever fluids washing about under their surfaces. “Is this a hope thing, Kyle?”
“A what?”
“You hope that you won’t die from them?”
That’s gotta be it! Somewhere, somehow, this thing has read a book about psychology. “That’s right! I hope I won’t die. And, if I do get sick, doctors who specialize in making people well again will make me unsick. But, that’s not the point. I can’t just stop smoking.”
“Why? It seems like the right thing to do, especially for a being with such a well-developed mind that it controls the earth.”
“Controlling the earth is one thing. Quitting smoking is another. Smoking is an addiction.”
More shifting from the spider, the eyes compelling in their motionless movement. “Can you explain addiction?”
More smoke exhaled through nostrils, the bluish white plume rolling over Kyle’s jacket and shirt, dispersing into the air about him. “It’s when we want to stop doing something, but we can’t because we depend on it for a sense of well-being. A sense of well-being that we get from the thing we’re addicted to.”
“Then, why did you start to depend on it in the first place?”
Shrugging, arms upraised, eyes brimming with anger, Kyle began to reply, dismissed the thought before it formed, puffed on his cigarette again, staring into the deep wells of blue and green surrounded by fine hair, sunlight bristling along their short lengths. Only six of them? For a second there appeared to be hundreds, all focusing through the bone of his skull, deep into this brain. Shaking his head, he snapped the mood. “My friends smoked. It was the thing to do.”
“Your friends were killing themselves, so you joined them?”
“It’s called peer pressure. It’s a human thing.”
“Can I forward a suggestion, Kyle.”
“Be my guest.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to have persuaded your friends to quit?”
“They were already addicted. And, besides, it was the thing to do. They wouldn’t have listened.”
“Sounds like the caretakers should learn to take care of themselves before taking care of the world around them.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You needn’t get angry with me, Kyle. Just making an observation.”
Kyle sighed, flicked his second cigarette into a puddle, lit another. The spider watched. “OK. Point taken. We’re not perfect, but we try. We try to better ourselves; we try to better the world. Sometimes we make mistakes. Then, we correct them. Then we make more mistakes and we correct them. We get better as we go along. Things get better.”
“Convince me, Kyle.”
“What?”
“Convince me that you can make things better.”
Interest perked, Kyle stared deeply into the eyes, shifting his vision from one to another, wondering which of them was focused on him. All of them? How does it process input from six sources? The same way humans process from two? “OK. I’ll bite. How do I convince you?”
“Throw down that cigarette. Stop smoking now. Prove that just one caretaker can take care of himself.”
An exasperated sigh, another puff of smoke exhaled roughly. “That’s not going to prove anything. It won’t make a spot of difference on the rest of the world.”
“But it’s a start. It’s one of the caretakers correcting a mistake, making this thing you call hope something real. Just throw down the cigarette.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t. I want to smoke. No, I don’t want to smoke. I want to quit. But I can’t quit.”
“Why?”
“I’m not ready.”
“When will you be ready?”
“When things are better.”
“When will things be better?”
“When I quit smoking.”
“Kyle …”
“No! That’s not what I meant! It’s more complicated than that.”
“Kyle…”
“I’m getting confused. I’ve been under a lot of stress at work. I’m talking to a giant spider, answering questions that there’s no way it can be asking. Having doubts from something that lives in an air conditioning unit.” He stepped closer to the unit, bent down toward the spider, bringing his face inches from the terrible eyes. “It’s just too damned complicated for a spider to understand.”
“You’re right, Kyle. Not only does it seem complicated … it seems senseless. You aspire to control the world, but you can’t control yourself. It all sounds pretty fucked up to me.” The words bristled with the fury of thousands of bubbles popping soundlessly through Kyle’s mind.
“What would you know about it? You’re just a spider!” His own words burst through the air, flaring in a noiseless play of color in the hundreds of eyes spinning in the sockets under the bony brow.
“But I have one uncomplicated thought.”
Kyle pushed his face into the face of the spider, nose almost touching the coat of fine hairs below the eyes. “And what the hell might that be?”
“I’m hungry.”
The panic too late, as hundreds of eyes seemed to bore into his brain, the sting of fangs piercing both sides of his neck simultaneously, a sense of being lifted off his feet, a feeling of skin ripping against the barbed metal of the grill, and then numbness, all feeling dissipating into quiet terror, the words flowing dead-like through the remnants of his fleeing consciousness. “And when I’m hungry, I do something about it.”
***
Blistering heat. Too cold inside with the air conditioning turned up so you have to practically wear a sweater while you work, and then outside for a smoke and come back covered in sweat and freeze even worse. No wonder people get colds all summer long. Crystal struck a match, lit her cigarette, staring at the air conditioning unit. Must’ve been my imagination this morning. Maybe a trick of the heat. Too much pressure at work. Maybe coming down with something. That’s it! Coming down with that cold everybody’s getting. Viruses spreading like plague through the air conditioning. And then, from somewhere inside her head, like something effervescent bubbling into her awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words: “What are you?”
(NOTE: This story was originally published as a standalone ebook by Echelon Press between 10 and 15 years ago. It's based on a true story, of course.)
He blew out a long stream of bluish smoke that traveled straight ahead, dissolving into the air without even a slight movement upward. No wind to cool down the scorching heat. Sweat dribbled from the pores in his forehead. He wiped it away with the palm of his hand and then dried his palm on the inside of his jacket. He took another long haul on the cigarette, wondering why the hell they couldn’t put aside just one small air conditioned room for smokers, a room with vents to pump the circuit-destroying smoke outside into this godawful hot day.
Beside him stood a three foot high air conditioning box churning out a strained humming sound, the diamond mesh grill on top ripped open by a snow plow during the winter. Kyle looked at the splayed metal and thought that maybe the heat wasn’t so bad after all, not after the skin-numbing temperatures of a winter that had seemed to freeze and storm forever. The problem with weather, either too cold or too hot, but at least you didn’t have to shovel driveways in the heat.
As he lifted the cigarette to his lips, he noticed movement inside the darkness of the air conditioning unit. He blinked. Probably just heat waves under the torn metal. But it moved again, and not like any heat wave. Must be the nicotine high, playing tricks on his eyes. He stared at the hole in the unit. The metal was ripped right down the six foot length of the gray metal box with a round gouge in the middle where diamond-shaped mesh curled up and away from the hole like grisly lips. Another movement, something long and dark, it looked like. Something solid.
Kyle wiped sweat from his forehead again, wiped his palm inside his jacket again, stepped closer to the, felt air even hotter than outside blast into his face. Just as he was about to step back, he saw it again. Something long and dark, black, shiny black. He blinked his eyes again, wiped sweat from his brows, and stepped away from the unit. Yeah, just the nicotine high, and the heat, the godawful heat, and him wearing a suit, his shirt soaked under his arms and across his back.
He looked at his black Honda, parked thirty feet away, heat waves dancing on the hood where the protective coating peeled and flaked in white streaks. From parking under a pine tree, the autobody guy had told him. Have to strip it down to the undercoat and repaint. Too late to fix the protective coating. Bloody pine trees. Cost a fortune to have it painted.
And then he heard a faint thump in the direction of the air conditioning unit. He looked, saw nothing. Must be the motor stressing out on the heat. Or maybe it was his head stressing. And then another movement, something definitely long, slender, black, moving from one side of the gouge to the other. Something loose in there? Blowing around in the exhaust? But the movement seemed too slow, too deliberate. What the hell was it?
He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled the smoke before inhaling it fully, walked right up to the unit and looked into the hole.
There it was.
A twig? Too small. A branch? No. A thick, black spine, leading to what looked like a joint, and then tapering to another joint, and tapering into a smaller spine. No, not a branch, not wood, but something definitely familiar. Where had he seen that shape before?
He bent forward cautiously. The long black spine moved slowly back and forth. Gotta be something caught in there, moving with the exhaust. And then another one appeared from the left side of the hole, exactly like the first, long and shiny black, three spines tapering down through two joints. And they both stretched straight forward and stopped, forming two parallel spines about six inches apart, each at least three feet long.
Where the hell had he seen those before? Still bent forward, peering into the torn grill, He stepped back. Something too deliberate in the movement of those things, something too familiar that wasn’t invoking any pleasant memories, something sinister in the way they just lay there side by side, so intent on remaining still.
And then he heard it.
Not from outside, but inside, inside his head, like something effervescent bubbling into his awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words.
“What are you?”
Kyle jumped back, almost losing his balance, the cigarette dropping through his fingers, burning them as it passed through.
“Shit!”
Regaining his balance, he looked around, eyes popped wildly, shaking his hand as though he could shake the burning away. No one was there. Just hundreds of empty cars boiling under the blistering sun, and beyond the parking lot, the city fuming in a smoggy haze. Gotta be the heat, the nicotine high. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped them with both hands, felt the pinching hurt in his fingers begin to loosen into a throb, then waved his hand in a futile attempt to cool the burning fingers. He looked back at the hole in the grill.
The spines were gone.
Too creepy. Too much heat. He stepped quickly to the door, opened it and walked into the cool of the building.
***
You could almost bounce off the wall of heat and sear your brows in the process. It took Kyle’s breath away. The metal door thumped closed behind him as he reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarette pack. His mind bristled with flashing screens from hours of research on the Internet, the muscles in his right palm throbbing from using the mouse. Have to fill out a requisition for one of those ergonomic models. His burned fingers had stopped throbbing. Lighting his cigarette, he glanced briefly at the air conditioning unit, still humming its strained monotonous tune.
Christ!
Two long black spines stretched out in the hole. Damn, what are those things? Time to get to the bottom of this. Ignoring the alarms firing in his head and stomach, he marched directly to the unit, bent forward and gazed at the spines laying motionless, side by side on top of the fan box. He dropped his cigarette onto the butt-cluttered cement, crushed it with his heel and moved his hand slowly toward them.
Just as his hand reached the opening in the grill, the spines moved. And something in the grillwork right under his head moved. What the hell was that? His hand froze. His body froze. He watched as a dark mass of material roiled under the rusted mesh, moving with slow, fluid motion. The spines curled under at their joints and disappeared, the dark mass gliding forward to replace them. Kyle’s eyes widened, their lids the only part of his body that wasn’t paralyzed solid. The mass in the unit was round and translucent black with a coat of short shimmering hair. It must have been as big as a medium-size dog, or more like a large beach balloon, but bloated in the center and tapering to a point at one end. It turned smoothly around and the end facing Kyle lifted.
First, he saw a flat, crusty section attached to the bloated black beach ball. Sprouting out from the bottom of this, he saw eight of the long spines. The crusted shell rose to reveal four liquid black eyes forming a square under a shell-like brow. Beside the square of eyes, two more larger sapphire blue eyes bulged menacingly. Below the eyes, two hairy black appendages like swollen, droopy lips sucked in and out. Each appendage had two reddish black fangs that curved inward, almost touching each other as the appendages sucked slowly in and out.
Goddam, a spider.
Kyle broke through the spell and jumped backwards. He heard the flat dead-like words bubbling in his mind again.
“What are you?”
Everything in Kyle’s body was moving now, especially his sweat glands, his shirt and pants starting to drench. His heart thumped hard enough to make his head spin. And the words intruded into his mind again, floating somewhere between conscious and unconscious, sanity and insanity.
“What are you?”
And that’s when Kyle realized that the words came from the spider.
The realization came in layers: a spider, a giant spider, a giant spider somehow throwing words into his brain, a giant spider asking him what he was. Mustering his senses like melting tar in the sweltering heat, Kyle broke through the barrier of impossibility and whispered: “What?”
“No need to talk out loud. Just think it.”
Whispering again: “What?”
“Just direct your meaning to me. Just think your words.”
Kyle thought: “How ..”
“That’s it. Just like that.”
“But …”
“Yes?”
Kyle stared into the eyes, four black and two blue, all six of them vibrating with inner life, seeming to float around in their hairy sockets, surrounded by the monstrous body with the black fangs moving slowly in and out like breathing.
“What the hell are you?”
“I think I asked you that first, only somewhat more politely.”
What kind of craziness? The thing was talking to him. He was talking back to it. The damn thing had to be real, but the damn thing couldn’t be real. He reached for this cigarettes, the outside of the pack was moist with sweat. He opened the pack and fumbled out a cigarette, hands shaking. Returning the pack to his shirt pocket, he groped in his pants for this lighter. Craziness! Maybe some kind of Internet surfing-induced hypnosis? Too many screens flashing by on his monitor, like the dividing line on a dark night, inducing highway hypnosis? He lit his cigarette with difficulty, lip muscles shaking as much as his hands. Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped it away with the lighter hand, left his wet hand on his cheek still holding the lighter, took a long drag on his cigarette, his eyes transfixed by the six eyes moving around but knowing they were focused on him, and he heard more words.
“No, Kyle, you’re not crazy.”
Kyle’s jaw dropped. “You know my name.”
“It’s in your mind. But what are you?”
“No way, you first.”
The spider’s head lifted up slightly, the eyes now all definitely focused directly on Kyle. “I’m me.”
Kyle pondered this a moment, still shaking from head to toes. “Fine. That’s what I am too … me.”
“But, what are you when you say me?”
Some of Kyle’s shaking began to loosen up in the rhetoric. This is not the way a spider talks. Not to mention that spiders don’t talk. And spiders don’t get this big. But there it was, a big spider, a giant black spider in the air conditioning unit. And it talked. “OK, I’ll bite. I’m a person, a human being.”
“What’s a human?”
“Oh no, you next, what the hell are you?”
“No, Kyle. Let’s focus on one thing at a time, take this step by step.”
Some kind of goddam analytic psychologist spider? What the hell was going on here? “Look, I don’t even know if you exist! Why should I answer questions from something that might just be a figment of my stressed-out mind?”
“How do you know that you exist?”
Kyle thought a moment. He knew the answer to that one, knew it from first year Philosophy. He took another puff on his cigarette. It came to him: “I think; therefore, I am.”
“Well, Kyle, I think too. Therefore, I am. And you’ve been reading my thoughts. Therefore, you know that I think; therefore, you know that I am. What’s a human?”
Kyle blew out cigarette smoke in a rush, the long blue stream racing through the windless air right into the face of the spider. The spider recoiled.
“Hey, watch that stuff! It burns my eyes!”
Kyle’s eyebrows lifted. The shaking in his body stopped abruptly, the spider not so menacing now in its vulnerability to the smoke. “Sorry.”
The spider shifted back into a relaxed crouch on top of the fan box, its movements smoothly fluid and silent, almost graceful. “Apology accepted. So what is a human?”
He thought. Images came to mind, images of people working, playing, doing a million different things, but how to describe human? Surely the spider could see that he was a smooth-skinned biped with hair on his head. Start with apes? Describe evolution? Opposable thumbs? The ability to think abstract thoughts? He took another drag on his cigarette and blew it out, this time away from the spider. He replied: “Look, I’m going to have to think about this. It’s kind of a complex thing. And I have to get back to work. Can we talk about this tomorrow morning?”
“You’ll come back?”
“Yes, I’ll come back. I come out here every day, twice, for a smoke break.”
“You’ll tell me what human is?”
“I’ll tell you what human is.”
“Will you bring others?”
Kyle thought about this. Tell Ernie and Jim when he got back upstairs? No. What if he was just imagining this? They’d think he was nuts, and maybe he was. Best to keep this to himself, for the time being. “No, I’ll come alone.”
“Good. I don’t like crowds.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m not sure. I just know it.”
Kyle dropped his cigarette and crushed it out. “Tomorrow, then.”
“And you’ll tell me what human is. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
More like six of them. Gotta be going crazy. Find out tomorrow, if it’s still there. Kyle opened the door and walked into the building as the spider glided back into the darkness of the air conditioning unit.
***
Almost like God had waved a wand over the sky and the earth, the weather had changed overnight, cooling down under a slate gray cloud cover. A soothing breeze brushed against Kyle’s face as he stepped out of the building, cigarette and lighter in hand. He ignored the breeze, the sky, the parked cars, and looked straight at the air conditioning unit. And there it was, crouched as yesterday on top of the fan box. So it hadn’t just been the heat, or Internet hypnosis. And any further doubt was shattered when the deadpan words invaded his mind.
“Good morning, Kyle.”
It was still unnerving. “Good morning. Sleep well?”
“As well as can be in here. Not much space to stretch out.”
“Ever think of moving to the suburbs?” Kyle lit his cigarette.
“What is suburbs?”
“Oh, just a place with more room, bigger air conditioners.” Putting his lighter back in his pocket, he stepped closer to the unit. “Just joking. Didn’t sleep much last night. Thought maybe I was going crazy or something.”
“I suppose I would have that effect. I don’t socialize much.”
What the hell was this thing saying? How would it even know to say these things? Kyle scratched his head, stared into the lidless, unblinking array of eyes. “You seem to have a good vocabulary for a spider.”
“Is that what I am? A spider?”
Kyle thought a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s what you look like. But different, bigger.”
“Then, that’s what I am. A spider. Have you had enough time to prepare your explanation of humans?”
Kyle sighed deeply. Between bouts of wondering about his sanity, he’d thought about being human, what it meant. He had his answer ready. “Yeah, I think I can describe humans.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Yeah, sure, where?”
“Just a manner of speaking. Please, tell me about humans.”
Pausing his thoughts for a moment, Kyle took another long drag and blew the smoke out, away from the spider. Today the smoke arced upwards in the light breeze, disintegrating quickly into the surrounding air. “OK. But, keep in mind, I’m not the world’s biggest expert on this kind of thing. Took some philosophy in college, read a few books, but mostly, this is just from living my life as a human.”
“Knowledge by experience is good.”
Kyle thought about this a moment. Where does it come up with these remarks? Got a library in that damned air conditioning unit? TV? “We weren’t always the way we are.”
“Nothing is.”
“Look, can we do away with the running commentary? This is hard enough as it is.”
“Sorry, Kyle. Please continue.”
The spider’s mass moved backwards gently, as though relaxing, the eyes still seeming to move, but not move, the black fangs breathing in and out from their hairy appendages.
“We started off as fish, turned into apes, evolved from apes into humans. It took millions of years but, during that time, our brains evolved into something that set us off from all other animals on earth, and maybe all life forms in the universe. We developed the ability to think, to solve problems, to think in the abstract.” Damn, none of this was coming out right. Why hadn’t he written it down the night before? It all seemed so apparent then. “What I mean is, we have the ability to change the world around us so that we enhance our ability to survive.” Kyle paused again, puffed on his cigarette.
“That’s it?”
“Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?”
“I can do all that. With the exception of fish and apes, I must be human.”
“But you can’t change the world around you.”
The spider waved one of its long, spindly legs over the inside of the unit. “Made some changes in here.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Would you like to stick your head in and take a look around?”
Kyle shuddered. Duck his head into the unit right under those two chomping fangs? Not likely. “Think I’ll pass on that.”
“You’re still nervous. Is that a human trait? To be nervous?”
“Only when we feel threatened, or when we’re in a situation where everything is uncertain, or improbable. Like when we’re talking to giant spiders that can’t possibly exist, and we think maybe we’ve gone over the deep end.”
“Would you like to touch me? Maybe that will convince you that I’m real.”
Kyle’s stomach tightened at the suggestion. “Thanks, but …”
“Right. Nervous.”
“No offense meant.”
“None taken. But is that really all there is to being human? It took you the whole night to come up with that?”
Kyle puffed on his cigarette, getting smoke in his eyes. He rubbed them with his free hand. “Well, no, it’s a lot more than that. I told you I wasn’t an expert on this. I’ll have to give it some more thought. I have to get back to work. Meet you here this afternoon?”
“You’ll come back?”
“Of course I will. Didn’t we already go over this yesterday?”
“That’s right. I hope I didn’t sound insecure. You’ll come alone?”
“Covered that ground too.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Kyle flicked his cigarette onto the pavement. In the distance beyond the parking lot, the tall buildings of the city appeared as gray as the sky, floating in their sea of exhaust and smoke. “Catch ya later.”
“Catch you later, Kyle.”
He opened the door and walked into the building. The spider remained on the fan box.
***
Mid afternoon, and the clouds were beginning to open up with a miserly sliver of blue sky here, a sprinkle of sun beams there. So what happened to the rain the radio promised? Kyle walked to the air conditioning unit. No giant spider. Nothing in there. He bent forward. “Hello, Mr. Spider!”
“Hello, Kyle.” The words rippling across his cerebral landscape like tiny bubbles bursting with meaning before taking any particular form.
Kyle watched as two long, black legs speared over the fan box and shifted to the left, the unimaginable black beach ball sliding in from the right. The spider perched on the box and lifted its head, all this in one elegant, fluid motion. The eyes focused on Kyle, but moving still, taking in the back of the building and the area around Kyle. The fangs moving in and out, in and out, slowly, like labored breathing.
“Before we get into this human thing… ” Kyle put a cigarette in this mouth, lit it. “…I have a question for you.”
The spider crouched motionless, only the fangs and their appendages moving, slowly, in and out. “The floor is all yours, Kyle.”
Where the hell did it learn that? “I’ve been wondering about this all morning.”
“Applying abstract thought?”
“Hey! The commentary …”
“Sorry. Please, continue.”
Another puff on his cigarette. Gotta give these damned things up. Maybe not a good time now, though. “Where do you come from?”
Silence. The fangs moving in and out. The legs spread out over the sides of the fan box, motionless. The lustrous, black body, motionless.
“Hello.”
“Yes, Kyle.”
“Oh, OK, just wondering if you heard the question. Where do you come from?”
“Here.”
He puffed again on his cigarette, eyes squinting with puzzlement. “Here?”
“Where I am.”
Kyle thought about this a moment, shrugged. “Oh yeah, well, that makes sense. Been anywhere else?”
“No, just here.”
“I see what you mean about your social life.”
“I get by. But enough talk about me. Let’s talk about this human thing.”
Suddenly, the spider’s eyes seemed to go wild, gyrating in their sockets, the appendages froze. In one quick movement, the spider was gone. Hearing something behind him, Kyle turned in time to see a red Dodge Caravan pulling out of a parking spot about fifty feet away from him. The driver, a man with short dark hair and a black suit, eyed Kyle as the mini van pulled out slowly and then drove to the far exit. All I need now. People watching me talking to an air conditioning unit. When Kyle looked back at the unit, the spider was there.
“A little on the shy side?”
“I enjoy my privacy.”
“Then, why are you talking to me?”
“Why not?”
Kyle expelled a long, forceful sigh. “Have you ever heard about semantics?”
“No. Are they a human thing?”
“Yesterday morning, I would have said yes. You seem to be an exception, though.”
“Thank you, Kyle. I’ve never been called exceptional before.”
“Have you been called anything before?”
“Not that I can think of. But again, enough chatter about me. What about this human thing?”
Kyle flicked an ash off his cigarette, took another puff. Blew the smoke out. “OK then, back to the human thing. I suppose the best way to put it is … we’re the caretakers of everything around us.”
“You clean things up?”
“No. Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. We have the ability to look around us and see the way things are. Then, we apply abstract thought and see the way things could be. Then, we apply creativity to abstract thought and this gives us a vision of how to turn the way things are into the way they could be.”
The four black eyes in the center, though motionless, seemed almost to be spinning with movement deep inside.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why change things from what they are to what they could be?”
“Well, to make them better.”
“I see. Could you give me an example?”
Kyle thought about this a moment, snapped his fingers. The spider jerked back. Kyle jerked back, regained his composure quickly. “Let me guess. Sensitive to sound?”
“Right on the money.”
“Sorry about that. Something we humans do sometimes when we get an idea.”
The spider moved forward slightly, relaxing back onto the fan box. “Apology accepted. What was your idea?”
“Rivers.”
“Rivers?”
“A body of water that flows through the land. If I want to drive my car from one side of the river to the other, my car will sink and I’ll drown. That’s the way things are.”
“I see. Not a happy prospect. But why do you want to get to the other side?”
“That’s not important. Maybe just for the sheer hell of it. Maybe I left something there and I want to get it back.”
“So you’ve been there before?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Well, you must have crossed the river without drowning. Why not do the same again?”
Kyle threw his arms up. The spider backed up again. “I haven’t been across the river!”
“Then how did …”
“It’s not important!” He tossed his cigarette down, and in the same movement, brought his hand up to his shirt pocket, took out another cigarette and lit it. The spider moved forward and relaxed. Kyle blew out a stream of smoke. “Let’s say I’m just curious about what’s on the other side of the river.”
“I can live with that.”
He glared at the spider. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Now, I want to change the way things are. So I apply some abstract thought and realize that I could drive across the river … if I had a way to do that.”
“How would you do that?”
“That’s what I’m coming to.” Another puff on the cigarette. “That’s the first step in being human. I accept that there is a way to cross the river. We’ve just gone from the way things are to the way things could be. And now we add a little creativity to the situation.”
The spider’s legs moved. Kyle asked: “What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just getting ready for the revelation.”
Smart ass spider. What the hell, talking to a giant spider. Well, this argument has the logic, even if the situation doesn’t have any. “The creativity is what allows me to put two and two together.”
“You use it to add?”
“In a way, yes. I use it to add up the things around me. For instance, I see trees. It occurs to me that, if I cut the trees down, and attach enough of them together, I can build a road out of wood that will span the river, what we call a bridge. Then, I can drive across the bridge without losing my car and without drowning.”
Again the spider’s eyes seemed to roll about without moving, the in and out movement of the fangs quickening slightly. “Amazing.”
Kyle’s eyebrows lifted as he puffed again on his cigarette, looked almost mockingly at the spider. “The human mind is amazing. Probably the most amazing and complex thing in the whole universe. It makes us special, gives us the ability to be the caretakers of everything around us.”
“The trees might not agree with that.”
“The trees?”
“Wouldn’t they die when you cut them down to make your bridge?”
“Of course they would. But they’re only trees!”
“But they’re alive.”
“But they don’t think.”
“I see; therefore, they don’t exist. Pretty shaky bridge.”
“No, they do exist, but they don’t think.”
“But you said…” “I know what I said, but that doesn’t apply to trees, or rocks, or anything that can’t think enough to ask if it can think.”
Silence.
Kyle lifted the cigarette to his lips, puffed slowly.
“Well, I’m glad I can think.”
“What?”
“It would appear to make me safe from the caretaker’s creativity.”
“I have to get back to work.”
***
A light breeze cooled the morning air under a blue sky studded with random puffs of cloud. Kyle watched the spider mount its perch on top of the fan box, repulsed by the horror of a creature so deadly grown so large, but mesmerized by the fluid beauty of its movement, fascinated by the anomaly it posed in everything he knew for certain.
“Beautiful day,” he said.
And the words came like hooded specters drifting through his mind. “Cool during the night, but nice now.”
An image of the spider shivering in the night-cooled metal of the unit dropped into Kyle’s mind and he almost felt sorry for it. He took the cigarettes from his jacket pocket, stared into the translucent eyes, his focus moving from one to the other, wondering how he looked through them. “I worked out a plan.”
“Plans are good. They give direction, establish order in chaos.”
“Exactly. Now, to continue…” Kyle lit his cigarette, took a deep drag, blew the smoke out slowly. “…I think the best way to handle this is to just let you ask questions and I’ll answer.” A horn honked loudly from the street beyond the parking lot. Kyle noticed that it didn’t seem to have an effect on the spider. “Horns don’t bother you?”
“I get used to them, and the sirens. You humans live in a busy world.”
“Not much going on in your air conditioning unit, I guess.”
“Just the usual things.”
Kyle decided to let that one go, took another drag on his cigarette, stared into the eyes smoldering with spider consciousness. “So, any questions?”
“Just one. How does it feel to be human?”
Damn, where was that covered in first year Philosophy? Psych 101 maybe? Kyle thought, dragged fitfully on his cigarette. He caught his fingers in mid snap, just as the answer came to him. “It’s kind of like a feeling of being in control, of nothing being impossible.”
“That must be a powerful feeling. Can you explain it?” The spider shifted its weight slightly to the left. Must get uncomfortable supporting all that weight on those spindly legs.
“Let me think now.”
“Take your time, Kyle.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“OK, here’s the way it works. As humans, we can control the world around us. Remember the bridge across the river? “How could I forget? A beautiful example.”
Kyle wondered. Smart ass, or sincere? He shrugged it off. “Well, that bridge would have actually been constructed out of metal.”
“Good news for the trees.”
“I’m sure they’re all breathing a sigh of relief. But it would have been constructed by people we call engineers, using something we call engineering. Engineering applies things like technology and science to control the world around us, to build things, to change the world into something that makes it better and safer for humans to live in.”
“Just humans?”
Well, no, for all living things.”
“Except the ones that don’t think.”
“I’m not going to get into that.” Kyle puffed on his cigarette. Damned spider with a one track mind.
“I’m sorry, Kyle. Sometimes I become fixated on details and miss the larger picture.”
God, where does it get these things? Graduated from Arachnid U? “Fine. Let’s look at the larger picture, then. But first, any questions…that don’t have anything to do with trees?”
The spider crouched forward, eyes seeming to blaze with movement under their surface sheen. “Just a small clarification.”
“Shoot.”
“Engineering is what makes it possible for humans to control the world?” “Engineering is one of the things. Like I said, it uses science and technology. These are really the things that make it possible for us to control the world.”
“How?”
Kyle sighed loudly. “I was getting to that. It works like this…science allows us to understand how the world works. Technology allows us to take what we learn from science and make the world do what we want it to do.”
“Could … “
A raised finger to shush the spider. “For example, science shows us how atoms work, and technology allows us to use the way atoms work so that we can build power stations to keep us warm in the winter and bombs to protect us from our enemies.”
“You protect yourselves with atoms?”
“No, we protect ourselves with the things that atoms do.”
“And what do atoms do?”
“They make large fires that destroy cities and make them uninhabitable for years.”
“And this is how you use atoms to keep yourselves warm in the winter?”
“In a way, but on a smaller scale. That’s where control comes in. We control the fire so that it heats buildings without burning them.”
“And using them as bombs means not controlling them?”
“No, it means controlling them so that they’re out of control somewhere else, away from us, in our enemies’ cities.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to just eat your enemies?”
“That’s what a spider would do. Spiders don’t have science and technology.”
“But spiders would be able to live in their enemies’ cities after eating their enemies.”
Frustrated, Kyle looked at his watch. “Gotta get back to work. Let’s try this again this afternoon.”
“You seem to be angry.”
“Not angry, just a little…I don’t know what. But, this discussion doesn’t seem to be going anywhere constructive. Let’s just try again later.”
“You’ll come back?” Kyle frowned.
“You’re right, Kyle, we’ve covered that ground. You’ll come alone?”
Kyle cocked his head to one side, remained silent.
“Right, alone. I’ll see you this afternoon. Have a good morning, Kyle.”
Walking away from the spider, Kyle felt his mind stewing in frustration and possibly a hint of anger. Getting flustered and boggled by a spider? Maybe start smoking at the front of the building? No, can’t do that. Not now.
***
The day was still breezy, the sky spotted with puffs of cloud as Kyle stepped out of the building. In the distance, high rises sparkled above the haze of smog. Kyle took a few steps toward the air conditioning unit, saw the black mass of the spider hunched in the darkness as his hand reached for his cigarettes. “New plan. I’m going to sum it all up, and we’ll leave it at that.”
“Is it wise to switch plans unilaterally?”
No longer phased by the spider’s retorts, he shrugged as he lit his cigarette. “Do it all the time. Called adapting on the fly.”
“You change plans on flies?”
“Just a manner of speaking.” Pocketing his lighter, a thought occurred to him. “By the way, you must eat a lot of flies.”
“Not really. Never acquired the taste.”
“Then, what exactly do you eat? I mean…” waving his hand over the direction of the spider’s body, “…you have to be eating a lot of something.”
“Oh, this and that. I try to keep my diet balanced. Tell me about your new plan, Kyle, your summing up of it all.”
He held a deep drag of smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, then blew the smoke out slowly, a bluish white plume rolling through the air from his mouth. “First of all, let’s forget about the allusion to caretakers. We’ve done a lousy job of taking care of things.”
“Admitting the mistake is the first step toward correcting the mistake.”
Kyle thought for a moment, puffing on his cigarette. “How do you know these things?”
Shifting its weight slightly to one side, the spider lifted its appendages, the fangs moving in and out slowly, and then crouched backwards a few inches. “I have thoughts about these things.”
Kyle waited, dragged on his cigarette. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Kyle shrugged. “OK, then, so … we’ve polluted the world, screwed up the weather, murdered millions in senseless wars, used science and technology to make money for a few while ignoring the suffering of the millions we exploited to make the money, and we’ve created nuclear and biological weapons that might eventually kill us all off.”
“Why?”
Kyle looked at the spider, smiling the smile of a victory won, nodded his head. “I knew you were going to ask that.”
“Then, you have your answer prepared.” The spider crouched forward.
“I have.” Another puff on his cigarette. “It’s because we know things are going to work out in the end. We know that our science and technology will save us in the end, because they are, after all, an extension of ourselves. What you said about admitting the mistake being the first step to correcting the mistake. You’re right.”
“Thank you, Kyle, it’s…”
“It’s the way we do things, throughout our history. We make mistakes, we learn, we go on. And what gives us the will to go on is a thing we call hope.”
“Hope?”
“We have hope in the future, belief that things will work out.”
“And that’s it?”
Exasperated, Kyle blew a long plume of smoke in the direction of the spider. The spider backed up. “Hey!”
Kyle waved his hand in front of him, an effort, too late, to stop the barrage of smoke. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. A little frustrated, I guess. What do you mean by: ‘That’s it?’”
The spider moved forward slowly to the top of the fan box. “Apology accepted. I meant, that your hope seems to put the future on a shaky foundation.”
“How’s that?”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something other than hoping?”
“We are doing something. We have people working on these things.”
“Who?”
“The scientists and the technologists.”
“The people who made the mistakes?”
“Well, yes, they’re the ones who understand the mistakes, and how to correct them.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s in the nature of humans. Nothing’s impossible for us.”
“So, the rest of you sit around and hope while the people who make the mistakes correct them.” “No, we keep track of what they do, form groups to protest and watch over the things we don’t like, pass legislation, write letters to the editor, post angry letters to news groups, promote dialogues, demonstrate.”
“Does it work?”
Kyle threw his cigarette on the ground, crushed it with his heel. “I have to get back to work.”
“You seem angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Flustered?”
“No, just a little drained.”
“You’ll come back…”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. Alone.”
“Sleep well tonight.”
“You too.”
***
Lighting his first cigarette of the day, Kyle looked over the puddles left by the early morning rain in the parking lot, the radio finally right. Yeah, predict it till it happens. Must be a lot of hand shaking at the station, maybe a few medals passed out, letters of commendation, promotions in the weather department, and predictions that, maybe, today we’ll have sun. To the west, small puffs of cloud trailed in the wake of the heavy cumulous clouds fading into the east. The spider looked dry and relaxed, legs spread over the sides of the fan box. Kyle’s hair was disheveled; his eyes, bloodshot.
“You look terrible this morning, Kyle.”
“Thanks.” Kyle pocketed his lighter, blew smoke through his nostrils. “New plan.”
“Didn’t like the way the last one was going?”
“It was going nowhere.”
“Time to change the fly.”
Kyle pursed his lips and opened his mouth with a pop. “Something like that. Here’s the way it works. Each of us humans do our own thing. We have scientists and technologists to do the science and technology things, accountants and financial experts to do the business things, laborers and clerks and salespeople to do their things. We specialize in our own areas and we all work together to make the world a place that makes sense. But, each of the things we do takes time and ability, just enough time to keep each of us busy with our own thing. So we have to rely on the people who are doing other things to do them right. And if they don’t do them right, we have to raise hell until they do them right. We can’t just start doing them ourselves.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
“Sounds too complicated.”
The spider froze, Kyle dragged on his cigarette, eyes on the ground as a blue Cavalier drove past them, splashing through the puddles. The woman behind the wheel ignored Kyle as she drove by.
“What do you mean by ‘too complicated’?”
“Sounds like a lot of potential for things to get out of control.”
“Sometimes they do. But, we get them back into control and go on.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Another long puff, and then inspiration following on the heels of nicotine ingestion. “OK. Money markets depend on thousands of variables and the cooperation of just about everybody who works in the markets. Sometimes some of the variables go haywire and people stop cooperating. The market collapses. But, then, people start cooperating again and the market rebuilds and comes back stronger than ever.”
“Until some of the variables go haywire again.”
He flicked his cigarette into a puddle where it fizzled out in a puff of smoke, and reached for his pack in the same movement. “You’re making me smoke a lot more.”
The spider slid forward a few inches, the huge black beach ball body rippling with the movement. “Why do you light those things and blow out the smoke?”
Kyle thought a moment. How to describe why he smokes? How to describe why he does something he wants to quit doing. “They make me feel better.”
“Then they must be good for you.”
“No. They’re bad for me. They ruin my lungs and heart with thousands of deadly gases, make my breath stink, stain my teeth and harden the capillaries in my brain. They make it hard for me to walk up stairs without losing my breath.”
“And that makes you feel better?”
Bloodshot eyes rolling, head cocked to one side, smoke rushing out of his nostrils. “No! That makes me feel really bad. But smoking them makes me feel relaxed, like everything is OK.”
“Even though everything isn’t OK. Even though they’re killing you?”
“I don’t think about that part.”
Silence from the spider as it shifted its body again, the luminescent eyes motionless in their sockets, but turbulent with whatever fluids washing about under their surfaces. “Is this a hope thing, Kyle?”
“A what?”
“You hope that you won’t die from them?”
That’s gotta be it! Somewhere, somehow, this thing has read a book about psychology. “That’s right! I hope I won’t die. And, if I do get sick, doctors who specialize in making people well again will make me unsick. But, that’s not the point. I can’t just stop smoking.”
“Why? It seems like the right thing to do, especially for a being with such a well-developed mind that it controls the earth.”
“Controlling the earth is one thing. Quitting smoking is another. Smoking is an addiction.”
More shifting from the spider, the eyes compelling in their motionless movement. “Can you explain addiction?”
More smoke exhaled through nostrils, the bluish white plume rolling over Kyle’s jacket and shirt, dispersing into the air about him. “It’s when we want to stop doing something, but we can’t because we depend on it for a sense of well-being. A sense of well-being that we get from the thing we’re addicted to.”
“Then, why did you start to depend on it in the first place?”
Shrugging, arms upraised, eyes brimming with anger, Kyle began to reply, dismissed the thought before it formed, puffed on his cigarette again, staring into the deep wells of blue and green surrounded by fine hair, sunlight bristling along their short lengths. Only six of them? For a second there appeared to be hundreds, all focusing through the bone of his skull, deep into this brain. Shaking his head, he snapped the mood. “My friends smoked. It was the thing to do.”
“Your friends were killing themselves, so you joined them?”
“It’s called peer pressure. It’s a human thing.”
“Can I forward a suggestion, Kyle.”
“Be my guest.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to have persuaded your friends to quit?”
“They were already addicted. And, besides, it was the thing to do. They wouldn’t have listened.”
“Sounds like the caretakers should learn to take care of themselves before taking care of the world around them.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You needn’t get angry with me, Kyle. Just making an observation.”
Kyle sighed, flicked his second cigarette into a puddle, lit another. The spider watched. “OK. Point taken. We’re not perfect, but we try. We try to better ourselves; we try to better the world. Sometimes we make mistakes. Then, we correct them. Then we make more mistakes and we correct them. We get better as we go along. Things get better.”
“Convince me, Kyle.”
“What?”
“Convince me that you can make things better.”
Interest perked, Kyle stared deeply into the eyes, shifting his vision from one to another, wondering which of them was focused on him. All of them? How does it process input from six sources? The same way humans process from two? “OK. I’ll bite. How do I convince you?”
“Throw down that cigarette. Stop smoking now. Prove that just one caretaker can take care of himself.”
An exasperated sigh, another puff of smoke exhaled roughly. “That’s not going to prove anything. It won’t make a spot of difference on the rest of the world.”
“But it’s a start. It’s one of the caretakers correcting a mistake, making this thing you call hope something real. Just throw down the cigarette.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t. I want to smoke. No, I don’t want to smoke. I want to quit. But I can’t quit.”
“Why?”
“I’m not ready.”
“When will you be ready?”
“When things are better.”
“When will things be better?”
“When I quit smoking.”
“Kyle …”
“No! That’s not what I meant! It’s more complicated than that.”
“Kyle…”
“I’m getting confused. I’ve been under a lot of stress at work. I’m talking to a giant spider, answering questions that there’s no way it can be asking. Having doubts from something that lives in an air conditioning unit.” He stepped closer to the unit, bent down toward the spider, bringing his face inches from the terrible eyes. “It’s just too damned complicated for a spider to understand.”
“You’re right, Kyle. Not only does it seem complicated … it seems senseless. You aspire to control the world, but you can’t control yourself. It all sounds pretty fucked up to me.” The words bristled with the fury of thousands of bubbles popping soundlessly through Kyle’s mind.
“What would you know about it? You’re just a spider!” His own words burst through the air, flaring in a noiseless play of color in the hundreds of eyes spinning in the sockets under the bony brow.
“But I have one uncomplicated thought.”
Kyle pushed his face into the face of the spider, nose almost touching the coat of fine hairs below the eyes. “And what the hell might that be?”
“I’m hungry.”
The panic too late, as hundreds of eyes seemed to bore into his brain, the sting of fangs piercing both sides of his neck simultaneously, a sense of being lifted off his feet, a feeling of skin ripping against the barbed metal of the grill, and then numbness, all feeling dissipating into quiet terror, the words flowing dead-like through the remnants of his fleeing consciousness. “And when I’m hungry, I do something about it.”
***
Blistering heat. Too cold inside with the air conditioning turned up so you have to practically wear a sweater while you work, and then outside for a smoke and come back covered in sweat and freeze even worse. No wonder people get colds all summer long. Crystal struck a match, lit her cigarette, staring at the air conditioning unit. Must’ve been my imagination this morning. Maybe a trick of the heat. Too much pressure at work. Maybe coming down with something. That’s it! Coming down with that cold everybody’s getting. Viruses spreading like plague through the air conditioning. And then, from somewhere inside her head, like something effervescent bubbling into her awareness, the bubbles bursting into words strung together with no tone, no pitch, no base or treble. Just the meaning of the words: “What are you?”
(NOTE: This story was originally published as a standalone ebook by Echelon Press between 10 and 15 years ago. It's based on a true story, of course.)
July 7, 2017
Short Story: The Clearing
Thirty feet past the power company building the road stopped abruptly before a clearing in the woods, as though the road crew had suddenly run out of pavement and gone home. The clearing stretched about two hundred feet, bordered on either side by tall spruces and worm-tattered pines, and then veered off to the left.
It looked to Daniel like a little world, a grand naturescape in miniature, complete with rolling, snow-crested hillocks and white fields, and an ice-covered stream meandering through its center. The naturescape sloped gently towards the stream.
Daniel glanced at his watch and relaxed. It had been years since he'd walked by himself in the woods and he felt an urge to explore, to recapture the magical quality of solitude in a natural setting. The sky was thinly overcast with a cream-colored hint that the sun was melting its way through the other side of the clouds.
Daniel stepped forward and his boot sank a few inches into the snow with a muted pumf. He smiled and made his way into the clearing. Mounds of frozen brown- and white-capped soil jutted through the even white layer of snow. Snow surrounded everything. It stuck like frozen milk to dense boughs of evergreens, pulling the trees into a winter-huddled droop. On leafless trees, it piled like smooth putty filling. In the soft light, the snow appeared warm and comfortable, a glaze molded flake by flake and shifted by wind and the contours of the land into a snug white blanket.
Daniel breathed deeply, savoring the freshness of the winter air untainted by odor, though its absence was a fragrance itself composed inoffensively of the frozen landscape. Another deep breath and he shouted.
"Daniel!”
And the woods called back to him.
danieldanieldaniel
His echoing name scattered his presence into the woods, bouncing off trees and careening into unseen snow banks, giving him a solid sense of affinity with everything that surrounded him. He shouted again.
"I love you!"
And the woods called back to him.
iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou
And he saw in his mind, the woods tucking his words into the beads of crystal water dripping from the trees.
"I am your voice!"
iamyourvoiceiamyourvoice
"I speak for you!"
ispeakforyouispeakforyou
"We are one!"
weareone
Filling his lungs deeply, he broke into a slow run through the snow and down the slope towards the stream. He laughed and shouted.
"I am free!"
And the woods acknowledged.
iamfreeiamfree
He stopped at the stream, amazed and breathless. The stream was no more than two feet at its widest point, but the shallow gully it twisted through suggested another six feet on either side during the spring runoff. Walking along the edge of the gully, Daniel followed the stream as it wound through the center of the clearing.
A sheet of wafer-thin ice covered the stream a few inches above the trickling water. There was a hint of ochre in the tiny glints of reflected cloud light that gave the ice a sense of warmth. In places it fluffed up, sagged further on, and then slanted from one side to the other like a long curving pane of glass.
Ahead, Daniel saw a section of tree trunk imbedded sideways beside the stream, and he felt this was the place to sit, that sitting on the trunk was a significant part of being in the woods by the stream and in the center of the rolling field of snow. It was what the trunk was for. He yelled: "I will sit here!"
iwillsithere
And he made his way clumsily to the trunk and sat down with his feet a few inches from the stream. A long crack split through the center of the ice and portions of the glistening sheet slumped into the water. Where the ice was perched just above the water, the edges melted from sun and wind into jagged fingers so thin that the slightest breeze might snap them. A few inches below them, crystalline water gurgled over pebbles and rocks and reflected light to the underside of the ice, creating smooth patches of iridescence shimmering with lambent life.
From where he sat, Daniel could see that the clearing continued for another fifty feet to the left and it occurred to him that he was at the center of the little world of the clearing. He imagined the stream was a vein coursing through the heart of the clearing, nourishing and sustaining it, and with the snow and ice melting, the stream was beginning to flow again and to pump life into the bushes and trees and the dormant seeds. Daniel opened himself to the lucidity of the moment, a comprehension of something vital, and he was in the center of it.
He pulled the glove off his right hand and scooped up a few grains of coarse snow from the top of the trunk. They sparkled in his palm like miniature diamonds. He reached his arm out and sprinkled them onto the fingers of ice. Their small weight broke a long knobby splinter off with a plick and it fell into the water and dissolved.
Daniel picked up more grains and let them fall onto the sheet of ice, where they bounced lightly and settled like transparent pimples. His hand reached mechanically for more snow, and he scattered the tiny beads until the fragile ice clicked and sagged with a small frozen sigh. Then, he picked up a larger piece of snow and poised it over the ice and let it drop. It punctured the ice, and the sheet trembled and collapsed into the water like a two-foot blade cutting into the stream.
Where it had been attached, there was now a long, straight edge that looked out of place to Daniel. He felt remotely guilty, as though he had done something ineffably wrong. His hand was cold and he put his glove back on. A shiver passed through his body and he zipped up the turtleneck on his parka.
He stood up and looked with dissatisfaction at the blade of ice breaking apart in the water, beyond his power to repair it. He looked at his watch and remembered the forecast for snow later in the day. The cream color was lost in the sky and the clouds were beginning to thicken as he scrambled up the gully and began to retrace his steps out of the clearing.
The darkening sky cast a gloom over the woods as another breeze rippled across the ground, and Daniel hunched his shoulders. His boots were wet and his toes were numb with cold. He began to jog awkwardly to keep himself warm, and his breath came in gasps. To his right he noticed a long discarded section of power line, snaking in and out of the snow, over and around the hillocks, twisting indiscriminately through the little world of the clearing.
It looked to Daniel like a little world, a grand naturescape in miniature, complete with rolling, snow-crested hillocks and white fields, and an ice-covered stream meandering through its center. The naturescape sloped gently towards the stream.
Daniel glanced at his watch and relaxed. It had been years since he'd walked by himself in the woods and he felt an urge to explore, to recapture the magical quality of solitude in a natural setting. The sky was thinly overcast with a cream-colored hint that the sun was melting its way through the other side of the clouds.
Daniel stepped forward and his boot sank a few inches into the snow with a muted pumf. He smiled and made his way into the clearing. Mounds of frozen brown- and white-capped soil jutted through the even white layer of snow. Snow surrounded everything. It stuck like frozen milk to dense boughs of evergreens, pulling the trees into a winter-huddled droop. On leafless trees, it piled like smooth putty filling. In the soft light, the snow appeared warm and comfortable, a glaze molded flake by flake and shifted by wind and the contours of the land into a snug white blanket.
Daniel breathed deeply, savoring the freshness of the winter air untainted by odor, though its absence was a fragrance itself composed inoffensively of the frozen landscape. Another deep breath and he shouted.
"Daniel!”
And the woods called back to him.
danieldanieldaniel
His echoing name scattered his presence into the woods, bouncing off trees and careening into unseen snow banks, giving him a solid sense of affinity with everything that surrounded him. He shouted again.
"I love you!"
And the woods called back to him.
iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou
And he saw in his mind, the woods tucking his words into the beads of crystal water dripping from the trees.
"I am your voice!"
iamyourvoiceiamyourvoice
"I speak for you!"
ispeakforyouispeakforyou
"We are one!"
weareone
Filling his lungs deeply, he broke into a slow run through the snow and down the slope towards the stream. He laughed and shouted.
"I am free!"
And the woods acknowledged.
iamfreeiamfree
He stopped at the stream, amazed and breathless. The stream was no more than two feet at its widest point, but the shallow gully it twisted through suggested another six feet on either side during the spring runoff. Walking along the edge of the gully, Daniel followed the stream as it wound through the center of the clearing.
A sheet of wafer-thin ice covered the stream a few inches above the trickling water. There was a hint of ochre in the tiny glints of reflected cloud light that gave the ice a sense of warmth. In places it fluffed up, sagged further on, and then slanted from one side to the other like a long curving pane of glass.
Ahead, Daniel saw a section of tree trunk imbedded sideways beside the stream, and he felt this was the place to sit, that sitting on the trunk was a significant part of being in the woods by the stream and in the center of the rolling field of snow. It was what the trunk was for. He yelled: "I will sit here!"
iwillsithere
And he made his way clumsily to the trunk and sat down with his feet a few inches from the stream. A long crack split through the center of the ice and portions of the glistening sheet slumped into the water. Where the ice was perched just above the water, the edges melted from sun and wind into jagged fingers so thin that the slightest breeze might snap them. A few inches below them, crystalline water gurgled over pebbles and rocks and reflected light to the underside of the ice, creating smooth patches of iridescence shimmering with lambent life.
From where he sat, Daniel could see that the clearing continued for another fifty feet to the left and it occurred to him that he was at the center of the little world of the clearing. He imagined the stream was a vein coursing through the heart of the clearing, nourishing and sustaining it, and with the snow and ice melting, the stream was beginning to flow again and to pump life into the bushes and trees and the dormant seeds. Daniel opened himself to the lucidity of the moment, a comprehension of something vital, and he was in the center of it.
He pulled the glove off his right hand and scooped up a few grains of coarse snow from the top of the trunk. They sparkled in his palm like miniature diamonds. He reached his arm out and sprinkled them onto the fingers of ice. Their small weight broke a long knobby splinter off with a plick and it fell into the water and dissolved.
Daniel picked up more grains and let them fall onto the sheet of ice, where they bounced lightly and settled like transparent pimples. His hand reached mechanically for more snow, and he scattered the tiny beads until the fragile ice clicked and sagged with a small frozen sigh. Then, he picked up a larger piece of snow and poised it over the ice and let it drop. It punctured the ice, and the sheet trembled and collapsed into the water like a two-foot blade cutting into the stream.
Where it had been attached, there was now a long, straight edge that looked out of place to Daniel. He felt remotely guilty, as though he had done something ineffably wrong. His hand was cold and he put his glove back on. A shiver passed through his body and he zipped up the turtleneck on his parka.
He stood up and looked with dissatisfaction at the blade of ice breaking apart in the water, beyond his power to repair it. He looked at his watch and remembered the forecast for snow later in the day. The cream color was lost in the sky and the clouds were beginning to thicken as he scrambled up the gully and began to retrace his steps out of the clearing.
The darkening sky cast a gloom over the woods as another breeze rippled across the ground, and Daniel hunched his shoulders. His boots were wet and his toes were numb with cold. He began to jog awkwardly to keep himself warm, and his breath came in gasps. To his right he noticed a long discarded section of power line, snaking in and out of the snow, over and around the hillocks, twisting indiscriminately through the little world of the clearing.
June 26, 2017
Short Story: East Berlin, 1951
In East Berlin, 1951―lifetimes ago―on Schlausen Strasse, in the rain by the puffenhaus―the ladies in the showcase windows enticed us with erotic dances and suggestive hip strategies.
Down the street, a beautiful Arian woman shagged an elephant under a street lamp, her mascara running down her cheeks as she puffed on a cigarette while engaging the panting elephant in talk of existential loneliness.
Behind them a lone monkey howled as it thrust its empty metal cup up to gods that never particularly cared about monkeys. In the dull reflective surface of the monkey’s cup, confused soldiers danced around a bayoneted rat yelling “Vas ist? Vas ist?” One of them uttered something about the next time being the last.
A tall man in black overcoat, black hat and black eyes took pictures of them from behind a mailbox marked “Verboten.” He click, click, clicked for whatever eyes wrapped their horror around East Berlin in 1951, on a drizzly night.
The blare of a car horn sent three teenage girls―with sudden old age disintegrating the whites of their eyes―plunging for the sidewalk with their wrinkled teen hands griping their heads, while red lights blinked from a passing plane, its propellers roaring ominously over a city still uncurling from fear of the sky.
A sentry in a guard booth lit a cigarette as she dreamed about the last time she ate bratwurst and brochens with curry sauce―about one or two lost lifetimes ago, before the planes and tanks came. Down the street from her, we talked about movies and baseball and threw an empty bourbon bottle into the shadows of a narrow alley and waited for the sound of crashing glass.
It never came.
Down the street, a beautiful Arian woman shagged an elephant under a street lamp, her mascara running down her cheeks as she puffed on a cigarette while engaging the panting elephant in talk of existential loneliness.
Behind them a lone monkey howled as it thrust its empty metal cup up to gods that never particularly cared about monkeys. In the dull reflective surface of the monkey’s cup, confused soldiers danced around a bayoneted rat yelling “Vas ist? Vas ist?” One of them uttered something about the next time being the last.
A tall man in black overcoat, black hat and black eyes took pictures of them from behind a mailbox marked “Verboten.” He click, click, clicked for whatever eyes wrapped their horror around East Berlin in 1951, on a drizzly night.
The blare of a car horn sent three teenage girls―with sudden old age disintegrating the whites of their eyes―plunging for the sidewalk with their wrinkled teen hands griping their heads, while red lights blinked from a passing plane, its propellers roaring ominously over a city still uncurling from fear of the sky.
A sentry in a guard booth lit a cigarette as she dreamed about the last time she ate bratwurst and brochens with curry sauce―about one or two lost lifetimes ago, before the planes and tanks came. Down the street from her, we talked about movies and baseball and threw an empty bourbon bottle into the shadows of a narrow alley and waited for the sound of crashing glass.
It never came.
Short Story: East Berlin, 1951
In East Berlin, 1951―lifetimes ago―on Schlausen Strasse, in the rain by the puffenhaus―the ladies in the showcase windows enticed us with erotic dances and suggestive hip strategies.
Down the street, a beautiful Arian woman shagged an elephant under a street lamp, her mascara running down her cheeks as she puffed on a cigarette while engaging the panting elephant in talk of existential loneliness.
Behind them a lone monkey howled as it thrust its empty metal cup up to gods that never particularly cared about monkeys. In the dull reflective surface of the monkey’s cup, confused soldiers danced around a bayoneted rat yelling “Vas ist? Vas ist?” One of them uttered something about the next time being the last.
A tall man in black overcoat, black hat and black eyes took pictures of them from behind a mailbox marked “Verboten.” He click, click, clicked for whatever eyes wrapped their horror around East Berlin in 1951, on a drizzly night.
The blare of a car horn sent three teenage girls―with sudden old age disintegrating the whites of their eyes―plunging for the sidewalk with their wrinkled teen hands griping their heads, while red lights blinked from a passing plane, its propellers roaring ominously over a city still uncurling from fear of the sky.
A sentry in a guard booth lit a cigarette as she dreamed about the last time she ate bratwurst and brochens with curry sauce―about one or two lost lifetimes ago, before the planes and tanks came. Down the street from her, we talked about movies and baseball and threw an empty bourbon bottle into the shadows of a narrow alley and waited for the sound of crashing glass.
It never came.
Down the street, a beautiful Arian woman shagged an elephant under a street lamp, her mascara running down her cheeks as she puffed on a cigarette while engaging the panting elephant in talk of existential loneliness.
Behind them a lone monkey howled as it thrust its empty metal cup up to gods that never particularly cared about monkeys. In the dull reflective surface of the monkey’s cup, confused soldiers danced around a bayoneted rat yelling “Vas ist? Vas ist?” One of them uttered something about the next time being the last.
A tall man in black overcoat, black hat and black eyes took pictures of them from behind a mailbox marked “Verboten.” He click, click, clicked for whatever eyes wrapped their horror around East Berlin in 1951, on a drizzly night.
The blare of a car horn sent three teenage girls―with sudden old age disintegrating the whites of their eyes―plunging for the sidewalk with their wrinkled teen hands griping their heads, while red lights blinked from a passing plane, its propellers roaring ominously over a city still uncurling from fear of the sky.
A sentry in a guard booth lit a cigarette as she dreamed about the last time she ate bratwurst and brochens with curry sauce―about one or two lost lifetimes ago, before the planes and tanks came. Down the street from her, we talked about movies and baseball and threw an empty bourbon bottle into the shadows of a narrow alley and waited for the sound of crashing glass.
It never came.
June 19, 2017
Short Story: Still Life with Muse and Sax
(I think this one was published in Rose & Thorn many years ago. It was the first of two stories I wrote for a beautiful muse...with eyes so green you could forget winter in January. The woman on the sax and her partner are two of the most amazing women I've ever encountered.)
It was a quiet afternoon at Molly’s Cafe. We were sitting upstairs in the emptiness of the post-lunch crowd, breathing the frenzied chi of post-face-stuffing and post-coffee-swilling fury. Outside, gray rain sliced through the air like tiny hatchets. Behind us, a lone sax player ground out something bluesy with all the gravel and grit of a break-hardened heart. Across from me, Jo’s eyes, as usual, were green, a green that could feed forests. That green.
She was wearing a black turtleneck with matching black pantyhose divided by a red swatch of tartan skirt. She looked hot. I tried to keep my eyes on her eyes, but the green threatened to swallow my soul and toss me around in the tides of her green forever. Yeah, that green. I focused my eyes on a couple of dust motes arguing about semantics and existentialism somewhere in that distance between her green eyes and her long legs, those legs that flowed up into an unimaginable playground, into … I refocused my eyes on the dust motes. They were still arguing. They would always be arguing.
“Do you like my sweater?” she said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Do you like my sweater? You haven’t taken your eyes off it. Are you thinking dirty thoughts again, you pathetic literary pig?”
Damn dust motes, arguing right in front of her breasts.
“Oh, uh … yeah. Nice sweater.” The plan was to be cool, but blood boiled in my head with the force of hot toothpaste squeezing through a vice. “I’ve always liked large sweaters,” I said.
The plan wasn’t working.
The two dust motes were cooler than I was.
She smiled. “You’re blushing, pig.”
“Something caught in my eye.”
“And it’s cutting off your air supply, goat?” “Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “Air supply.”
“How’s life …”
“ … boar?”
she said.
“I haven’t slept in three days,” I said. “I drink too much. I can’t write anything anymore. I dream about grabbing spoons and stabbing people. I have a spider somewhere in my bed and it feeds on me every night and leaves red bumps on my arms and legs. I found God rummaging through the bottles and boxes in my medicine cabinet. He looked hungry and confused. There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator. It sees everything. Its whiskers quiver. It asked me where I go. I don’t know where I go.” I slumped my head. “I don’t know where.” I looked up past Jo’s black sandals and black forever legs and dazzling tartan and past those damned pretentious motes and into the deep green seas of her eyes. “Other than that, I’m fine. And you?”
“I made love to John Lennon last night.”
I nodded. “Big night.”
The sax player winked at the empty tables around us and dove into a toe-snapping rendition of So What.
Jo put a cigar to her lips and lit it with a snap of her fingers. She puffed deeply and exhaled Hurricane Castro into my face. I breathed in the smoke and felt every hair on my body go bongo in the Congo. Her lips parted slowly under the slow noire wave of her hair, and she said: “Then we talked about the twenty-three things garbage collectors tell their children about their jobs. The first is … it pays the bills. The twenty-third is … you don’t have to attend meetings.”
“And the other twenty-one?” “Variations on the first and last, all beginning with the letter ‘S’.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
“Does my sweater display my breasts to advantage? I don’t want one looking more intelligent than the other.”
I curled around this thought. “I find them very similar.”
“You what, trite verbalist?”
“ …,” I said.
“Tongue-tied spelling bee reject,” she said.
I had a thought.
I expressed it: “John Lennon?”
“Yes. He stabbed me in the side of my dawn, comma lizard.”
“Did I mention … there’s a dead rat in my refrigerator?”
“I’m going to become a veterinarian and devote my life to things with four legs or more. Does your rat need help?”
“Yes, I think it does.”
“What exactly does it need?”
“A second chance.”
“Do you find my breasts fascinating?”
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at my breasts, shallow imagist.”
“What … what is the sound of wax melting?”
“How are the people in your life?”
Uh ha.
Trick question.
But I can handle it. “Alive,” I said.
“Alive?” she said.
“Except for the dead ones.”
“Dead?” She puffed on her cigar and blew half of Cuba into my lungs. Thank you.
“Not alive,” I said.
She thought about this.
I thought about this.
She nodded.
I nodded.
I tore the tablecloth off the table and ate it.
It tasted like …
… plastic.
Plastic.
I said: “The dead rat in my refrigerator asks questions I can’t answer.”
“We all have our dead rats,” she said.
“How’s work?” I said.
She puffed on her cigar and blew Jamaica and The Cayman Islands into my face. I surfed in green water. “Imagine a bored labia …” she said. “… waiting for a bus in the middle of a prairie. With no bar is sight.”
“So … things are getting better at work.”
“New management.”
“What are your dead rats?”
“Mundane symbolists,” she said. “Like you.”
“Do you keep them in your refrigerator?”
“Yoko was pissed at me,” she said.
“Yoko is pissed at everything,” I said. “In a sublime sort of way.”
“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t care.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Would you like me to take my sweater off, banal sentence arranger?”
I blinked.
She winked. “Perhaps I could take my sweater off and we could discuss my bra.” I gulped. Was she serious? I said: “God looked so desperate in my medicine cabinet, as though he expected something that never happened. It made me sad, so I went to my refrigerator.”
“Big mistake,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“Never do anything right after seeing God,” she said. “Especially when he looks that bad.”
Outside, the rain spread acid waste over the cars and pigeons. I had tears in waiting for every piston and wing.
No.
Not really.
I have no tears.
Not even for myself.
She said: “Are you feeling sorry for yourself, maudlin moralist? Thinking about crying for the cars and the birds?”
Damn, she’s good.
“Is God in your medicine cabinet?” I said.
“No, he’s between my legs.”
“He looked like he had something to say,” I said. “But he was too busy rummaging … just rummaging around … to do anything other than look confused.”
“Do you want to know what God is doing between my legs?” she said.
“The rain is our only contact with the fate of our sky.”
“The rain is dead,” she said. “The sky is dead. The rain is our only contact with the death of air. Why are you staring at my toes, lecherous linguist? Do you want to suck them?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Suck my toes?” she said.
My face sloshed with blood.
She said: “Hah!”
She said: “Hah! Hah!”
She said: “Hah, frightened little adverbial toilet!”
I blushed.
She said: “Have you read any good books?”
I said: “There’s a good book?”
“It resides on a shelf …” she said “ … reserved for one good book. Do you think about me when you masturbate?”
I gulped. “And where is that shelf?”
“Wherever you keep it.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
The sax player took off his shirt without missing a note and winked at a table full of nobody. He had talent.
She said: “Do you think the sax player has talent?”
I said: “He lacks audience.”
“This room lacks ambience,” she said.
I looked around. Empty tables. Afternoon light drifting through the skylight. Harsh light for a bluesy sax. Small stage. Just big enough for an audience-depraved sax. Depraved. Like in the song poem. The bongo song poem. The bongalongo songo poem. Dipdooling bonga …
“Grammar slut,” she said.
“I wrote a poem once,” I said. “It had words arranged boldly on white space, announcing their presence, if not their meaning.”
“Did it rhyme?”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Fucking transformational syntactical bongalongo songo dipalongo boo bipi diddly bump ….
… bump.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Boppa loppa bang.” I said.
“Boppa loppa bang,” she said.
“Boo bop,” I said.
“Bop,” she said.
We were standing. Boppaloppa bop. Standing to the sax in the bongo congo boopa bongalonga bop … standing into the groove of the smooth green ever green of her eyes dancing in the space of the boppa boomalongo dancing on the rongabonga yeah rongabongo of the …
“There’s a fucking rat in my refrigerator. It’s dead.”
“Refrigerators are not good for rats,” she said.
We shimmied and shook as her green eyes swallowed me in the greenness of my own lies and blindness. My teeth vibrated. I ate the table.
“Hungry?” she said.
The sax player swallowed the air around him and sprayed broken hearts and bus stops into the blue void of empty tables while Jo and I danced everything green and good in a universe of bop dilop.
“Boop,” she said.
“Biddly boppa,” said I.
“Bop diddly boop diddly diddly boop,” said the sax.
“Boop boppa boop,” she said.
“Boop,” I said.
“Poppa poppa boop.” said the sax.
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
Oh shambalingo ringo mingo … BINGO!
“thIs Is no game!” I InsIsted.
Jo sat down, legs and all. Tartan. Sat down and said: “My ears have teeth. I’ve trained them to kill your tongue.”
“Nothing rhymes,” I said.
“Lingo egoist. Feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Do you have a dream?” I said.
“I’m dreaming now,” she said.
“Do you have another dream?” “Only when I’m awake,” she said.
“I have a dream,” I said.
“Forget it, verb dweeb, my playground is beyond your leer.”
“Any plans for the weekend?” I said.
“I’m going to read a story about a man whose life means absolutely nothing. Nothing ever happens to him. Nobody knows him. Even death forgets him.”
“Does he live forever?”
“No. He dies,” she said. “Life forgets him.”
“Shouldn’t he go somewhere in between?”
“Get your mind out of there, filthy word bucket.”
“I was thinking about buying a new suit of armor,” I said. “You know, something to keep out the cold shafts of my insecurities. They glare at me through the peep holes of curtains and the stale looks of passersby.”
“I think we’re getting somewhere, cliché clincher.”
“I think I’m the man in the story you’re going to read.”
She nodded. “No one can handle life,” she said. “It kills us all.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
“Shall we sit?”
The sax player went silent. He waited.
Jo waited.
I thought.
I had an idea.
I said: “Yes. Let’s sit.”
We sat facing each other. The sax droned something slow and Blue in Green. The table was gone. It was in my stomach. Drums swished in the distance. Odd. Suddenly, the distance between us was less than a trillion miles. There was no border of table. There was no fence of table. There was no prison of table. We were free. Unrestrained. She said: “Before you can chew, you must bite.”
The dust motes stabbed each other with logical palette knives screaming ontological bullshit. They were killing each other with concrete abstractions. I had an idea.
“Premature focus kills art,” I said.
“Premature ejaculation kills a good time,” she said.
“There’s a …”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “In your refrigerator. A rat. Dead. What are the fifty-seven ways you would suck the index finger of my left hand?”
“I thought there were fifty-eight.”
“After one,” she said, “ … there’s no difference between fifty-seven and fifty-eight. They don’t exist.”
“I can’t write anything anymore.”
“You never could write.”
“But I used words.”
“No,” she said. “Words used you.”
The sax player shot three bars of Flamenco straight into the hearts of the dust motes. They died painfully. But they never stopped arguing. Their mote corpses still blocked the view. I cried.
“Stop your damned wailing, spineless symbol spinner … it’s only mote morte.”
I laughed.
She said: “Stop your damned hysterics, clause clown … they’re still arguing.”
I stood up and ate my chair.
“Now you have no excuse,” she said.
“Now I have no excuse,” I said.
I walked through the empty air of an eaten table and stood directly in front of her. I bent down on one knee, staring into the emeralds surrounding her irises. The sax player’s head blew off his shoulders and stuck to the ceiling. He winked as the room exploded with unresolved meaning. The sax didn’t miss a beat.
“You must bite …” she said.
I reached my hand toward Jo. Her eyes ate my soul. My fingers were inches from her knee. My brain spun inside my skull like a dryer full of starched dreams.
“Before you can chew,” she said.
I touched her knee and she disappeared.
It was a quiet afternoon at Molly’s Cafe. We were sitting upstairs in the emptiness of the post-lunch crowd, breathing the frenzied chi of post-face-stuffing and post-coffee-swilling fury. Outside, gray rain sliced through the air like tiny hatchets. Behind us, a lone sax player ground out something bluesy with all the gravel and grit of a break-hardened heart. Across from me, Jo’s eyes, as usual, were green, a green that could feed forests. That green.
She was wearing a black turtleneck with matching black pantyhose divided by a red swatch of tartan skirt. She looked hot. I tried to keep my eyes on her eyes, but the green threatened to swallow my soul and toss me around in the tides of her green forever. Yeah, that green. I focused my eyes on a couple of dust motes arguing about semantics and existentialism somewhere in that distance between her green eyes and her long legs, those legs that flowed up into an unimaginable playground, into … I refocused my eyes on the dust motes. They were still arguing. They would always be arguing.
“Do you like my sweater?” she said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Do you like my sweater? You haven’t taken your eyes off it. Are you thinking dirty thoughts again, you pathetic literary pig?”
Damn dust motes, arguing right in front of her breasts.
“Oh, uh … yeah. Nice sweater.” The plan was to be cool, but blood boiled in my head with the force of hot toothpaste squeezing through a vice. “I’ve always liked large sweaters,” I said.
The plan wasn’t working.
The two dust motes were cooler than I was.
She smiled. “You’re blushing, pig.”
“Something caught in my eye.”
“And it’s cutting off your air supply, goat?” “Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “Air supply.”
“How’s life …”
“ … boar?”
she said.
“I haven’t slept in three days,” I said. “I drink too much. I can’t write anything anymore. I dream about grabbing spoons and stabbing people. I have a spider somewhere in my bed and it feeds on me every night and leaves red bumps on my arms and legs. I found God rummaging through the bottles and boxes in my medicine cabinet. He looked hungry and confused. There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator. It sees everything. Its whiskers quiver. It asked me where I go. I don’t know where I go.” I slumped my head. “I don’t know where.” I looked up past Jo’s black sandals and black forever legs and dazzling tartan and past those damned pretentious motes and into the deep green seas of her eyes. “Other than that, I’m fine. And you?”
“I made love to John Lennon last night.”
I nodded. “Big night.”
The sax player winked at the empty tables around us and dove into a toe-snapping rendition of So What.
Jo put a cigar to her lips and lit it with a snap of her fingers. She puffed deeply and exhaled Hurricane Castro into my face. I breathed in the smoke and felt every hair on my body go bongo in the Congo. Her lips parted slowly under the slow noire wave of her hair, and she said: “Then we talked about the twenty-three things garbage collectors tell their children about their jobs. The first is … it pays the bills. The twenty-third is … you don’t have to attend meetings.”
“And the other twenty-one?” “Variations on the first and last, all beginning with the letter ‘S’.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
“Does my sweater display my breasts to advantage? I don’t want one looking more intelligent than the other.”
I curled around this thought. “I find them very similar.”
“You what, trite verbalist?”
“ …,” I said.
“Tongue-tied spelling bee reject,” she said.
I had a thought.
I expressed it: “John Lennon?”
“Yes. He stabbed me in the side of my dawn, comma lizard.”
“Did I mention … there’s a dead rat in my refrigerator?”
“I’m going to become a veterinarian and devote my life to things with four legs or more. Does your rat need help?”
“Yes, I think it does.”
“What exactly does it need?”
“A second chance.”
“Do you find my breasts fascinating?”
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at my breasts, shallow imagist.”
“What … what is the sound of wax melting?”
“How are the people in your life?”
Uh ha.
Trick question.
But I can handle it. “Alive,” I said.
“Alive?” she said.
“Except for the dead ones.”
“Dead?” She puffed on her cigar and blew half of Cuba into my lungs. Thank you.
“Not alive,” I said.
She thought about this.
I thought about this.
She nodded.
I nodded.
I tore the tablecloth off the table and ate it.
It tasted like …
… plastic.
Plastic.
I said: “The dead rat in my refrigerator asks questions I can’t answer.”
“We all have our dead rats,” she said.
“How’s work?” I said.
She puffed on her cigar and blew Jamaica and The Cayman Islands into my face. I surfed in green water. “Imagine a bored labia …” she said. “… waiting for a bus in the middle of a prairie. With no bar is sight.”
“So … things are getting better at work.”
“New management.”
“What are your dead rats?”
“Mundane symbolists,” she said. “Like you.”
“Do you keep them in your refrigerator?”
“Yoko was pissed at me,” she said.
“Yoko is pissed at everything,” I said. “In a sublime sort of way.”
“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t care.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Would you like me to take my sweater off, banal sentence arranger?”
I blinked.
She winked. “Perhaps I could take my sweater off and we could discuss my bra.” I gulped. Was she serious? I said: “God looked so desperate in my medicine cabinet, as though he expected something that never happened. It made me sad, so I went to my refrigerator.”
“Big mistake,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“Never do anything right after seeing God,” she said. “Especially when he looks that bad.”
Outside, the rain spread acid waste over the cars and pigeons. I had tears in waiting for every piston and wing.
No.
Not really.
I have no tears.
Not even for myself.
She said: “Are you feeling sorry for yourself, maudlin moralist? Thinking about crying for the cars and the birds?”
Damn, she’s good.
“Is God in your medicine cabinet?” I said.
“No, he’s between my legs.”
“He looked like he had something to say,” I said. “But he was too busy rummaging … just rummaging around … to do anything other than look confused.”
“Do you want to know what God is doing between my legs?” she said.
“The rain is our only contact with the fate of our sky.”
“The rain is dead,” she said. “The sky is dead. The rain is our only contact with the death of air. Why are you staring at my toes, lecherous linguist? Do you want to suck them?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Suck my toes?” she said.
My face sloshed with blood.
She said: “Hah!”
She said: “Hah! Hah!”
She said: “Hah, frightened little adverbial toilet!”
I blushed.
She said: “Have you read any good books?”
I said: “There’s a good book?”
“It resides on a shelf …” she said “ … reserved for one good book. Do you think about me when you masturbate?”
I gulped. “And where is that shelf?”
“Wherever you keep it.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
The sax player took off his shirt without missing a note and winked at a table full of nobody. He had talent.
She said: “Do you think the sax player has talent?”
I said: “He lacks audience.”
“This room lacks ambience,” she said.
I looked around. Empty tables. Afternoon light drifting through the skylight. Harsh light for a bluesy sax. Small stage. Just big enough for an audience-depraved sax. Depraved. Like in the song poem. The bongo song poem. The bongalongo songo poem. Dipdooling bonga …
“Grammar slut,” she said.
“I wrote a poem once,” I said. “It had words arranged boldly on white space, announcing their presence, if not their meaning.”
“Did it rhyme?”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Nothing rhymes.”
“Fucking transformational syntactical bongalongo songo dipalongo boo bipi diddly bump ….
… bump.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Boppa loppa bang.” I said.
“Boppa loppa bang,” she said.
“Boo bop,” I said.
“Bop,” she said.
We were standing. Boppaloppa bop. Standing to the sax in the bongo congo boopa bongalonga bop … standing into the groove of the smooth green ever green of her eyes dancing in the space of the boppa boomalongo dancing on the rongabonga yeah rongabongo of the …
“There’s a fucking rat in my refrigerator. It’s dead.”
“Refrigerators are not good for rats,” she said.
We shimmied and shook as her green eyes swallowed me in the greenness of my own lies and blindness. My teeth vibrated. I ate the table.
“Hungry?” she said.
The sax player swallowed the air around him and sprayed broken hearts and bus stops into the blue void of empty tables while Jo and I danced everything green and good in a universe of bop dilop.
“Boop,” she said.
“Biddly boppa,” said I.
“Bop diddly boop diddly diddly boop,” said the sax.
“Boop boppa boop,” she said.
“Boop,” I said.
“Poppa poppa boop.” said the sax.
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
Oh shambalingo ringo mingo … BINGO!
“thIs Is no game!” I InsIsted.
Jo sat down, legs and all. Tartan. Sat down and said: “My ears have teeth. I’ve trained them to kill your tongue.”
“Nothing rhymes,” I said.
“Lingo egoist. Feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Do you have a dream?” I said.
“I’m dreaming now,” she said.
“Do you have another dream?” “Only when I’m awake,” she said.
“I have a dream,” I said.
“Forget it, verb dweeb, my playground is beyond your leer.”
“Any plans for the weekend?” I said.
“I’m going to read a story about a man whose life means absolutely nothing. Nothing ever happens to him. Nobody knows him. Even death forgets him.”
“Does he live forever?”
“No. He dies,” she said. “Life forgets him.”
“Shouldn’t he go somewhere in between?”
“Get your mind out of there, filthy word bucket.”
“I was thinking about buying a new suit of armor,” I said. “You know, something to keep out the cold shafts of my insecurities. They glare at me through the peep holes of curtains and the stale looks of passersby.”
“I think we’re getting somewhere, cliché clincher.”
“I think I’m the man in the story you’re going to read.”
She nodded. “No one can handle life,” she said. “It kills us all.”
“There’s a dead rat in my refrigerator.”
“Shall we sit?”
The sax player went silent. He waited.
Jo waited.
I thought.
I had an idea.
I said: “Yes. Let’s sit.”
We sat facing each other. The sax droned something slow and Blue in Green. The table was gone. It was in my stomach. Drums swished in the distance. Odd. Suddenly, the distance between us was less than a trillion miles. There was no border of table. There was no fence of table. There was no prison of table. We were free. Unrestrained. She said: “Before you can chew, you must bite.”
The dust motes stabbed each other with logical palette knives screaming ontological bullshit. They were killing each other with concrete abstractions. I had an idea.
“Premature focus kills art,” I said.
“Premature ejaculation kills a good time,” she said.
“There’s a …”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “In your refrigerator. A rat. Dead. What are the fifty-seven ways you would suck the index finger of my left hand?”
“I thought there were fifty-eight.”
“After one,” she said, “ … there’s no difference between fifty-seven and fifty-eight. They don’t exist.”
“I can’t write anything anymore.”
“You never could write.”
“But I used words.”
“No,” she said. “Words used you.”
The sax player shot three bars of Flamenco straight into the hearts of the dust motes. They died painfully. But they never stopped arguing. Their mote corpses still blocked the view. I cried.
“Stop your damned wailing, spineless symbol spinner … it’s only mote morte.”
I laughed.
She said: “Stop your damned hysterics, clause clown … they’re still arguing.”
I stood up and ate my chair.
“Now you have no excuse,” she said.
“Now I have no excuse,” I said.
I walked through the empty air of an eaten table and stood directly in front of her. I bent down on one knee, staring into the emeralds surrounding her irises. The sax player’s head blew off his shoulders and stuck to the ceiling. He winked as the room exploded with unresolved meaning. The sax didn’t miss a beat.
“You must bite …” she said.
I reached my hand toward Jo. Her eyes ate my soul. My fingers were inches from her knee. My brain spun inside my skull like a dryer full of starched dreams.
“Before you can chew,” she said.
I touched her knee and she disappeared.
June 16, 2017
Short Story: These Eyes
(Note: This one was first published in the Stranglet Literary Journal)
I’ve given myself a week to live. I think that’s a reasonable timeframe. One week.
It’s going to be tough. I just received another call. From her. Like nothing’s happened. Like everything’s normal. It shook me the first time she called. It shook me a few minutes ago. Tomorrow at 7:29 PM, it’ll shake me again.
She talks about ordinary things: “Did you find that clicking sound in your car?”
I try to keep my answers short. I get a feeling that she only has so long. About ten minutes, including the silences, those wordless seconds when we’re likely more connected than when we’re talking, when all we can do is feel each other’s presence. “Do you still think about me?”
…
“Yeah. I do.”
…
“Did you get the new air conditioner installed?”
Deliberately drawing out the silences, savoring the closeness that comes from knowing the other is waiting, as though we become real knowing someone is waiting for us.
I’d like to say I waited my whole life for her, but I didn’t. She was sprung on me out of the blue, something I would never have seen coming because I really didn’t need―or want―it at the time. But suddenly she was there and going back to the way things used to be was…well, I’ve given myself a week.
I was on my way to the Cedar Tree Café for a hazelnut coffee, something I’d been thinking about all morning, mentally savoring the sweet nut taste and the hot cream-thick liquid. My agent had just called with great news; my latest book had just been picked up by a publisher of photography books with some of the biggest names in the field on their list. Mine was a book with a hundred and twenty images of shopping carts that had been abandoned around the city, pictures of shopping carts left on curbs, stashed under verandas or pushed over the banks of ravines. I had a picture of a cart that someone had lugged up to the top of a billboard advertising the city transport system.
It was a three-year project with thousands of images pared down to the essential. I used the carts as a metaphor for the sense of abandonment that runs through industrial/digital society, but I won’t get into that now. Maybe later.
It was a big step forward. I was excited. I was on top of the world. I was in a hurry. I didn’t see her as I rounded the corner. She was right in front of me, standing there with a vacant look in her eyes, something I noticed at just about the same time I walked into her hard enough to knock her off her feet, hard enough so that her ass hit the ground about the same time her head hit the door―the metal rim of the door. I should have turned around and headed back to the studio right then.
But I didn’t.
I was stunned motionless. She lay on the sidewalk, slumped against the door, her plaid skirt pushed up revealing slim legs with black leggings. There was a couple on the other side of the door looking through the glass at her. They couldn’t open the door with her lying against it and I could see the struggle in their eyes: wait until she’s not against the door before opening it, or risk hurting her more by opening the door so they could ask, “Are you hurt?”
And, yeah, I just stood there like a frozen turkey until she lifted her hand up to me. It took a few seconds to sink in: she wants me to help her get up. Her eyes were a deep brown that created an earthy aura around her eye lids. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, not even flustered. She seemed amused, calm. I thrust my hand out clumsily, missing her hand by a good few inches. She grabbed my wrist and pulled herself up, almost pulling me down in the process. Not that she was heavy, it just took me by surprise. I was suddenly face-to-face with her. She was beautiful, with brassy brunette bangs bouncing off her shoulders and cutting sharply across her forehead. She reminded me of pictures I’d seen of hippy women during the 60s: no lipstick or makeup or other fakery―just natural beauty. A black turtleneck suggested college girl from some other period. I didn’t see a purse. She was smiling.
The couple at the door were outside now. The woman asked, “Are you alright?” She ignored the question, still smiling, looking straight up into my eyes. I think I was blushing as I stammered out a barely coherent apology, gesturing with my hands, lusting for a hazelnut coffee, in a hurry, rounding the corner…but, oh my god, she was beautiful.
“You’re Steven Glen, aren’t you?”
She knew my name.
This wasn’t as much a surprise as it might seem. My work had been exhibited around town for several years and I’d been interviewed by newspapers, television and regional magazines. I wasn’t a celebrity, but I wasn’t invisible.
I nodded yes.
“I saw your exhibit at Ingrid Mueller’s Art + Concepts two months ago.”
I nodded yes.
“You’re very talented.”
I nodded yes.
“You don’t talk much do you?”
I nodded…”I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you until...”
“It’s OK. I’m all right. Back of my head’s a bit sore, is all.” She rubbed her backside. “Sore butt too.”
My god, she was beautiful. I was feeling a bit woozy from just looking at her. “I was in a hurry, not thinking. Just got some good news.”
Her smile widened. “And your good news was?” She seemed cheery and relaxed, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake that image of her eyes just before I knocked her down, the vacancy. There was something almost chilling about it.
But she was so beautiful.
I bought her a coffee―hazelnut, of course. She loved it. I told her about the book, how it as a big step for me. In fact, that’s all we talked about: me―my books, the shopping carts, my exhibitions, my artistic vision. Whenever I asked her about her own life, she turned the talk back to me, and I let her. Ego: that slippery plain of victories leading to ultimate defeat. I should have pressed her but I was on a ME high with a beautiful woman, and less than two hours later we were at my place, in bed, naked.
Yeah, that fast. I should have known something was out of whack. But I was on top of the world. I was invincible. Nothing could bring me down.
Her name was Heather. Heather Smith. Although I’m still not sure if that was her real last name. I’m not even sure if that was her real first name.
While we were drinking the coffee, I asked her, “How would you sum up your life?”
She said, “I’m the seed pod that fell into the river and was carried out to the ocean. How about you?”
And, of course, I blabbed on about myself, never bothering to ask what she meant by the seed pod, and that was the closest she ever came to saying anything really personal about herself other than to talk about her current mood, how things went at work, where she’d like to dine out.
Her moods were always the same: tranquil in a disquieted way, as though something was rumbling under the surface. She was a graphic artist for a company that produced educational software. My sum total knowledge of her work: the graphics have to be meaningful. But I did know if the day went well, fast, slow, or challenging. In the time that we were together, we never dined at the same place twice and in all that time she never failed to take my breath away.
She moved in the day after we met. The last thing in the world I wanted was a roommate; I didn’t even want a relationship, didn’t want the complications. I was so close to having everything I’d always wanted. I needed to focus on the book, on the exhibition for the book launch. Plus, there was the commercial photography―the weddings and portraits―to pay the bills. My life was too busy for a relationship. I thought about this while I was waiting for her to show up with her things and I made up my mind that I was going to tell her that we should wait a bit. This was too sudden. It wasn’t like me. I’m sorry but…
I answered a quiet knock on the door. She stood in the hall wearing blue jeans and a dark gray sweater, a suitcase in each hand. She took my breath away.
“Just two suitcases?” I said.
“I like to keep things simple.”
I kissed her and she walked through the door into the rest of my life.
Two suitcases.
***
Living with a woman was something new in my life. I’d had women stay the weekend but this was different. It was an adventure. Physically, she didn’t put much of a dent in my apartment. We shared my dresser, and the closet was less stark. Cosmetics, brushes and hair products appeared in the washroom along with a cherry red bathrobe and matching towel. We moved the couch to the middle of the room, closer to the TV, which I started watching more in the evenings. Things materialized in the refrigerator: yogurt, tofu, plastic containers of bean sprouts. All-in-all though, she made as much an imprint as a hotel guest.
But she brought a certain color and texture to life in the apartment, as though I’d turned the settings of my life to black and white and she re-set them to color.
My apartment was no longer just a place to eat, sleep, shower and catch the news; it was a place to live and create memories with color and texture. I looked forward to going home and finding her waiting for me. Seeing her on the couch or strolling out of the kitchenette or just hearing her calling out from the washroom: “Be out in a minute.” I never tired of her beauty. In fact, I never really got used to it―like it was something I could never define or understand. Like her.
Just like her.
***
We ate together, usually in the dining area, with music in the background and candles in the foreground. Sometimes we ate in the living room and watched TV. Conversation was sporadic. We didn’t talk much and when we did it wasn’t for long. I talked about my book, my exhibitions, plans for my next photo project, problems with my commercial work. She talked about things in the news or asked questions about my work, my artistic vision, my hopes and fears.
Weekends we got out of the apartment, starting with the Farmers’ Market early Saturday morning. She loved the Market: the stalls with fresh produce, the crafts (which she adored but never bought, not even letting me buy them for her), the exotic foods (her favorite was mild chicken samosas), the buskers juggling bowling pins or staging puppet shows. She never once became impatient because a line was stalled by people stopping to talk or someone just stopping to take in the movement and noise. She blended well into crowds.
After the market we took to the sidewalks for some window shopping or drove into the country where I’d take pictures of barns and ponds as backdrops to her beauty. Sometimes we’d go to a mall where she’d admire everything and buy nothing. She loved the shopping experience but wasn’t into accumulating things, except for the odd piece of clothing.
No matter what we did, though, her conversation focused on what was happening around us: “Oh look! A puppet show!” “Can you get the water lilies in just behind me? What kind of lens do you need for that?” “How do you think I’d look in that red dress?” She lived in the immediate.
We didn’t go to church on Sundays. Sunday was our stay-at-home-in-bed-and-make-love-all-day-long day. Conversation was mostly me telling her over and over how beautiful she was, how perfect she was, how much I needed her.
***
After a couple of months, I stopped doing portraits. I needed time to work on proofs for the book and re-write captions and the artist statement―a sprawling twenty-page monument to ambiguity, which I eventually pared down to a few pages. I needed time to start my next project: abandoned toys. These were pictures of toys, like play kitchens, play houses and pedal cars left on curbs for trash day, or left at the back door of the Salvation Army store. I had a rough concept about what I was doing, something along the lines of shedding the tools of our youth, learning to let go as part of the growth process. Something like that. I was having a hard time focusing and I can’t say that it was her fault. It was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, day and night, even when I was with her. Yeah, even when I was with her. I think most people think about other things when they’re with the ones they love because they’re right there with you, where you just feel them and think about other things.
In my case though, she’d be right there, lying beside me or sitting across the table from me, and I’d be wondering about her, wondering about her day, wondering about her past, about who she was and what she was doing when she wasn’t with me.
Wondering about why she was with me.
***
“So what meaningful graphics did you do today?”
“Mostly boring ones.”
“Boring? How so?”
“Just boring. Visual representations of boring material.”
“What kind of material?”
“Really boring material.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything about your job, are you?”
“Did you find out about that clicking noise in your car?”
***
We’d been together almost six months when I first noticed it. By that time I’d cut my commercial work down to almost nothing, taking occasional jobs to pay rent on the apartment and studio. She took care of all the other expenses, and the publishers had given me a generous advance―something unheard of for a still not-so-well-known photographer.
I spent my days roaming the city looking for cast-away toys―snooping around alleys, frequenting dumpsters, scouring the early morning streets on trash pick-up days. I’d finished the work on the shopping cart book. My next exhibition was a few months away, in conjunction with the book release.
I was at the studio, going through pictures I’d taken of her over the weekend. On Sunday we’d gone to the college campus, to the geology building, where they’d painted the walls in one of the stairwell alcoves with a lifelike forest motif. The alcove stretched up three stories with towering rainforest trees. The predominant color was deep green. She was wearing blue jeans and a loose red blouse, the first time I’d seen her wearing a bright color other than her bathrobe. It was raining lightly that day and she had a red umbrella. There was a long bench built into the wall at the base of the forest mural. She lay down on the bench with the umbrella open beside her. The contrast of colors was breathtaking. I took almost a hundred pictures.
I’d just deleted the ones that were definitely a no go, leaving me with ten images to process. In three of them, taken in succession, she was looking straight into the lens, smiling seductively. The bright irises spread a light brownish tint over her eyelids and the hollows of her eyes. Even looking at pictures of her caught my breath. I zoomed in on her eyes. The screen turned monochrome brown. My chest began to tighten with excitement as I leaned forward to let myself be lost in those eyes. And that’s when I saw it.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, only that it triggered a cold flash across my back and froze me like in those moments when you wake up feeling threatened by something you can’t define but and you know that if you move, it’ll pounce. It was the vacancy I’d seen in her eyes the first time we met, but it was more―like a pit descending into bottomless nothing, a complete absence of…I didn’t know what. I jerked back, fearing I’d be sucked into something from which I’d never return.
I sat at my desk, sweating, cold, shaken, fingers trembling. My thoughts tripped over explanations that might make sense of what I’d seen.
After a few moments I calmed enough to lean forward into her eyes and confirm what I’d just seen but it was gone, if it had ever been there. It could have been stress, change of lifestyle, anything.
I spent the next couple of hours working on the remaining pictures. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. In each of the pictures she was beautiful and her eyes took my breath away without swallowing me whole.
I didn’t mention any of this to her.
***
“As a photographer, there’s something I find really odd about you.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t have any pictures.”
“Pictures?”
“Yeah, pictures…family, travel, childhood, school. How come you have no pictures?”
“Well, hun, as a photographer, you weren’t around then to take them.”
***
I started losing it. Whatever I’d seen in her eyes wouldn’t let go. I went through hundreds of pictures, burrowing into her eyes as she sat on the edge of the fountain by City Hall, zooming into her eyes as she smiled under a black moustache at the dollar store, digging deep into her eyes as she waved to me high in the air from a swing at the playground across the street― searching her eyes in picture after picture.
But it was gone. I tried to chalk it off to imagination. Stress. A disagreeable lunch. I tried to doubt what I’d seen, distrust my eyes, but that look in her eyes when we met hovered over me. I remembered the chill I’d felt.
***
I started an obsessive campaign of picture-taking, catching her while she ate, watched TV, slept, showered, dressed and undressed.
“Steven?”
“Yes?”
“I’m undressing.”
“I know. And I’m taking pictures.”
“Steven?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you taking pictures of my eyes while I’m undressing?”
***
I put over a thousand images through every Photoshop routine I could think of, including a barrage of special effects like fish eye, sepia, duo tone, HDR, everything I could think of. I varied the resolutions, hues, temperatures, white balances, color saturations, brightness, sharpness, densities.
Did I mention I was obsessed?
***
I decided it was time to talk to her about it. We were eating authentic Mexican food in an authentic Mexican restaurant with authentic Mariachi music in the background.
“I know I’ve been acting weird lately.” I was on my fourth Corona
“Oh, you noticed?” Sometimes she could be a bit of a shithead.
“Yes, I did.”
“Steven.” She leaned forward, looking me straight in the eyes. “There’s something wrong.”
“Yes?”
She reached over the table and took both my hands. “When you’re not taking pictures of my eyes, or working on my eyes on your computer...”
“Yes?”
“You stare.”
“I stare?”
“Into my eyes, constantly. Like you’re looking for something.”
“You have beautiful eyes. I…”
“Steven. This is a nice restaurant. Don’t make me pour a bottle of beer over your head.” She squeezed my hands tightly as she talked. “I want it to stop…the whole eye thing. It stops.”
I nodded yes.
“Give me your word.”
“I promise. I’ll stop. No more eye fixation.”
***
For a while, I managed to reign in the eye fetish and pay more attention to her as in: “Nice to see a man who appreciates his woman undressing for the camera.” I immersed myself in my abandoned toy project and scoured the streets looking for toys left on the curbs for trash day or tossed beside dumpsters. Gray drizzly days were my favorite, with the rain adding a bit of the old sparkle to the colors of the toys, now contrasted so vividly with their drab surroundings and suggesting the magic they once cast on the children who owned them.
I was picking up more commercial work. My book release was a month away, and I was almost ready for the exhibition and launch.
She seemed to be more excited about the exhibit than me, talking about it incessantly, asking me if I was excited, telling me how beautiful the prints were. Her favorite was of a cart sitting in snow up to its lower tray. Behind it, a field stretched into a narrow line of trees. Behind that, a black storm-filled sky stretched across the horizon moving with a precision edge into a sunny cloudless sky. The play of light between the storm and the clear sky was surreal and foreboding. The cart was about thirty feet into the snow and, strangely, there were no footsteps leading out to it, as though it had just appeared there.
Things were looking good.
For the time being.
***
“I know hardly anything about you.”
“What’s my favorite pizza?”
“Sausage.”
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Brown. Chocolate brown.”
“What’s my favorite food?”
“When you want a break from health food…steak, medium rare, baked potato with sour cream, and broccoli with cheese sauce.”
“What’s my favorite song?”
“But, what’s this…?”
“Indulge me. What’s my favorite song?”
“These Eyes.”
“Most men wouldn’t be able to answer those questions.”
“So?”
“So, you know me better than most men know their women.”
***
There’re two schools of thought about balance. One claims that the purpose of our lives is to attain a state in which everything is completely in balance and then keep things that way until we die. This is a kind of spiritual approach. The other claims that it’s just fine to work towards a state of balance, but then we need to find ways to throw everything into chaos again so that we can start over trying to achieve balance. This would be an evolutionary approach with the rationale being: if things are always in balance, nothing happens—nothing goes forward, nothing goes backward. We have stasis. No progress. No evolution.
I guess I’m one of those people who need to evolve.
Things were too good between us. It was driving me nuts. Who was I to have this perfect relationship with this breathtakingly beautiful woman who never complained, who wanted the same things I wanted, who treated me like everything I did and thought was essential, who never told me how to live my life and who arrived on my doorstep devoid of historical baggage?
These were the kinds of crazy thoughts I was beginning to have. On the one hand, I was afraid to push things; on the other, I couldn’t resist the urge to push.
I started investigating. Google, LinkedIn, MySpace (after all, she was a graphic artist), Facebook, Twitter, online directories and dozens of other cyber ways to stalk a person were all dead ends. I couldn’t find a single pixel of her on the Internet.
Of course, it didn’t take long before she noticed that I was acting crazy again.
***
“My brother and I used to love toasted peanut butter sandwiches dipped in tea with lots of milk and sugar for breakfast.”
“Peanut butter is good for growing bodies.”
“Mom used to pack salmon sandwiches for lunch. Every day. And a banana. And Kool-Aid.”
“The salmon would explain why you have such a strong heart.”
“What was your favorite breakfast when you were a kid? Let me guess…bran flakes.”
“Why would you say bran flakes?”
“Um…I don’t know. Just a wild guess.”
“Did you get around to taking the car in about that clicking noise?”
***
“You look tense tonight, Steven.”
“Got something on my mind.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“How serious?”
“Really serious.”
“You just put half an inch of salt on your baked potato.”
“I like salt.”
“With a bit of potato on the side?”
“Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this why you were taking all the pictures, tracking me all over the internet?”
“Tracking you? What…”
“Browsers have this thing called histories. You were searching for information on me day after day. You even searched for things like demonic eyes. I’m guessing in relation to me.”
“You knew all this? Why didn’t you say anything?|
“I was hoping you would either find whatever it was you were looking for, or come to your senses.”
“I need to know about your past.”
“You need to get over this obsession.”
“But why can’t you just tell me…”
“OK. I was raised on a farm. I came to the city. I met you. Happy?”
“Is that true?”
“No.”
“Then...?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. Of course I…”
“Then just love me.”
***
But I couldn’t just love her. I pushed it like picking a scab trying to heal over a major artery.
We were home, drinking wine, watching a Seinfeld re-run, eating homemade guacamole. I felt like I was sitting beside myself, watching myself reach for the remote and turning the TV off, watching as I turned to her.
“Tell me about your past.”
“You don’t want to know about it.”
“I have to know about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I told you…a farm.”
“You told me that wasn’t true.”
“Maybe I lied about it not being true.”
“What was it I saw in your eyes?”
“Probably your imagination.”
“What are you hiding from me?”
“Nothing that should mean anything to you—to keeping us together.”
“But I have to know.”
“Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“But you do know.”
“I just want things to stay the way they are.”
“Things will stay the way they are, but I’ll know. I have to know what you know.”
“What I know—and all I have to know—is that I love you and I want things to stay as they are.” She stood up and walked slowly to the window. She stared towards the park but her eyes seemed focused on something far away, lifetimes away. It was a sad stare that flushed me with guilt. I should have backed off then. I should have put my love before my curiosity and gone to her and held her and told her everything would be all right. Just like in the movies. But I didn’t. She stood by the window for a few minutes before turning to me. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “The truth is, Steven, I don’t know. I remember my job and the people I work with, but that’s all. I went home after I met you and packed some things. As soon as I arrived at your door, I forgot where I’d come from. At work, I sort of floated through each day listening to people talking about things I should have known about but didn’t. I played along with them. It happens less often now. But, Steven, I can’t even remember the things they used to talk about. All I remember is you. And what we have. And I don’t want to lose it.”
“But you have to remember.”
***
Finally, she remembered.
I came home late one night. She was sitting on the couch. I said something about being sorry for missing supper but she ignored me. The hair running over her shoulders was like a chocolate waterfall. Even the back of her head thrilled me. I walked quickly to the kitchen to see what I’d missed eating by candlelight.
There was nothing. Not even the smell of cooking. Evening sun cast a surreal aura over the kitchen. There was a note on the breakfast table. I picked it up and read.
Steven dearest,
I remembered. Thanks, Steven. We should have left it alone like I wanted. Just left it alone.
As for what it is: no, you don’t get to know that. At least not yet. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and sorry for the blood stains on your couch.
Love always,
Heather
The calls started a week later.
***
When I think of it now, I got home at around close to eight that night. The blood on the couch was still slightly warm. Maybe it was 7:29 when she pushed the butcher knife into her stomach, maybe that exact moment when her soul fled her body. Maybe that’s why she calls every night at that time. I’ll ask her about that next week. It’s the kind of thing I should ask face-to-face.
One week.
I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to talk myself out of this. Though I can’t see that happening, and it’s going to be tough waiting through those seven days. But like I said, I have a solid objective within a reasonable time frame. She’s waiting for me. She knows.
And I need to know.
I’ve given myself a week to live. I think that’s a reasonable timeframe. One week.
It’s going to be tough. I just received another call. From her. Like nothing’s happened. Like everything’s normal. It shook me the first time she called. It shook me a few minutes ago. Tomorrow at 7:29 PM, it’ll shake me again.
She talks about ordinary things: “Did you find that clicking sound in your car?”
I try to keep my answers short. I get a feeling that she only has so long. About ten minutes, including the silences, those wordless seconds when we’re likely more connected than when we’re talking, when all we can do is feel each other’s presence. “Do you still think about me?”
…
“Yeah. I do.”
…
“Did you get the new air conditioner installed?”
Deliberately drawing out the silences, savoring the closeness that comes from knowing the other is waiting, as though we become real knowing someone is waiting for us.
I’d like to say I waited my whole life for her, but I didn’t. She was sprung on me out of the blue, something I would never have seen coming because I really didn’t need―or want―it at the time. But suddenly she was there and going back to the way things used to be was…well, I’ve given myself a week.
I was on my way to the Cedar Tree Café for a hazelnut coffee, something I’d been thinking about all morning, mentally savoring the sweet nut taste and the hot cream-thick liquid. My agent had just called with great news; my latest book had just been picked up by a publisher of photography books with some of the biggest names in the field on their list. Mine was a book with a hundred and twenty images of shopping carts that had been abandoned around the city, pictures of shopping carts left on curbs, stashed under verandas or pushed over the banks of ravines. I had a picture of a cart that someone had lugged up to the top of a billboard advertising the city transport system.
It was a three-year project with thousands of images pared down to the essential. I used the carts as a metaphor for the sense of abandonment that runs through industrial/digital society, but I won’t get into that now. Maybe later.
It was a big step forward. I was excited. I was on top of the world. I was in a hurry. I didn’t see her as I rounded the corner. She was right in front of me, standing there with a vacant look in her eyes, something I noticed at just about the same time I walked into her hard enough to knock her off her feet, hard enough so that her ass hit the ground about the same time her head hit the door―the metal rim of the door. I should have turned around and headed back to the studio right then.
But I didn’t.
I was stunned motionless. She lay on the sidewalk, slumped against the door, her plaid skirt pushed up revealing slim legs with black leggings. There was a couple on the other side of the door looking through the glass at her. They couldn’t open the door with her lying against it and I could see the struggle in their eyes: wait until she’s not against the door before opening it, or risk hurting her more by opening the door so they could ask, “Are you hurt?”
And, yeah, I just stood there like a frozen turkey until she lifted her hand up to me. It took a few seconds to sink in: she wants me to help her get up. Her eyes were a deep brown that created an earthy aura around her eye lids. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, not even flustered. She seemed amused, calm. I thrust my hand out clumsily, missing her hand by a good few inches. She grabbed my wrist and pulled herself up, almost pulling me down in the process. Not that she was heavy, it just took me by surprise. I was suddenly face-to-face with her. She was beautiful, with brassy brunette bangs bouncing off her shoulders and cutting sharply across her forehead. She reminded me of pictures I’d seen of hippy women during the 60s: no lipstick or makeup or other fakery―just natural beauty. A black turtleneck suggested college girl from some other period. I didn’t see a purse. She was smiling.
The couple at the door were outside now. The woman asked, “Are you alright?” She ignored the question, still smiling, looking straight up into my eyes. I think I was blushing as I stammered out a barely coherent apology, gesturing with my hands, lusting for a hazelnut coffee, in a hurry, rounding the corner…but, oh my god, she was beautiful.
“You’re Steven Glen, aren’t you?”
She knew my name.
This wasn’t as much a surprise as it might seem. My work had been exhibited around town for several years and I’d been interviewed by newspapers, television and regional magazines. I wasn’t a celebrity, but I wasn’t invisible.
I nodded yes.
“I saw your exhibit at Ingrid Mueller’s Art + Concepts two months ago.”
I nodded yes.
“You’re very talented.”
I nodded yes.
“You don’t talk much do you?”
I nodded…”I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you until...”
“It’s OK. I’m all right. Back of my head’s a bit sore, is all.” She rubbed her backside. “Sore butt too.”
My god, she was beautiful. I was feeling a bit woozy from just looking at her. “I was in a hurry, not thinking. Just got some good news.”
Her smile widened. “And your good news was?” She seemed cheery and relaxed, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake that image of her eyes just before I knocked her down, the vacancy. There was something almost chilling about it.
But she was so beautiful.
I bought her a coffee―hazelnut, of course. She loved it. I told her about the book, how it as a big step for me. In fact, that’s all we talked about: me―my books, the shopping carts, my exhibitions, my artistic vision. Whenever I asked her about her own life, she turned the talk back to me, and I let her. Ego: that slippery plain of victories leading to ultimate defeat. I should have pressed her but I was on a ME high with a beautiful woman, and less than two hours later we were at my place, in bed, naked.
Yeah, that fast. I should have known something was out of whack. But I was on top of the world. I was invincible. Nothing could bring me down.
Her name was Heather. Heather Smith. Although I’m still not sure if that was her real last name. I’m not even sure if that was her real first name.
While we were drinking the coffee, I asked her, “How would you sum up your life?”
She said, “I’m the seed pod that fell into the river and was carried out to the ocean. How about you?”
And, of course, I blabbed on about myself, never bothering to ask what she meant by the seed pod, and that was the closest she ever came to saying anything really personal about herself other than to talk about her current mood, how things went at work, where she’d like to dine out.
Her moods were always the same: tranquil in a disquieted way, as though something was rumbling under the surface. She was a graphic artist for a company that produced educational software. My sum total knowledge of her work: the graphics have to be meaningful. But I did know if the day went well, fast, slow, or challenging. In the time that we were together, we never dined at the same place twice and in all that time she never failed to take my breath away.
She moved in the day after we met. The last thing in the world I wanted was a roommate; I didn’t even want a relationship, didn’t want the complications. I was so close to having everything I’d always wanted. I needed to focus on the book, on the exhibition for the book launch. Plus, there was the commercial photography―the weddings and portraits―to pay the bills. My life was too busy for a relationship. I thought about this while I was waiting for her to show up with her things and I made up my mind that I was going to tell her that we should wait a bit. This was too sudden. It wasn’t like me. I’m sorry but…
I answered a quiet knock on the door. She stood in the hall wearing blue jeans and a dark gray sweater, a suitcase in each hand. She took my breath away.
“Just two suitcases?” I said.
“I like to keep things simple.”
I kissed her and she walked through the door into the rest of my life.
Two suitcases.
***
Living with a woman was something new in my life. I’d had women stay the weekend but this was different. It was an adventure. Physically, she didn’t put much of a dent in my apartment. We shared my dresser, and the closet was less stark. Cosmetics, brushes and hair products appeared in the washroom along with a cherry red bathrobe and matching towel. We moved the couch to the middle of the room, closer to the TV, which I started watching more in the evenings. Things materialized in the refrigerator: yogurt, tofu, plastic containers of bean sprouts. All-in-all though, she made as much an imprint as a hotel guest.
But she brought a certain color and texture to life in the apartment, as though I’d turned the settings of my life to black and white and she re-set them to color.
My apartment was no longer just a place to eat, sleep, shower and catch the news; it was a place to live and create memories with color and texture. I looked forward to going home and finding her waiting for me. Seeing her on the couch or strolling out of the kitchenette or just hearing her calling out from the washroom: “Be out in a minute.” I never tired of her beauty. In fact, I never really got used to it―like it was something I could never define or understand. Like her.
Just like her.
***
We ate together, usually in the dining area, with music in the background and candles in the foreground. Sometimes we ate in the living room and watched TV. Conversation was sporadic. We didn’t talk much and when we did it wasn’t for long. I talked about my book, my exhibitions, plans for my next photo project, problems with my commercial work. She talked about things in the news or asked questions about my work, my artistic vision, my hopes and fears.
Weekends we got out of the apartment, starting with the Farmers’ Market early Saturday morning. She loved the Market: the stalls with fresh produce, the crafts (which she adored but never bought, not even letting me buy them for her), the exotic foods (her favorite was mild chicken samosas), the buskers juggling bowling pins or staging puppet shows. She never once became impatient because a line was stalled by people stopping to talk or someone just stopping to take in the movement and noise. She blended well into crowds.
After the market we took to the sidewalks for some window shopping or drove into the country where I’d take pictures of barns and ponds as backdrops to her beauty. Sometimes we’d go to a mall where she’d admire everything and buy nothing. She loved the shopping experience but wasn’t into accumulating things, except for the odd piece of clothing.
No matter what we did, though, her conversation focused on what was happening around us: “Oh look! A puppet show!” “Can you get the water lilies in just behind me? What kind of lens do you need for that?” “How do you think I’d look in that red dress?” She lived in the immediate.
We didn’t go to church on Sundays. Sunday was our stay-at-home-in-bed-and-make-love-all-day-long day. Conversation was mostly me telling her over and over how beautiful she was, how perfect she was, how much I needed her.
***
After a couple of months, I stopped doing portraits. I needed time to work on proofs for the book and re-write captions and the artist statement―a sprawling twenty-page monument to ambiguity, which I eventually pared down to a few pages. I needed time to start my next project: abandoned toys. These were pictures of toys, like play kitchens, play houses and pedal cars left on curbs for trash day, or left at the back door of the Salvation Army store. I had a rough concept about what I was doing, something along the lines of shedding the tools of our youth, learning to let go as part of the growth process. Something like that. I was having a hard time focusing and I can’t say that it was her fault. It was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, day and night, even when I was with her. Yeah, even when I was with her. I think most people think about other things when they’re with the ones they love because they’re right there with you, where you just feel them and think about other things.
In my case though, she’d be right there, lying beside me or sitting across the table from me, and I’d be wondering about her, wondering about her day, wondering about her past, about who she was and what she was doing when she wasn’t with me.
Wondering about why she was with me.
***
“So what meaningful graphics did you do today?”
“Mostly boring ones.”
“Boring? How so?”
“Just boring. Visual representations of boring material.”
“What kind of material?”
“Really boring material.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything about your job, are you?”
“Did you find out about that clicking noise in your car?”
***
We’d been together almost six months when I first noticed it. By that time I’d cut my commercial work down to almost nothing, taking occasional jobs to pay rent on the apartment and studio. She took care of all the other expenses, and the publishers had given me a generous advance―something unheard of for a still not-so-well-known photographer.
I spent my days roaming the city looking for cast-away toys―snooping around alleys, frequenting dumpsters, scouring the early morning streets on trash pick-up days. I’d finished the work on the shopping cart book. My next exhibition was a few months away, in conjunction with the book release.
I was at the studio, going through pictures I’d taken of her over the weekend. On Sunday we’d gone to the college campus, to the geology building, where they’d painted the walls in one of the stairwell alcoves with a lifelike forest motif. The alcove stretched up three stories with towering rainforest trees. The predominant color was deep green. She was wearing blue jeans and a loose red blouse, the first time I’d seen her wearing a bright color other than her bathrobe. It was raining lightly that day and she had a red umbrella. There was a long bench built into the wall at the base of the forest mural. She lay down on the bench with the umbrella open beside her. The contrast of colors was breathtaking. I took almost a hundred pictures.
I’d just deleted the ones that were definitely a no go, leaving me with ten images to process. In three of them, taken in succession, she was looking straight into the lens, smiling seductively. The bright irises spread a light brownish tint over her eyelids and the hollows of her eyes. Even looking at pictures of her caught my breath. I zoomed in on her eyes. The screen turned monochrome brown. My chest began to tighten with excitement as I leaned forward to let myself be lost in those eyes. And that’s when I saw it.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, only that it triggered a cold flash across my back and froze me like in those moments when you wake up feeling threatened by something you can’t define but and you know that if you move, it’ll pounce. It was the vacancy I’d seen in her eyes the first time we met, but it was more―like a pit descending into bottomless nothing, a complete absence of…I didn’t know what. I jerked back, fearing I’d be sucked into something from which I’d never return.
I sat at my desk, sweating, cold, shaken, fingers trembling. My thoughts tripped over explanations that might make sense of what I’d seen.
After a few moments I calmed enough to lean forward into her eyes and confirm what I’d just seen but it was gone, if it had ever been there. It could have been stress, change of lifestyle, anything.
I spent the next couple of hours working on the remaining pictures. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. In each of the pictures she was beautiful and her eyes took my breath away without swallowing me whole.
I didn’t mention any of this to her.
***
“As a photographer, there’s something I find really odd about you.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t have any pictures.”
“Pictures?”
“Yeah, pictures…family, travel, childhood, school. How come you have no pictures?”
“Well, hun, as a photographer, you weren’t around then to take them.”
***
I started losing it. Whatever I’d seen in her eyes wouldn’t let go. I went through hundreds of pictures, burrowing into her eyes as she sat on the edge of the fountain by City Hall, zooming into her eyes as she smiled under a black moustache at the dollar store, digging deep into her eyes as she waved to me high in the air from a swing at the playground across the street― searching her eyes in picture after picture.
But it was gone. I tried to chalk it off to imagination. Stress. A disagreeable lunch. I tried to doubt what I’d seen, distrust my eyes, but that look in her eyes when we met hovered over me. I remembered the chill I’d felt.
***
I started an obsessive campaign of picture-taking, catching her while she ate, watched TV, slept, showered, dressed and undressed.
“Steven?”
“Yes?”
“I’m undressing.”
“I know. And I’m taking pictures.”
“Steven?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you taking pictures of my eyes while I’m undressing?”
***
I put over a thousand images through every Photoshop routine I could think of, including a barrage of special effects like fish eye, sepia, duo tone, HDR, everything I could think of. I varied the resolutions, hues, temperatures, white balances, color saturations, brightness, sharpness, densities.
Did I mention I was obsessed?
***
I decided it was time to talk to her about it. We were eating authentic Mexican food in an authentic Mexican restaurant with authentic Mariachi music in the background.
“I know I’ve been acting weird lately.” I was on my fourth Corona
“Oh, you noticed?” Sometimes she could be a bit of a shithead.
“Yes, I did.”
“Steven.” She leaned forward, looking me straight in the eyes. “There’s something wrong.”
“Yes?”
She reached over the table and took both my hands. “When you’re not taking pictures of my eyes, or working on my eyes on your computer...”
“Yes?”
“You stare.”
“I stare?”
“Into my eyes, constantly. Like you’re looking for something.”
“You have beautiful eyes. I…”
“Steven. This is a nice restaurant. Don’t make me pour a bottle of beer over your head.” She squeezed my hands tightly as she talked. “I want it to stop…the whole eye thing. It stops.”
I nodded yes.
“Give me your word.”
“I promise. I’ll stop. No more eye fixation.”
***
For a while, I managed to reign in the eye fetish and pay more attention to her as in: “Nice to see a man who appreciates his woman undressing for the camera.” I immersed myself in my abandoned toy project and scoured the streets looking for toys left on the curbs for trash day or tossed beside dumpsters. Gray drizzly days were my favorite, with the rain adding a bit of the old sparkle to the colors of the toys, now contrasted so vividly with their drab surroundings and suggesting the magic they once cast on the children who owned them.
I was picking up more commercial work. My book release was a month away, and I was almost ready for the exhibition and launch.
She seemed to be more excited about the exhibit than me, talking about it incessantly, asking me if I was excited, telling me how beautiful the prints were. Her favorite was of a cart sitting in snow up to its lower tray. Behind it, a field stretched into a narrow line of trees. Behind that, a black storm-filled sky stretched across the horizon moving with a precision edge into a sunny cloudless sky. The play of light between the storm and the clear sky was surreal and foreboding. The cart was about thirty feet into the snow and, strangely, there were no footsteps leading out to it, as though it had just appeared there.
Things were looking good.
For the time being.
***
“I know hardly anything about you.”
“What’s my favorite pizza?”
“Sausage.”
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Brown. Chocolate brown.”
“What’s my favorite food?”
“When you want a break from health food…steak, medium rare, baked potato with sour cream, and broccoli with cheese sauce.”
“What’s my favorite song?”
“But, what’s this…?”
“Indulge me. What’s my favorite song?”
“These Eyes.”
“Most men wouldn’t be able to answer those questions.”
“So?”
“So, you know me better than most men know their women.”
***
There’re two schools of thought about balance. One claims that the purpose of our lives is to attain a state in which everything is completely in balance and then keep things that way until we die. This is a kind of spiritual approach. The other claims that it’s just fine to work towards a state of balance, but then we need to find ways to throw everything into chaos again so that we can start over trying to achieve balance. This would be an evolutionary approach with the rationale being: if things are always in balance, nothing happens—nothing goes forward, nothing goes backward. We have stasis. No progress. No evolution.
I guess I’m one of those people who need to evolve.
Things were too good between us. It was driving me nuts. Who was I to have this perfect relationship with this breathtakingly beautiful woman who never complained, who wanted the same things I wanted, who treated me like everything I did and thought was essential, who never told me how to live my life and who arrived on my doorstep devoid of historical baggage?
These were the kinds of crazy thoughts I was beginning to have. On the one hand, I was afraid to push things; on the other, I couldn’t resist the urge to push.
I started investigating. Google, LinkedIn, MySpace (after all, she was a graphic artist), Facebook, Twitter, online directories and dozens of other cyber ways to stalk a person were all dead ends. I couldn’t find a single pixel of her on the Internet.
Of course, it didn’t take long before she noticed that I was acting crazy again.
***
“My brother and I used to love toasted peanut butter sandwiches dipped in tea with lots of milk and sugar for breakfast.”
“Peanut butter is good for growing bodies.”
“Mom used to pack salmon sandwiches for lunch. Every day. And a banana. And Kool-Aid.”
“The salmon would explain why you have such a strong heart.”
“What was your favorite breakfast when you were a kid? Let me guess…bran flakes.”
“Why would you say bran flakes?”
“Um…I don’t know. Just a wild guess.”
“Did you get around to taking the car in about that clicking noise?”
***
“You look tense tonight, Steven.”
“Got something on my mind.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“How serious?”
“Really serious.”
“You just put half an inch of salt on your baked potato.”
“I like salt.”
“With a bit of potato on the side?”
“Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this why you were taking all the pictures, tracking me all over the internet?”
“Tracking you? What…”
“Browsers have this thing called histories. You were searching for information on me day after day. You even searched for things like demonic eyes. I’m guessing in relation to me.”
“You knew all this? Why didn’t you say anything?|
“I was hoping you would either find whatever it was you were looking for, or come to your senses.”
“I need to know about your past.”
“You need to get over this obsession.”
“But why can’t you just tell me…”
“OK. I was raised on a farm. I came to the city. I met you. Happy?”
“Is that true?”
“No.”
“Then...?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. Of course I…”
“Then just love me.”
***
But I couldn’t just love her. I pushed it like picking a scab trying to heal over a major artery.
We were home, drinking wine, watching a Seinfeld re-run, eating homemade guacamole. I felt like I was sitting beside myself, watching myself reach for the remote and turning the TV off, watching as I turned to her.
“Tell me about your past.”
“You don’t want to know about it.”
“I have to know about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I told you…a farm.”
“You told me that wasn’t true.”
“Maybe I lied about it not being true.”
“What was it I saw in your eyes?”
“Probably your imagination.”
“What are you hiding from me?”
“Nothing that should mean anything to you—to keeping us together.”
“But I have to know.”
“Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“But you do know.”
“I just want things to stay the way they are.”
“Things will stay the way they are, but I’ll know. I have to know what you know.”
“What I know—and all I have to know—is that I love you and I want things to stay as they are.” She stood up and walked slowly to the window. She stared towards the park but her eyes seemed focused on something far away, lifetimes away. It was a sad stare that flushed me with guilt. I should have backed off then. I should have put my love before my curiosity and gone to her and held her and told her everything would be all right. Just like in the movies. But I didn’t. She stood by the window for a few minutes before turning to me. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “The truth is, Steven, I don’t know. I remember my job and the people I work with, but that’s all. I went home after I met you and packed some things. As soon as I arrived at your door, I forgot where I’d come from. At work, I sort of floated through each day listening to people talking about things I should have known about but didn’t. I played along with them. It happens less often now. But, Steven, I can’t even remember the things they used to talk about. All I remember is you. And what we have. And I don’t want to lose it.”
“But you have to remember.”
***
Finally, she remembered.
I came home late one night. She was sitting on the couch. I said something about being sorry for missing supper but she ignored me. The hair running over her shoulders was like a chocolate waterfall. Even the back of her head thrilled me. I walked quickly to the kitchen to see what I’d missed eating by candlelight.
There was nothing. Not even the smell of cooking. Evening sun cast a surreal aura over the kitchen. There was a note on the breakfast table. I picked it up and read.
Steven dearest,
I remembered. Thanks, Steven. We should have left it alone like I wanted. Just left it alone.
As for what it is: no, you don’t get to know that. At least not yet. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and sorry for the blood stains on your couch.
Love always,
Heather
The calls started a week later.
***
When I think of it now, I got home at around close to eight that night. The blood on the couch was still slightly warm. Maybe it was 7:29 when she pushed the butcher knife into her stomach, maybe that exact moment when her soul fled her body. Maybe that’s why she calls every night at that time. I’ll ask her about that next week. It’s the kind of thing I should ask face-to-face.
One week.
I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to talk myself out of this. Though I can’t see that happening, and it’s going to be tough waiting through those seven days. But like I said, I have a solid objective within a reasonable time frame. She’s waiting for me. She knows.
And I need to know.
June 14, 2017
Sample Chapter from The War Bug
(Excerpt from my third novel, The War Bug. You can buy it at Amazon. Just do a search for crazy stupid book. BTW, there's no giant ant in the book. The War Bug is a computer virus that causes a war between online city states...but turns out to be kinda nice when it helps the lead character get his virtual family back. I wrote a short story in which the cover artist get his for putting an ant on the cover. The publisher who published the book with the ant on the cover also published the story in which the cover artist gets his. Go figure.)
The Great Nano Canyon
"Cold murdering bitch. Damn, just one night with her, one hour!" muttered Jeemo, as he wiped drool from his chin and took off the white robe. The orange spikes on his head stood straight up like sharp erections.
Jeemo Roosenvelt would gladly have taken the sexclone’s place if he could have fallen to his death with his brain fresh full of sex with Bella and the smell of her cruelty seeping into his gray flesh.
He stared at his naked body in the wall length mirror. "Perfection!"
Vast folds of flesh rolled over thick layers of fat. Seven feet, seven hundred pounds. Jeemo loved the symmetry of the numbers. Somewhere under that mass his penis twitched crazily. He could feel it. "Yes. Throb my hidden toy, throb for the goddess Bella, psycho lust kitten of the emerald palace."
He turned sideways, looking up and down the bulk of his body, at the gray face bulging out of his shoulders, and the fan of orange hair spikes forming a line from one ear to the other. His hands and feet were small and delicate; his movement as he turned before the mirror, fluid and graceful. He loved to watch himself move. He loved to watch himself standing still. He loved to watch himself eat, sit, lying down. Every wall of every room in his mansion, except one, was a mirror. Through the mirrors he could watch his enormous girth stretch into an infinity of reflected images.
A tuxedoed serverclone—one of the lower orders of clones, bred without legs, but equipped with anti-gravity boots so that their footsteps would not irritate their owners—floated to his side with a glass of red wine on a silver tray. It was reflected thousands of times over in the walls. "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, Mr. Roosenvelt."
Jeemo whisked the wine glass to his lips with a single motion and the serverclone floated away. Sipping wine, Jeemo bounced lightly, mounds of skin shaking like sickly jelly, to an arched window. The glass in the window could withstand the force of an F7 tornado—and it had.
Outside, the moon spilled over a Mid-west gutted like a war zone, spreading into the darkness, deep into the New Tornado Alley leading right up to the edge of the Great Nano Canyon. In the distance, strange light played in the air over sections of the canyon, dancing in bursts of blue and orange. This was normal.
The canyon wasn't.
***
Less than a hundred years into the new millennium, the human race came close to becoming cheese soup. It started with the world's smallest computer, a computer so small, it could only be seen with an electron microscope. It was the first assembler nanobot, a concoction of seven atoms that had been circuited, programmed and instructed to build—though what the nanobot was supposed to build was never known. In the process of building, it killed ten million people, including the people who had programmed it, and the last communication with them had been from the project's lead Nano-applications Specialist, Milton Nadd.
His pallid face had filled the phone monitor as he whispered, "My god, it's cheese soup..."
Then the screen had gone blank.
No one will ever know why it was cheese soup, but here’s how the nanobot was supposed to work: it was supposed to visit neighboring atoms and nudge them around until it had built another nanobot exactly like itself. Then the two nanobots were to visit neighboring atoms and nudge them around until they had built two more nanobots exactly like themselves. Then the four nanobots…
It was much like E-bola, only faster. In fact, it was so fast that, by the time Milton Nadd had said "cheese soup", he was cheese soup. And his videophone was cheese soup. The other researchers and scientists and administrators and computer technicians in the room with Milton Nadd were all cheese soup. Desks, computers, chairs, paper clips, Far Side calendars, pencils and papers and books were all cheese soup. A million dollar electron microscope shook twice then collapsed into a splash of cheese soup that turned most of the floor into
cheese soup. The walls literally flowed into the floor and the ceiling fell and bubbled into the yellow-orange liquid. Within minutes, the entire underground high-security maximum-containment, fool-proof, fail-safe, absolutely accident free and "Senator-Jonz-you-won't-ever-have-to-worry-about-anything-escaping-from-this-place-or-my-name-isn't-Doctor-Milton-Nadd" facility was cheese soup, and it was working its way up through the ground, turning layers of red granite, quartz schist and an elevator containing junior research assistant, Jaqui Wright, who, strangely, had always wanted to be cheese soup, into cheese soup.
Now the assemblers were in gear, revved up and ready to rock, rarin' to chew into the atoms of igneous and metamorphic rock, bite into the neutrons of trees and grass and asphalt and spit out cheese soup. Highways, lakes and towns, swimming pools and rivers, airports and trains, canoes full of frothy cold beer, and entire cities all churned into cheese soup. Hundreds of square miles of North Dakota were cheese soup by the time the news began to spread. Around the world, people panicked and rioted while others prepared quietly to become cheese soup. Jerry Springer was thawed from cryostasis and hosted a special on people who had sex in vats of cheese soup. Leaders of the Unified Global Village pondered and debated over international chat forums and concluded that it was time to try something new, and soup was always OK. Just when the world was ready to accept cheese soupness, the assemblers stopped.
Just stopped.
There was no apparent reason. They just stopped, after having created a mass of cheese soup that stretched from Winnipeg to Fargo and from Williston to Duluth. The whole planet held its breath in unison, as the ocean of cheese soup trembled like gunky jello without advancing a single atom in any direction. It stayed like that for three days. Then the giant mass of cheese soup went "ping"—not a loud ping, but a barely audible "ping", like two expensive champagne glasses toasted by ladybugs. By the time the "ping" had "inged", the cheese soup was gone. In its place was a perfectly round bowl in the earth, its walls polished and smooth. Millions of people who had flocked to the edges of the cheese soup
stared quietly, their faces a wall of open-eyed non-expression around the massive hole left by the cheese soup.
Nobody knew why it disappeared. Nobody knew why it stopped. Only the handful of Nanotechnologists Milton Nadd had called just before he became cheese soup knew why or how it had started, and they later restricted all nanoresearch to space stations far from the Earth's orbit until the research was proved safe. Or at least somewhat reasonably safe.
Of course, there were those who thought a giant empty bowl was a big improvement over the former landscape.
***
For the briefest flicker of time, Jeemo’s mind drew him back to the failure of nano-treatments to change his body, rejecting him like a bad odor. Then the rejection by his parents, as though he were an insult to their DNA, and then his childhood spent with serverclones and software. Other than his parents, he’d never been in the same room as a real human, never touched real flesh other than his own. But that was all he’d needed, to feel himself real and nano-resistant, so perfect even the bots couldn’t improve him. He was the new standard of human perfection, and he loved every cubic inch of space he occupied.
But he’d gladly die for just a brush of Bella’s cold touch.
"Hot damn! That crazy woman’s going to fuck my brains out and flush me into the ocean." The throbbing between his huge legs went into hyper drive at the thought of plunging into the ocean with Bella’s acid love fluids burning into his body. All he had to do was get the woman and the girl for her.
He sipped his wine as he stared into the sky over the Great Nano Canyon. The pink hole that was his mouth curved into something like a smile. And there’s the key to it all, he thought, why didn’t I think of that sooner? I’ll move it later. He’ll never find them now.
A sweet aroma curled into his nostrils. Mmm, honey glazed ham. There would be Poinsettia Eggs en Gelee. Potatoes Savonnette and watercress soup. And none of it would taste like chicken. Oh, it might hint of chicken on the aftertaste—chicken was inescapable these days—but the glazed ham would taste like glazed ham on the first few chews.
The Great Nano Canyon
"Cold murdering bitch. Damn, just one night with her, one hour!" muttered Jeemo, as he wiped drool from his chin and took off the white robe. The orange spikes on his head stood straight up like sharp erections.
Jeemo Roosenvelt would gladly have taken the sexclone’s place if he could have fallen to his death with his brain fresh full of sex with Bella and the smell of her cruelty seeping into his gray flesh.
He stared at his naked body in the wall length mirror. "Perfection!"
Vast folds of flesh rolled over thick layers of fat. Seven feet, seven hundred pounds. Jeemo loved the symmetry of the numbers. Somewhere under that mass his penis twitched crazily. He could feel it. "Yes. Throb my hidden toy, throb for the goddess Bella, psycho lust kitten of the emerald palace."
He turned sideways, looking up and down the bulk of his body, at the gray face bulging out of his shoulders, and the fan of orange hair spikes forming a line from one ear to the other. His hands and feet were small and delicate; his movement as he turned before the mirror, fluid and graceful. He loved to watch himself move. He loved to watch himself standing still. He loved to watch himself eat, sit, lying down. Every wall of every room in his mansion, except one, was a mirror. Through the mirrors he could watch his enormous girth stretch into an infinity of reflected images.
A tuxedoed serverclone—one of the lower orders of clones, bred without legs, but equipped with anti-gravity boots so that their footsteps would not irritate their owners—floated to his side with a glass of red wine on a silver tray. It was reflected thousands of times over in the walls. "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, Mr. Roosenvelt."
Jeemo whisked the wine glass to his lips with a single motion and the serverclone floated away. Sipping wine, Jeemo bounced lightly, mounds of skin shaking like sickly jelly, to an arched window. The glass in the window could withstand the force of an F7 tornado—and it had.
Outside, the moon spilled over a Mid-west gutted like a war zone, spreading into the darkness, deep into the New Tornado Alley leading right up to the edge of the Great Nano Canyon. In the distance, strange light played in the air over sections of the canyon, dancing in bursts of blue and orange. This was normal.
The canyon wasn't.
***
Less than a hundred years into the new millennium, the human race came close to becoming cheese soup. It started with the world's smallest computer, a computer so small, it could only be seen with an electron microscope. It was the first assembler nanobot, a concoction of seven atoms that had been circuited, programmed and instructed to build—though what the nanobot was supposed to build was never known. In the process of building, it killed ten million people, including the people who had programmed it, and the last communication with them had been from the project's lead Nano-applications Specialist, Milton Nadd.
His pallid face had filled the phone monitor as he whispered, "My god, it's cheese soup..."
Then the screen had gone blank.
No one will ever know why it was cheese soup, but here’s how the nanobot was supposed to work: it was supposed to visit neighboring atoms and nudge them around until it had built another nanobot exactly like itself. Then the two nanobots were to visit neighboring atoms and nudge them around until they had built two more nanobots exactly like themselves. Then the four nanobots…
It was much like E-bola, only faster. In fact, it was so fast that, by the time Milton Nadd had said "cheese soup", he was cheese soup. And his videophone was cheese soup. The other researchers and scientists and administrators and computer technicians in the room with Milton Nadd were all cheese soup. Desks, computers, chairs, paper clips, Far Side calendars, pencils and papers and books were all cheese soup. A million dollar electron microscope shook twice then collapsed into a splash of cheese soup that turned most of the floor into
cheese soup. The walls literally flowed into the floor and the ceiling fell and bubbled into the yellow-orange liquid. Within minutes, the entire underground high-security maximum-containment, fool-proof, fail-safe, absolutely accident free and "Senator-Jonz-you-won't-ever-have-to-worry-about-anything-escaping-from-this-place-or-my-name-isn't-Doctor-Milton-Nadd" facility was cheese soup, and it was working its way up through the ground, turning layers of red granite, quartz schist and an elevator containing junior research assistant, Jaqui Wright, who, strangely, had always wanted to be cheese soup, into cheese soup.
Now the assemblers were in gear, revved up and ready to rock, rarin' to chew into the atoms of igneous and metamorphic rock, bite into the neutrons of trees and grass and asphalt and spit out cheese soup. Highways, lakes and towns, swimming pools and rivers, airports and trains, canoes full of frothy cold beer, and entire cities all churned into cheese soup. Hundreds of square miles of North Dakota were cheese soup by the time the news began to spread. Around the world, people panicked and rioted while others prepared quietly to become cheese soup. Jerry Springer was thawed from cryostasis and hosted a special on people who had sex in vats of cheese soup. Leaders of the Unified Global Village pondered and debated over international chat forums and concluded that it was time to try something new, and soup was always OK. Just when the world was ready to accept cheese soupness, the assemblers stopped.
Just stopped.
There was no apparent reason. They just stopped, after having created a mass of cheese soup that stretched from Winnipeg to Fargo and from Williston to Duluth. The whole planet held its breath in unison, as the ocean of cheese soup trembled like gunky jello without advancing a single atom in any direction. It stayed like that for three days. Then the giant mass of cheese soup went "ping"—not a loud ping, but a barely audible "ping", like two expensive champagne glasses toasted by ladybugs. By the time the "ping" had "inged", the cheese soup was gone. In its place was a perfectly round bowl in the earth, its walls polished and smooth. Millions of people who had flocked to the edges of the cheese soup
stared quietly, their faces a wall of open-eyed non-expression around the massive hole left by the cheese soup.
Nobody knew why it disappeared. Nobody knew why it stopped. Only the handful of Nanotechnologists Milton Nadd had called just before he became cheese soup knew why or how it had started, and they later restricted all nanoresearch to space stations far from the Earth's orbit until the research was proved safe. Or at least somewhat reasonably safe.
Of course, there were those who thought a giant empty bowl was a big improvement over the former landscape.
***
For the briefest flicker of time, Jeemo’s mind drew him back to the failure of nano-treatments to change his body, rejecting him like a bad odor. Then the rejection by his parents, as though he were an insult to their DNA, and then his childhood spent with serverclones and software. Other than his parents, he’d never been in the same room as a real human, never touched real flesh other than his own. But that was all he’d needed, to feel himself real and nano-resistant, so perfect even the bots couldn’t improve him. He was the new standard of human perfection, and he loved every cubic inch of space he occupied.
But he’d gladly die for just a brush of Bella’s cold touch.
"Hot damn! That crazy woman’s going to fuck my brains out and flush me into the ocean." The throbbing between his huge legs went into hyper drive at the thought of plunging into the ocean with Bella’s acid love fluids burning into his body. All he had to do was get the woman and the girl for her.
He sipped his wine as he stared into the sky over the Great Nano Canyon. The pink hole that was his mouth curved into something like a smile. And there’s the key to it all, he thought, why didn’t I think of that sooner? I’ll move it later. He’ll never find them now.
A sweet aroma curled into his nostrils. Mmm, honey glazed ham. There would be Poinsettia Eggs en Gelee. Potatoes Savonnette and watercress soup. And none of it would taste like chicken. Oh, it might hint of chicken on the aftertaste—chicken was inescapable these days—but the glazed ham would taste like glazed ham on the first few chews.
June 12, 2017
The World's First Annual International Holiday
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and everybody was excited
from Bamako and Brazzaville to Port Moresbury and Bellefontaine
from Hobart and Managua to Kalymnos andTurpan
from Derbent and London to Hemer and Dahaban
From Fredericton and San Lucas to Bangor and Dunhuang
everybody was excited
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
a day for child soldiers in Burma to lay down their guns and write home to their parents
a day for babies dying from starvation in the Sudan to stop starving and smile and gurgle like babies do
a day for bankers on Wall Street to stop stealing money from the poor and buy chocolate at the neighborhood co-op
a day for wife beaters everywhere to do the dishes and laundry and bring home flowers
a day for politicians around the world to take a break from lying and read The Road Less Traveled
a day to lay down machetes and dance with the children
a day for warring neighbors to shake hands and exchange recipes
a day for gadget slaves to lay down their iPhones and go for a long walk in the woods,
naked
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and the day started off sunny on one side of the planet
and dark (but clear-skied) on the other
there were no tsunamis, hurricanes, blizzards or tornadoes
no volcanoes, limnic eruptions, earthquakes, floods or forest fires
no outbreaks of Ebola, e-coli or flu
no mudslides, avalanches, droughts or famines
no Extinction Level Events
no riots, arrests, seizures or crackdowns
no bankruptcies, scams, economic crises, investor paranoia or lack of fiduciary prudence
no wars, police actions, diplomatic breakdowns or terrorist attacks
no scandals, rumors, publicity stunts, divorces or cover-ups
not a single spontaneous combustion of a human being
and everybody agreed that the absence of bad news in the media was exciting
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and for once nobody was calling the shots
nobody said, “You cannot eat meat on this propitious day.”
nobody said, “You have to get up early and wear your best socks.”
nobody said, “We’ll all meet at the meeting place for speeches and PowerPoint presentations.”
nobody asked for tickets
nobody asked for ID
nobody asked for passports or references
nobody asked questions or doubted another’s word
nobody cast suspicion
and everybody had fun doing their own thing
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and people were passing things out
they passed out smiles
they passed out hugs and kisses
they passed out free stuff like ice cream and hot chicken samosas and chocolate coated ants
they passed out WOWgrams
they passed out cards for every occasion
they passed out absolution
they passed out free passes to concerts
they passed out papers for safe passage through dangerous territories
they passed out recognition and pats on the back
they passed out shoulders to cry on and ears that would listen
some, overcome by the excitement, simply passed out
after which, the face paint was passed out
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and everybody danced to whatever rhythm they danced
drums beat out around the world to whatever rhythm the drummers beat
there were parades in the streets and celebrations in hostels around the world
piñatas hung from trees wherever there were trees
every wrist wore the Martenitsa and every hand held a sparkler
there was bean throwing and pumpkin seed spitting
young and old wore costumes and sang songs in foreign languages
fireworks filled the skies over streets painted in red and white stripes
candles and incense and bowls of hot punch spilled over the curbs
oceans of smiles flooded the streets and alleys and gurgled up from the sewers
the earth vibrated madly with excitement and goodwill and the approaching aliens nodded approval and called off the cleansing
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and the hangover lasted a few hours into the next day
before the babies began to starve again
and the children picked up their guns
(First Published in PostPoetry Magazine, 2012)
and everybody was excited
from Bamako and Brazzaville to Port Moresbury and Bellefontaine
from Hobart and Managua to Kalymnos andTurpan
from Derbent and London to Hemer and Dahaban
From Fredericton and San Lucas to Bangor and Dunhuang
everybody was excited
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
a day for child soldiers in Burma to lay down their guns and write home to their parents
a day for babies dying from starvation in the Sudan to stop starving and smile and gurgle like babies do
a day for bankers on Wall Street to stop stealing money from the poor and buy chocolate at the neighborhood co-op
a day for wife beaters everywhere to do the dishes and laundry and bring home flowers
a day for politicians around the world to take a break from lying and read The Road Less Traveled
a day to lay down machetes and dance with the children
a day for warring neighbors to shake hands and exchange recipes
a day for gadget slaves to lay down their iPhones and go for a long walk in the woods,
naked
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and the day started off sunny on one side of the planet
and dark (but clear-skied) on the other
there were no tsunamis, hurricanes, blizzards or tornadoes
no volcanoes, limnic eruptions, earthquakes, floods or forest fires
no outbreaks of Ebola, e-coli or flu
no mudslides, avalanches, droughts or famines
no Extinction Level Events
no riots, arrests, seizures or crackdowns
no bankruptcies, scams, economic crises, investor paranoia or lack of fiduciary prudence
no wars, police actions, diplomatic breakdowns or terrorist attacks
no scandals, rumors, publicity stunts, divorces or cover-ups
not a single spontaneous combustion of a human being
and everybody agreed that the absence of bad news in the media was exciting
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and for once nobody was calling the shots
nobody said, “You cannot eat meat on this propitious day.”
nobody said, “You have to get up early and wear your best socks.”
nobody said, “We’ll all meet at the meeting place for speeches and PowerPoint presentations.”
nobody asked for tickets
nobody asked for ID
nobody asked for passports or references
nobody asked questions or doubted another’s word
nobody cast suspicion
and everybody had fun doing their own thing
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and people were passing things out
they passed out smiles
they passed out hugs and kisses
they passed out free stuff like ice cream and hot chicken samosas and chocolate coated ants
they passed out WOWgrams
they passed out cards for every occasion
they passed out absolution
they passed out free passes to concerts
they passed out papers for safe passage through dangerous territories
they passed out recognition and pats on the back
they passed out shoulders to cry on and ears that would listen
some, overcome by the excitement, simply passed out
after which, the face paint was passed out
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and everybody danced to whatever rhythm they danced
drums beat out around the world to whatever rhythm the drummers beat
there were parades in the streets and celebrations in hostels around the world
piñatas hung from trees wherever there were trees
every wrist wore the Martenitsa and every hand held a sparkler
there was bean throwing and pumpkin seed spitting
young and old wore costumes and sang songs in foreign languages
fireworks filled the skies over streets painted in red and white stripes
candles and incense and bowls of hot punch spilled over the curbs
oceans of smiles flooded the streets and alleys and gurgled up from the sewers
the earth vibrated madly with excitement and goodwill and the approaching aliens nodded approval and called off the cleansing
It was the world’s first annual international holiday
and the hangover lasted a few hours into the next day
before the babies began to starve again
and the children picked up their guns
(First Published in PostPoetry Magazine, 2012)
Writing Hurts Like Hell
Writing Hurts Like Hell is a workshop taught by Biff Mitchell for a decade through the University of New Brunswick's College of Extended Learning. Held mostly off-campus in coffee shops, bars, studios
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