Averil Dean's Blog, page 4

The Narrows

They say that every writer has one story to tell. Just one, repeated from different angles and with an array of characters, the variety of which might be so vast as to disguise this fact even from the writer. And while I don’t subscribe to the “every writer” part of that statement or any other, I think there’s something to it. I do tend to circle around the same issues. There are a lot of violent men in my stories, a lot of crime and romantic dysfunction. That’s the top layer.

However, under...

Alignment

It’s 6:15 am and I’m in Redmond, my temporary nest, drinking coffee from a paper cup. I drove here straight from work and ate a bowl of pasta at the hotel bar, washed it down with a bee’s knees cocktail, and went straight to bed with a collection of stories by Mark Haddon and a back-up book on my Kindle. Already I miss my husband and my house, my feather pillow with its washed silk cover, my son, my dogs, my soy milk and Winco instant coffee. I miss the view from my window.

I don’t mean this...

100-Word Microfiction III

The Ring in the Lake

She’s wearing her favorite outfit: A blue linen skirt, cinched at the waist with a woven cotton belt, and her sister’s Coca-Cola tee-shirt to go with it, because that’s what he was drinking when they met. A denim jacket in case it’s cold by the lake. White socks, bra, underwear. An old pair of clover earrings, For luck, From Dad, and three slim bangles that make a shivery noise when they touch. A mood ring with an oval stone that will fade to gray as her body sinks, but f...

Moi

I have a long weekend coming up and I’m not sure what to do with it. What I’d like most is to spend a few days alone, writing, bumming around near this hotel in Redmond where my husband and I like to stay. It’s near the river, and in summers past we’ve rented bikes to ride along its banks and down to Lake Sammamish. Though I suspect the weather will put the kibosh on any thought of biking, there are still bookstores to enjoy, bougie restaurants, an outdoor shopping mall. There’s also a theater w...

100-Word Microfiction II

Let Me Show You

They meet at the door, which she holds open with her foot. He’s lost, reeking of cigarettes, and moves closer with his phone to show her where he wants to go. The font is so large that the words appear broken. They don’t contain an address. He reaches into his coat pocket, Let me show you, wait, and as his hand disappears she thinks, whatever’s in that pocket will decide me, and the pocket’s rather bulky, but not that bulky, so she waits in a parody of obstruction, dumb with m...

100-Word Microfiction

Post-Op

I didn’t know what I’d feel, seeing myself this way. The woman facing me is pitiable, maimed. Two long asymmetrical scars cross my chest: one over my heart, the other low and slanted red like the claw mark of a predator. My nipples are gone, giving my chest a blind quality, or perhaps a muteness, as in one of those horror movies where the character’s mouth is covered over with skin.

Yet my mind is filled with savage joy. The world has taken something from you, and that’s a first. ...

Flash I

The Clockmaker

I’m not where I’m supposed to be. You have a knack for sensing this, and I can mark the beat of silence here and there throughout our conversation, where I imagine you with the phone pressed between your ear and shoulder, pausing at your workbench with a pair of tweezers in each hand and that wrinkle of consternation on your forehead, and thinking perhaps that the background noise on my end is not what you’d expect.

My imagination carries on sometimes—a juxtaposition in...

Snapshot

An idea has settled over me and I can’t shake it off. If you’re a writer, you’ll be familiar with the signs: the queasy excitement, drifting focus, the sense of impending doom. The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott. A story looms.

I keep asking whether I have to write it. Will it fuck off and leave me alone, or will it be there every morning at 4 a.m., watching me sleep, waiting to pounce as soon as I open my eyes. Can I pare it down to nothing, write it and be done? Or will i...

Neckties

My god, these men. These foolish, grasping, needy men. Can we not have a moment of peace? Why must we always divide ourselves into teams: on the chamber floor, on the street, in business and religion and cultural constructs of every kind. Red team, blue team, world without end. Competition is their constant excuse for violence, for conflict, dragging everybody in, as if we all must stand behind our leaders at the urinal while they compare their dicks with the dicks on either side. Yours is bigge...

Pink

I’ve been thinking about one of our patients. A young guy, rope thin, with pink tips and dark roots, who went to the wrong clinic on his first visit and arrived so late we had to work through lunch to see him. He was sweet about it, though, and doggedly pushed through our paperwork, describing his health history, his symptoms, carefully laying out the mundane demographic details I’m expected to collect. He’s had a lot of injuries in his short life. A car accident in the recent past has left his ...